Ikaris : Rebirth (MCU/DCU)

[Firewillreign]

Ikaris did not simply fly too close to the sun. He flew straight into it's heart, seeking an end to all that he was and ever would be.

But a being born of a Celestial is not so easily sundered, and no matter how much he may have wished for it, the tale of the fallen Eternal does not end there.

In many ways, that was only the beginning.

 

[Firewillreign]

Marvel Multiverse - Earth 199999 - Indian Ocean

Ikaris mouthes the words before he's consciously aware of them.

"I'm sorry."

It's… It's not an apology. It's so much more than that.

As he stares at the woman he loves, has always loved, and will always love, his head head clears for the first time in centuries.

Ever since that fateful day when Ajak first revealed to him the truth of their mission, of their nature, of their very purpose, he'd been drifting.

Lost in a haze of uncertainty and burdened suffering that had shattered him from the inside out, left only jagged pieces held together by duty and loyalty to a path he'd never had any choice but to follow.

The others had been free, after Tenochtitlan. Free to carve out their own lives, to surround themselves with the people of the world whom they all so dearly loved and make their own lives amongst them, but not he.

How could he, when he knew how it was all to end? When all of humanity was destined to die so that a God may live, and through him, countless trillions more?

For a time, he tried to function.

He tried to draw strength from Sersi, but instead, he found only more pain, and the tears in his soul grew. For every day he spent with her, he saw firsthand how her love for the Earth and its denizens grow, and his own despair grew right alongside it as he pictured the moment the truth was laid to bare, as he imagined the look in her eyes as she witnessed the end of everything. dear to her heart.

When at last he could stand it no more, he fled, abandoning her like a coward and burying himself away as he awaited the end of the world.

Ajak had been wrong to tell him.

She'd thought him as strong as she, the Prime Eternal, and she'd been wrong.

So utterly wrong.

The truth had killed him first, and his death throes had echoed through time and washed over them all.

It was a bitter irony. He'd once thought that it was his sole duty to protect the others from the Deviants, but in the end, no Deviant had ever hurt the Eternals more than he.

And now here he was, standing atop the very literal corpse of his most fervent beliefs and beholding all his failures made manifest.

There's a moment where his soul aches, where grief and rage and utter loathing shred at the last lingering dregs of his sanity, and then it all stills.

The scattered pieces clicked together, revealing the truth he'd desperately avoided for fear of what it would mean.

The emergence had been halted. A nascent god had been smothered in its crib, and a world that was fated to die had survived in defiance of all the odds.

Which all meant… that…

…

There was… no point… to any of it.

His torments. His realizations. His desperate will, and all the sacrifices that he'd bore for the sake of it all.

The guilt and the grief. The isolation and the torment.

Ajak and Gilgamesh.

There was never a point to it, from the very beginning.

There was never any point to him.

It's that last thought that offers salvation, a path forward once more.

However finite may have been.

When he sees the fresh sorrow well in her eyes, he thinks Sersi understands too, if only just a little.

"I'm sorry."

Not an apology or a lamentation. Not an oath, or a promise, or any of a thousand other possibilities.

A conclusion. An ending.

He stares into her eyes for an instant more, lost in the memory of times long past before surging to his feet, up into the air, and away.

He thinks, for a moment, that he hears something echo in his wake.

A call. A whisper, full of longing and grief.

"Ikaris"

But he's already gone, and this time, there's no turning back.

…​

He flies faster than he's ever flown before.

His body thrums and pulses as he pushes forward, his every cell alighting with veritable maelstroms of cosmic energy as the power his Celestial creator had built into his being propels him ever forward in answer to his will.

The universe shifts around him as he accelerates further still, faster and faster until he begins to toe the line between the relativistic and the impossible.

And faster still he goes.

The sun grows in the distance, deceptively small at first even as it expands to fill his enhanced visual range and promptly drowns out the rest of the universe in its glow.

He observes with inhuman detachment as the approaching photosphere writhes and twists with storms that could consume entire planets whole, as the waves of myriad radiation pumping out of the dwarf star's core pulse and light the portions of the electromagnetic spectrum he can see with their intensity, and he feels nothing.

It's breathtaking, a phenomenon and sight beyond the perceptions and understanding of most, and yet he cannot offer it more than the barest acknowledgment and perhaps even the faintest glimmer of satisfaction at just what it represents.

The end.

The ending he so richly deserves and so desperately desires in equal measure.

Nothing else matters, and in a moment, nothing else ever will.

He closes his eyes, at peace for the first time in so very long, and plunges into his final fate.

At last

…​

Beyond Time And Space:

For some, death would be a nightmare. For others, It would be a relief.

For the fallen Eternal, it is the closest to existence he had ever come..

For the longest time, there is nothing.

His body is gone, as is everything else.

There is no light, sound, or anything at all. Time and Space are concepts that hold no meaning to him, and he is all that exists in the moment.

More than that, he has no senses, not the tiniest perception of anything and his very being is fractured, entire chunks of his identity disjointed, disconnected, and rendered utterly without meaning.

For the longest time, he simply exists, and he isn't enough of a person to decide whether or not that's a good thing.

And then, an instant and an eternity later, there is a second presence alongside him, and though he is still not whole, Ikaris is once more conscious and possessing a sense of self, however incomplete it may have been.

Tiamut the Communicator towers above him in all his resplendent glory, greater and more vibrant than the star that had claimed Ikaris's life, and a billion others more.

The Eternal knows that the Creator God is observing him, and he feels a frisson of curiosity banish his apathy for a moment.

What was this?

A punishment?

Had this being of incomprehensible scope transcended death itself for a chance to exact his vengeance on the pawn that had failed him so?

Ikaris had only just regained his capacity to feel, and he felt nothing at such a prospect.

Celestial he may be, but not even that would allow the vengeful God to torment him in a way that his very existence hadn't managed to achieve a thousandfold.

Time passes.

Or does it?

Existence in such a state is very odd, and Ikaris understands very little of it as it is.

An instant moves by. Or perhaps it was a billion years.

Who could tell?

And then Tiamut reaches out and seizes all of him at once, all the scattered pieces forced back into place with a single act of will, and Ikaris's reforged soul remembers what it feels like to burn.

"
!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"
​

An instant later, everything dissolves into nothingness once more.

…​

DC Multiverse - Earth 16 - Fawcett City:

The Universe trembles as, just for a minute, something fundamental changes.

Something other forces its way into existence, a foreign presence that did not belong, and though it remains for a moment, the ripples of its arrival travel far and wide even as it departs forever more.

These ripples, disruptions in the workings of reality itself serve to distract, to catch the sight of those who could see beyond mortal limitations, and in doing so draw their attention away from what remained of the Outsider's intrusion.

Of who remained.

In Fawcett City, a caretaker of Venus Sivana's Children's Center opens the door to find a newborn infant on the front step, swaddled in blankets of white cloth and utterly alone in a world that was neither ready for him, nor he for it.

Though children being so blatantly abandoned in such a way was not the most common of occurrences in that day and age, it was far from unheard of. Within a day, this child of no particular origin and unknowable potential is logged, registered, and gifted with a new name for a new life.

First name Marcus, after the caretaker who found him, and last name Milton, for the clever alliteration.

Marcus Milton, or Mark Milton for short.

And just like that, a new story begins.

...​

Wohoo! My first non-si fic, though still a crossover naturally.

I watched the MCU eternals movie, and as an avid marvel comics fan I was... conflicted. There were aspects I loved, and aspects I hated, but one thing I really didn't like was Ikaris's conclusion.

Perhaps the directors intent to have him come back in another film one day to continue his character arc, and I'm one hundred percent gonna be there for it, but right now I'm too impatient to wait, and this little plot bunny just popped into my mind so here we go!

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Mark Milton is five years old, a resident of Venus Sivana's Children's Center, and he is a quiet child.

This isn't to say he goes unnoticed, however.

Far from it, the little boy tends to garner a great deal of attention from his caretakers.

It is to be expected. Despite what some may think, Venus Sivana's Children Center very rarely gains custody over children younger than the age of four, let alone infants as Mark had been when he'd literally been left on their doorstep.

Still, his exceptionally young age isn't the sole reason for the near-inordinate amounts of attention he tends to receive.

No, a good deal of that was due to his developmental brilliance.

Mark Milton has a history of staggering cognitive development.

First steps at six months. First coherent use of words at eight months. Able to hold a basic conversation with an adult after a year and a half. Possessing the mental discipline to start receiving literacy training at age three.

By five, he's well and truly blown all expectations out of the water and cemented a reputation as a gifted child. There's talk of early schooling and academic opportunities to help nurture such prodigious talent, and many are thrilled for the boy's prospects, both for altruistic reasons and for the beneficial PR that could come with such a budding genius being associated with the center.

And yet...

Mark is intelligent, none can deny it. Academically, he has no equal among his peers. In point of fact, he has very little in the way of peers to begin with. Most children his age aren't half as capable, and certainly, none in the center can give him any competition.

And therein lay the problem.

Academically, Mark is off the scales. Socially, he's…

Well, he's a catastrophe.

To say the child was isolated would be akin to admitting that the sky was blue and that water was wet.

Mark Milton does not interact with his fellow children. He does not seek them out, does not engage them in any meaningful way, and on most days it's almost as though he doesn't see them to begin with.

Most could count one on hand how many times they'd ever heard the boy speak to another person without considerable prompting, and even then those exchanges tended not to surpass a few awkward, stunted moments before breaking down into uncomfortable silence.

Well-spoken for his age, but he spoke so rarely he may as well have been mute. At times, it was like he radiated his desire for solitude and his failure to register anyone around him and good lord, did it make him unapproachable.

And this wasn't a phenomenon that was limited to the other children, either. The adults in his life were just as rarely given the time of day, and most suspected that the only reason the boy spoke to them at all was to sate his curiosity.

For all that Mark seemed to go out of his way to exemplify the concept of personal independence (as much as any five-year-old could), he still had questions. Idle curiosities. Things that, for all his apparent intelligence, he neither knew nor understood.

Those questions were the only time he could be trusted to speak without being coaxed into it, with anyone lucky enough to be on the receiving end.

Which, fair enough, that's what the caretakers were there for, but the evident lack of social skills and perhaps even the most basic desire for social interaction was incredibly off-putting at the best of times and just plain concerning to boot.

Social interaction was important for growing children, on numerous levels. It taught them comprehensive communication skills, allowed them to build their confidence, and learn how to function autonomously and with others in their day-to-day lives.

It was a key part of individual development, and having a child so vehemently shy away from it was and remains most troubling.

Unfortunately, none of the interested parties could have predicted that in the case of this particular child's mental hurdles, a lack of social skills was only the very tip of the iceberg.

…​

Mark is five years old when scattered pieces click together, and he makes an odd discovery.

"Oh." Mark blinked in slow realization and tilted his head in thought.

He's alone in his room now, a small and cozy little thing illuminated and painted by the warm glow of his desk lamp, and the name comes to him even as he puts his pencil to his piece of paper and begins to sketch.

For as long as he could remember, Mark's head had been full of thoughts and complexities, dreams that were all... big.

Too big.

Too many ideas. Too many colors. Too much... everything really. So much context, and for the longest time, he didn't understand any of it.

As he grew, however, the strange sights in his head began to gain definition. Flashes of color and light resolve into images, and images become short memories. Snippets of a story, of history, so rich and wonderful and full of so many things he doesn't understand but make him ache in a way that is so very, very confusing.

Mark has lived in the Children's Center for his whole life, he knows this with absolute certainty, but there are so many stories in his head that have had to have come from somewhere, and they're all so familiar.

They were all so familiar, those strange people of unaging lives and Celestial Light and names that seemed so close to his heart and impossible to remember all the same.

Sketching out what he sees when he closes his eyes feels right. The more the pictures of warriors in shimmering armor and beasts from beyond the stars spill across the pages, the clearer his dreams grow.

When he'd asked about his strange dreams, one of his teachers had smiled at him, ruffled his hair, and praised him for having a 'wild imagination."

Mark didn't like that, because he wasn't blind to the implication that none of it was real. The teachers knew he was smart, but all of them seemed to think that he couldn't catch on to the truth of their thoughts if they twisted their words a little.

Which was silly, really. He could understand them just fine, and he'd be more inclined to ask them more questions and speak to them more often as they were always pushing him to do if they just gave him the answers he wanted when he asked for them.

It's why he never talked to any of the other children. They were never helpful, and most had given him odd looks when he asked, all the way back before he'd learned not to bother with them at all.

Well, that, and... He just didn't like to talk to people.

He knows those that surround him think it's an oddity, but it's not odd to him, so that doesn't matter. He can't explain why his instinct has him pushing himself away, how he's at his most comfortable when he's alone, but the fact is that he is.

It's probably the dreams.

All these people may as well be mayflies. Blink, and they'll be gone, so what's even the point of being able to tell one from the other?

It's been this way, for as long as he could remember, but tonight, tonight is different.

He's in his room, the walls are plastered with beautiful drawings that none but he can understand, and they all seem to pale in comparison to the picture that's taking form beneath the strokes of his pencil.

The armor comes first, with the intricate sigils weaved across its surface. The figure the dons comes into clarity next, expression blank and unseeing, and it's as he goes to draw the eyes that Mark notes that his hand is shaking.

It's a slight thing, but it's there, and for whatever reason, his heart is hammering audibly and the air he breathes is stifling and unfulfilling.

He traces his finger across the blank void of the warrior's (and he is a warrior, he knows it in his soul) face, and it's like there's something inside of him, a presence, and it's howling in...

In...

Recognition? and... pain?

"Who are you?"

The faceless warrior has no words for him.

Something whispers in his mind, and things begin to change.

...​

A few days pass

In that time, Mark notices something strange.

There's no way he can describe it, but it's as though he's seeing... more colors?

It is an odd thing. His eyes itch for days when it begins, and by the end of it, it's as though the world blooms.

Everything is brighter, crisper, and painted in shades of light he's never seen or heard of from anyone or anything. He tries to ask one of his caretakers about them, but he just gets a look, as if he's the odd one, and he decided to follow his instincts and keep the rest to himself.

After all, they're just colors, and it's beautiful.

And familiar. Very familiar, and it's only the beginning.

...​

Outside the Children's Center, the world abruptly grows a lot bigger.

There is an invasion, and five great beings from beyond the stars attack with powers beyond humanity and a will to see the world brought to it's knees.

The Appellexians, or so they're called, and it doesn't matter what they want, because this world has heroes.

There's footage of these customed beings with dazzling powers and memorable names plastered over every screen, printed across every newspaper, and hanging off the tongues of almost anyone who can speak.

It's not the first Mark has heard of some of them, and he never forgets. (His memories are ever accurate to the dot.)

He remembers receiving bedtime stories on the All-Star Squadron, and remembers cartoons and comics that had only nominally held his interest.

Some of the names he recognizes, even if they likely don't belong to the original legends.

Wonderwoman. The Flash. Green Lantern.

But there are others too, a Dark Knight and an Ocean King, and a Manhunter who's not a man at all, but none of them grasp Mark's attention as much as the last.

He first sees him on a television news report, and something in his brain stutters as he beholds recorded footage of the last members of the Justice League fighting a crystal goliath with beams of crimson light erupting out of his eyes.

The Man of Steel. The Last Son of Krypton, the Sole Survivor of a doomed race.

For the first time in memory, he badgers his caretakers for internet privileges. They let him have what he wants with minimal fuss, and though he doesn't much care, he can tell that they find his 'childish interest' at once amusing and comforting.

He watches videos, reads interviews, and absorbs everything there is to know about this Superman.

In the end, though, he feels cheated.

It's a frustrating feeling, both because he cannot understand where it's coming from and because it's overwhelming its intensity.

Wrong wrong wrong!

Superman is not what he expected. Not that he knows what he expected to begin with, but something inside him that had jolted in impossible recognition at the sight of the Kryptonian rears back into dormancy just as soon as Mark discovers his origins.

He's lost.

There are questions in his head, half-formed but weighed down with despairing need and a thousand other things besides, and he doesn't know how to answer them.

How do you find an answer you're desperate for when you don't even understand the question, to begin with?

...​

Time passes.

Mark is enrolled in Fawcett Central School, though he doesn't see the point.

There's no struggle to learn, nothing the teachers can provide him that he can't do himself with a book and time.

It's a waste of time but he doesn't see any way out of it. He is still a child, unfortunately, and therefore still beholden to the wishes of those who hold authority over him.

It's... not ideal, but it won't be the case forever, and though he doesn't have the slightest clue what he'll be doing with his life eventually, he feels no fear at the prospect.

They who are Eternal transcend such banality.

...​

Mark blinks in surprise.

There is a crib in his room and a rather haggard-looking caretaker is standing over the bundle within and cooing at it with feeling.

"I'm sorry, Marcus." She waved hello at him, and introduced herself as Emma. "We're getting his accommodations ready and we just needed a temporary space to house him. Just for a day or two."

He nods. "Okay."

He's not happy about this, per se. Babies were loud and disruptive, and Mark has sensitive ears (and growing more so by the day. He could have sworn he's once heard somebody whispering three floors down) and a preference for peace and quiet, but he gained nothing from being discourteous.

Her eyes brightened and she beamed. "That's great! Would you like to come say hello?"

Mark shrugged, and she gestured for him to come closer.

When he does, he finds a baby who couldn't have been over a year old, skin pudgy and with a rosy tint to it, and a few loose tufts of soft black hair peering out from beneath a small cap.

The baby wriggles, it's eyes blink, and Mark catches a sigh of pale blue before the lids drop closed once more.

"Isn't he gorgeous?" Emma coos again, and Mark tilts his head in thought.

Is he? He hasn't seen all that many babies, so he wouldn't know.

Still, Emma is looking at him with an expectant expression, so Mark nods. "I like his eyes."

They are a pretty blue.

Emma grins and ruffles his hair.

"That's sweet. Now be sure to keep an eye on him, okay? We'll check in every little while, so you probably won't have to do anything, but if he starts crying than feel free to come to ask for help, alright?"

"Okay."

Another hair ruffles, and she slips out of the room.

Mark turns his eyes back to the crib holding his temporary roommate and catches sight of the nametag he'd missed on his first look.

William Batson.

"William." He reads aloud and is somewhat surprised when the baby seems to rouse. He sniffles, once, and twice, and Mark knows he's about to start wailing and it's going to be awful to listen to, so he follows his instincts and starts rocking the crib ever so gently.

The sniffles quiet down a little, but ratchet up a moment later, and he's about to scream and he doesn't want to hear that-!

Mark opens his mouth and sings.

"Do not fear, Sweet Child Of Eternity"

A moment later, he stutters in shock as he realizes what he's doing, but the baby is visibly calming and he doesn't want that to stop, so he opens trips over the next verse and launched back into it.

It's a soft, gentle melody, and meant for someone with a voice far deeper than his, but he weaves the words and the inflections with focus, and it is a beautiful thing all the same.

By the time he's done. Willian is snoring softly, and Mark is exhausted in an entirely non-physical way. There is a strange sensation in his chest as he looks down at the child, one that he can't put into words.

Another Mayfly, soon to be gone with the wind.

He feels wrong, and he never feels likes, so in recognizing the truth he recognizes that something is wrong.

Everything is wrong.

He turns and slips out of his room, shoving his way past a few others and taking the nearest stairs down three at a time, the short trip giving him a chance to study his racing heart and his unsteady breaths.

He doesn't know what just happened, but something deep inside of him feels like it's been twisted into a knot and he's never needed fresh air more than he does in that moment.

What was wrong with him?

...
​

It's a much more hesitant Mark Milton who returns to his room when the sun falls and the caretakers call for lights out.

Sure enough, William is still in his crib, having just been nursed and put down for the night, and Mark approaches hesitantly.

Something about his interaction with the child had... unbalanced him.

Greatly.

Now that he no longer feels quite so weak in the knees, he feels a familiar desperation bubbling up inside of him trying to push him to understand.

What had that been?

He'd just been singing a song to soothe a baby. Everyone did that, so why did it feel like his soul was screaming?

He hesitates for a moment, then firms himself and begins to sing again, ever so softly.

"Do not fear, Sweet Child Of Eternity"

It is a song about love. About home and hearth and safety. It's comfort in lyrical form, and singing it brings warmth to his chest."

So why could he already feel that cold wave of panic rearing up from the depths of his mind and looming over him?

It was just a song-

He stills.

...

Slowly, his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open.

Drawing in a shaky breath, he goes to speak the words of the first verse, but this time, he listens.

"Do not fear, Sweet Child Of Eternity"

That... is not English.

The sounds are longer, more elegant, and the syntax is entirely different. Mark has never heard anything like it in his life.

Yet he knew enough to sing a song in it.

He can speak a language he's never learned to speak before.

That's impossible.

He exhales forcefully, fists clenching and unclenching.

That's impossible! and absurd! He doesn't even know what this-!

And he can almost feel it, as another piece in his mind clicks into place, and understanding and recognition both wash over him in an instant.

This is not a language he ever learned, because it's not a language he ever needed to learn. It was (is) his (their) mother tongue, and it was hardwired into his being at the moment of his very inception.

The Tongue Of Arishem.

Of course, he could speak and understand it, even now. All of them could.

But who are them?

The world seemed to blur, after that, as he walks to his desk and pulls open his drawer.

The half-finished drawing lies there, the sketch of the armored warrior the only one that he hadn't taped to the wall. He picks it up with a trembling hand and places it on the desk and retrieves a pencil.

The details are still missing, and the warrior is still faceless, but not for long.

He doesn't know how much time passes, but when he pulls back, his heart nearly stops as he sees a familiar face peering back at him, black and white features seeming to be locked onto him with inhuman intensity.

But it doesn't end there.

There's something missing.

His finger dips lower, flowing across a blank space beneath his sketch, and it's as though his other hand moves of its own accord, pencil meeting paper and flowing across its surface almost too quickly to process.

When he pulls it away, there are symbols there, graceful looping circles intertwined with more complex geometric sigils like those branded on near-all his drawings, but this one is different.

Because for the first time, Mark recognizes them in full, and he realizes that they're not just symbols anymore.

They're letters.

There's a dull splintering sound as Mark crushes the pencil in his grip, before staggering back, back, all the way back until he bumps into the wall and slides down against its length in utter, horrified disbelief.

Even in his unpracticed hand, the Celestial Script is unmistakable, as are the words it spells out in damning clarity.

"I AM IKARIS"​

And this time, everything changes.

...

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Mark Milton is nine years old now, and as he lays in bed, he contemplates the fact that his life (his second) seems to have… halted.

Lost traction. Bled off its momentum. Stilled.

He goes through about a dozen more hyperboles before he suddenly starts, sitting up and pushing his covers off of him as he picks out the familiar sound of little feet pitter-pattering across the hallway from a distance away and heading unerringly towards his room.

Again?

A few heartbeats later, his door rattles audibly as a certain someone pounds against its surface with tiny fists, and Mark's struggles to tamp down on his amusement intensify even as he slides off the edge of his bed and moves to unlock it.

"Billy."

"Mark!"

The four-year-old toddles into the room in the dead of night, bold as polished brass, and leaps for his bed without any fanfare, burrowing under the covers and peaking out from underneath them with a toothy grin.

"I wanna a story!"

His lips do not twitch. They don't.

This was far from the first time he'd found himself in this position. Billy Batson was growing to be almost hilariously precocious.

More often than not, he would be put to sleep sometime in the late afternoon, he'd wake up a few hours later at most, and then he'd toddle his little self across the hallway and into Mark's room and demand a story.

And he'd get it, too, which was the most surreal part of the entire ordeal.

It was his fault. He let him get away with it too many times, and now it was ingrained.

Back when... when he started to remember, the recollections of his shattered psyche had come to him in bits and crumbling pieces. Too irrelevant and lacking in depth for him to regain even partial awareness of who, of what he really was.

It wasn't until he'd sung the child a lullaby, an Eternal lullaby that Ajak (there's a flash of something deep there, too complex and too dangerous to unravel, and he pushes it away with herculean effort) had once sung to the human children she so loved to mother that the scattered pieces began to click together.

Ikaris.

Warrior. Protector.

Enemy. Betrayer.

And throughout it all, Eternal.

It had been a push he needed. But it hadn't been enough.

Seven thousand years worth of memories and more beyond even that did not simply return with the name that once was (and could very well yet be).

Mark, or Ikaris?

Or something else entirely?

No, even now, years later, there remained gaping pits in his memory, entire libraries worth of memories, of critical data and context he was missing that yet eluded him.

How did he get here? Why was he a child? Why only him?

Why always him?

But he was aware of them, aware of the absence, and finally conscious of why he was so different from everyone around him, and that was enough.

It had to be.

Still, he could resist the urge to dig deeper. To look inside of himself and try and claw out the secrets still lurking in the dark.

Even if doing so made his instincts scream, made something in his soul writhe in sheer desperation, screaming at him to let it go, leave it be!

The Billy Situation, as he'd mentally dubbed it, was one entirely of his own making. He couldn't have bottled up the memories any longer, not if he wanted the slightest chance of making sense of them, and he had needed someone to talk to (to talk at, really), which, considering how he often loathed even the most basic human interaction, was an issue.

It was a frustrating, childish impulse, and he entirely blamed this underdeveloped and at times entirely foreign body for it. He'd never had any issues with isolation...before, had craved it in fact, so to suddenly yearn for contact was another mental pressure he did not appreciate.

Enter Billy.

A child young enough that he likely didn't understand most of the stories and the lullabies Mark sang and weaved for him, but somehow found them captivating and entertaining enough to return every night when his sleep was not deep enough to hold him.

The caretakers were more than happy to allow him the time spent with the growing boy, no doubt thrilled that he was 'finally coming out of his shell."

Please

Regardless of his initial motivations, It... helped, which was astounding in itself. Sharing little snippets of the Eternals history helped him relive it.

Allowed him to delve into the memories that were at once his and not and feel something other than disturbing, silent apathy.

(And the sharp regret that tainted all it touched.)

What he hadn't foreseen were the consequences of his efforts in self-understanding.

He was never any good at planning ahead, was he?

Because at some point in the last few years, he'd stopped seeking Billy Batson out, and the boy instead started seeking him out in return.

And not just for the stories either.

Whenever his lessons had run their course. During meal times. As soon as he had a moment to spare.

Utterly relentless in his pursuit, and Mark found it all to be disproportionately unnerving.

He didn't know why this child was so... blatantly attached to him, nor did he understand why he himself continued to allow it.

As a general rule, neither Mark Milton nor Ikaris liked people.

They were loud, irritating, tended to infringe on his personal space and waste his time, and in the exceedingly rare event that he found any individuals he deemed to be tolerable, he still could hardly force himself to interact with them.

What was even the point? They'd all be gone anyway.

And yet here he was, indulging this little mayfly of a human being and reading him bedtime stories.

What a ridiculous prospect.

He should call for one of the caretakers, have them put the boy to sleep and leave him be, and yet...

...

"Which story would you like to hear?"

Billy giggled and rose out of the blanket, before raising his fists in the air and making a face and Mark's lips don't twitch, they don't.

"Gilymash!"

"Gilgamesh the Earthshaker it is."

There was something wrong with him, wasn't there?

...​

He once thought that to be an Eternal was to be a protector.

It was mere centuries after their arrival, in the early days of their mission to purge the deviants.

There had been a tribe of humans who lived on a coastal settlement in Mesopotamia, in the area that one day be known as West Asia. It was there that they had first landed, where Ikaris had fought the first of the deviants they encountered, and it had been a very different time.

The people there were humble, tied together by circumstance and bonds of blood, and the Eternals who had descended from the skies and saved them from the beasts that rose from the sea had been as gods to them.

For a time, they lived among them, for they were among the large of human settlements, and the Deviants were drawn to them like moths to a flame.

The years passed, and the Eternals came to care for these humans, these people so much like them and yet so different, for how could they not? Where they were never-changing, the humans were anything but.

Each had their own story to tell, each was unique, and they loved them for it.

For a time, they protected them and raised them as far as they could without breaking the laws of Arishem's Law of Interference.

Ajak healed the sick and wounded and with a touch of viridian light altered their immune systems to protect them from local diseases and poisons that would yet harm them.

Sersi transmuted precious gems and metals for their use, and Phastos taught them how to fashion tools for their use.

Thena taught them the ways of war, of how to wield a blade and raise a shield, and how to defend first and battle only when necessary,

Gilgamesh shattered the earth with his fists and carved the foundations of their homes, their farms and their wells, and their future livelihoods.

Sprite and Kingo gave them the concept of art, and recorded their tales in carvings and primitive stone illustrations fit to fight the passage of time.

Makarri and Druig taught them to accept, to understand intrinsically that none were so different as to be other, that all were just as similar as they were different.

And Ikaris, who had at once the most and the least to offer?

Ikaris gave them the stars. He taught them to look up at the skies above and see the world that was of yet his and his alone, and know that one day they too could reach just as high, and even further beyond.

He would wait for them, for the day they joined him in the skies, and show them the world from above.

Time passed, and the Eternals left behind the settlement in their pursuit the deviants, content in the knowledge that they would flourish.

They didn't.

…

When Ikaris returned, it was to find a husk, a corpse of what had once been his home.

Homes burned down, shattered, and defiled, and only the broken remnants of the people he'd once cared for were left behind.

Utter annihilation, not by Deviant or Eternal hands, but by other humans.

A warring tribe, poorer in arms but greater in numbers, who'd set upon the rest and burned them to nothing decades ago, and all for greed.

That day, Ikaris intended to act as the god so many believed him to be. Full of vengeance and fury and hate, he scours the continent for the perpetrators, and just as he goes to punish them all-

There's a blur of light, and Makarri blinks into existence, Thena and Ajak at her sides.

"Enough, Ikaris." The Prime Eternal dismisses the others and stalks toward him with purpose and pity so apparent it makes his first burn all the brighter. "You cannot interfere."

"Have you seen what they've done?"

"Ikaris-"

"Have you seen what they've done?!"

She closes her eyes, and that was all the answer he needs to surge past her-

A hand on his shoulder stills him once more

"It is not our place to interfere."

He stares in disbelief

"We are forbidden-"

"I don't care!" He roars, golden fire springing to his eyes, and she doesn't even flinch. "They have to be punished! Their crimes cannot go unanswered!"

"And what then?"

That stills him, and she pushed further

"What will you do then, Ikaris? When this happens again, because it will, over and over again, what will you do? Punish them all?"

She shakes her head sadly.

"Not even you can pass judgment on them all. It cannot be done."

Despair was quick to grip his soul, even as he tried to rally.

"If we all worked together-"

"Even if we all abandoned our duties, we could never govern the world, Ikaris. Even if we could, they would resent us for it. Chafe under our authority, and soon, they would either rebel or break. No matter the case, their individuality, their freedom? It would all be gone. Everything special about them would fade into the aether, and that is no future at all."

No.

"But they won't stop." He tried again, though he knew it was futile. "Have you been them? They squander their potential over petty squabbles. They keep ripping each other apart, ruining themselves, and for what?!"

"They may resemble us, Ikaris, but they are not like us. They have not been gifted with enlightenment, they must seek it out for themselves, by themselves. One day, they will see this world as you and I do, but to do that, they must first be free to make their mistakes, no matter how damaging, and learn from them without the burden of our interference."

His anger cools under the finality of her proclamation, but the despair lingers, heavy and inescapable.

"And if they never do? What's the point of any of it then?" He turns his back to her. "We're supposed to be their protectors."

There was a pause.

"No, Ikaris. We are supposed to be Eternals. Nothing more, nothing less, unto the end of time."

At that moment, just him and her, he can't seem to stop himself from asking.

"And what does it mean, to be Eternal?"

But Ajak gave him no answer

"Come. We have lingered here too long."

And so he left, shouldering a sensation not unlike emptiness that would hunt him across lifetimes.

Because he no longer knew what he was.

…​

Mark's eyes snap open.

Besides him, Billy was deep in the throes of sleep, his rhythmic breathing serving to steady him as he stared at his darkened circling, mind locked onto a single question.

"What does it mean to be Eternal?"

But much as he may have wished it were so, the darkness has no answers for him.

…​

Two more years pass, and Mark is a fifth grader, for how little that actually means to him.

There have been numerous talks of accelerated education programs and whatnot, but for all that his caretakers can pressure him into the nuisance that is the American Education System, they need him to actually cooperate if they want to push him past the minimum requirement for his age group and cooperate he will not.

For one, he doesn't have to, he's quite content where he is, and most of the programs that have been proposed would have him move elsewhere, and that remained a hard no for a wide variety of reasons.

Chief among them being-

"Mark! I made you something!"

He allows a small smile as Billy, (now a six-year-old and just as precocious as ever) leaps into his room, backpack thrown over one shoulder and school uniform a mess of paint splotches and smears of what he assumes he was served for lunch.

"Did you?"

"I did! I did!" He paused, before grinning wildly "But you can't have it yet!"

Mark raised an eyebrow "No?"

"You have to. Guess what it is first!"

"A painting."

Billy stills in shock, eyes widening before his features scrunch. Into a pout and maybe he should have played along with his little game because that expression was dangerous and did things to his feelings that he didn't like.

"How'd you guess?!"

"I got lucky. Can I see it?"

There's a moment where the six-year-old hesitates, obviously torn between his frustration and his excitement before he surrenders to the latter and starts excitedly ruffling around his bag, before pulling out a slightly crumpled piece of paper with a cry of triumph and all but shoving it in Mark's face.

He pulls back to look at it and blinks in surprise.

For all that it's somewhat messy, it's still a rather tasteful rendition of a blue and cloudy, and the figures in the middle are actually somewhat recognizable as being people and not the humanoid smudges he'd expect other children to produce.

Not very detailed, but there was a limit to his expectations, and the color scheme gave away the figure in the middle easily enough.

Red and blue bodysuit, with a red cape and a yellow emblem.

"Superman?"

"Yeah! And that's us!

"I see. And we're flying?"

He misses flying. That's perhaps the only entirely positive takeaway from his memories.

Flying was good. The Kryptonian was lucky.

"Yeah!"

He blinked back at Billy, who was pointing down at the painting.

"That's you, and that's me, and those are our capes, and that's me with my lasers-"

Hang on.

"Capes?" He frowns. "Capes are silly."

Billy looked like he'd just been slapped in the face.

"No, they're not!"

"Yes, they are."

He tried wearing a cape on a flight once. Once. And only because he'd lost a bet with Druig.

That dick.

"They're unnecessary, easy to dirty, hard to clean, and serve no purpose at all. Superman probably goes through a dozen a year."

Billy took that in, paused, then crossed his arms and shook his head stubbornly.

"Capes aren't silly."

And here we go.

"Are too"

"Are not!"

"Are too"

"Are not!"

"Are not"

"Are too!"

"Exactly." Mark nodded "I'm glad we agree."

"Wha- Augh! Mark, that's cheating!"

Heh.

...​

Time passes.

Life continues to go by at a snail's pace, in the same routine with all the same expectations and regulations, but Mark finds he doesn't mind it all that much.

He's still not whole, still not sure of who or even what he is, really, but for whatever reason, he's strangely at peace with the knowledge that he is neither who he used to, nor is where he's supposed to be.

It's a foreign world, one that he knows very little of despite his reputation as a child prodigy, and he's not sure how or why he's left the old one behind, but for a time, he finds he does not mind the change.

(What does it say about him, that he would rather remain broken and ignorant than become whole and regain what came before?)

But, as was often the case, no matter how content he was to leave fate be, it refused to extend to him the same courtesy.

And evebtually, it comes calling.

...​

There's a strange ringing in his ears.

The woman, the Matron of the Children's Center keeps talking and talking and talking, but there's he's not hearing her.

Ordinarily, that would be downright terrifying given that he could hear a butterfly flap its wings three blocks away, but in this instance, he paid the matter no attention.

Because he's too busy staring at the slightly rotund man sitting in the corner, who's been shooting Billy nervous glances for the last ten minutes straight.

Dudley.H.Dudley.

Marilyn Batson's elder brother, and Billy's maternal uncle.

And, as of two days ago, his legal guardian.

The matron keeps talking and talking and talking, yammering on about 'processed paperwork' and 'necessary signatures' and 'approvals', and she sounds so satisfied, like everything gone just perfect and-

He startles violently as someone touches his shoulder, forcibly pulling himself back into reality as he glances to the side and finds Billy staring at him, face pale and eyes watery.

"I don't want to go without you."

It's a whisper, and it's almost as he can feel something in the back of his mind snap before the world once again falls back into silence.

There's a lot more talking after that, a lot more gestures and a lot more agreements, and there's even some of it directed at him, urging him to go, to say his goodbyes, but he stands as a silent sentinel throughout it all.

At some point, someone even attempts to pull at him from behind, and there's a commotion as they trip and slam bodily from the effort.

"What the hell is this kid made of!?"

"Mr.Dudley!"

"Sorry, my bad!"

It's not until Billy physically faces him again, an expression of profound sadness, that he's forced to tune back into the conversation.

"We can come to visit, right? We can still be bro- friends, right?"

....

The silence drags on.

"Mark."

Abruptly, he decides on the answer.

It was for the best.

This was always going to end, as all such things did. He knew that, so what harm was there in making it official?

"I don't think that's a good idea."

...

Fool.

Billy's expression crumbles in pure despair, and Mark's had enough. He turns and, regardless of the calls to return, walks(flees) back to his room.

...​

Three days pass.

Three days of utter, inconceivable hell, as Billy's absence proves to be as much a catalyst for his memories as his presence ever was.

It's as though the child's mere presence was enough to push back the dark aspects of what lay in his mind, and now that he was gone, the guilt and the grief and the rage are all nigh overwhelming.

To say nothing of the loathing he feels for himself when he remembers the expression on Billy's face.

Was unreasonable, ludicrous even.

He did nothing wrong, he was just stepping back and closing a door he should have shut years ago. There was no fault in his actions.

Liar.

The frustration fed into his anger and kept going, looping over and over and over again until he felt fit to burst.

It all came to a peak on the third night of Billy's departure, when at last he could bear the urge to howl no more and slipped out of his bed with careful, measured steps.

Slipping out of the Children's Home is easy. Security was hardly impressive, never mind the fact that he could hear and track every heartbeat in the vicinity with practiced ease even in the throes of mental agony.

The night air is cool, and some would say refreshing, but it does nothing to soothe the eruption that's building up inside of him.

So he walks.

He walks and walks, and Fawcett City stretches out before him as he crosses street after street in his bid to get away from something that had neither form nor substance, yet somehow still managed to haunt his every cursed step!

It all rushes up on him in one go, all the messy emotions he didn't want, all the feelings he had no use for, twisted and compounded by the reality that was continued existence and he can't take it anymore!

He screams, violently, balls his hand into a fist, and lashes out at the first thing he sees.

That being the blue SUV right in front of him.

Ordinarily, when a ten-year-old punches a vehicle, they get effects ranging from a sore thumb and up to broken fingers, depending on the force applied and a number of other small factors.

Unfortunately, there was nothing ordinary about Mark Milton.

His fist impacts the frame and it holds... for about half a second before the doors cave in even as the sheer force behind the blow and the supernatural mechanism by which it was applied hit the vehicle just so, and send it skidding and flipping across the mostly empty street with a horrendous crescendo of flattening metal, shattering glass and collapsing bulk.

In about five seconds, it stills and every single remaining car on the street starts screeching, alarms going off loud enough to wake half the city, and Mark stands there, stunned senseless and trying to make sense of what he'd just done.

...​

And so it begins! Things start picking up after the next chapter, so stay tuned.

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

It's not long after Billy Batson is pulled out of his life when he considers dying.

Again.

With the child gone, there's nothing to distract him from the truth. The cold, logical acknowledgment that there was nothing for him in this new and foreign reality - and it was foreign, he could tell that much - slams back down on him and he doesn't even try to fight against it.

What would be the point of that?

He doesn't have even the slightest desire to live. To exist in any capacity. His psyche is an empty void where even the notion of moving forward, of having a future that extended past the routine he followed only out of habit and a lack of anything better to do simply wasn't present.

It's terminal depression taken to it's absolute peak. A psychologist would have a field day with him. That, or a mental break.

Yet he finds that time passes despite the world being devoid of value to him, and he doesn't die.

It isn't that he can't physically manage it. Despite his inherent power and survivability - Eternals were built to last, literally - He was fairly certain he could find a way around his own physiology.

It's that he just doesn't care.

In a disgustingly ironic state of events, it's the unspeakable apathy cloaking his soul that stops him from bringing his new life to a deliberate close.

Why go through all the effort? He'd thrown himself into a star the last time, had burned through every last vestige of will and dedication he had left to seek the promised release of oblivion, and in the end that had been for nothing.

He still doesn't understand why that happened, what it means, or any of a thousand other possible questions, and he doesn't expend the effort to ponder over them either.

Perhaps it was a punishment. A final penance for his mistakes, to live eternally even when he had nothing worth living for.

Some days, he finds it almost funny, in as much as he can find anything amusing.

Most days, he didn't think about it at all.

...​

The next few years are those of mediocre routine disguising the subtle alterations that steal over him.

Mentally, he remains the same.

At least at first.

Physically, however, there are changes right from the beginning.

It starts with his powers.

The awakening of his strength seems to prompt the previously linear growth of his abilities to explode, all of them evolving and reaching new heights seemingly overnight.

Mark's senses sharpen. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision evolve all at once, the world expanding into a canvas of a million variables only he can discern. He'd always been able to perceive more than any ordinary human ever could, but the enhanced sensory input he receives now is more than most could ever hope to imagine.

Matter and energy become visible to him in indescribable detail. He can see into the electromagnetic spectrum and other forces of this foreign universe with near-perfect accuracy, and observe how one acts upon the other in endless infinitesimal ways.

He can hear more too, a thousand and more frequencies with a range he can scarcely put a number on even on his best day.

Even before, the sensory intake was nothing like this. It's overwhelming beyond words and there are days where he sits atop his bed and just lays there, drowning in a million and one factors only he can detect.

By contrast, the physical abilities are laughably easy to master.

Both the enhanced durability and strength go hand in hand. The latter is a passive, thoughtless force rendering him impervious to conventional harm - or close enough that anything that could hurt him would likely obliterate everything in a considerable radius - and the former is an easy thing to control, the pulverizing strength coming to him easily and kept in check by sheer force of habit.

He doesn't know why he bothers at all, but for all that he loathes any social interaction beyond the bare necessity, the thought of harming the children and the innocents that surround him is one that actually breaks through the bleak gray static that surrounds his mind and fills him with apprehension and displeasure.

Eventually, his powers reach a plateau of sorts. The period of rapid growth comes to an end just as swiftly as it had begun... and nothing happens.

Though they're part of him, he hardly exercises them. What possible reason did he have to focus on such an effort?

Surprisingly little happens after that.

There's a brief period of strange, sharp dissonance when he looks in the mirror one day and realizes that he doesn't look like he - like Ikaris once did.

He'd never needed to check before he knew who he was and had never made the connection after he remembered, but when he sees himself with clarity for the first time, the differences are unmistakable.

Oh, the facial features were somewhat familiar, but Mark Milton's were both sharper and more delicate. The face was more narrow, the chin slightly sharper, and the hair was missing the white-grey strands that had adorned his head since the dawn of his existence and were entirely aesthetic. He didn't age, after all.

Even the eyes were a brighter shade of blue, bordering on inhuman.

It takes him some time to adapt to the sight, the strange dissonance lingering as he tries to parse between what he currently was against what came before.

He manages it eventually and refuses to think of it any longer.

He continues moving along with the motions, attending school and playing the role of a child, living his life to a standard that had no inherent value to him simply because there was nothing else he otherwise cares to do.

When you live in a world where everything means nothing, every course of action you can take has the same value as all the rest.

It's a sort of inner peace born of absolute disregard for anything and everything, and he sinks into it knowing with all his certainty that it was inevitable and endless in equal measure.

Or so he thought at the time.

…

Mark Milton was wrong.

He didn't notice them, but there were changes.

Though he didn't know it, the change in perspective rebirth had granted him had irrevocably altered him, separating Ikaris and Mark into two.

While both wished for nothing more than an end, Ikaris only did so on account of having nothing worth existing for.

Neither did Mark, in the beginning.

But that wasn't going to last.

…​

Fawcett City
The Venus Sivana Children's Center

"You need a haircut." A caretaker whose name he didn't care enough to remember looks down at him gravely as if proclaiming his doom. "It's going to get in your eyes if you let it grow out."

In response, he runs his hand through said hair and wonders.

It had grown out over the years, and now at sixteen - from an outsider's perspective, at least - it reached down slightly past his ears, all soft and comfortably familiar to himself.

Ikaris's hair had been short, and though it didn't matter either way, a part of Mark prefers it as it was now.

It was a distinction.

Why he needed it when he shouldn't have cared regardless was a question he didn't know how to answer. It's an odd sensation, the... relief he feels when he sees the differences between the present and the past, and what that twists at him in ways he doesn't understand or particularly care for.

As ever and always, the hidden workings of his mind and soul were an irrational, senseless place at the best of times, and he paid them as little attention as he could manage.

And that was for the best.

"Mark?"

He blinks up at the caretaker, who was still there.

How irritating.

"I like my hair. I'm not cutting it."

"But-"

"No."

"It'll bother you if you let it grow out any further."

"I have a comb. I'll make do."

"Are you sure? It's really just a small-"

They just kept getting more and more persistent, didn't they?

"No." He gazes at her coolly "Was there a reason you came into my room?"

She purses her lips sharply and plants her hands at her hips, as though...
No, she actually is trying to intimidate him

How adorable.

He suppresses his own irritation at the foreign amusement that bubbles up within him, the emotion strange and unwelcome.

Eventually, once it becomes obvious he's not going to acknowledge her little attempt at dominance, the caretaker speaks.

"There is an upcoming field trip this weekend." She speaks grudgingly, evidently unhappy to be conceding to him but seeing no way around it. "To Washington D.C."

...

"Yes?"

She flushes and glares, ire rising at his dismissive tone.

That had been happening for quite some time.

Mark had developed a reputation over the passing years as a genius introvert with a frigid attitude to match. He didn't care for sociality and he made no secret of it, and in his youth most took that for him being a precocious child.

These days, it just translated to him being rude and entitled.

Frankly, he didn't care in the slightest what they thought of his character so long as they left him alone, but no such luck.

"Nothing at all." She smiles falsely and walks out of the room, but not before adding. "Make sure you bring a positive attitude along, because we have a big surprise planned out for the trip."

She slams the door shut just a little too harshly and leaves it rattling in its frame.

In response, he rolls his eyes and goes back to the image he was sketching before she dropped in, still utterly dismissive and more than a little irritated by what was to come.

A surprise? How dull.
​

...​

Washington DC
The Hall Of Justice

For the first time in quite a long while, Mark feels genuine surprise, if not the same awe the rest of the children in his group were experiencing.

The Hall Of Justice. The Headquarters of the Justice League, an organization he'd only learned of simply because of a passing fascination with the Kryptonian who'd reminded him of himself long before he'd regained the majority of his displaced memories.

He ignores the prattling tour guide, as per usual, and instead chooses to look around and observe for himself.

It's a cavernous building, elaborate in design and shaped into a veritable fortress, though a curious glance with his enhanced vision reveals that it was understaffed to the point of apparent incompetence and feels almost... inadequate.

No exotic defenses despite having multiple aliens with rumored access to technology far in advance of what he was seeing with a passing glance. Not much worth defending, either, with most of the display cases showcasing the various trophies the League had picked over the years being filled with mostly defective junk and useless baubles.

Half the so-called 'supervillains' he'd learned of by osmosis over the years could probably take it over if there were no leaguers to defend it.

Disappointing.

Momentary curiosity satisfied, he's just about to search for a quiet corner he can escape to until the end of this boring expedition when he hears it.

The commotion starts off at the very edge of his hearing range, meaning that it's likely on the other end of the city, but it gets closer and closer with every passing instant.

He frowns as he recognizes the sound of violence, a combination of supernatural battle and the resulting destruction spearing through a metropolitan area, deafening and unstoppable, and then his eyes widen in a very different kind of surprise as he realizes just how fast the cacophony is approaching and just how close it was.

Too late.

Before he can decide on his next course of action, a portion of the domed ceiling above explodesinwards, dust and debris getting blown absolutely everywhere as a pair of figures slam through it and into the ground dead ahead with enough force to shake the building.

Mark doesn't pay attention to them at first, far more preoccupied with the disaster unfolding before his eyes. There was debris falling everywhere, and of the people he'd arrived with, he alone was near-invulnerable.

He speeds up, movements and perception actively accelerating as the world slows down around him. The building is mostly empty, so there's no concern there, but the people surrounding him are another matter.

They collapse in slow motion, thrown off their feet by the aftershocks of the impact, but he feels a frisson of relief when he realizes that none of them are in immediate danger regardless.

One is, though, a girl from his tour group with a paling expression adorning her features, frozen mid-scream as a chunk of concrete the size of a dumpster descends upon her from above.

Mark moves on instinct, beyond thought or reason as he runs, faster and faster than he's ever had to in this life. He grabs ahold of her an instant before impact and rockets them both across the chamber, sliding to a halt just as the debris hits with a deafening landing behind them, shattering into a cloud of dust and miniature fragments.

She chokes, eyes wide and already feeling the first traces of shock "W-what-?!"

He leaves here there, accelerating so quickly that he effectively disappears from her sight as he races back to his previous position.

He had little desire to listen to her hysterics, and he had bigger things to pay attention to besides.

Like whatever the hell had just happened.

He finally focuses on the instigators of that near-disaster, easily peering past the clouds of dust and ignoring the rising screams of panic as he takes in the sight before him.

Superman was unmistakable, but the same couldn't be said for the state he was in. The Man Of Steel lay on his back, dead to the world with his suit shredded, covered in vicious and rapidly discoloring bruises, and that was just to begin just to begin with.

Worse, what little of his skin that wasn't battered had turned gray and corpse-like, and his veins were visible, glowing a sharp, toxic green.

Standing above him was a seven-foot-tall behemoth of a man dressed in black biking leathers and looking entirely inhuman. Chalk-white skin, blood-red pupilless eyes with blackened eyelids and a vicious smile that all but dripped with sadistic delight.

"Well! Gotta admit, frag-face, you made me work for it!" The stranger growls, and his voice gives Mark the impression of a chainsaw blade striking against rock. "But I've never failed to collect a bounty, and I ain't gonna start with you!"

And then he raises a hook, black as night and viscously brutally, ready to bring it down and presumably kill the Kryptonian, and Mark moves.

For the second time in as many minutes, he charges forward, feeling an urgency that had long since become foreign to his very being and acting before he could even fully comprehend what he was doing.

The bounty hunter clocks his approach, crimson eyes widening as he clears the distance between them, cocks back his fist, and strikes. It's the first time in years that he's ever put his real strength behind a blow, and it lands on his target's chest with cataclysmic force.

The air surrounding them is blown away, and chalk-white skin ripples beneath his fist as the bounty hunter gets flung back at a monstrous velocity, rocketing away and breaking threw one, two, three walls and out of the building entirely.

Mark drops to the ground and turns back to Superman's fallen form immediately, trying to ignore the alarming confusion and borderline panic tearing through his mind.

What am I doing? What am I doing?!

"Superman?" He asks instead, still ever aware of the screaming civilians streaming around the pair of them in their haste to escape and trying to prop the man in question up. "Superman, how can I help?"

That last question seems to draw a response, the man stirring groggily and a shade of color returning to his skin, though it remained grey and tinged with arcs of green.

"Superman?"

He croaks something then, so faintly that a human would have never caught it.

"Sunlight"

As it is, Mark catches the bare whisper in perfect clarity and frowns in confusion.

He must be delirious. What was sunlight going to do for him?

Before he can ask again, though, the situation takes a turn for the worse.

"You little shit."

Mark's eyes go wide as he spins in place, finding the mountainous bounty hunter looming over him with a grin that dripped with blood-thirst and fury.

Mark hadn't even heard him move.

"So. You think you can take on the Main Man, eh? Alright then!"

And then his hand closed around Mark's throat, lifting him up and off the ground in a single uninterrupted movement.

"Let's play." His grin widened. "Lobo Style!"

And then he reaches back and flings him like a rag-doll, sending him careening up and through the roof of the building.

And that's how it all begins in earnest.

...​

As always leave your comments and ideas and If you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

From a purely observational point of view, It probably says a great deal that getting manhandled and bodily flung through a building at who knows how many miles an hour ranks as the single most interesting episode of his present life.

Far from pleasant, but it was certainly a riveting change of pace

That said, he really isn't in much of a state to reflect on the implications of that on account of his currently hurtling through the air after an initial acceleration so great that an ordinary human being would have suffered instant fatal internal damage.

Whoever or whatever this Lobo was, he was strong.

He's already bursting through what's left of the roof of the Hall Of Justice before he even realizes what's happening, a cloud of dust and furious debris momentarily accompanying him as he arcs above the building and the surrounding lake in a wide curve and descends in the parking lot right across the premises.

He lands on a parked and blessedly empty SUV, the unfortunate vehicle flattening instantly as he collapses atop it, the metal frame crumpling inwards like tinfoil and blowing out all the windows in a shower of shattering glass.

Mark is durable enough that the impact isn't debilitating, or even all that painful, but it is abrupt and very much jarring. He lies there in the aftermath, and there's a second of dazed incomprehension as his senses catch up to him.

The first thing he notices is the screams. There are droves of fleeing civilians scattering like mice, running for their lives amidst the destruction, and it's not just in the immediate vicinity either. Over the span of a couple of minutes, Superman and Lobo's clash had speared a line of carnage through Washington and he could hear thousands of people in various states of hysteric disarray across the city.

It's complete, near-deafening chaos.

The second thing he notices is the pulverized car beneath him, and he grunts slightly as he rolls off the collapsed wreck and stands to his feet, little fragments of stone and glass shaking free of him with the movement.

Wasn't this the second vehicle he'd obliterated? Shame.

The third thing and final thing he notices is the by-now-familiar whistle of something moving through the air at a dangerous velocity and heading right toward him. His eyes widen in alarm and he leaps to the side with super-human speed just as a cackling Lobo slams into the ground where he'd just been standing, feet first.

The landing is so powerful it visibly drives the seven-foot-tall lunatic straight through the asphalt, his feet sinking straight down into the material even as the sheer impact causes it to warp, splinter, and explode all around him.

Mark flinches out of irritating instinct as he gets showered in miniature fragments, and then he flinches again out of genuine alarm as Lobo grins at him, cocks back a fist, and charges, kicking forward and effortlessly crossing the distance between them in an unforgiving split-second. It's immediately clear that the bounty hunter is every bit as fast as he is strong.
He has the presence of mind to center his weight on his right foot and throw up both arms in a clumsy, long, unpracticed block right before the fist descends.

It's devastating. His arms hold but the force rattles his bones, the brutal impact traveling right through him and making his teeth ache. He's dimly aware of the air bursting around them and the ground splintering beneath his suddenly trembling knees, but he only has half a second to notice even that much before Lobo's other fist lashes out in a blurring hook and catches him in the side.

This time he doesn't have a chance in hell of keeping his footing and he's once again flying, stars filling his vision as he hits the ground hard and keeps going, gouging an ugly trench through the road and sending rumbling tremors out that could have been felt half a block away.

There's a well-known saying that often comes to mind in difficult, hurtful situations. Pain was an old friend.

While he of all people would never discount the wisdom behind the words, at the present moment the sharp, throbbing, white-hot agony that lances up his side and seems to spear into his very brain is less of an 'old friend' and more of a 'vicious, unrepentant bitch.'

Sixteen years he's gone without the slightest wound, physical pain long since forgotten, and so to be reminded of it in such a sudden manner has him gasping for sudden breath and trying to steer his mind back into conscious focus with alarmingly slow results.

"D'aww, come on!" Lobo's bellow is actually somewhat motivating, prompting him to tilt his head and clock his slow and steady approach. "You can do better than that!"

Shit.

Mark doesn't have long to think. Lobo is still walking, but the distance between them wasn't generous to begin with and he'd be on him in seconds. He's well aware that he hasn't at all thought this through, that Superman might already be on death's door and this entire endeavor will have been an overly elaborate suicide, but for the life of him, he can't manage to process anything past the need to get up and get ready, now.

He staggers to his feet, aware of how eerily unsteady his stance is and of the diminishing but still present throb of his ribs, and especially aware of how Lobo's features twist in even crueler delight as he watches him brace and raise his arms in preparation of what was to come.

"Better!" Lobo roars his approval, popping his knuckles and rolling his neck theatrically as he continues his approach. "I mean, don't get me wrong, frag-face, you killed your dumbass all by yourself when you decided to pick a fight with me, but it ain't no fun at all if you just roll over and die right as we get started! Come on, show me what you got!"

Fine. It's not as though he has anything better to do anyway.

Lobo bends at the knees, crouching as though in preparation to leap, and is therefore thoroughly stunned when it's instead Mark who accelerates with a burst of air, fists raised and ready to hurt.

The bounty hunter adjusts to his approach and reacts sharply, leaning back and cocking back a fist in a telegraphed but undoubtedly fiercely dangerous blow.

It never connects. Mark bridges the distance between them, weaves under it in a dodge he's never practiced but knows all the same, and drives a vicious uppercut into Lobo's jaw. His head snaps back brutally and the boy capitalizes on his advantage, seizing the bounty hunter's still-outstretched arm in a dual-handed vice grip, before pivoting on his feet and pitching forward with intent and sheer strength.

Lobo gets a taste of his own medicine as he slams across the ground and goes bouncing, physically lashing out and digging his fist through the concrete right up to the elbow just to stop and steady himself.

"N-"

That's about as far as he gets before Mark follows up with a knee to his face, and this time he's rewarded with the feel of what he assumes is cartilage giving away even as Lobo collapses back and howls something obscene, the flat of his foot snapping up far too quickly and catching Mark in the chest as he drives him away and leaps to his feet, amusement washed away and genuine murder in his eyes.

"Oh, you're gonna regret that!"

He doesn't dignify the unimaginative threat with a response, already charging back into the fight in a single powerful bound. Know when to press the attack, his instincts scream, and on this of all things he follows them to the letter.

The bounty hunter had power and plenty and he'd already managed to hurt him, but for all that the pain and physical agony was starting to claw at him, Mark had a lifetime's worth of experience to turn this battle into his favor

He'd trained with Thena, who'd been worshiped as the Goddess Of War.

This was nothing.

He throws himself forward and both of them clash in the middle with a shockwave of pressure, all surging fists and barely-leashed fury and subsequently start obliterating everything surrounding them.

Lobo is a brute of a combatant, relentless and looming and constantly towering over him and striking hard enough that it's a struggle just to raise his arms in time to take a hit, and he never manages to block more than two in a row. He's fighting an opponent who choreographs every move simply because he's fast enough to get away with it, strong enough to rely on power shots and little else and durable enough that every ten strikes Mark manages to land on him are repaid in full with a single returning blow.

Still, he doesn't give up, drawing on skills he hadn't practiced in what may as well have been an eternity and being rewarded with delightful results, amateurish at first but growing by the very second.

Their fight moves, and he's only dimly aware of how they rocket into the surrounding city in their single-minded rampage. Part of him tries to contain their fight but the vast majority of him is running on long-rusted battle instinct and something else he can't put his finger on.

Block, dodge, move, strike. Block, dodge, move, strike. Block, dodge, move, strike. Block, dodge, move, strike.

He doesn't even notice the injuries he accumulates, the shaken bones and the bruised flesh and even the blood that drips down his face.

There's a strange feeling starting to overcome him, some kind of primal excitement that leaves him both wistful and wary even as he wraps his arms around Lobo's waist and kicks off, the street finally giving out beneath them and crumbling as he throws both of them into the air in an uncontrolled tumble. It's not flight, but it sends them so far above that they overtake clouds before they even begin their descent.

Even in mid-air, the fight continues. Lobo snarls and wraps his massive hands around his skull and squeezes, generating enough force that his composure finally breaks and he screams for the first time, the dull and already healing ache of his other injuries proving to be nothing in the face of this torment. In frenzied retaliation, he responds by shooting his hands out, grabbing hold of his opponent's face and driving his thumbs into his eyes with enough force that he feels them give away and burst in their sockets.

All this, while only just beginning to fall from the sky.

Predictably, Lobo howls, grip loosening just enough for Mark to jerk his head loose and disengage entirely, legs folding and allowing him to kick off the man's chest with enough force to send them both hurtling in opposite directions. Given that they were already tumbling to the ground at nauseating speeds, it ends with both of them hitting the crowded, populated city street with enough force to rupture through it, upturn the nearest vehicles and send every last civilian in the general vicinity to the ground.

He's up on his feet the very next second, still running on what he assumes is an adrenaline high of sorts, when he catches an odd sound he can't place.

It takes him a long moment to get it, distracted by all the many variables pulling at his senses.

The screaming civilians. The rising alarms. The sound and sight of Lobo getting back to his feet and staring him down, fists clenching and unclenching by his sides even as his eyes visibly grew back in a particularly gruesome display.

The strange, warm feeling in his chest had only grown more pronounced with the passing time.

"Having fun, are ya?"

It's only after Lobo grunts those words that he makes the connection.

He's laughing.

Mark Milton is laughing.

And he knows exactly why, too.

The thrum in his veins, the thundering of his heart, the raging cosmic power surging across his every cell.

It's just like it was in the beginning. Before any of the dark secrets had tainted existence itself for him, when all he had to was defend his fellow Eternals and destroy their enemies with unforgiving might.

He doesn't feel like Ikaris. Or Mark Milton.

He just feels Eternal. Full of purpose and infinite potential.

He tips back his head and howls in laughter, somewhat aware of how deranged he must look and entirely accepting of the fact that he couldn't care less.

Because for the first time in years, he feels alive.

His senses give him a hint of a warning and he snaps into position, still laughing even as Lobo slams into him with pulverizing force and resumes trying to kill him in earnest. He responds by moving against the bounty hunter, the pair of them grappling furiously until they end up locked together, each of them pushing against the other in a brutal deadlock.

"Hrrn!" Lobo grunts, staring down at him with those pupilless crimson eyes. "They said there was only one Kryptonian on this backwater shithole, but now I'm not so sure!"

"Not Kryptonian." Mark (or was it Ikaris, now?) grunts back, still smiling widely and without reservation.

"Human, then?" Lobo pushes forward and Mark begins to buckle back, smile still not faltering. "Not that it matters, dead's still dead, but I didn't know they came as tough as you. Might have to come back here once I finish the Kryptonian. Blow off some steam every once in a while."

"Not human, either." He smiles, and it's only his lowered inhibitions that have him blurting out the next part. "Eternal."

"Eternal?" An eyebrow raises. "The fuck are those?"

At this point, Mark is just self-aware enough to realize that he's riding the equivalent of a high. He still doesn't manage to stop the peal of half-amused, half maddened and all wild laughter, feeling an entirely bubbly feeling surging through his head…

And his eyes too, he realizes with delight as he experiences a warm, physical sensation he had almost forgotten, a buildup of energy behind his eyes that has the blue orbs igniting with a yellow-gold glow.

"You want to know what an Eternal is?"

Lobo leans back, alarmed, even as Mark leans his head forward and grins.

"Let me show you."

"Oh." Lobo's eyes go wide. "Oh, frag the shit out of me."

He tries to disengage, but it's too late.

Golden light explodes out of Mark's eyes in a wide conical beam, engulfing and blasting the suddenly howling bounty hunter away without even a hint of resistance.

All the while, Mark cackles, delighted and more than a little out of his mind as he pours more and more and more into what had once been his signature power until eventually his vision turns blurry at the edges and he collapses to his knees.

There's a ringing in his ears, now, as exhaustion begins to creep at the edges of his awareness and he realizes with a start that he'd expended far too much energy, far too quickly.

And he still has to expend more, because the approaching cursing he was picking up meant that this was far from over.

Sure enough, Lobo appears back over the ruined street in less than a minute, singed and bruised but in no way downed.

"Alright. I'll admit, that was good." Lobo nods his head, before allowing his expression to fall into something flat and toneless and more than a little terrifying. "Now you get to die slow."

And he leaps forward at that proclamation, hands outstretched, and Mark tries to move despite knowing that he's not going to manage to dodge-

There's a blur of motion at his side as something flashes past him, and he only has a split second to recognize Superman before the Man Of Steel slams into the medley and everything goes right to hell in a hand-basket.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Superman drives himself into Lobo with an impact so powerful that it has the road-work at their feet violently imploding, the shattered remnants so thoroughly pulverized they may as well have been grains of sand as they get blown right up into the air and just as quickly start raining everywhere.

Credit where credit was due, Lobo wasn't even fazed, erupting through the earth he'd been driven into and headbutting Superman, the brutal move stunning him long enough for Lobo to drive a massive fist into his abdomen and double him over.

"Should've stayed down!" The bounty hunter cackles, raising both hands and interlocking them at the fingers before bringing them down fast enough that Mark can feel the displaced air from the other end of the street.

Superman likely feels it coming as well, because he dodges well before the hammer blow can land, surging aside in the blink of an eye with the kind of impossibly graceful maneuverability only flight could bestow. Lobo had committed too much power to the strike and subsequently finds himself stumbling forward right in time for Superman to retaliate and drive a blurring fist clean into his throat. He gasps, the sound wet and punctuated with a bloody hack that doesn't at all deter the Man Of Steel from remorselessly grabbing his opponent around the back of his head and ramming him headfirst into the ground with tremorous force.

It's an impressive display, but it has the knock-on effect of leaving him open for one of Lobo's furiously flailing blows that catches him clean in the side and flings him away like a ballistic projectile, kicking up dust and debris as he soars back and right towards Mark.

It's at this point that Mark himself comes back to his senses, the momentary lull in focus left behind as he braces hard and intercepts the Kryptonian in a collision that knocks the breath out of him and nearly sends him sprawling away as well.

"T-Thank you." The hero grunts in muffled exhaustion and blatantly obvious pain, and despite himself, Mark ever so slightly shifts his eyes off of the rapidly recovering Lobo and to the other man.

The first thing he notices is the sorry state that he's in. His skin may have shifted from its corpse-like pallor but remains a sickly pale and unpleasant shade, and his veins are still pronounced and discolored with a toxic green glow. On instinct, he tries to peer into the higher wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum and immediately grimaces at what he finds.

"You've been irradiated."

It's unmistakable. He can see the odd, foreign frequency clinging to him and making him glow in his sight like a particularly malevolent light bulb. It visibly warps and distends with every passing second, and he knows immediately that he won't be able to make heads or tails of any of it because right beneath the toxic radiation was a field of unknown energy intermixed with something he doesn't have a hope in hell of identifying, powerful and pulsing and shimmering over Superman's body like a second skin.

The source of his powers?

"I'll get better." Superman steadies himself sharply and pulls him out of his momentary reverie, and not a moment too soon as Lobo himself regains clarity and bares his teeth at them in a silent, savage promise.

He can tell that the hero is curious from the way he glances at him, that he's brimming with questions and curiosity and even an odd kind of hope that Mark doesn't understand, but he visibly restrains himself as the threat of the oncoming fight rears its head.

"You should leave." Superman urges him instead, feet rising off the ground as he prepares to charge. "Get to cover, and I'll handle-"

Ha.

Mark doesn't even try to dignify that bout of stupidity with a response, already leaping ahead with clenched fists and a returning spark of wild excitement.

Leave? When he finally feels alive for the first time in years?

Not for all the righteous purposes in the world.

They clash in mid-air and it's like a localized hurricane blooms into being, their collision deafening like thunder and the very air itself seeming to quake as each of them devolves into the time-honored tradition of trying to rip the other to pieces

This time, the bounty hunter is on the back foot right from the beginning. Mark may have spent more energy than he'd ever designed to use in sixteen years, and may have been approaching critical exhaustion far too quickly for comfort, but all that he's losing in power he's gaining back in skill, several thousand years of battle experience clicking back into place in a way that pushes him further, faster, harder, and drives his enemy away.

What's more is that he's not fighting alone.

Superman is still irradiated. Weakened, his every move clumsy and abnormally sluggish from what he can see.

None of that stops the Kryptonian from descending on Lobo right alongside him, fists barely visible as he strikes with a thousand devastating blows between every passing heartbeat, stronger and fiercer and more cataclysmic even as reduced as he currently was.

He's stronger than me, Mark realizes quickly and the thought has him laughing hysterically for no reason at all.

Eventually, though, the tide begins to turn.

It starts when, between one instant and the next, Superman vanishes.

It doesn't take even a full second to realize where he's gone.

He can hear the man rocketing towards the screams he's managed to tune out, can hear him living up to the ideal he preaches as he shifts civilians away from danger and obliterates collapsing rubble before it can spread more harm.

The dedication is admirable, really.

What decidedly isn't admirable is the way Lobo immediately capitalizes on the opening and cold-cocks him hard, the stunning blow wrenching his head to the side and sending instant lightning strikes of pain through his neck and down his spine.

He's too out of it to respond to the following barrage and he takes horrific damage, frame wracked with thundering force as Lobby pummels him down in a second and doesn't let up an inch. By the time the bounty hunter pauses and plants his foot atop his chest to keep him pinned in place, his head is ringing, his vision is dull and his body feels detached, physically numb in a way he'd never quite been before.

The foreign taste of blood in his mouth isn't doing much to endear him to the experience, though the thrill of the fight still hasn't left him.

Far from it.

"Finished, then?" Lobo grunts sharply, crimson eyes staring down at him with a look of expectation.

His foot flexes, pushing down against his battered ribs and drawing a choked gasp from his lips.

"Oh, yeah." Lobo nods "You're done. Main Man's gotta be sure, ya know? Just so there's no confusion when I rip out your spine and beat what's left of you to death with it."

Hah. Classic.

"You're strong." Mark muses, and oh, he's definitley delirious at this point. "You're really strong."

Stronger than any damn deviant he(Ikaris) had ever faced, but the experience was just the same.

"I am." Lobo agrees, before his features scrunch and he pulls the gleaming hook off his belt. "But if you think ass-kissing is gonna save you, bastich, then I'm gonna make this hurt twice as bad for being a little bitch."

Please.

"If you think you can kill me, go ahead." He spits, more out of a need to clear his mouth than to be deliberately insulting. "At this point, I welcome the attempt."

And he did in truth. He'd have preferred to win, but dying while his mind was still soaring gleefully seemed far more appealing than sinking back to the hell he'd been in before.

This isn't to say he's given up just yet, because the longer he lets the chalk-skinned lunatic speak the greater his chances grow.

At his admission, Lobo actually laughs, loud and deep and entirely approving "That's the spirit! When I'm done here, I'm going to track down whatever shitty planet you came from, Eternal. If the rest of you are this fun, we're gonna have a fucking blast!"

Mark snorts, and it's only the dizzying wounds mixed in with the swimming, unsteady cocktail of adrenaline, relief and madness that has him blurting out a response.

"You won't find any." There are images in his head then, a group of seven at the dawn of time right before everything had been ruined. "And if you ever do, then know that whatever planet you're on won't exist for much longer."

"Exploding planets?" There's a curious pause. "You sure you're not a Kryptonian?"

He snorts again. "Are you?"

"Nah. Czarnian?" There's another pause, where the man twirls the hook in place and smiles widely "Won't find any of them either. I killed 'em all myself."

…

Well.

Mark's just about ready to play his last gambit, so he fights through the blurry vision and focuses on the behemoth towering over him.

"You committed genocide against your own species."

"Hell yeah."

…

"That's… terrible." Mark drops his head back, and starts laughing again because sanity is officially for the weak. "That's really fucking terrible!"

Lobo takes him in for a second, and another, and another, before he starts laughing as well, all the while raising his hook for what must be a killing blow,

Mark, still laughing, opens his eyes and lets the power that's been building there erupt out of him once again, blasting the roaring Czarnian clean off and away from him with a brilliant golden beam of concussive force and scorching heat.

"Alright-!"

He's just staggering back to his feet and looking ready to rip Mark's throat out with his teeth when Superman finally snaps back into the air above him and descends like the hammer of god.

The subsequent carnage begins the very next instant, but this time it's less fun. Lobo stops trying to drag out his fun and starts fighting for the kill, and it shows.

The exchange is faster, more brutal, and this time the Czarnian fights dirty, extending a black chain that had been wrapped around his shoulders and tied at the waist in a practiced flourish and weaving it into the fight.

It's over too quickly. Superman is still suffering from whatever it was that had poisoned him, and he mistakenly overreaches a jab just as Lobo moves. The bounty hunter circles around the Man of Steel in one disturbingly easy movement and flings his chain around his neck, pulling it with apparent sadistic delight.

Mark's head is still in the proverbial clouds, but he starts to sober up fast when he hears the Kryptonian choke, fingers scrabbling against the chain and failing to find purchase.

What in the ever-living fuck was that thing made of?

"You know, shitheel." Lobo hums conversationally even as he kicks Superman's legs out from underneath him, dropping the man to his knees before planting a foot on his back and pulling tighter. "I'm all for a good fight, but two against one ain't all that far, don't you think?"

He glances at Mark and grins.

"Let's even the odds."

And then the Czarnian takes a breath and begins to whistle.

…

Nothing happens, and Mark is once again struck by the sheer, unrepentant absurdity of the situation all at once.

Struggling to stand, high on adrenaline and half-delirious from the pain, watching the strongest (arguably) man in the world get the life choked out of him by a self-proclaimed genocidal lunatic who continues to whistle like he doesn't have a care in the world.

And then, of course, it gets even more ridiculous.

He hears it before he sees it, descending from the clouds with a thrumming roar of alien power and a tinkling chime of advanced alien machinery only someone like him could ever hope to hear.

Even though he senses its approach, he still finds himself freezing like a deer in headlights as the vehicle descends and hovers above them all.

"Is that…" His voice cracks incredulously. "A flying motorbike?"

Seriously?

In its entirety, it's a little over twice the length of an ordinary motorbike, with a clear single-person seating control at its middle and stuck with a block-like structure for an engine, the majority of which glows with a baleful blue radiance. Its front is triangular, and twin blades emerge from either side of it, large and sharp enough to spear through an elephant.

In short, it looks every bit as demented as its rider, and Mark can tell that things have likely just gotten significantly worse for both of them.

"Sure is. I figured if you two were gonna have a team up, me and my sweet ride have to balance things out!" Lobo's sadism is practically a language unto itself. "And here's the best bit!"

The technological monstrosity (Phastos would have cried looking at it, really he would have.) reorients on Superman, the cone-like front unfolding like an origami creation before locking back in the shape of a truly menacing fun barrel that glows a familiar toxic green. Mark tries to intercept. Really he does, but all he ends up doing is staggering back as the weapon discharges and bathes its target in a blast of scorching green light, the radiation so potent he can almost taste it.

Superman doesn't howl only on account of the chain choking the light out of him, but his eyes go half-lidded and his body freezes in a way that belies unspeakable agony. His resistance against Lobo crumbles by the second, and it takes Mark a long moment to understand just what he's witnessing.

Superman was dying.

Superman was dying.

Finally, finally, the veil of drunken deranged delight evaporates as a frisson of inexplicable terror seizes him and forces him to move.

This is unacceptable. He'd gotten involved to prevent exactly this, and it would not come to pass.

His first instinct is to charge Lobo directly, but for all that he's occupied with his grisly task, the Czarnian's eyes hadn't left him. He was expecting an attack.

Never face an enemy on their own terms.

So he looks for a second option, mind working as fast as it ever has, and it comes to him so easily he'd have laughed again if the situation weren't quite so ugly.

He leaps, ignoring Lobo's roar of surprise as he goes for the alien's bike and lands in the seat with both feet braced. His first instinct is to destroy it, but another idea crystalizes in his mind's eye just as quickly as the first. Instead of striking through the control panel in front of him and hoping for the best, he seizes the handlebars in front of him and, praying to no god in particular that this would work, he revs the engine and waits.

And sure enough, a furious Lobo tosses aside a barely conscious Superman the very next instant (he'd feared he'd kill him instead) and leaps atop the bike, swinging his chain and looking ready to hurt.

Mark grins once and waits just long enough to see the realization dawn in those crimson eyes before he tugs straight up.

With a burst of acceleration, the bike bursts straight up the way it came, gaining altitude despite its owner's furious howl. Lobo leaps for him, fists closing around his head even as his other wrestles for the control of the handlebars, but he kicks out with his leg and suddenly they're tumbling and flipping in mid-air even as they continue to accelerate up and up and away.

From a purely logical perspective, he can spare a second to acknowledge that he should have never gotten away with this harebrained scheme. The wonders of intuitive technology really do speak for themselves.

And then he stops thinking altogether as Lobo starts to squeeze and they start fighting in earnest, flesh bruising and tearing and bones snapping as the two of them literally rip into one another, each uncaring of just how fast they're accelerating across the layers of the atmosphere and how far they'd left Washington behind.

They reach the edges of the exo-sphere before he finally runs out of tricks.


"You fragging shit!"

It ends with Lobo's hook stabbed deep into his left side, ribs shattering entirely as the alien blade rips its way into his lungs and they start to fill with blood. Almost all the fight goes out of him then, swollen eyes clouding over even as the Czarnian wraps both hands around his throat and begins to crush.

He can barely speak, can barely think, but his mind still has just enough lucidity to wander.

So this was the end, eh?

He's not disappointed, by any means. Death is the goal (isn't it?) and he doesn't care for his own life one way or another, but he would have preferred to have at least won his first and final fight.

…

Though… can't he still?

He sees Lobo above him, still trying to break him in the throes of his blind rage, and he remembers he has absolutely nothing to lose.

So he makes one final attempt.

He pulls the last of his power to him, trying to focus it on his optic beams to blast the bounty hunter away. With any luck, the fall from this height would at least be crippling.

Only, an odd thing happens.

He feels the thrum of power building, but it doesn't pool behind his eyes as he commands. Instead, it surges everywhere, arcing across his body, building and building as his reserves start running dry without an ounce of control or deliberate input on his part.

Lobo sees this too, and his features twist in foreboding as the power sets Mark's near-unresponsive body alight and just keeps growing.

"No." He snarls, fingers tightening around the boy's throat to no effect. "No no no!"

The glow reaches a peak, and so does the man's panic.

"NO!"

He throws back a furious fist, desperately attempting to pulverize the little shit, but it's too late.

With his last conscious thoughts being those of strange confusion and the slightest hints of primal satisfaction, Mark Milton detonates.

The energy washes the screeching Lobo away and obliterates most of his bike, reacting with the extra-terrestrial vehicle's exotic energy drive and catalyzing into an expansive explosion of refracting golden light that, for just a moment, shines as bright as the sun itself.

And then everything is blasted into oblivion and nothing but darkness remains.

...

Next Chapter: Interlude - The Batman​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Low Earth Orbit
The Watchtower

The Batman

Contrary to common belief, the Hall Of Justice wasn't the Justice League's primary headquarters.

The League's original base of operations, the now abandoned Mount Justice, had been compromised during an attack by the Joker and they'd been forced to relocate.

Relocate, and upscale to prevent a repeat performance.

It hadn't been long after their inception, and the idea of the Hall of Justice had been proposed in response to that necessity, as well as the need to reassure the public of the League's strength, unity, and functional capability. At the time of its creation it was intended to serve in the same capacity as Mount Justice once had, and officially it did, but Batman himself had pushed for a more… clandestine approach.

After all, the Joker had already proven that a sufficiently motivated enemy could overcome their defenses, and between all seven of the original members of the league, they had dozens of dangerous criminals to contend with. With the information and resources they handled on a day-to-day basis as well as the general security required for them to function as a cohesive unit, they needed something far more secure and as close to impenetrable as possible.

The Hall of Justice would therefore remain a deliberate front and tourist trap while their real headquarters would be accessible only through the League's Zeta-Tube network.

Once that decision had been unanimously agreed upon, all that remained was the actual establishment of a secure facility that was up to all members' (and especially Batman's) exacting specifications.

Which was where Hal Jordan came in.

Sector House 2814 had started off as a gargantuan orbital station built into an asteroid at the other end of the Milky Way and was inarguably the property of the Green Lantern Corps, assigned and open to the use of any active Lantern of Sector 2814.

Ordinarily, a Lantern permitting non-lantern or otherwise prohibited visitors aboard the facility would have resulted in sanctions and even possible dismissal, but given that Hal Jordan was the only active Lantern in the sector as well as a founding member of the League, they'd been able to appeal directly to the Guardians for a compromise of sorts.

In exchange for the Corps stripping the facility of its weapon platforms, advanced deep-space scanners and near-everything but the bare minimum required to keep it functional, they would permit the League to convert it to suit their purposes.
And so was born the Watchtower, traveling along the void of space in low Earth orbit, the sight of the glowing planet below a constant reminder of everything the Justice League fought to protect.

And everything they stood to lose, should they not remain vigilant.

It's that ever-pressing purpose that has him working in the Watchtower's mission room, a cavernous room with a backdrop view of Earth that remains completely forgotten in favor of the half-dozen holographic projections streaming data on his command.

"- Cat Grant with GBS." A familiar television news personality was speaking over the live feed. "And today I'm reporting live directly from the Hall Of Justice, the Headquarters of the globally renowned Justice League and, as of two days ago, the sight of a brutal alien attack that resulted in significant damages to the famous structure and even more devastating consequences for the city of Washington as a whole."

Here the feed switches out to a series of images, the first few exclusively showcasing the Hall and the extensive damages it had suffered. Half of the domed roof was just gone, having been caved in when Superman and the alien bounty hunter had rammed into it over the course of their battle.

The next set of pictures is even worse, highlighting the destruction shown before the fight had reached the Hall, and after it. The carnage driven through the city, streets and their surroundings turned to rubble, battered buildings with unstable foundations alongside all the rest.

"-weeks to clear the area, and optimistic calculations indicate that the cost in damages is ruinous. The cost in lives… incalculable…"

The images of the civilians come last.

The innocents caught up in yet another clash of impossible powerful forces and what became of them in the face of such. Fleeing from the sight of the calamity, pulled alongside the surging crowds and in the worst cases, having to be dug out from underneath collapsed debris.

Hurt, grievously injured, even dead.

The photographs are censored as per the network's standards, but that does little to detract or take away from the horror of the moments they've captured and immortalized

"-Justice League has yet to release a statement, though several members have been seen aiding in search and rescue efforts-"

All in all, it's the kind of situation he loathes with absolute passion.

Unpredictable, in that none of them could have seen it coming and unsalvageable in that none of them could undo the harm done by it.

Gotham and its criminals he can deal with. He was always, always at least somewhat prepared for whatever threat would rear its head sooner or later. He had his own resources to draw on, an open line of communication with the GCPD and half a dozen other variables that allowed him to maintain order and keep the people safe to the best of his ability.

From the rogues to gangs, he was always ready, and whatever new strategy they implied he could adapt to.

Violent, blatantly deranged aliens that dropped from the sky with no warning and were powerful enough to duke it out with their resident Kryptonian before using kryptonite were an entirely different ball game.

It's a bitter pill to swallow.

For all his preparations and countermeasures, for all his dedication and ceaseless effort, there remained opponents and scenarios he and the League as a whole couldn't face and guarantee victory, and though he never shows it, that grim truth burns.

"-who saved Superman?-"

His eyes narrow as he snaps back into focus and listens.

"Several eyewitness reports indicate that an as of now unidentified and suspected metahuman third party interfered in the battle between Superman and his hostile adversary. While a preliminary investigation suggests that this individual acted to aid and defend the Man Of Steel, the full scope of their involvement in this dark affair has yet to be revealed. Many continue to question just who and where this individual is and how much of the responsibility for this great tragedy can be laid at their feet. We can only hope that the Justice League's highly anticipated response will shed some much-needed light and provide the answers that so many are desperately waiting for. We now move over to GBS pundit G.Gideon Godfrey for more-

He's interrupted from his perusal of the report by the familiar activation sequence of the Watchtower's primary Zeta-tube.

"Recognised, Superman, Zero One, Wonder Woman, Zero Three."

A thrum of powerful machinery and a pulse of golden light heralds the arrival of his fellow leaguers and he takes the brief opportunity to study them as they approach.

Wonder Woman (Diana) holds herself with an easy grace and solemn dignity that has nothing to do with her station and everything to do with the contents of her character. All the same, there's a hooded look to her that tells him just how greatly the recent events have weighed on her.

Superman (Clark) is even worse. The man was never one to hunch his shoulders in the face of challenge and strife, but there's a tilt to him now that highlights the heavy guilt and grief that are all but smothering him.

For all his might and god-like power, there is and always has been something darkly ironic about how empathetic and human the alien amongst them is, and how easy it was to read him if you knew what to look for.

Like now.

The pair of them close the remaining distance and come to stand on either side of him and the computer terminal in expectant silence, eyes roving over the multiple display projections almost immediately.

"How are the relief efforts progressing?"

He already knows the answer, of course, but he's well aware of what Clark's next question is going to be and he needs a minute to pull up the relevant investigative files

"Search and rescue efforts have mostly run their course," Diana replies firmly, eyes still panning over the screen. "The numbers are… not good. They never are, but everyone who can be helped is receiving medical treatment and the proper procedures have been set up for the deceased. May the gods grant them peace in the next life."

He nods, aware of how Clark flinches at the mention of the deceased. He can tell that Diana catches it as well as she shifts in place ever so slightly before continuing.

"Flash, Green Lantern Stewart and Giovanni are now focusing their efforts on clearing out the rubble and debris to make way for reconstruction efforts. Most of the others are all clearing rearranging their schedules and working strategies to contribute however they can."

"Timeline?"

"At the most generous estimate…perhaps six months?" She tilts her head in thought. "If we dedicate sufficient time and League resources then we could significantly cut down on the time but the logistical constraints alone-"

"Understood. We'll look into it."

It wasn't the first time the League was in a position to deal with the collateral damage of an extra-normal event and much as he hates to admit it, it likely wouldn't be the last. It was another irony they were all faced with nearly every day.

Despite their best efforts to help and mend, destruction seemed to follow in their wake all the same. Some of them struggled with that unspoken knowledge far more than others.

And speaking of which…

Clark finally speaks then, voicing the question he's clearly been wanting to ask since the moment he'd set foot in the room.

"Any luck finding him?"

There's no point asking the man to clarify. He knows full well who he is and with two sharp clicks and one swiping motion, the projected news feeds flicker and die, replaced a moment later by half a dozen holographic panels projecting everything he'd gathered the object of their collective undivided attention.

With a gesture one of the panels flickers to the front and enlarges, expanding its contents as it does.

"His name…" He gestures to the magnified image. "Is Marcus Milton."

The boy is, at first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. Caucasian male, sixteen-year-old and six-foot-tall with dark hair and blue eyes. His facial features were pronounced but not exaggerated and his frame was lean but strong, and had he not known better, he would have assumed that he was looking at an ordinary child. One out of billions.

But Marcus Milton was anything but ordinary, as he'd proven when he went face to face with an alien who could best the Man Of Steel in a contest of strength.

"He's a resident of Venus SIvana's Children Center." He explains, pulling up the relevant documents when he receives a curious look. "An Orphanage in Fawcett City."

"Fawcett?" Clark frowns heavily. "What was he doing so far from home?"

"Organized field trip down to the Hall of Justice."

"I see." Diana nods, before matching Clark's frown with one of her own. "What are the odds that he visits the Hall on the same day-"

"Slim, but genuine as far as my investigation concludes," he cuts her off. "It's an annual trip for children past a certain age range, and as… convenient as it may seem, all the details check out. An unfortunate coincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless."

He'd checked, after all. Thoroughly.

"He's lived in the center for nearly his whole life. He was found on their doorstep with no identifying markers or any hint of his previous caretaker's identities, and he's been with them ever since." He scrolled to another document. "On paper, he's a prodigy. Perfect academic performance across the board, and not one significant disciplinary issue in either his academic or day-to-day lives in sixteen years. However, numerous caretakers, school teachers and adults in positions of authority who've had him under sufficient periods of observation all express similar or overlapping concerns."

Clark leans forward. "Such as?"

"Anti-social. Detached. Refuses to interact or acknowledge any peers or authority figures past what's obligatory, regardless of the circumstances. He's been known to actively shut himself away and avoid any contact to the point of extreme self-isolation, with only one known exception."

"Who?"

He very carefully doesn't pause. "Another child who was adopted years ago. An unrelated matter."

He had no intention of bringing up that particular discovery until he confirmed some very important details himself.

"These are… significant." Clark finally says, expression heavy. "Was nothing done to address any of this?"

"Attempts were made." He answers, "They attempted to assign him to regular therapy sessions during his youth, but they went nowhere. They could force him to attend, but they couldn't force him to speak, and once it became clear that they were a waste of time and resources they scraped them all together."

"Concerning." Diana murmurs. "But not a present current concern. Pardon my phrasing, but do we know what he is?"

And so they reach the crux of the issue.

"No." Clark looks at him in askance and he continues. "Though his abilities point to one obvious possibility."

Superhuman strength, speed, durability, and according to Superman, some kind of heat-vision analog and vision enhanced to the point where he could visually detect kryptonite radiation.

Diana reaches the conclusion in a heartbeat and turns to Clark in surprise.

"You think he's Kryptonian?"

His face cycles between half a dozen emotions at once, hope and a lingering sadness particularly prominent before he answers her.

"It's possible, given everything I saw him do…but-" He hesitates slightly and sighs in a manner that speaks of resigned acceptance. "But I doubt it."

When her expression shifts into confusion, he sighs again and rubs his forehead with a single hand, the other clenching and unclenching by his side.

"Near the end of the fight, the Czarnian -Lobo, that was his name - he fired another round of Kryptonite at me out of a genuine cannon. He hit me with more of the stuff than I've ever been dosed with at any one time, I could almost taste it. And the kid was just a few meters away. If he were Kryptonian-"

She nods in understanding. "He would have been affected. Visibly so."

"With that level of exposure at his age, Diana? He'd have been dead. God knows I almost was."

Batman frowns and interjects. "Do you know of any way a Kryptonian could become immune to Kryptonite, or at least develop a significant resistance to it?"

This he needed to know, for multiple reasons.

"Do you think I'd still be vulnerable to it If I did?" Clark shakes his head. "No. Kryptonite was a radiological hazard and interest in it was sparse once we developed precautions on how to deal with it. It's actually significantly more dangerous to yellow-sun-empowered Kryptonians than it is to the average civilian, not that knowing that helps. The Science Council forbade most forms of research into the effects of different solar wavelengths on our biology, and what little we did know was restricted to the Military Council and only very grudgingly at that. My father tried to work around them for a time but it wasn't his area of expertise, and every record I've got stored at the Fortress is entirely theoretical and wouldn't apply to Mark Milton even if he were a Kryptonian. He's too young."

"I see. Take a look at these."

Clark and Diana both blink at the next panel of images to emerge.
"Are those… drawings?" Clark sounds mystified.

"Yes. Marcus Milton's drawings."

Both of them sharpen at that, though Diana's confusion is still a palpable thing.

"However did you get your hands on them?"

"Once I had his identity, I had Green Arrow drop by Fawcett and acquire copies. Covertly."

…

"You sent a member of the Justice League…" Clark sounds incredulous. "To take a child's drawings. From an orphanage."

He doesn't acknowledge the tone. "Given the situation, I deemed it necessary. Green Arrow was looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that stood out, and he found these."

"They're… good. Excellent, even." Diana nods. "A testament to the boy's skill, but I do not see anything particularly informative."

"Look closer."

He magnifies a set of images, before scanning several particular sections of each sketch and projects them side by side for comparison.

"Some of these are years old, and they aren't random." He points to the symbols that at first glance look like nothing more than precisely interlinked geometrical shapes. "A graphological analysis indicates a significant possibility of it being some sort of code. Maybe even a language. There's at least a forty percent chance of either. Have either of you seen anything similar?"

"Not at all," Diana responds and Clark shakes his head.

"No. Maybe Green Lantern's Ring can-"

Batman shook his head. "I've already sent him the relevant scans. No result."

"Forty percent is significant, Bruce." He doesn't react to her use of his name. "But I can't help but feel that we're chasing little and nothing with this. Are you certain that you're not looking for a language or a clue where there's nothing simply because you suspect that he's an alien? For all we know, they truly are nothing more than the results of a child's imagination and the boy is a metahuman. Or a child of magical descent. It's uncommon for either of those to have this much in the way of untrained power or versatility, but hardly impossible."

To her surprise, he actually nods.

"Possibly." And then he stares at them with a familiar look to him and both of them feel the first flickers of real unease. "But that's not my biggest concern. Someone's been tampering with his records."

…

"Excuse me?"

"I was able to track the boy down through CCTV cameras in the Hall Of Justice." He explains, back to them as he reveals his findings. "He was registered as a visitor upon entry, and as far as anyone else knows he's currently a patient at the Washington Hospital Center, recovering from wounds and not permitted to receive any visitors. I falsified the records to protect his identity until we get to the bottom of this story."

It had been a stroke of luck that there was so little footage of the actual fight available and none that clearly identified the combatants. The benefits of all of them having super-human speed and being so obscenely powerful that being anywhere in the general vicinity was considered a death sentence.

"Underhanded, but admirable." Diana nods, but her eyes are still keen with interest. "What does this have to do with his records?"

"His medical records have been falsified." He finishes clicking away at the computer and displays the last two documents for comparison. "All of them are fraudulent, top to bottom. They're near perfect visually, but as far as I can tell he's never once been to so much as a single doctor's appointment in his life. And no one ever reported the discrepancy in any form or even attempted to investigate it."

Clark's eyes pan over the documents and his expression goes hard. "How is this possible?"

"We're launching an investigation in the Children's Center. At the most optimistic, this is criminal negligence. At worst, it's deliberate purposeful malice. Other than those, we don't have any leads" Batman's eyes narrow. "However, if we assume that the boy isn't aware of this, then it proves that an unknown party of some capability has an active interest in him. Likely due to his abilities."

"We need to get on top of this."

"And we will." Batman narrows his eyes. "But if we're going to investigate Marcus Milton, we need to find him first."

And just like that, the air itself seems to plummet.

"The Lanterns have found nothing?" Diana asks in his stead, expression grim.

Clark closes his eyes and hangs his head, and Batman himself says nothing.

The silence is answer enough.

After the boy and Lobo had left atop the latter's bike, they'd rocketed right up into the upper layer of the atmosphere and dragged themselves halfway around the planet before ending their clash in an explosion large enough to disrupt local weather patterns.

The Czarnian bounty hunter had survived and plummeted into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Egypt. It had taken several hours to regenerate the grievous wounds he'd suffered and by the time he'd swam back to shore he'd been greeted by one recovered, kryptonite-free and blindingly furious Superman, and the rest of the League as well.

The resulting battle was entirely one-sided, and the deranged monster was currently on a Green-Lantern-assisted voyage to the Corps's Science Cells. Given his numerous intergalactic crimes and his previous genocide, he'd likely remain there for the rest of his functionally immortal life.

But Marcus Milton, who had stepped in to save the Man Of Steel and suffered greatly for it… even two days later, he was nowhere to be found.

"I-" The Princess Of Themyscira sighs. "It pains me to say it, but is it not possible that the boy perished in the explosion?"

"He's powerful," Superman argues, but it sounds uncharacteristically weak. "Strong enough to go head to head and toe to toe against someone who was inarguably in my weight class, and durable enough to match."

"Yes." She agrees. "But Lobo himself only survived the cataclysm because of his regeneration, and nothing we've seen from the boy shows that he has that same capability."

"That's no excuse to give up." Clark clenched his fists again and relaxed them the next moment. "He saved me, Diana, and countless others when he pulled Lobo away. We can't give up on him now."

"And he's a hero for it, Clark, you'll never hear me say otherwise. I'm simply suggesting that we be… realistic, to an extent."

…

Once the tense, unpleasant silence had stretched on for a few moments, he finally chose to puncture it.

"We still have time." He informs them both, the slightest nod punctuating the gesture as he continues. "We can dedicate ourselves to the search for a good while longer. As it stands, we're seeking an answer and we have nothing to lose by taking an optimistic approach."

And that settles the matter, to a degree.

They separate then, both of them heading for the Zeta beam generator and to aid in the search efforts even as he remains and reviews the rapidly growing case file of Mark Milton.

He didn't voice his personal opinion to avoid disheartening the man further, but he doubted that the boy had survived. He wouldn't begrudge Clark his efforts, and would even aid them to the best of his ability. However, dead or alive, he would continue his investigation regardless of how cynical or ruthless the approach would seem.

There was a secret and a possible threat dangling ahead of him, and he'd leave no stone unturned in his search. New threats would always rise, and he wouldn't miss and despite the distasteful pragmatism of the approach, he wouldn't sit back and let them come to him.

Superman could hope for the best, but Batman would prepare for the worst, and all of them would be ready one way or another.

They had to be.

…​

Washington DC
Cadmus Labs

In an unknown subterranean chamber, a figure stands in the midst of a digital conference, nervously wringing his hands as he awaits his instructions.

His name is Doctor Mark Desmond, a wiry man just past his forties with unassuming facial features and long brown colored hair streaked with gray and tied at the back in a ponytail. He's dressed smartly in a white lab coat with his hands held at his sides and is employing a very admirable amount effort into controlling himself and not giving away just how nervous he really feels.

The five figures projected on the monitors surrounding him were nothing more than silhouettes, their identities deliberately hidden from view, and he preferred it that way. After all, it would not do for the good doctor to recognize his… extracurricular benefactors and subsequently become a liability.

Things never ended well for the liabilities.

"As I was saying," Doctor Desmond wrung his hands nervously as he continued to speak. "Preliminary results are still coming, but I'm very optimistic-"

"Get on with it." One of the monitors blares in a loud, flat tone that has the man flinching in place.

"...My apologies." Doctor Desmond nodded "I can confirm that the samples of Kryptonian DNA provided are more than salvageable. Replication is only a matter of time, sirs."

"Good." Came the prompt reply. "Then Projects Match and Kr are ready to begin."

"Yes, sirs."

He likely did a poor job of hiding his gleeful delight at that, but the opportunity to finally initialize the projects he'd been dreaming of for years was almost too tantalizing to even imagine.

For years he'd been preparing, and at last the necessary genomes had fallen into his hands. And so conveniently as well.

Mark Desmond wasn't a stupid man.

He'd seen the news reports on the recent fiasco at the Hall Of Justice and had plenty of theories on just how his benefactors had acquired Superman's genetic material, but he wouldn't dare voice them.

Not his problem, in any case.

"Doctor Desmond?"

He straightens in mortified panic as he realizes that he's allowed himself to drift off. "I beg your pardon-"

"Quiet." His mouth clamps shut as the voice continues to speak. "What of the secondary samples?"

Ah.

"Well…" He debates how to best phrase his answer before replying. "To be honest, sirs, I've never seen anything like it. The genetic material shares certain properties with Kryptonian DNA, such as its staggering resistance to decay, but where the latter will simply lay dormant until its point of expiry, the former… It actively regenerates. It generates mass from seemingly nothing at all and continues to undergo some form of extreme mitotic regeneration. It's growing, sirs, even in the harshest of conditions. It sounds ridiculous, but we've had to cryogenically freeze the samples because nothing else we've attempted has done anything to slow them down."

If he didn't know any better, he'd say the damn things were trying to grow into an entirely new organism all on their own!

…

He shook his head slightly.

No, even in this world of aliens and biological impossibility, that was a step too far.

"Interesting."

There's a long pause.

"Doctor."

"Yes, sirs?"

"We have a new project for you." He tries not to startle in place. "You will investigate the capabilities and limits of the secondary genetic samples and provide us with your results within a six-month period. Should they prove to be… satisfactory, we will discuss approaches to advance your research to its next level. Is that acceptable?"

It's phrased as a question, but there's only one answer and everyone present knows it.

"Yes, of course."

He nods wordlessly, mind already adrift with the logistics of running three high-value projects simultaneously, one of which he knew little to nothing about.

…

Well, he'd always like challenges.

"Excellent." The speaker's satisfaction is evident even through the digitized voice. "Then, as nothing more remains to be discussed, the Light bids you farewell, Doctor Desmond.

And without even a moment's pause, all five monitors flicker shut and plunge the room into darkness.

...​

Mediterranean Sea
Themyscira.

Night had fallen, and the dark skies above were a picture of beauty. The moon glows silver-white and contrasts against the primordial darkness, illuminated so thoroughly one could almost see the individual craters dotting its surface. Behind and all around it the stars shine across the heavens, twinkling one after the other, monoliths fit to last till the end of time.

The beach below the silver-white rays is just as majestic.

The ocean waves lap slowly but doggedly at the shore, glowing blue in the reflected moonlight. White foam crested the top of the waves as they approached, spilling onto the white sand with an almost musical cadence that went on and on and somehow never lost its luster.

It was a beautiful, peaceful existence.

Until quite suddenly, it wasn't.

Abruptly, a golden glow lights up in the sky above, growing brighter and brighter as something that does not belong approaches all the same.

A moment after its appearance, the fiery-golden light slams into the empty beach with a blinding explosion of heat and pressure that glasses everything within a hundred-meter radius of it and seems to echo around the Island itself with explosive, earth-shattering force.

When the smoke disperses and the fires die out, all that remains is a crater.

Lying at its heart, delirious and unseeing, was a boy.

Everything hurts. Everything is agony, and he can't process any of it.

The world is a jumble of color and concepts and hurt, and he's moments away from slipping into the comforting embrace of darkness.

Before he has a chance to do just that, however, the strangest thing happens.

A figure appears at the edge of the crater, staring down at him for what might have been seconds or hours before descending.

As it nears, he regains just enough lucidity to understand what he's looking at.

A girl, young, perhaps just as old as he was, dressed in white cloth that accentuated the paleness of her skin and the sharp gracefulness of her features.

He manages to make momentary eye contact and recognizes her stunned disbelief and wide-eyed wonder.

And then his mind begins to slip away entirely, and the last thing he hears is a stunned, incredulous exclamation.

"What the hell!?"

And though he didn't know it at the time, that was how Mark Milton met Donna Troy.

...​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

He feels like he's floating.

It's hard to think, his thoughts slow and muddled, and he realizes that he's surrounded by darkness.

No, no darkness.

Emptiness. An absolute void, nothingness at its most literal expression, a sliver of infinity devoid of everything but himself.

He doesn't understand how he knows that, but he does and at the moment it's all that matters.

[Ikaris]

…

What was that?

He tries to move, but there's nothing to move. His body isn't just unresponsive, it's as though it doesn't even exist.

It likely doesn't.

[Ikaris]

He hears it again, and he recognizes that it's more than just a word.

It's a greeting and a reminder and a thousand variables at once, an entire concept distilled into that one ever-familiar and inescapable word.

For a moment, just a fraction of a second, he remembers everything with perfect clarity, relieving seven thousand years in an instant.

[Mark Milton]

This one is different, and yet the same.

He relives fifteen years of dull mediocrity in another instant, experiencing the sum total of a thousand memories and feelings and emotions summed up in two words.

It's just the same as the last, but lacking.

As Ikaris, he had been a being of many titles.

Eternal. Warrior. Lover. Betrayer.

Each and every one of them was a title he'd defined himself by, stations that had given him meaning for as long as he could hold onto them before they inevitably crumbled away, overcome by the tides of time and fate and bitter, ugly duty that had taken everything from him.

Mark Milton, on the other hand, was nothing right from the get-go.

Just two words that sum up a half-life of bland mediocrity, devoid of purpose and reason right from the beginning.

Just the same as Ikaris had been at the end, but effectively meaningless in comparison.

[No]

The abject, absolute refusal is not his own, and he finally realizes that he's not alone. There's something else in this void beside him, and it makes its presence known.

[Not meaningless]

Just as it had before, whatever speaks to him uses not words but concepts. Ideas communicated in their purest state, and what's transmitted to him now is adamant refusal, bordering on command, such that he almost drowns under the weight and sheer conviction behind them.

[Mark Milton is not meaningless. Lesser than what came before, but not meaningless. Never meaningless]

He… doesn't understand.

[Mark Milton is not nothing, but he is empty. A shell made hollow by the remnants of Ikaris]

There's something building, some deep unfathomable pressure that surrounds him and behind to press down. His confusion grows stronger, edging into the beginnings of panicked hysteria.

What was this fantasy?

Mark Milton and Ikaris were one and the same. He would know, given that he had lived as the former and likely still existed as the latter in one state or another.

[Foolish Child. Mark Milton has never truly lived. He was never given the chance. You never gave him the chance. What once was has tainted what could have been, but what could yet be still remains]

What does that mean?

[You will understand all in time. Such is the beauty of having eternity at one's fingertips. But first you must seize it. First you must choose]

The pressure becomes unbearable, and whatever semblance of order or rationality to his thoughts disappears entirely, crushed beneath the might of the foreign presence's expectation and his own burgeoning fear.

What does any of this mean?

[Ikaris, or Mark Milton]

What?

[Choose]

Choose what?

[Choose]

I-no-

[Choose]

There is nothing to choose-!

"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍Choose"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͐̿͡


"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍No"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͐̿͡

"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡

"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍Choose"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͐̿͡

"͔͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡

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...​

Mark wakes up.

It's not a slow or gradual process. He goes from being all but dead to the world to full awareness between one heartbeat and the next, eyes snapping open and taking a full burst of blinding light before flickering shut again.

Distantly, he acknowledges that while he was conscious, his mind was scattered. Disorientated.

Deep sleep like this is an oddity. As the years had passed and his powers had grown, weariness and exhaustion had become non-factor. He slept out of habit more than anything else, and even then only to pass the time. He could have likely done away with the practice entirely if he had been so inclined.

And yet here he is, blinking his eyes as he tries to regain his bearings.

There's a feeling gnawing at his mind, a sensation that feels as though he's forgotten something, but as soon as he tries to reach for it it slips away from him entirely.

Irritating, and more than a little concerning given that, as a general rule, he never forgets anything.

Ever.

Deciding to put that aside for the time being, he still struggles, trying to think.

To remember.

The Hall Of Justice. Superman. Lobo. A blade sliding through his flesh and tearing into his lungs, and then nothing but heat and light and pressure.

It all comes streaming back to him in sudden savage clarity and he inhales sharply, the phantom sensation of pain coming into focus as he sits up from wherever he was lying and remembers.

…

Actually, now that he's actively aware of it, there's nothing phantom about the pain.

Mother of shit, everything hurts

His muscles are sore, heavy with weariness almost to the point of being unresponsive. His bones ache right down to the marrow, and his skull feels as though it's made of particularly fragile glass. Slowly, he lifts his arms and runs his hands up and down his bare torso, wincing at the effort it took. His ribs sting something fierce and feel especially delicate but he can tell that they are whole.

The skin wasn't even broken.

A brief examination of his throat shows that it was sore and perhaps a little swollen, but not crushed and filled with blood as it had been when the Czarnian had wrapped his hands around it and squeezed.

An aspect of his biology no doubt, but the healing and the lingering pain are both foreign experiences nonetheless. He's never been injured past a certain point in either life, never been pushed as far as Lobo had pushed him.

Slowly, once he accepts that he's more or less whole, he shifts his eyes and finally takes in his surroundings.

It's an arched, domed space, almost cavernous in scope. Plain white masonry stretches out to form the floor, and the domed roof is supported by great pillars that circle the chamber and give it shape. He himself is lying on a bed, white linens stretching over his entirely bare form and position right in the center of the room-

No, not a room. There are no enclosing walls, and just past the pillars he can see an entirely new landscape, the sea easily visible in the distance, waves crashing against a beach with sand that glows a gentle hue of white-gold in the early morning sunlight.

He registers the salty sea breeze as the sight sinks in with an incredulous tilt of his head.

Where-?

He registers footsteps approaching from a distance away, and he turns his head and clocks a woman's approach as she travels across a stone path and heads right for him.

She was tall, with pale skin and unfamiliar features, dressed in a manner he hadn't seen in… thousands of years, actually. A white Greek peplos fastened at the waist with a band of cloth. The moment she sees him however, her eyes widen in some alarm and she turns right back and marches away hurriedly in the direction of a large temple-like building he only just spots, the towering pillars and noticeably archaic architecture stalling his mind long enough for the woman to emerge once again, this time followed by three more unrecognizable figures.

If the first woman was dressed strangely, then the other three are downright bizarre.

He does nothing as they approach, instead roving his eyes over them as they near him. All are dressed in leather skirts that cover them from the waist down to the knees, with similar strips around their shoulders. From the waist up all are armored in cuirasses and armed with a spear in one hand and a short sword sheathed in a scabbard and tied around their waist, but only one wore a Corinthian helm wrought from gold, and the other two fall in line behind her as they get closer.

A leader of sorts, then.

He doesn't say a word as they approach and deliberately keeps himself still and quiet as he watches them close the distance between them.

It was hardly difficult to remain calm. He needed to find out exactly where he was, and even in his current state the worst a spear could do was irritate him.

They finally arrive, sandalled feet clicking against the stonework as they circle his bed and come to a halt, and he doesn't miss how the unarmed woman steps back and lets the apparent soldiers surround him with practiced efficiency.

There's a pause after that until the leader steps forward and regards him with a cool gaze. She's tall, with a darker complexion than the others and long hair that runs past her shoulders with an easy graze. Her features are not hard but they are strongly set, and her eyes rove over him for a long moment before she finally deigns to speak.

"Greetings, foreigner."

Her voice is cool, and the formal words are in Greek of all things.

Interesting.

"Hello." Mark returns monotonously, and he registers the small signs of surprise as she takes in his response. "Who are you?"

She doesn't answer at first. "You speak our tongue."

"Evidently."

His mastery of Greek isn't a great achievement by any measure of the word. He's lived thousands of years before in a world so very similar to this one. He's picked up nearly every language there was to learn, and effortlessly at that.

Come to think of it, he'd probably helped create a few.

"Then this will be far simpler than I'd feared." She draws herself up as she speaks. "Have you recovered from your injuries?"

…"What?"

"You arrived on our island injured and in dire straits." She informs him dispassionately before gesturing at the woman dressed in white. "Hippocrates Sadeh has been overseeing your recovery."

He glances at the proclaimed healer for a second, before turning back to the soldier.

"I will ask again. Have you recovered from your wounds?"

"Yes." He raises an eyebrow. "Who are you and where am I?"

The words are blunt almost to the point of being offensive, but Mark's never cared for social interaction past the bare minimum and he wasn't about to start now regardless of the circumstances.

To her credit, the woman doesn't so much as twitch, though her subordinates do bristle in place, clearly taking offense on her behalf.

"I am Captain Philipus of the Themysciran Royal Guard." She answers, regarding him with an impassive gaze before answering his second question in a thoroughly roundabout way. "And as soon as Sedah clears your health, you will be brought before Queen Hippolyta to answer for your unlawful intrusion into the sovereign state of Themyscira. I suggest you prepare yourself."

…

He blinks "What?"

...
​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Themyscira.

The name itself isn't new to Mark.

He'd developed an interest in Superman years ago, well before his mind had pieced itself back together and returned his memories to him, bordering on obsession. Some dormant part of him had recognized the vague similarities between the Kryptonian and the Eternal he once was (and always would be) and for a time he'd gone on a bender, researching and reading up on anything and everything regarding the last son of Krypton he managed to get his hands on. That eventually led to him halfheartedly looking into the Justice League and its original seven founders, of whom Wonder Woman was particularly notable.

Well, notable was a strong word.

He'd paid the princess of the so-called Paradise Island an iota more attention than the other Leaguers on account of her having fought in the First World War and subsequently being well over seventy years old. The thought of another apparent immortal had been enough to catch his
attention, if only for a little while.

Whatever the case, Mark knew of Themyscira. The sovereign state was recognized by the United Nations and its existence was public knowledge.

Other than that, though, he knew little of the island itself. Nothing of its laws or practices, nothing of its people, and landing here had been nothing more than coincidence.

Coincidence that he was now being asked to explain.

Because of course, nothing can ever be simple.

He doesn't protest when Captain Philipus orders his compliance, though there is a moment when he's tempted to refuse. As a general rule, he doesn't take orders. Ordinarily he goes along with the expectations this new life foists on him only for lack of anything better to do, and even then he only follows through to the bare minimum. The idea of submitting himself to the judgment of a Queen he knows nothing about and presumably being judged under laws he's equally ignorant of all to explain something he'd had no conscious choice in sounds tediously irritating at best and entirely unappealing as a whole.

Still, he acknowledges that he doesn't exactly have much of a choice in the present moment.

Not only is he still half-depleted from his battle against Lobo, but he's also effectively stranded. The Amazons may or may not be able to force him to comply depending on how they compare to Wonder Woman and her abilities (the swords and spears certainly aren't going to do jack, even in his current state) but even assuming he could trump them all, he's still got no way to get off the island.
He could probably swim back to the States, but while his abilities make the ridiculous suggestion somewhat practical, it still sounds about as appealing as getting stabbed in the lungs.

Again.

So here he was.

Captain Philipus has clothes bought for him as soon as he's declared fit to stand unaided. A plain white chiton that went over his head and draped down to just a little past his knees, fastened at the waist with a strip of linen and a pair of sandals for his feet. A style of dress he hadn't had anything to do with in millennia, but beggars can't be choosers.

Mark almost does protest at the iron manacles that come next, some part of his long-dormant pride bristling at the idea of being chained, but he holds his tongue and says nothing.

It would be best to see just how far his hosts intended to go before he…reacts.

His escort to the Themysciran royal court is an expedient thing, with two guards on either side of him and Captain Philipus leading on ahead, close enough to turn on him should he attempt to attack.

For what little good that would do if he genuinely wanted to harm them.

Initially, he doesn't see much more of the island during the brief, brisk walk. The weathered stone path leads them onwards across the wild outskirts, and he catches on to the fact that the healing temple he'd awoken in had apparently been built on the outskirts of the island's primary settlement, either due to poor planning or perhaps deliberate strategy.

When he expands his vision to observe what he's missing, he spots the archaic architecture first and foremost. The inhabitants of Themyscira built in stone and wood, and stuck to what was simple almost exclusively. Their homes are grand when considering the materials they're working with, but he can see buildings dotting the city that make the rest look like hovels with their sloping architecture and gleaming masonry.

Temples, he realizes. They dwarf everything around them by a considerable margin and it's with that thought that Mark is suddenly struck by how small everything is. He'd been expecting a city of sorts, but everything he's seen as of yet would barely qualify as a small town. He doesn't pay all that much attention to the milling civilians, but it's easy to determine how few there are. Two thousand at most, and likely not even that.

How exactly was this island considered a nation in its own right? He's known small armies that outnumbered its population a hundred to one.
He doesn't have much time to consider it, either, because they near the royal palace and his thoughts go elsewhere. Like the temples that dot the island, the palace is in the Doric style of architecture, but magnified and scaled up for size. Great elaborate columns and arched domes and towering open-pavilions are visible even from a distance, the pale stone glinting impressively in the sharp sunlight.

And now the headache begins

…​

The ruler of Themyscira awaits them in her cavernous throne room with only half a dozen members of her royal guard, silently patient as she sits atop a throne carved from glimmering white stone and inscribed in symbols he doesn't bother paying attention to. Similarly, he doesn't give so much as a second glance to the rest of the throne room, ignoring the elaborate ornamentation and the opulence on display and instead focusing on the woman who, fingers crossed, would get him off this island.

Credit where credit was due, Queen Hippolyta certainly had the presence of a royal. Seemingly untroubled, attentive, and just dismissive enough to imply superiority without coming off as overly arrogant. Her face remains expressionless as he's marched and ordered to stand before her, and her eyes rove over him in a way that could almost be described as lazy were it not for the sharp focus he can see in them.

Personally, he's not all that impressed with the posturing, but he says nothing and remains completely still as the queen of the amazons takes him in without a single word.

Still, any time now would be good.

At last Hippolyta raises her head and adjusts herself ever so slightly before deigning to speak.

"Child."

She speaks the word without any inflection. All the same, there's a strength inherent to her voice that seems to exert a force all of its own.

Not that it has any effect on him.

"Queen Hippolyta."

It's not a greeting on his end, more of an acknowledgment than anything else, but he offers it just to move this debacle along.

"You know who I am. Good." Hippolyta smiles, and it's a practiced humorless expression. "Then perhaps you would be willing to enlighten me as to who you are. It's not very often that we have… visitors. Certainly none that descend fall from the heavens and spend over a day recovering in our halls."

"Mark Milton." He says just as soon as she's finished, and if she's surprised by the immediate response she doesn't show it.

"An interesting name. Tell me, Mark Milton, from whence do you hail?"

Nowhere at all.

"The United States." He replies curtly, suppressing the instinct to say something potentially problematic.

"I see." Hippolyta nods "You are a long way from home."

How observant.

"Yes. Though not by choice."

She raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

And that's just about it.

"Queen Hippolyta, may I speak freely?"

Asking is just a minuscule courtesy. Mark fully intends to speak one way or another. He knows where this slow, meandering and frankly unsubtle interrogation is going, and he doesn't have the patience for it. Hippolyta is evidently intrigued because she nods her head in curious acquiescence, though her features remain neutral.

"I'm aware that my presence on Themyscira is…irregular in the extreme, but know that I had no conscious decision to intrude on your kingdom and, in all honesty, I have no wish to remain on this island any longer than I have to. Rest assured that the circumstances that led to my arrival here were far out of my control and I am more than willing to present them to you directly if only to avoid wasting any more time on unnecessary pleasantries."

Blunt.

Perhaps a tad too blunt, because one of the guards to his right bristles like a cat and makes an aborted move toward him.

"Watch your tongue-!"

"Hold!" Philipus's voice cracks like a whip and the Amazon freezes, seeming to struggle with herself for a moment before bowing her head in silent submission. For her part, Hippolyta just holds up a hand and smiles, and he can tell that the gesture is fractionally more genuine than it was before.

"Peace, Antimache. I take no offense where none is given." She turns back to Mark. "Very well then, Mark Milton. You have my attention."

He tells her everything, right then and there, from the moment Superman and Lobo smash their way into the Hall Of Justice and everything that follows. In this story alone, there's nothing for him to hide. There's no point in withholding information, nothing to be gained from secrecy, and so he doesn't bother with it at all.

By the time he stops talking, Hippolyta is giving him another appraising look and the atmosphere in the room seems to have shifted somewhat.

"An… impressive tale." She conceded after a long silence. "The members of the Justice League are known to me. You claim to have fought on equal grounds with a foe who could best Superman?"

"Yes."

He doesn't say anything more than that, and he smiles a little when the queen lowers her gaze to the manacles around his wrists. It's tempting to simply break out of them with a single sharp movement, but he limits himself to tugging on them, forcing the interlocking chains to resonate audibly just enough to have everyone surrounding him stiffen.

The message is unmistakable.

"If you are telling the truth," Hippolyta begins, eyeing him speculatively. "Then your presence on Themyscira is faultless."

"If I'm telling the truth?" Mark asks, and it takes genuine effort to tamp down on his building annoyance. "Your people saw me land on this Island, Queen Hippolyta, and the state I was in when I arrived. That should more than vindicate me."

"Perhaps." She leans back slightly. "But there are many who would go to even greater lengths to invade our home. Many have gone to greater lengths and were rebuffed at great cost. I cannot afford to be any less vigilant with you regardless of your claims."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

He doesn't move or so much as twitch, but some of his dark irritation at yet another waste of time hindering him must show, because even as Hippolyta remains unruffled, her guards tense and tighten their grip on their weapons.

"It means that, for as long as I cannot confirm the truth of your words, you will not be permitted to leave the island."

…

"What?"

This time, his incredulity is loud and clear.

"You think that I might be a threat to Themyscira," Mark starts, words slow and stunned by the sheer ridiculousness of it all. "And therefore you want me to stay… on Themyscira."

"For a limited time only. Threat or not, we can hold you well enough for a little while at least." Hippolyta declares airily, more amused than upset for all that she doesn't take her gaze off of him. "A message will be sent to my daughter, the Princess Diana, temporarily recalling her to Themyscira. As Wonder Woman she wields the Lasso Of Truth, and upon her arrival the matter of your innocence will be settled one way or the other."

She waves a hand.

"Until then, you will remain a guest." She tilts her head to the side. "You will be given suitable quarters and placed under watch. You will not be permitted to leave the palace and should you wish to leave your quarters, you will be under escort from the moment of your departure until you return."

Her eyes narrow.

"Do you understand me, Mark Milton?"

Yes. Mark understands her perfectly well.

She wants him to remain a glorified prisoner for an undisclosed period of time to determine how much of a threat he is. All for a crime he didn't commit.

Well, that was all well and good, except for the part where it was the most gallingly ludicrous idea he'd heard in the last sixteen years. Even ignoring the stupidity of attempting to cage a supposed threat who wanted nothing more than to leave, there was another simple immutable fact in the way of Hippolyta's suggestion. He was no one's prisoner (not anymore) Queen or otherwise.

The guards around him tense even further, seemingly ready to spring into action as his expression twists-

!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡OP.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡T.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡HI.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡N.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡C.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡HA.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡N.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"
​

-and he falters, stopping himself from shattering the manacles around his wrists and exhaling in abrupt disorientation.


…

Maybe… maybe he was being too hasty.

"... I understand, Queen Hippolyta."

The Queen herself had stood up a moment earlier as if in anticipation of an oncoming battle. If she's surprised by his apparent change of attitude, she doesn't show it.

"Excellent. Captain Philipus, If you would."

"At once, my Queen."

And that's how he gets the chains removed and exchanges them for a poorly gilded cage, all the while still confused as to why he was going along with any of this.

…

His uneasy compliance doesn't last.

It takes him no more than a few hours and a single conversation to decide that he truly, utterly loathes Themyscira.

And it all starts when, just as he's about to be escorted into his new quarters, a familiar-looking girl flies around the corner far too quickly and rams into him, sending them both tumbling through the nearest wall in a shower of dust and debris.

"Donna!" Philipus roars.

"Sorry, sorry, I wasn't looking!"

Mark just groans and lets his head thunk against the masonry,

What the hell was it now?

…​

Miles of the coast of Themyscira:


Two figures stood side by side, hovering above the roiling ocean as they prepared for the next phase of their plans.

The first was a man, tall and powerfully built with blue skin and red eyes made all the more menacing due to their black sclera. He had draped himself in red cloth and a high-collared cape of black and gold that flutters in the wind behind him.

The second made for a far different sight. A woman in green and golden robes, red-haired and fair-skinned. Most would find her strikingly beautiful were it not for the barely suppressed cruelly glinting in her eyes.

"Are you ready?" The man spoke, his voice echoing with unnatural force.

"Patience, Wotan." The woman smiles sharply as her hands burn with green fires, powers already surging forth as she begins to cast. "The centuries have done nothing for that temperament of yours, have they? Or is it the Witch Boy's influence that has you acting so childishly?"

"I have no patience for your games, Cerci!" He snapped, red eyes narrowing in frustration.

In response, the woman only smiles wider. "Be careful not to overstep, Wotan. Do not forget that you came to me, and you are not my equal regardless."

The warning is unmistakable.

…

"Are you ready?" He repeats the question, only slightly more mild, and she snorts in amusement.

"Just about. Give it time, Wotan. I assure you, no matter how long it takes, this?" She turns her eyes back to the Island then, visible to her even behind the layers of arcane protection. "This is going to be wonderful."

And then she begins to laugh, already casting the first spell.

…​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous

 

[Firewillreign]

His accommodations are… not unpleasant, if only from an aesthetic perspective.

A pair of conjoined rooms within the guest quarters of the royal palace, sparsely furnished but not lacking in quality, and pleasantly spacious while overlooking a view of the sloping wilderness that went out past the primitive city's boundaries and stretched onwards until it met the white sands that ringed the island and weathered the crashing ocean waves.

In the light of the morning sun, everything there was to see appeared to glow with a faint golden radiance. Ever so slight, but enough to noticeably alter everything in sight and make it appear… more.

Impressive. Many would even call it beautiful.

Mark, on the other hand, really doesn't care one way or the other.

As soon as the royal guards escort him to the rooms that will house him for the immediate future, he collapses into the nearest chair and proceeds to tune out everything.

He ignores the sounds of the guards taking up their posts outside of his chambers, ignores the traces of sound drifting in from the far edges of his sensory range (the crescendos of the living environment, the cacophony of wild animals, the humdrum whispers of Themyscira's other inhabitants milling about their daily lives), and tries to clear his mind and think.

There's something wrong with this situation and it burns at him fiercely.

After the unknown and as of yet unintroduced 'Donna' effectively body slammed the two of them through a wall, he had about five seconds to catch his bearings before he was hustled away at speed.

From the furious whispers he'd managed to pick up from the guards dragging the protesting girl away ("I said I was sorry, wait a second-!"), Queen Hippolyta likely intends for him to remain isolated from Themyscira's general population for the duration of his stay.

Which, honestly, was just fine.

He's never cared for any personal contact or even the most basic of social interactions with others past the bare minimum since day one, and that hasn't and almost certainly won't ever change.

If Hippolyta wants to gift him with a guarantee of peace and quiet while this mess is running its course, then he'll take it happily and consider it an absolute win on his end of the bargain. He's almost tempted to thank her for it, but whatever satisfaction the notion of blessed silence stirs in him is quickly smothered by the reminder that he's still very much a prisoner on this island. And willingly at that.

That's the part that has his eyes closing and his features scrunching in pronounced frustration, confusion clouding his thoughts like a heavy fog.

He still doesn't understand just what the hell he's even doing, agreeing to comply with the Themysciran monarch's demands. Still doesn't get why he's going along with any of this when he knows for a damn fact that he doesn't have to.

He's innocent and hadn't wanted to wind up in this speck of a nation halfway around the planet in the first place. That alone should be enough. Even if others thought that it wasn't, why should any opinion but his own even matter?

He doesn't need to humor the amazons. Doesn't need them to free him, not when he's more than capable of doing it himself. If push came to shove, he could very well swim off this island even with his powers as reduced as they currently were.

So why hasn't he?

Bowing to the Hippolyta's whims… it isn't him. It isn't who he is.

""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡​

[Do you even know who you are in truth?]

His features twist further and he winces as his skull seems to throb, a headache building quickly and seemingly centering on a point just between his eyes.

He's so lost in the sensation and the grip of his musings that he fails to note that he's never had a headache of this sort before, not once in sixteen years.

There's an odd feeling that eats away at him as he continues to think, some unholy combination of confusion and bewilderment, of doubt and disquiet that pave the way for his spiraling thoughts.

As a general rule, he doesn't hesitate to do what he wants. Ability is never the problem with him, just the desire to act on it. More often than not he lacks the motivation to do much of anything past what was necessary to just… be, but he's always had the capability even if he never chose to exercise it.

In the present case, though, he's actually in a position where he'd prefer to do just that.

He can leave if he wants to, whenever he wants to. He knows this.

Yet every time he considers the thought, he's struck with an explicable sense of hesitation that stills him in place time and again.

[Patience. There could be more for you here.]

He can't explain it, and the longer he goes without understanding it, the more infuriating it grows.

It's not fear or wariness that holds him back. Hippolyta's unspoken threats are wind to him, and for all that the woman herself possesses a ruler's bearing, he's met hundreds her equal and almost as many who were superior.

Even if he hadn't, it wouldn't have mattered. Queen or not, she has no sway over him.

The only standard he holds himself to is his own.

[And that has forever been your greatest strength and your greatest curse]

It's… it's ridiculous.

There's nothing for him on this island. Nothing of note, of value, or even worth a moment's consideration or the slightest interest at all.

Certainly nothing for him to hesitate over, and yet here he was. Lost in his own thoughts and feeling more confused than he'd been in years.

[Confused and alone. Always alone. But you do not have to be.]

No matter how many times he turns the issue around in his mind, he gets nowhere.

Mark grits his teeth and closes his eyes, and that in and of itself is an admission of defeat.


He can't help but recline then, leaning back in his seat even as his hands tighten on the armrests and squeeze until the wood splinters and pulps in his unyielding grip.

Maybe it's better if he… clears his mind. Stops thinking altogether, if only for a little while.

For as long as he can remember, he's had an odd relationship with sleep. Human beings slept because the act was, by its very nature, a biological imperative. They needed the physiological and neurological rest just to function.

By contrast, he's fairly sure he can forgo it entirely, but he's never been keen to find out. No point in making the days even longer when he could hardly bear the dullness to begin with.

Still, this is the first time in a very long time that he actually wholly wants to sleep just for the calm it will bring.

However temporary that would be.

In the end, it's almost easy to close his eyes a final time and slip from nonsensical hesitance to blissful nothingness between one heartbeat and the next, doubts falling entirely if only for a little while.

[Rest now. Conserve your strength and your mind. You will need both if you are to finally choose.]

…
​

Elsewhere:

"You're certain you can control them?"

"You think I cannot command my own creations, Wotan?"

There's a dangerous undertone to the words, and the crimson-eyed sorcerer eyes his companion warily.

"They have been altered. They are not as they were before."

It's not an apology, but it seems to do the trick as Cerci's silent anger abates somewhat in favor of her amusement.

"No, they are not," She agrees, smiling wildly. "Chaos magic. Terribly temperamental at the best of times but delightful in its effectiveness. Pass on my regards to your master."

This time, it's Wotan's eyes that narrow in fury.

"Klarion is not-!"

"Oh, spare me." She ignores his budding outrage in favor of observing the results of her preparation, "I haven't altered my little pets in thousands of years, did you know? Their arcane nature prevents me from changing them any further without considerable effort on my part, effort that I often have no reason to employ, but this alliance of ours has warranted an exception. Have no fear, they're still every bit as obedient as they ever were. So much so that I doubt I'll even have to direct them to do as I please."

Her smile grows as sharp as a blade with all the cruelty to match.

"They'll raze that accursed Island to the ground all on their own."

…​

It's on his second day on Themyscira that things finally get… interesting.

That night, Mark's out on the terrace of his room, staring at the horizon beyond the ocean. The view is as scenic as it had ever been with the ocean waves glowing beneath the moonlight, but it still triggers little to no response in him past begrudging acknowledgment.

Even if he was the type to enjoy such a banal attraction, he's presently in no mood for it. He's still uncertain about… everything. Mentally speaking, he hasn't been quite this out of sorts in a long, long time. Is unused to the cloak of apathy that he'd become accustomed to being derailed by this mess of a situation and his own atypical response to it.

It's just as he's about to turn it over in his head for the twentieth time and counting that a familiar figure descends from the sky right above him and lands not two feet away, a dull thud announcing her presence.

It's the girl from before, Donna.

Mark doesn't startle, he has more control of himself than that, but he does stiffen and turn to stare at her with a wary look.

That had been fast. He hadn't clocked her approach until she was right above him, well within striking range.

Foolish.

For a second, neither of them speaks. He takes her in for that little while, absently noting that she was likely his age (His current age), dressed in white peplos that cut off just past her ankles and looked to be untouched by even a hint of dust or grime-

He blinked.

She'd flown down from above. That was… concerning.

What little he knew of Wonder Woman from his reading had made it clear that her abilities were an outlier among the Amazons, not the norm. Everything he's seen of Themyscira's people since he'd landed, from their primitive weapons and their uneasy wariness of him (He has noticed that) only served to prove the point.

Were there others, then, who stood above the rest? He needed to be on his guard in case things went south and-

That's about as far as his thoughts go before she thrusts out her hands and offers him a-

…

What?

"Hi! I'm Donna." She grins at him, two parts confidence and two parts cheer, and ignores his stunned look as she continues to offer him a plate half full of… pastries. "Want some dessert?"

…

Again, what?

"I know who you are." He shakes his head, utterly bewildered and choosing to ignore the pastries in front of him. "We've… met."

She flushes at that, lowering her hands and leaning back a touch.

"Right...that… Sorry?" She tilts her head and smiles sheepishly. "I heard you were awake, and I wanted to meet you, that's all."

She takes in his blank look and laughs awkwardly.

"Themyscira doesn't get visitors. Like, ever. You're probably the first new person since me to arrive here. It's been a long couple of years, believe me." There's a pause, and she shrugs. "Cool entrance, though. A Little terrifying, but ten out of ten for style."

Entrance-?

Oh.

"You saw me land on the island."

"Big ball of fire cutting through the sky and blowing up half the beach? A little hard to miss, dude."

He finds himself nodding slightly, faintly acknowledging the point out of sheer bewilderment and the gesture seems to embolden her.

He also belatedly realizes that she's speaking English, as opposed to the formal Greek he's predominant in Themyscira.

"So… Let's try this again. I'm Donna Troy. I didn't mean to, uh, knockyouthroughawall" She blurts the last few words out and smiles at him again. "So, to make up for that… desert?"

And once again she offers him the plate of square-shaped golden pastries, smile entirely too earnest all the while.

"They're really good."

He opens his mouth to respond and closes it again after it becomes clear he hasn't got a damn clue what to say.

Just.., what even?

He was confused enough to begin with, and that was well before this girl had literally dropped from the sky and proceeded to stump him through sincerity and sheer ridiculousness.

Dessert? Really?

He's not sure where this new… experience was going, but the awkward silliness of it wasn't doing him any favors.

He's just about to try and speak again – to say what, he's entirely sure – when another thought occurs.

Wait, weren't the Amazons supposedly keeping him isolated-

Things happen very quickly after that.

The doors to his chambers burst open as the guards who were stationed beyond them finally realize that he's no longer alone. Donna Troy's eyes go wide and she lets out a panicked curse before she flings herself full force off the terrace as she flies off and disappears.

But not before she turns around, grins at him with the same earnest excitement he's beginning to suspect is an intrinsic part of her and beckons him forward, hand splayed out in open invitation for just a second before she blurs away.

And Mark…well.

There is no possible explanation for what he does next.

The decision is so far out of his norm that it's almost aggravatingly idiotic and he still does it anyway.

Maybe it was the uncertainty of the last day, the confusion and the uncharacteristic doubt, or even just the dull boredom of waiting for someone else to decide what to do with him.

[What have you to lose?]

Whatever the case, he finds himself leaping off the terrace in much the same way, unbothered by the oncoming drop or the roaring protests that follow him as he hits the ground and sprints in pursuit.

…​

Donna Troy, he decides a little while later, is more than a little reckless.

And possibly slightly stupid, but given his own recent choices he's surprisingly prepared to withhold judgment on that one.

"That was awesome!" The girl cheers, blue eyes wild. "I mean, we're so in for it later, but still awesome!"

He doesn't know how to respond to that, so he sort of ends up just standing there, trying to figure out what he's gone and gotten himself into this time around.

They've long since left their pursuers behind. It wasn't even a challenge. Between Donna flying off at superhuman speeds and him following with an easy run, they'd pretty much left them in the dust right from the get-go.

"I'm Mark Milton." He says at last, and the look of surprise on her face mirrors his own feelings at the freely given admission.

"I know."

He frowns.

"Philipus told me all about you. You know, when she was chewing me out for not being careful."

She rolls her eyes at the memory and mutters something distinctly uncharitable, but he's more focused on what she's just admitted to than anything else.

"You know why I'm still on Themyscira?" He tilts his head back and regards her slowly. "You know that your Queen was keeping me prisoner?"

"Not a prisoner!" She protests. "Just a guest."

Mark stares at her flatly.

"…Alright, maybe a prisoner. But only to make sure you weren't around to hurt anyone, and only until Diana comes back to sort everything out." She shook her head. " I don't think you're to cause trouble if it makes you feel any better. I was there when you landed, and you were a mess."

"Thank you." He replies dryly, and her eyes widen in mortification.

"No-I-argh!" She groans in defeat and runs a hand through her hair. "My point is that you were hurt, and I don't think you could have faked that kind of pain on purpose. I figured since you were probably innocent. you could use some company."

"That's not very well thought out." He argues, and he's not sure why he's indulging in this conversation, but at this point, he's not sure of anything and he's working off of long-rusted social instincts anyway. "What If I really was a threat to Themyscira?"

She blinks at him and seems to pause, hesitating for just an instant before she plants her hands on her hips and smiles again, and this time there's a great deal more bravado and deliberate challenge laced within the expression.

"Then I'd stop you. I'm the strongest Amazon after Diana, and I wouldn't let you hurt anyone."

…

There's a confident quality to that declaration that has him standing straighter and appraising her with just a little more interest than before rather than dismissing the words outright.

And the way she uses Wonder Woman's name so freely, coupled with her abilities and their shared looks and coloring...

There's a theory he's starting to put together, but rather than give voice to it he chooses instead to offer her the slightest nod.

"I see." It's not an agreement, he'd never give her that much, but it works all the same. "It's a moot point regardless. The only thing I want to do is get off this Island. Which-"

He frowns and looks away in the direction of the Royal Palace.

"-is going to be that much harder now that I've slipped the leash."

"It's not that bad!" Donna protests, hovering closer to him as she waves her hands. "I've pulled worse off before and the worst I've gotten is a training session with Artemis."

"I do not know who that is, and our circumstances are very different." He resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "You are a princess, the granddaughter of the Queen, and I am an illegal-"

"Waitwaitwait!" Her eyes go wide. "I'm a what?"

"I… had assumed that given your powers and how closely you resemble Wonder Woman…"

He trails off leadingly.

He's only seen a few images of the woman in question, but the similarities are unmistakable. Same facial structure, same pale skin and blue eyes, the same trailing hair… He thought the relation was obvious, but-

"No!"

-apparently he was wrong. Go figure.

"Diana isn't my…" there's a wobble to her tone that he would have missed had he not been paying attention. "We aren't related. I wasn't even born on Themyscira."

Donna Troy had been born in the States and spent her life in and out of the foster system, going from home to home before Wonder Woman had almost literally stumbled over her under circumstances the girl was visibly hesitant to share.

"It doesn't matter, alright?" There's a genuine force to her tone this time and a flash of something distressingly familiar beneath the words. "Just… Diana brought me to Themyscira a few years ago to teach me how to use my powers and I've been here ever since."

She turns and looks away just as soon as she finishes, and that likely would have been the end of this entire debacle. It should have been…

Except.

Mark suddenly finds himself in the horrifying situation of actually relating to another living bieng.

Because he recognizes the grief beneath her words, the longing and the ache.

Their situations are so very different (he steadfastly ignores the piling similarities) but the emotions… the emotions he knows all too well.

He decides to do something about them.

Clearly, Lobo had managed to permanently damage him in some way. It's the only thing that explains his current bouts of insanity.

"So." He grunts, nearly grinding his teeth at the fact that he was actually going out of his way to start a conversation, "What now?"
She turns back to him and blinks again.

"What?"

"What. Now?" He huffs the words out and refuses to hide his irritation. He's already compromising enough as it is. "Because I have no intention of going back to the palace and dealing with the mess we've stirred up, and I assume you had something in mind when you dragged me out here?"

…

For a moment, she's silent.

And then she smiles.

And so begins what can only be described as the oddest hour of his current life, as the pair of them hide away on a plateau that overlooks the city proper and the royal palace and talk.

Well, she talks, anyway.

In between him keeping an ear out for any stragglers (he can hear the utter pandemonium their escape has triggered even from this far out), and her own never-ending stream of speech, he can barely get a word in edgewise and he's more than fine with that.

And so is Donna, evidently, because the longer she goes on, the more she seems to radiate a viscerally, blinding kind of joy that stirs something best left forgotten in his own psyche.

She speaks about everything, from her life to the amazons all that lay in between, and he knows why she can't seem to stop.

She's lonely.

The kind of loneliness born of solitude so complete it becomes instinctual habit, and he recognizes it for what it is immediately.

[How could you not? You are just the same.]

He winces and shakes his head.

What an odd thought. They were nothing alike.

"Here."

He startles as he realizes that she's not only gone quiet but is offering him something, and he can't keep the surprised look on his face as he sees the same plate of pastries from earlier, still intact and unharmed despite their mad dash across the island.

"They really are great, you know." There's something softer about the way she looks at him now, less guarded and that much genuine for it. "You should try one."

The sincerity she directs his way makes him feel… honestly, he doesn't know what it is he's feeling in the present but he tries to distract himself from it all the same as he plucks one of the treats off the plate and crams half of it into his mouth in one go.

It's… not bad, actually.

He's no critic, but the exterior is flaky and there's an interesting crunch to it, and the flavor is both sweet and rich.

"It's good." He admits quietly, and Donna grins and slugs him on the shoulder.

"I told you!" She grabs her own piece and bites into it with gusto. "Polina's the best at making this stuff. Philipus says it's been three thousand years-"

He chokes.

-and there's still no one who… beats…her." She frowns. "Are you okay?"

He stares at her silently, eyes blown wide and previous bewildered calm utterly gone.

Three Thousand years?

He knew that Themyscira was ancient, knew that Wonder Woman was particularly long-lived, but somehow it's only now that he makes the connection and starts considering the implications.

If she was effectively immortal… why wouldn't the others be as well?

"The Amazons." His tone sounds unnaturally flat even to his ears, and Donna's eyes shift in confusion "They're immortal. They're all immortal."

"…Yeah?"

"…What do they do?" He doesn't turn to look at her as he asks. "They don't trade with the outside world, they're entirely isolationist and from the looks of it, they've achieved nothing on this island worthy of note."

He finally turns to look at her, and even that movement takes real effort to make.

"What, in three thousand years, have they actually done?"

"I-" She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. They just live here, Mark. There's not much more to it than that?"

…

Not much-?

…

That didn't make any sense!

He doesn't move, doesn't speak, but Donna still leans back in alarm as his face scrunches in frenzied disbelief and honest fury.

The Eternals had been prisoners in all but name, chained to the will of the Celestials, and any one of them could have changed the world if they only had the freedom to act.

The people of Themyscira numbered in the thousands. The thousands.

And they were all immortal and unageing. With three thousand years of peace and unified rulership, they should have accomplished wonders. Instead, from the looks of it, their only positive contribution to the world was Wonder Woman. Even then, she had only become a hero after she'd abandoned the island against her people's wishes and joined a war that was not hers to fight in the first place.

The people of Themyscira had everything, and they squandered it. Spent millennia doing nothing but sitting idly by and, apparently, baking fucking pastries!

He's on his feet before he's even aware of the movement, enraged and all but frothing at the mouth as he sees the island and its wasted potential and suddenly loathes it beyond all rhyme or reason.

(They had everything he was never given, and they did nothing with it)

The very concept of it drives him past the point of sanity.

He's vaguely aware of Donna reaching for him, trying to call to him, but he's more rabid fury and undefined intent at that moment than he is a person and it has no effect on him.

He's just about to move, to do something unknowable but no doubt ugly when the air above them seems to detonate.

Both of them have just enough time to look up and see the streaks of light flickering across the clouds, coalescing into shapes with growing flashes of eldritch green light that even he can't make heads or tails of.

And then a roar rings out across the island and drowns out other sounds at once.

"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"Kill Them All!""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[.}"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡​

There's a final burst of light, and when he next looks up, the very sky is filled with plummeting monsters.
...

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[]"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"Kill Them All!""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍["͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡
​

There's a flash of green light, a sonorous (and entirely melodramatic, he thinks) cry that echoes across all of Themyscira, and then his night goes from bad to almost stupidly worse.

For a moment, Mark just stares.

Somewhat absently, a part of him recalls that it's been nearly three days since his brawl with Lobo. He's still not entirely sure of what happened towards the end to so thoroughly deplete him of his powers, but in the time since he's more or less regained most of what he'd lost.

There are times when the experiences of this new body make him feel so, so odd. He's been injured before, and more times than he can count at that, but the sensation of extreme physical exhaustion he's only just overcome, the inherent feeling of depletion and weakness that still lingers ever so slightly in his frame is almost entirely unprecedented.

But right now, that's beside the point. Whatever happened did, and even if he's not all that clear on the specifics, enough time has passed that he's almost entirely himself again

(physically, at least. Mentally … Yeah, no, he's not going to go there)

The good news is that his visual range has expanded back to its prime, or close enough that the difference is barely noticeable.

The bad news is that his restored vision guarantees that he gets a damn good view of the literal monsters tumbling through the air and descending towards the island at breakneck speeds, the darkness of the night doing absolutely nothing to hide them from his eyes.

(Why? What even-?!)

The details are a little blurry, but he can see the writhing, animalistic, and unmistakably inhuman shapes that screech and howl and wail in a vile cacophony so loud it felt like someone was trying to stab him in the ears. There are dozens and dozens at least, and those were only the ones in his immediate field of vision.

Beside him, Donna twitches. Violently.

"?!"

There's a strange noise clawing at the back of her throat, some combination of alarm and disbelief and words (what the hell?!) that he doesn't have the patience to sort through, but it's edging on hysterical. Which is a bit much, honestly, but she can probably be excused under the current circumstances.

Only she seems to snap out of whatever stupor she's fallen into the very next second after he decides that, expression twisting into one of genuine horror.

"The city!" she gasps, and oh. "They're going to the city!"

Mark's eyes go wide.

He hadn't even realized, too busy trying to process everything and missing the obvious implication. Right as soon as he does, he starts picking up on the rumbling reverberations of heavy landings, and the first screams begin cutting through the air and echoing in his ears.

Because of course, he couldn't be allowed to have a few moments to think.

He spares another fleeting instance to exchange a look with Donna.

"Catch up."

And then he leans forward and sprints, air tunneling around him as he charges directly into what he's certain are the beginnings of an unmitigated shit show.

"Hey! Wait for me!"

...​

It hadn't taken him long to realize that calling Themyscira a city was a bit of a stretch. The 'city' had a population of some… six thousand themyscirans? If even that?

Please. It was barely a town by any legitimate metric, but he gained nothing from pointing the fallacy out.

Still, much as it pains him to admit it, there was clearly some thought put into its creation beforehand. The Royal Palace was technically beyond the settlement's limits, and most of the Themyscirans built their homes on the outskirts of Themyscira's heart and seemingly reserved that space for the most impressive architecture he's seen on the island, temples, and pavilions that snaked that dwarfed everything around them by a considerable margin. There was even a genuine coliseum, for whatever good that would do.

They may have been limited to timber and stone, but it's still the kind of construction that speaks of an impressive amount of forethought.

It was probably a shame, then, that a good chunk of it was currently on fire.

(And it wasn't his fault, which had been a legitimate risk with how furious he'd been just a little while ago.)

The scene he arrives in is chaos.

There are flames everywhere, smoke and ash are starting to clog the air in billowing waves as the beginnings of an out and out inferno continue to grow. People are screaming and fleeing in droves, heading deeper into the city - standardized evacuation procedures clearly haven't been needed for a long time with the island's ridiculous isolation, but from the bellows and cries for order that he's picking up, they at least still exist (and that's him being generous).

And speaking of running away-

He stands still for about a second. One second.

That's all the time it takes for something to leap at him through the clouds and smoke and convince him that expecting rationality and order from the feelings of civilians (or anything at all on this miserable island) is an exercise in futility.

Vaguely humanoid in shape, with gray leathery skin on a frame that was nauseatingly bulky, the proportions exaggerated to the point of obscenity. A human skull structure but intermixed with features that were almost bat-like. It was distinctly unnatural in a way that was obvious from the first glimpse, as though the two had been melded together. The curving wings that propel it forward in a mockery of graceful movement only further the point.

It's a…

Actually, he has no idea what he's looking at, but the thing screams at a pitch so high it could have likely shattered glass had there been any on hand. As it is, his eardrums aren't fairing too well, and he resists the urge to snarl back as it locks frenzied and pale, pupil-less white eyes on him and lunges. He curves his torso to the side just as it takes a swing at him with a massive taloned hand, the air brushing past his face from the force of the failed strike.

He winces as it screeches louder, and it sounds as though someone is trying to grind glass. It flaps its wings in a powerful burst, whirling on him and trying to press its feeble attempt of an attack, but he just clenches his fist and punches.

Once.

His blow strikes its center mass and he can hear its ribs shatter as its chest caves in, those pale eyes widening in visible and almost comical shock as the impact sends it tumbling away. It hits the ground hard, the force dragging in through soil and debris before its own bulk finally stills its motion, leaving it to lay there and gurgle weakly.

Mark blinks.

"That was disappointing."

And it was. He's not sure what he was expecting, but that was just pathetic.

Then again, there was far more than just the one, and he'd only just begun.

He can see them even now, as clear to him even through the ash and smoke and debris as they would be on a sunny day. They're not all the same, he realizes with a measure of surprise. They all vary, some of them wildly. All of them retain some form of humanoid shape, but it's as though each of them is a mockery of animal and human combined into one. An eight-foot tall bipedal lion features distended horrifically and crowned in a mane of serpents. Another winged man, but adorned with the head of a serpent. A hulking minotaur-like creature with the lower legs of a horse.


And others. Plenty of others, near and far, and they're rounding the outskirts of Themyscira with every passing second.

He realizes that he's somewhat torn. On the one hand, he wants to just stop and think despite how counterproductive that would be, because what the fuck?

On the other hand, he's spent the last three days in a perpetual state of frustration, and, coupled with his sheer outrage at… everything, he's suddenly desperate to break something. Or someone.

At this point, that distinction isn't all that important.

It's Lobo all over again, only not. There's no Superman dying at his feet here and forcing him to make a split-second decision he still can't explain. The Amazons are none of his concern. He's not a hero, or some naive samaritan willing to go out of his way to interfere in circumstances that've got nothing to do with him. He doesn't remotely care enough for anything of the sort.

And yet…

Mark smiles, and he's self-aware enough to realize that he probably looks quite deranged.

Abruptly, the winged beast at his feet jerks up and moves-

"Inhuman monsters threatening a settlement of primitive humans?"

-only to vanish beneath a burst of golden light that erupts out of his eyes with a negligent glance and reduces the weak little thing to ash.

It didn't have time to breathe.

His smile just grows wider. "This is just making me nostalgic."

They aren't Deviants, but he'll get some use out of them all the same.

...​

Time passes. He's not sure how much.

The fighting begins. It doesn't stop.

He carves through beast-men like wet tissue paper. Some of them are stronger, but whether he breaks them to pieces or incinerates them wholesale, they die all the same.

He's fully aware that he's acting like a lunatic, but he also knows that he doesn't care. The only caution he spares is the attention needed to target the beast-men closest to the fleeing civilians.

He notices the armed warriors who've finally seemed to stage some kind of defense, but he doesn't spare them a second glance.

Target the threat. Eliminate the threat. Rinse and Repeat.

He's running on instincts so deeply ingrained he falls into the same with the same ease of breathing, and he ever so quickly finds himself drowning in the same euphoria he'd been drunk on during his fight with Lobo.

[Do not rely entirely on what you once were. You will never live as such]

Shut up. Don't tell me what to do!

(Later, he'll stop and try to figure out just who he's talking to.)

He lets himself sink further and further into the haze of carnage and delight and habit, so much so that he nearly takes off Donna's head when she descents from above and lands right in front of him.

Her eyes go wide and she barely avoids the hook he sends her way.

"Are you crazy!?"

She looks harried, bruised, and battered in a way that speaks of a similar battle, but he doesn't apologize. He's still running on whatever adrenaline-equivalent his body functions on and it takes sheer force of will not to press the attack.

"Took you long enough." He says, and her outrage takes a more indignant edge.

"People were getting hurt, jackass! I had to help. And I beat as many of the Beastiamorphs as you did!"

That, he doubts but does not say

"Beastiamorphs?" He grunts instead, both because he doesn't feel the need to argue the point and because the name sounds ridiculous enough to warrant his contempt. Ordinarily he wouldn't bother, but just as before the fight's making him feel alive in ways he can't quite put into words and he's in as good a mood as he's ever going to get. "That name is atrocious."

"I didn't name them!" She crossed her arms "Diana told me about them, and the Justice League has them listed under that name-"
"Are there any left?"

It's a redundant question. He can look for them himself if he wants to, but there's enough background noise filtering through his senses that parsing through it all would be an effort best preserved for another time.

"Probably."

She rises back up into the air (Why can't he fly? He misses flight.) and gestures off to the side

"Philipus wants us back. The amazons are setting up arming up in force and we need to make sure no one gets hurt if one of those things sneak up on the civilians."

There's a dark look in her eyes that he takes to mean that there have already been casualties. No surprise there.

He's somewhat impressed that she's made no comment of how utterly terrible he looks, what with the blood and the gore that's nearly caking him from head to toe, but it's either shock or pragmatism that's keeping her silent and he'll take what he can get regardless.

"Do you know how many there are left?"

"Don't know." She shakes her head. "But Philipus says that this might just be the first wave. The Beastie Morphs are servants of Circe, and she never plays all her cards - are you okay?"

His mind's gone eerily blank, and whatever she sees on his face has her backing away with her hackles raised.

"They're servants of who?"

""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[]"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"Me.""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍["͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡
​

And then all hell breaks loose.

…​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and If you don't like it, please be courteous

 

[Firewillreign]

""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍[]"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"Me""͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡!ͥ̀̔ͮ̍["͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡"͔̱͍͇̘͙͐̿͡​

A woman appears in mid-air above them, a hazy glow of red light shimmering off of her skin in patterns that could make even his head spin, and Mark's mind almost blue screens from sheer relief.

It was just a second or two, but to someone with his sheer speed of motion and perception, it may as well have been a decade. He looked at her, processed the image in front of him, and came to a conclusion that sent a wave of relief roiling down his spine and all across the rest of his body.

It's not her

[Obviously]

He's fairly certain he's never assessed a situation so fast in either life - part of it had to be the adrenaline high he was still riding like a professional surfer at a high tide, but he'd be lying if he said that the rest didn't stem from the sheer 'fuck no' levels of instinctive terror that had spiked through his brain the second Donna had said her name.

It shouldn't have thrown him like that - Names were hardly exclusive, even to Eternals. There were half a dozen variations of Ikaris that he could think of off the top of his head, and that was just in one language. Connecting the name to her was a titanic leap. In hindsight, just the thought of it is absurd.

Hindsight is a bitch.

He scowls and looks up, meeting a pair of eyes that glittered like rubies.

The woman's features are strong, with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline that makes the contours of her face stand out more. Her skin is inhumanely pale and the color reminds him of dashboard chalk, the contrast between it and the fiery red of her shoulder-length hair is striking - The entire aesthetic is. The strapless black and red robes that cling to her torse and leave her shoulders bare shift and pulse, and something about them burns at his eyes.

Literally - they hurt to look at.

That part on its own is almost insulting in how ridiculous it is - he can see more of the electromagnetic spectrum than the majority of humans could ever even conceptualise, and somehow it's this newcomer's glorified get-up that trumps his vision.

"Well then," The woman says, red eyes gleaming as they flicker from him to Donna and back to him again. "What have we here?"

Her voice is low and melodious, and he's abruptly reminded of a venus fly trap - all pretty and appealing right until its prey gets too close, and then the jaws snap shut and start dissolving it in acrid acid

It isn't just the voice, either - the power he can almost taste as it wafts off of her is setting off all his alarm bells, and everything about her screams danger. Their proximity alone has the hairs on the back of his neck rising, and that's warning enough all by itself - it's been centuries since anyone or anything provoked this kind of instinctual reaction out of him.

[Threat]

No shit, he thinks sarcastically, before freezing

That hadn't been him - where the hell did that come from-?

"Circe!" Donna spits and derails that entire line of thought

That damn name. Why couldn't it have been literally anything else?

Stupid question - Obviously, it's because nothing could ever be easy.

Fuck.

"That is my name. I don't know yours, though." The glow in her eyes flares brighter when Donna clenches her fists and tenses as if to leap at her. "Oh, but I do know that look. That righteous fury - oh, that is very familiar.
I stand corrected, girl. I think I know full well who you are."

"You-!"

"And there is it is again. Barring an exceptionally foolish few, there isn't an Amazon on this island with the sheer nerve to stand before me alone - certainly not one who would dare be so bold as to address me directly without even a flimsy little weapon to defend herself with."

"I'm not scared of you, you evil bitch."

Circe doesn't lash out at the insult - if anything, she looks amused.

"No, I don't think you are. There are always the outliers, I suppose." Her lips curve upwards. "The brave, the valiant, the noble."

She snorts contemptuously

"The heroes. A dime a dozen, and they're always my favorites. All those lofty ideals, that vaunted courage - they always think it'll allow them to defeat me. They understand far too late that those petty banalities do them no good when they face me - No, they just make them all the more satisfying to break - and you'll be no different, Donna Troy."

Donna flinches ever so slightly, and that manages to sour Mark's mood even further.

"I must say, It's good to finally put a face to the name." There was nothing good about it if Circe's tone was any kind of an indicator. "I've heard all about you - anyone worth anything in the right circles has. Themyscira's latest ward. Diana's little charity project - the would-be wonder brat."

Her voice goes sharp on the last word, and this time there's no disguising the raw malice behind it. Donna seems to stutter, pale, and then her. expression twists in hurt before settling into raw rage. She takes half a step forward, and the forest floor quakes and tremors beneath her.

Circe doesn't miss it, she'd have to be blind to, and her delight seems to grow more blatant - and more unhinged.

"Oh, did I strike a nerve?" She presses a hand to her lips mockingly, and Donna makes a noise at the back of her throat that's half rasp, half growl. Mark doesn't blame her, he's halfway pissed off himself.

He doesn't know where this little tirade is going, nor does he particularly care. He's about five seconds away from treating her like the obvious combatant that she is, and the only thing keeping him still is the knowledge that enemies don't just show up to gloat unless they have another trick up their sleeve - that, or they're plain stupid.

He just needs to figure out which is which and soon because he's getting sick and tired of getting bitten in the ass when he least expects it.

"Call off your monsters," Donna says instead, and he knows she's about to leap into action. The tension in the clearing rockets so far up the scale somebody could have fingerpainted with the stuff. He crouches slightly and starts drawing his energy to the back of his eyes, letting the heat and pressure build up like an all too familiar fuse. "Leave the amazons alone. Now."

Circe's eyes flash dangerously.

"Careful, little girl. You do not command me. I have visited fates far worse than deaths on greater fools than you, and for far lesser insults at that. I have no qualms about giving a repeat performance."

Red light began to coalesce in her hands.

"None. At. All."

"I'm not afraid of you!" Donna yells again, and Circe bares her teeth viciously in answer.

"Let's fix that, shall we?"

The air surrounding them tunneled and burst explosively as Donna launches herself up, fist cocked. Part of him wants to scream at the outright mythical level of boneheadedness it took to charge an enemy you knew nothing about. Another part of him remembers the Lobo fiasco and promptly tells the rest of him to shut up and move his ass.

He doesn't get the chance to.

"No."

There's a burst of crimson that nearly blinds him, and then the red light that had pooled in Circe's hands lances out far faster than even he'd expected and strikes out at Donna a half second before her fist would have gone for the older woman's face.

"Augh!"

It hits her in the chest at point-blank range and... wraps around her, almost. Her momentum dies instantly and she drops like a stone - or maybe an anvil, because when she hits the ground below it almost craters around her. Dirt and rubble get blasted almost straight up past the tree line from the sheer force of it.

Mark tries to help - tries being the operative word, because the instant he leaped forward to help, the hazy red aura that was still grinding Donna into the forest floor surged up to meet him. A part of it breaks off, hazy and malleable like a cloud even as it propels itself up towards him, and he's so focused on Circe - the enemy combatant, the target - that he doesn't perceive it until it's already closing on him.

When the effect hits, it's easily the worst thing he'd ever felt in his life. Space distorts, his balance gets blown to hell, and the next thing he knows, he's driven straight down into the earth across from Donna.

Son of a bitch.

It's like having vertigo and a hangover at the same time, only multiplied by a thousand. Nausea bubbles up in his gut, and he closes his eyes. His balance is shot to hell - whatever this was, it was warping the physical space around to stop him from moving and distorting his perception of it to stop him even trying.

So much for helping. He can barely tell up from down, and Circe doesn't even deign to look at him.

"Attacking me directly with nothing but fists and fury. How inspired." She clucked her tongue at Donna's wordless howl of rage. "All brawn and not an ounce of wits. Diana's teaching through and through, no doubt. Disappointing, but perhaps the fault lies in me for expecting originality from an Amazon, especially the second-hand stray of my most hated enemy."

Donna didn't respond to that, possibly because she shouldn't - her prison and his were the same.

"Repulsively stagnant and pathetic, all of them."

If current circumstances were any different - meaning if he wasn't currently working out all the ways he could kick the woman so hard and so far out she wouldn't hit the ground until she passed over the horizon, Mark would have been inclined to agree. If wasted potential was a currency, this island Themyscira could tank the global economy a thousand times over.

A united community, immortality and free will, and all three were wasted without a care in the world.

The injustice of it burns.

Seeing everything he (they) wanted given so freely and squandered all the same... the irony isn't lost on him, and just thinking about it is enough to drive him to the edge of hysteria, present situation be damned - it makes him want to rip his hair out by the handfuls.

And that would be just for starters.

Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe the woman can hear his thoughts - he won't discount it, anything is possible with preternatural abilities - either way, Circe finally tilts her head towards him in acknowledgment. The distortion and the pressure keeping him in place and six shades off-kilter lessens, going from debilitating to just massively irritating even as her gaze locks on to his.

"You, I've never heard off." She raised an eyebrow. "And a boy, too - Is Diana picking up every little beggar and urchin-"

The words die in her throat and her eyes go wide as his burn gold, and that's all the warning she gets before he fires his optic beams up and at her with enough heat and force to cleave through solid tungsten like a hot knife through butter. They catch her in the lower abdomen and catapult her back, and immediately the crimson-powered hold on them breaks. Mark wastes no time flinging them both back, shooting out a hand and yanking Donna with him until she regains the sense of mind to take to the air again on her own.

Distance is key, after all.

Circe looks particularly ferocious as she rockets back in under a heartbeat. He tries to cut her off with another blast (His consistency is shit, he hasn't finished regenerating yet) but this time she's ready for it. When the beams go for her, she's somehow fast enough to react and more than ready for them. She's pushed back some ten feet at most before she swipes her left hand furiously and twists her extended fingers, and the beams somehow refract off her body at an angle like light through a prism, rendered completely harmless.

He cuts them off with a scowl and backs up further.

The ease that she dismisses them with is a little offensive - No, it's extremely offensive. Exceedingly offensive.

Not even Lobo had shrugged them off that easily. Nothing in his entire history ever had, and that particular run was seven thousand years long and still counting (against his best efforts)

"That," She hisses frigidly as she towers above even Donna, high up in the air as she was. "Was rather rude."

The air around her flashes red for a split second, the color so stark and deep against the backdrop of the night that it looks like someone painted it there.

Donna doesn't even look at him before blurring forward, attacking head-on again, but she's forced to drop so low she nearly hits the ground as an arc of something that resembles coruscating plasma blasts out of Circe's extended palm and cleaves the forest behind her in a ruinously expansive arc. Half the vegetation is disintegrated instantly and anything not caught in the immediate blast radius detonates in an explosion of crimson flames a heartbeat later.

The resulting heat and gales of winds buffet all three of them are strong enough to fling ordinary humans away like rag dolls.

"I'll deal with you in a moment." Circe snarls at a wide-eyed and (finally) still Donna, her attention still locked on Mark. "I have manners to instill."

Yes, it was safe to say the woman was pissed.

"In my defense," He says dryly, and he shifts out of the way of a crackle of red light aimed for his head "You did attack this island first."

Which is only his problem because he was on the island at the time and isn't quite enough of a monster to stand aside and let events run their course, he thinks but doesn't say.

[You are better than that]

Debatable-

Mark goes cold all over.

He heard that - the same instinct that had kept him from leaving this unilateral disappointment of an island days ago, but stronger.

More pronounced.

Sentient.

He isn't imagining it. There's something in his head - And of course, he can't actually do a damn thing about it because he's in the middle of an island-spanning clusterfuck with a woman who's almost certainly about to try and kill him and everybody in the general vicinity with extreme prejudice.

"I do as I please."

"Good for you." Her eyes narrow, but she doesn't immediately attack again and he's not in any state to care about what else the gesture might mean beyond looking out for an attack. He's compartmentalizing so hard half his brain is getting shoved into a box and nailed shut just until he can deal with this. "That doesn't mean anything to me."

"Impudent hero."

She sneers and spits out the word like it's poison, and then rears back again when Mark immediately laughs in her face.

"I'm even less of a hero than you are." Donna makes a noise to his side that he doesn't bother acknowledging, focused as he is on Circe and the ripple of surprise that alters her expression. "I don't know who you are and I don't care, either. You cannot imagine how much I don't care. I'm not even supposed to be on this island, and the sole reason I'm a part of this... debacle isn't because I'm being heroic, it's because I've got nothing better to do with my life and you made it rain an army's worth of acceptable targets to take my frustrations out on."

[That's not entirely true]

Whatever you are, fuck off

[As you wish]

"If things were any different, I'd probably be thanking you. As it stands, though?" He shook his head. "This tirade of yours means jack and shit to me, and it's giving me a headache. So if you could kindly wrap it up?"

He angles himself forward, a plan to break her guard the moment he provokes her into attack already at the forefront of his thoughts.

"That'd be great."

...

"...You're not lying."

The way her face blanks out and. the way the anger in her voice turns into contemplation should, in theory, be a good thing. In reality, it makes him and Donna tense so hard it's a miracle their spines don't snap under the strain.

"Interesting. Very interesting - I can see you, girl." Donna freezes from where she'd been trying to get behind her for a surprise attack. "Don't try it, it won't end well for you. And as for you-"

He bites down on the inside of his cheek when she rounds on him again. It's about all he can do besides keeping his gaze pinned on her hands - he's seen how fast she could move when she wanted to.

"I'm curious, then. What do you want, if not to oppose me?"

He almost laughs at that one.

Finally, an easy answer.

"Honestly?" He bares his teeth. "I just want something to break."

"And you actually mean that, don't you? How novel." She purrs in delight. "I have business to attend to while I'm here - a few treasures to pick up, a queen to humble, but if it's a fight you want-"

She claps her hands - Mark and Donna both have the presence of mind to fling themselves halfway across the clearing before her hands even touch, but it's not enough to get clear of the shockwave of energy that chases after them.

Boom.

It's not the force that bothers him, but the lack of leverage. The ground shudders and displaces, blasted away like quicksand, and there's nothing to anchor himself to, so he goes tumbling with an undignified roll with a snarl that goes unheard over the explosive detonation of air.

Donna's flight means she can generate her own leverage and sort of hold herself in mid-air, but it's a near thing.

He misses his flight.

It's a petulant, downright childish thought, but he yearns for the ability to take the skies as he digs himself out from underneath a mountain of dislodged soil and dirt that had buried him under its bulk like an avalanche, and he yearns for it a hell of a lot more when he sees the gargantuan cloud of red-mist blotting out the sky overhead and the shapes that are coming out of it.

No, not shapes.

Shape. Singular.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Donna blurts out as she lands next to him, and he's inclined to agree with the sentiment.

There's a cacophonous screech as the reptilian skyscraper of a beast fully manifests into reality in all its horrible glory, its long serpentine body trailing behind the shifting heads and ending into lengthy, sinuous tails.

That's right. Heads. Plural - as in more than one.

And every one of them is about the size of a camper van.

"Okay, I'll admit it." He admits as he eyes the monster, watching it as it stretches out above them... and keeps stretching, rising higher and higher with a heaving body - It was like it was just waking up. The sheer scale was ridiculous. "I may have been asking for this one."

Donna's glare is more than a little murderous. "You think!?"

"As I said, I have business to attend to, and I am nothing if not a woman of my word." Circe gave them a final smile, one that lingered when she turned to him in particular. "I don't care about the girl - Diana's despair at her death would be a lovely treat, but you? You, I find interesting. Try not to disappoint me and die too quickly, would you?"

Then she vanishes in another burst of red light, and all nine of the Hydra's snarling heads seem to finally awaken, snapping in their direction and belting out a battle cry that tears the night in two.

Then it charges.

...​

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Donna Troy can categorize her life into two neat little parts without much effort.

Before Diana, and after.

And the time before Wonder Woman had swooped down from the sky had been, frankly, complete and total garbage.

For as long as she could remember, the only constants in her life back then were the foster system and the revolving door that was her entire experience of it in a nutshell.

She never spent more than six months in any one home before being bounced back to the system and into another, and the homes were only just that in the barest sense of the word.

If she was lucky, the couples that took her in just flat-out didn't care about her - she was either a paycheck to them, a way to show off how damn great they were for taking in the most difficult sort of stray, or both.

It took her a while longer than it should have to realize that those were the best homes she could have gotten.

So long as she kept her head down and pretended to play by the rules, she got a roof over her head and people who were easy to work around when she wanted to break said rules on the sly because when it came down to it, they just didn't give a crap, not really.

Eventually, she'd either mess up something fierce or they'd get bored, whichever came first, and she'd wind up right back where she started.

Rinse and repeat.

If she was unlucky, she'd get the people who actually cared.

The do-gooders who were in it for the kids and the bleeding hearts and wanna-be parents who genuinely wanted to look out for her.

She hated those.

Because no matter how well things started, eventually, like clockwork, she would have to watch that light in their eyes fade the longer they kept her around, getting dimmer and dimmer as she kept screwing up and trying to be better and screwing up harder while trying not to, all of it in an epic downwards spiral down to good old rock bottom.

And just like before, she'd also wind up right back where she started, only this time she'd do it feeling like a big bucket of dog turds no one would ever want to look at twice.

So, yeah.

Donna had never been of the success stories people heard about in the news or saw on billboards driving up on the freeway - for her, foster care had sucked ass.

And then her powers had kicked in, and boy, it got so much worse.

Not at first, though.

At first, it was fun.

Flying was amazing, being near-invulnerable was sweet, and getting strong enough to toss an RV down a street without breaking a sweat overnight - like she almost had, and hadn't that been a near miss - was awesome right up until Donna realized that from then on, she would be living in a world of cardboard and damn near everyone else around her might as well have been made of wet tissue paper.

It was a miracle that she hadn't managed to hurt anyone - and she'd managed to wreck plenty.

Having to explain snapped door handles and pulverized alarm clocks and a shattered wall or three with anything but the truth was a nightmare. She couldn't tell anyone about the powers, didn't know where they even came from, and so she just... didn't.

Surprise surprise, that went down about as well as curdled milk.

Suddenly, as far as anyone was concerned, she was a delinquent and a hot mess to boot - like her resume as one of those kids no one could ever place right wasn't glowing already.

Juggling it all got harder and harder after that - every part of her life felt like sand slipping through her fingers no matter how much she tried to get a grip on it, and on the worst days the rest of the world was a box with walls that kept closing in on her every time she blinked... until the day she happened to be back on her way from school, minding her own damn business as always, and the street she was walking across exploded.

Lo and behold, there was Diana, all spandex and glory, starring down and primed to go head to head and toe to toe with a snarling, half-rabid Cheetah.

And Donna was right smack dab in the middle of them.

The only thing missing was a neon sign over her head that read "The Universe Hates This Sucker" and she would have been set for life.

Things happened, hands went down, and when the dust settled there she sat, slumped on the sidewalk, dazed and still clenching the one fist she'd used to cold-cock Cheetah instead of running away like any sane person would have.

"That was rather impressive."

Diana stood above her, haloed in sunlight and smiling down at her. Completely unruffled and unphased by her wounds and bruises, like Donna hadn't just watched her kick nine different shades of crud out of Cheetah before manhandling her with her golden lasso.

"Could I trouble you for a name?"

One conversation, a visit, and a month later, Donna stepped foot onto Themyscira for the first time.

...​

Life on the island wasn't like anything she'd ever had before, and that was a good thing.

The amazons were welcoming even if they spent the first few months without a single clue what to do with her - they separated from the world millennia ago. Donna was alien to them - and Diana herself was never away for more than a couple of days without a visit.

That Hippolyta had been and still is more open to her than anyone with that woman's history with outsiders probably worked wonders as well.

Donna likes it here.

Likes never having to hide her powers, likes never having to pretend to fit in, not when everyone was just as odd as she ever was - she even likes the lessons and the training Philipus had ardently forced on her, even if the captain of the royal guard was as unbending as a cinder block and liked to work her to the bone and quiz her till her brain as just about ready to melt out her ears.

It was good.

Is good. Not all rainbows and sunshine, duh, and the island had its hangups, but...

Themyscira is Home.

Capital "H" this time, or the closest thing to it she's likely to get.

So when the sky started raining monsters the size of SUVs like they were going out of season, Donna didn't need anyone to order her to leap into the fray.

Teeth, claws, and murderous bloodlust aside, they were just another target for her to hit.

... in theory.

Unfortunately, it was all a lot easier said than done when said problems could punch, bite, and chew back.

And that was before the literal witch-bitch sicced a monster on Mark and her big enough to use them both as toothpicks and flickered a way as all hell broke loose for the tenth time that night.

It goes like this:

Circe teleports away in a wave of crimson, the Hydra twitches, and suddenly there's ten thousand tons of scaled, screeching multi-headed lizard dragon bearing down on them at full terrifying throttle.

"Move!"

Mark roars and hurls himself back like a bat out of hell, already blasting away at it with beams of golden light and sizzling heat that pulse through the air with a thrum she can almost feel in her bones.

It works - Donna sees poison-green scales blacken and rupture in the seconds it takes her to fly up and away - but only technically. There's so much of the hydra's bulk surging down on them it's like trying to kill a living mountain with a particularly dangerous laser pointer.

Then the hydra slams down where Mark was standing and its heads surge. Nine sets of jaws snap open and unleash a collective warbling roar that's somehow both high-pitched and deep enough to match the grinding of stones in a rockslide.

The damaged scales visibly pop off, replaced by new growth and knitting flesh even as Mark keeps scoring lines and lines worth of the stuff from his position somewhere far beneath and away from her.

The hydra's roars reach a fever pitch when, on the third pass-by, he manages to carve a burning trench clear through the leftmost head's right eye. The entire organ bursts like jelly, viscous green goo steaming and slopping down its serpentine neck.

It's just about the most disgusting thing she's ever seen, and it gets worse as the wind changes and that exact head along with three others arcs up and focuses dead center on her, seven eyes filled with foreboding malice. The remaining five arc down instead, and she doesn't have to be a genius to realize immediately that they've locked on to Mark.

Then all nine jaws unhinge again, and this time, Donna sees baleful green light well up in their depths.

Her eyes go wide.

"Oh, s-"

Fwoosh.

Even as high up as she is, she can feel the air go bone dry and scorching before the ocean of fire that seems to span the entire freaking horizon wells up at her like an avalanche going the wrong way.

She turns and rockets away again, but not quite fast enough this time. She feels white hot pain lance up through her as the flames catch at her feet, burning her sandals and the bottom of her peplos to nothing and doing a hell of a job on her feet and the back of her legs before she manages to get out of range, and she bites through her lower lip trying to swallow a tortured scream.

The injury immediately turns out to be twice as costly as it looks, because in the moment of pain, she falters and loses both speed and height. Not nearly enough to drop to the ground, but enough that in the seconds it takes her to blink blurry eyes and flail over in mid-air, there's a maw full of spear-like fangs closing in on her

The good news is that she manages not to get shredded into bloody strips. In the time it takes for the teeth to snap shut savagely, she gets the sense to tug her knees up to her chest and kick out at the hydra's snout with as much force as she can bring to bear.

Which is a hell of a lot, even when suspended in midair.

Crack.

The bad news is that she's just kicked with her injured feet, and her vision goes white and blurry at the edges even as the hydra's head snaps back with a burst of air and a snarl.

The really bad news is instead of just staggering in flight this time, she loses control completely and ends up letting the force of her kick fling her the long way down to the forest floor.

Which is, coincidentally, also on fire.

Before she can react to that - probably by swearing until she goes blue in the face - something slams into her before she hits the ground. A pair of arms wrap around her in a vice grip, and the world blurs in a burst of speed.

The fires vanish, the acrid smell of smoke and scorching air gets left behind, and by the time the acceleration cuts off and she finds herself staggering onto her knees and glancing back, the hydra is only visible in the distance.

Still the size of a skyscraper with nine flailing heads that continue to belch flames in a devastating series of arcs around its surroundings, but there's enough space between them that she can breathe.

"Are you alright?"

She glances up.

She isn't sure what to make of Mark Milton. She'd spent the better part of a couple of hours talking to him - well, at him. He spent most of the time being about as expressive as a brick (and frustrated and sad, almost). - and it's only hindsight that she realizes she'd been so caught up in the excitement of meeting someone new on Themyscira, close to her age no less, that she really hasn't learned anything about him.

Well, besides the fact that he's strong and she's pretty sure that he can run faster than she can fly, which is just, like, offensive, but she can complain about that later.

"Are you alright?" He says again, words insistent.

Good question.

Donna glances down as she tries to rise up. Her legs from the knees down are lobster red, and the skin feels flayed and raw. Her feet ache something fierce and the feeling of dirt and rough earth against her soles stings like a bitch.

But it's not terrible. She'd always healed fast, and if she somehow didn't, there was always the purple healing ray.

"Fine." She grits out and rises to the air steadily, aiming an angry glare back at the hydra - the thing is still caught up eradicating the forest like the wildlife had personally offended it. "I'm going to shove a tree so far up that monster's ass all nine heads are going to taste the bark for the rest of its life."

Something passes over his face then, pulling at his lips. Like the ghost of a ghost of a smile. If things were any better, she'd crow in victory at finally getting a real reaction out of him.

"Won't be very long then. " He stares back at the hydra and his expression blanks and hardens again "Go."

Donna blinks. "What?"

"Go," Mark says again, blue eyes turning to bore into her with visible impatience. "I can't fight with you here. I don't know you, I don't what you can do, and I'm at my best alone."

He points in the opposite direction and turns her back to her.

"Go."

It takes her a long beat to parse through that, and then she clenches her fists in indignant shock and starts to swell up.

"Hey-!"

"She's going after your queen."

"Cerci." His face twists on the name like he's swallowing something foul. Which was fair enough, she gets that. "She said she wants to humble a queen. She's going after Hippolyta."

"One of us has to stay here. That thing is going to get bored of torching shrubbery soon enough and it's going to blast its way into the city proper. They barely survived the small ones, they're not going to survive that." He gestures to the Hydra. "Someone needs to warn and back up your Queen, and it'll be better coming from someone she actually knows and trusts."

That... made sense.

She feels the realization sink into her stomach, cold and ugly and infuriating. He can probably tell, too, because glances back at her one last time.

"It's up to you. Now, go."

And then he darts forward, breaks into a run that accelerates into a blur. A second later, there's a burst like muted thunder and in the distance, she sees the hydra stagger.

And then, again, the carnage begins.

For a moment, Donna just stares.

Then she howls, curses violently enough for the words themselves to be considered weapons and hurtles into flight toward the palace.

Behind her, the world lights up in hues of green and gold.

...​

When she gets to doesn't bother going around the walls, she goes through them.

Better safe than sorry, she repeats fiercely as she smashes through wall after wall, marble shattering in her wake as drills straight towards the throne room and explodes into it with a shower of debris.

And then she freezes.

Literally.

"Tut tut, girl." Circe beams at her from her position on the throne, her smile wide with cruel delight as she takes her in. "Did you really think it would be that easy?"

Donna doesn't answer her.

She can't. There's an aura of red light wafting across the room, and it feels like she's trying to move through drying cement.

She can't even open her mouth to speak.

"Then again, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything better given your... less than stellar role models" Circe turns to the side. "Isn't that right, old friend?"

She sees Hippolyta then. She's trapped, the same as Donna is, surrounded by a circle of fallen, bloodied guards. Her spear is still extended in a dead charge and her face is a picture of bitter, unyielding rage.

"Now, wherever did you hide-?" Circe's eyes widen. "Ah, there it is."

She extends a hand to the side, palm down, and the stonework by the base of the throne shatters as something large and heavy flies up to meet it.

It's a chest, cube-like and made of pale-white stone save for one face that Donna could see, etched with a simple mural.

A feathered helm painted deep night blue.

And Hippolyta's eyes flicker unmistakably at the sight of it, with sheer, horrible dread.

So much so that, for a moment, the Queen manages to lurch forward, the ground quaking with every heaving step.

One step, two, even three before the magic trapping her shimmers and pins her in place again.

"No!"

"Yes," Circe breathes rapturously, one hand held out to pin Hippolyta in place as her efforts to escape redouble whilst the other takes hold of her prize and makes it flicker away with a burst of red mist. "Now you're getting it. The age of my revenge is at hand, and before I'm done, I will utterly destroy-"

She's cut off when the throne room shakes.

"Already?" The witch seemed stunned. "However did he- No!"

Her hand snaps up and halts Donna in her charge, her mad-bull rush stopped dead in its tracks with her fist inches away from her.

"That was a mistake." There's something twisted and heady with evil promise in the words as Circe bears her fangs. "But again, it is one lies with your elders. They should have taught you better. But no matter."

She snaps her fingers, and this time Donna can't even think to stop herself from screaming in horror when the queen of the Amazon's head snaps back with a spray of blood and a howl of agony.

"A punishment for your ward's shortsightedness. Savor it, Hippolyta, for it is only the beginning." Circe grins wickedly when she turns back her, malevolent eyes shining crimson. "Till we meet again, little wonder girl."

She disappears in a burst of light right.

Not a second later, the roof caves in with a rain of pulverised stone and Mark crashes down into the pavilion.

He's alive, mottled in bruises and sporting a rather vicious-looking cut that runs down his shoulder and across his torso. His skin is also steaming, the air shimmering in heat haze as it wafts off of him, and he doesn't have a lick of clothing on him.

Donna doesn't spare him a second glance.

Not when she's too busy cradling Hippolyta's head in her lap and desperately trying to staunch the bleeding from the jagged pit that was once her left eye.

"I-" He looks around the ravaged throne room and then back down to himself with a sharp, muted scowl. "want my damn armour back. Where's-"

{It Is Time}​

There's no warning.

His voice stutters, something urgent and stunned and fearful in his last words, and by the time she turns back to him, his eyes have already gone gold, his body's locked up, and he tumbles backward onto the floor and into dead unconsciousness.

...​

Next Chapter: Answers at last!

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

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[Firewillreign]

Mark wakes up suspended over nothingness, in a space larger than he can grasp, empty of everything but himself and lit by a golden radiance two shades too sharp to be ordinary daylight.

When he looks up to find the source, slow and sluggish - hadn't he just been in a fight? - he feels himself go very, very still.

https://imgur.com/htFeAty

Titanic. Gargantuan. So immeasurably large that trying to understand his size was An entirely useless effort. He could've been a million miles away and still seemed larger than the moon.

Slowly, Mark steps back and tries to stand on his feet beneath the golden god's gaze.

"Tiamut." He whispers dully, mind just about screaming with the implications.

The celestial doesn't answer.

But someone else does.

"Not quite."

The voice that comes from behind him has him tensing like iron and whirling on the spot, optic beams charging on instinct and on the verge of spilling out

"Easy."

-when he suddenly freezes, the light in his eyes sputtering and dying as they widen at the sight of the impossible.

Tall, with rich dark skin and warm, unmistakable features. Armored in the same blue and gold vibranium suit he'd held onto for millennia, engraved with the same Eternian script all of them had added to their own suits as time crawled by and left them all the same.

He stands there, completely and utterly unchanged as all Eternals ever were and would be, and Mark goggles hopelessly.

"Phastos?"

The Inventor Eternal smiles and folds his arms behind his back, unphased and unbothered by the ridiculous look on his face.

"Come on, old friend. Let's take a walk."

Then he turns and strides away into the void.

Mark stares after him, jaw unhinged, before scrambling to his feet and dashing in pursuit. His feet make strange reverberating thumps as he moves, as though he's running over glass but

He's never been out of shape, is literally biologically incapable of it even, but by the time he crosses the short distance between them and staggers to Phastos's side, he's gasping for breath like his lungs are on the verge of failure.

"How?"

The way he mouths the one word is the most pitiful, desperate thing he's ever heard throughout the entirety of his collective existence, but he can't bring himself to care.

He doesn't even acknowledge it.

Neither, for that matter, does Phastos.

"Do you remember the Uni-Mind?" The older eternal asks pointedly, in lieu of a real answer "The synergetic power flow we created when Sersi-"

Mark cringes at the name despite himself and his raging mind.

"-pooled our collective energies together and used them to stop the emergence of Tiamut?"

He doesn't trust himself to speak, so he nods instead.

Phastos nods back

"Yes, well, as it turns out, snuffing out a god in his planetary cradle isn't quite as easy as that. And what little we actually did do had unintended consequences."

"I don't understand."

And that's the truth, but he's not at all torn up about it.

Getting confused and feeling like an idiot when listening to Phastos speak is so achingly, nostalgically bitter-sweet that it has him forcing down lumps in his throat and suffering through stinging eyes, and he knows he's doing a shit job of hiding it.

Phastos either doesn't notice or decides to spare his dignity, for whatever good that would do.

"Celestials are more than just their corporeal forms, Ikaris."

Getting addressed by that name - by his name - after all this time is one step shy from a punch to the gut. He hisses out a breath - but nothing more than that as the words wash over him.

"They're beings beyond time and space. As close to omnipotent as you can get without being the real thing. We destroyed Tiamut's body and temporarily stunted his manifestation into the physical universe, but we didn't kill him. Not even close, and not even if we had a million years to try. You'd have better luck putting out the sun."

There's a lot to unpack there.

Temporarily.

Too much

"Then we didn't kill him. Is that-?" He turns back to the looming celestial behind them, breathing uneasily, but he feels more than sees Phastos shake his head.

"That's not him. Not entirely"

The words are relieving in the same way that being told the bomb you were sitting on wasn't likely to explode.

"Phastos."

"Right." Finally, the other eternal sighs and stops walking. A hand rises to pinch the bridge of his nose, the same way it always did whenever he struggled to dumb down a concept for the rest of them. "Better rip off the bandage, then."

He turns to Mark and looks him dead in the eye.

"When we initiated the uni-mind and connected to Tiamut's mind we opened ourselves up to him. That's why Sersi's gambit worked - the Sleeping Celestial understood what we were doing and why we were doing it and he allowed us to prevent the emergence."

Mark swallows. A pit of foreboding opens up in his stomach "But that isn't the end of it.

Phastos shakes his head gravely.

"When we broke apart the uni-mind, Tiamut stayed connected to us. To all of us. His body was unmade, but his consciousness is more than just energy and matter as we understand them, and it was still active and more than capable of influencing the universe, even if his capabilities were only a sliver of what they should have been. But a sliver of the kind of power it takes to make galaxies - that's the power celestials operate with - is still beyond anything we could have ever understood."

"When you dove into the sun-"

It's said so flatly that Mark almost doesn't understand before Phastos continues, blind to his stunned recoil.

"Tiamut was still there - with you, in your mind. He understood you, then. Your pain, your guilt and shame and remorse, and above all else, your unyielding desire to give up everything that was ever a part of your life no matter how far you had to go to get rid of it in its entirety."

"And he decided to grant that wish in a way that only he could. To unmake Ikaris completely - wipe the slate clean, and give you room to start over somewhere you could never interact with anything of your past again." Slowly, Phastos raises a hand and gestures to him. "And here we are, Mark."

...

For a long beat, the silence stretches on.

All the while, he tries to think.

To muster up the will to say anything.

He finds that he can't.

Sixteen long years, and now answers at last.

And not one of them was worth a damned thing.

"He did this to me."

It's repetitive and worthless, but it's all he can say.

Phastos smiles sadly. "He gave you what you wanted.

"I didn't want this." The burst of fury ignites like a wildfire, quick and blazing and burns itself out even faster still. "I wanted an end!"

Mark wants to scream and howl and rage, but the very thought saps him of energy. The outburst takes nearly everything out of him as it is.

He can feel the sixteen year-long cloak of apathy that he'd only just banished away with the thrill of fighting creeping over his shoulders, threatening to smother him again.

Except, there's one last light left.

"He did this to me, but you're here too." He dares to look at Phastos.

The burgeoning hope is crushed swiftly when Phastos places both hands on his shoulders and gives him a pitying look.

"I'm not really here. Not truly." He carries on firmly even as Mark's face crumples. "I'm just a fragment - a temporary snapshot of the real Phastos that Tiamut wove into your psyche before he remade you. A final parting gift and an explanation for if... when you refused to take to this life as well as you could have."

He tries to speak through the tidal wave of misery that the answer brings him and finds that his tongue has turned to lead. His fists clench and unclench as he tries to move it despite that.

"The voice, then." The words taste like ash and dirt as he spits them out. "The pressure at the back of my skull, the reason I stuck around on this shit-hole of an island when I should have swam back to the States. That was you."

He gets a nod for his efforts.

"Yes. After all this time doing nothing, you needed the right nudge to move."

"Then why now?" He can't stop the bitter edge from seeping into his words. "Why now, when I've been living this ridiculous parody of a life-

The derision on the one word alone could have ended worlds.

"-for nearly two decades?"

"Because in the past sixteen years, Mark-"

"Don't call me that!"

He snaps before he's consciously aware of it, but Phastos ignores him placidly. It sparks another wave of rage in him, but he doesn't get to use it.

"-you have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that you are, and follow me on this one, a complete dumpster fire of an individual."
...

"W...What?"

"Did you expect me to be nice about it?" Phastos asks flatly. "I'm here to finally nudge you into getting off your ass, not to butter up that bottomless well of self-inflicted misery you call a soul."

"I-"

"You don't get to keep whining about both lives, past and present when you literally flew to your death in the most excessively dramatic way possible to escape the first and continuously insist on squandering the second because you still can't get over yourself. That's not how it damn well works, you idiot."

"Phastos-!"

"Do not interrupt me, because this has been a long time coming. It's time to cut the pity parade short, buddy, because it passed the point of being sympathetic a thousand years ago and now it's just downright pathetic."

"What the hell do you want from me?!"

"That!" Phastos roars back and Mark nearly chokes on his tongue. "Emotion! Signs of life! Actual engagement! You're alive, Mark. Act like it!"

"I don't want to be!" He yells helplessly, suddenly aware of the fact that he's been stumbling back as Phastos advances on him, a strangely terrifying expression on his face. "I never wanted any of this!"

"Tough. shit." The answer is merciless. "You are, you have it, and it's yours, so deal with it."

"I don't know how."

It sounds so pathetic he wants to disappear. He just wants to be gone.

But he's not.

There's still only Phastos, looking down on him.

Literally. He's on his knees now, and he's not entirely sure how he ended up there.

"I don't know how."

"Then learn."

Mark laughs at that.

Or sobs.

One or the other.

"That's not as easy as you make it sound. You were always the smart one."

"Not smart. Just well-learned. It's what happens when you live life the way you're supposed to." Phastos says softly. "You make mistakes. You learn from them. You make more and you learn from those too. Most of all, you grow up, like the rest of us did."

He hears the implication there loud and clear.

"Like I didn't."

"Like you didn't." Phastos agrees, though not unkindly. "For what it's worth, it wasn't all your fault. Not at the very beginning. Ajak should have never told you alone of the emergence."

Ajak.

Mark ducks his head to the empty nothingness beneath them both.

"I'm sorry." He whispers. "About her. About all of it."

"I know."

It's an acknowledgment and not forgiveness. And they both know it. Strangely, that makes him feel better. The sensation is so foreign he almost doesn't recognize it.

Then there's a hand being offered to him, and he finds himself looking up into Phastos's eyes.

"Get up."

There's an implication there too.

Phastos quirks a brow. "I don't have forever."

"We literally do."

"Very funny, smartass."

He sounds pleased, though, and his face shows it all the more when Mark takes his hand and allows himself to be pulled up.

"Now stay on your feet, Mark."

"It's Ikaris."

The protest rings hollow

"It was." Phastos allows. "And it always will be. Your life before will never not be a part of you, and no change in names will ever lessen that. But it's time you stopped letting it be all of you. Ikaris has had his go. It's time for Mark to take the wheel."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it does. You just have to put in the work to understand it."

Mark stares at him for a long minute.

"You're so full of shit."

He gets a grin for that one.

"And you're an asshole, and karma is a boomerang. Glad we cleared that up. Now get out there and stop being useless."

He feels a frisson of alarm.

"Now-?"

"Damn straight. You're the only true Eternal here, Mark. I'm just a fragment that'll fade sooner or later, and you've wasted enough time as it is. Go live your life, and put your back into it this time. A second chance like this isn't meant to be wasted."

"Wait!" He snaps desperately and surges for him, but when he tries to grab at him his hands go right through his image and it shimmers like hazy smoke. "You haven't told me anything! You can't just leave-!"

"This won't be the last time we speak, and you're already waking up, Mark. Stay on your toes, because we'll be watching."

"Phas- wait" His eyes go so, so wide. "We?"

Phastos grins. "You didn't think I was the only one in here, did you?"

And then the world dissolves in a burst of brilliant gold.

...​

Mark wakes up when a cool breeze ghosts over his skin.

He blearily takes in his surroundings - the room he'd been offered in the guest wing of the Royal Palace remains unchanged.

The company, however, doesn't.

"Good morning."

His gaze snaps to his bedside.

There's a woman there - dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes, dressed in a star-spangled leotard that anyone the world over could recognize on sight.

She looks remarkably Like Donna.

"Wonder Woman." He tips his head in something that might be considered a terse greeting.

"Diana," She says instead, a warm smile on her face. "And you are Marcus Milton-"

"Mark."

She pauses when he cuts her off, waiting for him to speak again, but he doesn't. Slowly, he turns back to stare up at the ceiling and just. .. breathes.

A second chance, then?

"I'm... Mark."

The name is still meaningless to him.

And yet...

He feels lighter.

...​

Next Chapter: Arc Epilogue

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Unknown location:

In a dark, enclosed chamber, two exceptionally dangerous men - though each in vastly different ways - stared at one another across encrypted, featureless monitor screens.

"I take it everything went according to plan?" The first asks, leaning back in his chair and his fingers.

"Perfectly." The second answers, his voice distinctly rougher. "Wotan reports an absolute success and the evidence of Circe's rampage on Themyscira speaks for itself."

"A rousing success, then. And where exactly is the woman of the hour now?"

"Gone. Likely returned to her domain with her prize in tow."

"So I suppose we won't be inviting a new member to our cabal?

"Hardly. The witch-queen keeps to her own company and her priorities are too... narrow-minded for our purposes."

"I see. I'll admit, I do have... concerns. From what you've told me of her so-called prize-"

"It is no concern of ours."

"But it could rapidly become so, should she unleash it without taking the proper precautions. And from everything I've heard of her, she doesn't exactly strike me as the patient type."

"On the contrary - Circe is exceptionally patient. A necessary virtue for any immortal. Her business with the Amazons is simply... personal."

...

"I suppose you would know."

"Indeed."

"Then we leave her to her devices?"

"For now. The matter can be revisited if her games with the Helm and the Amazons prove to be problematic. Until then, we are better off not making an enemy of her."

"And if she decides to make an enemy of us?"

"That is what Klarion is for."

There's another longer pause

"I'll leave it to the experts, then." The first speaker says at last "And Wotan?"

"He did exactly as he was supposed to. Circe's attack was the perfect distraction, and he succeeded in absconding away with several very valuable artifacts from the Themysciran treasury, and one in particular you are already well aware of."

"Yes, the purple-healing ray." He snorts humourlessly. "A little on the nose, that, but really, I shouldn't complain - I'll be renaming it soon enough."

"How soon can you commence your work with it?

"As I already have several of my best Lex-corp research teams ready to take a crack at it. All off the books, of course. Dr. Desmond in particular is very eager to get his hands on it for Project Cadmus."

"That man is entirely too eager to demand new resources."

"Oh, very much so, but he's yet to fail to produce results and I have him well in hand."

"Very well. If there's nothing else?"

"One last small matter. I'll be needing Deathstroke's time for the short-term future. A few weeks at most. Unless you're opposed?"

"Not as of yet. For what particular reason?"

"Oh, nothing too strenuous, I assure you. I simply need him to complete some... subtle reconnaissance."

There's a final stretch of contemplative silence

"The boy, then"

"Yes. It's about time that the Light learned everything there is to know about Marcus Milton. Don't you agree?"

...

"Agreed."

Halfway around the world, upon hearing Vandal Savage's implicit approval, Lex Luthor smiles.

...​

Themyscira:

A day after the attack on Themyscira, Donna descends into the patch of wild forest where Circe had unleashed the Hydra.

Or, well, what's left of it, which isn't very much at all beyond blackened earth and layers of ash thick enough that the largest of them goes up nearly to her knees. The smell of the smoldering remains of the wildlife overpowers the salty breeze from the ocean, and the sight of the damage is just miserable even if she's already learning to ignore it.

It's regrow, sooner or later. the Amazons had all the time in the world.

She turns her sight away from it and finds something else to stare at instead.

Mark is standing not too far away from her now, right at the very edge of a massive crater that hadn't been there the night before.

"I've been looking all over for you." She smiles when he shrugs and tilts his head in something that might be a half-hearted greeting. It's a sad effort, really, but she can still tell that there's something... looser to him than there was the days before.

Less tense and on edge, and more... tired.

But not necessarily in a bad way.

"I've been here."

"Remembering the fight?

"No."

Without looking at her, he sighs and angles his head up to stare at the sky. It's pretty early, and the morning sun has just started hitting the pearlescent sky above the island in just the right way to make it sparkle.

"I'm already done with that. I'm thinking about...everything else."

That's... mildly unhelpful, as far as answers go, but she's not about to complain.

Donna still doesn't know enough about him to guess at the context of 'everything else' and why he sounds so frustratedly exhausted about it, but she's familiar with having baggage and she knows better than to ask about someone else's.

"How did you beat the hydra?" She asks instead

He blinks and turns to stare at her.

"It regenerated." She's not sure about the 'cut of one head, two more take its place' thing she'd heard from the myths - and Hippolyta's stories, who'd been around when the original was alive and kicking - but she'd seen it regrow flesh and regenerate scales. That couldn't have been fun to deal with. "How'd you manage to get past that?"

"I blew up."

...

"What?"

He looks as surprised as she feels, as though he hadn't meant to tell her that, but he doesn't stop explaining

"I blew up. Released most of my energy in one burst and flash-fried it into nothingness. That's what took out the rest of the forest."

...

Slowly, she pans her eyes across the utter wasteland surrounding them.

… okay then

"Huh."

He grimaces "Yeah."

"That's-"

"Yes."

"Dude-"

"Believe me, I know."

He sounds so irritated she can't help snorting, even if she's still gaping on the inside at how outrageously ridiculous that story sounds.

She shakes her head to get rid of the last of the laughter and takes a few steps forward.

"So I heard you talked to Diana."

"She talked to me." He corrects dryly. "Talked at me, mostly."

Donna frowns.

"She didn't-"

"She was perfectly courteous." Mark rolls his neck side to side, expression distant. "She asked me who I was, and how I ended up on the island. A few other things."

And they must have all checked out, or he wouldn't be walking free right now. Diana must have used the Lasso, and Mark must not have minded.

Or maybe she hadn't.

It was almost impossible to lie to Diana even without the use of the Lasso. Donna still wasn't sure whether it was more magic crap or just the unbreakable poker face.

"That's it?"

He shrugs again.

"She was needed with the relief efforts and... the preparations.

Ah.

That.

Preparations. Funeral preparations.

She feels her mood plummet.

Crice's attack had done a number on the island... but that didn't mean a damned thing when compared to what she'd done to the amazons.

Most of them were warriors, but there was only ever one Hippolyta, one Diana, and most recently, one her. The rest of them weren't nearly at the same level, and it showed.

Last night, forty-three amazons died.

Thousands of years of life on Themyscira, irreplaceable people in every way, and suddenly they were just gone.

She swallows roughly at the reminder and looks to the ground, the lump in her throat refusing to budge.

A lot of them were her friends, and all of them were Diana's before they were hers.

If Mark notices - and he very likely does - he doesn't say a thing about it.

"She believed me. It's why I don't have a leash anymore. Not even Queen Hippolyta argued against it."

If that's an attempt to change the subject, it's a poor one, and they both know it.

Donna still tries to humor it - and really tries not to remember that Hippolyta had lost an eye right in front of her.

"... Maybe." He looks at her over his shoulder. "You helped too."

"...Not enough."

Not really. She hadn't been strong enough, or fast enough, or just good enough, and it hurt.

(One day, no matter how far into the future she had to wait, Circe was going to pay.)

...

For a long moment, she thinks that's it. That he won't say anything else.

"I don't think any of it is ever enough when things like this happen" She startles in place, but he's already turning away. "But that doesn't mean it wasn't worth it."

It's not exactly comforting, but it's not an empty platitude either.

She thinks about it in the comfortable silence that follows and decides she likes that better. Before she can say anything back to him, though, he beats her to the punch.

"We have company."

Company?

She follows his gaze and squints.

There are two people flying towards them, circling around the city proper on their way closer.

Diana is, as always, easily recognizable, but it takes her a second longer to place the figure, and then she rears back in stunned surprise when she does.

"Woah."

"Superman." Mark murmurs, eyeing the approaching man of steel carefully, if not warily.

"What does he want?"

"Let's find out."

Donna frowns at the words, and then rears back in surprise when he moves.

Slowly, unsteadily, his feet rise off the ground. Donna feels her eyes widen when he continues rising, swaying erratically from side to side but growing surer and steadier with every passing second.

"You can fly."

Mark floats around to face her, and when he does, he's smiling for the first time since they'd met.

The expression is real, wide from end to end and equal parts euphoric and disbelieving, like he'd finally accomplished something he'd always wanted but never quite believed he'd manage.

It's just about blinding.

"I can. And it's about time that I did."

And then he turns on the spot and soars out into the distance with an honest to god laugh of glee.

Donna stares after him dumbly, and then she grins helplessly for no reason at all and flings herself into the air in pursuit

...​

And that's a wrap on this arc. We're rapidly approaching canon start now, so fair warning: canon is not safe! The divergence can strike at any moment!

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

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