Grind

29th October
14:21 GMT +1

"…pretty sure Catherine wouldn't share that opinion."

"Why, what was wrong with it?"

Donna frowns at me as if I've said something bewilderingly stupid. "You deliberately picked a fight with your audience, then you had to use your ring to make them stop shouting."

"Yes, exactly. They had to stake their colours to the mast, then have me play a recording of an angel saying that the things that made them do that actually weren't a problem. Meaning they are, by their own terms, in the wrong."

"They don't think like that, Paul."

"True, but like the fellow in 'Thank You For Smoking' said: I wasn't after them. Unless I suddenly converted to.. some branch of Christianity or.. started my own, I was never going to keep the Christian religious right's approval. But I could give them a platform to publically demonstrate their hypocrisy, so that's what I did."

"Alright: I don't think like that."

"Do you believe that I should have let Satanus kill Blaze?"

"No."

"Do you believe that I should have helped Blaze hide somewhere where she would continue to help people damn themselves to sustain her magic?"

Donna sets her jaw. "No."

"Do you think that I should have killed her myself? Because Adom-."

"Paul."

I twitch my mouth, giving the impression that I'm trying not to laugh. "You're getting really good at doing the 'Diana' voice."

"I'm basically a clone of her. I can probably do her exact voice."

"I'll make sure to get you larger bras for Christmas, then."

Her eyes widen very slightly. "I-. Er, no what?"

"Okay, but I've seen Diana's old pictures, and if you're basically a clone-."

"Would you offer to get Kon a bigger jockstrap!?"

I blink. Yes, but… "Kon.. isn't ever going to grow, so, no. He also prefers boxer shorts-."

"What do you mean?"

"Er, Kon, not going to grow?" She nods. "It's because of how the genomorphs assembled his chimeric tissues. His hair gets longer, and.. eventually it'll go grey-" Probably. "-but that's about it. He'll always be shorter than Kal-El. Actually, he'll.. probably end up being the shortest man on the team. Unless Helios decides to do something about it."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because he's healthy and happy. I can use my power ring to.. alter people in all sorts of ways. But… I'm.. still surprised that Kon works as well as he does-. You know, as a biological organism. Of all the ways I could think of to.. alter him, none of them were… There isn't a solution that's simple and good. Nothing that just fixes the problem. Inasmuch as being at the lower end of 'average' height is a problem."

"And… What about Match?"

"Minimal chimerism. And I think Jor-El might be going to remove that. Aside from the eyes, he'll end up looking just like Kal-El."

"Okay." She nods. "But none of that makes it okay for you to make cracks about my breasts."

"I wasn't making a crack, I was making a light-hearted observation. Based on the similarities-."

"Well don't do that either."

I nod. "Noted." We begin our descent onto the volcanic soil of Mount Etna. "Am I allowed to make comments about shaving, on the grounds that I know Kon and Kal-El shave?"

"I'll.. allow it." She lands, just ahead of me. "Can we go back to talking about you offending three major world religions and how that isn't a good idea?"

"Actually, we'd moved on to how it offended you, which was why I attempted a light-hearted deflection. But alright: what do you think I should have done?"

"Asked Zauriel if you could have a fruit when you saw him in the Garden of Eden."

"So you don't have a problem with the Gabriel part of the story?"

"Yes, I have a problem with it, but that had already happened and wasn't anything to do with you. I don't… There are places that have compulsory organ donation and I don't mind that, so… Using his wings when he can't use them any more isn't necessarily bad."

"Alright, but what happens after he says no?"

"He said that he didn't have a problem with you giving her the fruit. Why would he say 'no'?"

"Because he doesn't have the authority to say 'yes'. Regardless of what he thinks of the idea-" And I'm momentarily reminded of many years ago when I worked at Asda, and a man asked me why I wasn't discounting nearly out of date fruit. "-he wouldn't do it without appropriate authorisation."

Her shoulders tense slightly. "And you don't think God would let you save a demon?"

"I don't remember him saying anything about getting orders from any god. Zauriel said that he was going to inform his king."

"Yes. That's God."

"No, the way he spoke about his god was different to the way he spoke about his king. And he directly stated that his instructions did not come from the Mind of God."

"Maybe if anyone had heard the full transcript I'd know that! This is the problem with anyone telling you what you should have done: no one knows everything you know! You don't tell anyone!"

"Not.. unreasonable. But you need to understand, the Source is not some.. sort of.. super powered Morgan Freeman. It isn't Highfather Izaya, who can do a decent impression of what most people think when they hear capital 'g' god. No one really knows why it does things or -beyond certain obvious things- that it's even what's doing them. I wouldn't even want to claim any degree of certainty that it created the Silver City."

"The Source? That's what you call God?"

"That's the most common name across the universe for the singular almighty divine power, believed to in some sense be physically located on the other side of the Source Wall. 'God' is a fairly generic name, easy to confuse with the class of being that the Source is not a part of."

"Okay, let's… Leave that. Why don't you think Zauriel's king would have said 'yes'?"

"Because Fawcett City. Because.. every atrocity ever committed, including the ones committed by them. I don't know what instructions they're operating under, or what they consider an appropriate time to intervene, but I've got enough evidence at this point to determine that it isn't the same as the one I use."

"Am I..?" Hephaestus waves his right hand as we look around. "Intruding? I thought we had a meeting, but to be honest this sounds a whole lot more interesting."

29th October
14:32 GMT +1

Hephaestus leads the way along a corridor on one of his foundry's lower levels, grinning as he does so. "So I understand that you're my great aunt?"

"Ah…" Donna appears to not know how to respond. I suppose that it is a bit of an odd thing to hear from someone who looks old enough to be your grandfather and is actually old enough to be your ancestor. "I'm not sure it.. works like that. Cronus didn't… Ah, 'sire' me-."

"So you're adopted. That just means that you didn't get stuck being raised by him."

"Yes, I.. don't think I'd have liked growing up in Tartarus all that much."

"Mm, you might have ended up growing up in Hades' court instead. That might have worked out. He's wanted to raise a little philosopher-king or queen for centuries now."

"What's stopping him?"

Donna cringes slightly, while Hephaestus just shrugs. "Did you see Persephone last time you were down there?"

"No, but I.. didn't have any particular business with her. Why, is.. she ill?"

Hephaestus 'hm's. "What version of the myths of the origin of their marriage do you know?"

"Ah… Well, the Amazon version has Hades abduct her, bring her to the underworld and trick her into drinking something with pomegranate seeds in it so that she can't completely leave."

Donna nods. "That's the version Diana told me when I asked her about it."

He nods. "And it's not completely inaccurate, as far as I know. I wasn't there when it happened, but everyone who was has given their version in my hearing at least once. The first point to consider is that Persephone is Zeus' daughter by Demeter. Hades had Zeus' permission to wed his daughter. I know that it's not how things work now, but at the time it wasn't unusual for fathers to arrange their children's marriages."

"Without talking to her or her mother at all? Shouldn't they have at least known each other?"

"That was.. less usual, it's true." I spot him glancing upwards, as if to make sure that there's a mountain between us and the sky. "But they did know each other, at least a little. Hades always visited Olympus when Zeus was holding court; she'd have been able to see him there. And he must have seen her somewhere to become so fixated on her. And… Zeus never admitted to it, but I think he might have said that he had mentioned it to them. Or.. at least implied it. Hades wasn't anything like as nice a guy back then as he is now, but I think he'd have still drawn the line at kidnapping his niece."

"That.. puts a somewhat different spin on the story. But did he not work it out after he saw how.. surprised she was when he picked her up?"

"Which is the second point. I think that if Persephone had flat out told him that she didn't know anything about it, he'd have cooled off a little. Or at least spoken to Demeter about it before declaring it was a done deal." He shrugs. "But Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are the most powerful gods of their generation, and when someone like that tells you that you're going to do something and that one of the few beings who could stop him has consented to it… I guess she didn't think that she had any choice in the matter. And she'd certainly have known how Zeus and Apollo act when they don't get their way."

"She pretended that what Hades thought had happened had actually happened because she was afraid of him?"

"As I said, I don't know any of this for certain. He certainly knows now, and I've never heard anything about him being violent toward her. But Hades can be a scary guy." He looks away for a moment. "Did the version you know have Demeter starving Greece in revenge?"

"Ah… The Amazon version-."

"The Amazon version says that the starvation was an unintended side effect of her searching for her daughter." Donna looks thoughtful. "Which seems odd. Wouldn't a Goddess of Agriculture instinctively know about a famine?"

"The Amazons aren't going to talk smack about one of their main patrons. And 'if you obsess about children you go crazy and everyone around you suffers' is a lesson-."

"No, I don't think that's the message."

"Whittle dolls, Donna. Hidden, because they were a source of shame."

Hephaestus raises his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Whatever the reason, the famine happened. Zeus had to admit to Hades that he hadn't talked to either of them, a divorce was unthinkable…"

"And the pomegranate seeds?"

Hephaestus scoffs. "Given when Zagreus was born, I think we can take a guess at what sort of seeds he was putting inside her. Which would explain why he wasn't willing to accept a separation."

"So why didn't he raise him as a philosopher-king?"

"Because at that point in his life, he wasn't interested in that sort of thing."

I nod. "And unlike most gods, Hades is faithful to his wife."

Hephaestus nods. "Unlike most gods, Hades actually loves his wife. Though… I suppose… Shades can't beget children. We wouldn't necessarily know."

Donna shakes her head. "Hades and Persephone have two children, don't they? I've never met Zagreus-"

"He works on a game reserve in Kenya. I get postcards, sometimes."

"-but we've both met Melinoë. What's stopping them having more children?"

Oh. I get it. "Zagreus and Melinoë are about the same age, aren't they?"

Hephaestus nods again. "Hades thought that once Persephone got to know him a bit better, she'd warm up to him. As far as I know? Never happened. But once she knew him well enough to realise that he wouldn't force himself on her, wife or not, that was the last time they shared a bed."

"'Wife or not?'"

"Different social customs, Donna. Or so I'm told." He shoves open a metal door and immediately the clanging and banging of a working foundry fills the air. "Marriage was less about individuals and more about family alliances. One person saying 'no' to their spouse might have meant a war. And if hundreds of lives on are on the line, then the person who was in the wrong was the one saying 'no'."

"Is.. now a bad time to ask about Aphrod-?"

"She's as chaste of me as you are. And I'm just about the only Olympian that's true of."

"I assure you, the thing with me and Eris-."

"I meant that I'm the only god she hasn't had sex with." He takes a look around the machinery, which puts me a little in mind of a Dwemer-built version of a nineteenth century factory complex. "Assuming that Zeus doesn't have a delayed explosion over Hera divorcing him, I might try and go that route myself."

"But Hades wants to have more children?"

"He had a... What did Vulcan call it? A 'mid-life crisis', some time after Greece went fully Christian. But rather than buy a flashy car, he wanted to change the way he treated the dead. He consulted a lot of people on what they thought that a God of the Dead should do, and unlike a lot of gods he actually listened. That was also when he started sharing Erebus' power with the shades. He also tried courting Persephone again, but that didn't work out."

I see Vulcan standing on.. stage, surrounded by what look like mechanical control systems. He waves, then goes back to studying the dials.

"Why can't Persephone get a divorce?"

"None of us can get divorces. And if you thought that Demeter starving Greece to get Persephone back was bad, remember that Hades is far more powerful than her."

"You mean he'd-."

"I don't know. But I do know that I don't want to find out. But." He brightens up slightly. "Neither of you came here for a history lesson, did you? Why don't I show you what we've been working on?"

29th October
14:44 GMT +1

"I know you said that technology isn't part of your domain, but I still don't understand why it isn't."

Vulcan looks around from the volcanic resonance engine he was cooing over. "Really? It's a pretty simple concept. Primal concepts have the largest impact on both the arcane world and the people living in it. The latter becoming increasingly important in more recent times."

Hephaestus pours more metal into a mould. They're making another metamaterial, something heavy as heck but super strong. "There's been lightning for as long as this world has existed. Darkness for longer."

"I know that, it's why enchanting swords is easy but enchanting guns is hard. But isn't smithing a lot more recent than everything else?"

Vulcan pushes a couple of levers downwards, and runes on the engine start glowing fiery red. "Isn't love?"

"Maybe, but sexual reproduction is a billion years old. Tool use is nothing like that old."

Hephaestus waves a tool a little like a coat hanger over his metal, the molten liquid visibly cooling as he does so. "Tool use is older than the humans who use most of them. And that matters more than you might think."

Vulcan nods. "There's a reason why we gods all look human. Before you, there was just power without form-."

Donna doesn't look impressed. "Are you saying we literally built gods in our own image?"

"I doubt it was a conscious process. But, in places, your ideas caused the Dreaming to… I'm not sure how you'd describe it. There was power, but you gave it form. Definition. That process eventually gave rise to the Titans. And because they already had powerful ties to the material world, moving from the Dreaming to the material world was simple for them."

"I know about the titans. I saw Oceanus this summer. Giant elemental monsters, who were really powerful because they embodied the most primal concepts."

Hephaestus shakes his head. "No. Not monsters. Not.. colossal animals, like some big elementals can be. The titans basically came from early humans, remember. And some parts of human life are so universal to your species that they had to share those elements themselves. Like breeding, for example. Or fighting for power."

Donna nods, a little irritated at the speed of the narration. "The titans begat the gods, resulting in a worldwide supernatural war which saw the titans lose to their children and either be killed or imprisoned."

Hephaestus turns his casting out, and then picks it up to look it over. "You're missing the point. Each god is a combination of the arcane characteristics of their parents, paired with some aspect of the world as experienced by humans. Humans have been making tools for long enough that nurturing and commanding could combine into crafting. It doesn't come up much these days, but flint tools are as much a part of…" He glances at Vulcan, who is hooking up his newly tested engine to an assemblage of some kind. "Our domain as metal tools. But they've got history. We've both tried, but our instinct for metalworking doesn't extend to circuitry."

"On the other hand, it can help with novel applications. Since you-" Vulcan nods in my direction. "-shared that idea about using jovium as a heat conductor, we've been building all sorts of things."

Hephaestus slots his casting into a rack with a dozen others like it, then pulls a chain to turn the pulleys to move it out into the middle of a clear area in the middle of the complex.

Hm. "So… You aren't the Gods of Technology."

"No." Vulcan picks up something that looks like a large bore rifle. "And we can't learn to become the Gods of Technology. But we can learn technology."

"From what you were saying about god breeding, would it follow that one of your offspring would be the God of Technology?"

"Hm." Hephaestus stops pulling and frowns as he thinks about it. "He wasn't, but at that point 'technology' wasn't much more than what was covered by my domain. And his mother…"

"Um."

"Probably not the right mix."

Donna frowns. "Just one? The myths-."

"I'm a married crippled smith who earned Zeus' disfavour. The goddesses weren't exactly lining up." He waves his right hand dismissively before clumping awkwardly back towards Vulcan. "Sometimes they named me as the father as a joke, or when they didn't want to get a mortal lover in trouble. Trust me, the real number isn't high."

"So who was he? And.. who was his mother?"

A very faint smile graces his lips. "I read everything I can on science and technology. I teach anyone with a mind to learn and a will to use their knowledge. And you need to ask me who my son's mother was?"

Donna blinks, shocked. "The myths about Erichtonius say-."

"Myths… Say a lot of things. I wouldn't put too much store in them." He comes to a halt next to Vulcan and turns around. "Zeus ate her mother because he feared her power. What do you think he would have done to her son?"

"So… You're saying that she's not a virgin?"

He shrugs. "We never married. And she couldn't acknowledge him…"

"So what would be?"

"What?"

"If learning and craft don't make technology, what does?"

Vulcan lowers his gun, rolling his eyes. "Can't we leave the theoretical theologism until we're well into our cups?"

"I was just wondering-?"

"As I said, the sort of technology that exists today wasn't a thing when Erichtonius was born. With no metaphysical source of power, he wasn't much more capable than a demigod. But… Athena is a war goddess as much as she is a patron of classical learning. I'm not sure that he'd have been technology even if he'd been born today."

"Technology. Someone sees a problem, comes up with a way to deal with it… And then a few years later it's being put to a use they never envisaged and society has shifted around it in unplanned and uncontrollable ways…" I smile. "How do you feel about E-"

"No."

"-ris?"

Vulcan raises his gun again. "Test seventy five, heat transfer gun mark four. Firing."

Hephaestus nods. "Thank you."

Runes along the sides of the gun glow, and there's a faint hiss as the air inside superheats and a projectile rockets from the muzzle, striking Hephaestus' metal barricade dead centre. Molten metal explodes away from the impact point, and I can see it continuing to dribble down from the point of impact.

Hephaestus tilts his head to the side. "Some damage."

"Hm." Vulcan smiles, then pulls another lever on his engine. For a moment, noth-.

The projectile flares brilliant white for an instant, and I get construct shields up just about quickly enough to prevent us getting enshrouded in vaporised metal!

"Hm." Hephaestus takes a moment to examine the dripping remains of his metal plates. "And it does that to four inch thick gromril. What do you say we try it against enchanted plates next?"

29th October
10:44 GMT -5

Ted crouches over the metametal samples like a bird of prey mantling its kill. "And how much of this can you produce?"

Vulcan shrugs. "Even with the increased automation we've built into our new plant, it's still not exactly a quick process. Not for industrial quantities."

Hephaestus nods. "You need a certain feel for metal that only comes with working with it for years."

"I can hire you five hundred foundry workers really quickly." Neither of them look particularly impressed by the suggestion. "What?"

"We could.. try, but manipulating metal by machine usually doesn't produce the same sort of… Arcane characteristics." Vulcan takes a small lead rod out of one of his pouches and lays it on a workbench. "This is a basic test sample. Standard size, total purity. Hephaestus and I could transmute it in a few minutes. Io and Pallas could do it in half an hour or so."

Hephaestus nods approvingly. "It used to be an hour. They're picking it up fast, compared to most mortals I've tried to teach."

Vulcan taps the metal sample with his right hand. "They're also three thousand years old. They know how to listen to the spirit of metal, how to shape it with hand and breath-. With their own spirit."

Ted looks like a child who's on the verge of having his favourite toy stolen. "I can.. hire blacksmiths..?"

Hephaestus raises his eyebrows. "Three thousand year old blacksmiths?"

"Do they..? Really {blue}need{/} to be three thousand years old?"

"No." Hephaestus shakes his head. "Someone really committed could probably get a feel for it in…" He looks at Vulcan. "Twenty years..?"

"More like thirty. Unless they were literally doing nothing else."

"Thirty years. They wouldn't be as good, but they'd be able to do it reliably."

"Thirty years…" Ted leans back in his chair, holding up a small orichalcum rod and staring at it. Then he turns his attention to me. "Think the Atlanteans can shave a little time off that?"

I puff out my cheeks slightly, shaking my head. "I wouldn't like to say. There might be a pure arcane way of replicating the spiritual resonance, but I doubt that it would be easy or fast."

"Guess we won't be rewiring the whole country with zero-resistance wires, then." He closes his eyes, tilting his head back for a moment. "Okay, so you need smiths. Ancient-sword-master-meditates-on-top-of-a-mountain-for-a-day-before-each-blow smiths."

Vulcan frowns. "No, there's a difference between 'dedicated' and crazy."

Ted looks back at him with a mildly puzzled frown. "No, that was just hyperbole-. Wait, people tried that?"

Vulcan shrugs. "People will try all sorts of things. Especially when it comes to pleasing a god."

"Right, okay. But you need smiths." They nod. "And if I get smiths, would you be willing to train them?"

Hephaestus nods unenthusiastically. "Sure, but you need to understand something. Hellenists worship me as the God of the Forge. Just about all Amazons have tried their hand at smithing at some point in their lives, and it isn't just Io and Pallas who have it as their main occupation." He leans forward slightly. "We've got two students who can aid us in a worthwhile way."

Ted nods. "So don't get my hopes up, is what you're saying."

"Ah…" The three of them turn their attention my way. "Given the religious affiliation of most of the people you'll be recruiting-."

Vulcan huffs. "I work in a car dealership in Italy."

"Wait." Ted looks at me with an expression of amused disbelief. "You're being sensitive to people's religious sensibilities?"

"No, I'm encouraging other people to be sensitive. The bit of the whole.. uplift project I do isn't the bit which most people are going to have to interact with." Ted nods. "But the bit you're doing-."

"Yeah, people still ask if they need to pray to Zeus to make the weather control spheres work." He nods again before looking hopefully at the forge-gods. "Are you guys alright pretending to be..? I don't know…"

"An Italian car mechanic?" Vulcan shrugs. "I have a decent secret identity these days. A lot of us do."

Hephaestus frowns. "I don't, but it's not like I go trumpeting my true nature to everyone around me."

"Oh, er… On that subject?"

Hephaestus raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"

"How did the Hephaesteia go?"

"Now you ask? I had to find out you weren't going to be there from Diana."

"And.. I'm… Sorry about that, but I really.. felt it was best not to be on the planet for a while. Did you get my letter?"

"Yeah, I got it. And given what you were doing I'm not too offended that you didn't tell me about it. It was just… A shame, you weren't there." He smiles. "It wasn't like the old days, and I think the statue was supposed to be Vulcan, but I loved every minute of it."

Ted nods. "Thirty one companies showing off the latest in bleeding-edge designs. LexCorp even brought in one of their power armour suits." I frown. "You know, the ones they sent out to fight Oceanus with you."

I nod. "Reverse engineered OMAC technology. Skipping millions of hours of research and development with the help of a supervillain from a parallel universe."

"If you see another supervillain from a parallel universe with technology like that, feel free to give him my card." Ted shrugs. "On the other hand, they needed to plug themselves in to ultra-high capacity charge points every half hour or so, so I don't think BAE Systems are panicking quite yet."

"Now that the Russians have their Red Rocket Brigade up and running, Mister Luthor might be betting on the American military panicking instead."

"No, I think at this point the US military knows the problems with current generation power armour sufficiently well that the shine's worn off the concept. What Lex was showing off was a step up in capability, but what they really want is something that can keep on working for days at a time without constant recharging or technical problems. But, ah, anyway, turnout was good and I'm looking forward to next year's."

"Yeah. Great." Vulcan frowns, then looks thoughtful. "If you can find smiths who can learn how to create metametals, how much are you going to want?"

Ted looks mildly confused by the question. "{orange}All of it{/}. {orange}There is literally no amount you can produce that I can't find a use for{/}."

"Are you sure? Jovium is fairly ductile, but orichalcum isn't something you can easily reforge. Once it's in shape, that's it."

"So..? This rod..?"

"A test piece. Nearly useless for anything else. We'll need to know your exact specifications when we get to work."

Ted nods. "What are you doing with what you're making now?"

"Heat capacitors, mostly. See, we found out how to-."

"You have devices which can {orange}store and release heat in a controlled way{/}?"

"Yes, though we've done a lot of work improving the designs lately." Hephaestus nods. "We use Mount Etna-" Ted inhales {orange}excitedly{/}. "-because the work we do requires so much heat that it just wasn't practical to use charcoal. But convection made just working over the magma impractical. These actually let us get a lot more work done. You.. think there's a market for it?"

"I'm already selling as many weather control spheres as I can make! Just about every volcano in the world will want a hundred if it means they don't have to worry about eruptions, especially after Yellowstone nearly went off last year!"

Vulcan frowns. "I'm not sure the other forge-gods will like that."

Oh?

"Maybe you should set up a meeting?"

{red}30th October
10:03 GMT +5{/}

Sam closes his eyes for a moment, and gives his head a small shake. "No, they're not there in case Superman 'steps out of line'. I had them deployed there right after Doctor Psycho appeared, because he made it pretty clear that he was interested in hurting as many people as possible and it seemed to me that the best way for him to do that was to mind control Superman. So I made some calls and got a squad put together, under the command of a man who respects Superman. And I chose him because I wanted someone who would use the least force necessary but would still do it if it turned out to be necessary." He leans back in his chair. "Do you think Kal-El would want to risk killing millions of people?"

I nod slowly. "Doctor Cizko requires a surprisingly large amount of time to take that sort of control of individuals. I'm.. not sure that a.. group of people in power armour without telepathic protection of their own would.. really be a good counter."

"Cizko demonstrated the ability to give people instructions they would carry out after they left his immediate environment. The idea was -and I want to be clear that this was the only circumstance in which they'd be deployed- that they would attempt to stop Superman if he went on a rampage only if we were sure that he was far enough away from the little bastard that he couldn't affect them."

"Wouldn't.. other superheroes be better counters?"

"Sure, if they weren't working their civilian jobs or running around doing God knows what at the time." He sighs. "I don't hate superheroes, Grayven. I wouldn't be having this conversation with you if I did."

"Hey, I'm a federal agent these days."

"You know, that would have been the way to go in the fifties." He brings his right hand up to his chin. "Let the Justice Society become federal agents, and have them become the umbrella organisation for all American superheroes. Given how popular they were, I think they might have pulled it off."

"Director Armstrong not getting the.. uptake she'd like?"

"I'm not sure that she'd be 'happy' with less than a hundred percent. But, no. Rookie superheroes don't want to spend the time that getting qualified takes-."

"Which is probably why they're becoming superheroes and not police officers in the first place."

He grins with the left side of his mouth. "Yeah, probably. And the older ones who could stroll through the qualification process don't see the point, because they already know everything we'd be trying to teach them and they've already either got working relationships with local police or.. don't want working relationships with local police."

"The Question?"

"Mm." He nods. "Which is particularly annoying, because out of state help is just what Hub City needs."

"Anything I can do to help?"

He nods. "Give it at least a couple of years before you overthrow an allied government again."

"Mister Talbot-."

"I'm not recording this conversation, Grayven. There were genomorphs and boom tubes all over the place and you were seen at several of the places that got attacked. Look, I think you did the right thing and I know PR's a pain in the ass sometimes, but if we're trying to persuade a whole lot of people to change how they behave-" I'm already nodding. "-we need to do things that make us look like their kind of people."

"I have no immediate plans to overthrow any more governments." Sam rolls his eyes. "Alright, fine. In the medium term Kahndaq and a few other ultra corrupt African places are going to have a change of officers, but I'm not going to be directly involving myself on the ground. And it probably won't be soon anyway."

"If anyone asks, I didn't hear that."

"Okay. Okay. And I'll.. go and talk to a few people. High potential/low experience types." Sam nods. "Now can we talk about your anti-Kryptonian defence budget?"

"Alien defense only came under my control recently, but I've got to say that I agree with a lot of the decisions. Again, it's nothing personal, but he comes from a whole race of superpowered aliens who get their superpowers from something the Earth has in abundance. America has to be able to defend itself against all reasonably foreseeable threats."

"Krypton's a giant radioactive asteroid belt. I'll take you there right now if you want to see it."

"Did they have FTL?"

"… Yes."

"And we know there was at least one survivor." He shrugs. "It always seemed likely to me that there would be others."

"Krypton underwent a period of extreme isolationism immediately prior to its destruction. While there.. are other survivors, the vast majority are in the phantom zone."

"And what's that?"

"I.. don't really understand the physics of it. Limbo, basically. They were using it.. essentially as a prison."

"For what sort of criminals?"

"Originally, the worst of the worst. Mass murderers, people like that. By the time Krypton went up they were using it for petty criminals; people convicted of theft and common assault. In theory, a lot of them could be paroled."

"That seems like something Superman might do."

"If he could reliably tell which ones were the mass murderers and which ones weren't, certainly. Surprisingly, they're not the most honest of people."

"And that isn't even the main problem. Technology is technology. If one species can invent a phantom zone portal, others can as well. Which means that we could have some of the worst criminals in Kryptonian history free at a moment's notice."

"And their jaywalkers. But, sure, okay. Just promise me that it's kryptonite weapons and whatnot, not.. giant, Kryptonite-enriched monsters you can't control or anything like that?"

"Heh." Sam shakes his head. "Even if I wanted to. No, we haven't gone quite that crazy."

"And.. have you made similar arrangements for other species?"

"What, like the Martians? We've got multiphasic scanners that can detect most shapeshifters and psychic insulators that impede telepathy."

"Thanagarians?"

"Nothing specific, but they're fragile enough that conventional armour piercing rounds will take them down. Beyond that, we'd need a space fleet. And in an uncharacteristically anti-capitalist display I understand that Lex Luthor won't be selling to us."

"It would probably trigger a massive decay in international relations if the US had a fleet and no one else did."

"Your idea?"

"No, his, but I think it makes a lot of sense. My advice is to train up as many people as you can and release them to volunteer when his training centre opens." I frown. "You have a… Team working out how to kill my species?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you about it."

"Oh, no, I'm not complaining. There are two super-Earths covered in my people and one of those worlds is extraordinarily hostile to Earth's interests, whereas there are maybe a handful of Kryptonians around. Heck, one of the reasons I set up shop here was to get better anti-New God weapons. I want you to be developing them. Here." I reach into my pocket, pull out a data stick and pass it to him. "That's a pretty good summary of what we can do and how our metaphysiques work. They might find it helpful."

30th October
15:36 GMT -5

{orange}**{/}No, just a rusted wheel-inner. Moving on.{orange}**{/}

I turn away and trudge a little further up the Mississippi river bed. If this is what I've been missing…

**Aqualad to team. I have not yet discovered anything of note.**

**Color me surprised.** Wallace sounds about as enthusiastic as I feel. **Is this really the best thing we could be doing with our time?**

**Try to stay whelmed, KF. The people in this whole area are showing disrupted sleep patterns, and since that's just about the only symptom we know people carrying the new type of Star Conquerors show, somebody's got to check it out.**

I get a mental picture of him slumping slightly as he moves along the waterfront. **And we drew the short straw.**

And of course I can't scan the riverbed-. Or rather, I have, but that isn't reliable since the new type can use magic, can't they?

I see a shape in the water as M'gann swims by. **At least you're not having to breathe the water here. I don't even want to think about some of the things that I'm putting in my gills right now.**

I see a faint glow from Kaldur as I approach. He's using some sort of indirect water current detection spell in the hopes that it will speed things up a little. He's also using a water purification spell , but sadly for M'gann it only works on the caster. **Miss Martian, if you are putting your health at risk-.**

**No, no. It's just really… Ugh.**

**Your distaste is not misplaced.**

{orange}**{/}So… What else have I been missing?{orange}**{/}

**A couple of weeks ago we had to deal with a whole bunch of religious crazies.** I can hear the implication in Wallace's mental tone. *Can't imagine what got them all wound up.**

{orange}**{/}I didn't make them crazy, Kid Flash.{orange}**{/} Hm, another car. And oh so much mud. {orange}**{/}What were they doing?{orange}**{/}

**Kidnapping people they thought were being influenced by demons and 'exorcising' them with torture.** Richard sighs. **We got everyone out… Everyone who was still alive, anyway.**

{orange}**{/}Which is really all you can do.{orange}**{/}

**Hey.** Again, I get a mental impression with the words. In this case, Kon frowning. **Did you lose computer access or something?**

{orange}**{/}Ah… Haven't tried it. And I.. do want to show an interest.{orange}**{/}

**Alright.** I get a blurred impression of different images as Kon thinks. **Ah… And before that, there were a bunch of museum thefts Batman wanted us to look into.**

{orange}**{/}Find anything?{orange}**{/} A small sunken boat with a few brave plants growing off it. {orange}**{/}Investigating a boat. Nothing suspicious on the exterior.{orange}**{/}

**And I'm not hearing anything with my mind. You don't think they'd be able to hear us, do you?**

{orange}**{/}Maybe? But they're not good swimmers unless they've got aquatic hosts, so while they might hide they can't really get away. And based on what Mister J'onzz said about Guy-.{orange}**{/}

I get an image of her nodding. **It only takes a few days for the programming to break down.**

{orange}**{/}Honestly, the team looking into people's houses has a better chance of finding something than we do.{orange}**{/} I send a mental image of someone taking a Star Conqueror off their face and putting it in a cupboard. And then it jumping out at the next person to open it.

**Seriously, Oh El?**

**Don't worry, Kid. They don't actually hurt their hosts, remember?**

**Except for the beak wounds. Actually, yeah: how come a bunch of people haven't shown up at hospital with beak-wounds they don't remember getting? Or, y'know, just walking around with cuts in exactly the same pattern as everyone else?**

**It is possible that the Star Conquerors have learned to heal their hosts, or to attach themselves without the use of their beaks.**

I don't get any impression of Kaldur's thoughts, but I do get a rough sense of his location. Interior of the ship… Silted up. I generate a construct probe and start rooting through it. No bodies, at least.

**Maybe they just wear hats?**

**Heh-.** I get an impression of Wallace's surprise as none of the rest of us laugh at Kon's suggestion. **Really? No, those things were big. You couldn't get a baseball cap over one without it being obvious.** There's a pause as we all try and imagine it. **But-. I suppose a bigger hat might work.**

**I'll send a message to Artemis.** Richard doesn't sound too convinced either. **Hopefully she'll take it seriously.**

{orange}**{/}What sort of hats do they usually wear in this part of the world? I mean, if-{orange}**{/} No, just silt. {orange}**{/}-we don't have a baseline, it would be hard to tell whether or not there's been any change. Oh, and boat clear. Moving on.{orange}**{/}

**Houndstooth, maybe? I don't know if you could fit a Star Conqueror under one of those either. Aaand Artemis just replied with a question mark.**

The glow from Kaldur dims momentarily. **I can detect no inexplicable arcane presences in this part of the river. I will also point out that illusion would also explain the lack of alarms from hospitals. And the continuing lack of hats. Orange Lantern, how large could the Star Conquerors have grown in this time?**

{orange}**{/}Green Lantern Corps records say they grow based on need rather than food or age. And they don't breed particularly quickly. Assuming the ones we found in April were all of them… One might have grown to Star Hunter size by now. Or at least be getting there. But we don't know enough about this type to know for certain.{orange}**{/}

I drift over another section of riverbed. No, no points of interest here. {orange}**{/}So how did the theft thing turn out?{orange}**{/}

A slight sense of.. unease.. conveys itself over the link.

**Regrettably, those among the criminal group whom we were able to locate killed themselves to avoid capture.** Oh. **None of those we were able to identify had any prior history of criminality. Most of them also had no history of associating with one another, nor anything else linking them.**

{orange}**{/}Any… Leads?{orange}**{/}

**We have descriptions of most of the artefacts that are still missing. Sadly-. With Doctor Fate…**

{orange}**{/}Yes, he can't identify them for you.{orange}**{/} And Doctor Mist didn't seem like the book-collecting type. {orange}**{/}I know a few people you could ask.{orange}**{/}

**You…** And I know what Richard's going to ask even before he thinks it. **Wouldn't know a way to get into the Tower of Fate, would you?**

{orange}**{/}Ah…{orange}**{/}

30th October
18:36 GMT -5

"Look, when I said 'maybe', that's exactly what I meant."

We're standing on the plaza, just in front of where the Tower appeared last time. Most of the team's gone home, or at least back to base. They've got their own cities to protect and their own homework to complete. Kaldur's here, because he considers it his responsibility to investigate, Richard, because he doesn't want to let me out of his sight. Kon's here, because I'm here. Wallace I suspect came because he knows why I didn't trust Fate from the start, and Artemis is here because he is.

Really didn't think that would work.

The whole thing in Alabama turned out to be a total waste of time; some idiot playing around with subsonics. I could have given him a truly soundproof room. Richard could have upgraded his control program to something that would allow him to monitor what he was doing. But having spent the better portion of the day trudging along a riverbed I decided not to, and Richard had already notified the police.

It's basically just a noise complaint. He'll probably get off with a fine.

Wallace looks at me curiously. "Fate's dead, right? I mean… That was what that whole thing was about."

"Brain dead. We destroyed his personality, but we couldn't work out how to completely cut his connection to the plane of order. In theory, the Tower's intelligence should still be capable of detecting us. And since we've been here before…"

Kaldur swings his right hand through the place where the doorway appeared during our last visit. "It does not appear to want to recognise us."

Richard waves a sensor wand across the same place. "I'm not detecting anything either." He turns to look at me. "I'm not an expert on magic, but maybe having the guy who killed Fate here isn't the best way to convince it to let us in."

Kon frowns. "Hey."

"He's.. got a point." And I really don't know how long John had in mind when he said not to go looking for him for a while. It's been four months... "But… You can come back here without me whenever you like." I look upwards towards where the top of the tower was. Feels like a lifetime ago I was fighting Klarion up there… "Tower, Klarion the Witch Boy is dead. No replacement Lord of Chaos has been sighted. We're in the middle of a case, and we would benefit from having access to your library."

"Oh El?" Wallace doesn't look either pleased or displeased. "You're not exactly… 'We'." Kon's eyes narrow slightly. "I mean, you resigned." Kon keeps glaring. "He did."

"I did." I crank my empathic vision up all the way, until the lights on the far side of the plaza start to hurt. No, nothing. "But I don't have anything better to do today, so unless you're telling me to leave, 'we' are 'we'."

Kaldur raises his right hand in order to stop a discussion… They have most likely had already. "If the Tower will not grant us access, then we-."

The door appears, then opens wide. And…

What?

Out strides a man in flowing blue robes with golden thread decoration, the Helmet of Fate sat upon his head. Empathic vision's giving me nothing. Ring scan-

{orange}Don't do that.{/}

-not doing that. And that wasn't John's voice. And that isn't John's build or John's walk. John sidles forward. And he's never had that sort of musculature. This man is… Built like a superhero. And he strides purposefully. And if that was his voice my ring just spoke in, then their accents are different as well. The same faint trace of scouse, but none of the Londoner. Sounds a little… Welsh, maybe?

I take a {yellow}definite{/} step back. I am not prepared for fighting a Lord of Order.

"Good evening. What brings you to my home?"

The ring on my left hand is fizzling and crackling and.. heeeee's got it already, hasn't he?

There's some decidedly confused looking at one another from my team mates. But Kaldur's leader.

"Lord.. Fate. We were told that you were dead."

"Did you come here to check?"

And breathe. No constant references to 'fate'. He's not back, he's not back. Which still leaves the possibility that it's some other Order spirit pulling the strings. Huh, I never really thought about it, but… Did he actually call himself 'Lord Fate', or did other people pick it up based on the references he made?

"No. I apologise. I was simply surprised to see you."

"It's quite alright… Aqualad, yes?"

"You are correct." Kaldur turns slightly to the side, gesturing to the rest of us with his right hand. "And this is my team. You.. have met them before, but-."

"No, Nabu met them before. This is the first time for me. Ah! Where are my manners?" He holds his right hand out to Kaldur. "Lord Fate. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Aqualad." Kaldur takes his hand and they shake… Companionably enough.

Kon looks to me for some sort of clue about what's going on, but all I can do is shrug. Okay, Larfleeze's old ring looks like it's still -yep, that's a small box-construct- working. Perhaps the lack of AI means that it's not orderly enough? My spell eater is still cold so that wasn't a direct att.. ack. But… Power rings draw power from somewhere else which means-.

And now he's looking at me.

"Orange Lantern."

"Lord Fate." I hold out my left hand. "Ah, if you're planning on using the name."

"I may as well." He takes my hand with his left and… Nothing untoward happens. "I understand that the Justice League still have me listed on the active roster."

Ahhhhhhhhaaaaa…

Right. And that's the thing about masked secret identities. Kon can't pretend to be Kal-El; he's not big enough. But if another martian pretended to be J'onn J'onzz, no one who wasn't another martian would know it. Heck, the Justice League that formed during the One Year Later thing happened because one Firestorm gave the next Firestorm all his old Justice League gear. If something happened to Diana, would the next Wonder Woman get an automatic placement?

I somehow doubt that any of them have ever talked about it.

"They have Nabu on the active roster. I imagine that they'll want to talk to you before confirming the succession."

I'm aware there have been other Fates in the comics, but the only one I can remember right at this moment is Hector Hall and this man doesn't sound American. And… Jared something? I think he was American too?

Of course… There's the other option…

He removes his hand and extends his right towards Wallace. "I understand that you had the displeasure of being locked in your body by my predecessor."

"Yeah… That-" His eyes shift to me before returning to… Oh great, now I'm going to have to call him 'Fate' too. He shakes his hand. "-happened. Do you not..?"

"No, but I see why you would be concerned. This is my own body. But it's no trouble at all to demonstrate." Without particular ceremony he reaches up and lifts off the Helmet of Fate, revealing…

Some bloke with long blonde hair. Not John. Maybe what John would look like after a century-long detox program and a body building course. He also doesn't have any of the weight holding him down that John has, the slight cringe that comes from having everyone around you die or be horribly injured again and again and knowing that you were to blame and that's it's going to happen again. This man is.. confident. Calm. Friendly. And there's enough difference in the structure of his face that I'm not worrying that John's done some sort of stupid bit of magic to reimagine himself.

"Ah! Forgive me. I shouldn't keep you all waiting out here, not if you're tracking down arcane artefacts which may have fallen into the hands of ne'er-do-well's. Please." He motions to the open door with his right arm while putting the Helmet under his left. "Come inside."

30th October
18:43 GMT -5

Artemis stares around the vast library. "What happened to all the stairs?"

"They're still around." Fate walks over to what looks like a broom cupboard and pulls open the door, revealing… Yes, there they are. "But I find them a little inconvenient for moving around. Since I can change the relationship between the interior elements of the Tower, I shuffled some of the more inconvenient ones out of the way."

He closes the door and leads the way towards a reading area. The shelves are arranged in such a way that I can't tell whether the place is very big, actually infinite or just repeating itself. Certainly, I can't see or detect more of us.

"If I may ask?" Fate turns to Kaldur with his eyebrows raised. "I have not heard of… A magician of your appearance before. Have you been a hero for long?"

"In my own small way." He walks around to the far side of the table and sits down, putting the Helmet of Fate down in front of him. "I've always been a minor magician. Human psychology, basic synchronicity… A little wart-charming. And then: Helmet. And the whole wonderful music of the universe opened itself to me."

Richard, Wallace, Artemis and Kaldur sit down opposite him. I stay back a little, and Kon folds his arms across his chest and stands nearer to me. Would John have given up and dumped it on some likely lad? He might, I suppose. If it was really getting to him. And I probably wasn't on the planet, so I can hardly fault him for-.

"You don't know who this guy is, do you?"

"Not the foggiest."

Fate says something to Wallace, who frowns but holds out his hands anyway. A moment later a book flies in from one of the shelves and lands in them.

"Do you think he's telling the truth? I mean, what did you do with the Helmet of Fate after you killed him?"

"I was in hospital, Kon. I had no input into what happened to it.{orange}"
{/}
"But you know." My eyes dip slightly. "Paul."

"John had it. He's looked after that sort of thing before, he's the man I got Angelica's wings from.{orange}"
{/}
"Mom said they'd put things like that in the reliquary on Themyscira."

"And I made my plans assuming that she wouldn't be involved."

He doesn't look impressed. Which is.. understandable, really. "So, is this a problem?"

"Don't know. Hope not. Having a powerful Order magician around would certainly be useful." He starts to open his mouth. "One who isn't a body-stealing parasite."

"If I'm not intruding?"

We both turn around to look at New Fate. The others are flicking through books, going from illustration to illustration and pulling out the 'possibles' for further study. I think about reaching for my rune stone, but this place is so full of magic that I doubt that I'd get a worthwhile reading.

Kon nods at him. "Who are you?"

"My first name is 'John', actually. But you'll excuse a magician for not wanting to give out his full name." He half turns, gesturing to the other four. "Now, why don't you.. join your friends. I'm sure they'd appreciate an extra pair of eyes. And I need a quick word in private with Orange Lantern."

And… Kon's muscles tense slightly. He knows I'm hiding something about this from him. Which I am, and will continue to do until I can find out what's going on from John and then he can decide. Kon walks over to the table and pulls out the chair next to Wallace, while 'John' puts his right arm around my shoulders and gently leads me away down one of the aisles.

He doesn't say anything right away, just leads me down a corner to an intersection. Two seats, a small table, a glass of milk and a tea set. The latter being for him, presumably.

"Please, take a seat."

No real reason not to. I pull away and take the seat to the left. He gently lowers himself into the chair to the right, Helmet on his lap.

"Now." He picks up the teapot and pours himself a cup. Teabags in a kettle, or is he just replacing the strainer with magic? "I'm sure that you're finding this whole situation extremely suspicious."

I reach for the milk glass, hold it up and take a good look at it. "I walked into here, didn't I?"

He sets the teapot down and shakes his head. "I don't follow."

"John Constantine could probably futz around with the magics of the tower, given enough time. But an Order-aligned magician? No, the tower's accepted you. Which means you could probably put me on a Möbius strip stairway or something and there'd be very little I could do about it."

"Except call the Ophidian, and I would really rather that you didn't." He looks around as he raises his cup to his lips and takes a small sip. "I've just got it looking the way I like it."

"Alright. How did you get that Helmet?"

"Ah… Where are you up to?"

"John visited me in hospital after the fight with Nabu. He had it with him then."

"And how did he seem to you?"

"Like it was doing his head in."

He nods, a slight smile on his lips. "Yes, that's… John… Wasn't the most orderly of people. I'm a bit surprised he didn't hand it over to someone else immediately."

"So how did you get it? And how do you know John?"

"Some British police officers believe in magic. I was in Cardiff when there were a series of… Apparently ritualistic murders. I offered to help, they accepted… Completely unnecessarily, as it turned out. John was already on the case. We traded phone numbers…"

"Just one case?" Though that might explain why John never bothered mentioning him to me.

"I phoned him for advice a few times, and we got together for a drink on the one occasion I visited London." He shrugs, taking another sip. "Having contacts in the know is vital in our line of work." I nod. "We weren't especially close, and all I could really offer him was an extra pair of hands."

"But he trusts you with the Helmet?"

He chuckles quietly to himself. "How many orderly people do you think John Constantine knows, oh Discordian Lantern?"

Fair point. 'Not many' would be my guess, which pretty much matches the contact list he shared with me. And while Mister Zatara might have been willing to take it up again… Okay, there wouldn't be a huge problem, now that Nabu isn't in it any longer. But Order might have issues with it, and if he were directly plugged into it…

But some bright-looking magician from Cardiff? I could sort of see that working. And it's not like John isn't known for dumping people in the deep end.

"Alright. The Justice League are doing a full cover up on what happened to Nabu, so…"

He nods. "Mum's the word. He's on holiday, or retired, or accepted a new posting."

"Have you had any contact from the Order side of things?"

"Not yet. It's possible that they don't even know that Nabu's dead. But that's my problem now."

I nod. "If you ever want any help, I'm happy to assist."

"Thank you." He drains his cup and puts it back down. "And… Since we're going to be colleagues in future… Why don't we get to know one another a little?"

30th October
20:05 GMT -5

"That guy seemed pretty normal." Artemis shrugs as I look at her. "As super powerful wizards go."

"I will try not to take offence on my queen's behalf."

Artemis winces very faintly. "Right. But is she powerful, like, Lord of Order powerful?"

Kaldur inclines his head slightly. "I do not believe so. But I am also not certain how skilled the new Fate will be without Nabu to guide him."

It's not far to the Salem zeta tube, and the locals walking along the pavements around us are giving us a degree of space. Fate aside, Salem doesn't have a significant superhero or supervillain population. And I know that Nabu didn't interact significantly with the locals.

Kon nudges me with his left elbow. "What did he want to talk to you about?"

"An expanded version of how he got the Helmet."

Kaldur nods. "And do you believe his tale to be credible?"

"Plausible, yes. I'll need to check it out before I say 'credible', of course."

Wallace.. appears to be getting a little annoyed with me. "Oh El, why don't you just tell us what you did with the Helmet?"

"Because I put it in the care of a person, and I want to discuss the matter with them before spreading that information."

Richard tilts his head slightly to the side. "You weren't expecting him, were you?" I nod. "Were you expecting there to be a Fate, or was that a surprise too?"

Ahh-hhh… "I wasn't expecting a Fate. I also wasn't expecting such a helpful attitude, so really that went better than I thought it would. What did you find out?"

"Each of the ar-."

"Ah, hold on, Supes." Wallace raises his right hand.

Kon frowns. "What?"

Wallace looks at me and I nod. "I'm not on the team. Which means that I don't automatically qualify for sharing sensitive information."

"Oh, come on!" Kon frowns at Kaldur and Wallace in turn. "We didn't even get in when we came here without Paul. And John.. Fate seemed pretty friendly. What's the point in keeping something secret if he can just go back and ask them?"

I hold up my hands slightly. "Look, if you want to handle this without me... That's fine. I was just.. trying to be helpful."

"Kid Flash does raise a point which several of us have been considering." Kaldur stops for a moment and stares me in the face. "Do you wish to rejoin the team?"

"Um. I… I'd.. assumed that after Hyde Park the League wouldn't want me to be quite so closely involved with their work. Particularly given how I've already rejected their rules of engagement. A young superhero who doesn't know their own strength is one thing, but everything I did was deliberate."

"I understand that there may be problems, but you did not answer my question. Do you wish to rejoin the team?"

"Yes." A little tension leaves him. And Kon, I notice. "Not that living with Alan isn't fascinating. I now have an encyclopaedic knowledge of forties and fifties superhero trivia, and it's been great-."

"Ah, Oh El?" Wallace looks around. No one in our immediate vicinity, but I can see people further away. "Secret identity?"

"Unfortunately, after the zombie attack… He doesn't exactly have one any more. It's not… Common knowledge, but it is out there. Look, Mister Garrick managed perfectly well for decades without-."

"No, he didn't. He got attacked, Joan got attacked and the companies they worked for got attacked a whole bunch of times because people knew where they'd be. Don't try and pretend it doesn't happen."

"Okay, I'll.. talk to him about improving his home security."

"And what about his family?"

"I don't think that any of Alan's old enemies are still active. Except Solomon Grundy, and he hasn't been seen for.. nearly two years? And anyway-" I shake my head. "-people don't go after the extended families of police officers."

Artemis winces. "They do in Gotham. Did, anyway. I don't think it happens so much these days, but it definitely happened." Richard nods.

"Alan's mostly been practising healing, but-" I raise my hands. "-okay, I'll mention it to him, see what he wants to do. But… Going back to the original question." I nod. "I would like to rejoin the team. I just didn't want to create ructions between you and the-" Kon gives my left shoulder a playful shove. "-League. So… What's the process?"

"It-." / "You need to talk to Batman."

Kaldur looks at Wallace in surprise. He makes a shrugging gesture with his hands. "What? Look, having Oh El back would be great. It's not like I want to try walking along a river bed for five hours. But he-."

He checks around us again, and I give it a quick ring scan as well. No listening devices I can detect, and at this point we're away from areas people usually go outside of work hours.

"Assassinated a member of the Justice League. He just said himself that the League might have a problem with him coming back."

Kon gives his head a small shake. "Batman was fine about him helping us fight Eliminations Inc."

Richard shakes his head. "Him coming back on the team means that he gets access to Justice League information. And authorisation. And it means that League members who aren't okay with him being back are expected to start teaching him again."

"Green.. Arrow…" Artemis looks uncomfortable as she says it. "Said he was fine with teaching him. I got the impression a lot of the League feel like that."

"I know Mom does."

Kaldur nods. "But in the League, decisions must be near-unanimous."

"Okay, I'll make an appointment with Batman. And not just appear in the Batcave this time. In the meantime, if there's anything you want me to help with… That's fine, no need for a full explanation."

Another nod from Kaldur, accompanied by a small smile. "Those of us who are not attending school tomorrow were going to follow up on some of these leads." Him, me, Canis, Roy, Garth, Tula and Zatanna… Maybe. "It would make things easier if you were with us."

"As long as it doesn't involve a fingertip search of the bottom of a major river again."

"No. Since we have a better idea of what the artefacts stolen can be used for, we are able to considerably narrow our search parameters. Though the search will still most likely be exhaustive."

I nod as Kon pulls open the door leading to the zeta tube.

"Sounds… More fun than today."

31st October
09:00 GMT -5

"Aqualad has informed me that you have an interest in rejoining the team."

I stand at parade rest in the Batcave. I'm mildly pleased with the situation, that this meeting was arranged so quickly, that there actually is a meeting, that I can't use basic scans to examine his equipment… And that Alan is going to have to stop making cracks about me 'getting a job'.

I pay rent.

"That is correct, Batman. None of my uplift projects require my continued input, I found you two magic users… At.. this point, it's that or found one of my own." Ah. "Another of my own, counting the Orange Lantern Corps."

"Doctor Mist has expressed a reluctance to work with the League in circumstances where we would be expected to intervene, and your handling of Angelica Blaze's reveal left a great deal to be desired."

"And yet, neither of them are parasites, and as such represent an improvement upon their predecessor."

Batman regards me impassively. "Doctor Mist has stated that if he saw a river surge and flood a populated area, he would leave the local people to drown rather than help them."

"Yes, I do appreciate that Doctor Mist's belief that natural disasters are 'natural' is a bit strange, but you needed someone who can fight the most powerful tier of magic using criminals and that's what you've got. He believes that it isn't his job to deal with problems that normal human society should be able to cope with, and… We know that building on flood plains results in homes being flooded, and yet.. it keeps happening."

"Do you agree with him?"

"No, because I believe that our objective should be to raise everyone else to our levels. I don't believe that we're 'apart' in the way that he does. On the other hand, I'm not as old as he is and it may be that once I've seen a few civilisations rise and fall I'll feel differently."

A slight inclination of his head. "How would you convince him otherwise?"

For a second I frown at the question, but alright. "Resocialise him. He has few friends and little investment in the particular lives around him. Change that, and he may be more open to interventionism. Or.. perhaps if you encouraged him to nurture those parts of modern civilisation which can resist threats of the tier you're recruiting him to fight, he would feel that it was acceptable until such time as those threats no longer exist."

"Plausible. Do you have similar plans for improving Angelica Blaze's public image?"

"No." I sigh. "A great many people have religious beliefs which are factually inaccurate. There is no way around it, no way to change their minds with mere evidence. The best I can think of is having her continue her mercy missions and to not have anything to do with me."

Batman nods. "While I still do not approve of your handling of Nabu, I have no objection in principle to you rejoining the team."

Great! "Thank you-."

"Other members of the Justice League may, however. I am aware that you have talked things through with Wonder Woman and Green Arrow, but as I understand it you have not spoken to most other members of the League."

"No, not… About that. I didn't think that restarting that argument was a productive use of my time."

"The team was founded to train the next generation of superheroes. I -and most other members of the League- have assumed that its members will eventually become members of the Justice League. While in the short term, it is likely that 'restarting the argument' would harm your working relationships, I also believe it is the best way to repair them in the longer term."

Oooooh great. I mean, I've spent time with Arnus due to Lantern Xor's upcoming trial and with the Lanterns during training, but we've never addressed the point directly.

"And if I do that..?"

"Then you will return to the team's active roster and be expected to take part in team activities. Including lessons."

"And I will endeavour to approach them with an open mind."

"In the intervening period, I do have a few tasks it would be helpful if you could perform."

"I've.. already offered to spend today helping the team."

"These do not need to be attended to immediately."

I nod. "Okay then. What can I do for you?"

He turns away, activating his computer terminal and bringing up an image. A group of superheroes; a man in light power armour and a youth in an ill-advised body stocking, flames churning around his hands. A woman in black and gold and a woman in gold and red.

And is that Flamebird?

"Superhero teams are far from being a new phenomenon. Even the Justice Society wasn't the first such alliance. But recently, large numbers of unconnected superheroes have been provided with improved equipment and training by an organisation called 'The Alliance of the Just'."

"Sensible. I did say the League should consider doing something like that."

"Given that the head of the Alliance is Vincent Edge, you may wish to reconsider your endorsement."

Ah. Vincent Edge, believed but never proven to be the founding father of Intergang. I suppose the skill set is somewhat familiar.

"I thought he was retired."

"He had a successful heart transplant early this year, and appears to be as physically sound as a man of his age can be. Despite your stated views on the matter, the Justice League is not an umbrella organisation for superheroes. If all that is happening is that he's had a Damascene conversion and wishes to redeem himself, then there is nothing about this which warrants League intervention. However, my concern is that this is a cover for an act of large scale criminality."

"Are all of these people..." I languidly wave my hand in the direction of the screens. "Known quantities with a history of heroism?"

"Most are, some are not." He takes a data stick out of the console and hands it to me. "While in other circumstances I might ask the team to investigate this, their increasingly public roles as partners of members of the Justice League make such an approach somewhat overt."

"I'm a known Justice League affiliate."

"You have also missed several missions undertaken by the team due to your resignation. I have also allowed controlled leaks to take place indicating that you have had a falling out with your mentors."

It is true.

"Any problem with me including Alan in this?"

"Since you have not yet rejoined the team, this is not an order. As such, you are free to proceed in any way you choose."

"Thank you. I'll-" I raise the data stick. "-get right on that."

31st October
18:58 GMT -5

Today was… Nice. Just Tula, Kaldur and I attempting and largely failing to find any further leads on the rash of thefts while Garth and Canis did little better.

Querying the families of the deceased produced… Nothing actionable. They reported that the people who disappeared had been mildly confused and a little distressed before their disappearances… Which could indicate a chemical compound being used to alter their thoughts, or a form of telepathic control that has brain damage as a side effect. I'm not aware of any currently active telepaths on Earth whose abilities work like that, and from what M'gann told me martian telepathy generally doesn't have that sort of effect.

Canis seemed to be enjoying himself, less from having me back and more from the sheer disregard for life shown by the perpetrators of the thefts. He and Garth were able to track one of the escaped thieves down, but sadly whatever kills them doesn't require them to be capable of moving. Whatever they stole had already been moved, and an analysis of the site yielded no clues about where it had gone.

And now I've got a meeting with-

"Hey! Orange Lantern!"

-Arnus, to talk about the Nabu situation. I wave with my right hand as Raquel flies over the Dakota City skyline and comes up alongside me. "Good evening, Rocket."

"You here to see Icon?"

"Yes, I.. phoned ahead. Batman wants me to talk about Nabu with everyone in the Justice League before he'll sign off on me rejoining the team."

She frowns. "Why do you want to come back on the team?"

"Because it's where my friends are? Why?"

"I'm only on the team until I can join the Justice League. That's what it's for, ain't it? I mean, you're already an official Lantern, you're in a Lantern Corps… What do you get out of it?"

"If you put it like that, what do I get out of joining the Justice League?"

She blinks. "The zeta tube network? Cooperation from police all over the world? You get to look like a legitimate hero, rather than some guy in glowing armor?"

"My abilities as a Lantern are at their strongest when I fight beside people whom I identify with most strongly. I'm better with the team than the League. And it's not like I can't do my own thing in my own time."

"It would make Mister Scott happy."

I nod. "That's the best reason, but I'm not in a rush on that front any longer."

"Why? Did he stop being old?"

"Yes, effectively." She blinks. "Oh, were you not in the loop on that? I got him a new lantern, and he's now elementally enough that as long as he wears his ring he won't decay."

"Huh. Okay then. How's the.. search thing going?"

"Since I haven't been told what we're looking for, I'm not completely sure. No significant further progress was made today…"

"It's statues. Weird little statues."

"I.. don't think you're supposed to-."

"Are you gunna tell anyone how you found out?"

"Nno."

"You can't look for something when you don't know what you're looking for, can you?"

"I suppose not. Are you continuing the investigation this evening, or doing-" Arnus flies out from behind a block of flats and we alter course to meet him. "-local patrolling?"

"Local. Icon doesn't like me being out late on a school night." The three of us slow as we get to within speaking distance. "Where do you want me tonight?"

"I believe that Sadler would benefit from your oversight this evening. There has been a small spike in rates of petty theft lately."

"I'm on it." She turns in the air and accelerates northwards with a wave.

Hm. Okay. While I know 'Augustus Freeman' reasonably well -at least on the professional level- I don't know Arnus at all. Not his.. distinguishing characteristics. I know the things which he's done from Justice League records and Raquel's mentor boasting contests with Wallace, but on a personal level? Almost nothing.

"Is it appropriate to call you 'Arnus'?"

"It is a name for which I no longer have any use. Since we are in costume, I believe that 'Icon' would be more appropriate."

"Alright. As I.. said in my message, Batman has made my return to the team contingent on me talking about the Nabu situation with all members of the League. Personally, I'd rather have drawn a veil over the whole thing. So if there's anything you want to ask me or.. volunteer, now's the time."

"Why did you request that Wonder Woman's lasso be used during your testimony?"

"Spite. Oh, and the reasons I stated at the time. I had roughly planned to storm out, and having to repeat myself might have interrupted that."

"Spite. Because the lasso symbolises not merely factual truth but divine truth. Because you wished to indicate that you would speak honestly even when totally in the League's power, telling us something we did not wish to hear."

I nod. "Pretty much."

"In the Cooperative, we learned to be cautious of primitive truth compulsion techniques. The evidence indicates that they often bias the answers given. Do you believe that the character of your own answers was influenced by the lasso's magic?"

"Once or twice, yes. Generally, not sure. But I had intended to be confrontational from the start and didn't say anything that I regret substantially."

He nods. "Is there anything which you would like to ask me?"

I have been wondering… "Why was slavery abolished in the US in eighteen sixty five?"

His eyebrows rise very slightly. "I was referring to my negligent treatment of Giovanni Zatara."

"That's between you and either your god or your conscience, as you prefer. You telling me now won't change anything. But if you want to…"

"Slavery was abolished in eighteen sixty five because that was the earliest point after the civil war at which the legislation could be passed in the House and the Senate, and then ratified by the States. Can I safely assume from your question that you are curious as to why I -who arrived in the United States in eighteen ten- had not taken action to end it sooner?"

"I'm curious as to your reasoning. Your life pod reconstructed you as a baby, and you didn't know anything about Earth society. On the other hand, by the time you were… Say, fifteen? You would have known enough, and you were powerful enough that I don't think anyone around at the time could have stopped you."

"Because I believe that Earth society needed to learn to deal with the evil of slavery itself. To struggle with its conscience and learn from that struggle, rather than have a solution imposed upon it by a single man. I take it that you disagree?"

"In cases where the provocation is sufficient, yes. Slavery, slaughter, mass mutilation and mass mind control would result in me intervening, more or less regardless of other factors."

"I cannot swear to you that the route I took was the best for Earth society. I am aware that in the short term many people suffered who could otherwise have been saved. Are you certain that your interventions have maximised utility?"

"Not certain. I don't think a person ever can be."

He looks away for a moment. "I did not intervene in the matter of Nabu's occupation of Giovanni Zatara because I believed at the time that the arrangement was truly voluntary. I did not know that their joining could function without the host's consent. When you.. confronted us and I became more fully informed, I was surprised that other League members had allowed that state of affairs to continue. I certainly do not approve of Nabu's actions."

"And mine?"

"I found them disquieting. But I cannot say with any confidence that you were in the wrong."

I nod, following his gaze. "Anything else, or shall we spend the rest of the evening on crime prevention?"

"I have no further questions at this time."

{red}1st November
11:35 GMT -6{/}

Miss Shimmer eyes me warily from just outside her laboratory door as I approach. "What are you doing here?"

I blink. "I live here."

She frowns. "No, I mean, why are you here at my lab?"

I smile. "I'm trying to show an interest in your work?"

She closes her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. "I haven't made any progress working out how to recreate the portal to Morgan le Fay's world-."

"No, no." I hold up my right hand. "Not with the work I set you. With your own studies."

She shakes her head again. "I'm not doing anything that's got anything to with-."

"Sunset." I tilt my head to the right. "I'm trying to show an interest in your work. Just… Being sociable, subletting landlord to tenant. I'm not demanding, I'm just aware that.. I haven't been paying as much attention to you as I have to some of the other residents except when I need you to do something."

"And you've got nothing going on right now."

"And-. Well." Ah… "I'm not exactly rushed off my feet at the moment, but when you're as powerful as me there's always something you can be doing. And let's be honest: you're a lot more independent than the children are. But." I lightly lay my right hand on her left shoulder. "I do want to make time for you. You're a valued part of the team, and that needs to work both ways."

She looks at me for a moment, then turns her head away. "Yeah. Okay, sorry, I-." She exhales. "I'm still not-." She looks uncertain.

"You're expecting me to do a Celestia?"

"No." She irritably brushes off my hand, then sags slightly. "Maybe? I don't know. I'm not good at… Social.. stuff."

"I used drugs to turn myself into a giant grey mutant and lied to everyone about it." I shrug. "None of us are perfect."

"Um. I guess."

"And I thought you and Iname were getting along well?"

"I-." She turns away and places her palm on the door's scanner. "Can we just talk about work?"

"We can talk about whatever you want to talk about."

The door slides open and I follow her inside. Hm. I remember a television series I watched back on Earth Prime where a wizard used lights to project a magic circle on the ground. Far easier to program it in and then press a button than to draw it out every time. Miss Shimmer has taken a more lego approach: metal parts designed to tessellate with one another are arranged in a warded enclosure or stacked neatly at the side of the main workshop. I don't recognise the particular configuration, but that's a decent opener.

I gesture towards it with my right hand. "What's that for?"

"Hm?" Miss Shimmer has responded to my intrusion into her territory by going right to her work station and metaphorically hovering. "Oh, ah, I was trying to…" She looks away awkwardly. "It didn't work, I just haven't needed the space, and I don't like the genomorphs being in here without me."

"What was it..? Supposed to be for?"

She hesitates, then shrugs. "I've been trying to use what I've learned about thaumaturgy to recreate unicorn magic. Wilson unicorn magic, not fae unicorn magic, however that works."

"Every failure is a chance to begin again more intelligently!" She gives me a black look. "How did it go?"

"I thought… Now I can use Earth magic, I thought I could build some sort of conversion device. Based on what I know about unicorn magic I came up with models for how it could work…"

"That's science for you. Come up with a theory, test it, and if it doesn't hold up then you know how the universe doesn't work."

She shakes her head. "I don't think I'm wrong exactly. But… I don't think magic on Wilson works like it does here. I-." She frowns at me. "Do you actually read the books you get for me?" I shake my head. "Ugh. Some of it matches up with what works here, but I think some of the… Not the operating principles exactly, but… Some of the constants are different?"

"So no wizard to unicorn converter?"

"It's theoretically possible, but…" She shakes her head. "It would take years to work out what the differences were." She shrugs. "I mean, without access to Equestria."

"Have you tried asking Zatanna for help? I got the impression that her talking backwards thing worked for just about anything."

Miss Shimmer's jaw tightens. "Yeah, that…" She huffs. "It just feels-. Stupid. Using a magic I don't understand to cheat. And.. talking backwards!"

"How are words more stupid than glowing keratin?"

"Because I grew up with one and not the other. And it's not like-." She throws her arms up a little and starts pacing. "It's not like I didn't know there were other ways of manipulating the environment using magic. When I was a little filly I used to nag the palace gardeners to show me how earth pony magic worked."

"Because you wanted to learn how to be an alicorn."

"No! I didn't even know that was possible until Celestia showed me myself in Starswirl's mirror as an alicorn. And then-." She looks like she's swallowed something unpleasant. "Celestia wouldn't tell me anything about becoming an alicorn. After a while I thought that maybe she just didn't know, or maybe it was symbolic or something. {red}Then{/}…"

"Then..?"

She shakes her head. "Some pegasus pony managed it. One moment wings, next moment wings, horn and about ten centimetres taller."

I nod. "Which.. means that Cel-."

"{red}Yeah{/}, which means she was {red}lying to me the whole time{/}. It's not like I was serious when I said I wanted to dissect her!"

I nod. "Dissections are for life, MRI scans are every six months."

"Exactly! I mean, we didn't have MRI scans, but I could have done something." She throws out her arms wide this time. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Follow Friend Computer's wise and benevolent guidance like a good meat robot."

"What? No, we don't have computers. I was supposed to mindlessly follow Celestia's orders!" Her pacing naturally turns her away from me as I briefly consider explaining 'Paranoia' to her and decide against it. "But yes! 'Meat robot'. That's exactly it!"

"But getting back to your work..?"

"The only example of Equestrian magic on Earth is this end of the portal. And I don't think I can build a laboratory in Filly-. In Philadelphia."

"Might be difficult. I could probably get a temporary one authorised…" I frown. "Is there any way to move it?"

"I don't-." She turns around, frowning. "I don't know. Celestia called it 'Starswirl's Mirror', but I couldn't check its provenance. And she wouldn't let me study it either."

"I didn't notice any particular object on this side. Is the anchor point in the air? Does it move… Actually, if there's been a portal there for who knows how long, is there a way to detect other examples of Wilsonian magic on Earth?"

She frowns again, this time in thought rather than frustration. "Actually, there… Should be. Let me just do some calculations."

1st November
23:20 GMT +6

Rain hammers into my construct umbrella as a construct riverbank springs into being, monsoon surge now being channelled away from the village and farmlands. In the dark my rings show me Kal-El going to work, grabbing people out of the water and lifting them to safety.

Ring, show me the whole of the river channel.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

A couple more places are likely to breach. I extend the construct and lift its sides, increasingly replacing the channel of the river. I can't help but feel that this shouldn't be happening. Monsoon rains are an annual event. The fact that this river is the course the waters are taking shouldn't be a surprise. Why wasn't this area better prepared?

"Superman to Orange Lantern. Having any trouble?"

"No, sir. I'm directing the surge downstream now."

"Are you able to deepen the channel?"

Which is a sensible thing to ask. It would have been even more sensible to ask the local civil engineer six months ago, but this is an emergency response. We wouldn't be here if someone had asked that. Moving earth is of course well within my abilities…

A better question is: do I want to?

The people suffering the effects here are not individually at fault, but someone around here is, and they're living on a flood plain. Not far away from here, people make the entirely sensible decision to build their homes on stilts precisely because they've adapted to these conditions. This village hasn't.

No, I don't want to. Not strongly enough to do a full and proper fix. I can keep my current construct up all night, but beyond that…

"No, sir. I'm afraid not. I've got some building materials in subspace; I should be able to shore up this bank-."

"Can you dam the river for a few minutes?"

The area immediately adjacent to the river is uninhabited for tens of metres. I might not want to wipe the Bangladesh government's arse for it but I genuinely don't want these people to drown on my watch.

Agh, should have grabbed a Dolmen gate or two…

"Yes, sir. Say when."

My environmental shield wavers as he appears next to me. "When."

I expand my construct to the left and right of the bank at the same time as I block off the end. Water flow downstream cuts off immediately and Kal-El darts off in that direction. Of course, water doesn't stop coming. I'm building up a decent size reservoir here. Which is actually easier for me to manage than a small volume would be, as it being here is my fault and there aren't reasonable civil engineering solutions to this quantity of water being dumped on you.

And while I'm doing that, Kal-El-.

Oh. Goodness.

I assumed that he was going to improve the river channel himself. And it's not as if he was asking me to keep the water off for his benefit. He might need to breathe, but he can hold his breath for a significant period of time. I had thought that he might not want to risk sloshing the water out with the speed of his actions, but it's not that. He didn't want to scald the area with superheated steam.

I'm flying, so I don't feel the ground rumble as he hits it and forces his way through. I do see the glow as he melts the river bed and shoves it aside, the molten material cooling just enough to stay more or less where he puts it. And he's moving really fast; he's already further away from me than I could see with my unaided eyes in daylight. The channel will have about… Three times the volume when he's finished. More than enough for normal monsoons and certainly a start for the local people to improve upon if they so choose.

I suppose when all you've got is a hammer, you learn to get really good at fixing things with a hammer.

"Looks good from here, sir. How far are you planning on going?" I wait for a moment. "Sir?"

Of course, that's a problem with having communications gear that isn't Kryptonian-tough. Magma and molten glass aren't too healthy for portable radios. Okay, he's got that end covered, and once he's finished I'll be able to release the water faster than it's coming in. It'll be rather dull if he has to dash off, but if he can stick around then-.

"And done." Kal-El reappears next to me, easily catching his falling radio out of the air as he does so. He sees me looking at it. "Batman gave me a lecture after I destroyed the first one of these."

"That was impressively well timed, sir." He shrugs, apparently considering timing ploughing through molten rock precisely enough to catch an object he threw up before he started just a party trick anyone could learn. "Should I let the water go now, or leave it for a bit?"

"If you're managing okay, let's give it a minute or two." I nod. "You wanted to talk about something?"

"Yes, but-. This river shouldn't have overflown, right?"

"No, it shouldn't. And I think I know just the mild-mannered reporter to find out what happened to the levee maintenance budget."

"Is the Daily Planet interested in that sort of thing? We're a long way from Metropolis."

"The Planet has an international edition. And it's always worth knowing where your foreign aid money is being spent."

He knows Mr Mason better than I do. "What I wanted to talk to you about was Nabu." He raises his eyebrows very slightly, but doesn't interrupt. "Batman wants me to talk things out with the entire League before letting me rejoin the team."

"I.. see. I'm a.. little surprised that you want to keep learning from us, given how things were when you left."

"If I don't understand why you do what you do, I can't correct the thought processes that lead you to doing it. Either for you or for the next generation. And I really do find it easier to identify with the rest of the team."

"I'll admit, after what you did to Nabu I'll probably feel better having you where I can see you." He semi-smiles at his semi-joke. "I'll tell Batman that I don't have any objection to you returning to the team."

"Thank you, sir, but I think he rather wants us to talk about Nabu a bit first. I'd just as soon not, but…"

"In that case… You made your views and motives very clear, so I suppose you're finally ready to hear mine."

"I was ready to hear them any time you chose to volunteer them. I just didn't think it was a productive thing to spend time on."

"I -on the other hand- think it's an excellent use of my time to make sure you don't kill any more superheroes. And since you're rejoining the team, take this as my first lecture. If you're getting into a situation where you think you might end up having to use lethal force talk to your teacher first. You're a smart-" Don't. "-kid, but not even Batman sees all the angles."

"I gave Nabu a chance-."

"A chance to surrender, which you almost certainly knew he wouldn't take."

I look away for a moment. "Actually, I was hopeful that he would. I assumed that as a being of Order he'd be rational about it, put our personal enmity aside and do what makes logical sense." I look back at him. "So you believe that I should have taken a chance and raised the matter with Diana or Batman?"

"In your case, yes. You clearly brought other people in, so I take it that you had a way to avoid Fate's detection."

"Not one that would have been reliable for someone in frequent close proximity to him, but I could have risked it. But after you brought him into the League, I didn't think the risk was worth it."

"We can't teach you if you don't listen to us. And we can't answer your questions if you don't ask them."

"Alright. I can listen. But I should not have had to prompt you about something like that."

2nd November
12:56 GMT -5

"Hail, Lantern!" Marcus Aelius floats upwards as the Washington police deposit two people in suits into the back of a police car. "What brings you to Washington?"

"Lunch." I hold up a picnic basket. "If you're hungry?"

"I believe-" He glances down as the police pull away. "-that I can spare some time. But please tell me that you haven't brought dormice?"

"Ah… I haven't brought dor-." He bows his head slightly. "I thought Romans-."

"I spent ten years on Virmiron, and have spent a further three on modern Earth. And even in my youth, I thought that the fixation on dormouse-eating was a bizarre affectation of the idle rich. There is no time for faddish diets on campaign."

"I apologise for my assumption. All the.. more for me?"

"Hah!" He floats past me, heading in the general direction of Rock Creek Park. "I've eaten dormice before." I head after him, and we both accelerate as we go. "It is simply that when people discovered I was actually a Roman Centurion it was all anyone who hosted me put on. I have no wish to offend my hosts…"

"But I imagine that it got a bit tiring?"

"I come from Greater Germany! I visited Rome twice in my entire life!"

"So, for future reference, less dormice, more sausage?"

"If you're really trying to score points with me, bring something you've hunted and killed yourself with a bow or a spear." He lands on an area of open grass. "We could get a permit to roast it."

I take a couple of power armour safe seats out of subspace and deposit them next to him. "You know, I was going to ask why you stayed in America rather than going back to Italy. But if you're ethnically German-?"

"Bah. I went back to visit." He tests the seat before trusting it with his full weight. "The mountains are the mountains, and the Rhine is still mostly in the same place. But after nearly two thousand years there was nothing about the people that felt familiar."

I take the other seat, putting the picnic basket down between us and construct-lifting out tubs of salad, eggs, cheese and a small loaf of bread. "And Italy?"

"The Roman Empire was confident, proud, strong and aggressive." He pulls a plate out of the basket and uses a small energy blade to cut off a piece of bread. "Modern Italy… No people who worship their past could take its place. These United States are the closest I've found."

He watches with unconcealed amusement as I lift out the honey-glazed dormouse tub. Wolf.. seemed to like it. "If I may ask..?"

He chews a piece of bread, then swallows. "I doubt that you invited me to lunch for an autograph."

"Why did you become a superhero when you came back?"

"As opposed to a soldier?" I nod. "My alien tutors showed me examples of barbarity and harshness undreamt of by the most brutish barbarian or the cruellest tyrant. It all made.. political expansion seem… Trite. Trivial. I was told -and fully accepted- that I would serve Rome best by serving as a bulwark against such things. And then I returned…"

Yes. I imagine that was a shock. I've tried and failed to come up with a species that engages in interstellar travels using devices that can muck up time dilation so badly and would be inclined to train up local heroes.

"I had half-expected that upon my return I would found my own legion with which to defend the Earth, but in my absence…" He looks around. "The Earth was not inclined to wait for me." He adds a hard boiled egg to his plate, along with some carrots. "And you? What was your reason?"

"I originally said it was for self defence; I wanted to learn to protect myself in a clearly insane world. Having had a great deal of time to think about it…" He watches closely as I take a bite of dormouse. It's… Okay, though I'm still not sold on sweetened meats. "I think it was more about taking the opportunity to… Have a wider impact on the world in a way I just didn't before. Not that being an administrative assistant didn't have its own… Charms?"

Well. Sometimes.

"It is perfectly natural to want to make your mark. But is that really what you wanted to ask me?"

"Just trying to get a feel for your character. I usually-. I used to speed things up by using empathic vision, but… I got told that was creepy."

"So..?"

"Two things. The first and most simple is that Vulcan wants a look at your armour."

"Really? He didn't seem much interested when we met two weeks ago."

"He didn't-? Wait, you mean the superhero Vulcan."

"Yes. Naturally. Is there more than one of that name?"

Probably. "There's the forge-god."

He looks at me a little uneasily. "Normally, I would scoff. But after your turn in the theater, I believe that you may be serious."

"He and Hephaestus have been remodelling Mount Etna and-."

"I'm a Christian."

"What?"

"Certainly, the faith has changed from how it was practiced in my day, but surely you knew that-."

"Yes, I knew that the Roman empire converted, but-." I shake my head. "Didn't you used to swear by-?"

"Force of habit. Do you yourself not find yourself calling out to the Lord God when under stress, despite being a professed devotee of Discordia?"

"Not.. so much now, but I did. So… Shall I tell him 'no'?"

"It… Might be best. And the other question?"

"I wanted to ask about 'The Alliance of the Just'."

He nods. "Would you not be better off enquiring directly with its director?"

"Oh, I will be talking to him sometime soon. But I wanted to ask a member first."

He nods, and takes a bite of carrot while he considers his response. He certainly doesn't seem bothered by my asking. "I can stop muggers all day, but in order to maximise the utility of doing so I must also ensure that they are convicted and that their support infrastructure -fences and the like- are arrested too. And then… I'm not a police officer, and while I am tolerated here I do not automatically gain access to police information resources. The Alliance has their own database, which they share freely. All they ask in return is that I share my own case files so that other superheroes can benefit from them as well."

"Is that all?"

"I don't require training, either physically or in legal matters. Though I do see the value in them offering such to others. They also offer forms of insurance which people in our profession might otherwise find it hard to get, and attempt to negotiate working arrangements with police forces. I don't know if you keep track of superhero arrest rates..?"

"No. In fact I wasn't aware that a significant number did get arrested. America has traditionally been very tolerant of vigilantes."

"The ones who get arrested generally don't get called 'superheroes' by the newspapers." He jabs at me with a carrot. "If you're so interested, why don't I introduce you?"

2nd November
13:47 GMT -5

"…base themselves here, but the Justice League do virtually no policing within Washington DC itself. And intervening when the Hall of Justice is attacked feels… Strange."

I had rather assumed that a former Roman Centurion would be less sociable than this, but Marcus is actually quite pleasant company. And.. now I'm.. feeling mildly guilty for putting him on the 'low priority' Justice League membership list, more useful for the Pax Romana than for himself. His ship has FTL and some weaponry, but it's designed as a mobile infantry command post rather than as a ship of war. If it had been an actual warship, I'd have prioritised him a little higher.

"Trust me, their internal defences aren't that impressive."

We land in front of the office building which the Alliance are using as their head office. Budding superheroes aren't expected to come here in order to register, but apparently setting up an organisation dedicated to supporting pro-social law-breaking is easier from the capital city.

"So… How does the training work?"

"Some are online affairs, but I understand that they want to run on-site seminars as soon as they get enough interest." He leads the way through the revolving rooms and into the lobby. "I've told them that I'm willing to act as a tutor."

"For active superheroes or people thinking about starting out?"

"Either. Though personally, I'd wait until they'd been active for a few months before inviting anyone." He waves at the receptionist, who picks up his phone. "I think that too many journalists and other such rubberneckers would turn up otherwise."

"Maybe they could just give a discount. 'Five dollars off per scar'?"

"Would it not be better to reward those without-? No, that unfairly benefits those with superhuman resilience or regenerative abilities."

"So they do charge?"

He nods. "At cost. This organisation is a charity, but things must be paid for-" The lift doors open. "-somehow. Ah, Vincent!"

"Marcus! Always a pleasure." Mister Edge walks a little awkwardly out of the lift, visibly putting weight on his cane. "And Orange Lantern. What brings you here?"

"When the leader of a crime syndicate starts hiring superheroes, it sounds like a trend I should monitor."

"Ah." He nods. "Batman send you?"

"I'm not formally affiliated with the Justice League at present. However, if I had to guess how he felt about it…"

Another nod, then he turns towards the reception desk. "Patrick, hold my calls for an hour, will yah?"

"Sure thing, Mister Edge."

Mister Edge looks up at me. "We should probably have this discussion in private."

"As you wish."

Marcus and I follow him as he leads the way down a side corridor and into a small meeting room. He gestures to us to take a couple of seats, then closes the door and activates an instrument panel. Ring?

{orange}ECM field detected. Ring function not impaired.{/}

"Can't be too careful." He makes his way over to the opposite side of the table and-. I push the chair out with a construct for him. "Mm, thanks." He sits down very carefully, putting his walking stick across his legs. "Welcome to my offices. Only moved in last month, so things aren't quite fully set up yet."

"I… Had understood that you were fully recovered. If you're not up to-."

He shakes his head, waving his right hand dismissively. "I'm probably better than I think I am. You have one heart attack, you never want to have another. And that's kinda why I'm doing this. I know it looks fishy as all get out, but..." I turn up my empathic vision. No, that would be too easy. "You met an angel, right?"

"I've had that… Happen."

"And you met a demon right outside the Hall of Justice. And I had a heart attack." He shrugs. "I know a man having apprehension about his own mortality isn't the best reason for… You know… Some of the things…"

"Some of the things you're alleged to have done."

"Yeah." He looks away for a moment, then shakes his head. "Ah, hell. No point lying about it now. I've done more than enough for God to damn me. And I don't think I've got all that long to make up for it. It's a-" He lightly taps the left side of his chest with his right hand. "-warning. A reminder. I've got money, my wife's dead and my son's companies are all legitimate. I want-. No. I need to give something back."

"Why superheroes?"

"I bought off dozens of police back in the day. Never bought off one guy crazy enough to come at me with his trunks on the outside. Someone crazy enough to fight like that could do anything."

Marcus smiles. "With proper organisation."

Mister Edge nods. "No one can say I don't know the law. Or how crime works, how it pays. This is my… My expertise. And you're all in favour of rehabilitation, right?"

He's probably talking about Thomas and Tuppence rather than alluding to Jade… "Of course. What's the point of putting people in prison if you're not going to try and straighten them out?"

"{yellow}God{/}…" He looks away for a moment. "God handled the 'straighten out' bit for you." He takes a deep breath before returning his gaze to me. "So." He manages a small smile. "You going to haul me off now, or is there something else you want to ask?"

"One thing. Could you please take off your ward?"

"What, this?" He takes a small metallic plate out of his jacket pocket and lays it on the table. "That any better?"

"Yes."

I'm seeing a genuine desire to {orange}redeem himself{/}, and as he said it's built up around an imprint of {yellow}a very Old Testament sort of God, glaring down at him while he lies weak and helpless{/}. Not.. unusual in itself, but fairly unusual amongst violent career criminals. I'm not seeing anything else that would cause him to change his mind, it's literally just fear of Jehovah's retribution.

But I'll take what I can get.

"Thank you, you can put it back on now."

"Thanks." He slides it back into his pocket. "Do I want to know what you just did?"

"I used.. 'exotic' means to confirm your story. And I see that you were telling the truth."

He nods, managing a small smile. "Glad to hear it. You know, I'd ask for your input in all of this, except I already know what you'd say?"

"Really?"

"I don't think classified Justice League reports just 'happen' to get posted through our doors."

"It is not Justice League policy to comment on leaks."

It isn't, coincidentally.

Marcus' smile broadens. "I read it as well. You argued intelligently for the League to improve its command and control capacities. Has your view found any favor?"

"I don't believe so."

Mister Edge raises his eyebrows. "We could always use new trainers, if you can spare us the time? Or any information you've got on supervillains that you're allowed to share. I know.. normal crime. With super crime I can't tell what stuff online is true and what's nonsense."

I do need to check out the rest of the organisation as well…

"I can share my own records with you. Not Justice League records, but my own observations." Two nods. "And in return? I was wondering if you could help me track down some thieves."

2nd November
17:21 GMT -5

Hub City.

Pre-Batman Gotham without the architectural pretensions. The bit of Illinois that the rest of Illinois likes to pretend doesn't exist. And… I don't know. It was a hole during prohibition, it's been a hole since and it was probably a hole before that if we had the data to know for certain. Detroit says 'we're not Hub City'.

And it's not worth fixing. If I arrayed all of the countries of the world in order 'most in need of intervention' to 'least in need of intervention', I'd still have to go through hundreds of places before this was my highest priority. America-crap is still America, and this place by itself doesn't manage to turn a first world country into a third world one. The effort involved to completely overhaul everything would be huge, and there are plenty of places where that could more usefully be done. A lesser effort -such as The Question is supplying- barely manages to keep the rot from spreading.

The people manning the morgue barely bother looking up as the faceless man pushes the door open and lets himself in. This place is… Not as clean as it should be. It's not dirty-dirty, but it's far from medical facility standards. I see… Broken locks and wear and tear. No one manning the front desk. The computer there still had a cathode ray monitor, and that was locked to the desk.

"Where is she?"

"That is-" Please don't. "-the question." He looks over to one of the mortuary workers, who is listlessly leafing through a newspaper.

He looks up. "What?" I get a momentary look of interest, then he goes back to looking at Mister Sage. "You know the deal."

"Not my case."

I can't tell where he's looking without scanning through his mask. Which it turns out I can still do. I suppose that not everyone can keep abreast of the latest in thaumaturgical developments as well as maintaining two identities. Bruce Wayne had an inherited fortune, Victor Sage has an ill-maintained lighthouse. Heck, I could have one of my rings alter my vision so that I can see his face as if the mask weren't there. But… I don't. Because ridiculous as doing this with a man with no face is, it would somehow feel more ridiculous doing it with a man with a normal face.

"You pay bribes now?"

"Fighting mortuary technicians takes too much time."

"Fine." I raise my left hand in benediction. "If I started paying bribes now-" Holly doesn't count. "-I'd never stop, but-" Up to date computer equipment appears, dirt vanishes and equipment shimmers orange and then is as good as new. "-I can stretch to giving you the equipment you need to do your job."

The man takes a look around. "Saves me an annoying job tonight." He eases his chair back, and languidly rises to his feet. "Right this way."

"What made you contact the Question about this?"

"Someone gets killed, someone gets paid off. Or threatened. Even if it's shooting a thief in some warehouse. Technically, this isn't a stand your ground state." He shrugs. "This time, nothing." He comes to a stop in front of a drawer. "Gotta get my payoff some how."

"At least you're-" He pulls out the tray, watching my face as he does so. "-reliable." The body is in reasonable condition, and the bullet wounds-. I frown. "Did the security guards report her saying anything after they shot her?"

He grins, his disappointment at my stronger than predicted stomach washed away by my 'out of town' attitude. "You think they're saying anything?"

"Do you have anything useful to add?"

He raises his hands and turns to walk away. "Close her up when you're done doing whatever you're doing."

I raise my left hand and run a scan. "Why did you think this was worth my attention?"

"Officially unidentifiable bodies are not uncommon in Hub City. But some effort is usually made to identify them in case someone will take exception. This one was genuinely unidentified. Not local or state."

Curious. "Not reported missing, or you're sure she's not from around here?"

"Not reported missing, no police record in state. Nothing in the Alliance database."

"Uploading police reports to the Alliance database might be a little problematic, even for superheroes with good working relationships with the local police." I lift my hand away. Ring, ruthlessly plunder databases until you have a match.

{orange}Compliance.

"{/}The bullet impacts don't appear to have been the cause of death. She might have lost use of the arm, but…" Yep, same as the other ones. I create a scan of her brain. "See here?"

"An aneurysm?"

"Technically, yes. But not a natural one. There have been a significant number of thefts across America recently where any thieves caught died with this injury."

"A suicide implant?"

"No residue my ring can detect. And Maryanne Sugden, fifty four, from Missouri, had no criminal record. Just like the rest."

"Mind control?"

"It's possible, but it's virtually impossible to detect after they're dead, certainly impossible after… That."

"More questions. Do you know what was stolen?"

"If it fits the pattern of the others,-" Which Kaldur told me when the alternative was asking me to wait outside of the third pawn shop. "-an icon from a dead religion."

"Magic?"

"Possibly, but probably not. The thefts in progress we stopped just involved small unenchanted statues. There are spells that can be cast with things like that, but if that's what you're doing it's usually just as easy to carve your own." I dismiss the brain scan with a sigh. "Would the victim of the theft be willing to provide more information?"

He bows his head slightly. "Define 'willing'."

"Not that I wish to interfere with any ongoing investigations you're performing, but I see no need to be confrontational about this. We're investigating a death we now know whoever it was didn't cause. High muckamuck criminals usually take other organisations stealing from them very personally."

"True. Pride takes the place of actual honor. That may be enough to motivate him." He reaches out for the corpse, right hand passing over her blood splattered eyes and lightly touching her forehead. "The death of criminals doesn't trouble me. However, if what you say is true then she… Wasn't…"

"Question?"

"Strange." He withdraws his hand.

"What is?"

"When I first tried to fight the wickedness of this city, it overwhelmed me. I came to the attention of many evil men and a few evil women. I left, half dead, and sought a new approach."

"What sort of approach?"

"Do you know of Nanda Parbat?" I nod. "While there, I learned to listen to the spirit of the world around me. Even after death, I should be able to feel the echoes of a person's life. When I touched her, I felt {black}nothing at all{/}."

…

Oh dear.

2nd November
18:44 GMT -5

Jeremiah Hatch stares moodily at me from behind his desk. "The hell do you want?"

There are two armed men behind me, but as far as I can tell they're just here as set dressing. Their guns aren't anything like powerful enough to harm me through my armour, let alone my environmental shield.

"Two days ago security guards in your employ shot a woman by the name of-."

"That was legitimate-" He waves his whisky glass in a vague motion. "-self defence."

"Surprisingly, you may well be right there." He frowns. "The woman's name was Maryanne Sugden, and as far as I can tell she had absolutely no motive to steal from you. No criminal record, no evidence of narcotics, no debt… I can't even work out why she was in Hub City."

"A regular mystery."

"Which is why I'm hoping that you'll be willing to help me. It looks like someone is altering the minds of innocent people and using them for theft."

"Not a bad line. Have to remember it."

"The programmed thieves kill themselves when captured or… Disabled. This makes the thefts difficult to stop, because we need to locate the perpetrator of the mental conditioning." I shrug. "Capturing the thieves gets us nothing except the responsibility to explain what happened to their family."

"So you think it's just some nutty costume criminal like the No Face?"

"I don't want to make assumptions at this stage. Costumed criminals usually have… Certain psychological tells which don't appear to be in evidence here. The thieves aren't uniformed, don't have any unifying characteristics at all, actually. No one is openly boasting about our inability to stop them…"

"You're telling me it could just be some guy in an office."

"It's possible. Given the… Low value of the items stolen so far, my guess would be some sort of test run for the process."

"Low value?! Those were antiques!"

"Mister Hatch, I am not an insurance claims adjuster. I am questioning you because I am interested in stopping someone using mind control, not because I am interested in any other types of crime which may be happening. I have.. rapidly become used to Hub City."

He actually smiles. "Yeah, it's a hole, ain't it? Kinda makes you want to burn the whole place to the ground and start over?"

"I don't think I'd start over. But please, any information which you may have neglected to share with.. whatever passes for legitimate authority around here, may serve to prevent things being stolen from you in future. And allow me to track whoever stole from you this time."

"And then what?"

"I stop them from doing it again. And then I study their methods and work out how to prevent anyone doing it again."

He smiles faintly, then pushes his chair back, gets up and walks over to the window. "And Hub City?"

"I don't want to spend more time here than I absolutely have to."

He nods, his back to me as he toasts his home city through the window. "Damn thing was, she didn't even really try to get away."

"Didn't she?"

He turns back around. "I spoke to the guys on duty myself. Needed to make sure none of them were in on it. But all their stories lined up and checked out. Blew the lock on the fence with a small explosive, rushed the warehouse and opened the door the same way. Got into the computer while the guards checked out the initial explosion, went right to the crate… Well, I still say they're valuable. To a collector, maybe."

"Statues?"

"Authentic antique figurines. I handle shipping all kinds of things."

"And they ignored everything else…" Wait. "Off the record, were there drugs in the case?" Ah, yes, I see there were.

"There's no cause for that sort of accusation. I'm a legitimate businessman."

"And the sad thing is, by Hub City standards you may be right. Can you confirm that there were other, clearly higher value items in the crate along with whatever was stolen?"

He nods. "Yeah, I think I can."

"Did they take anything else?"

"A few things got broken, but…" He shakes his head. "Stealing to order is a thing, right? Guess someone really wanted a statue of Satan."

"Do you have a picture?"

"Yeah." He walks back to his desk and puts his drink down. Then he takes a small key out of his pocket, unlocks one of the drawers and takes out a card folder. He opens it and flicks through until he gets to a picture. "Here."

Not 'Satan'. Cernunnos. Which breaks the pattern a little, as neo-pagan groups have revived his worship. Still, it's not a big thing, and we don't exactly know what the criteria are anyway. The statue itself looks old enough. The style is… First century, or maybe a decent replica. I'm not an art historian.

I make a point of visibly scanning it. "Thank you. I'm sure this will be helpful. You were.. saying that she didn't try to escape?"

He nods as he returns the paperwork to his drawer. "Two guys stayed on the gate, one in the control room watching the cameras and calling for backup and three went after the thieves. Two of them inside: dead woman and some other guy. They split up... Long story short, she was carrying what they stole so my guys went after her. The other thief got over the fence, and she tossed it to him right before running back inside. Security didn't notice she wasn't carrying it any more, and took a shot… Too late to get it back."

"The man?"

"It was dark." He shrugs. "Police found the car he got away in two days later. No prints."

"Genetic material?"

He frowns. "Where you think this is, Metropolis?"

Alright. A man, or an unusually butch woman. Possibly working alone, athletic and… That's it. I'll check the car, but it's not that hard to avoid leaving genetic material for a few hours. Then if the statue's warded I'm out of luck.

"Have you had any other thefts like this?"

"Where the thief committed suicide by security guard?"

I nod. "Or where the object stolen was a small and apparently low value statue?"

"No. Neither. Usually they try real hard not to die."

"Do you have any other statues like this?"

"No. And I don't think I'll get any." He picks up his glass. "Looks like it draws the wrong sort of crowd."

2nd November
22:26 GMT -5

"…{blue}really nice people{/}." Alan sounds genuinely {blue}chipper{/}, something that's been happening a lot more since he became 'active' again. "I'm not sure what's got Batman so riled up. They're good kids. If we'd been this organised back in the fifties…"

I glance over to where Mr Sage is meditating cross legged on the bonnet of the car used as a getaway vehicle for the man who robbed Mr Hatch.

"I don't think he's riled up, exactly. It's his job, what he does for the Justice League. He makes sure that potential problems are investigated so that he's ready if they become actual problems. If they're not, then great."

"You still in Hub City?"

"At the moment. I'm just taking a look at the getaway car with the Question."

"So… Are you coming home tonight..?"

"Well... Ah, don't wait up, but I'm currently planning to."

"That.. Question guy. Ah… See, there was this one crazy guy back in the sixties, wore a suit and a metal mask. The Question kinda reminded me of him. Is he on the up and up?"

"I think so. I remember the man you're talking about, and I think that if the Question were like him then the murder rate around here would be a good deal higher. And he'd be dead from the retaliation." I look over to him again. No, still not stirring. "He's trying to commune with the car at the moment."

"Is it a… Magic car?"

"No, but it turns out that he's a minor magic user. I haven't seen him do anything beyond basic psychometry, but it's one thing I can't replicate with my rings."

"Good luck with that. I'll see you when-. Oh! That reminds me. How far have you got speaking to the members of the Justice League?"

"Not.. much further. It's something I want to do face to face, and with secret identities and everything it's hard to find time."

"And I get the feeling you're not exactly eager."

"You're right, I'm not." I sigh. "Did you..? I haven't heard you say anything about having a falling out like this in the Justice Society."

"That's because we didn't. I don't know whether that was because we mostly stuck to our own beats or because we mostly had the same moral beliefs, but I honestly can't remember us ever having something like this hanging over us for any length of time. I mean, there was that thing with Sandy… But by the time any of us knew that he was okay… Mentally okay, Wesley had already fixed things."

"It's not really the same thing. Mister Hawkins had gone on a rampage before being contained. Yes, with the benefit of hindsight… Getting him somewhere isolated and checking that he was still crazy might have been a good idea, but I'm not sure how practical it would have been. And that's… Not what happened with Nabu."

"I know. I know. Personally, I'd just try and get it done as quick as possible. Try the people who'll argue the point with you the strongest, get it out of the way."

So… Hawks? Well, no secret identity problem there. "Yeah… You're right. I'll.. try and prioritise it."

"You do that. Okay, you have a good evening."

"Good night, Alan."

I let the phone construct evaporate, then take a few steps towards Mr Sage. The problem with self-taught minor magicians is that while they might get quite good at using their particular abilities, those skills aren't transferable to other parts of the arcane world. If he can do what he claims to be able to do, we could find something jolly useful. If he can't, I can't get someone else in to do it. It's not Ambrose's thing, and brute forcing it high magic style would be inefficient to say the least.

Mr Sage slides off the bonnet and onto his feet with a squeak of the suspension. "We need the key."

"For the car? I can just start it-."

"Without the key, the car is not whole. If it is not whole, then it cannot lead us." He starts pacing. "We need the key."

Ah. He's still in the trance. He's only semi-aware of his surroundings as he tries to do what the echoes in his soul are telling him to. He needs to do things step by step… How vital is the particular key? The thief will have touched it, but only briefly. The car was stolen after all, and we already know who the owner is. The key wasn't recovered, but I can create a replacement easily enough. I can't get the original key, and if he's trying to drive the car then walking the route probably isn't an option.

I fabricate a perfect copy of the key. "Question."

He snags it out of the air with his left hand without looking around, already reaching for the car door. We don't have authorisation to take the car anywhere, but he's already lowering himself into the driving seat and slotting the key into the ignition. For one moment I'm tempted to get into the car beside him, a residue of schematic patterns from before I could fly faster than light at will. Guy you're travelling with gets into a car, you get into the car as well, right?

Mr Sage closes the door and slowly accelerates. I remember from How To Succeed In Evil that driving up to a locked gate and accelerating in low gear is the best way to break it down. Fortunately, Hub City doesn't spend more on its impound gates than it does on anything else. A filament flicks out, unlocks the lock and opens the gate before Mr Sage can reach it.

He doesn't look at me or the gate, just accelerates and turns right when he reaches the road. Okay, this place isn't manned at night… I take a sheet of paper out of subspace, and… I don't have Justice League authority. I'm literally just stealing a car. Okay, accessory to Mr Sage stealing a car… Ah… 'Dear Madam/Sir, borrowing this car as part of an ongoing Justice League investigation, will return if reasonably practical. Yours sincerely, Orange Lantern.' I take an envelope out of subspace as well, put a fifty dollar note inside along with the letter because Hub City and deposit it on the front desk. Then I close the gate, lock it, and take off after Mr Sage.

He's driving… Erratically. Not that I know how he normally drives, but he's weaving-

A woman {yellow}panics{/} as he drives into the wrong lane ahead of her, and {yellow}veers towards a wall{/} for a moment before my construct catches the vehicle and deposits it in a nearby lay-by. Mr Sage comes to some sort of sense, getting back into the right lane and driving down… I think he's heading out of Hub City. He's just turned onto the main thoroughfare. Police… He just drove past a squad car and nothing appears to be happening. Oh, he's not speeding. They don't have any sort of car recognition device built into their vehicles. I think I've turned my cynicism up too far.

Empathic vision {green}shows his mental focus{/} as he manages to drive safely. I never actually watched John when he-. Okay, not safely, but he drove through that crossing in one piece and no one crashed. A few damaged brakes -I'll fix those- and he's still driving more or less regularly. I never actually watched John when he was riding the synchronicity wave. I've never seen what happens around him. Maybe this is why John doesn't drive, he just walks or gets a lift. I could ask Mr Chandler-? No, he'll be asleep now.

I send a message to the League and to the team. Just an update. I'm not really expecting to find anything other than an empty room with a few traces of temporary occupancy. That's been the pattern, after all. Still, it doesn't hurt to keep everyone up to date. Like my old manager used to say: any of us could be hit by a car tomorrow.

Mr Sage has left Hub City proper and is driving through what looks like it was some sort of suburban industrial estate. Most of the units are empty, but… He's stopping in a car park and turning off the engine. I transition downwards, appearing just in front of the car.

"Here?" He just stares for a moment, then opens the driver side door and gets out of the vehicle. "Question?"

"I can't hear it." He stares around in apparent confusion. "I can't hear it."

"Nice to know whoever it is has found a way to block you too. I was beginning to think I was being singled out. Shall we do this the old fashioned way?"

2nd November
22:34 GMT -5

"Of course." He adjusts his coat, apparently unconsciously. "But the fact I can't hear it is significant."

"There are counter magics that can disrupt magic detection. I know a magician who can remotely cause any written or electronic records about him to spontaneously vanish."

"No, it's more than that. I can't hear anything here. If they had some way to disguise their trail I would still hear the echo of all of the other trails. The street here is dead."

Hm. There aren't enough 'street shamen' for there to be standard terminology, let alone good records of the state of the mystic systems of America's cities. "Is it.. similar to how you couldn't feel anything when you touched her?"

"No." He hesitates. "Perhaps. In the morgue I could hear the sound of the city, you, a little from the other bodies. Here, it's as if the city has stopped existing."

"Are you aware of anything which could cause that sort of phenomenon?"

"New or heavily redeveloped streets are sometimes quiet. Not quite part of the city yet. This is new."

"Can you guess what could cause it?"

He takes a last look around and then heads towards the closest industrial unit. "A better magician than me."

I float after him. "A slightly better magician than you, or a really strong magician?"

"I don't know." He looks at the door, then reaches into his coat pocket.

"Allow me." I attach a filament to the mechanical code lock and open it. "Question, I don't know your style at all. I don't know what's possible with it, or how hard it is, or what level of experience it requires. If you were trying to do this, could you?"

"No." He hangs back slightly as the door opens and I attach a filament to the burglar alarm, then pulls a small torch out of one of his pockets and strides forward. "All I can do is listen. The teachers in Nanda Parbat said that someone at one with their surroundings could do other, more dramatic things. But I had a job to go back to."

This company describes itself as a building supplies warehouse. As we walk through the empty building I send filaments out in all directions. Nothing that shouldn't be here as yet. Pallets of wood, cement, brick…

"And I imagine that killing the spirit of a place is fairly antithetical to what Nanda Parbat is about."

"Quite." He accelerates, moving quickly along the main walkways in the warehouse area. "This appears to be in order."

I nod. "Offices next."

Not much in the way of offices here. I suspect that most of the business is somewhere more central and this is just a pickup and drop off point. Ring? Ah, yes, there's an office towards the centre of the city, in a subsidised redevelopment zone. It wouldn't be practical to have large lorries drive in that area.

"If a thief dies in the commissioning of their theft, then they've brought it on themselves." Mr Sage checks the desks while I scan the server. Nothing relating to this case, though I'll make the results available to him in case there's anything else suspicious about the company. "However, if their minds have been altered they cannot be considered morally culpable. I assume that the Justice League does not have a secret pro lethal force policy."

"You assume correctly."

We head back towards the door, Mr Sage turning off his torch before we reach it. "You stated that the thieves died in all previous encounters. Do you have a plan for keeping this one alive?"

"Neither physical restraint nor telepathic suppression are sufficient. None of the magic users present said that they felt anything when thieves at the other locations died. Autopsies didn't show any kind of implant. I'm coming up short on things it could be. I have a purple healing ray, and I can use constructs to interface with every part of his body… But I can't guarantee either of those will work because I don't understand what's killing them."

He takes a quick look around the exterior before motioning me to follow him. Next unit, this one allegedly empty.

"The safest technique would simply be to monitor them rather than intervening directly."

"Unless we can get a lead on whoever's doing this, and that enables us to prevent it happening to anyone else. And since we really don't know what's going on or why a bunch of worthless statues are being stolen… We've got no way to make an informed decision."

The lock on this door is broken. I switch from 'investigation' armour to 'combat but in reasonably narrow corridors' armour and lead the way inside.

"You favour intervention."

"Yes, but I know that's not necessarily correct."

"How many dead so far?"

"Eleven that we know about. Six from the original investigation, five including Ms Sugden who turned up in various morgues with the same mortal injury. The original thefts only came to our attention by chance and the original briefing was to capture a mundane criminal gang." Dust, cobwebs, some damp… I lead the way deeper into the building. "I suspect that Batman would want us to hang back and observe. Attempt to follow them back to a controller."

We start checking abandoned rooms. This used to be a courier office. Now it's just dead.

"A sound idea. You still believe it would be better to intervene."

"In the unlikely event that we can approach one of these people undetected, I'm happy to hold off. But I would remind you, we don't know what the trigger is. If it does go off, the first I'm going to know about it is the target falling over with parts of their brain turned to mush."

"Difficult."

I take the offices while he goes through what used to be the sorting room. No sign of recent occupancy. A few discarded folders with mouldering paper work. Whoever stuck around to clear the office out did a reasonably thorough job-.

I hear the faint rumble of a car engine. Immediately I turn my environmental shield down to the minimum and I see Mr Sage's torch go out. Ugh. Did I miss some sort of alarm? We didn't conceal the car, but I doubt that Hub City police would follow up on us taking it quite this quickly. If it's something to do with the theft, would they recognise it? Can I risk scanning?

Mr Sage carefully picks his way across the office. He's got some sort of light amplification glasses on, but I've used those things and they're not the easiest to navigate with. "Who is it?"

"Power ring scans are detectable.{orange}"
{/}
"Mm." He gets a… That's a periscope, out of his pocket and heads for a window. Taking care to keep out of sight himself, he removes his glasses, puts one end to his right eye and the other onto the glass.

I doubt that he can see much. There aren't any artificial lights out there, and that periscope doesn't appear to have any enhancements. I could take an infrared sensor out of subspace, but subspace evacuations are even easier to detect than ring scans.

"One figure. Humanoid. No apparent weapons. Heading for a disused unit on the opposite side. Knows where they're going."

"Did they see the car?{orange}"
{/}
"Can't tell. Also can't tell if there is anyone else inside their car." He pauses, then steps back from the window. "They're inside."

I'd prefer to intervene, but I'm trying to get back in with the team…

"I'll check their car, bug it if it's suspicious, then we'll monitor them from here."

He nods, then turns back to the window.

2nd November
22:40 GMT -5

I remember the film 'Ghost Dog'. There was a quote… I don't remember where it was from originally. Ring? Ah, Hagakure. And apparently the line in Ghost Dog 16 is 'In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.'

I'm not a wannabe samurai. I'm an Orange Lantern, but that entails that I do what I want to alter the universe to be more like I want it to be. It is a way which encourages introspection, but only outside combat. Mr Sage is watching someone through a periscope, a passive action which contains a minimal risk of discovery. And I'm not scanning with my super advanced xenotechnological hyper-tool because they might be able to detect that.

I carefully pull both rings from my fingers, then manually trigger my armour's phasing system to drop through the floor.

Irritating thing about encountering an ability I don't even begin to understand is that I don't know what else I don't understand that the user can do. If the person out there is something to do with this and not just picking up their house keys then they might have detected my phasing and killed the man we're trying to recover. Or they might have installed some sort of sensor in all of these buildings and know we're here already. Or they might have had some disenchanted Kobra Bestowed muck around with local magic, take a payoff and leave them to their own devices.

I don't know, and I don't know what it is that I don't know.

I drift through the ground in the direction of the car. One of the systems that got cut back to make this armour was the flight system: it's there, but it's not what you'd call fast. Now, how to approach this? I saw the direction in which the figure went, and I can easily keep the car between myself and that building. In addition to being invisible. Does it matter-? Agh! Annoying!

I drift up through the ground, the underside of the car suddenly being right there as my head pierces the asphalt. Drift up a little further, careful-. Someone ins-! No. Some body, tied to the passenger seat by the cord around their neck. Body still somewhat warm. Recent, then.

Not here for their house keys.

In most cities I'd inform the local police at once. In Hub… I think I'll leave it until we're done here. Without using a light or the ring I can't get a good view of their face… Given their approximate dimensions, there are any number of people on Hub City's missing persons list it could be. But the great thing about being dead is that your condition is unlikely to deteriorate.

I move around to the front of the car. This number plate hadn't been reported as stolen an hour ago, but if the owner was murdered when it was taken there's no reason to believe that it would have been.

I sigh. Nothing.

Okay, check the angle… Phase in, attach a tracking device to… The underside of the wheel arch. Tap twice to activate the molecular bonder, hold for a second… Done. It won't let us track the car, because if we can track it then so can anyone else with the right gear. Instead, it will respond to a particular sort of energy wave and give us its location when we choose to look for it. Safer, but less useful.

No point attaching a second. If they can find one, they can find two. If they can't find one, adding a second just increases the chance they'll find either of them. But… What now?

Were I a less enlightened Orange Lantern, I'd either be charging in or having some sort of episode trying to hold myself back. As it is, I'm… Confounded. There is no way for me to know the course of action most likely to keep the last thief alive. Assuming that was him. Assuming that he's in there. I would let him die if that was what it took to locate the ultimate perpetrator, but there's no guarantee that would work. Another body gets me no more information than I already have.

Tracking device on. The options are fall back and wait, or advance. And it's my decision. Yes, I could pass it on to Kaldur or Batman. I'd need to leave the area to do so, and there's the risk of detection… But any form of monitoring risks detection. And I'm well aware that I'm already verging on paranoia now, but… If they couldn't detect observation, what are the chances they could stop me? Heck, motivated like this I could simulate the parts of the brain that were collapsing as they collapsed and replace them when the effect ended. So: intervening it is.

Do I get extra help? I could retreat and call in… Who? Doctor Balewa and Angelica both have skills which I lack, but neither have specific knowledge of this case. And from the description in the team's reports, death happens quickly once the process begins. Something that matches my examination of the injury. John Fate might be similarly useful… Really, the time to call him in was when Mr Sage started driving, except there was no way to know this would actually lead to a contact and I'm sure that he's a very busy man.

Alright then. I'm going in, but I'm not going to rush things. I walk around the car-.

There's a note in the driver side window. Couldn't see it from the other side, but in the starlight I can just about make out the orange sigil drawn on it. Settles that question. I take a half-step away from the car and slide my rings back on, keeping my environmental shield to minimum. Immediately I regain the ability to see my surroundings. The person inside… Male, black, business-casual dress. As far as I can see the envelope is just paper. I can't see any poisons, electronics or arcane sigils.

Ring, scan the writing.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

'To the Acolyte of Greed'

Close enough.

'What you seek is inside, and will be offered to you freely if you have the wit to take it. Come without fear.'

Lure or genuine offer?

Again, an imponderable. My presence in Hub City isn't a secret, but I can't know if they just put this here on the off-chance or if they actually know I'm here. Does luring me in actually get them anything? The sort of weapons that would be needed to successfully ambush me don't really care about precise relative locations. At most, it would buy them a fraction of a second. And it may be pride talking, but I'm increasingly dubious about my own worst imaginings.

Okay, going in. I raise my left hand towards Mr Sage's window and send 'going in' in Morse code ring flashes. Then I phase and drift towards the unit the car driver headed into. Not the front door, obviously. Assuming that the units were built according to a standard design I can go through the wall here and enter the neighbouring unit. Empty of anything concerning. I drift further in, heading towards the back of the building. Turn up empathic vision a little… Two people, both shot through with… Veins of {black}black{/}? One is otherwise fairly normal, while the colours in the other are translucent. Barely there at all. Something weird is going on, but frankly I've seen worse. And since they're not reacting I can assume they can't feel this.

Excellent.

Phased and invisible, I float through the wall behind them. The main lights are off, but there's a window letting in starlight and I can just about make their faces out. Karl Wilson, thirty seven, from Nebraska. Pale skin, orange hair and moustache, faint colours and not wearing any sort of concealing gear. Like the others, no significant criminal record. Almost certainly the thief. The other person is a bald mixed race woman with many scars and a number of facial piercings which would shock me if I hadn't met Raquel. I don't recognise her face. She's dressed in baggy trousers and a tube top, but it looks like it's a sports bra type thing rather than a normal garment. Something for exercising in. The other distinguishing items of clothing are the bandages wrapped around her forearms.

She… Reminds me of something. I'm not sure what. I've read so many comics -and League intelligence files- that… Well, they don't blur together, but there's a lot of very similar looking distinct things in my memory. Nothing about her triggers one specifically.

Oh well. I'll ask in a minute, when she'll want to give answers as much as I want to hear them. I could phase in and brand them both, but the displaced air might clue them in that I was there fast enough to trigger the suicide effect. Another approach. Record her face.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

I float back through the wall, phase in, then send a filament underground in the direction of Mr Wilson. Tagging his foot is fine… Physically healthy. Nothing odd in his blood or bone or muscles… Or peripheral nervous system.

That {black}black{/}. Not as all-encompassing as Dark Druid, not as controlled as Ms Sackville. I could paralyse the woman right now, but… They both have the {black}black{/}. Could be sympathetic, magic or thought-activated… No, I need to purge them both at the same time.

Ring, filament to her as well, then brand.

2nd November
22:44 GMT -5

{orange}Branding in progress. No resistance from unknown woman. Branding of unknown woman complete.{/}

And Mr Wilson?

{orange}E-error error ERROR.{/}

Make her want to help me.

{orange}Compliance. Alert! Unknown woman already wishes to help you. However, her concept of 'help' is significantly divergent from yours. Concept amended.{/}

Thank you. Dare I ask exactly how she was planning to 'help' me?

{orange}Cult indoctrination.{/}

Nothing serious, then. And what's that 'error' stuff?

{orange}error.{/}

Yes, I got that. Explain the cause of the error message.

{orange}Unable to comply. If cause was know-.{/}

You would have stated it, yes. Is there anything about him other than that black stuff that stands out as unusual?

{orange}No.{/}

Are you able to preserve the structure of his brain?

{orange}No special impediment detected. However,-.{/}

You can't tell what's going on, so can't be certain. Fine. Construct bio-regulator sarcophagus. Muffle sound, then use construct blades and cut through this wall.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

Buzz saw constructs make short work of the plasterboard and corrugated steel. Another construct grabs the doorway-sized portion as it comes free and leans it up against an adjacent wall. The revealed room is illuminated by the glow of my constructs and the glowing sigil on the unknown woman's forehead as she stares beatifically at me. I didn't pay attention to it during my first look, but the stolen statue is standing in the centre of the room and…

Someone's covered it in blood.

"Good evening." I walk into the room. Full scan, please.

{orange}No further anomalies detected.{/}

The orange sigil is struggling to form on Mr Wilson's forehead. For a moment it's complete, then it shimmers and flickers and vanishes again. Decidedly odd.

"Would you be so good as to-" And she's kneeling in supplication. "-tell me what's going on?{orange}"

"I was awaiting your arrival. Now, I wait at your pleasure."

"{/}What have you done to Mr Wilson's brain?{orange}"

"Nothing, O Acolyte of Greed. Our Master speaks, and the dissolute who hear his words become like that."

"{/}And those who are not dissolute?{orange}"

"We hear His truth, and are moved to serve Him."

"{/}And how exactly are these thefts serving him?"

She raises her head slightly. {orange}"What reason would you have?"{/}

What is she-? Oh. I nod. "Because I want it. No greater or lesser reason than that." I look at the sarcophagus holding Mr Wilson. "And if you've burned out a man's soul anyway, you may as well use him for something."

Her head dips again. {orange}"You grasp the lessons readily, Acolyte."

"{/}Who is your master?{orange}"

"Our Master Is."{/}

That's tremendously helpful. "Does he have a name?{orange}"

"Our Master transcends labels, rather it is we who bear labels to distinguish us from him."

"{/}Did he..? Used to have a label I might have heard of?{orange}"

"If so, I do not know it."

"{/}Do you know where he is at the moment?{orange}"

"No."

"{/}Do you have a way of communicating with him?{orange}"

"His spirit moves through us. We are His hands as He is our will."{/}

So, magic. Area effect compulsion? They feel a slight nudge to do something, not overwhelming, but enough to recognise it as him. Reasonably clever. "Why do they die?{orange}"

"Loyal in life, loyal in death."{/}

That doesn't really… No, she's a cultist, I doubt that she's been told exactly how her master's mind control works. "How did you know I was here?{orange}"

"Your arrival was recorded on a superhero fansite. This-"{/} She glances at Mr Wilson. {orange}"-dissolute one noted that you attended the morgue. Since your friends amongst the Justice League's sidekicks are investigating the thefts, it seemed likely enough that you would come here for me to attend in person."

"{/}Have you been ordered to meet me?{orange}"

"No. I did it because I wanted to."

"{/}And what did I do to deserve that honour?{orange}"

"You mastered Cain's lessons without instruction!"{/} She's smiling, and her expression is making me uncomfortable. {orange}"Cain himself required the example of Har-Mammon to comprehend the power of greed."{/}

Cain. Religion. Oh.

"The Dark Faith. Cain went to Har-Mammon, and the city's ruler tried to bribe him to go away. The more he gave, the more Cain wanted the rest where before he would have been happy with… What was it?{orange}"

"Water."

"{/}But now he'd had a taste of the rest, he wanted it all." I bow my head slightly. "That parable stuck with me. Which means that you're a member of the Order of the Stone.{orange}"

"You know it? You've..? Been inducted?"

"{/}That depends what you mean." What were the lessons again? "I've deceived people who trusted me, killed people I didn't need to, stolen things that it was convenient for me to have and taught others what I've learned. All for the greater good.{orange}"

"And lust?"

"{/}Never really been a big part of my character, but my girlfriend has no complaints."

A few, actually, though not about that so long as I'm not using the rings. Hm, maybe I should consult with her about this? She's got more experience of personality cults than I do.

{orange}"You have learned much, Acolyte. But Cain teaches us to indulge at will, not control."

Alert! Neurological decay occurring!

"And it seems that the Master wants you to receive another lesson."{/}

2nd November
22:48 GMT -5

"Oh yes?" Ring, construct neurons. And assimilate the black. "And what would that be?{orange}"

Att-error. At-at-attempting to comply.

"Superheroes tend to risk themselves to help worthless people, and berate themselves when they fail. None of my order would do so. This dissolute one is here to show us what you do."{/}

My construct neurons are flickering and failing just as fast as the brand is. I'm restoring them just as quickly, but this isn't a viable strategy. Replacing the tissue is just resulting in the new tissue being destroyed as well. "I'm not sure I understand why it matters."

Black isn't death per se. I've seen any number of dead and dying people without the tiniest hint of black in them. It's more… A longing for nullity, or drawing on power that feels similar enough. So what I'm looking at is an implanted desire for death. But while doing that to a person might result in risk taking behaviour or suicide it doesn't usually result in living cells dying of their own accord.

{orange}"Cain's lessons are for all who have the wit to hear them."{/} She stands, drawing a knife. {orange}"I was supposed to attempt to put out one of your eyes as Cain did unto the Caitiff, but I don't think I need to now."{/}

Hooray for mind control. My mind control.

"I've been blind before. It didn't stick."

Okay, synthetic neurology. Not really true cybernetics, just novel chemical structures. No, lasts a fraction of a second longer but gets destroyed as well. Ring, rate of power consumption?

{orange}Approximately point eight percent per second.{/}

No rush, then.

{orange}Total charge will be consumed in approximately two minutes.{/}

Yes, I-. Never mind.

All three significant examples of black I've seen so far are magic based. Let's try that. I take a mage slayer round out of subspace and have the construct sarcophagus press it against Mr Wilson's head. No effect. Either not magic, or the round would need to be touching the location the spell is bound to. Opening up his skull seems like a bad idea.

My rings had a bit of an episode when I tried assimilating the black. It's not as if I want the black for itself; becoming a Host of Nekron sounds like a very bad idea. What else, what else…

His other colours are faint. I should be able to imbue him with orange light. That might-. That almost certainly will cause problems in its own right. And it might cause the black light to lose its connection. Mr Wilson… The missing person file mentioned that he went bowling..? Ugh, no, too specific. Can I manage generic desires? Maslow level one.

Food. Yes, his digestive system is running on empty. I suppose that whoever… Wait, that… Thing, they were going to sacrifice Batwoman… Bruno Mannheim. Bruno Mannheim 16 is a minor crime boss… No recent records, and no history of cannibalism. Still, it's a lead.

{orange}Neural structure decay reaching-.{/}

Right right sorry. Food. Hunger. The basic desire to eat. The empty feeling soon to be sated. The satisfying crunch, the warmth, the sudden alertness of a burst of sugar. The calm relaxation, the smell.

Water. Dry patched tacky mouth cleared out and cool and damp. Sweat and dirt and stress wiped off and sent down the drain. Warmth. Life returning to your extremities on a cold day, the play of sunlight on your skin on a clear day. Rest. Come on, I can feel how tired your body is. The lack of focus as you relax and everything fades away.

Ring, progress?

{orange}Black light infection still present.{/}

Next level it is, then. Know that you are next to a superhero who has your wellbeing foremost in his mind, and who will be escorting you to a very secure location when this is over. Walls all around, and competent personnel to guard you when you sleep.

Progress?

{orange}There is no measurable decrease in the extent of black light infection.{/}

Alright. Um, since Mannheim or whoever's doing this clearly knows that I'm here: ring, message Alan and ask him to come to my current location at best possible speed. Include my location.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

Infusing him with my desires hasn't worked. Imbuing him with desire externally doesn't appear to work. What do I do what do I do?

That…

I take Larfleeze's ring off my right ring finger, reach into the sarcophagus and put it on his left middle finger. Cease branding efforts.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

The ring fizzles and crackles on his finger as it attempts to make a connection. What else, what else..? My tattoos. They are designed to hold and channel energy into me. I create constructs in their image on Mr Wilson's skin. And… She said that he heard her master's voice.

Inducing short term memory loss in humans is relatively easy. Harming long term memory is… Not. Even for a telepath, they'd usually have to wipe everything and start from scratch to remove the chance of things coming back. That or renew the effect every so often. Short term memory suppression is possible, though most methods involve turning off conscious thought.

{orange}Minor innate orange light resonance detected.{/}

Progress! I'm only using enough orange light to drive most people insane-. Actually… Ring, if the black light infection vanishes, cancel all of my efforts at once.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

Ah… Okay, if I'm working on the assumption that my desires -even the fairly common parts- can't embed because there's nothing to embed in… The Honden. There… Should be an imprint of every desire he's had there… And… I'm down one Ophidian and I can't risk withholding my constructs for a moment. But… My ring and his ring both have connections to the Central Power Battery. Could that work? Well, it worked when the Ophidian was with Larfleeze…

I take my personal lantern out of subspace, and touch it with my left hand.

Ophidian.

No, nothing. Alright, she's got a whole Corps to listen to now and I don't want to save this one man anything like as much as I wanted to prevent the rest of my friends being killed…

{orange}"Will his death hurt you?"

"{/}No, not really. I don't even know-" That he's on his second marriage, two children from the first and one from the second, has good relations with them and.. never needed court orders to oversee his relationship with his ex-wife, at least. That his employer considers him reliable and gave a glowing account of his character to the police when questioned. That he's got a couple of parking tickets on his police record but paid them both promptly, and one fine for smoking marijuana when he was nineteen. "-him."

I'm not denying he's a person. He's just not my person.

{orange}"Then why are you trying to fix him?"

"{/}I want the world to work in a certain way. People who are productive members of my society being turned into someone else's instruments is contrary to that. Not because it is injurious to them -plenty of things injure people whom I don't care about as individuals- but because it's a frustrating distraction. It means I've got more work to do to fix things. Like this! Have you got any idea how much work I could be doing now if I wasn't saving one guy?{orange}"

"Then why do you?"

"{/}Would Cain have let Har-Mammon retain its independence? You can't put something like this in front of me and expect me to walk-" There's a {blue}sudden flare of blue light from the exterior door{/}. "-away. BLUE LANTERN, IN HERE!"

The woman starts, her eyes widening as she turns to the door. {orange}"He must-!"{/} Then she reorientates on me. "{black}Purpose=Failure{/}."

2nd November
22:50 GMT -5

I frown. "No it doesn't. BL-!"

{blue}Alan comes in through the door{/}, {blue}plate armour style blue construct armour around him{/}. Lantern Stewart and I barely had to spend any time beating that habit into him at all. "What have you got?"

"Karl Wilson. He's been mind controlled, and his controller is trying to make his brain collapse. His emotional resonance is almost nonexistent. I've been trying to infuse him with orange light with partial success, but it's not enough. He needs your help."

He nods. "Of course. Ah… How?"

"See the symbols I've put around his body? Copy those. And.. try and.. project things that make you hopeful into-." I put a construct manacle around the woman's arm as she lunges for me, the sigil on her forehead now glitching in the same way Mr Wilson's was. "Into him."

"{blue}Alright{/}." He raises his right hand, {blue}blue cables extending{/} from his ring and {blue}attaching themselves to Mr Wilson{/}. "What's her story?"

"She's a member of the Order of Stone. Evil worshipping warrior monks." She swings up her right leg, kicking at my head. I catch her ankle in another construct manacle and then float her back against the far wall. "And-. Actually." I put a construct muzzle on her. "She's got the same thing he has, but it doesn't seem to be affecting her in the same way."

Alan squints slightly. He still doesn't find fine detail as easy as I do, but {blue}blue lines{/} in the pattern already traced by my construct begin {blue}moving across Mr Wilson's skin{/}. "I.. think {blue}I can feel what you're talking about{/}. What is that?"

"Not sure, but it doesn't look too healthy. Any joy?"

{blue}"Black light infection fading, Orange Lantern. Mister Wilson will be restored shortly."{/}

"Blue Lantern?"

"{blue}She's been getting more talkative the longer I wear her{/}. {blue}Should I be worried{/}?"

"Not unless she turns yellow. Fear isn't useful without a yellow ring."

"{blue}Alright then{/}."

The blue ring's right. I can see the black lines fading slightly. Maybe if we had other colours to go with it we could go faster? Seems logical, but I don't particularly feel like having a tête-à-tête with Sinestro, so… That can wait. I reach into the sarcophagus and recover my ring, because I don't think dealing with that should be the first thing Mr Wilson has to do when he awakens.

Rings, total charge remaining?

{orange}Fifty four percent.{/}

Drat.

"This isn't a viable long term solution."

"{blue}Seems to be working fine to me{/}."

"One Blue Lantern in existence. Two Orange Lanterns on Earth, one of whom has agreed not to use his ring until his trial date. Between zero and four Green Lanterns. Orange Lanterns don't come more powerful than me, and I couldn't purge him on my own. That means we need to grab… Green Lantern A is on Earth at the moment, right?"

"{blue}I haven't spoken to him since our last training session{/}."

"Even if three of us makes it faster, that means it takes three Lanterns to fix. Per person. We need a better solution-" The last black strands evaporate, and the colours behind them surge-.

I step back, cancelling my infusion constructs. Alan glances my way.

"{blue}That it done{/}?"

"Hope's a little less… Dangerous than avarice. Give him a moment or two."

Ring, is his brain still collapsing?

{orange}Decay has ceased.{/}

Restore his brain to its original organic state. I'm.. not exactly sure what happens to a human who has not-exactly-organic parts to their brain for a prolonged period, but I don't have any reason to find out.

{orange}Compliance.{/}

Mr Wilson's eyes snap open. "Uuuuuuumgh?"

I transform the sarcophagus into a camping bed and set it down on the floor. "Okay, Blue Lantern, that should do."

Alan withdraws his hand, his construct fading. "How are you doing, sir?"

"Uh?" He shudders. "Like-. Like everything I've ever tried has been a total failure. Oh God."

"Sir, do you remember your name?"

"Um. Karl. Karl Wilson."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Aaaah…" He looks around, spotting the woman attached to the wall. "Wh-?"

"Mister Wilson, please try to focus. I appreciate that you've been through a trying time, but I need to assess your mental state."

"Right, right, sorry. No." He shakes his head. "No, I don't. I don't… I don't remember…"

"Don't worry, sir. That's probably for the best."

"{yellow}Oh{/}. {yellow}Oh God, what did I do{/}?"

"That we know about, one act of petty theft. I-."

Alan puts his right hand on my chest. I stop talking. "{blue}Which wasn't your fault, and neither was anything else you did while you were being controlled{/}."

Mr Wilson looks {blue}stunned for a moment{/}. "Ah. {blue}Yeah{/}. {blue}Of course not{/}."

"Now, I realise that you've been through a traumatic experience, but when you've had a chance to-."

He smiles. "{blue}Actually, I feel pretty good right now{/}. {blue}If you want to ask me any questions, you can go right ahead{/}."

I glance at Alan for a moment. "Thank you, Mister Wilson, but I think we should probably wait until you're in a police station." He {blue}nods cheerfully{/}. "Blue Lantern, if you'd be so good as to escort him outside?" Alan offers Mr Wilson a hand up. He takes it, and they walk out of the room. I dismiss the bed construct and turn back to the woman. "And now you. What exact-?"

Ah. Darn.

I lift her body off the wall, pick up the statue and follow Alan out of the building.

4th November
09:21 GMT -5

Batman nods. "And the statue?"

"Since.. I couldn't prove that it was stolen property, I returned it to Mister Hatch. He was sarcastically grateful." From his expression, I think that Batman is well aware of Mr Hatch's business practices. "On that subject, sir, if you wish to pursue Mister Hatch, I would be perfectly happy to sub in for you in Gotham while you carried out a comprehensive investigation."

"That's irrelevant at present. Do you believe that the monk you encountered was behind the thefts?"

I shake my head. "Now I know who to look for I can start going through CCTV records, but I rather doubt it. I don't know whether she was the source or if her 'master' was making personal visits… Heck, since we still don't really know what the black stuff I was seeing was, I don't know whether or not it's something all members of the Order of the Stone can induce."

"Where did you first hear about the Order?"

And this is why it's important to take the time to cover yourself in advance of talking to the World's Greatest Detective. Especially if you're known to have a perfect memory. "They were mentioned in the League of Shadows' database, and again in various police reports passed to the Justice League. The same with some parts of their philosophy. I have a.. particular interest in alternate moral systems." I sigh. "Unfortunately, theirs is rather stupid."

"Purpose equals failure."

"It doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, on one level, yes, if you're not trying to do anything then you can't fail to achieve it. I'm just not sure why she said it to me like that."

"Was anyone else close enough to hear when she did?"

"Mister Wilson, but otherwise no. The Question was still in the building opposite and Alan hadn't arrived yet."

Batman bows his head slightly. "How reliable is the Question?"

"He's been working in Hub City for years. He's had appreciable success against the city's criminals, and has a number of scars which would have come from life threatening injuries. Empathic vision shows that he's genuinely committed."

"And his allegedly magical abilities?"

I shrug. "Plausible. It didn't make my rune stone glow, but since he's claiming to be using a form of psychometry that's not too surprising. It's something Nanda Parbat could probably teach someone who knew nothing about magic within the available timeframe. You'd need to have an actual magician speak to him to draw a firm conclusion."

He nods, then turns and walks away from the table to look down through the armoured glass into the examination area where Dr Balewa is studying the woman's corpse. I fall in just behind him. Mr Wilson was examined first of course, but they couldn't find any trace of whatever it was which caused the black light I saw. Dr Balewa was able to confirm that a part of Hub City has been gutted of arcane energies, but… He could also list several entities that could have done it and couldn't come up with any idea why they would have felt the need to.

Doctor Balewa is currently painting lines on the woman's naked corpse. Something to aid him in measuring particular flavours of arcane energy, I assume. It looks a little like what I've got-.

"Would the person who made Blue Lantern's ring be prepared to make any more?"

"I don't know. I'd imagine that he'd charge quite a lot, and I don't have another candidate."

"Hope isn't that rare."

"You're welcome to ask him. I'd.. suggest having Lantern Stewart and I have a crack at the next one. Or myself and Zatanna. I still don't know exactly what it was that finally broke its hold."

Below us, Dr Balewa raises his hands, closes his eyes and starts chanting.

"You would recognise it if you saw it again."

"Yes. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Even in those.. few people who have appreciable amounts of black in them anyway."

"We don't know how many there are or where they are. We don't know if there's an upper limit on the number there can be. We have no way to stop it, and we can only undo it by having Lanterns present before the suicide effect takes place."

Dr Balewa frowns as he concentrates.

"The other statues?"

"There were no traces of magic on them, or any exotic phenomena we could detect. They've been returned to their owners."

"Geh." The tips of Dr Balewa's fingers smoke and smoulder as he staggers away from the examination table!

Batman leans forward and presses the intercom. "Doctor Mist, report!"

Dr Balewa angrily shakes his hands, the smoke dispersing. "A minor side effect, Batman. I am afraid that I must confirm the Question's assessment. The woman's body is completely devoid of arcane influences. I cannot feel any part of her soul, or her life."

"Was her soul stolen or destroyed?"

"No." Below us, his body… Simplifies, colours merging and textures smoothing-. He vanishes, then reappears in the room with us. Batman and I turn to face him. "The magic involved in such a thing would leave its own mark, both upon her and upon her surroundings. There is nothing. It is not merely her soul that is missing, but every other arcane influence which I should be able to feel."

"Was her soul..? Nullified? Or have they just wiped her body clean?"

"If I am to seek out her soul in the hereafter, I will need more information on the practices of her Order."

"They regard morality and restraint as weakness, and learn to channel their desire for vice into a drive to act. I don't know what they believe as far as afterlives are concerned."

"What spirits do they worship?"

"A re-imagining of the biblical figure of Cain. Instead of being punished by Jehovah and leaving to found the first city, he wanders around the ancient world, steadily learning more and more about how to empower himself and control others with their cardinal vices: deceit, greed, lust and murder. I've no idea what they think happens to their souls. I don't even know if they believe in souls."

"Are they a large Order?"

"The League of Shadows didn't think so. I don't know."

"Doctor Mist." We both look at Batman, who is looking thoughtful. "Could the arcane presence you are looking for be hidden in a way that would make it impossible for you to find it?"

"No." He considers for a moment. "There are ways in which they could blur specific details, but that there was something there? No."

"How can you be certain? There are other ancient magicians-."

"And they are all younger than me, but that is beside the point." He looks at me for a moment, then gives a slight nod. "In… My early life, before…" He looks at his robes. "Before this. I had been a minor magician for a long time, and I wished to… I had been born a slave, and though I had risen far I still wished to know if there was more to life than I had experienced. So, I passed my authority on to my eldest son, set a great wooden pillar at the most powerful geomantic site known to me and sat upon it. I meditated, my spirit drifting free from my body, for… I do not know how long. I… Saw so much, all of the magics of the Earth, peoples I had never seen in the flesh, lands I had never walked upon. And as my body died… Just for a moment-". He smiles at the memory. {white}"-I saw something beautiful."{/} He shakes his head. "Batman, I have seen life's purpose, and now it is my owen. That." He points to the window. "That is not life. That is…"

He shakes his head.

Ah. I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

"Anti-Life. It's Anti-Life."