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

Neruz · Jul 18, 2024

Vaermina said:
Moral of this story.

Don't leave your dead enemies just lying around

To be fair, its a corpse the size of a small planet, what exactly are you supposed to do with it?

Ryumancer · Jul 18, 2024

Neruz said:
To be fair, its a corpse the size of a small planet, what exactly are you supposed to do with it?

Chuck it in a black hole. Disintegrate it via clarketech. Hand it over to the Orange Lanterns for study. Probably other stuff you could do too, because comic book universe.

Chojin Patriarch · Jul 18, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
16th April 2013
02:43 GMT -5

"This ship doesn't have a head, you know."

For a moment I'm frowning before I remember that 'head' in this context means 'toilet'.

And I doubt her suit is fitted with any sort of sanitary recycling systems. Not something that lightweight. I's surprised, though. The ship has no crew facilities at all? What, is the 'cabin' just a tiny cockpit or a small car sort of setup? Then again, she didn't have the luxury of choosing a good ride in her rush.

"Ah, if you require one, my ring has a waste management facility."

"No, it's just-. We're going so slow, you know? You told me there was a giant super-monster and then we start crawling across the system like we're a pre-ftl cargo tug."

"Yes, because I don't know what sort of detection equipment they might have set up."

Still erring on the side of caution with respect to possible Dominator presence, eh?

Though I can obviously narrow it down to things that I can't detect. I do full active scans of the system a couple of times a day and I haven't detected anything, and that's ignoring things that I would pick up by default the moment they happened. Normally that would suggest they were limited to passive monitoring, or… Putting monitoring equipment physically on our satellites and using a bleed fracture pulse system..?

I'm guessing that is something of a new habit, after that whole alien slaving fleet that turned up.

Would I..?

No, no, that would actually work, and I can't check for it now because that might alert whoever this is that I'm onto them.

Man, he is going to drive himself crazier with all this paranoia.

I'll mention it to Batman when I get back.

"What are you afraid of a dead giant starfish detecting?"

Maybe nothing, maybe the Dominators... And some chunk of the Mother Star itself may yet live...

"I'm afraid of the starfish detecting anything because we got very lucky when it broke out, and if it can still detect things then either it wasn't as dead as I thought it was or it has somehow become undead and I didn't notice."

"What's 'undead'?"

...Oh, right. Earth Bullshit. Man, if Blackest Night happens, most of the galaxy is going to be confused as hell. Before they start dying...

Huh-? … Oh, right. 99% of the universe doesn't have undead. Amazing what a narrow perspective you get…

"That's where a thing-. An organic being loses all vitality but keeps going anyway, usually by using magic. At a basic level there are spells to pull someone's soul back to the material world as a ghost, or animate a corpse in a controlled way. At the top end you get things like liches who bind their soul to an object and animate their own corpse, or vampires who sustain their existence by leaching vital energies from living things."

And when you put it like that, it sounds kind of unbelievable... Still, she knows enough to know that Earth is crazy enough to have this stuff.

"Does Earth have those?"

"Vampires? Yes. It can be passed like a blood-borne infection, so it's actually quite hard to eliminate them completely. Though the ones who last any length of time tend to be intelligent enough to moderate their feeding and avoid reproducing too much. Liches…" I smile inside my armour. "Not any more."

I take it he's been cleaning house a little. Stuff off-screen that he hardly felt worth mentioning, eh? Edit: Oh, right. Nabu,

But speaking of the Mother Star, we're only a light minute away. I asked Bleez to stick to passive sensors, but while Thanagarian sensors are good, they're not power ring-good.

Give me a better look.

To be fair, most things in the universe aren't on Power Ring tier. Those that are... They're ones to be concerned about.

Compliance.

And there it is. A giant starfish, one eye… One the far side, from our current angle of approach. Instead, we get a nice view of its vestigial mouth and… The lines of orifices from which it deployed the smaller types of star conqueror. I see a few… Tears and craters, presumably from where the rocky remains of the plutonian crust crashed back into it. No ships or structure and no signs of life.

On the surface, anyway. Who knows what's happening within?

Or… Unlife.

"Seems to be more or less the same as I left it."

Which bodes well...

I'd take a look with empathic vision, but Kent Nelson showed me how easy that was to detect for a magic user back when I was first starting out. And everything I've learned about magic since has confirmed that. My soul should be more strongly anchored to my body than Swamp Thing's was, but that's not something I feel like testing.

Not without a backup plan.

"Has that just been floating in your system?"

"Yes. For longer than my species has, actually."

Which is kind of concerning. Who knows what the dreams of a sleeping near-godlike entity do to a species...

Okay, as far as passive sensors go, my rune stone… We're a long way away, but in a thaumically inert environment…

I pick the stone out of an equipment pouch and hold it out.

Ah, I think that's a response, but I suppose that with my tattoos I'm fairly thaumically active. Oh well.

Yeah, just the ambient magical energy of your body, much less Bleez's would enough to set it off in such a low-mana environment...

Heh. Part of me wants to just jump in and scan at full intensity, on the assumption that my fully accelerated decision-making processes are going to be faster than anything I could encounter. Stealth is all very well and good, but it's difficult to sneak up on something in space. Even something simple like infrared means that I'm having to have my rings absorb my heat, though the files Dox gave me seemed to indicate that some very sophisticated species sometimes forget about simple things at critical junctures; someone once nearly killed one of his father's avatars with a clay-covered explosive fired from a trebuchet.

I suspect Brainiac gets very annoyed if anyone ever brings that up. Like, 'immediate disintegration' kind of annoyed.

But I don't want to risk Death Number Three, especially not knowing where my last clone ended up. Which means that a full visual inspection is the.. next…

"Is that thing turning around?"

...Large bodies do tend to turn on an axis. Maybe a large impact set it rolling?

Either that, or there's a surprisingly prescient black hole around and I didn't detect a change in local gravity fields.

"Nth metal isolated you from telepathic effects, right?"

Not as well as it does against magic, I suspect.

"Up to a point!"

Yeah, I don't think my telepath baffles are rated to stop something like that, either. To say nothing of its telekinesis, though it's possible that it can't focus on something as small as me.

Like trying to swat a tiny gnat flying in front of your face... Sure, if you connect with a swing, it's probably gonna squish. But the trick is connecting.

How long would it take me to generate enough neural chaff to affect-? Hah, no. The very structure of its decentralised neural network would make that… Impractical, particularly when its telekinesis could destroy the construct fairly instinctively so scrambling its thought processes wouldn't do much.

Not unless you could make a construct across every square inch of every neuron in it's entire body... And OL may be good, but he's not that good.

Does the fact its moving mean that it's spotted us?

Ah…

It could be coincidental. But given OL's luck...

How is it moving? It'll be a few seconds until I can passively detect heat from a thruster. The only way to easily detect telekinesis would be to monitor it's brain. Thanks to our rapprochement with the Green Lantern Corps I do know what a Mother Star's brain looks like when it uses its various abilities, but that still requires active sensors or something implanted into its flesh.

Something you should have thought of back when you found it. But no, it was dead, so you let it be...

One enterprising Green Lantern managed that with microbots, once. Exactly once.

Gas thrusters? In theory it could harvest ice and turn it into gas, but I'm reasonably confident that someone would have noticed that by now if it was sending smaller star conquerors outside of itself. No, by the time I would see it moving I'd see the plume as well, that's-.

It's… Side-on to me now, and… That's not the right shape. The faintly scaled upper surface leading to the raised section containing the eye is…

Honestly, if it doesn't have enough telekinesis left to move it's own mass, that might work.

It's..? Missing? And there's..? Some sort of plant-machinery? I'm seeing vines and… Glass? And tendrils of some sort and I can't tell whether they're plant vines or animal tissue. It doesn't look like anything that J or Alstair would make, or like what little I know of Dominion plant technology. And it's almost like I'm… Not seeing parts of it. I can see vines that are clearly part of a complex structure start and stop without rhyme or reason. I'd guess that they're moving out of phase or something, but confirming that would require very active monitoring-.

...Something that big would naturally have microflora. Microflora so large it would qualify as megaflora structures... And if their ecosystem is large enough, a Plant Elemental could take shape within it.

"What is-? What is it?"

"I have not the slightest idea. But I think it's too late to get away."

Hopefully, you just found one of your missing Avatars.

This could be Swamp Thing or Gumbo Man, making do with what they can find in the Mother Star's corpse. Just imagine the internal ecology of something the size of a small planet. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something like that in a comic book... At least he's fairly sure it's not the Dominators. This is going to get strange soon.

"Nth metal isolated you from telepathic effects, right?"

"Nth metal isolates you from telepathic effects, right?"

Neruz · Jul 18, 2024

Ryumancer said:
Chuck it in a black hole. Disintegrate it via clarketech. Hand it over to the Orange Lanterns for study. Probably other stuff you could do too, because comic book universe.

I think you are underestimating the difficulty and time requirements of dealing with something that large.

Like sure if OL had a free month or so to dedicate to the project, he could probably tow it somewhere else, but I don't think he's really had anything like that much spare time to do anything about it without other, more important issues to focus on.

And given that this is a comic book universe, throwing it into a black hole in no way guarantees that it will in fact be dealt with: There is a non-zero chance it will just end up coming back from the black hole worse, because that's how comic book universes work.

In fact, 'comic book universe' is probably the best possible reason to not bother trying to do something about the corpse: Comic book rules of narrative dictate that the corpse will become relevant again later no matter what happens to it, so any attempts to dispose of it are at best wasted effort, if not actively making the eventual situation worse.

Mr Zoat · Jul 18, 2024

Chojin Patriarch said:
I take it he's been cleaning house a little. Stuff off-screen that he hardly felt worth mentioning, eh?

He's referring to Nabu.

"Nth metal isolates you from telepathic effects, right?"

Thank you, corrected.

Lord Ernest · Jul 18, 2024

Neruz said:
I think you are underestimating the difficulty and time requirements of dealing with something that large.

Like sure if OL had a free month or so to dedicate to the project, he could probably tow it somewhere else, but I don't think he's really had anything like that much spare time to do anything about it without other, more important issues to focus on.

And given that this is a comic book universe, throwing it into a black hole in no way guarantees that it will in fact be dealt with: There is a non-zero chance it will just end up coming back from the black hole worse, because that's how comic book universes work.

In fact, 'comic book universe' is probably the best possible reason to not bother trying to do something about the corpse: Comic book rules of narrative dictate that the corpse will become relevant again later no matter what happens to it, so any attempts to dispose of it are at best wasted effort, if not actively making the eventual situation worse.

I agree that the Illustres has been too busy to properly dedicate the time to handle just corpse disposal, but you may also be overestimating how long it could take handling the Mother Star corpse. The Green Lantern Corps used to throw these things into stars to dispose of them, so that would have been an effective method. And it's not like the Illustres needed to just handle it alone; if he had allocated the necessary wariness that a Mother Star, even a corpse, should provoke he could have brought an Orange Lantern team or some Maltusians to take care of it, be it disposing into a star or being brought to Maltus, no? In fact, wouldn't it help that Controller that was trying to create telekinetic agents after studying the Burning Martian?

The problem is that the Illustres has too many issues to tackle and he's sometimes too nonchalant about the stuff that he does or encounters. They may be mission creep or fetch quests, but he sometimes comes across as having acute ADHD and some of the stuff he does or encounters during those creeps or quests end up biting him in the arse. Not entirely by his fault, mind you, but it happens.

BartlettMagic · Jul 18, 2024

Neruz said:
I think you are underestimating the difficulty and time requirements of dealing with something that large.

well. the Mother Star is more or less still where Pluto was... and there's a star right there in the Sol System. OL and Bleez made it to Pluto/Mother Star from Earth in a relatively short period of time, seems like it would only take slightly longer to tow the Mother Star back in the same direction and dump it into our Sun.

Neruz · Jul 18, 2024

I really do not understand why any of you seem to think that throwing the corpse of a planet-sized psychic eldritch space monster into the Sun would actually dispose of it safely in a comic book universe and not result in it later turning out that the Sun is now haunted by the ghost of an angry alien starfish, or something along those lines.

LZB1285 · Jul 18, 2024

Pluto masses 1.3x1022kg, the space shuttle massed around 2x106kg. Even if the Motherstar was only half of Pluto's mass (6.5x1021kg) that is a difference of 15 orders of magnitude. One little ship, just not going to cut it...

Darko · Jul 18, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
16th April 2013
02:43 GMT -5

Zoat, in the spoiler box it say 15th April above the link for this chapter.

WereDragon · Jul 18, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
16th April 2013
02:43 GMT -5

Paul likes to second-guess the Guardians a lot. But I think in future he will agree with them that 'throw it into a star' is the correct response to Mother Stars.

Liches…" I smile inside my armour. "Not any more."

Uncharacteristically arrogant of him to think he got all the Liches on Earth. And that no new ones have been made since you last checked.

Ciber · Jul 18, 2024

See OL. Now this is the point where you put out a distress beacon to the multiple lantern corps you have friends in.

Some silly buggers going on with a Star Conqueror of all things is not an "internal matter" for earth.

Actually. Why didn't they do the smart thing and throw the corpse into a sun?

Mr Zoat · Jul 18, 2024

Darko said:
Zoat, in the spoiler box it say 15th April above the link for this chapter.

Thank you, corrected.

Ciber said:
See OL. Now this is the point where you put out a distress beacon to the multiple lantern corps you have friends in.

Some silly buggers going on with a Star Conqueror of all things is not an "internal matter" for earth.

Actually. Why didn't they do the smart thing and throw the corpse into a sun?

He doesn't like destroying things where there's no obvious reason to do so. This Mother Star's last action wasn't to lash out, it was to try and explain something to him. Given time, he'd liked to have sent a team to study it, which is difficult if it's been destroyed by a sun.

Wivk · Jul 18, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
He's referring to Nabu.

I thought he was talking about his backup clones for a bit there.

CrazyNoVa · Jul 18, 2024

Ryumancer said:
Chuck it in a black hole. Disintegrate it via clarketech. Hand it over to the Orange Lanterns for study. Probably other stuff you could do too, because comic book universe.

Mr Zoat said:
Thank you, corrected.

He doesn't like destroying things where there's no obvious reason to do so. This Mother Star's last action wasn't to lash out, it was to try and explain something to him. Given time, he'd liked to have sent a team to study it, which is difficult if it's been destroyed by a sun.

Couldn't the corpse easily get turned into a gigantic black lantern, or something? Leaving it like that is just asking for trouble. I mean, could you imagine how horrifying a Starro with a lantern ring could be?

Actually, we don't have to, because we've already seen it happen in one continuity. And it was about as terrifying as you can imagine.

Neruz · Jul 18, 2024

Also worth noting that even if the corpse was thrown into the Sun, from Pluto's orbit it would take years to actually reach the Sun, so this would not have been prevented anyway.

CrazyNoVa · Jul 18, 2024

Neruz said:
Also worth noting that even if the corpse was thrown into the Sun, from Pluto's orbit it would take years to actually reach the Sun, so this would not have been prevented anyway.

Not necessarily. We've seen lanterns make moon-sized and planet-sized constructs before, so a sufficiently powerful lantern could easily grab the corpse and travel FTL to the sun to chuck it in there.

Or in the case of Indigo Lanterns or Star Sapphires, just teleport it straight into the sun.

Hell, you don't even need a lantern for that. The strongest members of the JLA could easily drag it and push it into the sun too.

Darko · Jul 18, 2024

One reason he may not have destroyed it is because the Guardians haven't done anything about it.

The Guardians have a lot more experience dealing with these things, so if they thought it was dangerous, they would have removed it themselves.

Yeah, Paul isn't a 100% okay with the Guardians, but he still knows that they know what they're doing most of the time, and if they haven't done anything about the giant starfish, then it would have been a safe bet that it was harmless.

Signaller · Jul 18, 2024

Whenever Possible said:
Has the stargod been in the system longer than the Martian species?

Because I'd wonder if the telepathic and telekinetic alien god has something to do with the development of the telekinetic and telepathic species in the system.

Now that's a cool idea.

Mr Zoat said:
You told me there was a giant super-monster and then we start crawling across the system like we're a pre-ftl cargo tug."

I think "FTL" should be capitalised?

Mr Zoat · Jul 18, 2024

Signaller said:
I think "FTL" should be capitalised?

Thank you, corrected.

Whenever Possible said:
Has the stargod been in the system longer than the Martian species?

Because I'd wonder if the telepathic and telekinetic alien god has something to do with the development of the telekinetic and telepathic species in the system.

Sorry. The Martians were reformatted before the Guardians started using Lanterns, while it was Lanterns that fought the Star Conquerors.

Mr Zoat · Jul 19, 2024

16th April 2013
02:47 GMT -5

"Is it looking at us?"

"It doesn't appear to have any eyes, so my guess would be 'no'. However, I stress that is just a guess."

"Is it coming this way?"

"Not at the moment. It's focused on turning around."

"Is… That where Swamp Thing went?"

"I really hope so, because if there are two things like that around here then I'm giving up and moving to Tamaran."

"Hah." … "So, what does it want?"

"Well, Mother Stars usually want to spread Star Conquerors to as many intelligent beings as possible for both their value as labourers and the improved intelligence they bring to the Star Conqueror collective. I also got the impression that the minds of the people being puppeted are added to a weird sort of dream realm inside the consciousness of the Mother Star, but that is based on a fleeting impression that I got from that one as it died."

"So is.. that a liche..?"

"Based on its appearance, I think what we're looking at is a parasite using the corpse as a host. I'm not familiar with this life form at all- " I upload an image to Maltus tagged for Hinon's attention and marked with the text 'what is this thing?'. "-but if we go with normal parasite lifecycles, it's going to reproduce and dump its young somewhere with a lot of potential hosts."

"Isn't that the same as a normal.. Mother Star..?"

"If we're really lucky, we're looking at a Star Conqueror parasite that can only infect them." I take another look at the… Thing which is now almost completely facing us. "And it's just looking at…" Quick check, considering gravity fields and orbital pathways. "Earth, directly, because it wants to infest the handful of Star Conquerors we still have."

"Um..?"

"Yes, I'm not feeling-"

Target in motion.

"-lucky. Ah… Well, that growth does look sort of plant-like, and we're looking for two elementals, so… The second most likely thing it might be parasitizing is plant elementals and we've got lots of them on Earth. Ah. And since I'm not detecting gravity manipulation I'm going to assume that it's not using gravity manipulation to fly, which means that an object that big going to Earth -even if it doesn't try and land, which isn't a certainty- would result in atmosphere loss, messed up tides and… A whole bunch of volcanic eruptions as the crust gets stressed. Aaaaand we might lose all our greenery and be left with an uninhabitable planet, depending on how its ability works. Orange Lantern to Justice League."

"Hey, Paul."

"Green Arrow, we have a large problem. Sending images."

"Ah. What is that?"

"Don't know. Which means that the Controllers probably don't know and the Guardians haven't put it on any database they've decided to share. Check with Guy or Jordan."

"I'll get right on that. Can you stop it?"

"I don't even know how it started. I'm going to start prodding now."

"Poking weird sea creatures is what killed Steve Irwin."

"I will remember that comment next time you face down a giant exotic alien. Orange Lantern out. Okay, Bleez?"

"You want to get closer, right?"

"Yes. Ah. And you've got a choice between coming with me or leaving the system, and I'm afraid that you've got to make it now."

"Ah… No offence..?"

I nod. "It's fine. Go."

Her ship wallows around, its manoeuvring systems nothing like as good as its primary drive. Then she's accelerating away, FTL drive engaging a moment

//

a moment-. What?

Bleez's ship flies towards the thing from the point in space where her F.T.L. burst ended, but-.

She wasn't aiming that way; her FTL system can only make her move in the direction of travel. And she's getting dangerously close to-

"AH!"

Tendrils pass by her rapidly braking ship on either side, threads of… Glass? Spinning between them, binding the ship and forming a.. ball around it? Parts of the ship start doing the same vanishing-and-reappearing thing as parts of the creature-

-and then I'm there, reality stabiliser construct on my back and x-ionised blades slicing at the… Stuff?

Ring, analysis?

Unable to comply.

And sticking construct armour around myself and gosh does this thing look bigger close up, because while I don't really expect construct armour to do anything I'd feel stupid if I didn't try.

Situation?

Okay, the phasing? It's not actually phasing because I can detect and block phasing, but that's what it looks like. The phasing effect appears to be reduced in an area around me but not completely stopped. That probably means that the stabiliser is interfering with part of the process rather than stopping the end result. Which means that it can still do-

Some sort of… Dissection laboratory shimmers in to being around us, techno-organic probe arms reaching for-

I see gaps in the structure, holes through which I can see what surrounded us a moment ago. Not subspace, but what?

-both me and Bleez's ship. X-ionised blades swing out to counter them, slicing just under the blade heads and separating them from their tendrils. Follow up swings start chopping the arms into thin slices-.

The walls of the dissection chamber pull… Away, twisting and shimmering and then reappearing, whole and intact, arms reaching out once more! Slice again-.

This time the arms I try and attack do the pull away-shimmer-return thing as I swing at them, returning to the attack a moment later.

Yes, that's about what I expected. But the glass stuff imprisoning Bleez's ship doesn't appear able to pull off that trick and I'm nearly through. One more cut-.

Bleez's ship metaphorically rockets free, darting around anything that look like it's reaching for her and trying to-.

"Stay close to the surface! If you pull away it can target you from a wider area."

Her ship immediately dips down, heading for a coral-like area that doesn't appear that active. I-.

The dissection chamber folds back into unreality once more, replaced by glass-bearing vines that are reaching for me-.

I head after Bleez, desperately trying to make sense of what I just saw.

Ngamer11 · Jul 19, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
Her ship wallows around, it's manoeuvring systems nothing like as good as its primary drive. Then she's accelerating away, FTL drive engaging a moment

//

a moment-. What?

Those slashes should be removed.

Mr Zoat · Jul 19, 2024

Ngamer11 said:
Those slashes should be removed.

No they shouldn't.

Prince Charon · Jul 19, 2024

Ngamer11 said:
Those slashes should be removed.

It's possible that they're meant to be there.

EDIT: Batman'd

moralrelativity · Jul 19, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
"So it.. that a liche..?"

liche -> litch?

Chojin Patriarch · Jul 19, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
16th April 2013
02:47 GMT -5

"Is it looking at us?"

"It doesn't appear to have any eyes, so my guess would be 'no'. However, I stress that is just a guess."

And it might not be using eyes to see, after all. It may have all manner of exotic sensory apparatuses to be looking at you with. Especially if it can sense minds, and you two are the closest ones in range. Even worse if it;s hungry.

"Is it coming this way?"

"Not at the moment. It's focused on turning around."

Which makes it concerning as to where it plans to start going.

"Is… That where Swamp Thing went?"

"I really hope so, because if there are two things like that around here then I'm giving up and moving to Tamaran."

As much fun as hanging around the planet of the flying supermodels sounds, rebuilding with them, you'd get bored in a few weeks.

"Hah." … "So, what does it want?"

"Well, Mother Stars usually want to spread Star Conquerors to as many intelligent beings as possible for both their value as labourers and the improved intelligence they bring to the Star Conqueror collective. I also got the impression that the minds of the people being puppeted are added to a weird sort of dream realm inside the consciousness of the Mother Star, but that is based on a fleeting impression that I got from that one as it died."

And metaknowledge from one odd JLA storyline.

"So it.. that a liche..?"

"Based on its appearance, I think what we're looking at is a parasite using the corpse as a host. I'm not familiar with this life form at all- " I upload an image to Maltus tagged for Hinon's attention and marked with the text 'what is this thing?'. "-but if we go with normal parasite lifecycles, it's going to reproduce and dump its young somewhere with a lot of potential hosts."

And Hinon just goes 'what the fornicating blazes did he find now?'

"Isn't that the same as a normal.. Mother Star..?"

"If we're really lucky, we're looking at a Star Conqueror parasite that can only infect them." I take another look at the… Thing which is now almost completely facing us. "And it's just looking at…" Quick check, considering gravity fields and orbital pathways. "Earth, directly, because it wants to infest the handful of Star Conquerors we still have."

...Shiiiiit. 'Lots of potential hosts' indeed.

"Um..?"

"Yes, I'm not feeling-"

Target in motion.

Hopefully, it's limited to sub-light speeds. That gives them time to stop it.

"-lucky. Ah… Well, that growth does look sort of plant-like, and we're looking for two elementals, so… The second most likely thing it might be parasitizing is plant elementals and we've got lots of them on Earth. Ah. And since I'm not detecting gravity manipulation I'm going to assume that it's not using gravity manipulation to fly, which means that an object that big going to Earth -even if it doesn't try and land, which isn't a certainty- would result in atmosphere loss, messed up tides and… A whole bunch of volcanic eruptions as the crust gets stressed. Aaaaand we might lose all our greenery and be left with an uninhabitable planet, depending on how its ability works. Orange Lantern to Justice League."

Which puts me in mind of the disaster that opened Thundarr the Barbarian. Granted, that was a 'runaway comet' and presumably a bit smaller than this thing...

"Hey, Paul."

"Green Arrow, we have a large problem. Sending images."

Sadly, the League has little in the way of options for dealing with it before it reaches Earth. Like, say, Lanterns.

"Ah. What is that?"

"Don't know. Which means that the Controllers probably don't know and the Guardians haven't put it on any database they've decided to share. Check with Guy or Jordan."

Otherwise, you're dealing with something new, and therefore much harder to sort out...

"I'll get right on that. Can you stop it?"

"I don't even know how it started. I'm going to start prodding now."

Well, don't get killed doing it. Epecially since you're not alone out here, OL.

"Poking weird sea creatures is what killed Steve Irwin."

"I will remember that comment next time you face down a giant exotic alien. Orange Lantern out. Okay, Bleez?"

And you just reminded me that it's been over a decade since he passed...

Hell, close to twenty years, now.

"You want to get closer, right?"

"Yes. Ah. And you've got a choice between coming with me or leaving the system, and I'm afraid that you've got to make it now."

He certainly won't think any less of you for leaving now, either.

"Ah… No offence..?"

I nod. "It's fine. Go."

Smart lady.

Her ship wallows around, it's manoeuvring systems nothing like as good as its primary drive. Then she's accelerating away, FTL drive engaging a moment

//

a moment-. What?

Oh, something weird just happened, didn't it?

Bleez's ship flies towards the thing from the point in where her FTL burst ended, but-.

She wasn't aiming that way; her FTL system can only make her move in the direction of travel. And she's getting dangerous close to-

...Did it just fold space to turn her around so that she'd be closer?

"AH!"

Tendrils pass by her rapidly braking ship on either side, threads of… Glass? Spinning between them, binding the ship and forming a.. ball around it? Parts of the ship start doing the same vanishing-and-reappearing thing as parts of the creature-

Weaving a web? How... Spidery. Sounds like it's not entirely present in this plane of existence, either.

-and then I'm there, reality stabiliser construct on my back and x-ionised blades slicing at the… Stuff?

Ring, analysis?

Here's hoping it has some ideas on how to destroy it...

Unable to comply.

And sticking construct armour around myself and gosh does this thing look bigger close up, because while I don't really expect construct armour to do anything I'd feel stupid if I didn't try.

I fancy it feels like you're flying at an odd angle over a wide stretch of open land, hmm? After all, this thing was curled up inside a planet and comfortably filling it, right? It's probably at least the size of England...

Situation?

Okay, the phasing? It's not actually phasing because I can detect and block phasing, but that's what it looks like. The phasing effect appears to be reduced in an area around me but not completely stopped. That probably means that the stabiliser is interfering with part of the process rather than stopping the end result. Which means that it can still do-

It's rippling reality itself around it. That can't be good.

Some sort of… Dissection laboratory shimmers in to being around us, techno-organic probe arms reaching-

I see gaps in the structure, holes through which I can see what surrounded us a moment ago. Not subspace, but what?

...Wait, what? Is that some kind of... Dream chunks of the Star Conqueror was having? Nightmares of being 'examined'?

-me both me and Bleez's ship. X-ionised blades swing out to counter them, slicing just under the blade heads and separating them from their tendrils. Follow up swings start chopping the arm into thin slices-.

The walls of the dissection chamber pull… Away, twisting and shimmering and then reappearing, whole and intact, arms reaching out once more! Slice again-.

Now that's just cheating.

This time the arms I try and attack do the pull away-shimmer-return thing as I swing at them, returning to the attack a moment later.

Yes, that's about what I expected. But the glass stuff imprisoning Bleez's ship doesn't appear able to pull off that trick and I'm nearly through. Once more cut-.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

Bleez's ship metaphorically rockets free, darting around anything that look like it's reaching for her and trying to-.

"Stay close to the surface! If you pull away it can target you from a wider area."

Yay. Stay close to the giant kind-of-dead giant monster and the gribbly plant-dream-thing puppeteering its corpse... Fun...

Her ship immediately dips down, heading for a coral-like area that doesn't appear that active. I-.

The dissection chamber folds back into unreality once more, replaced by glass-bearing vines that are reaching for me-.

I head after Bleez, desperately trying to make sense of what I just saw.

That suggests it used the whatever-it-was as some sort of bait or distraction. Or it has less control over whatever the heck it was than it should...

The dimensional flux around it and the giant projection make it sound like it's drawing on something supernatural. Star Conquerors in this universe have ties to the Dreaming, right? What if it regurgitated something it previously 'ate' as an attack of some kind? A Nightmare of something or someone about being studied. Which begs the question: Did that stuff look human-made, or something else familiar?

It doesn't appear to have any eyes...

Double Space.

...from the point in where her FTL burst ended...

Either delete 'it' or 'change to 'in space'?

Once more cut-.

One more cut-.

Rin · Jul 19, 2024

moralrelativity said:
liche -> litch?

Lich

Darko · Jul 19, 2024

Mr Zoat said:
I'm going to start prodding now."

"Poking weird sea creatures is what killed Steve Irwin."

And Paul is already friends with a big, red demon.

Bloodalchemy · Jul 19, 2024

I think the not phasing is self contained time travel via 4th dimensional shenanigans. The apparent phasing effect is the shadow of it's movements forward and back though time.

PJCG · Jul 19, 2024

Rin said:
Lich

No, I think it's right.

Liche as in plant organism.

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