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

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
15:37 GMT -5

"Burr?"

I shake my head as Batman's eyes remain fixed on… Looks a little like the globe hologram in X-Com. I'm assuming that one of the wizards set it up in our new command centre.

"Didn't even respond to me."

"And?"

"And he's a lunatic with little to offer us. If you just want canaries I'm sure I can find some who aren't theologically obliged to help Mannheim."

"Thornton?"

"Being helpful. Gaining his knowledge of history and demon magic was an interesting experience, but I don't think I'll be giving him the Fatty treatment."

His eyes dart towards me for a moment, then some sort of update to the globe comes in and he returns his full attention to it.

"You stole his identity."

"Indeed. What news?"

"We've had no contact with Atlantis or Themyscira. Still nothing from Green Arrow, Black Canary or Plastic Man. The entire team made it to the mountain, which seems to be holding the Anti-Life off."

"Any independents?"

"None."

I nod sombrely. "Unsurprising. Where do you want me?"

"Have you been able to contact the Controllers?"

"I.. haven't tried. Do you want me to?"

"Lantern Stewart can't contact the Guardians. I'm concerned that they'll order him to leave."

"No, they won't. They might abandon him here, but Corps regulations won't allow them to order him to abandon his homeworld."

"Are you certain?"

"No, not… Certain. Anti-Life is a bit different to conventional threats, as is Darkseid getting active." Hm. "I suppose the only thing they can really give us is knowledge of other Anti-Life based attacks in their… Records. Which Guy might have anyway. Where is Guy?"

"Norway. They don't have any Alliance presence. He wants to see if he can keep the country functioning."

"Even if he can, it wouldn't be safe for me to try doing the same thing."

"We're well past the point of being safe."

"In that case, do you want to know-?"

"Demonic contract. Can you do any other demon magic?"

"I don't think so. And on the list of things that could actually make this situation worse, one of the few entries is 'more demons'."

"Attempt to contact the Controllers. If you can't, leave Earth until you can. We need anything they can offer."

"Will do."

I leave the operations room, because he's got a war to plan and doesn't need my chatter distracting him. There's a… Sort of vertical garden thing with a tree that glows blue/white rising up through several levels of banistered-off walkway. Vines covered in decorative leaves and flowers are draped over its branches, though I can't see anything growing from the tree itself.

"Orange Lantern to Controller Hinon."

Nothing.

"Ring, are we getting through?"

"Unable to confirm."

"Alright." I walk towards the closest lift and step inside. "Front door, please."

The Tower's intelligence shimmers into being as the lift doors close. It's kept Kent Nelson's appearance, which I honestly appreciate.

"There's still quite a crowd out there."

"I don't have a boom tube generator. Do any of the crowd look like they're capable of fighting me?"

"It's hard to say. This tower would react to magic if they used any, and I can't see any costumes. But not everybody wears those."

"I'm not trying to go through the Dreamstorm again."

The lift dings and the door opens out onto the lobby, which now resembles a castle gatehouse, with bare stone and murder holes. The front door is steel-reinforced oak, though I'm sure that's just a skin for the magic construct that actually guards the entrance. I generate a construct ram that matches its dimensions and get ready to shove.

"Open."

The door swings outward, giving me an immediate view of the sea of people outside. It's not a solid mass; they're spaced out in.. even, curved lines.

And they're all staring at me.

I walk out through the doorway as it opens to ninety degrees, far enough forward that I can shield it as it closes. And they're still staring.

"Can I help you?"

"No." / "No." / "No." / "No." / "No." / "No." / "No."

Dozens of voices, not quite synchronised. Not the whole crowd, though, so it's probably not a hive mind effect. Or a sign of them all being simultaneously controlled by Mannheim. So… Why..?

Because it's their honest answer. They're just people, probably locals, who've been hit by the Anti-Life. They don't believe that I can help them, but they don't know where else… No, they don't have the motivation to go anywhere else.

Puts a rather different spin on things.

"I shall endeavour to prove you wrong. Good day."

I fly upward, until the town of Salem is a blot on the landscape.

"Orange Lantern to Controller Hinon."

Nothing.

Up further, then. Up until I can clearly see the horizon curve.

"Orange Lantern to Controller Hinon."

Nothing.

Up into space, so that the Earth looks peaceful… Would look peaceful, if not for the grey haze my empathic vision shows over the whole of the place.

"Orange Lantern to Controller Hinon."

"What have you done now?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
15:42 GMT -5

"Nice to hear from you, Controller Hinon."

"What. Did. You. Do?

"Summoning the Ophidian into myself caused a group of New Gods to go directly to their secondary objective instead of visiting Mount Justice. This… Indirectly contributed to them being captured and imprisoned on Apokolips. That led to the human who masterminded the Earth-end of the fight being turned into some sort of avatar of Darkseid, and he's just Anti-Lifed the entire planet Earth."

"… Ah."

"Given what's buried in the Earth, that's obviously really bad. The problem is that while I'm familiar with normal Anti-Life broadcasters, there doesn't appear to be any equivalent thing in use at the moment. My current theory is that Mannheim -that's the avatar's original name- has done something clever to use the thaumosphere itself as the broadcast medium."

"What is the current state of your species?"

"It doesn't.. look like the death toll is too high, at the moment. I'd say… There are…" Atlantis has a total population of about twenty million, plus Kahndaq's eighty million... If we assume that their shielding is completely successful… "Let's say a hundred million definitely free, an unknown number at least in the thousands fully Justified and everyone else suffering from something like clinical depression."

"Fleet elements?"

I look around.

"Nothing yet. Since I'm still active I could attack fleet elements myself. I can't do that on the ground due to a lack of targets and the fact that the 'enemy army' are effectively hostages."

"Other New Gods?"

"If you mean 'Apokoliptians', I haven't seen any Elite so far. There's a giant god-robot in Washington but that's about it as far as direct support. Aside from some giant insectoids we've already killed."

I send her an image of my scans of the thing. She nods.

"A last hurrah for the insectoids, and a field test for the robot."

"I don't think it's worth calling in any Lanterns, but-."

"Good, because we can't. Dox has actually been trying to get hold of you."

"Oh? Ah, why?"

"Oh, a combination of factors. Most importantly, the Reach appear to have authorised the deployment of one of their inner circle fleets. Possibly more."

I frown. "We weren't expecting them to do that for.. months. Deploying one of their inner circle fleets when their core isn't threatened is contrary to their Writ. They're religious about following their Writ."

"It appears that your Reach-shadow has decided that it made them too predictable. We don't have a copy of their Writ that we could trust to be completely accurate. It may well be that there are exceptions that we don't know about."

"Can we.. cope with it?"

"Dox's estimates say 'yes', but we will take considerable damage doing so, and it will undermine the confidence of our affiliates. If they deploy a second fleet, we won't. Maltus will survive, but that will be all."

"Their inner circle fleets aren't unlimited. There are reasons why they don't deploy those."

"Yes, it appears that for some reason they don't think that Apokolips will take advantage of their distraction to remove them as competition. And of course other galactic powers are content to let us take our swing at them without offering aid."

"And we can't take a strike force past their lines while their rear is less defended?"

"That's part of why Dox is so eager to get you back. Or, he's ordering you back, I should say."

Darn. Objectively, that's the right choice. Five billion or so on Earth versus hundreds of billions who've thrown their lot in with the organisation I created explicitly to fight this war.

But…

"Am I needed right away?"

"That depends on what you consider to be the limits of 'needed'."

"Are the Reach about to capture any inhabited world?"

"Not… Immediately. I would say that you have approximately two Earth days until that world where you saved the young of their entire species is returned to Reach control."

"So realistically I've got about a day."

"Every moment you delay is a moment where our allies die unnecessarily, but if 'people I actually know getting hurt' is your definition of 'needed', then yes."

"I need all data we have on the Anti-Life. All the records. Everything on Darkseid, including anything we've 'acquired' from the Guardians and Green Lanterns. Because actually, due to… A certain thing being stored here, it actually might be worse if Earth falls than if Maltus falls."

She considers, but she knows that I'm right.

"Are they actually looking for it?"

"Not as far as I've seen. And we've got a man with a direct-ish line to it and he hasn't noticed anything."

"Then the simplest solution would be to move it."

"Are Maltusians immune to the Anti-Life Equation?"

She hesitates before responding.

"Not… Entirely."

"Given how powerful your species are, and how you're ageless, I don't think that exposing any of you is a good idea."

"You will have our data. And I will hold my nose and reach out to our cousins. Will your people survive?"

"If we can work out what we're supposed to be hitting, sure. This might well cause the final collapse of our current social order and I might still end up evacuating the planet, if only temporarily. But I believe that we'll win in the end."

"One day, Illustres. Do what you can for the humans."

"One more thing. Do we know where any of the other Central Power Batteries or Light Fountains are?"

"I'm not aware of any besides Orange and Green even existing. Unless the Zamarons have finally found something to act as the core of their Violet Central Power Battery. I will check in with them as well. What are you planning?"

"Using the White Light to purge the Earth's thaumosphere."

She thinks for a moment.

"We were never able to firmly determine the White Light's limits. It was too alien to our mindset, even in those days. And we had no contemporary contact with the Anti-Life Equation at all. I will not veto your attempt, but I strongly suggest that you be mindful of your more immediate problems."

I nod.

"Then I will expect you tomorrow. Relaying data now."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
16:13 GMT -5

"Riddle me this."

Mr. Nygma doesn't turn around from his monitors.

"When is a contract not a contract?"

"I don't know the answer you want, but I can think of several logically consistent answers. For example, 'when it's upside down', because 'it's' can mean either 'it has the property of' or 'it is only'. Alternately, I could treat the first 'contract' as a document and the second as a legally binding agreement, in which case 'when no one signs it' would be an answer."

In the reflection on the screen I can see him sneer. "You're so basic. This is why I fight Batman."

"Because Batman would work out what answer you want, then use that to beat you. I freely accept that I'm not as intelligent as Batman or as you. On the other hand, I can achieve a similar level of success by brute forcing the actual solution. I read a book a few years ago called Un Lun Dun, where the heroine wasn't the prophesised saviour but decided to have a crack at saving the day after the heroine got taken out. Initially, she tried to follow the prophecy, but after one of her friends was killed she stopped, worked out what bits of it she actually needed to complete her objective and did those instead. Batman would try to understand your thought processes, I'd just say 'ring, scan'."

"I was in your class."

"You taught classes because it massaged your ego. The rest of them were there to learn things and maybe reform. Which is why your signature is on a contract and theirs aren't. And yes, it works whether you sign your own name or not, Theophilus Carter."

"Batman would have worked out that I was going to do that."

"While I just monitored everyone with my rings. I've already admitted that you're more intelligent than me. You really don't need to convince me."

"Oh, I know that I'm more intelligent than you. But the honest truth is, I think Captain Cold is as well."

"Possibly. I've never invented a device capable of reducing a target to zero degrees kelvin."

"Oh, that's clever. But it's not that."

"Okay, what is it? Is it-?"

"He reinvented the wheel, Orange Lantern. He knew next to nothing about physics notation so he invented his own. Have you ever tried doing base nine maths?"

"I once very briefly tried doing base thirteen maths."

"Base thirteen-. Hitchhiker's Guide, where Douglas Adams didn't write a joke in base thirteen. How much do you think doing everything in base ten limits our thinking?"

"Not at all. I have data on thousands of cultures who do maths in various ways, and there's no real correlation between base and development speed."

"I didn't ask 'does it limit people'. I asked how it 'limits our thinking'."

"I don't know." … "You taught yourself to do base eight maths, didn't you?"

"Please. I can think in any base."

"Including tw-"

"Two and a half, yes."

"-o and-. Probability, or did you know I was going to say that?"

"It's a riddle."

"I can see your face in the reflection, you can probably see mine. Between the shape of my mouth and the starting sound, guessing 'two' isn't hard. Half is quicker to say than 'quarter'. Though I should warn you that a lecturer once asked what came next in the sequence 'one, two, four, eight', and I said 'seventy seven'."

"Were you right?"

"I wasn't wrong. The pattern was 'each new number is bigger than the one before'. It was supposed to teach us that most people assume things and won't try and falsify their assumptions. Most people guess 'sixteen' and then stop."

"But not you."

"But not me. I think I was the only one in the entire lecture theatre who actually did the required reading, which explained the whole thing."

"I suppose that knowing when to mindlessly obey is a skill in itself."

"Mister Nygma, could you please explain something to me?"

"Probably."

"You've read your own psychological profile, both the Arkham one and the Belle Reve one."

"Quinzel has a second class mind at best."

"I doubt that she's got your IQ, but she does want to help you get better. And as far as I can tell, you don't."

I start to pace a little, and I can see the reflection of his eyes following me.

"Your father's dead. Everyone who knows you acknowledges that you're a very intelligent man. Crock isn't up here, looking at this. And neither are Leonard or Tuttle, and you know how much I respect their work. Batman wouldn't have put you here if he thought that he could work it out without you, so… Riddle me this: why is the Riddler?"

"That's even easier than your lecture hall answer. My 'neuroatypicality' isn't that I like riddles. If you want that, you should go and talk to Cluemaster. It's my compulsion to tell the truth when I misbehave. It's why I'm talking to you now rather than just ignoring you; I can't… Not. The reason that I got sent to Belle Reve and not Arkham is that I'm not legally 'insane'. I know perfectly well what good and evil are, otherwise I wouldn't be compelled to leave confessional riddles around when I do evil."

"But you… Do it for validation, right? I was sort of hoping that I could provide you with intellectually challenging problems for the rest of your life and you'd abandon the whole 'Riddler' thing."

"Not until I beat the Batman."

"Would..? Working out how to fix this mess count?"

"I don't know yet. Probably not. He wants me to do this."

"You're using him as a stand-in for your father?"

"Yes, I realised that years ago. And I don't like it because I hate the idea that an ignoramus like him had such a major effect on my life."

"You know… Doctor Quinzel does.. actually want to help. And you just said that you want to change. I don't have to be as intelligent as you to see an opportunity here."

"Then you should have thought of that before you embarrassed me in front of my peers. Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
16:26 GMT -5

Dr. Quinzel doesn't look up when I sit down next to her. She's staring out of the library window into the Dreamstorm, which is swirling every bit as hard as it was when my party and I went through it.

"Doctor Quinzel. How are you doing?"

"Y'c'n call me Harleen, yah know."

"I like 'Quinzel'. It's a combination of syllables where the softness of 'Quin' compliments the hardness of 'zel', no one part outstaying its welcome. I can't think of another word quite like it. Whereas 'Harleen' has those two long vowel sounds, like... 'Balloon', or something. Of the two, I think 'Quinzel' is definitely better."

She makes a very small smile, glancing my way for a moment before resuming her vigil.

"I ain't nevah thwort of it like that befowah."

"Of course not. You hear it a lot. As far as you're concerned it's a perfectly normal name."

"How 'bowt you?"

"It's three syllables and has a similar mouth-feel to 'Halloween'. Only the double 'E' is an 'I'."

"I mean… Awla this."

"I wasn't ready. But for some reason the Anti-Life isn't affecting me. For me this is a.. setback, but I have every confidence that we'll pull through in the end."

"Y'gawt anyone not inside'a here?"

"Jade's on the other side of the galaxy, so she's fine. A.. part from the huge Reach war fleet heading her way. But her mother and a few friends of mine are out there. You?"

"Niece an' nephew. Little kids. A few friends from college I get togevah with a few times a year." She swings her legs under her seat. "Guess y'can't rilly pick 'em up before ev'ryone else."

"It's a novel situation. We don't know what we need to prioritise, or even… Whether it might be better to evacuate the planet."

She turns her head to look at me with a sniff, her eyes wide and slightly watering.

"Can th' League do that?"

"Lanterns can move a lot of people quickly. We'd need somewhere to go, but Tamaran's coming along nicely and they've got plenty of space. Heck, given how low their population is, a few million temporary guest workers would probably be quite useful. It would… Certainly be easier to do that than attacking things we don't know about in places we can't locate, though that's where we are so far when it comes to actually resolving this conflict."

"What's happ'nin' right now?"

"Right now Batman and the League's other experts are trying to put together a plan of attack. Which… Isn't really something I can help with, hence why I'm here. I-." My ring blinks. "Yes?"

Alan's face. "Paul, we need you to head over to Norway. Looks like that robot they had in Washington isn't happy staying put. We need to know if it's possible to keep countries working by getting rid of Alliance infrastructure."

"Rightoh. I'll send you a message once I get there."

"Good luck. We all need it."

I close my left fist, ending the call, then rise to my feet.

"Excuse me."

"Yeyeh." She gets up, wiping her eyes. "I should get back ta werk, too."

"Doctor Quinzel, you got Anti-Lifed, the same as everyone else." I put my right hand on her left shoulder. "If you want to talk, just come and find me, alright?"

She nods awkwardly, mental defences going back up. Unlike Selinda, Dr. Quinzel actually is good at feigning a positive attitude.

"I'll see you when I get back." I walk towards the balcony, pushing open the bay windows so that I'm on the exterior of the Tower. "Orange Lantern to Mister Miracle. Tube to the North Sea, please."

BOOM!

I fly through, noting-

31st December 2012
22:29 GMT +1

-that there aren't a lot of planes in the air. Modern planes are mostly flown by machine, a process that was accelerated after Klarion's mass child murder because everyone remembers the recordings of the plane crashes and terrifying death plummets after the merger. In theory, once the alert goes out, every plane should head for the nearest landing field and land. But the simple artificial intelligence system can't do everything the air traffic controllers do. It can put the planes on the runway, but it hasn't tested all that well with large numbers of planes because it can't taxi them out of the way in most places.

"Orange Lantern to Lantern Gardner."

Norway looks like… Norway, with a very faint green glow in the air. I haven't really had any cause to come-. Here. Since last time I spoke to Jon Haraldson. No idea if the Einherjar are affected by the Anti-Life.

"'sup?"

"Alan says you need a hand. You've got me, for up to twenty three hours."

"What happens then?"

"I get recalled to Maltus to deal with a major Reach offensive."

"'kay. That robot can open boom toobs. It's droppin' off squads a' Justifiers wherever it goes. Just hangs around long enough ta' wreck any actual soldiers or police."

"The Justifiers?"

"Dunno what they've lookin' fer. They've stuck helmets on a few people, but they don't got enough fer everyone."

"I assume that the robot's powerful?"

"Tough, strong, firepower an' it can boom tube you whenever it feels like it. On yer six."

I look around as the green glow approaches me from behind.

"I don' wanna risk gettin' their air force involved, so we're gunna hav' ta fight it smarter."

"Haraldson?"

"Haven't seen 'im."

"Lead on, then. I'm sure at least some of my ammunition types will work."

He nods, then accelerates over the coast, heading inland, and I follow an instant later.

"Ice?"

"Trapping Justified guys. Her family 're battening down the hatches, so-. There."

It's standing in the sea off the coast of Bergen, Justifiers marching out of a boom tube into the streets.

"I'll get in his face, you cover me."

"Not a problem." I switch to the power armour I made that actually has weapons on it. "Just say when."

Guy generates a construct around him that resembles a 19th century train-

"When."

-and charges forward!

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
22:30 GMT +1

"Choo choo, muthaf-"

The robot turns its head towards Guy and raises its right hand, a-

BOOM!

-boom tube appearing directly in front of him.

"Graviton deflator. And message Alan."

"Compliance."

And then immediately collapsing as the gravitational anomaly which allows space to be torn asunder in that way collapses. There'll be a small amount of alpha and x-ray radiation released, but not enough to harm anyone who isn't right next to it and Guy's protected by his construct.

Dox will be pleased that his work on the subject came in handy.

"-aka!"

Guy's construct slams into the robot, smashing its right arm into its chest and sending it staggering back a step. But just one step, and Guy's full force constructs are no joke. Inside the train Guy drifts towards the rear while continuing to pour on the power, but it's not working. The robot's recovered-

I send filaments under the road surface and replace the road surface with a frictionless construct.

-but fails to adjust to the sudden change. It slips backwards, falling-. Falling from ninety to eighty degrees before 'catching' itself on the air and righting itself. Red beams flash from its eyes and slice through Guy's construct, reducing it to green mist. Guy's already out, dropping down to swing a hammer construct at its crotch.

The robot blurs back out of hammer range, causing Guy to miss.

Railgun. Target the eyes.

Compliance.

The robot raises its left hand, red energy coalescing in its palm for a moment before arcing at Guy. Guy generates a shield construct, which the red… Plasma? Lightning? Eats through rapidly. But Guy's fine with that, shoving his shield forward and creating more shield at the back.

Come-

The robot's eyes glow red.

-onfire.

The crumbler round screeches through the air at a far higher speed than I usually use. I'm not trying to keep the evil god-robot intact, after all. The red glow in its eyes brightens a little as Guy's ablative shield starts to get ablated faster than he can restore it, then the crumbler round hits. There's a sort of… Pulse of red, radiating out for a moment from the point of impact. Then the glow dims, the beam from its hand cuts out and its head turns in my direction.

Looks like I mildly abraded its paintwork. I can still see the faint default glow of its-

BOOM!

-eyesdodge!

The swirling grey portal appears above me, next to where I was a fraction of a second ago. Even as I pull away I can feel a strange pull that I haven't felt from other boom tubes. But I suppose that those were travel tubes, rather than any kind of weapon.

I trigger the graviton deflator again and the tube aperture collapses.

CLANK!

While the robot was focusing on me, Guy dropped his shield construct in favour of his hammer and swung, hitting the robot on the side of its right knee. There's a slight shimmer, and I note with a small smile that he added a crumbler effect to it. The robot doesn't appear to be impaired, but in a situation like this we're pretty much reduced to hammering at it until something gives.

Looks like crumblers don't do a whole lot. Dox might have tried getting hold of radion weapons to fight Grayven, but none of them have made their way to me. Next on the list…

Bullets plink off my environmental shield as a group of Justifiers jog into position in a nearby street. They're basically incapable of harming-

"Anti-Life justifies their actions." Inalienable Truth.

-meagh!

Fly! Fly!

Those bullets just punched through my construct armour, environmental shield, kinetic barrier and actual armour! I'm-.

Ow.

The bullets… In my body, looks like they're normal. I pull them out of my body and knit my flesh back together.

"…okay?!"

"Yeah! Fine! Bullets-"

The squad of Justifiers fire another volley, so I try blocking with a girder I put in subspace for blocking the omega beams. That… Appears to work. Don't know why.

"-go through everything!"

"Anti-Life justifies their actions." Inalienable Truth.

Another volley, and this one punches through the girder, but none of it hits me. No reason to suppose that the Justifiers were trained soldiers before their brains were annexed.

"I got the robot, deal with-!"

The robot swings its left fist, smashing through his construct shield and sending him flying into a building!

Okay, Justifier helmets cover the mouth and nose. I don't know for certain that they have their own air supply, so I'll drop knock-out gas on them on the off-chance. They can't fly so they can't punch me up here, so if I grab their guns with construct hands-.

Oh. That worked. Quick scan… No, it's N.A.T.O. standard, no special modifications here.

Bang!

What?

Bang! Bang! Bang! B-!

I grab the pistol out of the last surviving Justifier's hand before he can shoot himself in the head like his squad mates did. He charges after it, frantically grabbing at it!

"To fail Mannheim is to lose all worth! I cannot bear his eyes upon me! I long for-!"

Construct straight jacket, construct manacles, x-ionised blades to cut at the-.

They fail to breach the helmet's armour. Okay, crumbler? No, no, not going through and I'm worried that they'd kill the Justifier if I increased the power. Ugh, have to risk-. Cover the x-ionised blade in an environmental shield and drain and cut.

Okay, that's working, go faster. Cut around the faceplate, can't feel any straps, and pull! And it's off. Don't recognise the man, but that's hardly a surprise. He doesn't seem to be snapping out of it, but he's still being exposed to the background Anti-Life.

"Anti-Life justifies their actions." Inalienable Truth.

I'm viffing the moment I hear the voice, bullets peppering the position I was occupying as squads of Justifiers run towards us from all directions. I can-.

"AGH!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
22:31 GMT +1

Guy's hit. Doesn't look critical, but he can't regenerate in the way that I can. One hand on his abdomen, he flies around a building to get out of the Justifiers' line of sight while I throw out a volley of weighted chain constructs. Each one strikes a Justifier hard in the chest, and I hear bones snapping as they're thrown backwards. Because they can harm us but not survive us hitting them, because Mannseid doesn't value their lives outside of their immediate utility. Disarm them and they kill themselves. Cripple them outright and they'll probably do the same. Injure them-.

The Justifiers now dealing with a chest full of broken ribs shakily get back to their feet. Because they're not reacting to pain. They're still injured and they can't just ignore the physical impairment. They're struggling to breathe and that will reduce their athleticism, but ribs aren't essential in the short term.

BOOM!

I counter with a graviton deflator without really thinking about it, my railgun shooting the robot in the eyes a moment later as it tries to use the omega beams again.

Okay, its mouth isn't moving but I'm pretty sure that it's the source of the voice that keeps-.

Bullets plink off my armour, but these ones aren't augmented and pose no threat. Weighted chain constructs fly out again this time targetting right arms. More snaps, but this time they lose the ability to hold their guns properly. But they can still hold them, so…

Yes, they're shooting but their accuracy is abysmal. Some draw their handguns and shoot those with their left hand, but the lower rate of fire and lower accuracy mean that I'm not too concerned.

"Guy?!"

The robot drifts down a nearby street in pursuit of Guy. Let's try… Positron beam to the back of the head. Construct ready, firing. Impact… A flare of light, but none of it from the robot's armour. Some sort of force field. I'm not detecting one, but it could well be magic.

"You dead?!"

"Show you who's-"

A fat beam of green light slams into the robot's chest, prompting it to bring its arms up to its chest to shield itself.

"-dead!"

Guy rises above the surrounding buildings, ring glowing brilliantly as he continues to blast the robot. I'm not seeing any damage-.

If my draining abilities weakened the Justifiers' helmets, I could give it a go against this thing? Can't hurt more than failing to kill it.

I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and shoot Guy with it as he keeps pushing the robot back. Okay, x-ionised knives at the ready, fly at the left leg-

"Anti-Life justifies their actions." Inalienable Truth.

-and weave around the shots by tracking possible trajectories and evading them as the crippled Justifiers try to draw a bead on me. One handed pistol shots aren't that accurate anyway. Robot looks like it's focusing on Guy, trying to get its right arm up to take a shot but can't in the face of the waves of green energy. Close enough and stab and drain-.

It's irrelevant. The thoughts and designs of the one who exists as the totality of the universe binds and enthrals me, with my knowledge or without it. To raise a hand against his creation is to-.

I'm flying backwards through the air, green bonds wrapped around my-.

"Okay okay! I'm good-."

Guy glances down at me as I stabilise myself in the air.

"The hell was that abowt?!"

"I tried draining it."

The robot is facing us, but it's on the ground. It tries taking a step closer but its left leg doesn't respond and I can see the cuts I made before being overcome.

"It worked on the helmets, but that thing's channelling… Or.. broadcasting, Anti-Life. I got it right in the brain."

"And you're just okay now?"

"Um. I think so. Ring?"

"Thought processes align to behavioural baselines."

"So stabbing it's a no-go?"

"Stabbing has certain risks, but if it's the-."

"Die for Mannheim." Life Is Fuel.

The robot's wound glows unearthly red as the Justifiers fall to the ground, convulsing-

"Huh?"

-and shrivelling up and sinking in on themselves. A moment later all that's left is clothing, their helmet and... Dust.

How is-? No, the one I dehelmeted is fine… Not drained, anyway. But-.

"Move!"

I fly an evasive pattern as the robot raises both hands, the damage undone and its flight systems restored, red light-.

"No you fucking-"

Railgun, target the hand with… mage slayer, but…

I pour orange light into the thaumovoric systems of the mage slayer round, needing it to consume what it touches. Then as the robot fires its right hand at me-

"-don't!"

-as Guy slams some sort of… Box construct over its right. I jerk sideways as Guy actually manages to contain the blast this time, the shot aimed at me scything through the houses behind me even as my railgun fires at its face. It hits home a fraction of a second later, and-. And it worked! The robot's left eye blinks off and on and the beam from its left hand goes out. Alright, I've got more of those, I can-

BOOM!

Can't see where it is. Not around us, at least.

Mage slayer, charge it. Let's see if I can hit something more vital this-

"Die for Mannheim." Life Is Fuel.

-time. Okay, I can't see any more Justifiers-. The boom tube, it brought them in out of line of sight. Darn it.

Red veins spread around its head, then its eye lights up as I rise above the rooftops and-. There! Graviton deflator! X-ionised knives and slice! I don't know if I can save their lives but I should be able-.

I watch them collapse into dust piles.

I can't save their lives.

Okay. Stay higher. They can't bring in heavy anti-air, and they'll need a head shot to kill me while the robot's defence-bypass power is active. That's manageable.

I fly upwards and towards the robot, which now has black veins running through the red-

The eyes light up and I fire a crumbler round at each one, Guy looking visibly relieved as lights flicker and dull.

-glowing parts. Not sure what that's ab-.

BANG!

Aeroplanes roar past as missiles explode all around me!

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
22:32 GMT +1

"They have planes! Ring?"

The ring shows me an image of the cockpit in my mind's eye. Helmet. Plane's an F-35 Lightning with marking for the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Bit strange there's-

BANG! BANG!

-just.. one. Alright, what do I do about them? If I remember correctly, Norway is dithering about the direction of their defence procurement so these planes shouldn't have anything super advanced. Neither air-to-air missiles or cannons are going to do much to me, and since the area below has been evacuated shrapnel and falling bullets aren't a concern. I just need to down the planes before the robot gets free and uses its bypass power.

BOOM!

Graviton deflator.

"No shit! Y'got em?"

"In progress."

Downing a plane when you have a power ring is very easy. Downing a plane when you have a power ring and want whoever's in the plane to survive is fairly straight forward. Downing a plane when you have a power ring and want whoever's in the plane to survive without the wreckage setting the city on fire when the pilot will try to ram you in preference to ejecting is a little trickier.

Firstly, I fly out towards the sea. It will take me a little longer to support Guy, but-

BOOM!

Graviton deflator.

-I can still deal with the core parts of the job.

First plane banking to make its second run. Force beam projector off to the side. Slice through the neck of the plane, just behind the cockpit. Kinetic absorption field for the cockpit, trajectory of the body of the plane heading out to sea… Tumbling, but it's still not going to hit anything. Ignore. X-ionised knives slice into the cockpit, pilot reaching for-. Flare gun? Disarm, slice and drain. Helmet off, dump cockpit in the ocean, drop pilot on a bench by the-

"Anti-Life justifies their actions." Inalienable Truth.

-shore. Great, laser point defence constructs-.

Missiles fly towards me to be met by laser beams, punching through their flimsy outer casing and prematurely detonating their explosive-

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

-load and I yank myself around as most of the cannon rounds miss, agh, and I've been meaning to redo that hip anyway. Check line of fire on the second, reposition-

"One plane down, two left. You still there?"

"You used crumblers on the eyes, right?"

"Yes."

Plane starts turning move. Decapitate, kinetic absorption field-. Body of plane heading for-. The shoreline, and there are still people in that area. Ring, phone them and tell them to move. Construct cockpit to stabilise flight path, send it into the sea. Cut through the pilot's helmet, toss the cockpit and land the pilot. Last plane is-.

"Guy, evade!"

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!

This one just gets an energy pulse because I need it to stop shooting more than I need anything else. The main body to the plane shatters, fuel tanks spraying and fuel igniting a moment later! Trigger the ejection system, kinetic-

BOOM!

-absorption field-

Graviton deflator.

-to catch most of the wreckage which hasn't exploded yet because the fuel isn't being contained but is burning nicely. Thrown it into the sea, catch the-

"Guy? Third plane down."

-seat, cut and drain through the helmet, drop off the pilot. No further planes here-

"Okaygreat."

-yet and I'm fully healed.

"Status?"

"Gone to ground, bleedin' like a pig."

I turn and fly back towards the… They've moved, tracking… There. Purple-

"Anti-Life justifies my actions." Inalienable Truth.

-healing-.

Red lightning scythes through the city as Guy frantically evades, boring a hole in the ground to duck under it and then weaving around as the red seems to.. drip down. I fire a volley of crumblers at the robot but some sort of… Barrier? Appears in the air and detonates them prematurely. Not a barrier, then. Just ionising the air would probably work, not to mention whatever New God technology that thing has.

Okay, clever dick. Crumbler shell.

In Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series, a German artillery detachment was able to bombard a Race landing zone and destroy several of their landing ships. The landing zone had point defences, but they were lasers designed to destroy incoming missiles and did absolutely nothing to heavy metal artillery shells other than mildly discolour the casing.

Most of my crumbler rounds aren't well armoured, because it's usually superfluous. That doesn't mean that I can't make armoured rounds.

Bit of tungsten, easy to crumble but capable of protecting the mechanism, aim and fire!

The round streaks through the air, and-. Gets about a metre further through the shielded area before being triggered.

Okay, cold gun. Absolute zero. Aim at the neck and fire.

Ice precipitates out of the air as the beam hits home, ice coating the area around-. Darn it, it's blocking this as well.

Fine. Construct battering ram go!

The construct shoots through the air, pushes past the robot's defences with no more than mild abrasions to show for it and then hits the robot directly in the neck hard. It staggers, some sort of energy I don't immediately recognise flickering and flaring around the impact site as its red energy lash cuts out and Guy gets a moment's respite.

Actually-.

I release Colin Thornton from my ring and attach filaments from the crumbler ram to him.

"Drain."

Lights on the robot flicker once more but this time there's no platoon of Justifiers for it to kill to heal itself. This time-.

"Cease." Final Stage of Existence.

This time my ring turns off and Colin fades away as the robot flies up to confront me.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
22:34 GMT +1

Yesterday, that would have been a sound move. But right now Guy's down to that stupid Halla pistol and a personal force field while I've actually got some reasonable fire power. No way to stop a boom tube, but if it-

The robot raises its hands, red glow slowly coalescing in its palms.

-actually attacks-.

"Plot flight path, engage."

My armour accelerates, crumbler gauntlets going live as I fly arms-first into its right palm! It-. Ah! That's what happened! It loses containment immediately, the effect feeding back into wherever it's getting this energy from. My armour gets… Ah, not used to reading these alerts, a little abraded, which suggest that the red stuff needs to be fully 'shaped' in order to have the maximum effect.

And now I'm past the robot, its now limp hand knocked aside and noticeably not building up the red stuff. The robot turns slowly around to face me, shielding its still-glowing right hand with the mass of its body as it does so. Unfortunately for it, I still had the design for the smart missile system I designed for Artemis a few years ago in my database and stuck a slightly repurposed version on this armour when I gave it firepower. And since whatever shield it had a minute ago doesn't seem to be working now…

"Fire volley one."

The ejection system vomits twelve missiles directly upwards in rapid succession, sending them arcing up over the robot. At the apex of their curve the cases pop open, submunitions deploying, simple guidance systems networking with my armour's computers and aiming themselves down before activating their boosters. The robot raises its right hand just a little too slowly, the blast of red energy hitting the oncoming swarm only after they spread out from their initial cluster. The rest strike home, destabilising the red energy around the right hand-

There's a small burst of energy as something inside it overloads and the hand goes slack.

-and hitting the face on the off chance that it was planning on using omega beams. No, looks like it wasn't, but the face is more than a little abraded.

My armour's scanners show no Justifiers in the area, and if something's happened to its boom tube system then it can't call more-

Space around its chest twists, the robot appearing to bend into a spiral for a moment before vanishing.

-in.

My rings light back up-.

"Find Guy."

I get a response and fly, coming to a halt just above him as he awkwardly plays a purple healing ray over his wounds, an empty vial of healing potion on the ground next to him.

"Robot retreated. Need a hand?"

"Nah, I'm-. Nearly good."

"Healing ray's not great on complex internal injuries." I deploy a healing tube flask of my own and offer it to him. "Here."

"Thanks."

He takes it with his left hand, screws the cap and downs it.

"You got all the bullet fragments out, right? Because-."

He nods his head towards a small pile of brass next to him.

"How long 'till it comes back?"

"Don't know. Given the way it was healing, it could be back in seconds if it can find some Justifiers to drain to death."

He makes an expression of distaste. "Yeah. Spotted that. Y'got any idea how?"

"It's higher up the hierarchy than they are. Their lives are lived to serve it. We're basically surrounded by a high-end spell right now, so there's a worldwide conductive medium."

He stands, poking his former wounds with his right hand to make sure they're gone.

"We can use that, right?"

"Bloody hope so. What was that you did to its hand?"

"Old technique. Supposed to stop th' universe changin' if you've got the will for it. Think I nearly did." He thinks for a moment. "You sure we can't use th' embodiments?"

"'Sure'? No. 'Willing to risk it'..?"

"Yeah, I getcha." He generates a phone construct and holds it to his right ear. "Hey babe. Yeah, it's gone. Ah…Think so. I'll check, but-."

He makes eye contact with me.

"You got those pilots, right?"

"Lined up on a bench on the shore."

"Right. You get that? No, just one. They shot themselves when they were disabled. Yeah, we'll-. 'kay. I love you. No no, that ain't-. I jus' wanna say it, y'know? 'cause I do. Okay. Bye."

"Are you affected by the Anti-Life broadcast?"

He nods. "Yeah. Kinda? I mean, I hear it, an' it makes me think abowd stuff I don't wanna, but it ain't stoppin' me. You?"

"I heard the robot, but apart from that?" I shake my head. "If it wasn't for everyone else reacting I wouldn't even know it was happening. I thought it was the enlightenment, but if you're still affected that can't be it."

"Yeah. Weird." He brings his right hand up to his chest, laying his left hand over it. "This is gunna feel a little weird."

"What else is new?"

He glows for a moment, not particularly bright but certainly intense. Then a wave of green shoots out in all directions and I feel confident, certain, ready to take on a legion of those robots and smash them to pieces.

"Yeah." His eyes are glowing green. "I ain't no Ion, but I'll do fer now." He rises into the air. "I need ta hit th' airbase. You okay tawkin' with th' prisoners?"

Tracking… The Justifier I freed is now on his feet and sort of wandering around. The pilots on the bench are staying where they were with their heads in their hands. "Can do."

He takes off at speed, heading inland. Right, now to-.

"L-lantern! Lantern!"

I fly over to the liberated Justifier as he waves-.

"Mister Wasem?"

Recruiter for the Gotham branch of the Congregation. I've spoken to him a couple of times…

"Oh God, Oh God. I…" His right hand clasps the side of his face. "What happened to me?"

"Anti-Life. The Alliance was a cover for an alien take-over. Talk to me. What happened? Tell me everything."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th October 1998
17:57 GMT -7

I shake my head. "I don't agree with that at all."

The young woman opposite me glares. "But it is the original sin. How can you know of it and yet not believe that it is a sin?"

"Alright." I lean back slightly. "Was Adam and Eve's nudity in the Garden of Eden sinful?"

"No, because they had no concept of shame or lust."

"Did they have a concept of property?"

She thinks for a moment. "No."

"Vice in general?"

"No, that came when they ate the apple."

"So when they ate the apple, as they put the apple in their mouths, they had no concept of theft, deceit or guilt. They had no concept that the serpent could have anything other than honest intentions. They were, in effect, children. Mentally speaking. It wasn't until after they ate the apple that they gained that capacity: to lie, to feel lust or shame or anything else. Before they were innocent, afterwards they weren't. But if you're innocent, you can't sin. It would be like a… A parrot, flying through a nuclear silo and pecking the launch button. It's got no idea what could happen as a result, it just thinks 'shiny, peck'. Would you assign moral blame to the parrot?"

"Adam and Eve were not birds. They were people."

"They were pre-apple people. Mental children with no concept of… Anything they weren't built with. It's not until after they ate the apple that they became capable of moral understanding, became… Adults, in anything other than the biological sense. The apple gave them knowledge of good and evil. How can they have done evil before they gained the capacity to understand good or evil?"

She blinks, though she doesn't immediately refuse my supposition.

"That said, I regard eating the apple as the correct thing to do. Who wants to remain a child forever?"

"A child. And they are not wrong to want to be children."

"Children are children rather than gnomes because they go on to become adults, with all that that entails. Adults, we children of the apple, have a more full understanding of the world-. And that's something else. If God created all animals, that included the serpent. If God is all-knowing, then God knew what would happen, and if God is all-powerful, then God could have prevented it. God chose not to, and despite the fact that he was dealing with simpletons acted like the blame lay with them."

That… Appears to meet with favour. For some reason.

"Of course, that doesn't negate human agency, we simply have to recognise that we're acting with finite knowledge and sometimes the consequences of our actions aren't quite what we intended."

"I suppose that you have a point. Then what justifies sending someone to Hell, if God sets up everyone to fail?"

"Nothing." She blinks. "There is no reason to send anyone to Hell ever. Eternal punishment is pure sadism. And if some depictions of God are accurate, pure narcissism."

"There are people who deserve it."

"No. There are people who deserve a great deal of punishment, but if death isn't the end and the soul is eternal… What's the benefit to it? Once they're dead, they can't harm anyone else, so there's no argument for protecting anyone else. After a hundred years of suffering…" I shake my head. "Anyone's going to agree to anything. They're not going to learn anything from that. Heck, they probably wouldn't even know why they're in Hell. And even if they learn why they're there and reform, they can't get out."

"Reform?"

"Sure, because this whole thing is premised on there being an all-knowing God. That rather than being limited to trying to know one another's mind by observing behaviour like humans do, there's a being who can just know. It-."

Across the student bar, I see Detective Stone walk in. He looks agitated.

"And on an unrelated note, did you know that Hell is far less radioactive than Earth?"

Gwendolyn DuBare, my drinking companion, frowns. "What?"

"Less radioactive. So someone who escaped from there would have less radiological material in them than someone who grew up in this-" I feel the wave of heat pass over me as the air around her hands shimmers. "-nuclear age. Now, I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help. He, on-"

I stand, interposing myself between her and Stone as he strides in our direction.

"-the other hand, isn't here to help."

Stone recognises me, his expression… Stony. He's not drawing his gun, so it looks like he'd learned from our last encounter.

"Step aside and let me do my job."

"Detective, I know good and evil and the difference between them. I will not voluntarily send anyone to eternal punishment, as that would be an evil deed. Her or you."

I still don't know why the Detective went to Hell. I mean, I could guess any number of things that the NYPD wouldn't put in their databases, but none of that really chimes with his excellent record.

Gwendolyn's on her feet, and she's moving to get a clear shot-.

I raise my right hand to motion her to get back. "Please, let me handle this."

"He's here to send me back?"

"If I don't, they'll just send someone else."

He's right. The sort of person who would create Hell isn't going to care about its residents. One or another, no one wants to be there and I doubt it takes long for every single one to get to the point where they'll agree to anything to get out. And I can only protect one person, and I picked up dozens of others in the Los Angeles area alone.

"And someone's checking up on you?" He nods. "Detective, you're a descendant of people who ate the apple of Eden. You are a moral agent in your own right, not just a.. weapon for whatever demon sent you here."

"They're not exactly sending me after good people."

"Every one of those bastard rapists deserved it!"

It only lasts a moment, but Stone cringes as she says 'rapist'. Okay, he's emoting, but what can I-?

"Ah. I have it. Detective, during your career with the New York Police Department, did you ever have a case where FBI agents started arguing with you over who had jurisdiction?"

He cautiously nods.

"But outside of immediate concerns, sorting that sort of thing out wasn't your job, right? That's for your Captain or the Police Commissioner or the Mayor. Right?"

Another nod.

"There's been an escape, Detective Stone. And the reason why you're here on a release scheme on your own rather than something else is that the demon who sent you wants to keep things quiet. They fucked up, didn't they?"

Another nod. "Probably."

"But knowing that doesn't help if you can't notify someone in internal affairs. Because despite their misdeeds, you can't get any leverage."

I reach into my pocket and take out today's apple. I was planning on giving it to Gwendolyn, but magic aside psilocybin mushrooms work nearly as well.

"Good. And evil. And the difference between them. Take it and offer it to the demon when they turn up to complain. And if they're still annoyed, give them my number, and I'll put them through to my sponsor."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
22:53 GMT +1

"I had another vision."

Mr. Wasem doesn't look at me. He's sitting opposite me with his body facing me, but his head is turned off to the side. The three pilots I rescued are sitting in that general direction but I don't think he's looking at them.

"I had another vision, and-."

"And it was Mannheim. I'm sorry."

"He is… Doing something to the world, isn't he? After you took the hel-helmet off, I felt… The crushing despair. All my devotion-. I just wanted to help people-. I-I…"

"To be clear, Mannheim isn't God. False visions happen, as do lying false prophets. You were trying to do good for good reasons. God knows that."

"Perhaps… Perhaps it is just the… Shock… But at the moment, I do not know what to think. What I think. To think there is such… Evil in the universe."

"I realise that Kahndaq-."

His face turns back towards me, and for the first time I see a little of the real him. "No. That was the evil of men. The sort of evil that happened for all of history. What I feel in my soul, that is something… Something beyond."

"I know what you mean."

"I suppose… I suppose that you do." He shakes his head. "I was in the community centre. Then… Then it started. It was like…"

"Yeah."

"Like everything I had worked for was… It was a waste of time, like I had made the situation worse and that there was nothing that anyone could have done to make things better. To begin with, it was just… Something external, someone telling me that. People were screaming, panicking, and I tried… Tried calming them down. It… It didn't… Didn't work. I couldn't do it. Then… Then it wasn't outside any more. It was me, I believed it."

"Was that because they put the helmet on you?"

He bows his head slightly, then shakes it.

"No. No, it was not. When they-. When they came, with the helmets, I… I stepped forward. I wanted it, wanted… Wanted to complete the.. change, to… Accept what was happening, to know why it was happening. With the helmet on, I… Felt that I was a.. tiny, completely replaceable part of some… Great machine."

I nod. "And that was the right place for you, and it was right that the machine was there. And standing-"

He stares directly at me, his eyes widening slightly as he nods.

"-over it all is a malevolent divine power."

"Yes. Yes."

"If you're worried about anything… Anything blasphemous prayers you might have shouted while under the influence, don't. Heaven knows that mind control exists. God knows your heart."

"But what if my heart has been corrupted with my mouth?"

"Then you need to get to work on uncorrupting it. The people who put the helmet on you, were they wearing helmets themselves?"

"No. I recognized some of them from the Alliance. Superheroes, or just people who wanted to do some good in the world but didn't have faith in God."

"They weren't wearing helmets?"

He shakes his head.

"Were they wearing anything similar? Any… Sort of device that had the same design on it?"

"No, not… Not that I saw."

"Were there any other members of the Congregation there with you?"

"One man. He was affected in the same way that I was."

"Can you hear the rest of them?"

"I'm-." He shakes his head, then goes back to looking away. "I'm.. blocking it. We can still have privacy. I'm-. I am afraid of what I would feel."

I nod. "Understandable. Can you tell me what happened between them putting the helmet on you and you appearing here?"

"It-. It's not… With… That in my head, being all I could.. think of, where I was, what I was doing… It didn't matter. Just being part of the machine, doing what G-. What he wanted. Shooting you, shooting myself…" He trembles as he shakes his head. "It didn't matter. It was all the same."

"I don't suppose you got any sort of… Feel, for what other plans he might have?"

"No. Only that they were great and terrible and inevitable. I..?"

"Yes."

"How is..? Gotham? And Kahndaq?"

"Kahndaq's okay, actually. Teth Adom is able to use his magic to keep the Anti-Life out-."

"That's what it's called? I suppose it's appropriate."

"Yes, so Adrianna's leading the defence. It's one of two places in the world that look like they're holding out."

I look around, trying to get a feel of the mind state of the people of Norway. The Anti-Life is all around, but with a little help from Guy it's… Mostly at bay. I… Maybe Dr. Balewa can use Scandinavia to see what other tweaks he can make to keep things normal? If we can prevent them from physically invading, they can't have an infinite number of helmets. Even if they're getting them from Apokolips, it's just a matter of travelling there and destroying the factory.

"Look, I need to get back to it. Gotham is even less safe than normal, so I can leave you here or take you to Kahndaq."

He nods. "Is it a sign of weakness that I want to go to Kahndaq?"

"I don't think it's that unreasonable, given what happened to you."

"I would rather shelter under a pagan god…"

"I'm pretty sure that Kahndaq is going to play a major role when we retake the Earth, so feel free to volunteer when you've recovered a bit. To be honest, from the looks of things you wouldn't be much use at the moment."

He nods again. "No, I suppose not. Thank you."

"Orange Lantern to Blue Lantern."

"Go ahead."

"Robot defeated, Justifiers… I'll send you the file. One survivor, technique for fighting the robot acquired. I'm heading to Kahndaq now, but if you need me somewhere else..?"

"It looks like the Justifiers sent some people to your place in Bir Tawil. I think maybe you should take a look at it."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
00:02 GMT +2

"…know precisely how far Teth Adom's purification aura extends?"

"As far as Kahndaq's borders. But that does not just mean our 'official' borders. If the people hail him as their king, his power shields them."

I nod as I come up on… My home away from home.

"Does that include Bir Tawil? I can see the greenery from here."

"No." Falil sounds quite sure. "Mighty Adom discussed the matter, and it was decided that your use of that place required that it be part of no nation."

"Thank you. I'll let you get back to it."

I lower my ring, wincing.

This is a trade post which I upgraded slightly to be more suited for long term habitation. It was never precisely a fortress. But it has-. Had force fields and automated weapons of varying degrees of lethality. It.. technically still has armour that should turn aside most Earth-built anti-armour weapons.

Someone smashed right through it all. That's… Within the combined abilities of people the Alliance has on its rolls, I think. If Marcus-.

I look over at the blasted-open anti-ship silos.

Ring, scan for atmospheric disturbances commensurate to-. Yes.

Marcus's ship has some pretty solid shields. From the residual ionisation in the air it looks like it took a few hits, and then…

I float over to the closest silo and try connecting to the control system. No, it's been destroyed. Local backup? Destroyed. Targetting data in the gun itself? No.

"Orange Lantern to Blue Lantern. Bir Tawil's been attacked. Exterior defences appear to have been destroyed by a force that included Alpha Centurion's ship."

"Yeah, that's what we picked up. You got any idea how worried we should be about him just… Flying to another planet in it?"

"Don't know. Mister Wasem told me that Alliance members didn't need to wear the helmet to be under the sway of the Anti-Life. Otherwise I'd have guessed that they had to stay in range of the Earth's thaumosphere. If anyone is going to have been heavily dosed, it's Marcus. And he has the coordinates of every inhabited world in this region, so if he…"

"He can just fly off any time he wants to."

Ah.

"No, because he doesn't have access to the Justice League's interdiction system. He could fly off, but it would take him months to get outside the affected area at least. There's still boom tubes… Do we have a count on the number of simultaneous boom tubes they've used?"

"I don't think so. Our coverage isn't what it was." He sighs. "Gotham and New York are little slices of Hell right now, Paul. The people who aren't catatonic are… They're lashing out at everyone and everything."

"Unlikely. There's almost certainly a pattern."

"That's what Riddler says. One thing I don't get, maybe you can explain it to me: if Mannheim's trying to take over the world with mind control, why is he letting them tear it apart?"

"Could be several reasons. I doubt he could produce enough helmets for everyone in secret. So he sets this off, we're distracted and he has the time to finish his work. Or he might not be trying to conquer the Earth."

"No?"

"This universe contains seven galaxies. Each contains about a hundred billion stars. The Reach are trying to conquer them reasonably conventionally, subverting their neighbours before annexing and exterminating them. By N.E.M.O.'s calculations, they might just about finish before the universe runs out of energy. Apokolips haven't been on a conquest-spree for longer than humans have had the wheel. Darkseid is trying to learn more about the Anti-Life because universal mind control is more practical than conquering everything."

"So that's all it's about."

"That would be my guess. He's been able to negate Lanterns since the Green Lantern Corps' failed invasion. That's not new. But the sort of arcane technology Earth's developing is new. Maybe he wanted to see how they interact?"

"But why bother attacking your place? What do you have in there?"

"Some weapons they either couldn't or didn't try to take in one piece." I don't suppose I can scan..? No, that would have been too much. "Not sure about the interior. I've got-. I had a couple of purple healing rays here, but they don't seem all that worried about their people dying. I'm going to look inside."

"Do you need help?"

"Doesn't look like there's anyone still here." And we're in the Anti-Life zone. We don't have enough people who can resist on their own. "I'll handle it. Probably just a matter of recording the damage. I didn't keep anything unique here."

I release Lantern Thornton and send him forwards, flying in through the gaping wound in my breakfast room.

"It's clear."

I follow him in. Am I even going to rebuild this? Yes, yes of course I am, but getting one of my…

Yes, first world problem, but I doubt that Jade's flat is in one piece either.

"Damage to the interior is precise, targeted at defence systems. Some blood on the floor, and the… Pattern of dust and clothes suggests to me that wounded Justifiers were vitality drained. Estimate… Thirty minimum killed in the initial part of the attack."

The outer defences escalate to human-lethal, but they start at 'stun'. Or… It's possible that they interact with the Anti-Life in a way that causes more damage. There aren't all that many long-term Anti-Life exposure cases off Apokolips itself. We're probably going to be a gold mine for researchers.

"Still clear. The place is empty."

I continue on, maintaining my alert just in case. Living area looks like someone threw an explosive into it. Orange light spills out from my left ring and begins reassembling the settee, though if I'm going to have to redecorate I should probably run it past Jade first. Dismissing my own efforts, I float into the working areas.

"Workshop and storage room were ignored as far as I can tell. The defence systems are destroyed and there are more remains, but it doesn't look like they took anything or destroyed anything that wasn't directly in their way."

"What sort of things did they ignore?"

"Space-age tools. A couple of infantry weapon prototypes. Useful things that normal supervillains would loot. Not what Mannheim wanted, so they didn't even look at it."

Next is medical. I float over the molten remains of the door.

Darn it.

"One of the purple rays is gone. Parts of the computer have been carefully removed and taken. Three cloning tanks and my three backup bodies have also been removed."

"Your three-? Oh, because you can move yourself.. into one if you die."

"I'm not sure if I can do it on a thaumically active world, but that's the idea."

Though obviously I can't risk it now.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
00:06 GMT +2

"Did they just..? I don't know, destroy them? If they're going to try and kill you, they wouldn't want you coming back."

"They took all the equipment required to keep them in suspended animation."

"Are you.. saying, they're alive?"

"Living tissue. There's no activity in their brains. They're really no physically different to how I'd be if I died and was immediately frozen. Only with less of an arcane presence."

"You're sure they can't just… I don't know, wake them up?"

"Depending on what technology they've got access to, probably. The machines I had them plugged into weren't designed to do anything like that." I check, and-. Yes, they removed the rune-inscribed plates that were supposed to ease my entry into them. "There's a resurrection protocol programmed into the system, but that's only supposed to trigger if it detects me in them."

"What would happen if someone triggered it when you weren't… Ah, 'in there'?"

"It would be like taking a brain dead coma patient off life support. They'd lie there, and eventually die."

"So they can't just… Wake up as you."

"No, Alan, that would be slavery and murder."

"Alright, but you understand how it sounds, don't you?"

"Would it help if you thought of them as cloned organs for transplant?"

"No, not really. Back in the fifties, I ran into some space pirates who said the same thing about some people they abducted."

"Could those people talk? Did they have actively functioning brains?"

"Yeah, they did."

"Mine don't. And can't, without the sort of work that you'd need to do in order to make a body fresh from the cemetery get up and walk around again."

"Okay, that's… That makes me feel a little better about the whole thing. Is that common, out in space?"

"Clone-doning does happen in some places, but it's exactly the sort of lazy-evil that I despise. If you have the technology to clone an adult, then you have the technology to clone individual organs and keep them alive. The only place I know of where it was common was Krypton, but they didn't allow the clones to develop mentally-. Meaning they were brain dead not that they were children."

"I don't remember Superman talking about it."

"They stopped a long time ago. After a major war. The trigger was a really messed up case where a woman called Nyra Vor-Z tried to marry her son to a clone of herself and he murdered them both and then tried to kill himself… Krypton abandoned cloning but decided that memory-dubbing was still fine. I'd have gone the other way…"

"So what can they do with them?"

"I'm not sure. There are some magic rituals that require parts of a person's body, but they barely count, thaumically. I don't taste any better than most people, so I doubt that it's for consumption."

Alan makes an awkward-sounding cough-laugh.

"That's a little dark."

"Who's growing crops right now? Rearing animals? Who's transporting them to cities that don't produce any of their own food? Every society is only three meals away from chaos. And I'd have to destroy them now, anyway."

Ah, who am I kidding?

"I mean, obviously Mannheim's going to animate them and make me fight them in such a way that he gains whichever of us wins, but I've got no idea what the mechanism he's going to use is and since I don't know where they are there isn't much I can do about it." I sigh, calling Lantern Thornton back to my ring. "Alright, there's nothing else for me to do here. Any new orders?"

"Just a moment." … "Batman wants you to try talking to Euanthe or Poison Ivy. If one of them gets infected by the Anti-Life, we're in… A lot more trouble than we are already."

I fly out of the wreck of my home and turn west, accelerating across the scrubland on the edge of Adrianna's regreened area.

"I can check on them, but I don't really have any way to keep them Anti-Life free. Unless we have something?"

"Mist thinks he might be able to put something together, but we need to know it's safe first. He's going to have to work it out as he goes."

"Which he can't do if every bit of plant matter in his body is trying to kill him. Has Batman said anything about that thing in Hub City?"

"He thinks there's more than one, probably hidden all around the world. We're going to need to hit all of them. I… I think you made the right decision."

"I expected. I'm not sure."

"It's like you said, about virtue ethics. You don't act virtuously because that's guaranteed to give you the outcome you want. You act virtuously because it usually does. Because it generally does. Yeah, if that was the only place like it that Mannheim had, you might have fixed the whole thing by taking a shot. Do you think someone who pulled off something like this would just have one site?"

"Possible, but unlikely."

"Right, so you'd have killed them for no good. But if they're alive and we can free them, we could… I don't know, build something like the machine they were plugged into so we can… Reverse the Anti-Life, or shield people and places from it. I… I do see the usefulness of being able to kill people without hesitating. I don't like it, but I… I do understand. But I'm glad you didn't. And-. And don't say 'we'll find out if I was right later', because that's not how it works."

"Yeah. Thanks, Alan. Okay, coming up on the coast now. I'll get back in touch if anything significant happens."

"Blue Lantern out."

31st December 2012
19:09 GMT -3

And there's Rio de Janeiro, not looking much worse than normal. Interesting fact that with the money and drugs more or less gone, large criminal gangs are more or less a thing of the past. Plenty of small gangs, and I can hear gunfire from here, but the Accala have almost completely cut off drug production in South America. And the reduced size of the government gives far less opportunity for corruption.

"Orange Lantern to Accalacan. Literally anyone, please come in."

Scans of the jungle are confused, as per normal. The Accala had nothing to do with the Alliance of the Just, due to not needing external help in policing themselves and having a barely measurable crime rate. Also, a healthy dislike of foreigners and no infrastructure. Point is, I'm not expecting any Justifiers out here-.

"Lantern. What the Hell is happening to us?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:12 GMT -3

The Accala in… Ah, this village, are subdued, but it looks like they're still functional. Just the occasional hesitation or shudder to indicate what they're going through. Huh. Maybe I was wrong about the people in North Africa not being so badly affected because they're used to it. Maybe a more simple way of life and good social networks just makes people better able to resist the Anti-Life than the complex and socially isolated lives of city-dwellers? Don't know. A few people look up as I fly overhead, but for the most part they just focus on whatever they were doing before.

Hugo himself is sitting cross-legged on the top of a ancient flat-topped pyramid. Tourism has become a lot more difficult since the Accala and Euanthe destroyed the interior's road networks. A few brave souls still make the journey, but otherwise they're mostly used as meeting points. The Accala aren't Aztecs after all, and their culture has diverged quite a lot from the Mayans. He's just sort of staring out into space, and I don't think he's aware that I'm here.

"Mister Danner?"

He blinks, rousing himself from his stupor.

"Anti-Life. That's what this is?"

"Yes. May I ask what you're feeling?"

"Desolation and despair. It's as if I never left prison, never saw that the Accala survived, never found a new purpose. Does it go away?"

"Uh, it's being broadcast and we're working on stopping that."

"I mean, does it stop affecting a person?"

"Probably, but it requires a degree of profound spiritual awakening that is highly unusual. I'm not affected at all by the broadcast and Lantern Gardner can easily ignore it. Everyone else gets what you get; Superman, Batman… The only other way it wears off is if you internalise it and accept it. But don't do that."

"I wasn't planning to. Once was enough. Is there anything we can do to help the Justice League?"

I create a binder with a summary of everything we've learned and pass it over.

"I don't know how good your communication links are, and I think that the person behind this is using the Green as a transmission medium, but if you can relay this to the whole of Accalacan that would let everyone know what's going on."

"The Green? That explains-. You're here to check on Isley and Euanthe, aren't you?"

"Something wrong?"

"Our tribe's druids said something about her wanting us to stay away from Brasília. I sent some runners, and it looks like they've fortified the place. They didn't want to get too close, because when a goddess tells you to keep away it's a good idea to keep away, but from what I've heard you're not the type to listen."

"Doing things sensible people wouldn't is what being a superhero's all about. Did she say anything other than 'stay away'?"

"The druids aren't saying anything coherent. I thought they were just getting a stronger version of whatever's affecting everyone, but there could be more to it."

"I assume that Accala druids are Dannered-up too?"

"Yes."

"Keep an eye on them. When a person accepts the Anti-Life, they fall under the control of the person causing this."

He nods. "I'll give the orders."

"Doctor Mist thinks that he might be able to use the Green to push the Anti-Life out. We can't promise anything, but do we have your permission to try?"

"God, yes."

I nod, floating upwards. "I'll get back to you when I know what's happening in Brasília."

I turn north and accelerate, shooting over the revitalised greenery towards the former capital. Scans show… Something like the Sleeping Beauty's castle, thorns everywhere. And not just thorns. I recognise those hairs. Passive defences might be manageable with patience but that doesn't mean that they can't kill you. Or make you wish they could. Interesting that she hasn't put a dome over the city, but I suppose that she doesn't want to cut off the sunlight.

Or perhaps it's meant to serve as a lure.

There is an exterior wall, a giant wall of brambles solid enough to stop someone walking through it but not solid enough to climb. And… Something about it…

I hold up a rune stone, which glows as it nears the wood.

Active magic. A step up from what Dr. Isley could use last time I visited her. Depending on how advanced it is, those things could be projecting an aura of conceptual agony and poison for about a metre or so. And constant exposure will overwhelm my defences.

If I fly over and they've got any defences on automatic, I could get in serious trouble. They don't have a radio or any other kind of modern communications infrastructure. How do I signal that I'm friendly?

I release Lantern Thornton from my ring and send him forward over the wall. He narrowly makes it over the top before vines shoot out and pierce him, sending him back to my ring. I release him again and send him higher. A mile up he easily passes over the wall before drifting down into the spike-infested former street-.

And he's back in the ring, without seeing what destroyed him.

Alright, that's not working. The only alternative involves doing something that Euanthe specifically asked me not to do, but she should recognise that I'm the one doing it.

I point my hands at the wall and focus on the mandala which Lantern Medphyll uses for manipulating plant life. True to Euanthe's request I haven't practised with this at all, so there's little chance that it will be less annoying to her than last time.

Ah well.

I form a connection to the Green via local plant life, and add a tiny amount of unformatted orange light in the direction of growth, which should be uncontroversial, r-?

Thorn vines erupt towards me, spines spinning around each other like a rock crusher! I fly backwards, away from-. Towards the other trees shit disintegrate and fly up and deploy physical shields!

The trees outside the barrier died in response to my energy pulse, but the wall of vines didn't and it's still coming-.

Thorn darts slam into my metal shield. It's not an exotic material but it should be tough enough to deal with anything a plant can throw and it's not. Hardened… Spines? Have bent the metal with every impact, tearing through the metal in several places. I'm honestly impressed, though I'd rather it wasn't shooting at me.

Okay, mandala, focus on the spine, see if I can trigger-.

That's not a spine-.

Vines lash out as I back up but they're already around me, grabbing onto my armour and pulling me towards the seed! Disintegrate, full reverse, cut the vines off-.

Ah…

This is… New.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:17 GMT -3

For a confused moment I think it's dragged me down into the city, but what I initially thought were plant-covered ruined tower blocks are… Actually rotting trees, towering over the streets even as the inside of their trunks rot and great fronds of fungus sprout from their sides. Vines wrap around them and hang between them, but they don't look all that healthy either. Their leaves have holes in them and the vines themselves seem shrivelled and woody. The ground is hard and dry earth, dead roots poking through here and there to break up the surface.

I… Think I'm in the Green. Looks like a mess.

"Hello?"

Metal shield and its associated seeds -interesting choice of projectile- didn't come through with me. I've still got my armour and rings, so I generate construct armour, and…

A branch falls from high above, hitting the ground in front of me and exploding into dry rot.

Oh, this isn't good.

I'm not going to try manipulating the Green from inside the Green, but if I get a little height I might be able to spot Euanthe or Isley. If they're here.

Well, someone fired those seed pods at me, and low-lethality isn't the way Apokolips does things. So, presumably, someone wants me here. And if there are Apokoliptians here, somehow, then fighting them is part of my job so them finding me just saves me time.

"Orange Lantern T-. Illustres here!"

I look over at the closest dying tree as I float upwards. It's alive but barely, and in parts. But while this is more the idea of a tree than an actual tree, I should be able to patch it up. I look around to see if there's any obvious point of interest but it really just looks like more of the same. Dingy, too, as the plant's idea of the sun is obscured by the plant's idea of rain clouds.

Okay, time to fix the plant. Fixing the inner wood is pretty simple, it's the outer bark that's the complex part. And I've got no idea what these… Spiritual reflections of trees are supposed to look like outside of their general structure. Should I make… Side branches? Leaves? Are they trying to mimic the structure of buildings, or is this a model of a successful tree, choking out all rivals in a show of strength of the sort every plant wishes it could replicate?

Let's just fix the obvious stuff and hope that-

"No."

-it-.

A wave of dark specks pass over me, each one settling into a self-created divot on my construct armour and… Spreading out, polluting and draining it. I part the armour away from the direction of the attack, flying back and thrusting the construct away before dismissing it and creating a replacement.

Where did that-?

Another cloud descends from above, and it-. Moves like dust, moving with impetus-.

Construct fan, blow it back the way it came. The dust is somewhat affected, but where it touches either the vines or the tree it starts eating at them. Okay, not what I wanted. Wide-beam maser construct, wait for-. There, movement near the top of the tree. I fire the maser, which-. Does nothing because the Green has no concept of microwave radiation. Switch to chemical flame thrower and back up back up, transmute fuel, aim and fire!

My fuel spurts out, the dust cloud igniting a moment later, and-. And that was highly flammable! I fly back and then up, trying to spot whatever it was that I saw a moment ago. Just more manky-looking wood, but-.

"Rot."

Warning: spell eater temperature increasing.

And I see it. Looks a little like the fungus person I saw on Alstair, only partially submerged in rotten wood.

"Oi! You!"

"Wither and die, feed-."

I lash out with an orange beam. I mostly want to grab… It? And try interrogating it, rather than just kill it. If that's even possible here. But my target ducks back into the wood and disappears before the beam can reach it.

Okay, if that's how you want to play it.

I trace the outline of the tree it's attached to and insert filaments into the trunk-.

A new.. spore cloud, bursts from one of the fungal growths. That simplifies matters. I open up with my flame thrower again, allowing the relatively normal burst of heat to waft over my construct armour. Then I send construct cables into the frond and tear it free, setting my ring to work on fixing the tree beneath.

Good. Now, if I guess right and the fungoid can't move through healthy wood, it should-.

Another cloud, another burst of flame to incinerate it. If I was a druid myself I'd consider some sort of burn off ritual to renew the area, but since I'm not I'm going to have to do it a little slower. Can't.. see the fungoid, but I don't need to see to repair the tree.

"Decay from within."

Warning: spell eater temperature increasing.

Sound coming from there, keep up the flame throwing and send cables to make repairs to the wood here and here.

And then-.

"Die-"

The flames billow and something lands on me as I try to evade. I'm seeing damp rotting wood and fungal growths in a humanoid shape, black-glowing talons which-

"-and feed me!"

Pull the cables back and bind its arms!

-is disturbing, but perfectly-.

The weakened wood of the arms falls apart, releasing a new wave of spores at point blank-

Backupbackupbackup!

-range!

Abandon construct armour again, cables constrict further and assimilate, because you're a rot creature and you're trying to kill everything.

"Decay from without!"

Connection lost.

Then increase the temperature on the flame thrower.

Compliance.

"GYAAAAAGH!"

Wood crackles and burns, flames clearly visible under the exterior wooden shell as damp rot loses moisture!

"Constructs don't burn. Your choice. Assimilate."

No resistance detected. Identity theft complete. Nameless fungoid of the rot, you belong to the Orange Lantern Corps.

And…

And the flames die down, and I see the rest of them.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:21 GMT -3

Dozens of lumpy fungoid faces staring at me from their perches in the rotten boughs of the Green. I mark their locations as I slowly gain height. There doesn't seem to be a 'roof' to this place, but at a certain point there are fewer tree-representations trying to reach for it.

I create a giant construct of myself.

"Yeah?! You want some too?! This is the Green!"

I continue making repairs to this tree while I still have their attention.

"And you're invaders! Leave, or be cast out!"

Most vanish back inside their trees, with a few staying on lookout duty. The trees they're in don't seem to be getting… Notably worse, so I assume that they're building something to fight me. Still not seeing Euanthe or Isley, but the tree I'm working on is almost back in a functional state. In fact, that's the last of the rotten sections gone and all the bark is connected up.

But it still feels… Incomplete.

I wince as I form the mandala. Okay, what could I have been doing wrong? Everyone I know who does this is a weird plant person either naturally or by adoption. I try to command plant life. Does that sound like something that Euanthe would do? No. Euanthe considers herself to be part of the plant continuum. She nudges and encourages, she doesn't just restructure piece by piece as she will.

The body is earth, the blood is magma. Think like a tree-. No, feel like a tree.

Not blood. Desires. The world is the soil where my roots grow and feed. Those concepts that I need to form the shape of myself flow up my skin and to the parts of me that need them. I reach out, taking what I need to grow.

I want to be… A tree.

Ah. I think that's working.

I mean, I've got no idea how to do anything complicated, manipulating it this indirectly. But for just getting the whole thing started up again, that appears to be doing it. I can see the tree looking more… Alive, than it did before. Parts that I didn't know what to do with are sprouting, small branches growing and leaf buds appearing.

One down, an entire plane to go.

"Tree, have you got any idea where Euanthe is?"

The tree says nothing.

"Fine. Fungoid, your name is now 'Gary'. Confirm directive."

"I confirm."

"What's going on, Gary?"

"We are led to a land of food which enriches the soul, nourishing us."

"This food would be… These living spiritual representations of plants?"

"They were alive. We struggle to eat the living wood. But something made them smell of death, taste of death. Taste of food."

I remember a film reviewer once saying that when the squids arose from the sea to dominate the Earth, Hellboy would serve as evidence of our casual anti-squid racism. I don't want to be racist against fungi. I'm sure that they serve a very useful ecological niche, and the fact that they're usually found on dying trees isn't proof that they made them die, any more than finding maggots in rotting flesh is proof that they made it rot.

But still.

"What has to happen for your kind to leave?"

"We will leave when there is nothing to eat."

"The place you were before this. What was it like?"

"Waiting, as a spore waits to germinate. Sometimes we would hear food and we would extrude one of us to consume it. But all there are as we are."

Ah, it's the old 'rabbits in Australia' problem. In a creature's own ecosystem there are all sorts of other creatures that live in balance with it, eating it or otherwise using it. Take it out of that, and it reproduces uncontrollably.

"How mentally complex are you?"

"What?"

Right. It's never been anything else; how would it know how to compare itself to anything else? It's an elemental creature, not a normal person who happens to be fungus-based. Even if it can engage in conversation, that doesn't mean that it can be persuaded to act out of its element any more than Euanthe can.

"Am I correct in assuming that you're some sort of fungus elemental?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it was that made this place feel edible?"

"No."

"What were those decay-related abilities you used on me?"

"An extension of my nature. I am decay to things that are not like me."

"You can induce decay, and not just feed on it."

"It is tiring. But I am well-fed." For the first time it forms an expression. I think it's confused. "I was well-fed."

"Are there intelligent beings here who are not like you?"

"Yes."

"The tree I healed. Does it feel tasty to you?"

"Not… Now. But if I was not like this…"

Its structure changes, odd fronds projecting from its head and neck and waving in the air.

"Yes."

Which means that I can't leave it to the mercy of the others… Wait.

"Using your abilities on things that aren't rotting uses your strength. Whatever it is that made this place feel edible didn't actually make it edible. You had to use your powers to fully rot these trees, didn't you?" It nods as it pulls its fronds back in. "So how come you aren't all starving to death here?"

"There is more to eat."

Then… They have to be a symptom. Or possible a distraction. Magic loci resist being changed; you can't just take one and then add its strength to your own without losing something. Did something… Magnify their ability to rot things? And if so, where is the connection to this realm?

I want to defend something I've built, but I don't think that's the correct thing to do here. I need to find something more significant to work on.

"Take me to where you came in."

"Yes, Master."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:26 GMT -3

I fire another wave of flames down, the spore cloud that had been rising to meet us crackling and burning. No, not a cloud; it's more like a mist, diffuse and all-enveloping. The spacing is enough that I can't just burn the whole thing with a single gout of fire, though it does clear out the area around me. Which suggests that it's not aimed at me.

"Gary, you attacked me with spore clouds. This isn't an attack. What is it?"

"Home."

"Your home is filled with spores all of the time. You consider that normal."

"Yes, but that is not all. This will make this place part of home. When we are everywhere and everything."

Ah.

"Can you manipulate the spores?"

"I can make more."

"But can you control them?"

"No." Again, he… It? Makes a confused expression. "Can you control your seeds?"

"Yes, but it's not a common ability." And Jade finds it unsettling. "Are the others of your kind doing this deliberately, or is it automatic?"

"This..?" It floats down and waves its left arm through the miasma. Interestingly, they don't try settling on it or leaching its power. "No. This is simply a product of us being here."

"Can you destroy them?"

"Yes. It isn't hard. But not more easily than you can with fire."

"Can you recall them-" It gurns at me. I.. suppose I can see where it's coming from. "-or shut down the things producing them?"

"I could go lower and tear them out of the food. That would stop them. But they would become more faster than I could do it."

I peer down through the spore mist and spot the places where the growth is just beginning. Purging fire is looking more and more like the best option.

"Fine. Carry on."

He doesn't bother coming back up, flying through the upper part of the miasma in the direction of what I hope to be the origin point. The land below is looking more like a swamp rather than a forest of rotting redwoods, though I don't know if that's just because the fungus has been working here longer or because this is a different region of the Green.

Ring, are we..? Getting anything useful?

Lack of baselines makes accurate analysis difficult. Fungoid elementals have stunted emotional range by human standards. Fungoid elementals have stunted emotional range by observed dryad standards.

More emotionally simple than Euanthe.

Yes.

Naturally, or is that the Anti-Life?

Unknown. Lack of baselines-.

Yes-. Yes. "Gary, what do you want-" I let out another blast of fire to clear my way. "-out of life?"

"Nothing. I exist in continuity with my environment and nature."

"But you can talk."

"I was told that elementals emerge from the world's magic as a result of human expectations. I mimic humanity. I do not possess it. I am a fungus that can talk, not a human with fungus magic."

"Do you know the name 'Mannheim'?"

"I do now."

"Did you know it before now?"

"No. Maybe. I don't register human names. Just whether they smell like food or not."

"How about 'Darkseid' or 'Anti-Life'?"

"No."

"'No' as in 'definitely not', or 'no' as in ' I didn't register it'."

"Darkseid is just a name. Anti-Life, that has meaning. If someone had told me that something was Anti-Life, I would remember it. We near it."

I frown. "Anti-Life?"

"Home."

Then it's time to put a little more effort in. A huge fuel tank construct forms behind me, orange light being transmuted directly into fuel. Twelve fuel hoses project down, pilot lights burning faintly as I plot a firing solution. And… Burn.

WOOOOSH!

"Faster, please."

It accelerates down through the murk… Definitely reduced levels of illumination down here. Other fungoids… Larger ones, pull their way out of the mire below and adopt a hostile posture… For a few seconds before my hoses reach them and render them a non-issue. The ground they were hiding in proves to be a little more resilient to my attentions, the moisture oozing back from underground.

Don't worry about that. Flames to the sides and above, and follow Gary.

And… Huh. Some of the plants lying close to the ground aren't-. Don't appear to be dead. Not much: a few leaves and small sprouts. I move the flames to avoid burning them, using constructs to shield those that are too close to major piles of rot to be avoided. No coherent response from the fungoids, but I suppose… Fungi aren't exactly known for being proactive, and it's not as if I'm making a real difference to their numbers.

"We are near."

"Alright, what does-?"

And there's a huge tree, standing a good two hundred metres tall and.. sort of.. bent over. There's a faint green glow around it which appears to be keeping the spores at bay… Mostly. I see a small conk growing near the base, only for some sort of Venus flytrap mouth to chomp into it and tear it off. The wood beneath repairs itself a moment later. Further on, a part of the tree appears to be growing into the ground, the green glow there more intense.

"It look like."

Around the tree I see rows of the same sort of brambles around Brasília. The fungoids are attempting to break through, but they appear poorly organised. Their rot-based powers appear to make a degree of headway, only for a surge of growth to make good the Green's losses and cut into them.

I fly upwards to try and get a better view. The shape of the tree is… Odd. It looks more like three or four trees are growing together, which would make sense if the growth were directed, but-.

Oh.

The giant wooden form of Doctor Pamela Isley slowly turns its head to look at me.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:30 GMT -3

I shift the flamethrowers into a defensive position, setting up a wall of fire around giant Doctor Isley.

"Doctor Isley, can I help?"

"… Hard… To concentrate…"

The voice isn't exactly coming from her throat. That part of her plant body looks too rigid, but various outer parts making up a… Cloak? Of smaller branches and leaves. They're branches and leaves that give the impression of forming a cloak rather than a literal leaf-cloak, but there's enough structure there to form some sort of sound-making organ.

"What do you need?"

"… Can't…"

Alright. Form the mandala, picture the vital processes in terms of desires and-

Cross my fingers.

-go.

There's a sort of… Exhalation. Or it could just be air moving in an uncontrolled way through her leaves. Ah, okay, can I project her desires into this system? Should be.. possible, I can't see them at the moment but I remember what she looked like last time I saw her and I doubt that she's undergone a fundamental restructuring… Just don't be too precise. Just tease the basics into the right general direction-.

Her head tilts back slightly, her eyes unfocused.

"Aaaaaah."

I'm not sure whether that's a good 'ah' or a bad 'ah', but she doesn't look like she's in pain, and the spores are still failing to find purchase-.

"Paul."

I float up into her line of sight. "Doctor Isley. Earth's under attack by the Anti-Life. I'm here to help you defend Accalacan. What's happening with the Green?"

"I…" She ponderously shakes her head. "I can't maintain the connection well enough to fix it-!"

I raise my hands. "Slow down. From the beginning. Unless something's super-urgent, then go to that."

"Creatures of Grey. The despair of the Green itself called them here, the idea of constant failure and die-off, acid rain and deforestation."

"It's that easy?"

"The emotion was always there, ever since the first woodsman swung the first axe. But with this… Anti-life reverberating through the Green, it's overwhelming."

"Why are you a tree?"

"I'm not. I needed a plant form to come here. My meat body is still in Brasília. Euanthe is helping me."

"But I'm.. here. There was a seed-."

"I'm a human who can use Green magic. You're-. Whatever you are." She looks down towards where her 'hands' are clamped together. "I'm holding their entry point closed because I'm hoping there's some way to destroy the ones that are already here. I'm not strong enough to fix this."

"Alright, all I need to do is shut down the linking point? I should be able to do that. If not, the League's got a few wizards outside of the Anti-Life effect area. We can-."

"There's barely any Green left. We don't have time for the League's wizards to work it out from first principles!"

"Then let me-."

"If I let go, the Green starts merging with the Grey. More than it is right now."

"And that kills all plant life on Earth?"

"Everywhere not protected by a.. goddess, or something. Look, I've got a solution. It's not-. I'm not happy about it, but the world's dying and I can.. do this."

"Do what?"

"Swamp Thing used to be a man named Doctor Alexander Holland. I know you know how to recreate the bio-restorative formula that made him transform. If you-."

"No he didn't."

"What?"

"Alec Holland is dead. The Green created Swamp Thing's mind based on the state of Doctor Holland's mind when he died. It's a copy, not the original. That's why he's so mentally slow."

"So you do know how it works."

"I know how it worked. I don't know how to repeat it reliably. I also know that the Green has a strict 'one champion at a time' policy. So let's leave that until after we've tried other things."

"How does it work?"

"You burn to death."

"That's it?"

"It's probably a lot more complicated, but basically, yes. Burn to death surrounded by greenery, and if there's an opening then the Parliament of Trees might decide to create a Champion based on your template. But it isn't worth taking a chance on without absolute necessity and an assurance that they'll actually do it. Now: restoring the Green. If I burn the whole place, can it be restored?"

"Euanthe… She thinks so. That's why she remained outside: to maintain as much Green energy outside of this place as possible."

"Is that a 'yes'?"

"I don't know. We were desperate and just.. hoped we could make it work."

"I-."

Huh. The waves of fungoids have stopped attacking. I suppose that they're not mindless: when they saw no way to progress, there wasn't any reason for them to keep trying.

"If I burn the infestation out of a particular area, can you… Fortify it?"

"No, it's taking everything I have to keep this portal closed. I'm nothing like strong enough to do that as well. If you need to burn my actual body-"

"We're not there yet, Doctor."

Alright, scan the plants that started sprouting and… Make more. Connect them to the Green-.

"I see what you're trying to do, but that won't work. There's so… Little left that they-. It can't think."

"The Green isn't currently mentally complex enough to feel the Anti-Life."

"Even if you could repair the Green manually, the moment it was complex enough this would all start again."

"We've got a plan for that. We just need to clear out the fungoid infestation, then Doctor Mist can fortify the whole place. I just.. need…"

Huh. Looks like I've burned off most of the spores in the area. And their sources. That's good. I-.

"All Things Decay!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:33 GMT -3

"EEYAGH!"

The construct hoses of my flamethrowers sprout holes, fuel spraying in all directions before igniting in an uncontrolled wall of flame! I shut it down at once, sending the fuel into subspace as the tank construct similarly decays and fades.

And then I cough as my chest starts decaying in the same way.

"Buh-grugh."

Rep-repair that. And I'm guessing that the armour-. Yep, yep, repair and replace. In fact-.

By the power of seniphobia, I reject decay!

Owf, that's better! There's a extra layer to my environmental shield now as I channel my poor mental health into a useful output. For a moment I'm reminded of the clicker burrow-guards and really hope that Dox doesn't try inducing that sort of thing to see if the result is a net gain in performance.

Or that if he does, he does it in people who aren't him.

"Isley?"

She's… She doesn't look good. Bark's decaying in several places and her regeneration isn't able to keep up. Looks like she's concentrating on maintaining her hands and arms to ensure that the portal stays blocked, but if I remember the technique she's using correctly then she's feeling like she's got Ebola right now.

I strobe out solid beams of orange light, trying to hit or feel whatever just did that-.

"Gary, what was that?"

"All of us."

The concentration of spores is increasing, so I counter by spraying out small quantities of fuel and igniting it.

"Expand."

"We exist in continuity with our nature and one another. We are one, we are all."

Ah… Parse that…

"You're part of a gestalt. Not just an energy, there's a higher order mind there."

"There can be."

I see… Not a movement in the spore cloud, but a movement of it. As if some sort of wind that I can't feel had blown through it.

"Does it have a name?"

"No."

Tracking wind… Movement? Density of cloud-.

My constructs abrade and decay into nothing.

"All Is Rot!"

Shieldsallaroundlinkedtomytattoos!

Conks made of black light appear on my shields, the energy-.

Dump, dump the construct, I do not want that inside me.

Compliance.

The construct starts to fail, only for black stands mimicking its outline to remain in place-. Railgun, crumbler, shoot them out!

The crumbler detonates early as the spore cloud eats through-.

This is the natural outcome of building anything: it falls apart and is picked over by people who could never imagine its glory. The universe is inhabited by children smashing stained glass windows because they love to hear the sound of shattering-.

Through it!

Plasmaplasmashoot a hole through and then crumbler again!

Haah. Haah.

Okay, I…

That was disturbing.

"Isley, I'm going to try and draw it away."

The leaves and other fripperies are gone, the bark looks like it falling off completely would be a mercy and I can see parts of the interior wood decaying.

"Aah-hhhngrgh."

"Hang in there."

I generate a large construct replica of myself, which starts falling apart almost immediately. I try releasing fuel and setting fire to the outer edge, and that… Works a little.

"Over here!"

And fly up and away from the things I can't see and that I'm not sure I can hurt. Okay, physical attacks are just getting destroyed by the spores and there's nothing behind them to hit anyway. I didn't think to ask Queen Hyathis how to use magic to affect fungoids, which is something I should… Fix. That leaves assimilation, but I don't really see anything to assimilate.

I could… Try assimilating it via the spore clouds? I should be able to eat them faster than they eat-

A piece of rotting wood hits the back of my armour. It bounces off and then… Moves around me and continues on its way.

-me.

And another and another until I'm forced to put a burning shield in the way as a hail of rotting wood slams into me! It's not-. I don't think it's being thrown as a projectile, and the burning-. I can see where they're going through the murk as the broken pieces continue on their way. I can see-.

See.

See the outline of a six-eyed cancerous head, and the hulking mass of a body whose shape I can't fully make out. Then the fires are quashed and I can't see it any longer and that's not reassuring.

"Hello, giant rot creature. I'm the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Can we talk about this?"

"You will be consumed. All Exists To Feed Us."

"That's not-."

A hurricane of spores roars past and around me! I try dumping extra fuel out but it's even feeding on the fire! Giant construct me is gone and I'm frantically replacing the shield and burnable fuel as the spores decay through them!

"And what then?!"

"There is nothing else."

That.. sounds familia-.

Warning: low power. Twenty percent remaining.

Marvellous.

"Okay, but did you feel like that-"

"Feed the Grey."

"-yesterday?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:35 GMT -3

Ah.

So that's what it feels like to have fungus growing out of you.

And-and not… Tech-technically decay-.

Instinctively I reach up with my left hand to remove whatever's obscuring the vision on my left side, only to remember that I'm wearing power armour and-.

Utter rejection.

And there are better ways to get fungus out of your eye socket than pulling it out manually.

"E-huhg."

And out of your face.

Warning: low power. Fifteen percent remaining.

And rings. Assimilate!

"You would feed upon the Gray?"

"It's the circle of life! You feed on rotting wood and animals and other animals feed on you! It doesn't matter to you as long as there are fungi left, because fungi as a class keep existing! You need wood to eat and if you kill all the plants here then that will immediately stop being the case!"

"We must feed!"

"But do you need to eat everything right now?!"

"It may be gone."

"It's been here for billions of years. Why would it go now?"

"It may be gone."

"What is killing the Green right now?" Through the burning spores and smoke I can dimly see… Something. An outline, the occasional hard edge. Parts of it are moving, and I think it's getting closer but given its size I think my sense of scale is being thrown off. "Because it looks like it's you. You're trying to permanently kill the thing the Grey needs to feed off. The Green doesn't care about you eating the occasional plant that was dying anyway, but this will doom you both! And I know-"

"We are doomed anyway. We must fight for every moment."

"-that you feel like it's all inevitable anyway, but that's the result of a spell!"

"No, we are too vast, too old-."

"Everything's being affected. The fungoid told me that he thought that the trees here are edible because of some sort of magic. You feel that too, right?"

"It was different, but that does not matter."

"No! It matters! You've been entranced!"

"Impossible."

"Did you feel like this yesterday?"

"Yesterday..?"

"Or the day before, or the day before?"

"No…"

"What changed, then? The lesser fungoids might just be acting on instinct, but you're more complex than that. Aren't you?"

"It feels like you're lying to protect this growth."

"'This is the natural outcome of building anything: it falls apart and is picked over by people who could never imagine its glory.' That's what you're thinking, isn't it? That's what I felt when my power touched yours."

"It is. Among other things."

"You feel it so deeply that you can't even imagine building anything anymore. You can't see any point. All that's left is grabgrabgrab, to take everything you can in whatever time you have."

"Yes."

"It's lying to you. The Anti-Life is a cynical, miserablist lie. My allies and I are fighting to get it removed. Do you want that?"

"You would try to control me?"

"I would try to remove the control that's already there! Because it's not just you, but you being affected affects everything else. Do you like feeling like this?"

"No."

"Do you want to go back to feeling like you did yesterday?"

"I am not sure that there was a yesterday."

"That's part of what it does. Look, if you back off-." There's a movement in the murk. "For a moment, for a moment! I can help you remember how things are supposed to be, supposed to feel."

"I saw what you did to Gary."

Ah.

"Not like that. With you-. The whole of you, that would make things worse. Earth needs the Grey to exist, and the Grey needs the Earth to exist. Apokolips doesn't, and they're the ones who are making you feel like this."

It doesn't respond immediately, and in the quiet I can hear… Weakened wood breaking, bursting as rotten fibres give up the ghost.

"I'm sorry to have to rush you, but the Green is on the verge of death."

"What do I need to do?"

That sounded different. Not in tone, in the… Presence, behind it.

"Do you remember the area that you and yours used to occupy?"

"Yes."

"Can you call all of your kind who are here, all the fungoids, all the spores, everything, through the opening and return there?"

"Yes."

"Without doing more damage to the Green?"

"… Yes."

"I'm just writing off the things you've already destroyed. If a plant's dead then it's dead."

"Yes. And then?"

"I'll come through with you and try and fix it. If I can't, I'll call in other people better equipped than me. Is that acceptable?"

Spores fall from the air, and I get a oh my that is a big fellow!

"Yes."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:48 GMT -3

There's not a.. lot left.

The fungoids walked out. Some in their basic forms, others taking the conks and rotten wood of their new homes with them. What's left is… Good soil and sunlight, a little moss, a few tiny sprouting plants and the one tree I stuck back together.

"What's the knock-on effect of this likely to be?"

Giant Wooden Doctor Isley shakes her head as she pointedly avoids looking away from the leaving column of fungusfolk.

"I don't know enough about thaumaturgy to tell. A huge focus of Green magic just got destroyed. Even if Euanthe can manage to… Partially restore it, the bonds between the world's plants and this place just got… Totalled. Plants will grow more slowly -if.. they grow at all- and fruit yields will be way down."

"I'm worried that no one will be farming at all."

"That might have been the point. If the Green wasn't… If it was healthy, we could help out. Do what Swamp Thing did to Gotham. Or Euanthe could talk to the other dryads into visiting places and helping out. Now, we can't do that." She shudders a little. "If they could even manage to work through the Anti-Life."

"What did it feel like to you?"

"You mean, 'what does it feel like to me'."

"Oh."

"It's like I'm still Poison Ivy, but I'm not crazy enough to just go with it."

I float closer, and lay my right gauntlet on the middle phalanges of her right index finger.

"Then you're not Poison Ivy, because that was her defining trait. You've managed the Brazil-Accalacan situation really well, you and Euanthe, and what you're feeling now that you weren't yesterday is the result of the Anti-Life."

She nods, her left hand coming around to put the tip of her left index finger on top of my right hand.

"Thanks."

"So I've been wondering: are you and Euanthe romantically involved?"

Her hands are withdrawn.

"Uh-aah, what?"

"Because it would be something to look forward to? Because that would mean that you're a prospective violet power ring user? Because it would be a sign of your psychological normalisation?"

"I don't think-. I haven't really… Thought about her that way. I don't think she thinks about humans that way."

"She's open to the idea."

She looks at me askance. "Should you be using your power like that? Isn't that unethical?"

"I didn't use my power. She came onto me. In a way that suggested that she didn't exactly get human interactions but thought it might be something I'd enjoy."

"And… Did..?"

"No. But you've spent a lot more time with her than I have, and you're more on her wavelength."

The last of the fungoids tramp through the pale grey hole in space.

"If you think she needs advice on the meatspace aspect, I'm happy to wingman for you."

"So.. I'll have something to not go crazy for."

"Yes indeed. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to pacify the fungoids and you-."

"I need to rebuild the Green with Euanthe. I.. guess that works for a date?"

"Given how long you've been living together, I'd say that you should be a bit direct about things. If that's what you want. Excuse me."

I fly through the portal, and…

Huh.

It's a bit like a snowstorm. Or some sort of duststorm or smog. Light-coloured… Fog? Mist, or… Dust? Is everywhere, but unlike back in the ruins of the Green there's strong light coming from… Somewhere. Yes, diffuse snow is what it reminds me of. The fungoids I was following have… More or less vanished. I can see a few as they walk away but none of them are paying me any attention.

What little of the of the landscape I can see appears to be made of giant conks and fruiting bodies. Colours… Are accurate, when I'm close enough that whatever is filling the air doesn't obscure it. I'm not going to prod things, not when things are tense and not with power armour. I'm not… Sure what they're growing on. There's a definite floor here, but unlike in the Green where it was soft earth I'm… Not really sure what it's made of.

Okay, may as well get started. I unfocus my mind slightly… Ah, yes, there it is. The pale of the Anti-Life, cast over an otherwise functioning area of the Earth's thaumosphere. It's not the same as… Erebos, and it's definitely not the same as the attitude of Melinoë and family. They accept that things naturally end where I cling to them and demand that they last forever. Anti-Life is magical nihilism; rushing towards annihilation and nothingness.

I don't know how fungus thinks, but I can't immediately come up with a reason why it would be all that different from plants. Other than the fact that they make less use of animals as a vector.

"Gary, do any of you have friends?"

"Some."

"Who?"

"Odd wizards and druids. Sometimes we go into the world and meet people. It's confusing."

"But there aren't any fungus dryads."

"No."

So the fungoids are at least a degree less human-like than Euanthe, who struggles to understand humans at the best of times and certainly doesn't value human stuff in the way that humans do.

On the other hand, I've touched the Ophidian's mind.

I draw away from myself and surround myself with the Grey. It feels like dying, but that's because they're part of the system that breaks human remains down. They're not agents of primal annihilation, not in their inner selves.

I think for a moment of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but honestly the underlying nature of the Grey is so… Simple, that I think that MRS GREN is more appropriate.

But it's not just the characteristics of life in themselves that will act as a fix, and I can feel the fungoid's habits of movement in the same thought as I feel a ring of fungal spore pods advancing across a lawn. Or the alien way fungi sense the world around them by dampness and something like a sense of smell. No, it's the idea that those things are sufficient. That acting in accordance with those impulses are satisfactory in themselves, that living is sufficient.

I feel the Anti-Life try to tie itself around particular impulses in opposition to my efforts, but it seems to have lost its 'in'.

"A life well-lived is its own reward."

Pulling back in to my own consciousness, it seems… The Anti-Life is still all around, but it's less tied to the spiritual energies of the Grey. It's influencing them less.

Good.

Now it's time to call in Dr. Balewa.

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st December 2012
19:59 GMT -3

"I did not realise that you were capable of such subtle manipulation."

Dr. Balewa walks through the Grey, hands shimmering faintly as he does his best to ward the plane against the influence of the Anti-Life. It turns out that it's currently impossible to block it, and the best he can do is limit its influence. At least until we can work out how to purge the Earth's thaumosphere completely.

"I just worked it out. But I don't think that I can get better than this."

"Could Lantern Gardner do the same thing?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I think that the mental process involved might be antithetical to the green light, but I could be wrong. I've never tried to work out what a strong-willing plant would be like. Or what would motivate one to become strong-willed."

"Adversity, I think."

"The fungoids seemed a bit too fatalistic for it to work for them. What have I missed?"

"We hev… A plan. It is not a plan which makes me… I do not like it. But it is all we hev."

"Okay? What don't you like about it?"

"The Anti-Life encourages people affected by it to behave according to certain patterns. Scott Free spoke to us of the Lowlies of Apokolips."

I nod.

"It seems that if a person acts as a New God, the Lowlies will instinctively treat that person as one. Even if they are not the source of the Anti-Life broadcast."

"Even if they're not a New God?"

"So it appears."

I can't help but smile. "So the League are going to act like New Gods. In order to stabilise their home cities."

"It will turn the Earth into a war zone, as those enslaved to Mannheim fight against the people ruling everywhere else. This… Pattern has already begun to emerge as strong-willed brutes dominate those around them." He shakes his head in frustration. "Because why not?"

"Because.. the things that usually stop people doing things like that are suppressed by the Anti-Life. Morals aren't important. Righteousness and piety are… Lies. Lies, before the unmeetable stare of Mannheim."

"Yes."

"Can they cope?"

"I don't know. I don't know." He shakes his head. "We think thet the robot will need some time to repair itself. Members of 'Task Force X' are being sent to hunt and destroy the helmets where they are stored and made. We can hold. If they are not reinforced from Apokolips, we can hold. And… I hev no better answer."

"I've still got a few hours left. Is there anything else I can do?"

"Betman wants you to gather information. To see what the rest of the world is like. There are… Only so many people who can risk taking part in this mission. And there are people whom we wish you to bring to a place of safety, and to relay messages."

"There aren't enough Justice League members… Even if you include the entire trainee team, there aren't enough to righteously dominate more than a tiny portion of Earth. Are people being nominated?"

He nods sadly. "There is a list of superhumans whom we think can do what is necessary. Not all will be protected… Outside what is offered by their new role."

"If that's the best you can come up with, then it's probably the best option that there is."

"It is a failure on my part."

"But think how much worse it would be-"

We step through the green portal in the air leading back into the Green, and Dr. Balewa closes it behind us once we're through.

"-if you hadn't joined the Justice League."

The area around the portal is a maze of thorns, thick and dangerous. They look like the wall outside of Brasília, but in an even more elemental place I'm going to assume that they're even less constrained by mundane matter.

We stop and wait for a moment, then the thorns shift aside to give us access to the rest of the Green.

It's… Better?

There's grass, and t-. Ah.

They didn't try rebuilding the Green from scratch. They shifted Brasília here. Yes, if they put all the Green energy they could into the city, then shifting in here would be the best way to restore the locus. There's a haze of mist in the air, but now it's regular water vapour in the manner of a damp jungle during summer and not doom spores.

And in the distance, outside the limits of the city, I can see my tree, now by far the tallest structure here.

It's… A sound decision, and Euanthe appears to have demilitarised the place enough that the plants look leafy and fruitful. My only concern is where Swamp Thing is and where the Parliament ended up, because either could form a back door, and… I don't think this is something that we could repeat.

"I will see to the wards."

"I'll find Euanthe."

I rise into the air, then freeze as plants shift into a defensive posture, flowers and leaves vanishing and hardened seedpods emerging. I raise my hands.

"Friends, plants. Friends."

I wait, uncertain if they're… Considering it, or if they're reporting to Euanthe for review, or… Something along those lines. After a few moments they relax slightly, leaves still in a defensive posture. But the offensive parts return to their 'at rest' mode, and I take that as a sign that I can move. I go up, trying to-.

Ah. There she is.

I fly at speed towards the grass field outside the city limits that Euanthe is walking through. She's in her combat body, antediluvian thorn armour on display and blades at the ready. Where she walks, plants of various kinds emerge from her footsteps, a wave of growth which spreads in all directions.

"Euanthe?"

She ignores me, walking… In the direction marked by my tree.

I drift after her, watching the plants springing up in her wake.

"The souls of trees, ancient and primal. And now… They are gone. Mortality, even in the eternal Green."

"I'm sorry."

"I would not weep for a single tree, a single bush, but this… I don't have words, I don't have… Thoughts!" She shakes her head in anguish. "I don't know if I can make it again, if I can bring the souls of plantkind here and make them home. Dryads are near-meat, near-Red. It shouldn't be me who has to-!"

"What happened to the Parliament?"

"I don't know. They didn't come to me, didn't stay to die with their charges. The Great Champion is in the world somewhere and I don't know where."

"Things don't go the way they should. They go the way they go. And if you're here, and they're not… If you're doing the job and they're not… Hail Queen Euanthe of the Green."

At that she stops, turning back to me with her hard wooden head staring at me.

"Queen. Eldest sister. I have grown much since we first met, and I wish with all my heartwood that I had never left Mother's glades. I wish I could run carefree through field and glen, troubled only by faun or woodsman. I wish I could be so simple once more. But if there is no one else, then I must."

"Well…" I look over to the tree, where Dr. Isley is checking its health. "You don't need to do it on your own."

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th December 1998
07:21 GMT -7

I can't help but feel that I'm being indolent about the whole thing, but… I've gotten into the habit of having breakfast in a café.

"For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness."

Nothing crazy; though I could use the ring to deal with the consequences of a daily Full English Breakfast, given my current role I don't want to become that sort of person. It's disingenuous to lecture people about sin and the virtue of self-sacrifice while gorging yourself on meals that your forebears ate because lunch hadn't been invented yet and it had to see them through until the evening.

"What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death."

I've really got to sort out something regarding my residential status. I don't think that I can just buy whatever the American equivalent of Indefinite Leave to Remain is, which is really inconvenient. I have no documentation for anywhere, and… I don't think that I want to become a citizen. I think that the possibility of conscripting people with superpowers is something that the US military probably shouldn't be tempted with.

Particularly given that most of the available superhumans come from hell, apparently.

"But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life."

The British government can issue a draft, but it requires an Act of Parliament, and that's not going to happen. I mean, 1998? That's before the War on Terror. From the news reports I've caught on the televisions I've seen in various bars the Kosovo War is currently going on. Honestly, I'd forgotten that even happened until I saw a news report… Here. And I don't even remember that much about it now. The best I've been able to dredge up is that every ethnic group in the Balkans hate each other and will kill each other at the drop of a hat, but after the Bosnia War other countries were actually paying attention this time and Serbia got bombed until they stopped. And that Paddy Ashdown ran the government for a while after stepping down from the leadership of the Liberal Democrat party.

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

It was probably a lot more complicated.

I could involve myself, but it's the Balkans. It's a byword for fractiousness and violence and has been for over a century. I don't have enough charge to just fly around doing whatever I want. Without something specific to do, not only would I out myself and perhaps the others, I wouldn't do anything that American airpower won't do in a few months anyway. So it-.

The priest pulls out the chair opposite me and slumps down. For a moment he just looks around at the passers-by who had been trying to ignore him. Then he turns his attention to me.

"What did you think?"

"I… Don't really have anything to compare it to. Though I do respect your willingness to engage in public oratory. Goodness knows I wouldn't want to."

"No. No." He leans forward. He's… I'd guess in his fifties, jaw length grey hair parted in the middle and combed back behind his ears. Face is.. angular, and to be honest his focus is a little off-putting. "Romans Six. I hear that you have an interest in theology."

R-ight, what was-. Ah, shazbot.

"I'm sorry, I didn't recognise you."

"Oh, I don't think that matters. After all, I didn't write it."

"It's a little more merciful than reality, I suppose." I shrug. "The wages of sin aren't death; they're eternal torment."

"Is that worse?"

"I'd say not, but I've never experienced eternal torment and a straw poll of those who have suggests that it's not an easy choice to make. I wonder if the verse was intended for the ears of Roman pagans, who could understand the idea of a god rewarding them with eternal life in heaven in exchange for obeying its laws more easily than the idea that that god had always been in control of things." I gesture to him with my right hand. "I'm sure you know better than me."

"I do." He nods. "I do. Which is why I really don't understand…" His face hardens. "Why you're pushing me on this."

I blink. "Really? You just read chapter and verse declaring that people should be righteous in exchange for eternal life, and that not doing so would result in oblivion, and you don't understand why I'm pushing you?"

"Oh, you think you're in the right." He fishes a bible out of his cassock. "Do you want me to find the parts about obedience to the will of God?"

I shrug.

"'If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.'"

I shrug again.

"And if I remember correctly, the Catholic Church is in the middle of a massive paedophilia cover-up at the moment, so I'm less inclined than might otherwise be the case to take their advice on the nature of God when I can't check their sources. Though if you're trying to warn me about the sin of pride, first, thank you. Second, I know that the powerful are inclined to forget that might doesn't make right because they don't need to remember it as much as less powerful people and I'm trying to make sure that I can take input from other people in the spirit in which it is intended."

"The people you're trying to save had their chance, the same chance everyone gets. Them being sent back where they belong is exactly what they deserve."

"See, I hear what you're saying, but you don't have the… Best reputation for honesty. My.. sponsor.. told me a few stories-."

"Your sponsor literally has a forked tongue."

"And it's playing to my prejudices, I did spot that. But the thing is, my sponsor has been nothing but helpful. Whereas you've been a dick. Not just to Detective Stone, but… Every time you meet him, you're encouraging vice amongst the people he sees you with."

"Tempting people is kinda my job."

"'I was just doing my job' hasn't been a valid excuse since the Nuremberg Trials. And probably a bit before that." I shrug. "Are you under some sort of obligation? Because… It occurs to me that… You know, if you've got enough freedom to get yourself into this position, you've probably got enough freedom to take a different approach to your work. Have you ever tried..? Not subjecting people to eternal torment?"

"Every job has some perks. I've seen every evil mankind has heaped upon itself, and I know perfectly well that the people it was dumped onto would return the favour if they could. Like your friend Miss DuBare, for instance."

I look away.

"Should have seen this coming."

He favours me with a hard smile. "You really should. Because since 'Zeke' is no longer reliable, I've been forced to bring in extra help."

"No, you chose to. It's your decision. Don't be so cowardly as to pretend otherwise."

"Alright." His posture relaxes, his smile becoming a little more honest. "I chose to bring in extra help. If I'd realised how cheaply they were prepared to work I wouldn't have bothered with Detective Stone in the first place."

"So now you value personal satisfaction above discharging your responsibilities effectively?"

"Oh, there's no need to worry. When you become one of my special guests, I'll be sure to give you the attention you deserve."

"Why, thank you, but I wonder if you've really thought this though."

"Oh, go on. I'm fascinated to hear what you have to say."

"If Miss DuBare takes an impromptu trip downstairs, then the only way for me to recover her… Is to pull the metaphorical trigger, get you fired and take your place."

He sniggers to himself.

Hm. I lean forward a little.

"If you don't think-."

He leans forward suddenly, staring into my eyes from an inch away.

"Take it as a sign of how much I hate you that I'm tempted to let you have it."

Then he leans back and stands, face back to normal. He flashes me an obviously fake smile.

"I'll see you on Sunday!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

Fleet Traction

Earth 534834

7th February 1992
23:12 GMT +3

The stars are out, the wind is gentle and I'm sure that if I turned towards the sea I'd see a sight that would put me in awe of the natural world when transformed by the multi-million dollar investment of a burgeoning tourist industry.

But darn does Anne-Marie fill out that bikini… Delightfully. And… I know it's not her power that does it. Sure, that gives her strength, but Ashley Crawford's strong in her augmented form and she's… Nothing like this sculpted. No, super strength actually makes staying in shape more difficult, because you seldom have to exert yourself in the way that makes the human body build muscle. Her stomach is flat with just a hint of muscle because she's spent a lot of time under one of the X-Gym's pneumatic presses, exerting herself against colossal weights.

Her breasts on the other hand are the result of a combination of good genes and good diet, though I appreciate them every bit as much. Her hips are in perfect proportion, her neck elegant and her mouth smiling as her eyes look directly at me…

I maintain eye contact for a few moments.

"In my defence, you look really good."

"Ah don't see no problem with you lookin', sugah." She leans against the balcony's railing, hair flipped back and chest thrust forward, something she doesn't really need to do. "Long as you don't mind me lookin' back some."

"I have no objection, though I'm.. honestly not sure that I'd notice."

"Aw, you don't got no need-" She walks over to me, placing her right hand on my left pectoral muscle and her left on my abdomen. "-to worry none. You're pretty pleasin' to the eye yourself."

I smile a.. little awkwardly, even as I feel my ring start to shine entirely on its own without any input from me at all. I'm not really sure where it's okay to put my.. hands in this sort of-.

Anne-Marie looks mildly disgruntled for a moment, then takes a half-step back.

"Anne-Marie-." / "Is there some-?"

I stop, waiting slightly nervously for her to resume talking. She looks… Nervously back at me.

"Is there..? Some kinda problem..?"

"Problem?"

"You..?"

We look at each other in nervous incomprehension for a moment.

"D'y'all..? Not… Find me attractive?"

I blink. "I find you extremely attractive. Um. I'm just-. Sometimes I'm not sure-. I mean, don't know exactly what I'm meant to do..?"

"'cause y'all were just gawpin' like a-"

"Oh! Right, sorry, I-"

"-landed catfish-"

"-wasn't-. Catfish?"

"-and ah was… Hopin'…" She blushes faintly, looking away.

"Hoping..?"

"We've been together more 'an two months, an' we still ain't…" She looks me directly in the eyes, as if trying to prompt me to-.

"Are you talking about having sex?"

"… Yes, Gawd. Ah weren't expectin' nothin' on the first date, then it was two, an' three, and a month-"

"Oh, I-."

"-and two, an' you tole me you weren't religious-"

"No, but I thought-."

"-so is there some kinda problem?" She looks down at my crotch. Then blinks. "'cause it sure don't look like there's a problem."

"Ah, no, it's-. I know Americans are generally more religious than British people and I thought that you'd wait until we were married." I shrug as her eyes go back to my face. "I didn't-. I am very much interested, and… I told you what the ring does where my desires are concerned, and I.. sometimes have to reel it in a bit, but that's not because I don't want to have sex with you."

"Oh. That's…" She looks awkward, raising her right hand to brush a wayward strand of hair out of her face. "Real… Ah. Gentlemanly."

We look at each other awkwardly, but the… The tension is… Reduced, at least.

"Y'all know.. I don't go to church no more."

"Yes, but… I thought that was because you… Associate it with where you.. grew up, and-. Well, the fact that you don't go doesn't mean that you don't still… That you don't still think that's the right way to live."

"Oh." She looks away, blushing a little more. "So how long were you figuring on keeping me waiting, s-?"

"I currently intend to propose to you on the fifth of September."

She blinks. "Okay? What's so special about the fifth of September?"

"It's precisely nine months after I realised that I love you. I-." I frown. "I did tell you, didn't I? I'm sure I-."

"No, you-. You tole me. Thought you were going to pick me up and carry me upstairs."

"I'll…" I nod. "Remember to do that, though-."

No, now isn't the time to tell her that I read Gone With The Wind when I was fourteen because Mum said that I was reading too much science fiction and fantasy, and that I ended up wanting every named character except Melanie to be hanged.

"Though it wasn't a line, or-. Look, if you don't want to-. If you want to have sex before that, I'm perfectly-. Perfectly happy…"

She frowning thoughtfully. "Why nine months?"

"Oh, the… The human brain is… The infatuation period of the relationship lasts… About six months? And the brain sort of encourages you to fixate on your partner and ignore any… Potential problems? I'm…" I bow my head slightly, smiling. "I'm besotted with you. I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else, but I also know that I'm… Sort of not in my right mind at the moment, and… Rationally, it would be more sensible to wait until we both… Were, before making a lifetime commitment."

She looks like she doesn't quite know what to think.

"That… That might not have been the best decision I ever made. Um. But I… I remember that we're superheroes, and… That's not about doing what you feel like, but about setting the best possible example, and…"

And I shouldn't mention that I got that from Thermoman.

"And you're worth waiting another seven months for? I mean, look at you. And everything you've done. You're extremely desirable, and I do desire you."

She thinks for a moment, eyes not meeting mine. Then she walks right up to me and wraps her arms around my neck, staring me in the eyes with a look of ferocious sincerity.

"Ah ain't. Waitin'. Seven. Months."

"Um. Caution to the wind, then? Can you give me five minutes to grab an engagement-?"

And then heavily armoured soldiers break down the door and tase us both.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
14:58 GMT -5

"I can't…" Oliver glances at me and then looks away pensively. "I can't help feeling that we're playing into Mannheim's hands, here."

"Yes. You are."

He jerks his head back around. "What? Why didn't you say something earlier?"

"Because he wins coming and going. If human society descends into collapse and misery then it's easier for him to finish his work and take over the planet. But if you arrest that collapse by fitting into his paradigm then it increases the chance that he'll get you along with the planet, just a little later. And maybe give his master a greater insight into that part of the Anti-Life."

His mouth hangs slightly open for a moment, then he masters himself.

"He really does. So all we can do is hang in there, try and keep ourselves together and work out how to stop him before it goes too far."

"That's the best option we've been able to come up with. The alternative is evacuating Earth with as many people as we can and then bombarding it from orbit."

"Half right." He reaches back with his right hand to rub the fresh tattoo on the back of his neck. "And this isn't reliable."

"You won't be able to know how to act without being able to feel some things. But if you want to work towards enlightenment-" I look over to where Connor Hawke is talking to Paula Nguyen. "-then he's probably the best person to talk to."

"I only got into Buddhism for the girls."

"Bald girls, huh? So does Canary still wear a wig..?"

"Whu-?" He blinks. "No." He blinks again. "Sometimes. She's not bald, that's her hair, but..." He shakes his head. "Okay, you got me out of the spiral, good work."

"The perils of living with a psychologist. I-."

"Chime!"

I nod, Oliver looking first at my ring and then at my face. "Time for you to go?"

"Yes. Excuse me."

I walk over to where Paula is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a small statue of Buddha. I never really… Asked about her religious beliefs. I've nagged Jade about picking one and I.. know that I mentioned the utility to Paula once. I just assumed that she'd go with Vietnamese not-Shinto. I nod to Mr. Hawke, but his eyes are closed as he… Prays, probably. Or centres himself for the trying times to come because there isn't much more antithetical to Buddhist ideals than the mission he's about to undertake.

Paula on the other hand has open eyes, staring at the incense stick burning just in front of her. Of course, I… Don't know that she isn't praying too, but unlike Mr. Hawke I actually do need to speak to her.

"Paula?"

I need to speak to her because she was in Gotham when the Anti-Life hit and she didn't have any particular resistance. She didn't kill anyone, but the area around her home is a good deal less riotous than other places due to the fact that she… 'Established control'.

"You are leaving."

Her face is fairly blank as she says it.

"I am. How are you doing?"

"Attachment is the source of all suffering. So I am putting all of my attachments away in a box in my mind, that I will open when this is over."

I.. nod. That might work, or the Anti-Life might eat the box.

"Does that help?"

"It means that I no longer mind. I will be able to help Batwoman more effectively this way."

Because Batman's going to be spending most of his time organising our counterattacks, he's left Gotham in the care of his wife. She knows how to be a cult-leader, and she won't hesitate to dominate in the way most reliable Justice League-affiliates might. And if she could move away from the League of Shadows despite all of their indoctrination then she can probably manage Anti-Life exposure better than most people.

I think.

I hope.

"Okay, well I'll… I'll let Jade know that you're managing."

She nods. "Once this is over, I will appreciate that you did that."

But it doesn't exactly reassure me, seeing how she's dimmed her own lights.

"I'll leave you to your meditations." I take a step back. "Orange Lantern to Mister Miracle. Tube to low Earth orbit, please."

BOOM!

I turn and fly through the tube, looking down at Earth.

Damn it.

The Hawk family are conquering North Africa in the name of Teth Adom. Not that that involves much actual fighting. Hopefully, that will be an Anti-Life compliant way of throwing off the Anti-Life. Between Adrianna and Euanthe, the situation with the Earth's plants should be handled.

Everywhere else I looked…

It's going to take a very long time to fix this.

But I don't have time for this any more.

I warp space, accelerating towards the edge of the system. Without really thinking about it I end up flying past the corpse of the Mother Star, its dead eye staring towards Earth.

That's a… Nice image to leave with.

Alright, stop. Can't really feel any of the Anti-Life aura out here, though it's disturbingly easy to look back and see where it's focused. I

step out

and reappear over Sereaven. Six months ago I rescued all of their eggs from a Reach booby trap cum amnion extractor and moved them into a N.E.M.O. incubator. Since then the locals have wholeheartedly converted to N.E.M.O. and created underground fortifications to contain the new generation of incubators designed and built by them. The defence platforms and docking gantries are a bit primitive at the moment, but they're expanding constantly and the first locally-build ships should be completed within a year.

The L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet in system wasn't built here, but as a testament to the strength of our alliance it's here anyway. Virtually all of the ships are L.E.G.I.O.N. standard pattern designs with only a small amount of variation to take into account differences in preferred living conditions of their crews. Darting hither and thither or just hanging in space are my Lanterns. Not… As many as there were in the earlier stages of the war. This is really supposed to be a job for the fleet, with Lanterns only around to deal with Scarab Warriors. It doesn't do to get dependent, especially when we know that the Reach are working on anti-Lantern weapons. Darkstars will be on the planet to assist the garrison in the event of a landing, or at teleport stations ready to board enemy ships should an opportunity become available.

We look ready.

Let's find out if we are.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Earth 534834

8th February 1992
02:34 GMT +3

"You know… Ororo, I've been meaning to bring this up for a while."

Ororo's keeping an eye on the floodlight-lit playing field below us where the remains of the Genosha 'Self-Defence Force' are kneeling with their hands behind their backs. We're both more than a little concerned that the resistance fighters and mutant civilians policing our temporary holding area might take the opportunity to just kill them all. Not quite sure what we're going to do with them. They're the locals, after all.

"You are free to speak."

"Team balance. I realise that Charles took whatever mutants he could get when he started the X-Men, and that it was mostly to train them in using their abilities safely and usefully rather than crafting the best possible field team, but… It seems to me that we've got quite a lot of D-. People who can shoot things or smash them, but not a lot of people who can absorb damage or heal."

"I do not know of any mutants who have powers that allow them to heal others."

I frown. "Huh. Really?"

"If such powers were commonplace, mutants would be more widely accepted. People fear fighters more than physicians."

I nod. "So there aren't any, or we just haven't heard of them?"

"Mutant powers emerge without rhyme or reason. Though there is no reason to believe that healing powers cannot exist, if there were mutants with the power to heal, we would have no easy way to hear of them."

"Well, I'm going to count that as evidence in my favour." She gives me a dubious look. "Oh, come on, what's more evolutionarily useful: the ability for a member of a species that already has guns to fire low-grade explosives from their hands, or the ability to heal rapidly?"

"Evolution is seldom so simple. And the absence of an obvious precursor ability does not 'prove' the involvement of alien biologists."

I grin. "So are you taking the bet? It's just you and Henry who are holding out."

She'd clearly like to be able to say 'yes', but she masters herself. "No, though I will be happy to review any evidence you find. Should you actually find any."

"And I'll be happy to present it to you. How about tanks?"

"Tanks?"

"People who can take hits. A taser doesn't do much to me, but they hit Anne-Marie hard enough to stun her."

Of course, I only had to hold them off for the few moments it took her to activate the Impact Beam Ring, and then we were both immune to just about every weapon they had. The robots and power armour slowed us down a little, but Anne-Marie and I both have far more resilience than they could cope with. Well, when her ring's active in her case. It took a lot of electricity to down her, but she's actually quite a lot less tough than she is strong, something I hadn't really… Picked up on before.

"There are several such people in Cerebro's database, but most of them have made choices that would make joining the X-Men difficult."

Henry is a bit tougher than a normal human, but not by all that much and he's in gaol at the moment in any case. Logan heals faster, but he's not actually all that much harder to hurt than a normal human. And he made it very clear when I asked that while he's more used to being hurt than most people, it still hurts him just as much as anyone else. Apparently he gave up wearing body armour because it wasn't effective enough to make up for the pain of pulling partially-melted steel plates off his skin. Which is pretty fair.

"The easiest thing would be for people to find us, but that draws attention to the school, which… Has its own problems."

She nods solemnly.

"…mutant citizens of Gehosha will not tolerate…"

I wince as a man I recognise as the leader of a resistance group called 'The Acolytes' starts grandstanding for the benefit of the other mutant tourists. Apparently, the Acolytes are big fans of Magneto, which is a little odd because as far as I know he's never met them and he's always on the lookout for new mutant henchmen. Not sure how much of that attachment is a reaction to the radical anti-mutant practices of the Gehosha government, being drawn to his mutant-supremacist teaching as a result. Or I suppose they could be natural mutant-supremacists. As Sir Terry Pratchett wrote, 'Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority, it doesn't mean that they're not a nasty, small-minded little jerk.'

I turn to Ororo. "Do you want to get that, or shall I?"

"I think that it may do him some good to interact with humans-"

There's a tiny hesitation which lasts nearly long enough to make me raise my eyebrows.

"-who are not mutants."

I smile and nod in gratitude, because it took a while for the X-Men to understand the point I was making there, and her acceptance of my terminology is a minor victory for both science and integration.

I give her a jaunty salute and then fly over to where Mr. Cortez is holding court. Surprising that a man of his mindset hasn't picked a 'mutant name', but I haven't had enough exposure to the mutant subculture to really be sure what that signifies.

A couple of his friends spot me as I get closer, but he himself doesn't react to me until I drop into his line of sight.

"Mister Cortez?" I smile warmly. "Is there a problem?"

"Not any longer." He looks.. genuinely pleased to see me, though living out in the Genoshan wilds hasn't exactly lent itself to regular washing. "Now we are free of our oppressors!"

The Genoshan government database says that he's Spanish, so I'm not all that sure how they were oppressing him from here. I don't want to… Imply anything, but for an island off the coast of Africa the Acolytes…

I'd be surprised if they were local, let's put it like that.

"Do any of you-"

He's turned back to the crowd. "We will establish Genosha as a home for all mutantkind!"

"-have any government experience, because-"

"Free from all who would enslave us!"

"-running a country is actually quite hard-."

"Free from all humans who hate and fear their us as their superiors!"

"Mister Cortez, I'm human."

That brings him up short. He turns on the spot. "What?"

I hold up my left hand, showing my glowing ring. "No x-gene, I'm afraid. Just an alien ring." I shrug. "I just really don't like slavery, and my.. girlfriend does have an x-gene. So if you could tone down the racism a bit, that would be splendid. Also, if you keep trying to incite a crowd to murder our prisoners, I'm not going to be very impressed. Look." I move my eyes from him to the now slightly less riled up crowd of holidaying mutants. "You've all had a very hard time. Why don't you head over to the hotels and get some rest in an actual bed. Then we can all get together and decide what to do with this lot tom-. Later today, when we're all thinking a bit more clearly?"

Mr. Cortez grimaces, then marches off, his Acolytes following behind him. One of them, a red haired woman, glances back for a moment before writing me off. With them gone, the rest of the crowd decide to-.

Somewhere near the back of the crowd I spot a hulking great man I recognise as the time traveller Cable. We make momentary eye contact and then he's gone, vanishing into the darkness. I could go after him, but… That sounds like a bad idea.

Alright, demagogue sent away, crowd dispersed, prisoners not going anywhere. Now all that's left-.

"So sugah." Anne-Marie drifts down to stand beside me. She's thrown a blouse and sarong on, but those really do more to emphasise the thing they're concealing than to actually conceal it. "What was that about a ring?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
20:24 GMT

I know that the timings were approximate, but it is a little aggravating that the Reach aren't more prompt.

My ring blinks again. I take a moment to feel the location of the Lantern trying to contact me, and close the call.

Bit of a dick move on my part, I suppose. They're sure to be happier confirming my identity. But as good as our security procedures are, protocol in situations like this is to avoid confirming my location to anyone until the engagement begins. My general armour style has been copied by enough humanoid Lanterns that it's not that distinctive and my environmental shield doesn't really look all that different to what the others have.

So I can't talk to anyone. Not locally and not throughout N.E.M.O. because the more places I communicate with, the more likely it is that the Reach will pick up on it. I'm not going to head deep into Reach territory and remind them why they keep their inner circle fleets there without checking with Dox first. So unless Dox directly gives me a new order I'm stuck waiting for the enemy fleet to arrive.

…

Wonder if I should build an X-Box into this thing? Or an emulator, anyway. With the components I can get access to, it wouldn't be all that hard. Just have to work out how to manage the control pad. By comparison these gauntlets are so light they'd throw off my instincts.

…

The waiting isn't the worst of it, it's just the most annoying. Because the Reach are wasting my time. I could phase out, but the Reach have phasing technology and it would probably do more to draw their attention than to deflect it.

"Twenty Orange Lanterns in the wall,
Twenty Orange Lan-terns-."

No, the rhyme scheme doesn't work.

I peer in the general direction of Reach space, 'rimward' and 'down' of this system's orbital plane. I could reach out and try and perceive them, but again, that might be something they can detect.

Though this could be a strategy. If they haven't found a way to block me, I should be able to increase their desire to be more aggressive and feed us ships. I-.

"Admiral Scratch-Click to all N.E.M.O. assets. Reach vessels have arrived at the edge of the interdiction area. All ship captains are to manoeuvre in accordance with plan three."

I've never met Scratch-Click. They were a borderline case for joining the Corps -and a borderline case for burrow-guard syndrome- but it was felt that having as many experienced fleet officers loyal to Maltus in strategic command positions outweighed the possible good they could do with a power ring. But there are… A lot of fleets this size, and a lot of admirals.

Compared to most fleets in this region of space, L.E.G.I.O.N. ships are far more agile than others of their mass. Getting them moving is a simple matter, and they turn and accelerate in a way that puts me in mind of Star Fleet ships. Citadel and Gordanian ships are far clumsier, and the Reach are not quite as agile. They're not heading directly into the enemy; that's a good way to get flanked by a second fleet jumping in on a different vector. But since we can see at least one fleet, it doesn't make sense to hold station in high orbit any longer. We're going to have to fight them before too long, so we might as well position to intercept them even if we're not doing that immediately.

Some Lanterns -the most war-hungry- head off with the vanguard, while others hang back in case they need to reposition the larger ships in a hurry. A couple actually sit on the hulls, which doesn't do much to save ring power but does add to the spectacle as their brain starts interpreting the hull as 'ground'. I've seen some Lanterns try to vomit as a result of the vertigo when other ships move around theirs.

I hold back with the sternguard. Details are coming in about the Reach fleet, and it's… Nothing exciting. And it's doing that annoying thing where they fly around the edge of the system just inside the interdiction field without coming deeper. That's something out of 'Baby's First Fleet Tactics'. If it works, it draws the defenders out of position so that a strike fleet of high acceleration ships can dart in once the defenders are out of position, destroy the main target and then everyone can fly away. Even if the defenders don't take the bait, the fleet in being can force the defenders to leave a large fleet in position for a substantial period of time.

Lanterns are a fairly solid counter for that sort of thing, since we're not affected by the defenders' interdiction field. I could take that fleet. The rest would probably gang up on individual ships before falling back to recover, but they'd eat through the fleet unless it fell back.

So that can't be the main attacking force. Hm. I wonder-.

Ah. I smile as our artillery ships line up their long axis weapons. Faster than light weapons designed specifically to counter this sort of nonsense. Reach fleets usually prefer to close the range and overwhelm their enemies with their short ranged weapons and deployed Scarab warriors. It didn't take them long to realise that that didn't work against fleets backed by Lanterns, so they reconfigured. And so we had to modify one of our carrier designs so that the launch bays and crew habitation areas were replaced with a giant gun. At the moment it's not a perfect counter; it's weak at any range other than extreme range and isn't anything like powerful enough to destroy a fleet. But it does mean that-

Two green lines shine out from one of the smaller Reach ships and flow back towards the artillery ships. Always a little confusing that FTL weapons look like that. And that's another problem: they don't hit all that hard. We're not Apokoliptians and we can't build our own hyper blasters. These… Well, that Reach destroyer is going to limp back to the shipyards, or-.

The artillery ships fire again and the destroyer's hull evaporates, atmosphere burning and energy stores exploding. I remember that in Babylon 5 one of the station's maintenance engineers said that he could tell who lost a ship in a furball by the colour of the explosion caused by differences in the ship's atmosphere. Of course, in this reality most humanoids breathe atmosphere so similar in composition that that doesn't really factor into things.

Another volley, this time targetting one of the larger Reach ships. Looks like they've improved the armour-. And they're turning in-system. Yes, sitting at long range is a far less appealing prospect now, isn't it? And of course there's the fact that the defender can always turn off their interdiction system and jump onto your fleet to consider. Not a good idea most of the time, as the systems need time to propagate and fade away and if the attacker's navigator is on the ball they can return the favour by jumping onto whatever you were defending… But they have to keep the possibility in mind.

"Admiral Scratch-Click to all N.E.M.O. assets. Reach vessels have turned inwards and are accelerating. All ship captains are to advance with plan three."

That means that the whole fleet will advance a little, while leaving us enough time to move back if another fleet appears elsewhere. Reach ships don't have the range to fire on the planet from anywhere near their current location with their energy weapons, but it isn't all that hard to fire missiles or kinetic rounds if they've switched some of their ships over to that. We should be able to detect that and the planet's defences should be able to stop anything hitting the surface, but the usual plan is for the fleet to try and intercept Hail Mary shots before that becomes necessary.

Alright, so far so normal. But that's not an inner circle fleet. That's a normal periphery raiding fleet. We can't ignore it but it doesn't make sense for them to use it this aggressively. Even without Lanterns, this L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet would be able to destroy it without undue losses.

I know there's a trick.

I just don't know what it is.

The L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet is well away from Sereaven now. Just about far enough away that it would be awkward to turn back, but-. Yes, longer range weapons on the battleships are firing on the Reach, who don't quite have the range to fire back yet. The Reach are committing to a full burn, charging directly for us with only minimal evasive action. Fire ships? No, no, the mass distortion shows that they're still conforming to normal ship profiles. Which could be faked, but just chucking fire ships at a fully mobile fleet isn't going to-.

Warning: fear detect-

There's a shimmer as a Yellow Lantern transitions into the system, with a… Small space station held in their construct grip. A Scarab, blue armour with yellow highlights, they transition away immediately.

-ed.

"Admiral Scratch-Click to all N.E.M.O. assets. Reach have deployed an interdiction system. Plan four is-."

I brace myself as the system's gravity begins to warp.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
20:32 GMT

Ring?

It's focusing on our fleet, but it's not a gravity weapon. It's bending space around the ships to… Prevent them turning back?

Ring, is that plausible? Macro-gravity gives me a headache.

Suggestion is plausible.

The Lanterns should be able to fly around it, but-. There go the Scarabs, and the Reach fleet is getting into range. The N.E.M.O. force should win the engagement, but I'm assuming-.

Warning.

The Scarab Lantern reappears, this time towing a Reach troop ship. It forms a giant cannon construct and a construct shield which blocks the shots incoming from the planetary defence network. It then returns fire, yellow energy lancing out and cleaving the closest defence platform in two.

Looks like this is a job for m-.

The Scarab's gun construct swivels and fires at me. It's sub-light so I evade easily enough, but the Scarab Lantern has registered me as the priority threat.

"Good eff-"

The troop transport accelerates towards the surface, construct shield still protecting it as more orbital and ground defences target it. It uses its thrusters to take evasive action, but the shield-.

"-ort."

The shield actually takes it fairly well. I don't think that this Scarab has attained fear enlightenment; I remember the distinct feel of the soul of my alter-ego who had managed that and I'll not forget it any time soon.

Construct armour.

Compliance.

Is Sinestro siding with the Reach, or just using them to test his techniques? Or us?

Railguns.

Compliance.

I fire a volley of crumbler rounds, but at this range the Scarab Lantern will-.

Point defence lasers appear on its shoulders, thin rays of ultraviolet light lancing out and piercing each of the crumbler rounds in turn. Yes, it can still use its integrated weapons along with the power ring. Didn't bother dodging, though, and I've still got some armoured crumblers left over from my fight with the Apokoliptian robot.

"Meat."

The Scarab Lantern is flying backwards, staying close enough to the transport to shield it while facing me so that it can maintain focus. I accelerate, construct boosters behind me because I've seen the construct interdiction system it's created on its back. I'm too well-drilled by my sparring sessions against Guy to even try that.

"Bug."

I smile inside my armour, turn my railgun towards the gravity distortion device the Scarab Lantern brought here and fire a volley of crumbler rounds. It's not close to where we are, but spatial dynamics means that-.

That it only has to bend space a little for them to miss, yes. And-. I see emotions-. Emotion. Fear. There are people on there, and they-.

They're fuelling the Scarab Lantern's constructs. He brought his construct booster with him. Passably clever-.

No, it's the Reach. Flooding the place with a fear toxin equivalent wouldn't be enough. This Scarab will have made sure that they're afraid of it. Overwhelmingly. Not sure how long the Reach had to work on the problem or what their relationship with Sinestro is. Rescuing them would be ideal, destroying that structure and killing them would weaken the Scarab Lantern and free up the fleet.

No. I can manage. I'll prioritise that if any other Yellow Lanterns or a second fleet appear, but failing that I should be able to manage.

Another shot from its construct cannon and this time I intercept it with a construct shield rather than evading. This is our world, interloper, thief, bandit. Try to take it from us and we will squash you.

The shot hits but doesn't penetrate, force endured and attack not sustained. Probably because the Scarab didn't think it would be necessary or useful. The hit was about as hard as a moderate hit from Guy pre-Enlightenment, and I doubt that it was as hard as this Scarab can hit.

Still, it does suggest a perfectly winnable fight.

Magnification shows me the moment that the Scarab realises that I took their hit without slowing. A small sneer, then their face stills for a moment. Then the Scarab abandons their shield construct and uses their Scarab's booster system to fly away from the ship and towards me.

The ship takes a couple of hits and then phases, lasers and plasma beams passing through it without damage. Defence station railguns loaded with phasic rounds open fire, but the volume of space is vast and the projectiles relatively slow. Some might hit, and with the ship's other defences effectively useless in a phased state they might get a kill. Or maybe not.

Deal with the oncoming Scarab Lantern first.

It fires again, beam hitting my shield and once more failing to break it. Then the beam changes, turning into a giant construct drill and spinning to try and bore its way through instead.

It makes a few scratches before my crumbler ram construct hits it in the side and shatters it.

"Did Sinestro not train with you before sending you out?"

I fire the ram towards the Scarab Lantern. Its point defence lasers do nothing, so it throws up a construct shield to block it. Predictably, it's a single layer construct and crumbles instantly, forcing the Scarab to dodge the attack with a snarl.

"Did you think that Reach records of us was all you'd need?"

It accelerates towards me using its booster, blades forming on both of its arms. They have a glowing yellow edge which suggests to me that they'll hit a little harder than normal Scarab swords. It also suggests to me that whoever this is really hasn't integrated the niceties of Lantern combat… Either that or it's too arrogant to deviate from Reach training when it doesn't absolutely have to.

Construct crumbler gauntlets, x-ionised shards and… Load phasic rounds. The Reach ship is flying almost directly away from me and I'm closer than the defence platforms. Aim a few shots at the Scarab Lantern to tie up its point defences and fire.

The Scarab loses a little mass from its booster pack to reform its point defences, but they intercept my shots easily enough.

"Pathetic."

"Yes, because I'm rather bad-"

I smile as the ship shudders and undergoes an emergency phase-in, its primary drive in ruins.

"-at this."

The Scarab Lantern glances back at the ship, but doesn't change course.

"…useless…"

Thing about power rings, is that they make environmental catastrophes easy to deal with. Even if that ship manages to hit a somnolent super volcano, it'll only take a couple of Lanterns a few hours to tidy things up so well that you'd never know that it happened. As it-.

There's little sound in space, so I don't hear it as the Reach ship is repeatedly struck by the local defence systems and torn apart, whatever was inside being spread out across the planet's upper atmosphere.

As it is, it looks like it was just a troop ship.

And now for the Scarab Lantern.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
20:34 GMT

How to further weaken a Yellow Lantern? Induce fear? I don't think I can intimidate a Scarab Warrior. They're fanatical enough that even knowing how many of them I've killed to date, even knowing that fact that I came back from the dead, they're perfectly happy to throw themselves at me. Not willing to, actually happy-.

But I might be able to make it angry.

"What, you can't carry more than one ship?"

We're close enough to meaningfully fight now and we both know it. I switch to yellow laser constructs to bypass its construct defences and fire, keeping the beams on the Scarab Lantern's chest with reasonable accuracy. All it really does is discolour its armour as the plates regenerate, but Scarab armour can only regenerate so much and so quickly.

I also patch myself into the defence satellite control systems and feed them my targeting data. Usually, Scarab Warriors are too small and agile to target effectively by anti-ship weapons, but if a Lantern's painting it then things are a little different.

"Don't worry; we all come up a little short sometimes."

The Scarab's retaliation is some sort of charged particle beam-. Ah, charged anti-matter beam, that's a little cleverer. Anti-matter's a bit of a waste against Lantern in space because it does nothing to matter-free constructs and there isn't usually enough matter or anti-matter around to reliably kill Lanterns with explosions. It's really more of a finisher to be used against ships whose shields have already been downed. Which is not to say that even a mole of anti-matter wouldn't do a number on my armour if it got a direct hit in.

Anyway, the beam hits my construct armour to little effect, other than spraying atoms of anti-matter out-.

A few small releases of radiation where the atoms encounter stellar dust or debris, but as efficient as an anti-matter detonation is at turning matter to energy, they're still only single atoms. Against some people that would throw off their sensors, but I'm a Lantern.

The Scarab is charging almost exactly in a straight line-. And could be doing exactly what I'm doing using that gravity distortion station. Ring, disrupt communications.

Compliance.

Now, we don't think that Scarabs can block power ring communications. Power rings can, obviously, but the Scarab doesn't seem to be using it for that.

The fact that the Scarab is charging in a straight line means that I can have the defence stations fire at a predictable cone of space, which I do. Then I build a barricade construct and crumbler rams. A normal Scarab can futz around with momentum a little, but still has to mostly fly in a physics-compliant way. Lanterns don't, which means that the Scarab Lantern's best move is to switch to ring-flight to move around my defensive construct and attack me from the side.

So crumbler rams at the ready, and-.

The Scarab Lantern adds overdrive boosters and hurtles towards me, the sudden acceleration causing most of the flanking fire to miss. The few hits cause its constructs to flicker but they endure, and… Its head morphs into some sort of ram? The Scarab Lantern slams into my barricade, sword constructs actually managing to bite into it while the ram… Some sort of construct disruptor. Not as good as a crumbler -and my construct rams are swinging to intercept- but still notable.

Defence satellite fire follows the Scarab Lantern, hitting my construct barricade and… That shouldn't wreck it, but I guess its war head is weakening it more than I thought. Construct rams impacting-.

The thruster array is sucked back into its armour, replaced by spines that shoot outwards to intercept my attacks. It's.. partially successful, the spikes being crumbled and destroyed but the constructs being too disrupted to hit home with their crumbler function intact.

Not a problem.

I turn the construct barricade into a swarm of crumbler rams, imagine this Scarab Lantern as the embodiment of the cankerous soul of the Reach civilisation and slam them into it.

I see the flicker of yellow as its defensive constructs are crumbled, but mine don't survive inflicting the initial blow. Defence installation is hitting the Scarab armour as well as my construct armour, and between that and my lasers it's definitely getting the worse of it. I see… Blood? Leaking into space and free-boiling where the armour's regeneration can't quite keep up with the damage.

Given how Scarab Warriors usually self-destruct when we try to assimilate them… How would the ring interrupt that?

I spike the Scarab with a newly constructed construct-lance, running it through and shoving the point through its back. For a moment the structure around its head tries to repair itself, then collapses back into its body to patch more holes being shot into its back.

Assimilate.

My ring blinks.

Answer.

"Illustres. How fortunate."

"Sinestro, would you care to explain-"

"Identity Theft in progress. One percent complete."

"-why you're siding with the Reach?"

"Why would you assume that when you know that I didn't side with the Spider Guild?"

"Reach use extensive PR to avoid looking scary. The Spider Guild survive by scaring people into leaving them alone."

"There is value in subtlety. Unfortunately, Scarab Warriors do not make good students."

"Identity Theft in progress. Five percent complete."

For a moment I think about suggesting that he give Batman a try-out. I'm going to need a yellow ring at some point and having him just give it to my first choice of bearer would save me time. Fortunately, sanity prevails.

"Perhaps after reviewing this data they will be a little more prepared to listen to me."

"Sinestro, I'm-"

The Scarab Lantern forms a weak knife construct and stabs at the lance impaling it. It causes a few scratches before I send out manacle constructs to lock its arms in place. The Scarab implant lets the Warrior ignore little things like pain and traumatic blood loss, but only to a point.

"Identity Theft in progress. Eight percent complete."

"-all about making deals. Do you think that you and N.E.M.O. could come to terms instead? We actually know how to use power rings, and our students pay attention to their lessons."

"I would sooner cut off my own head than work for a Maltusian."

"Like you're currently working for the Reach? Come on, you know Dox would give you a good deal."

"I prefer to be a free agent."

"Alright. Let me know if you change you mind. I'm quite keen to have you helping us rather than our enemies."

"Perhaps. Dismiss deputy ring."

Sinestro's face disappears from above my ring, and the yellow aura battling to remain functional vanishes from the Scarab Warrior-

"Identity Theft in progress. Ten percent complete."

-who immediately self-destructs.

Darn.

I signal to the defence stations to stop firing, and head towards the gravity weapon.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
20:38 GMT

My gravity manipulation constructs wrestle with the technology of the Reach space station, gradually restoring space to its normal local curvature. I give it a moment to see if there are any backup devices, but it looks like it was designed with one specific purpose in mind. I send a construct probe forwards, crumbling its way through the force field and armour into the interior. The force field feels like an afterthought, but the armour's clearly designed to endure considerable stress. I assume that they weren't sure how much force it would experience when their Lantern threw it around and wanted to be on the safe side.

Alright, power plant is there, so take control so that they can't overload it or anything like that. Most ships don't have self-destruct systems for their physical structures because of the weakness that would involve introducing. Scarab Warriors do it with a program taking advantage of their innate protean nature rather than introducing something truly new. But with technology that it's essential to keep from the enemy, things are a little different.

Power plant under control I move to the main computer. A relatively mundane affair without any exceptional resistance. Shut down the gravity system first, and send a message to Scratch-Click to let them know. Did the Reach want to make sure that their own Lantern would be able to interface with it? Okay, so what were they..?

Pods. Two hundred and eighty life-support pods. Clearly designed to keep the people inside awake and alive for an extended period. Feeding tubes and catheters all around, and… Drugs to force wakefulness. Okay, and who-?

Quamen, from Qualar IV in Sector 2234. Of course, a species afraid of almost everything and whose natural response to fear is to do a fainting goat impression. Except with those drugs in their system they can't lose consciousness, and… Humans can't sustain a fear response for more than a certain amount of time, but quamen can.

I… See the logic, but that wouldn't have been what I'd have gone-.

An orange power ring floats over to me.

"Orange Lantern Flozz'm is deceased."

Gone with.

I take the ring and put it into one of my armour's pouches. I didn't know Flozz'm, but taking their ring and sending notice to their family is one of my jobs. It's going to be fairly boilerplate because I didn't know them, and I'm probably going to end up writing more about Sereaven and the war in general than them personally. Still, that's better than leaving it to Dox.

I check the medical pods. Yes, the excitative doesn't appear to have any other properties so I cut off the supply. Almost immediately there's a surge of relief as everyone on board loses consciousness. Send a general message that it should be visited by medical support and intelligence.

And then check that Scratch-Click's force has been triumphant.

Hm. Looks like the Reach fleet didn't try to disengage. Their heavier ships tanked damage to protect the rest of the fleet, which tried to get to get to point blank range. Short ranged weapon focus? Boarding? I'm not sure, but the satellite wasn't here long enough to prevent Scratch-Click from keeping his fleet at his preferred engagement range for most of the fight and they're just mopping up now.

"Illustres to Controller Hinon. Sereaven is secure for the moment. Inner circle fleet was a no-show."

"Nothing of note?"

"One Yellow Lantern, and it tried to get a boost by bringing a space station full of terrified people along with it. I'd estimate that it could have engaged one of our neophytes at a slight advantage even if its Scarab weapons are ignored."

"The next will be better."

Ring, send records direct to Controller Hinon.

Compliance.

"Hm. I think I need to talk to my cousins on Oa about this Thaal Sinestro person."

"In what regard?"

"Basic psychological screening as much as anything. His basic morals-. Have any of your homeworld's Lanterns mentioned ongoing psychological assessments?"

"I think Guy had a few checks after he woke up from his coma."

"Some rather sharp words, then. The Green Light causes fewer behavioural changes, not none. They should know better than leaving mortals unattended."

"I'm not sure that they've got the manpower. As First Lantern, Sinestro had the authority to duck out of that sort of thing anyway."

"That doesn't make it better. Ever since I came out of my coma it's as if everyone's taken leave of their senses."

"You're playing it up again, aren't you?"

"Somewhat. It is genuinely vexing. They are too old to be so foolish, and too old to be so ignorant of their own failings. Ah."

"Ah?"

"We have located the inner circle fleet. I'm sending you the coordinates-"

Karrakan. No no no no no.

"-now, and I think you should probably-."

I step out, seeking out the strong drives and confused execution that I remember from my previous meetings with

the people of Karrakan. Why the Reach are coming here I don't know. There's been some travel back and forth between here and Minosyss since the truce came into effect, but Sparta never fully unified Karrakan and while she was mistaken about there being no survivors it's a really hard place to live. We build unmanned monitor stations with interdiction systems more or less out of habit, but their interdiction fields are routinely deactivated to make patrolling easier. The Ascendant themselves are fine with that because they use boom tubes anyway-.

The Reach are also fighting Grayven. Grayven had-. Probably had dealings with Karrakan through Sparta. 'Ascendants' are compatible with New God technology in a way that gordanians aren't. Karrakan still has basically no industry. They didn't have anything to offer Grayven in terms of industrial output. But Sparta only had young Ascendants with her when she attacked New Cronos. They thought that she left the older Ascendants to die. But if she gave them to Grayven… Then they've got a very good reason for coming here. They want to choke off his supply.

Karrakan is a hellworld. The handful of asteroid mining stations the Ascendants built are the only thing worth coming here for, and that's what the ships of the Ascendants' fleet here are positioning to defend.

They are massively outnumbered by the Reach. And it seems that I've been underestimating the Reach's ship-building prowess by judging them by the ships that they deliberately put on show. The heavy ships of this fleet are larger that the biggest I've seen before: genuine battleships and dreadnoughts. But more than that, their power generation capacity is far greater, and their shields and weapons disproportionally powerful.

Their acceleration isn't bad either. Looks like they're heading for Karrakan, and some of their larger weapons are already firing. Not faster than light weapons, but their narrow beams and the size of their target means that they meaningfully hit it from halfway across the system.

I create construct interdiction field generators.

"This is the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps to the Reach Fleet."

"Ah, you're here. I should have thought that it was obvious."

"I don't suppose there's any chance that you'll tell me your name this time, is there? You're still down as 'Unnamed Assimilation Specialist' in our files."

"I try not to let ego get the better of me. But since you're here…"

Alert! Spatial distortions detected.

"Let's see if you can leave."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st January 2013
20:42 GMT

The stars… Move, the universe 'above' and 'below' the system's orbital plane emptying of light sources while the rim becomes far brighter. I… Don't even want to think about the sort of gravity manipulation they've had to do to make that happen.

"Very pretty."

On the off-chance, I try warping space. I can manage a little, but the feedback I'm getting from my ring makes space-time feel unusually… Sticky. Which means that my second favourite form of faster than light travel is effectively unavailable unless I feel like trying to override their generator… Which could actually be outside of the system.

"I look forward to the day when we can do this to your home system."

"My home system?"

"Yes. Why, did you think we would grant it clemency?"

I try transitioning a test object, and… It works, but that system is dramatically slower than warping. Flying in normal space would make me deal with relativity and relativity is no fun at all. Honestly, when I imagine trying to get around Universe Prime with FTL probably being impossible I actually shudder.

"Tell you what. If you abandon your attack here, I'll take you there right now. I'll even escort your troops to the surface and do absolutely nothing to them."

"So you are a deviant even amongst your own kind."

A sternguard element of their fleet… Rotates with impressive speed to face me. They don't actually move in my direction, but their heaviest armour and main weapons are now pointing in my general direction while their existing momentum carries them along towards Karrakan.

"Oh, Earth. Did you know that we gained powered flight technology a hundred and ten years ago? Sixty six years later we had rockets capable of taking us to our moon. Giant moon. Whenever I stand on another planet and someone describes the moonrise as 'beautiful' I always end up squinting. 'That tiny thing?'"

Ring, cold gun.

Compliance.

Big cold gun.

Compliance.

"We've got hundreds of gods no one even worships because they're so common, humans with bodies made of mud, AIs that run on electromagnetic tape reels… A few weeks ago I had to fly through a pocket universe made of fragments of dreams. I call it 'hard mode' sometimes because I know of exactly no other planets that have the same range of madness that we have to deal with."

"Fascinating. Please, keep talking. This is helping me build a far more accurate psychological profile."

"And about ten years ago, a man with no higher education invented a gun that can reduce anything its beam hits to zero-"

Fire.

Compliance.

"-degrees Kelvin. Completely arrests molecular vibrations. How good's the thermal insulation on those ships?"

Okay, so don't point it at the star, unless it's a star no one's using and Leonard needs an ego boost. We're all in the inner part of the system but the beam won't hit anything for five minutes or so-

Realistic space combat sucks.

-unless… I focus on our desire and the desire of all within N.E.M.O. to strike at the Reach… No, let us draw upon the desires of species long since extinguished as well and add that to our force!

"I suppose that we'll find out in five minutes."

"Maybe."

Space wobbles like a rubber sheet, snapping back almost immediately. But the distortion carries with it a beam of max-strength cold ray, partially concealed by the ongoing beam I'm firing in the direction of those ships. No beam attenuation makes this a far better weapon for long-ranged sniping than a laser.

I watch as the Reach fleet manoeuvres, using gravity manipulation to shift a little at right angles to their main angle of thrust. Plenty to make sure that they're not on the same trajectory five minutes from now that they were when I fired. The sternguard do something-

My pulse hits the largest ship in the sternguard.

-similar, manoeuvring but not moving as far due to their lower speed.

Not that it matters.

The ship I hit tremors, but it keeps moving and manoeuvring. Maybe it-.

The hull cracks, a dozen rents appearing in the frontal armour and atmosphere venting from all of them. Usually there would be emergency force field or -given that this is the Reach- reactive armour automatically patching small holes. But it looks like those systems also just got wrecked by absolute zero and can't function. The ship isn't dead-dead, but it's severely-

"That's interesting."

-impaired in its functioning. I think I got about half of its frontal weapons, though the dorsal, ventral and side weapons are completely fine.

"Glad that you liked it."

"But can you do it again?"

"No, that's completely impossible."

We do it again, aiming at the next ship in line, predicting based on observed to-target time and manoeuvring pattern.

"Excuse me."

Ring, drop channel and try contacting the Ascendants in charge of those ships.

Compliance. Channel open.

"This is the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Please respond."

"Illustres! It is good to hear from you."

"Ascendant Thiva. Well done for still being alive. Any idea why the Reach are coming here?"

"This is the Reach? Their ships are different from our records."

"This is one of their inner sphere fleets. They use them to defend their core systems. People don't usually see them. Consider yourself honoured."

"It is an honour I would gladly pass. As to why they are here, we are evacuating the remains of Grandmother Rhea to be interred in New Orthys. We were going to finally abandon the system after that."

"Do you have them on board?"

"Yes."

"Can you make it to the edge of the system? Without being overhauled?"

"Perhaps."

"Try it. I don't think we've got the force here to defeat them in conventional fleet combat. Did you send an alert out?"

"Yes but… The system… Can they get in?"

Given how boom tubes work, probably not using those.

"We'll have to assume that we're it for now. What can the Ascendants you have on board do?"