[Archive] With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Story Only)

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:47 GMT -5

I head into the wreck at a walk. Perhaps I should make this quick… Then again, Devilance doesn't seem to be in any sort of hurry.

Ploong.

Father Box is trying to provide me with information about Devilance and his accomplices. Unfortunately knowing their capabilities doesn't really help me. At no point in their history have they fought anything like us. Kon, Match, Zatanna and I should be able to survive an energy weapon blast or two through the combination of armour, endurance and divine resilience. The rest? No. The armour I made for them will take a physical beating but it won't stop a solid blaster bolt impact. I know Devilance himself is much faster than he looks like he should be and exactly as strong as he looks like he should be, but he isn't really built for duelling. In fact, he might shrink himself down in order not to be at a disadvantage against me. His spear will cut me in two if it hits with the blade and while I'm not sure the energy blasts it can emit would one-hit me I really wouldn't want to find out.

Flipping it around, none of them are magic users. Devilance might be a bit resistant -it comes with the godhood- but the Parademons, Aero-Troopers and Gravi-Guards are completely open. X-Ionised weapons will go straight through them… Probably through Devilance as well. Parademons are somewhat ungainly in the air and those flight pack things they wear make them much less agile than any of our fliers. Aero-Troopers not so much. Equipment… I'm going to need to offer X-Ionised weapons to everyone, Wallace especially. Miss Ervin already has Apokoliptian armour and goggles. I could make them energy shields. They'd burn out pretty fast and wouldn't be all that tough… And we haven't practised with them…

I look down at Jade for a moment, then create a screen around us before gently taking hold of the sensory deprivation helmet and sending it to subspace. She immediately jerks her head around, takes me in and frantically scans the rest of the wreck. "Grayven, it's an ambush." I wince slightly and nod. She looks down at the floor. "Damn it."

"Queen Beatrice, I assume?"

She shakes her head. "No. Ra's said you'd convinced her to avoid them. It was Savage. This was planned in advance but they haven't found anyone to replace Bane yet and someone from Apokolips offered to help." She looks at where the case was. "Did you get the case?" I nod. "It was supposed to be the bait. Those.. things were supposed to ambush your team once Riddler sent a signal but they were already here waiting for us." She looks up at me. "What's going on?"

"Father sent them. A test of might for me. If we fail he's going to detonate a bomb that will leave a nasty crater where once there was the northern hemisphere. We'd appreciate your help."

"Father as in..?"

"Darkseid. The ultimate boss of the people your employers have been dealing with."

She looks away again. "They took my weapons. And even if they hadn't-."

Two X-Ionised swords of the same dimensions as her collapsible ones appear in the air in front of her. They have a faint green glow in the same way as my meat cleaver wannabe glows orange. "These were going to be part of your Christmas present. They'll cut them just fine."

A faint smile. Good. "Am I going to fight them from here?" I cut away her bindings while reattaching Mister Nigma's collar to his own feet. Jade takes a moment to stand up and stretch out, then glances at him. "Not letting him go?"

"I've seen recordings of him fighting. I don't think he'll be much use. Oh, here." I add carefully sheathed X-Ionised sais and kunai to the places I know she usually keeps them. Not seeing her mask I take the one I've been working on out of subspace. "I also created an upgraded mask if you want it. Now it has a Velocity Ten inhaler built in."

"Mmm. Went a bit overboard, didn't you?"

I reach forward, putting my right hand under her chin and gently pulling it in my direction so that I can gaze into her eyes. "I missed you this Christmas."

Her smile grows a little more. "Maybe I should stay away for longer and see what you come up with."

I lean forwards. "Maybe I should tie you back up again so you can't."

She mirrors my action, thrusting her face forwards so that only a few centimetres separates us, a wicked grin on her face. "Maybe you should."

"Hey! You done in there yet?" I look over my shoulder to see Artemis banging on the shield. While I'm looking away Jade slips free of my grasp and lifts the mask from my grip. I drop the barrier and Artemis stomps forwards. "What were you thinking!"

Jade straightens her mask and double checks her weapons. "Grayven was just making sure I'd behave myself. I can be a naughty girl when there's no one to keep an eye on me."

I nod. "She really can."

Artemis doesn't know whether to gag or to shout at us. In a less mortal situation I'd take the time to make fun of her some more, but alas, battle beckons. Jade takes a moment to tug her kimono back into place then we head out. Looks like everyone's spread out and… Ooh. From the glares Jade's getting it looks like some people still aren't happy about New Orleans. If she weren't about to start cutting people up at the speed of light I'd suggest pairing her with Tao and Miss Ervin. That will also serve to justify 'letting' her get away. Wasn't that a sticky minute before the New Orleans mission. I've got no idea how I'd have ducked out of it if not for Green Arrow suggesting it be a sidekicks only thing. Certainly saved Jade from getting repeatedly run through by Tao's arrows.

Kaldur steps forwards. "Cheshire. Grayven thinks you might be able to help us in this fight, but if you-."

"Big, isn't he?" She's looking up at Devilance. He's.. pretty much ignoring us, actually. She turns back to Kaldur. "Don't worry, fish boy. Tall, dark and overcompensating up there broke his deal with the League of Shadows when his… What are they called?"

I smile. "Parademons."

"Parademons, attacked us. Plus, I like the northern hemisphere."

Kaldur nods. "Very well then. Grayven, is there some sort of signal..?"

"I don't know, I've never done this before. I'll go and ask." Eyes glow and lift.

Devilance returns his attention to me as I rise back up to his level. "Are you prepared for your death?" "Are you prepared for battle?"

"As prepared as I'm likely to get." "I've been away from home a while. Remind me how this works."

His glowing yellow eyes turn down to look over my team mates. "Not content with opposing our plans, you share our weaponry with these aliens." "I can feel their nascent divinity. Who among them is your huntsman?"

"Of course I did. They're mine." "Why do you want to know?"

"Equipment is not what makes a warrior, as I will shortly show you." "I had thought to simply have the Parademons hem them in before destroying them all with my spear. But if I have an opposite number then I will duel them to their death instead."

"Am I counting down from five?" "I had assumed that you and I would be fighting one another."

"You will be in no doubt as to when to begin." "I am unworthy of such an honour. My master had something special prepared for you."

That's.. not ominous at all. He raises his left hand once more and a new object appears next to the Hellspore. A turquoise and grey cube shaped device I immediately recognise as a techno-seed. Those can be used to generate plasma-servitors of various kinds. They're useful for hazardous environment work but I'm not sure where he's going to get a power source big enough to make it a threat Hellspore. I'm looking at a Hellspore. That'll make a Brimstone class servitor at least. Shit, how big will that be?

Ploong.

Not actually helping. Alright, I'll have to cope. Who's got the best chance of killing Devilance? "I thought you said equipment isn't what makes warriors." "I have two. Brothers. Tank bred like the Parademons, but far more capable."

"This doesn't make warriors. It just makes weapons." "Acceptable."

"If you're going to use it, use it."

Devilance lowers his left arm and then hurls the two objects upwards. A little over two miles up there's a burst of light as the Hellspore detonates. Rather than scour the land clean of life all of its burning fury is sucked into the Techno-seed. For a moment I wonder if perhaps something's gone wrong with it, but then the hissing roar reaches my ears and I notice that the sky has started to fade around it. Looking to the side I can see a clear cut off point, but that's… Oh my goodness. It's filling from the outer edge inwards. That thing.. it's going to be forty metres across at the shoulders.

I'm not sure I can beat it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:50 GMT -5

Humanoid, glowing orange and slightly translucent. For a moment I wonder if Larfleeze's Constructs have found me already, then I recognise the man's face.

"A brilliant mind would be a terrible thing to waste, wouldn't you say?" Truggs takes a step sideways and puts his arm around Construct Lantern Doctor Thomas Oscar Morrow's shoulder. Morrow's still wearing the prison jumpsuit he was assimilated in, though he now has a lantern sigil under his name tag. He looks up at me with a somewhat vacant expression on his face and stumbles forwards a half pace as Truggs slaps him on the back. "You know… I was worried he might revert to your control when you took the ring back. Sure, I didn't get the cat or the dwarf.. thing. What actually is that? No, no." He shakes his head and waves his right hand. "Getting distracted. I-I do that sometimes."

Ring, access team radio. "Aqualad, can I take a shot at him?"

"If you must, but it would be better if you were to keep him talking. We still do not know the location of the briefcase."

Ring, load Crumbler round.

Compliance.

"And because I like to monologue, I have to take precautions against someone jumping the gun."

Alert! Vacuole evacuation in progress.

Oooh my. I can't clearly see the thing which gets spat out of subspace, but it's big. The size of a small lorry, certainly. There's a sort of black misty haze around it but from the occasional glimpse at the creature beneath I'd say probably looks something like a cross between a Gorilla and a Warthog. It leans forwards on long and extremely muscular forelimbs which terminate… I can't see clearly but I think it's knuckle walking. I also can't get a clear view of its face but I can see what I think are horns and five glowing red dots that might be eyes.

"I got this little fellah off your friend from Liverpool. After I heard about how that In.. vul.. nukey?" He frowns for a second and then shakes his head. "Whatever it was called, cut through your shields." He stops and looks directly at me. "It did right? Because if it didn't and he was lying to me I kind of have to-" He holds up right hand, mimicking the position a phone would take. "-make a call."

"It did. He made it by torturing a baby to death."

"No need to worry about that here! This fine fellow was ready to go straight out of the box. Apparently he's an 'Enemy Of All'. Comes from somewhere called the…" He jazz hands. "'The Shadowlands'. The Shadowlands. That's a great name, isn't it? Sounds sinister without actually telling you anything use-."

"The former resting place of the Great Darkness and the power source for -among others- The Shade and Nightshade."

"Oh. Ruin all my fun, why don't you." He puffs up his cheeks and exhales. "Alright, how about this? It can move as fast as your friend Kid Flash over there and if you don't let me finish my monologue without interrupting, I'll send it to the nearest population centre instead of setting it on you."

I look in Kaldur's direction and get a nod.

"Grhgrhrrrugugug."

Truggs goes to pat the thing, then thinks better of it. "Whow! Ea-sy boy." He turns back to me. "The control spells on this thing aren't the best. Fire and forget's all we could do. I'd rather have had Bane's people here but he seems to have up and vanished. Hey, I knew you'd talk your way out of it! I just wanted to find out how much you knew, then I'm sitting at the rendezvous point waiting for my ride for three whole days and he doesn't show. What'd you say to him?"

I don't say anything as he waits expectantly. After a few moments he gives up.

"Be like that, then. I wasn't expecting the ring recall thing you pulled off… Something to do with the lantern it's paired to? Automatic, or… Hardly matters. And, hey, keep the finger." He holds up his left hand and wiggles the finger stump at me. "Great thing about coming from the future? These grow back." I'm going to be checking the finger's genetics over very carefully when we get back then. "And given where I got this from-" He holds up a metal gauntlet. Right handed. No, wait, not a gauntlet, that's a cybernetic. He stole someone's cybernetic hand? "-I can't really point fingers." He wiggles the gauntlet at me. "Point fingers. Eh? Eh?"

I make a show of wincing.

"Guy I took it from wasn't a collector. He actually used it, so I left him alive. Still, he never had another one made so it'll be a while before he gets out of hospital. Me?" He gestures to his henchmen. "Mass production. Morrow android derived armour combined with an upscaled version of Leonard Snart's Cold Gun. All these supervillains just have to be special snowflakes, but now they're in prison or, ah..." He pats Morrow on the shoulder with the cybernetic. "Welcome to the nineteenth century! Got a whole factory putting this stuff together. We get a decent AI prototype, we might even make it into the twentieth."

"Bozo was twentieth century."

"And didn't he turn out well. Dumber than the Chinese superwhatever Shaolin Robot who's twenty two hundred years old!"

"Still seems a little wasteful, throwing a unique robot away against me."

He smirks. "Yeah, unique. Alright. I'm done. Morrow, look after Onyx. I don't want to have to dig through every snowflake to find the hole she hid the case in." She takes a step away as Morrow slowly turns in her direction, his gaze as vacant as a zombie. "Everyone else?" He takes what looks like a tazer in his left hand and applies it to the cybernetic.

And promptly disappears. What. The metal hand gives another wave before being thrown aside. Ring, find him.

Unable to comply. Unable to scan. Unable to detect physical presence. Unable to detect subject radiation.

Shit. Has he actually found a way to get around all power ring based detection?

And then a soldier disappears. And another. Then a whole group. Then all the rest. Mass.. production. Optic scans still show part of their armour -presumably the part which emits the invisibility effect- and they still have mass -I can see the depressions in the snow beneath their feet- so he doesn't have phase generators for everyone…

"Where'd they go?"

"They're still there. Invisibility. He's managed to-." I stick a dome shield over the entire crash site just as the first Cold Rifle opens up. Constructs don't really have a temperature so the dome can't be frozen, but whatever it is the guns have that makes thermodynamics their bitch also allows them to start building a hard layer of ice over the top. I've no idea where the ice comes from, given that there isn't that much water vapour in the air. The weight isn't really a problem and we can just disengage with a Zeta Tube construct if we-.

"Get 'em, chuckles."

Through the ice I see the head.. area of the Enemy jerk up, sighting me. "Hkh! Hkh!" It takes a few not particularly quick bounds in the direction of the orange barrier ahead of it. If its claws work like the Invunche's it'll be able to penetrate… I point the railgun in its direction. I checked after last time and the League are fine with me killing quasi-demonic monstrosities. The shadows cloaking the Enemy blur as it approaches and.. it's.. not there anymore. Where did-?

The ring jerks me to the side as the Enemy reappears two metres ahead of me, its claws narrowly missing taking my head off. New railgun constructs form to try and draw a bead on it but it vanishes again before I can bring them to bear. It flashes into being next to one of the railguns searching for it and envelopes it in darkness before cutting through it with its claws. The particle beam I use to replace it meets the same fate. Another near miss from above and I'm forced to evade with a small transfer. That makes me stop projecting the dome, but with so much ice coating it we should already be covered from that direction. I re-establish my team mates' armour and-.

"Ymene fo Lla dloh llits!"

"Grhgrhrkk!" It freezes in the air half in one location and half in another. Some sort of wormhole thing? I create a new railgun and start firing Crumbler and Spell Eater rounds. Partial impacts, I think, but it's hard to judge and from the way its shadows are spasming around its entire body I don't think-. "Hkkrh!" It disappears again. The ring's still searching, still ready to shift me out of the way, but I'm not seeing anything. Lost control, maybe? Some types of creature-.

A fountain of snow erupts from the ground close to M'gann! I see what looks like a hand stretch forth and then flame everywhere! **Aaahh!** The construct armour should prevent her from being burned but it won't do anything about the psychological effects. Kaldur goes to help but another eruption takes place to his left and the water from his Water Bearers is suddenly sucked away. A second later it returns in the form of an ice bullet directly to his construct faceplate which knocks him flying! The rocky ground under the rear of the plane fractures and explodes, hurling my ground bound team mates aside. Kon flies at the source of the flame only to be met by a blast of hurricane force wind which slams him into the canyon wall.

Another wind blast which sounds more like.. what Red Tornado uses to fly. Wait, fire, water, earth and air? Oh, he has Morrow as a Construct, of course he'd-. I fight to remain stable as another air blast pushes everything towards the ground, revealing… Mass production.

The Air Bozo spins its head through three hundred and sixty degrees as its brethren pick their targets. "Hello little birds! We're going to squish all of you!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:51 GMT -5

Devilance smiles at me condescendingly. "Have you lost your confidence? Do not worry. You are hardly the first that Brimstone has unmanned." "Our combat will begin at Brimstone's direction. If you wish to tutor your pantheon, now is the time."

My eyes remain fixed on the space Brimstone is starting to occupy. I can now pick out its arms and head. For some reason the system mimics organic musculature. When complete its body will be superheated hydrogen plasma, powered by the energy given off by the Hellspore. The Hellspore is already inside its spawn's outer edge, though I can still see it. Will it keep feeding the monstrosity during the fight or be consumed by its body? I have no idea. What could I do to beat it?

**Aqualad, that thing forming in the sky is called Brimstone. It's what I'll have to fight.**

**What can it do?**

**Generate massive amounts of heat and electromagnetic radiation. Since it's basically a humanoid sun surrounded by a force field it's immune to physical attack against its surface. The techno-seed is the weak spot but I'll have a devil of a time hitting it, let alone damaging it. It could probably incinerate everyone here by accident if it misses me so I'll have to make sure I keep its attention.**

**How long do we have?**

The sky behind it is nearly completely obscured now. The final step in its activation will see it go from dull red to brilliant orange. And start shouting, of course.

**Maybe two minutes. On to our other opponents. Devilance wanted to fight my 'huntsmen' himself. Since the alternative was him frying everyone with his spear I named Superboy and Match.**

**You should have consulted me.**

**We can take him.**

I smile slightly at Match's enthusiasm. **I know, and I'm sorry for undermining you like that, but I need to look like I'm in charge or they'll smell a rat. Devilance can alter his size and density at will, within certain parameters. The spear lets him fly but he's awkward in the air. As far as I know he doesn't know what species you are but he's probably heard of Kryptonians. He will go for Kryptonite blasts once he works it out.** I pause for a moment. **Given the nature of our opponents I'm going to recommend lethal force against the Parademons at least, and don't be afraid to cause crippling injuries against the rest.**

**I'm not.**

**Thank you Cheshire, but that was really more directed at my team mates.**

**Maybe you missed that lesson Grayven, but superheroes don't kill people!**

**I'll be happy to argue the merits of lethal force with you later Robin, but Parademons aren't people. Feel free to have Her Highness scan them if you want proof. And the others… I would be astonished if they weren't killed upon their return anyway, but if it really matters to you I'll heal them. After we win.**

Brimstone has legs now. Can it fly? I don't remember it being able to fly but Father Box doesn't have any record of one being fuelled by a Hellspore before. Father Box also doesn't have any record of how easy it is to hit the techno-seed with a power ring construct. I really.. haven't prepared for this sort of opponent.

**Miss Martian confirms what you have said. Given the odds we face…**

**Aqualad?**

Wallace sounds surprised. I seem to remember that Mister Allen killed Mister Thawne in the comics but that most certainly hasn't happened yet here. I suppose there's not much point giving him a sword if he won't use it.

I hear Kaldur sigh through the link. **What of the other two types of Apokoliptians?**

**Aero-Troopers are a match for you in terms of strength and endurance. The aero-discs on their feet let them fly and they're carrying blasters. Possibly other weapons as well. The body armour I made for you should allow you to survive taking a hit if you have to but I recommend evasion as the preferred option. They'll probably prioritise enemy fliers. Mass produced Apokoliptian weapons aren't gene locked so disarming them and using their guns is a viable option. Their goggles will let them see through Miss Martian's invisibility but her telekinesis should be strong enough to mess around with their flight paths.**

**Blasters. I don't suppose those are explosive and not energy weapons?**

**I'm afraid not, Rocket. Your personal shield might absorb a small amount of the attack but the strength reduction wouldn't be significant. I recommend speeding directly for them as fast as possible, jinking as much as you can. You're faster but based on what I've seen so far less manoeuvrable.**

**Will my force shield projector work?**

**It might be able to take a hit but don't stop moving in order to use it.**

Brimstone's nearly completely filled in now, even down to the black markings around his head, shoulders and forearms. Not much longer.

**The two brutes with red skin are Gravi-Guard. They're sophonts but not particularly intelligent. They can sense gravity and manipulate it within an area of about three metres…** I remember who I'm talking to. **Ten feet, from their bodies. That said, the ability is much stronger if they make physical contact. In a grapple they'll crush anyone here.**

**Any advice for Devilance?**

**Yes, Superboy. Strike and evade. If you can take out his knees, do so. If you can disarm him, do it then destroy the spear. He's resilient but far from invulnerable to a level of force you can generate. Grappling isn't practical given the size difference. You're probably better off getting close-.** Brilliant golden light radiates outwards from Brimstone. I narrow my eyes slightly and have to suppress the urge to shield my face. **This is it then. If by some miracle I finish before you do I'll return to assist. Good luck, my friends.**

I look back at them and see Kaldur nod to me. **And to you.**

Keeping my face still I float upwards. Getting level with Brimstone's head should make getting his attention easier. I'm leaving the canyon behind but there isn't really any other option as Brimstone's nearest foot is a good hundred metres away from the rim. The area of brightest light is contracting now with its extremities dulling to its standard red/orange colour. Once it reaches the face area-.

The face darkens and the light flares once more around its eyes and mouth. Colossal arms rise up and hands the size of bungalows clench into fists above its head. Here we go then.

"Behold the fallen angel known as Brimstone!" Why do they do this? Why do they build a walking sun and then make it think-. "Gaze into my eyes, ye mighty, and despair!"

My construct armour darkens slightly as the electromagnetic blast from its eyes passes through me. Nothing.. too worrying yet. It reorientates its head slightly. I think it's looking at me but without actual pupils it's rather hard to te-.

"My dark master has cast me out! My redemption lies in cleansing this world of false gods and graven idols." That… That's not funny. "You are the false one who claims to be my master's son!"

"Can't you see the family resemblance?"

The fires around its head intensify. "Impudent wretch! I will harvest your soul and present it to my lord for him to torture and consume!"

I risk a half second glance at the canyon. A green blur has slaughtered most of the Parademons but the rest have escaped into the air. Shots are being exchanged and Kon and Match appear to be heat visioning Devilance directly in the eyes. Not sure that'll work. His eyes don't work like-.

"Now BURN! Burn for Darkseid!"

I don't wait for the plasma wave to hit. Instead I transition directly behind him and fire an x-ionised javelin directly at the location of the techno-seed. Ring, track it.

By your command.

No, no good. It didn't pierce the epidermal force field. Laser, perhaps? Light is clearly getting through. Brimstone shifts around to face me, ground turning to magma beneath his feet. It might not be able to fly but it can certainly move quickly. Air shimmers around me as it opts to superheat the environment in lieu of a targeted attack. Bearable, temporarily, but all that heat will put my team mates at risk. I transition again and form a laser construct only for a bolt of plasma to leap from its shoulder directly into my chest! Of course it doesn't need to see me to shoot, it's a walking sun! It doesn't even have eyes! I transition once more and fire the laser to no noticeable effect.

Think, damn it!

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:54 GMT -5

Snow explodes from all directions, enveloping the area under the ice dome in white. I can still see the location of my team mates by the orange glow of their construct armour and the ring would mark them out for me anyway. Robin and Wallace have visors but I don't.. think.. anyone else does.

**Putting heads up displays on your construct armour now. Aqualad, you up?**

**Yes. Miss Martian-**

"Bozo Rock Smash!"

The ring shows a section of canyon wall pull free and sail through the air towards Zatanna's position! Three Crumbler projectiles eliminate most of it but she still gets pelted with rubble.

**-are you hurt?**

**Got it, Aqualad! Their element powers are magic, so they're mine!**

"Bozo wants to burn! Why won't you burn! … Buuuuuuuurn!"

**I'm okay. I'm okay.**

**Try to stay away from the fire robot.**

**No need to tell me twice.**

**Zatanna, can you show us where the robots are?**

Getting rid of the snowstorm would make things easier for us as well. Ring, use observations of Red Tornado and Mister Twister and attempt to calculate the location of the Air Bozo.

Compliance.

**Um.** "Ozob stobor.. wolg ylthgirb!"

I can barely hear her over the howling of the wind but the effect of her spell is immediately apparent as four glowing humanoid figures appear.

Air Bozo located.

My railgun comes around and fires three Crumbler rounds at maximum power at the torso of the glowing robot near the top of the dome. Just before they reach the target the snow vapourises and condenses into an ice wall. Come on! No! The wall is dense enough to trigger them. It gets annihilated and the unaffected Air Bozo behind it raises its hand in my direction, only for a series of arrows to pierce its arm. Most just fly through but two manage to strike something it had to leave solid. Wait, they haven't read-! **The Bozo robots are phased! You need to use-.**

The wind drops off for a moment as the Air Bozo brings its arm back in front of it and shakes it. The arrows fall out, presumably due to it rephasing.

**Crumbler arrows, got it.**

**Now!** I fire a volley of regular slugs which smash through the newly reformed ice barrier just quick enough to get it out of the way of Artemis' arrow. Air Bozo tries to climb higher, which causes the arrow to strike the edge of its torso rather than the centre. Nearly half the crumble effect is wasted on thin air but Air Bozo shudders as a chunk of his chest vaporises. Doesn't look like it hit anything load bearing, sadly.

"More air for Bozo!"

**Good news, Nth Metal armor lets me punch them. Bad news, the rock robot's gone underground again.**

**Fire robot's just trying to punch-. Thanks Robin!**

"Bozo doesn't burn! He makes things burn! … Buuuuurn!"

**Agh!** / **Wahh!** / **Gah!**

The lights being emitted by the robots go out and I can see the ground shaking from here. It's near liquefying! I strengthen the tethers to pull my team mates up and-.

"Hkhcccckcckch!"

The ring yanks me sideways as the Enemy makes another drive-by. Rather than disappear this time it latches on to the canyon wall and scrabbles around the edge, flowing like a wraith over the surface.

**Watch out! The Enemy of All's back! Rocket, move!**

I form a particle beam and fire it even as the Enemy leaps at her. She points, generating a force barrier, and the Enemy strikes it and seems to flow around it. My purple beam pierces it through the side just before it leaps off the far side, cutting a momentary hole through its dark aura and into what I assume to be the flesh beneath.

"Hhhgh!"

It seems to slip, start to fall towards the ground and then vanishes again.

"Bozo hate water! Bozo hate water!"

**Aghhh! I've got nothing to run on! The ground isn't solid enough!**

**Fire robot's down, I'll try draining the earth one. Um, soon as I know where it is.**

**Zatanna, we could really-.**

"Ozob stobor peek gniwolg ylthgirb!"

The space in front of me lights up OH SHIT! The armour around my head cracks as one of the Bozos smashes it from alternate sides in a frenzy. "You have water!" Bang! "Bozo hate water!" Bang! "You have water!" Bang! "Bozo-!" It lurches to the side as an Unmaking Arrow hits it on the left shoulder, causing the arm to hang limply. "-hate-" I generate a blender construct around it and whir the blades. Water Bozo's flight beanie comes apart and he starts to fall. "-water!" I think I felt something else get hit as well, but from the blast of ice covering most of my front I'm going to assume it wasn't anything critical. No railgun this time, I just send a filament down, take Crumbler micro-missiles out of subspace at point blank range and activate them. Water Bozo jerks as his torso is torn apart. "Critical misson failu-." I stab another through what looks like his computer core in the centre of his chest. He shudders and then goes still before hitting the ground and sinking into it.

**Water Bozo down and out. Just two more and wherever the Enemy-.**

The blue beam of a cold gun strikes the side of my construct armour faceplate, covering it with ice. Another strikes lower down, then two more hit me in the back. What are they-!

Warning: telepathic attack in progress.

Guuhhh! I don't see the chaff grenade but that definitely felt like one! I get my telepathic shield in place fast enough to prevent me from being knocked out again but I lose telepathic contact with the rest of the team. More importantly, they lose their construct armour and my filaments fade out of existence as my entire exterior is coated in ice. Ugh. Ring, detect shots and respond with branding. Let's friendly fire those bastards!

Unable to reliably locate-.

Best guess until you get a hit!

Compliance.

Another cold beam strikes, this time hitting me in the chest. The ice is now thick enough that I'm having trouble seeing out and it's dense enough that it actually takes me effort to punch a hole out and fire a volley of ring-guided filaments in the direction the shot came from. Four miss but the fifth strikes something that I can't see. The humanoid figure is briefly outlined in orange-

"Gyuaaah!"

-before his head jerks back and he fades into invisibility with just the arm mounted stealth generator and glowing orange forehead brand showing.

My puppet, you really want to shoot the floating stealth generators around you.

"Ah!" / "Shit!" / "What the fuck?!" / "Two-three's lost it!" / "AH FUCK!" / "Where is he?!"

"Hssuh!"

The Enemy appears on top of my ice bubble. For a moment I see the red of its eyes refracted through the water crystal then it jams its claws forwards and rips away at the ice!

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:55 GMT -5

"Ploong."

Right, it's not just heat. Brimstone is throwing out an impressive amount of electromagnetic radiation as well. I could take it -briefly- as could Kon or Match, but the rest of my team mates won't last long this close. Neither will the surviving Parademons, though they won't care. Sensibly, the Aero-Troopers appear to be falling back. Devilance is even more resistant to this sort of thing than I am and the Gravi-Guard will laugh it off. Create a shield myself or call on Zatanna?

Damn it, can't delay.

A large orange barrier appears between us and the canyon. Obviously it won't stop the escaped heat but it will stop my friends getting turned into cancer-ridden mush puddles by ionising radiation. Orange filaments spread throughout the combat area will allow me to maintain it without completely losing my FTL capacity, though I'll have to drop it if my construct armour breaks and I need to leave to re-establish it.

"No true son of the God-Tyrant would be so merciful!"

He swings for me with his right fist while vomiting a wave of chromosphere-temperature plasma. I swiftly evade both with simple flight. Don't want to burn too much power. Wait, vomit? Brimstone doesn't have a digestive system. It must have intentionally breached its own force field to do that and let its vast internal pressure cause the spray. A burst of gamma from its eyes is intercepted by an Apokoliptian gamma collector construct and fired into space. No point firing it back after all, Brimstone would probably just feed on it. Right, I can assimilate, but do I need to hit the techno-seed or will it work with a hit anywhere? Normally during a confrontation with an Apokoliptian I'd fire it from my eyes but I don't want to do that in a situation where there's a good chance of it not working. I descend to the glutinous molten ground and fire a filament down into it and then up towards my target.

Assimilate.

Unable to establish connection.

I'm forced to transfer as a brilliant beam of white light sears through the air. Try again.

Brand.

Unable to establish connection.

Settles that.

**Aagh!**

I flick my eyes in the direction of the canyon at Kon's mental scream. Devilance swings his spear around and green beams fly in Match's direction as he dives to catch his brother. Ring?

Radiation pattern matches substance 'Kryptonite'.

"Rejoice sinner! For soon you will be cleansed!"

Un. Ac. Ceptable.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Seventy six percent remaining.

I need to pierce its epidermis and get at the techno-seed. How does one bend a sun to one's will? With immense magnets. I go high, creating a tower shield as Brimstone uses scintillating beams of light once more. The shield isn't so much cracking as evaporating at the edges as Brimstone hits it with temperatures normally only found in the cores of fusion reactors.

But I can do better. Ring, star singer.

Such a simple device, really. Just intense electromagnetic fields projected from what look like long metal v-shapes arranged in a circle with the points of the v's facing inwards. Don't remember the name of the book where I first heard of the technique but I can't say I was surprised to find mention of it in Father Box's files. It was listed as 'spectacular but inefficient'.

Brimstone's shoulders ripple as the magnetic field hits and the colossus staggers forwards slightly. In the book a race of AIs use it to bend the surface of a star in such a way that the core is exposed, causing massive amounts of radiation to scourge all life from a nearby planet. In this case Brimstone doesn't have a core but it does have a techno-seed that I need to access. Brimstone staggers around in a circle to try and get its shoulder facing in my direction but I shift position to remain behind him. There's a definite distortion but it's too slow. Brimstone even manages to rally enough to fire another beam of plasma at me. The magnetic fields bend the whole blast harmlessly around me but by the time it's gone Brimstone has more or less regained its normal shape.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Sixty nine percent remaining.

This isn't good enough. I need more!

My eyes blaze orange.

"This is my power, this is my might!
I stand alone in darkest night!"

Two additional star singer constructs appear besides me, the air itself hums and wavers with the force of the magnetic fields and Brimstone is driven to its knees.

"With this ring my foes I smite!
I conquer all with orange light!"

"GRAAAAHH! No! Father, aid your loyal servant!"

A hemisphere of material has been displaced from what would be the top of its spine. Its head twists and slides forwards and its arms shake at random as it loses control of the magnetic fields it uses to control them. Still I can't get a clear shot at the bloody techno-seed.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Fifty four percent remaining.

What else could I..? I bring the star singers closer, pushing Brimstone onto all fours. I jam a plasma siphon into the focal point, piercing his epidermal shield and causing plasma to blast out, fountaining high into the upper atmosphere. I'm going to need to do something about that when this fight is over but I'm so close now! Ring, find that fucking techno-seed!

I send two orange lines out from my eyes, zigzagging them towards the hole in Brimstone's shield. Just before they enter -and out of line of sight of any observers- they merge together and form a solar probe construct which dives into the stream. Really annoying thing is I can't simply kill Brimstone. If I do that he'll just go nova and kill my team mates. I need to shut it down.

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Forty one percent remaining.

"Aaaaaagh!" "Bend to my will!"

Warning: significant power consumption in progress. Twenty nine percent remaining.

"Find the fucking-!"

Connection established.

Father Box, take control.

"Ploong."

Shut down all its attacks. I feel the pressure on my armour fade. Not completely -a sun can't choose to not be hot after all- but enough that I can drop the radiation barrier and extend an orange aura across Brimstone's entire surface. Ring, transition.

We reappear in space, as near to the edge of the system as I dare risk without provoking Gaea. There's nothing out here but me and it can't fly fast enough to make any difference. For a moment I consider just leaving it out here as some sort of long term storage.

"Master, I live to serve you! Do not abandon your servant to the dark and the cold!"

No. That's just asking for trouble. Father Box, set its containment systems to deactivate in five seconds.

Ploong.

Now, drop the armour construct and take me back to Earth.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:58 GMT -5

For a moment I think the ice might actually help. I mean, if the chaff grenade had worked I'd be dead or crippled right now but as it is I've got a layer of frozen whatever this stuff is about two metres thick between me and the Enemy. No such luck. It more or less surges through the ice in fits and starts, red glowing eyes staring madly at me. It's not destroying the ice, not after it appeared and got a grip. It's somehow occupying the same space.

Ring, do you detect black light?

Black light not detected.

Don't have enough space for a railgun or particle beam. Timing my shot to meet it just as it completes its next surge I let loose with an orange light blast. It recoils -slightly- then stops to take a closer look at me. Next, it moves its head to look at me down the narrow hole my attack just made. It's only about two centimetres across and virtually the entire creature is still in the ice. It shouldn't mean-.

"Hhkhkhhkhgh."

The Enemy twists slightly, bringing its right forelimb around to the hole. Then the limb seems to twist… Bend? Almost flow down the hole block it block it block it! It pulls back from the construct. Okay, so it doesn't have the black light claw things that the Invunche had. Wait, is..? Its dark aura is moving through the ice, spreading out from the Enemy like rapid-spreading hoarfrost. That doesn't look good. Okay, I can still get away by making a filament hole and transitioning, but we need to win here. The pulse didn't seem to actually hurt it, just alarm it. I send filaments out from the bung construct and thrust them in the approximate direction of the Enemy. Several just vanish but a couple make a solid contact. Got you. Brand.

Unable to comply. Creature… Substance… Not found. Unable to identify.

The Enemy writhes within the ice and the shadow pulls back through the ice. "Hhrngungng!"

Cannot cannot cannot cannot-.

Stop trying. That seemed to sort of work a bit but I can't risk damaging the ring. An Atlantean rune stone appears from subspace within the bung and I wave it at the recovering Enemy. No response, which means that if the thing is innately magical then the amount of magic it uses is utterly trivial. The stone goes back into subspace. Not magic, not emotional spectrum energy… Just how many weird types of power are there? And why is it coming after me? Wait. Dark Druid does use magic and I've already hit it with a Spell Eater. That probably would have destroyed any spell on it. Fire and forget. Enemy of All. No more control spell.

The Enemy jerks through the ice, circling around behind me. Basic predator behaviour though it's easy enough for me to track. I send a filament through the ice away from it, pan the end around-.

Avarice detected.

Hello Doctor Morrow. Even as the last of the light dripping in from outside is obscured by the shadows under the ice I start accelerating in the direction indicated. I should be able to beat a simple Construct-Lantern but that isn't what I want to do. If I can convince this thing to go after Truggs' people instead of me we can deal with those robots properly… Can't risk opening myself to telepathic communication with those grenades around and I can't hear a bloody thing through this ice. Just hope I haven't run M'gann over or anything like-.

BWUH! I jerk forwards as we hit the ice dome at speed and then slam into the ground! The environmental shield prevents my internals getting shaken too much and keeps 'down' toward my feet as the internal compass indicates that we've flipped over twice. I take a moment and then surge the orange light outwards, exploding the ice away and turfing the Enemy out onto the snow.

"Hhkhgh?"

It scrabbles to get its feet back under it as I create a grabber arm construct above it and then drop it down, hauling it into the air. It goes berserk but can't get any leverage. Next, a railgun appears in front of its face and two Crumbler rounds slam into its face at full force.

"Ghguuhguh!"

Its body jerks but it's still alive. What does it take to finish this thing off?

"I can't let you be here."

I glance around at Morrow and Onyx. He's floating just off the ground while she's standing at a crouch with her sword drawn a little way behind him.

"Lantern Morrow, I don't know how much of your reasoning capacities remain intact, but do you think I'm the main threat here, or the Enemy of All?"

"The Enemy isn't threatening Onyx."

"Neither am I."

"Then I guess I'll just ignore you both."

Ugh, what happens to Construct-Lanterns that get destroyed? Fatty reappears at the ring but I didn't assimilate Morrow. Him turning up at the Orange Central Power Battery would be a very bad thing for all concer-. Ah! A cold beam hits my faceplate and the ice begins to build up again. Fine, I'm not getting anywhere with the Enemy anyway. I let it go next to the floating invisibility generator.

"Aagh!"

I can't tell exactly where the mercenary is but from the way the generator is flailing around I'll guess that he's trying frantically to get away from the Enemy as the Enemy shakes its.. probably head. I wave Lantern Morrow goodbye as I float into the air. Right, no grenades around now so I can…

A glint of metal discarded on the snow catches my eye.

…pick up that cybernetic hand and stick it in subspace right now. Then get back in contact. I cautiously lower my barriers.

**…stand on the ground now?**

Robin's in one piece then, good.

**Sorry for dropping out like that. Truggs' mercenaries-.**

**Are inside the dome. We are aware. What is the status of the Enemy of All?**

Lantern Morrow fires an orange beam from his right hand, knocking the Enemy aside as it dives for Onyx.

**I nullified the binding spell. It's fighting Onyx and Morrow at the moment, looks like it's going after whoever's closest. I'm having real trouble doing anything to it and I can't risk it killing anyone.**

**Not all of Truggs' minions are alive. Zatanna!**

Nothing. Is she hurt, or..? She had to speak spells and I would hear-.

A section of the dome near the top explodes outwards as the Air Bozo comes spinning through. On the ground the Enemy slashes a claw at Morrow, cutting cleanly through his chest. Morrow doesn't seem concerned about this damage and thrusts his hands through the shadows near its head to blast it again. Snow swirls around us as the Air Bozo tries to correct its trajectory. Nope, not happening. I transition behind it, create a solid construct barrier and shove it forwards. It goes part way through the robot's back before encountering something that isn't phased out and catching on it. Bozo can't cope with Zatanna's spell and the force I'm adding. A slight correction and it slams into the Enemy of All.

**Orange Lantern, we will cope with the mercenaries. Try to find a way to destroy that monster.**

**On it.** Think think think. I watch as the Enemy flows around Bozo's air blast and pounces only to fly right through the robot. Anti-magic attacks do nothing. Orange light and Crumblers do next to nothing. I don't have any other esoteric attacks. Who do I know who could help?

Would The Shade take my call? Can't hurt to try. I raise the ring to my ear. "Ring, contact Richard Swift, Opal City."

"Compliance."

I hear a dial tone. Richard Swift is -nominally- Opal City's superhero in residence these days. Theodore Knight's been dead for decades and Jack Knight -the one I know of as Starman- hung up his goggles years ago. From the little information I got on him it looks like he is the eldritch abomination-mode version rather than the man with the magic stick from the earlier comics. I tried scanning him at long range once and he turned to look in my direction and wagged his right index finger. I took the hint.

"This is Richard Swift." English voice, well spoken in a BBC voice artist from the fifties way.

"Mister Swift, sorry to both-."

"I'm afraid that I'm not available at present. If you'd like to leave a message after the beep, I'll try to work out how to make this infernal contraption play it to me just as soon as I can."

Damn it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
09:59 GMT -5

The boom tube opens on the less melted side of the canyon, just in time for me to clothesline an Aero-Trooper.

"Bwgf!"

She spins on her axis and I take the liberty of relieving her of her aero-discs, sending her plummeting towards the ground. She manages to land legs first and then tumble, striking the rocky hillside face first. She struggles to rise for a moment and then slumps back down. Quick scan, nothing mortal. Father Box, program the aero-discs for my use.

Ploong.

Parademon body parts and vital fluids litter the surrounding-.

"You just going to stand there all day!?" Miss Ervin flies past me at speed, dodging blaster fire from the pair of aero-troopers who are in hot pursuit while shield-checking a third. That one goes down hard. One of her pursuers notices me -stationary target that I am- and changes direction to intercept. Two blaster bolts are blocked at the last moment by small ring-generated barriers that would be invisible from his position, any side splash being easily handled by my body armour. That gives him pause.

I tilt my head slightly to the side as my eyes flicker with orange light. "How does it go again? Ah, yes. Die for Grayven." Orange beams flare forwards, striking each in the centre of their chests. They shake as their central nervous systems get a massive shot of pain and then follow their comrade in tumbling to the ground. Fascinating as the technology behind the agony matrix is, I don't particularly want to force them to remain conscious. Or to have to explain to Batman why I own such a device. The aim here is to fit into the Darkseid-shaped space in their heads, because Devilance's word aside there's absolutely nothing to stop them just sending in more soldiers in if I don't fit the bill. Darkseid might be scrupulous about keeping his word -though I don't know that for sure of this version and Father Box refuses to be drawn on the subject- but the others in the Apokoliptian Elite have never let that sort of thing trouble them.

To my far right Tao dodges between the burning trees in pursuit of the last few Parademons. A short distance away M'gann has an Aero-Trooper pinned and from the way her eyes are glowing I'm going to guess that she's pumping him for information. I smile as on my left-

"GraaaAAAHH!" "Inconceivable!"

-Match repeatedly flies at Devilance's face fists first while Kon- oohw that looked nasty- grapples his right hand, snapping back the fingers he's using to grip his lance. Three are pointing at truly awkward angles when it finally slips from Devilance's grasp and falls to the ground.

Hello new power source for the cave.

His objective achieved Kon disentangles himself and stands off, with Match coming up alongside him. I scan them both. A few burns and they're going to need a thorough decontamination before they go anywhere but nothing serious. Wait. Brimstone. Walking sun and two Krypt- HAHAHA! He couldn't have known in advance! I don't bother suppressing my enjoyment as they both fly at Devilance's head at full speed in the punch-through-not-at manoeuvre Wonder Woman drilled into them. Devilance goes down hard, then tries to push himself up on his broken fingers. Another thing Wonder Woman taught them is that the fight isn't over until the other fellow stops moving. That's probably why they drop full speed feet first onto his chest just below his diaphragm.

"Hugk!"

Devilance's upper torso is jerked upwards by the force of the impact just in time to be double punched back down again. Is he going to take the hint, I wonder? I don't know his particular physiology well enough to assess the particularities of his injuries, aside from the obvious. Looks like they have that fight well in hand. How's everyone else doing?

I gain altitude and look down at the canyon. It's surprisingly intact. The side I'd been fighting on is somewhat melted but nothing like to the extent I'd expected. More Parademon remains and one of the Gravi-Guard is very down, cuts from x-ionised swords covering his body along with the protruding fletchings of several arrows still sticking out of it. Looks like x-ionised weapons trump density increases. The other one's hammering futilely on a golden triquetra-decorated shield dome while Kaldur directs in meltwater in what is presumably an attempt to drown it. It grunts and gestures downwards, trying to force the water down. I suppose… Apokolips doesn't really have any surface water. There's no reason for him to know oooh there we go, boiling water. I can't hear his screams from outside the shield but Kaldur's changed the way he's waving his Water Bearers in response and a second later the water condenses. I do note with some satisfaction that Zatanna doesn't drop the shield as the Gravi-Guard drops to the ground. Actually, where is Zat-?

A green-glowing sword appears by my throat the moment I appear inside the wreck of the plane. I instinctively shield and raise my hand to counter the thrusting arm before meeting Artemis' eyes. We both relax slightly and she moves the sword away.

"Can you help-?"

I'm already brushing past her to get to our injured team mates. And Jade… Jade. Her legs are a mess, though the other injuries are what initially draw the eye. Richard nods at me. "One of those Gravity Guard things got her when she tried to hit him with her swords. Zatanna's been trying to-."

I kneel down next to her and hold my hands out as a thousand tiny orange filaments radiate out from them. Fix this. Across her body there are a thousand tiny flares of orange light as repairs get underway. None of these look life threatening but without me her legs would have to be amputated. From the golden glow around her and Wallace I'm going to guess that Zatanna's been trying to effect repairs.

!Not allowed to happen!

She needs to be tougher. Damn being found out, I could Awaken-. No. She wouldn't want that. If I.. if I make armour for her while I mend her flesh, and mend her clothing… Yes. That will do for now. I didn't give her armour before the fight as it would have affected her balance and that's a very bad idea at superspeed. Should have made her try it on earlier. I know… I've become stronger as Father Box has built up my spiritual strength to true New God levels, and Father Box explained to me that my true godly self would be in part based on the characteristics I had as a mortal. Awakening Jade now would deny her the ability to further improve herself first. Given the way she's taken to super speed I'm fairly confident that she'd want to use the Garrick Formula first at the very least.

"Hey ah, can the rest of us get some attention?"

I give Wallace a quick scan. "You have got minor electrical burns where a glancing shot from a blaster breached your armour. I'll get to you once Cheshire's not crippled."

"Oh, sure, just because I'm your team mate and not a supervillain doesn't mean-."

"She nearly died, Wally." Artemis is glaring at him in a way that would raise a red flag with me. "I think she qualifies for priority treatment."

Fortunately, Wallace isn't quite so attentive. "How'd she run so fast, anyway?"

"Velocity Nine, or a variant of it." Major work done, newly added Apokoliptian armour concealed by a slight modification of her kimono. Probably best I don't give her her weapons back but I do stick a small dose of Velocity Ten in an inner pocket where she'll be able to feel it.

Wallace and Robin start, but Wallace looks most concerned. "Velocity Nine? Isn't that stuff fatal after a couple of doses? Premature ageing, exhaustion." A particular personal horror creeps in. "People's bodies digesting themselves 'cause they burned up all their fat reserves."

"They might have fixed the bugs-" As if I'd give Jade something that had bugs. "-or maybe they have a fix to undo the damage back at Shadow HQ." I shrug. "You know Ra's is an expert alchemist. There, done." I stand, taking the time to nod to Zatanna. That's odd, why has the box been reclosed? I extend filaments towards Wallace, subspacing his armour and working on his burns. "What's in the box?"

Richard glances at it. "Letting Riddler go would have been a bad idea, but so was leaving him tied up in the middle of a firefight. I figured that since the box was made of the same stuff as your armour it might keep him safe. Safer than he would have been without it at least."

"True. Plus, it'll stop him escaping again." I neither know nor care how he got out of Belle Reve. Comic book prisons, right? If it had been someone I actually rated as a threat, maybe I'd have bothered to look into it.

The patients healed, Zatanna waves her hands around to disperse the golden glow. "How did you beat that.. giant..?"

"Brimstone Class Plasma Servitor." Quick scan of the three I haven't healed yet. Grazes, mild burns and a little too much ionising radiation exposure. A quick sweep will fix that right up. "Very strong magnets and then a very tough probe so I could interface with the control system. Dumped it on the edge of the star system before letting it explode. How come there's still snow on the ground down here?"

Zatanna shrugs. "I put up a shield to keep them from shooting us. Kept the heat off as well." She raises her right hand and a swarm of golden triquetra dance around it. "It didn't even feel hard."

Wallace stretches his shoulder where the burns were situated. "You think maybe you could get your dad to teach you some healing spells as well?"

Robin winces. "KF!"

Zatanna nods, downcast. "No, he's.. got a point. If you'd been more seriously injured-."

She's cut off as a crash from outside marks the arrival of the unconscious Devilance. Kon and Match follow him down in a more controlled fashion, Match carefully holding his spear like a caber for tossing.

I turn to Zatanna. "They're worth knowing, but at the moment I think the best thing you could do would be to work on restoring this area to its pre-Brimstone state. I doubt the League will look kindly on us causing major ecological damage. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to send the surviving Apokoliptians home and collect my winnings."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:02 GMT -5

"Beeeep."

"Mister Swift, sorry to bother you but I'm in the middle of a fight that could really benefit from your input." Wait, why am I-? Ring, show me Richard Swift.

I see a man in his prime, black hair oiled back in a style that reminds me slightly of David Tennant. He's wearing a shirt with loose sleeves and an embroidered waistcoat, flicking through a broadsheet newspaper while lounging on a chaise longue. Next to the chaise longue is a small table on which sit a tea service and his fucking mobile which I can see vibrating. Ring, phone him again. A new burst of vibrations and no response. Ring, cut off and do it again.

He closes the newspaper, folds it in half and then lays it down next to him before looking directly at my point of view and gesturing at the phone with his right hand and raising his eyebrows. Yes, but I can't talk to you before you pick the bloody thing up, can I? I could transition there but I don't know how long persuading him would take and I don't think just grabbing him and pulling him here would be conducive to my continued existence.

"Blown away! All blown away!"

Air Bozo's landed and is projecting a tornado directly at the Enemy. It's battered back and then somehow seems to flow around the edge of the wind funnel before Morrow hits it with another orange bolt. Interesting, it looks like he can't make constructs. Onyx is heading around to the other side of the increasingly punctured ice dome. I could shockcrown her but it seems like a wasted effort at this-.

"This is The Shade. I would appreciate an explanation for this intrusion."

He's still looking at me, phone to his ear. Right. "Mister Swift, I apologise for disturbing you but I rather need your help. We've got-."

"Are you in Opal City?"

"Um, no?"

"Is your family name Ludlow?"

"Nnnno?"

He leans back. "Then I'm afraid I'm rather losing interest."

"It's called an Enemy of All. The man controlling it said that it came from-."

"The Shadowlands. Hm. I suppose that merits my involvement. Where are you?"

"The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, about seventy kilometres south south east of Knoxville."

He pauses for a moment. "Really? I can't see you."

"I'm unscryable."

The Enemy teleports directly behind the Air Bozo and swipes at its right side. Bozo shakes as the Enemy manages to find something corporeal inside and tear it out. Half of Bozo's air blast immediately cuts out and Bozo is sent shooting backwards in an arc. "Weeeeeeee!"

"If this is some sort of trap, be warned that I am notoriously vengeful and ill-tempered."

"Hate to be a nag Mister Swift, but-."

"Oh, there you are." He's.. under some trees? I look around until I spot him emerging from a snow-covered copse, cane in hand. His clothes seem to melt into the shadows around him. No, the other way around, like the tar-coloured shadows around him have flowed upwards and only gradually got the hang of becoming clothing. The pool of darkness flows ahead of him as he strides out across the snow-covered mountainside, wisps of the same stuff moving through the air in the way I now recognise from the Enemy. He looks me over before returning his attention to the Enemy. "Now I see you I'm certain that I recognise you from somewhere. I just can't put my finger-."

"The Cake Man. I'm the Cake Man."

"Oh, of course." I see a thin smile form on his lips. "Rum business, that."

"Mister Swift, if you could please-?"

"Yes, yes." He stops and extends the head of his cane in the direction of the Enemy.

It looks up from its attempt to ingest Lantern Morrow, who's become a little corroded by the contact. A chunk of the right side of his head is gone along with most of his right arm. Its concealing darkness seems to cease its movements for a moment. "Mmmrut?"

"Here boy! Come here!" Its head jerks twice and then it vanishes, reappearing a good thirty metres directly away from Mister Swift and running. Mister Swift lowers his cane and shakes his head. "No, no, that won't do at all." The snow before him darkens as if some great sea creature was swimming underneath the surface, heading in the direction of his target. With its assailant gone Air Bozo points its remaining arm at Mister Swift but before it can attack I shove two Crumbler missiles into the tear in its side, violently unmaking its internals.

Now that the Enemy has space to run I begin to see that Truggs wasn't exaggerating about its top speed. Clearly it can't accelerate as fast as Wallace but it's getting to his-. And it just fell into Mister Swift's elongated shadow. Ring, do you have any idea how he did that?

"Unable to analyse."

Probably the most powerful man on Earth and he hardly ever leaves Opal these days. I actually put him on my Justice League long list but from Batman's response I'm going to guess that isn't going to happen.

"I believe that constitutes a threat."

A beam of orange light flares from Morrow's remaining arm towards Mister Swift only to be smothered and absorbed by his protean darkness. "Orange Lantern, I brought my pet to heel. Would you mind disciplining yours?"

I transition directly behind Lantern Morrow and put my left hand on his shoulder. Never tried this on someone else's construct before but I suppose there's no reason why it wouldn't work. And it's not killing. I'm not doing anything to him that hasn't been done already. "Ring, assimilate."

The ring flares for a second. "No resistance detected." Orange light flows from the ring into Lantern Morrow and the obvious damage begins repairing itself. "Doctor Thomas Oscar Morrow of Earth, you belong to Agent Orange."

"Yes, I… I do." He lowers his left arm and turns his head to look at his right as it reappears.

"Morrow?" Mister Swift vanishes into his puddle of darkness before reappearing a few metres away. He peers at the Construct-Lantern's face, recognising it. "Thomas, do you remember me? We worked together briefly during the fifties."

"Shade." Morrow nods as I release his shoulder. "Yes, I.. know you."

**Orange Lantern to team, the Enemy of All is gone… Um, dealt with. The Morrow Construct-Lantern now works for me.** Ring, optical scan for those invisibility generator things. Just one, the one I tried getting the Enemy on earlier. I send in a filament to remove the invisibility generator and shockcrown him. **No functional mercenaries out here that I can see, though Onyx-.**

"You, Lantern! What in God's name have you done to him!?"

**I got her.** A purple glow breaks through the dome on the far side before dipping down hard.

I hold my hands up to placate Mister Swift. "I didn't do anything. I don't do that to sentients. A man called Nylor Truggs stole the ring from me a couple of weeks ago, broke into Belle Reve and did that to him. And no, as far as I know there's no way to reverse it."

His frown deepens. "Where is this man 'Truggs' now?"

"Somewhere around here, invisible and.. probably carrying other weird devices. You do know that Morrow was trying to kill every living thing on Earth, right? I mean, I wouldn't wish that-" I nod at the Construct-Lantern. "-on anyone, but if it had to happen to some-."

CRACK CRACK CRACK!

I look back towards the dome as a jagged crack connects Bozo's exit hole to the one the mercenaries used, and from the sounds of it others as well. "Excuse me!" I lunge for the nearest hole, ring shining, just as the centre of the dome collapses.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:06 GMT -5

"Eci t'nod tih enoyna!"

I catch the largest parts of the top of the dome but the whole thing's going down! Over on the west side I see an exhausted looking M'gann throw her arms up to stop a slab in mid air but I know she finds it harder to block lots of medium sized objects. Kon flies up to hammer lumps away and Miss Ervin creates a force field around a pile of bound, unconscious and frostbitten prisoners. Robin is smashed to the ground by a lump the size of a beach ball! And then pushes the frozen boulder off himself and dusts himself off. Oh, right, I suppose this isn't much of a threat to him or Artemis. In fact, with phasing, armour and strength, Zatanna and Wallace are probably the only ones… Filaments strike both of them and form construct armour around them while I start shifting the ice I'm already holding to the rim of the canyon. M'gann sets what she's holding down on the ground next to her.

**Is that it?** Wallace is pressed up against a crevice in the canyon wall and looks around hopefully.

Kaldur waves his trident and the ice crystals piled up around Miss Ervin and the prisoners shift away. He looks for a moment. **Before the fight started I counted eighteen mercenaries in addition to Onyx. We have only seventeen here.**

**I got one at the top. He's not going anywhere.**

**I presume that you accounted for the air robot as well?**

I nod, then realise that he can't see me. **Yes.**

Kon floats upwards in my direction, looking pleased with himself. **That's all four of them. Who got Truggs?**

No one says anything. Oh shit, are you really telling me-.

"Rolyn Sggurt laever flesruoy yletaidemmi!"

There's a flicker just behind Artemis as Truggs' invisibility shuts down. Immediately he grabs her around the neck and holds a gun to her temple. "Oh-kay then. Now, I seem to have suffered an unfortunate reversal of fort-." Artemis swings her bow back over her shoulder, striking him directly in the right eye. He fires instinctively as he staggers back, free hand shielding his ruined eye. "AH FUCKING BITCH!" The cold beam hits her in the head and encrusts it in ice!

**"Artemis!"**

Wallace speeds forwards while Kaldur fires electricity and I try and get him with a shockcrown. Between that, an explosive from Robin and what looks like a telekinetic surge from M'gann Truggs isn't getting up again any time soon. Is that..? Artemis is still upright as I transition over to her. I know she's tough but it's not like I've tested-.

Her hands slam into the sides of the ice encasing her head. Once, twice, three and it shatters and she starts coughing to clear her airways. Ring, help her out and do a full medical scan while you're at it. She takes a gulp of air as the ring clears out the remaining blockage and puts her left hand on my right shoulder to steady herself. Looks like the cold guns his people use freeze material to the target rather than just lowering its temperature. It still gets pretty cold but I suppose that would get around the problem of sufficiently well insulated targets ignoring the freeze ray variety.

**You alright?**

She nods, panting. "Yeah, I-." **Yeah, I'm okay.** She stands back and holds up her bow. **Eww, is that..?**

**His eye.**

She turns to look at Truggs as Wallace pushes him into a sitting position to handcuff him before searching him for other weapons. His right eye socket is just a bleeding hole with the mashed remains of his eyeball that aren't on Artemis' bow stuck to his cheek. **I was aiming for his forehead. I-I haven't got used to how short this bow is yet.**

I glance back as Kaldur approaches. **Artemis, no one blames you for his injury. He brought it on himself when he tried to take you hostage.**

Wallace looks up, nodding. **Yeah Artemis, and it's not like Oh El can't just grow it back.**

**Um…**

He looks at me. **You can, right?**

**No. He's killed two people that I know about and he stole this ring. I don't care how injured he gets.** I shrug. **Sorry, I'm just not that good a person. Of course, he might just heal it back on his own like he said he would his finger.** I use the ring to remove the eye mush from Artemis' bow and then look up at the rim of the canyon. Mister Swift looks down at me and then at Truggs, narrows his eyes slightly and then disappears in a puff of blackness. Not sure what's going on there though I doubt he's exactly impressed. I look around. **Anyone need their injuries healed?**

There's a general shaking of heads, but I run a quick check anyway. Minor cuts and plenty of bruises but it looks like the damage on our end was fairly light. M'gann, Robin and Rob are over with Miss Ervin by the prisoner huddle. Her eyes glow as Onyx is yanked off her feet. "Where is the case?" Wait, didn't she get hit by Fire Bozo? Looks like the construct armour held.

"I don't know! You probably buried it somewhere."

**Cornwall, did Miss Martian get hit by the Fire Bozo?**

**Only a bit, and I fixed it. Simple healing magic was the first thing Dad taught me.**

**Oh. Um, well done. I didn't know you could do that.**

M'gann lets Onyx collapse back the snow covered ground. **She really doesn't know.**

Kon lands to pick up Truggs while Robin looks around the canyon. **This is ridiculous. It's here somewhere. Zatanna, could you detect it?**

She shakes her head as she carefully sits down on an exposed part of the plane. **Sorry, I'm… I don't have enough power left.**

Kaldur's head snaps around. **Are you injured?**

**No, I've just exhausted my magic reserves.**

**Cornwall, can you transfer power to her?**

**Maybe, I… I don't have much myself.**

But you've still got the sword. **Have you tried using the sword yet?**

**… No?** He pulls the scabbard around to his front, looking at it nervously. **Do I.. need to?**

Kaldur puts his right hand on Rob's right shoulder. **If you think it too dangerous then we will simply have to wait. That said, we do not know how or when the villains intend to use whatever is contained with the case. If we delay-.**

**Yeah, yeah, okay. Orange, you better stick me back together if this doesn't work.** I nod and attach a filament to him to be ready. "Here I go." He takes a deep breath. "Abannan afol Beowulf." Nothing happens. Rob looks at the sword. "Did I say it r-?" Lightning blasts from the scabbard, knocking him down onto his back! "Afh!"

Kaldur knees down next to him. "Cornwall, are you injured?"

"No. I'm okay, I'm okay." He pushes himself into a sitting position. "Oh, whaw, it's like someone injecting Red Bull right into your brain. Think I soaked it all." He stands, crouches and leaps, landing next to Zatanna in a spray of ice crystals. "I'm feeling a bit shaky, so it's probably best you take it."

She nods, standing and putting her hands on his shoulders. "Leuf ym lleps htiw Llawnroc S'yob cigam, esac fo ruo seimene, laever flesruoy!"

The normal gust of air that accompanies her spell casting swirls from Rob to her before flowing out across the ground. Near where the cockpit's buried a column of snow and ice erupts upwards, spraying out across the ground. I flick a filament in the direction of the hole and haul up the case.

Rob staggers back, looking pleased. "Job done. Um. Where do we take all these guys?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:16 GMT -5

Wallace gazes around the empty hangar, then walks over to the edge of the landing pad to see if our superiors are hiding in its shadow. No one there. "Where is everyone?"

Richard smirks. "Ah, KF? We didn't tell them exactly where we'd be appearing."

"No, but it's Batman. He just.. knows stuff."

Kaldur looks back at the boom tube as Match and Kon carefully fly Devilance's spear through. "Batman is a skilled detective but he is not omniscient. Perhaps we should have announced our return." Devilance will probably be a little upset about that when he wakes up. I dropped him off in the barracks near to the Tower of Rage along with the Gravi-Guard, Aero-Troopers and the few surviving Parademons. It seemed polite not to make 'father' wait to hear how the fight went. A trip back to the edge of the system confirmed the destruction of Brimstone along with the Hellspore and the techno-seed. Might have been interesting to have a closer look but I don't have much use for that sort of servitor at present, let alone a planet killer weapon.

Miss Ervin grimaces. "We gotta do that before we take a shower?"

I nod. "We probably should. One moment, I'll find out where they are." Ring?

I see an image of Batman in the training area speaking to Scott and Barda Free. Wonder Woman is also in attendance, along with Icon, Canary, Red Tornado, Mister Zatanna and.. Colonel Fang? Interesting. The Colonel's standing a little away from the others, League members forming a rough arc around the Apokoliptians. Ring, what are they saying?

"…older than me and he didn't have to grow up in Granny Goodness' Happiness Home. I think I saw him a few times at a distance but I couldn't tell you whether that was him or not." Scott turns to the side a little. "It's certainly possible, though. He feels.. Apokoliptian."

Batman inclines his head slightly. "Could that just be his ring, or as a result of his use of the Father Box?"

"I don't know. Having seen the pictures… Yes, it could be."

They both look at his wife. Barda shakes her head. "I didn't know him well either. Grayven left Apokolips a long time ago. This Grayven looks right but it's been too long for me to be certain."

I tap the ring to cut the feed. Makes sense that he'd want to know, I suppose. "Kaldur, our superiors are having a quick chat with my brother and sister in law in the training area. Would you like me to boom tube us there?"

"Hey, can we take this?" Match rests the haft of the spear on his right shoulder and points to it with his left hand. "I wanna show it to.. Mom."

M'gann raises her right hand to her mouth to cover her giggle while Kaldur looks it over. "I am not sure that it would fit."

I point my left hand at the side wall of the hangar and alter the structure and composition of the rock, creating a long straight shelf with a stand for the spear. "You can show it to her later." He and Kon look at the shelf, glance at each other and then fly over to deposit the spear. Despite my uncertainty they were both delighted by Wonder Woman's offer. Looking back at my own behaviour I've come to realise exactly how strongly I'd begun to believe that I was the sole agent for positive change around here. Obviously that was nonsense, and when I realised exactly how I'd been thinking about the situation the correct course of action became clear.

"Is this..?" Tao was fine during the fight and in the immediate aftermath but he's been looking progressively more and more uncomfortable since. "I am unused to flagrantly ignoring the instructions of my superiors in this way. How angry will Batman be?"

Richard shrugs. "Riddler's back in Belle Reve and we got the case and the Star-oh…" He looks at me for confirmation and I nod. "Starro-tech. Cheshire got away but none of us could have seen that coming." Wallace's expression tightens for a moment. "I think he'd be okay with that. Kinda hard to know how he feels about Grayven's friends crashing the party."

"No crust buster, no foul. Kaldur?"

He nods. "I do not believe that Batman will judge our actions too harshly. Open a tube."

There's the usual booming noise as the portal opens. I've set it to appear in the corridor leading to the training room so that our superiors can draw their conversation to a close without it being obvious that they're reacting to us. Nonetheless I catch a snip of sound. "…concerned with his conduct than his nature. So far I have heard no reason-." Colonel Fang's voice. He cuts off as Kaldur walks through the tube followed by Miss Ervin, Richard and Wallace, Kon, Match and M'gann and then Zatanna. Tao hesitates as he recognises the voice then gets a nudge from Artemis before metaphorically girding up his loins and heading through.

Just me to go. How do I want to play this? Do I try to claim that I'm actually Grayven or tell the truth? The joke's gone far too far now. If it got back to Darkseid that he'd been tricked… Assuming he doesn't know anyway… Wonder Woman can detect lies and she and Batman can both simply order me to tell the truth. I can't lie, telling the truth is risky and I can't give her cause to lasso me.

Time for sophism, I think.

I walk through and collapse the boom tube behind me. Ahead, Match goes to greet Wonder Woman only to be restrained by his brother. Naturally he's excited after his first mission but while he might 'know' how things work now he hasn't experienced much about the way we work. The team forms a rough line facing their superiors, Batman standing slightly forwards. Colonel Fang looks at me briefly before his eyes drill into Tao, who cringes slightly in response. I take my place just behind him and place a hand on his shoulder where Kon's body prevents Colonel Fang from seeing it. Tao's eyes flick to it and I feel him calm down slightly. Scott's looking at me with curiosity while Barda can barely conceal her hostility.

Batman looks us over before exhaling softly. "You've all had an eventful morning. The most important matter first: Grayven, do you believe that there will be any follow up from the Apokoliptians?"

"No sir. No Apokoliptian would dare claim Darkseid's authority without actually having it, or break Darkseid's word on his behalf." "Hello brother, sister in law."

Neither Scott nor Barda visibly react to the name or to the god speech.

"Do you believe that Darkseid expects you to conquer Earth for him?"

"Based on the demands he usually places on his suzerains, no. As far as he's concerned, as long as I don't raise banners against him the Earth and its people are mine to use or not as I choose."

"Protocol in the event of an alien attack is that all League members should be notified. Why did you decide not to follow this protocol?"

"Because I had no idea what qualified as a breach of the Apokoliptian duelling code and no way to stop Devilance bringing over more Hellspores if he felt that I had breached it. Earth's safety rested on us playing by a set of rules I didn't and still don't know. He appeared to accept my team mates as members of my retinue. Anyone else… I couldn't risk it."

"Are you Grayven, son of Darkseid?"

That's the biggy. "If I am, then Earth-" I nod at Scott and Barda "-its New God residents included, is safe from Apokoliptian intervention for the foreseeable future. If I'm not and Darkseid finds out, then he will feel that I've made a fool of him and things will go rather badly for us all. Do you really want an answer?"

Batman's eyes narrow slightly. Not the most helpful answer I suppose but it's the best one I could think to give. There's a grating noise as Colonel Fang folds his arms across his chest. "I do not believe that one is required. Your devotion to the defence of the Earth has been noted, Grayven."

And he wouldn't be saying that without the Standing Committee's approval. "Thank you, Colonel." I take the case out of subspace and offer it to Batman. "This was what we recovered from the crash. The objects inside are partially created from the body tissues of a species called 'Star Conquerors'. I believe that the Green Lanterns can furnish you with more information on them than I. The technological and sorcerous components are unfamiliar to me."

Batman passes the case to Icon, who carefully opens it. "I have never heard of these 'Star Conquerors'."

"Telepathic starfish. They don't have much use for lawyers."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:28 GMT -5

That was a lot less painful than I was expecting.

Batman was happy… Well, less grumpy, about getting Mister Nigma back in custody. I got a moment's eye contact when Kaldur reported Jade's escape at light speed but he didn't comment on it. He knows that Jade's my source in and point of contact with the Light. Since I was subtle enough that the others didn't spot it I don't think he'll pursue it further. I need to, though. That was some epic level stupid they just pulled, inviting Apokoliptians here. I hope that Jade will make very clear in her report to Ra's exactly how fucked the Earth nearly was.

Richard and Kaldur have stuck around while Batman and the other League members review Father Box's recordings of the fight but everyone else has left to find a shower. Kon finally managed to pull Match away from his excited recounting of the fight to Wonder Woman. I haven't quite adjusted to exactly how much less broody than his brother he is. Is it because he had a stable home environment and adult caregiver right from the start? Something to do with the differences in programming? Or was it all down to the neurochemical imbalance? I would have assumed the latter, but Kon's personality hasn't changed that much since I fixed it. Curious.

I turn to my left where Barda is still staring at me while Scott is fiddling with the scanner form of his multi-cube. Hmm. Not really sure how to handle her and my new brother. On the 'avoid' side of the scales, she's best placed to notice if my behaviour is wrong for the person I am becom-. Pretending to be. On the 'charm' side, interaction is most likely the best way of reducing her hostility, making her see me as an individual and not simply as a potential Darkseid-lite. I imagine that Scott will have a more neutral position… I glance at Wonder Woman. I have no doubt that she'd prefer me to be nice about it, and I do want to give her a somewhat more positive image of me than she has at present…

Smile in place I walk over to say hello to my new family. Barda's face hardens and her right hand reaches to the hilt of her mega rod. Scott manages a narrow smile of his own as he surreptitiously returns the multi-cube to its default form and then to his belt. "Scott Free. Big Barda." I hold out my right hand in their direction. "I realise my presence here is.. likely more than a little disconcerting. I assure you, had it been my choice I would have cut every link to Apokolips and I have encouraged those here who have such links to abandon them at every-."

For a moment it looks as if Scott is going to take my hand. I think Barda sees it too. She shoves her husband aside and steps right up close to me, glaring directly into my eyes and jabbing at my face with her right index finger. "If you have led Darkseid to us then the last thing you will see is my fist erupting through your eye sockets on the last stage of its journey from the back of your skull!"

I lower my right hand. Not a lot of people are tall enough to do that these days. Aggressive though the action is it actually makes me hopeful. If she still thought I was an immediate threat she wouldn't have taken her hand from her weapon. "Dear sister in law, I-."

"We aren't actually related." Scott approaches, though he stays out of Barda's easy shoving range. "Even if you really are Grayven. Which I'm still not convinced about."

"You were technically adopted by Darkseid,-" Again, I notice that neither of them wince. Is it age? Power? Prior exposure? "-it's close enough. I'm the nearest thing you have to a relative who isn't also a total arsehole."

Scott fold his arms. "Are you calling Highfather a 'total arsehole'?"

"Yes. He handed you over to Granny Goodness, didn't he?"

His eyes narrow slightly. "And Orion?"

"Without his Mother Box he'd be a berserker in seconds. Don't let my grey skin deceive you, I'm far further than either of my natural brothers from our father's nature. And as for your question dear Barda: no, I did not lead him here. He already knew where you were, he simply doesn't care enough to do anything about it."

The corners of her mouth turn down further. "That's impossible. The transportation device we use can't be tracked." "Scott, he's lying. I'll beat the truth out of him."

"You underestimate Darkseid. You don't ambush your prey by watching where it goes and then chasing after it. You only give it one place where it can go and you lie in wait for it." "I'd rather keep things civil." "Scott, he wanted Granny Goodness to break you. When she couldn't, he went with plan B and put you in a position where you would either die or escape. When you did escape the treaty which was bound by the exchange of sons became invalid." "And I'm not convinced you could."

Scott looks away. "I realized that he'd use that as an excuse. I didn't know that he'd cared about the treaty though."

"I don't pretend to understand why he does things, though if I had to guess I'd say that invalidating Highfather's 'noble sacrifice' was reason enough. Scott, Barda, I am not Darkseid. My designs for this world are wholly dissimilar to his and I bear you no ill will." I move my hands to the sides. "If in your eyes I have committed some misdeed then I apologise for it. Is it truly so unthinkable that I could be a friend, or at least an ally?"

Barda pulls back a little and shares a glance with her husband. "I.. suppose I don't need to kill you immediately. But I'll be watching y-." I step forwards with a grin, my arms going around their chests to pull them into a hug. For a fraction of a second I feel the surface friction on Scott's costume completely disappear as he prepares to slip away, only for him to decide not to. Barda is a little slower on the uptake. "W-? Get off me!" As her left arm is pinned against her husband's body she gets her right up and pushes against my head.

I take the shove in good humour and release the two of them. Barda looks distinctly disgruntled while Scott looks more amused. "I.. think we're about done here. If Darkseid keeps his word-"

Barda's still staring at me. "Hmpf."

"-then we're more likely to be left alone now than ever. Grayven, ah… Nice to meet you." He turns away to walk towards the zeta tube then stops when he realises that Barda hasn't followed him.

She points at my chest. "You. Crossfit Relentless gymnasium, Hartford, tomorrow at seven thirty. I've got a lot of anger to work out and you look a lot like the guy who inspired it."

"Barda, he doesn't-."

I hold up my right hand to cut him off. "It's fine Scott. I'll be there. We can get to know one another better." Scott puts his left hand on her right arm to lead her away. She makes to go with him then turns her head to look at me once more, pointing her left middle and forefingers at her eyes and then at me. I make a catching gesture with my right hand and pull it towards my heart before smiling at her. With a grunt she turns away and stomps towards the Zeta Tube.

"Recognised, Mister Miracle A zero seven, Big Barda A zero eight."

"I thought you handled that well." I turn to see Wonder Woman a short way behind me. "Though if she's as good as she's supposed to be you might wish you'd worked harder in your unarmed combat lessons."

"A few bruises are a small price to pay." Ugh, hard bit. "Sir, I wanted… Your adoption of Kon and Match. I…" I give up and extract a large gift wrapped box out of subspace. "I realise that it's a little late, but I also know that Amazons don't have a tradition of midwinter gift giving."

She looks it over cautiously. "What is it?"

"Apokoliptian body armour. I… I tried to use colours from your preferred palette. It's surprisingly hard to make Apokoliptian equipment in gold, blue and red but I.. kept at it. Unlike what you're currently wearing it'll cover your arms and legs, and there's a helmet… It's loose enough that you could wear it over your-" I gesture at her armoured bustier with both hand. "-current armour if you want. I also made moderate donations to a couple of charities in your name."

She nods, slightly puzzled. "I had wondered why they sent me thank you notes. Grayven, why are you doing this?"

"A peace offering. I want to… I think I'd.. got it into my head that the only way anything would change for the better was ifff… I was the one making it change. And then you… You did that. I was wrong." I nod to myself. "I was wrong. You've demonstrated that you are a person in whom I.. I think I can have faith. I don't know if it means anything now but.. I'm prepared to follow your direction. If you'll have me."

She nods once and then goes quiet for a moment, thinking about it. "Very well. If you're prepared to give me another try as your teacher, I'm prepared to give you another chance as my student."

"Thank you."

"I was planning to take Kon and Match to Themyscira at the end of next week. In light of.. this, I think it would be good if you were to join us. I know that they would enjoy your presence and I think that it could be.. beneficial to you."

"I would like that. Thank you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:44 GMT -5

Miss Ervin watches as the Charlotte City Police Department's Special Response Unit shove the last of Truggs' mercenaries into an armoured van. Since we obviously couldn't let them keep their armour we took that off them, along with the undersuit. As a result the fifteen guys who don't need more serious medical attention are going straight to the local maximum security prison's cells in their underwear while the other three are going to its medical wing. Apparently police forces have learned not to take chances with people involved in super crime, even at the mook level.

Since none of the injuries are crippling or life threatening I haven't even tried healing them and Rob hasn't offered. Not sure whether that was because he was too drained or because he didn't care either. Kaldur, Kon, Artemis and M'gann went on to Belle Reve via Bio-Ship with Truggs and Onyx while I sent Robin, Wallace, Zatanna and Rob back to the cave via Zeta Tube with the case and the strange red things inside.

"Is it always like this?"

I think for a moment. "Depends how you mean. That was my first sprawling melee with multiple super powered participants on either side, and because of how our team operates we're usually the ones on the offensive." I briefly remember being pinned to the wall in our own base. "On the other hand, nothing we encountered there was really new. We've all fought elemental robots before, most of us have fought freeze rays… Quasi-demonic beasties are new but we've fought fast melee fighters before."

She gives me a dubious look. "You said some guy just turned up to take that thing away?"

I nod. "Mister Swift has a very particular skill set. I've tried to create a record of just about everyone active with superpowers in the world in case something like that happened. It came from the Shadowlands, he's powered by the Shadowlands… It made sense."

"Aqualad to Orange Lantern and Rocket."

Miss Ervin puts her right hand to her ear piece while I raise the ring to my right ear. "We're here, Aqualad."

"Warden Strange has agreed to take receipt of our prisoners, pending an agreement being reached on where they should be tried for their crimes."

"I know the Gotham Police would like a word with Mister Truggs. And the Kawasaki police. I haven't even got around to telling the British police about Steel Claw yet."

"Have the Charlotte City Police finished taking their mercenaries into their custody?"

"They're on their way to prison now. I was going to hang around just in case but… They.. don't look like there's much fight left in them."

"If there is nothing else that requires your attention, come to Belle Reve to pick us up. We will return to the mountain to face our mentors." There's a slight beep as he hangs up.

"How mad are they gunna be?"

I shrug. "Hard to tell. I mean, we should have told them what we were planning, but the mission itself was a near-complete success. Aside from Truggs losing an eye, but Batman himself told me that that sort of thing can happen no matter how well you prepare. I don't think I'll be getting a ticking off from Diana. Robin might get his knuckles rapped for fiddling with League systems… How d'you think Icon'll take it?"

She crosses her arms. "We don't have that kinda relationship. I'm his partner, not his sidekick."

I nod. "Transition alright last time? No sickness or anything?"

"No? Why, was I supposed to feel sick?"

"When I first started doing it to other people, I didn't realise that I needed to put an environmental shield around them first. Miss Martian was quite ill." Miss Ervin grimaces appropriately. "Ready to go?" She nods. I affix a filament to her and the scenery flickers as we appear next to the Bio-Ship at the side of Belle Reve Penitentiary. Miss Ervin's eyes widen just a little as she takes in the fortress' outer walls. "Belle Reve Penitentiary. Name's a bit of a joke really; I certainly wouldn't call this place a beautiful dream and few of the people inside are particularly penitent."

"Those walls really Superman-proof?"

"Million dollar question. I'd say not. I think he'd get through eventually. Might take him a while though, and none of the people inside are Superman-strong."

The armoured door closest to us opens to reveal a guard and our team mates. The guard's one of the new ones, I note. I've looked into Waller's concerns and I still haven't found anything concrete. People.. move jobs, and according to Strange's personnel record he prefers to avoid direct confrontation. If he wanted people to go it seems in character for him to try increasing pull factors rather than push ones. Only other cause for concern was that he persuaded Doctor Harleen Quinzel to transfer here from Arkham to take his old job as prison psychiatrist. She doesn't have the experience that a post like this would normally require.. but again, they used to work together in Arkham, metahuman clinical psychology isn't a popular specialisation -not the criminal sort at least- and a background check didn't reveal anything particularly worrying about her. I don't think she's even met Mister Napier yet. It's a little odd -given my outside knowledge anyway- but not a red flag of the sort I need to bring the matter to League attention.

Kon and M'gann amble over while Kaldur and Artemis hang back to speak to the guard. Kon waves his right hand in greeting. "Hey. Everything go okay?"

I nod. "Yep. I'm all ready to get our bollocking out of the way so I can get started on adapting this armour."

M'gann looks uncertain. "Are you really sure that's a good idea?"

"Some of us can't go invisible under our own power. And the armour's much better than what we're…" I look at Kon's dull grey plate. "What most of us have got now."

Miss Ervin raps her right knuckle against her breastplate. "Armor you made last time worked out okay." The Bio-Ship's entrance ramp oozes down and Kon and M'gann lead the way onboard. Miss Ervin holds back and gives me a slightly puzzled look. "I thought the League handed stuff like that over to STAR Labs?"

"They usually do, but when Truggs took the ring from me he wrecked their secure storage site and I don't really want to hand invisible scry-resistant body armour over to somewhere it could go walkabouts from. Besides, I'm faster than they are."

She nods and I follow her up the ramp, pausing a moment at the top to check that Artemis and Kaldur are following before going inside and taking my seat.

"Hey, Paul?" I look over at Kon. He's sitting on the front right side with his seat swivelled around to face me. "Could you put a Zeta Tube in Belle Reve?"

"If we got permission for it from the League and from Strange, yes. Why do you ask?"

"Be a lot easier to drop people off if they had one."

"It would also be a possible point of access to any League facility for someone inside America's leading supervillain prison. Besides, the Atlanteans are pretty close to having their own Dolmen Gate prototype ready. We might all be changing over before too long."

"Why? Zeta Tubes work fine."

M'gann shakes her head. "They didn't work when the Ice Fortresses created that blizzard."

"Right, and a Dolmen Gate wouldn't have been affected by that. Of course, we don't know what it would be affected by yet…"

I trail off as Kaldur and Artemis enter. Kaldur nods to M'gann. "Miss Martian, please take us out of Belle Reve airspace. Orange Lantern, once we are outside the exclusion zone return us to the mountain. Robin has relayed the message that Batman wishes to.. speak with us, concerning the events of this morning."

M'gann lifts her hands over the controls and the Bio-Ship rises into the air. I don't really think that Batman will have a problem with this any more than he did Santa Prisca. Nonetheless, the sombre look on Kaldur's face brings a certain song to mind.

"There may be trouble ahead…"

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
10:52 GMT -5

"Tell me if this sounds familiar."

As tallest member of our group I've taken position near the back of our huddle. For some reason Robin is front and centre rather than Kaldur and the rest of us spread out around him in the order we left the Bio-Ship. Opposite us is Batman, with Black Canary, Diana and Icon just behind him. Red Tornado was here but he's taken Doctor Morrow up to his room. Morrow's place in his Belle Reve hospital bed had been occupied by a lifelike robot and Kaldur said that Warden Strange claimed to have no idea that he wasn't who he appeared to be. That's a bit fishy but I suppose he wasn't exactly the most active of inmates. Which means every other incident of someone not being in Belle Reve when they should be might also be the result of robot duplicates. Strange could really be innocent.

"You hacked League systems, disobeyed protocol-"

Batman's start-with-an-intimidation thing doesn't really work on me any more. With empathic vision I can clearly see what he's feeling so I know full well that he's not angry. Oh, the colours don't tell me exactly what he's feeling by themselves -there's no colour for happiness, satisfaction or pride for example- but by looking at his usual green and yellow psyche I can catch glimpses of memories and associations that are being brought to the surface. My eyes unfocus slightly as I take a closer look. Oh, shouldn't have done that. There's a.. lot of learning to contain his emotions in there. I hadn't realised that he and Mister Pennyworth didn't-.

"-and does something about this amuse you, Orange Lantern?"

My eyes snap back into focus on his material body and I awkwardly take note of the smile that's already taken up residence on my lips. "Sorry sir, empathic vision. I already know how you feel about the situation and the relief's kicked in before you actually.. said it. Um. Sorry."

Batman continues to glare at me for a moment as Kon and M'gann struggle to suppress any manifestation of their own relief. I think Diana's suppressing her amusement as well but she's a good deal better at it than they are. "Despite that, and the reckless way you endangered your own lives your initiative resulted in the capture of a number of wanted felons, including one who has claimed to be the operations manager for the alliance of supervillains that we believe has been behind a number of recent missions for both the League and the team." Then he actually smiles. "Well done."

Even knowing that he was going to say it, it wasn't until he actually does that I feel the last dregs of my fear drain away. Pfew. There's a general relieved shuffling from my team mates as well. Canary still doesn't look best pleased and Icon… Does he do facial expression? I know that he isn't Human but surely he's been on Earth long enough to mimic us?

"And then there's this." Batman and Icon step over to the table upon which rests the open case containing the Starro-tech thingies. "Biotechnology integrated with some form of nanocircuitry."

Icon reaches forward to why is he doing that shield! He takes in the shield and then turns his head to look at me. "Sir, I really don't recommend touching those with bare skin. The biological component comes from a Star Conqueror, the whole thing screams mind control technology."

He nods. "A justified concern." His voice is even deeper than Batman at his growliest. "My own people had barely discovered farming during the Star Conquerors' last expansion." He turns his head slightly towards Batman. "Perhaps the Green Lanterns could tell us more?"

"We'll take it to the Watchtower." I remove the shield and Batman closes the case before picking it up and walking towards the Zeta Tube. Hm. Nothing about Truggs' eye? I thought it might at least warrant a mention. I plan to visit him in Belle Reve at some point next week. Don't know how productive it will be. I mean, he certainly hasn't sounded like the sort of person who might be redeemable through reasoned discussion but I can't just pass up future knowledge.

Icon and Canary follow Batman while Diana's heading towards me. "I'm curious, Paul: what made you decide to ask The Shade for help?"

Rocket flies over to talk to Icon while I consider my response. I know that she fought him several times as part of the Justice Society. I think she might have first met him during the Second World War, him being one of the few empowered individuals who could operate in Axis territory due to 'not being a superhero'. I've never asked how she feels about him now. "He was the first person I thought of with any knowledge of the Shadowlands. I was really hoping for advice."

"I'm a little surprised that he was prepared to take the risk. If that Enemy of All creature had charged him and destroyed his cane..." I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth in order to stop myself laughing. "What is it?"

She doesn't know about… Okay. "Diana, when you fought him before, he was… Um… Jobbing."

She looks blank. "'Jobbing'?"

"It's a stage wrestling term. Basically it means being the guy whose job it is to lose convincingly. For Mister Swift… Well, he was bored, decided that fighting the Justice Society looked entertaining and, um… Pretended to need his cane to use his powers."

She pauses for a moment as she takes that in. "Why?"

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"So that you'd have a hope in hell of stopping him. Richard Swift is an eldritch abomination whom it -mostly- suits to look Human. He doesn't need the cane, he doesn't even need to manifest a Human looking body if he doesn't want to. A fight he couldn't lose would have been boring so he.. lowered the bar."

"I.. find that.. hard to believe."

"Ring, access main screen." The screen comes to life, displaying what I saw from the moment Mister Swift first appeared. The image glitches a little around the man himself. The ring really struggles to cope with the Shadow stuff.

"Black Canary, one three, Icon one eight."

The rest of the team gathers to watch as well. I've already described what happened to them but this is the first chance they've had to see it for themselves. We watch as Mister Swift appears, speaks to me and then causes the Enemy to flee before consuming it. I couldn't see exactly what happened when it was happening live but with the ring providing a close up… Yes, it definitely looks like there was some sort of shadowy mouth structure which the Enemy fell into.

Wallace looks at the screen wide-eyed. "Whow. Jay didn't mention him doing that before."

Mister Swift then effortlessly parries Lantern Morrow's attack. Oddly, that is the bit that Diana reacts most to. Because it didn't involve him gesturing with his cane, perhaps? "That doesn't necessarily prove that he doesn't need the cane. You said yourself that Morrow isn't as powerful as you are, and The Shade's still holding onto it."

"You could try asking him for proof, or just phone Mister Knight and ask him about it." Odd. For the first time since receiving the ability I can see tiny slivers of red light within her. Why would this set her off? Looks like… Pride? She feels insulted by his behaviour?

"I see. I may just do that." She tears her eyes away from the screen and puts her right arm around her son's shoulders. Kon looks surprised for a moment and then leans into it. "Kon, I'm proud of your performance today. I know how counterintuitive it feels to save your foe in the middle of a fight but your quick actions prevented those soldiers from suffocating."

Yes, maybe making that chap want to coat everyone on his side in ice wasn't the best thing I could have done. Very lucky that Kon was on the ball enough to break them out. "Um." He looks a little embarrassed at the attention. "No problem."

"I'll look forward to reading your full report." She kisses him on the forehead, then lets go and flies over to the Zeta Tube.

"Recognised, Wonder Woman, zero three."

Miss Ervin frowns at the tube and then at Kon. "What was that about?"

"That's what moms do." Kon shrugs. "Isn't it? I'm still a bit new at this."

She boggles. "Wonder Woman's your Mom?!"

Robin smirks. "Think maybe we need to make some kinda info leaflet for the new guys?"

"How did-? I mean, she didn't-?" Miss Ervin makes a round gesture over her abdomen.

"I'm adopted."

"Oh. 'Cause that explains it."

Kaldur presses some buttons and gets a view of the crash site as it was when we first arrived. "I am still concerned about how our enemy knew that we were watching them."

Artemis looks at him, then at a suddenly thoughtful Robin. Then she sags. "Not the mole thing again!"

Rob and Miss Ervin both look blank. Robin turns to them. "We had intel that-."

"We had an unsubstantiated claim from a criminal that there was… You know what I think? I think Truggs just sets up ambushes everywhere he goes on the off chance that someone wanders into them. We did the mole hunt. There was no one." I'm so not doing that whole thing again, and from the looks of Kon, Artemis and M'gann I'm not the only one fed up with the idea. "The fact that the League has access to airport security systems isn't much of a secret and neither was the fact that we were after Onyx. That's all there is to it. That's it. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got modified cold guns to take apart."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
14:57 GMT -5

"It's not going to look any different, is it?"

I look away from Devilance's spear to where Match floats just to my side. I can just about remember wanting to present things to my parents in my own childhood. Wonder Woman was appropriately attentive while Kon and Match recounted details of their fight with the God of the Hunt but it isn't as if they can actually use a weapon like this.

"Match, if you don't want me to do this, then I won't. This spear belongs to you and Kon."

"You said you needed it."

"The power cell would be very helpful, certainly, but if you don't want to give it to me, that's the end of the matter. I'm fully capable of reattaching the outer casing without leaving a mark."

He thinks it over for a moment. "Noooo, it's okay. Just kinda wish I'd taken his gauntlet too." An idea occurs to him. "Not the one Kon broke. The other one."

"Maybe next time you see him." Right. The spear doesn't have an obvious access panel or opening, and the weapon is too unique for Father Box to have records on it. I don't want to start cutting if I don't have to. I lay the palms of my hands on the area on the haft where the power generation unit lies. There's a capacitor near the head which feeds into the energy discharge system but the actual generator is much lower down. "Open sesame." "Open."

Nothing happens. Hm. I project twenty filaments out from my hands and attach them around the circumference of the spear. "Looking forward to starting school next week?" Father Box, attempt connection.

Ploong.

Not getting anything. Does the spear classify as a Box? I couldn't hack a Father Box but I could probably talk one into accepting my authority.

"I guess. I mean, it'll be nice to get out of the mountain more, meet people. Will they find my eyes weird?"

"Probably, but you shouldn't worry about it. That's just an initial response. They'll get over it once they get to know you." I spread an orange aura outwards from my hands to envelop the section I'm working on. I think I can feel the mechanism. "What have you worked out for your cover story?"

"I'll say I was getting home schooled but that Mom wanted me to spend more time with people my own age. Can I..? Ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything, Match. You know that." Spear, answer your prince. There's something, some sort of impulse back. Father Box, communicate with it.

Ploong.

"I get that I need to go to school so I have qualifications and so I learn how to deal with, you know, normal people. That's a year and a half. What do I do then?"

"Whatever you want. You're intelligent, handsome and you have super powers. The world is your oyster." No, it isn't a Father Box, it's just connected to Devilance's aura strongly enough that-. Ah! There we go! The surface of the spear seems to melt away from the area over the generator. The generator itself is a little conventional. Simple enough to dis.. con.. nect… There we are! "Match, you've only been out of the pod for a month. No one's expecting you to make major life decisions yet. Kon's been out six times as long and I know he's made no such plans. Try things, learn about the world and if nothing really appeals… Well, with a bit of luck I'll have founded my Corps by then. I'm sure we can find something to keep you busy." I extend manipulator appendage constructs and float backwards, lifting the generator free. "Excellent. Oh, have you had a look at the Kryptonian database I gave Kon?"

"Yeah. Didn't really mean much to me. I think Kon still thinks of Kal-El as being our father, but… He doesn't really mean anything to me either. I mean, I was made on Earth. Everything I know is about Earth. Why should I care about a planet that doesn't even exist anymore?"

"Fair point." I drift back down towards the hangar's lower floor and Match trails along behind me. "How about your mother's books on Amazon culture?"

"The language is kinda hard. And it's all primary sources, there's nothing to say how accurate any of it is. I think…" He trails off as we land.

"Yes?"

"Maybe I'd... like to write about it? If they don't mind. Share information about how they live with people in the rest of the world."

"I think that's a rather nice idea. I'm sure Wonder Woman will approve of it at least." Since I'm not going to do what I originally thought I was and install a secondary power source directly into the hush tube I can finish building it and site the generator elsewhere. I'll still need to upgrade the mountain's power transmission systems before activating the generator-.

Alert! Incoming transmission.

"Excuse me, someone's trying to get hold of me." I raise the ring to my left ear. I had to stick a little Apokoliptian doohickey in the exchange to make this work, but now anyone phoning Rhode Island seven eight one hash hash will be directed to the ring. Not many people have this number to say the least. "Ring, answer." I don't say anything.

"Grayven, it's me." Jade? Why is she..? "This better not be your answer machine."

"Jade, hello." I give Match a smile. He won't be able to hear her end of the conversation but it would look a little suspicious if I excluded him from mine. "What can I do for you?"

Match looks curious. "Who's 'Jade'?"

"They want to talk to you."

I hold up my right index finger in a 'one moment' gesture to Match. "Who do?"

"Ra's and the others. It sounded like they've had some sort of argument."

"You weren't invited? Rather rude of them."

"Why would-? Is there someone there?"

I nod. "Yes, of course."

"Fine. They weren't expecting the Apokoliptians to do that and now they've been cut off."

"I don't mind paying them a visit. What sort of time do they have in mind?"

"I don't know yet, they're still setting it up."

"Is everyone going to be there?"

"I don't know, I don't even know who they all are."

"Well, I'd be delighted to meet everyone… Assuming none of them had an existing axe to grind. My.. schedule's fairly empty. Are they thinking sooner..?"

"Today. It'll be today."

I take a look at the hush tube. "I should be able to finish off here by then. Should I bring anything..?"

"You should bring every weapon you can carry. If Ra's offers you safe passage he'll keep to his word. The rest aren't like that."

"Of course. I'll look forward to it. How about you? How have you been?"

"My legs are fine. Thanks to you. Armor's good too. No one work out how I got away?"

"No, of course not."

She exhales. "I've never been in a fight like that. It was.. incredible. And, painful, when those Gravi-Guard hit me. I guess superspeed doesn't make you invulnerable."

"I'm afraid not. Look, phone me back when you've had a chance to confirm things with your friends, we can have a proper talk when we see each other in person. And I really want to see you."

"I'll let them know."

She hangs up and I lower the ring. That was convenient, though if I have to put up with Ra's' drivel again I'll probably kill them all and hide the bodies. Of course, if they've brought Klarion…

"Who was it?"

I focus on Match again. "My girlfriend, Jade. She wants to introduce me to some of her friends."

"Are they nice?"

"Bit early to say, really."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
01:55 GMT +4

"I really didn't have you pegged as a walks-along-the-beach sort of woman."

She looks up at me with a smirk. "You don't know everything about me. A few secrets keep a relationship interesting."

"I'm so very glad you think that." We're on the island of Masirah just off the coast of Oman, waiting for her employer to get in touch. She's still wearing the armour I gave her and so despite the heat I've left mine on as well. Normally I'd happily take advantage of any opportunity to spend time with her, but in this case… "Jade." I pull my right hand up to my chest, keeping hold of hers. "My skin isn't armour plated anymore. I can feel how tense you are without asking the ring."

The smile vanishes and she looks out to sea for a moment. She's annoyed that I caught her out. I didn't used to be that good at interpreting facial expression or body language but I've got to know all of hers intimately over the past few months. "You can't do anything about it."

"That sounds like a challenge."

"You know they're probably going to ask you to join, right? They're some of the most powerful people on the planet, and they're going to ask you to join them."

"Then we'll just have to see what sort of offer they make. I still don't really know what they're trying to achieve."

"Ra's told you."

"I thought he was being a little vague. I'd need a great deal more detail before I commit to anything, and frankly I very much doubt that I'll end up saying 'yes'."

She moves in front of me, staring up at me. "Don't start a fight with these people, Grayven."

"I won't. I'll listen with as open a mind as reason will allow but they don't have the best reputation. Look, neither of us know what they're going to say. We're as prepared as we can get. There's no sense worrying about it. How about I relax you?"

She blinks. "We don't have time for.. that. They could send a message any time now!"

"I wasn't talking about sex, Jade, though, given how long we've been waiting we probably could. I've been taking massage classes."

"Oh? Since when?"

"Since you mentioned that my hand eye coordination wasn't all that it could be." I generate a massage table construct. "Take the armour off and I'll show you what I've learned."

"What.. sort of massage classes?"

"Both relaxing massages and sports massages." The grin which appears on her face is pure filth and I smile along with it. "I.. may possibly have watched a few videos about that kind as well."

She sighs and rests her forehead against my chest. "No. We shouldn't. We might get distracted."

I eliminate the construct. "How about we talk about something else, then?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"You seem to like superspeed. Would you -ideally- like to have the ability permanently?" She lifts her head up to look at me. "I thought about… When you were injured, I thought about… You know what I've done to Artemis, Zatanna and Green Arrow, and now Kaldur and Kid Flash?"

"Altered their souls to make them gods."

"It's more like.. granting them the potential to become gods, inasmuch as Apokoliptians and New Genosians are. If you were able to move at superspeed before undergoing that, you'd probably get faster. If you underwent that process first, you might not be able to use it at all. Seeing you injured like that, I was this close-" I hold up my left hand with thumb and index finger nearly touching. "-to doing it anyway, whether I'd get found out or not."

"I don't need you looking after me the whole time."

"I know." I put my left arm around her back. "And that's part of why I love you. But… If you didn't have some tool that you needed.. because I didn't think to give it to you, that is a failure on my part."

"Hm." She thinks for a moment. "So if I want a superpower as well as godhood, I have to get the superpower first."

"It would be best. So, superspeed?"

"I do like superspeed.. buuut I'm kind of interested in teleportation too."

"I haven't really looked into teleportation. I think there's a young woman in Central City who can teleport, and Rocket mentioned another who'd been operating in Dakota City. Not sure their abilities can be adapted as easily as the Garrick Formula… But if you want me to find out then I can do that."

She smirks. "Why can't I have both?"

"Metahumans who manifest different abilities usually do so from a single source. A Lantern can fly and travel faster than light not as the result as separate abilities but as functions of a power ring. Unless we found someone who was naturally capable of several different things I wouldn't recommend trying to blend them."

"I suppose being a goddess with one super power's not too bad. I'd just like to try a few more out, that's all."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Did you offer that to Artemis?"

"She has an established preference for pointy sticks. Though, I suppose… She's still in the early stages…" I frown. "Might be able to find something for her. I'll talk to her about it. Anything other than teleportation you're interested in?"

"How about a power ring?"

"That would make it completely obvious where you got it from. Annnd, orange rings can have adverse affects on the minds of their users. I'd really want an expert on hand before offering one to you. On the more positive side power rings can be used perfectly safely by New Gods, so there's no need to hold off on godhood in order to get the maximum advantage." I pause for a moment. I had been meaning to bring it up at some point, but is now the time? "Though, speaking of rings, what sort of wedding did you want?"

She pulls away a little in surprise. "Huh?"

"I ask because you haven't shown any particular religious belief. I usually associate Vietnam with Buddhism, but as I understand it the native religion is a lot more like Shinto in its reverence-."

"Are you..? Asking me..? Because that's got to be the worst-."

"No. I mean, not right now. I just want to make sure you've thought about it. I don't really care about the sort of ceremony… As long as Father isn't officiating. That would be very uncomfortable for everyone."

"What's he like?"

"What's Darkseid like? I'm really not sure how to describe him. Physically, he's a large grey skinned man much like myself. A little larger, I think. But he's bald, so there's that. His eyes glow red with the power of the Omega Force that he bound to himself upon his ascension. In terms of his character… He desires to see all things -not merely people, but all life, all matter, the very fundamental forces of the universe- in tune with his will. He can be civil, if he wants to be and it doesn't cost him anything. Equally, he can decide to be monstrous and raze an entire world to the ground just so the few survivors will speak of him with dread. I suppose… Imagine if your father was a Kryptonian. Something like that."

I think she gets it. "Let's not invite him. What about your mother?" Ah-h. I have no idea who Grayven's mother is. Father Box has quite a lot of information about Grayven but nothing on her. I could just say that she's dead, but-. Jade's head jerks up. "It's the League of Shadows. They're ready for us. I have the co-ordinates."

"Then we'd best not keep them waiting."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
00:02 GMT +2

We step out of the boom tube into the designated spot in Queen Beatrice's palace in Al-Qawiya. There's a guard detail -Bialyans, I note- but their weapons are lowered and only a few of them are facing inwards. Armaments look conventional, that's a good sign. They haven't tried to hold onto anything Apokoliptian they shouldn't have done but it wouldn't astonish me if there were some plasma weapons around here. We're actually in the palace gardens, close to the palace itself. I'm not sure whether it's part of her faux piety, a reminder of historical greatness or she just really likes gardens but the grounds attached to the palace are really quite beautiful… Provided that one is prepared to overlook the anti-aircraft emplacements and -even on the best days- the small horde of plainclothes security operatives.

Two figures step forwards as the boom tube back to Masirah collapses behind us. The one on my left is a lieutenant in the Palace Guard. He's in field dress and carries the same rifle as his subordinates. Regular Bialyan soldiers come equipped with locally produced AK-47s but elite units like this apparently.. get… A little something from LexCorp's approved for export list. Goodness me, it's going to be like supervillain bingo in here, isn't it? He stays back a little as the civilian woman- ring?- Rayyah bint Khalid al-Saliba, Queen Beatrice's Principal Private Secretary. Interesting choice of greeter, given what happened last time we met.

I take a step forwards and extend my right hand. "Ms al-Saliba, pleased to meet you."

She keeps coming and takes my hand in the absolutely lightest grip she can and still qualify as actually holding onto it. "Prince Grayven. Her majesty Queen Bee has requested that you join her in the banquet hall."

"Oh, there's no need to call me 'prince', I'm illegitimate." I move my hand slightly away from hers and she moves hers back to her side as fast as she can. "Apokoliptian law on the subject is fairly flexible but by local standards only my half brother Crown Prince Kalibak would qualify. Please, lead the way."

She turns away and scurries down the path as fast as her dress will allow. I offer Jade my right arm. She hesitates and gives me a look of confusion. I wiggle my elbow and raise my eyebrows. She takes another quick look at the guards around us and then takes it with her left hand. I wait a moment and then we follow on behind Ms al-Saliba at a slow walk, the guards falling in behind us.

"Interesting point of law: did you know that Bialya is remarkably accepting of homosexuals? And I don't just mean by the appalling standards of the region; even by western standards." Jade glances at me while trying to simultaneously keep watch on our surroundings. "You're getting tense again. They're not going to shoot us before we get there and they can't stop us getting away."

She takes a breath and thinks about it. "Is.. Queen Bee..?"

"Not as far as I know. In fact, I haven't found any records of her having liaisons of any kind."

"What does she get out of it then?"

"Loyalty. Queen Bee can control lesbians just as well as she can straight men. Most of her female attendants -including our usher- are lesbians. Must be a very frustrating job, actually. And any homosexual men in her employ know that there are opportunities here they wouldn't be able to get anywhere else. Queen Bee may be an autocrat but she isn't arbitrary in her dealings. There is a secret police in Bialya but the quality of their investigations is actually quite high, they don't just grab people off the streets and torture them for fun. Corruption is stamped on fairly hard for much the same reason."

"She has your approval?"

"I think she's someone I could do business with. If she knocked her silly obsession with her neighbour to the west on the head. And if Ra's is here and.. the guns do rather imply that Mister Luthor will be joining us. Hm. I'm feeling surprisingly optimistic."

We walk up onto a tiled veranda and then into the palace proper. Considering that her Justice League file all but screams megalomaniac the palace isn't actually that big. Most of the civil service buildings are located in Al-Qawiya proper for security reasons. Military and police headquarters similarly located off-site, though the Palace Guard garrison is on-site. Parliamentarians might need a nod from their monarch before they even think about running for office but she has offloaded a fair bit of work onto them. I suppose that if one must spend the money to keep up appearances it behoves one to ensure that it isn't entirely wasted. There are civil service offices, meeting rooms and the Queen's personal residence and those of her attendants, but most of the space is essentially a big art gallery cum museum for entertaining the occasional dignitary or school party. The corridor we're passing down is decorated with paintings of various historical scenes; historical accuracy not guaranteed.

"Ms al-Saliba?" She glances back over her shoulder. "I feel I should apologise for the way we met."

"Oh no, there's really no need-."

"I rather think there is. I was more concerned with creating a lasting impression on Queen Bee and, to be frank, my own entertainment. I should have taken the effect it would have on other people into consideration, so, I'm sorry."

"Oh. Then, you are forgiven." She looks at me for a moment longer and then continues on her way.

"What did you do?"

"I drove the super cycle through the wall of Queen Beatrice's private dining room during breakfast."

She pulls her arm free. "If anyone asks, I'm not with you."

"We parted on reasonable terms. And I think events have proven me right in my views on contact with Apokolips." A left turn and at the end of the corridor I see the double doors leading to the banquet hall. I wonder if they're laying food on?

"Why did you tell her you weren't a prince?"

"Because it puts me in the same boat as Queen Beatrice, and she ascended to the throne anyway."

"She was the daughter of the previous king."

"True -probably- but she wasn't the daughter of his wife. As far as I was able to tell she used her pheromone control ability on him to get adopted into the royal household and eventually became heir designate after the former queen had a bit of an attack of the undetectable poisons. Probably with the assistance of one of your co-workers. Her heir is her half sister Princess Adilah, currently attending an excellent university in Singapore and kept under the eyes of no fewer than four armed security agents at any one time. Incidentally, Queen Beatrice's official history puts a rather different spin on it and no one in earshot will dare repeat what I just told you." We share a glance at the lieutenant who pointedly keeps staring dead ahead.

"Did we 'help' her with her father as well?"

"No, I don't think so. Everything I've seen suggests that his natural causes really were natural. No point in killing someone you already control."

"What about her mother?"

"Currently living the life of Riley in Monaco."

Ms al-Saliba waits for us in front of the doors as we approach before nodding to the uniformed functionaries standing next to them. They simultaneously take hold of the handles, turn them and open the doors outwards. Ms al-Saliba enters and quickly moves off to the left as Jade and I stroll forwards.

"Presenting Grayven of Apokolips and Operative Jade Nguyen of the League of Shadows."

The room inside looks a little deserted with only the high table set up, its occupants facing the doorway we just entered through. Queen Bee has the central seat and Ms al-Saliba quickly walks around to stand behind her mistress. On her left, Mister Luthor sits in a relaxed but formal pose, Miss Graves just behind and to his left. The next seat along holds Ra's al Ghul in full costume. Behind him, Ubu and a young looking Caucasian man with floppy black hair. Looks a bit like a male model but I'm sure that if Ra's has bothered bringing him along he's quite deadly to most people.

The man on Queen Beatrice's left on the other hand… I give him a quick scan to check, though I can't think of many people who would belong in this setting and have three diagonal scars across their face. Vandal Savage. Him, I'm not sure I can do business with. Wouldn't mind dissecting him to see if I can work out how his immortality works. Next to him is a computer screen showing a blurred head shape. Someone who doesn't want me to know that they're part of the group? If Mister Luthor is confident enough to show his face… Sivana, maybe? A politician, or some sort of infiltrator? Red Arrow's mole?

I come to a halt about five metres away from the table and look down at them. "Your Majesty, gentlemen. I am here as you requested. What can I do for you?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
00:09 GMT +2

Queen Bee leans forwards slightly. "No Tiger or flying motorcycle this time, Grayven?"

I give her a small smile. "No, not this time. I felt that it would be impolite, given that I had an invitation and you weren't doing anything liable to cause an Apokoliptian invasion this time."

"No. This time you were."

"I'm given to understand that they were invited by-" I look over to my left. "-Mister Savage." He doesn't react. "And my team mates and I were perfectly capable of dealing with them ourselves."

"Yes. You were. Please,-" She gestures with her right hand at the empty chair opposite her. "-take a seat."

As I walk forwards the television screen reorientates itself on me. "It is a shame that you did not bring the Tiger with you, Mister Grayven. I would have been most interested to study its development. He really was a most promising specimen."

The sound comes from the speakers next to the screen. I'm hearing a translation so his usual smattering of French is being omitted but that's unmistakably the Brain's voice. Of course, he uses a speech synthesiser these days anyway. I assume that he keeps his original voice out of pride. "I don't think that would have been a good idea, Brain. While I agree with your assessment of his intelligence his temperament is somewhat uncertain and I don't believe that he remembers you fondly." I do a quick check that the chair's strong enough to take me and then sit, Jade taking up station behind me. "So? What is this about?"

"We.. want to-" Ring, gag him "-mpf." Ra's glares at me, though the effect is totally ruined by the glowing orange band over his mouth.

I look along the row of other panel members. "Someone else, please. I don't want to be waffled at for two hours this time."

Queen Bee parts her lips slightly and then turns slightly to her left. Mister Luthor gives me his patented press conference slash used car salesman smile. "We believe that we have certain interests in common which might more profitably be pursued through cooperation than competition."

I remove the gag. "You see? Six seconds." I look down the row again. I could use the soul gaze I suppose, but I think it would be more polite to let them explain themselves and politeness does seem to be the order of the day. "What precisely do you believe those interests to be?"

Ra's takes a moment to compose himself. "When you tracked Cheshire to the League's safe house, you said something rather interesting. You claimed that you were trying to alter the world for the better, and that you were not afraid to get your hands dirty to do it. We,-" He indicates the Most Wanted with his right hand. "- share a similar philosophy."

"Yes, I've heard about your vision of the future of the Human race."

Spotting dissonance Mister Luther makes a subtle 'stop' gesture in Ra's direction and -interesting- he heeds it. "Without giving away the details of ongoing projects-"

I wave his caveat away. "Of course."

"-the exploitation of advanced technology, preternatural biology and magic to improve the state of Human existence and eventually to advance the position of Humanity in the universe. We began our dealings with Apokolips with that goal in mind, though…" He looks to his right. "It seems they were a more dangerous business partner than we initially believed."

"Were you aware that they were also dealing with Intergang?" An amusing thought occurs. "And at a higher level than you were?"

"Not.. at the time. And in every problem lies an opportunity. I understand that you have a monopoly on trade between Apokolips and Earth."

"I control contact between Apokolips and Earth, it isn't quite the same thing. What I can actually get for you would be somewhat limited."

"We weren't planning to ask you to hand us the keys to the place. In fact, that would be contrary to our ideals."

Supervillains who don't want giant alien weapons? Mind equals blown. "How so?"

A quiet whir from the television. "The use of alien technology to cover for humanity's inadequacies merely compounds the problem we are seeking to correct."

Ra's appears to have regenerated his ego. "The natural abilities of certain gifted individuals -most notably the Justice League- give certain people an almost unbeatable advantage in their chosen field. The result over the past few decades is that a certain.. passivity has entered into the Human spirit. Though we are threatened by alien invaders and violent criminals-."

"Like yourself."

His eyes narrow slightly, but he considers and nods. "If you like. Despite those things, mankind trusts in the League to keep them safe rather than looking to their own defences, a problem which will only worsen as the League expands. I myself am no stranger to feudal social order but for all their acclaim, the League seem content merely to be…" A ghost of a smile. "'Righteous Face Punchers'?"

Ah, the old Kingdom Come problem. "I should probably have known better than to say that in a room with a publicly accessible gallery. Alright then, yes. I see the problem. And I admit that it would be easier to fix as part of a group set up to do research and development rather than front line combat."

Queen Beatrice raises her right eyebrow. "Altruism? From an Apokoliptian?"

"To paraphrase the author Sir Terrance Pratchett, sometimes it's better to make the pie bigger than it is to try to make your slice bigger. Especially when the other diners have knives. I intend to use Earth as a power base and that will be far more productive if Earth is more powerful. Does this august assemblage have a name, or is this an ad hoc thing?"

"We are called The Light."

Vandal Savage speaks for the first time. I never really rated him as a threat, but he must offer something if he's here. I wonder what it is? "Does it have any other members? I note a few conspicuous absences; no.. Circe, no Thaddeus Sivana?"

Mister Luthor shakes his head. "Neither of those are members. Circe is notoriously reclusive and.. I'm afraid that Doctor Sivana appears unable to play nicely with others. Ocean Master was a member until his death at the hands of the Atlantean security services-."

"Yes, about that. Word of advice? If you've managed to develop armour that can block Lantern constructs? Make sure it covers your whole body."

"Ah. That is…" He looks along the line and I don't know the others well enough to judge their responses as well as he apparently can. "Not necessarily an impediment. He wasn't engaged in Light business at the time, after all. And we weren't in formal contact with you. One of the reasons that The Light exists is to prevent just that sort of.. crossing of wires.. getting in the way of us achieving our shared goals."

"Big of you."

"An excess of ego is so often detrimental to our work. Speaking of which, do you believe that you would have difficulty in working with any of us?"

Ra's. "Maybe." Luthor. "No." Queen Bee. "No." Savage. "Maybe." Brain. "No."

Ra's raises his eyebrows. "Though Doctor Roquette's survival was a little irritating I was not aware of any fundamental dispute between us."

"It's the whole primitivist utopia through mass slaughter thing."

He nods. "That should not be a problem. While I still hold to the same ideals I.. no longer believe that such methods are necessary to ensure mankind's survival."

"No problem, then. I'll even volunteer to help with your preservation work." He looks a little interested. "Wouldn't be too hard for me to set up an artificial habitat off world. If you can get me the DNA samples I can even clone extinct or endangered species back into existence."

"A most generous offer."

Savage's face is implacable as ever. "And your objection to me?"

"I feel that the chaotic genius of unencumbered humanity would be somewhat oppressed if we ended up being obliged to make you God Emperor of mankind."

"I have learned to enjoy more subtle applications of power. I have no more desire to force the Human race to calcify under my governance than I do under the League's."

"Then we have no fundamental dispute either. So, what needs to happen for me to sign up?"

Ra's steeples his fingers. "To begin, we need to make sure that you are not reporting everything we say to the Detective. A period of.. observation, while you demonstrate your usefulness and loyalty to our ideals."

"A reasonable precaution. Dorrance, Crock." The two Construct-Lanterns appear by my side. "I'll even stop killin' yer doodz. Anything else?"

Mister Luthor makes eye contact with their late field commanders and briefly dips his eyes. "One other matter. The last member of our group has something of a personal vendetta against you and.. we.. don't feel that the two of you would be able to function together."

Who could..? Oh. "Magic user. Powerful and surprisingly well connected. You're working with the Witch Boy, aren't you? That.. is going.. to be.. a problem."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
00:13 GMT +2

"Dare I enquire as to why..?"

"The Witch Boy's involvement became rather.. impossible to avoid, Mister Grayven."

I frown at the monitor. "How so?"

"Are you familiar with the joke about what to do when there is an eight hundred pound Gorilla asleep in your bed?"

In your case, tell him to stop hogging the duvet? I really don't want to know if that part of his relationship with Mallah is true here as it was in the comics. "So, what? He just turned up to a meeting and you couldn't get rid of him?"

Mister Luthor seems reluctant to meet my gaze. "It was.. a little more complicated than that. He has power, certainly, and a disinclination to accept the status quo. He seemed like a good fit."

"What exactly were you expecting to gain from the Roanoke Island incident? I'm hardly a squeamish man but if you're going to slaughter hundreds of thousands of children I'd expect the reward to be proportionate. I can't imagine what that would have been."

Ra's gaze goes a little distant. "Klarion offered to provide a distraction while we acquired a certain object. He chose not to inform us of precisely what forms this distraction would take, merely that it would be highly effective. I personally found his methods.. distasteful."

"Ra's, a few months ago you tried to fire a satellite mounted solar reflector at the world's greatest cities. I hardly think you're in a position-."

His face hardens. "The heat generated in that attack would have killed those in the affected area almost immediately and given the size of the area it would have encompassed it would most likely have incinerated whole families together. I regarded the deaths involved as a regrettable necessity for the good of the world, not as worthwhile ends in themselves. I did not laugh at the prospect. I did not cavort with glee at the death of so many children."

He sounds serious. I give myself a momentary flicker of orange vision. Hmm. His conversion appears to be genuine. "So, like many people with no actual morals Ra's al Ghul does have standards. Do you all feel the same way?"

A nod from Mister Luthor. I'm not sure how credible it is. He doesn't have a young family and I doubt the incident cost him much money. A few sick days for grieving relatives but his competitors would be in the same position, wouldn't they? Maybe he just doesn't like chaos. Queen Beatrice also nods. It would have been the middle of the night here when it happened… An issue of control, perhaps? She doesn't want there to be threats to her citizens that she can't use organs of the state to fight against, it undermines her position. Savage… His facial expression changes a little. A little tightening around the eyes, a flattening of the lips. It's subtle, but I get the impression he isn't entirely on board with this hanging out to dry of his malevolent colleague. Reminds me of what Mister Luthor said to Cheetah in the comics about her objection to Doctor Light joining their society: 'if we limit our membership to men of good character...'. Is it loyalty? Does he prefer a known power to an unknown one, even if the known one is one Red Bull from deciding that up should be down? Or onion? Savage doesn't directly answer, but for the first time since I sat down he turns his face a little away from me. And for Brain?

"I have little concern for the lives of others, my grey friend. Still, I find the disregard Mister Klarion has for the physical laws of the universe disconcerting. With Ocean Master dead we have room to spare for both you and another magic user who may be a little more.. predictable. Perhaps Madam Circe, no? But alas, the eight hundred pound Gorilla remains."

Did he just..? "You want me to kill Klarion?"

Mister Savage recurls his lips. "If you can. Treat it as a job interview. Klarion's greatest asset is his power. If yours is greater then his passing is of no concern."

Killing Klarion… Not the easiest of tasks, if our last meeting is anything to go by. I dodged his dust trap easily enough but was stuck with only brute force options against him and his new familiar cum power source. Plus, killing him is both in-character for Grayven and is.. let's face it, is a boon I would be more than happy to grant the world. "That's.. not something I'm going to rush into."

"If you feel unequal to the task…"

"I'm not fool enough to underestimate a Lord of Chaos. Killing Klarion wouldn't simply be a matter of physical force. It requires careful thought, preparation and study." Mister Zatara would be the obvious place to start, or perhaps… What was that sword John Constantine used on the First of the Fallen? Of course, from their point of view Klarion killing me because I rushed things is a perfectly acceptable result as well. "I'll take it on… How quickly do you expect results?"

"There is no cut off point. Still, the longer you delay, the more time he has to enjoy himself."

"Quoting the Clown, Mister Savage? Really?" In the corner of my eye I catch a split second of smile from Mister Luthor. "So, don't tell Batman, look for ways to help humanity escape both the crab bucket and the emergent superhero dominated feudal order and kill an immortal sorcerer of godlike power. Anything else?"

Queen Beatrice smile. "I believe that you have a grasp of the situation. Obviously the rest of us will not be offering you any assistance. Klarion is difficult enough to deal with as it is without him actively opposing us."

"I wasn't expecting you to."

"One other matter. How attached are you to the Justice League's sidekicks?"

Cold and calculating or protecting my own patch? Easy choice. "Extremely attached."

"And if anything were to happen to them?"

"I would hunt the perpetrator or perpetrators to the ends of the universe and subject them to every agony available to an Apokoliptian God. They're mine. To cause lasting harm to what is mine is to will yourself to die in the midst of unimaginable suffering."

"You left Devilance alive."

"He failed. And in any case, Father will take care of that for me."

She looks at and nods at someone towards the back of the hall behind me. I turn to look as the rear doors are pulled open and…

I blink, then have the ring run a check before swiftly dismissing Crock and Dorrance. No, that's really Artemis and M'gann walking in under armed escort. They're not bound and the weapons aren't being pointed at them. They're here voluntarily? They both try to avoid looking at our hosts and M'gann notices me first, a startled gasp escaping her lips. Artemis tears her eyes away from Jade to see what so alarmed our team mate. Her eyes widen and then narrow to a scowl.

How to play this? I stand and walk slowly towards them. "Artemis! You told me you didn't play for the other team!" I turn to the side. "Jade, are you being a bad influence on your sister?"

Jade grins a cruel grin. "She couldn't stand the idea of your team mates finding out who her family were."

I feel a slight nudge on my mental defences, a polite request rather than an attack. I relax the barrier slightly.

**Grayven, what did they threaten you with?**

**Nothing. Nothing at all. I came here for a job interview. Why, what are they holding over you?**

**Queen Bee threatened to kill Marie Logan if I didn't do what they said. How..? Why are you..?**

"Because I found out what they're actually trying to achieve. And I agree with it." I turn back to our hosts. "You might have given me the chance to try talking them around."

"I can't believe..! You! You're the mole!"

Back to Artemis. "No. This is the first time I've met with this august body and I haven't given them any information about our group. If there even is an informant, it's someone else." Back to the Light. Who's actually in charge? I want to assume Lex Luthor but Queen Beatrice has centre stage in her own country. "Why are they here?"

"They can keep track of your progress while you work on the task we've set you. After all-" The Queen's smile widens slightly. "-you didn't think that you were the only member of your team we were trying to enlighten, did you?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
22:21 GMT

I send orange lights up into the four corners of the stone-built room as the boom tube closes behind us. In their dim light I can just about make out the decorations on the walls of the small antechamber to the main tomb. Will M'gann notice it before the shouting starts, I wonder?

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot you right now!"

Looks like 'no'. I take a moment to compose myself before turning around. Artemis already has an arrow on string and M'gann doesn't look much happier. "Because in the unlikely event you managed to kill me you'd suffocate in short order. The air around us is almost entirely carbon dioxide." Her eyes widen slightly but her hands stay steady. "We need to talk about-."

"We're on… You brought us to Mars!?" M'gann looks around for a moment and then raises her hands to her forehead and blinks heavily. "I can.. hear…" Her eyes widen fully. "We're in one of the sacred pyramids! We can't be here! It's the most-!"

"Actually, you can. Perfectly legally, your Highness. Visiting one of your blessed ancestors with a.. small retinue. In this case…" I have a closer look at the engravings on the walls. "Imperator Bar'soom, notable for his love of theatre and skill in long ranged telepathic communication, if I'm reading this right."

"Why did you bring us to Mars?"

Artemis sounds like she's on the verge of loosing on me anyway. "Because I very much doubt that the Light have contacts on Mars." I lay one hand on the wall, feeling the power within the structure. "Martian pyramids of this era were heavily warded, alien magic that should serve to defeat Earth based magicians. Klarion or someone of his tier could brute force it but the effects would be very noticeable." I nod to myself. "Combined with Father Box and the ring, this is probably the safest place to talk in the entire star system. And we do rather need to talk about-."

"You selling us all out to the Light!"

"The final stage of an undercover investigation I am carrying out at Batman's behest." That makes her think. "Could you please lower the arrow now?"

She keeps staring at me for a moment longer before reluctantly turning the bow towards the floor. "Really?"

"It was after the fight in Happy Harbor when I confronted the Shadows who were after Doctor Roquette. I let Cheshire -Jade- run so I could watch where she ran to."

"You said you didn't know where she went!"

"I lied. I barely knew you back then, certainly not enough to trust you when Green Arrow was already lying to cover for you. Secrets don't stay secret if you tell people. Anyway, my intent was to develop her as an intelligence asset, offer her a chance to get away from the League of Shadows in exchange for information leading to the organisation being wound up. Then, the Injustice League thing happened. Afterwards…" I pause, remembering the meeting. "Batman came to have a word. He was concerned about the prospect of supervillains working together and wanted more information. Ra's al Ghul is extremely well connected and I already had an 'in'."

Artemis tries to take that on board. "So.. the whole thing with.. you and her..?"

I shake my head. "Completely genuine. I haven't told her that I'm acting on Batman's behalf, but she knows my final objective. Falling in love with Jade.. wasn't…" I pause. "Wait. Why aren't you freaking out about M'gann hearing this?"

"I told her. I told everyone. After you left Jade called me and threatened to tell everyone about our father."

"So you walked in there why?"

"To get intel."

I raise my right hand to my forehead. "Months of patient undercover work and you walk in on a full board meeting, just like that. How'd our team mates take hearing about Sportsmaster?"

"They-."

"No one on the team cares about who Artemis' father is, but Queen Bee will still kill Marie if we don't do what they want!"

"Which is what, report on me? I need to keep up appearances anyway until Batman decides what he wants to do with the information."

"What if they kidnap her?!"

I don't.. think Queen Beatrice would do that. On the other hand, no harm in making sure. "Father Box."

"Ploong."

"Activate the hush tube and dispatch drone squadron six to the Logan Animal Sanctuary, perimeter patrol. Have them shoot anything Bialyan-looking."

"Ploong."

"There, no more problem. Those drones could stop an armoured company or a bombing raid by the entire Bialyan air force and their camouflage systems will stop the Logans noticing anything out of the ordinary."

M'gann nods, calming down a bit. Artemis still doesn't look happy. "What were you talking to them about before we walked in?"

Ah. Haven't really had a chance to sort out my own feelings on that subject yet. "With their source of Apokoliptian technology cut off, they were interested in allying with me. Offered me a position in their group. There are certain requirements…"

"You're not going to take it, right?"

"The main requirement was killing Klarion, so I don't think I'm in a rush to decide."

She and M'gann look at each other. Artemis appears to be lost for words while M'gann looks at me in puzzlement. "Why would you want to join a group of supervillains?"

"You remember that whole.. speech I did after Superman finished talking during the swearing in of the new League members?" She nods. Only this morning but it feels like a lot longer. "I wasn't just saying that to be contrary. I believe every word. The Light… They see the problem. They don't like Earth becoming dependent on the good will of the Justice League. They want… They want a lot of the same things I want, and I think I could live with the rest."

"But… They're evil. And.. you're not. Everything you've done for us, for Kon and Match especially…"

I sigh. "I don't know, M'gann. Sometimes I feel like a supervillain who accidentally walked into the wrong lobby… And only stayed because the restaurant was better than the one the Legion of Doom had. When the four of us confronted Ocean Master I didn't hesitate to kill him. You did, Kon did, even Kaldur did and he had far better cause than I. I'm ruthless and hard in ways you're just not. The League.. just doesn't do stuff that I think.. we need to. And if the Light do…"

Artemis gesticulates. "Queen Bee's a tyrant!"

"Her citizens have higher standards of living-."

"Vandal Savage is a murderer! Ra's runs a League of assassins and tried killing almost everyone on the planet with satellite lasers!"

"I looked into his soul. He told me that he doesn't intend to do that sort of thing anymore, and I believe him. And as for being a murderer? So is your mother." She freezes, shocked. "Paula may have only gone to prison for armed robbery but I think we both know that wasn't the full extent of her crimes. Do you intend to investigate those? Demand that she return to prison for the rest of her life?" Artemis can't meet my gaze. "No, because it would serve no useful purpose. The League of Shadows won't stop murdering, but there's a point… There's a point where the benefit outweighs the cost."

M'gann shakes her head. "Nothing could justify that."

"Certainly it could. Simple example: plasma weapons exist on Earth, yet even in America which could afford them, outside a few areas Special Response Units aren't routinely issued with them. Why? Because they know there'll always be a superhero on hand. Police are shoved aside for unaccountable people in silly costumes. Arrange a few attacks when the League are occupied, then press for a nationwide equipment upgrade. Dozens die, but hundreds don't die in the future because the police have the equipment they need to deal with high end metahumans."

"The Shadows don't-."

"I know. But their intelligence network might save more than the murders they use to fund it kill. Or at least enough to justify…" Me putting up with the murder of innocent people because I've never met them. I should feel worse about that. "If I don't have a better solution-."

"The League will." M'gann walks up to me and confidently puts her right hand on mine. "We can talk to Batman about what they said. He and Uncle J'onn and Wonder Woman and the rest of the League will know what to do. I don't care what you say, you're not like a dictator who mind controlled an eight year old boy and threatened him to make me obey her. You're not. Now open a boom tube back to Earth so we can sort this mess out."

…

Well.

…

That's me told.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th December
18:39 GMT -5

"So.. you're a mole.. for Batman?"

Kon seems to be having a little trouble getting his head around the idea. "Not yet. More like.. double agent." I nod my head to the side. "Would-be double agent. I haven't actually got in yet."

Kaldur's kept up though. "Then why are you so concerned?"

We're in the kitchen area, my team mates either sitting or leaning against the surfaces. I suggested reconvening in one of the actual meeting rooms but that was voted down.

"I have an orange power ring. Mood ring jokes aside, what I can do is a fairly strong indicator of how I feel about the situation. I can't fake it. I would have been of limited use if I didn't really…"

He nods. "If your outspoken concerns about the limitations of the League were not genuine."

"Quite. Down side of that is, their offer has genuine appeal to me. I don't want to limit my role in Earth society to doing what the League do. I mean, I don't want Earth to look like Apokolips but.. Rann, maybe? That has appeal."

Richard's eyes narrow. "If this is true, why didn't Batman tell me about it?"

"Your acting is good and your integrity unimpeachable. But you aren't telepath proof."

"I'm still not. What changed?"

"I.. started genuinely doubting that I was on the correct side. Needed M'gann to talk some sense into me. So. The loyal opposition." I wave my right hand and create constructs in the centre of our group. "The Brain, Vandal Savage, Queen Beatrice-."

"Beena."

I frown at Richard. "Her school records say Beatrice."

"Her birth certificate says 'Beena'. She anglicized when she started college."

"How the heck did you find..? No, fine, Beena. Alexander Luthor and Ra's al Ghul. Prince Orm was a member until I killed him. What do we notice about this motley crew?"

Match looks them over. "Most of them are guys?" More than a few of us stare at him. "What? It's what Mom says about the Justice League."

"I was really going for the fact that none of them are fighters. Ra's and Savage can brawl but neither of them are top tier metabrawlers. They're controllers, planners. Except for the Brain they have large resource bases. They can hire muscle, these people are the ones-."

Kaldur nods. "Doing everything else."

"Ra's has a vast intelligence network. Brain can handle research and development of whatever useful artefacts and technologies they come across. Luthor can fence technology as an exciting LexCorp development and-" I manage a crooked smile. "-Beena can site anything which needs to be completely hidden in Bialya. No risk of investigation when you legitimately control the police. The League selects for power, they selected for intelligence. Of all League members only Batman is capable of the sort of organisation all of these people are."

"Ocean Master had his people serving in all parts of the Atlantean government. If he had not underestimated you…"

"He'd have been in a position to share every arcanotechnological development Atlantis made."

"Egami fo Noiralk raeppa." A full colour illusion of my target appears in the centre and sneers at us. "So where does Klarion fit in?"

"The impression I got was that he didn't. The Brain told me that they aren't any more able to get rid of him than we are and as such they're stuck with him. The task they set me to complete if I want to join the Light's management is to kill him."

Richard looks at me for a moment. "You're thinking about doing it, aren't you?"

"I've already got a method in mind. Frankly, I'd be on board with killing him even if I didn't have this offer on the table."

"We don't kill people, Grayven. Not deliberately, at least."

A filament pierces the Orm-construct's left arm and burrows through his flesh up into his brain. The construct jerks in a re-enactment of his death. "I do. I did, and Klarion deserves to die far more than Orm did."

"That isn't how it works! Ocean Master was in the middle of killing Queen Mera! What you're talking about is coldly sitting down and planning out how to kill someone."

"What, so accurate utilitarian judgements are worse than bestial rages?" I suppose it's time, then. "Richard, suppose there was a person… For the sake of argument let's call him Joseph Kerr. Let's further say that this person has killed an average of seventy people a year for the last ten years, though he really outdid himself with his last group effort. That he's been arrested on several occasions but each time has been sent to a notoriously escape-friendly asylum and managed to get out. Sometimes by stealth, sometimes by force and sometimes by blackmailing or bribing the staff. Now let us examine this problem from a utilitarian point of view. A person arresting Mister Kerr does so in the knowledge that he will most likely escape, and that if he escapes that he will kill again. If this utilitarian agent killed him then in the first year there are sixty nine fewer deaths than there would otherwise have been. The next year, seventy. Then seventy again, and again, and again. You can't legally execute an insane person, the evidence suggests that he can't be contained… What is a person to do?"

He scowls, working out where I'm going with this. "Crush his arms and legs so he can't use them anymore. Like you did to.. 'Joseph Kerr'."

"So the doctors couldn't repair them? Oh, that is good news. I'd rather have killed him outright but I don't imagine that Batman would have been very impressed. As it was, I was on low power, the control system for the plants was on his hands and I needed to stop him moving. Crush. I killed Ocean Master not just because he was threatening Queen Mera, but because I could and it would solve the problem."

Wallace's face drops. "That's... Stone cold."

"Kaldur, if I hadn't, what would have been his punishment?"

"He would have been tried and then executed."

"And?"

"I am not sure what-?"

"What method would have been used? Remember, the crime is 'royal treason'."

His eyes widen for a moment, then he sags and stares at the floor. "The punishment for treason by a member of the royal household… The condemned is impaled on Traitor's Reef and then left to die. A guard is posted to make sure that they are neither fed nor given any other aid until they do. When they finally expire their body is fed to the Barracuda."

"The most fun part is that the guards don't have to stop the Barracuda getting stuck in before the condemned expires. And the only moderation that can be offered by the monarch of the day? King Orin could personally open Orm's jugular vein-" I gesture at my own throat. "-with a knife before they stuck him on there, so he'd be unconscious when the barbs pierced him and die soon after." General looks of horror from my team mates. "And King Orin's too good a man not to do that, if it came to it. I could have cut off Orm's hands to disable him. I chose not to at least in part so that King Orin wouldn't have to kill his own brother." I take a moment to imagine what that would do to the man. "Funny thing is, King Orin actually changed the law so that regular treason wasn't punished like that. Too inhumane. He didn't bother the senate with changing the royal treason version of the law because he didn't think it was worth their time for the handful of people it applied to."

"In circumstances.. where it is not practical to take a metahuman into custody…" Tao doesn't exactly look happy about speaking up. "Members of the Great Ten are authorised to carry out summary executions. I have not.. been called upon to do so myself, but… Klarion killed hundreds of thousands of children. I do not believe that I would have any difficulty in justifying killing him either to myself or to my superiors."

Zatanna nods, though she doesn't look any happier about it. "Nabu's been telling Dad things about Klarion. He doesn't think he can be contained. If Klarion decided to do a repeat of Roanoke Island… I don't think we'd have a better chance of stopping him than we did last time. Most of the deaths happened in the first few hours and it might take me that long to find him. I… I don't like it, but I can't think of another way."

"It's academic, anyway." I shake my head. "I'm not going to take any concrete action until I've had a chance to talk to Batman about it tomorrow."

Richard shakes his head. "He'll never agree to it."

"Then that'll buy him six months to come up with a better solution."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Gude-Willie Waught

31st December
05:53 GMT -5

"You're up early."

I look up from the workbench and see Zatanna standing in the doorway. "I am?" I look up at the clock. "Oh. No… No, I'm up late. Whoops."

She sighs theatrically and walks into the workshop, coffee mug in hand. "What are you working on?"

I grin. "Power armour."

"I thought you were working on the cold guns."

"Oh, finished them hours ago. Dropped a few prototypes off with the Metropolis fire department."

She walks over and sits down across from me at the workbench. "Don't they already have cold guns?"

Both index fingers up, lecture mode engaged. "No, they have freeze rays. Big, bulky ones they can't risk using anywhere where there are people because they'd get frozen to death. These-" I push part of a chestplate I was working on out of the way and pull a partially disassembled cold rifle over to show her what I mean. "-are ice guns."

"Okay?"

"A normal freeze ray works by… Well, I'm not actually sure… Explanation kind of went." I wave my right hand over my head. "Simple version, they use battery power to impede molecular vibrations. Somehow. Shoot something with it and that thing drops in temperature. Fine. Er, can I borrow that?" I point to her coffee.

"If you like?" She pushes the mug over to me.

I generate a freeze ray construct. "Works like this." I jerk the mug up and then down. Obeying the laws of motion the coffee keeps going and I freeze it in mid air. It thumps back down onto the bench, small bits of frozen coffee breaking off but the main lump staying solid. "Now, what do you notice?"

"You just ruined a mug of perfectly good coffee?"

"No, it's fine, you've just gotta…" I pick up the lump with a construct, brush it off and put it on top of the mug. A quick blast from a maser construct and the mug is half full of hot coffee again. "Okay, so what else did you notice?"

"You can just tell me."

"No ice. I mean, no extra ice build up around the frozen coffee. You see, there isn't enough moisture in the air to create the sort of ice build ups some cold effects generate. And yet, ice appears. Where does it come from?"

"The.. gun..?"

"Yep. But, someone like Doctor Fries has to use this whole compression system, keep the gas at very high pressure to get the effect he wants, and his accuracy at range is terrible. The advantage of that sort of system is that the harm done to the target is greatly reduced. The ice isn't usually much more than minus ten degrees so their body heat will start to melt it and it's hard to get it to layer on very thick. That's why he's only killed eight people rather than hundreds. Mister Snart's version -the one I ripped off- has better accuracy but a much lower rate of fire. He usually uses it as a sort of cold.. plasma.. blast.. thing, messing around with pressure and hydrogen bonding as well as temperature. These-" I pick up the rifle and give it a little shake. "-use these gel cartridges. You know that dome shouldn't have stayed up under its own weight? And I actually had trouble pushing through it when I got coated. That's be-caaause it isn't exactly ice as in frozen water. It's a sort of novel liquid crystal, a bit like Artemis' hard foam arrows, only it has weird thermal properties and.. I'm.. going on a bit, aren't I?"

"A bit. So what can it do?"

"When we captured the Ice Fortress there was no way for it to generate power."

"You said it was coming through…"

"Right, right. This has the same system! I mean, there's a local battery and a cable for connecting it to the armour's power supply, but it's designed to have reloads and power sent in through mini Dolmen Gates." I remove a panel on the rifle and show her the circle of dull grey metal. "Best of all?" I use the ring to pick up from the workbench two I'd removed earlier and apply a small amount of electrical power. Runes inscribed on the outer edge glow as the Gate forms. "Mass production! They're a standardised design. You just have to work out which bit of the inscription defines the target, and thanks to Sephtian's notes on his work I have. I mean I was just thinking about the potential for bulk transportation but… A firefighter could have a hose attached to a huge tank of water miles away with one of these at the bottom. Or just.. chuck it in the sea, or a river or something. The power requirements are large but compared to the cost of the infrastructure they could replace it's a pittance. Hey, check this out!" I stick my right forefinger in through one of the Gates and it appears through the other. I give it a wiggle and then grin at her.

"That sounds useful." She picks up her mug, sniffs at it and then puts it back down with an expression of mild distaste. "I'm not sure why you're so excited, though."

"You know how useful my subspace storage is. Now, everyone can have it. Just have a load of these lined up somewhere, dial the rune-tag and voila! You can make them small like in this rifle, or handbag size or whatever size. And I can store arcane artefacts without wiping out my power reserves. Here, you want a go?" I move the two mini Gates over to her.

She gives me and them a sceptical look before deciding to humour me and quickly jabs her right index finger through one of them. "How about the armor?"

"Yeaaaaah. Ssssslight problem with that. Power armour.. needs to 'learn' how you move, how to interpret your nervous system. Otherwise you'd risk pulling yourself apart whenever you moved. I'm wearing-" I reach up to the collar of my jumper and pull it aside. "-the undersuit and control collar, but I can't really start playing around with the armour itself until it's learned me. The armour's simple enough, though I did ask Red Tornado to ask Morrow about incorporating the improvements I made to Danni into a revised design."

"How strong does it make you?"

"You could arm wrestle Kaldur and win."

"Not Kon?"

"No, not with the version they were using."

"Does the invisibility thing work?"

"Sort of. When I took the claw back to Mister Crandell I had a chat with his MI6 handler. It uses a sort of exotic radiation, you need to be exposed to it for a while before you can use the invisibility function and it has a rather.. unfortunate effect on the Human mental state for a few months before the whole thing stabilises. There might be a way around it but I'd want to do a lot more testing before moving to Human trials." I frown as my explain-the-clever-thing-you've-done impulse winds down. "Wait. What are you doing up?"

She looks away. "I've.. been up for half an hour. I couldn't.. get back to sleep." She glances at the coffee mug. "Can't seem to fully wake up either."

Agh, she mentioned having trouble sleeping before. Should have… "Right. Before you go to bed tonight, come and see me." She blinks at me, blushing slightly. "My massage teacher insists that it's supposed to be good if you're having trouble sleeping and clearly.. ignoring the problem isn't helping."

"Um. I mean… Um. Couldn't you use your ring or something?"

"To suppress activity in your brain? Yes, but I'm not going to. Look, if you're really not comfortable with it then I'll try and think of something else… Whale song, maybe? Some sort of white noise? But, come on, it's me. I'm not.. going to do anything weird."

She shifts slightly in her seat. "Okay. Um. Tonight. Let's.. give it a shot."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:11 GMT -5

Red Tornado's already waiting for us when Zatanna, Kaldur and I walk into the training area. Lantern Morrow isn't with him. He's probably still working on the armour.. or maybe that alternate android body Tornado wanted. Since I took control of him I've seen him create simple construct tools but I'm not sure if he has the full range of Lantern abilities. The only ability I remember Construct-Lanterns having in the comic was assimilation and I.. don't.. really think I want to test that. No one else is here yet, Kon and M'gann being.. together.. somewhere, and everyone else went home yesterday. Surprised Robin isn't here yet though.

The three of us come to a halt at 'lecture distance', Kaldur slightly ahead. "Red Tornado, do you know why Batman has asked us to assemble?" Really thought we'd got him out of the habit of dropping things on us with no notice. Ah well.

"No. I spent last night working with my father. I am as much 'in the dark' as you are."

"Howwww.. is he.. doing..?"

A slight creak as he turns his head in my direction. "I do not have a good baseline from which to assess his behavior. He is different from the android we encountered in Yellowstone Park but I do not know whether that is a consequence of his greater age and experience or the 'assimilation' effect."

"Have you told Danni?"

"Yes, as well as our elder brother. She intends to stop by later. Jim suggested that we throw him into the sun."

"That would just cause him to respawn... Not the point."

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

Wallace walks out of the Zeta tube in full costume. "Hey guys. Know why Batman-?" The three of us shake out heads. "Rob here yet? He's usually-."

A sudden wind rockets out of one of the corridors and blasts outwards across the room! I close my eyes for a moment on instinct, then open them to see a cheerful looking Robert standing at the epicentre of the blast. "Yes! Ride the Wind! Finally cracked it!" He beams at me. "Mate, this sword is amazing!"

"Oh great, another guy who's faster than me."

Zatanna smiles. "You're not at all bothered by the fact that the Sword doesn't consider you worthy of using it?"

He shrugs. "What does a dead Viking know about it?"

"Recognised, Robin, B zero one."

Robin walks out of the tube slowly, head tilted slightly down as Wallace waves to his friend. "Hey Rob! What happened, Catwoman turn you down again?"

"Batman didn't come home last night."

Wallace thinks for a moment, then shrugs. "He's a busy guy."

"I know, and it's not the first time. He just usually calls if he's on an all-nighter."

Robert looks at me and raises his eyebrows. "Son." He nods in understanding.

"Well, he called us all here so he's not hurt or anything."

"I know, it's just not like him not to follow-."

"Recognised, Rocket, B one one." / "Recognised, Superboy, B zero four, Miss Martian, B zero five, Wolf C zero three."

Don't think I've seen both tubes activating at once before. Hadn't actually realised that Kon and M'gann had left the mountain. Kon tightens his grip on the lead as Wolf sees us and tries pulling forwards. M'gann holds up a bag. "Who wants donuts?"

"Depends what sort."

Wallace is already moving towards her. "I'll have his."

M'gann opens the bag and holds it out towards Wallace. "Fried rings, still hot, sugar and no frosting."

"Thank you." I send a construct to pick one out of the bag and bring it over. "It's the only way to eat them."

"Mrut a fostin-" Wallace swallows his first mouthful. "-the best bit!"

I narrow my eyes. "Heathen."

Raquel takes a donut from the proffered bag and then takes another look around. "No Artemis yet?"

Kaldur shakes his head. "I am sure that she will be-."

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

Raquel, Kon and M'gann scurry to get into the line up, M'gann concealing the donut bag behind her back while shifting her skin back to green and her clothing back into her team uniform. I glow orange for a moment as my new light power armour materialises around me. Obvious, really; the ring is perfectly capable of imputing data on my movements to the armour systems. It just didn't occur to me until Zatanna pointed it out over breakfast. The armour doesn't have enough bulk for me to go the Alan-in-Kingdom-Come route of physically integrating my personal lantern, but it's still bloody tough and I got a smile out of Zatanna by using the muscles in the legs to bounce off the floor like it was a trampoline. Super strength might be less adaptable than a power ring but it's still bloody good fun. The armour even has a helmet and gauntlets I don't mind wearing, though I leave the helmet off for now.

Those of my team mates who haven't seen the armour yet give me a curious look but our attention is soon turned towards Batman. He looks us over to make sure he has our attention and his eyes stop on me for a moment. Have I got some sugar on my..? Ring says no. Probably the armour. Guess he wasn't expecting results this quickly. He… Uuh. Odd. His usual green/yellow aura looks a little different today. Not sure why, he's all there.

Oh whaw. Is he hung over? That would be hilarious.

"Team, I'm afraid I have some unfortunate news. Last night I was able to locate the mole in our organization who has been passing information to our enemies."

NONONO! There is no fricking mole! I can't really sag inside this armour but I give it a try anyway. I was so sure there was nothing to that.

Wallace swallows the last of his donut. "So who was it? My money was on Oh El."

"Thanks, Wallace." Wait. Artemis isn't here. He doesn't think she was-?

A holoscreen appears next to him with an image of Red Arrow on it. "The mole was Red Arrow."

"Roy?" / "No way!"

Robin and Wallace are most shocked. Aside from Kaldur the rest of us didn't really know him that well and he's not all that expressive. I don't know; Red Arrow seemed alright to me. Still, I never put him through the same sort of background checking that I did everyone else. I suppose it's.. possible. Ring, location of… Oh, of course he's blocking it.

"Batman, that cannot be." It's subtle, but having spent as long around him as I can I can pick up the distress in Kaldur's voice. "He was Green Arrow's protégé, we have all known him for years."

"The Roy Harper you've known is a creation of Cadmus, cloned three years ago from material taken from the original." A new image appears alongside that of Red Arrow, showing him in his old what the fuck is that hat? Why would anyone go out dressed like that? "The real Speedy was abducted shortly after becoming Green Arrow's sidekick. The clone was pre-programmed with a drive to join the Justice League, which was why he was so angry over any delays to his admission and why he refused to join the team. This Roy Harper had no idea he was a clone or a traitor and his subconscious programming drove him to become League-worthy. So he struck out on his own, as Red Arrow."

"When he was finally admitted his secondary programming kicked in, and he attempted to betray the League to Vandal Savage. Fortunately, I had already deduced that Red Arrow was a clone. We were prepared." Another screen, this time showing Savage. League versus pointy stick launcher guy and caveman man? Sounds like a stomp. "Savage is in custody but Red Arrow was able to escape." How the heck did he manage that? And what exactly would he have given Savage that he couldn't have done a month ago? "He is currently still at large."

Kon rubs the back of his head with his right hand. "If you guys hadn't rescued me from Cadmus…"

"What..? What happened to the real Roy?" Robin isn't even bothering to disguise how shocked he is. Actually, that's a bit harsh of him. The only Roy he knew was the clone version. He shouldn't just dismiss him because he's a clone.

"We don't know. He isn't at Cadmus." How many times has the League said that about someone? I'll get hold of Dubbilex once Batman's left. "We have to face the possibility that the real Roy Harper.. is dead."

I'm not assuming anything at this point, though from the slumping postures of Kaldur, Wallace and Robin I think they're convinced that Batman is right. Kaldur recovers fastest. "The clone Roy. The team will find him."

"Negative. Red Arrow's a member of the Justice League now." 'Cause that worked out so well last time he said it. "Leave him to us." He straightens slightly. "I'm needed on the Watchtower. Red Tornado-" He pats him on the back. "-stay with the kids."

Since when does Batman pat people on the back?

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:14 GMT -5

I'm not quite sure where it all turned around. Yesterday we beat up a small group of Apokoliptian soldiers and so guaranteed Earth's freedom from Apokoliptian influence. Other than me, obviously. A little later I got the hush tube working and got confirmation on the identities of the members of the Light. Their offer.. I don't know. Yes, I was prepared to consider it. Maybe even accept it, depending on exactly what it entailed. The barrier to entry was so high that I didn't think that I needed to make a decision immediately. And then…

Mister Tawny detects my mood and nudges the side of my right leg with his head. I reach down and scratch the top of his head. Then it all turned to shit. Keeping Jade and that side of things separate worked as long as they were separate. Batman knowing was fine, he can keep secrets and understood the value of my work. Sure, I think he thought I was going to hand Jade over to the authorities at the end but apart from that there wasn't a problem. Artemis knowing was fine because she was even more committed to secrecy than I was. My other team mates… They know I let Jade go the first time we met. That in itself would put me into the doghouse, even with Batman signing off on the whole thing. Pointing out to Artemis that Paula almost certainly committed other crimes… What the hell was I thinking?

No, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking 'this is obviously true, why are we talking about this'. I was thinking 'utilitarian calculations do cause people to do horrible things without being wrong, hasn't everyone studied philosophy?'. Thing is, I can't even… I wasn't angry. It wasn't anger. I guess when you're thirty relating to teenagers isn't an easy thing to do. 'Stone cold', Wallace said. Yes. Rational, utilitarian and stone cold. None of them could really argue the logical justification for killing Klarion but they were clearly discomforted by how naturally the decision comes to me. Even the ones who agreed with me…

I've marked myself out as something other. Something far more alien than Kon or Match or M'gann. For the first time since I joined the team I'm beginning to think that maybe this isn't the right place for me.

I'm a little late for Batman's morning powwow but I don't really want to.. interact with my team mates yet. Let things calm down a bit first, speak to Batman about the whole situation in private if possible -though it probably won't be- and then decide my next step. Maybe we could request a resolution from the Security Council authorising lethal force? I could just take that straight to the Chinese but this is the last time to cause further alienation if I have any intent of remaining here.

Ahead of me the team is gathered opposite Batman and Red Tornado and I head over to fall in behind them. This isn't the best time for another mission.

Batman makes brief eye contact with me. "However you feel about the situation, Grayven has not been passing information to the Light. The mole was Red Arrow." Batman calls up a holoscreen with an image of Moody Arrow on it. What, did he think we'd have forgotten what he looks like? And… Is Batman wearing a different cape or something? He looks… different, somehow.

"Roy?" / "No way!"

Richard and Wallace are most shocked. I'm… Not sure I credit it myself. Then again, there're any number of mind control techniques which could have been applied to him. But there's something else here, some undercurrent of events that's trying to make itself known to me. An itch right in the godhood.

"Batman, that cannot be." Kaldur makes a gesture of appeal. "He was Green Arrow's protégé, we have all known him for years."

"Unfortunately, the Roy Harper we have known for the last three years is another Project Cadmus clone." A new holoscreen shows an image of the Cadmus building but I don't bother looking at it. The feeling is there again, like there's something… Something wrong with Red Tornado as well.

"We've learned that the real Speedy was abducted and replaced immediately after becoming Green Arrow's sidekick."

Ring, show me his desires.

"The clone was pre-programmed with a drive to join the Justice League, which was why he was so angry over any delays to his admission and why he refused to join the team."

By your command.

"This Roy Harper had no idea he was a clone or a traitor and his subconscious programming drove him to become League-worthy."

Still there, still the same, but there's something curtailing them.

"So he struck out on his own, as Red Arrow. When he was finally admitted his secondary programming kicked in, and he attempted to betray the League to Vandal Savage. Fortunately, I had already deduced that Red Arrow was a clone. We were prepared."

Father Box, any ideas?

Ploong.

Well of course they do but this is just about the worst possible time for me to ask them to pick a side between myself and Batman, even if he couldn't give me orders backed by Gaea. Nothing for it.

"Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt but, are you feeling alright?" "Zatanna, Tao. Are you feeling.. something strange about-."

"Yes!" Zatanna gets a few puzzled looks, then realises what she's done. "Because.. you.. can't be too careful. I mean, if he's had access to League facilities for this long he could have planted some sort of poison or something." "There's some sort of magic working on them both. And from the way my order magic detection spell reacted, I'd say it was chaotic."

Batman regards her levelly for a moment. "Finding Red Arrow is the League's top priority. We'll know more about what he was planning-" I peer more closely at him. There, at the base of his skull. Desires not his own. "-once we've caught and interrogated him."

"Still sir, since I'm sure you're going to call it a League matter and tell us to butt out, could this team not be usefully employed in that capacity?" "Tao, on his neck. Do you see it?"

Tao smiles and slides his bow off his shoulder as if to put it aside. "I have no other plans for today." "I see it. Orders?"

I think Batman realises that something's off, but somebody didn't want to become a god-detective. "I.. appreciate your willingness to assist, but-."

I grin. "No trouble sir." "When I say 'now', Zatanna, paralyse them. Tao, put an arrow through it without otherwise harming them. Nod if you understand."

Tao and Zatanna both give tiny nods. Batman frowns. "That won't be necessary. The League-."

"Now."

Zatanna gestures upwards with both hands and giant golden triquetra appear around Batman and Red Tornado, pinning them in place. Tao has the Bow of Yi up and pointed at Batman, arrow already leaving his string before Robin can finish turning around to ask what we're doing. Red Tornado reacts as fast as he can think, winds already blowing around his arms and legs as my filament strikes the centre of his chest and bores into his responsometer, disconnecting it from his other systems. Fast, but not as fast as a New God. A split second later a second arrow flies through his neck, passing through his body but hitting something on the way through. Both Batman and Red Tornado loll in place, animating force temporarily removed.

"What the hell are you doing!"

Richard is too incensed to even reach for his weapons. Kaldur has his water bearers up and Artemis has an arrow on string. One of my x-ionised ones, I note. Match, Kon and Miss Martian are hesitating to act against us and Miss Ervin looks shell shocked. Wallace is right on the edge of dashing at me, and if he does the others will follow. Need to deescalate, but I'm shit at that.

"They were being controlled." Zatanna lowers Batman and Tornado to the ground and holds out her right hand. "Worra ylf ot ym dnah."

One of Tao's arrows is jerked out of the far wall and flies over to her. She takes hold of it around the shaft and holds it out to Richard.

One of the Starro things is speared on the point.

Richard takes his eyes off me to look at what Zatanna is trying to show him and his eyes widen. "No." The room's still tense but the rage isn't focused on the three of us anymore.

"Recognised, Captain Atom, one two, Plastic Man, one eight."

We turn and brace ourselves as the zeta tube lights up.

Things are about to get filthy.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:16 GMT -5

Rob pokes me in the chest. "When'd you get power armour?"

I'm sure that as soon as we can come up with a convincing excuse we'll be ducking out of Red Tornado's sight in order to go after Mister Harper. I've even prepared a program which will cause the mountain's internal recording equipment to see us as still being here and automatically 'move' away from anyone who comes to find us.

"Truggs' people used it, so I copied it."

"Yeah, but that was yesterday. You can really just.. copy stuff?"

"As long as it doesn't have a supernatural component, yes."

Artemis smiles at me. "When do the rest of us get a suit?"

"Uhh, to be honest, I don't think you or Robin would get anything out of it. I mean, I can make you a suit but you're already stronger than it is." Oh, might as well be me this time. "But, Raquel, Zatanna? If you want a version for you we could.. head to the workshop and get you measured up?"

"I don't-" Raquel realises that everyone's staring at her. A half second passes and then I think she gets it. "-think.. there's.. any reason not to."

"We may as well all go." Wallace has acquired an extra donut from somewhere. "Not like we had anything planned." Hoping that Red Tornado will have an attack of amnesia and so decide not to follow us -or will remember and decide to just give us space to do our thing- the entire team begin moving in the direction of the workshop. Wallace makes an expression of distaste. "Wait a sec. Why aren't I getting offered power armor?"

"The motion control systems need to learn how you move so they don't rip your arms and legs off. You can try, but I think you'd just be too fast for its processor to keep up with you."

"Huh. Makes sense."

"I will accompany you."

We're looking away from Tornado as he says it, which is why he doesn't see me wince. Our eyes flick across each others faces and Kaldur gets nominated. He turns back. "We would not wish to call you away from your father."

Red Tornado stops still for a moment, then turns and looks up towards the iris in the ceiling. Is he going to-? No. He turns back to us. "My father cannot escape." Eh? Well, probably could actually, but why is he-? "I wish to ensure that there is no repeat of what happened during my disappearance."

Oh well. One of him, ten of us. We can split up-. "Paul, you put those cookery books in the kitchen, right?"

Quick work there M'gann. "Yes, most of them. What exactly were you-? Oh, hello Teekl."

My cat walks out of the passageway out of the training area which we were heading towards. As I crouch down and hold out my right hand she makes eye contact with me, leaning forwards to sniff in my direction. "Teekl smell."

And that's the problem with a talking cat, the phrasing could mean just about anything. Teekl herself has an unpleasant smell? She doesn't, not in the literal sense. Maybe it's a metaphorical smell? Was she just commenting on the fact that she was sniffing in case we didn't notice? Does she smell something in particular? I wiggle my outstretched fingers. "And what does Teekl smell?"

"Teekl smell…" She looks around our group, an almost.. puzzled expression on her feline face. Not seeing whatever she's looking for she walks forwards and briefly nuzzles my hand.

"That animal should not be wandering freely."

Robin looks as puzzled as I feel. "Ah, Tornado? The cave doesn't have a 'no pets' policy."

Teekl's ears orientate on Tornado's voice and her fur begins to stand on end. What's setting her off?

"I am implementing one."

I'm thrown back as Teekl expands to the size of a Liger and lunges through my team mates! Rob and Zatanna dodge out of the way as she leaps at Tornado! Swirling winds envelope his legs as he tries to get out of the way but he's too slow! She slams into his chest and they both go flying out of control across the room, propelled by his air blast. What the hell?! An air blast from his hands lifts her rear off him but her claws have dug into his shoulders, anchoring her in place as she bites down on his neck!

Shit! Shit! "Teekl, stop! Bad cat!" I fly across the room, a construct grabber arm forming as I exert my control to compel her to shrink back to her normal size. Red Tornado lies motionless on the ground, her claw rents clearly visible in his shoulders as the grabber construct pulls her off him by the scruff of her neck. "Teekl, what the hell..?"

Then I see the thing in her mouth and note the lack of tooth marks on Red Tornado. She's holding a piece of Starro-tech. She stares at me for a moment before spitting it out. "Teekl smell NastyBad Klarion."

I create a new grabber to hold the Starro-tech up for my team mates to see and take hold of Teekl myself, laying her along my left arm and stroking her with my right. "Good cat. Good decision."

She cranes her head back to get a more forceful head scratch. "Teekl know Teekl wonderful. Teekl wonderful and Agent lucky to have her."

"That's Starro-tech." Robin's looking closely at the small piece of arcanotechnologically altered flesh. "How'd Teekl get hold of it?"

Teekl turns her head to stare at him. "Teekl wonderful, intelligent, sleek and wonderful. She explain to dumb boy kitten, who is far less wonderful."

Rob grins. "You're getting slagged off by a talking cat."

"Heeeey." I tap her on the head. "Be nice."

"NastyBad Klarion control wind golem with squid lump. Teekl smell Klarion through squid lump, bite out of wind golem. You may now worship Teekl."

Kaldur hurries over to take a closer look at Red Tornado. "These injuries are superficial. He should not be unconscious."

Robin frowns. "But Red Tornado's been here all night. He went up to his room almost as soon as we got back yesterday, the Starro-tech went with Batman and the others." He looks at me and the other lifers. "Has anyone else been here?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "No, no one."

Ring, internal monitoring? "Internal recording says no, automated defences say no, external access says no, Zeta tubes say you guys and Batman were the only ones.. who..." From the looks on their faces and on mine I think we all get it at the same time. "Teekl, exactly where on Red Tornado did you find it?" She looks up at me and shares the idea. The centre of his back. "Right where Batman-."

"Batman called us 'kids'. He never does that." Robin has his computer up, trying to scan the Starro-tech. "I just thought maybe he was.. tired or something, but if someone was controlling him..."

"They weren't familiar enough with his speech patterns or lexicon. And if they got Batman…"

Kaldur nods. "Then it is likely that the rest of the League has fallen as well."

"But not Roy." Wallace grasps for the cloud's silver lining. "If they got him too they wouldn't be trying to chase him down."

Raquel points at the Starro-tech thing. "If he was being controlled, won't Klarion know he's been disconnected?"

Shit. "Everyone got their Spell Eaters?" Everyone except Rob nods. Ring, shut down the zeta tubes.

Compliance.

"I just turned off the mountain's Zeta tubes to external access. We don't have to worry about anyone else coming in." I think for a moment. "Not that that will stop the Flash running across the country at the speed of light and Starroing everyone anyway. Kaldur, I think we need to leave. Now."

"I think that you are right."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:18 GMT -5

Orange construct armour appears around my team mates and Mister Tawny, Captain Adams' green..? Yes, kryptonite blasts, hitting both Kon and Match in the chests and being absorbed by the construct armour as Mister O'Brian lunges at us, expanding as he comes. What are their weaknesses?

Ah, yes. **Plastic Man, weaknesses, extreme cold.** An orange freeze ray appears in front of me and fires, hitting him on the left calf. The area struck solidifies as the device which is usually used to tackle out of control fires reduces the vibration of the molecules in the target area to nearly nothing. O'Brian stumbles but turns it into a roll and then bounces at us, fists swelling. M'gann gestures and he's yanked backwards into the air as Kon flies at Adams for a full speed punch to the head. I retarget the freeze ray at O'Brian's chest and solidify more of him.

Adams is knocked back by Kon's punch but doesn't appear to be hurt. He goes to counter only for Match to grab his arm. **Archer! Shoot him!**

Tao has an arrow on string but he's hesitating. **I cannot see his body clearly!**

**Captain Atom, weakness-** I draw my sword. **-x-ionised weaponry.** Hard to judge precisely, but if I'm careful about cutting away BWFG!

Foreign body detected.

My construct armour cracks in a dozen places as a red blur zooms around the room, striking faster than I can follow! Just in the corner of my right eye I can see a Starro-thing starting to phase through my face plate! **Flash-!**

**Aagh!** / **Ah!** / **Uncle Barry!**

Ring, infrasound, maximum intensity!

By your command.

One of the Starro-thing's tentacles is through my construct armour. Ring, assimilate the bloody thing!

Tiny filaments attach themselves to it from both the inside and outside of the armour, pulling it away from me. Identity Theft in progress. Progress negligible.

Odd, but as long as it isn't coming at me any more I'll live with it. Mister Allen appears to have gone face first into a wall when my infrasound took his sense of balance, my armour constructs protecting everyone else. I lost my freeze ray construct when he attacked and similarly M'gann lost hold of O'Brian. Kon and Match are playing pass the parcel with Adams, who suddenly evades, surging towards the ceiling and firing a concentrated blast at Zatanna!

"Esrever kcatta!"

The blast swings around just before it hits her and smacks Adams into the far wall.

**Everyone, stand down.** Kaldur's relaxed posture is completely at odds with our situation and-. Yes, the aura's back. **The League probably believe that we are infected-**

**Tao, Kal-.**

The arrow passes through Kaldur's chest and he collapses to the floor. Another hits Mister Allen in the left shoulder and I see the Starro-tech piece impaled in the ground next to him. Miss Ervin forms a shield around the still struggling Mister O'Brian to contain him as Adams pushes himself off the wall only to be hit by another arrow. A golden glowing slash opens along his cheek as Artemis' x-ionised arrow slices through his dilustel hide. **Tao, any good?**

**No, I cannot-.**

"Niatpac Mota, nruter ot ruoy Namuh mrof!"

A burst of golden light and his Captain Atom form is replaced by that of his Cameron Scott form, wearing a blue business suit. His eyes go wide as he falls towards the floor. "Don't shoot, I'm-!" Tao's arrow flies through his head, spearing the Starro piece just before he hits the ground hard.

Robin and Wallace are checking on their respective mentors as O'Brian presses his bizarrely distorted face up against Miss Ervin's barrier. Right, Flash could have just run through the walls but there's no sense leaving a back door for anyone else. Ring, shut down hangar Zeta tube.

By your command.

Miss Ervin looks back at me as Tao lines up for another shot. **Someone wanna tell me what the heck is going on?**

**Someone used the Starro-tech we handed over yesterday to mind control the Justice League. Tao, Zatanna and myself could feel it and Tao can shoot the devices out of their bodies.**

**We got the whole Justice League coming after us?!**

I take a quick look around but the only strange presence I can feel is from O'Brian and the Starro-tech being held in my filaments. In Mister Allen's place I'd have covered the whole team in those things, not just myself and Kaldur. Do they have a limited supply? No way to know at present.

Three golden triquetra appear around the shield containing Mister O'Brian. **Nabu really wanted to teach Dad how to fight chaos magic. Since these things definitely use it…** "Tcafetra fo Soahc, eb edamnu!" Brilliant beams of golden light flare from the triquetra, passing through the force field and into O'Brian. He shudders for a moment and then goes still. I concentrate but I can't feel the alien presence from him any longer.

I smile. All hostiles eliminated. **Nicely done, oh Lady of Order.** Ring, assimilation progress?

No significant progress has occurred.

Very odd. Usually it either flat out doesn't work or there's at least some progress. I got Nabu faster than this. I intensify the construct holding the last surviving piece and float it over to Zatanna. She holds out her right hand and another triquetra forms as her eyes glow with golden light. "Wohs em tahw siht si dna woh ti skrow."

Wallace finishes checking that Mister Allen didn't break his neck when he hit the wall and then stands up. **So, wait: does this mean that Roy's in the clear?**

Ring, location of Roy Harper. Thank you. Father Box, connect to the hush tube.

Ploong.

**Because if the League were all infected-.**

"Why don't we just ask him?" I stick my right arm through the invisible portal, wrap it around Mister Harper's chest and pull him through.

"Huh?!" He looks back, sees me and brings the end of his bow around to strike my face.

I treat the attack with the contempt it deserves. "Mister Harper, we're not affected. And from the feel of things-" He drives his right elbow into my side. I continue to ignore it. "-you aren't either. We could really use more information on how the Starro-tech-."

He stills, looking around the room. Batman, Red Tornado, Plastic Man, The Flash, Kaldur and some guy in a suit lie on the floor while everyone in the team is covered in glowing orange armour. "How do I know you're not infected?"

I raise my left eyebrow. "You're still breathing, pointy stick launcher guy."

I move my right arm off him and he spins away, making sure that he can keep all of us in his field of vision and that his back has a wall behind it. His eyes narrow slightly. "That certainly sounded like a Grayven thing to say."

Zatanna's eyes dim. "It's Klarion. These things are full of his chaos magic. Etaropave." The Starro-tech disappears in a puff of golden-red smoke.

Mister Harper shakes his head. "I didn't see Klarion on the Watchtower, just Savage."

I nod. The caveman tribal alpha has to lead from the front. It appears that he was the link to Klarion as well as to Apokolips. Ring, scan the Watchtower.

Unable to comply.

Darn it. That's the second occasion, and it's far more critical now.

Robin stands up, having checked Batman's health, disconnected his belt and removed several concealed weapons. "We need a plan for getting rid of them and freeing the League. Red Arrow, tell us exactly what happened."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:20 GMT -5

Kaldur turns to me. "Orange Lantern, Kid Flash, get to the armory. We will need our equipment and you will need your lantern."

Wallace dashes off as I nod. Leaving the Ophidian where Klarion can get her would be a suicidally bad idea. I see Robin start interfacing with the zeta tube as I transition to the fortified vault of the armoury, arriving just behind Wallace as he inputs his entry code. I already cut off external access, what's he..? Oh, good idea. The door jerks as the lock disengages and then its two sides start to swing outwards, a design feature which makes it hard to get in just by hitting it. External access may be cut off but they can still travel between the training area zeta tubes and the ones in the hangar. That will be quicker than dashing for the lift and then riding it down. The ring shows me Kon picking up the recumbent Red Tornado as they disappear. I transition past the still opening outer door to the inner door and input my code. Curse me for designing a vault I couldn't easily break into!

Wallace is at my side a heartbeat later. The outer door has to close before the inner one will open. I might be able to blast through but the walls are x-ionised and ridiculously strong. Probably better to wait. Potential threats? Mister Allen can run in, Mister J'onzz can fly through the walls, Nabu can teleport in… Probably. I haven't thought to check how much the geomantic wards I placed throughout the mountain's structure have powered up. Enough to stop him? Wouldn't have thought so. Enough to buy us the couple of minutes we'll need? Maybe. Of course, Klarion might not need to use them. I've seen him pull off long ranged teleports twice now. Can Accomplished Perfect Physician teleport? I've seen his Great Ten file but it isn't as if he had a good motive for being completely honest with them.

Outer door fully closed the inner door begins to open. I don't bother waiting for it and transition us both past as soon as there's a crack big enough. Right, what do we need? I grab Kon's armour and Kaldur's Ocean Master gear. Can't transition with either of them, can't subspace them, going to be a nuisance. "Kid Flash, can you carry these?"

He gives me a look of incredulity. "Ah, no? Do I look like Superboy?" I start grabbing the stuff I made for Robin and Artemis and shoving it into subspace. "Kaldur's stuff maybe."

"Right." I strip Kaldur's armour from its stand. The midnight blue bodysuit is actually fairly flexible and can be folded but the bracers, greaves, helmet and combined shoulder and chest piece are all solid and inflexible. I make their combined volume as small as I can before taking a holdall out of subspace and shoving them inside. "Here."

He slings it over his right shoulder and catches Neptune's Trident as I pass it to him. Kon's Nth metal armour is not going to be fun to carry but there's no way I'm leaving it here. The pieces actively try to repel my constructs so I shove them into a small crate and close the lid. Okay, don't need to take mundane body armour, I've already got spares in subspace and the design isn't secret. Flight belts go into subspace. Anything else?

**Kid Flash, Orange Lantern.** Kaldur? **Be advised that we are under attack.**

Nothing else urgent enough to wait for. I shove the crate containing Kon's armour through the inner door and input my code into the outer as Wallace dashes through after me.

**Anyone we know?**

**Icon, the Physician and.. Aquaman.**

Inner closes and outer starts to open. "Kid Flash, head to the Zeta tube and get down there. I'll grab my lantern and meet you down there."

"Right." He crouches slightly, preparing to sprint away.

Hang on a minute. I close my eyes for a moment. Teekl's going after Mister Yao as she doesn't have any bones he can shatter and Fatty's still in the ring but Morrow's in Tornado's room working on the android. I don't really like compelling any of them like this, but needs must. I reach out mentally towards him. Doctor Morrow, we're evacuating. Head to the Zeta tube and then to the Bio-Ship. His point of view changes slightly as he raises his head before walking in the direction of the stairway down to the training room floor. No no no. Doctor Morrow, you can fly. Speed up a bit please. His view shifts again as he nods and accelerates.

In front of me the door has opened sufficiently and Wallace heads through it in a blur. I have to wait a moment longer than him as I'm quite a bit broader. I dump the crate containing the armour on the far side of the outer door and transition into my room, reaching out to the apparently empty space where I left it as I materialise. My lantern emerges from its hidey-hole as the fingers of my right hand close around its handle and immediately I feel the Ophidian's awareness surrounding mine. I open my thoughts to her as I transition us back to the armour.

"Recognised, Kid Flash, B zero three."

"Foul and vile deceit! None may take our precious ones from us! They are not his to play with!"

"Recognised, Thomas Morrow, A two one."

I pick up the crate and have the ring fly us along the programmed route to the zeta tube. "Thank you for the support." No idea why the ring has such trouble with metamaterials. Enchanted or innately magical materials, sure, they don't scan quite right so clearly something light-disrupting is going on there. But Nth metal is far more mundane. I made it by squeezing lead. Right, construct armour up and activate.

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

A stuttering blast of black and red light radiates outwards from Mister Yao's mouth for a moment before Teekl bites into his throat. Even as she does so her body seems to distort and twist, splitting up into not looking at that now! A second later she falls out of the ring and flies at him again. A strange sound comes from Fei's mouth and his wounds begin to fade. The internal defence systems appear to have deployed across the room but Icon's staying airborne out of their effective range and Mister Yao's either blocking them or ignoring them. King Orin's unconscious and paralysed under water -of course he could come in under water!- while in midair Icon tries to throw off Kon with little success. Looks like he hasn't been training against people his own strength either.

"Noci esol lla ecnatsiser ot yhtapelet!"

Icon jerks in the air and Kon throws himself free before he falls towards the water's surface. Before he crashes down he's jerked over land and dumped down next to a paralysis field generator. Should keep him out of the game.

A flash bang hits Mister Yao in the chest and detonates as I fly at full speed for the Bio-Ship. I throw the crate at Kon, who catches it and sprints into the Ship as Robin looks around. **Oh El, the doors are jammed!**

**On it, Robin.** Stuck due to physical damage? Ring, start scanning and deploy Fatty. Fatty, absorb any of that energy Physician puts out.

"Yay!"

The doors aren't just jammed, they've been partially transmuted. The parts they need to respond to instructions just aren't there anymore. A railgun construct forms alongside me. Crumbler rounds, maximum radius. The first gouges a chunk out without breaching. Why did I think x-ionising everything was a good idea! Second one.. does nothing? Some sort of force field? Physician's power uses sound to alter-. Right, ring, nullify sound in the target area and try again. A hum and another crumbler round fires, this time causing a tiny breach. Big enough for me!

**Orange Lantern, can you transfer the Bio-Ship-?**

The Bio-Ship disappears in a flicker of orange. Robin, Teekl and Fatty are still in here and I transfer myself down to the landing platform. Teekl, Fatty, pull back! I form a sonic cannon in front of myself and fire it at the Physician. No effect; the sound appears to.. just.. stop a metre in front of him. He looks up past us and sees that the Bio-Ship's gone, then opens his mouth a little wider. I raise a barricade construct as that weird red/black light reappears, only for Fatty to roll into its path and open his mouth. I see the stuff roil within him as he expands like a balloon. Um, ring, sound nullification on the Physician and then shockcrown him. The filaments go around him to each side and lunge forwards only to break on some sort of force field. Hell with it. I redirect the filaments to Fatty, stick my right arm around Teekl and attach another filament to Robin. Transition.

We're in the sky above Happy Harbour, the Bio-Ship in camouflage mode just below us. Rear door's open so with another transition we're inside and our team mates look around as we drop to the floor. "Close the door and get us the hell-" A tear opens in the universe and the Physician steps through! Before he can do anything I hit him in the head with the most intense infrasound I can before shoving him out the back of the Bio-Ship with a construct claw. "-out of here. Zatanna, can you-?"

"Ah-ah… On.. eno nac tceted su!"

Hah. I slump back against the Bio-Ship's interior wall. Well. That's a relief.

Next to me Fatty grasps at his swollen belly. "OOoooooOOO." His head nods back and forwards in a motion reminiscent of someone about to retch. But he can't-. Oh yes he can! His mouth bulges wide, far wider than it's normally capable of doing, and the mass in his stomach heaves upwards and out! A large orange mass heaves onto the Bio-Ship's floor and.. picks itself up? The second orange Praexis Demon shakes its head as Fatty wipes his mouth, his stomach settling back down to its normal dimensions. Wallace, Kon and Zatanna all move to cover their mouths with their hands.

So that's how Praexis Demons reproduce.

I could have lived a long and happy life without knowing that.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:22 GMT -5

"I…" He breathes out, and both tension and strength seem to flow out of him. "I was a sleeper agent, pre-programmed to infiltrate the League. I think.. the League of Shadows' Sensei was my handler. He had a key phrase, 'broken arrow', that could shut me down. Put me in a hypnotic state so they could steal secrets for their superiors."

I nod. "The Light." **Miss Martian?**

Her right hand goes to her temple and her eyes glow. **It's gone. I can't feel any more hidden commands.**

"Or incorporate further programming. I'd then carry out all orders subconsciously, completely unaware of what drove me." He looks at me. "I think one of those orders was to gather whatever intel I could on you."

"I am fascinating."

"It wasn't just a social enquiry. I think they were scared that you'd ruin things for them."

"And here I thought you were shadowing me due to my irresistible sexual magnetism." The disgusted expression he makes is the most normal thing I've seen him do since I grabbed him.

"Batman said you were a Cadmus clone." Kon glances at Match. "Like us."

Mister Harper sags even further. "That explains it."

Wallace tilts his head to the side. "Explains what?"

"I still couldn't remember how they first got hold of me. But if everything I think I remember was implanted in my head by the G-Gnomes…"

Ring, detailed scan.

Genomorph genetic components detected.

"The ring confirms Genomorph genetic markers." I smirk. "Either that or one of your ancestors was into-." Glares all round. "Okay, not the time."

Richard steps forwards. "What happened on the Watchtower? And how come you're not under their control any more?"

"As a member of the Justice League I had access to the alien biotech you took from Riddler. When all of the League were assembled in one place, my programming… It was like being a half-asleep passenger in my own body. I just walked up to each League member in turn and infected them."

"Savage was able to make it work on five different species?"

I shrug. "In the wild Star Conquerors can mentally dominate anything with a mind. Not sure how it worked on a robot…" Ring, scan Red Tornado for… Oh, wonderful.

Zatanna nods. "Chaos magic could easily blur the distinction between organic and inorganic."

"And bloody nanotechnology. There's some inert nanoprobes still inside Red Tornado. Purging."

"Once everyone was under Savage's control I added him to the Watchtower's Zeta tube system as a guest and sent him a signal. He had the League kneel before him and just strolled in." Mister Harper shakes his head dejectedly. "That's when I got away. Apparently they didn't program me to infect myself. When I fulfilled my mission's last parameter my mind began to clear. I'm sure Savage planned to Starro-tech me, but he paused to… Bask. I escaped through the Zeta tube." Another sigh. "I've been dodging League members ever since."

Wallace walks up to him and puts his right hand on his left shoulder. "Hey. You're with friends now. We totally got this."

Miss Ervin shakes her head. "No, we don't got this. Savage has the League, Klarion and mind control squids. I read the report on what happened last time you guys fought Klarion." I glance at the Zeta tubes. No further attack appears to be forthcoming, so… The construct armour around my team mates evaporates. "We need a plan-."

"Ah!" / "Ugh!"

Kon and Match both wince in pain. Why, what-? No. Immediately the armour reappears around both of them and a moment later they've recovered. Match shakes his head. "What was that? It felt like my skin was on fire!"

"Probably residual Kryptonite radiation." Richard frowns. "That doesn't make sense either. Captain Atom can't generate different forms of radiation!"

"Hey, uh…" Match picks up something from near where Captain Adams fell. "Is this important?"

I'm momentarily nonplussed by the sight of a Kryptonian holding what appears to be… Yes, that's Kryptonite. In fact, I think I recognise that particular piece. From the slight widening of Richard's eyes I'm going to guess that he does as well. "If Captain Atom was focusing his energy through the Kryptonite crystal… But if he had that…" That's Batman's Kryptonite. When I wanted to scan some his cave was the first place I looked.

"Vandal Savage has access to the League's confiscated weapons and technologies." We all look around as Batman gingerly pushes himself up. "And most likely our database and memories as well. As of yesterday, none of our secret identities are secure."

"Batman!" Richard rushes to his side but Batman holds up his right hand to ward him off.

"I'm alright, Robin. Status of the team?"

"Aqualad got Starroed. Aside from that, we're all good."

Batman tries to rise, but stumbles and goes back to sitting. "Is the mountain secure?"

M'gann's eyes glow. "The only minds I can feel are in this room."

Double check. "Ring confirms."

"The zeta tubes?"

"I deactivated the one in the hangar."

Richard's eyes widen. "You mean this one's still open?!"

"Yes. We're going to have to fight them all anyway, and this way Savage can feed them to us piecemeal." He calls up his computer and frantically presses buttons, deactivating the Zeta tube. "You do understand that won't stop Mister Zatara teleporting here, yes?"

"Sdrol fo Redro, dleihs siht niatnuom morf lla eht srewop fo Soahc!" Golden light blazes from Zatanna and seems to seep into the walls. "That should stop anyone affected by chaos magic from getting in here."

Batman nods. "Celestial Archer. Do you believe that you could reproduce the effect you used to free me against the other members of the League?"

"Sir, I believe that Wonder Woman's bracers could block my arrows. I have never tested them against Nth metal. Aside from that, yes, I should be capable of removing the Starro-tech devices."

"Grayven, are you able to scan the Watchtower?"

"Sorry sir, no. Something's interfering with the ring. Perhaps if I were closer." Oh, that's an idea. "Zatanna, do you think your father would mind passing control to Lantern Nabu for a short time?"

She thinks for a moment. "No, he's not in control anyway. Would that work?"

"Should do. If all else fails I can just dismiss him and recreate him here. He's seen everything that's happened and should be able to teleport us up to the Watchtower once we have a plan of attack."

"Uhssh…." Kaldur sits up, his left hand holding his head. Will the others recover soon enough to be useful, I wonder? Mister Allen's showing signs of life as well, but I seem to remember something about him recovering faster than usual. Captain Adams appears to be down for the count though I can't see anything physically wrong with him.

Batman looks like he's wondering about that too. He turns his head to look at me. "Grayven, contact Nabu. We need more information before taking any action which puts the team at risk."

"If we could hold off on that, sir? I've no doubt that Klarion could detect me doing that. It would probably be best to wait until we were ready to go."

Ooh, I'm going to miss my appointment with my sister-in-law, aren't I? Or.. maybe she'd prefer beating up a Lord of Chaos to beating up me?

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:29 GMT -5

"Ekam lla gniyrcs stpmetta erongi siht pihs."

I breathe a little easier as the Bio-Ship accelerates through the sky over Happy Harbour. That should stop anyone doing something clever like scanning for our air displacement or something. I don't know about the other two but wide area ring scanning is something Guy is perfectly capable of doing. Huh, see how they like the boot being on the other foot for once. "That still leaves telepathy."

M'gann dips her head slightly. "Once we get further away from Happy Harbor it shouldn't matter. Uncle J'onn… He'd have to be up close to hear us."

"Shit." Rob just sort of collapsed into his seat when he got into the Bio-Ship and hasn't quite recovered yet. "Shit."

"Cornwall." He turns his head in my direction. "Not helping, chum."

"Not help..? The bad guys just took over the Justice League!"

"Which just proves that the League aren't unbeatable." I turn to look into the Bio-Ship's rear compartment. "Doctor Morrow, how's it coming?"

"Tornado's physical systems are fine. I'd need more advanced analytical equipment to work out what's wrong with his mind."

I glance down at the lantern next to my seat. "Doctor Morrow, you're a construct. If you want equipment, just make it."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

Wallace shudders and then turns back to face our team leader. "So what's the plan, Aqualad?"

"First, we need to locate Red Arrow and Artemis." He pauses, then looks down at the cat currently splayed out on his lap. "I… Teekl, do you believe that you could reliably identify Klarion's.. 'scent' if you were to encounter it again?" She gives him a look of withering contempt. Kaldur does not appear to be a cat person. Maybe it comes with being part fish? "I will take that as a yes. Orange Lantern, do you have any idea where Artemis might have gone?"

"No. She could be almost anywhere on the planet. I can't scan for her and I can't get access to the Zeta tube network's records to narrow it down. If I had to guess… Red Arrow knows her civilian identity. I'd guess she's wherever he is."

"After Roy went solo he installed equipment caches in several major cities. He told me the location of the one in Star City. Since Artemis operates-."

"Um…" Telling others a secret identity is a major no-no, but under the circumstances… "She doesn't. She actually lives in Gotham.. and commutes." That gets me a few interested looks, though not from Robin. Of course he knows. "I've got her home phone number, I'll give her a ring."

Kaldur nods. "Miss Martian, set course for Gotham City. I will direct you when we get closer."

Kon pauses in putting his armour on. We only really had time to grab essential stuff and the team pets so we're a bit.. under equipped. "Couldn't Paul just transfer us there?"

"I can, but I can't guarantee that doing so won't make us easier to detect. Aqualad?"

"Miss Martian, how long-?"

"Fifteen minutes at most."

"Then I think it best that we not take the risk. Once we have located our missing team mates our next step is to find some way to nullify the Starro technology. Doctor Roquette is an expert on nanotechnology and the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis is the finest magic research center on the planet."

Robin shakes his head. "Finding out how to counter the Starro-tech could take months."

"Yeah, I… No one's got more faith in Sephtian than me, but that's… Wouldn't it be better to beat the League into submission, power suppress them and then work on a cure? Or at least not hold off until we have one?"

Zatanna shakes her head. "The Starro fragment reeks of chaos magic. That probably means that Klarion's up in the Watchtower right now, along with Savage and whoever else they've brought in."

Wallace seems more bullish. "We can take Klarion." He doesn't get the immediate positive response he was looking for. "Can't we?"

"With Spell Eaters and Mageslayer rounds… Maybe. If he hasn't got anything too nasty prepared this time. I mean, if we won he'd probably be dead at the end of it. I certainly wouldn't be able to pull my punches at all. What worries me more is who else the Justice League might have called in. I mean, if you were a superhero and the League called you in for try-outs, would you turn it down?" Consternation all round. "Batman had my list of possible future recruits. We have no idea how many of those Starro things Savage has and no way to know who's been infected until Zatanna scans them or Teekl sniffs them."

Kaldur nods. "What do you propose we do?"

"Send a message to Queen Mera immediately. Tell her that King Orin's been mind controlled and to cut contact with the surface until she hears from us. And if we want to call in extra help, we need to do it now. Talk to them, check them for infection and bring them in before they can be nobbled."

"Whom do you suggest?"

I raise my right hand and begin generating constructs. "John Constantine, the most cunning bastard on the planet. And a noted wizard. Teth Adom. He fought and killed one of Klarion's predecessors." By doing nothing but ripping him apart for a month until he stopped trying to regenerate, but let's draw a veil over that. "Danni, because the easiest way to shut down Mister J'onzz is with fire."

M'gann looks over. "How about Brainwave?"

"Good choice. He'd certainly make getting around the Watchtower easier."

Kon thinks for a moment. "Donna and Barda?"

Robin puts his right hand to his chin. "Yeah, but Mister Miracle would be more useful if we have to sneak in. And from what you said he should be impossible to mind control."

Raquel thinks for a moment. "There's a guy in Dakota City Icon's worked with a couple of times. He's called-."

"Hardware. Could be useful but he's not a nanotech specialist."

"How do you even-?"

"Power rings are awesome. Kaldur?"

"A sound idea. I am certain that Garth and Tula will also want to participate in liberating our king."

"I'll start making calls. I'll contact the Frees first. Barda's boom tubes will be harder to track than ring transfers. Unless.. Batman's improved the League's boom tube tracking since our Bialya mission?"

Robin shakes his head. "The Green Lantern Corps black boxed most of the Watchtower's systems when they handed it over. Including the advanced sensors."

And they improved the sensors in case there were Star Conquerors around. Rod, meet back. I custom made you for it.

Rob perks up a little bit. "So… You think we can actually do this? Beat the Justice League?"

"Yep. No one's unbeatable. That said… Robin, I know Batman's almost certainly got a lump or two of Kryptonite around the place. I know he wasn't keen on me scanning it…"

"We can pick it up when we're in Gotham. I need to secure the Cave's computer and pick up some more equipment anyway."

Kon looks a little perturbed. "Batman's got Kryptonite? Why? I thought him and Superman were friends."

Think I'll let Robin field that one. "Because even if he trusts him, he can't bet everyone else's lives on him always being able to trust him. If Superman got mind controlled -like he is now- Batman needed to know that he had some way to shut him down. He didn't want to ever use it, but if he ever had to, he needed it to be there."

Kon blinks. "Whaw. I didn't realize…"

"That's what baseline Humans who want to be top tier superheroes have to do. There are morgues full of would be superheroes who couldn't hack it and I don't intend to add to them." I raise my left hand to my ear. "Ring, get me the Frees."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
07:41 GMT -5

Barda sighs as she puts on her headdress. "I knew it was too good to last." "Mind controlled or not, I am not happy about having to fight the Justice League."

Mister Free pulls his balaclava over his head and takes a moment to straighten it out. "Actually, I think this is a record. And as long as our neighbors don't spot us, there's no reason why we can't carry on living here." "I'm.. not.. completely unhappy about getting a chance to break into somewhere protected by a Lord of Chaos."

Barda takes her mega rod off her belt and presses the activator. "Hmpf."

"I just want to thank you again for agreeing to do this."

"Diana is my friend. Savage and his Boy Witch will pay for what they've done to her." Mister Free's eyes meet mine for a moment and we both just manage to avoid laughing at 'Boy Witch'. "Where is our mustering point?"

"We'll be meeting up in Poseidonis, but if you don't mind there's a few people I'd like to pick up first."

Mister Free fishes his aero-discs out of their storage case and lays them on the floor. "Wouldn't it be easier for you to do that?"

"I was concerned that they might be able to track ring FTL."

He raises his left eyebrow. "So..?"

"I was hoping you could use your Mother Box to open-" He nods and looks away for a moment. "-a boom tube to get us there. I can suppress the sounds, as well as containing the radiation the League used to pick up the tube in Bialya."

"Yeaaah, about that…" "Do you want to tell him?"

Barda looks down at the Mother Box still sitting in the case they were keeping their more advanced equipment in. "That belongs to a warrior of New Genesis I slew for Darkseid. It will not serve me and it will not acknowledge Scott."

"Oh. Rather got the wrong end of the stick there. Then I suppose-."

"We can use my mega rod to travel." She holds it out in front of her. "Gather close." Um. Okay? Don't remember this from the comics. Mister Free finishes equipping himself and walks over to her left side. I stand to her right and wait. "No, closer than that."

"Really? Because we're going to be picking up whup!"

Barda clearly decided that she wasn't going to wait, put her hand around my chest and pulled me closer. Even with the weight and articulation of my power armour she did so with no trouble at all. She's nearly a foot taller than me, excluding her weird headdress thing, and I'm being forced to pretty much put my head on her shoulder. This is going to be interesting.

"Where is our first destination?" "Why must lower beings be so afraid of intimacy?"

She leaves the arm where it is. "Inwood Hill Park, New York. We're picking up Firebrand."

"Describe this 'Firebrand' to me."

"She's a gynoid first built by Doctor Thomas Morrow and then rebuilt by me to look more Human. She's strong, tough and can generate and control fire and heat."

Her headdress pushes against my face as she nods. "I have her. Prepare yourself."

"Why, what-?"

Yellow light flares from the mega rod, bleaching the colour from our surroundings before evaporating them. Ring, analyse this, would you?

Compliance.

"What in tarnation-!"

Colour returns to our environment, the green glow of Alan's construct sword and shield first, then the pastel shades of his living room. "Morning, Alan." I smile from Barda's shoulder as she moves her mega rod to a defensive posture. "Friends. Friends." I process what he's doing and frown at him. "And drop the constructs, you don't have power to burn like that!"

He relaxes and allows his constructs to evaporate in a puff of green. "You might want to avoid teleporting into an old man's living room. My heart isn't as strong as it used to be."

I pull away from Barda. "And it'll get worse if you keep using power like that."

"The Earth has another Green Lantern?" Barda isn't quite frowning but she does look a bit puzzled.

"Barda Free, Scott Free, this is Alan Scott. He used to be part of the Justice Society. Alan, Big Barda and Mister Miracle. They were kicked off Apokolips for being insufficiently evil."

"Well, as long as it wasn't for being excessively evil." He extends his right hand, glowing ring still on his left. I shouldn't fuss but he really needs to take that off as soon as possible. "Pleased to meet you both." Barda shakes first, then remembers to let Scott go so that he can as well. "Paul, Zatanna called ahead. They managed to get Tornado working. Danni's just-." He catches sight of something through the door. "Ah."

Danni walks in, wearing the improved armour I made her after we got back from Qurac. Ironically, it makes her look more like she did before I humanised her. "Orange Lantern, we are ready to depart."

"We?" I turn to Alan, already knowing what she means but wanting to be sure. "Alan, no."

"I used to fight Savage, back in the old days. And from what you said about Kent's old records Klarion more or less took over from Mordru. There's still some life in this old dog yet."

"How much?"

He gives me a wry smile. "If I knew that…"

"How much ring power do you have left?"

"Ahh…" He holds up his left hand. "Feels like… Three quarters?"

"Jesus, Alan, it's only been two months. You can't mess around with-."

He waves my concern off. "I used most of that when you went all snake eyes on us. Paul, Diana's my friend too. One of my oldest. And Jay loves Barry the same way I love you. I will not stand idly by and do nothing. Now, you can either take me along with you or you can watch me fly around near Earth space looking for the Watchtower the hard way."

Shiiiiiiiiiiit.

"You don't wear your ring for longer than you have to, you stay in reserve until we need you and you wear body armour this time."

Our eyes remain locked for a good five seconds before he gives me a very shallow nod. "Alright then." He looks down and slides his ring off his finger, taking it into his right hand. I'm… For a moment I consider grabbing it off him and hiding it until it's time for his weekly dose. No, no, there's always room for emergency measures later and I can see inside him how much he wants this.

Barda frowns. "Why would you not allow him to participate in this battle?"

Yeah, clearly this whole thing makes no sense to her. "Alan gave up his personal lantern so that I could function as a Lantern but he'll wither and die-."

"Hey!"

"You will. He'll wither and die if he runs out of power and I can't get him a replacement until next July at the earliest. And now he wants to burn power-." Deep breath. "Okay, everyone hug Barda. Next stop, Teth Adom."

Mister Free thinks for a moment, then understands. "You mean Bla-?"

"No."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December
14:46 GMT +2

There's a general clicking and shouting as the yellow light fades, depositing us in the middle of a small park near what has become the centre of government for the region of Kahndaq Adom's people tenuously control. A small squad of armed police from the Shiruta Provincial Guard have their Kalashnikovs levelled at us while one frantically shouts a request for backup into a radio. Hey, I made those uniforms!

I step away from Barda with my hands held up and open at shoulder height. Two lower their weapons half way as they recognise me but from the bewildered looks the man next to them is giving them he clearly doesn't. "Gentlemen, I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four. I would very much like to speak to His Excellency, if that can be arranged."

"Orange Lantern." One of the ones who recognised me -a sergeant- lowers his weapon the rest of the way and gestures for the others to do the same. "I am sorry for our poor greeting, but your arrival-."

"I know. Sorry about that."

He turns to the fellow with the radio. "Ammar, contact headquarters. Let them know that Orange Lantern is on his way."

"More attacks?"

The sergeant nods. "They finally gave up on aircraft, but they're sending mercenaries and assassins now. We have to keep a constant watch on all public places."

The Middle East here is actually.. much less violent than it was back home. I mean, back home there'd be suicide bombers all over the place in a conflict like this. As it is, the only places where the government still has any real control are the areas around Cairo and Alexandria. With the knowledge that Adom can and will intervene to prevent government aggression in other places they couldn't break free of President Muhunnad fast enough. Adom for his part has done his best to keep the death toll down. Not always possible of course and unfortunately the remaining areas are all under the guns of government loyal troops. He could take them but there wouldn't be much left when he did. We spent some time talking about how South Africa handled truth and reconciliation and he's said he's willing to be merciful in victory. I think he was genuine about it, though in practice it will probably mean that the second rank of offenders will be allowed to leave the country with the shirts on their backs rather than getting tried and executed. Really, our best hope is someone on their side realises that they've lost, shoots their bosses dead and takes the exile option.

Still, while I'm here... Ring, citywide omnicognisance, two seconds. Ugh. Hurts a little less than it… No, it doesn't really hurt anymore, it's just… Strange. I can briefly not just see everything that's going on around me but understand it, not just the actions but the reasons. It's a bit like when the Ophidian and I were merged, except that I can still understand people. I could… I might be able to get away with using it more often, but I'm still worried about what happens if my mind becomes accustomed to it and expands out into a structure which collapses. Or if I'd still be recognisably Human if I went by that route. I hold out my right hand and transmute a folder into being. "I can't detect any active explosive devices, but you might want to look into the people and places listed here."

He takes it from me. "Our thanks. I will ensure this is acted on."

"Please, go easy on the informants. The President's people have started taking families hostage."

"I know. I had a brother in Cairo. I'm not sure that I still do." Ammar comes over and whispers something to him. He nods and then turns back to me. "His Excellency has been informed and is waiting for you in his office. Do you require an escort?"

"No, thank you, we'll go straight there. Thank you for your help."

"You are welcome, sir."

I turn and walk back to the hero huddle as Alan tries to alter the position of his left pauldron. No time to fit him for power armour but what he's got should make him more survivable. "Barda, please take us to the antechamber of his office." We could have gone straight there but itchy trigger fingers and thin walls don't mix well, to say nothing of Adom himself. This whole thing is going as well as I could possibly have hoped and I have no intention of messing it up by being careless.

"First-." She fixes her eyes on me. "-you will tell me what sort of man this Teth Adom is."

"Uh…" I glance back. Translation's still on and we're drawing a curious but cautious crowd. How many of them have actually met him in person? "Why do you want to know?"

"You have said that he is not the Black Adam whom Captain Marvel fought. From what I have seen on the news, that seems to be true. But if we're going to trust a man whose first action was to try taking over a country I want to know more about him before I get within his reach."

"Alright. For a start, he didn't try to take over a country. Before he even came back here he learned everything he could about the modern world. The first thing he learned was modern languages: English and Kahndaqi Arabic, then French and the more minor Kahndaqi languages. The second thing he did was learn how the modern world functioned. He knew that he was ignorant of a great many things and he didn't want to do anything radical before he knew he was capable of doing the job. He only came back to Kahndaq full time when the government tried cracking down on demonstrations after the Roanoke Island incident. And he didn't try to take over, he only got involved to protect the demonstrators. Adom loves Kahndaq, but he knows that he isn't really a part of modern Kahndaq. The very morning before he accepted his current position he actually told me that he wasn't sure that he should take it while the country was in disarray in case he didn't know enough to hold it together. His strongest characteristic is his desire to act in Kahndaq's interests. Everything else, even his pride and temper -and he is proud and he has a nasty temper- is secondary to that. If the people of Kahndaq revolted on their own and established a new government he would respect it. When they asked him to become a figurehead all the factions can support, he agreed without hesitation and he'll do the job to the best of his ability. If they wanted him to become Pharaoh again -whatever that means for a modern country- he'd probably do that too. But he wouldn't insist on it, and if they want him to step down and become a nationalist superhero he'd be happy to do that as well." As long as he believed that the people doing the asking were genuinely acting in the national interest. I remember the short shrift he gave to those 'government in exile' people. Really, Nigel Farage could have taken notes.

"So you say. I have seen a few too many tyrants to take his word for it."

"Barda, I can look into a man's soul. I can see desire. I am a very hard man to lie to. I don't think he's perfect by any means, but neither does he. He has the powers he does because six gods decided that he had the virtues for the job. He always has six beings who are more powerful than he is looking over his shoulder. His pride will not allow him to give anything other than his all." And his need to prove Shazam wrong. William said that after what he thought was a successful time in Fawcett City on Halloween he mentioned the possibility of some sort of reconciliation between the two. Apparently his answer was quite vehement, but at least he didn't abuse the situation by trying to find out where the portal to the Rock of Eternity in Fawcett is. "He isn't good at mercy but he can do clemency. He hasn't fully adapted to modernity but he knows he hasn't and is willing to listen to advice. And he's my friend. Is there anything else you want to know?"

Barda keeps her eyes locked on mine for a moment and then gives a slight nod. I press myself against her side once more -I wonder if there's some way for me to extend the range of that thing- and the world goes yellow once more. When the light dims we're in the hotel that has been taken over to use as the Unity Council's headquarters. A few clerks stare at us but the soldiers here are mostly used to me appearing in unusual ways.

"Ah! Orange Lantern." A cheerful looking heavily bearded man in black robes and wearing a black turban raises his right hand in greeting. "I had wondered why His Excellency cut short my visit."

Adom did say that his current religious affairs advisor was much easier to get on with than his predecessors. He's been trying hard to get his head around Islam and this is the man whose job it is to help him. Ring? Proper form of address for an Imam? Oh. That's easy, then. "I apologise, Mister Khalil. I know how His Excellency values your help but this is rather urgent."

"Then don't let me detain you." He steps aside, leaving me with a clear path to Adom's office.

I turn back to the others. "Probably easier if I do this. And.. we should probably stop off at base before picking up anyone else." Danni doesn't have a problem with our method of locomotion but Alan looks a bit uncomfortable about being pressed up against Barda like that. Turning back to the door I knock twice and then press on through.