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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

Reader mode
Mr Zoat said:
8th November 2012
12:41 GMT -5

Mage slayers hum from my railguns, impacting-. A barrier of golden light with a red-burning boarder. The shield shimmers when hit-. No, tiny shields, each one collapsing and being reformed almost immediately.

"-appoin-"
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Well, that's just rude, now. I see he's playing up the high intelligence Wizard trope to the hilt, with counters prepared for everything he knows OL can do. A pity OL hasn't shown off everything he has in his bag of tricks. Which should make for a nasty surprise.

Alan is shining blue light over the second-. The only Demon Constantine, the man's dozens of visible small injuries knitting back together. His eyes are open, but I'm not sure how much he's taking in.

"-ting."
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Yeah, he's been mind-whammied hard. I'm guessing Quinn poured the whole bottle of Anti-Life Flava-Aid down his metaphysical throat...

I pull and push, restoring the link between Demon John and Original John's desires in the Honden with one thought and trying to drag Quinn's desires out of his soul.

A golden ripple passes over his body. I can sort of feel his desires, see their shape, they're still there, but some sort of spell is preventing me from touching them.
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Ooh, pulling a cut and paste on Quinn's desire network? Pity he expected that, and made sure you couldn't disable him that way...

"John Quinn!"

The red light is extinguished like a blown-out candle, causing the shield to begin to diffuse into the air, smaller components spreading out. I focus fire immediately, but-.
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Oh, boy, the Doctor is pissed. And he knows how to break Chaos-based defences, I see.

A golden glow and the barrier-components lengthen, hexagon-ended octahedral barriers forming an overlapping protective barrier, each one with a tiny crimson flame inside it.

"Anti-Life! Explain!"
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I see Quinn's gotten the hang of lightly mixing Order and Chaos, at least, so this won't be a complete waste of time for John.

Sanderson takes charge of Demon John while Alan manoeuvres up and around, trying to flank Quinn.

"The universe and all its people disgust me."
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One Wizard of Order and Chaos versus an angry Life-fuelled Wizard and two Lanterns? Not the best odds, but I get the feeling Quinn won't go down that easily.

Oh sugar, is he not infected? I mean, given that Belle Reve never reported The Demon Constantine missing I'd guess that he was switched over very quickly. It wasn't just 'these parts of John's character could be a problem, best be sure', it was something else?

"Why?! You are more-!"
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For all we know, some lingering part of Nabu's thoughts are still lurking in the helmet, and that's what's driving him batty.

Purple clouds bubble up from the Dream-discharge below us, enveloping Dr. Mist!

"Doc!"
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Oh, that's bad. I'm betting that's almost a weaponised form of the Dream Storm...

Sanderson throws sand at the swelling pseudo storm, causing it to collapse back down and reveal an.. injured Dr. Balewa, clothes burned and skin slightly melted. Or not melted, but exposed to enough raw conceptual anarchy that it wore away at him in a similar fashion.

"Sandman, can you-"
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...Ow. :confused: Looks like it's just as effective as the wild version.

Painfully aware that my reserves of mage slayer rounds are not unlimited, I switch them out for solid rounds and crumblers. Those-. Do nothing that I can see, which makes sense as an Order wizard of his level should be able to block physical force by altering the application of the relevant physical laws. Alright then, how about masers?

"-do something about-"
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You've really got to learn how to make your own anti-magic rounds, OL. I suppose you'll manage it someday.

The first beam does actually get through, impacting on his blue and gold body armour and achieving nothing of note. The second beam hits a shield as the red flame inside flickers and gets effortlessly absorbed. I try firing a solid shot at another shield at the same time as a maser beam just in case this spell works on one type of attack at a time, but no such luck. That should be consuming more of his reserves, but I'm starting to feel that him solving the Order-Chaos dialectic might have made his spell casting super-efficient. In which case-
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To quote Captain America: "I can do this all day." Not great when you're on the opposite side of that, though.

"-that?"

Never a fan of my technical precision, Alan adopts a brute force approach, hitting Quinn with a construct battering ram which merely causes a new shield to become visible, and then with a swamp of boxing gloves which hit every single shield he can see again and again and again in the hope that if he punches them enough then they have to go down eventually.
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Problem is, that kind of thing burns a lot of charge quickly, no matter how hopeful you are. He can't keep that up, and the second he stops...

Quinn turns his head slightly in that direction and every single one evaporates in a waves of gold-red flame.

"I'll try!"
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...Quinn's uber-hax will steamroll him into a wall... This is probably going to be a puzzle boss, not a stomp.

Sanderson shifts to sand form, appearing to absorb spare Dream sand as he travels 'down' from our position. Quinn points his free hand in that direction, but while the Order crystals so far enveloped by the miniature Dream storm strain and force it back a little all Sanderson needs to do to counter that is spread himself out a little. That should give him an override on what dreams occur there.

Dreams.
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Morpheus' blessing may well prove vital to solving this riddle. How lucky...

"Sandman, dream us up something-."

Quinn stares at me, and then a golden box forms next to me. I slam a construct drill into it, but it stays solid.
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Well, shit. Looks like he's pulled too much aggro. And now Quinn's focused on him.

"He was right. Caging you-"

And the box is the universe, and like the Monkey King couldn't escape the lap of Buddha I find it surrounding me with no way out!

"-is simple."
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Well, at least you're tasteful enough not to piss on one of the pillars, like Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equal to Heaven, did.

I try to fly away, but unlike Faust Quinn knows what he's doing!

This is how genies feel, isn't it?
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"Phenomenal Cosmic Power! ...Itty-bitty living space." Good thing OL's not as easy to pin down.

Right then. Mage slayer the boundary layer, and-.

Wait.
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Right, something metaphysical is happening. Looks like Quinn went right past the meaty outer shell for the sweet orange-flavoured soul inside.

I look at myself and realise that I just left my body behind.

I'm snake-shaped again. I'm so close to being an arcane life form that a ghost trap can suck me out of my body regardless of my tattoos and ward. That's… A worry for another day.
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On the other hand, that's a good thing in some respects. At least it's harder to keep you dead.

The mage slayer I fired is still travelling through apparently infinite space. Access to the Honden… No. Radio? No.

Alright then. FEED ME! You think combining Order and Chaos is impressive?! I'll combine them IN MY BELLY!
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Eating the cage from the inside out. That's a clever trick.

The golden universe around me shudders, gold light precipitating out of empty space and flowing into me, though since I'm not an idiot I make sure to process it into orange light as it passes my snake lips. Just another Fate to DIGEST!

Flickers of red light all around me, the structure shimmering as I feed. I think I'm pulling enough power out of the structure that it's weakening. That's teach you not to lock up a genie with a tin opener!
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Just be careful. You might be able to swallow it, but too much rich food might still give you a gut-ache.

The box collapses in front of me, and I get half a second of seeing my armour from the outside before I'm opening my eyes back in my own body. Alan's stuck me on a bio-bed construct to keep me out of the way, but I fly off at once and exhale at Quinn, a ray of manifested avarice flying from the front of my armour and slamming into his shield spell! They actually buckle, cracking and fracturing into tiny motes of energy!

A swirling red disk intercepts my shot before it can hit home, orange energy intermixing with-.
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Nice, turning his own power back on him, with a little orange zest added in.

FEED ME!

Intermixing with the red and then absorbing it, expanding outward to envelop Quinn! He brings his sceptre to bear in a parrying motion, the head flaring gold as he strikes! The orange bomb holds for a moment, then shrivels and vanishes.
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Oooh, do I see a weak point? I bet that sceptre's helping him hold things in balance.

Then he points the sceptre at me.

"Oi!"

Demon John pulls himself up over the lip of a platform circling the upper part of the room.
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Ah, good, he's up and about. Let's see what he can contribute.

"What was that about?"

"I seek the beautiful purity of Anti-Life, but I'm immune. I wanted to infect you so that when we merged we would still be a part of it."
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...Huh. Wonder why he's immune. Because he's a broken wreck of half a Constantine? Or something to do with the Helmet, perhaps.

And then I see Dr. Mist just behind him, the central shaft of the chamber coming apart under the effect of his magic as one of Demon John's eyes glows red while the other glows gold.

"Well that's just fucked up, mate."
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In more ways than one...

Well, Quinn is neck-deep in it now. I have the feeling this may be the tipping point that they needed to set him on the back foot. Hopefully, he sees how fucked he is and chooses to go down easy. But I get the feeling this will get much trippier before it's done. Because they've still got to re-merge before we get John-Classic back.
 
Bud-E said:
Well, there goes the Quin is being controlled by Anti-Life theory.
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Seems to me that he's immune in the same way that Amy Dallon was immune to Victoria Dallon's aura: It doesn't influence him because his natural state of mind is so close to where the influence would lead him that there's no noticeable effect.
 
Stsword said:
I think that's a sign that the merger worked- So he's Golden Demon Constantine now, and since Demon and Golden Boy were being used as proxies for chaos and order in that separation spell, that Golden Demon Constantine has access to both Order and Chaos.
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Demon Constantine has all of John's pain and bad habits he's also everything John hates about himself.
.
Golden Boy theoretically has a perfect life but is nice and self sacrificing. Potentially more powerful than even a Lord of chaos/order because he's never really lost. He also tried possessing John to become real... Or you could say that John accidentally manifested him due to his self loathing+depression.

As one being. That's already a greatest hits recipe for screwing over John Constantine.

As one being with Order/Chaos? Very very bad for John.

And unless Johnny Boy has planned this all along,I don't think he'll get away from this scot free.

Or this new fusion is simply a smug prick.
.... Basically a Shonen Protag.
 
theaceoffire said:
I'm not even entirely sure how many people are in this room right now, and I'm pretty sure there's at least two or three people who are standing around not interacted with anyone who aren't even being written into the chapter!
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It's worse because the entire chapter is happening at Jojo's Bizarre Speed thanks to Paul's mental acceleration being foibled by Chaos and Order magics.

Milliseconds of real time pass while taking up a third of the runtime dissecting the attacks and defenses of the enemy stand.
Brief clips of free-action-dialogue sprinkled with talking-is-not-a-free-action moments that never follow logical time progression but instead depend on the audience tracking peripheral cues as to if this happened just before or after someone did a thing.
Deep dives into inner sensorium timelessness paired with ORAORAORA blitzes that take interminable time lengths.

Just reimagine the whole chapter as a sceries of camera jump cuts straight out of an episode of GOLDEN WIND and it becomes a lot more reasonable.
 
My best guess for Quinn's immunity to Antilife is that, as the receptacle for John's wisdom and other associative positive traits, there isn't much for the Antilife to grab on to. He's not really a whole person, but his vessel is filled so to speak. But the thing is, just because John gave him all of his "positive" traits, that doesn't mean that they're going to make a positive person. What's wisdom without humility? What's power without the memory of weakness? What's order without an understanding of the importance of chaos as a concept and not just a power source? Throw all that together with some good old fashioned Order Above All mentality and tadaaaa.

Someone said that Quinn was like an Auditor of Reality from Discworld and that seems pretty spot on to me.
 
Mr Zoat said:
No, the SI doesn't pause at any of those points.
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Zoat, actual written language uses commas and shit for more stuff than the...Dramatic...Kirk...Pauses...you've devolved into using it for.

Remember this is not some playscript, it is text, meant to be read by human eyes, and interpreted by a human brain, who is almost certainly not saying the words out loud. Here is a list of reasons for using a comma.

  1. Use commas to separate independent clauses when they are joined by any of these seven coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet.

    Example: I love vanilla ice cream, but my brother prefers chocolate.

  2. Use commas after introductory a) clauses, b) phrases, or c) words that come before the main clause.

    Example: In the beginning, there was light.

  3. Use a pair of commas in the middle of a sentence to set off clauses, phrases, and words that are not essential to the meaning of the sentence. Use one comma before to indicate the beginning of the pause and one at the end to indicate the end of the pause.

    Example: Hilda, a very good cook, went to San Francisco.

  4. Do not use commas to set off essential elements of the sentence, such as clauses beginning with that (relative clauses). That clauses after nouns are always essential. That clauses following a verb expressing mental action are always essential.

    Example: It is critical that you not put a comma in this sentence.

  5. Use commas to separate three or more words, phrases, or clauses written in a series.

    Example: George traveled to Spain, France, and Germany.

  6. Use commas to separate two or more coordinate adjectives that describe the same noun. Be sure never to add an extra comma between the final adjective and the noun itself or to use commas with noncoordinate adjectives.

    Example: The big, hairy monster glared down at me.

  7. Use commas to set off all geographical names, items in dates (except the month and day), addresses (except the street number and name), and titles in names.

    Example: On October 3, 2015, Jeff Smith, marketing director at Intel, traveled to 14 Appian Way in Rome, Italy.
Note that none of them seem to care whether the speaker is supposed to take a pause or breath there.
Even if little Timmy didn't specifically have a noticeable pause (as you would determine it) in "I love vanilla ice cream, but my brother prefers chocolate," the comma should still be there. Commas help readers organize things in their heads.

...This is you being a belligerent twat. Please stop that.
 
You know, looking at it from a physics standpoint, Paul missed one simple way to fight a Lord of Order. If he can manipulate physics to exploit the underlying Order in an attack, then the simple solution is to hit him with the physical version of Chaos. Specifically, entropy. And, as increasing entropy is accompanied by the release of thermal energy, the perfect weapon to use against Quinn would have been heat. Pure, simple, random molecular movement.

I say, blast him with as much IR as you can and watch him burn...
 
Welp. There goes the hope of Quinn being a decent person. But he isn't really a person, now, is he...

As a previous commenter stated, positive traits don't necessarily make a good person. What's the phrase, a tragic flaw is just an innocent character trait in the wrong circumstance? Hope is great... unless it leads you to waste away instead of moving on to something better. Compassion is wonderful until someone forgives mass murder because the person committing it had tragedy happen to them. Etc.
 
rdfox said:
You know, looking at it from a physics standpoint, Paul missed one simple way to fight a Lord of Order. If he can manipulate physics to exploit the underlying Order in an attack, then the simple solution is to hit him with the physical version of Chaos. Specifically, entropy. And, as increasing entropy is accompanied by the release of thermal energy, the perfect weapon to use against Quinn would have been heat. Pure, simple, random molecular movement.

I say, blast him with as much IR as you can and watch him burn...
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KILL IT WITH FIRE!

(It's the only way to be sure!)
 
Prince Charon said:
I've forgotten where Sauntering Downwards is/what happened in it, and failed to find it in the ToC.
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Here, and several chapters after in that episode. Essentially, it's 'Tangseid' Paul's start of darkness. You may remember him as the one that took an 'evil' super-serum, lost his moral center and decided he could manage the world via manipulation of people's desires...
 
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