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

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Lazurman

    Lazurman That Others May Fap

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    This too.
     
  2. Handlewithcare

    Handlewithcare Versed in the lewd.

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    Reminds me of the Hyron from Deus Ex.

    Where did we see Sage and Fite again?
     
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  3. thebishop8

    thebishop8 Umm, ackchyually...

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    Victor Sage is The Question, for those who don't recall. Anita Fite was a missing member of the Alliance, and I think Black Orchid was supposed to have been a member of the Alliance killed by the lady with the possessed handguns.
     
  4. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    I see that Mr Free is a fan of Optimus Prime.
     
  5. Ganurath

    Ganurath Apologizes For Nothing

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    Odd that this is Part 13, when the previous update was Part 11.
     
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  6. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    I was half expecting. "Is this some kind of joke? After all, when an Orange Lantern, a White Mage, a New God and an Angel walk into a hotel... Guy must be really jaded if seeing the front door disintegrated doesn't faze him...

    Sounds like this city was the perfect place to hide an Apokaliptian stronghold. Who'd notice slightly more depression, gloom and sloppiness?

    Not feeling nostalgic, are we? :p

    Guy's got a sense of humour, if nothing else.

    So the longer it's in place, the more dependent the person's soul becomes on it to hold together? Explains so much about the Lowlies of Apokalips. I remember that animated scene where they go to Darkseid's aid when the League throws him into their midst.

    Ah, the good old dungeon bypass. It's not quite Nanoha's method, but it does the job. (Sadly, there are damn few clips of that moment vs Quattro online.)

    Still, the hope of it is a powerful motivator, isn't it?

    And He might take threats against His person personally. Assuming He takes it seriously at all. I'm sure He's heard His name uttered in oaths of vengeance often.

    So probably local guards in mufti. No doubt with only conventional weapons close at hand to keep the disguise effective.

    Careful, OL. Loose lips sink ships. Then again, it'll take years before they're ready. No doubt Darkseid will have people working on modifying their Anti-Lantern techniques to counter them.

    A classic Divination spell, after all. 'If my name be spoken, tell me where and by who.' Advanced versions even let you listen to the words spoken. :D

    Bet that'll make them confused when they wake up. Like 'What did I do last night?' turned up to eleven.

    Ah, there's the real defences. Time to dig a hole. :V Diggy Diggy Hole... Such a catchy song...

    Fancy work. Bet he even capped the water and sewerage lines and live cables...

    ...And also provides an avenue of attack, given a decent amount of magical skill. Law of Sympathy and all that.

    Ah, gonna play tank for this raid, Zee? Probably a good idea, OL's kind of squishy, and he takes a while to respawn.

    Resilient until someone dumps anti-theurgistic weapons at him... And I would not be surprised to find there are such.

    :D Ah, the joy of being able to tell gravity to go suck a lemon. In song!

    After all, his scans can be fooled.

    Good to know. But is it the heart, or just a remote station...

    "Sorry, they're blocking remote network access. How rude."

    Why would it not? Deeper the better. More defensible that way.

    Looks like the whole party love to play the 'dungeon bypass' spell card.

    Gee, how mundane. And polite of them to clean up. After all, even an evil genius should have some standards of hygiene.

    Useful. Like a sniffer dog.

    'Check your corners!'

    And confirmed! Empress is being used as the human brain of the machine. And Black Orchid too? Interesting that the Question is in there, though. He must have found this place and the mastermind decided 'waste not, want not.'

    Urge to Quote Transformers lines... Rising...

    Scot's last line of Godspeech makes me wonder what it'd be like to have Cybertronians running around a DC Earth... There's at least one Marvel Earth with them. At any rate! They've found bad shit going down. And it looks like the person behind it is here, ready to fight. Black quotation marks, though? That can't be good...



    I open each of them just in case, but the scan was accurate.
    The flooring vomits itself up and we go down again.
    Missing Full Stop.
    Either 'as' or 'and', I think?
     
  7. Relyt33

    Relyt33 Know what you're doing yet?

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    Actually I just checked the threadmark list they’re two Part 11s so the second 11 should be Part 12
     
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  8. The Froggy Ninja

    The Froggy Ninja The Blade Will Never Die

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    The Question. Local hero with detective skills approaching Batman’s. Makes sense he’d find out about this, at least. Not sure why they’d plug him in other than general sadism though.
    Empress, a heroine powered by an Anti-Life fragment. Totally makes sense why she’d be used as a vector of infection.
    Not sure why here. Maybe trying to exploit her connection to the Green?
     
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  9. B00ki5h

    B00ki5h Verified: Oddball, Lurker, and Dabbler

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    Scott Free’s god speech reminds me of liberty prime was waiting to hear down with communism in there
     
  10. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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  11. NightmareWarden

    NightmareWarden Versed in the lewd.

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    Mr Zoat, this is a little much, y’know? Orange quotes, black quotes at the end there, invisitext, AND Nommo Balewa’s accent? I’m concerned on your behalf, not complaining.

    They got Question?! Fiends!
     
  12. Duke Long

    Duke Long Glomerulus

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    ’at’
     
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  13. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    LePaul is very very lucky he brought along people who can actually handle this...

    Because if he didn't he would be fuuucked.
     
  14. Stsword

    Stsword Versed in the lewd.

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    The Question is an urban shaman. In his 2005 series Metropolis asks him to prevent Superman's assassination by a shaman hit man who uses his psychopomp powers to send his victim's souls to a Hell that never lets go. Zoat was inspired by that to make him a student of the monks of Nanda Parbat, sort of making him a Shadow expy.

    As for Black Orchid, Flora Black had mind control pheromones that makes Pamela Isley seem like just a woman who smells kind of nice.

    So my first assumption is that no, Anita isn't the vector, she's source of the anti-life equation, and Question and Black Orchid are the vectors, on the spiritual (Victor) and biological (Black Orchid) level.

    Or since Black Orchid as a nymph is a spiritual being, perhaps both Black Orchid and the Question are being used to broadcast the ALE over the spiritual plane.
     
  15. AmericanNumbers

    AmericanNumbers Not too sore, are you?

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    Paragon Paul reminding us he ain't quite right by casually going "I'm gonna kill Darkseid" in the middle of a building with Anti-Life'd people.
     
  16. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    I had two part 11s.
    Thank you, corrected.
     
  17. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    Optimus, IMHO, really should have a blue ring.

    The original Marvel Transformers comics were technically part of Earth-616 at some point, weren't they? Then again at one point IIRC everything was no matter how much snarling it caused to continuity.

    There was also, in the later IDW comics run, a Transformers/Avengers crossover with the famous shot of Spidey webbing up Megatron. That one was technically canon for the entire IDW run, although the legal issues meant that 'the Avengers happened' was quietly never mentioned again - it was the aftermath that had consequences though...

    (To wit,Spotlight: Ramjet by the crossover's author. Ramjet, who made his first real-world-timeline appearance in IDW2005 continuity in the crossover - with the altmode of a quinjet - decided he had the smarts and the means to overthrow Megatron. Given this was Ramjet, this worked out about as well as you'd expect, and Megatron left the ripped-apart bits and pieces of the now-very-very-offlined conehead scattered about the planet, pour encourageur les autres.

    Much, much later, this came around to bite everybody in the skidplate when those bits - along with those of Thrust - were used to build an army of automaton Seeker clones for the Earth Defense Corps...)
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2022
  18. m_d

    m_d Fascinated by storytelling

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    dryers - not strictly an error, but more common, even in British and Canadian usage. Usually 'drier' is used for the adjective form describing the relative state, and 'dryer' for the noun for the thing or process that makes the change.

    I wonder why they're partially dismantled. Spillover from Doctor Mist's disassembly of barriers, or were they like this already after someone was took parts for something?
     
  19. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  20. BartlettMagic

    BartlettMagic peekaboo, you fucks you!

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    what a coincidence! i was just wondering where the Question had been when we were still working with Constantine a few chapters ago. didn't i read in this fic somewhere that Question and Constantine are synchronicity surfers or otherwise connected to fate/luck/what-have-you?
     
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  21. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    I'm kinda reminded if that scene in Gravity Falls where the mind erasing gun didn't work.

    Can't break what's already broken.

    Is this the same guy from the last time Paul visited Hub City.

    True, Darkseid may consider Paul a potential actual threat, but also think he can safely kill him, unlike say someone like Highfather.

    Hmm, like Stsword said, maybe their using Sage and Orchid to broadcast this thing using plants and shaman magic.

    I'm also reminded of the weird plants Quinn had in the Tower and I'm wondering if he was helping the bad guys research this.
     
  22. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    It's especially funny because stronger beings then him have tried.
     
  23. Stsword

    Stsword Versed in the lewd.

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    Hmm, I hadn't thought of that.

    Maybe because Black Orchid didn't actually have plant manipulation powers in the comics that I can recall, but she is a creature of the Green, so I guess there's no reason to state it's theoretically impossible, especially with New God tech involved.
     
  24. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Do you mean the mortuary attendant? No, but they have a lot in common.
     
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  25. Windona

    Windona Beetle Queen of Crackshipping

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    Well then, that answers quite a few questions and leaves even more.

    Vic Sage is interesting, since he can be very Objectivist. But between him, Black Orchid, and Anita Fite, well.
     
  26. Threadmarks: Pete Tong (part 14)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    31st December 2012
    14:15 GMT -5


    Now that feeling I know; that's Anti-Life. I don't know what nonsense it's about to try to convince us of but I'm pretty sure that we're all immune. And my rings may not be able to generate constructs down here but their AI can still monitor my behavioural baselines and trigger my armour's computer to fly an emergency escape.

    Objective check. I can destroy this machine by slapping it with crumbler gauntlets. That will probably kill Mr. Sage, Miss Fite and Orchid, and deny us information we could get by studying it. But it would slow down whoever-this-is's attempt to Anti-Life the planet. A couple of weeks ago I might well have just done it, but now I'm hesitating.

    Getting them out in a rush is impractical. The plugs in Miss Fite's brain would probably kill her or at the very least cause hard-to-treat brain injuries if not removed with the utmost care. Mr. Sage and Orchid look like I could rip them out, keep them alive with a purple ray and go for distance and then repair them with my rings once we're clear. The problem is that if Mr. Sage isn't already free then there's probably something magical going on that I can't see and that could create problems that I can't fix.

    So neither destroying or evacuating are appropriate. Let's hear the villain speech.

    "You're not Darkseid." Mr. Free taps his Mother Box, which twinkles silently. Presumably trying to access whatever device whoever said that is using to communicate with us. "I'll never forget his voice. Is that a Metropolis accent?"

    Metropolis, named Bruno, criminal, associates with Apokolips. One name, but… This doesn't match anything in his records. Letting a mortal near the Anti-Life suggests that they're actually backing him, rather than just using him as a patsy and stringing him along.

    "Bruno Mannheim. I'd say 'delusions of grandeur' but if you've managed all this then you're clearly not deluded."

    I think that Mr. Free is frowning under the mask. "Mannheim? A two-bit Intergang thug."

    BOOM!

    A boom tube opens just in front of the core of the machine, and a-. Agh, ghuh… Someone, someone large and powerful, walks through with their hands behind their back. Ah, camera, don’t observe directly, monitor the space in the surrounding area, track when lines of sight to background objects is disrupted-.

    "I hardly need that-"

    And now I can see him.

    "-now."

    The face is more or less correct. His hair's a little neater and his moustache is a little shorter and thicker, but it's nothing a salon couldn't do. But the rest… He's gained about seventy centimetres in height, going from one meter sixty to two metres thirty. Most basketball players are now shorter than him, and unlike them he's gotten broader as well. He was always well-muscled, but now he's gone past bodybuilder and into metahuman territory. His altered proportions appear to be preventing him from being muscle-bound and I doubt that he's limited by merely human body tissue.

    'Ugly' Mannheim also never wore a suit that good.

    Mr. Free's eyes narrow.

    "What..? Happened to you?"

    Mr. Mannheim doesn't smile. His poise suggests confidence, yes, but his expression is completely sombre. Almost… All supervillains I've encountered would be smiling in a situation like this. Mr. Mannheim certainly used to have a livelier disposition than this.

    "You remember the Justice League's attack on Apokolips?"

    "Yeah?" Free Your Tongue.

    "Darkseid gifted Intergang with certain pieces of equipment. Trifles, really, but that was the point. We exceeded Darkseid's expectations by defeating Infinity Man and handing the children over to him. And he rewarded me."

    "You feel like… You're a New God? Is that.. possible?"

    Mr. Mannheim glowers, a faint red light burning deep within his eyes. "Yes."

    "No."

    No is… I have anti-omega effect techniques, but they're rather dependant on me having access to my rings when I confront him. Accessing my armour's subspace arsenal and throwing stuff to block his shots isn't a great solution, but the alternative is flying through the ceiling to create debris and that… Depends on how fast they move and how much they reinforced the roof here.

    "Darkseid touched me, and now everything seems so clear. So obvious."

    "For those of us who aren't New Gods?"

    "Darkseid broke off part of his soul and stuck it inside Mannheim. Anti-Life, Omega Force, Tyranny itself. He's connected to it all."

    "And all the better for it."

    "You gave Vincent Edge his change of heart. That's why he was so scared. He saw… Darkseid, and thought he was speaking to an angry God."

    Of all the reasons to reform…

    "He did see an angry god. The one true and absolute power in the universe showed him his own failure."

    "Criminality?"

    "Living in a way other than in compliance with the will of Darkseid. He has reformed acceptably. I will tolerate his continued existence, though I will crush his hopes and dreams as I crush the hopes and dreams of all who live on this world."

    "I'm sorry, I'm not clear how much I'm talking to Darkseid and how much I'm talking to Bruno Mannheim right now. Are your dreams getting crushed too?"

    "My dreams are Darkseid's dreams. His vision is my vision. His thoughts are my thoughts. Whatever feeble dreams I had before he transformed me are but a tiny speck in my memory."

    "What is your intent here?"

    "Earth is a world rich in magic. Everything is tied to everything else by the magical bonds of millennia. I was curious to see how easily those bonds could be turned to the Anti-Life. How easily it could slip from the collective unconscious of this world into the souls of every living thing."

    "And then?"

    "And then the fragment of Darkseid that is me shall study the broken shell of humanity for any knowledge that can be derived from their fall before I open Fire Pits and truly turn this world into the mirror of Apokolips. All for the glory that is Darkseid." Quail.

    It's too early. It's too early and we're not prepared.

    Dr. Balewa nods.

    "A street shaman and a creature of the Green. But why the girl?"

    "Through some black art she contains within her a fragment of the Anti-Life equation. This will enable me to learn of its nature even as it spreads to this world."

    Zauriel hardens his face and raises his sword. "Why do you delay, then?"

    "Delay? I began the moment you entered the room. Now, die." "Die for Darkseid."
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2022
  27. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    A few bits of Godspeech...
     
  28. Katillno

    Katillno Verified Nobu fan

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    Ok time to fight a mini Darkseid this will be good practice for Paul and the rest of the gang for when actual Darkseid shows up
     
  29. Someguy Somewhere

    Someguy Somewhere The Critical Fumbler

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    He made a new son, since he didn't like the other ones.....or at least a extra limb. Doesn't sound like there's too much of the Man left in Mannheim.

    If he's had the full support of New Gods the entire time, rather then say, Renegades stolen gear and allies, he might even pack as much or more power in that body. They would have started off around the same time frame. This might be as close as we get to a Paul Vs Grayven Fight for a while.
     
  30. BR549

    BR549 This is filth! FILTH!!

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    Mannheim's not home. This is an avatar of Darkseid that happens to be wearing a Bruno suit.
     
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