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

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
11:57 GMT -6

"I am Despair, a Sheeda Mood 2 Mind Destroyer. You should not be able to perceive me."

"Unlike the sheeda, modern humans can innovate. Now we are aware of your future, it will never happen."

There's a.. sort of visual glitch, its whole body becoming slightly more cloud than person for a moment before reforming.

"Orange Lantern. Do you want to know-?"

"What's my name?"

Its head tilts slightly. "Do you want to know how the mighty star-spanning Empire of Earth falls? How the war-fleets of the drug-ascendant god-kings stretched forth their hands from wretched wastelands of Old Terra and slowly strangled the spirit of humanity to assuage their vainglorious lusts?"

"Yes please, it would be quite helpful. In chronological order, ideally, so I can more easily prevent it."

But that was the first thing it suggested. The idea that the sort of interstellar empire I might approve of would be crushed by high-end supervillains is exactly the sort of thing that would make me despair… If I didn't know that history could be changed even if that would create a paradox.

How did it know that?

I haven't hidden roughly what I'm trying to do, but I imagine that most people wouldn't jump to 'Empire' as my preferred form of political organisation. I've mostly kept out of commenting on Earth politics, though my willingness to work with the Russian government probably implies that I'm not exactly the 'Truth, Justice and the American Way' type. The fact that I still occasionally refer to my American colleagues as 'colonials' isn't public knowledge.

If it didn't learn that from publically available sources, the other obvious place for it to get that information is my mind. Except that I've got telepathic shielding built into my armour and I'm using anti-telepath techniques. And that if it could get into my mind like that, it could just make me despair without needing to talk to me.

Neither Truggs nor Kadabra acted like they came from a future where I existed. That means that the sheeda almost certainly don't have a record of my actions they could look at to find out what I did. Heck, they both said that human records were a mess after the Reach occupation, so even if there was a 'retcon wave' which the sheeda survived there shouldn't be a good record of me… Yet.

...

Unless we've.. already prevented the Reach occupation. That would be nice, but it would mean that there could be records. And that I'm dead. That they found a way to kill me in the future, because there's no way I'd tolerate them existing.

Now I know how Miles O'Brien felt.

"-refined from the brains of their fellow men, some so consumed with unholy hunger that they-."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, were you still talking?"

Beryl snorts in amusement. Miss Ryan has sort of frozen, but is shaking slightly less.

"I just started thinking about the situation and stopped paying attention. Dreadfully rude of me."

Still, there are non-telepathic ways to get information from a person's brain. Most of them wouldn't work through my armour; it blocks electromagnetic radiation too well. Some sort of non-magical exotic detection? I could assume an elemental form to dodge that, but if-.

Oh.

The orange filaments just fail to reach it before it shimmers and reforms once more, its eyes now focused on Beryl! Damn it! Okay, tech-based mind reading as part of its lock-on feature. The entity itself isn't an illusion because you can shoot them and they do leave a residue.

"Beryl?"

"Oh, apparently I die old and alone and surrounded by cats."

"Are they nice cats?"

"Probably wait a whole day before eating me."

"There's not a lot of meat on you. Perhaps they didn't think it was worth the effort?"

"Cats can be a bit fussy." But she looks a good deal less confident than she sounds. The Mind Destroyer appears to be able to be selective in its speech, and I doubt that she wants to announce exactly what it's telling her. "Can I please shoot it now?"

"'Being a bit mean' isn't a death penalty offence in America. We can shoot it if it resists arrest or actively threatens someone."

"Right. Oi! No, I don't care. You're under arrest."

Beryl continues with the arrest spiel, but I'm wondering… Ah, I should try out all of my team mates with orange rings for situations like this. It's locked onto her and I don't know whether or not tossing her a ring and telling her to go at it will work, even just in the short term.

"So are you resisting arrest, then?"

"Squire, have you ever wondered what it's like to use a power ring?"

"I don't need to wonder. Robin told me." She takes a deep breath. "It's resisting arrest. What now?"

"Are you willing to perform a summary execution?" She glances at me uncomfortably. "As far as we know, no one else can attack it while it's locked onto you. I have a weapon that I know can kill it, but I don't know how to stun or wound it. Legally, if it's clearly involved in an act of supervillainy and refuses to comply with law enforcement officers we are enabled to use lethal force. However-."

There's an audible hum in the air. I don't recognise the sound-.

High-mass teleportation.

A grey-brown… Rocket plane? No, it's designed to look like a rocket-plane, those parts my ring can identify are far more advanced than that.

"Oh, well done! I was wondering where I might find another test subject!"

Doctor Thaddeus Sivana Senior leans forwards in his cupola, the nose cone of his retro-seeming craft rising out of the way as it deploys… A device which my rings can't identify.

"Doctor, please define 'test subject'."

"Ah! I knew there was something I was forgetting." The Mind Destroyer shudders again, then takes on a purely gaseous form and gets sucked up into Dr Sivana's craft. "Not you, not the girl, not the other girl-." He tilts his craft so that he can get a better look. "On second thoughts, if she's been exposed for a long period there might be some form of residue I could study."

"What do you-?" Beryl looks at me. "It's not telepathic. If it was telepathic it wouldn't have affected you. It can access your thoughts without telepathy."

Dr Sivana smiles. "Oh, well done. Yes, it's a clever system. They tried it on me once or twice when I was in their time period and I didn't have the equipment to puzzle it out."

"Doctor, I would very much prefer it if you limited your studies to the Mind Destroyers themselves."

"My boy, that simply won't do. I need to be able to detect them, and the best point to do that is when they're connected to a human brain."

Beryl looks my way. "Is there a reason why you're not attacking him?"

"Yes. Doctor, have you studied Magnificus's brain?"

"Of course not! He's far too resilient and neurally abnormal for the results to mean anything. I did have a go at studying me, but frankly I'm not much better."

"Do you know why they're here?"

"No." He frowns. "Is something important happening?"

"We're not sure. Are you able to extract that data from the Mind Destroyer first?"

"Yes. That shouldn't take too long."

"Might that not give you something more important to look into? They were presumably sent here for a reason."

"Hm." He strokes his chin. "As a matter of urgency, I suppose that it should take precedence. Very well. Do you and the young lady want to come and watch?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:03 GMT -6

There's a small circular area in the Oregon High Desert where an open-walled laboratory appears to have been deposited. Sivanadroids move to and fro, setting up equipment and erecting force field emitters to keep out the dust and… Unwanted superheroes, presumably.

I transitioned Miss Ryan back into town without us. I'm letting Doctor Sivana take the lead, and Beryl is flying alongside me using her kinetic belt. She's also been shooting me irate glares.

"What is-?"

"How long have you been working with the insane mass murderer Thaddeus Sivana?"

"'Working with' is putting it a little strongly. And I'm not convinced that he's legally insane."

"So how would you put it?"

"I've been trying to keep an extremely dangerous weapon pointed at the people who've exterminated worldwide civilisation at least once."

"Five times." Beryl's head jerks in the direction of Dr Sivana's rocket plane. "I've been using some of my own suspendium reserves to track their temporal shifts. They've ravaged worldwide Earth civilisation on five separate occasions, about five hundred years apart at their end. And while I like 'extremely dangerous' I'm really not fond of being described as a 'weapon'."

"Doctor, you've freely admitted to me that your social skills aren't very good. Your reactions to human society are sufficiently atypical that I feel that -as a metaphor- describing you as someone who can best be handled by treating them as an explosive with 'This End Towards Enemy' printed on it is fairly reasonable."

"Ah, so you were referring to your inability to fully grasp my mindset, rather than describing me as a tool to be wielded."

"There's a degree of overlap, but that was my principal intent. I've no desire to offend you so much that you select me as your next target once the sheeda are dealt with."

"Oh, there's very little chance of me doing that. Have you ever heard of a man called 'The Spider'?"

"I have. He was a racketeer, thief and terrorist. And then he vanished, and hopefully he's dead."

"He also worked for British intelligence."

"Don't bloody remind me. I don't know what they were thinking."

"A few years ago I managed to get hold of the records of an associate of his, a man named Professor Pelham. He wrote that The Spider told him that he found other criminals to be far more challenging foes than the police, as they operated under fewer restrictions on their methodology. I didn't think much of it at the time-"

Beryl and I land just outside of the laboratory area as Dr Sivana brings his plane in to land and a couple of Sivanadroids remove a containment unit from inside the nose cone.

"-but having decided to pit myself against the sheeda, I can't help but wonder if he was on to something." A sivanadroid reaches up with telescopic arms and lifts him out of the cockpit, then deposits him on the ground and returns to its other work. "The Batson boy represented a static obstacle; resilient but disinclined to innovation. But the sheeda, all of the genius and malice of a desperate and corrupt civilisation!" One of the sivanadroids plugs the containment cylinder into what looks like a large fish tank, and a moment later the Mind Destroyer is visible within its confines as Dr Sivana strides over to stand before it, rubbing his hands as he does so. "I don't mind telling you that I'm positively giddy with excitement!"

"I'm glad to hear it."

"You needn't worry… Squire, wasn't it?" Dr Sivana turns his head to look at her, and his smile… Well, it comes a little short as far as reassurance goes, but it's an improvement on what he used to do and he actually noticed that an effort would be appropriate. "Orange Lantern's intentions are quite noble. He has been trying to encourage me in the direction of reform."

"You're not someone like Leonard Snart, a thief with a rough childhood. You had every opportunity not to be a monster and you threw it away."

"Not 'every opportunity'." He turns back to the tank and starts pressing buttons on the control panel. "Though I suppose that I did have more than him. And since I suspect that you're about to mention it-" He glances my way. "-not that I'm picking up on that as a result of an improvement in my understanding of social conventions, but you can only be heroically lambasted so many times before you pick up how it goes, no, I don't feel bad about any of the people I killed. No, most of them hadn't done anything in particular to offend me, they were just sort of there. I don't feel bad now and I suspect that even if I became as 'reformed' as I can, I still wouldn't feel bad."

"And you're only doing this because you find it fun."

"And they tried to kill me and my family. The fact that I do actually care for a few people means that Orange Lantern was probably correct in pronouncing me sane. I'm just very nasty."

"Have you been able to extract its orders?"

"Oh, yes. I was just going through its records."

I wait for a moment, but he doesn't say anything else.

"And?"

"The people they were attacking were best-fits for their priority targets. But those targets aren't particularly well defined. The sheeda queen appears to believe that a group of seven soldiers were the greatest threat to her efforts to harrow our civilisation. Unfortunately, she didn't know anything else about them, so the Mind Destroyers are programmed to attack groups of seven people. Her ex-husband is also on the target list. Apparently, he fled back in time after being deposed-."

"Melmoth, yes. He kidnapped a lot of puritans and used them to found a colony in a nearby parallel universe. They deposed him, but I'm not sure what happened after that."

"They were supposed to look for any trace of him as well. That appears to be how they ended up here." He strokes his chin. "Once I work out how to get write access, I should be able to turn these things into long-range sheeda detectors. Which will certainly come in use if this 'Melmoth' is active on Earth to any degree."

"He might be able to give us all sorts of information."

"He led several Harrowings himself."

"And you have a moral objection?"

"No, but I've committed myself to ending the sheeda, not changing which of them is in charge. Having them swap places doesn't make any sense." He frowns. "To me. Does it make sense to you? I sometimes miss things."

"I don't know." She glares pointedly at me. "How optimistic are we feeling?"

"I was planning on branding him and then placing him in Belle Reve for the rest of his life, however long that might be. In the unlikely event that he has reformed, I might reconsider."

Dr Sivana frowns faintly, then shakes his head. "No, I definitely think I'm missing something."

"My aim is to prevent the Earth being harrowed. I don't much care about the sheeda in and of themselves. In the unlikely event that Melmoth thinks he can make them reform I'll probably let him try. For much the same reason that I'm willing to work with you."

"Ah! Rationally pursuing your objectives, even at a dreadful cost to others! That's an ideology I understand!"

Beryl bows her head and shakes it.

"Though naturally I won't get in the way of your efforts against them."

"Glad to hear it! Now, this thing wasn't able to track down Melmoth, but according to its memories there was definite evidence that he was here at some point. Without any real direction they were just latching on to people who matched their target criteria to at least the lowest level and talking them to death. It appears that they thought that he might come back at some point, though their evidence supporting that belief appears to be somewhat weak."

"What evidence is that?"

"The butterflies, naturally."

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:11 GMT -6

"All sheeda creatures share certain biological traits, certain genetic elements. I suspected as much when I was in their time, but I proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt by performing a detailed analysis of the tissue samples which I brought back with me."

I frown as we fly in the direction of the town, Linda flying to meet us part way.

"I don't remember you having tissue samples with you."

"Naturally I had to wait until my next bowel movement. I was far too malnourished to pump my stomach."

Beryl fails to hide her disgust. "You were eating intelligent beings?"

"Oh, don't worry; we are biologically dissimilar enough that there was little chance of disease transmission."

She regards me, then twists her right hand in a 'see what sort of person you're working with' gesture.

"And not often. The scavenger creatures were far easier to catch. The humanoid ones seldom left the cities except in armed patrol groups."

"And the local butterflies contain sheeda genetic markers?"

"Yes. It's not entirely unique. Certain breeds around Slaughter Swamp show similar signs, but that place has a unique magical background which might have drawn sheeda attention in the past. This town has nothing. And yet, here they are. Sheeda-modified butterflies."

"Butterflies. That's it?"

"A great many of the sheeda's weaponised creatures have insectoid traits. Perhaps Melmoth was testing the local creatures to see how compatible they are? Or perhaps they ate something. I really don't know yet."

Linda twists her fiery wings to match our direction as she reaches us, sparing Dr Sivana only a brief look. "Tempest has consulted with a local flower merchant. The scrublands near the old mine are popular with butterflies during the summer months, though they can be seen all over town."

"Doctor, would you mind collecting the remaining Mind Destroyers while we investigate that area?"

"And deny myself the opportunity to gather more specimens? I don't think so."

"You're interested in butterflies?"

"I can hardly engineer a plague to exterminate the sheeda if I can't examine every creature containing their genetic material. Besides, I've already learned everything I can from the Mind Destroyers. The others won't have anything else interesting in them that that one didn't."

"Doctor, one of two things are going to happen when we get there. Either we'll find a lot of dormant butterflies, or we'll get into a fight with something sheeda. If it's butterflies, there will be plenty for you. If it's sheeda, you're frail for a normal human. It would make far more sense for you to let us handle the fighting and for you to analyse whatever's left."

"While I'm not averse to creating autonomous weapons to do my fighting for me, I'm certainly not about to let a group of superheroes blunder about the place without my supervision. And if you think I haven't taken my own physical frailty into account then you're sorely underestimating me."

"Doctor, you're our leading expert on the sheeda. Deploying you to the front lines-."

Something 'pings' in his cockpit.

"Mm?" he pokes at it. "Oh. My social analytics program thinks that you're being honest."

"Did Georgia get that from Dox?"

"Georgia and Junior built it for me as a Father's Day present. But even if you are being honest, I can tell perfectly well that your colleagues don't have your attitude towards me."

"Was your first clue when I called you a murderer?"

"No, I just thought that was a statement of fact. I am a murderer, and an entirely unrepentant one. It was the way you kept using an accusatory tone of voice when you spoke to Orange Lantern. You don't approve of him working with me, even though you don't have anyone who knows as much about the sheeda as I do. It's a very heroic attitude. Very stupid."

"Doctor-."

"And here we are."

The ground below us is noticeably rockier than it was around town, and I can see the general outline of the mine workings. There hasn't been any serious mining in this area for decades, and the area is thoroughly overgrown.

Ring, scan for butterflies.

Now there's an instruction that I never thought I'd give.

Basic scan reveals no butterflies. Sonic and electromagnetic images of butterflies being added-

A huge number of tiny wire frame butterflies appear in my visual field.

-to your view.

Dr Sivana's ship drops down to just above the level of the ground and then… Spins around so that the exhaust is facing towards the ground. Inside the dome, the interior control system spins around so that the doctor is now facing outwards. And then… Panels at the side of the ship fold aside, arm mounted manipulators and particle beams deploying as the exhaust section opens up and.. four.. stubby legs deploy. The mech suit then lands, the main flight system shutting down as a force field shimmers into being to protect the whole unit.

"I'm fragile. It's not."

Beryl lands next to a small bush and holds up her personal computer's probe to scan a butterfly. The doctor spots her, then pulls some levers inside his control module to deploy a suction hose. I imagine that he'll want to analyse those later. Linda-.

Linda's eyes are burning pits of fire as she floats above us.

"I will burn these unnatural abominations-."

"Glass houses and stones, Supergirl."

Her eyes narrow at me, still burning.

"This is an intelligence gathering exercise. We need to understand what the sheeda are doing and how to fight them. You can burn the place after we have all of the samples we need."

She descends, her fiery wings extinguishing as she lands. Then she bends slightly and picks up a cocoon.

Then she frowns.

"These abominations are of earthly origin, correct?"

"The sheeda are, as far as we know. The butterflies are local."

"There is something… Their spirits are malformed. A creature of the Earth should not be able to feel this way."

"I'll hand some examples to Sephtian, see what he makes of it."

She nods a little uncertainly. I suppose that it wouldn't hurt to take a detailed scan myself, if only so that I can recognise the modifications that have occurred to them. If I crush one then whatever's throwing off my scans should stop working.

I use a construct jar to grab a cocoon of my own and pull it over to me. Detailed scans show…

That's curious. Why-?

The Spine Rider slices its way out of the cocoon and slashes its way through my construct!

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:15 GMT -6

Fastmovingpossibleconstructbypasspunch!

The Spine Rider lunges at me and I'm not sure exactly how much contact its swords need in order to control someone. But its small size means that it can't reach my actual skin through my right gauntlet even if it got the angle exactly right and as it explodes around my knuckles I assure myself that it isn't going to get the chance.

"The cocoons aren't butterf-"

All across the wasteland Spine Riders pull themselves free and fly at us!

"Fascinating."

Dr Sivana moves his mech into the largest concentration, samplers darting out and grabbing any who fail to evade in time. Several are attempting to attack his cockpit but he grins to himself as they fail to penetrate his force field and are electrocuted by it. Some of the more enterprising ones are going for the joints of his suit's limbs, but at the moment he appears to be perfectly safe.

Beryl is not safe, dodging and diving wildly as she attempts to leave the area. She's swinging her baton more to force them to fly more cautiously rather than as an actual focused attack, which seems perfectly sensible to me. Ordinarily she could just fly away, but the Spine Riders have wings, there isn't any cover in the air and she clearly doesn't want to find out whether or not they can bypass a kinetic barrier.

Linda is effortlessly flash-frying any that bother approaching her, her wings at full extension and billowing in plumes of fire.

I clap my arms against my chest where I briefly acquired some sheeda passengers and smear them against my cuirass. Filaments reach out and pick up one of their tiny swords, and my magnified view shows me the.. circuitry covering the surface. That will be… Useful. I wonder if the construct-disrupting effect is an absolute, or it only worked because the construct was relatively weak? I generate construct armour around myself and… Yes, their swords are leaving an impression, but they're not able to just ignore it.

Good show.

I fly at full speed towards where Beryl is panicking in a controlled sort of way, throwing up a construct dome around us-

"Nice of you to remember!"

-once I'm in position.

"Sorry. The first one cut through my barrier and I wasn't sure this would hold. Is now a good time to upsell you on personal protective equipment?"

She ignores me. "So these are Spine Riders, huh? Surprisingly… Pretty. I wasn't expecting the wings."

"Doctor, have you got enough?!"

"There's no such thing as too many samples!"

"But there is such a thing as diminishing re-"

Flame washes across the scrubland and incinerates all in its path. Spine Riders burn, their wings disintegrating first and dropping them into the burning brush.

"-turns. Supergirl, explain."

"They are converging on the town."

Oh dear. Neither Garth nor Leonid are well-positioned to deal with an attack like that. Garth has his water armour which should keep them out, but I've got no idea whether they'll bypass Leonid's toughness or not. And Garth's not all that fast…

"Good call."

Dr Sivana awkwardly clumps his mech around in a circle so that he can look at us. He doesn't look all that happy.

"Find them and burn them. Minimise collateral damage. Orange Lantern to Tempest and Starfire-."

"Tempest here."

"We've found Spine Riders and they're heading your way." With surprising speed, given that they're using butterfly wings. "Kill them. If you see anyone behaving out of character, their preferred attachment-."

"The back of the neck. I remember the briefing."

"Supergirl is coming your way." She twists in the air, wings flaring as she heads in their direction. "I'd-. Getting people inside would probably help a bit." Americans. Projectile weapons and zombie films are not a good background for dealing with the victims of Spine Riders. "But the police and local gun owners won't."

"Are you heading back?"

Dr Sivana's mech clunks towards the mine entrance.

"Not unless it's essential. I still need to keep an eye on Doctor Sivana. Call me if you're losing control of the situation."

"I understand."

Do we need additional force? It…

"Fascinating."

Darn it.

The fires around us die for lack of fuel, and Beryl's already got a gas mask on. I spread out my shield and make it semi-permeable, letting new air in by keeping the worst of the smoke out.

"Doctor!"

Beryl follows as I march towards the mine entrance. "Why are we following him?"

"Because we can't let the sheeda mind control him. Bluntly, losing the town would be better. You know how much damage he's done, and as far as he's concerned that was all incidental. If the sheeda have him when the harrowing happens he'll do a lot more than that."

"… Fine." She looks back at the burned scrubland as we enter the mine proper. "How intelligent are those things we're killing?"

"I really don't know."

"Look here-."

"I genuinely don't know. They've got enough magic about them that I can't see whether they've got complex desires or not. Given their size I'd guess not, but I really don't.. know…"

A short distance inside the mine I see torn medical waste bags, dried blood-. Ring, check? Dried human blood and other fluids smeared on the surrounding rock. Someone brought that here? Active Spine Riders hiding in hospitals?

Beryl spots it too. "Someone's been busy."

There's a clunk as Dr Sivana's mech opens up further, legs lengthening at the cost of armour around the central trunk. He uses the extra height to grip the ceiling and floor, keeping weapons pointing deeper into the mine.

"So it appears. I'm rather eager to find out who."

"Do the sheeda eat human flesh?"

"They didn't seem fussy when I was with them, but in the far future where would they get any? But if they were trying to adapt to human physiology… Now there's an idea."

I walk under his cupola and then accelerate to a march.

"We need this dealt with now. I'm taking point."

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:19 GMT -6

I'm moving at a jog on the grounds that -given the armour I'm wearing- me ramming into anything is going to be far worse for it than it is for me. While it wasn't obvious at the entrance, this far in it's pretty clear that someone has been visiting recently. And frequently. The dust on the floor is disturbed, there are traces of blood on one sharp piece of rock jutting out slightly from one wall, and I just saw a crisp packet from far more recently than this mine was closed.

I don't really know mines, but I'm a little surprised that a mine from this period of history is this large. The cuts in the rock don't look recent. Ring, what's up with that?

Data not found.

I skip that step and try and feel the internet through the ring. Nothing. A slight change in the focus of my desires and I easily access the ring's database, and a flick of my left hand shows that I can still make constructs…

"Area effect ward. Magic user."

"Good show. I've never seen a sheeda wizard before."

"Didn't think you had much to do with magic."

Beryl's hanging back a little while Dr Sivana is only a little behind me. He presses a button and his cupola moves from the middle of his mechanical assemblage to the rear, rotating so that he can look Beryl in the eye.

"Oh, you don't put any faith into that silly 'irreconcilability of magic and science' business, do you? Science isn't machinery, it's a wonderful process of examining, theorising and testing. Granted, physics is more my focus than sorcery, but I'm passingly familiar with a dozen magic traditions."

He holds up his right hand and… Conjures a small fireball for a moment, before closing his hand and snuffing it out.

"I've even summoned up the occasional demon. And dissected them, thus disproving my earlier theory that they were merely aliens from a parallel universe. Or at least, not in the sense that I'd imagined before."

Ring scans are working, but they become fuzzy and indistinct more than ten metres away. Area ward, and a fairly clever one. If I was setting something like this up I'd need runic markers throughout the area, while here there's nothing. I try a sonic scan, but-. The ground-penetrating system isn't picking up anything beyond the ten metre cut off, but there's a faint…

"…wasn't at all. It was smooth and things just flowed together…"

I know that voice. Nigel. He must have come almost straight here. He didn't exactly look like he was built for speed. Taking into account the echoes around the passageways I.. think he's this way.

I change directions, accelerating to a run and linking my scans straight to my armour's motor controls. I still don't know what's happening, but… He's talking to someone. Someone I strongly suspect to be either in control of the Spine Riders, or at least responsible for them. From what the witch-hunters told me, there's no way that Melmoth himself would live somewhere like this, but Nigel clearly came here in the belief that his contact would be here.

"Fret ye not, boy. Even with a power such as yours, there are ways to confound it."

That's a Witch World accent, though there's a rasping tone to it that the witch-hunters lacked. When Beulah ranted hellfire and damnation at me over the whole 'bringing people back from the dead' thing, she included a short soliloquy about the sort of evil magicians they usually went after. Since they end up as outcasts pretty darn quickly there isn't an underground society, but Columbia doesn't cover the whole of their world and there's plenty of room for them to flee to. Would one.. voluntarily work with their universally reviled grandfather?

…

If there's one thing I've learned in this job, it's that there's nothing so stupid or revolting that someone won't do it.

Wait a.. second. I remember… Something like this in the Seven Soldiers comic. Nigel… Could be the.. telepathic boy who fed his classmates to the sheeda thingies. But that was interrupted by Frankenstein and.. wherever he ended up it wasn't here. I don't remember why Melmoth was in town there… And there weren't any Mind Destroyers in that part of the comic.

"But that means that I can't know anything! I might as well not have this power!"

And the comic version didn't behave anything like that. I don't.. remember it well, but I think that he was confident and domineering. Nigel didn't appear to be that when we spoke earlier. Earlier in his personal timeline? Something else? Don't know. But unless I get good evidence that he's irredeemably compromised, I'll try and talk him down. The Witch Worlder on the other hand, he's going to have to talk fast or he's getting a ticket home. Where they burn people like him.

"You're becoming hysterical, lad! Even if one man is as you say, there are still-."

A wooden door set into recently worked stone, runes carved into the stonework. I create a railgun construct and fire once, the mage slayer easily wrecking whatever protections there were on the door a second before my fist wrecks the door itself, exploding the wood around the hinges into splinters!

The room beyond is… Decorated, if stone age barrow is your idea of decor. A man dressed in a smock and breeches sits on a stone chair, a strange maggot-like creature laying next to his right arm. His features remind me of Klarion in monster-mode, though his skin maintains the blue tint I remember from the witch-hunters. Long fingers splay out like crane fly legs across the ends of his seat's arm rests, his head is taller than it should be, the hair on top of it unnaturally solid. His eyes are human in proportion but compound, the pale blue clearly visible even in the low light.

Nigel clasps his hands to his chest, backing away from the entrance towards the corner of the room.

"You were not invited here."

"You're under arrest for offences relating to immigration violations and supervillainy. It may result in a more lenient punishment if you recall all of the Spine Riders and Mind Destroyers and set them to inactive."

"I could not, even if I wanted."

"Then I'm afraid that it's extradition back to Witch World. Do you know Beulah Bleak?"

"A quaestor, mayhap? A witch-hunter?"

"Got it in two. Last chance. Stand down or be stood down."

"Know you then the name of my master?"

"There are a few possible candidates, but I'm going to guess that you've sworn yourself to Melmoth. She called witch-men like you 'warlocks', because you broke the oath not to use the fey parts of your magic."

"A foolish commandment. As well to tell us to cut out our own eyes."

"Which I see that you've done."

"A side effect of this foolish curse." He shifts his weight slightly. "Know you then the name of the foe against which King Melmoth would lead us?"

"The sheeda. His people, who ravage the past to sustain themselves."

"Then why do you interfere? The time of their assault draws near, and the King applies the whole of his cunning into building weapons with which we may fight them."

"If that were true then he'd have introduced himself openly to the local superheroes. Or governments."

"Bah!"

"Fine. Explain yourself in Belle Reve."

I take suppression chains out of subspace and advance-.

His maggot hurls itself at my face!

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:22 GMT -6

My construct net briefly slows it, but the witch man gestures and the construct evaporates. I use my armour's flight systems to dart sideways and evade it but fortunately Dr Sivana is there, an appendage which looks disconcertingly like a butterfly net briefly surrounding it before a force field bubble forms to contain it. It squelches against the bubble's interior, then slightly extends its disturbingly wide mouth and tries biting at it.

For a moment I consider mocking the effort, but then I remember that I'm a professional with a job to do.

The witch man gets to his feet, the purple-glowing fingers of his right hand intercepting a grabbing arm construct and reducing it to orange smoke. The filament I sent after him at the same time tags his right boot but immediately meets the same fate. Alright, we're doing this the harder-.

Rock bulges and breaks as more maggots squirm their way free from the floor, walls and ceiling…

And I'm underwhelmed. Or, sure, these things are probably nasty, but…

I raise my right foot and stomp, the head of the maggot I've targeted bursting apart in a spurt of yellowy green ichor. I don't think there is any bone in there, though I'll leave the autopsy to Dr Sivana. One attempts to drop on me from above but a slap from my left hand is more than enough to smash it aside.

Railgun, mage slayer, target the witch man. Right arm.

Compliance.

Dr Sivana's mech frame fires an electrolaser at him as my construct gun forms, burning through his smock and revealing the carapace-like armour underneath. Then a maggot lands on it from above and bites into the mechanism, the force field shimmering for a moment and then buckling and failing. He shifts position, coming fully into the room and using his weapons to clear the maggots off his frame before they bite into something important.

He can handle himself. Fire.

The railgun round launches at the witch man with a small flare of plasma, im.. pacting at a fraction of the force it should have against his upper right arm. He winces faintly in pain, then wiggles his fingers.

Warning: spell eater temperature increasing.

Okay, not sure what happened there. Solid shot, increased power, continuous fire.

Compliance.

The first shot causes him to jerk his arm back, the purple fires now expanding to cover his entire body. The second I direct at his chest, and it hits hard enough to make him stagger back a pace as he waves his left hand and destroys my railgun construct with a flare of purple. A maggot lands on my faceplate and I grab it before it can try digging in with its teeth and hurl it at him as the third railgun shot hits home. The railgun round causes him to stagger back again, the backs of his legs bumping into his chair. The maggot-.

The flames go out where the maggot hits him, then it starts to fall-.

I shoot the maggot, its internal fluids spraying out across him and causing his spell to weaken and fail.

Then I shoot his right arm again and this time the shot strikes at full power. For a fraction of a second there's a clear hole through his flesh and bone, then he jerks again as his blood begins to pour out. Another shot repeats the process with his left, leaving them both hanging limply at his sides.

"Yield."

Beryl's ducking and weaving around Sivana's mech frame, luring the lunging maggots into its fields of fire. I fire three solid rounds, each shooting a maggot squirming after her through the face and pulverising them.

"NYREGH!"

Purple light spills outward, rocks crumbling, the chemicals in the air decaying as he somehow pulls energy into himself! Through the guttering purple flame I see the flesh of his face become.. slightly translucent, blood vessels and bones becoming easier to see. His eyes glow brilliantly-.

I use a construct scoop to throw the remains of the maggot-corpses littering the floor at him and then shoot him in the throat!

He collapses back into his chair, air wheezing through the hole in his oesophagus as his purple lights go out.

Nigel has collapsed to the floor gasping for breath. I extend a filament to him, giving him an environmental shield while checking him over for injuries. Some damage to his lungs from trying to breathe what was briefly a non-Earth atmosphere, but nothing serious. The maggots appear to have been avoiding him, probably directed away by his telepathic abilities. I take a few steps closer as Dr Sivana's frame finishes off the remaining maggots.

"That was invigorating."

His samplers deploy once more from their housing, jabbing into maggot corpses and scraping up samples of goo. I walk towards Nigel and Beryl checks her goo-covered costume for a moment before deciding that it isn't worth attempting to clean it.

"Nigel? You with us?"

He looks up, nodding a little frantically. He's never seen a serious fight before, and I doubt that the fact that he can't read my mind is making this easier for him.

I can have a talk with him later.

"Squire, escort Nigel outside."

"Er, yeah."

She moves to take possession of him while I walk over to the witch man. He's still desperately gasping for air, his arms limp at his sides and… He does not look well, and not just from the blood loss. That last spell did something to him.

I take another set of suppression chains out of subspace and clamp them in place before patching his oesophagus with a construct. He gasps as his lungs suddenly regain access to air, and I send a filament inside him to patch up some of the internal damage.

"That construct is keeping you breathing. If you disrupt my construct, you will finish suffocating. Do you understand me?"

A weak nod. A bit impressive that he's still conscious, given the amount of blood he's lost. I fabricate a small device to allow blood flow to resume without allowing him to regain any strength or motion. Right, immediate medical attention applied.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you're going to answer them. Do you understand? Just nod."

Another weak nod.

"Orange Lantern to Tempest. Status."

"We've gotten most of them, but the ones which have landed on people are going into hiding."

"We're finished here. We'll come and help you hunt them down shortly." I turn-.

Dr Sivana is right behind me.

"Doctor?"

"Are you taking him back to my laboratory, or shall I do it? If you're going to be busy I'm confident that my rocket-plane can still bear the load. I've signalled my Sivanadroids to come here-."

"Doctor, I'm sorry, but as long as you're a wanted man it's only possible for me to cooperate to a certain degree."

He scowls. "Why on Earth is that?"

"Because while you and I know that the sheeda are coming, most people would want a clear and present danger before they would tolerate me working with someone with your reputation and history. Beryl and I are heading into Kennedy with Nigel and our prisoner, and while I will share our discoveries with you just leaving him here isn't on the cards."

He leans back slightly.

"I… Grudgingly concede your point. Your contacts are far too valuable to burn over one living specimen. Would it be-?"

"Tissue samples are fine, body parts aren't, you've got twenty seconds."

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
12:39 GMT -6

"Over-over there." Nigel points a finger a short distance down the road. "In the-that car."

The car is driving slowly out of town, the driver's posture oddly fixed. I grab it with a shipping container construct and pull it through the air towards us. When it arrives I take control of the car's electronics and turn off the engine, then deposit it on the road. The driver turns their head slowly to look in our direction. The Spine Riders might have learned how to hide themselves from normal senses quickly but the subtle nuances of human body language appear to elude them.

"Supergirl?"

She raises her right hand and shoves it through the window, the flaming corona burning a circle through the glass as she grabs the back of the host's neck… The hidden Spine Rider burning to death a moment later. Suddenly the wounds it inflicted on the back of its host's neck appear, Linda withdrawing her hand and the host slumping bonelessly against the steering wheel.

"Thank you, Nigel. Can you feel any others?"

He stares around blankly. "Um. No?"

I nod. "Alright." I raise my ring to my ear. "Orange Lantern to Squire."

There's a very brief delay.

"Squire here."

"Another one at my current location. We think that's it."

"I'll pass that on to the ambulance. They're just picking up the last few now. Should only be a couple of minutes."

I nod. "Good show. Any word from Belle Reve?"

"They'll have the cell ready in a couple of hours. What are we charging him with?"

"Illegal residency, unlicensed medical experimentation, quite a lot of incidents of attempted murder, resisting arrest and mind control."

"Was he in control of the Spine Riders?"

"I don't know, but we can charge him with it while we investigate exactly how it all worked." I glance at the three Spine Riders floating behind me, orange sigils glowing from their chests. "Which is what we're going to be spending the rest of the day doing."

"And what about the Mind Destroyers?"

"They appear to have 'mysteriously vanished'."

"Sivana."

"I didn't think his robots were just going to sit there."

"If this is the best that the sheeda can do I don't think he's worth it."

"It's not. Not by a long way. How is the mayor?"

"Annoyed that we didn't tell him what we were doing. I showed him the recording I made of our conversation with the Mind Destroyer and he calmed down. You.. didn't know that those Spine Riders were there, did you?"

"I knew that there might be Spine Riders in the area, but I was as surprised as you were that they were near the mine. Or had butterfly wings."

"Your friend Sivana not mention that?"

"They don't really use Spine Riders in the future. No one to hijack. Though it's interesting that Melmoth uses them; it's possible that he does and the queen doesn't. He's had enough time to develop new sheeda strains, and regular fairies do exist."

Now that's a disturbing thought. It's not just modern humans that the sheeda replace. It's everything. The remaining Saremites, dryads like Euanthe… Presumably even the gods. I can't even imagine what must have happened to leave the sheeda as the only thing left.

I really hope that I don't end up recognising Gloriana Tenebrae. That actually would depress me.

"Should we.. check that?"

"No, I think that's something to pass over to the League. Unless you have contact with the fairies."

"No, no, somehow that's never come up before."

"Alright then. Orange Lantern to squad. Tempest, any joy?"

"As far as I can tell, the only living sheeda creatures between here, the Rogue River and the sea are the ones we know about."

"Good-."

"But this isn't my specialty. I cannot guarantee that they don't have a way to hide from me."

"Understood. But that's good enough for now. If we hear anything from this region later we can bring in a specialist. Everyone finish what you're doing, then it's back to base to write up our reports and follow-up plans."

I hear their acknowledgements and then hang up, making eye contact with Linda.

"We'll hang around until this guy gets picked up, then do a fly-over just in case we can pick up something Tempest missed."

She nods as I use a filament to open the car door and then carefully lift the passenger out.

"Nigel?"

He nods distractedly.

"What were you talking to the witch man about?"

"Everyone's insides were all mixed up. I know most people don't notice it, but I always have. Until I met you, I thought everyone had to be like that. I thought I was special because I saw it and no one else did."

"And your insides aren't mixed up?"

"No, they-." His eyes widen. "They can't be. That can't be how things are meant to be. I'd notice if I was that ugly." He looks at me with fear and hope warring on his face. "I would, wouldn't I?"

"Honestly, Nigel? Based on what I've seen, that sort of mess is normal. Very few people do what I've done. And if you can't look at your own thoughts as an external observer, then you can't know."

"That's… Normal?" He shakes his head. "The witch man, his mind isn't like that, but he's not really human. You are. You don't think like that, and I started thinking that maybe you're how people are supposed to think."

Linda scowls. "He is most certainly not."

"Why did you talk to him?"

"He understood. Or… I thought he did. Now I don't know. Everything I thought-. What do I do?"

Something most people don't realise about telepathy is that it isn't paired with high intelligence more often than the statistical average. It also doesn't make you immune to other cognitive dysfunctions.

"I know some people who can help you. I'll come and see you tomorrow. But right now, I think that you should go home and speak to your parents about what you've been seeing."

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February
22:02 GMT -5

"Recognized, Superboy, B zero four."

I raise my right hand in greeting as Kon walks out of the zeta tube into the training area.

"Hey." He nods in greeting. "How'd it go?"

"The suicides were being caused by a group of the things the sheeda set on Magnificus. We caught them, a number of sheeda creatures for STAR Labs to study and someone from Witch World who appears to have been overseeing them. You?"

He shrugs as he strolls over and flops into the construct chair I make for him.

"We found the fight ring no problem. But they weren't breaking any local laws. Canis wanted to enter and kill everyone in the arena-"

I roll my eyes. "Of course he did."

"-but instead of doing that we just took pictures of everyone's face and planted bugs everywhere so we can track their movements."

"No one with international warrants?"

"No." He shakes his head. "Robin said he recognised some of their moves, so maybe they're having supervillains train them?" I nod. "There's not much more we can do until the tracking devices say they've moved."

"Any trouble?"

"No. I kinda wanted to join in some of the bouts, but I couldn't see how that would help the mission. Roulette's gotta be doing background checks on everyone. If I was gunna get hired there I'd have to get up a villainous identity and that would take months."

"You could go in as yourself. Supervillains would be lining up to fight you."

He smiles at the idea, then shakes his head. "Yeah, but they'd hide all the illegal stuff. And I don't think Roulette would go for it."

"Okay… How about pretending to be Ultraboy? He's not well known, but his picture did get released to the media."

He looks thoughtful. "I don't have a parallel universe transporter."

"I could build you a type of teleporter that doesn't exist on Earth. Unless Roulette had exactly the right people look at it there wouldn't be any way for her to tell the difference."

He nods. "Maybe we could try that during winter break. Otherwise she just has to schedule a fight during school hours and I can't show. Does Ultraboy go to school?"

"I.. didn't check. I… Probably gets tutored?" I frown. "How did you get time off for the Belle Reve infiltration, then?"

"Ah…" He looks away. "Batman wanted me to do it, and… At the time, school wasn't all that important to me. I guess Batman knew that I didn't really need it, and he needed someone who could pretend to be Tommy Te-."

I give him a mild glare.

"r-ah-whatever his name is?"

"Beresford."

"Right, yeah."

We sit in silence for a moment.

"Did you know that Madagascan taxi drivers usually rent their taxis day by day?"

He frowns slightly. "Really?"

I nod. "But they have to pay for their own petrol, so they hate buying more than they need because if they leave any in the tank then the person who gets that taxi tomorrow gets it."

Another shake, but this one is tinged with amusement. "Guess that explains why they were driving so-"

"Recognized, Aqualad, B zero two, Arsenal, B one six, Green Lantern, B two two."

"-slow."

Kaldur has a few minor cuts and Roy's armour has.. enough damage that he's probably going to swallow his pride and ask me to fix it for him. Arisia's armour has a few scratches, but nothing like that much.

Kon's eyes widen slightly. "What happened?"

I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and float it over to Kaldur, who takes it and begins playing it over his injuries before replying.

"Mister Gaines was being held captive by an alien Green Lantern identified as a durlan."

"Ooh, nasty. The Chinese have been fighting them for decades."

He nods. "It did not communicate with us directly, so I do not know whether or not it was part of the same group. And since it died when its ship was destroyed I doubt that we will ever know for certain."

Arisia looks at my construct chairs for a moment, then raises her right hand and creates chairs for the three of them.

Kaldur gives her a small nod as he sits down. "Thank you."

Roy pulls off his helmet and shakes his head. "I'm gunna go start work on my armour." I start to open my mouth. "Yeah, I know. I just wanna do what I can before I hand the rest over to you."

I nod as he stomps off down the corridor, the right leg's motive systems noticeably lagging. Could be the power, the data links or the servos themselves, but he can probably fix that…

"The Green Lantern assigned to Durla. He's called… Von Daggle? Van Daggle? Something like that?"

"I will check." Her eyes glow for a moment. "No, there is no Lantern Daggle in the Green Lantern Corps. I've sent a copy of our mission report to the Lanterns assigned to that Sector. Hopefully, they'll be able to find out why it was here."

Kon leans towards them slightly. "Did that Gaines guy make it out okay?"

Kaldur nods. "He had only minor injuries. He is staying at STAR Labs so that they can ensure that he is not carrying a durlan nanotech infection like the one which transformed August Colonel in Iron, but they believe that he will be fine. Is your mission complete as well?"

"For now. We're gunna keep an eye-."

"Recognized, Miss Martian B zero five."

Kon gets out of his chair to greet her.

"Hey, how'd it g-?"

**Ugh!**

M'gann's jaw is clenched and I can see her anger.

Kon looks concerned as he lays his hands on her shoulders, and she reaches up to put her hands on his.

"What happened?"

"There weren't any Kobra cultists before the police started beating up civilians, but there are plenty now. I don't even think they're part of the Kobra we fought before. I think they're just using the name."

Kaldur nods. "That is troubling."

"And the police did not want to hear that they were the cause of the problem. It's just like-."

"Mars and the Hyperclan?"

"Yeah. And I don't think the situation is going to improve."

I wave my hand and a holographic after-action report form floats over to her.

"Maybe. But we're not out of options yet."

Kaldur nods. "My mission requires no follow up, and I am certain that we are all willing to assist you with yours."

M'gann nods and manages a small smile.

"Thanks guys."

 

[Mr Zoat]

13th May 2007
21:54 GMT -5:00

"Okay, I think that's about enough for this evening."

It's… Hard. Hard to take it off.

She obediently floats back down to ground level, the green flames that accompany the use of her-. Of Alan's ring, guttering as she does so.

The ring feels so… Right on her hand. And… More than that, more than its usefulness as a tool or a weapon, it represents a clean break from… Being a Crock. Becoming a Green Lantern. But whatever else it had involved, being raised a Crock had taught her patience. She'd kept up her end of the bargain with Alan, and he'd kept his. And more than that, more than these lessons, he'd introduced her to other superheroes. His old mostly retired friends, but also their students and allies. She'd met most of the Justice League. Two years, graduate from High School, and then… Anything.

She pulls the ring off her right ring finger and holds it out to him, and he takes it from her with a nod and a smile. And just like always she can't help but feel diminished by the absence, an impulse she ruthlessly quashes. She doesn't just 'snatch and grab' anymore. She's building something, something solid and hers. Trusting people-. Some people. People of proven dedication to their cause.

Wonder Woman was… Nicer than she thought that she'd be. Friendly without prying too much. Of course, if she did decide to join the Justice League, they'd probably expect more than that. A full background report as part of the process. Wonder Woman might not have pressed her, but The Question certainly would.

But that was fine. Whatever it took. She didn't intend to let the suspicions her father beat into her control her life.

"You wanna fly home, or do you need bus fare?"

The first few times they'd trained like this, she hadn't wanted to come to the training area with him or leave with him. She said that it was because it wasn't secure, and that was… Partially true. But more than that, she hadn't wanted to have to rely on him.

Not any more.

She nods. "Fly."

Alan smiles and holds out his right hand. She's suggested that he should try and avoid telegraphing his intent like that, but he just shrugged and claimed to be too old to learn new tricks. It's-.

Something catches her eyes and she looks up, focusing on… A tiny green dot, rapidly approaching them through the air. Alan spots it a moment later, frowning as he does so.

"Is that Hal? I wonder what he wants?"

Jade hopes that it's Hal. He has a serious military demeanour and as such was far easier to deal with than the abrasive idiot who served as his-.

It's not a Lantern. It's a ring, without-.

"Jade Scott of Sector Two Eight One Four. You have the ability to overcome great fear."

…

In a daze, she holds out her right hand, the ring floating towards her to replace the one she just returned to her mentor.

"Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."

A green corona envelops her, a thin layer like Hal and Gardner have rather than the burning plume like Alan has. Her uniform, based on what Alan wears, shimmers for a moment as the ring tried to create a standard Corps uniform. She stops it-.

"Jade Scott, huh?"

Oh.

That.

"It beat the alternatives." She takes a breath to center herself and regards the ring. "Ring, which of this Sector's Lanterns died?"

"Green Lantern Guy Gardner of Sector Two Eight One Four has been critically injured and will be unable to perform his duties for an indeterminate period of time. This ring was dispatched to select a replacement."

That's… Good. She didn't like him but that didn't mean that she wanted him dead.

"Is he in a hospital?"

The-. Her ring doesn't answer Alan's question. Alan's ring doesn't talk and can't answer questions. The only time when Hal managed to get the better of him when they sparred was when he let his ring do his thinking for him.

"Ring, state current location of Lantern Gardner."

"Lantern Gardner is presently located in The Johns Hopkins Hospital."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Traumatic brain injury. Broken right forearm. Fractured right shoulder. Broken jaw. Broken ribs. Numerous bruises and lacerations."

Alan creates a brick wall construct around them.

"Hal said a lot of Lanterns die in the first few minutes because whatever killed the last Lantern comes after them."

She shakes her head. "Because they follow the ring. This ring didn't come from Lantern Gardner."

"Still, it's a green glow. We should be ready just in case."

She doesn't reply that she's always ready. She suspects that he knows about the knives, but if he hasn't felt the need to draw attention to them then she won't either.

"What happened to him?"

A moment of silence-.

"Answer him."

"Lantern Gardner was struck by a motor vehicle. The driver contacted the medical services. Lantern Gardner was not involved in combat at the time."

Hit.. by a.. car? He can't have been wearing his ring. Or looking both ways.

"Is my appointment provisional?"

"No. As of accepting this ring, you are now a Green Lantern of Sector Two Eight One Four."

"Are there any matters in this Sector which require my immediate attention?"

"No."

"Do the Guardians have any orders for me?"

"No specific orders on file. Standing orders are that newly chosen Green Lanterns should report to Oa for basic training."

She lowers her right hand. "I don't need it."

Alan chuckles, then bows his head slightly. "We've covered the basics, Jade. The rings the Corps hands out have a whole bunch of functions that my ring doesn't."

"You checked what Green Lantern Corps basic training involves when you started training me. We've covered most of it. I can use this ring's archives to learn the rest."

She clenches her right fist and floats into the air.

"Besides, I have school on Monday."

"Spatial warp to Oa-."

"No."

"Spatial warp suspended."

She smiles faintly at the idea of willing her ring into submission.

"Let's go and show Artemis my new ring."

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th June 2007
04:00 GMT

"You're out of uniform, recruit!"

Locating Lantern Kilowog's class was easy. Hardly any of Oa was inhabited, so it was just a matter of scanning for Lanterns anywhere other than the Citadel or its immediate surroundings. Gardner's description of him hadn't ever really conveyed his bulk.

She raises her eyebrows slightly.

"I assumed that the uniform selection was a training exercise. With sufficient willpower power rings will generate just about anything."

Or not generate something, because you're perfectly happy with the clothes you're wearing. Though she realised after reviewing Kilowog's students that their various uniforms are all lacking an actual Lantern Corps insignia, each having some variation on a white circle where one should be. She's just copied Alan and used a picture of a carriage lantern.

Kilowog regards her for a moment.

"You figure that out all by yourself, recruit?"

"No, I've had two years' training from a man who's been a Green Lantern for over sixty years. The only reason I came to Oa at all was so that my ring would stop nagging me about it."

"What Sector-? Two Eight One Four? That's Jordan and Gardner. They're not veterans."

"No, but Green Lantern Alan Scott-" The construct of her mentor appears in front of him. "-is."

Kilowog's eyes glow faintly, his ring presumably updating him on the situation on Earth.

"No one called 'Alan Scott' has ever been part of the Green Lantern Corps."

"If you don't bother keeping track of who gets your rings, you shouldn't be surprised when their names aren't in your database. I've worked hard to impress him."

"If you wanna pass my class, poozer, you should work on impressing me."

"But if I don't want to pass your class -and I don't- then I don't have to impress you."

Kilowog shrugs. "Sure, you can quit. All you gotta do is hand in your ring."

She shakes her head. "I know perfectly well this class isn't compulsory."

"Ah…" One of the other recruits, an alien from a species who resemble naga, nervously raises his upper right arm. "This isn't compulsory?"

Kilowog's jaw tenses in obvious irritation. "Not if you don't mind dyin' real early."

Jade senses weakness. Kilowog must have access to her logs and reports, which means that he already knows that she's competent at the very least. He can't have his authority undermined in front of his class, but has no way to know precisely how capable she is. Her ring has already told her that he's a veteran. Beating him might be difficult, but the Green Lantern Corps wouldn't expect a Sector Lantern to be able to reliably beat a member of their Honour Guard anyway.

On the other hand, if they don't know what Earth is like…

She smiles, challengingly. "No. The closest thing Jordan got to lessons was a few months following Sinestro around after he'd already had his ring for over a year. I honestly thought that Gardner got singled out for special treatment."

Gardner hasn't woken up from his coma yet, though the rest of his injuries are well on their way to mending. She remembers that he told her that he'd been trained by Lantern Kilowog, and appeared to genuinely respect him. Mocking him-.

There's a slight movement in Kilowog's jaw which her ring's body language analysis program tells her is a sign of irritation amongst his species. Excellent.

"Hal took part in some of my lessons but frankly I wasn't impressed."

"Not impressed, huh?"

"Only a fraction of the inhabited worlds in my Sector have faster than light communications. I spent most of the last month transporting panic buttons to planetary capitals, something which he'd never bothered to do. There aren't any extraplanetary extradition agreements, no agreements on what legal power Green Lanterns actually have while on any particular world and he hadn't even introduced himself to more than half of them. Not that Gardner did any better."

Kilowog leans back, cracking his neck first to the left and then to the right.

"All right Green Lantern. You trying to convince me that you're ready?"

"If I have to."

"One test for you. You ready?"

She doesn't nod. She keeps staring him in the eyes, her ring analysing his features and microexpressions for a clue as to what he's about to do.

He floats back slightly, then raises his right arm and generates a fortified wall construct. It's huge, easily a mile tall and three wide, the construct designed to look like solid metal emblazoned with the Green Lantern Corps' symbol.

"Break my wall, rookie."

She doesn't believe that she can power through a construct created by a member of the Honour Guard. On the other hand, she's always found it easier to focus on active constructs than passive ones. If this is the whole of the test-.

Much as she hated him, her time with her father left her instinctively suspicious. And unlike Alan, she doesn't know Lantern Kilowog well enough to suspend that instinct.

Something is going to happen. But the wall still needs to come down.

She doesn't move her hands, but a giant drill construct forms in front of her, rotates at steadily increasing speed until it's a conical blur and then slams into the wall.

Kilowog regards the attack with apparent disinterest as his construct shakes very slightly, tiny flecks of green flaking off the impact point and evaporating. But she's watching closely. Closely enough to spot the iridescent green line dropping down to ground level and creeping towards her. Splitting concentration like that is hard for a Green Lantern; she can do it, but it generally results in unacceptably weak constructs. Multipurpose constructs are generally superior, but she understands why he's doing this. It demonstrates a level skill most of the recent recruits can't hope to duplicate, while simultaneously putting her in her place. And then she'd be ordered to fall in line.

Unless she actually did break through the wall, but while she's making some progress it isn't going to fall to a construct-attack any time soon.

And then the green strand leaps up from below, wrapping around her as Kilowog grins-.

And then the holographic projection fails in a shimmer of grey-blue. Kilowog starts, his grappling construct fading as he loses focus. Her ring floats free in the air for a moment and then flies back towards her actual body. Her armour's stealth system disengages as she flies forward, letting the ring land on her right ring finger as she slams the crumbler gauntlet mounted on her right arm into Kilowog's wall!

It doesn't fall apart, not completely. That by itself makes her momentarily consider applying for some sort of advanced class, because she's never been able to hold a construct together against a crumbler attack. If they even offer advanced classes. But a hole about ten feet in diameter has evaporated into green vapour, and she's easily able to fly through it.

And then she folds her arms across her cuirass and waits silently in front of Lantern Kilowog.

"Huhm."

He flexes the fingers of his right hand, dismissing the great wall construct. She suspects that he wants to call that cheating, but sour grapes now would destroy his credibility. Grudgingly, he nods.

"You thought I was going to try something before you got here."

"I had an interesting childhood."

"I know your species; at sixteen you're still a child-."

"Are we done here?"

"You got through, you pass the cla-."

The universe cracks, the sky turns red and for a brief moment she sees a vast tuning fork, a red crystal floating between the tines, a hundred copies of her bound to one and a hundred copies of a man she's never met bound to the other.

She raises a shield-.

"Acquisition successful."

And then she sees nothing.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Bended

23rd February
23:23 GMT

"…disappointing performance."

Batman looks around the room at the assembled Justice League members, though he can't quite bring himself to give it the usual full-beam glare.

"Hey, it wasn't-." Mr Queen squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, wincing as he does so. His vision still hasn't quite recovered yet. "Did you have to make the nuke that realistic?"

I don't trust myself to answer him out loud, so I settle for nodding. Yes, the hologram was bright but that's all it was. If he wore decent eye protection he wouldn't be having this problem.

"You gotta admit, that was some pretty impressive lateral thinking." Mr O'Brien waves his unnaturally long right forefinger. "I mean, people have told me to go jump in a lake a few times, but walk up to a live nuke? That's a first."

Ms Hol clenches her hands into fists. "I didn't fall for it."

Her husband shakes his head. "You refused to cooperate with him. That is not the same thing."

"Eh." Dmitri doesn't look particularly troubled. He didn't put in a better showing than any of the others, but when you don't do worse than the best in the world that doesn't really matter all that much. "I had thought that the wargame would be different to that. Like a quest? Like Dungeons and Dragons?"

Mr J'onzz bows his head slightly. "It may be that Orange Lantern wished to remind us of our vulnerability to the more subtle forms of manipulation."

Guy actually looks amused by the whole thing. "I reckon I coulda taken the hit."

William… William Harper shakes his head. "We shouldn't have been getting hit in the first place." He looks me in the eyes, disbelief fighting with a grudging respect. "I still can't believe that you killed the entire Justice League by… Asking them."

And then I lose it.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

A few of the more prideful League members look away. A few of the better humoured ones look like they're thinking of joining me.

Diana nods to herself.

"Was that Eris's idea?"

"Hah-! Huh-hah! Ah -hah!- um, she's-. She's been becoming more insecure about our relationship since Christmas. I thought this would pick her up. Um." HAH! "I was -originally- planning to go back over what I was hoping that you'd learn from this session, but-. Really, I think you all know what you shouldn't have done, so, do you want me t-."

Batman does glare at that.

"Yes."

I come to parade rest.

"It occurred to me during planning that since enemies who can shapeshift -martians, durlans, whoever else- are an issue, and mind control is an issue, it might be worth me talking to a League member or two about being my patsies. Since there are any number of ways to suborn individuals it wouldn't be unrealistic… But then it occurred to me… Wouldn't someone with that ability try to get all of you?"

"So I approached you all about being my patsies and -with the exception of Hawkwoman- you all agreed. So, ah, thank you-"

Guy actually does chuckle to himself, then turns it into a cough when John glares at him.

"-for helping me out like that and not talking to each other about it, because if any of you had realised what was going on then it wouldn't have worked. And thank you all for being willing to walk up to a nuke for me, that sort of loyalty is very hard to instil in henchmen and if I ever do go villainous for real you'll all be my first picks."

Billy -who had been taking what was happening in good humour- now looks a little perturbed. "The escape teleporter was fake."

"Yes, otherwise I'd have had to give you all one and that would have ruined the whole thing. But, seriously, while several of you-" I make eye contact with each in turn, even if I had to nudge Alan about it a little. "-have availed yourself of Mister King's services to improve your ability to resist telepathy, there are any number of other ways to bypass agency and the League has no policy of checking for them. A villain probably couldn't do what I did… But I did."

I make eye contact with Batman.

"So do you want to do another one..?"

"Yes."

"Do we want to agree on the number of patsies I have this time?"

Mr Freeman leans forward slightly. "I do not believe that we would fall for such a ploy again."

Should flipping hope not.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this wasn't a joke. I mean, I found it pretty funny… But you need to take note of what happened. In twenty oh five, during a wargame between the Swedish navy and the United States navy, a one hundred million dollar stealth submarine 'sunk' a six point two billion dollar carrier along with all of the planes still on board, bypassing its entire screening fleet to do so. Repeatedly. If any of you particularly want to fight me, us Lanterns have regular practice sessions in the Chihuahuan Desert and I'll be happy to unload on anyone who's feeling lucky. This is about the League's ability to respond to threats which are both powerful and cunning. Don't give me cheap kills."

I smile.

"Unless you're the patsy this time in which case-" I punch the air with my right fist. "-go team!"

Billy raises his right hand.

"Can I vote for no patsies?"

He looks around and finds little support.

"I'll get to work on a new scheme, to be put into action some time next week. You'll have that long to prepare yourselves." I raise my right hand to my forehead. "Good day, sirs."

I

step out

23rd February
18:28 GMT -5

And reappear on top of Mount Justice. Euanthe doesn't look around from where she's tending some of the plants which are a product of her work with Dr Isley, but some fronds turn towards me and a couple of vines begin snaking my way. Ted was initially stumped by how to get the produce of shampoo fruit to market without using plastic, but once the problem was explained to Euanthe in sufficient detail she was able to create a squeezable gourd that should do the job. It would eventually rot, but not within the period most people would use the shampoo contained within and… Isn't biodegradability the point?

"How's it coming?"

"Both the poison and the antidote are ready as you asked."

"And -just to check- the antidote removes the poison in such a way that the one poisoned survives without lasting damage?"

"Yes."

"Even if they're not a tree?"

"I used Ivy to make sure that I understood what you wanted." Now she turns and glides towards me, plants reaching for her as she passes by them. She lays her hands on my shoulders and leans her face towards mine. "But will you give me what I want?"

I nod, and hold up the seed packet.

 

[Mr Zoat]

24th February
09:12 GMT -7

It's interesting. Shayera is actually too proud to shiver.

It's a crisp and clear winter morning in Rifle, Colorado. The school rush has more or less finished and the working population of the town is actively pursuing its lawful business. John and Shayera are dressed in regular street clothes -inasmuch as they can be considered 'regular' when accented with wing slits- and somewhere under the pile of blankets and coats sitting in the pushchair John's pushing is my young namesake. John's wearing a thick coat and fingerless gloves, and while Shayera is dressed reasonably sensibly, there's a fair amount of exposed flesh in her wings. Flesh with excellent circulation. It must be like carrying a couple of radiators around with her.

Not that you'd know it from looking at her.

Catherine.. somethingorother, a woman I vaguely know from the Parent-Teacher Association, waves to me as she heads into the local pharmacy. I smile and nod back. Yeah, the crime rate in Rifle has dropped like a ten tonne weight while I-. Alright, being honest, while the genomorphs have been here. Nothing that's happened since I've moved in has been serious enough to require my personal attention, though I've made a point of turning up in person a few times. And since I get on well with the local police I've had a few g-gnomes helping them upskill on the more archaic aspects of commercial and financial law. I doubt that this town has ever been so law-abiding.

"Does everyone here treat you like that?"

Shayera's eyes dart around potential angles of attack for a moment before alighting on my face.

"Yes. I've made a point of ensuring that my family and I are all part of the community. The hero-worship might have been worse, but this is a Republican state and the president I saved is a Democrat so they're not sure how they feel about it."

"How do they feel about Klarion?"

I smile. "Pretty darn satisfied. Have you decided whether or not you'll be sticking around?"

There's a slight.. sag from both. Batman 50 hasn't reappeared. It's looking increasingly like my alter ego got him. Having reclaimed the goddesses' blessings Diana 50 could return to Themyscira 50 without any trouble, but Shayera and John can't go back to America 50. Without a Watchtower to operate out of and with Stormwatch having taken over all of the Justice Lords' former responsibilities, there isn't really anything to draw them back. On the other hand they both loathe the idea of cutting and running when things get tough.

"No, not.. yet."

Shayera's eyes are pointing straight forward as she says it. Eh, if they haven't made a decision then they haven't made a decision. Not like it's urgent. Normally, this is the point where I'd try and slide them into one project or another and hope that the investment they'd grow to have in it would cause them to keep at it, but… These are my friends, and they have a proven track record of superheroism and sorting their own lives out, so… I'm going to limit myself to more direct avenues.

"You seemed to be having a pretty good time with Knockout, earlier."

"It's nice to be able to train with someone on my level."

I look away, smirking slightly. "I can feel Diana wince from here."

"Diana hasn't recovered her warrior spirit from when the Justice League defeated us."

I frown. "Is that a metaphor, or is there some sort of magic damage-?"

"A metaphor. She knows that the Justice Lords were wrong, but she doesn't have a clear goal any longer."

"Not planning on offering her a job?"

I, um. Hm. I… Could. Goodness knows that I always have work for superpeople. Putting another Wonder Woman on Earth is a bit awkward, but I could use her on Tamaran, or Hny'xx. Or with a disguise she could function as another bodyguard, but that won't really give her the purpose she's apparently looking for.

"I.. hadn't been. If you've got any-?"

John Stewart 16 descends to street level just ahead of us, arms folded across his chest. He's wearing his uniform, his environmental shield forming a solid green line around his body. He and his counterpart regard one another cautiously for a moment, then the 16 version turns to me.

"You wanna explain what this is about?"

I turn to John 50. "John, this is your alter ego from this Earth. I don't really know him that well, so feel free to blow him off."

"I'm just glad-" John 16 frowns at the sound of the voice, raising his ring slightly and doing what he thinks is a covert scan. "-that he didn't bring their Shayera."

"Okay." John 16 lands and walks over to us. "What's your story?"

My John passes the pushchair over to his wife and then steps up to his mirror. "You wanna have this talk in private?"

"I don't see a ring. Can you fly?"

My John's eyes glow brilliant emerald, his red overcoat gaining a Lantern sigil and John 16's eyes staring at what is unmissably a modified Guardian robe.

"Sure. Let's talk."

Both of them rise up into the sky, and the few rubberneckers return to their business.

"Should I expect your Shayera to drop by?"

"You're my Shayera. And… Mrugh, probably. She's an agent of the Thanagarian Empire too, and the version here hasn't picked a fight with 'me' yet. Once she hears about a Thanagarian who's not 'meant' to be here, she or her husband will probably investigate." I smile. "It will be interesting to see how they treat the news that thanagarians and humans can interbreed. That sort of thing…"

"I know. My Thanagar is.. the same." She snorts, then crouches down to make eye contact with Rex.

"But you know where's not? Tamaran. And if you're interested in learning to use a power ring-."

The air in front of us ripples and twists, and a construct fortification materialises around Rex and Shayera even as she draws an nth metal baton from the back of the pushchair. That's… An Almeracian-.

Queen Maxima strides imperiously through, taking in our surroundings in a moment and dismissing them as uninteresting. Her armour is a little more weathered than last time I saw her, but she is a warrior-queen. It's working armour, not a display piece. Shayera momentarily arouses her interest, then she frowns as she notices Rex.

"You told me that you were incapable of impregnating an alien."

"Rex is my godson. His father's-" I point upwards to where two green glows are just visible. "-busy at the moment. Shayera, this is-."

"Maxima. Superman told us about her."

"Good show. Maxima, is this a social visit..?"

"No, though I will take your invitation later. I'm in the middle of winning a civil war and I need somewhere to stash my heir."

"I'll be happy to put them-."

"Excellent!" A short, slightly built and extremely pregnant woman.. whom.. I presume to be Sazu walks through the portal and stands just behind her. "That weakling Ultraa shouldn't have time to send more than a dozen assassins before I've finished off his pathetic army."

She turns, grasps her wife by the shoulders and pulls her into a passionate kiss.

…

After a minute or two she releases Sazu.

"I'll be back soon. Keep Maxima Junior safe for me."

Sazu nods. "Of course, Mistress."

And Maxima strides back through the gate, which closes down once she's through.

Sazu walks over to us, smiling at Shayera. "Oh, what a delightful child. Is it yours?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th February
15:21 GMT -5

"Good afternoon, Mister Waddill."

"Ah…"

The elderly parapsychic looks up from his park bench a little nervously. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that he's still alive. Parapsychics in a society with little to no magic knowledge generally get overwhelmed with their own visions and… Either go insane or kill themselves to stop the visions. Even the better psychiatric hospitals, the ones whose staff know the techniques telepaths can use to control their contact with other people's minds, can't help. Parapsychic readings aren't blocked by mnemonics or mental discipline, either from the user or the target. Parapsychics can't help each other; if anything, having other parapsychics around makes things worse.

And yet, Mr Waddill is in his eighties, and apparently in rude health. I only know about him because Alan mentioned him in relation to my own work at Belle Reve; a supervillain who actually went straight and stayed there. Possibly that had something to do with him not having had anything to do with any sort of supervillain fraternity or with him not having gone to prison. Hardly anyone knew who he was, and so he could still get legitimate employment.

He'd be a fascinating case study if-.

His wife orientates her head in my approximate direction. "Who is it, Johnny?"

Nervousness blossoms into a pantomime of panic as he gestures to her. She's blind so can't immediately identify me, but she probably doesn't know about his brief fling with supervillainy many decades ago and I doubt that he's told her.

I'd criticise him, but…

I mean, I told Jade.

"Ah, sorry. My name is-"

"Paul."

"-and I'm the.. former apprentice of an old business colleague of your husband's."

"I didn't realise that.. Mister Green still talked about me."

"It came up in conversation. I've developed.. business relationships with a few people similar to the one he had with you. And on that subject, I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me-?"

"I'm not.. involved in that…" He shakes his head emphatically. "Sort of work any more. I've been retired a very long time. I'm really not sure I can help."

I shrug. "It's my money to waste, right?"

I glance at his wife. The scars across her face where the belt destroyed her eyes are faded but visible. I seem to have been running into my caring cap rather a lot lately as far as healing goes. On the other hand, Mr Waddill is very good at his abandoned occupation and I.. do.. want to persuade him.

I extend a filament to his ears. "I can also restore your wife's eyes as a signing-on bonus."

His eyes widen a fraction. I can see the conflicting impulses inside him, his love for his wife and boundless compassion for her condition warring with his fear of discovery and of alienating her. I'm fairly confident which way it's going to go-.

"I suppose it is. I'm kind of busy now, but if you give me your number we can set something up later."

"Thank you, Mister Waddill. I assure you, you won't regret it."

25th February
17:01 GMT -6

Abra's eyes flicker as he considers my proposal. Literally flicker, his implant uses his optic nerve rather than plugging directly into his visual cortex. Given his array of implants and his burgeoning use of subtle sorcery, I can't be completely sure what he's using them for.

He blinks and gives his head a small shake, the flickering fading. "Why are you asking me?"

"Supervillainy never made much sense to me. The way I see-."

"'If you have the power to do it, you have the power to make more money legally', yes. Leonard mentioned it. In my own case it was never about financial reward."

"Right! See, I'm having to come up with a 'villain', and they can't have financial motivations because that would be stupid, so you're exactly the sort of person who can help me."

"I… See." He glances in the direction of the room's concealed camera. "You understand that I have no desire to fight the Justice League in reality."

I flare my eyes for a moment.

"Now, we both know that's not exactly true."

"On balance, I stand to lose too much to… Indulge myself."

"Better. But planning something out and hearing about the results in a way that doesn't risk your parole and won't hurt anyone?"

"I.. suppose."

"One of the other guys I've got working on it once broke into the headquarters of the Justice Society and looted their trophy room. If his mental condition didn't require him to precisely follow the steps of the last man to try that, he'd have got out before Green Lantern could have caught him."

Abra manages a disinterested frown. "How did he do that?"

"He's a parapsychic. He has a particular affinity for the thoughts and abilities of criminals. Meaning that if you work together face to face he'll be able to think exactly like you."

Abra gives the idea a small smile. "I suppose it's one way to get intelligent conversation."

"Or anyone else in here, which we'll have to be a bit careful about."

He nods. "This could be an interesting challenge. Who else is involved in the planning?"

26th February
02:37 GMT +8

"Yes." / "Yes."

I regard Thaddeus and Georgia a little nervously.

"You do both understand that this is a wargame, yes? We're trying to upskill the League in preparation for the fight with the sheeda. You can't do anything permanently disabling."

Thaddeus rolls his eyes. "Yes, we know. We have this conversation with Tia and Mom every week."

Georgia smiles as she considers the idea in more detail.

"Along with contributing our villainous insight, we could also create status trackers to virtualise their injuries. And since the conflict should ideally be double-blind, we could design it to record the results of their investigations and pass along information they uncover."

"Or incorrect information, if they mess something up."

"Or to you, if they outsmart you. I assume that you're taking the role of primary antagonist?"

"With everything else that I've done, I think it would be a bit unfair if they didn't get a chance to take a swing at me. Thank you both for agreeing to join in."

Thaddeus shrugs. "Dad never let us have a go at Marvel on our own. This way, we get to go after Marvel and all his friends without even doing anything wrong!"

I wince, and he thinks for a moment.

"Too much?"

"Little bit."

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th February
18:18 GMT -7

Diana 50 rubs her right shoulder with her left hand as she emerges from the sparring arena, then visibly hesitates as she sees me.

I raise my eyebrows in polite enquiry. "Good bout?"

"Yes." She nods. "She is a far more capable fighter than the Knockout I fought on my Apokolips."

"Stronger or more skilled?"

"Both. Have you used the g-gnomes to improve her skills?"

"No. She's been training with our Barda, but…"

Hm. I look through the viewing window to where Knockout is shouting at Elise.

Logistical Awareness.

Ah, that's interesting. I've known for a while that Knockout is essentially the New Goddess of Thuggishness, but I haven't appreciated exactly how much influence I have over her. Thugs are hirelings, working at the direction of an overseer who decides who gets thugged. Granny Goodness wants broken, obedient thralls. Darkseid wants the same, only not so much 'obedient' as 'unable to comprehend that disobedience is an option'. But I raise my hench-. My lieutenants up, empowering them to discharge their duties as they think best. She's actually… Not drawing on my power exactly, but responding to it, becoming better able to fulfil the role I set for her.

"Hm. It seems that I'm good for her."

"What did.. you just.. do?"

I raise my eyebrows as I return my attention to her. Curious. Not entirely unexpected. And it… Reminds me of that Teen Titans comic where after spending a good deal of time disempowered, Cassandra Sandsmark discovered that the various mystical influences on her life weren't providing her with power so much as restricting the power she had innately as Zeus's daughter. Do Diana's powers come from the goddesses..? Or do they come from her titanic nature?

"You felt that?"

"I felt.. something." Suspicious now. "What was it?"

"New God technology interfaces with our souls. Unlike most humans, we can manually control our metaphysiques, though… Only those powerful enough to attain a god-name can do so to any significant degree. I am a member of the Apokoliptian elite, the New God of Conquest. When I reach out I can feel the natures of those around me. I was curious as to whether there was anything in what you experienced concerning Knockout, and there is. My oversight makes her more powerful than she was under Granny Goodness or Darkseid."

I regard her curiously.

"I'm interested in how you felt it. If you're not opposed to the idea, I'm sure that Sunset would relish the chance to examine your metaphysique in detail."

She tenses slightly, and I hold up my palms in a pacifying gesture.

"Though of course it's not compulsory. Might I offer you a healing ray for the shoulder?"

"No. I'm fine."

She walks past me in the direction of the showers. Hm. If I remember my Earth 2 correctly, Diana became the Goddess of Truth. How do 'truth' and 'conquest' interact? Well, a functioning imperial justice system is a must-have for any empire, and it must be both honest and seen to be honest. Being prepared to be open and direct is a statement of confidence and power, but I'm far too dishonest to regard it as anything other than a situational tool.

Do I want to make Diana my tool?

She's not as capable as Diana 16. She left Themyscira… What, a decade ago? As opposed to during the Second World War. But she has the same potential. And unlike Diana 16 she would actually use her New God-like affinity for soul-based technology. As my tool she would regain her sense of purpose; my purpose, true, but a valuable one for the universe at large. The Justice League pussy-footed around the Light. I ended them in an afternoon. The fact is that I'm much better at this sort of thing than any of the other groups in the field.

I mean, she was a Justice Lord. And my visit is half the reason she's not trying to… Do whatever she was planning on doing for Ares before that. I could have her providing metahuman muscle for the genomorphs in Africa? The US superpeople might get better publicity but there are still plenty of hard cases over there who can give the genomorphs trouble. And then… Attach her to Lex's fleet?

No, no, nothing to do with Lex. Bad memories, even if she accepted intellectually that they aren't the same man. But policing isn't ever really 'solved'; there'll always be some sort of problem to throw her at. And maybe we can work on truth-power aura effects..? I did once consider writing a superhero story where a man with truth compulsion powers was elected to the US senate. Could be productive. It would be interesting to see a legislature where people couldn't feel the need to pose and pander, at least after the initial honesty-related career suicides finished.

I can't even really see a downs-.

Downside is that I'd be acting just a little like Darkseid.

Just a little, but I'd still be deliberately altering a person's outlook without their knowledge or consent. And that's not what I'm trying to be.

"Diana!"

She takes a step back into sight.

"I've.. got an offer for you, but… Finish your shower. It can wait."

She looks slightly puzzled, but nods and then returns to her ablutions.

I open a hush tube to the large dining room. Given the size my family has grown to we use this room for family dinner most days. In fact, it's also started serving as a spill-over living room.

"…unsure why you still call her 'mistress'?"

Ah, Ghia'ta's being confronted with another aspect of love she hadn't encountered on Zamaron. Since they don't have the Amazons' rope-play fetish. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that she hasn't bumped into bondage by accident at this point, but perhaps that's deliberate on Carol's part.

"She is the Queen. I would never let our personal relationship interfere with the performance of my duties."

Jean told me that Sazu keeps trying to help with running the place. Attempts to encourage her to take it easy in the final stretch of her pregnancy met with refutation; she gets stressed when she's not working. So I just gave her access to all of my plans and asked her to have a decko, which appears to be a reasonable placebo.

Ghia'ta shifts awkwardly.

"But… Surely… Your love for one another does change your relationship?"

"Since I share her bed whenever she is in the capital, I am no longer separated from her during the nights. I prefer that."

"You do love her. Don't you?"

Sazu smiles demurely. "I was designed to be a personal assistant. All members of my caste love the people they assist. By being Maxima's consort, lover, and the mother of her children, I can.. help her in ways I had not thought possible. That's something I find profoundly joyful in a way I doubt I can adequately explain. Maxima is my world, her and our unborn child, and I will love them both as long as I live."

"Des.. igned?"

Sazu nods. "On Almerac, we are all genetically engineered to be highly effective at the roles required in our society. I was designed to be a highly social administration and logistics specialist. Once I completed my basic training, my assessment test results were so high that out of my entire batch I was chosen to serve Crown Princess Maxima, and to aid her in all ways."

"Including marrying her and carrying her children?"

"I did not expect this. Generally, engineered castes reproduce with others of their caste. Naturally, conventional reproduction between different castes is taboo because it would remove the specialised adaptations with which each caste has been engineered. The children would be born with a confusing mix of instincts and struggle to find anywhere to fit in." She smiles. "But since both Maxima and I were created in laboratories neither of us saw any reason not to use them in the creation of our own children."

I take a step closer. "I take it that Ultraa does?"

"Ultraa is a high-performing member of the command caste. In other circumstances he might well have become Maxima's husband and king. He claims that what we are doing undermines the caste system, but having reviewed his psychological profile I think it's far more likely that he resents being passed over for someone who he could beat in a fight."

I nod. "Well, not to worry. Maxima knows her business and I know mine. Nothing's going to reach you in here."

I then consider that statement.

"For a statistically significant length of time, at least."

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th February
15:17 GMT +5:30

Dr Munro looks at me dubiously.

"Have you asked Lex about this?"

"Of course not. If I talk to Lex about it, they'll start to think that I'm actually trying to kill them."

"Why would they think that?"

Ah… Yes. The 'legitimate businessman' problem. Coming from Earth Prime, the fact that Lex Luthor is the bad guy is well known. Even amongst Earth 16 superheroes it's-. Well, amongst the better-connected ones, it's known in the same way that it's known that Racer X is Speed Racer's brother. Everyone watching knows, no one in-universe knows. But amongst people out of the loop, they genuinely believe that he's a legitimate businessman. Maybe a bit sleazy or corrupt, but that's due to the job and not due to his actual personal characteristics.

How to break it to one of his project leads?

"Because he's a supervillain."

"I'm… I'm sorry?"

"Yeah, he…" I bring up a construct showing the sub-levels of LexCorp I flew through during the Young Offenders' attack. "He's attempted to have Superman assassinated on multiple occasions, he was one of the people behind the Roanoke Island Event, he backs all sorts of-."

"Wait wait wait." He shakes his head. "Wh-? You're the one who told him to hire me!"

"I told him about the Danner Formula because I thought he could be rehabilitated if I proved that he could fulfil his objectives in other ways, because he's very good at disguising what he does and finding evidence hard enough to get him convicted was prohibitively difficult. It.. didn't work. I still don't fully understand why."

"I-." He looks around at the laboratory complex. "We're making super guard dogs for him. Do you not think you should have told me about this sooner?"

"I didn't -and still don't- have proof I'd feel comfortable relying on. A few winks and nods, a few remarkable coincidences. Because if I did have proof, he'd have been arrested by now. And the work you're doing is very useful to human civilisation and Ted Kord didn't have the same sort of resources."

Though he's getting there now. I wonder if Lex regrets his decision after seeing how much KordTech's share price has gone up? I only know about that aspect because the commercial law firm which arranged my purchases wrote to me about it. And given his behaviour regarding that part of the business I could easily believe that Ted doesn't know at all.

"So, yeah, that's why I don't want him knowing about this exercise. Are you in?"

28th February
19:33 GMT +9:00

Colonel Park frowns faintly.

"I do not understand what agreeing to help the Justice League will entail."

"Well, that depends. We're assigning roles blindly, so there's a good chance that all that will happen is that the people working at the site-" I point to the file concerning one of North Rhelasia's research and development hubs. "-will just have to carry around cards with 'No Information' written on them for a day, and they'll probably never see a member of the League. There's a small chance that one of them will have a role in the exercise, probably something along the lines of 'conceal this information' or 'conceal this object'."

"You do not want us to fight the Justice League."

"Of course not."

"Even as an exercise, using rubber bullets and dummy explosives."

"The League is… The League wants to avoid implying that they're training to destroy national militaries. This exercise is designed to simulate their response to a well-networked supervillain. While there will be combat segments, I'll be handling those with my own resources well away from civic infrastructure."

"And how long will this take?"

"Assuming that the site is even involved, the League would be on site for… Maybe an hour? The people on site would have the possibility of a visit hanging over them for a week or so, but as I said: they don't need to actually do very much."

"Why was this site in particular chosen?"

"Because it's hard for the League to reach, and the laboratories there are sophisticated enough to credibly play a role in the plot. Part of what I'm doing is creating a thread of evidence that the League can track if they find it. There wouldn't be much point in implying that certain parts came from somewhere which they couldn't have come from."

"What do you know about what happens at that site?"

"Most of what I know is available from publically accessible sources. Of course, I also have access to the 'high risk locations' file your government provided the League."

His eyes narrow. "That was supposed to only be shared with Justice League members."

"Actually, the agreement which your government signed includes anyone deputised by the League, as the League didn't want to define a formal recruitment process at the time. If you feel that the North Rhelasian government was misled about that, I can only apologise. If you wish to make a formal complaint, you will have to address it to the League."

He appears to decide to let it go.

"Would you need to meet with the people working there?"

"If they're selected for participation, a brief meeting would be helpful. I'm afraid that I won't be able to schedule it in advance, as I'm trying to avoid the potential for metagaming."

"Can you select a time during which they will need to be available, and then simply not arrive if they are not required?"

"Yyy.. es, that should work."

"Will there be a public announcement after the exercise is complete?"

Meaning a PR opportunity with members of the League.

"While the fact that an exercise is happening isn't a secret, there isn't any plan to make public announcements about how it went. Obviously, that sort of information is exactly the sort of thing that a supervillain wanting to take a swing at the League could benefit from. If they end up being involved, I would like the opportunity to thank the participants in person."

Which doesn't exactly thrill him. I'm not much of a PR coup, and some of his colleagues are still annoyed about the whole 'bringing traitors back from the dead' thing. I suppose I'm just lucky that the forest Euanthe made hasn't killed anyone yet.

"Will facilities in the South also be participating?"

"I have made such a request. The government gave me their tentative approval, subject to the directors of the facilities in question giving it theirs."

A mild twitch, and I strongly suspect that I've got him. If I just asked the South, his government would moan about it. If I just asked the North, they could turn it down with no loss of face.

"I suppose that it is more likely that the South would consort with supervillains." He nods. "You will have my decision within two days."

"Thank you, Colonel. You've been most helpful."

29th February
20:53 GMT

Evan McCulloch cautiously raises his pint glass in my direction.

"Aye, well, yer payin' fer it, pal. I'm yer man soon as the cheque clears. We'll no' be doin' anything illegal, aye?"

"Not at all. Nothing could be further from my mind."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th February
17:22 GMT -5

I knock on the window of the Daily Planet office once again, and once again Ms Lane pointedly ignores me.

When I first did this, Planet staff looked around in alarm or flat out sprinted for cover. Now I've got a small crowd, and one of the braver souls took it upon herself to point me out to Ms Lane. She hasn't even looked up since she confirmed that I wasn't Superman.

Lex would have said something by now. I don't.. think I've done anything in particular to irritate her.

Ms Grant appears to be trying sign language again. And by sign language, I mean posing.

I knock again, and Mr White sticks his head out of the editor's office, takes one look at me and then shouts something. Ms Lane sighs, gets up and with clear reluctance heads my way. I

step out

and reappear in her chair.

"Good afternoon!"

She turns around with a frustrated exhalation. "You could have walked in the front door and you could have phased through the glass. Were you really that desperate to take my chair?"

I stand, step aside to ceremoniously return her chair to her, then sit in the air next to it.

"Hn."

She retakes her seat.

"Having a hard day?"

"I've got a deadline, an article to write and someone just knocked on a fifteenth floor window to get my attention. What is it? And it better not push my actual article to the second page again."

"I'm running a wargame for the Justice League."

She looks at me blankly. "What, like, Napoleonic?"

"No, a.. training field exercise."

"God damn it." She sighs. "Do you ever feel that everyone focuses all their attention on the.. part of your work that's least important?"

I smile a little too broadly. "Hey, remember when there used to be a drugs trade in Caracas? No, no, never mind. Yes, it was a very big cake."

She nods sympathetically. "So, what, you're here to give me the inside scoop?"

"No-." Huh. "Sort of. More… A front row-."

"You want to kidnap me."

"N-. No. Technically, I wouldn't be doing it." She shakes her head, breath hissing through her teeth. "I'm going for realism, and you have to admit, Superman's villains have a certain form when it comes to-."

"I know."

"Also, it's just a possible thing. The idea is that the villainous party will be reacting to the League and vice versa. You and Mister Olsen are the obvious targets for anti-Superman distraction attacks, so I thought that I'd try and get your permission."

"So we're going to get kidnapped."

"Or killed-. Virtually, virtually killed. If you agree to take part. I'm striving to make this as authentic a supervillain experience as possible."

"Are you kidnapping people?"

"No, that would compromise my objectivity. Also, if you consent in advance it isn't kidnapping. It's an unexpected holiday."

"You checked, did you?"

"Yes. For every country on the planet with a coherent set of laws."

"Am I getting an actual holiday out of this?"

"I'm happy to offer my services as a transport vehicle whenever you like. I don't know where the villain team is planning on hiding any hostages they may take, because that would threaten my objectivity."

And risk Mr J'onzz or M'gann getting a look at it inside my head. M'gann's not technically part of this, but she could very well involve herself at his direction. She is a Manhunter, and a better telepath than him.

"So? Are you in?"

29th February
18:33 GMT -5

General Lane squints slightly.

"You are aware that I'm a general in the US army, right?"

"Yes, General. The uniform was a bit of a clue."

"And you want to stage a supervillain attack in the middle of an army base. That's what you're telling me."

"Possibly, yes."

He shakes his head. "I don't think I'm going to be able to approve that."

"Won't it be a useful readiness test? I mean, I know that Hardcastle's gone-."

"And that didn't exactly make you any friends."

"Yes it did."

"I wouldn't-."

"I'm an empath. It may be less precise than telepathy, but it has the advantage of bypassing the mental defence techniques US military officers get taught."

His face takes a turn for the stern.

"Get the hell out of my head."

"That's not.. how it-." I shake my head. "Look, you have preparedness drills, don't you?"

"We don't use civilian contractors. And I doubt that you want whoever you've got playing the role to get shot dead by the US army."

"Actually, that's fine."

He raises his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"We're using lifelike robots. Your people can shoot them as much as you want. The individual running the villain side knows that your rules of engagement are different to the ones the Justice League uses."

He looks a little interested.

"Are you serious?"

"They'll be using low lethality weapons themselves. It's possible that your people could get hurt in melee or by.. friendly fire. But it doesn't matter if any of the attackers get destroyed."

"Didn't you.. get a law passed-?"

"They're not intelligent enough to be covered."

"Okay." A frown, this time curious. "Can we buy these robots?"

"I'll ask, but probably not."

"Okay, yeah. This could have legs. Let me talk to a few people, then I'll get back to you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st March
08:59 GMT +1

I look around at the reflective vistas all around us as my escort marches towards our destination.

"This is bloody amazing! How does it work?"

Mr McCullock glances back as we approach the rectangle which marks our exit point.

"I dinnae ken. Fandan who give it to me just gave me the instructions. I havnae clue what makes it work." I think he's frowning. His mask makes it hard to tell, and since we've come to terms I don't want to scan him. "Thought you knew all that stuff."

"I know that you don't have any outstanding warrants. I don't know exactly how Mister Scudder's equipment found its way into your keeping."

"I'll no be naming names." He walks up to the rectangle and gestures for me to pass through first. "But not everyone's keen on superheroes, ya ken?"

"Don't count on being let off a second time. I'm going to be siccing Batman on whoever it was after this is over."

He shrugs. "We parted ways a ways back anyways."

I nod, then step through the mirror. I try-. Ugh. No, it's no good. Whenever I do this I try to analyse exactly what's happening and the results make me feel unwell. The mirror surface sort of seems to stick to my skin, as if the mirrored universe is reluctant to allow me to switch back around. Looking back at the mirror from this side I can see the part of my body still on the other side clearly not connected to the part on this side, except… It is. I can feel it. There's no problem with my circulation, despite the fact that my blood should be moving in the other direction…

I'm sure there's an explanation but I've got no idea what it is.

"Get a move on."

I pull the rest of myself out of the mirror, gently nudge aside Georgia's drone scanner which is hovering in my face in order to scan my emergence, and turn to watch Mr McCullock emerge. Something he does with a good deal less fuss than me, before turning back to the mirror and firing his mirror gun at it. A ripple passes over the surface, and it turns from a portal back into a regular mirror.

"What?"

Georgia frowns as she pokes her remote control.

"That.. doesn't make…"

"Aye." Mr McCullock smirks at her frustration. "I didnae think-."

"Yes, yes. I'm sure that I'll crack it later." She puts the remote control down on the bench and looks him over. "Do you have a lot of experience with this sort of work?"

"A wee bit more than you, I reckon."

"I wouldn't be so-." / "I wouldn't be so sure of that."

Georgia looks at me.

"This is the man playing the role of chief henchman?"

"Yes."

"I could have built someone better."

"I'd be right peeved aff at that, but yer man's paying me not tae be."

"This isn't about creating an unwinnable scenario. It's about testing the League's ability to respond to a crisis. Mister-."

"Watch it. I'm on the clock, pal."

I don't roll my eyes. "Mirror Master is competent, ruthless, cunning, strategically manoeuvrable and for hire. He's exactly the sort of point man a villainous strategist might employ as a leading field operative. Minions couldn't be sure where he was at any one time, and hence would feel obliged to keep working rather than slacking off. And for this event, the fact that he needs certain types of environmental artefact to work encourages the League to pay attention to their environment."

"If you insist. This-."

I step forward and take hold of her right hand.

"Georgia, I'm always willing to listen to any feedback you have. If you-" She's blushing. "-really think-."

"Nono." She snatches her hand back. "I'm sure he's perfectly adequate. Follow me."

She leads the way out of the small and secure-looking room containing the freestanding mirror and out into one of the Sivanaplex's corridors. No feats of artistic expression here, I note. Just utilitarian corridors, armoured, warded, and with all sorts of deadly security devices built into the walls.

Thinking about it, this whole situation reminds me a little of what Mr Queen did during the One Year Later event in the comics. Concerned that he just wasn't good enough at the job, he took Mia and Conner to an island for a series of training sessions with some of the best instructors in the world. As they mastered their lessons they got better and better, but he himself was of the belief that it wouldn't be enough. So he invited an evil ninja to the island to train him. It was totally brutal and ended with the supervillain getting annoyed and calling in a small army to force Mr Queen to wise up.

Hopefully I'll be able to get away with something a little less extreme.

Georgia stops in front of one armoured vault door.

"Now, we have your mookbots in here."

She waves her hand at the access panel. It beeps, then the door clunks open. Inside, positioned on racking in poses which put me briefly in mind of the soldier droids from the Star Wars prequels, are what look like people at first glance. People in various forms of street clothing stuck on racking. Hostagebots, mookbots, bystanderbots and metabots, all of which are set to record the damage they take. All of which can be destroyed during the combat portions of this event, though obviously they shouldn't.

The point is that for the purpose of this exercise the League has to treat them as living, breathing humans-.

"How lifelike are they when they're active?"

Rather than answer me directly, Georgia walks over to the edge of the platform looking down on the mookracks. "Mookbot fourteen, activate and identify."

A mookbot near the front reaches back to unhook itself from the racking and falls-. Falls into a crouch, changing its general attitude on the way down from 'automaton' to 'humanlike'. It then straightens up and strolls down the gangway between the racks towards us.

"Yo, boss-lady. Wassap?"

The mookbot lazily waves with its right arm. Good quality synthetic flesh-.

"That's synthetic flesh, right?"

"Yes, of course it is. It's far easier to work with than cloned organic tissue, and I want to be able to reuse these if they survive the tests."

"How does the AI do on Turing tests?"

"As well as most humans, but don't worry; they're using predictive systems rather than building schematic systems themselves."

"W-."

"Yes, Junior has already made the joke about most humans doing that as well. But these don't have a-."

"Don't choo talk 'bout me like I'm not here, bitch."

Georgia rolls her eyes. "Mookbot fourteen, return to racking and deactivate."

It loses its human-seeming pose immediately, and heads back to its station.

"Looking good, then. And the portable GM units?"

"All ready to go."

"And the end boss?"

"Junior's working on it now."

She leads us back out of the mook storage area, down the corridor and to another locked door. She tries raising her hand to open it, but nothing happens.

"Ju-nior!"

"Hang-. Hang on a-. There!"

The door clanks open and I smile as I see the outcome of their work.

I nod at Thaddeus as he throws the switch. This should be… Interesting.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
08:56 GMT -5

"…saying that if you want a patsie, I'm really easy to bribe."

He winks with a disturbingly distended right eye.

"Mister O'Brian, I'm divorced f-."

"I'm not that desperate for a leg up!" He taps an elongated right forefinger against his forehead. "Or am I?"

He shifts shape, expanding and contracting until he resembles a ridiculously buxom woman… But still with his original face.

"If you made the effort to change colour-." He raises his eyebrows. "It would still be a 'no', but I'd be a little more impressed."

"If you're not looking for a rebound, why'd you mention the divorce?" He thrusts his disturbingly rubbery breasts in my direction. "Huh?"

"I'm divorced from managing the scenario. I have no direct input. I know roughly what's going to happen, but not exactly what's going to happen. And -please- try to take this seriously."

"Yeah yeah, I'm just getting it all out of my system now where Bats can't glare at me. You ready to go?"

"I-."

Wallace appears in a blur of yellow.

"Hey, Oh El."

"Kid Flash. What brings you here?"

"Can I spectate? On the Watchtower, if that's where you're doing this?"

"Um." I look at Mr O'Brian, who wobbles back into his usual shape and shrugs his shoulders. "I don't have a problem with it? Though you understand that doing so removes you from play."

"You were planning for us to join in?"

"If the 'villain' side can identify a Justice League member, they can launch attacks on their family as a distraction or for revenge. That includes you."

"Were you planning on telling me..?"

"I got consent from all of the civilians. Ms Lane was actually quite interested to see what this exercise involves." Grudgingly. "But 'Kid Flash' knows that supervillains could target him, and he's trained to fight them off."

"Yeah, but this is you."

"I've tried to keep my privileged knowledge out of it. The villain side only have access to publically available knowledge unless they can find out more." I glance at the zeta tube. "Look, you might as well come along for the full briefing that I'm going to be giving the League. Batman can just throw you off if he doesn't want you there."

"Okay." He smiles confidently. "Let's do this!"

I nod, Mr O'Brian leading the way through-

2nd March
13:58 GMT

"Recognized, Plastic Man, two three, Kid Flash, B zero three, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

-the zeta tube and into the Watchtower and someone's been paying attention! The exit point is no longer in the meeting room, but in its own fortified chamber with… Yes, martian technology testing the mental state of the entrant.

I look in the direction of the camera, and clap.

"Huh." Wallace looks around. "This is new."

"This is overdue."

Resuming his natural form, Mr O'Brian strolls over to the exit and smiles at the sensor.

"Bats wanted this here when you showed up. Took him a while to get it all designed and installed."

"And my birthday isn't for another seven months."

I feel the slight automatic pressure in my mind as the martian biotechnology tries to make sense of my thought processes. Is it calibrated for me? I'm a little unique, but, okay. I relax my shields.

"Kinda annoying for me, 'cause it can't read my mind at all. But-."

"Identities confirmed."

The heavy blast door slides open, granting us access into the main chamber. Which… Isn't unreasonable. There's only so much internal space here, after all. And the main defence of the League is the members of the League, not any automated systems.

Wallace and I follow Mr O'Brian out. The rest of the League is already here, and Ms Thal gives me a glare as I approach the open end of the table's U.

Mr O'Brian finds his seat as Batman inclines his head very slightly towards me. "Orange Lantern. Please explain today's event to the League."

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for taking part. Today -somewhere on Earth- a series of crimes will be happening. These will snowball until the training event's villain achieves their objective. Your aim is to stop the villain. You may do so in whatever way you think best, but you will probably be gathering evidence from crime scenes and following up the leads you generate from them."

"Funny as.. last time was, none of you are patsies. However, the villain may attempt to subvert any of you during the event. Sometimes this will involve them using information or threats to blackmail you. If that happens and you don't accede to their demands, I'll mention the likely result in the summation at the end of the event. If they successfully mind control you… Then I'm going to ask you to play along because we're not using actual mind control technology."

"Once we start the event, not only will the villain start their attacks, they will also start gathering information on you just as you gather information on them. Again, I'll feed back on the consequences of that at the end, but you may find yourself being informed during the event that a particular person has been killed or a place has been destroyed. If someone actually dies we'll obviously call this.. whole thing off. Any deaths reported in that way are virtual, but please try to avoid interacting with a dead person without the aid of a necromancer."

A couple of quiet chuckles, but they're all very much motivated to beat me. They're focusing.

Good show.

"To keep you informed of events which are happening virtually, you will each be issued with one of these." A series of filaments flick out and deposit a bracer in front of each of them. "These will also feed back to me about where you are and what you're doing."

Guy nods. "So we don't wear them, got it."

"No. As I was explaining to Plastic Man, I'm not going to be an active participant in the event. Ah, unless something goes very badly wrong, then me stepping in will be a sign that it's over. I'll also be on monitor duty just in case something real happens which requires the full attention of the Justice League, in which case I'll either deal with it myself or call the whole thing off. I'm also off the target list, so the villain won't try to retaliate against me."

I focus on Batman.

"You can check it out if you want, but it's part of the mechanism by which this scenario works, so it's not intended to be a variable itself."

He nods, and removes his left glove to put it around his left forearm.

"Ah, Plastic Man, Martian Manhunter, consider yourself free to take yours off while shapeshifting, but.. try and keep it close by if you can. If they get destroyed, I can issue you with a replacement pretty much immediately. Any questions?"

"Yeah." John Stewart frowns as he straps his bracer on. "Who are we up against?"

"You don't know. But I suggest trying to find out at the earliest opportunity." I pull a Bleed fracture pulse transceiver out of subspace and activate it, signalling to the 'boss' that we're about to start.

"Three, two-"

Batman's already out of his chair, calling up crime reports and sightings of me for the last week.

"-one, go."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
10:02 GMT -5

Ollie nervously confidently checked his surroundings once more before stepping out from behind the aircon unit and tiptoeing striding purposefully towards the next building.

Yeah, okay. He was a big enough guy to admit that after last year's report cards he wanted to put in a good performance. And he figured that Paul was probably… Probably above deciding to break his own rules to prove his score right. But it wasn't like he ever fooled himself into thinking that he could handle the same sort of punishment some of the big guys and gals on the League could. And Paul did seem like the kind to treat everyone 'fairly'.

Bats was still on the Watchtower, going through every bit of info he could get his hands on with J'onn and Katar. He'd told everyone else to head home and 'be ready', because the easiest way to get data would be for someone to walk into an attack Paul's 'Villain Team' had set up. He wondered for a moment whether there actually was a villain team, or if he'd.. just.. gotten...

Would Arte have told him if he'd roped her into it?

…

Maybe?

He checked the quiet-sounding rooftops and streets of Star City once again, trying to remember if there'd been anything off about the way she'd been acting lately. No, no, nothing… Stuck out. But Paul knew a whole lot of people, so it probably wasn't the team. If only because the whole League actually knew stuff about the team and there's no way Paul would give anyone an edge like that.

Huh. Okay. Whoever the boss bad guy was, he wasn't going to be able to just… Teleport a whole gang to anywhere, right? Teleporters like that took a whole lot of power. Icon did a lecture on it that one time. Easy enough to power someplace like where he came from, not so easy on Earth. And if Paul knew anyone with a power source like that, he'd… Heh. He'd have already dragged them to KordTech.

Nothing much happening on the streets, though a couple of people spotted him and waved. He waved back distractedly warmly, without losing any of his hawk-like concentration. Nothing sneaking up on-

He reached back and took the goggles Roy got him off the clip on his quiver and held them up to his eyes.

-him.

Another check, and no problem. Roy was pretty clear that there was some stuff it wouldn't show, but it was supposed to see through most types of invisibility tech. Nothing invisible, nothing-.

His communicator chimes, and he raises his right arm to press the 'respond' button.

"Green Arrow. Go."

"There's a break-in in progress in the Platinum Flats district."

He instinctively glances in that direction as Batman gives him the address. No sirens yet…

"Is it him?"

"Does it matter?"

Well… Kinda.

He starts running, plotting the route across the rooftops which will get him there fastest. He may not be Batman -and Star City sure isn't Gotham- but he's been patrolling around here long enough to know his way around. If this is some random thief trying to make his Saturday morning a little lively, then this is going to be a cinch. If it's something Paul set up, then there's going to be more to it than that. Which could happen anyway, but it's guaranteed now.

"Any progress working out what he's up to?"

"He visited a wide variety of tech companies, as well as government and military officials and people publically known to be associated with League members. Presumably, he sought their permission to involve them in today's events."

"That narrow it down at all?"

"Not enough to tell me what the plan is. The range of technologies these companies are working with is too large for me to be able to narrow it down."

"No ideas at all?"

"I suspect that Orange Lantern will attempt to create a narrative of escalating intensity, but we can't rely on it. He's set this up so that even he can't predict exactly what will happen."

So a guy who once turned the moon around can't exactly predict what the villain-.

"You don't think he got an actual villain, do you?"

"The location of each of his known criminal associates has been accounted for. Except for the Sivana family."

He nearly misses effortlessly makes a jump.

"Sivana? Marvel's mad scientist?"

"Three members of the family are completely sane. And the younger children have never been independently psychologically assessed."

"That's reassuring. Okay, you get back to it. I'll let you know when I'm there."

"Remember to try and recover any evidence you can. This will be part of something bigger."

"Got it, Bats. Green Arrow out."

Hm. Canary or Red around? Because if Paul set up a challenge for the three of them and there was only one…

"Green Arrow to Pretty Bird. You wouldn't be anywhere near-" And roll "-Platinum Flats, would you?"

"Black Canary to Robin Hood, no, I'm in Gotham."

Someone had to cover for Bats. "You drew the short straw?"

"Rock beats scissors. Roy's in Middleton. Looks like you're going to have to handle whatever this is on your own."

"I've been doing this eleven years. I think I can handle a break-in."

"Ollie… If Orange Lantern has decided to throw something big at you, just pull back-."

"Yeah, I remember Ivo's and.. roid..."

…

No. No, he wouldn't.

"Ollie?"

Would he?

"I was just-. Yeah, I got it." The computer strapped to his arm bleeps, and he sees that the silent alarm has just been forwarded to him. The company wasn't one he recognised. Consolidated Applied Sciences, which… Could mean anything.

Which meant that Paul could justify the villain team finding just about anything there.

He could phone the manager and 'check' that Paul got permission to use the place. But.. that would kinda be cheating and a sign of desperation. Okay, the building is a little way that way, but-.

He stops behind the roofline, ducking down as he sees what he assumed to be a lookout on one of the nearby buildings.

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. A few guards on the outside, ready to call down if they spot something. And they probably report in regularly so knocking them out before they can say anything isn't gunna cut it. Need to find out exactly how many there are, then pull off some quick indirect shots…

He winced. Those were never easy. But it was doable.

He takes another quick look. No, no gas mask. A near miss with one of the stronger mixes would work fine. Try to be close to one to pick up their radio, try and work out how well organised they were. And he was also kinda interested in who Paul roped into doing this.

He worked his way across the roof, careful to stay out of sight before dropping down a fire escape and heading around the block in an approximate circle around the CAS building. Tricky, but definitely doable.

As he spotted a second lookout he couldn't help but wonder if he was missing something.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
15:12 GMT

I carefully didn't react when I received the notification via my transceiver. Starting in Star City. Hm. I wonder if that's because they want to score an early 'kill' and think Mr Queen's a weak link..? The tech sector in Star City is reasonably well developed. A successful 'theft' there will give the villain team a reasonable number of 'tech points', and the place is lightly defended compared to a military installation. So that could be the sole reason. The Star City zeta tube is also a good distance away from it, so unless one of the League members with enhanced speed heads that way Mr Queen will be dealing with it on his own.

Batman stopped checking up on my recent activities after Mr Hol and Mr J'onzz agreed that it was blatant metagaming. Reluctantly agreed, but… Yes. The knowledge that something is going to happen today is more than meta enough. They're basically limited to looking at 'anomalous' reports, which does somewhat include me. I gave them a bye on that, because there are only so many 'available in the wild' ways to look for these things. I haven't told them what resources the villain started with because they wouldn't know that, and villains in reality can start with all sorts of infrastructure under their control. Possibly something I can refine for next time; some sort of trade off between potential data leaks and expansiveness?

The Sivanas' GM devices are recording everything that happens, but only feeding back to the villain side the things that they 'actually' report back. The mookbots will have to manually radio sightings of Green Arrow -or whoever else turns up- back to base in order for the villains to 'know' that he's responding rather than local police.

Local police very much can involve themselves, as I felt that that incentivises League members to improve their relationships with other law enforcement groups. There has to be some reward for not being a complete iconoclast. Mr Queen's relationship with the police was… Pretty neutral before he joined the League. He'd been around for long enough that he had a working relationship with some officers, but there wasn't anything official in place. Even now, his relationship isn't as good as Batman's is with the Gotham police.

I look through the hull in the direction of Mr Queen. I know him well enough that I can… Sort of home in on h-.

Really? He's worried that I'm singling him out? I might need to talk to him about that.

With none of the Green Lanterns around I should be able to scan the area without giving the game away. But perhaps…

I raise my right hand to my forehead and

relocate

to the Watchtower's garden before taking a closer look.

Mr Queen appears to have taken it slowly, well done him. He's carefully picked his way around the outer sentries, and… No, the villain side has only used basic mookbots for this. A 'local gang', they aren't particularly good at what they do, but they can't really leak much information either. Though… Yes, one nasty surprise to go with the low power plasma weapons standing in for conventional firearms. Mr Queen only has basic armour and there isn't all that much bullet-resistant cover around. If he starts taking hits he'll be eliminated quickly, which is a problem for him because he's wearing green in a city during the day.

He takes an arrow out of his quiver for each sentry… He hasn't checked whether they're robots or not, but that would be fairly hard for him to do. The gas rounds he's using won't work but they will 'work', as they would work on the people these mookbots are pretending to be. There's an explanation of that written on a note attached to their chests, just in case he gets curious about that.

He checks their positions carefully. He doesn't have the sort of drones or deployable monitoring devices I know Batman would use in a situation like this, but with his heavier 'primary' equipment load and lack of an arrow car it probably wouldn't be practical for him to include that sort of stuff. He's carefully checking wind speed and direction…

He looses, some shots fired upwards in an arc and others fired directly. He's moving the moment the last has left his bow, heading for a third storey balcony on the building which the mookbots are 'ransacking'. He stops to check that the sentry there is out and starts briefly when he sees the mookbot's face-.

And promptly backpedals because he's seen that the flesh is synthetic and that means it couldn't possibly have been knocked out by the gas. Ring, trigger 'accurate' description on Mr Queen's GM device.

Compliance.

It's not a lot, just a message saying that the mookbot is supposed to look like a living human mook and as far as he can tell is behaving like one. He might end up believing that that's supposed to be a trick, but there's not really that much I can do about that.

He checks its neck. What's he-?

"Can I feel a pulse?"

The GM system is adaptable enough to handle basic enquiries. The result is a bit like a text-based adventure game for the blind, but it'll be able to describe the mookbot's condition without much difficulty. I wonder if he'll have trouble separating in-game knowledge from out-of-game knowledge? No, he.. appears to be accepting it and taking the mookbot's hoodie in order to give himself a degree of camouflage. He chuckles for a moment as he spots the written explanation, then dons the hoodie and hides and zip ties the recumbent mookbot. Then he moves on, checking for a camera and then applying a small electromagnetic disruptor to the key card reader in order to gain access to the building.

He's handling it well so far, but these mookbots are acting on the most basic level. They're not really the challenge here.

Alert.

Other locations are coming under 'attack', in places with no Justice League presence. Mr McCulloch will be leading one or two, in the company of 'pro' mookbots. Unless the security systems in those places are very good at their jobs, those will result in a far higher level of successes while leaving a clear indication of who is carrying out the thefts and what they're trying to acquire. As well as giving more information about who could be behind it: anyone carrying out thefts like this is clearly unable to acquire what they want legally, either due to outstanding warrants or lack of funds. Technically it's the latter in this case and the boss wasn't ever actually charged with any crimes, though that's a very technical 'technically' and I suspect that I'm going to get a few glares over this.

Interestingly, the League don't officially know about Mr McCulloch. I don't remember what happened to Mr Scudder in the comics -if I ever even knew- but the last time anyone saw him the equipment he was carrying was wrecked and he was plunging deep into the Mirror Universe. 'Missing, presumed planning to return when you least expect it'. Might be worth spending the time to try and get him out, but Mr McCulloch made it pretty clear that he thinks his predecessor went more than a little crazy in his efforts to understand the Mirror Universe and he himself has stuck to the practical aspect.

Practical as far as villainy is concerned. Not practical in the sense of making money, which would involve him offering legitimate services, or…

I wonder how it interacts with fibre optics-?

Oh dear, is that Mr Queen's 'street' accent? The mookbots probably won't react immediately -not all members of a gang know each other well- but that isn't going to last. Especially-.

Ah. He's removing the arrowheads and using the delay fuses to turn them into mines, clever. Probably got that idea from Red Arrow. The hostages… Are bad actors, and a couple of them are really hamming it up, and one has realised that the people holding them are robots and is trying to talk to the person controlling them about an operating licence. That can be part of my follow up. And… I should mention it to Sivana Senior. I don't think that he'll be… Excited or anything, but his tacit acknowledgement that things have changed might let me encourage Thaddeus Junior and Georgia over to the neutral side after the sheeda are dealt with.

He steps around a corner, slips on a gas mask and triggers the mines. Mookbots look around, their sensors detect the aerosol and cause them to collapse. Too quickly to get off a warning, though the thump… No, the mookbots in other parts of the building who are in hearing range briefly look up but then return to their tasks. The hostages are also unconscious, but that was really unavoidable. Mr Queen nips back in and disarms and zip ties the mookbots. He checks one of the weapons and notes the 'THIS IS AN UZI' sticker with a degree of amusement. He takes the time to remove the battery units and throw them into one of the bins, so that if the mookbots 'wake up' then they won't immediately be able to activate their weapons.

Having rendered the hostages unconscious he can't ask them for information, but he is able to call up a floor plan on his computer. Two exits, both guarded by people expecting an attack from the outside. This is -on the face of it- well within his abilities.

I give him half an hour.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
10:42 GMT -5

Nooo sweat.

Okay, he was sweating a little. Sneaking around a building filled with creepy-looking robots was bad enough. Creepy-looking robots that probably got built by the Sivana family were even worse, because he's read Marvel's after-action reports and there was absolutely no way in hell the sort of things those lunatics could put together would get knocked out by gas arrows. Which meant that even if they were playing along for now, he was still surrounded by two dozen possum-playing robots built by mad scientists and all he could really hope was that they weren't built by the serial-killing mad scientist.

Would..?

Yeah, but only if he really had to. He wouldn't call Pa Sivana for a training exercise.

Right?

Yeah.

"Uugh."

He looks around as the first of the thugdroids he dragged out for the cops begins to come around. He'd put the unconscious employees in the recovery position back in their offices, and got some of the others to help him bring their 'attackers' out front. Signed a couple of autographs, chatted with a few fans…

Police were kinda taking their time, but then, he wasn't really sure what the police were supposed to do with them. If the robots were standing in for regular guys they'd need to book them, but-.

He tapped his bracer.

"Hey, what am I supposed to do with these guys? I don't really wanna waste police time with this."

"Once the automata are in police custody, they may be marked for extraction from the scenario."

"Or..?"

"You may choose not to mark them for extraction."

Why would-?

"I can interrogate them?"

"That is a possible action."

"Interrogate a ro-?"

No. This whole thing was dreamed up by a guy who stopped Dinah destroying Dukeston and got a law passed making robots 'people'-.

"Wait, how smart are these things?"

"The automata are subsapient, but may be programmed to reveal information in particular circumstances."

Oooor we could just telepathically-.

He looked at the robot. Who was a robot.

Wait, was that intentional?

"How does that work with telepaths?"

"Information will be revealed after an interval depending on the automaton's modelled resistance."

He smirks. "And how about if Rocket Red takes a look? You know his armour lets him read any database."

"Metagaming is strictly prohibited."

"Yeah, but he could read their phones or whatever."

"Metagaming is-."

"Yeah yeah, I get it."

Man, he didn't remember it being this hot in March before. He wasn't going to take off his armor or anything, but he was definitely gunna need a shower when this was over. Anyway, if these 'automata' can be interrogated…

He knelt down in front of the closest.

"Hey kid."

The automaton visibly slumps. "Fuuuck, we got beaten up by the second lamest superhero ever."

"Second, huh. So who's first?"

"Red Bee. Using a bow rather than a gun is stupid, but at least it's not a fucking trained bee."

The robot's face isn't particularly expressive, but it looks like whoever put it together decided it needed to be able to sweat. He guessed that having a few… What, tubes filled with water? Wasn't that hard.

"So what was the point of all that, anyway?"

"Fuck you Five Oh. Not sayin' anything."

"Huh. Okay."

He stood up, picked an automaton at random and picked them up. Then he carried their weakly-struggling form around a corner, put them down and gagged them. Then he crouched down in front of… Huh, this one was female-shaped. What was that word-? Gynoid, but that was only if they were intelligent.

"Just hold still a minute, will yah? I need to convince your friends that you're spilling all your secrets 'round here."

The automaton struggled against its bonds, but with human-force, not mad-science-powered-death-robot force, and they were designed to cope with that. Then it-

"Mngrmngrrhhhh!"

-tried to shout through the gag. He stuck his head back around the corner to make sure the others weren't trying anything. Nope. He waves cheerily to any who looked his way and then ducked back.

"Okay, keep up the good work. But seriously, between you and me-."

The automaton collapsed. Was that supposed to happen? Did it.. run out of battery power or something? If it was the Sivana kids, would they bring their A-game for the Justice League, or.. was it a pride thing so they definitely would? No, no, Paul might not drop some sort of super demon on him but he definitely would a thug with a heart attack!

Shit, ah…

Two fingers to the part of the neck where whatever mechanism the automaton used to replicate a carotid artery was, and he takes a half-second to be glad that in this case the person he's doing this for can't die. Despite what Paul told him about 'magical head trauma', seriously injuring the people you were fighting against actually was a serious problem, especially if you were shooting them with arrows. He hadn't ever had to deal with an actual heart attack, but he'd been trained by an EMT so he could actually handle things like this.

Pulse… Okay, not a heart attack. Elevated but regular. Breathing, so fast it's on the border of hyperventilating. Temperature, elevated. There's a whole bunch of things it could be, and calling an ambulance-.

His legs gave out, and he collapsed on top of her.

Poison? A disease weapon? This was a Paul job, so he wasn't actually going to die, but…

Sweating. They were all sweating, and he was feeling hot. In March. A supervillain wouldn't trust someone else's gang with anything vital, but-.

Ugh.

But he might dose them with something. Hadn't happened in Star City before, but Flash and…

His vision wavered.

And Bats…

He just had to hope Paul would tell them the symptoms.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
16:08 GMT

"I was the first one to die, wasn't I?"

I nod sympathetically as Mr Queen sits up on the bier. "Yes. But I'd like to say that thanks to your valiant sacrifice none of the police or ambulance personnel were exposed, and most of the Consolidated Applied Sciences who were also exposed survived."

His expression brightens up very slightly, then the brightness dies.

"But you can't, because they all died anyway, along with all the robot gang bangers, because I got exposed after all of them."

I nod again.

"Was it a.. poison, or a disease?"

"What knocked you out was a poison, an extremely safe one I had Euanthe develop to stand in for something nastier. I'm afraid that I won't be telling you what it was in-game until today's activities are concluded."

He gives his muscles a slight stretch, the last of the lingering effects vanishing. Things like this make me very glad that Euanthe isn't a supervillain.

"So what was I supposed to do? Not get close enough to get infected?"

"I was going to include that as part of my feedback at the end, but… If you really want to know now?" He nods. "Everyone in the League now uses the wards Sephtian and I developed to protect them from magic attack, but… Most of you haven't followed up. I don't use them, but there are wards against poison and disease."

"U-hh."

"Failing that, sealed armour like Roy wears or certain types of environmental energy shield or certain types of physical enhancement would have rendered you immune."

He-. He's trying to put a brave face on it, but I can see he's sagging.

"I can put you in touch with my supplier if you want."

"I've never-. I mean, I know it's a fair test. Joker does stuff like that all the time, and I think Barry had a guy-"

I nod. "Doctor Amar."

"-who-. Right." He hesitates. "What-?"

"Murmur."

"Yeah, that's it. I've never had a bio-weapon bad guy." He slides off the bier and onto his feet. "Think I've just gotten lucky?"

"I think it's the heavy industry. Star City never had all that much compared to Gotham in its heyday or Keystone City today. Chemicals get into the water, the air… Plus, heavy industry has suffered from relatively cheap imports, resulting in higher unemployment in primarily low and semi-skilled manual labour jobs. And, yes, a bit."

"So… You're not… I mean, all the guys the League are gunna be fighting-."

"I'm not trying to push you out of the League, if that's what you're working up to asking."

He hesitates again, then nods. "Yeah, it kinda is."

"Alright, to be totally blunt, based on the criteria I came up with for League membership, I wouldn't have recruited you. You're not alone in that category, and it doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job or that you're a bad person. If we were reforming the League to have a far broader base I'd be happy putting you in charge of a city or a region. Your skills and comportment are good. But several of the League's core functions call for a level of raw power or extraordinary skill which you don't have and don't appear to be inclined to get."

"Huh." He nods again. "So who else is on the list?"

"The initial seven members joined up due to fighting the appellaxians together, so skipping them-."

He shrugs. "Why skip them?"

"Alright. King Orin is borderline. I'd rather have had Queen Mera. He can contribute an army and the resources of a state, but he can do that without occupying a front line position. I wouldn't have recruited the Hawks when they were recruited." The same year as they started operating on Earth. The only justification I can think of is that Batman wanted them where he could keep an eye on them. There's no way they showed a level of ability and dedication in that period which justified their recruitment. Mr Freeman's dodgy for similar reasons. Not enough time active, Superman's 'I thought he was kryptonian' excuse notwithstanding. "Ms Lance, Mister Harper, Doctor Palmer, Mister O'Brian-."

He frowns. "Plas?"

"It's not a 'superpowers only' thing. I recommended Dmitri and I'd recruit Batman. Mister O'Brian's abilities just aren't useful enough to justify his inclusion compared to plenty of other people on Earth." I shrug. "Of course, all that only matters if we're talking about a 'small League' like we have now. If we switch to a broad based organisation, they're all fine."

"Okay, so, how about your team?"

"For Justice League membership?" He nods. "Kon, M'gann-."

"You don't think Superboy belongs on the League?"

"No, he does. I'm skipping the rest. Zatanna, if she wanted to join. Roy. That's it at the moment."

"Not you?"

"Gods, no. The lack of clear direction would drive me insane. I'm more effective left to my own devices."

"And everyone else?"

"Same sort of problem. Insufficient power, skill, experience or poor comportment."

"You.. told them you think that?" I shake my head. "'cause Arte-."

"Doesn't want to join the League. Oh, she wants to fight the good fight, partially to distance herself from her father and partially because she actually likes helping people. But the best way to utilise her would be to deploy her off in somewhere like Hub City. Somewhere with a high level of both street crime and official corruption. A long term medium intensity job."

"You told her that?"

"No. I might once she finishes college, if she decides to get back into it." I pause briefly. "Do you have any other questions? Because the wargame is still running-."

"Those wards. Orin can hook me up?" I nod. "And… Enhancements?"

"I'll include a few options in my report. Excuse me."

Under the circumstances I decide not to raise my right hand to my forehead, but instead just

step out

and reappear in the Watchtower's main room, Batman giving a summary to the rest of the League.

"-biological agent. Take extreme caution in dealing with anyone. If you notice yourself sweating or an increased heart rate, call for Doctor Mist, Accomplished Perfect Physician or Angelica immediately."

The heads on the monitor all nod. It appears that Mr Queen has been the only fatality so far. Ms Lance's eyes alight on me for a moment, then her face vanishes with the rest.

GM system, how are things going?

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
15:08 GMT -5

"-KordTech's exotic materials research."

Barry nods, already turning north in the direction of Seattle.

"I'll be there in two minutes."

Because while he could be there sooner, Orange Lantern had reported using cold fields completely successfully against a parallel universe version of him and he didn't want to dash into a trap. The poison had come as just as much of a surprise to him as it had to Ollie, but he'd recognized it faster and accelerated his metabolism to flush it out before it could 'kill' him. Talk about a Fool's Mate. But fool him twice? He didn't think so.

"Understood. I'm sending Rocket Red and Lantern Jordan."

He runs past a car, the children in the back suspended in the action of battering each other with fluffy rabbit dolls.

Orange Lantern had asked him about it one time, when he was just starting out. He'd wanted to know if he was fast from his perspective as well. And he saw where he was coming from right away. Logically, if his body was moving faster than everything else, from his point of view wouldn't he just be running normally through a world of statues? Or if it was just his body that moved faster, wouldn't he have big problems with steering and control?

He hadn't really thought about it before he took his shot of Jay's formula. If Jay hadn't had any problems with it, why would he? And then they went running to test it out and he accidentally ran around the world when they tried to test his top speed. And it had been quick, but after a moment he could remember all of the things he saw, a million still images from every country he ran through, a million stationary objects he remembered dodging around.

He got the best of both worlds, and when Orange Lantern brought up the alternatives he was damn glad about it.

"Rocket Red?"

In Klamath Falls, an inattentive driver suddenly found their phone out of their hand and on the back seat, while the wandering cat they hadn't noticed found itself safely in a nearby garden.

"It's a secure facility, and Kord himself is on site. The only way we'll know what the attackers are looking for is by getting into their computers."

Dmitri… Yeah. Barry honestly hadn't been all that happy with a serving US military officer joining the League. After getting Jay's Cold War horror stories -and especially after learning that the same man was in charge of the program- he's been extremely sceptical about having Rocket Red onboard.

When he asked, Dmitri admitted that him being there was basically a PR stunt but that he wanted to do a good job anyway. He'd expected a denial, and that response had left him feeling a bit awkward about putting him on the spot like that.

Of course, in a situation like this, he'd be the one out of the three of them whose powers didn't have a direct counter. Hell, he'd joked about green lasers to Hal after they first met. He didn't think they were actually a viable option. Good thing Orange Lantern hadn't spread it about -or told the villain team for the exercise- because the League's Lanterns had dealt with their first opponents pretty easily while he'd been stuck checking up on places that had already been raided.

"You made any progress working out what the plot is?"

"No. Even with you cataloguing everything that's been stolen, there are simply too many things they could be used for."

"Do you think they need it all, or are they running a load of redundant thefts in case they don't get everything?"

"I think it's more likely that they have several potential plans, and will select the best one based on what they manage to acquire."

"Isn't that kind of 'metagamy'?"

"It's good planning. I'd do the same. An intelligent villain wouldn't be overly concerned with how they achieved their objectives."

"And do we know what that is?"

"They were able to hire large numbers of street gangs at short notice. That means that they are well connected with the criminal underworld and have a sizable amount of capital to work with. But at the same time they can't make purchases themselves, otherwise they wouldn't need to commit theft. What makes me curious is how they intended to move what they've stolen. Where the thefts were successful the objects stolen would be extremely difficult to transport. Someone should have seen something."

You can't pay off everyone.

"So it's not a game thing. They aren't just vanishing when they get so far away from the place they were taken."

"No. Not unless they're reaching somewhere we can't follow."

"Teleporters?"

"Not according to Lantern Gardner and Icon. Doctor Mist has checked for magic-based teleportation and found nothing."

Alright, so-.

"Mirror Master stole the entire contents of the First Bank of Central City's vault by hiding it in a mirror."

"No mirrors were reported on-site."

"It-."

"But that would be easy to miss. I'll send Lantern Scott to check the area."

"Not Stewart?"

"Checking for poorly-defined classes of object is harder with green rings."

Makes sense.

"Nearly on-site. Location of Green Lantern and Rocket Red?"

"Green Lantern is there now. Rocket Red will be with you in three minutes."

Slower than Dmitri's actual top speed, but sonic booming through Seattle for an exercise wouldn't be the right thing to do. But in an actual emergency they'd radio a warning and do it anyway, so maybe he should ask Orange Lantern to take that into account?

And then the roads and the fence and he stopped a block away behind a solid wall.

"Flash." Hal floats down and nods in greeting. "Took you long enough."

Ever since Hal cracked going faster than light in an atmosphere, he'd kept making that joke. And by the sounds of it he wasn't going to stop anytime soon. God help him if he ever learned to do it at a tactical scale.

"You think Green Arrow being dead is supposed to make us charge in there?"

"Now Flash; no metagaming. We're both professionals."

Professionals in a dangerous business who'd been fortunate enough not to have a friend die before. Hal had seen other Lanterns die, but they'd been colleagues and not friends. Barry actually wasn't sure how he'd react to Ollie dying.

"Can you scan the research center?"

Hal shakes his head.

"KordTech started warding all their buildings. I could do it with a construct, but that'll tip the people inside off that we're here."

"So we could wait for Rocket Red, or-." Barry blinks. "You can make a telescope construct, right?"

Hal looks mildly insulted.

"Yeah, easy."

"So far, even the more skilled thefts have just been hit and run. There are plenty of ways to counter an attack, but they've all been lightly equipped. If you flew up high enough, you could observe the site passively with a telescope. Count how many guys they've got inside."

"Yeah, I thought about it. You don't think they'd spot that?"

"No. I mean, sure, if you were right over the building they'd spot it, but a tiny green light miles up in the sky? I wouldn't think so."

"Right. I'll do that. You going to scout the site?"

"Yeah. But I'm going to be really careful. Someone like Orange Lantern isn't going to set up a wargame that never escalates."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
20:14 GMT

In the interests of reality, most of the faux-supervillains are wearing clothes which clearly distinguish them from the semi and fully professional criminals around them. This includes the final boss, who I'm pretty sure they'll all recognise. The costumes aren't indicative for the metabots, and only roughly indicative for the techbots, but they're there and clearly mark out some on the villain side as higher priority targets.

In the interests of not being stupid, not all of them are costumed. Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke the Terminator might wear that natty blue and orange number but Constantine Drakon doesn't feel the need to try quite so hard.

With Dmitri on site they have access to KordTech's database. There shouldn't be any difference between the files I planted for this exercise and the ones which were there anyway. Even the fact that I 'brought' the technology to the company doesn't stand out. I've been doing that a lot. And because I'm sure that Batman will check, I also added a bunch of e-mails relating to the fictional project to the server. Except… I'm not quite sure how the Rocket Red armour's 'talk to technology' ability works. It's perfectly possible that it might just tell him that the files I added were added at a different time from what the server now thinks they were.

It's also possible that there's a truth compulsion spell which can affect machinery, but if they managed that I'd award points for creativity and just accept it. Dmitri doing it would just be 'using an ability everyone knows he has in a really inconvenient way'. It wouldn't ruin the wargame, but it would make the investigative portion which the research team has been so invested in less valuable. This is one of the places where the villain team actually need a win to get their preferred end result.

Not that we don't have contingencies. Ultimately, team villain can do what so many of their contemporaries do and slink off. If the Justice League thwart them but can't find them by the end of the day I'll call an end to it and… Talk about rerunning it in a couple of months.

Jordan's using what he sees through his telescope to make a construct model of the facility, and Batman's using KordTech employee files and publicity brochures to create a 3D model of the place and a register of the people likely to be there on a Saturday. The telescope was a little clever, but Jordan's revealing his limits by not creating a construct infrared sensor. He simply doesn't understand the technical components well enough to create a construct of it. That means that the Leaguers don't know how many attackers there are or what they can do. And Dmitri is filling Mr Allen in on all of the ways the Russians found to stop speedsters with mundane technology.

Inside, the mookbots pantomime coming fully alert as the metabot with enhanced senses reports that the League have arrived. Faux-explosive harnesses fitted to the hostages bleep and twinkle, each connecting to four others in other parts of the building. While that won't stop Mr Allen, it might well result in him inadvertently killing hostages. He can outrun radio triggers, but it seemed reasonable to me that the villain side might suspect that he'd struggle to do so without advanced notice to several different end points. Their mission objective here is theft, so all they need to do is delay the League members until that's done and the chance of dead hostages achieves that result nicely.

In India, there's a flash of light as the Hawks' ship is 'killed' by a cyborg monster, leaving them with a two hour wing-flight back to the nearest zeta tube. Hawkwoman and Captain Atom themselves are.. coping, picking up injuries which the GM system thinks will inhibit them further. But limiting their mobility was the main aim, and I think that Batman suspects it.

In China, xeno teams have decided not to trouble the League and are going in shooting, which… I'd complain, but that's a pretty realistic depiction of what they'd do in an actual crisis. The mook-mookbots drop pretty quickly, but the pro-mookbots are returning fire and triggering traps. Since we predicted that something like this might happen, the traps aren't 'flash, please sit the rest of the event out'. They're genuine neural shock devices that will render the attackers unconscious and paralysed for a few hours. I wonder if they'll tell the League that this happened quickly enough for it to matter.

In Japan, a superbot team manage to neutralise the alarms too quickly for the League to be alerted, and also locate and deactivate the local zeta tube so they'd struggle to respond anyway. Slightly worried that the Sivanas managed that.

In France, Diana and Dr Balewa manage to prevent an attack on a nuclear power plant by a probot team without any injuries or damage being inflicted. Diana truth-lassos them one after the other and receives everything they know. Which isn't much as they weren't 'told' why or who, but she sends it to Batman anyway and another part of the puzzle comes together.

"Batman to Flash. I think the attackers are at KordTech to get their experimental radiation shield technology."

"Are they trying to build a nuclear bomb?"

"No. There are far easier ways to get fissionable material than this."

"That wasn't meant to be reassuring, was it?"

"KordTech isn't enriching material which could be used to make a bomb, and the fuel rods used by nuclear power plants aren't high grade enough. KordTech's shield would allow people to survive high levels of radiation exposure without lead-lined suits-."

"So they want to go somewhere highly radioactive?"

Oh, well done.

"They want to allow humans or delicate equipment to go somewhere highly radioactive. Equipment they don't have time to redesign from scratch."

"Any idea where?"

Batman looks over to where Mr Hol is already looking at nuclear waste storage sites.

"We'll look into it. The hostages come first, stopping them acquiring that data or any prototypes comes second."

"Got it. Flash out."

He says something to Dmitri, who gives him the bad news that while he can identify anything on a data storage system he can't remotely erase it. Now things get interesting. Flash can sort of go invisible, but it makes it hard for him to see what's going on around him and reduces his straight line acceleration for a while. With the lives of hostages on the line that isn't an option. Guy performed his traditional macho bullying routine until Jordan learned to make filaments, but it still doesn't come naturally to him and he certainly can't infiltrate a building with them. Dmitri's armour doesn't have stealth.

Huh. It's surprising how unprofessional evildoers usually are. Plenty take hostages, but most of the time they just point guns at them or put them near a single large explosive. Two veteran superheroes and a veteran soldier and they're struggling to work out the best way to proceed.

In a police station in Fawcett City, several files are manually destroyed to cover up the disappearance of an object that's already missing.

In a police station in Central City, several objects are covertly removed from secure storage. It's not the first time that store has had something appropriated from it.

In the tunnels beneath Aberrance, a mechanical thumper starts going off and triggering all sorts of alerts. They actually start the process of preparing for the public relations effect of League members arriving before they send the notification that something untoward is happening. They do actually send it though, which is a good sign that Cranius is less bitter about our first meeting now than he was at the time.

Mr Allen moves, and a second later Jordan starts-. Oh, I didn't know he knew how to make those! A construct to disrupt electromagnetic radiation, good thinking. Mr Allen vibrates the harnesses -that was risky, but he's been doing this for a while and I'm going to assume that he checked them before risking it- off the hostages in one frantic charge and throws them into a box construct Jordan has waiting. They explode harmlessly and Mr Allen's already back inside punching mookbots out.

Dmitri decides to head for the server directly, meaning through the building's walls. Jordan sticks a construct shield around the hostages, using the map to send thick green beams through the building's corridors before the hostage-takers can 'kill' them. They fire anyway, because that's what everyone does. Mr Allen's run into one of the techbots, who's covered the floor around 'her' with a gel copied from the Trickster. He slows down the moment he touches it, having to vibrate at exactly the right frequency in order to get it off.

A metabot fires a sonic blast in his general direction and he's thrown backward, being caught in a green catching mitt as Jordan arrives and advances under the cover of a green shield. Gel shots and sonic blasts are harmlessly absorbed, and Mr Allen is back on his feet and vibrating through a wall to attack from a novel angle, running through a toilet-.

"Watcha, Flasher."

And getting charged by a translucent mirror image of himself.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
15:17 GMT -5

Brute force and ignorance.

When Paul first called him that, Hal worried about it about as much as Guy did when he asked if all the time him and Paul were spending together meant he was cheering for the Buckeyes now. But when he did think about it, yeah, actually. It bothered him. He'd always used simple, powerful constructs. Always emptied his mind of everything that wasn't that construct to make it as strong as it could be. And then Paul shows up making constructs that are strong and complex. And-.

Goddamn Guy Gardner was managing it. And Martin Jordan didn't raise no quitters.

He was pretty sure that Paul was watching this. Two years ago, if he'd found himself thinking something that extraneous during a fight he'd have crushed it. Now it just flowed, a background consideration that was there but not distracting. He'd thought that m'eelam na'aquall was something for the religious types like Toren who wanted the green light to save their souls as well as their bodies. But it really shook things out.

And made double sure he never wanted to try acid-.

So right now? Keeping up a shield while also having a heads up display over his eyes showing where Barry and Dmitri were wasn't so hard. Stuffing the nozzles the second Barry got clear? Piece of cake-.

Not a Christmas cake.

Noticing that he'd actually had time to do so without Barry hitting them in the side while still laying on the pressure, still shielding himself when some more robots tried shooting him in the back. Still-.

The gunge-sprayer bursts, covering the robot carrying it with quick-hardening sludge.

Two concussive bolts to the heads of the backstabbers, then a construct scalpel slices through the goo and makes sure the robot has an airway. He hadn't lost a perp yet and he wasn't about to just because they were robots.

Now, what happened to B-?

The wall explodes! Barry's already landed on the floor before Hal can really process it, which is about par for the course with speedsters. He calls his constructs in, shield at the ready as a… Tall thin version of Barry walks through the hole.

Evil duplicate? Must be Saturday.

A fire hose construct sprays what's left of the goo in the double's direction and his environmental shield shines as he channels more power into it. Barry can hit hard and fast, but Hal knows his shield can take it for a while.

The double sort of.. twists and.. vanishes. Ah, okay.

"Flash?"

"Mirror Master."

"Didn't look like Mirror Master."

Barry picks himself up, still alert.

"Mirror Master was in the bathroom. Soon as I ran past a mirror, that came out."

Huh.

"Like a robot Mirror Master, or-?"

"Too short and too broad to be Scudder. But his face looked real."

"Good robot real, or-?"

A weird, washed out greenish beam hit him in the chest and knocked him back… Well, a little, as an equally washed out duplicate of him floats through the hole. A washed out midget version of him, who fires washed out midget boxing gloves, forcing him to throw up a shield as Barry speed-grabbed everything in arm's reach and started throwing it at super speed. The evil midget was battered back by Barry's barrage, but still found enough time to prevent any shots going into-.

"The mirror, break-!"

A faded red blur shot out from the bathroom, grabbing projectiles out of the air and hurling them right back! Barry zoomed towards it, and the two of them-.

Two speedsters fighting, he wasn't going to be able to keep up. But breaking a mirror?

He raised his ring to eye level.

He could do that.

The beam punched his mini-me back through the hole, through the wall behind that, through the wall-. Yeah, okay. Bathroom mirrors. Smash smash smash-

The grey blur vanishes and Barry de-blurs, panting slightly.

-and smash a little more, just in case.

"You okay there?"

Barry waves his enquiry off.

"Guess we need to go slow, if he's had time to set more mirrors up."

Barry shakes his head. "Just break them at the edges, that usually does it. Don't hit them dead on, or you'll end up inside them."

Hal nods. "Got it."

"Comrades Lantern and Flash? I have a problem."

Barry vanishes in a blur, and Hal's not far behind. The building map said the server is right around-.

Dmitri knocks on the inside of the mirror covering the server room door, a very faint thud being heard on the real universe side.

"I flew in but I cannot fly out."

"Flash?"

Barry darts around the surrounding area, then slows to a stop and shakes his head.

"He must have shot the mirror again once Rocket Red was through. We won't be able to open it up without his gun."

"Can we get his gun?"

"There might be an old version back in Central City, but unless he stuck around, no."

"Any other way out?"

"He could try flying through the mirror universe, see if he can find another portal."

"He in any danger right now?"

"Not unless someone breaks the mirror."

"I do not want to be a broken mirror."

That.. sucked, but-.

"Sorry Rocket Red, we'll have to come back for you. We need to stop them getting away with the radiation shield."

"Understand. Mission must come first."

Alright, so the labs were that w-.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
20:21 GMT

I remember that Mr McCulloch looked at me like I was a complete idiot when I asked if his mirrors could transmit energy. Not at the question itself, which was fairly logical, but from the implication that it was a remotely original idea. Apparently, Mr Scudder once used a couple of burning barrels to make a mirror-based cutting torch. Mr McCulloch never found the technique particularly useful, but considering the endgame we're going for…

"Flash, eliminated."

Mr Allen isn't entirely able to prevent himself making a small gesture of appeal, but appears to accept it a moment later. Somewhere behind me, Wallace punches the table. Quietly, after the glare Batman gave him last time he made a noise.

"Jordan, what happened!?"

"I don't-. Ring?"

"Intense light burst detected. Minimal threat."

His GM device chimes in a moment later.

"Immediately lethal gamma radiation dose released. Unshielded humans suffered extreme damage to soft tissue."

Jordan's eyes widen, then he shoots upwards through the roof and puts a barrier up around the entire building.

Batman gives his head a small shake.

"Jordan, it's too late. Whatever that was, it released gamma rays, not radioactive particulates. There won't be any ongoing effect."

Jordan hesitates for a moment, then nods and removes his construct. "Right. How many people just died?"

"You do not know."

"Scan the area."

Inside, Mr Allen sighs faintly, then turns around and walks slowly towards the nearest exit.

"Hey, Flasher."

Mr Allen stops and looks at one of the broken mirror fragments, Mr McCulloch's face grinning back at him.

"Nay hard feelings, aye?"

"Who are you?"

"Mirror Master."

"That means that either Orange Lantern cracked Samuel Scudder's technology, or that equipment's stolen. And I don't think he would have kept quiet for this long if he'd managed that."

"Fellah I got it from mighta pockled it. I didnae tekkit meself."

Mr Allen's eyes narrow. "I don't think that's going to cut it. When I'm done here, I'm going to be checking the evidence locker in Central City and seeing how much of his equipment has gotten 'pockled'."

Mr McCulloch waves and vanishes from the shards, now happy in the knowledge that whoever supplied him with his startup equipment is about to receive a Justice League investigation and certainly won't have time to chase him any longer. Because mercenaries don't expect to have the protection of officialdom, while I strongly suspect that whoever backed him does.

"Hey." Mr Allen prods his GM device. "If the villains don't have the anti-radiation shielding yet, how did Mirror Master get close enough to a radiation source to put a mirror down?"

"Would the corpse please vacate the mission area and hold his questions until the end of the exercise?"

"Yeah. Right."

He blurs towards the Seattle zeta tube, then reappears at.. the Central City terminus inside the Flash Museum.

"Would the corpse please also hold off on doing any investigations tangential to the exercise until the end of the exercise?"

"This is serious. If supervillain weapons are going-"

I appear

2nd March
15:23 GMT -5

just in front of him.

"-miss-." He reorientates on me. "Missing, that's a major security breach. Keeping my town safe is my job, and I was doing it for years before I joined the Justice League." He frowns faintly. "You haven't been-."

"If I have been taking them, then it was with the appropriate permissions, and they will be returned before the end of the day. After that point, any other thefts were nothing to do with me and you may investigate them as you wish."

"I don't actually need your permission to investigate crimes."

"Flash, if anyone was going to do anything major with them, they'd have done it already. And an investigation into longer term activity can wait a few hours. Go and.. spend the day with your wife. Or whatever you would have done if this wasn't happening."

He grimaces, but nods.

"Was I the second one to die?"

"Yes, and-. Oh, there goes Hawkwoman to a rather lucky headshot." I smile at him. "Three League members dead so far."

"How many civilians?"

"Promise you'll take it easy for the rest of the day and not try to communicate with people still 'alive'?" He nods. "Sixty eight civilian deaths, and just under a hundred more injured. Eighty deaths on the villain team, though only three of those were the direct result of League action."

He nods again. "You're not pulling punches, are you?"

"Actually, I probably am. The villain team has an objective which the League are opposing. The villain team isn't specifically trying to kill the League as their primary objective."

"Three's more than most real villains manage."

I stop smiling.

"Four. Excuse me."

2nd March
20:24 GMT

Looks like Jordan's given Ted the bad news: that he's dead along with a good chunk of his workforce. The villain squad who attacked the place… The ones who were still free when the radiation burst went off got away with their objective, but the knowledge that their boss killed so many of their colleagues will cause a mini-revolt and deny the villain team their services. When put along with the manpower the League has apprehended, they're going to have to either stage a break out or limit their offensive activities for a while.

Now the League knows what they're looking for, there's a chance that they're going to finally be able to go on the offensive. I might mark them down if they get lucky while trying to search everywhere, but it's a viable strategy. Though with Mr Allen dead and the Hawks' ship destroyed they won't be able to search anything like fast enough to stand a realistic chance of finding the villain HQ that way.

Should be interesting.

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
13:34 GMT -7

I sigh as another Almeracian portal shimmers open.

"Knockout, do you want to get that-?"

She's already in motion, grabbing the would-be assassin around the neck before he's fully through and squeezing.

Well, it's efficient I suppose.

I nod as she drags the corpse through the collapsing portal. "Bag him up, then send it to Cranius. Like the others."

Which has got to be doing wonders for his human telepathy and telekinesis research. Between him and Doctor Williams, they've got to be close to being ready to experiment by now. I'm pretty sure that Adam Blake would appreciate anything further they can do for him as well. He still hasn't fully recovered from what the First did to turn him into a telekinetic weapon system.

I turn to Sazu, who's keeping Rex entertained with a purple windmill toy while his parents pick a fight with a coterie of villainous mercenaries in Africa.

"Not that I mind, but how many of these should we expect?"

"It's hard to be certain." She bends forward as he reaches out for it with one chubby hand. "Based on the demographics of his supporters, the production of psychic warriors capable of generating rifts of that nature -yes, it's shiny isn't it? Yes it is- and how hard my mistress is pressing him, I would be surprised if he could afford to spare more than five assassins."

"And why are they coming one by one? After the first one didn't report back you'd think that he'd get a clue."

"Oh, no." She gives Rex another smile and then turns to face me. "I doubt that he ordered them to come here. Most of his followers simply find my mistress taking me as her consort and lover so profoundly disturbing that it may well be that they are taking the initiative."

"And not talking to each other about it?"

"When you give someone powerful psychic abilities… Something has to give."

"Even with Maxima? She seems reasonably together."

"Queen Maxima is the first of a new generation, and… She turned out extremely well, but even then there are limitations. She can be quite impatient. I don't think that she's ever finished a book, even one about a topic that should interest her. And I was honestly surprised when she announced her intention to come here to acquire a mate."

"Why?"

"It was an unusually creative idea for her. Her mind excels in dealing with situations which require immediate decisions, but she struggles with long term or abstract planning."

"That seems like a bit of a flaw."

"Oh, no." She shakes her head. "Her abilities in those fields aren't significantly worse than… Well, than the average human. But for her it seems so slow. She craves the stimulation that comes from combat."

That definitely seems like a flaw.

"Oh, I wanted to ask who your final nomination was."

"For what?"

"When you tried to arrange a mate for her? She told me that once you convinced her that someone with my skill set would be a better co-regent, you tried to show her someone. I've been wondering who it was."

"Oh. A man named Alexander Luthor. He's an extremely wealthy businessman who built an international conglomerate out of.. basically nothing. Intelligent, disciplined, focused and… Hm."

"He sounds as though he would have been a good match."

"I don't know. Obviously I didn't know about you when I started suggesting people, but Lex is socially aggressive, and.. assertive in a way which you.. don't appear to be. I had thought that someone who could think like Maxima, but… Apply it to administration rather than combat would be a good match. I didn't have anyone of your personality type on the list until much further down."

"Hm. How much-?" Rex grasps her right forefinger, earning himself another fond smile while she scrolls through articles on her computer with her free hand. "How much did she tell you about Almerac?"

"Not a lot."

"My mistress wouldn't want to risk two unknowns. Someone from Earth who shared her warrior outlook would have been acceptable. Someone from Almerac who didn't would be fine. Someone from Earth who thought differently to her, she would have felt obliged to fight for dominance. And if they weren't a warrior, that wouldn't have worked." She suddenly looks… Like she wants me to know that I'm on to her. "What else made you select this 'Alexander Luthor'?"

"He's an ally of mine. I thought it might help our work to tie Almerac and Earth together, economically and militarily."

"Our navy is a little bit bigger than yours."

"Even now, class for class, ours are more effective." She raises both eyebrows. "Once we've actually built them."

"We have three hundred and sixty two orbital docking slips. How many do you have?"

"What, me? Including Tamaran, about two hundred. But Earth probably won't build them. Their technology is too advanced to have purely space ships. Even the Starseeker can switch between atmosphere and interplanetary flight without any difficulty and that thing's forty years old. Your ships can't do that."

And that's not even starting on the advantages the luminal drive has over the telekinetic space-warping system they use. The Earth Defence Force's cruisers will be able to dance around anything Almerac could throw at them… Once we've built them. Because unfortunately putting a luminal drive on a planet is somewhat cost-prohibitive, and right now the Almerac navy could just rush Earth. And will be able to even once the first flotilla is finished.

"True. If the alliance could have been made to work, it would have benefited both of us. But I don't believe that it could."

"No?"

"Our warrior class wouldn't have accepted an alliance between our peoples any more than they have accepted my marriage to my mistress. They would have seen the people of Earth as too weak to treat with as equals, no matter the power of your technology."

"I suppose that when all you have is a hammer…" I frown. "Wait. You're not here just to keep you safe-?"

"Of course not." She smiles pleasantly. "Maxima rules Almerac. I govern Almerac, and that includes making alliances with other spacefaring species."

"And?"

"If you're successful, your people will certainly be worth our time. But if some greater power stamps on you before you are ready, Almerac will be happy to offer the survivors sanctuary. The handful of you who are meaningfully contributing to Earth's advancement would make excellent additions to our empire. You're right; our fleet has become rather moribund. We've focused too much on breeding better warriors and not enough on paradigm shifting technology. We create breeding lines based on what we need now, not based on what we will need tomorrow."

"And you're fixing that."

"I'm trying to. I'm part of the old paradigm myself." She lays a hand on her stomach. "But Maxima Junior is something new. She has traits we don't usually put in warriors. We were inspired by you, actually."

"How so?"

"You can fight and you can plan. We've always made them separate roles, but the way you combine them makes you better at both." She looks up at the clear sky for a moment. "Oh, they're nearly here."

"Who are?"

"The actual assassins. They're coming by ship."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd March
03:41 GMT +5

I open the door, and General Lane punches me in the face.

Naturally, the kinetic energy is absorbed by my environmental shield, leaving me entirely unharmed. As he realises who he just took a swing at he lowers his arm, and looks mildly guilty for a moment until he realises that I'm unhurt.

"God damn."

He shakes his head, then walks back across the small holding room to the bench which is firmly bolted to both the floor and the wall.

"They grabbed me through a God damned mirror. I wasn't even sure it was your people!"

"Given that shapeshifters and telepaths exist, it would probably be best if you didn't assume that I'm me just because I look like me."

"Hey, this cockamamie scenario isn't about testing the US military." He sighs, releasing built-up frustration. "But… Yeah. Make a construct while I think about football scores."

I create a construct of Mr McCulloch, and he nods, taking a seat.

"Yeah, that was the guy. Mirror Master, right? We talked about having to cover every mirror in the US military with wire because of him. Only reason it didn't go through was because he was supposed to be dead."

"Is there a collective term for the people who agree with former General Hardcastle about the best way to deal with supervillains?"

"Lunatics." He exhales sharply through his nose. "Or politicians. Officers who are thinking of going into politics when they leave the military. You didn't make any friends in the US military with that stunt. Or anyplace else."

"What stunt? Making sure that people follow the law?"

"Your new Lantern threatened a police officer with a car."

"No, he was just looking at the car. His fists were a far bigger threat than it was. Looking at a car isn't a crime, and I.. don't think picking one up is unless the owner asks you to put it down." I nod. "But yes, I did realise that it would sour relations. Remind me to provide everyone with an update on what Lantern Xor has been doing with his time since the-."

Oh dear.

"Is Hardcastle going into politics?"

"Looks like. If he gets made President Knight's Secretary of Defense, life could get… Interesting. For both of us."

I frown. "I… Would be surprised if Knight gave such a prominent role to such a divisive figure. He never struck me as having the sort of conviction that would require."

General Lane shrugs. "It polls well with people he needs to vote for him."

"Yeah…" I shake my head. "But… Even if he did it, he wouldn't okay him shooting up US cities. More money for anti-supervillain arms procurement, sure, but… One shooting is all it would take to turn public opinion right against it. And then Hardcastle will be gone for good."

"I hadn't realised you were that optimistic."

"Heck, I considered giving him a power ring. Maybe trying-."

"That's not funny."

"There was a book series I read a few years ago. Fantasy novels. One of the nations in it was an Empire that had a pretty laissez-faire attitude to rebellions. Usually, when one of their governors was overthrown they immediately recognised the leader of the rebellion as the new governor. Their rationale was that if someone actually overthrew a sitting governor then there was clearly a huge problem which the previous guy wasn't dealing with. So either the new guy would deal with it and cement his support, or he'd fail and be easier to remove once he'd lost everyone's support."

I shrug.

"So if I gave Hardcastle a ring, he'd find out exactly how hard dealing with supervillains is. And he'd either do a great job and be able to reform the law while fully informed, or he'd fail and everyone would ignore him."

"I don't think it's quite that simple." He leans back. "So why didn't you?"

"Because it's not quite that simple. And I was worried about the damage he might do in the mean time."

"Good." He looks around. "So what happens now?"

"As you surmised, you've been captured by the villain team. They want some information which they think you have and are going to torture you for it."

He raises his left eyebrow.

"On the assumption that you don't particularly want to be tortured in the name of realism, we're going to say that you held out for half an hour and then were beaten unconscious. Does that sound reasonable to you?"

"What, they don't have mind readers?"

"The mind reader quit after her boss fried her colleagues with a radiation weapon. They couldn't recruit another at short notice without alerting the League."

And paying through the nose. The villain team has a finite amount of resources to work with, and a short list of institutions they can 'rob' for more. But that results in an even higher risk of League intervention and it looks like they're trying to avoid needing to expand their budget.

"So why bother taking me at all?"

"The person who did it didn't know about the walkout. You.. overheard that from one of your guards, by the way."

"In case the Justice League ask?"

"Yes. They've got half an hour to rescue you if they want you conscious… Well, twenty seven minutes, now. And they can get information from your brain by telepathy if you're unconscious."

"So, what? I just wait a few minutes and then tell them?"

"Ah… We can do it like that, but…" I take a small tablet out of subspace. "This-."

"You are giving me a suicide pill?"

"No, it will just knock you out for a few hours. After that point you could well have woken up from your beating. Obviously, you don't have to take it; I appreciate your cooperation so far and don't want to start trying to insist or anything."

"How would it make things more realistic?"

"The League has recruited a few people with exotic healing abilities. I'd like to be able to reward them by having those people be capable of waking you up early."

He goes to speak.

"And.. yes, I do realise that we could just use a shorter countdown or something, but I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible."

He gets up and takes the pill from me.

"That's it? I lose consciousness and wake up a few hours later like nothing's happened?"

"Yes. We tested it. KordTech is going to start selling it as an anaesthetic once it gets FDA approval."

"Fine, I'll take it." He goes to sit back down, and then stops. "You've told the people at my command that I vanished as part of an exercise, right?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
22:58 GMT

On the monitor, Dr Balewa looks visibly uncomfortable as Dr Palmer and Mr O'Brian vanish again. He then turns fully towards the camera.

"Betman. It is not wise to continue to teleport them in this way. They are nothing like as resistant to the magic of the world as a magician such as myself. They will be harmed by it."

Batman nods.

"Understood. We'll make this the last time."

For some very good reasons, the Justice League doesn't put zeta tubes next to nuclear waste storage bunkers, or other places likely to house enriched radioactive material. With Mr Allen out and the Hawks' ship wrecked, the League's mobility is Dr Balewa and the Lanterns. The League has one physicist, and radioactive material isn't his speciality. Most of the League are immune to gamma radiation at anything less than planet-scouring intensity, but not all of them are. The knowledge that any reflective surface might turn into a graser means that Batman, King Orin, Mr Hol, Ms Lance, William and Mr Yao are off the front line and several of them don't have other skills.

"Superman to Watchtower."

A new window appears as Dr Balewa's vanishes.

"Go ahead."

"We found Doctor Phosphorus, but it isn't him."

In the background, the unconscious glowing skeleton man is being lowered into a heavily armoured containment unit. Despite how he looks he isn't actually all that radioactive, though prolonged physical proximity isn't a good idea. I didn't even consider using him for this because he's too mentally unstable, though I suppose there's a chance that the boss might be able to do something for him.

"Good work. Move on to the next site."

There aren't actually all that many superheroes or villains whose powers are radiation-based, for obvious cancer-related reasons. Dr Adam Mann died in his late thirties, his resilience only prolonging his suffering as it protected him from chirurgery but not from his own tumours. Firestorm doesn't exist yet, if he'll ever exist at all. Atomic Skull is still in his containment cell. Aside from that, the League is attempting to check up on mad scientists who specialised in physics.

Until I started preparing for this I didn't realise exactly how much nuclear waste -by which I mean material classified as low-level waste or higher- is getting stored around the world. The League's efforts to check it have mostly been limited to phoning each site and requesting that they check the status of their facilities. Mr O'Brian and Dr Palmer checked Aberrance very carefully when it became clear that the villain team had access to that sort of material, but other than the one thumper and some security footage of the mookbots there was nothing there. Cranius would never have let me use his home in that sort of way.

Other facilities are being cooperative, though I haven't spoken to people at more than a handful. Once they get over the shock of being addressed by Batman and they're assured that it's just a readiness exercise, they usually do a quick visual inspection and report back. Nuclear weapon silos are a bit slower responding, but I think that Batman is assuming that no one on Earth would let me near their nuclear weapons.

They wouldn't. Even Her Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde, which frankly wouldn't have involved all that much work on their part or involved us having direct contact with the weapons.

I mean, honestly: I have a power ring. If I wanted a nuclear weapon I'd make one myself, and I don't need one because power rings can be far more devastating.

"Black Canary to Watchtower."

No image this time. She and some of the other squishies are in the Hall of Justice, handling communicating with affected parties. Direct communication to the Watchtower would be a bit of a giveaway about the Justice League having a space station.

"Go ahead."

"I've had a call from someone claiming to have taken part in the attack on KordTech Seattle."

Batman glances at me for a second.

"Are they genuine?"

"Can they be genuine?"

"Are you asking me?"

"Yes."

"The villain side is as realistic as I can make it. That includes the possibility of internal disagreements. This could be genuine. It might also not be. I suggest treating it as you would if you received it during an actual mission."

Batman thinks for a moment.

"Watchtower to Lantern Stewart. Black Canary is getting a phone call. I need you to track the source."

"On it."

"Doctor Mist, please do the same."

Dr Balewa nods. "I will try."

"Put them through."

"Who is this? This bettah be someone important, like Superman or something."

"I'm Batman."

"Ah. Cool. I'm Sensite. I got hired to rob that KordTech place, but I didn't know about that… Radiation bomb, or whatever the fuck it was. Half a' my fuckin' crew got fried, an' I wanna help you get the mutherfuckah who did it."

"We won't offer you anything in return."

"Wasn't askin' you to."

"Very well. Who was behind it?"

"I.. don't.. exactly know. Mirror Master hired us, and he wasn't exactly happy about it after it happened… But he's still working for whoever was paying fer it. I think they're Russian, or.. in Russia anyway. He made a joke about getting vodka from the source, and I'm pretty sure I heard people talking in Russian when he was on the phone."

"What happened in Seattle?"

"He wanted to rob it. His boss wanted something from there, an' anything else was a bonus. Some kinda force field thing. I dunno if we were all supposed t' be wearing it when that… Happened. I sure didn't see enough prototypes for everyone. I dunno whether that was Mirror Master fucking up or if the Big Boss told him t' do it, but my best friend just got melted."

"You were definitely there for the radiation shield."

"Well, we got some other shit as well, but yeah."

I think 'Big Boss' just failed a diplomacy check fairly catastrophically. We didn't say in advance that this sort of thing could happen, just that the robots would behave like people with their own motivations. On the other hand, they aren't… Essential to the plan's final stage, if that's how they want to play it.

"Do you have a copy of the plans for the radiation shield?"

"Like, from his server? No, but… One of my things is that I've got a totally accurate recall. I was looking over Mirror Master's shoulder when he was checking the files. I can draw it out in, like, a couple of hours."

"Or Manhunter can take it directly from your mind."

"Fuck off. Ain't no way I'm coming anywhere near you. I'm heading to the toughest nuclear bomb shelter I can find and holding out there until whatever this is gets dealt with. An' I'm keeping the shields I got. You want anything else, you can make me an offer. An' I'm hangin' up now, 'cause I know that green fool is tryin' ta' track me. Call you in an hour."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd March
23:07 GMT

"Superman, Lantern Jordan, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel. I have a location I need you to investigate as a matter of priority."

I look up from monitoring the locations of the various participants in the wargame as Batman speaks. Jordan for transportation, and the other three are the toughest members of the League. I think he thinks that he might have found the main villain.

"Having analysed the wavelengths of the radiation surge which killed Flash, I believe that it was generated using waste material from early work in plutonium production. If Sensite's claim that the criminals are working in Russia is accurate then there are several possible locations, but the most likely somewhere near Ozyorsk in the Southern Ural Mountains. The area is highly radioactive. Everything you encounter there will be contaminated to a level hazardous to human health."

Hm. Well, they might still be there. If the plan was near completion they'd have moved on by now. Or given the sudden slowdown, they might have decided to bring things to a conclusion right now with their ultimate objective unfulfilled.

I take a moment to wince inwardly as General Lane is 'beaten unconscious'.

Jordan nods. "Superman, you still in Hartford?"

"Yes, but I can get to the Gotham zeta tube-."

"I'll be faster."

Jordan's picture glitches and then there's a green glow behind Superman. He's not that quick with passengers, but it'll be faster than Diana using her plane or Superman or William flying under their own power.

William looks puzzled. "Why is everything near Ozyorsk so radioactive? Is that what the town near Chernobyl is called?"

"No. Chernobyl is in the Ukraine. Ozyorsk was a Soviet-era closed city where people working at the Mayak nuclear plant lived. It was the Soviet Union's first plutonium enrichment facility. Waste storage systems were poorly designed and maintained, and large quantities of waste were simply dumped into local lakes. In nineteen fifty seven the main storage system not in a lake overheated and exploded. The resulting disaster was a level six accident on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the second worst of any disaster in human history."

On the monitor, Jordan and Superman glow brilliantly as they head to pick up Diana.

"It also caused four times as many cases of acute radiation sickness as Chernobyl. I contacted the head of the Mayak Production Association just after the Seattle attack, but they only confirmed that the facility has not been breached. The surrounding area is too large for them to check quickly."

"You mean… People still live there?"

"Yes. It's possible that our primary opponent is a local person who wants to use KordTech's technology to protect the people who live there."

No.

"Should we..?" He glances my way over Batman's shoulder. "Do something about that?"

"The people who live there are free to leave, and there isn't any easy way to remove thousands of tonnes of highly radioactive material from the environment-."

He cuts himself off and glances at me, while my face remains impassive. Then he returns his attention to William.

"Though if you are aware of one, I imagine that the Russian government would be extremely grateful."

"And… I know I can take radiation like this, but… Ah…"

There's a glow as Jordan acquires Diana, and William's background blurs as he shoots higher into the sky.

"If I breathe radioactive dust in and transform, I don't know if that would kill me or not."

"Captain Marvel, I'm not trying to kill you. In the event that your abilities don't simply prevent radioactive material entering your body and don't neutralise it, I'm confident in my ability to purge you."

He nods, then returns his attention to Batman. "I don't suppose you've been able to get any of those radiation shields they stole?"

"Unfortunately, the people who were working on them were among those 'killed' during the attack. Icon has asked his associate Hardware to create a suit to serve the same function but it won't be ready until tomorrow at the earliest. And it isn't designed for people with super strength."

"Don't sweat it, Captain." The other three appear just behind him. "I can put an environmental shield around everyone. That'll keep you safe."

"Actually." Superman points to the personal shield I built into his buckle. "This keeps out radioactive particulates as well as the radiation, so I should be fine."

And Diana's wearing her golden armour which-.

"My armour's enchantments should do the same."

I'm pleased that she's taking things so seriously. She even explained not wearing it from the start using the in-game rationale. But there isn't really anything I can do to make it more convenient to wear. It needs to be that size for the enchantments to hold.

"Captain Marvel, if you're unwilling-."

"No! No no. That wasn't what I meant." He turns in the air to face the others. "Let's go."

Hm. Their target is on-site. And… Mr McCulloch isn't. I wonder if he's quit, too.

Should I go down there, or would it be better not to? Given the strategies we discussed during the planning, I… Probably should.

I raise my right forefingers to my forehead

step out

3rd March
04:09 GMT +5

and reappear over the Mayak facility. If this does turn into a brawl, the last thing this region needs is yet another radioactive dust cloud. I'll see if it occurs to Jordan to create a containment dome and then create a 'failure dome' myself. Whether it does or not. The boss isn't going to be aiming at me or disrupting my concentration -not unless I've seriously misjudged things- but they will be aiming at Jordan. He's shown some ability to manage multiple constructs simultaneously, but given that he still prefers to avoid doing so I doubt that they're anything like as strong as what he can make when he's allowed to focus on one.

Ah, there they are. Jordan brought the group to directly over the city, and Superman grimaces as he takes a look at the inhabitants. I know that he doesn't share his comic book alter-ego's ability to see souls or individual atoms, but he can see skin lesions and his vision includes the frequencies of most popular types of radiation. He knows with an immediacy that even I can't match exactly how deadly this region is.

I dim my light as much as possible. I don't want to help them find anything-.

Incoming transmission.

Answer.

Orange Lantern. I believe that I am ready for the final confrontation.

I light up again as I rapidly gain height.

"Are you sure?"

I misjudged the behaviour of the mercenaries. I know that you warned me, but I honestly assumed that my personal power would make a greater impression on them. I don't think that attacking the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository is going to be possible.

The four League members are heading in the direction of the lakes… Alright.

I generate a construct dome, Jordan looking up with mild concern as I do so.

"Okay. Begin the final stage when you're ready."

Starting now.

A giant plume of dust erupts from the concrete plug over Lake Karachay.