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

[Mr Zoat]

Two seasons later
Morning

Bastet smiles down at the bowing underlord, the jaffa warriors behind him with a lotus blossom tattoo on their foreheads kneeling with their foreheads pressed to the ground.

"Be welcome, Lord Nefertum. The doors of Tell Basta are open to your and your warriors."

Nefertum straightens up, though his jaffa stay where they are. He flashes both myself and Lady Heset a mildly curious look but doesn't comment. Historically, this is the time when new underlords would be introduced to the others. He might not recognise me by sight, but the only odd thing is that we're standing up here with Bastet rather than that there are other goa'uld around.

"I thank you for your hospitality, and look forward to our discussions."

As far as I know, Nefertum's thing is medicine and perfume. If you've got a disease ravaging your workforce or your jaffa have come down with something that their prim'ta can't cope with, he's your man. Physicians from his world are often attached to the fleets of other underlords and even Bastet's fleet uses some. He's also the source of most of the floral displays that decorate Bastet's palace.

Bastet makes a gesture of polite dismissal, and-

"Jaffa, KREE."

-Nefertum's jaffa rise to their feet as he walks calmly in the direction of one of Bastet's functionaries, who will escort him to his quarters.

Scan.

Oh dear.

"You have a concern, Lord Mammon?"

Because you don't remain a major goa'uld for thousands of years without being aware of the people around you.

"Yes, Lady Bastet. Though I think it would perhaps be best raised in private?"

Bastet looks around at the ceremonial greeting area, the notables of Bubastis filing out now that the last greeting ceremony is completed. A handful are subordinate goa'uld, administrators of individual cities on Bubastis or technologists, but most are human priests, functionaries or merchants. Around us are her jaffa bodyguard, their leader with Bastet's cat emblem embedded in her forehead as a piece of solid silver. Bastet's First Prime is above us with the home fleet to ensure that no one can use this opportunity to make a decapitation attack. Heset's First Prime is also with us, a nervous man clearly unused to having a boss who isn't a psycho.

Or perhaps he's heard the rumour that I'm the one who removed his former god. That would explain the sidelong glances.

"If Lady Heset did not have my full confidence then I would not have appointed her."

I give her a shallow bow, moving my eyes to Heset to indicate that I am including her in the apology. "As you will."

An orange barrier appears around the three of us, though I'm careful that it's not obviously being projected by the ring. Heset looks around, noting its exact dimensions and the fact that her bodyguard just got cut off. Bastet only looks at the part of the barrier closest to her, and seems… Pleased about it?

"Speak."

"When I met Lord Am-heh, I could not help but wonder what the cause of his anomalous behaviour was. Upon closer examination I observed notable lesions on certain parts of his brain." And with his knowledge of biology to draw upon, I know exactly what that meant. "The parts damaged relate to self-perception and mood regulation. Damage would most likely cause megalomania and paranoia. Gods usually have a high opinion of themselves and their abilities, but paranoia is a little more obvious."

"I hardly see how that concerns us now."

"Since I do not know what caused his condition, I thought to see if any of your other underlords have similar characteristics. If one was being poisoned, for example, if would be worth knowing in advance of the symptoms appearing."

"And Lord Nefertum has those signs?"

"With the exception of Lady Heset, we all do." That gets me a slightly slow blink of shock. "The moment I.. realised, I corrected it in myself, but… Yes. No one is overtly symptomatic as yet… But since I don't know the cause, I can't say why that is or how or if the condition progresses. I can fix it in every case, but that would involve me gaining permission to alter the sufferer's brain. And their host's brain. Which won't help with the paranoia."

Bastet considers the issue.

"You have proof?"

"I have my scans of Lord Am-heh and the scans I took of everyone else. Those scans can be confirmed by anyone with a kara kesh. Interpreting them would require a high degree of familiarity with both goa'uld and human physiology, but I am hardly the only one with that familiarity."

She nods. "And you believe that it is caused by poison?"

"I.. considered it, but I doubt that anyone could poison all of us. Since Lady Heset in unaffected, it may be that there is something that all goa'uld in this region are exposed to sporadically which she has not been. My next step would be a careful investigation of all stargates and farmlands, but consulting Lord Nefertum first would be most sensible. His expertise far outstrips mine."

"The sarcophagus." Heset looks slightly surprised as Bastet and I both look at her. "I.. observed that those gods who use it frequently begin exhibiting such symptoms. I had been suspicious for a while, and limited my own usage."

The sarcophagus is a remarkable medical device, capable of repairing most physical injuries. Even death, as long as the head is mostly intact. Goa'uld tend to keep them to themselves and their most favoured servants. I don't actually own one because I couldn't understand how it worked. Still can't, actually.

Bastet looks at me. "Is that possible?"

"Possible? Certainly. The sarcophagus might well have some sort of defective scanner which causes cumulative neural damage." I shrug. "I'm afraid that my knowledge of the technology is not good enough to say for certain."

She weighs me up for a moment, then turns to Heset. "Use your kara kesh to examine my brain."

"Yes, my lady."

Heset raises her right hand, the jewel on her palm glowing as a pale orange beam briefly links it to Bastet's head. Curious how much Bastet trusts her. I haven't seen her around the palace before, but it's not as if I know all of Bastet's subordinates. After a few seconds Heset lowers her right hand and raises her left, a green holographic image appearing in the air over her signet ring. An image of Bastet's central nervous system appears, human host and goa'uld. It them zooms in, displaying the same minute lesions which I detected.

Bastet inhales sharply.

"Someone is acting against us."

Or that could be the paranoia, but I just nod as she turns to me.

"Remove the damage at once."

I raise my right hand, a construct kara kesh appearing and radiating orange light over her face. Honestly, it's an easy fix, because psychotic System Lords are how worlds burn and that's a bad thing. Once done, I lower my hand and dismiss the construct.

Bastet frowns. "I feel no different."

I nod. "That's to be expected. In your case the lesions were small. You may note a few minor changes in your behaviour in the coming days, but I mostly wanted to prevent the changes from worsening. What would you like me to do about the others?"

"Could you mend them covertly?"

"With a little difficulty..?" I nod cautiously. "Yes."

"Do so. Now return us all to my palace. We have more to discuss."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Three days later
Morning

"…reduced his fleets in the face of a series of probing offences from Baal." Mahes moves his hand and the holoscreen responds by updating the force indicator. "Combined with his need to assail Heru'ur's territory, there are fewer ships here than there have been in living memory. Now is the best time to strike."

I retake my place at the table, Mahes not bothering to look at me. He's the primary warlord amongst Bastet's underlords, and it's hardly surprising that he wouldn't respect someone like me who has neither fleets nor jaffa.

I take a look at the galactic map and sigh. Because naturally, Ra's death led to his son and chief general Heru'ur trying to simply take up his father's mantle. But while he is generally considered to be skilled in military terms, he doesn't have the genuine respect that the other System Lords have for Ra. Ra was the only reason that they managed a draw in the fight with the Asgard, the reason why they live lives of luxury with worlds of humans singing their praises. It's not that they liked him, and just about any System Lord or underlord who thought that they could get away with it would have killed him and tried to replace him. But if they had to have anyone over them, just about all of them would have picked him.

Mahes continues his presentation, looking at all of the underlords except me in turn. "I have already spoken with Lord Agni, and he believes that Lord Kali will be amenable to coordinating our efforts."

Lord Agni being his counterpart amongst System Lord Kali's underlords. Kali and Bastet are long time allies, though I don't know how much they actually like each other. Agni and Mahes on the other hand are friends, and meet up on a semi-regular basis to have their jaffa train against each other.

I dread to think how many people have died in this mess so far. The war-. The current war started with Heru'ur fighting against Ra's more uppity vassals, who made a break for either independence or at least greater freedom. Then Ra's brother Apophis stuck his oar in, a chunk of Ra's old underlords backing the more established and politically cunning brother against the brutish son, and more just content to lurk in their own systems until one side or the other forced the issue.

But with big fleets moving around the place, everyone not allied to either of them decided that now was a good time to make their own moves. Baal decided to take a few systems from his fellow System Lord while he's distracted. From what I can tell none of them are particularly important worlds, which is almost certainly part of his calculation. 'Is it really worth moving your forces back, Apophis, when Heru'ur is the obstacle between you and dominating Ra's territory?' But if he doesn't defend it, everyone will take that as a sign that Apophis can't defend his territory, and everyone will try taking their own little bites.

It's all starting to turn into a huge mess. I'd compare it to World War One, but nations during World War One weren't anything like as eager as the goa'uld are. And there are a lot more than two sides. And now Bastet's trying to work out how we should involve ourselves.

And she's looking at me.

Yes, I realise that half of the problem is that while you could roll your eyes at Mahes being his aggressive self, the other underlords aren't all that peacefully inclined. They want more worlds, more ships, more worshippers, and they definitely don't want their rivals to get those while they remain as they are. Capturing wrecks and shipyards is so much easier than building them fresh. So, what, you want me to talk them out of it? Or play the role of gainsayer so that this gathering doesn't do the very human thing of going along with the loudest voice, and then feeling slighted when you don't?

After this is over, I'm going to request that she briefs me on the role she wants me to play ahead of time in future.

I make a construct kara kesh and update the computer's tactical records. New fleet placements appear at once, and they aren't quite as optimistic as Mahes's original estimates.

Apophis isn't an idiot. He doesn't want to fight Baal. He wants to fight the next fool who tries anything, on the assumption that they'll be someone weaker than Baal and will allow him to make a statement without using more of his fleet than he actually needs to. Which is why enough Ha'taks to make an attacker very sorry are sitting a few systems away from the juiciest targets close to Bastet's space, under cloak.

Now he looks at me.

"What is this?"

Ha'taks fly using gravity manipulation. The system that lets them fly also maintains a convenient level of gravity inside the ship and allows it to land on a planet without pulling itself apart. Unlike gas or ion thrusters, it doesn't leave a trail, though it is easier to detect while in use.

Hard to hide from a power ring.

"This is why I dashed out. My sources had just tracked down where the transferred ships went."

He narrows his eyes. I gave his brain the same patch up as everyone else, and perhaps if I hadn't he'd be assuming that this is a plot from me to undermine him. As it is, he appears to take it at face value. He returns his attention to the fleet.

"How confident are you of the accuracy of your sources?"

"I'd bet my life upon it."

He nods. "This complicates things, but it is hardly an insurmountable obstacle. Knowing where the reserve fleet is, we can launch a second fleet under-" He smirks at me. "-Lord Mammon to attack them while they are powered down. If the first strike can target them precisely, then we need not engage them in equal numbers."

I shake my head. "Even knowing exactly where they are, Ha'tak hyperdrives lack the precision to guarantee that they would emerge from hyperspace in a position to fire before Apophis's ha'taks raised their shields."

Now he looks at me with a little more respect. Actual-Mammon didn't have all that much experience at fleet command, so I suppose that he wasn't expecting much.

"I was thinking more of using an Al'kesh swarm."

The Al'kesh. Big enough to be targetted by a ha'tak, small enough to be hurt by a death glider, not agile enough to dodge either. But sending them into the reserve fleet, using standard hyperspace drift calculations… It wouldn't be a sure thing, and they'd get punished on the retreat unless the jaffa on those ships were asleep on the job. They might cause enough damage to disable enough ships to neutralise the fleet, and the cost wouldn't be anything we couldn't afford to lose because they're really only good at bombarding ground positions and we're not planning on launching any ground invasions.

Militarily, it's a reasonable move. Politically…

I nod. "That could work, depending on the number of Al'kesh and the precision of the jumps. I'm just not convinced that it's worth it."

"We can hardly let them reinforce their position when we attack it."

"No. Your plan is militarily sound. I'm just not convinced of the political utility of a military victory. If we do this, given that Apophis is clearly looking to make an example of someone, that will become us."

"He is planning an ambush because he wants to crush someone far weaker than he is. We are not weak enough for that to work, especially forewarned."

"That's true, but you're missing the point. This war? This isn't going to go away. There's no Ra who will step in and enforce a peace treaty if things go on too long. I believe that the ultimate victor will be the side which handles attrition the best. That doesn't constantly lose ships for debatable gain."

He crosses his arms across his chest. "Then what do you propose?"

"Let everyone tire themselves out while our strength increases. Increase the strength of patrol fleets, and build new shipyards. With Lady Heset's improvements to her mines-" Some of which was a result of mining equipment I provided, but not all. It turns out that not being crazy makes you a better administrator. "-we have an increased amount of naquada to work with. And everyone who might try and interrupt construction is distracted."

"This war could be over before any new ships can leave the yards. We will look weak."

"Then just copy Apophis's strategy and make an example of the first god to try their luck. Perhaps deliberately leave an opening to tempt someone to try?"

He considers what I said for a moment, before turning to the other underlords and weighing their response. "That could work, though I believe that the point would be better made with a first strike. I suggest attacking Apophis's territory because I believe that Heru'ur will ultimately win their confrontation. Their total forces are nearly equal, but he can afford to concentrate his fleet far more. If Heru'ur wins, there will be no blowback against us for attacking Apophis. But there are no sure things in war."

Bastet nods. "Lord Mahes, go with Lord Mammon to a war room and use his intelligence to plan the campaign which you would like to wage, and the industrial build-up that he would like to create. Present me with both plans when you are done."

Mahes gives me a sidelong glance, but we both bow to Bastet together before leaving the gathering.

 

[Mr Zoat]

A little later

"You see?"

I nod. I do. Mahes has been doing a lot of work on wargaming the most likely outcomes of the wars raging all across the galaxy. While the calculations changed slightly based on my intelligence -which only extends to the area around Bastet's space- there's almost no way for us to make enough ships to make a significant difference to the situation before one of the victors comes and starts leaning on us. Not with the systems we have now, at least.

Goa'uld are feudal. The fight between Heru'ur and Apophis will end with one of them dead, but most of the other goa'uld who survive to that point will be given the opportunity to bow to the victor. At that point, if we haven't supported the victor they might well decide to pay off their supporters with our space. We need to have done enough fighting that the victor will feel obliged to negotiate our submission instead.

"I believe that figure can be improved within a relevant timescale."

He frowns. "How? Labourers can only work so fast before the errors become unacceptably frequent. Even if I move trained jaffa crewmen to construction duty, these figures will change little and our fleet performance will suffer drastically."

"Provide them with better tools."

He tilts his head slightly to the side. "Better..?"

"Much better."

He stares at me, his eyes flaring for a moment. "That is a risk. If we were discovered, the other System Lords would use that as a rallying cry to crush us utterly. And that is leaving aside how unruly the humans would become."

"I have long believed that a more technologically advanced level of human civilisation could be maintained without sociological collapse. My original plan was to experiment on Syrania, on the grounds that I could kill the rebellious human population with a viral weapon easily enough if I was mistaken."

He looks curious. "Is Lord Bastet aware of your actions?"

"She is not unaware of them. It is a gradual process and I have not yet breached Ra's laws."

He considers our logistics plot, and then shakes his head. "Even if we throw out those laws immediately, it would take generations to educate them sufficiently."

I nod. "True, but I… Believe that I could acquire sufficient devices to speed up the manufacturing process without the need to fully educate the workers on their function."

"From where? Your own wrecked ship? The fleet Ra granted you, whose ships even now fight for Heru'ur?"

"It is no great secret that Ra did not use jaffa for his armies. He… Was less than rule-abiding in other ways, as well. Heru'ur had little enough interest in where the ships he fought with came from."

Nonsense, of course. Oh, I'm sure that Ra had better construction technology than he was sharing with the System Lords, but I'm going to be making whatever machinery we need with the ring.

"What will acquiring that cost?"

"Cost? With Ra dead I'm probably the only one who knows that such devices exist. The only question is, how much does our production need to improve for the difference to be significant?"

He presses some buttons on the tactical computer, and with Am-heh's help I'm truly astonished at how inefficient goa'uld techniques are.

"We would need to increase production by two hundred percent in two years. By which I mean that at the end of two years we need three times as many ships as we would have had otherwise."

"Hm. That should be possible. Mechanical drills to improve the output of the miners, ground penetrating radar to locate new seams of minerals, plasma smelters to increase refining speed…"

And thanks to Am-heh I just know this stuff. I see where the goa'uld attitude comes from. Modern humans might be able to understand goa'uld technology well enough to use it but every goa'uld knows how to make just about everything their civilisation ever developed. Compared to us… Them, humans are a bit slow. Even advanced humans from worlds like Earth.

I access the computer myself and feed in the timelines and improvements. Crystal production appears to be the bottleneck now, but even allowing for a margin of error 200% doesn't look like it will be that hard.

The difficulty will be in convincing the others to go along with it.

Mahes sighs.

"That will work. Can your spies locate a source for new crystal forges?"

"They haven't yet, but I can make enquiries." I give him a sidelong glance. "You could sound happier about it. Are you seeing a risk that I am not?"

"I like war."

"You'll get a war. You just have to wait two years instead of jumping right in."

"I will live with my disappointment. Enjoyable as conflict is, it is better to win."

I offer him my right hand, and after a moment's hesitates he.. clasps my forearm.

"You do realise that Bastet sent us in here as a test, don't you?"

He frowns curiously. "Who else would she send? You were the one arguing against my proposal."

"Exactly. The mouthiest underlords get sent to work on a plan. If we can't get along, she could berate both of us and take whatever course she wants. If we can, she gets a better plan and no one argues about it."

He looks mildly irritated as he releases my arm. "I don't care for that sort of thing."

"Oh?"

"I've served under dozens of different gods in my life. When I was much younger I was more politically aware, always… Scrabbling for the slightest piece of influence or power, retaliating against every slight. Now? I stick to fighting. It's what I enjoy and what I'm best at. Lord Bastet respects that, and so do the other underlords. But you…" He eyes narrow. "I don't know what you want. I know of the Lord Mammon of old, but he could not have killed Lord Am-heh so quietly. What has happened to you?"

"Two hundred years, Lord Mahes. Two hundred years, trapped under a crashed starship, under a mountain. I had to rethink a great many things."

"Such as?"

"What happens next time we have to fight the asgard? It is fortunate that they do not consider our treaty to have been invalidated by Ra's death, because we have no one who is his equal. No Supreme System Lord to unify us. We know so much, understand so much, yet those few of us who truly innovate hoard what they build to themselves and all others would be more likely to kill them and destroy their work than attempt to copy their example."

"You have examples, I assume?"

"The helmets we give to jaffa. Ra designed them originally, but did you know that his own have a number of features he omitted from the version he shared?" He looks curious. "Starship control systems are the same. He and Ptah, and… Me, in the old days, got the good stuff. Everyone else got the dumbed-down version. What do I want? I want us to be the glorious shining gods we deserve to be, eternal, powerful, terrible. We could do so much and we actually do so little. We disappoint me. And if living up to our potential means dragging the jaffa and humans up to where we are now, then so be it."

He grins. "You're a madman! But from the sounds of things you will at least be entertaining." He thinks for a moment. "Do you know where I might find some of the fully functional helmets?"

"I might be able to lay my hands on one or two. And I might be able to trade them to you."

"In exchange for what?"

"I would like to borrow one of your Second Primes, and a squad or two. I have some thoughts on how our doctrines could be improved, and I would like to test it with them."

He doesn't hesitate in nodding. "I look forward to hearing what you discover with them."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:29 GMT +2?

It's a good job that Akhlys isn't in a hurry.

Walking along the bank of the river dividing the Elysian Fields from the rest of Erebos, I've seen burned farms and fields, shattered statues and walls, despoiled palaces and rotting orchards. I'm not sure how she's achieved this, but… I think this is a reflection of the thoughts of the heroes who have been given control of the local afterlife as part of their reward for entertaining the gods in life.

"Did they do this, or is it the result of your work?"

"It is the same thing. They abandon their vainglorious fantasies, finally growing beyond their childishness."

I'd hug her, but I don't think that would go well. At least I have time to recharge.

Once we reach the 'northern' end of the Fields I create a construct bridge for us to cross as we turn 'north-east'. There isn't a lot in this part of Erebos, dark grey rock and dust giving the impression of a volcanic environment without any actual volcano. No settlers that I've seen, though whether that's because they're all bunkered up closer to the capital due to Akhlys or because this just isn't an appealing location I don't know.

Or it could be because of the one feature that this part of Erebos has. The Punishment Fields are coming up on our right, and… I'm a little worried that I can't hear people crying out in pain. There should at least be a few people there, even if the long term residents have long since been discharged…

Oh. Of course.

"They seek meaning from their suffering. They do not yet understand."

Two shades are fighting over access to some sort of… Mangle.

"I thought you were pro-suffering?"

"Yes. Of course. But that is not because it has a higher purpose, or a deeper or grander purpose. It simply… Is."

"But you have purpose. You're spreading your truth. If it just 'was', then you could just… Go back to what you used to do; hanging around outside the gate to Tartarus."

"My motivation comes from the Anti-Life itself. An… Impulse to spread. I don't regard it as good or bad, but I exist with nothing else. A leaf does not need to desire to fall to be blown on the breeze."

Hu-uh. There's an angle of attack there. If I induce avarice, if I make her want something, would that throw the infection out?

Uraaah, no, she's an Anti-Life infected goddess and I can't risk the Ophidian like that. Not without something else. Which I'm hopefully going to.. get…

There's an army.

"Ah, how interesting. More souls to enlighten."

She strides-.

"Wait wait wait wait." I fly backwards, facing her. "Let me talk to them."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because if I persuade them to move aside, we get to the Dream faster and you Anti-Life everyone faster."

"You can fly more swiftly than a hawk. Convince them before I reach them."

"Oh… Kay."

Booster constructs and fly. Hard to tell where the command-. Wait, those are aliens from-. Shield!

Some sort of plasma-. Ah, tie it into my tattoos because that's something exotic, ugh. Shield's holding and I'm getting closer-. Not sure who most of these people are, but that's Melinoë. Since her father's probably forgotten who she is I doubt that she's in charge, but her raw power should at least make her a senior officer. Soldiers fall back as I land in front of her.

"M-."

"I liked him. Perhaps he will wake up if I make him afraid."

"Melinoë, I'm-."

She gestures, and-.

Spell eater reaching critical temperature.

"And perhaps I could comfort him as he-."

"I'm still me, Melinoë. We fixed Earth last month."

She's armoured up, and it looks like Hephaestaean really put some effort into it. The base appears to be mithril, but it's as if some sort of dark gas is stuck to the surface, shifting into shapes of… Eyes, teeth and screaming faces. A bit generic, but I'm sure that she can do worse.

"Explain."

"The Anti-Life has convinced Akhlys that it's the fundamental truth of the universe. As such, she doesn't believe that it can be beaten or stopped. Meaning that she'll walk into a trap knowing that it's supposed to be a trap without any concern."

"You have a trap in the Dream… No."

"No? Melinoë, it-."

"I conjured the greatest terrors in the collective unconscious to fight her last time, and she laughed."

"Anti-Life thrives on fear. I'm afraid that you went the wrong way with that."

She rolls her eyes. "What am I the goddess of?"

"Nightmares and madness, yes, this wasn't playing to your strengths. Honestly, I'm impressed that she wasn't able to turn you as well."

"My own nightmares bring me comfort, not distress." The shadows clinging to her armour roil for a moment-

Your fault your fault all your fault and you can't fix it.

-and I see-. Nothing of consequence.

"Can we pass?"

She looks around at her force. A few of them are firing on Akhlys, and she casually ignores everything that hits her. "Where is Diana?"

"Hopefully, she's reached Alan and is coming here via the Dream."

"And what is your back-up plan?"

"I force her to want things and throw the Anti-Life out that way."

"And mitigation? How will you stop her tearing the Dream asunder?"

"I'll stop her before she gets that far. I'll have to."

"Tch. No. You may pass, and I will come with you. I will hold the Dream together against her and against you."

I take a step closer, take her right hand in mine and smile at her. "Thank you."

"Tch. Still an idiot."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:35 GMT +2?

"So how are you finding it down here?"

The heavily armed khundian shade glances away from his gun sight for an instant. He was one of the shades who transferred here from Mother of Mercy's tender clutches, and I'm… A little concerned that a khundian wouldn't fit in well. Khundian culture is rather distinct from Ancient Greek culture, with the possible exception of some parts of Sparta.

"Acceptable."

Around us the rest of the Army of Erebos is deploying in a semicircle around the gate, leaving room for Akhlys to approach but digging in just in case they need to fight after all.

"You'll be here for millions of years, if not eternity. You might want something better than 'acceptable'."

"No. I will spend time here teaching other shades how modern war works. Once I tire of them, then I will demand to be reincarnated."

"You mean 'ask politely to be reincarnated'."

He snorts. "Khundians have little to do with gods. I pay respect to Hades for rescuing me and housing me. That respect ends when I want to leave."

"You realise that as things stand you won't reincarnate as a khundian?"

"One of my employers was three thousand years old. It made him miserable. I am not such a coward. If this existence no longer suits me then I will move on to another. I have been a fine khundian. I will be a fine… Whatever you are."

"Good-."

"Don't touch me."

I lower the hand that was going to pat him on the back. "Man. I'll… Leave you to it."

I fly over the army towards the gate itself. Melinoë is waiting by it already, and Akhlys is approaching at an unhurried pace.

"Ready to go?"

"I am no less ready than I was when I agreed to this. Are you certain that Alan Scott is inside?"

"Not in the slightest. But his whole thing is hope, so… Ah…"

She looks at me. She raises her eyebrows a little. I smile reassuringly. She rolls her eyes and strides up to the gate, pulls it open just enough to get inside and walks through, pulling it closed behind her.

She's probably planning to try to hasten his arrival.

I turn back t-.

Akhlys lays her right hand on my left gauntlet.

That-. That shouldn't let her affect me. I've replaced my spell eater and that isn't physical contac-.

She squeezes her hand, my armour cracking and crumbling underneath! That shouldn't-. She's not using physical strength, so it's not triggering the kinetic barrier. I activate the crumbler-. Already destroyed.

"What are you doing?"

"Winning more swiftly."

I pull away-.

The armour fails and she touches-.

Grinding down.

Huh. Wondered what I'd get this time. Because despite everything I'm in a pretty good mental place. Plenty of fulfilling and beneficial work, but at the same time it's not such a desperate rush that I can't take an hour to myself. So what exactly-?

Oh.

Yes, that's… There's an increasing possibility that human civilisation could collapse. It's not-. And the thing with the League is that we… Will become society, the only source of… Anything. We'll be needed to make anything large scale happen because the lesson people will learn from this is be simple and turtle up. That wasn't why Mr. Queen was having an episode, but perhaps it's as much of the idea as he can grasp. It isn't human civilisation anymore, it's Justice League society, featuring the human species.

And I've got no reason to believe that this won't keep happening. We can't… build. We can just do our own thing and rebuild and rebuild every time, making exactly no progress, because… We're not the point. We're not being superheroes so that we can say that we're superheroes. We're superheroes because we want to improve things. Us taking over doesn't just mean that we can do that without anyone getting in the way, it means that no matter what we do we can't succeed.

"Do you see?"

Hm.

"No."

I pull my hand away from her.

"I mean, I see what you're getting at, but it's not very convincing. I have all the time in the universe. And at the end, if it turns out that it was impossible… Then I haven't done anything wrong because it was impossible."

I step away from her, towards the gateway, rebuilding my gauntlet as I go.

"How did that get to you? I can't really see you being ground down like it was trying to imply I had been."

"I was ground down over the course of seven thousand years." She falls in behind me but makes no effort to touch me again. "Everything was subsumed by my suffering, the constant pain and weakness."

"Did you ever experience anything else?"

"Yes. When I was very young. But the joy faded as the titans were felled."

"What did that have to do with it?"

"You discovered that the Olympians strengthened themselves by leaching power from those bound in Tartarus. But they were not inclined to take what they did not want. That which would bring them pain."

"But they couldn't leave it to its owners, because they might use that power to escape. So… You."

"Yes. Me. And others like me."

"I… See why you'd be upset about that. It's quite reasonable."

"No. I'm not upset. I'm not much of anything, other than the Anti-Life."

"Yes, well…" I reach out to grab hold of the gate. "I'll see about correcting that."

"You poor man. You will not. It is I-"

She reaches out and yanks the gate, throwing it wide open!

"-who will correct you, and all others."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:39 GMT +2?

This is… Novel.

The graveyard that was here last time has been replaced by… Stone. Grey stone, illuminated from nowhere because this is a dream. I can't tell if this is a castle or a… Maze? I haven't seen a window or anything else which would suggest a direction, though Akhlys seems to know where she's going.

"Is this what it got turned into last time?"

" In part. It seems that Melinoë has added to it."

We pass a-. Ah, a room for a sarcophagus. This is a giant crypt. Thematically appropriate, though-. Ah, of course. The things that emerge are dream-creatures: fragments risen from the collective unconscious. None of them are the souls of the dead.

"Let us learn what she had in mind."

We walk out into an internal pathway which runs around the interior of a square cross-sectioned tower. Looking up-. Heh. Looking up I see myself and Akhlys looking up and/or down from a hundred other pathways, because conventional physics are for the weak.

"An optical illusion. This is a pointless delay that cannot hold me here."

"Each day's a gift and not a given right. People will struggle on for every moment, even if they don't have any hope of winning. Because who knows what might happen."

"They might give in to despair."

"Or a madman with a glowing orange ring might swing by and deal with their problem. That's happened quite a lot recently."

"The hope merely emphasises the hopelessness."

I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her torso. "I'm sorry about-"

Ultimately, alone.

Just an opportunity to meet new people. I've actually lived through that one.

"-that."

"Is this what you are planning? To try and turn me from the truth with feigned affection?"

"No."

She reaches around with her left hand and lays it on my left forearm. "Fool."

"That appears to be the prevailing opinion."

"I tolerate your touch because I am not used to using the Anti-Life in this environment."

I frown, looking past her-. The cracks between the stones are glowing black.

"This dream of stone and death lacks the integrity to resist as you do. Merely by my being here I cause it to crumble."

"And how do you handle madness?"

"See?"

She points upwards with her right hand, and I follow her extending index finger to watch as the black glow reaches the reflections.

"Dreams fade before the light of truth."

Dark lines appear between each reflection, the whole shattering into fragments which shimmer into ethereality as they move through each other like phantoms before merging and collating-.

I see a translucent image of myself swing in through the wall, another through the ceiling, another-.

I see myself from slightly different directions and angles, and Akhlys and.. this place, and…

Some of them didn't come here the same way. I see stairs I didn't walk up, passages I didn't walk along. I feel everything from a dull emptiness that feels a little like the Anti-Life to exhalant joy, shivering fear, amusement-.

"An interesting approach. Making me induce my own madness." Akhlys looks across the now-sensible gap between our walkway… And the opposite walkway where Melinoë stands. "But all that you have done is expose your ignorance. Did you think that my thoughts are my own, so that confusing them would stop me?"

"Also, did you have to hit me as well?"

Melinoë glowers at-. Either one or both of us. "Yes."

"You cannot inflict suffering on me. You could not have done so even before my enlightenment in the ways of the Anti-Life. I am the Goddess of Suffering. I can no more be made to suffer by you than I could make you dream a nightmare."

"I cannot make you suffer." A figure emerges from the corridor behind her. "But not everyone who experiences madness suffers from it."

"He-llo there!" The-. Napier waves, lipstick-coated mouth grinning and too-long right arm waving in a parody of genuine friendliness. "Straight Man and Debbie Downer. My money was on you ending up with the Superboy!"

"Jack. You seem chipper."

"Hah-hah! What can I say? You gave me that white glowy knock to the ol' noggin, and everything was right-" He taps the top of his head with his right fist. "-in the Jokerdome!"

"I was sort of hoping that we'd get your original personality back."

"You did! But it turns out that I'm not even good for my own sanity! Completely fruited his loop! Fell back into me like a comfortable pair of unwashed pants!" He leans forwards, right hand at the side of his face as if offering a private aside. "He did that sort of thing a lot."

Akhlys pushes me back and walks to the edge of the walkway. "Are you a jester?"

"I'm the jestiest! But you…" He shakes his head. "I'm afraid that the Anti-Life just isn't funny."

Behind him, Melinoë makes eye contact with me and motions to her right with her eyes. I nod inside my armour, then rise slightly off the ground and head down the passage to my left.

The moment I'm out of Akhlys' line of sight the space around me shifts and I'm falling, plummeting down a corridor that a moment ago was horizontal. And I admit, for just a second I'm afraid of falling again for the first time in years. I'm falling-

Through a gap in the wall I drop past I see Napier throw a gas grenade at Akhlys.

-down to-.

I stagger, turning my momentum into a run as down becomes down again, Melinoë watching me disinterestedly.

"The Joker?"

"His mind is empty of aught but joy and madness. He will use the Dream to his advantage without thinking about it, and her aura will not afflict him."

"So long as he can't come back later. No sign of Alan?"

"Not as yet."

"Then we'd best go find him."

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:42 GMT +2?

Melinoë leads me out onto a… Landing pad? Her gaze rises to the… Cloud-wracked sky as a bat-winged horse swoops down towards us.

"You could probably get a real one."

"I am not asking Uncle Poseidon to have sex with a bat. A steed of bound-together dreams will-" It lands just in front of us and she climbs onto it. "-suffice."

"Okay, we're looking for hope, Alan, or a giant blue bird called Adara. Can you find them?"

"We cannot leave this to chance."

"Sure, ideally, but I don't know how to make this-."

"So we will consult with the master of this realm." The horse's wings flap and it rises into the air. "You can explain."

"Hgghuuuhahahahaha!"

Napier grows out of the tower, pushing down on the wall to lift up his legs and crouch on it. Then he reaches towards his flower with his right hand and triggers the bulb, acid spraying out and making the stone smoulder and melt.

I close my eyes, focus my mind on the sensation of flight in all its forms and sort of pull the associated ideas to me. Nothing like as fast as I'm used to flying, but then we're not flying to a particular corporeal location. "Why him?"

Melinoë leads the way, leaning close to her steed as it flaps for height. "How many willing servants do you think that the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness has?" Her eyes narrow. "Or did you expect me to keep myself for you?"

"No, of course not."

She looks up at the rapidly-approaching clouds. "He knows the basics of the art of dream manipulation. He will hold her longer than either of us could."

"Is there going to be a long-term problem with Jack 'the Joker' Napier knowing how to do that?"

"Not if we do not contain the Anti-Life."

"I seem to remember Dream being a bit… Temperamental."

"Are you worried that we are going to see one of the few being in existence who can hold you to account?"

"Yes. Plus the fact that Desire seems to like me and the two of them don't get on. Ah, as I understand it."

"Desire has spoken to you?"

"Twice. Apparently I'm a 'delightful mess'."

"Fooooooooore!"

I glance down as Napier draws a golf club from… Nowhere, and swings it at a tower which changes into a golf ball a moment before the club hits.

"I bet you've never suffered like that before!"

"Can he-?"

"I cannot imagine him winning, but he can hold her attention. Now, ready yourself to-"

We punch through the clouds, and there's a castle of ridiculous towers standing on rock fingers rising out of the clouds, buildings perilously perched and inadequately braced. Thin walkways link some of the towers, without rhyme or reason in their directions or orientation. The clouds below are dark grey, and the sky all around is pale blue-grey, not cloud or mist but reality with nothing printed onto it.

"-grovel."

"Does he know we're coming?"

"Yes."

"Then at least the grovelling will be efficient."

A wing-flap from her steed and we're nearly there, another and she's coming into land, touching down on the top of a battlement with no visible way off. I drift down and land next to her.

"Is there a way to get an emergency meeting? I realise that he's a sovereign and a busy man-."

"But he recognises patterns well enough to know-"

I turn, and see… That small turret wasn't there before, and neither was the door it in. Morpheus… I'm assuming that that is him, but what I'm seeing-. I know he can look like just about anything, but what I'm seeing right now is a black… Blob with a white mask with a sort of simplified human face on it at roughly the level a face should be.

"-that leaving one such as you alone in my domain would be ill-advised."

Melinoë mimes a curtsey. "Dream Lord."

I perform a shallow bow as he approaches, his body… Refining itself into something more human-looking as he does so. The blob takes on a suggestion of robes and hair, the face more definite features. Eyes shining with tiny stars shimmer under heavy brows.

I incline my head. "Dream."

"Goddess of Nightmares and Scholar of Avarice. You have brought Anti-Life into my kingdom."

"Yes, and if you'll help us find Blue Lantern Alan Scott we'll deal with that immediately. And I'll pay you back for the insult and intrusion but please, we're in a hurry."

His robe becomes a coat and trousers, and he gains visible arms. "You do not intend to claim that I owe you for freeing Sanderson Hawkins?"

"I don't know how you value the two things and don't have time to argue. I'm a hero; if I can pay a price to prevent something terrible happening, then that's what I'll do."

"Very well then. A favour for a favour. Alan Scott is trying to find passage from Baghdad. But it is a simple matter-"

"…a single place.. where-."

Alan steps out from behind the turret, looking around in surprise.

"-to move him from one part of my realm to another.

"Thank you. Alan, did Diana explain what's going on?"

He blinks, then shakes his head. "No? I haven't seen her. I just thought Sandy might have some kinda dream portal, or a way to get through the Dream so we could get into Erebos that way."

"Good idea." I turn to Morpheus. "Thank you, you know how to reach me when you want me. Come on!"

I rise into the air. Alan tries to follow but doesn't get anywhere. Melinoë pulls him towards her horse and then boosts him up onto its back before mounting it herself.

"Okay, I'm missing something. What's going on?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:45 GMT +2?

Is it insulting to tell a veteran superhero that you're impressed by his lateral thinking when he decides on his own to do something you were going to tell him to do? Maybe, but I should anyway. Best not leave things unsaid.

"Good thinking, realising you could get here like that."

"Wouldn't have, if it wasn't for Sandy."

Clouds part before us and the… The mausoleum is rubble and ruins, slowly sinking into the black march beneath it. Black vapour rises up and tries to wrap itself around the giant form of Mr. Napier as he crouches on a too-small cloud. His clothes… And his features are melting, running like soft wax, a melting that worsens as more black mist catches up to him.

"If this was happening to someone else, I'd find it hilarious."

He lifts his right hand and watches the tips of his fingers drip off. His left hand reaches up to push his dripping hair out of his eyes, and ends up… Deforming his entire head.

Where's Akhlys?

"You left me with this fool in the Dream?"

A great black hand lifts itself out of the mire, turns and lays palm-down on the now solid surface. Another hand… Some way away does the same thing. And then…

"Do you want me to spread the Anti-Life?" Alan looks up as Akhlys pushes her inky black torso out of the inky black liquid, looking up at us. And then down at us. "I had assumed not, but perhaps I misunderstood."

"That… Dream attraction thing. I guess she can do it too?"

Melinoë nods. "Yes."

"That seems like something that she's probably had practice with."

"Yes. But Paul speaks well of you."

Alan glances my way. "Thanks."

"You work on that, I'll rescue Mister Napier."

"I don't-. I don't even know where to begin."

"You are a hero, Alan Scott. You have inspired people across the world throughout your career."

"I know how to make people hope, but this is a whole lot more abstract."

"You have felt hope yourself. Begin with that."

I fly towards Mr. Napier's cloud as he seems to rally, pulling free of the mist-strands and standing upright. Stones from the ruin float upwards and then stop, creating stepping stones for him to run along to get away-. Stagger away, really. If it were anyone else I'd worry about whatever this is doing to his psyche, but in his case I hardly see how it could make things worse.

I reach out for desires for escape and sudden winds that blow a fire away, and the wind comes, pushing the grasping mists away from his retreat. I draw on desires for safety and protection and the stone bricks double and triple, forming a floor and walls around him.

Mr. Napier leans against the wall, smearing it with his sleeve, his elbow bending in a 'U' shape.

"What happened to you?"

"Oh… Heh. She's been pulling apart my self-concept. Which is a riot, because it isn't even mine!"

"I'm not your psychiatrist. Do you require assistance, or can you wake up on your own?"

"Oh, heh. Waking up like this would be a terrible idea! The world doesn't need two of me. And I don't need the embarrassment of him calling me a tribute act! Just…" He sags further. "Hoo. I'd studied him, you know? He was just down the hall, and it's not as if he ever shuts up. Heh. Thought this would keep the Anti-Life off, but it means I'm covered in him."

"You're not The Joker?"

"Disassociative identity disorder isn't so hard to understand. People normally behave differently in different situations. Ugh. Ah… I think I could do with a hand. I don't want Debbie seeing the real me."

I float closer, until I'm next to the increasingly glutinous surface of his chest. Then I twist, sticking my right arm into… Into him, and reaching around for something-.

There. Something solid. Grab on and pull!

The Joker figure collapses almost at once, white and purple and green gunge falling to the ground. And in my hand…

"Doctor Crane. I take it that you and Melinoë continued your correspondence?"

He reaches up to his glasses and adjusts them. "It's been such a relief to be able to feel again. And the Dream, the collective unconscious! Amazing! There must be fears here that even I can't imagine! Just as long as Akhlys doesn't see me."

"You're afraid of her?"

"Justifiably cautious. I didn't enjoy the Anti-Life either. But I think that you should probably confront her before she decides that you aren't going to try. She's very keen on overcoming obstacles to her new 'truth'."

"Alright. Hold tight here-. Hey, did you once prank the Arkham Asylum guards by pretending to hang yourself?"

He blinks, focusing on me completely. Then he smiles. "Yes, how did you hear-? They took so much effort to make sure that I couldn't get access to chemicals, you see. I needed to prove it wasn't the only way I knew how to work. The chemicals make people conjure up their own fears, it's so… Useful, but… Easy."

"Any advice on beating Akhlys?"

"She destroyed my Joker persona by drawing upon the self-destructive impulses contained therein. While I can't be certain, I suspect that it is her hope that will prove most efficacious."

"But she doesn't feel hope any more."

"But, fortunately, we are in the Dream. All the hopes she once felt are in here, somewhere." That… He should be r-. "Go."

I fly upwards, completely unsure what-. I mean, she says that she doesn't want things, but by that standard-.

"I had hoped for more."

Alan's glowing blue, which is good. Blue mist is precipitating out of the air around him, which is also good.

But it's all completely overwhelmed by the black.

"I intended to crush the universe's hope. Can you not conjure more than this?"

Akhlys hoped. Akhlys wanted.

I can't see her wants now, because she's an emotional void.

But her dreams…

Oh dreams of desire, show me what she wanted.

 

[Mr Zoat]

30th March 2013
03:48 GMT +2?

Make it all go away.

Yeah, that's a pretty understandable desire for someone whose own divine nature caused them seven thousand years of every form of suffering that it's possible to experience.

An orange construct hand appears and punches through the black… Face that Akhlys has conjured from Anti-Life-aligned dreams, grabs and pulls.

"Alan, how's it going!?"

"Not great, but it looks like you've got it handled!"

"No, I don't! You need to destroy the Anti-Life fragment! I literally can't do that!"

"Got any advice?!"

"Remember when you asked if there was a hope Honden and we did those exercises?"

He looks… Blank. Alan… "Yeah? Kinda?"

"Like that! Imagine a web of hopes which-!"

My hand dream-construct explodes as Akhlys… Opens her arms and tears it apart from inside.

"Those are my old dreams of desire, aren't they? Were you lying to me earlier?"

"Strictly speaking, no. It's just that Joker is out of commission and now I need to distract you."

She raises her right hand, mists swelling and surging to envelop the hand I made, which… Evaporates.

"And now no one need dream that foolish dream again."

Ahhhhhhhh, fiddlesticks.

"Can she actually do that?"

I glance over to where Alan's blue ball isn't much bigger. "I don't know! I don't come here regularly!"

I mean… Anti-Life destroying dreams? Sounds perfectly plausible to me. Strike and dismiss it is. And I doubt that she's the only one who's wanted illness or injury to go away.

I form two construct hands… Slowly, as Akhlys lands on her slumped Anti-Life torso and begins reforming it. Her head still visible I shove the hands forwards, fingers first with palms together. The mists follow, but-. Pull apart and then dismiss!

The torso splatters over our fighting area, Akhlys reduced to standing on the black ground.

"She hoped to be cured, Alan! Try focusing on-."

"Yeah, I spotted that one!"

Or-. Wait.

"And lots of people hoped to be free of the Anti-Life! Combine them!"

"Because that's so easy!"

Akhlys spreads her arms wide. And… Nothing happens. No, clearly something's happened, it's just…

The black comes down, destroying the clouds which had topped this… Zone. And… It's harder to tell, but I think that the walls are closing in as well.

Melinoë breathes in sharply. "If there is aught that can be done to aid you, name it."

"Yes, Alan Scott. Dream of Rose. Dream-."

"You don't-! You don't get to mention her."

"Dream of Molly Mayne, of the life you could have had together. Dream of-"

Dream of a gag made of your own fantasies that you could stop whimpering.

"-mph."

"Alan, you're good at focusing. Stay focused."

"Yeah. Okay, I-." The blue ball grows. "I think I'm getting the hang of this."

Akhlys tears off the gag and then points at him, and-.

I hit her with a hammer of all the times she dreamed that she was suffering because she deserved it.

"Ah."

And she tanks the hit because she's Anti-Lifed and doesn't care about things like that, but it disrupted her.

And Alan… Alan is using that.

"Before this whole Anti-Life mess started-"

Akhlys gestures to send the mist after him, but I block it with her desire for suffering to end.

"-I used to visit hospital wards. Terminal cases, people who were desperate… Giving up, in some cases. Can't say I've ever been down quite that far myself, but I know what it looks like. And after I fixed them up, heck, it didn't even cost me any ring power. They got back into hoping right away. They got their lives back. Everything they could have done with their lives if they'd been healthy, they could do again. I know what that feels like. So-"

The black ceiling drops on him. And… Bends around him, unable to withstand the… Light of the Blue Lantern.

"-I'm not angry, Akhlys. I just wanna help."

The glowing blue ball expands, until I can't… See him, or… Anything, really. Normally I'd be worried but this… Actually feels pretty nice. I could live without hope, just doing the best I could and accepting what I couldn't change, but I'd struggle to deny that this is better.

"And sometimes, people need their arms twisted before they'll take it."

Blue strands, blue winds, blow past me. I see tiny pieces of… Uplifting scenes, families, friends generally embracing life, the dying getting off their sickbeds…

And then it passes, and the graveyard from our first visit is back, and Alan is hugging the blue-glowing Akhlys in the middle of it.

 

[Mr Zoat]

About a month later
Afternoon

Judge Todos maintains a serious and focused demeanour as he finishes summarising the case. The defendant cleared an area of scrubland and planted it, but it turned out that it was already owned by someone else. Todos brought it to me because the existing law would have at best had the defendant paid as a labourer for his time and the crop awarded to the landowner, and he and the defendant thought that unfair. The plaintiff on the other hand thought that he was getting a windfall and started looking extremely uncomfortable at having me hear it.

I nod. "Thank you, Judge Todos. You, Yakub." I point at the defendant with my right hand. "Did you make any effort to discover if the land had an owner?"

He bows awkwardly, clearly not sure of the protocol. "I… It hadn't been worked in my lifetime, divine one. I asked around the village-" He shakes his head. "-and everyone thought that it hadn't been owned since Old Habil died."

I raise my eyebrows. "Productive land taken out of use?"

"We farm orrocks, divine one. We could grow feedstock I suppose, but the orrocks need a lot of water. We aren't a big village, and it was easier to clear land along the river bank than move them back and forth from pasture to water. But I thought I could use it for planting."

I nod, pointing at the plaintiff. "You, Danyal. Why did you not claim your great uncle's land sooner?"

He shrugs awkwardly. "I'm… Just one man, divine one. I already have a farm, and much work to do on it. My second son is only just old enough to consider starting his own farm, and we knew that the whole family would need to help for the first year. I don't have time to walk to another village just to see it, so we waited until the year's work was done on my farm before travelling. When we arrived and found someone else had taken it…"

Village records are clear about who owns the land, and family records mean that it's very likely that Old Habil is indeed his great uncle. Syrania doesn't use surnames, and that's something that I'm going to try introducing at some point. Habil isn't exactly an uncommon name.

I nod. "Very well. Clearly, no party acted maliciously, but I feel that a labourer's wages would be insufficient compensation." Danyal winces. Honestly, a years' wages for a labourer to be paid out in one go would be more cash than he'd have on hand anyway. "I rule that the entire crop is awarded to Yakub, who will pay Danyal rent for the period of occupancy."

Danyal looks a little relieved, but Yakub looks unhappy. "Divine one, I can't afford that."

"I will buy your produce. Speak to my seneschal and an inspector will travel with you to assess its value." He sags slightly in relief. "Are either of you unsatisfied with my ruling?"

"No, divine one." / "No, divine one."

"Yakub, since you are clearly a hard-working and driven young man, I would recommend that you apply for a farm in the new settlements."

He nod-bows. "Thank you, divine one. I will do so."

"Then you are dismissed. Judge Todos, please enter this ruling into the canon of law for distribution amongst your peers."

He bows. "Yes, divine one. Thank you for your judgement."

"Thank you for bringing this to me. Go in peace."

Todos shepherds the others out, Danyal and Yakub exchanging a few muttered words.

Holding court is a great way of managing disputing power groups, because it lets you play them against each other while still sounding completely reasonable. Letting everyone in the country petition you, on the other hand, is a stupid way to run a country. You'd never hear them all, you'd never get anything else done and if you've got any sense then you'd set up levels of officials for handling the things that most of them would be about anyway and if you build in a bypass everyone who doesn't get their way will use it. But I decided that hearing a few petitions a month might be a useful way to keep in touch with what was bothering people. And then I found out that while Mammon did originally implement a justice system, how it works from place to place could vary a lot. A few judges were even a bit dubious about the idea of binding precedent, which was reasonable when records couldn't be effectively shared across the settled territory and standardising precedence wasn't possible.

Of course, not all petitions have the same weight.

My eyes unfocus for a moment.

"Well, I haven't seen your dolly before today, but based on the description you gave me I think that it's in the gutter just above your room. And those girls were very naughty, and I'm going to ask your village watchman to have a word with their parents."

Kasrin sort of sways back and forth as her childish shyness overcomes her. Finding a lost doll for a six year old girl is the sort of thing I like to end on. The court recorders smile, and the people who read the published records will as well. When I had the brilliant idea of introducing moveable type and printing presses, I had the issue that there wasn't really any demand for it. Mammon hadn't exactly been demanding in his religious observances and he certainly didn't bother with a holy book, with the predictable result that literacy is uncommon. Newspapers didn't appear spontaneously because hardly anyone could read them and most people prefer to advertise through sponsorship. Reports of my ruling and judgements on the other hand have become quite popular.

Kasrin's mother awkwardly approaches her daughter. "And what do you say?"

Her daughter wiggles for a moment.

"Are you really a god?"

I hear the hiss from her mother, but I wave my right hand to tell her not to worry. And then I make pointed eye contact with Second Prime Abrax, who loosens his grip on his Ma'toc staff.

"Why do you ask?"

"My teacher says you're a snakehead."

"Your teacher?" She nods. "That would be…" Oh, seriously, Stargate Command. Already? "Missus Duxley?"

Kasrin nods lopsidedly, watching my in an odd half-interested sort of way.

"Well, I'm going to pick up Missus Duxley and bring her here, and then we can talk about it. Okay?"

Kasrin nods again and I plot a route and transition to next to Missus Duxley, who is marking some sort of test. "Seriously?"

She starts, sitting upright in her chair. "Lord Mammon? I-."

"'Snakehead'? Seriously?"

"Ah-."

I step forward and put my right hand on her left shoulder before returning us both to the audience chamber and releasing her next to her student before retaking my seat.

"Kasrin?" The girl… I think that she's starting to realise that she might have done something wrong. "You haven't done anything wrong, but that's a very important question you asked, and I want to make sure that I answer it properly. Do you understand?"

No, she's… Gone back into shy mode, clasped onto and half-hiding behind her mother's left leg. But I still need to have an answer, if only for the people who will read this tomorrow expecting light entertainment and who instead get hit right in the theology.

"Missus Duxley?"

"I… Don't think-."

"In future, comparative theology is for the over fourteens, alright?"

"I think she overheard me say something. I wouldn't have.. started that conversation."

"Wouldn't you? I've seen American intelligence agents do some very stupid things before. Poisoned shaving foam?"

"No, my.. job.. is just.. to teach."

"Well, I'm afraid that as a result of your loose lips you're going to be doing a public theology discussion with someone four thousand years old in front of his worshippers. And in all likelihood it's going to become a holy text. And I will be sending a sharply-worded letter to General Hammond, but I think that's punishment enough. So let's start with history."

 

[Mr Zoat]

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"About nine thousand years ago, System Lord Ra came across a world in his territory. The world had no name, as no System Lord had felt the need to name it and the primitive inhabitants had no real concept of 'world' or 'worlds'. In time, the world would come to be known to their descendants as 'Earth', and the people as 'humans'. Ra found that these people, your ancestors, made excellent servants, workers and warriors, and so he uplifted them, taking a portion of them to live on the worlds that he controlled. He then made pacts with other System Lords, each one being granted dominion over one part of Earth and the right to move its people into their domains. In exchange, they hailed him as Supreme System Lord and master of the galaxy."

"Humans were transported to thousands of worlds across the stars, granted lands to farm and mine. In return, they hailed those who took them there, granted them safety and order, as their gods. A few centuries later, on a world called Dakara, the greatest-" I nod at the Second Prime. "-of human warriors and their families were brought even closer to their gods when the first jaffa were created, humans granted great strength, long life and immunity to disease and poison by their gods in exchange for fighting in their service and carrying their infants in their abdominal pouches."

I focus on Mrs. Duxley.

"Is any of what I just said untrue?"

She hesitates.

I give her a small smile and a shrug. "Missus Duxley, you are not one of my people. Regardless of what you say, the worst I will do is send you home. Answer freely."

"That-. That's.. probably true as far as I know. I hadn't heard of Dakara, but I… Guess that jaffa had to come from somewhere. But that doesn't make you gods."

"The fact that we have entire worlds worshipping us doesn't make us gods."

She takes a breath, draws her self up and looks me straight in the eyes.

"No."

"Alright. What would?"

"Excuse me?"

"You're using the word 'god', so presumably you're attaching certain characteristics to it. How would you define a god?"

She shakes her head. "I'm a Christian. I don't define 'a' god in the sense of an actual thing because there aren't any. A god is a fictional being worshipped by people."

"And I'm not a god because I'm not fictional?"

"You're not a god because you're a… You're a three foot long serpentine parasite attached to that man's brain."

"And Jesus Christ was just a Jewish architect?"

"No, he's the son of God."

"No, come on. That's not how the Trinity works. Even I know that. He was at once the son of God and your god himself, a god made mortal to walk amongst mankind as one of them, to suffer and die as they do."

"That-. You.. should probably talk to a priest. And you're still a parasite."

"Technically, true." I tilt my head back and command Am-heh to crawl out of my mouth. Ow. I make my eyes go vacant as construct Am-heh wiggles at the crowd. For the humans it's the first time they've seen something like this. For the jaffa the only puzzling thing is why 'I'm' orange. Then I pull Am-heh back in. "But is that necessarily all that I am?"

"Yes, because you're not God."

I smile, bowing my head. "Ah, Christianity. You do realise that the Abrahamic religions are a product of folk memories of Ra and El, don't you? Ra's dead, but I can take you to meet El if you like. And his wife, Asherah."

She shakes her head. "The goa'uld left Earth three thousand years ago. Christianity is two thousand years old."

"And was it invented full cloth, or did it draw upon earlier traditions?"

"It-. Early on, it drew on Jewish traditions."

"Ah, there you are. But please don't be offended. I'm not singling your religion out. We were on Earth for six thousand years. There isn't much in Earth religion that isn't related to us."

"I don't need to add anything to 'parasite' to understand what you are. God is all-knowing and all-powerful and he created the universe. You're not, you aren't and you didn't."

I lean back in my chair. "What do you know about goa'uld genetic memory?"

"You.. know everything that your parents knew."

"Ah, everything that our mothers choose to pass on. And because that was true of their parents as well, all the way back to our original home, I have hundreds of thousands of years of memories. Given time, I can build almost any device used in goa'uld space. I have memories of hundreds of civilisations, thousands of species, millions of conversations with people and peoples long dead. I can call them to mind nearly as easily as I can talk to you now. I can concentrate a little and see any part of this world. With a little effort I can see any part of this star system-."

"With technology you try and tell people is 'magic'."

"That's just two different labels for the same thing. When we first encountered humans they didn't have the slightest notion of how our devices work. The word in that early language essentially translates as 'magic', and they kept using it even as we explained how to use it. I'll admit, we haven't been the best at explaining things, but that's not something that any goa'uld has ever had to do for another goa'uld because we're born knowing things like that. So we use a word that makes it sound like some sort of 'spiritually elevated mystery' and you use one that makes a quantum communicator sound like a door hinge." I shrug. "It's literally semantics. We're talking about the same thing. What's the difference?"

"The implication that they can only use it because you let them, whereas technology is something anyone can learn how it works."

"Do you know how your personal computer works?"

"Not in detail, but plenty of people do."

"Ah, of course. So, in summary, I'm a member of species that lives for thousands of years, knows more about everything than your entire species, is responsible for spreading humans to thousands of worlds, has devices that can do things you can't comprehend and is literally worshipped by a religion. Yes?"

"It's not that simpl-."

"Yes?"

"… Yes."

"And to you that doesn't say 'god' because your religion says that gods other than yours don't exist. But to my people it says 'god'. There's no practical disagreement, you're just applying a different label." I mock-frown at her. "And being weirdly insistent on it."

She takes a moment to assemble a reply. "I suppose you could look at it like that."

I smile at the crowd. I think that we've left them a little behind, but the court recorder is dutifully writing everything down. "Good! Good. So, in conclusion-."

I get up and walk up to Kasrin's mother before crouching down and smiling at Kasrin. She doesn't really respond.

"So, in conclusion, I'm both a 'god' and a 'snakehead', because those are one and the same thing. Do you understand?"

She shakes her head.

"Well, maybe you will one day." I reach out and gently pat her on the head. "Thank you for coming here today, Kasrin. Kiss your dolly for me, okay?"

"'kay."

I straighten up and smile at Mrs. Duxley.

"Thank you for coming. Please, return to your school. I'll have the letter for you to pass on to your superior later."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Later that day

"Look familiar?"

Second Prime Abrax takes hold of the automatic rifle I shamelessly copied from those SG7 pointed at me. We're in the armoury, which seemed like the best place for him to get a feel for the new weapons before we draft a plan for our wargames.

"Clearly, it is a-" He spots the trigger and pointedly keeps his fingers away from it. "-weapon of some sort, Lord." He looks at the magazine, goes to open his mouth and then hesitates. "No, Lord. I am not familiar with it."

"Abrax. Your master Lord Mahes is a God of War. That is his domain, and his mastery of it is rivalled only by other war gods. I am a God of Trade. My understanding of economics is superb, but my understanding of war is far more limited. No doubt Lord Mahes complained about me treating war as an exercise in logistics?"

He hesitates again. "My god did inform me that it is unlikely that we would be sent into battle soon."

I nod. "You are here because I can't possibly produce products for sale without knowing what the end user desires. So speak to me as a warrior to an armourer."

He looks at me askance. "That is not-. Ah, I do not question you, Lord Mammon. It-. This-."

I wave my right hand. "Speak freely and without care, Abrax. The worst I will do is return you to your god, and it is paramount that you and I understand one another in this exercise."

"I do not… Understand."

I raise my eyebrows. "Can you narrow it down a little?"

"Your manner, Lord. No god I have heard speaks as a mortal speaks, yet…"

He's tense. Bastet's underlords are less inclined to execute their jaffa and human followers for doing what they're told in a displeasing way than some, but there are still some fairly definite red lines.

"A king gives commands. A general issues orders. A merchant converses. People are far more likely to buy from someone who they like. That's why I don't usually bother with the voice. But if it would make you happier, I could do so?"

He nods. "It is… What I am accustomed to."

"Very well. What else?"

"You tolerated the heretic speaking out in your court." He frowns, grimacing. "The child spoke in ignorance, and I understand why you were merciful. But I do not understand why you tolerated such blatant disrespect."

"Because she's too useful to discard. Because we do simplify things for our followers, and as mine learn more they need to know how they are supposed to deal with understanding what their grandparents would have simply called 'magic' and avoided thinking about. Because my job is to persuade those who disagree with me to see things my way, and sometimes that cannot be done in a single meeting."

He's still frowning, but he nods.

"Now, that weapon. Tell me your impressions."

"It is… Short." He grips the stock, squeezing and shaking it to try and determine how solid it is. "As a melee weapon it has poor reach, through it may be more manoeuvrable than a Ma'Tok and so negate the need."

I nod. "There's an attachment point for a knife on the barrel, but the designers generally assumed that it would be used almost entirely for shooting."

He holds the stock in his right hand and lightly grips the magazine with his left. "This is the source of its power?"

"No. Where a Ma'Tok staff or a Zat'nik'tel use a liquid power source that can fuel thousands of shots, these weapons use solid ammunition which is propelled by an alchemical explosive. It can fire only those shots physically placed inside. That-" I point to the magazine. "-is their container. Just press-" I point to the magazine release. "-there."

He moves the hand on the stock to hold the middle section of the gun, then presses the release. He nearly drops the magazine as it falls into his hand; perhaps he was just expecting it to come loose? Then he lifts it up to he can examine the rounds.

"They seem… Small."

"They hit with considerably less force than-." Hm. "It just occurred to me that you have only used the standard issue Ma'Tok staff."

"I do not understand, Lord."

"The version issued to Ra's forces has a little more kick to it. A privilege of being sworn to the Supreme System Lord. A hit from a normal Ma'Tok will burn a hole in a man's chest. Ra's version would cave his chest in and send him flying as if kicked by a mule as well. But you are correct. Each bullet hits with far less force than a blast from a Ma'Tok staff."

His frown deepens as he slots the magazine back into the gun and then shifts it to a from-the-hip firing position. Realising that that's clearly incorrect, he raises it to the off-the-shoulder position jaffa use for aimed staff shots. Then he thinks for a moment and moves it so that the stock rests against his shoulder instead.

"Is this correct, Lord?"

"Just so."

"The small metal circle above the barrel is a sight. The magazine allows the ammunition to be drawn-." He moves the rifle off so that he can examine it again. "No. There is no source of power. It is purely mechanical. The ammunition is fed into the launching mechanism."

He moves to a firing lane and releases the magazine again before putting it on the bench. Then he returns the rifle to his shoulder and pulls the trigger, which does not move. Frowning, he lower the gun and looks it over for a moment before finding the safety switch. He can't read the writing, but there are only three settings. He selects the first, single shot. Then he raises it to his shoulder and aims at the target.

Click.

"It is a hammer. A contact trigger. It strikes the ammunition. What is the delay between shots?"

"Less than a second. If you move that dial again, it will continue to fire again and again until the magazine is empty. Thirty shots, though there are larger versions."

"I can see an advantage against an unarmoured foe, but against armoured jaffa surely it would achieve little?"

"That depends on their armour. Many gods only equip their jaffa with light armour, designed to absorb fire from energy weapons. These kinetic weapons will pierce it."

His frown deepens, then he raps his knuckles against his own trinium heavy plate. "And against my armour?"

"Not easily. They would have to hit the joints, or shoot the eyes of your helmet to force you to expose your head. Or use a larger version."

He nods, returning the magazine to the gun. "This weapon seems… Simple, compared to the workings of the gods."

"Its designers are the tau'ri. The humans of the original human homeworld. They have no god to instruct them in the higher magics, but they have made considerable progress in mastering the lower ones by themselves."

"If they have no god, then who do they make war upon?"

"Oh, each other. In the three thousand years since Ra left I don't think a single year has gone by without one group on their world making war upon another."

He shakes his head. "Foolish, and wasteful. They should be conquered and corrected as swiftly as possible."

I nod. "A fine warrior's answer. But I am a merchant. Now, try firing it. Though I will-"

He raises the gun and fires, bullet narrowing missing the bull's-eye as he winces at the BANG.

"-warn you that it's a little louder than a Ma'Tok staff."

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th October 1999
11:34 MDT

I try to keep a look of mild interest on my face as I'm led through the military facility where Earth keeps its stargate, even as I frantically data mine everything, their records, their research, their music and film library and the location of the planet…

I know where Earth is relative to everything else now. Not that I intend to share that with Bastet, but…

Haaaa…

Obviously I need to check that the film Stargate wasn't some sort of huge cover story for America's real stargate program. I'm not-. I know I won't find my family out there, in this Earth's Britain. But I'd like to visit anyway. Just to hear familiar-sounding voices.

But-. Focus. They had a physical barrier that could extend over the front of their stargate, though the gate itself was fixed in place. The only defences inside were a couple of fixed autocannons, though there is enough space for a squad to form up at the bottom of the ramp. That would be nasty for an attacker to charge into, but… Honestly, a couple of cannons could fire through the gate and kill everyone in the room if they could get the right angle, and from the way there was a blast shield over part of the wall at the opposite end of the room I suspect that they've got a control room overlooking the gate.

That's… An interesting design.

The soldiers escorting me aren't people I recognise from any previous contact, and they're not looking at me. I wasn't searched for weapons when I arrived, though I did make a point of showing that I wasn't wearing a kara kesh. We… Haven't passed anyone else in the corridor, probably because the route was cleared beforehand. I haven't been shown anything that would give me any idea what the surface looks like, or what the time or date are… If I didn't have a power ring.

Professional, but insufficiently paranoid.

I'm led to the door to a conference room, and my escort takes up position on either side of the door as their leader opens it for me.

"General Hammond is waiting for you."

I smile at him- "Thank you." -and then head on through.

At the head of the table is a bald and overweight man I assume to be the General. He's in his dress uniform, block of coloured ribbons representing medals included. Not sure whether that's a gesture of respect or an attempt to intimidate. If it's the latter… I don't know what he accomplished when he was younger and in shape, but he's not much of a threat now.

Three other people line the opposite side of the table. A short-haired blonde woman, a grey-haired man and Doctor Daniel Jackson, who has visited Syrania a few times.

He looks.. a little down.

"Lord Mammon." I return my attention to General Hammond. We've never met in person, though he's the one who signed off on all of our trades to date. Interesting that it's a General who is in charge rather than a civilian government official. The… State Department, I think it's called? "I am General George Hammond of Stargate Command. This is Colonel Jack O'Neill,-" Grey-haired man. Looks… Different to how I remember him. "-Major Sam Carter-" Blonde woman. Don't remember her. "-and you've already met Doctor Jackson. Please, take a seat."

"Thank you."

I hold out my right hand towards him, and after a moment's hesitation he half-rises and shakes it. Colonel O'Neil.. half raises an eyebrow at his colleagues as I hold it out to him, but he responds in kind without noticing the warning look from General Hammond. Major Carter is already holding out her hand, and only grimaces a little when I turn it aside and kiss her knuckles. Doctor Jackson-

"Peace be with you, Lord Mammon."

-manages to shake hands without incident, but he-. Yeah.

"Is something the matter, Doctor Jackson?"

"I-. Ah." Colonel O'Neil flashes me a small frown, while Doctor Jackson doesn't know where to look. "My-. My wife was.. abducted by Apophis."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Wait. "I heard that Amaunet took a new host a.. while ago. Is that..?"

He nods awkwardly. "We-. She died, recently."

"Ah." I nod. "I suppose that explains why I'm here. I don't have a sarcophagus device myself, but I could probably talk Lord Bastet into letting me use hers for a 'favoured servant'."

His eyebrows shoots up as he stares at me. "What?"

"Or are you-" I look at General Hammond. "-looking to buy a sarcophagus? I mean, I can get one, but it'll be expensive. Ah." I turn back to Dr. Jackson. "Best keep the body at between one and four degrees. Freezing it's a bad idea but you need it cool to impede decay." Huh. I frown. "Although given that she was a host, perhaps a little short term memory loss wouldn't be a bad thing?"

There's a certain amount of concerned looking around, but Colonel O'Neil is looking at me.

"And you're not at all concerned about sarcophaguses making you evil? Or is that a gimme for a goold?"

I frown. "I mean, they do cause brain lesions with repeated use, but it takes dozens of uses before it produces a noticeable change in the patient's behaviour. It's only a problem for goa'uld because we live so long. And… Anyone-. Any goa'uld with a kara kesh could fix them once they know they're there. Or I could do it."

I make a glowing orange spike appear from my left palm.

"I'd throw that in. For valued business partners."

Dr. Jackson's head whips around to face General Hammond. "General-."

"Go-" He nods. "-and make sure that your wife's body is being preserved properly."

Dr. Jackson is on his feet immediately- "Thank you." -and he's halfway to the door before he remembers me. "Ah, thanks-. Thank you."

"Think little of it. I'm happy to help."

And he's gone, at something of a clip. I smile at the swinging door, and then turn back to-.

Oh. Right. Colonel O'Neil's… Son.

"Ah… I'm sorry, but in your case…" I waggle my right hand back and forth. "Too much time has passed. There-" His eyes harden for a moment as he works out what I'm referring to, though his actual facial expression doesn't change from the mildly disinterested expression that appears to be his default. "-wouldn't be enough.. to work with."

"Mm." He sits back slightly. "So what exactly are you expecting in return for this act of generosity?"

Interesting point. Now that I've stolen their entire technical database, I don't need to trade for that side of things. So…

"Well, there's no point discussing it as a separate item. I assume that you wanted to have this talk here rather than an unoccupied world somewhere because you want something significant?"

Major Carter nods. "We'd like to significantly increase the amount of naquada you supply to us."

I make a show of thinking about it, then shrug. "That's… I mean, I can do it, but most of Lady Hestet's excess production is going on Lady Bastet's ship-building program. And my own build-up. I can double what I sell to you now without anyone caring, but anything above that is going to be very expensive. Same with trinium, if you were wondering."

Colonel O'Neil nods. "Can you get us a used Ha'tak with one careful owner?"

"Hah." I shake my head. "You couldn't afford it."

"Perhaps." General Hammond makes a open-hand gesture with his right hand. "But it would be helpful to my superiors to know what the price would be if we could."

How much..? Taking a Ha'tak from a minor goa'uld on the other side of the galaxy, killing or removing the crew and then flying it here… I could do it, but.. I don't know that I could conceal that someone glowing orange did it, and that's a risk.

"Two hundred thousand tonnes of gold and unrestricted tax-free access to your markets without intermediaries in perpetuity. And you'd have to arrange delivery, because I actually don't have a way to get it here without telling anyone paying attention that there's something going on in this system."

"Yeah, we…" Colonel O'Neil's eyes drop to the table. "Can't afford that."

I shrug. "Then let's see what you can afford."

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th October 1999
13:13 MDT

"Well, no. I mean, we all can." I shrug in answer to Major Carter's question. "Genetic-." I frown. "You're aware of goa'uld genetic memory?"

She nods. "Goa'uld inherit their memories from their mothers."

We're taking a break in negotiations while General Hammond's staff frantically try to find out if there are any Akkadian-speaking welders on Earth, though I've pretty much accepted in my heart that we're going to end up using English as the Latin of Syrania: a language for the educated elite. The words we need for technology just don't exist in Akkadian, and the only other language we could use would be the main goa'uld language. And if I picked that then I'd need to bring in other goa'uld, and that's a hard no. Major Carter is on goa'uld-sitting duty with me in the canteen, and I'm sure that the presence of what's starting to feel like half the garrison is due to a fortuitous shift-change.

It's nice to be able to get familiar fruit again.

"The first hosts we took were primitive tribals-. The first hosts we remember were primitive tribals. I've long suspected that we probably used large animals before that, but their minds were too simple to encode anything. But we remember everything since then. I know how to start a fire with flint and kindling and how to build a starship and everything in between. Of course I know how to teach welding myself. Just about all goa'uld do. I'd have to practice with the actual tools your people use to get used to their precise specifications, but it wouldn't be all that hard."

She raises her eyebrows a little and snorts. "I guess I just find it a little hard to picture 'gods' in a workshop."

"Hephaestus, Vulcan, Igbo, Ogun, Qaynan, Kagu-tsuchi… Plenty of goa'uld have an interest in smithing or ship-building. I suspect the issue is that you've only fought the more… Snobby.. goa'uld. Those who style themselves as god-kings."

"And who've spent centuries using a sarcophagus."

"Probably doesn't help."

"So why don't you just use other goa'uld? Even if you don't have any jaffa yourself, Bastet does."

"Ah… That… Wouldn't work. Goa'uld aren't… Sociable. You.. humans are troupe apes, we're solitary symbiotes. You instinctively seek to surround yourselves with others like you, while we also instinctively try to surround ourselves with others like you. People less knowledgeable than us, less physically capable than us. People whom we can lord it over and lead. Put a newly spawned goa'uld in a teaching role and they'll act out because they haven't mastered their instincts yet."

"I hadn't thought of it like that." She frowns. "Actually, aren't there a lot more prim'ta in jaffa than you need to replace your numbers?"

I breathe in sharply. "Oooh, yes."

"So, what happens to them? If you can't work together, it seems that you should have a whole lot of adult goa'uld. And you don't, so where are they?"

"They get eaten."

She blinks. "Excuse me?"

"They get eaten. I sometimes wonder if that's why Ra didn't use jaffa; he recognised that while it was a convenient way to get physically superior soldiers it would just create problems in the longer term."

She's starting to look disturbed. "So… Do you just throw them in a lake or.. something?"

"No, no. Mature prim'ta with no host to move into get stuck in storage jars and then eaten by the dominant goa'uld in the area in what is probably a re-enactment of our instinctual pre-sophoncy culling practice."

She's actually going a little pale, staring at my face on the off-chance that I'm making a joke.

"Major… Goa'uld are a little like vampires. The ideal situation for a goa'uld is one where all the other goa'uld are extinct and no one really believes in goa'uld any more. And… Anyway, you've killed plenty of infant goa'uld; you kill one every time you kill a jaffa."

It.. looks like that hadn't occurred to her.

"We've.. never been sure exactly how old prim'ta are."

"Anything from a couple of hours to a couple of years. You can go up to about six years, but that's pushing it. Goa'uld have the knowledge of their forebears from birth, but it can take a while to get things straight in our head."

"Pushing it? What happens if the prim'ta doesn't get removed?"

"The pouch starts to feel unsafe. The prim'ta will become more physically active, which will be pretty painful for the jaffa. Ultimately… We can take jaffa as hosts, which is probably what would happen. That or the prim'ta would inflict serious internal injuries and then leave, though that would only happen if there was a body of water nearby and they were planning to escape there." I frown thoughtfully. "So you should probably get your shol'va in the habit of swapping his baby goa'uld out after every fire fight. You don't want to get stuck somewhere when it ages out. And don't forget to kill the discarded baby afterwards."

"How can-?" She takes a moment to think her question through. "You don't act like other goa'uld. I don't understand how you can say things like that."

I shrug. "We have a different reproductive strategy to you. We don't usually bond with our offspring like you do. Though the few exceptions-." I chuckle. "Have you heard of a group called 'Against Ra'?"

She clearly has. "No? Who are they?"

"Major, I would advise against taking up poker. Certainly, don't try playing it against people with hundreds of thousands of years of human facial expressions committed to memory." Her eyes dip for a moment. "Like that. 'Against Ra' are the last children of the goa'uld queen Egeria, Ra's queen before Hathor. Before she finally got killed, she created an entire generation of children.. twisted around so that they hate everything about themselves, to the point that they have a hissy fit if you even refer to them as 'goa'uld'. They were supposed to be a revenge weapon against Ra." I snort. "A shame she didn't give them any common sense."

"What makes you say that?"

"I need to come to you for teachers because I can't trust other goa'uld to do the job. If I was a queen, I could just breed a generation of goa'uld who really want to teach people things. Take them, fly to an isolated world off the stargate network with a few thousand humans and start teching up. Within five hundred years, there would be no more System Lords. But no: the Against Ra are BY DESIGN too overwhelmed by their hatred to act rationally."

I frown. "Actually, while I'm here… What exactly is your organisation's long term goal? What are you trying to achieve here?"

"I'm.. afraid that information is classified. I can't talk about it. If you want, you can ask General Hammond-."

"Are you familiar with the Hague Convention?"

She stops, looking at me. "Yes. Of course. I don't know how you are, but the laws of war are covered in our officer training."

"One of the requirements on all signatories is that belligerent parties state their war goals when declaring war or engaging in a policing action. Given Stargate Command's activities to date, I was assuming that you consider yourself to be at war with the System Lords as a polity. Since I'm part of that polity, I would sort of like some assurance that I'm not helping you genocide my entire species. There are a few of us I quite like."

"We're not trying to exterminate your entire species."

"See, you say that, but I'd like to know if that's actually written down somewhere. You're a soldier fighting in this conflict. What is your war goal?"

"I'll…" Colonel O'Neil walks into the canteen and heads towards our table, giving Major Carter a nod. "Have to get back to you. Excuse me."

She gets up, makes some sort of exasperated facial expression I can't see from here to the Colonel -who doesn't respond- and walks out of the canteen while the Colonel-.

Teal'c walks in behind him, face expressionless, and heads over to join-.

"So…" O'Neil regards me curiously as he sits down across from me, head tilted slightly to the side. "You know you're not a god, right?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th October 1999
13:18 MDT

"Are you seriously doing good-soldier bad-soldier? Because if so I've got tens of thousands of years of memories of-."

Teal'c sits down one table away from us, staring at me challengingly.

"Interrogation, and I thought when the shol'va wasn't in the room during negotiations that was because you had the sense to realise that would be unproductive." I make the expected expression of distaste, grudgingly glancing at him before returning my attention to O'Neil.

"For me to betray a god they would have to be a god."

Now I turn my body towards him, meeting his eyes directly.

"Tell that to the jaffa who served under you who you shot in the back during your betrayal." I get up and walk across the room until I'm standing opposite him with the table between us. "Do you remember their names? Their faces? You must have trained with them, served with them for years. Their families? Your wife and son lived in that area, didn't they? Kill any family friends? No regrets there, murdering men who trusted you, you miserable backstabbing shol'va?"

I let my eyes flare, though his face remains impassive.

"I regret that I could not turn them away from the cause of the false gods."

O'Neil follows me over, sitting sideways on the seat next to me. It seems that they've been authorised to put me under a little pressure and see how I react. Alright, not unreasonable.

"And what being above us would you worship in our place?"

"I would not. I would have the jaffa stand on our own."

"You literally can't. You have one of us in your body now. Without us you die in a few hours, as we intended when we raised the jaffa up to be our most favoured servants."

"When you send us to die by the thousands for the sake of your vanity, it does not feel like we are being favoured."

"Try living like a human and then compare the two existences." I snort. "And I note that you say nothing of the fate of the humans living under goa'uld. Are they not relevant to you, shol'va? Do you consider them beneath you, as we goa'uld taught you they are? Do you believe yourself to be a warrior by divine providence?"

"No."

I allow my eyes to dim. "Then what's the plan? How do you intend to be free of us?"

"In each jaffa settlement we will have a pool where a goa'uld queen exists to breed prim'ta, who will be discarded when they reach maturity. We will use you as you use us."

"We make you our most favoured servants, and you will make our children your slaves. It is almost a shame that you haven't used your time away from Lord Apophis to learn actual morals."

His face hardens ever so slightly.

"And in answer to your question, Colonel O'Neil, as far as I'm concerned 'god' is the label applied to us by your ancestors. If you want to apply another one now, I won't be offended."

"I like goold."

"Then I shall call you 'Jon On'el', because I can be just as petty-" Major Carter marches back into the canteen, a thin binder in hand. "-as… You?"

She puts it down in front of me. There's a State Department seal on the cover, and the title… 'Opinion of the Office of the Attorney General on Off-World Warfare'.

O'Neil looks at her. "Carter?"

"He asked why we were fighting them, sir. It's not classified. I checked."

Hopefully this one did a little better than Bush's 'torture is totally legal, guys' Attorney General. I open it-. Hague Convention, there we go. Flip through a few pages-.

'Elimination of threats to the US and its interests', not helpful. That covers the elimination of literally every weapon in the universe not controlled by the US or its allies. In fact, according to Project for the New American Century, including its allies, as well as economic threats. Technically a car being driven legally that could in theory hit a US citizen is covered. Is there more detail..? No. 'Protection of allies and non-combatants'… So they're taking the position that they need to actively intervene anywhere where anyone fighting could endanger non-combatants. It also means that an ally could start a fight, start losing, and expect the US to fully commit to bailing them out. 'Recovery of US personnel and equipment', there's the Space Hague Invasion Act. Nothing about it being legitimate for us to invade them to take our stargate back.

I shake my head. "This is a terribly drafted legal opinion. Was your Attorney General not fully briefed, or were they instructed to give you loosely-worded legal cover for anything you felt like doing?"

O'Neil looks unmoved. "Isn't that his.. job?"

"Put it this way. If the System Lords wanted to surrender tomorrow, how does this-" I tap the page. "-tell them what that involves? What are your concrete demands? If your enemy doesn't know what you're fighting for, they can't give it to you. Honestly, we have better documents than this."

Or we did, until Ra died. Now the interstellar order has rather fallen apart, without a top level power to stamp on flagrant breaches of protocol. Bastet would enforce treaties between her underlords but that's the most I've got.

O'Neil flicks his right hand to the side. "We'd quite like it if you gave up slavery."

"I don't own any slaves. Slavery is actually illegal in Bastet's domain."

"Uh-huh."

"Yuh-huh." I raise my right hand and create a full copy of Bastet's Maat Code, putting it on the table. "There you go. Most places have a primary industry and it would be difficult for a person born there to work anywhere else, but they're not property. They get paid and have protection under the law."

O'Neil raises his right hand as Teal'c takes the book. He extends his right index finger and moves it towards me, stopping with it an inch from my forehead.

"You got one slave right there."

"I-. Ooh, you want to talk to my host." I shrug. "Okay. Just a moment."

I create a large vase and fill it with water, then create a pillow on the table in front of me and take a seat before leaning forwards and resting my head on it. I turn my head to the side so that my mouth is facing the vase.

"Just stick me back in when you're done."

O'Neil looks at Carter in confusion while Teal'c looks on impassively. Right. Mask brain activity, minimise heartbeat and breathing while perceiving the world through Am-heh who climbs out of my mouth and slivers towards the jar before climbing into it and coiling up in the bottom to watch me.

They look cautiously at Am-heh for a moment, then give my body their full attention as they wait for the 'host' to wake up.

Naturally, nothing happens.

After a moment, O'Neil pokes me.

"Sir, I wouldn't-."

"Shouldn't he.. wake up?"

Teal'c frowns very slightly. "In every incidence I have seen of a goa'uld abandoning their host, the host either recovers swiftly or dies swiftly."

Carter immediately checks my pulse. "His pulse is weak, but it's there. Breathing too. Sir, I think we should get him to the infirmary."

What?

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th October 1999
13:31 MDT

General Hammond walks into the infirmary, minus his jacket. He looks around at my recumbent body, Am-heh in the jar -I make him wave his tail, which is awkward for a goa'uld as they're not really designed with that range of motion in mind-, and three quarters of SG1.

Teal'c has been staring at Am-heh continuously.

"Could someone please explain to me why our guest is in the infirmary?"

They put a heavy book on top of the jar. Am-heh could get out, but a normal goa'uld wouldn't be able to and O'Neil knew that when he put it there.

O'Neil is the first to answer. "I can only assume he was feeling tired, sir."

Hammond looks at him for a moment, then turns to Major Carter.

"Mammon was insistent that goa'uld under System Lord Bastet don't have human slaves. The Colonel.. pointed out that he had a host, and he… Decided to leave him."

Hammond and Carter both look my way, so I have Am-heh wave his tail again.

"And the host?"

"We're-" She steps aside as some medical staff move an electroencephalograph machine into position. "-not sure, sir. He made.. it lay down before he left. He knew that… Whoever this is wasn't going to go anywhere."

Electrodes are attached and the machine is activated, and not a lot appears on the screen.

"Doctor Fraiser?"

"He's barely breathing, his heart is barely beating and he has no higher brain activity at all." The doctor turns to the General. "If I had to guess, I'd say that he was in a coma, but we know next to nothing about long term goa'uld hosts." She shrugs. "This could be normal or this could be abnormal."

"Is there any sign of a head injury?"

"No. Aside from the lack of brain activity, I'd say that he's in perfect health."

"Is he in any danger?"

"I don't know. Fundamentally, there's no difference between him and any other coma patient. I should be able to keep him alive indefinitely, but the chance of someone waking up from a coma decreases the longer it lasts."

Hammond nods, and then walks over to peer into the jar. "Why is it orange?"

Teal'c keeps staring. "I do not know, General Hammond. I have never seen a goa'uld with this pigmentation. Or who glowed. It appears unusually calm."

Hammond looks away, considering the situation for a moment. Then he turns back to Doctor Fraiser. "Doctor, will the host recover?"

"I couldn't tell you. We're doing blood tests to see if Mammon used any sort of drug to keep the host unconscious. A CAT scan might give us a better idea of what's going on in his brain, but I doubt it will tell us what the cause is."

"Teal'c, would a goa'uld use someone in a coma as a host?"

Teal'c considers for a moment. "I have never seen a goa'uld select a host who was not in perfect physical condition."

Hammond thinks for a moment. "What happens if we put the goa'uld back in?"

O'Neil raises his eyebrows. "Then.. we.. condemn this man to hundreds of years locked in his own body while Mammon uses it… Sir."

"Colonel, from what I'm seeing he's not using it himself right now. Naquada traded with Mammon makes up about half of what we get now. Ah don't see his people carrying that on if they hear about this."

Teal'c bows his head slightly. "If he were placed in a canopic jar and returned to Syrania, then he would simply take a new host. If you wish to continue trading with him, using someone who cannot awaken would be more merciful."

Major Carter frowns. "Wait. I think he was making a point."

O'Neil raises his left eyebrow. "That.. we're.. not as strong on the 'no slaves here' rule as I'd formerly believed?"

"He clearly knows what a slave is. He said that he doesn't own any. So what if he found a man with a head injury and picked him because he thought that was better."

Teal'c tilts his head slightly to the left. "I know little of Mammon's history, but nothing that I heard suggested that he was any more considerate than other goa'uld."

"Daniel said that Mammon was buried underground for two hundred years. And goa'uld can change. The Tok'Ra were made the way they are by Egeria, but she changed her mind by choice. If we put him back in… Maybe he has an explanation."

O'Neil gives her a flat look. "Would you volunteer?"

"If I was in a persistent vegetative state… Yeah."

Hammond looks at Dr. Fraiser. "Doctor?"

"Depending on the level of damage the host's brain has taken, the symbiote might be the only thing keeping him alive." She frowns, looking back at him. "Daniel said that you'd been able to get hold of a sarcophagus for his wife?"

"No, but he-" He nods at me. "-has."

O'Neil closes his eyes and exhales slowly. "Fine. I'll do it."

He walks over to the jar, Teal'c stepping out of the way to give him access. He picks up the book and sets it aside, then thrusts his right arm in and roughly grabs Am-heh just under his head. He then pulls him out and walks over to my body, holding Am-heh up to… His own head?

"Look grateful, you little bastard."

Then he shoves him towards my mouth and releases his grip. I make Am-heh squirm forwards and enter my mouth, give it a couple of seconds and then sit up, pulling the sensors off my head.

"I trust that was informative?"

General Hammond squints slightly. "Do you want to explain to me what that was about?"

"I said that I don't have slaves. I don't. If you'd been paying attention, you'd have realised that this body has an entirely different ethnic origin to the people of Syrania. Where did you think I got it? I was stuck under a mountain for two hundred years. I built this body. Cloned it. It doesn't have any higher reasoning functions of its own and it never did. The brain lights up when I activate those parts of the brain manually."

There's a very quiet-

"Ohh."

-from Colonel O'Neil.

"I could have switched to a different host, but I don't, because if I can come up with some advantage to this system I might be able to convince every goa'uld under Lord Bastet to release their hosts and accept synthetic replacements. And their hosts aren't slaves, they're volunteers. It's considered an honour."

O'Neil opens his mouth-.

"You don't like it? No one's asking you to do it. And while you're here, General." I recreate the 'Opinion of the Office of the Attorney General on Off-World Warfare'. "This is unhelpful legalistic bullshit designed to shield you against people in your own country suing you. It contains absolutely nothing that might lead to a cessation of hostilities with the people you're actually fighting. Take it back and get one with actual war-aims written in it, because while I don't think you did anything wrong in killing Ra, that act has resulted in a war that makes the period nineteen ten to nineteen fifty look like a minor border skirmish and you don't appear to know what you actually want out of the situation. Also."

I glare at O'Neil.

"A heavy book? Really? I voluntarily left this body. Putting captive enemies on display contravenes the Geneva Conventions and putting trading partners on display gets your prices jacked up."

Hammond looks at O'Neil. "Colonel?"

He moues awkwardly. "The book... May, have been a bit much."

 

[Mr Zoat]

9th October 1999
13:38 MDT

"…is our lab."

Major Carter opens the door and leads the way inside.

I look around the science laboratory/workshop with some interest. It's far more sophisticated than anything I ever worked with at school, though thanks to Am-heh the partially-disassembled goa'uld devices on display are more familiar than the human analytical machines being used to study them.

"Mine's better."

"Maybe you can show me if I visit Syrania."

"I'd be happy to. You, I'm happy to invite." I frown. "Do you really have time to do research as well as your field missions?"

Her eyebrows rise for a moment. "Without wanting to say anything I might be called to testify about in the Hague, most of our missions are focused on finding technology to help with defending the Earth. Taking what I find apart and working out how it works is a part of my field missions."

"Ah." She looks curious. "Goa'uld are sometimes accused of only being able to copy technology that other species developed. It's pleasant to watch humans do things in the exact same way."

"It's not.. quite the same."

"I-" I nod. "-think it is. We dig up ancient technology, you dig up ancient technology…"

"But I've got access to teams of thousands of people who can work on reverse engineering anything we find."

I nod. "Which is why I'm trying to develop a similar technology base. Literally any goa'uld can outperform any human scientist, but we can't beat those numbers. We've stagnated as a society."

"And that's why you're trying to carry out an industrial revolution."

"And why I'm happy to talk to Earth. Or the United States, at least. My ideal solution involves the System Lords agreeing to leave Earth alone and for both sides to respect one another's borders. Fighting you doesn't get us anything, it just-. Apophis attacked you because you killed Ra and he wanted to establish his credentials before the other System Lords as Ra's successor. But Heru'ur wasn't ever going to decide not to fight him, so… Who was he trying to prove himself to? I haven't been able to check everywhere, but were you even using your stargate between your original journey to Abydos and the time when Apophis attacked you?"

"Setting up Stargate Command took-."

I nod. "You weren't, right. So he just.. stuck his arm in a meat grinder to prove a point… To himself, because he still hadn't gotten over Ra becoming Supreme System Lord ahead of him. I really wish you people hadn't killed Ra."

"He was planning to send a naquada-enhanced nuke through the stargate to Earth."

"And how did the nuke get there?"

She considers that for a moment, then shrugs awkwardly.

"Besides, if you rotate the stargate so that the open end is facing the ceiling, sending the bomb through probably wouldn't work. He'd think the Earth had a new crater, Earth would be fine, and your team could just dial back after he left."

"Did Ra know Earth's location?"

"Yes, of course he did, but he did nothing with that knowledge for three thousand years."

"Why?"

"Why? Because he had what he needed and Earth didn't have any rare resources." I shrug. "Usually, leaving human-inhabited worlds to their own devices doesn't cause problems. You must have seen enough worlds that the goa'uld have abandoned to know that."

"We're not the only technologically advanced human world."

"Sure, but how many are advanced enough to have faster than light travel? Because that's the point where they actually become a problem. With anything else, a mid-tier underlord can bombard them into dust with a single ha'tak. Or an asteroid and a couple of rocket motors."

"Apophis sent two ha'taks to Earth and we're still here."

"Yes, and no doubt you could do that again tomorrow with no warning-." I bow my head. "I'm sorry, that was unnecessarily threatening. And I know about your favoured status under the Protected Planets Treaty, and the System Lords are nowhere near ready for a new war with the asgard. But… You do need to understand that the only reason you're still here is that no one who could have dealt with you bothered to do so for three thousand years."

"We're working on that."

"You've seen our ships, our hyperdrives and you've got naquada. Given your industrial power, you could probably start building your own ships within a few years." I shake my head. "Honestly, through… It seems to me that you'd be best advised to cut down your stargate usage. You need to keep buying raw material that can't be found on Earth, but every encounter with us risks drawing attention that you're not ready for."

She doesn't look impressed.

"Now, once you have a few ships, things become different."

"You said that you can't sell us a ha'tak, and that's the only goa'uld ship that can fight other ha'taks."

"No, but I could get a team onboard a functioning ha'tak. Even a shipyard that was constructing one. You would have to pretend to be a human from Syrania who was there to learn the 'higher mysteries', but Lord Mahes already knows what I'm trying to do. He wouldn't question it. You could learn our ship-building techniques directly."

"And what do you want in return?"

I take a step closer, maintaining eye contact. "I'd need to be able to show Lord Bastet that the studying was happening on Syrania, so you would have to be based there. And teaching my people everything that you learn."

She glances aside. "I don't speak Akkadian. I don't think any of our scientists do."

"So we teach my people English. We'll have to do that anyway. I'll even throw in goa'uld tools and equipment."

"That's-. An interesting offer. I-."

The laboratory door opens and Teal'c enters, taking a moment to consider the two of us before speaking. "General Hammond has asked me to inform you that the stargate is available. You may return to Syrania."

"Shol'va-." I smile, taking care to make it obviously awkward. "Teal'c." He raises his eyebrows, looking unimpressed. "I have an offer for you."

"I am not interested."

"Now now, hear me out. You hate the goa'uld, yes?"

"We have been your slaves for nine thousand years."

"And I don't like you because you want to break the oath your ancestors made while still keeping all of the benefits. But it occurred to me that if you gave up those benefits, then you wouldn't have that moral obligation. And since you hate us and all our work, you must hate the fact that we have such an impact on your physiology. So how about it?" I extend my left hand in mock-benediction. "I can remove your prim'ta and all of the biotech supporting it from your body. Right now. You can carry on your life as an untainted human, with no obligation to the goa'uld. You wouldn't even be a shol'va any more. You'd still be a traitor, a backstabber and an oathbreaker, but only to your fellow servants of Apophis."

I step closer to him, reaching out with my glowing left hand.

"I can just-."

He takes a step backwards away from me. And I smile.

"So I was right. You want the benefits but don't want to pay the costs. How contemptible. Please let General Hammond know that I will be returning shortly."

 

[Mr Zoat]

31st March 2013
05:59 GMT +3

The five of us look down at the Aegean as Themyscira… Shimmers back into physicality. Or rather… Not shimmers exactly, but some parts of it shift physically to-. Still there, but… Like I'm having to interpret stimuli, a dream-image, rather than observing a physical object. And then it's there, as if it never left-.

"Great!" Kon smiles broadly. "Let's go down and meet everyone."

I check-. "Reformation island isn't back."

Alan smiles at me as Kon, Mitchell and Donna fly down towards Themyscira City. "That's a nice half-empty glass you've got there."

"I just don't trust John Constantine where I can't see him."

"Ah… Look… Paul, I've been meaning to say something… Do you think-?"

"Oh! I came up with a solution to the President problem. Right before I got sucked into Erebos, but-. I can tell you now."

"That-." He looks down as the other three disappear into the city. "Okay. Let's hear it."

"So we want a fig leaf of legitimacy, which means that doing a Vice Presidential shuffle is off the cards."

"Ye-ah. I'm not-. I don't want to talk about it in terms of it being a fig leaf. I want to follow the law as much as possible, because we can't be-. We shouldn't use this situation to rig things in our favour. It's anti-democratic and it's not right."

"With all due respect to the pirates and revolting thugs who founded your country, I don't think that they had this in mind when they wrote the rules for electing presidents."

"Sometimes, you go into a crisis with the rules you have, not the rules you'd like to have. So what's the solution?"

"We use magic to bind Knight to the idea of Kennedy. He gets motivation and actual moral beliefs and can actually do the job, and Kennedy gets to help his country one more time."

"And does Knight get a say in this?"

"Is Knight mentally competent to have a say in this?"

"Ah…" Alan averts his eyes for a moment. "Yeah… He may not seem like much, but if he was literally incompetent… The twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution covers that. And if he's competent to be President, then he's competent to make his own decisions."

"In that case, we talk to Kennedy about it, then get them a face to face meeting. I'd be surprised and disappointed if he said no, but… Yes, it's his decision."

"You know something? I remember the real Kennedy-."

"Yes, Alan, we all know that you're old."

"I wasn't keen on his mob connections or his affairs. Now, I admit I don't really understand how this.. whole.. magical America thing works, but are there… I don't know, negative side effects?"

"Do you mean, apart from radically altering his personality for the duration of the merger?"

"I mean, if he agrees to it… Yeah, apart from that."

"The Kennedy we encountered is a reflection of President Kennedy as he… Exists in an idealised version of the popular imagination. It won't cause a manifestation of his less than admirable real world traits."

"Then it sounds like a good solution." He frowns. "Unless it… Ah, it's not actually Kennedy, so the two term limit isn't a problem. I'll put it to the rest of the League, see what they think." He smiles. "You about ready to go down now?"

"Yes, I need to talk to Diana about-."

"Taking a day off?"

Ah.

"You know we keep a record of what you get up to, right?"

"I wasn't specifically aware of that, no. But I'm not surprised, and it's probably wise."

"You remember when Klarion killed all those kids and you worked yourself to exhaustion and Diana had to bench you? We've been keeping tabs on you since then. You've been putting in a lot of hours, and with Themyscira back…" He pauses to consider his best approach. "I'm not saying you're not needed, exactly, but we've gotten to the point where it's doesn't have to be all hands on deck all the time."

"Alright. I was a bit worried about tomorrow anyway."

"The First of April?" I nod. "Do you think Wally is going to prank you or something?"

"There was that thing with Ambush Bug two years ago, and then last year I… Had the same sort of visions of alternate versions of myself. Some of whom I ended up meeting when Krona abducted us. I want to make sure that there isn't some… Lingering effect on me that's magnifying the link between me and the other versions of me. I need to build equipment and… Then do nothing for a day."

"Ah… As long as you're taking it easy, I guess. Are you ready to talk to Diana now?"

"Actually, I… Do need to talk to her."

Alan frowns as we begin our descent. "Anything I need to be worried about?"

"Yes. Probably. But there are only so many examples I have to study so it's difficult to be sure."

"Don't keep a fellah in suspense. Do I need to start getting prostate exams again?"

"You know how you rejuvenated when your ring recharged?"

"Why did you think I stopped getting them?"

"Right. Thanks for that image." He smirks. "Thing is… I don't know if that's a state change or an ongoing process. Are you now a man who's partially emotional energy, or are you gradually becoming more emotional energy?" I shrug. "I've got the same thing with my tattoos, and-."

Below us I see Diana fly up towards us. She's back in her normal costume and I can't see any physical changes-.

"Hey, Diana! What was it like, being a goddess?"

"It was strange." We slow to a stop as she reaches our level. "I felt a deep connection to the fundamental nature of the people around me, to the very concept of truth and rightfulness. But at the same time, it was almost… As if I was not acting but instead being moved by that connection. Now that I am just myself again, I don't think I miss it." She notices my facial expression. "Ah."

"Yes. I'm not certain, but it would make sense for your metaphysique to have adapted to the higher energy level. It would probably have happened eventually anyway, and-. And as I said to Alan, I can't be sure because not enough people have had this happen to them. But I suspect that you'll start drawing more magic from your environment, and… Start being more like a goddess than you are now. You should ask Mister Zatara or Doctor Balewa to get some baseline readings in the next few days."

She nods solemnly. "I will. Do you have more ill-tidings, or can we all enjoy the celebration now?"

"No, that's it. And according to Alan I could do with the respite. Work is officially over for today."

 

[Mr Zoat]

11th October 1999
08:02 GMT

Well… That's… Completely terrifying.

At Secondary School we didn't have separate biology, physics and chemistry G.C.S.E.s. Instead, we had something called Science Double Award G.C.S.E. which compressed the three down into two. I'm not sure what the difference would have been, but… Physics wasn't my best subject. So much of what is supposedly true about the nature of spacetime just sounds so ridiculous…

And that's a black hole.

I've read Stargate Command's records on the incident, and… And honestly, it made me want to go and live in a universe with sensible physical laws. But between Am-heh's ancestor's understanding of real physics and my own desire for the stupid suck-hole to leave me alone-.

"-od we can still-."

The man I believe to be Major Boyd jerks around, taking in his still-stationary comrades and.. the man hanging in the air next to them, and then looking up at me.

"Are you..? Am I dead?"

"No."

"Oh fuck."

"You're not really my type, but get a few drinks in me and who knows where the evening might take us?"

He stares at me.

"What?"

"Better. Now, my name is Lord Mammon. I am currently Stargate Command's leading supplier of naquada and I'm here to… Ah, let's be generous and say 'rescue' you."

He considers that. Then he looks up at the black hole in the sky behind us. "How?"

"Gravity shielding. Technically, any species with artificial gravity technology could do this, I'm just better at it."

He nods distractedly. "My team?"

"I thought that briefing the team leader first would be the thing to do. My plan is to take the five of you back to my homeworld while your superiors arrange the novel plant varieties that I want to trade you for, then send you on your way."

"And which of us is getting a snake in our head?"

"As long as the snake is a consenting adult, I'd frankly rather not know. Are you coming, or do you want to stay-" I point my right thumb at the black hole. "-here?"

11th October 1999
12:37 GMT

I sit up in my lounger and take a long sip through my banana milkshake's straw. Oh, Neper grows a sort of plantain-marrow thing on Cannett, but it's not the same. And then I lean back as the ring continues to scan right through that cloaking field the nox have around their flying city. No weapons worth anything, but their anti-gravity system is jolly interesting and cloaking something with that sort of power output is no mean feat.

"Hello?"

I tilt my head-. Ah, one of the local hippies. A young male.

"Good morning." I grip my milkshake and shake it at him. "Want one?"

He gives me the mildest frown imaginable. "I was wondering… Do you know why I can't feel you?"

"Because you're not touching me?"

"No. It's like… You have no life force at all?"

"Is that some sort of… Extra sensory perception thing? Because I'm wearing a force field, so it might be blocking it."

I could scan him. The nox are supposed to have some sort of innate biological ability to heal others. If I could create a cell suspension that duplicated it, we could do away with the sarcophagus. Or I could give a mindless clone to Bastet…

No, too much risk. I'll just be happy with what I'm getting.

"Huh. Yes."

"I mean, I'm not an expert on your abilities-."

"I would like one."

"Rightoh." I focus on my desire to give the young hippy who's probably never known another way of life at least one benefit of consumer society and a new milkshake appears in the air before him. "Enjoy."

He takes the glass in both hands and takes a sip. Then he pulls a face.

"I don't like it. Is there milk in it? I'm not a baby."

"It's a milkshake; it's mostly milk. You don't like it, don't drink it."

He drops it, spilling it on the ground, and then looks around. "Are you hunting? That doesn't usually work very well."

"No. Not hunting. It doesn't usually work very well."

"Then what are you here for?"

I shrug. "Got any good fruit?"

12th October 1999
16:52 GMT

The stargate closes and those naughty robots of Altair finally stroll through. Stargate Command's reports say that they buried the gate, so I decided to borrow Lord Bastet's calculation system and locate this planet manually. Of course, they haven't buried the gate, and Harlan is awkwardly heading for the gate to welcome them back.

Stealth drones built with a combination of goa'uld and nox technology have scoured the facility and the land outside. Their shielding protects them from the intense radiation and acid rain, and I've already identified dozens of sites of interest. I'm not really sure who used to live here, but a cursory examination suggests that their technology was at least equal to that of the goa'uld.

Messing up your world this badly takes effort.

I could break into the facility with force, or hack into the entrance computers, but I think something a little less confrontational would be better.

Plug that drone into the exterior communication system…

Transmit.

"Hello Altair base. Please respond."

The ring shows me the team looking around, and then looking at Harlan's retreating back. He leads them into some sort of command centre-.

"Comtrya?"

"Comtrya to you, too. My name is Mammon, and I'm a merchant. I have a proposition for you and your colleagues. Might I have your permission to enter your home and discuss it?"

O'Neil 2 nudges Harlan aside. "And what happens if we say 'no'?"

"Then I salvage the surface on my own and then leave you to it. Some jolly interesting stuff up here. I.. think that's a space ship. Oh, I've also got a better battery system, stargate network map, goa'uld scientific and technical tools and farm fresh produce, and… I also acquired a full record of every episode of The Simpsons?"

O'Neil looks around, getting nods from his team and a confused shrug from Harlan.

"Alright. We'll meet you by the main door."

"I will see you shortly."

 

[Mr Zoat]

12th October 1999
17:18 GMT

"So that's the basics. I need a-" I gesture to Captain Carter. "-scientist, a linguist-" Mister Jackson, since he technically doesn't have a doctorate. "-and a couple of soldiers who are a little more creative than the jaffa average."

Harlan glances awkwardly at the other four. "Um."

"I assumed that you'd want to stay here and bring the place up to full working order after I've dealt with the conditions outside."

O'Neil squints at me. "Can we go back to the part where you're a goold?"

"Are you aware that the word 'robot' comes from-?"

Daniel snaps back to full awareness. "From the Czech 'robota', meaning forced labour, which was itself derived from 'rab', meaning 'slave'. Can we go back to my wife being free?"

I nod. "Teal'c killed Amaunet, Doctor Brightman removed the corpse of the goa'uld and then I lent them a sarcophagus and she's recovering at Stargate Command."

"Okay." Captain Carter pats him on the shoulder and he jerks his head around in surprise. She gives him a supportive smile. "I just-. I.. didn't…"

"I understand." Teal'c nods. "You assumed that if she returned that it would be to you. I am similarly estranged from my own family."

"Yeah, I-." He focuses on me. "Thank you. Even if I never see her again, just knowing that she's alright…"

"'Alright' might be a bit much. The culture shock from living at Stargate Command was a bit extreme, and being a host isn't much fun for most people."

O'Neil frowns. "About that."

"This body is a mindless clone. I did this whole thing with your organic counterpart where I got out and they gave it a brain scan and found no higher reasoning going on."

Carter looks surprised. "You can do that? Then why do goa'uld take host at all?"

"Because it's convenient, I'm afraid." I shrug awkwardly. "Goa'uld aren't communal primates. We're solitary stealth predators and symbiotes. We don't have the social instincts that humans do. It has its good points; humans who are socially isolated tend to go a bit peculiar while goa'uld would be fine. But the downside is that we don't really care about other people suffering until it starts to affect us." Hm. "Well, Stanley Milgram. Even more so than humans. We don't feel any guilt or remorse about taking a host, even if they're screaming in terror and actively resisting us. And cloning is time consuming, and technologically complicated if you want an adult body. So… Why bother when you're surrounded by perfectly good bodies?"

O'Neil cranes his neck towards me slightly. "You're not really selling me on this whole-" He makes a circling motion with his right hand. "-'cooperation' thing."

"I… Had some considerable time to reflect upon our situation. And I still believe that having goa'uld in charge has a number of advantages. We have far less war than Earth does, for example. But we're… Well…"

"Kinda nuts?"

"That's.. not unfair. It's a… Selection pressure thing, like how there are so many psychopaths in boardrooms. Without a body of educated humans to draw on there's no benefit to being diplomatic. If I got hold of an agreeable queen…" I shrug. "Well. That's not going to happen. But the point I want to make is that we're not cruel for fun-. I mean, as a species. Some of us are. We're just ruthless."

O'Neil slowly shakes his head. "O… Kay..?"

"If I can show Lord Bastet and my fellow underlords that there are advantages to having an educated human population, there's a good chance that they'll go along with it. And if Lord Bastet becomes more powerful, she may be able to convince others to reform as well, or… Just conquer them. If you want to improve the lives of humans across the galaxy, it may work better to work to improve things from the inside rather than… Declare war on the entire galaxy like Stargate Command has."

Teal'c raises his left eyebrow. "That would be a great change in goa'uld behavior."

"It would." I nod. "Lord Bastet knows what I'm doing. I need this to be a success. My people need this to be a success, because if it's not then I'll probably be killed just after they are."

"Ah-." Jackson cuts himself off, then looks around to see if anyone else wants to ask a question. Seeing that no one does, he turns back to me. "Do other goa'uld feel this way? I know the.. Tok'Ra have been trying to overcome the System Lords since-."

"No."

"No?"

"Without a Queen, the Against Ra can't replenish their numbers. They take human hosts, but don't recruit humans into their organisation otherwise. They're just as uncreative as most goa'uld and the methods they use cannot result in their victory. I assume that Queen Egeria made them the way she did because she wanted to infiltrate Ra's feudal hierarchy and destroy it from within because their whole mental setup seems completely… They can't win as they are."

"Oh?" Captain Carter looks curious. "What should they be doing?"

"Pretend to be normal goa'uld, take over somewhere and outcompete their neighbours because all of their scientists could work together without intriguing against each other. Build trade networks with their neighbours. Share the least offensive of their methods and try and get them to change their ways for practical reasons."

"What you're doing."

"Yes, that's… Why I'm doing it?"

She frowns. "Wait, are you a Tok'Ra?"

"No? Ah…" Huh. "I mean, I'm not a part of the organisation. It's not impossible that Queen Egeria was my mother, given that I took my first host at the direction of Ra's priests. I honestly don't know. Parent-child relationships aren't usually considered that important amongst the goa'uld. Given the.. number of children queens spawn, it wouldn't be practical. Anyway! Ah, the Against Ra are bad enough, but if your objectives are still the same… Well, Harlan might be able to build new versions of you if you die, but that's still four people against the galaxy. I think that we can achieve more by working together." I open my arms. "What can I do to convince you?"

"I would very much appreciate it-" Harlan jumps in, prompting the rest of us who'd sort of forgotten that he was there to jerk our heads towards him. "-if you could stop the storms. I would very much like to recover Wallace from outside. Particularly if he could be reactivated. Though that is unlikely."

O'Neil frowns. "Don't the storms cover the.. whole.. planet?"

I nod. "Pretty much. I don't think I'll-." Huh. "If you open a wormhole to Syrania and let me pick up some equipment, I can get that done in a few hours. If you just want me to clear the area around this facility, I can do that under my own power now."

Captain Carter shakes her head. "How?"

I smile. "I'm a god, remember? Just wave my hands."

O'Neil doesn't so much roll his eyes as roll his entire upper body. Teal'c remains impassive while Captain Carter sort of tenses her jaw and Daniel looks a little bewildered.

Harlan looks mildly impressed. "You're a god?"

O'Neil sighs. "He's not a god."

"But he said he was a god."

O'Neil give me a long-suffering glare as I stand up. "Who wants to come and see me use my divine magic on your storm clouds?"

Harlan smiles and nods. "Yes. That is what I said I wanted to do. So, me."

"Right then! Shall-?"

"Oh, and I've been told that I should ask, but, would you mind me making a robot duplicate of you?"

The other four watch for my response.

"I.. think that can wait until this facility is fully functional and you can give future androids the best possible bodies. How about that spaceship?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

Mighty Morphin' Lantern Rangers

1st April 2013
09:17 GMT -5

Kaldur looks over the machinery which surrounds me, his eyes passing over the electronics with a cursory glance while lingering a little longer on the enchanted objects and arcane devices.

"Do you not think that this is a little extreme?"

"No."

"I understand that the visions you have had for the past two years are perhaps a little distracting, but you yourself have said that they have not harmed you in any way."

"One thing I learned from that mess with Krona. Parallel universes cause intersecting problems. I saw no sign that Ambush Bug was involved last year. None of the other versions of me I met at Vanishing Point admitted to experiencing anything like it. Which means that Ambush Bug might have done something to me that caused a lasting change to how I work. If so, that is a problem, because… Yes, a few visions one day a year isn't a problem, but if I don't-" Kaldur nods. "-know why it's happening, I don't know how to stop it if the visions start coming more often."

"And if this year none come?"

"Then… Great, it was probably something to do with Krona and I can stop worrying about it."

Kaldur smiles a smile which makes it clear to me that he's leaving me to my folly. "Then I will wish you the best of fortune."

"Thank you."

"Will you require someone to check in on you?"

"No, that's fine. People have been in close proximity to me both times this has happened-"

The world around me turns slightly, moments in time being interspersed with brief flickers of white like a projector reel.

"-and can you see that?"
//
Kaldur frowns at my alarm and
//
looks around. "I cannot see anything unusual."
//
He turns back to me. "Can you describe-?"
//
//
///////////////
The universe tilts and whirls and peels away and I'm sent flying and none of my time-wasting machines register anything unusual! There's a street, a road, American road signs, people running while a group of five brightly-costumed individuals fight a mob of grey humanoids and I'm flying or falling-.
/
Uhgh.

I land face-down on the asphalt-

"Oh dear. That wasn't supposed to happen."

-and push myself up, construct armour appearing around my body.

The alien looking at me in concern resembles some sort of uplifted chimpanzee. With… Wings and a monocle. His body... Looks like he's either been heavily bio-engineered or he's wearing organic armour, and he's looking at me like he thinks I'm about to explode.

The figure next to him is looking awkwardly at a large bottle in his right hand. His skin is blue, his head and most especially his jaw are far larger than the humanoid norms, while the rest of his body is squat and muscular. His clothing is… Weird. Baggy trousers with some sort of circular decoration, armoured helmet, boots, shoulder pads and breastplate. The teeth from his lower jaw protrude uselessly from his mouth in a way which puts me in mind of the designs I've seen of Japanese Oni masks.

"Ahhhh…" He tosses the bottle over his shoulder, and it smashes when it hits the ground. "Not my fault."

"Oh who else could it be? I gave you a simple task-."

"Excuse me, gentlemen."

They freeze, the shorter one looking directly at me for the first time.

"Oh… That's not good."

"Would one of you mind explaining what's happening?"

"Ah." The simian raises his right forefinger. "One question first."

"Okay?"

"Are you evil?"

"A.. completely honest answer to that question would be fairly complex. I have killed a lot of people-"

"Oh?"

"-and I don't feel any reluctance when my goal requires ruthless action-"

The monkey man nods. "Good, good."

"-but my goals are generally altruistic; I try to improve the lives of the people and.. society around me."

The blue-skinned one grimaces more, and the two of them look at each other.

"So really it depends on how you define evil."

They both return their attention to me.

"We…" The simian raises his right hand uncertainly. "Might… Need you to help us conquer the Earth."

"I'm.. going to need some evidence that you're some sort of godlike administrator before I even consider that. Do you have a… Curriculum V-?"

"Hey!"

The two of them take a nervous step back at the shout, and I turn to see that the brightly coloured fighters have defeated the grey humanoids. The fighters appear to have some sort of empathic shielding; I can see that they're alive and have emotions but that's about it. The figures on the floor… Either dead or they were never-. No, that one twitched. Some sort of automata? A robot or-.

They vanish, in… I think that was a teleportation effect.

"Uh-oh."

The five of them -yellow, pink, blue, red and black- form up on the red one and adopt… Silly pseudo-martial art poses like it's a photo shoot or something. Hm. They're clearly capable enough, and… They each have weapons and side arms they're not using.

Ring, identify.

Alert! Internet size vastly decreased since last scan. Identifying with paper archives. Targets are vigilante group 'Power Rangers'-

The… Fuck..?

-and are identified by colour.

"Two of Rita's goons and a new monster." The Red Ranger… Darn, I can't remember what his name was. He draws his sword, which is a sign for the others to draw their main weapons as well. "Let's stop their evil plan right now!"

"Right!" / "Right!" / "Right!" / "Right!"

The blue alien cringes further. "I'm outta here!"

His body shimmers and vanishes, and from the look of the other one he's not far-.

Something occurs to him.

"Go, my Orange… Warmaster! Destroy the Power Rangers!"

"Excuse me?"

He shimmers away as well as the five Rangers charge me.

 

[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."