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

[Mr Zoat]

I don't think I'm
in Kansas anymore

Pink slows, putting an arrow on her bow from.. somewhere, and loosing it at me. I flicker aside and the arrow misses, striking a car behind me and-.

BOOM!

A wave of force passes over me as the car explodes, pieces of metal and plastic raining down around me. A few hit my construct armour but they're hardly a threat. Another arrow and I dodge again, this one gouging a chunk out of the road.

I'm being attacked by Power Rangers. Now, as far as I remember that wasn't a program with a great deal of moral nuance. Zordon picked his teenagers with attitude, gave them their power coins and zords and had them fight Rita Repulsa, the least efficient alien invader ever. Each week, a new clay monster brought to life. Each week, a new chunk of… Angel Grove, flattened under the giant monster versus zord battle. No wider comment on why the world wasn't having a total freak out or why the military didn't nuke Angel Grove. Or why Rita didn't invade literally anywhere else with her teleporters. And.. okay, that was because all the actual fight footage came from a Japanese series with… Well, I never watched it but it probably had a completely different story.

But Rita wasn't attacking with any sort of political goal in mind beyond 'conquest = good'. There was no difference of opinion that could be resolved by dialogue. No discussion about the morals of killing or the use of child soldiers. Not much of one about the state of the rest of the universe where people could and did just openly declare for Team Evil. I mean-

The Red Ranger leaps at me and I sidestep around his attack, his sword cutting a slice through the tarmac as he recovers and move into a guard position.

-how was Rita's base-.

Blue Ranger. Billy, I remember him. He keeps back a little, spear held in both hands as he repeatedly stabs and retreats, trying to hold my atten-

I fly upwards five metres, causing… Zack? The Black Ranger, to miss his axe swing. I happen to know that his axe can be transformed into a large energy gun which would be far more of a threat to me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I fear there's been-"

Another arrow, and this time I use a construct shield to block it. Failing to embed, it skitters off to my left before falling to the ground and blasting apart a stretch of pavement.

"-a misunderstanding."

I hold up my hands in what I hope they understand is a gesture indicating that I don't want to fight.

"I don't work for Rita and I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop attacking me." I smile, dismissing my construct armour in favour of a slightly thickened environmental shield. "Please?"

The Rangers take a moment to redress their line, staring up at me. Red Ranger points up at me with his left hand, sword still in his right.

"If you're not with Rita, why were you hanging out with Baboo and Squatt?!"

"That was simply where I appeared on this Earth. I didn't recognise the two of them and since they were just talking to me I didn't have any reason to attack them."

"Wait." Billy-. William? Jerks in surprise. Are they being unusually physically expressive because they can't see one another's faces? "You're Orange Lantern!"

Black Ranger turns his head towards Blue. "You know this guy?"

I nod, lowering myself to two metres up. Let them see my decidedly non-monster face a little easier. "An Orange Lantern, yes. Does this parallel have a version of my Corps, or are you stuck with Larfleeze?" No immediate response. "Someone else?"

"No, he's a.. comic book character." He glances at his team and then returns his attention to me. "Like… Superman or Batman."

"Yes, that happens between parallel universes sometimes." Though this is the first time I've been on the receiving end of it. I wonder if my adventures on Earth 16 made it into Earth Prime comics? "Look, I'd really appreciate it if you could point me in the direction of anyone with the sort of exotic detection equipment-"

Yellow Ranger… No, her name's gone too. She walks over to where I was talking to 'Baboo' and 'Squatt' and picks something up.

"-I could use to detect what technique they used to bring me here so I can go back-."

"Ah, guys?" Yellow Ranger walks back to her fellows with a.. comic in her hands. "I think-"

She turns the book around, showing white spaces where parts of the illustration used to be. It's next to Kaldur…

In a room, surrounded by exotic equipment…

"-he's literally a comic book character."

I land, walk over and take a closer look. The illustrations are simplified compared to how they really looked, but… Yes, that's Mount Justice.

Okay.

Okay.

There probably are magic rituals which used fictional focuses to summon best-matches from parallel universes. That wouldn't work on Earth Prime, because the shaped magic field doesn't extend much beyond the planet, but there's no reason why parallel universes wouldn't work differently.

The alternative-.

"Um. Are you okay?"

The alternative is that those moronic Saturday morning television villains just used.. something to bring to life a comic character, and that's me. And that spell would have needed to recreate their -my- entire memory from a comic which would only hold a tiny portion of their story. That… Sounds ridiculous, but… Parallel universe magic system. I can't.. be sure that it couldn't work.

"Oh dear."

Breathe in. Breath out.

"No.. I.. don't believe that I am." I notice with some relief that they've mostly lowered their weapons. "The… The blue one. He had a bottle, he said that something wasn't his fault. If there was a potion in that bottle, that might be what caused… Me."

I send orange filaments across the street to where I appeared and… Yes, the fragments of the bottle. I reassemble it, careful not to remove the tiny amount of chemical residue.

"Do you know anyone who could analyse this?"

William nods. "I could."

"You can analyse magic potions?"

"No, but I can analyse the chemical composition."

"Whether it brought me here from a parallel universe or created me from a comic, I doubt that this is a matter of conventional chemistry. And frankly, my ring outperforms a-"

Ring, year?

Nineteen ninety five.

"-nineteen ninety five mass spectrometry system."

"Ah. Yes, you're probably right. How about Zordon?"

Red Ranger's head jerks his way and I'm pretty sure that he's glaring at him under that helmet.

"And who might Zordon be?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

"Uouuughhhh!"

Steppenwolf shudders as I ram my daiklave through his back, staring down dumbly as the point of the blade exits through his chest. For a moment it feels like he's trying to turn, then the strength leaves his legs and he starts to collapse.

I pull my blade free and stare down at him dispassionately.

"A cruel blow, great uncle, I know. But let us be honest: nothing good would have come of you going to Earth."

He falls to his side and then flops onto his back, eyes staring as if he were looking right through me. "Mo… Ther…"

No sense in letting him suffer. He is family, after all. I raise my daiklave up by the guard and then bring the point down directly between his eyes because that's what you get for not wearing a faceplate.

Now. Where was I?

Ping.

Ah, yes. Quite right. I stride through the boom tube-

17th November 2017
09:14 GMT +3

-and into a.. cave..? No, this is clearly an artificial structure. Tomb? No, vault. The local Darkseid's Mother Box sits on a plinth in the middle of the room, the light from within shining just brightly enough to pierce the outer casing. A curious design choice, but given the things he was using it for I suppose-.

"Who are you?"

Oh! Is this..? Mother Box?

Ping.

It is! Themyscira! That explains the women pointing spears at me! Which.. means.. that the middle aged blonde glaring at me is…

"Queen Hippolyta, I presume. My name is Grayven. I'm here for Father's Box."

There's a general tightening of bow strings and bracing of shield wall-. Well, it's not really a shield wall anywhere other than by the entrance. They're more buttresses guarding the archers.

"You will never have it."

I raise my eyebrows. Then I turn my head to look right. Then back at her. Then left. Then back at her. "How.. precisely.. were you planning on stopping-"

"Loose!"

Arrows -iron-headed arrows- plink harmlessly off the armour covering my chest, back, arms and thighs. One or two strike me in the face.

I smile. "-me?"

And they're still shooting. And what I'm learning from this is that local Amazons are baseline humans rather than demigoddesses and that their arrows are unenchanted.

I fold my arms patiently behind my back as they continue to draw and loose at me.

"The greatest archers this world has ever seen-" A lucky hit lands directly in my mouth. I bite through the shaft and turn my head to the left as I spit out the head. "-were fifteenth century Englishmen. They used longbows of around one point two metres-" I hold up my hands to indicate the length. "-with a draw of around four hundred Newtons. About twice what you're using." They've stopped loosing. "With a two hundred Newton draw, drawn back forty centimetres and at a distance of… What is this, five metres? The force of the impact on my skin is something like three million kilograms per square millimetre-."

"Form up!"

The Amazon hoplites form up around the huddle blocking the door, the bow wielders drawing swords and assuming a skirmishing position at either side of the shield wall.

"Perhaps another history lesson, then. In seventeen fifty six, the British Admiral John Byng led a force of thirteen ships of the line against a French fleet of twelve. The French ships were modern and in good repair, the British ships dilapidated. The initial fighting saw the British-"

"Advance!"

"-take the worst of it. In the end, he decided that it wasn't possible to win, to relieve the nearby garrison or even to inflict significant damage on the French. So, he retreated his fleet."

I take a few slow paces to the right so that the line can advance without needing to split around the plinth.

"Afterwards, the Admiral was recalled, tried, and executed for 'failing to do his utmost against the enemy'. So I understand why you're doing-" I gesture towards Queen Hippolyta with both hands. "-this, even knowing that it is futile. Indeed, I respect you all the more. And when I rule this world I will ensure that there is a place for all of you in it."

I lunge, knocking aside seven spear points with a swing on my right arm and shoving the shields behind them with my right hand. Warrior women go flying backwards as I step into the gap, brace and shove.

Swords and spears plink uselessly against my armour.

"You might need to.. improve slightly before it's a place of honour, but-."

There's a slight scraping noise as someone -it's Hippolyta, isn't it?- grabs Father's Box and sprints for the exit. "Close the gates!" Past the reforming hoplite huddle around me I see.. burly Amazons in bikinis take sledgehammers to wooden pillars supporting the ceilings above them, their strikes splintering them and causing stone sheets perhaps forty centimetres thick to fall into place.

Did they.. not.. see the boom tube I arrived by?

"But there's always a place for women of courage-" More iron weapons scrape uselessly against my armour. "-under my rule."

"We defeated your kind before!"

I lightly grip the speaker's spear head with my right hand, anchoring it in place. "You did? You don't look like a Green Lantern."

"All the people of this world fought against Steppenwolf's hordes!"

"Our histories only mention Green Lanterns and a couple of local gods. I don't remember hearing about iron age barbarians. Are you sure your people achieved anything noteworthy?"

I shove my arms outwards, pushing the Amazons pressing against me away and giving me the space to grab one in my right hand. Then I pull a nerve jammer off my belt with my left and delicately place it on her neck before dropping her. Her eyes move and she can still breathe, but her arms and legs are completely still. Good show.

This isn't about killing people, no matter how-.

A section of the crowd parts and a large woman swings a hammer at my head. It hits, and then rebounds with such force that she loses her grip and it-.

I catch it in my right hand before it can brain one of her fellows, toss it at the far wall and then grab her and nerve jam her. Huh. Gone rather dark with the only light source blocked. And -amusing as their feeble attempts to harm me are- I'm not really achieving anything here.

Mother Box.

I get into a rhythm, grabbing and nerve jamming every Amazon still assailing me.

Mother Box, boom tube to… Wherever Hippolyta is about to be.

Ping.

BOOM!

Those Amazons still standing are knocked off their feet as the tube opens, and I nudge the fallen aside with my feet before striding through it-

"Hyarh!"

-bracing myself and catching Hippolyta's horse mid-stride as she tries to run me down, casually absorbing its momentum as I lift it off the ground.

And again, if you please.

Ping.

BOOM!

Horse and queen in hand, I leap through the tube before her fellow Amazons can reach us.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
06:27 GMT

"Your majesty, I fear that you've rather got the wrong impression of why I'm here."

Queen Hippolyta sits opposite me on a wood and wrought iron gazebo, a small table with tea and buns between us. Behind her, her horse grazes peacefully on the long grass. This particular stretch of coastline is popular with hikers during summer, but during the winter only a few brave souls would come out this far from habitation. Hippolyta could easily manage the hike, but she doesn't have any idea which direction to head in. And I don't know how good her English is, so she might struggle to convey her concerns.

Tea appropriately steeped, I delicately place a tea strainer upon one cup with my left hand and lift the teapot with my right.

"Milk? Sugar?"

"You will gain no succour from me."

"But will you accept succour from me?" She doesn't really react. "Neat it is, then." I pour the tea, drowned leaves steadily piling up on the upper surface of the strainer. "Now, I understand that you had only simple materials to work with, but I have to say…" I glance at Father's Box. "Your defence didn't really slow me down. Did you ever consider passing the responsibility on to a nation with weapons a little more… Modern? If I'd been greeted by a fission bomb or three I might well have died."

She continues staring at me as I set the teapot down and gently push the tea across the table to her.

"But… Leaving that aside. The reason that I'm here-."

"You seek to restore the Mother Box and transform the Earth in the image of your own homeworld."

I widen my eyes in disbelief. "Wherever did you get that idea?"

Hippolyta's eyes pointedly shift to the component of Father's Box which I took from Themyscira.

"Oh, I took that because if Uncle Steppenwolf knew where it was, everyone else in the Apokoliptian Elite certainly did as well." I put the strainer over my cup and start pouring. "And they're not all idiots." I mean seriously? Why the heck did Steppenwolf plan on bringing those weird mindless cyberzombie things rather than actual parademons? "This way I can keep an eye on it. Because as I think I just demonstrated, your preparations were not adequate, and I don't want Vundabar or Desaad getting hold of it. Anyway." I put the teapot down and use my right hand to detach Mother Box from my armour and put her on the table. "I have a Mother Box."

"Ping!"

"And I certainly don't want to turn Earth into a new Apokolips; the one we've got is bad enough. Having two would be twice as bad."

I pick up my cup and take a small sip. No idea if this is any good or not. Bloody cost enough.

"I'm afraid that I bought the cakes rather than baking them myself, but after I found out that Steppenwolf was coming here I didn't-" I smile apologetically. "-have all that much time to prepare."

"Why would I believe you?"

"I don't put raisins in mine. I mean, I don't.. hate raisins, but I don't like them in cakes. I think it's the texture change between the cake and the dried fruit? So if you don't eat them I'm going to have to spend ten minutes.. picking them out... And have you seen the size of my fingers?"

"Why should I believe you about your goals?"

"Ah." Another sip of tea. "My name is Grayven. I'm arrogant, violent, smug… Gosh am I smug. I mean, look at this place." I'm grinning as I gesture to our surroundings. "My ultimate goal is to turn the universe into a unified political entity with myself as its sovereign, and that definitely includes Earth. But. Darkseid. Ruler of Apokolips. His goal is to mind control the universe so that not a single thought or action can occur but in accordance with his design. Obviously, those two goal states cannot coexist. Thus, at a very early age, I realised that I would have to rebel. So, first chance I got, I left Apokolips and set out on my own. Unified a few gordanian clans under my banner, improved their economy and military to the point where I could expand further, and… Found out that my Great Uncle was planning another stab at wrecking Earth."

"And where is he now?"

"Dead, with gaping wounds through his spine, lungs, heart and brain." I smile warmly. "You're welcome. And that might be an end to it. But I doubt it." I take another sip of tea. "You might.. 'big up' your role in the last showdown between Apokolips and New Genesis, but I assure you, Earth was so.. peripheral, to the main conflict that as far as we're concerned it barely warrants mentioning. There's no obvious reason for anyone to bother coming here. Which means that if someone did, there must be something of value here."

"And you want to uncover it and claim it for yourself."

"I'm not averse to that. I'm not averse to conquering the Earth. But I don't need to." I smile. "Right now, anyway. What I need is to prevent Darkseid realising his ambitions. Anything else…" I shrug. "I can be patient. I'm not getting any older. And while I think I could eventually sell you on the benefits of my rulership, I'm currently more focused on the short term."

She nods cautiously. "Why have you brought me here?"

"Seriously." I gesture to her cup with my right hand. "No pomegranate seeds. It's just tea."

She picks up her cup with hands clearly more used to a kylix rather than a deep-bowled cup, and… Pretends to take a sip. Fine.

"I need to prevent Darkseid getting what he wants. I don't really care how that happens. If I have to do it, fine, but it's also advantageous to me if he doesn't find out how far I'm prepared to go to actively oppose him. So… I don't really care who opposes him, just so long as the opposition wins."

"And what is to be my role in your design?"

"I need a witness. A hostile one. And -if it comes to it- I might need you to give Diana a prod. She's one of the few people around who can fight on my level and she went to ground in a museum for a century. That needs to stop."

"A witness to what?"

"I could bring in my fleet, but that's a… Brutish solution. And my fleet is far smaller than that of Darkseid. What we need are… Specialists. Now, ideally, these specialists would be associated with Earth's government, and capable of acting as the point of the spear during your conflict with whoever Darkseid sends. But, to my disappointment, no such group exists." I take another sip. "So what I've decided to do is to collect powerful individuals who would never act in such a fashion, and try and threaten the Earth into either compliance or open resistance. That way, win or lose, I get more or less what I want." I lean forward. "I want you to see who I recruit. I want you to hear their stories, how they… Got to the point they did, where they would side with an alien warlord rather than the people of the Earth. And you should pay attention, because I strongly suspect that you will need to brief Diana on them later."

Her eyes move away from my face for a moment as she considers what I've said.

"Why.. should I believe any of what you have told me?"

"I suppose, by comparing my actions to my stated objectives. But does it really matter? If you go along with what I want then in a few days you will be released with useful intelligence on what I'm planning and who I'm working with. If not…"

BOOM!

"There you go." I pointedly turn my head to look at the boom tube. "Back to Themyscira. You can even take the cakes. In fact, please take them; I wasn't joking about the 'picking out the raisins' thing."

"And the Mother Box?" I frown, and reattach her to my armour. Hippolyta takes a moment to readjust. "The one you took from us."

"Not until you can do a better job of protecting it. But be optimistic! One of my recruits might kill me, then there'll be no one stopping you just picking it up and heading home!"

"Very well, then. Where do you wish to take me first?"

I drain my cup and set it back on its saucer.

"Kazakhstan."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
11:35 GMT - 7

How has no one found this place?

Firstly, the Power Rangers' base of operations is on top of an obvious point of interest in a park. Okay, the exterior looks like it's made of conventional concrete blocks, so I could see a proportion of visitors writing it off as some sort of weird art installation, or.. maybe an observatory. But someone would have to check, wouldn't they? A park ranger or someone? And okay, the teleport system means that the Rangers don't have to worry about getting spotted travelling to or from the place. But they're superheroes. Even on Earth 16, which has all sorts of customs encouraging people not to go spying on superheroes, there are people who scour cities after major new appearances to find out any information they can. And even if there aren't any people like that, the National Security Agency should be pretty darn interested.

Or the villains. The only halfway sensible reason for Rita Repulsa to attack Angel Grove rather than anywhere else on Earth is because she's trying to draw them out, so she must know it's around here somewhere. Is her intelligence gathering so bad that she can't get some of her people-.

Her chimp-man, her winged lion in gold armour or her blue goblinoid.. people…

Okay, yes that makes a kind of sense.

"I have a question."

Zack looks at me from the other side of the antechamber.

"Sorry man, I can't tell you anything until Red Ranger gets done talking to Zordon."

"Why doesn't Rita attack literally anywhere else on the planet?"

"What difference does it make? We'd just teleport there as soon as Zordon picked up their teleport signal."

I nod. Worldwide detection capabilities. Interesting.

"Does that get you the exact location, or the approximate location?"

"It's.. not exact, but it's pretty good."

"So all she'd need to do would be create a monster who could hide, teleport them down somewhere with good transportation links, have them.. jump on a lorry, and then they could attack anywhere and you wouldn't know about it until the news report came in?"

He jerks. "Ah… No, if they fire energy beams we can pick that up too."

"And if they limit themselves to physical attacks?"

"Then…" He looks visibly perturbed. "I.. guess we'd be in trouble."

"Have you ever considered making direct contact with Earth's intelligence agencies? Given the 'giant monster versus giant robot' fights that happen around here, I can't imagine that they're unaware of your existence. You can't build a full human intelligence network yourself, but no one wants Rita conquering the planet."

"That's-. Maybe you should talk to B-Blue Ranger about it."

I nod.

"Can I ask you a question?"

I nod again. "Certainly."

He smiles. "You really work with Batman?"

"That's what I remember. Of course, on the preponderance of evidence I'd have to say that it's more likely that I have alchemically-created memories of working with Batman which have no basis in reality."

"Cool." He pauses. "I mean, I only watched the series, so I-."

"Live action or animated?"

"The cartoon."

"Good, because for a moment there I thought you were going to ask about the Adam West series and then I'd have to kill you." He hands jerk towards his axe-. "Joke!" I hold up my hands. "Joke!"

He freezes, then moves his hands away from the axe and tries to pretend they were never there. "Who's Adam West?"

"He did a very camp live action Batman series in the sixties. I don't hate it, but that's not what being a superhero is actually like."

"Yeah, TV really doesn't prepare you for this." He looks left and right, but the other Rangers are out of sight. "First time Rita made a monster grow, y'know? I completely froze up. If the teleporter hadn't put me inside the Mastodon Zord automatically I'd probably have missed it."

I nod. "Same thing happened to me during my first supervillain fight. It's not that you're afraid so much as bewildered. Nothing can quite prepare you for a tornado-throwing robot. Or a-" I indicate him with my right hand. "-sudden giant monster."

He nods back. "Putties? Regular-sized monsters? Just another day on the sparring mat. Kinda. Then suddenly you've got something the size of a skyscraper screaming at you. Now, it's-"

I smile. "Yeah."

"-all, 'oh, she's making it giant again, because that worked so well the last dozen times'."

"So… Why haven't you ever attacked her on the moon?"

"'cause, then she'd have all her guys all around us, all the reinforcements she wanted, in her castle -which has gotta be full of traps and magic spells and stuff- and we wouldn't be able to get back. And if she made a monster giant up there while our zords were back on Earth, we'd be toast."

"Good reason. But how about teleporting up there with a tactical nuclear device-?"

The reinforced door to the-. Well, I assume that it's the actual command room where Zordon spends his time, opens and the other four Rangers walk out. They're still in costume and.. honestly, I'm not sure if I remember their faces well enough to pick them out of a police line-up.

"Alright, give me the bad news."

"You were created by the potion." William twitches as Yellow Ranger elbows him. "But that doesn't.. make you a bad person?"

"Thank you for clarifying that. Follow up question: is it permanent?"

"We don't know. The only way to find out for sure would be to use it on another publication, and their post-initiation emergence would mean that you would be affected by any time-related expiration before they would."

"No, I was just hoping that alchemical potions conformed to certain norms of behaviour. Supplementary question." I create a simple shield construct. "How the heck am I doing this?"

Yellow Ranger tilts her head slightly to the side. "You do that with your ring."

"My ring draws power from the emotional spectrum. The emotion spectrum is a feature of the Detective Comics universe." Post-1995, but let's leave that aside for the moment. "The thing this ring uses as an intrinsic part of how it works doesn't exist here, so clearly this ring can't be using it to function. And yet, it functions. How?"

"The obvious source of mystic energy is the potion used to create you. But since your exposure was a unique event-."

"Either it made me tap into something else, or I have a finite quantity of power and I'm running down my battery."

Shit. Shit. Shit.

"Could I please speak to Zordon directly?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
11:40 GMT - 7

That's not a prop.

My ring can identify some of the nanotechnology and alchemy flying around the interior, keeping the commander of Earth's power rangers alive and functional. The facial projection he uses to communicate is the least of its functions, and I'm.. a little concerned about exactly what was done to him that it can't just fix him up. Some sort of… Curse? Something doing progressive damage, and they can't repair the underlying cause?

Similarly, non-prop Alpha looks a good deal more impressive than the plastic mask version I remember from the series. Some of his surface systems make sense to me while others… Don't. Real physics…

Real physics doesn't work like comic physics.

…

"Orange Lantern."

I incline my head slightly as his projection stares down at me.

"Zordon. Thank you for consenting to speak with me. I realise that this must seem like.. a bit of a risk."

"You are not responsible for the circumstances of your creation."

"No, I… Never thought that I was. But from your point of view I can see how this could look like a trick, and I'm.. grateful that you're taking the chance."

"You have been scanned extensively by the command centre's sensors. If you were simply another monstrous creation of Rita Repulsa's henchmen we would not be communicating face to face."

I fan my hands out to the sides.

"Scan away. Please. You probably know more about me than I do at this point."

"My knowledge of alchemy is not equal to the knowledge Baboo possesses, but I will tell you what I can."

"Am I an organic human?"

"You are not. You are a magic construct given life by alchemy. Your body resembles a human body. It will function like one, until the magic animating you runs out."

"That-." I bow my head. "I'm sorry, you're the expert, but I was assuming that.. my body was a human body. My ring is.. working. Even if I am made of-. Being sustained by magic, anything I make is just.. made, isn't it?"

"My scans are not exhaustive, but no. Things created by expending magic will be unmade once the power of that magic is gone."

"That-." I frown. "Sorry, I… I'm having trouble getting my head around the idea."

"That is quite alright."

"So… Matter I rearrange? That would snap back?"

"As far as I can determine, yes."

"Then what was the point? I mean, presumably they wanted me to fight the Rangers. If I can't do anything permanent and.. if I killed them they'd.. just come back from the dead when my timer ran out…"

"With the Rangers incapacitated, Rita Repulsa would be free to strike anywhere on Earth. Furthermore, it is possible that she or Baboo could maintain the effect, or further stabilise it."

…

"Damn, that's… That's actually worse than my worst-case scenario. I just…" I raise my left hand. "Thought I might have to go without my ring."

"I'm sorry, but unless Baboo returns to Earth we lack the knowledge required to aid you."

"What about the morphing grid?" Pink Ranger steps forward. "Could he use that to power him instead?"

"I'm afraid that the energies are incompatible. While he could draw upon it, it would not sustain him."

…

Damn. Um.

Okay.

It… Sounds like the only way I can survive this is.. either find a source of magic power that by some miracle happens to be compatible with whatever it was that Baboo did to create me, or-.

"The potion residue. Is there anything we can do with that?"

"While Alpha was able to analyse the components, replicating those that were made by magic is not possible. Even if it were, that potion was designed to give life to a fictional character, not to sustain one which already existed."

"That would simply be a matter of letting me return to my comic-" I glance at the console which it is lying on. "-and applying it again. But you're sure that there isn't any source of the magic components on Earth?"

"I cannot be completely sure without conducting a detailed survey of the entire planet, and that is impossible with the resources on hand. However, I am as certain as I can reasonably be."

"Does Baboo.. come to Earth.. frequently?"

Three Rangers shakes their helmeted heads.

Red thinks for a moment. "I think this was only the second time I've ever seen him."

"Does he have anything he's particularly partial to? Something I could use to lure him here?"

"No, but in any case, given the failure of his task today, it is most likely that he will avoid drawing attention to himself for a time."

"Okay. Ah. Any idea how long I have?"

"I will not be able to determine that without more data. I suggest remaining here for the time being."

"I appreciate the offer, but you've just told me that you can't help me. And.. I need to be out… Doing something."

Zordon looks down at me for a moment.

"I understand. I have altered the security systems to grant you access. You may return at any time."

"Thank you. Um." I turn to face the Rangers. "Thank you for trying, I suppose."

I brush past the Rangers and head towards the exit in something of a daze.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
11:38 GMT +5

BOOM!

I walk slowly towards the checkpoint, an oblong and mildly concave shield in front of me. The guards saw the boom tube open, saw me emerge from it and are clearly torn between hunkering down and hoping I go away and simply fleeing.

Hippolyta is trying to keep an eye on me while simultaneously taking in the sights that she's never seen before.

"In Nineteen eighty four, the world of Krypton was destroyed due to its people draining energy from its core. One of their.. philosophers, a man named Jor-El, was able to send his son to Earth for safety before it happened. He landed in a place called Kansas, was taken in by a nice couple and grew to manhood there. Nice chap."

Two of the guards open fire, their rifle ammunition failing to make any sort of impression on my shield.

"He's as strong-. No, stronger than me, far faster, he can fly under his own power, fire rays of heat out of his eyes and… Heh, probably some other things as well. More to the point, he was a good man. Solid morals. Died last year."

I don't mention the sheer number of people who died as a result of his ineptitude when he fought General Zod in Metropolis. That was… Okay, he got thrown in at the deep end, but a hundred and fifty thousand dead is part of why I'm reluctant to hand this over to the locals. That, and his period of inactivity prior to Zod's arrival. I'm sure that was a good man, I'm just not sure that he was a competent one, and if that's the standard...

The soldiers at the checkpoint appear to have received instructions from somewhere, and fall back in reasonable order.

"Was this his home?"

"No, he lived half a world away from here. This is where they put the other fellow."

It's designed to look like a nuclear power plant. But it's not sending power anywhere and the doors are locked and barred.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean-" I jerk my left hand out, construct hand gripping a man who thought that he was being clever by sneaking around the side and taking aim. I pull him through the air right up to me and leave him dangling there. "-that the one who ended up here did not get a good home." I smile at my prisoner. "Isn't that right?"

"I-I-I don't know anything-."

"Of course you don't, of course you don't. They don't tell privates working security at sites like this the details of their top secret projects! That would be ridiculous."

His eyes widen.

"And I'm not going to kill you either." I roll my eyes. "I mean, look at you. Still holding your gun? Good man, good man." I lean in slightly, and he tries to cringe back but can't because my construct won't let him. "Put the gun up to my left eye, then pull the trigger."

"Huh?"

"I want to demonstrate to your colleagues that they can't fight me. So I'm giving you a free volley." I reach over with my right hand and lift the barrel of his rifle upwards, until the tip of the barrel is right against my left eye. "There. Do you need me to-?"

CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-CHUH-clickclickclickclick.

"Aim it for you?" I dismiss my construct and half catch half prod him in the direction of his comrades' firing line-. No, wait, the Soviet Union collapsed, I shouldn't call them 'comrades' or it'll start sounding like I'm the Soviet experiment. "Trot along, chum."

"Uh?"

I look him over. Ah. "You're not going to find a change of trousers here, are you? Go!"

He scrambles away, nearly dropping his rifle but staggering as he frantically catches it and starts running again.

"Did you need to humiliate him?"

"Humiliate? The man who got right up close to the alien overlord and gave him a full clip to the face? He's going to be dining out on that one for years." I start walking again. "But as I was saying, this one didn't get a good home. A little under seventy years ago, a flying ship crashed in Russia. Three people on board. The father was the helmsman, and he died at his post. The mother survived the impact, but she had a difficult delivery, and combined with the injuries she sustained in the crash and the changes the Earth wrought on her body, she died as the local physicians tried to save her. Her son lived."

I don't bother listening to whoever that was have a shouted conversation with his sergeant. I do note them leaving without trying to fight further, but it's a background to what I'm actually interested in.

"And they treated him cruelly."

I snort, shaking my head. "People survive 'cruelly'. People cope with it and go on to live productive lives. They drugged him with everything under the sun, cut him up and stuck him back together dozens of times. The torture-god my father employs would have been impressed. And then the empire the people responsible served collapsed, and the place they built to contain him was left to rot."

A giant yellow gauntlet grabs the front door and tears it out of the brickwork before tossing it aside.

I sigh. "Seventy years. I'm probably going to have to bring in my daughter Lynne to sort his head out."

Queen Hippolyta looks at me askance. "You are a father?"

"And a husband." I hold up my left hand, showing my wedding ring. "Which is one of the reasons why things like this really-. Get me. My nine eldest all had similar upbringings before they entered my care, and everyone involved in setting up this place better hope that they've left this vale of tears…"

We walk up the steps to the opening, a few bricks falling onto the floor but the rest having decided to stick to their supports.

"It's a bit of a circuitous route, so I'm just-" Footsteps run towards us. "-going to dig through directly…"

I trail off as a short-haired blonde woman in surprisingly figure-hugging overalls runs towards us, looking distraught. "Please, you need to stop!"

I raise my left eyebrow. "I don't think I do."

"You know what we're-?" I nod. "Of course. I'm Doctor Llewellyn. They brought me in to see if they could fix him. We were making progress, but-. They're panicking."

"Sounds like a 'them' problem?"

"They didn't just invent tranquilizers! They-."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhh!"

"Oh no."

Ah. "Doctor, why don't you and Queen Hippolyta take cover? I think I'm going to need to-"

"Mmmnggaaaaaaaaaaaghhh!"

"-focus for this one."

"He's basically just a child-."

"I know, that's why I came here to free him. Get to cover. Do it now." Direct the Peasantry

They move, Hippolyta more purposefully than the Doctor. Alright, exactly where-?

Concrete, soil and brick explodes in all directions as the alien leaps through the ground to punch me in the face!

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
11:42 GMT +5

My jaw shatters, my head is wrenched around and I feel my vertebrae strain to keep my neck from snapping!

And for some reason I'm thinking about Kara.

I'm knocked aside, falling backwards as… Subjekt-17 flies past me. Horrifying scars and… Nineteenth century stitching aside, his body and arms are standard issue humanoid, three-fingered hands notwithstanding. His face… His nose is barely there, short and almost flat against his face. His eyes are red and wide apart, and his nostrils are only slightly below them. He's completely hairless, and his head projects forwards from his shoulders on a long, thick and highly flexible neck. For clothing, bracers and a pair of cycle shorts appear to have been… Stapled? To him?

**HURT!**

And he's telepathic, apparently. I… Didn't know that.

Construct armour, healing ray. Pacify the Belligerent

I wince slightly at the uncomfortable feeling of Sinestro pinning my chin together prior to healing, watching as Subjekt-17 keeps his face pointed at me even as his body… Struggles to turn in flight, wallowing in the air, legs sort of flicking out as he turns for another lunge.

"A'm 'ot 'ere to-." Ah, yes, thank you for spot-welding my mandible, Sinestro.

Your preparation was inadequate, Lantern Grayven.

"I'm not here to fight you. We can-."

**HURT!**

He finally gets himself sorted out in the air and flies down. He's faster than me, but I've had plenty of practice coping with that.

And now I'm thinking about Kara again.

A second's notice is all I need to dodge and grab his torso. He realises that he's missed immediately and tries to slow, but that just makes it easier for me to slam him face-first into the ground.

"Listen to m-!"

He twists with his flying ability, pulling out of my hold and catching my construct armour a glancing blow-. Which shatters it effortlessly. I float back and restore it. Just lucky he doesn't have heat vision.

"Listen to me!" Rebuke the Disorderly

**HURT ME! HURT YOU!**

"I didn't hurt you!"

Ugh, I could try talking in his species' language but he was never taught it. I could use a gas, but there aren't that many things that affect his species under these conditions.

**HUUUUUUUUUURT!**

Egh. My vision swims for about a second, and then it clears. Alright, his brain blast has raw power but no subtlety. He's using it instinctively. He hasn't gotten any training with it. Manageable, given how uncoordinated he is.

Kinetic barrier.

It will overload.

I don't need it to stop him, just to slow him down.

Very well.

The construct emitter appears just as he lunges again. He hasn't gotten up to full speed so the energy in his impact isn't enough to overload it. It flickers into existence, his own redirected force stopping him dead.

Message to Dr. Llewellyn. 'What did they dose him with, exactly?' Send.

Glaring at the barrier, Subjekt-17 snarls and slaps it. It does that… Shimmer thing it does when it's actually being stressed more than the system can withstand, but it survives that one hit.

Healing him might help his mental state, but it doesn't make poisons vanish. Anything that was altering his mood would keep doing so. Take him somewhere by boom tube and let him burn it out? Heat his body to burn it out myself?

He jumps and flies, twisting as he does so to slap the barrier-.

My construct emitter fractures as it gets hit with far more force than it was designed to withstand. But this time I don't dodge. Instead I duck slightly and punch up with both fists. He mostly misses: a light kick to the stomach where his legs flick out as he folds up around my fists.

"O-uh."

They didn't take his tongue at least. I grab his right foot and pull, pulling him down and pressing him into the ground where I try to fold his.. arms behind his back, and I can just about move them, but he's resisting and I'm not strong enough to just force them into place. Mechanical enhancement please.

Bulky construct mechanical power armour arms and shoulders appear around me, granting me the extra strength I need to fold his arms behind his back in what should be a submission position. Unfortunately, he's far too frenzied to respond to pain like that. Injection sites, injection sites…

There! Analysis-.

Agh! I didn't take his neck into account! He just swung his head back and head butted me right in the still-healing jaw! Agh-! He pushed off the ground and we're flying upwards, spinning around-. Yeah, that's not going to work, and if I bind your arms with New God restraints-.

My-. My skin is humming, he's-. Some sort of sonic attack, but I can deal with that. I think he's trying to hit a frequency rather than using raw-.

Oof! No, raw power was-. Not sure why he waited, but-. Ow. Construct armour's gone, armour's cratered and my ribs don't feel too good. Fix that and broadcast this fight and related information nationwide. I need the fear boost.

Done, Lantern Grayven. But why not worldwide?

Because they'll just treat it like light entertainment. And Batman might see it. Now isn't the time.

Understood. Message from Doctor Llewellyn. That's a potent cocktail.

Ugh. It is, and it's a brutish combination too. Not so much a tailored combat drug as a mix of methamphetamines and whatever they had in the drug cabinet. But I can deal with it.

My armour glows brighter as people imagine Metropolis happening to their town or city. I don't like doing things like that, but needs must when Darkseid drives.

And then he's on me, chunks of the manacles I put on him spraying out across the wasteland around us. He's-. Fast and his flying is improving and I'm just about fending him off and my arms are going to be solid bruise in a few hours time. But the hodgepodge of chemicals they used to do this to him-. They actually implanted the dispenser. I can't get at it without cutting him open and I'm not sure I can cut him open. I've got records on the medicines that his species usually use, but there isn't anything-.

I fly down as he tries another long-necked headbutt. Blood chemistry, counteragents and-. His people use calming sounds? Alright. Broadcast and synthesise.

He hear it and slows, not pressing his attack. I use the opportunity to pull back slightly-.

The air between us ripples as he fires a sonic blast at me, but my own sonic cannons neutralise it. Construct gas mask behind the shield, wait for the sonic attack to end and throw the shield forward as if it's an attack. He braces to block it, the shield shatters and the gas mask clamps on his face and doses him.

"G-uah?"

"Sorry, but you're not in your right mind right now-."

"Yes. They put.. a machine in me. It.. does this?"

"That gas should counter it until it runs out… I think. It's not too healthy, but-."

"Take it out!"

"I… Can do that, but not without a lot of pain."

He… Is that a smile? "I know pain. Do it."

I fabricate a scalpel, x-ionise it and then float closer.

"Brace yourself."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
11:47 GMT +5

"Have you started?"

I hold up the half-empty injection system. It looks disturbingly bodged together, and I'd be astonished to learn that they'd tested it properly.

"Yes. Healing your wounds now." I point the healing ray at him. "Though if you genuinely didn't feel that, I think we need to get a doctor from your own species to look at you, because you might have damage to your nervous system."

"Uh. Feel it slightly. So much pain. Didn't stand out."

The hole I dug in his chest starts regrowing at an acceptable speed. I… Could try using it on the stitches holding his head and chest together, but I'm really not qualified to deal with this and I feel uncomfortable doing anything experimental on someone so used to experimentation. Not when someone's life isn't on the line.

"Take mask off?"

"It'll still take a little while for the drugs in your bloodstream to fully purge themselves. Leave it on for a few minutes more, unless you start to feel… Uh, unwell."

He looks at me with an odd expression. "Nearly laughed."

The wound I made finishes healing. I give it a few seconds more, then shut off the beam. "Okay, that's done. Let me know if.. it-. Starts hurting more."

He… Nods. It's an odd gesture to watch, given the structure of his neck.

"Now, I'm sure that you've got a whole list of people you want to tear apart for what they did to you, and you're perfectly justified in that desire. But I was wondering if you could help me with something first."

He looks down at the facility where he was being held. "Humans right here."

"The people who did this to you are still here?"

"Humans are still here. You… Like me."

"I'm not from this planet. I was never treated as you have been." Alright, Desaad stuck a few knives in me during training but that's not the same as seventy years of torture. "I can take you back to your planet if you're not up to-."

"This planet!"

Ah. I suppose he was born here. Unlike America, Britain doesn't have citizenship by birth so it didn't really occur to me that he'd think of it that way.

"I'm sorry. Your species' homeworld. You have relatives there. Family."

"No family. No family."

Ah… I take a step closer and gingerly give him a hug… Which.. I.. realise is probably the first one he's had in his entire life. Damn. He doesn't hug me back with his arms, but he does rest his chin on my left shoulder for a moment. And at the end of that moment I feel the tension enter his body and his muscles tense.

"What-?"

"Humans."

I separate and look down-. Doctor Llewellyn and Hippolyta are darting out, arms full of binders and hanging files. Old paperwork. I-.

He's diving at them-.

"Waitwaitwait-" I head down after him. "-waitwait-."

Hippolyta drops her load and prepares to-. Die fighting, but I put a wall between them and Subjekt-17 stops rather than charge through it.

He glares at me, gesturing with his right arm. "Humans!"

"Hippolyta has lived on an island with no contact with the outside world for three thousand years. Doctor Llewellyn was here to heal you. If you want the people responsible…" I scan the building. "They're still inside. But it's-"

He flies up and then smashes down through the upper levels of the building and into the secure laboratories, the gas mask construct failing as he breaches the site.

"-interrogate, then eradicate." Hm.

Doctor Llewellyn looks at me expectantly. I look blank, shrugging and shaking my head. "Aren't you going to stop him?"

"No? Bastards had him chained up for seventy years. They deserve everything they get, as do the moral vacuums who enabled them. I'd make sure he has a list of names and faces before he tears down any cities wholesale, but that's the limit of my largess."

"Oh. I-. Thought-."

"You..? Oh, I'm not a superhero. I'm actually trying to conquer your planet."

"… Oh."

"I just don't want to be a dick about it. Ah, so do you actually know anything about his physiology, or was your work here more speculative?"

"I was-. I'm a paleobiologist. My specialisation is working out how the bodies of-."

My eyes narrow. "You're the reason dinosaurs have feathers?!"

"Ah." She takes a step back. "It's-. They do-. Did. You've just got to look at their bone and skin structure-."

"But it's so lame!" I throw up my arms. "I used to like dinosaurs, and now they're just-. Giant… Turkeys." I sigh. "So they don't have any actual alien doctors or xenobiologists, so they hired the closest thing they could get. Fine, I understand." I read a Star Trek story where the Enterprise got the ship's vet to help with an injured alien because they were familiar with a wider variety of morphologies. "Have you actually made any plans for treatment?"

"I was still going through the records." She shakes her head. "I was really just here to advise the actual doctors." She glances back into the building in response to a particularly loud scream. "Who… Are dead, now."

"And nothing of value was lost. The Hippocratic Oath exists for a reason."

"They weren't-. They weren't here at the start-."

"Don't care. If they saw what was happening and didn't leave immediately, they got what was coming to them."

"I didn't-."

"Yeah. Lucky for you that I'm feeling nice, because he is worth far more to me than the population of this country."

Subjekt-17 bursts through a wall, forearms and face coated in blood and tiny pieces of torn flesh. He stands there, looking up and the sky and breathing heavily.

I take a few steps closer, putting myself between him and the other two. "Are you ready to move on?"

"Humans. I want to kill humans."

"We have records on everyone involved in this place. Everyone who did this to you, and everyone who knew about it. But I need your help with something first. You're not the only one something like this happened to."

His head twists to look at me. "There are other Subjekts?"

"Oh yes. More than a few. Will you help me rescue them? Will you help take revenge on the people who hurt them?"

"Yes. Where? Where are the other Subjekts?"

"A place in America called Area Fifty One, and a prison in China."

"We kill humans?"

"Some. We let the other Subjekts kill the people who hurt them. It's only fair."

"Then I will help. Where first?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
12:57 GMT -7

"Um. Hey."

The Pink Ranger -sans costume- approaches as I look out across the Angel Grove Park. I want to call her… Trinity..? But that's probably not right.

"Afternoon." I shrug. "I'd say good afternoon, but…"

"Ye-ah." She looks up at my face for a few moments then follows my stare out across the park. "Are you, like, looking for something?"

"If you think about it, this is the first park I've ever seen."

"What, they don't have parks in… Comic book land?"

"The comic wasn't a portal to a parallel universe. It was fictional, and so was I. Nothing I saw, or… Remember seeing, was actually real. It's like-."

I take a moment to consider who I'm talking to.

"I'm.. going to guess… You're not a big Star Trek fan."

She shakes her head apologetically.

"The past does not exist, only our memories of it. Doubly so for me. You and your friends are the first people I've ever spoken to; the first real people. This is the first park…"

"Yeah, I…" She nods. "Get it."

I watch some sort of toddler group meandering across the grass, shepherded by their parents.

"So.. you're dying then, huh?" … "That sucks."

"Yes, it does." I breathe in and out slowly. "In other situations there are a few things I could do to put it off or get around it, but your boss was pretty clear that when time runs out everything I made vanishes. So there's no point building a new body, because it will just vanish. Same with uploading-."

I've lost her.

"Same with putting my mind into a really powerful computer. I'd have to build it with local parts and program it with…" I shake my head. "Basically, it's not viable. And the little magic I can do myself doesn't appear to work here due to this being a different universe."

"Oh." Her eyes dip. "Sorry."

"Oh, better to have existed for a day than to have not existed at all, I suppose."

She… She smiles. "That's the spirit! So what're you gonna do?"

"How do you mean?"

"If you've only got, like, a day left, what're you gonna do with it?"

"I… Ah. I'm going to do everything I can to get out of it."

"Oh." She frowns in confusion. "'cause I thought you couldn't do anything."

"I can't think of anything right now, but I could have days."

"Yeah… But..? Do you really wanna..? Use them like that?"

"The first successful heart-lung transplant was performed in nineteen eighty one. Someone receiving that chirurgery will have to cope with the procedure itself, then with the immunosuppressant drugs they'll be on for the rest of their lives so that their own immune system doesn't attack their new organs. That will make them more vulnerable to all other diseases and might not be entirely effective anyway. They might still get problems with the organs being rejected."

I turn to face her.

"So tell me; if it was you, if you had a fatal heart disease and the opportunity to maybe get a transplant… Do you stay in a major city that has a hospital that could do the chirurgery or do you go backpacking in Belize in the understanding that you won't need a return plane ticket?"

"I dunno." She shrugs. "I haven't really thought about it."

"Then I strongly advise you to never take up smoking."

"As if." She looks thoughtful for a moment, then perks up. "Hey, did you know Supergirl?"

"How do you mean?"

"Supergirl. Like Superman?" She squints. "You know who Superman is, right? Or is that, like, a different company? Or something?"

"I… Allowing for the fact that all my memories of them are fictitious, I know Kara Zor-El, Kara El, Linda Danvers and Angelika Kant."

"But do you know Supergirl?"

I…

"I know several women who've used that title, yes. How… Familiar are you with 'Supergirl'?"

"I think there was a film a few years ago?"

"Not-. Where I'm from. But I'm aware of it, and I don't think it was anything like as bad as the reviewers said. Ah. But none of the Supergirls I know are actually like she was in the film."

"Oh."

"Though I do appreciate your attempt to relate to me."

She perks up slightly. "Oh."

I mean… Power Rangers. I barely remember anything about Power Rangers. Certainly not enough to do what I did on Earth 16 and exploit my metaknowledge. I know… Goldar's got a zord buried somewhere, but I've got no idea where it is or how to get at it. And that's it, really. Rita's people generally made their monsters as and when they needed them or when inspiration took them, so there's nothing I can acquire first...

The Green Power Coin? I have no idea where that was before Rita gave it to Tommy. Various others… I don't even remember where their costume-changes came from. Apart from that one alien who really wanted to go home… I don't even remember what it was called, but it left Earth and then…

Rita's staff made a giant copy of it to fight the Rangers.

Which…

Which is something I haven't particularly wanted to think about, but… The one readily available source-. The readily available sources of magic around here… Are in the hands of Rita's team. Minions.

I mean, Baboo made me. He can probably work out how to sustain me. And Rita's staff…

"So… Do you want me to show you around, or..?"

"No. Thank you for offering, but I doubt that what I need is in Angel Grove. But.. I.. do appreciate you making the effort."

"Okay." She smiles. "Well, if you need anything, you know where to find us."

"Thank you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll get back to my search."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
20:26 GMT

Nineties mundane data protection, the sort of thing you can bypass with a dial tone. But my energy budget is unusually strict. I could scan the entire world, but…

I don't know how much of my optimal lifespan that would use. It might be none. It might be that the power from the potion went into making my ring and now it just does ring things, at least for as long as its current charge holds out. I'd experiment, but that might make me die faster.

And I don't know if this universe has souls, much less whether or not I still have one.

Death could be permanent here.

I could die. For real.

I dealt with that. Or rather, the comic book character whose memories I have dealt with that. And now I've got to deal with that all again, because-. Because it didn't happen. And I guess I'm glad to exist, but from my point of view I-. I didn't exist but my memories tell me that I did.

And I want to keep existing.

Everyone… Else… My friends, family… They don't exist. Didn't exist. And even if I got more of whatever that potion was and… Pour it out…

I don't even know how to evaluate that. Definitely immoral without a way to sustain them. And then… I don't have a problem with selfishly bringing fictional characters I know into being rather than fictional characters I don't, but…

I don't know.

But keeping myself alive comes first.

Positives. Not many. With no Justice League here I can pretty much do whatever I want. Since I'll be dead soon anyway, there are basically no consequences that are worse for me than the inevitable. So between the aforementioned nineties electronic security and my willingness to completely disregard the law, I can hop from secure facility to secure facility and scan whatever I want.

If only anyone had anything worth stealing.

The National Security Agency facility near Angel Grove had plenty of data on their fights, as well as all of the personal data of each Ranger. Because ducking into an alleyway might throw off a putty but actual spies are a little harder to fool. But when monsters are destroyed by the Megazord's finishing moves there isn't much left in one piece, and sometimes what there is reverts to clay. And as far as they can tell, the clay itself is completely mundane.

I might be able to get more. But I'm not risking shortening my lifespan to try.

Area 51 was a disappointment. Not a single intact ship and most of their research on the fragments they have is on paper. I copied a few pages before deciding that it was worthless.

The Bermuda Triangle is a perfectly normal confluence of shipping lanes with a statistically average number of disappearances.

Loch Ness does actually have an alien sea creature in it. But it's not one that can give me what I need.

The Tunguska Event was an alien incursion, but reading between the lines in the contemporary reports it looks like Zordon dealt with it while he was in his prime. Some machinery was recovered, but between revolutions, governmental circular firing squads and general neglect, if there ever was anything that could help me it's long since broken beyond my capacity to repair.

I'm dithering.

I know that there were different generations of Power Rangers, but I don't remember when they went from just changing the current cast to restarting the whole thing. Or if they shared a setting. There were time travellers, ninjas, beast… Something or other? There probably are things I could loot to sustain myself. But I don't know enough to remember where they are.

I'm still dithering.

Did Rita ever have a goal? A… Strategy that went beyond this week's plan? Now that I'm not ten years old, the ability to teleport superhuman soldiers to anywhere on Earth seems like something that would make it simple enough to just bypass the Power Rangers and conquer the planet conventionally. Even if their equipment can't make many monsters within a given timeframe, she could easily…

Mid-nineties. The Bosnia war is still going on. She could make a deal with any of the involved parties, give them some monster support and then have a base of operations on Earth. Large parts of Africa would be incapable of offering meaningful resistance. The Russian Federation is still kind of a mess.

But no. She attacks Angel Grove. Is that because her experience tells her that the Power Rangers are the only thing able to resist her significantly? And that this is genuinely the most efficient route to go down? Am I overestimating putties? Regular putties could be beaten up by human martial artists, so they're probably perfectly killable by actual guns. The Lord Zed putties were invulnerable everywhere except the 'Z' on their chests, but they weren't actually any better at fighting than the other sort. Just tankier until whoever they're fighting works out where they should be hitting and then they could be destroyed by literal children.

I suppose that against someone who knows to attack the weak spot, they're actually worse than normal putties.

The giant monsters would still beat everything that isn't a zord or a tactical nuclear device. I'd bet on an infantry platoon against most regular-sized monsters, but they'd take losses killing it.

I look up, and there's the moon.

Time to stop dithering.

I accelerate, trying to spot any space-based defences. Or weapons. Or detection devices. Looks like a few American satellites are pointing at the moon, but I don't know if that's more than normal or not.

No weapons. The SALT treaty was intended to stop people using space based weapons against targets on Earth, not against other things in space. If they didn't want to use nuclear weapons then they could build a railgun and start blasting with that.

Are they dealing with the same problem of ignorance that I am?

Closer to the moon, and closer, and closer… There's the pot… Container thing, that Rita got out of. Odd that she just left it lying there. I'd have either kept it with me or destroyed it, but up to her.

Step through the dust and there's her citadel, complete with… Telescope that's currently pointing at me. Something about the building is throwing off my scans, but they definitely know that I'm-.

A golden fleck leaves-.

I stop, because while Goldar had effectively been reduced to scenery by the time I started watching he's supposed to be a significant physical threat. And to emphasise that I don't want to fight I hold my hands out to the side with my fingers unclenched.

By the looks of things his flight speed isn't all that great, but he's not on a death clock.

He slows as he approaches conversation range though he keeps his sword at the ready.

"You. You were supposed to fight the Power Rangers."

"Why? I had no reason to fight them."

"Because it is what you were made for!"

"And if I'd been told that, I might have acted on it. Or at least asked-."

"WHAT?! What do you mean, you weren't told? How did those idiots bungle that?"

"I couldn't tell you. My… Creator just told the Power Rangers that I was there to destroy them, without telling me to do so or explain why I should. I am here because I wish to offer your mistress my services. For appropriate compensation."

He sneers. "Mercenary."

"Yes."

His stare becomes slightly less intense. "Hah. She will hear you. And if you fail to impress her, you will not live to return to Earth."

"Rightoh. Lead the way."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
20:30 GMT

"You're back!"

The short blue person who was responsible for creating me shouts in surprise the moment he sees me approaching Rita Repulsa's throne. His jaw drops and his hands come up to cover his mouth. Then he throws his arms out to the sides in excitement.

"You're back, my Orange… Warlord! Are-?"

"Warmaster."

The winged ape next to him rolls his eyes.

Squatt just blinks. "Huh?"

"The name you picked for me was Orange Warmaster. You clearly put no thought at all into it and made it up on the spur of the moment in an attempt to encourage them to attack me after accidentally dropping whatever potion that was onto my comic."

"Ah…" Ms. Repulsa looks at him with an arched left eyebrow, so he decides to double down. "Don't worry about that right now. Are the Power Rangers dead?"

"Probably not."

"You came back here without doing your job?!" Ms. Repulsa gestures to me with her staff. "Tell me why I shouldn't destroy you where you stand!"

"I don't remember accepting a job. The short nitwit dropped whatever that potion was on a superhero comic. I had no reason to fight them and no reason to follow his orders." I smile cruelly. "Not that he actually remembered to give me any; he told them I was supposed to kill them, not me."

She glares at him and he cringes back. "Ah-aaa…"

"How can you be so stupid that you don't even tell your monster to attack?"

"Uh, I was-. Surprised! Yeah!"

"With the greatest respect, ma'am, there's very little point in blaming a moron for being stupid. He's working at the limits of his competence."

The ape-man snorts, raising his right fist to his mouth as the short blue one glares at him for his lack of support.

Ms. Repulsa gives me a grudging smile. "So! Why are you here?"

"The poorly brewed potion that granted me life only gave me a limited amount of power. When I run out, I stop existing."

"That's not a bug." Ape man wiggles his right forefinger at me. "That's a deliberate feature. The potion is only designed for creating short term minions."

"Ah. Then I apologise. The potion worked exactly as intended, which is a problem for me."

"Oh." Ms. Repulsa smiles cruelly. "So you want to live?"

"Just so. I already asked Zordon, and apparently I'm out of luck. If you can make me a 'real boy', I'm your man."

"I can make a new monster any day I want." She waves her left hand dismissively. "What's so special about you?"

"The dullard dropped the potion on a superhero comic. It brought me to life with all of the skills and memories of the character I'm based on. Years of fighting against supernaturally powerful opponents in all sorts of exotic locations. And I'm fairly powerful…" I glare at Baboo. "When I'm not having to worry about spontaneously snapping out of existence."

"Oh, that's not how it works. You'll be able to do… Ah… Nearly everything you could do in your comic. Not things that required other things to work properly, but everything else. And you should be able to do most of them as much as you want! Un… Til… You run out of power."

"Ah. In that case, why not accept? You'll want me to fight the Power Rangers anyway, and from the sounds of it I can do that without anything extra from you. If I win, I want you to extend my life. Is that something you can do?"

"Baboo! Bring me the potion recipe!"

"At once, mistress!" He bows and scurries off into one of the other rooms.

"Thank you. I do rather like being alive."

She gives me a hard look. "How do you plan on fighting them when all of my other minions and monsters have failed?"

I know that there are more zords buried in various places. I doubt that Ms. Repulsa whipped up the Dragonzord herself, but 'somewhere underwater' doesn't really narrow it down. Titanus is 'somewhere in the mountains in California', which narrows it down a bit, but a quick scan earlier didn't reveal it and I'm not sure how reliable my more exotic scans are at the moment anyway. She's in a better place to track the location of the main dinozord hangar than I am.

Other than just flying into Angel Grove and tearing apart a few buildings… Which I'd rather not do because I'm sure that insurance rates there are already ridiculously high. I could just snipe each of the Rangers from a few miles away, but…

I'm negotiating with Team Evil here. Just killing the only people who can effectively fight them is just asking to get backstabbed, and leave the Earth completely vulnerable to them. Making it look like I've killed them is similarly problematic: I have no idea what sort of sensors they've got up here, so I don't know if I could fake it convincingly. And if I did, I don't know what Rita Repulsa actually wants to do with Earth. She might just see that as a sign that it's fine to let her people go on a rampage.

"Is there any device or artefact that you particularly want to recover from Earth?"

"You said that you had extensive experience. If you want to impress me, kill the Power Rangers!"

"Show me the potion and I'll get right on it."

She pouts frustratedly, then turns to Baboo as he hurries back in, book in hand.

"It's this one, your-."

She grabs the book from him and plants it on a nearby lectern, peering at it intensely.

"Hhmmmm. Yes, that's easy! You just need more magic power!"

"Just an infusion of magic power? Nothing… Special about it?"

"No. But I'm the only person in this entire star system who could do it, so don't forget who's in charge!"

"Certainly. I assume that my continued existence will be dependant on my continued service?"

I hear Goldar snort behind me. "You should be grateful for the privilege."

"I'm not complaining, I just want to know where I stand. I mean, if you're constantly having to recharge me I imagine that you'd find that annoying."

"Hm. Yes. I would."

Ms. Repulsa bangs the butt of her staff on the ground, the orange crystal in the head shimmering for a moment… Before a necklace with a smaller but similar crystal pendant appears around my neck.

"Once you've completed your mission, that will allow you to retain more than enough power to keep yourself alive… For a few months. And in the mean time, the glow will tell you how long you've got to live."

It's not glowing very brightly at the moment.

"Very practical. I don't suppose I could trouble you for a top-up now, could I?"

"No."

"Alright. Then I'm going to need some putties, and the use of your teleporter."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
00:17 GMT -7

Subjekt-17-.

"I've been meaning to ask." He doesn't look around, staring blankly at the American west coast beneath us. Ring scans show that the telepathic portions of his brain are highly active, so I imagine that he's focusing on that sense. "Do you..? Want a different name?"

"I am Subjekt Seventeen."

"Yes, I know that's what the people who experimented on you called you, but… That's not the sort of thing that members of your species are usually called."

"I am what I have been made. I see no point in pretending otherwise. Whatever else I could have been was cut away and this scar is all that is left."

I find myself looking at Hippolyta for ideas, because I've never dealt with someone with as much justification to hate everything as he has. Lynne had moments where her caretakers treated her decently and the succupires were neglected but no one was going out of their way to hurt them. Even father granted Lowlies moments of respite so that he could more thoroughly crush them. Subjekt Seventeen has literally no experience of joy, of happiness-.

"No. I saw. People in the butcher-shop."

Wait, what? I didn't feel him pressure my barriers-.

He turns his neck to look at Hippolyta. "Sometimes they used new drugs. Drugs that didn't stop me seeing their minds. Sometimes they thought about other things."

"Seeing such things vicariously is not the same as living it yourself. Have you considered… Putting aside-."

"I will not forgive these monsters. Do not ask."

"Putting it aside, not abandon it. You do not know what it is to live. Try… Anything, rather than-."

"I have listened enough. When do we attack?"

"No time like the present. One moment." Sinestro, blanket radio frequencies and… Put me through on the base's intercom, would you?

Done and done, Lantern Grayven.

"Hello, everyone. My name is Grayven, and I'm the superpowered alien about to take control of your base. I'm sure that by now you've all seen the footage from General Zod's attack on Smallville. You know exactly how effective conventional weapons are likely to be on me. I won't resent you testing my resilience one or twice, but I can't guarantee your safety if you don't evacuate promptly. I'll be seeing you shortly."

I look at Subjekt-17 as the soldiers below us try to work out if what they just heard was a joke.

"Remember what I said: retribution is for the Subject we're here to recruit. Scare them off if you like, but don't maim or kill."

"I hear."

And down we go. Hippolyta is looking down with concern, and I suppose that this is her first time seeing an actual military base. I don't know if Diana ever told her about what modern armies are like, but-

Shield.

-it should be interesting. The guns in the guard towers can't elevate enough to hit us but some of the soldiers -or airmen or whatever, I forget what it is Americans call soldiers who aren't part of the army- aim with their assault rifles and give it a college try.

Or given their likely highest level of education, a high school try. No, wait, Air Force, they might actually have college degrees.

Darn, ruined it.

The air ripples as Subjekt-17 uses a-. Ah, he did listen. A relatively weak but nonetheless painful sonic attack. Most of the soldiers work through it, but their fire discipline gets worse. I move the shield so that it's just covering Hippolyta and dive.

I punch through the ground, concrete and rock exploding in all directions! Down,-

CRUNCH.

-down-

CRUNCH.

-and down again through three levels before reaching my destination; the storeroom containing what's left of the silver starship that they partially cannibalised to destabilise Nathaniel Adam's quantum field. Quick check…

Yes. Good. The guard who was on the outside bursts in through the door with his weapon raised, but I ignore him while bringing the system online.

"Halt! Down on your knees!"

Even better! I half-turn towards him with a smirk.

"But I'm not your mother last night!"

He raises his gun to his shoulder and aims at my head. "My Mom died two years ago, asshole."

I shrug. "I never said I wasn't a necrophile."

He fires, and I tune him out as I bring the quantum drive online. Check the last used coordinates… Wait, that was Clifford Zmeck? No, no, the one before that-. Actually, shove him in further. Good. Set the retrieval point and pull the lever.

The guard throws a grenade and I transmute eighty percent of the explosive into cotton wool and the outer casing into streamers.

"Hey." I give him a half-glare. "Don't throw explosives-" It detonates weakly in a shower of coloured paper strips. "-around expensive government property."

"Motherfucker!"

He reloads as quickly as he can and empties another clip into my shield.

"As I already said, yes."

Hippolyta winces. "Have you truly performed unclean acts with his mother's remains?"

Ancient Greek only. "No, of course not. I'm just insulting him to rile him up. I have been-"

A… Spot appears next to the silver ship, as it forces an interface between conventional space and the quantum field. To a human it would probably look like a hole. To me, it's like a fold in cloth which is pulled to show a differently coloured piece of cloth that was beneath the fold.

"-been entirely faithful to Luna since we met."

"Oh shit, that thing's-!"

The guard dashes off, hopefully to inform someone important what I'm doing, while-.

While something pierces the fold, though 'pierces' is the wrong word. It's more like…. A twist moves from beneath and becomes foreground and then emerges. It doesn't have defined shape or texture, and I'm not sure that it's really aware-.

The ship reacts, extruding a silver film at the… Thing. The silver film appears to give it an epidermis, giving it into the shape of a man regardless of its previous indefinability.

The silver man-shape staggers as it completes its work, hands going to his head.

"Wha-?"

I smile warmly. "Captain Adam?"

"I-." He straightens up, plain silver face focusing on me. "Who the hell are you? What the hell-?" He raises his arms, taking them in for the first time. "What the hell am I?"

"That's a long story, and it's pretty unpleasant. I'd suggest that you sit down…" I shake my head. "But I don't think that would do anything."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
00:21 GMT -7

"My name is Grayven, I'm from a planet called 'Apokalips', my father is its evil ruler and he's going to invade the Earth. This is Queen Hippolyta, she's Wonder Woman's mother. The big fellow upstairs is Subjekt Seventeen, he was captured by the Soviet Union when he was born and tortured for his entire life."

…

"Huh? What?" He glances up at the ceiling and sees the hole. "Invaded?"

"Sorry, you asked who I was first, so I thought I should lead with that. Normally, I'd…" I wave my glowing ring at him. "Alter your physiology to calm you down, but you don't appear to be a biological life form any longer."

He refocuses on me.

"What happened to me?"

"Do you remember volunteering-"

"H-aah!"

"-for the quantum field experiment?"

"I remember everything. Like it was-. Oh God, like it was yesterday." He looks around again. "This isn't the lab. How-? How long has it been?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"If I'm not biological-" He looks down at his right hand, opening and closing his fist. "-then I can't go crazy, can I?"

"I've known some pretty crazy computers, but you're an adult and it's your mind." I watch his face, raising my eyebrows interrogatively. He nods. "The year is twenty seventeen."

He tries to gasp, his hands going to his throat when the fact that he doesn't have lungs or an airway prevent him from doing so. "Fifty years. Goddamn. My wife?"

"Dead. Sorry."

"No, I-. I knew that was-. Kids?"

"Both alive. Effectively older than you now, and… Your wife remarried after you apparently died and they.. mostly-."

"They.. think of their stepdad as-. Ye-ah. That-. It's a miracle that I'm getting any kind of chance to get to know that, after… This."

"I realise I'm dumping a lot of stuff on you all at once, and I'm sorry about that, but the planet's about to be invaded."

"Alright. The quantum field. What happened? Where is everyone?"

"I'm not a physicist, so I can't tell you exactly what happened. In summation, you were transformed from a meat creature into a quantum field consciousness but the people handling the Earth end couldn't work out how to bring you back. Having reviewed the machine I think you'd have come back eventually, but better sooner rather than later."

He nods.

"Your pardon got lost in the shuffle after you didn't come back right away, so you're still technically sentenced to death." I raise my right hand in benediction. "Don't worry, I know you were innocent. The man they sent in after you wasn't, so I'm leaving him where he is."

"What did he do?"

"Rape, murder, rape-murder and murder-rape, though to be fair that last one was probably accidental."

His expression hardens. "That is not something to laugh about."

"Remember when I said that my father is evil? That's our whole civilisation. What Clifford Zmeck did would barely register back home so if the worst you can say about me is that I have a black sense of humour then I think I'm doing okay. Anyway, the ship the Air Force's researchers butchered to make the portal covered you in that silver stuff so that you can interact with normal space."

"So what am.. I? Inside…" He gestures to his chest. "This."

"Remember when I said that I'm not a physicist? My best guess is that your flesh body doesn't exist any more. There might be some way to turn you back, but I've got no idea what that would be. Can you still feel?"

He presses the fingertips of his left hand against his right palm. "Yes."

"You got sight, hearing and touch. Can you smell anything?"

He tries to sniff. "Yes." He frowns. "How am I-" He puts his right hand over his nose and tries to sniff again. "-doing that? I can't breathe. I don't think I have lungs."

"Don't know. I don't think you can eat either, but it's better than death, right? Ah, you may have picked up some additional abilities, but we can find you space to test those out later."

"You said you know I'm innocent. How?"

"Went through the case files, got some mind readers to trawl the brains of the surviving people who were involved." I take the binder covering my investigation out of subspace. "Want to know who the real culprits were?"

He-. Flies forward in a standing position and grabs the folder. "Yes."

He opens it and stares at the summary page.

"No."

"Yeah, that's why you got railroaded. Eiling's the one who married your wife, by the way. If it's any consolation he was a decent husband and father."

He turns a page, and then another. "No, no, this-."

"The stupid thing is, I can't even work out why they killed him. Should have been simple enough to read him in on the C.I.A. operation. The.. names of the agents are on the next page."

"Why are you showing this to me?"

"You've been betrayed by a lot of people. I want to help you take revenge. And then I want your help in conquering the world so that I can prepare it to fight my father."

"Conquer the world..? Are you out of your mind?"

"Lincoln suspended the Constitution during the Civil War. If the Earth's going to have any chance then I'm going to need to compel obedience until the fighting's over, otherwise I'm going to be hamstrung bringing together the few resources this planet has that can fight on our level."

"'Our'? I'm not helping you take over the world."

"Captain Adam, your entire government got together to do this to you. I'm not taking over the world to micromanage America's judicial proceedings, or… Establish a religion or take your guns away or whatever worries you so much. Last year America lost an entire city when two superpeople fought in the middle of it, and the government didn't learn anything from the experience. Look, why don't you hunt down the people on that list and see what's happened to America in the last fifty years? See what you think then."

"There's enough information here to get these bastards put away for the rest of their-."

"It will never happen! They got away with it, Captain, with the full support of the infrastructure of the state. The case will go nowhere, the guilty will slip away or get the pardon they denied to you and your children will carry on calling him 'Dad'."

I don't even see anything. One moment I'm standing there, the next I'm embedded in the far wall surrounded by fractured concrete, an odd purple glow dissipating around me.

Across the room Captain Adam lowers his right hand. "I didn't mean to do that, but you sure had it coming."

"True." I pull myself out of the wall. "But that doesn't help with what comes next. Do you want to come with me, or puzzle things out for yourself?"

"I'm not letting you out of my sight. And I want to have words with these people."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
15:43 GMT -5

A volley of bullets plink off my construct shield as Squatt crouches low, hands over his head. Goldar on the other hand just sneers as the shots which hit him fail to penetrate his armour.

I look down at my… Creator.

"What are you doing?"

"Those things huuuurt!"

"I don't even-"

The putties finally charge down the last of the garrison, their slightly greater than human strength and lack of blood or vital organs allowing them to absorb bullets far better than any living creature.

"-know why you came."

Goldar sneers. "He came because he's a coward, and seeks to escape our Mistress's wrath at his incompetence."

"Ah. Makes sense."

The putties are actually capable of understanding the idea of 'prisoners', which means that since I gave them clear instructions the guards, office workers and scientists of Pantex won't suffer anything worse than bruises.

This time he sneers at me.

"What?"

"It's shameful conduct. If someone does something wrong then they should accept the punishment, and so regain their honour."

"If they're leal in service or committed to the cause, you're correct. If they just joined up because they didn't have any better alternatives or got conscripted, then you can't really expect the same level of dedication."

"Like you."

He stomps forwards, raising his sword at the securely sealed door. I send out a filament and bypass the locking system, causing the sensors to open it when he gets close.

He growls.

"What can I say? I want to live. Her Ladyship is the only person who can make that happen. Would you really believe me if I pledged my undying devotion out of nowhere?"

"From a human? No."

"Well then."

I gesture up to a gantry where a small group of warehouse workers have taken cover. Three putties who followed us in from outside take the order and dash up the ladder to capture them.

"Ah..?" Squatt looks around with an expression of what I think is puzzlement. "Why are we here, anyway?"

"This is a major repository of nuclear weapons."

"Oh, so we're here for weapons!" He looks around at the heavy locked crates around us. "Ah, I don't see any."

I suspect that he doesn't know what nuclear weapons are. I'm not really clear why he's on Team Evil-. No, I know why he's on Team Evil in the sense of being evil, but I'm not clear why they want him on the team.

From the way he just got a little more twitchy, I rather suspect that Goldar does know what nuclear weapons are. I watch as his eyes alight on the 'radioactive' symbol on one of the crates, and then move along the row and see the same sign on all of the rest.

His eyes widen a little.

"Yeah. A lot, aren't there?"

"Rita Repulsa only freed herself from her prison last year. Humans were too primitive for such weapons when she fought Zordon. No one else would dare attack a world marked for her conquest. Why do humans have so many?"

"Each other, of course." Orange tendrils reach out and open up the closest crate. Ah. Excellent. "We built enough to consume the entire surface of the planet in nuclear fire, and then built more. Honestly, it got a bit silly, so the main countries involved agreed to disarm most of their supplies and stop making more of them. The other countries took theirs apart, but this country just took them off the rockets and stuck them in here."

"This is a lot of nuclear weapons."

"So is it like a sword?" Squatt looks around my shoulder. "That doesn't look like a sword."

"It's a bomb."

"Where's the fuse?"

"And suddenly I'm not wondering why you haven't beaten the Power Rangers yet."

Goldar recovers from his astonishment enough to scowl. "Do not judge me by his standards. If humans have these weapons, why haven't they used them against us?"

"I don't know. But if I had to guess, they don't want to have to deal with radioactive fallout. And since you only really attack one city in one country, there just isn't any reason for them to resort to measure like that." I consider him for a moment. "Are wars in the wider universe generally settled by small groups of powerful champions?"

"Yes. Someone like our mistress can destroy entire armies of lesser beings, but only a few creatures in most species have the potential to fight at that level. There is no point in putting someone weak in combat if someone significant could destroy them with a thought. And then there's the cost of weapon systems like zords, which cannot be beaten by something other than another zord or a giant monster."

"Are zords nuke-proof?"

"They're resistant. Zords can shoot missiles out of the air or detect nuclear weapons planted on the ground, and their armour is reinforced with magic. It would take an overwhelming number of nuclear weapons to destroy one."

His head jerks back to the lines of crates.

"Though I think that this may be enough. We could simply lure them into the open and then saturate the area. They would have no chance to survive!"

"Hold on there."

"Now is not the time for cowardice, Orange Warmaster!"

"What is Ms. Repulsa planning on doing with the Earth after she conquers it?"

"Whatever she wants."

"The problem is that nuclear weapons drop the value of the real estate. The sun gets blotted out, people die from starvation and cancer… Things like that. And if we're unlucky, other countries would fire theirs as well, and that would leave us with a lifeless ball of radioactive rock."

He snorts. "What, then?"

"I'll use these to lure the Power Rangers to the locations of my choice. Once they are isolated, I will attack and defeat them individually. And then I will present their battered carcasses to Ms. Repulsa, in exchange for my life."

I construct-grab four crates, and check their contents.

"Grab one of the big ones, would you? Then teleport us back to the moon. We'll work out where to put them from there."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
03:29 GMT -5

Adam stares down at the infamous pentagonal building. "You sure he's in there?"

I nod. "Yep."

"It's the middle of the night, and he should be an old man by now."

"He's part of the America government's efforts to utilise alien technology and superpowers. My best guess is that he got called in either when I hit Kazakhstan or Area Fifty One." I nod my head to the right. "Outside chance they picked up my boom tube on Themyscira." I check his position. "You alright flying on your own?"

"This isn't flying. It's telling the universe where I am." He turns his head towards me. "What do you expect me to do, here?"

"I didn't even want to come here. I've got a guy to break out of a prison in China. My advice: disintegrate the wall and ceiling, fly in like you own the place, tell him what he did in front of witnesses, really get it out of your system, and then drop a couple of copies of my binder around the place." I fan my arms out. "Or just kill him. He has it coming. Him and the others. Then-."

"Randy and Peggy.. would..."

"There's no good way to find out that the man who raised you is an arsehole. But if you can't bear to act on your vendetta, we can leave and you can pretend to be someone else. You know Lemar had it coming, and if you've decided to take the high road there's no one else who got hurt except for some soldiers in Vietnam. And people didn't care about them at the time, much less now."

"Which room?"

I make a targetting reticle on the side of the building. "There. Now there's a big yellow light that they can easily see from inside. And-."

A spotlight swivels to shine on us. Subjekt-17 glares at it and it shatters, the soldiers manning it shrinking back in case it explodes.

"And so you've got a time limit."

"Fine."

He moves forwards, his movement even less 'flighty' than I do with my rings. He just leans in the direction he wants to move and drifts that way. One of the people taking part in the meeting ducks his head to look out of the window as Captain Adam raises his hands and-.

And the roof and wall are momentarily wreathed in purple vapour before evaporating, revealing the meeting room to the outside world as Adam gets into a good position to glower at the people inside.

But I can't accuse Eiling of not being on the ball. "Guards! Get in here!"

They breach the door immediately, guns raised and searching for a target. They're only thrown off by the lack of wall for a moment as they orientate on Adam.

"Give it your best-"

CHM-CHM-CHM-.

"-shot."

Not even a ripple in the silver material making up his epidermis.

"Though you might wanna be careful." He drifts down to float at the head of the table, the area around his hands glowing like plasma globes. "I think I might be radioactive under this."

I could shout down that he's not, but… Let him have this.

Subjekt-17 flies back from looking at the White House. "Those are the humans who hurt him?"

"One of them."

"Why is he delaying?"

"That's complicated, and I don't think-" One of the officers tried to leave through the door as the soldiers reload, and Adam fires a purple beam through the wall next to his head. "-that you have a frame of reference for it."

"Nothing to say, Eiling?" He-. Oh, good power move! He flies through the table, the purple glow splitting it lengthways as he moves. "Unlike me, you've had fifty years to think about it."

Eiling, who held his ground a little better than the others, stares at Adam. It takes a moment, but there's a slight glimmer of recognition.

"Nate? Nate Adam?"

"The very same. I hear my pardon got lost in the mail."

Eiling relaxes a little. "Hey, I tried. And no one here is trying to defend Nixon. So, you… Got out."

"With help." He reaches the end of the table, which falls into two halves with a thunk. "C.I.A. put you up to it, huh?"

"C.I…. What? What are you talking about?"

I send a copy of the folder down, and Adam catches it. "You, Lemar, Yarrow…" He holds the folder out to Eiling. "See if this jogs your memory."

Eiling takes it, because if I remember rightly he wanted a super-powered soldier and a little office renovation would be a small price to pay to get Adam onside, particularly on a world like this where they're so rare.

"Okay, what is-." He sees the summary page, and respect to him, he doesn't twitch. "This. Is this your own work?"

"No, an alien gave it to me."

"They were right about Yarrow, but Lemar didn't have anything to do with it. Whoever this alien is, they fed you a line. Next time try checking your sources before blowing a hole in the Pentagon."

He tries to hand the folder back. When Adam doesn't take it, he hands it to an aide.

"Look, we can fix the pardon. We already got enough new evidence to prove that you're innocent, and I know Randy and Peggy would love to get to know their father. And we can fix the wall too, so don't worry about that. I don't know if you've heard about it yet, but we had a bunch of super powered aliens try to destroy the Earth last year, and the US needs someone of our own who can fight at that level. You'll be a hero."

Huh. Good delivery. And if we hadn't already telepathically interrogated just about everyone on that list with Hippolyta acting as a disinterested party it might well have worked.

"I can't believe that you're seriously going to try that." He raises his right hand, purple glow crackling. "Did you really think I wouldn't have checked something like that-."

Two red beams hit him in the chest and send him flying back out through the hole!

What? Heat vision doesn't have mass and there aren't any living kryptonians on this planet. Who-?

J'onn J'onzz is flying invisibly through the air after Adams. Ah, some sort of focused telekinesis?

"Why would one Subjekt attack another Subjekt?"

"There are a lot of possible reasons. He could be a trustee, getting privileges for guarding against the other inmates. He might not be a Subjekt in the sense that you mean it. As I said, you were unlucky."

J'onzz fires again but Adam ducks under the shot and fires upwards towards the source. He narrowly misses, most likely because he can't see his target and is having to guess his location. I doubt that either of them are careless enough to create another Metropolis, even if this is Washington and so would be far less of a loss.

Still, we've rooted out Martian Manhunter. I can't imagine a Justice League without him, and this would force him to get involved… I'll take it.

But we've got other places to visit.

"Adam! We'll be in China! We'll pick you up when we're done!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

BOOM!

17th November 2017
15:35 GMT +8

"Tenzin Cering!" I stride through the portal into the Chinese black site, and because I know that the Chinese are a bit more on the ball with summary executions that the Americans I've come out next to his cell and disarmed the soldiers on guard. No, not soldiers. Some sort of Chinese K.G.B. types? They were armed, anyway, and now they're not. "I'm looking for Tenzin Cering!"

"I am here."

One of the guards lunges for the wall-mounted alarm, and gets sonic blasted by Subjekt-17 until his bones fracture. He falls to the ground with a quiet, high-pitched moan.

"Auuuhhhhauuuuuuhaaauuuhhhh…"​

The other guard runs at me and punches me in the-. In the groin armour, and promptly breaks his fingers. He pulls back, shielding it as he tries to work out what to do next.

"Funny thing. Prior to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese Communist Party tried to restore order using local army units. But confronted by people handing them flowers, some of whom they knew personally, they weren't prepared to break heads in the way the Party wanted. So they pulled them out and sent in soldiers from rural areas, as indoctrinated as they could find, who wouldn't have those sort of normal human hang-ups about killing peaceful, unarmed people."

I rip the cell door out of the wall and chuck it down the corridor.

"So I'm curious. How much violence have you two been dolling out to defenceless prisoners? Subjekt Seventeen?"

"A great deal."

"A great deal." I bow my head and wave my right hand from Subjekt 17 to the guard. "Oh dear. Then do as you-."

"No." Mr. Tenzin limps out of his cell, face swollen. "Do them no violence. Please."

"Really? I mean, I understand that you're a Buddhist, but I think that a little corrective chastisement might, you know, burn off a little karmic debt?"

"You are here to free me?"

"Free you and load your head with your past life memories."

"Then violence against these people would only be retribution. It would serve no greater purpose." He leans against a wall to steady himself. "Though if you have an aspirin, I would not be averse to receiving it."

Subjekt-17 takes hold of the guard who is still standing and slams him against the wall. Hard enough to severely injure him, not hard enough to kill him.

Mr. Tenzin looks at the fallen guard in concern, then at Subjekt-17. I shake my head. "He's had a rough seventy years. Does the 'no violence' thing extend to Gods of Evil?"

"It does not extend to humans. I try to limit unnecessary violence, but it is not an absolute prohibition." He looks down the corridor. "Please. There are many other prisoners here."

I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and hand it over to him. "Point it at yourself and pull the trigger to heal your injuries. What are the other prisoners in for?"

"This is a prison for political prisoners. Some of them may have committed normal crimes-."

"If you were guilty, there are a thousand prisons in China where they would lock you away." I sigh. "Fine. I-."

"What?" Subjekt-17 glowers at me. "What does he ask?"

"Humans are so evil, Subjekt-17, that they sometimes treat other humans as Subjekts. These human Subjekts want us to help them escape. Do you think we can do that?"

He looks around, the-

Someone in the guard post finally looks at their camera screen and activates the alarm.

-telepathic portions of his brain activating as he takes in our environment. "Such cruelty. Disgusting. Keep them away from me."

I nod. Ugh. I need to get Mr. Tenzin powered up myself, Subjekt-17 isn't interested in rescuing people and Queen Hippolyta isn't bullet-resistant. I'll have to interrupt Captain Adam, which is poor form, but I think he might appreciate something morally unambiguous.

Mother Box, boom tube.

BOOM.

Pin-

Captain Adam flies backwards through the hole and slams into the wall!

-g.

"Ah, are you alright?"

He straightens himself up. "I'm not hurt. I was handling the invisible guy, then someone hit me from behind."

"Can I assume that your training focused on aircraft more than infantry combat?"

"That's fair." He looks around. "Where are we?"

"Chinese political prison. Please break everyone out and send them through-"

BOOM!

"-that boom tube. Allies of mine will have food and medical aid waiting."

"China-. Are you crazy? Even Nixon didn't-."

"You're a man made of silver. As long as you don't tell anyone your name, I don't see how anyone can trace it to anywhere. I speak with an English accent and I'm an alien. And you can't tell me that they don't have it coming."

Mr. Tenzin has finished with the healing ray, so I grab it off him and hand it to Mr. Adam.

"This is an anti-gun. It makes people healthy by shooting them."

"That-. That doesn't make sense."

"If you want to make it an actual ray gun there's a dial on the side." He checks, and avoids touching it. "That's a bit superfluous for you, but I understand if you have a childish desire to play with a death ray."

"Healing ray gun. Sure, why not. How many people?"

Looks like… "Thirty eight."

The door to the next cell along vanishes in a flare of purple. "On it."

I nod. "Mister Tenzin, where do we need to take you?"

"Tibet. My father's temple."

Sinestro, scan for his father.

There is a slight issue there, Lantern.

What? Oh, no. Of course. The Chinese have their own candidate. No matter that forcing past life memories into some random arsehole will at best do nothing, with permanent mental damage being the intermediate result, I don't want a Party-approved arsehole getting those powers. Though that's almost certainly why they left his father outside of prison himself.

I armour Mr. Tenzin and open a new boom tube.

BOOM!

"Please, as little violence-."

Subjekt-17 walks through ahead of me, and I shrug.

"No promise."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
21:55 GMT +1

My giant drill construct bores into the rock, cutting a hole big enough for one of the medium-yield nuclear devices.

"What is this?"

To be fair, Goldar didn't complain about carrying the crates, but it's clear that patiently working through a plan isn't really his thing.

"What do you know about tsunamis?"

"Great waves. I've seen them triggered by ships falling from orbit and striking an ocean. Do you mean to trigger one with your bomb?"

"No. This is a multi-stage trigger. You see…" I turn in a circle, right arm extended. "This entire coastline is poised to fall into the sea. When it does, it will trigger a tsunami that will spread across the Atlantic Ocean-."

Squatt tilts his head to the side in confusion.

I point to the ocean. "That one."

"Errr…" He looks at it, then back to me and Goldar. "I knew that."

"Seriously, how long have you people been here? Which of you is responsible for intelligence analysis?"

Squatt shakes his head. "Not me!"

"Our Mistress can see anywhere on Earth with a wave of her staff. What more do we need?"

"Do you think that Ms. Repulsa might be willing to make more potion? My fiancée specialised in the field. It's helpful to be able to know where the points of vulnerability are before you attack them. For example, the Power Rangers have launched their zords from the same hangar for years now. Do you know where the hangars are?"

"No. Fine. You've made your point." He strikes a pose, clenching his right fist. "It would be nice to confront them at the source of their strength and watch them fall powerless to the ground before ending them once and for all."

I dismiss the drill and replace it with a construct crane, gently lowering the crate into the hole.

"Uh." Goldar and I make momentary eye contact as we brace for incoming stupid. "Isn't this a long way away from where the Power Rangers live?"

"Yes. In fact, this won't directly affect Angel Grove at all, as there's a continent in the way. It will however ruin all of the cities on the east coast of North America if it's allowed to detonate."

"So are we gunna turn it off?"

"No. The Rangers will."

Goldar smiles. "You will lure them here with a threat to North America, and then detonate the bombs when they try to retrieve them? Magnificent!"

"No. If I detonate the bomb, the coast will be destroyed, and that will significantly reduce the economic capacity of the planet. I want Ms. Repulsa to take possession of a planet that is as pristine as possible. The bomb is a lure, and it could serve as a contingency, but the primary purpose is to force the Rangers to split up. Once that is done, I will take the Red Ranger, you will take the Blue and Squatt and the putties will take the Yellow."

"What about the other two?"

I shrug. "Who cares? All of their most powerful weapons and zord combinations require all five of them to be active. They could conceivably draft one replacement, but three-." I pointedly look at Squatt. "Or two, would be harder. And the replacements would have no experience."

"Why those three?"

"Black and Pink have heavier ranged weapons: the bow and the axe's gun mode. Red, Blue and Yellow have to either engage at short range or use their weaker sidearms, and we can all take those."

"Mm." He nods. "A sound decision. But why are you so confident of your ability to take their leader?"

"I'm not. But I know that I'm joining the team late in the day and I want to prove my value. I have a lot riding on this."

The crate reaches the bottom of the shaft, so I dismiss the crane construct and use a bulldozer construct to push soil back into the hole. Wouldn't want anyone tripping and falling down the hole. Workplace health and safety is important.

"Okay, that should do for now. Goldar, would you please trigger the teleportation system? Our next destination is Yellowstone Park."

He looks blank-.

I generate a construct globe and make it with a targetting reticle.

"Here."

"That's not on a coast."

"No, it's over the magma chamber of a supervolcano."

"A supervolcano?!" Squatt.. sort of hornpipes, waving his arms excitedly. "That sounds super! Ah… What do they do?"

Goldar smiles. "They explode, devastating the land for miles around with molten rock and cover the atmosphere of the entire world in choking dust and ash."

"There are four that could be activated with these devices. But I don't want to repeat myself too often. Two should be fine. The teleporter?"

Ring, scan.

Compliance.

The putties go first, drawn upwards for a moment and then vanishing. Then Squatt, then Goldar and then… The space around me blurs for a moment before the universe reasserts itself.

1st April 1995
14:59 GMT -6

I watch as the putties caper off to form a perimeter.

Data?

Partial analysis available.

Hm.

I didn't detect any mundane power source when I was on the moon base. As far as I could tell, everything runs on magic. And I can't see Rita Repulsa having a super-powerful magic artefact somewhere where she can't get hold of it. Which means that her staff is it. It's powering everything, including the teleporter.

The crystal on my pendant has dimmed. Not a lot, but it's noticeable. Everything I know about my ring and magic energy says that I should be able to siphon it… But everything I know could just be wrong.

Goldar looks at me. "Well?"

"Just considering the best site. It's not every day one plants a fission bomb on a supervolcano. Something to tell the grandchildren about."

Of course, I took medium sized fission bombs. We don't exactly need to place it right in the geyser field. Which is good, because I don't want to encounter any tourists. Given that the civilian deaths so far have been zero somehow it doesn't seem as if Rita's followers actively want to inflict collateral damage, but… Let's not push things.

"Ah, I've got it." I nod. "This way."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
15:48 GMT +8

I shield the monk praying by the mandala, then walk forward calmly as the soldiers guarding him turn and raise their… Guns. Don't recognise them, but-. Eh. Some sort of plasma gun, but the confinement shield looks like… Like something that could be made on early 21st century Earth. So, crap. I might feel it if they walked right up to me and fired but that's about it.

"Gentlemen. Kindly sod off and you'll live to see tomorrow."

"Heh." The squad leader… Not seeing any unit patch, so presumably these are deniable operation soldiers too. "No, we will not."

"I… can offer sanctuary for you and your families if you're concerned about-."

"We do not fear reprisal. We gladly sacrifice ourselves for China."

"Your loyalty is commendable, if sadly misplaced. Die with honour, then."

They fire as one, the plasma… Yeah, I can just about feel it. And I mean, I could probably disable them, but they're Chinese 'special' forces in Tibet who have almost certainly been up to no good prior to being told to force an elderly and somewhat bruised monk to hijack a sutra. But I told Mr. Tenzin I'd try, so-.

Huh. No fear. Oh well.

I tether their guns and send them to subspace, the room dimming now that the plasma is no longer being refreshed. Replace the shield around Mr. Tenzin senior before one of-

Bang!

-one of them noticed that it dropped and shoots him with their sidearm.

"Okay, you gave it the old college try. How about-?"

They run at me, drawing knives from their equipment harnesses. Alright, fun time-.

The one at the rear draws a vial of something-.

Orange manacles manifest around each of them, locking their limbs in place to their obvious frustration. I walk past the struggling soldiers… Who seem to be appreciably stronger than their musculature suggests that they should be. Toward the unit leader with the vial in his-.

He smiles, and drops it and I catch it before it can hit the ground. What is-?

"Durlan? You were going to drop a Durlan-. Are you insane?"

I mean, it might have been confined to the building, depending on what the internal airflow is like, but if even a single microbot reached the town… I've only seen random transmutation weapons deployed twice, and I'd like to keep it that way. Durlan pseudo-bioweapons bypass the usual heat build-up problems that nanotech weapons have by melding with local materials and dumping heat into their surroundings, which means that they're a pain to stop once they get going and even more to clear from an area completely.

"I am doing what is right. My only regret is that I have failed."

"Well, try again tomorrow with-" His jaw clenches. "-someone else."

I move the soldiers aside and motion for Mr. Tenzin to enter. He hurries in, moving immediately to check on his father. Let's see… No other soldiers in the immediate area… I drop the barrier so that they can embrace.

"My son, how are you free?"

Mr. Tenzin glances at me. "This is Grayven. He freed me, and everyone else at the prison."

His father's eyes widen slightly as he properly takes me in. "Thank you."

"Wasn't an act of generosity, but you're welcome. How quickly can you perform the ritual?"

"It-. It should be completed after a week of fasting and meditation."

I raise my left eyebrow and look at his malnourished son who was stuck in a small room for months.

"Father, I am ready. I wished to be prepared in case I somehow became free."

"Very well." He gestures to the mandala. "Sit, and free your spirit."

Mr. Tenzin obeys as I take another look around. The soldiers aren't trying to fight, which is-. I take a closer look, then drop the bodies. Fast acting poison in their teeth. I might be able to bring them back, but they weren't afraid and I don't want to. Still, it's a surprising reaction. Few soldiers would do something like that with so little provocation.

"I was surprised to find you at large." I look at the old monk as he mutters a prayer for the departed. "What were they having you do?"

"They wanted me to grant the memories of the Accomplished Perfect Physician to someone of their choosing. I told them that it could not be made to work like that, and-. And I have stained my soul by making the attempt. I have driven five men mad, and they still do not believe me. They have brought in their… Tame monks to try to learn the ritual. Pah."

He begins muttering prayers as his son takes position. And I start thinking. I can't assume that China is using xeno-teams at this point in their timeline, but if they are then these people aren't dressed for the role. Having durlan technology suggests xeno-team, but working on a magic-based project suggests something else. Xeno-teams weren't the soldiers of the Standing Committee on Metahuman Affairs, their reporting chain was considerably more convoluted.

Scan.

H.. uh.

Their bodies are at once young and old. Telomeres are short but the damage their cells should have taken from solar radiation alone just isn't there. I'd guess they'd either been in a poorly functioning suspended animation unit or that they were clones grown to adulthood. That latter might explain the simple-minded devotion, but… That sort of cloning is about thirty-forty years more advanced than the medical technology this planet actually has. And that's if they don't mind a very high failure rate. And from the way their bodies are aging -that guy has early stage arthritis, for goodness sake- I don't think that could be it. China isn't exactly short on patriots. Being able to grow a handful at tremendous cost wouldn't be worth it.

So that leaves-.

Walls, corridors with different levels of illumination and then out into the air, a pain in the left side of my head and left shoulder! I reach around to grab at whatever hit me but it's already gone, and-.

I twist, activating my aero-discs before I hit the next mountain over. Ow. What was that, Superman? No, he wouldn't let go and then get out of visual range. He might hang back once we got clear of bystanders, but-.

"All hail the jewel in the lotus."

For a moment it feels like the world is rejecting my presence. Scents suddenly become sharp and wrong, colours discordant and my own skin at once too tight and too loose. It lasts a fraction of a second because I'm a god. My soul is always aligned to the spiritual energies around me and it'll take more than an office drone with delusions of grandeur to stop me, Thundermind.

A gold, purple and white flash, but this time I'm ready and facing him. I slap his outstretched fist aside and slam my forehead into his nose!

"Uh."

He pulls back, his nose unbroken but his surprise at my response clear on his face.

"Alien invader."

"School history teacher who thinks that having magic pottery means that he deserves consideration. A thief of power he has not earned and does not deserve."

"You murdered six men."

"No, I just disarmed them. They killed themselves. Apparently they thought that was better than living with failure. I make no judgement."

"I am already arresting the criminals you freed from prison. I will-."

There's a crash as… The other Thundermind body goes flying out of the temple, Subjekt-17 hot on his heels.

"Yeah, I'm not an idiot. So are we fighting, or-?"

He punches me in the face.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
15:51 GMT +8

Mega rod.

By your-

He punches me twice more before I get my arms into position to block or counter.

-command.

Thundermind isn't as fast as 'peak kryptonian'. I can actually see him when he moves. But he's still a good deal faster than me. On a tactical scale, anyway.

The air hums as Subjekt-17 realises that Thundermind's faster than him as well, and just barrages him with sonic energy. Which only hits because when it comes right down to it Mr. Kang isn't a particularly good fighter. The Chinese government lets him keep a secret identity as a school teacher. I'm not sure if they do it to maintain secrecy or if they couldn't work out how they'd stop him leaving the country if they said 'no', but it means that he doesn't spend time training in his mortal form. And in this world with few superheroes he almost certainly hasn't ever fought anyone in his own weight class.

I pull the mega rod back slightly, giving him a small opening which he immediately tries to exploit.

Mustard gas.

By your command.

And gets a face full of S(CH₂CH₂Cl)₂. He doesn't breathe it in, but it confuses and distracts him even if it.. probably can't hurt him. And then I swing the mega rod, because while I'm not technically super-fast I'm strong enough to pretend. He reacts just in time, taking the hit on his left forearm as he raises it to block, and the force of the blow smacks his arm out of the way and sends him spinning downwards.

And the ritual is… Still in progress.

Mr. Kang catches himself on the air and reorientates himself to face me.

"Do you even know what your government was doing here?"

He studies me carefully. "Learning to use Buddhist magic for the good of China."

"Learning to hijack the memories of a reincarnating soul, which inevitably drives the test subjects insane. Now, individual suffering, sure, burn that karma and reincarnate to a better life. But deliberately interfering with that system to pick and choose which bits of a soul you pass over to someone else? Pretty hard to justify in Buddhist terms."

"That is not for me to determine."

"That right there? That's why you would never have achieved enlightenment without that magic pottery. Loyalty above truth. Herd behaviour above selflessness. You may not live for yourself but you live for whoever tells you how to live."

In the corner of my eye I spot his double zip around Subjekt-17 and punch him where he thinks his kidneys are. Subjekt-17 doesn't react to the pain and spins with his arms outstretched. Mr. Kang has worked out his range and flies back to just outside of it. He looks self-satisfied for a moment, then Subjekt-17 locks his eyes on him and-

**[PAIN!]**

-blasts him in the mind with a little of his own suffering. My Mr. Kang winces a little, but their faux-enlightenment does grant them a degree of resistance to both telepathic attack and pain.

"So sod off, let us finish and I'll kill you and conquer your country later."

"I will not do that."

"A'ight." I heft the rod. "Guess I'll just have to beat you to death, then."

Oxygen to chlorine, ten metres.

By your command.

Everything goes dull yellow, and while Mr. Kang is resistant to poison he does actually need to breathe. I pull back and move around the cloud, forming a fusion cannon construct on my right arm and aiming at the other Mr. Kang who is busy flailing inelegantly at Subjekt-17. That does give me pause. Between my actual training, Other Grayven's inherited memories and however long it's been of experience, I'm not-. I know that I'm not top tier in terms of skill, but the self-depreciating jibes don't ring true any more. I can spot what they're both doing wrong.

I'm already moving sideways as my Mr. Kang puffs out of the chlorine behind me. Not sure if he located me by flying to my last known position and then following the wake or by using some sort of soul sense, but it hardly matters. Line up the fusion cannon and shoot the other Mr. Kang-

Subjekt-17 takes a punch to the throat in order to grapple him in place.

-in the back-

"Ah!"

-and smack my Mr. Kang in the middle of his back while he's distracted. A Slave Will Not Raise Hands Against A Master

**[POWERLESS!]**

My shot burned through the back of Mr. Kang 2's costume and inflicted mild burns on the skin beneath. Subjekt-17's telepathic attack appears to have stunned him, and Subjekt-17 hurls him towards the ground-.

Yes, the mountainside, that's fine. I'd hate-.

Mr. Kang 1 recovers somewhat, wincing as he changes direction-. Alright, smart guy. Undo your multiform technique. Make us fight you at full-.

My opponent touches his other half, and immediately there's only one of them there. They don't merge or run into each other, it's just that the effect that was convincing the universe that he was in two places while also being in one place has turned off. And then he splits again, each version flying at one of us. Then what was-?

The wounds are gone. Either the transformation just removes the damage, or he can pick what becomes 'real' when they stop being separate.

Fine.

Fabricate two kinetic barrier generators and drop them in their path.

By your command.

Both Mr. Kangs ram into the barrier at the same time. Both try and punch their way through while I switch to a laser cannon and fire.

I hit lefty in the face, burning off his weirdly sculpted left eyebrow and reddening the skin. Not as powerful as the plasma shot, but plasma doesn't work as well with the kinetic barrier.

**They got better.**

I glance at Subjekt-17. "Just make sure you hit him in the same place that I do. That should-."

I feel it. I feel seventeen versions of the same face become one, one hand becoming seventeen and still one as it reaches out.

"Never mind." I move the laser across and test my hypothesis, burning off righty's eyebrow as well as they try and work out how to get around the shield. "The man we rescued has been empowered."

"But they are of the oppressors!"

"Subjekt Seventeen, I know it's a complex idea, but… Sometimes people make themselves Subjekts."

"What?"

"Did you look at his mind in any detail?" He shakes his head and I shrug. "Have a go now. He's not going anywhere."

And boom tubes.

Ping.

One tube opens behind us and another opens in the temple for them to evacuate as Subjekt-17 stares at the Thunderminds. Then he jerks and floats back several metres in apparent shock before turning around and flying through the tube. In front of me the Thunderminds merge and split again, with one of them outside of the kinetic barrier bubble. I smile as the outside one -who is still missing an eyebrow- smashes both of the generators. Then I wave and fly through the boom tube, shutting it down as I emerge on the refugee camp on New Gordane.

That's my team finished. Now let's see if anyone actually does anything about it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

I think Justice Segue isn't working for me because it's spending a lot of updates interacting with generic DC universe characters rather than the unique versions of the characters who appeared in the DC movies. The Power Ranger one is spending a lot of time with Power Ranger characters, and that's cool and different. Grayven tromping around meeting a bunch of DC comics characters with a background of "experimented on by national governments" is something that could happen just as easily in the main Renegade timeline. It would be much more interesting to see Grayven, for instance, talk to movie Aquaman about how to do the job of being a ruler in a way that brings personal satisfaction. Or dealing with a Flash that's very different from anything in the Young Justice timeline. Or find himself on the backfoot (if only briefly) when old(er) grumpy Batman shows up and surprises him. Or... I dunno, just that if the premise is going to be "Grayvan interacts with the DC cinematic universe" then I'd like to see him actually interact with the DC cinematic universe beyond Hippolyta.

Click to shrink...

Alright then.

17th February 2396
14:14 GMT +3

I narrow my eyes slightly.

"That's a screwdriver."

The lanky man with the greasy off-blonde hair opposite me waggles the silver rod with the glowing blue tip at me with a little more vigour.

"No it's not."

I bring my hands together at my chest, bowing my head and sighing quietly.

"Look… Mister..?"

"Doctor."

"Mister Doctor, you're intruding in my office and I happen to know that you don't have either an appointment, press credentials or… Really, any other reason to be here. I'd prefer to humour you rather than calling security, but a dialogue requires two people?"

He narrows his eyes slightly, a decidedly mistrustful expression on his face. But he lowers his screwdriver. I mean, he's still using its sonic imaging setting to probe his environment, but at least he's not pretending it's an offensive weapon.

He takes a moment to look around my office. My public office, I should say. This era's technology is easily advanced enough to allow me to work from wherever I happen to be, but a large and richly decorated room still helps underline my authority.

"So what's this about… Then?"

"If you just want a prospectus, you could have picked one up from reception."

He nods, shoulders slumped as he schleps in the direction of one of the exhibits.

"Where did you get that?"

I make a point of smiling as he nods at the Cyrus Industries cyberman helmet.

"Oh, there's quite a collectors' market in things like that. Only a handful didn't get sucked back into the void after the fight at Canary Wharf in the early twenty-first century, and…" I shrug. "Most people can't tell the difference between the parallel universe ones and the Mondas version."

"You've been studying it, have you?"

"Oh, well…" I make a careless gesture with my right arm. "Briefly, but while it was advanced for its time, the cyber-interface technology isn't all that impressive now. And goodness knows there's no modern market for the sort of emotional suppression technology they used to keep the poor bastards sane in those things. You know, they had no sensation in their skin at all?"

I shake my head.

"I don't think they'd have lasted. Logic only goes so far, and the human brain is.. designed for a homeostatic system working just so. You can't just shut down chunks of the endocrine system and still expect it to work."

"You'd be surprised how many people don't realise that."

Oh marvellous, he's a mumbler.

He keeps looking around the other exhibits. "Not doing any work on them yourself?"

"Like I said, they're out of date."

"No, I mean, the Mondas ones."

"Oh yes." I nod. "Their cybernetic interface technology is far more advanced than everything currently on the market." He freezes. "With cloned organic limbs being so cheap these days it's not really worth it for pure cybergrafts, though…" I shrug. "Some people are into that. You're supposed to call them 'mechanoids' these days. I don't see what's wrong with 'cyborg', personally, but they're the clients."

"That technology is extremely dangerous."

"And that's why we work to understand it before we sell it to anyone. We're not amateurs, here. Oh, and of course, there are cybernetic interfaces for commercial use. Proprioception aids for controlling machines…" I shake my head. "Bit of a mind-bender, but some people can think themselves into a mental state where they can accept feedback from a machine as if it was their own body."

He raises his eyebrows, fidgeting, wiggling his body back and forth.

"You ever try that yourself?"

"Oh, no. I'm all organic." I raise my right hand. "Not that that's a statement on the quality of our products. If you want to see anything in action we have lab tours… You know, in the lab, not my office."

"Yeeeeah, I think I might take you up on thaat."

"Okay." I nod. "Um. Was there anything else? I… I do have a job here."

Then he stops moving, stops fidgeting, stares at me directly and if I wasn't, you know, me, I might find it a little intimidating.

"Are you doing anything else with their technology?"

"We study everything we get, but…" I shrug. "It's not like we have an unlimited budget. Samples of Mondas technology are rather expensive."

"I want to see everything you've got. Everything you've done. And I want to know who's buying it."

"Do you wander into people's offices and demand commercially sensitive information a lot?"

He frowns, then his face relaxes as he contemplates the question.

"Y'know, I do, actually. It's a bit of a habit."

"You might want to watch that. I'm pretty easy going, but it is a crime in a lot of places. You're going to get in trouble."

"Oh?" He reaching into his jacket pocket with is left hand and pulls out a card holder. He then flips it open, revealing-.

I blink as I block a weak mental probe projecting from a small blank piece of paper.

"Am I?"

"If your identification is a blank piece of paper, yes. Telepathic intrusion is a crime in a lot of places as well."

"Well." He slips the card back into his pocket. "You'd know."

I tap my amulet. "I prefer to hide my appearance. I naturally look rather… Intimidating."

"Oh yeah?"

I point to my office door. "See how big that is?" He glances back. "That's for me. Humans aren't speciest, but a big scary bloke is a big scary bloke. It makes things a bit awkward, so it was this or a clown mask, and… Last time I wore that, people screamed."

"A'right. How about that tour, then?"

"Sure. Um, but I'm management, so why don't you go back down to the lobby and I'll have an actual scientist come up to take you around?"

He nods, still clearly suspicious, then with a last look at the cyberman parts turns around and heads out of the office.

I wait until the door is firmly closed before-

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

-I remain completely calm and professional, despite the Doctor investigating me. I mean, this is how you know you've arrived, right? I mean, whaw. And I think I'm good. The cyberman parts are suspicious as heck, but there's nothing actually illegal going on here in that regard. And the low down deal I've got going on with the Adipose is the sort of 'embarrassing if it got out but not actually illegal' thing that acts as a fake goal if he doesn't give up.

Because if he finds out that I'm working on samples of Susan Foreman's hair then I'm proper fucked.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
14:27 PT

My communicator beeps.

For a moment I freeze, but it's Saturday and I'm not in class so I don't need to. I'm in Comic Centre, because if Rita is using comic books to make monsters-.

"Was that a pager, Billy?" Mr. Manson the owner heard that, and he's looking at me. "You secretly some kinda schoolboy tycoon or something?"

"No." I walk over to the counter and put the Orange Lantern Corps comics I found down next to the register. "Just Mom reminding me to come home for dinner."

Mr. Manson doesn't reply, but he does ring up the comics quickly, which I appreciate. Jason would have left the store right away, but I think this could be important. Luckily, most of the comics were in the discount bin, otherwise I might have had to try reading them in the store, and that's just rude. I pay, take the bag with the comics and leave the store before running into the closest alley and pulling out my communicator.

"Billy here."

"Come to the Command Centre immediately. Rita Repulsa is attacking the Earth."

"Right."

I place my right hand on my Morpher and trigger the teleporter. I've tried to work out why it feels like I'm jumping into orbit and then falling down in three and a half seconds, but the only thing I could think of was that the signal is being bounced off a satellite in orbit and that wouldn't explain why I'm aware of it. A transmitted signal might be able to perceive it's surroundings in some ways, depending on the transmission medium, but it wouldn't be anything like human vision. Unless that's just how my brain interprets it, and even then it should take dozens of teleports before a human brain learned how to do that and this is how it was from the start. I-.

"Billy?"

Trini is smiling. At me. I'm just outside-.

I smile awkwardly and jog into the Command Centre. I'm already late, and-.

"What was the hold up?"

"Research."

"Oh?" I nod. I still don't know if she's really interested in the sort of thing I usually get interested in, but it's nice that there's someone who's at least willing to pretend. "Into what?"

I hold up the bag to show her just as Zack sticks his head out of the main room. He spots the bag-.

"You read comics?"

"These are Orange Lantern comics. I thought it might help."

He nods as we join the other in front of Zordon. I sometimes wonder about the monsters Rita uses to attack Earth. Zordon told us that most of them are made in a machine called the 'Monster-Matic', so I don't know how mentally sophisticated they are. Can they disobey Rita? Do they think about anything other than invading the Earth and destroying us? Orange Lantern is the first one they've 'created' that held a conversation with us, but does that imply that he's the only one who could, or does it imply that they all could since they're made in essentially the same way?

"Rangers, we have a problem."

The orb lights up, showing the Dragonzord walking slowly out of the sea.

Kimberly looks up at Zordon. "I thought Tommy couldn't use his coin again?"

"He cannot. It was not activated using the Green Power Coin. Look closely."

The image zooms in, and-. I can't see into the cockpit through the eyes, but I can clearly see that there's a glowing orange shape on its head.

I pull out an issue of Orange Lantern's own comic and compare them. Yes, it's the same.

Jason scowls. "How did he activate the Dragonzord without a power coin?"

"Probably with his power ring."

They're looking at me. Um. I didn't read enough comics to be sure-.

Trini picks up a comic. One of the actual Orange Lantern comics. "Did these tell you what he can do?"

"Yes." No, that's not what she-.

"And what is that?"

"Anything. Anything he wants." Make eye contact. I look at the others. "His ring lets him make orange simulacra of objects and weapons, but it can also do a lot more. He can transmute matter and synthesise hi-tech machinery, he can permanently transmogrify people into orange simulacra, temporarily realign their goal-oriented behaviours, control machinery-."

Kimberly pulls a face. "What?"

Trini smiles. "Make anything and control anything."

"Oh."

"Whow." Zack's eyes are wide. "Seriously? Anything?"

"There are limits. He only has a limited power capacity, and he has to have an intensely avaricious drive to achieve what it is he's trying to do. And given that he was worried about dying by running out of power, I doubt that he would risk using anything like the greatest feats he used in the comics."

Zack shakes his head. "Why did he become a superhero? I mean, Batman watched his parents get murdered…"

That was covered in issue one. "He thought that the world was so dangerous that the only way to ensure his survival was to become powerful enough to fight anything that could hurt him."

Assuming that every major city in Detective Comics America has the equivalent of one monster attack per month, and that superheroes have been active since World War Two, an average person would encounter a monster at least twice a year. More than that if you include indirect disruption, so it was a legitimate concern.

Kimberly keep staring at the sphere. "Do you think he's taking the zord because he thinks it can keep him alive?"

"A zord's power system requires a power crystal from one of your morphers. If the Dragonzord could provide him the help that he wants then I would have already suggested it."

"Right, but… Does he know that?"

"No, but him taking control of the Dragonzord is not the main source of my concern."

The image on the sphere shifts to show putties attacking a military base.

"This was recorded earlier today."

Orange Lantern and… Goldar follow them, ignoring the gunfire from the soldiers on duty.

"This is the Pantex plant in the state of Texas-."

Oh God. "Oh God."

Jason frowns. "What's so important about it?"

"That's where the United States Department of Energy makes nuclear warheads."

Everyone stops moving, even a little. Then Zack looks at me.

"He… He asked me why we never used a nuke on Rita's moon base."

"Without an atmosphere the effective destructive radius of a fission bomb is far less than it would be on Earth. We would have to get it inside the base before we set it off, and if we had already defeated everyone then there wouldn't be any reason to use the bomb."

"… Huh."

Jason frowns. "Did you pick up anything from those comics about how he thinks?"

"One of the things I learned about Orange Lantern is that when he decides to do something, he focuses on it. He commits to it completely, no matter what it takes. The only things that makes him hold back are his friends, and he just found out that all of them are fictional characters. If he's decided that the only thing that matters to him is staying alive, then the world is in a lot of trouble, because there isn't anything that he won't do to make sure that he does."

Jason nods. "Then it's our job to stop him. It's morphin' time!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
14:35 GMT -7

It was interesting, that while the hangar where they keep most of the zords appears to be warded against detection, the Dragonzord was just sort of left standing underwater off the coast. It wasn't even that far off, as it could get to shore in the time it took Green Ranger to play a few riffs on his dagger-flute.

I haven't… Completely worked out how, yet. I'm forcing an interface with my ring and the zord's magic appears to be resisting. And I could probably completely subvert it, but I'd rather not wreck the zord entirely. I think it's something to do with using its tail as a propeller while submerged, but since I didn't want to test that myself I settled for walking through the water the slow way.

There are missile launchers in the hands, but the reloading system appears to use an energy-to-matter system that I can't fuel without whatever is it the Rangers use to power these things. I can get one volley, but that's it. The other form of attack appears to be tail swipes, as these stubby little arms and clawless hands aren't much use for fighting.

I can't help but think… I remember the Dragonzord being cooler than this. If I could spam missiles, I guess…

Teleportation detected.

And did we detect the energy form used?

Yes.

Oh. Yeah, that's no use at all. I could probably build a teleportation array like that. I don't know exactly how Zordon's powering it, but a couple of small-scale bleed torsion generators would probably do it.

Red Ranger is gesturing at me with his sword. Um. I don't remember his sword having a supercharged execution mode and as far as I remember the only way they ever killed a giant monster was with a zord, but I do need them to respond appropriately.

Now, if I was actually trying to kill them I'd fire missiles at them. There were a couple of times when giant monsters or zords fired at them while they were on foot, and as far as I remember it was always a bad time. Now my biggest challenge is making sure that the Dragonzord doesn't wander off while I'm outside-.

I raise my left hand and project, an orange construct of myself in full armour appearing and towering over them.

I don't have to go outside.

"…out of the Dragonzord, now!"

"Mm." I make the construct stroke its chin. "Do you have a way to extend my life?"

"So that's what it took. You're working for Rita now?"

"Yes. She's the most magically powerful thing in this star system. I can get her what she wants, and what I want in return is next to nothing for her. It's a perfect trade."

The pink one takes a step forward. "What about Earth?"

"Let me put it this way. You're all immune to small arms fire while you're wearing your costumes, aren't you?"

Zack and Pink look at Blue, who nods. "Effectively."

"Have you seen what's happening in Bosnia lately? Afghanistan? Iraq? Chechenia?"

Yellow nods. I'm not sure if the rest don't because they don't feel like answering a supervillain, or because they don't do foreign affairs. I don't want to assume. I'm trying to be nicer to Americans, but I knew about the first one in 1995. When I was 12.

"There's a war."

"A war fought between people whose weapons you're entirely immune to. In Bosnia they're making a point of targetting the civilian populations. Genuine genocide, that you could stop. Easily. At no risk to yourselves. And yet, you don't."

Red stares at me. "And you think Rita will?"

"Do you really think that Rita is going to do anything with Earth if she wins? No, she'll stick up a few statues of herself, grab any interesting artefacts and technology and then swan off to conquer somewhere else and leave it in the hands of a competent subordinate. And then I can do it. I'll be able to reorganise the world any way I want. Unlimited authority to rewrite legal codes, set monetary policy and intervene on a whim to stop mass murderers. It'll be everything Earth Sixteen could have been if I'd had a personal lantern from the start. And… No competition."

I have the construct suddenly extend both of its arms towards them, prompting them to brace themselves.

"Which is where you come in. Or to be more accurate, leave. You are aware of the nuclear bombs I stole?"

Red gestures angrily. "Where are they?"

"Oh, I'll tell you. I took five: one for each of you. On the west coast of Africa, there's an island called La Palma. I buried one there. Do you know what happens when it goes off?"

William straightens up slowly. "A landslide, which would create a tidal wave big enough to flood the entire east coast."

"Someone buy that man a National Geographic subscription!"

"Actually, I already have-."

"Then I'll pay for next year! I put another one in Yellowstone, in just the right place to set off the supervolcano!"

Pink slumps slightly. "What's a supervolcano?"

William turns to her. "Oh, it's-."

"Like a volcano, only more super! Ever hear of the Year Without A Summer?"

"No?"

"Okay, then I guess that as well as abolishing war I'm clearly going to have to revise the history curriculum. It was really cold all year! There were famines everywhere!"

"How does that make the world a better place?!"

"Because when I'm permanently at full power, I can make all the food I want! Desperate and dependent people are far easier to control! Heck, I liked that plan so much I put another nuke on the Taupo supervolcano in New Zealand! The fourth one went near the Darvaza gas crater; if it goes off it'll set off the entire gas field! Half of Turkmenistan will fly into space!"

Red Ranger nods. "That's four. Where's the fifth one?"

"Oh? It's just over-" I have the construct point to the left. "-there."

They all look in that direction, and I have to keep myself from firing the missiles while they're distracted.

"Oh, and I set them all to go off in…" I make the construct move its left arm like it's checking its watch. "Eight minutes. And unless Red Ranger stays here to fight me, I'll remote detonate one at random."

They sort of stand there for a moment, and I start to wonder if I've stunned them. Then the other four teleport away, leaving Red Ranger staring me down.

"Come down here and fight me!"

"Poor tactics. You should be trying to find the bomb. But fine."

I

step out

and didn't that feel weird. That wasn't the Honden. Something else entirely. Something to look into later.

I appear on top of the Dragonzord's head and fabricate a suit of light power armour with a shoulder-mounted railgun.

"I'm not really much of a fighter. But then you're not much of a tactician."

I jump down, landing hard enough to blast a crater in the ground.

"Let's see if brain beats brawn. Or rather, how quickly."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
14:39 GMT -7

I take a loose stance and wait. After all, all I have to do to 'win' is run down the clock-.

Red Ranger runs towards me-

"Hyaaagh!"

-and leaps, extending his right leg-

Woon.

-and taking a railgun round in the chest for his trouble.

"Ah!"

He's knocked to the ground, and there's a small black mark where whatever strange technology holds his totally-not-lycra armour together smoulders as he rolls back to his feet.

"Did you not see the gun? Or did you think I was bluffing?"

He moves his sword to a guard position. "You think I don't have brains? Then why haven't you just set off the bombs? You don't need to give us a chance to defuse them."

"Is that what you want to do with Angel Grove's last… Seven minutes not being an irradiated wasteland? Fine, fine. Of course I didn't, but there's no power in the universe that can make Rita Repulsa stick to a deal when she doesn't feel like it. Working around you to wreck the world is too simple. I have to show her me beating you if I'm going to persuade her to keep me alive!"

"You're crazy!"

"Says the guy still talking with six minutes and forty seconds left!"

He charges along the ground, sword in a guard position across his body. I fire-

Woon.

-again, but he manages to parry the shot without being knocked back at all. Not sure.. how that works, but.. okay. I put a construct wall in the way but one slash of the sword cleaves through it and reduces it to orange mist.

Woon.

He parries that as well before accelerating into a sprint.

"Hah." I put a friction free construct strip on the floor between us, his feet shooting out from underneath him as his grip vanishes. His momentum keeps him coming flat on his back, sliding towards me as he tries to get back to his feet by rolling off. "Too easy."

He rolls off-.

I raise a construct shield, the shots he fires with his sidearm from his prone position splattering off it a moment later.

"Do you want me to tell you what you're doing wrong?"

He stands, sword in his right hand and gun in his left. "What?"

"I have to defeat you to win Rita's favour. You have to prevent the bomb from exploding in order to save Angel Grove. Why are you fighting me rather than running for the bomb?"

"Because you'd shoot me in the back."

"True, but you do realise that your teleporter can teleport you short distances, right? Come on, make me work for it! It's a big box with a radiation symbol on the side!""

He holsters his sidearm and vanishes. Okay, good, that-.

CHING!

I stumble forward as my railgun falls to the ground, Red Ranger's sword having sliced through the anchor point. A pile driver construct slams into his chest and sends him flying back into -and through- the wall of an abandoned boatshed.

"Good thinking, but you realise I can just repair that, right?"

I crouch down to pick it up, and make a show of floating it back onto my shoulder and reattaching it.

"I just have to-" He picks himself up. "-wear you down until your potion power runs out."

"That would beat me. It wouldn't do anything to the nuclear bomb."

"I heard what Zordon said. If you go, they go!"

"Go back to Pantex? And blow up there, amongst the largest concentration of highly refined nuclear material on the planet? Is that..? Good?"

"Why would they blow up if you set the timer?"

"What, do I look as stupid as you do? Goldar set the timer. I just moved them."

I use a construct shield to block a volley of shots and then transition sideways to evade his swing.

"Oh-hooh! That wasn't aimed at my gun!"

"You're going to kill-" He swings and I transition just out of reach. "-thousands of people!"

"No! Billions! And here's the thing: the Angel Grove bomb threatens the least people! If you were prioritising properly you'd be teleporting away to deal with the other bombs!"

He swings again, and this time I just sidestep.

"I don't know how to defuse a nuke!"

"Hammer and chisel! You just have to crack the explosive shell around the uranium and it can't go critical!" He swings once more, and this time I lock his arm in place with construct manacles. "You could disarm it with your sword!" He struggles against my grip, but can't break free with raw strength. "The correct response is to-."

He draws his sidearm with his left hand, switches it to knife mode and slashes it through my construct.

"There you go!"

He resheathes his sidearm and slashes-.

"Found it!" He teleports away. Finally taking my advice? Good show.

Of course, I know where the crate is, and there aren't that many ways to approach it. I transition to an overwatch position, ready my railgun and-.

And…

Ring, scan for Red Ranger-.

And then I hear it.

Can he do that? I don't remember him doing that. I mean, sure, the green dagger is still 'available', but without the green power coin, shouldn't it-.

The Dragonzord hasn't returned to the sea yet. He doesn't need to wait for it to-.

I shoot into the air, half a second ahead of the first volley of missiles!

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
14:42 GMT -7

I think I made it angry.

Five missiles zip through the space I occupied prior to my aerial dodge before slamming into the ground and exploding. Red-. Scan. No, he's teleported away, but I hope there wasn't anything valuable in that boat shed. And those missiles are big; I'd say about a metre across the fuselage and six times that long. Not sure what the warhead is. Anti-matter would make sense, but there isn't the radiation that would entail.

I sight the zord-. It's firing its left hand now. I fly upwards to evade them, spotting it reloading its right fingers. They don't appear to have any tracking capacity, so I suppose that they're intended for overwhelming the defensive abilities of other zord-scale opponents at short range. So as long as I-.

AH!

Hah, okay. They can be prematurely detonated in an airburst. Goldar did say that zords could shoot down missiles. I guess that's how the Dragonzord does it. But I'm a lot tougher than an aluminium missile, so it'll need a far closer miss to take me-

I look down at my nearly-dark crystal.

-down.

And with this much time having passed, Black and Pink might teleport back here. Or go to help William or the yellow one beat their opponents. But the reason why I wanted to pair William with Goldar is because while I don't think he can win that fight, he's intelligent enough to try to stab his bomb and leave.

Another flight of missiles heading this way. Point defence constructs, shoot them.. while moving, because that zord is lumbering this way and I don't know that I didn't forget one of its weapon systems. Shooting them out of the air… Ah, they still detonate, but nowhere near me and… This whole area is used to having a giant robot dragon lumber out of the water and so they've got a really good evacuation plan.

Alright, where did Red-?

Oh, good man. I-.

I glance down at my crystal again and don't create a booster rocket construct, instead settling for using my armour's flight system. Target Red Ranger, who is rummaging around a fish market and trying to locate where I hid the bomb, most likely by tracking the tiny amount of radioactive material I left as a trail. Someone needs to pay more attention in physics-.

The Dragonzord tries launching all ten missiles at once, some coming in high, some direct and others flying along the deck. I didn't know it could do that.

Did someone get inside when I wasn't watching?

"Good distraction, Red! Doing wonders for property values!"

Thin lines of light leap out from my point defence constructs, missile after missile detonating without coming anywhere near me. I'm careful to shoot out the lower ones while they're not directly above any structures; their explosions are intense but relatively contained-.

He's spotted the crate. Railgun, track and fire on full automatic.

Compliance.

The first shot hits him in the back, sending him tumbling forwards. He rolls and dodges, the second shot ripping through the wall next to him.

Fly closer and construct lasso.

Red Ranger leaps at the crate, sword held high as he takes my advice. All for nothing, as my construct grabs him and yanks him back.

"No!"

"Didn't Blue or Black tell you what I can do?"

I spin the lasso, dragging him through the air before releasing him in the direction of the next wave of oncoming missiles. The Dragonzord detonates them early, but Red is already moving to intersect with the blasts.

"Ugh!"

And then I let him drop.

"Given how slow you are, maybe I should leave now! The bomb will probably go off by the time you get there!"

He lands in a crouch, exhaling hard before looking up at me.

Then he teleports.

Okay, passable. But it's not like I don't know where-.

The Dragonzord fires again, and I ready my point-.

Duuuufgh!

There's a screech as-. As the Pterodactyl Dinozord swoops out of the clouds, both lightning cannons firing! Construct shield, nice and non-conductive… Yes, good. It's heading back up into the clouds. My point defence constructs fire at the oncoming missiles. Ah, trying to time their attacks so that they hit at the same time. Good tactic.

Red Ranger grabs the crate with the radioactive symbol on it, only for me to lasso it this time and pull it out of reach.

"I thought you only used zords against giant monsters. What gives?"

"None of Rita's other monsters tried to blow up the world!"

Fair point. Okay, the Mastodon Zord freezes things but I don't remember what the other-.

A silver missile shoots past me.

Oh, okay, that-.

Chain! It was towing-! Construct armour and-.

The air around me turns to plasma as a lot of electricity flows between the two… Missiles? Horns? Triceratops horns, right. Doesn't do a thing to me because I'm insulated, but-.

The Pterodactyl Dinozord comes around and fires, destroying my point defence constructs.

Ah.

And here come the missiles, direct flight path so they can minimise the time I've got to do something about it.

I fabricate insulated cables and stick them out through the electrified plasma, recreating my point defence constructs as I thicken my armour, but…

Oh, this is going to hurt.

WUCHUUUM-CHUUUM-CHUMMMMM!

Yaaaagh!

The chains break and I… Fall to the ground. Still alive, skin… Burned and leaking juices in places. Construct armour's broken and regular armour looks like something a niche stripper would wear, good work environmental shield. I think I'd be in more pain if my nerves were still connected.

I wallow as I reach the ground, nearly arresting my fall but needing to take a few staggered steps.

Red Ranger dashes towards me, sword held at an.. odd angle as he runs his left hand down the blade-. And it starts glowing.

Oh. I guess they don't always need the combination gun, then.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
14:45 GMT -7

Armourconstructarmourconstructwallpneumaticram-!

"H-yah!"

Red Ranger lunges and swings, his now-glowing sword cutting through my ram construct and cleaving it lengthwise! My wall suffers a similar fate as his slash extends well beyond the limits of his blade, energy cutting through my construct armour and slamming into my-.

"AaaaaGGHH!"

My armour literally bursts off me in a shower of sparks as the energy eats through my chest. Looks like the nerves inside my torso are working fine, good to know! I try catching my breath but-. Can't because there's my lungs, nice and exposed and-.

The crystal-. It's.. gone, and-.

I realise that my right arm is translucent. All or nothing, then.

"Mistress! I had to fight-. Zords, on foot! I can still do this!"

Is it going to be enough? Is she going to give me the same chance she gives every monster of the week? I mean, I think so, but I also know that Red Ranger is getting closer for a coup de grâce. With my ring power being equivalent to nothing right now… It's a good job that I've gotten used to pain, because this-

"Magic wand!"

-is really painful.

"You'd probably have been better off shooting me."

"Make my monster..!"

Now, there's no way that she actually throws it to Earth in the couple of seconds this usually takes arrive, so I'm assuming that she's using the same teleportation effect we've been using to jump around. The records the NSA had show that it definitely teleports back when the monster is defeated.

Matrix… Detected…

Feed me!

I don't know if I've got enough power to actually do this and I couldn't study the actual spell set-up she used for boosting her monsters to giant size, but with my life on the line I don't have time to hope.

I look down, and see that my legs have already gone.

Oh, that's why it's not hurting so much.

"Grow!"

Red Ranger looks up, and I follow his gaze to spot the staff as it appears-.

Matrix absorbed.

Yes!

I fly off the ground, my increasingly phantasmal body fading back into existence as I zoom towards the falling staff. It's not flying anymore, just falling, but it was relatively close to the ground already and terminal velocity for something that shape isn't exactly slow. I think I can-.

In the corner of my eye I see the Pterodactyl Dinozord swing around for another pass. Not now you don't! Sonic cannon construct, target the left wing! It charges its weapons-. But my shot hits the wing and knocks it off-course, causing the lightning cannons to miss. The staff-. Too low! Grapple construct!

Compliance.

The rope shoots downwards, and-. Got it! I got it I got it!

"Hah hah!"

Feed me!

Compliance.

"What's he doing? Squatt! What is he doing?"

"Uuh, I haven't gotten that far in the comic book yet, magnificent one!"

"Why are you even here!? Can you even read!?"

Ooh, that's better. I can feel a mild stinging as my tattoos light up, whatever strange reality/fiction interface that lets me exist here trying its best to properly represent what would happen if I focused my rings' draining ability on my tattoos in the presence of a source of magic power like this.

One last concern. Ring, message to Goldar.

Compliance.

An orange screen with Goldar on it appears in front of me.

"What?"

"Is the Blue Ranger dead?"

"He destroyed the crate and fled!"

"Well, never mind. My bomb's still active. Why don't you head back to base and let me handle it from here."

"If you fail to keep this world in good condition-."

"There's nothing important in Angel Grove, and one little crater won't affect the value of this planet."

"Fine. Do not disappoint our Mistress."

"See you later!"

A giant buzz saw construct slices through the cable as the Triceratops Dinozord fires again, giant construct opera gloves grabbing the horn missiles and throwing them off course. The Dragonzord prepares a new volley of missiles but my heavy mining laser construct burns through them before they can launch. They erupt in its hands in a fiery blast, sending the zord staggering.

Ring, is Goldar still on Earth?

Goldar has now left Earth.

Anyone else on Earth?

No other member of Rita Repulsa's known associates is currently on Earth.

I fly towards Red Ranger with the staff in hand-. As the other Rangers teleport in. I make a point of clapping.

"We're down to ten seconds. You got them all, I assume?"

Four nods, then William looks at the others. "Yes, but-."

Red Ranger takes a step forwards. "Where is it?! Where did you move it?!"

"Look up."

And they all do, for goodness sake.

"One, zero."

For one point three seconds, nothing. Then a very small flash of light is visible on the moon's surface.

"And that is how you kill a supervillain team!"

Pink looks at me, then back at the moon, then at William. "What just happened?"

"The bombs on Earth were fake. He put the real ones in Rita's base."

"Yes I did."

Ring, where's the power in this staff coming from?

Scans show… The bulk of the staff looks like a focusing device. The power source is the appropriately orange orb attached to the crescent moon shape. I think I'll make a lantern-shaped protective case for it later.

"That was your plan all along?" Red Ranger stares at me. "Then why did you fight me?"

"I needed Rita to use the staff. With it, I can power myself for long enough for Zordon to find someone who can make me fully real. And I needed access to their teleportation system to sneak the bombs in." I look up, thoughtfully. "We should probably check anyway. Up for a trip to the moon?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
10:37 GMT

A song barely audible makes the air shudder as Mr. Tenzin completes his circuit of the evacuees. Not only has his command of his power reached the point where he can heal the injuries they were still suffering from, but he can reach into them and correct older injuries, like badly healed bones or organ scarring. Or forced sterilisation. It's a bit of a shame that superpowered healers are so rare, because I'd quite like it if the League had a more sensible starting composition.

I turn to Subjekt-17, who can't quite make up his mind if he wants to stare at Mr. Tenzin or at the gordanians who make up the majority of the population. Unlike Original Grayven I've focused on building up their civilisation. Like Genghis Khan, I've completely broken down the existing tribal structures to create a civilisation that won't just collapse into its composing parts in three generations like they usually do. I've.. eased back on the telepathic policing compared to my efforts with Earth 16 humans, because if you do that you end up having to keep doing that, and I want these gordanians to be able to stand on their own.

Aside from the immigrants. Honestly, I was surprised when karnans of all people started applying to live here. I actually arrived early enough in the timeline that the karnan/gordanian conflict hasn't… Gone as far as it did back in Universe 16. Apparently the attitude back on Karna now is that this is where the 'civilised' gordanians live, unlike the yokels back on Karna.

"These… People. Not human. Not Subjekts."

"That's right. This is what civilisation looks like when they're not using you as a laboratory rat."

"Laboratory rat?"

"I'm surprise that you don't know the term."

"I learn through hearing thoughts. But they have to be thinking the meaning, or it is just… Noise. And I can hardly hear you at all."

"Laboratories use rats to test things. Genetic alterations, chirurgery, behavioural science-."

"Subjekts."

"But not intelligent ones." I frown. "You know what animals are, right? I realise that-."

"Yes. Some of the researchers had… Pets."

I nod. "Like that, but without the affection."

"Animal Subjekts."

"I… Suppose. Look, are you going to let Physician to look you over or not?"

"No." I sigh, and he turns his head towards me. "I know that he… He has good intentions. But I cannot."

"Okay. But we're going to fight people in our weight class. If you really want to keep your current injuries, fine, but in a fight, he'll just heal you, because it's not just your comfort that we'll be risking. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

I nod, and walk towards the Physician.

"Are you ready?"

He pats his last patient on the shoulder in dismissal before turning back to me. Unlike the 6th Doctor look of the Accomplished Perfect Physician that I'm used to, this one has stuck resolutely to his orange Buddhist habit. "Ready to declare war upon Earth? No. I am far from ready."

"What, you want another look at Apokolips? Because that's the alternative. I mean, you're not a.. New God, but you're about as close as a human can get on their own. You felt what it was like."

He nods solemnly. "I did. And that and the behaviour of the Chinese government is why I am willing. But this sort of violence stains the soul and… This will be what I leave to the next Perfect Physician."

"There was a human physician I used to know, by the name of Richard Donovan. One day, an elderly woman presented herself at the clinic where he worked with 'pain in her arm'. Upon closer examination it was severely gangrenous. They rushed her into chirurgery, amputated the arm and saved her life." He nods. "Obviously, they'd rather have treated her earlier in the development of the condition and saved the limb as well, but…"

"I am not certain that the metaphor can bear the weight you are putting on it. Where on Earth has both gangrene and clinics?"

"Brighton, England. He told me about it because they could barely believe it happened and he had to autopsy the arm. Still, if you're as ready as you're going to get then we might as well get this show on the road. Mother Box!"

"Ping."

BOOM!

We stroll through the portal, out to the viewing platform next to the Absolute Dominion's docking cradle.

It's ridiculous. Sure, building ships in orbit might be simpler for low-tech primitives, but we have all kinds of gravity and mass manipulation technology. So why not put my ridiculously huge dreadnought in dock on the planet's surface. Even if that means that we have to plane a continent a little because it doesn't fit on one horizon.

Captain Adam is still staring at it. He glances around as we approach, then shakes his head.

"Doc Smith had nothing on this."

"I actually read the Lensmen series. Throwing planets at people isn't actually an efficient way to wage war, even if it's essentially just a matter of applying power. Also, hive mind telepaths aren't actually stronger than individual telepaths, as what tends to happen is that the gestalt overloads one of its component brains and accidentally kills itself. Though there is a species of evil telepathic starfish out there, so he wasn't wrong about everything."

"Starfish?"

"Oh, don't worry. Without an organic brain I'm…" I make a show of thinking it over. "Ninety nine percent sure that you're immune to them."

"Look, if you've got-. What did you call this thing?"

"The Absolute Dominion."

He stares at me for a moment.

"Y.. eah. The guns on this thing put the New Jersey to shame. So why do you need us?"

"Legitimacy. I'm going to need to convince other superpeople to work for me. I'm going to need you to act as my lord-lieutenants as I establish control of the Earth's territory, to go out and meet people on my behalf. And dreadnought main batteries aren't exactly precision weapons." I shrug. "If I could beat my father by myself I'd have already done that. I need more."

Adam nods, his gaze moving over to where Hippolyta is trying to avoid looking at it.

"Your majesty? Are you alright?"

"I think that I should have spent more time with my daughter." She turns, her eyes not focusing on the strangeness around her, seeing without truly taking it in. "My understanding of the world outside of our island was… Woefully inadequate."

I smile. "But hey, you started fixing that when we were in Washington, didn't you?" Her face hardens slightly. "Honestly, I'm impressed that you knew how to use a telephone."

Adam looks surprised. "Are you saying that Wonder Woman is still around? In the US?"

"Yeah." I nod. "Working in a museum. Her boyfriend died in the First World War and she never got over it."

Hippolyta glares at me. "She is 'over it' now. You will be stopped, and then the heroes of Earth will cast down your father after you."

"Glad to hear it! All aboard!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
10:37 GMT

Captain Adam is sitting… On the top of the hyperblaster, which… Could kill him if it fired with him in that position. From here we can see the swirling hole in the universe being maintained by the hush tube generators.

"I thought that thing made more noise."

"At that size it would deafen the dock workers and wake up everyone on the continent." I shrug. "The quiet version is bigger and requires more power, but it can be a lot more convenient."

The Absolute Dominion begins to accelerate, rising smoothly from its berth and moving towards the portal. Adam feigns taking a deep breath.

"This is okay for me, right?"

"You don't breathe. You don't have orifices. Your metal skin is proof against stellar radiation even if you had biology underneath to be adversely affected by it, which you don't." I sit down next to him just as we pass through the portal. "Your life is about-. No. Sorry. Your life from the moment you were pushed into the quantum realm has become very strange. You can't do a lot of the things you used to and you will.. almost certainly never get them back. Even aside from… Your family-. Well, you were a soldier. I assume you had periods of separation, but you never had entire days of not breathing."

He looks at me askance. "Are you trying to..? What, reassure me?"

"No. It's just…" The bow of the Absolute Dominion emerges from the hush tube, pointing directly at the Earth. Adam's eyes widen slightly. "You got all the bad bits of this life right at the start, full force. But this… No normal human could do what you're doing right now. No normal human could sit on a starship as it flies through a hush tube into a vacuum and stare down at their planet. No human astronaut has seen this in the way that you are. And… There will be other good parts, too. I… Won't try and tell you that it makes up for everything you've lost, but… They do exist."

"And there's no way for me to become human again?"

"Eh…" I frown. "Maybe? It's not an area of physics most of my species are interested in, but the universe is a big place. Help me out with killing my father and I'll point a few worlds out to you where you might be able to get help. Alternately…" Ah. I don't get the New God feeling from this Hippolyta that I get from Hippolyta 16. I really don't know if they're… Compatible with the Awakening in the way that humans 16 are. "I don't know. There are some things I could try, but again, I don't want to get your hopes up unduly."

"Thank you for being realistic about my chances." He stares at the Earth for a few moments. "This… Do we really need to do this?"

"Define 'need'. I already killed the guy who was going to attack Earth. My father will send someone else for the other parts of the Father Box he left there, but will he do it soon? Could we put him off the idea by just giving him the Box? Maybe? Could Earth pull itself together well enough to make this unnecessary? Maybe? But I doubt it."

"I knew my war, the Vietnam War, wasn't going anywhere good. And here we are, invading the Earth because your dad's an asshole. He runs your home planet?"

"Yes."

"Just one planet? You said that you ruled a bunch of planets. I'd have thought you could just out-produce him."

"Apokolips is a completely industrialised super-Earth. Its output is colossal, and he's had a lot longer to build up."

"'Super' as in..?"

"Bigger. Not all small rocky worlds are the same size."

He nods. "I guess I just thought that a species as advanced as yours would have a whole lot more answers. Be.. wiser than we are."

I shake my head. "Technological advancement does not go hand in hand with wisdom. In fact, the opposite might be true. When you can do anything easily, there's no obvious reason to think things through first. When you can flee from your mistakes, there's no motivation to confront them."

"Mistakes?"

I nod. "I've made a few. But then again… Too few to mention."

He chuckles, shaking his head. "I'm sitting on a spaceship and an alien warlord is singing Frank Sinatra. Jesus."

"Never met him." I stand, opening a-

BOOM"

-boom tube to the bridge.

"Frank?"

"Well I didn't meet Jesus either, but I doubt that he was much of a singer. Come on."

He stands, and in defiance of physics he walks after me, back into the ship.

"Right, friends, and Hippolyta. Here's what we're going to be doing. We-."

"We will turn the weapons of this ship upon the planet?"

Subjekt-17 sounds a bit too excited about the prospect.

"No. That would kill any other Subjekts on Earth. It's important that we only kill the people who need killing. So, Adam, you might not be up to date on modern communications technology, but it's a lot easier to make information widely available to the general population than it was back in your day. Mother Box?"

"Ping."

"I just released-."

"Ping."

"Mother Box just released every dirty secret of every government on the planet to everyone, and removed everyone's ability to censor any of it. Honestly, given human governments, that's probably just going to overload things, but Mother Box will highlight anything relating to anyone who tries making any sort of public pronouncement. Meanwhile, I'll make a big speech explaining mankind's place in the universe and what I'm doing here. Once that's done, we're going to acquire the other two parts of Father's Box in case they're sending some sort of signal, and get to work preparing the Earth more generally."

Hippolyta shakes her head. "How can you hope to take control of an entire planet?"

"It's a combination of things. Once I show how vile their existing leaders are and the benefits of joining my empire, I expect that a substantial number of people will volunteer to be ruled by me. I'll pick an area where they're in the clear majority and use that as a base of operations, expanding outwards with minimum force while bringing in my own administrators to make the transition function. Once things are stable, the public trials of literally everyone who used their authority to duck accountability will begin as a reminder why I'm better, and I'll get to work discovering why Father finds Earth so interesting."

I smile at Captain Adam. "Captain, I realise that you're on the fence about the whole me-taking-over-Earth thing, but that file I showed you about how they did you over? Tip of the iceberg. Sometimes, you need to clean house, and this house is thoroughly rotted through. How good and noble the rules are doesn't matter if the enforcement is heavily biased."

"And… The rights guaranteed by the Constitution will still be there if you win?"

"I'm abolishing the right not to incriminate yourself. That was added to guard against torture which I will not be authorising, but I intend to make heavy use of involuntary telepathy in the trials. It'll just take too long otherwise. That benefits the innocent as my telepaths can immediately establish their innocence and they don't have to go through months of imprisonment and the stress and expense of the trial itself. I already have a legal framework written up and ready to be put into use."

Physician raises his eyebrows. "And Tibet?"

"Independence from China. I'll be a hands-off constitutional sovereign."

Subjekt-17 glowers. "And killing humans?"

"I'll make you my official executioner. I'll make sure that everyone knows exactly what-"

BOOM!

"-the condemned are being.. killed-" Luna trots out of the boom tube. "-for. Luna, darling!"

I walk over to her and lean down to kiss her. She tilts her head back to meet me.

"We thought that We would bear witness to your latest-"

"A-hah!"

"-bout of foolishness." She turns to Adam. "Doth your silver knight have some comment that he wishes to share?"

"You married a talking horse?"

I frown at him. "Not every intelligent species in the universe is bipedal, Captain Adam. And no. I married a pony."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th November 2017
11:03 GMT

Huh.

Alright, I know that it's not actually that easy to modify intercontinental ballistic missiles to hit space-based targets even if they've got the fuel to reach them. I know that the general level of technology here isn't high enough to have other kinds of anti-ship weaponry.

But even so, I… Wasn't expecting nothing.

Ping.

Yes, I'm sure that you're doing a splendid job of matching crime with criminal. I just thought that the way chains of command worked, even if you did show someone that their commanding officer had multiple people murdered -for example- they just would choose not to believe it, or keep following orders until the military police showed up.

Superman must have gotten into space somehow when he fought Zod, surely?

Ping.

Well why didn't they just do that on the ground, then?

Ping.

True, I suppose. Still, they managed to whip up a proto-Doomsday thing pretty quickly.

"Alright, that should be enough time. Suit."

"By your command."

It looks a bit weird on someone with my dimensions, but maybe it will look better on television.

"And open a boom tube to a random city somewhere on Earth."

Ping.

BOOM!

"You coming, Luna?"

"Neigh." Adam covers his mouth with his right fist. "We believe that We shall watch from a safe distance this time."

"With me, lady and gentlemen."

17th November 2017
06:05 GMT -5

I stride out onto the streets of… Dallas. Huh. Usually I get somewhere a little more exotic when I randomise.

"Oh shit!"

Not a terrible exclamation, but he rather ruins it by just standing there.

"Good morning, citizen…"

Ping.

"Darren Molyneux, twelve years service at the post office and only faked ill health to watch a ball game once."

"Hey, I booked that, my manager just decided to be an asshole 'cause he wanted to watch the game too and couldn't get cover!"

"Even better! You're just the sort of person I'm proud to be Supreme Overlord of. Keep up the good postal service work."

"Supreme what?"

"I'm taking over the planet, Mister Molyneux. I've got a giant spaceship in orbit."

"Well…" He blinks uncertainly, then rallies. "What's that gunna do to gas prices, huh?"

I contemplate the question. "In the very short term, you'll probably see a small rise from the political instability. But as my administration gets going, I intend to replace ground-extraction with mass thermal depolymerisation before gradually transitioning over to full electrification with hyper-efficient batteries. What that means for you is that within three years the price at the pump will be about a tenth of what it is now, and the environment will be better."

He looks surprised. "Really?"

Really. And that's because I'll be working with existing infrastructure and because I've prepared the factory units that I need in order to make it happen. And because the factory units are designed to require manual labour which will actually result in them creating jobs in the places where they're stationed rather than eliminating them as it would if I switched to pure electric or car-mounted bleed torsion generators immediately. The increased efficiency just isn't worth stability loss on the non-military side of civilisation.

But I just nod. "That's the advantage of alien technology used to actually help people rather than just build weapons."

"How about guns?"

I take one of the Chinese plasma guns out of subspace and toss it to him. "Never fear a poorly trained dog again."

He catches it, staring at it in awe. "Well, Hell, you got my vote."

I smile and gesture to him with my right forefinger. "It'll be a dictatorship, but I appreciate the thought. Keep up the good work."

Not a lot of people on the streets at this hour. A few people opening up restaurants, or some really eager office workers. And there's the weirdly wedge-shaped town hall. Looks reasonably structurally sound, and it should crumple nicely when someone tries hitting us.

"That looks good. We'll do this from the roof."

Adam looks confused. "Why not the White House?"

"I'm not conquering America, I'm conquering the world. And that's a national monument I'd rather not destroy. This thing looks like someone built it upside down."

I rise into the air, carrying Hippolyta and Mr. Tenzin with me and depositing a drone camera out of subspace as I go. Broadcasts…

Ping.

Are being the good little shills they've been trained to be. 'Alternate' media on the other hand are getting everything out that they can. And in those places where alternate media is suppressed, Karna-TV is there with catgirls telling you exactly how repugnant your politicians are. I'll have to interrupt for a bit, but they can get right back to it in a little while.

And land, reinforce the roof so that it doesn't crumble, and…

Begin.

"People of the Earth! My name is Grayven, and I'm the reason that after being lied to for so long you now know exactly what calibre of people rules over you. Some of you may have expected that they were self-absorbed arseholes only interested in shoving money into their Swiss bank accounts. And some of you may have genuinely believed that they were good people. I trust that I have now disabused you both."
Know That I Speak The Truth
"Power is a drug like none other. And like any addict, those who allow themselves to become addicted will say anything, do anything, make any deal and indulge in any vice so that they can keep that high. It is not about achieving any particular end, it is about being able to achieve whatever end they want, and in that goal they are unified with each other and against the people they rule. No one on Earth has had the time to go through everything that I've shared, but you won't have to look far to find the proof of my words."
Know That I Speak The Truth
"You can also find my files on me. I've included reports written by my enemies and neutral parties for comparison. To be brief, I intend to conquer this world and clean house. I will punish the guilty and raise up the innocent. I will take your greatest champions and wield them against the greatest menace in the universe, and when that is done I shall leave you to your own devices."
Know That I Speak The Truth
"Accept me as your ruler. Accept my protection and the uplift of your civilisation. Accept the ruination of the evil and despotic. Become my people and know the full measure of my beneficence."
Know That I Speak The Truth
"I am currently standing in the American city of Dallas. Call me with any questions!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
22:27 GMT

"Giant steps are what you take…"

The Power Rangers teleported up in their zords, which is something that Zordon doesn't like to do because it drains the power reserves. But under the circumstances…

Pink overflies the giant crater of molten glass where Casa Rita used to be. "Are we safe? Being this close?"

The Triceratops Dinozord is noticeably ahead of the rest of the pack as it approaches the edge of the crater. "The armor on the exterior of our zords is more than thick enough to block the alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and the air filtration system will keep out radioactive particulates. In four years someone in a regular space suit could walk through the crater without any consequences for their health."

"Huh. I thought it was, like, hundreds of years?"

"It's about a hundred for salted nuclear weapons, where they're deliberately designed to spread as much highly radioactive material as possible. But Earth's nuclear powers don't actually have those. I checked."

Yellow pings me. "Why did you check that?"

"Well, if I'd used a salted nuke, it would have motivated you more and blowing up Rita's base would have been even more emphatic. It's not like anyone is actually using the moon for anything."

The Tyrannosaurus Dinozord looks over the crater rim, its head turning left and right.

"And you're sure this isn't a trick?"

"I didn't use five nuclear bombs because I wanted recoverable body parts, but these warheads were designed to incinerate hardened bunkers and anyone standing within a mile of them. Rita's facility wasn't actually all that big, and the protective spells appear to have mostly been designed to deal with attacks from the outside."

"Pterodactyl Dinozord's sensors show nothing. I mean, other than the glass bowl. And dust. And radiation. B-blue, are you sure this isn't dangerous?"

"I am as sure as modern human science allows me to be that the radiation isn't dangerous to us. It wouldn't be dangerous through our armor either, I just thought this was a reasonable precaution in case Rita was storing something dangerous."

Ring, scan.

Compliance.

"Did you know that mildly elevated radiation exposure is actually good for you?"

"I don't believe that's true. Every chart I've seen shows an almost completely straight line correlation between radiation levels and cancer rates."

"Yes, above a certain point that's true. The problem is that because it was such a straight line at higher levels the researchers just assumed that it would carry on at lower levels and didn't check. Partly because people who had received lower levels of exposure were harder to find. Low but elevated levels appears to trigger the human body's radiation countermeasures, causing-."

"Well I'm not getting out." The Pterodactyl Dinozord wheels around. "She's gone, good riddance."

"Did you..?" Zack sound uncertain. "Plan all this?"

"I didn't think Red would use the zords like that. Good work there, genuinely impressed."

"Thanks."

"But aside from that-. Yellow, did Squatt even turn up for your fight?"

"Yes. And then he left."

"About what I was expecting."

"I still had to fight the putties."

"And now you'll never have to fight them again."

"But…" Something's giving Zack difficulty. "Even the nuke? And where you put them, you knew where they could go to wreck the planet."

"Of course I did. Back in the comic, we used to keep an eye on places like that so we could be there in time to stop someone doing what I pretended to do. You can't guard your vulnerable spots if you don't know where they are."

"And you knew they'd do what they did?"

"There was a chance that Goldar would demand to stay behind. Him surviving on his own wouldn't be much of a problem. And there was a small chance that they'd find the bombs and disarm them or teleport them away… It was a calculated risk. But it paid off. Any plans for your new free time?"

"There's a new hair and nails salon that just opened in the mall-." I hear four quiet sighs. "I need to de-stress, okay? I'm not used to nuclear explosions."

"Wait." The Tyrannosaurus Dinozord's head turns towards me. "All those wars you said we could stop. Is that what this is about?"

"No-. Well, sort of. It's never about any one thing. I'm not sure exactly what Zordon authorises you to use your Power Ranger equipment for, but I'm aware that you might start using it for forceful interventions against human war criminals. Or you might not."

"He could just take it back. With Rita dead, he might not need Power Rangers any more."

"No, because Lord Zed is probably going to send someone else in a few years, and-."

"Who's that?"

"Lord Zed? Rita's employer, and the one who sent her to Earth in the first place?"

The communications systems go quiet for a moment.

"You didn't know about him, did you."

"No, but it makes sense." William sounds phlegmatic about it. "Rita was already a highly capable magician when she came to Earth. There's no obvious reason why Earth would be the first planet she conquered."

"So the added field training will be useful. Oh! Good news! With Rita's base completely destroyed, there's no more green candle. Green Ranger can return to active duty. I'll.. get the Dragonzord valeted."

"Forget the salon, I'll go tell him as soon we we're done!" … "Are we done, Red Ranger?"

"We're done. Zordon, we're at the site. There's nothing here. Are you picking up anything that we're not picking up?"

"No. The detonation appears to have been completely successful. I will return you to Earth now. Orange Lantern, I wish to speak with you upon your return."

"Certainly. I'll transport myself back."

Now that I'm paying close attention, I can feel the difference between my old transitioning and what I'm doing now. I scan the Command Centre and… It's like I'm literally jumping at faster-than-light speed. I appear at the entrance a moment later and then jog inside, a lightness in my heart. Yes, alright, everyone I know and love never existed-.

And it's gone.

1st April 1995
15:30 GMT -7

"Orange Lantern." Zordon doesn't look annoyed, so I suppose that someone of his experience can take things like this in his stride. "Congratulations on killing Rita Repulsa."

"Glad to help."

"The governments of Earth are in uproar. This will make my work of protecting the Earth much more difficult if someone does not explain things to them."

No rest for the wicked…

"I'll get right on that."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st April 1995
15:41 GMT -7

It's a heady feeling, knowing that there's nothing on the planet that can stop you.

Yes, back in the world of fiction, normal police couldn't do a thing to stop me. But the League certainly could, and a hundred other wizards and superheroes, and even if they couldn't stop me, their ill-regard would make my life harder.

Now? I'm on a world where I don't know anyone. I might actually be better served by finding another planet to set up shop on. But I… I think I remember… In the Power Ranger series, something about most of the galaxy being evil-controlled? Though if they considered Rita to be a high-level operative, maybe… Maybe I'm some sort of ultimate hero by their standards? Maybe I actually could lead a crusade and overthrow the evil rulers of the galaxy?

I should probably learn what exactly they mean by 'evil'. And what their idea of a completely 'good' civilisation looks like. Power Rangers didn't strike me as a setting with a great deal of moral nuance, but to have an evil empire there has to be a certain functional structure to it, and if the leadership are regularly, say, blowing up inhabited planets for fun then that structure wouldn't exist.

The N.S.A. agent I'm walking towards spots me and drops his coffee, the cardboard cup hitting the pavement and splashing its contents all over his shoes. He winces, hands twitching as he instinctively goes for his gun and then stops as he considers the situation.

"Senior Agent Ramirez." I wave my right hand and the cup floats up, coffee streaming up into it from the ground and from his feet. "Allow me."

He takes the coffee, looking around for something to put it on and finding nothing.

"What?"

"I can't return the nukes. I used them to blow up an enemy stronghold. But I used all of them, so I don't have any more."

"Yeah. The N.R.O. passed that on."

"I'm sure that the N.R.O. picked up the detonation; I doubt they knew I used all five. Anyway, Rita Repulsa is radioactive dust and there shouldn't be any more monster attacks for the next few months at least."

"M. Hm."

"Questions? Comments? Feedback on my approach?"

"Attacking a U.S. military facility is a serious crime-."

"And I'll care the moment you have someone who can arrest me. Because it's just the Power Rangers who could even try, and they're currently just glad that she's gone. I mean, be reasonable. What's worse? A few dozen instances of assault and trespass, or an alien invader with giant monsters?"

"Four guys had broken bones."

"And if you're going to be a baby about it, I'll visit them and fix them. I'm calling on you because I want to make sure that you're not panicking and planning to do something stupid, not because I want to be friends. Do you have any reasonable requests or sensible questions or can I get on with my day?"

"You're a.. fictional character. How are you even having this conversation?"

"I'm a magic construct based on a fictional character with that fictional character's memories and abilities. I myself am not fictional."

"'Magical'..?"

"They literally dropped a magic potion on a comic. I can't think of any sort of nanotechnology or whatever that could do that." He frowns-. "Yes, I was created by accident. Feel free to joke about it on your own time."

"Okay. So they're dead."

"Yes. The group around Rita Repulsa are dead. There are a great many other hostile aliens in the universe and I don't know how they'll feel about me nuking one of their allies. But Rita's efforts were fairly typical of how they work, so you don't need to worry about them sending a fleet of space ships or anything sensible like that."

"Then what's changed?"

"Now you've got a chance to find an agent with testicles, have them walk over to the Command Centre, and ask for information directly like a sensible person. I'm only bothering to talk to you so no one starts a nuclear war." Hm. "No Earth-nation starts a nuclear war."

"Our orders are to be hands-off with the kids who fight with giant robots."

"Then I.. guess that your ignorance is your problem? Or I can fly by the White House and be rude to the President instead of you, if that would be more helpful?"

"Yeah, for a guy who's supposed to be a superhero, you're being a real dick right now."

"I'm less than a day old and everyone I love never existed. Oh, and my extrasensory perception is so strong that I can see every war and instance of suffering on the planet. Try it sometime."

"I.. guess-. Every war?"

"Yeah, so I'm going to be stopping those. And I'm probably.. going to be building a Star Wars defence network to stop I.C.B.M.s, and… I don't know. I'll see where the mood takes me. I don't mind warning you and yours in advance but to be very clear, I don't work for you or any other government."

Wait, 1995? Zimbabwe isn't completely wrecked yet. Gosh, I'd forgotten about that due to Zimbabwe not existing on Earth 16. All the government-engineered theft, murder, economic ruination and starvation I can prevent.

Senior Agent Ramirez takes a breath. "Well, you're right. I can't physically restrain you, so there's no point in me trying to arrest you. I don't have any authority to set agency policy, so I can't tell you how my bosses are going to react."

"I wasn't expecting you to." I look around the street. "Want to meet up here in a week so you can pass on any questions they have?"

"Frankly, no, but I will anyway."

"Good man. Excuse me while I go and do something important. Good luck persuading the testicularly challenged to do something sensible."

I.. don't raise my right hand to my forehead. Considering everything, it just seems…

Yeah.

But I vanish anyway, and after a moment of… Disquiet-. There's no Ophidian here, is there? I didn't think about how much a part of me she was, until…

2nd April 1995
00:45 GMT +2

And here we are. Sarajevo. A city with no military value being bombarded by some dead men. Railgun, auto-target any soldier not running away. Ring, locate me sniper nests and artillery positions.

Targets found.

I raise my left hand, making it glow orange. I was a bit too young to really remember the details of the Bosnian War. I remember that the worst war criminals went to ground, dodged anything approaching justice for years and then ran down the clock in the Hague, but the details of the fighting? Nothing.

Iron slugs and beams of orange light out, and men fall or are disintegrated. I could do this part in my sleep. I erect an orange shield around myself in case someone decides to try shooting me with an anti-aircraft gun of some kind, and then I erect another over the ruined city. That one starts taking hits almost immediately, but…

I told the world-. The comic world, that the Justice League had effectively become its rulers. But here, it… Really is just me. And there's no one whose-. Who I like enough to listen to, to let myself be talked down by.

That.. might not be a good thing. But it's where we are. And looking at the piles of shallow-buried corpses littering the countryside around here, I'm not exactly worried about my ability to do better than the default option.

Hail Orange Lantern, I guess.