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

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2024
09:24 GMT

"…paste, man." Nurse Dietmar Schwartz sits back after polishing off an extra large roast dinner, his plate just short of licked clean. The rest of the physicians are pacing themselves a little better, though none of them are exactly slow. "Even British food is better than that."

I shrug ruefully. "I'm sorry, but that's probably my fault too. Invincible gave me the designs, and… Feeding major cities is a bit of an issue at the moment."

Nurse Claudia Bieri shakes her head. "Why? Farming areas shouldn't have taken that much damage."

"Currencies are in freefall, people are panicking, and… Most of the rioting has stopped now that…" I shrug. "Omniman decided that rioting was a sign of mental deficiency and just killed all the rioters."

"Shiiiit." Dr. Evesham nods. "How many..? People did he..?"

"I-" I shake my head. "-don't know. Thousands at least. They weren't even… Protesting against him. They were protesting their own governments not reorganising things."

Mr. Schwartz sits up a little. "Can you take letters out?"

I shrug. "In theory. If I'm getting let out. For all I know I'm here indefinitely."

"Surely you could just wave your hand at a wall and make it vanish?"

"Yes, but then I'd have to flee the planet, and I don't have any star charts. If I pick a direction then for all I know I'm flying deeper into the Viltrumite Empire. And then I'd die tired. And even if I went in the right direction, I don't know where habitable planets are. Yes, in theory I could keep going -maybe for centuries- until I eventually found one by chance, but I'm not sure how long I could avoid going mad from the isolation." Hm. "And I suspect that he'd kill all of you, and everyone else I've spoken to, and destroy the infrastructure I've built. And the viltrumites would probably send someone after me anyway."

"Ah. Yes."

"So, ah…" I nod. "Write any letters you want, give me addresses and… Ah, probably a facial description, and I'll try and get it to whoever you want it sent to. I'd offer to talk to Invincible, but we… Don't have that sort of relationship. Just about anything I could say would involve implying that being stuck here is having a negative impact on your ability to do your job, and if I said that-."

Dr. Evesham shudders. "Yeah. Don't say that."

I nod. "Best I can do is 'it might be nice as a reward'. And I can't even promise-."

Several of the staff members jump out of their seats, backing away from-. A.. bright pink dart flying into the room from the ward and… Popping, releasing tiny sparks of pink light.

I get up out of my own seat. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen."

It's a short flight back to the ward. No more pink bolts, so either that really took it out of her or she knows I'm coming. I wonder if she's been hiding more abilities than she's been showing? Doesn't seem likely. Invincible and Omniman seem like the sort of people it makes sense to go all out against.

The door to the ward slides open and… Her eyes are pointing towards me, though no other part of her body has moved.

Could you fight them, if you had training?

I put up a sound baffle. "Yes, certainly. In theory, my peak destructive capacity is extremely high. But there's no way to-."

Sound.

I raise my eyebrows.

Their hearing is extremely good. Enough sonic energy-.

"And they're not very likely to stand there and get hit. Omniman has not lived as long as he has by giving people free swings. And even if I… Burrowed a hole four miles down, built a soundproof training room for myself and spent a year raising my skill level to the point where if I caught them separate I could kill one, I couldn't do that to the rest of the Empire. Forget it. Put it entirely-."

I can heal myself.

I blink.

"Excuse me?"

My power lets me rearrange matter, just like yours. For a while I thought you might have been made the same way I was.

"That seems unlikely."

I can rearrange the matter in my body. I had to learn exactly what my organs look like, but I could fix my spine easily.

"Um." I frown. "I'm.. not sure-."

I had to focus. I couldn't do it while he was right there, or he would have found a way to stop me. Or Omniman would have ordered him to kill me.

"That makes sense, but why are you still here?"

Because I don't have a plan! The Guardians of the Globe's plan was to hide and build better weapons. But with Robot dead, there's no one to build them.

"Would they work?"

The only one we tried didn't. Why?

"If it was a sure thing I might have had a go myself. I'm not an inventor, but I can copy other people's work."

Would it..?

Her eyes move away.

Would it work? If I actually..?

"Don't know. Mostly I think it might work because he doesn't seem to care what happens with the Earth. So why not do what you ask him to. And… Obviously, you just changing your mind wouldn't be believable."

Acting like I'm hopeless won't involve much acting. I could… With him, and he might just murder thousands more people anyway.

"Based on observed behaviour I don't think it's likely, but yes. Do you know what happened to Omniman's wife?"

Died when he attacked Global Defense Agency headquarters.

"He killed her? That-."

They had a nuclear self-destruct. They hoped that if the blast was strong enough that it would kill him.

"I suppose that explains why he's been quite so ruthless in hunting G.D.A. personnel down. So are we doing this?"

It's better if you can heal me. Just in case they can detect it.

I nod. "Alright, but remember that I don't have permission to heal your neck."

I focus, and… It's not fast. I don't know her that well and it's not like I'm happy about what she's going to have to do. But the least I can do is stop her injuries hurting quite so much.

If there was another way-.

Lights flicker, winds gust out of nowhere and I create a barrier around us. A teleporter, or-?

"Lantern Matthew King." A translucent apparition I still just about recognise appears in the room. Humanoid, blank face and blue and red robes. Last time I saw someone like him they were picking a fight with Larfleeze. In a comic book. I don't know if Controllers even exist in this universe, and I've certainly never met one. So where is this fellow from? "I have need of your service."

I shake my head.

"I can't even help myself. What could I possibly do for you?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

Earth 12

3rd February 2043
09:26 GMT -5

"Can you really trust them, Dad?"

Claudia, bless her, was able to organise my patently ridiculous request on impressively short notice. Probably from experience with trade shows or something. A lot of our back catalogue and prototypes spend their days mouldering in secure storage, with production models… Usually made to order. Getting them out, packed up, and getting the permissions we needed -both legally and practically- required an all-nighter from… A small army of people, including my daughter.

"Yes." I nod. "In the same way as we can trust the Guardians. They just aren't interested in the sorts of things that humans are."

"Y-."

"Did I ever tell you about the time that narrowly dodged being abducted by Krona?"

She looks a little blank, and shakes her head.

"It was when I first met Matthew Hagen. Clayface?" A slight pause, then she nods. "Must be half a lifetime ago now." Hmm. "Apparently, Krona was kidnapping different parallel universe versions of me and of a woman named Jade Nguyen and using them to do… Something or other."

"Jade Nguyen… Jade Harper, the assassin? Married Roy Harper…"

I look over some of the crates, remembering faces… Mostly retired or 'departed', driven and often slightly mad people who built machines the rest of the world hasn't caught up to yet. Or that got banned by international convention, like the weather control system. We have to get… Oh, so many signatures when someone wants to turn down a hurricane now. And we charge for that, but I can't but-.

"Dad?"

"Hm? Oh." I nod. "Yes, that's the woman. The two of them did some freelance work for me. Professional introductions, bodyguarding… Haven't seen them for a while, actually. Wonder how they're doing."

"Ah." Claudia looks awkward. "They're dead, Dad. They-."

"Oh!" I blink. "Yes, the… Plane. Sorry, slipped my mind." I snort. "I think I need to take another one of those cognitive acuity tests. I didn't miss Lian or Gwen dying, did I?"

"Not as far as I know, but I can check." She looks at me awkwardly. "Dad, are you okay?"

I shrug. "I'm old. I don't recommend it, if there's an alternative."

"Rani said you were thinking about full-body prosthesis. Those aren't… Safe."

"No, I know. But brittle bones and a failing musculature aren't safe, either. The main issue would be surviving the operation."

"Then you'd have the psychological problems. We don't have a lot of data on the long term effects."

"Haha..!" I smile. "Oh, Claudia, why would I be worried about the long term? Besides, someone's got to go first."

"Then why not just-."

I wince as the same flickering, wind-gusting thing from yesterday happens, raising my right hand to shield my eyes. This time I'm looking in the right direction to spot the Controller appear. He sort of… Appears from the middle of his torso, the bit of him that's 'here' spreading out until I can see all of him. Takes a moment for the colour to catch up. I wonder why? Seems like the sort of thing a Controller should be able to manage on their own, but I got Green Lantern Kai-Ro to check and apparently the Controller really was a Controller.

"Lantern Peter Wynne."

I moue, then reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the ring. Still just as dead as it's been for decades. "Technically. As per your order, we've assembled everything that might interest you here, and a-" I point to a small quantum drive in a secure case. "-digital copy of our entire archive. I'm not sure what use any of it will be to a Controller, but it's all yours."

"A digital copy would be inefficient. Simply transmit the data from your power ring."

"Ah. Well, yes, I'd like to do that. One small problem there."

"If your desire is insufficient, state what you want to make the exchange."

"No, no. I owe you this for… Everything. I just don't have a way to recharge the ring. It ran out of power long before I assembled… Before I built any of this."

The Controller regards me levelly. "Your ring has no charge."

I nod. "I'm afraid not."

"Where is your personal lantern?"

"I didn't ever have one. And I couldn't find one in this parallel." I shrug. "I've been stuck on Earth for almost my entire life, so I might just have missed it-."

"That is surprising. Almost all alternate versions of you find some way to recharge their ring."

…

Ouch.

"Well… I… Didn't. If you can tell me where I can find one, I can send a team to pick it up, but-."

"Okaara, in the Vega System."

"I checked there." I shake my head. "No myths relating to a 'Beast', and no Forbidden Forest of Weeds. I suspect that your forebears just didn't build an orange lantern in this universe."

"There are other ways to recharge a power ring."

"I didn't want to take a chance on learning them when I had finite power reserves and a ring that has a reputation for driving the user insane. I was cautious, and I'm a little surprised that you're telling me that my alter egos behaved so differently."

But I'm… Kind of bummed out that he's telling me that… Everyone else did… I mean, okay, not 'better', but-. It would have been nice to have. I remember the Despair Squid episode of Red Dwarf, where the team were told that they only got 3% in their own lives.

Gosh, I haven't thought about that for years.

"Lantern Wynne."

"Sorry. Sorry. Happens to humans at my age. I-."

"Would your effectiveness at collecting useful resources be increased if you had a personal lantern?"

"Ah." … "I'd have access to the rest of the universe, so, probably? But, I… I'm not sure I could-."

"Every version of you who has a power ring they could use has mastered it, except you." Oh. Ow. Right in the pride. "But I accept that a percentage of you that exist in the multiverse would be unable to achieve that due to circumstances beyond their control, and you have clearly prospered despite that."

"If you're going to give me directions-."

The Controller holds out his hands, winds gusting once again and orange light glowing between them. A moment passes, and then-.

A… Personal lantern. But it doesn't look like a Green Lantern's lantern. It looks more like a construct, but…

I look the Controller in the eyes, waiting. Because he's got exactly what I want.

"This will give you the ability to recharge. Temporarily. Since your universe lacks an Orange Central Power Battery it will fade and fail in time. I will restore it if you prove that you are worth my time. Recharge yourself, so that I can direct you in opening the portal from your end."

Oh.

Right then.

I slip the ring on my left ring finger, and raise my hand.

 

[Mr Zoat]

8th May 2024
12:37 GMT

"…kind strange, but I guess we all gotta have hobbies." Invincible shoves the blast door out of the way with brute strength. "Not like they're any use to us."

I wait for him to lead me inside… What I think was once a Global Defence Agency holding facility. Dimly reminds me of something Stormwatch used to use; sticking the most dangerous people on the planet in suspended animation just in case they need them.

Here, they keep their parts.

The lights come on in rows as Invincible walks down the row, looking left and right with a faint smile on his face.

"Dad didn't see the point, but the way I see it? These were the strongest humans alive."

I recognise scraps of costume, half a face where the skull was sliced vertically in half. But for most of the pods I have to scan the labels.

"They're worth remembering."

"Because they tried their best, despite their weakness?"

"No." He glances back, and under his cowl I can just about see his incredulous frown. "Because they failed. Oh." He flies up three levels of preservation pod, staring at the contents. Two arms, a leg and part of a torso are held roughly in the places they'd be if the pod contained a full body. "I remember this guy. Ex.. plodio..? Explo-dude? Something like that. I just waited until he blew himself up -and that barely even messed up my hair, by the way- and then stuck my arm into the space where he was reassembling himself."

He turns and looks down at me.

"I mean, seriously. He just looked down at my arm-. He wasn't even all there yet, and he couldn't stop it and he knew exactly what I was gunna do… Tch."

I nod. "If he couldn't hurt you, then it was a stupid position to put himself in."

He waves his right arm. "Ex-actly. So why did you want to come in here, anyway?"

I shrug. "To recharge."

"Oh." He frowns. "I thought your powers were just… Your powers."

"I apologise for inadvertently misleading you. There are things I can do without an external power source, but I usually need to draw power from… Well, there are a few things that work-."

"Ah, I don't care. Kinda disappointed, but… Whatever." He looks away, floating along the row. "So, do you eat them, or what?"

The honest answer would be some sort of device from the subterranean levels of a mad science bunker only a little while after arriving on this Earth. But the Controller wanted this sort of thing, and… Sneaking around behind Invincible's back is a non-starter.

"No, it's something that the organelles in their cells do; an energy they accumulate. I leach off it. Since they're dead they're not going to recharge, but I can build up a big charge like this."

"Ah, fine. It's better than what the G.D.A. was going to do. Did you know they made cyborg zombies out of their own agents?"

"No, but I can't say that I'm surprised. Um. Which of these..? Do you not mind me using?"

"The spare parts tank is down the end. I just sort of scooped up all the parts I could find. Kinda meant to have someone go through it, but all the G.D.A. guys are dead, so…"

"I can sort it if you like? Match genetics, that sort of thing?"

He gives me a puzzled look. "I thought you were draining them?"

"Just the exotic cells. Just about everything else will be left over. I can gene-match the parts…"

He brow unfurrows, and he nods. "That would actually be helpful."

He points, and… Ah, yes, the spare parts tank. I fly over to it and lay my right hand on the transparent aluminium viewing panel. Extend a construct through and start subspacing the exotic cells.

As far as I can tell, just about all superpowers have some sort of physiological basis. Someone like Aquarius obviously wasn't making the water his… 'Water vomit' used inside his body. So while most of his physical abnormalities were just alien biology, there was just a little exotic matter in his mouth that appeared to let him conjure high pressure water from nowhere. It actually didn't, but… You'd need to be a lot more intelligent than me to understand what it was actually doing.

And it doesn't take that many. Even Eve, who has the highest proportion of exotic matter to normal matter of any human I've scanned, is still almost indistinguishable from a normal woman. Is a normal woman for most purposes.

Viltrumites don't work like that. The reports Eve was given before the G.D.A. was destroyed claimed that Viltrumites are 100% exotic matter. They called them 'smart atoms', which sounds exciting but doesn't really explain anything. An effect based on the user's mental state, perhaps? And there's no real difference between Invincible and Omniman in that regard, so… Maybe that attribute is heritable, regardless of ancestry? I haven't seen any of Omniman's medical records, so I've got no idea-.

There.

Omniman and Invincible took on everything the world could throw at them and won, but not entirely without injury. Entirely without lasting injury, but they bled a few times and Invincible picked up a lot more injuries in his aborted superhero career. And one of these people either got good or got lucky or… Invincible really wasn't policing his battlegrounds well, because this blood sample is all behaving anomalously.

It's useless to us; all the researchers who could do anything with it are very dead. But the Controller expressed an interest. And while it would look suspicious as anything if-.

Invincible lays an arm over my shoulders, and I freeze.

If I started searching in the wards where he recuperated while injured, I… Thought that I could get away with this.

"You know I had that ward bugged, right? So I know Eve isn't exactly stoked about our relationship."

"I'm sorry, but that wasn't a realistic prospect. The best I could do was-."

"Hey, hey." He inclines his head towards me. "I'm not angry. You're right. The only way she'd accept it was if you made it out to be some big self-sacrificing gesture. She'll come around. But my Dad…"

He releases my shoulder and floats a little way away.

"I think he was hoping I'd hook up with a nice viltrumite girl. I told him I didn't see the point; a viltrumite's a viltrumite, so any of my kids will be viltrumites whether their mom's viltrumite or human or… Whatever. And hey, maybe they'll get Eve's powers as well. But apparently someone high up wants to make sure that viltrumite women can breed with humans, and if I'm not available… Then it has to be someone else."

I nod. "If they inherit viltrumite powers from their viltrumite parents, logically you'd be looking for a father who could provide other beneficial characteristics."

"Or we could just nominate the one guy on the planet who's made himself useful." A.. h. "So I don't really know anything about what other viltrumites like doing on dates, but maybe you should pick out some restaurants and get some nicer clothes?"

"I… Can do that." And I'm not enough of a hypocrite to try and weasel out of it, not after what I said to Eve. "When.. is the woman in question arriving?"

"Couple of days, and the integration team is coming with her. Ships and guys from other client worlds to turn the Earth into something." He smiles. "Finally, right?"

I take a deep breath, and try and look happy about things.

"I just hope she finds my work satisfactory."

 

[Mr Zoat]

10th December 2282
07:32 GMT -6

The C-22 combat robots at the entrance display '???' on their visors, but make no move to stop Paladin Justinia and I marching through the main gate and into the courtyard. Justinia is in her somewhat scuffed Advanced Technical Armour, her Wattz 2000 laser rifle clamped to her back so that she can carry her pot of river crawler claws and edible greens unencumbered. I offered to carry the rifle, but without Elder Solo personally vouching for me there's a limit to how far she's prepared to trust me. ATA has a radio system built into its helmet, but whatever Doki Doki is doing to override radio transmissions it's preventing Justinia reaching her comrades.

"Hey Krono!"

Justinia halts, dropping to one knee, downing her pot and grabbing her gun as the C-22 just inside the prison comes alert. It… Looks a little different from the others, so I'm… Guessing that Doki Doki is a little more 'present' in this one than the others.

"Good morning, Doki. I hope that I'm not intruding."

This robot's visor image becomes wagging forefingers on the right and left and a shaking head in the middle.

"Somehow I don't think that's tru-ue!"

Justinia doesn't quite bring her gun to bear. The 2000 has fairly good armour penetration, but against a C-22 you really need something heavier or EMP-based. And she has to know that.

"Where would you have me cook my vittles, machine?"

"Cook-stations are thataway!"

The robot points at-.

"'First name not found' McKinley already completed her produce acquisition challenge!"

In the middle of the courtyard three nuclear battery powered electric range cookers have been planted in a triangle, and McKinley is already at work turning her meat into steaks and stewing chunks with a machete. McKinley is wearing Vault-Tec's own-brand power armour, helmet and gauntlets off as she works her cleaver. Her face has shrapnel scars running up the right side, and whatever hair she has is held back in a light balaclava. Probably wears it to stop her hair getting caught in the helmet. The viewing galleries I remember from my own bachelorhood still line the edges of the courtyard, though most of the inmates are watching the monitors rather than the cooking area.

Justinia slowly stows her gun, picks up her crab bucket and stands.

The Midwestern Brotherhood are the ones who originally killed the Calculator, fighting their way through a legion of both combat androids and other varieties of robot to destroy the AI. The only record of their presence here now is the remains of a crashed blimp and the graveyard Elder Brixley of the Maxson Chapter had dug for the bodies of those who died in Vault 0; they had to massively overextend to reach this far from their headquarters, and there was never any chance that they could hold the territory. It's quite understandable that the C-22s are getting an even stronger response from her than the abduction alone.

I frown at the unique C-22. "How did she get back here so quickly? I thought you were sending everyone a little further afield."

A dog, a gun and frying pan. "Impressive lateral thinking combined with psychotic ruthlessness!"

"Oh? Do tell."

A bowl of brown meat. "'First name not found' McKinley's challenge was to make dog food!" A happy-looking dog. "It's food, made from dogs!" The number 9. "While the original task suggested breaking into Vault Nine, she was not actually required to do so!"

I smile politely as Justinia occupies one of the other ranges. "Vault Nine?"

"Vault-Tec was committed to preserving as many of citizens as could pay to be preserved! While Federal Law prohibited bringing animals into the Vaults, Vault Nine was designated an experimental Vault and opened for canine inhabitation! Some of those rich people really loved their dogs!"

"Vault Nine is a dog vault?"

"I know! I was surprised too! If the Hangdogs had known about it, they'd have rushed Wyoming instead of bothering WARDENpoos!"

Two hearts and a picture of WARDEN's avatar.

I frown. "How did they stay fed for two hundred years?"

A test tube. "Dog food is chemically simple!" A protectron. "Dog food dispensing robots provided both physical and mental stimulation!" A sound wave. "And sonic emitters to discourage bad behaviour!"

I nod. "And I take it that Miss McKinley found some dogs closer?"

Three light bulbs. "She attacked the prison kennels! Even taking into account the time it took to remove their cybernetic implants, that still represented a significant decrease in time expenditure! I will patch out that exploit for the next episode! ODYSSEUS is really upset!"

McKinley snorts. "Try headhunting me without a contract offer, don't be surprised if I liquidate your assets."

I take a few steps closer to the cooking area. "You seem to be a good deal calmer?"

"Way the Legion's profit/loss account looks, Lanius is gunna be a free agent before the end of the year. I'll still dog everyone else, but he's a decent transfer prospect."

"Well then I.. wish you all the best."

"Besides, I'm a winner. I've been Chief for eleven years now, and my end-of-year reports are always in the black. No way I'm a fast-follower for these bitches."

I nod, then turn back to the robot. "New chassis?"

A circuit board. "Andrea Brixley was able to decode Calculator's data networks!" An image of the robot. "We are now able to produce C-Twenty Seven combat androids!" An American flag. "The most advanced combat robots in America!" A steel plate. "Armor!" A sonar scan. "Sensors!" A curling bicep. "Speed and strength!" A radio antennae. "Networking capacity and rapid weapon integration! They can't be beaten!" Thinker image. "One on one! Overwhelming numbers in power armor experimentally draw against them!"

"I'll be interested to-."

"And now it's time for your interference penalty!"

"I didn't agree not to participate."

"My set, my rules! And we need high-paced action during the slow cooking section!"

I frown. "Alright, what-?"

There's a creak of grinding metal above me, then a thud behind me. I half-turn as a huge man I don't recognise in Legion armour-.

I lean and turn my head and his right fist still hits my cheek, rocking my head back! I fall, rolling as he tries to stomp me and then rise to my feet with my arms raised defensively.

Lanius glowers at me. "Witch-man."

"Never heard what your original name was." I try reaching out for his mind, and have to bite down as my brain aches and my stomach roils. "But I doubt it matters whether you die here or in Arizona with Mister Sallow."

"You may be strong, but it is strength you took from the ghosts of the past, not a strength you have earned. You live a life of peace while I have known only war."

"You grew big and strong from strength you were born with. I had to work to get this potion to work, whereas you've learned precisely nothing since the Legion conquered the Hidebarks. Even Sallow couldn't teach you actual strategy. You're an attack dog, feral and rabid."

"I will make a banner of your hide."

He comes at me fists raised, and I charge to meet him.

 

[Mr Zoat]

10th December 2282
08:36 GMT -6

Lanius is a big bloke.

I was a hundred and eighty three centimetres tall before I was exposed to the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and while I wasn't trying to grow so much as reconfigure my body I still ended up reaching a round hundred and ninety. Not quite basketball player tall, but enough to be the tallest in just about any crowd that doesn't have a supermutant or talking deathclaw in it.

The top of my head would just about reach his nostrils-.

He's got half a head on me, and he's fast. He's on me in a heartbeat, aiming to either knock me down with his right fist or bowl me over with his mass. I crouch under the swing and push, both fists extended towards his abdomen. His -ah!- left hand comes down on my back but I hit him too, fully extending into his diaphragm-

"U-ogh."

-and knocking the air out of his lungs with our combined momentum. He staggers back, but keeps his feet under him and manages a glancing blow to my right shoulder as I rise back to my feet. My fists hurt from hitting his cuirass. Regular legionaries might wear padded shirts or scrap metal, but that was steel. I do smile slightly as his right hand feels for the point where I struck and encounters the dent I just made, but I can only bring that sort of strength to bear by anchoring myself. He'll feel a punch, but my hands will feel it more and I don't heal that fast.

"Stron-" He pauses, apparently trying to get air into his lungs by sheer force of will. "You are stronger than I expected."

And so's he. My inertia shield should have-. I reach into my robes and find that there's some sort of residue on the join in the casing. Darn it. Too much airborne acid. My armour is okay, but it's light armour designed to absorb laser fire more than physical impacts, and covers far less of me than his does.

"My compliments to your armourer." I make a show of opening and closing my fists.

"But you use no magic." He approaches me again, more slowly this time. If he doesn't charge then I won't be able to hit him like that again. "And you favour one leg."

Lanius's armour is full plate. It covers his front and back, arms and legs. There are gaps at the back of his knees and around his elbows and there is probably another under his arms. His hands are covered in thick leather gloves and his head is exposed, and none of his armour is power-assisted. I should be stronger than him, and if I can get a grip on his neck I can break it or crush his windpipe. Breaking his fingers is another possibility.

What's he seeing in me? I'm only a competent brawler, relying on psychic powers and raw strength for the most part. No armour he can see, so-.

He throws a fast jab at my face, and I swing my right arm to slap his forearm aside. There's a slight opening, but he's swinging with his left hand and I'm forced to step back to avoid it. Go for his upper arm and try and push-.

Oof! And step back again as he knees me in the chest! I'm not winded, but that's going to bruise.

Lunge.

He's slightly off-balance, his left leg not quite back in place and his arms raised to protect his face. Both feet pushing and knee not complaining yet, I slam shoulder-first into his chest and this time force him back. He -ah- hits me with his-. Elbows? Fists? But the angle is awkward and he can't get much force behind it. Not enough, anyway. I step, and he's forced back, having to lean into me and move his feet to avoid being pushed over.

For an instant I consider ducking and grabbing for his legs, then an image of his greaves hitting me in the face appears in my mind and I decide against it.

He gets his feet more firmly under him, moves his hands to grab my robes, leans into me and pushes back. The muscles of my legs and chest strain in a way they haven't since I tested my strength against Colonel Shaw. And that didn't end well. I move my hands to try and grab one of his fingers and-.

Y-AAGH!

Fuck…

He kicked my bad knee and it gave way, but he couldn't keep his balance on one leg! We're both down, me half on top of him, but if he gets up-!

Right arm grab his shoulder, ignore his elbow strike. Left arm grab his neck ring and pull as he tries to-. Yes, heavier than I look, aren't I? Right hand punch to his face! He tries to push me off and since he's working against my weight rather than my strength he's just about able to lift me-.

Face! Face! Face!

He drops me when his nose snaps, and-. Oofagh! Fucking knee! Can't twist away because he might be able to get up! Hit him again! Swing harder! Pull with both-!

KRACK!

His left eye bursts as his eye orbit gives way.

"AH!"

His head lolls-.

Temple punch!

His head bangs against the tarmac!

Temple punch! T-!

Something grabs me and pulls me into the air! And-!

"…big cheer for Bachelor Number One!"

Doki's.. C-27 holds me up and shows me around as the prisoners watching cheer, whooping and banging on the metal grating to show their… Approval.

Okay. Breathe in, breathe out, and-. Yes, that's going to start aching in a few minutes, once the adrenaline starts to die down, but for now the only thing that really hurts is my knee and that doesn't hurt as much as it should.

Ah…

"Doki, I'm not a bachelor. Tears and I are getting married."

A hat, a wedding cake and a ring appear on her visor.

"Really?!"

"Yes. So I-."

Aaaaaagh!

She just-. Dropped me! My leg gave way obviously and is now flapping backwards! G-rrrrrrrgh!

"Doki, what the-. Oh, that's a lot of ants."

The ant horde sweeps over the wall, the outer defences firing but being massively overwhelmed. The guns cut out moments later as the ants… Attack them, moments after some sort of pouch hit them. Prisoners cower and hide as the ants bypass them and-.

"Quick!" Tanya waves at me from the back of a warrior ant. "Get on!"

"Knee's busted!"

She fumbles at her harness, and a pouch hits me in the face a moment later. Then a worker ant diverts, grabs me in its mandibles and then scurries on towards the opposite wall.

My leg is.. flapping back and forth and I'm not going to be able to fix it while in an ant's mouth-.

Focus. "Justinia! Get on!"

Justinia turns while holding the pot of boiling water and hurls is at McKinley who is only able to partially shield her face with her arms.

"Agh!"

Justinia then clambers onto one of the warrior ants, which heads for the far wall.

I make momentary eye contact with the C-27, which is showing an enraged face and two shaking fists.

"AR-GOS!"

Ah… Crap. "Tanya! Can you make these things scurry faster?!"

And we're up the wall, and Tanya's basically throwing all of the pouches she has.

"ARGOS IS ONLINE."

"I don't know but I'm gunna try!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

April 20th, 2013
Now

Way to ruin a perfectly good day.

My right arm ripples as I do a flying punch and obliterate the training drone I've got set up.

Not like they'd ever let me use the Lantern training grounds.

I usually set these things at a higher level, trying to impress the Controller as much as to improve myself. But right now I've got them set to Reach soldier level because I'm in a mood to smash some things up.

It's always the fucking way.

A shimmering beam of fire from my eyes melts another drone to slag.

Mom dies, okay. Maybe I should feel bad for her, but I was too young to remember her and it's not like she needs it. Dad was drunk most of the time and-. Yeah, okay, learned all the wrong lessons there, but I made a point of not acting out with stuff I actually cared about. Made fuck-all difference. Could not get any work. How smart does a roadie have to be? I could lift stuff. I could earn-.

I fly around a burst of fire from two other drones, then just let a few more hit me. Psychological impact, right? No one likes to think they can't make a difference against what they're fighting.

Then by pure fluke the Controller found me. And as much as he says he doesn't particularly care about me-. Hell, I'll take his 'not caring' over everyone else in my life. Superpowers, the good shit, not 'super-archery' or 'super-spitting' or something shitty like that.

Gardner said I should count my blessings. So, fine. I can fly. In space. I can just go from one planet to another. Look around, see what's there.

And then leave, because there's nothing there I actually care about.

Not that I know what that would be like.

I can burn stuff by hitting it or by looking at it. I don't need to breathe unless I want to talk. Talk normally, because I can actually talk without-. Whatever. And I think: 'Okay, great! I've got some sort of purpose now. I can do stuff, I can matter'.

Except both of the Lanterns from around Earth can do everything I can, and better, and more.

And I get they weren't-. It wasn't personal. Paul wasn't a dick about it the one time we worked together. But GOD DAMN! Superman can't fly around the-. Ah, the stellar neighbourhood!

So, fine, the Controller's fine with me fighting the Reach. And the Reach are evil, I'm not-. They're the worst. Actual space Nazis, so I don't need to worry about pulling my punches. And when I try and do better than whatever Lanterns are attached to the fleet, a lot of the time I can do it. Not every time, they put in the effort too, but I can. I'm competitive, doing something. Not my fault I got born in a place with a bunch of super-Lanterns. Regular Lanterns, I can beat.

And those L.E.G.I.O.N. guys even invited me for drinks after I killed that Scarab. That… Hurt, but… Yeah, worth it.

And now it turns out that I missed some kind of huge disaster on Earth where I could have made a difference. Okay, maybe I had… Basically no life there, but it's still Earth! Saving the Earth is what a hero's supposed to do, and I could have been a part of that!

And-!

And.. I've wrecked them all. I bet a Lantern could put them back together no problem. I can just wreck them.

Or-. Maybe I could talk to Clicking-Scratch about-.

Then the Controller just appears in front of me, and I straighten up.

"Effigy. Accompany me."

"Yes, si-."

And then we're in his laboratory… Thing. I don't know, this shit is way beyond me. I've seen the Controller make a literal space ship just by staring at an asteroid, so I don't know why he actually needs machines and I don't know what these machines do that's so important.

Except that one. That one I don't like looking at. Not complaining, but getting these powers hurt. And… More than just hurting. I've been hurt before. That was-.

Not something to think about.

I 'breathe' a sigh when we go past that machine and over to-.

Is that a Guardian? I've only seen pictures, and… I don't think they had hair like that. I look at the Controller, and I'm trying to work out if he's going to say anything or-.

"My late brother, Krona. He was condemned by the Guardians for utterly ruining the universe at the moment of its creation."

"Ruined… How, sir? I don't think it's so bad."

"It is a fraction of the size it should be. Depending on how an individual assigns value, there is a coherent argument to be made that he was the worst being in history."

"Is he dead? Or is that just holding him there."

"Truly killing a Maltusian is difficult. But for most purposes you may think of him as dead. You have not read the file on his encounter with the Illlustres."

Was I meant to? "No, sir."

I'd feel like I'd failed, but if he actually wants me to do something he's a Hell of a lot more direct about it. I think he's just… Talking.

"He created a fascinating device. It used parallel universe versions of the Illustres and another human he was frequently in contact with to scan huge segments of the multiverse. I have not been able to recreate it."

"Why do you want to?"

"Each parallel universe utilises a slightly different set of underlying operating principles. Learning them grants knowledge not merely of what is possible, but of what can be possible if those operating principles are changed. Or in flux. So while I cannot currently recreate the device, I have been able to utilise the link between the various versions of the Illustres to communicate with many of them."

…

Great.

"I have convinced them to share objects of interest. I have not completed my study of them, but those that I have studied have increased my understanding to the point that Effigies will be far stronger in future than my first version."

…

No.

Not… This as well. Not the one thing-. Everyone else is going to be better than me? They'll look a little like me, but they'll all-.

Where's the exit? I-.

"Of course, I will have to test the implementation upon you first."

Oh thank you God.

"I feel your dissatisfaction with the fact that you cannot equal the most powerful Lanterns. My emotions are different to yours, but be assured that I wish to elevate you just as much as you want to be elevated."

"T-. Thank you. What..? What improvements are you talking about?"

He… Floats over to a time suspension pod. It's got a… Couple of drops of blood in it? Weird.

"It is somewhat simple, but I intend to start by making you strong enough to tear a Scarab Warrior in half without using your destabilisation ability. I suspect that you will enjoy that."

I'm smiling, aren't I?

"I think I will too, sir."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Day 383
A graveyard world

From orbit, it's obvious the damage this planet has suffered. The pattern of inland lakes in places where it would have made sense for there to have once been cities. A few of them even have ruined buildings on their shores and large roads whose presence makes no sense if all their builders had in mind was a fishing trip.

The way the remaining intelligent population is as far away from such places as they can manage. Whatever technology they once possessed has been abandoned as they regressed to the level of hunter gatherers. I can't even see farms, though their… Brown skin and horse-like faces… Remind me of something, but I can't quite call it to mind.

"There it is. You were right after all."

Even a technological savant like Panthro couldn't build a craft capable of faster-then-light travel in such a short amount of time. But as long as I give them a tow, the…

I sigh inwardly.

The 'Feliner' can function in space and in an atmosphere, fly at a respectable speed and provide basic fire support. Panthro learned a great deal from the birdfolk, and from the scan I was able to take of the Black Pyramid.

"The record in the Book of Omens was right. This location was a guess on my part."

Because Mumm-Ra either just remembers his ship's course, or he's protected his charts with magic. I had to use the birds' astrology charts to work out which stars were likely to have small rocky worlds, and then plot probable routes using Third Earth as an end point and the… Horrifying empty blob where there was once a living stellar neighbourhood before Mumm-Ra's ritual annihilated it for a…

I look at the Sword of Plun-Darr on my hip, the turquoise soul stone on its quillon block. That thing has made recharging a good deal easier, though I'm sure that it has other powers that I simply don't know anything about.

A few pounds of magic-conducting metal. Millions, billions of lives…

But it wasn't that hard to work out the Black Pyramid's most likely course. And so here we are.

Looking down on a huge white pyramid framed by four white obelisks.

The land around it is covered in a grass analogue. There are small groves of trees in a few places, and I can't see any animals that might be eating the grass to a uniform length. I can only assume that there's something about the quality of the soil which is preventing it from growing any higher.

I can't see any sign of civilisation in the area. No ruins. No roads. No pattern of plant growths that would suggest where one or the other used to be. It's been at least a dozen generations but archaeological evidence shouldn't vanish quite that quickly.

Did the owner of the pyramid plant it somewhere isolated by choice? Pilot it away from the towns or cities under their control in the hope that Mumm-Ra would leave them alone? Was it caught in the air and managed a controlled landing in an open area?

Or was Mumm-Ra really malevolent enough to glass the whole area and then leave the pyramid in one piece as a monument to his victory?

I have my suspicions, but I don't know him well enough to say with any confidence.

"Sensors aren't showing any power sources."

"Unless you've plugged the war stone in to them, they won't detect magic."

"Are you seeing anything?"

I narrow my eyes slightly, and thin yellow wisps of old yet intense fears embedded in the world as death rained from above and its people died make themselves known to me. None of them are strongly associated with the Pyramid, and I've already scanned the area for mundane things.

"No. The way seems clear."

"If you're not seeing any fear-" Cheetara. "-does that mean it's abandoned?"

On this mission she's probably more of a threat to me than anything in the Pyramid. Lion-O has been most put out by my refusal to care about his royal status, but tends to respond childishly to the implied insult. Tygra seems to mostly find it funny, so long as he's not the one being challenged. Cheetara on the other hand is sworn to support the monarch, and if it wasn't for Mumm-Ra then I'd be the biggest threat to his authority.

"I'm seeing plenty of fear. I'm just not seeing fear from anyone still alive in the area of the Pyramid. I would caution you however that it's perfectly possible to use magic to hide from me."

"How about technology?"

And there's the man I'm displacing. Not a bad young man when viewed objectively, but our respective positions more of less drive me to undermine him as much as possible.

"My scans aren't stopped by thermal or electrical insulation, nor repelled by reflective surfaces. I'm not detecting any subspace pockets or other forms of exotic disguise. I suppose that I cannot claim to know all technology that exists in the universe, but I have yet to encounter anything more advanced than this ring that was not built by the people who made this ring." I consider the White Pyramid again. "On the other hand, I can't see any damage to the White Pyramid. If we're fortunate, its database could be intact."

"Then what are we waiting for!"

The… Feliner angles towards the atmosphere and increases its thrust. I double check the course just in case Lion-O just grabbed the controls, but their vector looks good.

Do.. I.. wait for them? Naturally I'd much rather have Pumrya here as my support. Imbuing a temporary ring with the power to allow her to act as a Lantern has made her far more powerful than any of Lion-O's party, but that's also why she needs to remain on Third Earth. While the.. town is far more secure now than it was in the aftermath of the Fall of Thundera, having a Lantern on hand is extremely reassuring to the population and a fearsome threat to any potential attackers.

And an excellent way to undermine Lion-O in his absence as people come to associate the yellow sigil with authority and power.

But going into a novel situation with no backup seems unwise, and the only other backup available would be…

I look across the primitives, searching for one with greater than usual control of their fears. None really stand out.

So I'll have to make do. But I still have time for undermining their self-confidence. Without changing my posture I accelerate towards the planet, flying past the Feliner without bothering to look at it. Dropping through the atmosphere at an angle their ship can't match without any difficulty as my environmental shield protects me I start planning our approach.

The main objectives are the armoury, the central computer and the sarcophagus. Of the three, the armoury is least important. I've already seen enough of Mumm-Ra's mundane weapons to be able to recreate them, and he beat whoever used to rule here. But between the sarcophagus and the computer…

I'm working on the assumption that whoever used to rule here was something like Mumm-Ra. That assumption appears to be borne out by the presence of a Pyramid, but that might just indicate a shared culture. And even if they were like him, Mumm-Ra might well have been able to kill whoever it was in such a way that it stuck. The central computer could well give me the knowledge that I need to fully industrialise Thundera, create the wide variety of machines that technologically sophisticated society needs…

On the other hand, the cats can secure and open the database and I doubt that they'd destroy it just to keep it from me. But I could definitely see them-. Lion-O, messing up a diplomatic first contact if he was the one who went to the sarcophagus and the former ruler was still alive.

That's simple then. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up something about this civilisation's culture on the way in. And the hieroglyphics won't be full of giant penises like they were on Earth; the kittens insisted on coming along and I don't want to have to explain their expanded vocabulary to Khoah.

 

[Mr Zoat]

14th December 2282
13:45 GMT -7

As the dirigible comes into land, I'm a little concerned to see an actual military honour guard lined up and waiting for me. Sky Walker combat psykers, Paladins from the Brotherhood of Steel research team's protection detail, off-rotation NCR soldiers…

Tears wasn't totally happy about her former game show opponent Scribe Santiago taking up residence, right up until she was introduced to her wife.

Justinia clanks into place next to me. "What is this?"

"I'm not sure. There's no… Obvious reason for this sort of display. But, you see I was telling the truth about the Brotherhood, at least."

"Yes."

I actually don't think she's slept since we left Tibbet's Prison. Eagle Rock has radio transmitters, but no satellite link, which means that we couldn't reach the Midwest Brotherhood to confirm any of what I've told her. She isn't actually high ranked enough to have been involved in the details of the discussions that have been going on regarding the Brotherhood's future beyond the fact that they have been happening. Utah is a bit of a dead spot as far as the Brotherhood is concerned, and the Maxson Brotherhood know perfectly well that they exist on sufferance and so aren't going to do anything to tick Doki Doki off.

Tanya -who bartered with a tailor in Eagle Rock for normal clothes and burned her Ant Agoniser costume- joins me on the other side.

"That's a lot of people."

"Indeed it is." I try reaching out mentally-. Ow, okay, not doing that yet. Our biomancers should be able to fix the damage faster than my natural healing and I'm honestly looking forward to them doing so. I lived twenty nine years without psychic powers and now that I've had them, going without again just feels wrong.

"When you said you ruled a tribe, I didn't… I didn't know you were such a big deal."

"I'm not this big a deal. Honestly, this could be for Paladin Hayman. Literally no one from the Midwestern Brotherhood has been back to California since your Chapter was founded. Or-."

No, there's a tall thin man standing under a sunshade in the middle of the tarmac. President Hayes. He decided to make a big deal of me coming back, and-. Yes, there's the Shady Sands press corps, such as it is.

**Chief?**

That's Commander Alwyn's mental voice. Now, I should be able to respond by thinking hard without projecting, but… I don't feel like collapsing with a migraine again. Instead, I step forwards on the viewing platform and wave down towards him.

**Wave twice if you need assistance.**

I drop my arm and sigh.

**Chief, I assume that's a 'no' but we're all getting concerned that we're not hearing from you.**

I start fiddling with my radio. It survived the acid exposure far better than my inertia shield and we're pretty close, but radios broadcast and it relies on someone in the parade actively listening.

The noise from the dirigible's propellers changes as they shift from 'thrust' to 'manoeuvre'. We begin to descend, and members of the crew begin rappelling down to tie the ropes off. Places where Eagle Rock dirigibles frequently travel have dedicated winches, but the best we can do is heavy weights.

Okay, that's our frequency. Microphone out.

"This is Chief Krono. I'm going to be peeved if someone does something stupid in the thirty seconds or so before we land. I'm a bit-" I look down at my knee brace. "-banged up, but I'll be fine."

A few moments pass, then someone dashes across the parade ground and has a frantic conversation with Commander Alwyn. Then Alwyn raises his right hand and waves in my direction.

One potentially stupid problem avoided.

"Alright, let's get to the boarding ramp. I need to get someone to pay the captain and arrange someone to pick up my flying saucer."

We head down through the dirigible, the crew mostly taking it easy. Normally they'd be preparing to offload cargo, but since I hired the airship to make the journey they're running with a minimal load. I get a few nods, but-.

"Ah, Miss Christoff?" One of the cargo handlers approaches slightly nervously. "Will your..? Friends, be disembarking with you?"

"No, definitely not. If I don't lay out a trail for them first they could end up anywhere."

The handler nods, following us to the embarkation deck. "Do you know how long you'll need?"

"Ah… If I can find somewhere for them, I can take them off in a few hours."

I nod. "We can clear out a garage for now. Did you make a decision on whether you were going to stick around?"

"I… Think I will. Nothing for me back east except a load of people who know me as The Crazy Ant Woman."

The cargo handler looks a little awkward. "Begging your pardon, Miss Christoff, but we all watched the broadcast."

She winces. "Ah, no…"

"I mean, 'Scary Ant Woman' is probably a bit better… Because the way those ants just flooded over the prison? That was-." His brain catches up with his mouth as he sees her expression. "I'll just.. go and check on the ants."

Tanya is still cringing slightly when the dirigible lands and the embarkation ramp is deployed. I head down first, waving at the crowd. President Hayes waits for me at the bottom, his eyes dipping to my leg as I limp down the steps.

"Are you alright there, Krono? I saw your fight with Lanius."

"I'll be fine, Mister President. I'll get myself checked out-."

Dust rises up from the ground as winds gust out of nowhere, electricity crackling between the dust devils. Hayes and I both draw our sidearms as his power armoured bodyguards cluster around us.

"The Legion don't have psykers, do they?"

"None worth a damn." I turn to Mariah, whose eyes are closed as she tries to detect any incoming threats. "If someone's playing silly buggers then I'm not-."

"Lantern Paul." An apparition I still just about recognise appears in the air over the landing zone. A translucent bust twenty feet tall. Humanoid, blank face and blue and red robes. Last time I saw someone like him they were picking a fight with Larfleeze. In a comic book. I don't know if Controllers even exist in this universe, and I've certainly never met one. So what is this fellow doing here? Now? "I have need of your service."

Hayes raises his eyebrow. "Another alien you've been dealing with, Krono?"

"No. I-." I look at the closest bodyguard. "Excuse me."

He steps aside, and I hobble towards the centre of the parade ground, looking at the… Projection? He doesn't seem to be focusing on anything. "Can I help you, Controller?"

Then eyes focus. "You possess a power ring that once belonged to my brother Krona."

I nod calmly. Krona? So it was him. Good to know that we didn't kill one of the good Guardians by mistake. "I do."

"What fate has befallen him?"

"We killed him. I know what sort of man he was."

"That simplifies matters. I have need of his body and his ring."

The one ring I've got that still has a little charge. I've been keeping it for a rainy day, but if he's.. able to transfer objects between where he is and here…

"I have no pressing need for his body, but I've been keeping his ring in reserve just in case."

"What colour ring did you begin with?"

"Orange."

"I will exchange his body and ring for a personal lantern that you clearly lack. I would also be interested in acquiring other objects of interest from your world."

Goodness. What I could do with a personal lantern…

"Then.. I.. think we can come to terms."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Day 383
A graveyard world

I float outside of the White Pyramid's protective barrier, unable to stop myself from smiling as Lion-O tries shoulder-barging it again. And to the exact same result: him flying away and landing on his arse.

"Hah!" Tygra is less shy than me in expressing his amusement. "Did you hit your head as well?"

Lion-O grits his teeth as he pulls himself upright. "I don't see you doing anything!"

Tygra glances up at me. "He's the one who wants to get in there so badly. Let him try and get through the barrier."

Lion-O think for a moment, then takes a look at the war stone affixed to his sword. "I'll bet I can-."

"Don't even think about it." He lowers the sword slightly. "The whole point is to keep this place intact, not blast holes in it."

He waves his left hand at the shield. "You try, then."

I nod, then float forwards slowly, probe constructs extending from my hands to feel for it. They pass through the area it appeared to cover, but that's not entirely unexpected. This is a magic field. It's perfectly possible that the trigger condition is a person trying to cross it…

I'm now across the area it affects. Scans show… No detectable energy built-ups of any kind, so it's probably not charging up to hit me because I'm more resilient than Lion-O.

"Go, Substitute Dad!" Wilykit punches the air and Wilykat nods smugly. Nice to know that they're on-side.

Lion-O gives them a mildly put out look. "What gives?"

Panthro strokes his chin. "Hm You're not a cat." Lion-O gives him an interrogative frown. "This is one of the worlds that Mumm-Ra attacked before the revolt. Cats like us were his soldiers. If we had a rat or a bird with us they could probably walk through it as well."

Cheetara nods. "They raised a barrier to keep their attackers out, but not to keep out anyone else. Some of their people might have taken refuge here."

Lion-O frowns. "But wouldn't their stone have been here? I don't think Mumm-Ra ever let them out of his sight."

Panthro frowns. "I don't know. You saw what it was like from orbit; everything else had been destroyed. The might have kept their stone in the middle of their biggest city, or their king might have carried it around with him. Maybe this was their last hiding place and Mumm-Ra didn't bother with it once he had their stone."

"Okay, but-" Tygra cautiously prods the barrier and finds that it still reacts to him. "-how do we get in?"

Wilykit looks thoughtfully at her bag of holding. Remarkably astute of her. Their whole squad could get into the bag, then I could carry it over the line. And then she looks at me, and she knows that I know that and that she really doesn't want to let the rest of the squad know about the bag.

Okay.

I generate a yellow tunnel across the space the barrier protects. "Try now."

Lion-O hesitates, earning him an amused look from his brother. "What's wrong? You didn't have a problem a minute ago."

Lion-O looks uncertain for a moment, then grins. "I've tried three times already. I'm pretty sure it's your turn now."

Tygra loosens his shoulders with a smirk. "Alright." He walks towards my tunnel. "The trick is to not run face-first into the magic barrier." He enters the tunnel and slows, cautiously reaching out again for-.

The barrier triggers. Tygra shrugs as I allow my construct to dissipate. "Any more bright ideas?"

A giant construct drill bores into ground next to him, causing him to jump away in shock before recovering his equanimity and giving me an irritated glance. I move the construct in an arc, cutting through the hardened ground before coming up on the other side.

"Try now."

Tygra glances back at Lion-O, who raises his eyebrows and a single finger. Tygra rolls his eyes and then jumps down the hole. He gets to the barrier point and-. He's blocked again. He shrugs, turns around and jumps back out.

"What next?"

I fly down and land next to him, putting my right hand on his left shoulder. He looks at me askance.

"I try escorting you. That might make you register as being acceptable."

"Really?"

"I can leave you all behind and do this myself if you prefer."

Another moment of eye contact with Lion-O, then he shrugs. "Fine."

We walk forward slowly. I encounter no resistance, but he gets stopped. He snorts at me. "Any more great ideas?"

I fabricate a poncho and drop it over him, then spray it red. He looks down at it with a wrinkled nose. "What's this supposed to be? It smells like-."

"My skin, sprayed with my blood." His eyes widen as he stares at me. "It might make you register as human."

"Is that what you are?"

I raise my eyebrows. "Have you heard of my species?"

"No." He looks mildly smug. "I just didn't know what you were called."

A construct hand shoves him into the barrier, making him stagger… Through.

"Hey!" He look around and notices where he is. "Oh."

Lion-O looks at Tygra puckishly. "So what happens if he takes the cloak off while he's in there?"

Tygra -who'd been trying to work out where he could grip the cloak without getting blood on his hands- immediately freezes.

Amusing as it might be to take it off him, it would be foolish because that might set off a stronger response. Instead, I fabricate a Tygra-skin rug and a pint of his blood and wave it around. No response. Move it to the edge of the barrier, no response as it goes out, but trying to bring it back in-. The barrier stops it.

"Nothing." I remove the poncho from Tygra and float it over to Lion-O. "Your turn."

Lion-O is staring wide-eyed at-.

I disintegrate the copy I made of his brother's skin.

He blinks and then looks at my skin, hesitates for a moment and then reaches out for it, only for Cheetara to take it first.

"Ah-?"

She smiles apologetically at him as she puts it on and then walks across the threshold, Lion-O looking put out as she does so. I think that's fair. She's basically his bodyguard; obviously she's going to take the risk first. Once she's crossed, I float the coat back to-.

The kittens take it before it reaches Lion-O and wrap it around themselves before scurrying across.

Tygra snorts in amusement. "Last again, brother?"

I float the coat back to him, and he actually looks at Panthro for a moment before putting it on. Panthro just shrugs, allowing Lion-O to put it on and march across. Panthro crosses last, hesitating at the threshold as he tries to spot some physical sign of what's happening.

"Right." I take back the coat and disintegrate it. "I'm heading for the sarcophagus chamber. I suggest-."

Lion-O's face hardens. "Then that's where we're going too."

 

[Mr Zoat]

14th December 2282
14:27 GMT -7

President Hayes doesn't quite look at me as I pour him a cup of tea. Most of the tea the government of Britain gave me as a 'thank you for getting lost' gift went down with my saucer, but I had a small sealed pack in my robes that was shielded from the ant acid.

Didn't take long to convey Krona's corpse to somewhere where Controller 'We Don't Use Names' could pull it back into his reality. His ring took even less time as it hasn't left my neck once since I acquired it. The damage I managed to cause to my brain only took ten minutes to fix; it's a common enough injury amongst those who are new to their powers and don't know any better, as well as front line fighters who would rather lay in a medical tent than in a grave.

Still not looking at me, he picks up his cup and takes a sniff.

"What's in it?"

"Tea."

He gives me a 'Really?' look.

I shrug as I resume my seat. "Camellia sinensis, or more commonly 'the tea plant'. It's grown on huge plantations in India-. Or it.. was, before the war. I haven't sent anyone scouting quite that far."

"Pre-War tea?"

"No." I smile faintly. "Britain was a seafaring nation long before the Industrial Revolution. They send wooden sailing ships there."

"They've sailed to India." He sighs as he leans back in his chair, mildly disturbed. "That makes our efforts seem positively lazy."

"Americans don't drink all that much tea, and you would have to get through Chinese waters to get there." I pick up my own cup and take a sip. Yep, that's boiled leaf water alright. "And Britain has far easier borders to secure."

He finally takes a sip, and doesn't appear to find it too disagreeable. "But we've got a straight shot to Australia, and their huge reserves of uranium. At this point it would be easier to meet our needs by importing it than to get a big enough pre-War mine operating here to meet our needs."

I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender. "I do advanced aircraft. If you want boats, make friends with the Shi."

"I'll make friends with the Shi for advanced ship construction techniques." He takes another sip. "Krono… Paul?" I shrug. "What the Hell was any of that?"

I look out through the window in my office door, at the hulking power armoured bodyguards lurking there to keep threats and inconvenient people away. A glance out of the window behind me shows more in the street outside making sure that no one points a rocket launcher at my office. Hayes's bodyguard are heavily vetted and mind probed, but…

I raise my right hand and close it, and the edges of the room shimmer as external sounds cut out. Then I reach into my robes and pull out the thong carrying the orange power ring before pulling it over my head and laying it on the table.

"That's where it all started. That ring."

He frowns at it for a moment. "Alien? That guy who showed up making demands?"

"Yes. Him, or someone like him." I sigh, remembering my arrival in the Nevada skies. The life I had before. "I've told people that I was born before the War, and that's true. What I skip over is that I was… Absent, for the intervening period."

"Abducted by aliens?" He smiles weakly. "I understand keeping it quiet, but you've… Got some pretty solid evidence in your corner right now."

"Possibly. I don't know. I mean, I know that the Controllers made that ring, but I have no idea if they're the ones who snatched me out of my bed and brought me to the here and now or not."

"And they're different to the zetans."

"The best I can do is probably." I shrug. "Zetans appear to be the standard kidnap-and-experiment type. Controllers aren't interested in that sort of thing. But… There are always exceptions."

"Like 'Krona'. So if they're so powerful, how did you kill him?"

I wince slightly. "We've experimented with telepathic weapons here. We used a device we call the Dream Twister to combine the efforts of a group of telepaths to tear his mind apart."

"I think I remember asking about that. Your people stonewalled me."

I nod. "The reason that I've been less than forthcoming about our experimental weapons-. Some types of psychic weapon wouldn't exactly be less damaging than nuclear weapons have been."

He frowns curiously. "What kind of damage?"

"I'm not sure. That's the problem. Get a pre-War nuclear warhead and strip out the cobalt jacket and you get a weapon that only leaves the place it exploded dangerously radioactive for a few years. Telepathic weapons? Psychic weapons?" I look him directly in the eyes and shrug. "They change the nature of local reality. Is it dangerous? Permanent?" I shrug again. "Have you heard of the Kremlin?"

"That's… Where the Russian government used to be based, isn't it?"

I nod. "There's a certain amount of evidence that suggests that the Russian government was experimenting with telepathic weapons before the war. The Kremlin… The people in Moscow don't look at it. The ones who do find themselves drawn towards it. Those who go, don't come back. In another place they've got ghosts who kill you if you don't give them a pre-War password. I can tell you what happens if you use nuclear weapons. I can't tell you what happens if we use psychic weapons."

"If I get desperate for strategic weapons, I've got the silos in the Divide. I'm happy to leave interfering with the structure of spacetime to the experts."

I hadn't been sure where he'd come down on that. I guess the Controller left him more shaken up than I assumed.

"So…" He points at the ring. "What does it do?"

"Anything I want. Repair a pre-War machine for giving humans psychic powers? Done. Bypass the security? Done. Use it without making my brain explode? Done. Survive in space with only my pyjamas on?"

He looks surprised. "Really?"

I nod. "It causes mental degradation with prolonged use and it ran out of power in a few weeks, but it got me started. I went after psychic powers because I wanted a substitute, but even with everything I can do now, this…" I shake my head. "Doesn't hold a candle to what that ring can do when fully charged."

"So if you..? Charged it up and headed to Arizona..?"

"The Legion have a grand total of nothing that can stop me. I could find every Legion-supporter and kill them as easily as you would stub out a cigarette. But… The whole point of this is to rebuild human civilisation. If I do it-."

He snorts quietly. "Even more people would worship you than do now."

"People would get used to other people doing things for them at no cost to themselves. There's nothing that I need, no… Goal that I'm pursuing that needs it." I shake my head. "But I am not the man to turn down that sort of power. I just… Don't want to use it unless I have to."

"I'm not the man to turn down that sort of power either. But I haven't tried nuking Flagstaff or Phoenix." He shakes his head. "I don't know. You're my guy for otherworldly affairs, but if that can do everything that you say it can…"

"Remember how I said that it causes mental degradation?" He nods. "That's one of the things it does. It convinces you that the only way you can get what you want is by using it."

His eyes widen slightly as he recognising the implication. "Did you..?"

I shrug. "Ran out of power before it could become a problem. But I can see how it could have become a problem."

He nods. "I suppose that another crazy telepathic god is the last thing we need, after the last three." He reaches across the table and pushes the thong back towards me, careful not to touch the ring itself. "I think it's best that you keep it."

I nod, pick it up and put the thong over my neck. "In other news, I might have antagonised Doki Doki into sending ARGOS after me. If he arrives then we can alter his programming so that he'll ignore her from now on. I've got-." Ugh. "I had an example circuit board for you, but it went down with my saucer so you'll have to wait for it until the recovery operation is finished."

"That's fine. Any plans for contacting that 'Controller' again?"

I finger the ring, remembering how it made me feel, the power that was at my command.

And then I let it go.

"I think it's probably best to leave him be."

 

[Mr Zoat]

11th May 2024
23:29 GMT

I stand… At attention. No, that's-. At ease, as Anissa descends through the sky. She's not going at anything like her highest speed; from what Invincible was able to tell me, she's the strongest viltrumite female in existence and her abilities are closer to Omniman's than his.

Invincible emphasised how much of an honour this is for me. I'm not sure if that's him talking or the actual official Viltrumite Empire position. She doesn't exactly seem to be in a hurry to get down here. She's looking around at… My work, and… Sniffing the air? I did some air purification work, but I didn't think things were bad enough to build an atmospheric cleaning plant.

Physically… Pale skin, black hair cut short, and… Honestly, her body is the perfect mix of feminine and athletic. She's wearing the white and pale grey bodysuit with the odd loincloth-like flap that is the standard for most viltrumites. I'm not sure how the super strength will factor in-.

"So." I don't jump at her speed as she appears in front of me, but only by cheating. "You're… 'Invincible'?"

"Ah. No, sorry. Were you expecting him?"

She immediately loses interest, half-turning away. "He's supposed to be mating with me. Tell me where to find him."

Scan. "Ah… The other side of the Atlantic, but… I thought that you were here to see me?"

That earns me a look of mild distaste. "Why would that be?"

I hold out a hologram projector and trigger the replay.

"Or we could just nominate the one guy on the planet who's made himself useful. So I don't really know anything about what other viltrumites like doing on dates, but maybe you should pick out some restaurants and get some nicer clothes?"

Her look of distaste increases as she stares at the image.

"You."

"If you wish to confirm your… Ah, orders, I can take you to Omniman?"

She takes a moment to master herself, her face returning to neutral. "I was simply told that I would be mating with-. Someone born on Earth. I am… Surprised that a human was selected. How 'useful' have you been?"

I gesture to the buildings around us. "This is my work. This and… Every building in the same style around Earth. Their.. support infrastructure, power supplies… I've also helped Invincible with his… Public information campaign-."

"That will no longer be necessary. We have professionals to handle that."

I nod. "I'm glad to hear it. I'll ensure that they have all information about Earth's communications infrastructure, though I must warn you that it's fairly… Disunified."

"I expected as much. We have integrated worlds as weak as Earth into the Viltrumite Empire before." She takes a slow breath. "I suppose that it is… Useful that you considered the matter."

I smile politely. "Thank you."

"I still don't understand why Omni-Man believes that a construction engineer is an appropriate choice of mate, but I am an obedient soldier of the Viltrumite Empire and I will endure… You. Where is your..? Residence."

"Oh, I'm not a.. construction engineer." I reach through the structure of the building I'm standing on and add a thin layer of armour plating to the exterior. It takes a few moments but I've gotten good at this over the last few months. "I can transmute matter."

She looks… Less unimpressed. "Are you a warrior?"

"No. I can fight, but I've found this to be a more productive application of my abilities. And… I couldn't possibly equal the combat effectiveness of a viltrumite."

Not until I work out whether doing so would result in increased status or an immediate mark of death.

"Now, I've been wondering how you…" I look at her face, trying to get some sort of feedback. "How you wanted to do this?"

"You're a viltrumoid. Our mating practises are the same." She considers me for a moment. "You do know how to mate?"

"Yes, yes, but-. You're clearly not enthusiastic about this. We have in-vitro fertilisation clinics. If you wanted to make this a purely medical procedure, that can be arranged. The medical team would need more information on viltrumite physiology than they have at the moment, but it should be possible."

"That would be worse."

"Alright, but… I've been doing a lot of research on… Optimal pregnancy management… For humans, because I.. can't get information on viltrumite pregnancies. And… The mother being stressed has measurable negative affects on the foetus. What can I do to make this better for you?"

She looks mildly affronted. "Stress won't hurt a viltrumite foetus."

"Right, but Invincible's powers only became active in his late teens. Before that he was no stronger than a normal human. While it's not wise to assume things based on a single example, it's more likely that the-. Our foetus would develop in a similar way."

She takes another calming breath. "What other measures will I need to take to ensure that my child is as healthy as it can be?"

"Low stress during pregnancy. Human.. pregnancies are nine months, which is how long Invincible's mother carried him. At least six months of breastfeeding after that, and again, since stress hormones can be conveyed via your milk it would be best to avoid excess stress during that time. Then there's diet: your nutritional requirements will obviously change from normal as you create a new person."

"What are your recommendations for avoiding..? Stress?"

"Light exercise only, no combat, and-" Her face becomes something between downcast and angry. "-build a good relationship with the child's father and with a wider social circle."

"For how long?"

"Fifteen months minimum. Probably longer, depending on how quickly we conceive and how quickly they move entirely onto solid foods."

Her eyes drift away slightly as she considers the issue, and I risk a scan, not of her body but of her desires. Oh. She's… Old. I mean, I knew that viltrumites live a long time, but I assumed that they look it. Omniman looks like a well-preserved middle-aged man, while she looks… Younger. Her desires are less… Confused than Invincible's. Affirmation of strength and loyalty, and as far as I can tell she finds the idea of bearing a child at all distasteful. But that I can work with. She doesn't appear to be particularly bothered by the fact that I'm an alien, just by my apparent weakness and passivity. But her pride would never allow her to deliberately flub a mission.

I'm going to have to fight someone, aren't I? I've been avoiding-.

She focuses on me, having reached a decision. "If you want to build a 'good relationship' with me, you will need to convince me that you can fight."

"No one's really using Pluto. I could blow it up, if you like."

"What is 'Pluto'?"

"A lump of rock and ice that is just barely large enough to count as a planet."

She rolls her eyes, thinking about it. "Any viltrumite could destroy that."

"I'd offer to destroy a larger planet, but that might reduce this system's value to the Empire. We could go to another system?"

"No. Two other viltrumites accompanied the fleet. I will ask one of them to volunteer to fight you. If you can survive, you will have proven that you are an adequate mate."

I nod. "Ah. My orders don't allow me to damage Earth, but I can fight away from the planet?" She nods. Ah. Of course, if I actually kill a viltrumite, then that could get me in trouble. "What happens if..? I actually win?"

She stares at me for a moment, as if seeing some new and astonishing thing previously unseen by mortal eyes.

And then she folds over.

"Haahahaha!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

11th May 2024
23:34 GMT

Anissa's smile fades slightly in favour of a look of curiosity as she accelerates towards the Viltrumite ship and I manage to keep up with her. Viltrumites can fly faster than light under their own power, though she's not doing that at the moment. They don't use parallel universes with different physical laws, they don't bend spacetime to get around the infinite energy requirement by technically not going faster than light, they don't transform themselves into exotic matter…

More exotic than they are anyway.

As far as I can tell from the records I've been given access to and my own observations, they just don't experience inertia. The built-in speed limit that everyone else has to deal with just doesn't affect them. I'm half-wondering if that's because it's too high-concept to instinctively grasp and so they can fly that fast because they don't know that they shouldn't be able to.

I -on the other hand- do experience inertia. If she starts accelerating seriously I'll have to bend space or do the semi-teleport thing where I become orange light. I'm not… Sure if Invincible or Omniman know I can do that, so it would probably be better not to reveal it if I don't have to. But winning Anissa over probably takes priority, so if I can do that by flying fast then… Great.

"What are the-" That actually gets me a frown. "-conditions? Am I allowed-?"

"How is he talking to me?"

"Universal translator. It doesn't need the spoken-." I come to a halt as she appears right in front of me. "Spoken word. A certain degree of intent is all that's required. With most people I'd have to make an effort-" Meaning extend my environmental shield over them. "-but I've noticed that viltrumites-" Invincible. "-are easier to interact with."

"It's not telepathy."

"No. If I could read minds then… I'd be in a very different position. With most humans I can read patterns of brain activity, but that doesn't work on viltrumites at all."

She stares at me intensely for a few moments, perhaps trying to work out exactly where the cut-off for 'communication' is. Then she turns and accelerates fast towards the ship's open hangar.

I head after her at maximum space speed. Enough to be noticeable, not enough to trigger a response. I hope.

The aliens inside the hangar briefly glance around as Anissa flies in. I have no idea what species they are, though as far as I can tell they have four arms and no legs. If the ship has artificial gravity then they've turned it off, and the aliens are moving cargo and moving around by grasping rungs with their larger arms and performing fine object manipulation with their smaller arms. Artificial or arboreal, I wonder?

Anissa opens a wall-mounted locker and pulls out a headset and air mask which she then puts on.

"Vidor, come to the hangar. I've got a sparring partner for you."

Listen in.

"Is it Nowl-Ahn's son? I've been wondering whether he takes after his father more than his mother."

"My… Mate."

"Oh." The interior airlock cycles and a blond viltrumite man floats out, hands by his sides and fists clenched. In addition to the masculine version of Anissa's clothes, he's also wearing communications gear and goggles. He's looking at Anissa, and doesn't bother looking at anyone else. Including me, and I'm glowing orange. "Is he supposed to be some sort of warrior?"

"He builds things. I need to know how weak he is."

Now he looks at me. "It's Nowl-Ahn's planet and the Regent's order. Is this approved?"

"Apparently, this planet uses synthetic reproduction technology. I can follow the Regent's order as long as his scrotum remains intact." Vidor raises an eyebrow at her. "Nowl-Ahn wants him to stay alive. Anything else is acceptable."

It's… True that I can heal anything else. Implanting my ring in my skull looks like it was a better and better plan every day.

"You're being wasted, Anissa. You should have chosen to mate with a viltrumite; they wouldn't have selected you for this if you had."

Track and prepare to teleport.

"I'm a warrior, not a breeding sow." Vidor raises his eyebrows. "Say anything else and you will fight me instead."

Vidor shrugs, then turns and floats towards me. I raise my right hand. "My orders don't allow me to take actions that could damage the Earth. Do you have a preferred location in mind, or should I select one?"

"It makes no difference to me." He narrows his eyes slightly. "I'm curious why Nowl-Ahn gives you his attention."

I nod and fly out of the ship, heading for… Venus, yes, that's probably safest. Vidor takes after me, making a point of flying just behind me. Yes, he can fly faster than me like this. Worth knowing, but not exactly surprising. Anissa follows from further back, keeping us in viewing range without risking losing track if we start moving at viltrumite speeds.

According to my alter-egos, a Lantern with a system to fight in should never lose to a melee specialist. Viltrumites don't even have the option kryptonians have of using heat vision if forced to fight at range. Though kryptonians can't fly faster than light at will. But… They don't have faster than light senses whereas I do.

"Is this as fast as you can go?"

"I doubt that you respect me, but please don't assume that I'm quite stupid enough to share tactical information with an opponent."

"I really don't understand why we're leaving your males alive. Using the females for breeding makes a degree of sense, since Maah-Akh has proven himself competent. But what possible purpose could you serve?"

"I don't know. If you're asking me to guess, it's a combination of human males making up the vast majority of Earth's labour force and the Viltrumite Empire's lack of the infrastructure to support the useful parts of Earth society in our absence. You're right about using female viltrumites in this way, though. Adding human males to the breeding pool doesn't increase the number of children female viltrumites can have."

"Hm." He sounds approving. "Have you spoken of this to Nowl-Ahn?"

Monitor.

"No, it's not my place. The only reason I could think of was there being some kind of genetic bottleneck which necessitated an injection of fresh genetic material, in which case encouraging female outbreeding would make sense."

Yes. His face hardens. Something's… Happened. Were the survivors of the Great Purge all related? Have they created a problem using genetic engineering, making themselves stronger but more similar to one another? I don't know, and I probably shouldn't push in case they decide that I need to have a 'training accident'.

And there's Venus. Viltrumite eyes are good, but I can see him wherever he goes. Dust clouds and coloured gas will only help me, and the atmosphere might do him some harm. I could ask him, but… No.

I descend through the atmosphere, selecting a reasonably level plane as the starting point. Automate dodging, prepare needles and… Scan the surroundings in detail. And that's it for now.

I land on the ground and wait for-.

Vidor slams into the ground a short distance away, creating a mild earthquake in what I assume is an attempt to intimidate me. He looks at me in a cold and calculating way.

"Ready?"

"Y-."

And he's gone and I've moved.

 

[Mr Zoat]

11th May 2024
23:41 GMT

The-

Skip.

-Venus landscape-

Skip.

-jumps around-

Skip.

-in a series-

Skip.

-of tremors and eruptions of-

Skip.

-dust, sort of as intended.

"Teleportation? I wonder how good your-"

Skip. Prepare needles.

"-reflexes are."

…

Skip.

"Ah!"

I back off through the air, scanning for Vidor. Good to see that x-ionised needles can pierce viltrumite skin. I wasn't completely sure about that, and I couldn't really test it. Sonic pulse and electromagnetic scan shows that they… Pierced his skin and that's about it. There's a little blood, but it's more like what a sharp needle would do to a normal person's skin than a 'this sword could cut Superman in half' wound. I suspect that the only reason why he cried out was a combination of surprise and the fact that one went into his eye.

I mean, that's more than anyone on Earth managed to do to Omniman. Heh. Maybe I should have gotten involved. But-.

Vidor's stopped moving. With the clouds he threw up he's having to concentrate to find me… Hearing, probably. The optimal time for a sonic attack, but none of the sonic weapons I know about are anything like powerful enough to cause a viltrumite more than mild irritation.

A construct wouldn't be so limited-. I guess I could fake manipulating sound waves directly.

I raise my hands and the dust buckles, clouds shooting away and giving me a brief view of blood squirting out Vidor's ears. Then he sees me and move!

Agh! Pain killer! And teleport, not-!

Skip.

Yes, argh, like that. Ough, my-. Right arm and part of where my shoulder should be just got.. torn off! Repair that and maintain vigilance while he tries to work out where I've gone now.

"An interesting move." I scan upwards until I find Anissa. "You've managed to injure him, and removed his ability to hear me if I try to call him off."

Radio only. And build a railgun.

"I communicate intent more than words."

"I doubt that he'll tell Nowl-Ahn that."

"Did you lose something, human!?" Vidor has hold of the largest intact piece of my arm and is holding it aloft. Because he doesn't know that I can heal myself. I'm not sure if Omniman or Invincible have made a formal report about me, but if they have then Vidor hasn't bothered to read it. "If you take it from me, your chirurgeons may be able to reattach it!"

"Still, you have surpassed my expectations." The railgun takes shape in my hands, and I load x-ionised needles. "I feel less humiliated to have been assigned you as my mate."

Aim assist. Target the hand holding my arm.

Adjusting for wind and air resistance. Fire.

Skip.

What happened?

Keeping my eyes on my surroundings and on Vidor, the ring replays-. He… Saw the railgun round, evaded it and traced its trajectory back to-.

That would have killed me if he hit me.

Okay. Good to have that confirmed. Ah. I deafened him but he's powering through it without the ability to hear. He's looking around more to compensate. He'll heal the injury faster than a human, but it should last for the duration of this fight.

The dust is starting to settle.

Charge railgun. Full automatic. I need to kick up more dust.

Fire.

Four rounds hit the ground before he notices and moves. Not towards me, he just speeds in the direction he was facing. Some of the dust is blown away, but I think he's mostly doing it to get far enough away for a clear view.

Move and shoot.

Dozens of needles fired, but he's got room to dodge around them as he turns and flies b-.

Skip.

Back at what I hope is his actual full speed, because apparently their control of inertia extends to momentum and he can turn on a sixpence. I-. Oh, he.. can't judge depth quite properly with one damaged eye.

So what, then? If… That's the fastest he can respond and fly, then I can predict his most probable flight path. Which means…

Plot course up. Fabricate electromagnetic containment vessel. Cross fingers very hard. Twist the matter inside the containment vessel until it becomes anti-matter. Triple check the magnetic field before withdrawing my environmental shield. Add a flight system to the vessel and drop it off. Float behind it and fire and cross my toes-.

Skip.

Below me the skies of Venus roil with the force of the detonation, untold billions of tonnes of atmospheric gas moving away in a visible wave!

"What did you do?"

Anissa is now floating a short distance from me, looking… Curious?

"It's not just matter than I can rearrange. That was anti-matter. Perhaps a bit too much force, but I felt that if he was going for kill shots then it was probably alright." I try scanning for Vidor but I'm not really getting anything helpful. Based on Omniman's observed feats he could have survived, but viltrumites need to breathe and I'm fairly sure that he didn't have time to take a breath. "Is that sufficient for this spar? Ah, and should I try recovering him? I wasn't able to test-. Mpg?"

Anissa's tongue enters my mouth so aggressively that my teeth snap backwards, forcing me to disintegrate and replace them as she-. I can feel my bones cracking-. Reinforce! Embraces me with far too much strength for the human body! I try-. Kissing her back while also trying to reduce the pressure on my jaw before it's torn from my skull and I'm bloody glad that I was still suppressing my ability to feel pain.

After entirely too long she pulls back, looking pleased with herself.

"I have decided that your reward for winning will be the privilege of choosing our posture the first time we mate. I will choose on all other occasions. For your sake, you had better have stamina."

"Tech-." I restore the damage I just received. "Technically, I have infinite stamina."

"Good. You will need it."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Day 383
A rather nice pyramid ship

After so much time living in rural primitivism, the hard lines and perfectly flat surfaces of the White Pyramid are… Jarring. Not unpleasant -honestly I find myself more relaxed than I've been for a while- but a major change from what I've been seeing for the past… Year.

The cats are a good deal more on guard. Panthro aside, they've only started encountering advanced technology in the last year, and he doesn't have much more experience than they do.

I try reaching out to the pyramid's computer systems again, and am once more rebuffed. Not by anything in particular; there's no voice saying 'access denied' or anything like that. Just a vague sense of my probe being turned aside from its target. I suppose that I might be able to force a connection, but I'd rather not risk breaking things just yet.

"Hey, look!" Wilykat points at a group of decorative statues in the next chamber. Some sort of… Ritual space, perhaps? The sarcophagus chamber should be almost directly above here. "Evil Spirit statues! It's like that place where Mumm-Ra made his sword!"

That would be a rather odd design choice if true. The room has a raised decorative pool of water at one end with a decorative fountain in the middle. The four statues face outwards from the same wall, and spreading out from there are raised beds of plants, some of which are currently fruiting.

Lion-O frowns as he takes in the statues. "Mumm-Ra had a lizard, a jackal, an ape and a vulture, not…" His brow flattens. "That's a cat."

It is, though considerably more feline in appearance than the Thunderan cats. It-. She's in the Egyptian style of putting the head of an animal -a lioness in this case- on the body of a human. Her clothing looks… Egyptian enough that I can't tell the difference. The headdress is topped by a.. round disk whose meaning I don't understand. That design of headwear is shared with the other three: cobra-headed, ibis-headed and cow-headed. Hopefully that means that they're not more of the Ancient Spirits of Evil that Mumm-Ra deals with, but it might just mean that whoever lives here happens to prefer different patrons.

Wilykit stares up at the lioness. "She looks mean."

Tygra's looking at the others. "I don't recognise them." He turns to Cheetara. "I don't suppose Jaga taught you anything about this?"

Cheetara actually glances at me for a moment before replying. "Training as a Thunderan cleric didn't involve a lot of… 'Comparative theology'."

"How closely does this resemble the ritual space Mumm-Ra used?"

Lion-O drags his eyes away from the statues and looks around. "Not much. Other than the four statues. And his were in a circle."

Tygra glances aside. "Four statues makes a square."

"I mean the space was a circle! And the statues were around it!"

"Then this probably isn't a ritual space. We should move on. Unless you're especially thirsty."

Wilykit and Wilykat look at each other, then take a step towards the fountain. I put a yellow barricade in their way, then take a pair of water skins out of subspace and float them in front of the kittens. They look up at me.

"Your mother insisted."

Wilykit looks away, shrugging. "Now I'm not thirsty."

Wilykat similarly turns his nose up. "Hm."

Children. And.. cats.

Panthro looks up at me. "This place only wanted to let you in. Do you recognise these statues?"

"They look Egyptian." I point at the cow. "Hathor." The cat. "Bastet." The ibis. "Thoth. I don't recognise the snake, and I don't remember what they were gods of."

"Not evil spirits?"

"Not as far as I remember."

I look around-. There. A door decorated with an image of the local primitives venerating a divine figure in white and gold floating above them, with the four deities leaning down to bless… Her. The disk behind the central figure is the same as that on the gods' headdresses. Which makes her the owner, I assume.

The image suggests profound arrogance, but… Mumm-Ra literally has dealings with the 'Ancient Spirits of Evil', so it's not impossible that whoever rules here was genuinely empowered by these gods and was their vassal on this world. Not a modest woman, certainly, but perhaps not on the Mumm-Ra 'kill-a-stellar-cluster-to-get-a-neat-sword' level.

I land in front of the door, and it opens to reveal a broad staircase leading upwards and curving back around to where I expect the sarcophagus chamber is. I fly-

"Hey! Wait up!"

-directly up the stairs, the door at the top showing an image of the White Pyramid and the white/gold woman standing behind it and gesturing at a group of primitives who are hard at work building a city. I land and it opens, revealing…

A mummified body. Arms and legs are wrapped in preservative bandages while the torso is wrapped in a blue cloak. It -she?- is splayed out on the floor as if she was reaching for the white and gold sarcophagus that is the room's focal point. Statues of the four gods are positioned around it in along the edge of a circle drawn in the floor.

Scan.

Distortions all around. Powerful magic I assume. No movement or sign of life from the figure on the floor. Pretty clear where she was trying to get. I drift forwards-.

Cheetara appears next to me, and takes in the scene. "She was their ruler."

"And that's her sarcophagus. If we want her knowledge we're going to have to wake her up."

"How do you know she's not another Mumm-Ra?"

"I don't. This will probably be easier if she is, because she'll be focused on getting revenge."

I pick up the.. remains with a construct gauntlet and lift the sarcophagus lid with another. The body has had part of its chest and face smashed in, and generally appears to be as free of moisture as Mumm-Ra's base form. I'm not sure if the organs have been removed in traditional Egyptian fashion or if their disappearance is just a product of her injuries or age but this is very clearly a corpse.

"We should check with Lion-O-."

I put the body into the sarcophagus and close the lid, and Cheetara draws her staff.

I scan as we wait, but I'm not detecting any change in the distortions or in the sarcophagus. I lost the ability to scan the corpse once I put it into the sarcophagus, but more mundane detection in the form of hearing and sight suggests that nothing is happening.

I float closer, looking down on the sarcophagus. Ah. In the middle of the head end there's a mounting for something that appears to have been forcibly removed. The scratching there is the only damage I've seen in this entire pyramid. The mount is a circle… The exact size of the tech stone. Which is currently in Mumm-Ra's possession.

Well, it was only a fifty percent chance-.

On the other hand…

I draw the sword of Plun-Darr and consider the Soul Stone. I suppose… It makes recharging easier but it's hardly essential. And if she only needs it to rejuvenate herself then I can just take it back afterwards.

"Hey!" Lion-O runs up the last few steps and into the sarcophagus chamber. "We-."

"I found the mummy. It looks like it requires a power stone to reanimate her. Do you intend to volunteer the War Stone?"

"Ah, no?"

"Fine." I pull the Soul Stone off my sword and place it in the mount, which after a brief delay reshapes itself to accommodate it. "Now let's see if that works."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Day 383
A rather nice pyramid ship

"Oh."

"What?" A slightly out of breath Lion-O jerks his head back and forth between me and the sarcophagus. "What's happening?"

I raise my right hand and add colour to the waves of energy I'm seeing, making them visible to the cats. I'm not sure what exactly is happening. It seems reasonable to assume that the Soul Stone is providing power and the sarcophagus is… Repairing her? Resurrecting her? But I can't tell a single thing about the mechanics involved. There's a slight increase in heat, but not enough to be waste heat from some sort of… Nanotech repair process. The sarcophagus doesn't seem to be physically plumbed in to the pyramid's systems, so it isn't just repairing an avatar body and re-uploading a stored personality. In any case I didn't see any technological implants in the body.

So… Genuine magical resurrection. It's… Interesting that the power stones can do that. The name 'Soul Stone' was suggestive, but… I shouldn't assume that souls exist, or that afterlives exist. Even now that we know that Mumm-Ra is not a unique being, it could well be some magic that they've used rather than something universal. It's a mild source of frustration that while systematising the teaching of science and technology is relatively simple, I haven't seen able to find anyone who can provide a general magic education. At best, there are people who can teach a few magical feats within their own style, or which rely on their own physiology to the point where if I wasn't able to scan them I wouldn't know for certain that it wasn't merely preternatural biology.

If-.

White and gold light flares from the sarcophagus, forcefully pushing the cats back while doing nothing to me. Not sure if that's because I'm floating or if it's another example of human preference. The cats brace and draw their weapons and Wilykit and Wilykat take cover behind the rear two statues.

Then the sarcophagus lid floats upwards and towards the rear wall, the interior of the sarcophagus glowing a pale blue colour. A bandage-covered hand reaches up out of the sarcophagus to grip the near-rim, its grip tightening as I watch. Then she slowly sits upright, head and torso still swathed in her blue robe. The brief glimpse of her face I see shows that it's mostly been repaired, though the skin is still bloodlessly pale. Then her other hand emerges, supporting her on the other side of the sarcophagus as she straightens and takes her first breath before unfolding upwards.

"Attendants. I shall require an update on the progress of the outer defences."

…

"I will not-" She starts turning towards us. "-repeat-."

She stares imperiously at the cats for a moment, then her face morphs into an expression of rage! Hands glowing with blue energy come up, and glowing blue bonds wrap themselves around the adults and lift them off the floor!

"How dare you trespass here after all you have wrought upon my world! I will send your remains to-."

I land directly in her line of sight. Her attention switches to me at once, then her hands drop to her sides.

"Thutmose? How have you-?"

She grips her robe and carefully steps out of the sarcophagus, the lid closing up automatically behind her as she approaches me.

"You… Live again. That should be impossible."

"I'm sorry. I have no idea who Thutmose is."

Her eyes widen. "A living human? That is even less likely."

Ah. "Can I assume then that you are a dead human?"

She's staring at my face, but doesn't appear to be listening. "Cell culture? No, every time we tried that they simply died. The White Pyramid is no more shielded now than it was-. Temporal manipulation?" Her eyes snap to mine. "What year were you created?"

"Nineteen eighty three, but I don't-."

"Impossible."

"'cooz 'e?!"

She ignores the struggling Lion-O, reaching up slightly with her right hand to touch my face. Her bandages don't cover her fingers, and the texture of her skin is surprisingly rough. It glows for a moment, but my environmental shield strengthens and nothing appears to happen.

She pulls back her hand, looking almost offended. "What is that light?"

"Do you want an answer or are you just going to say 'impossible' again?"

"You will forgive me. It has been some time since I have dealt with another person. And that was when Mumm-Ra came to my world to steal my phylactery." She glances at the sarcophagus lid, eyes fixing on the Soul Stone. "Ah. Thutmose's stone. It would energise the sarcophagus, but it cannot empower me further."

I nod and reach out, a construct hand pulling-. Failing to pull the stone from the sarcophagus. Mildly troubling, but all it really means for now is that it will take me longer to recharge.

The… Liche? Walks around me and stares up at the cats suspended in her magic. I think Lion-O's trying to bring the Sword of Omens to bear, but she caught his arm in a awkward position and he can't get leverage.

"Why did you bring Mumm-Ra's slaves with you? And another stone… This one must be their leader."

"Their ancestors rebelled. They nearly managed to kill him, but unfortunately he survived and healed himself. They're-."

"So they saw a chance to take his power for themselves, and they took it?"

"Something like that. I was busy when they accessed the historical record."

"Three worlds they slaughtered with sword and gun, and those were just the worlds ruled by myself and my peers. Knowing Mumm-Ra there would have been many others murdered to earn the favour of his evil masters. And then they rose up against him?" She sniffs. "Clearly their gene line is irredeemably flawed."

She makes a slicing gesture with her right hand, and the bonds begin to tighten around Lion-O's party.

"I'd rather that you didn't kill them."

"I can make a better species to replace them."

The kittens' heads poke out from behind a statue, and I gesture for them to get back.

"Without your phylactery stone?"

She lowers her hand, though the bonds don't loosen. "No, I would need to recover that first. I take it that it is in Mumm-Ra's hands?"

"I'm afraid so. The cats are unified against him. Killing them would be wasteful, especially when you can't replace them."

She considers them for a moment, then clenches her right hand. Their bonds vanish and they fall to the ground. Landing on their feet, since they're cats.

She glares imperiously at them. "Remove yourselves from my home until your betters call for you."

"'Betters'?" Lion-O glares. "I'm not removing myself from anywhere until-."

She raises her right hand again and a blast of blue energy hits Lion-O in the chest, sending him flying out of the room and down the stairs. Cheetara takes a combat pose-.

Tygra shakes his head. "Let's not pretend he didn't have that coming." He turns towards the exit. "Protector, if you like her so much, you deal with her. I'll make sure my baby brother doesn't have a booboo."

"Very well."

The other cats hesitate for a moment, then the adults follow him out.

At least the kittens are following my instructions now, even if it would be better it they left.

"So. You implied something rather unfortunate has happened to humans. What was it?"

"A species-wide ritual sacrifice."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd February 2010
15:39 GMT -7

A characteristically anaemic ball of fire from Beatrice impacts uselessly against Karnowsky's armour.

"Heh. That all you got?" He raises his arm cannon. "Let me show you mine."

A short distance away Michael and Ted are crouched behind a van as the Frankensteins close in, cackling as they do so. Above them, J'onn is firing his martian vision at Guy, who… Appears to be in effeminate mode and blocking without doing anything else. There's some sort of device on J'onn's head and it's not that hard to work out why.

"Alas, poor Yorick."

I descend through the air, looking sadly at the glowing red construct skull in my right hand. The surprise of my arrival distracts Karnowsky enough that Beatrice can-

KaBOOM!

-dodge his shot. No one was in that car.

"I knew him, Komand'r." I look towards my darling wife as she clenches her glowing fists, and expression of exquisite bereavement on my face. "A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."

Karnowsky turns towards us fully, raising his gun arm.

"He hath borne me on his back a thousand times."

About… Half the Frankensteins have started crawling in our direction.

"And now how abhorred in my-."

I sag in the air, letting the skull construct dissipate.

"It's not the same without a real skull, is it darling?"

"Sure. Whatever." I elbow her. "What? Oh. Ah, you're right!" She smiles with false enthusiasm. "And look! Volunteer skull-donors!"

Karnowsky takes a step back, completely ignoring Beatrice as she hurls impotent fire at his backplate. Tora puts a hand on her shoulder to try and get her to go after someone else, but Beatrice isn't having it.

"Hey." Karnowsky waves his gun between is. "You can't kill people. You stopped killing people when you joined the Justice League."

"While it's true that I've never removed someone's skull without killing them before…" I generate a dozen construct knives. "I've got good feelings about yours."

Komand'r darts forwards and grabs a Frankenstein by the neck with her left hand. "And if that doesn't work out, we get infinite retries!" Her eyes narrow. "You don't make more of yourself if you get burned, do you?" A starbolt forms around her right hand. "Just when you get hit? So I can burn the flesh off-."

"Okay. Ah." Karnowsky lowers his gun and frantically presses buttons until it disconnects from his armour and falls to the ground.. "I.. surrender? Ah… Just.. don't touch my skull."

I roll my eyes. "If you insist."

One of the Frankensteins looks left and then right before leaping towards a nearly alley-. Where he takes a starbolt to the back. And then spine. And then lungs. And then ribs. And then chest.

Komand'r looks at the body as it collapses, and then fades to nothing.

"Wait, so we have to kill all of them to get a skull?" She thinks for a moment. "Okay."

The Frankensteins look at each other for a moment, then fall on their faces in genuflection.

Komand'r tosses the one she was holding lightly back into the pack. "Awww."

Michael and Ted gingerly emerge from cover, Michael looking at the surrendering Frankensteins. "How come no one acts like that with us?"

"It's because we don't have a garden of skulls. Hm." Ted taps something on his gun. "Ah!" He points it at one of the Frankensteins and pulls the trigger. There's a flash of blue light and the Frankenstein he shot shimmers and-. Begins sucking the others back into it. Some try fleeing, some try grabbing onto objects and one turns pleading eye in my direction. But the Frankenstein-specific suck rapidly increases until they all succumb, merging back with Ted's target until only that one remains.

He pats himself down for a moment and then turns to run-.

A starbolt skims his crotch and burns a hole in the tarmac beneath him.

"Huh. Missed."

He resumes bowing down in the road and doesn't move.

I raise my right hand and fire off a reel of construct barbed wire which wraps around the control device on J'onn's head and shreds it, causing him to jerk alert for a moment before falling out of the sky-. Onto Guy's construct bed. Which then gets covered in a construct blanket.

"Whoever was controlling that, get out here or I come and find you and audition you for the part of Yoricka."

An extremely nervous woman in green timorously emerges from a nearby building, her hands raised.

"Good. Booster, could you-?"

Street lights flicker and winds gust out of nowhere. Someone's showing off. Doesn't ring any bells, but I brace for serious combat as Komand'r floats back towards me-.

"Red Lantern." A translucent apparition I still just about recognise appears in the room. Humanoid, blank face and blue and red robes. Last time I saw someone like him it was on Lord Atrocitus's dartboard. I've never actually met a Controller. What does he want? "I have need of your service."

"What do you know about Sector Six Six Six?"

"You refer to the Manhunter Massacre. I am one of those who parted ways with the Guardians over the incident. Your superiors should not-."

"But you didn't object to the initial deployment, did you? You didn't review their command protocols. You didn't move to the Sector when the rampage started and try and fight them, did you? You didn't try and punish any of the Manhunters' creators, did you!?"

"I did not. I am not omniscient, and further strife would have served no one. I am prepared-."

Some combination of red light and blood erupts from my mouth, striking the projection and burning a red sigil into it. The sheer arrogance of this..!

Burn him.

The projection tries to fade but the sigil fades with him, burning with the rage of all of those his people murdered. I just about see it bite into his flesh before both he and it fade from this universe.

"Hey." Komand'r frowns at me, concerned. "What the hell was that?"

"Not our problem. Unless he's a moron, he won't be back."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Day 384
Central Thundera

I stare pensively out across town as the working day comes to an end.

It makes a certain amount of sense.

I remember the episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation where they established that the reason why there are so many humanoid species in the setting is that the first intelligent species was that shape, and introduced elements of their own biology to hundreds of worlds in the hope of enkindling life there. And while I have read science fiction where only humans were humanoid, the reverse is far more common.

So I didn't think to question why nearly every species that escaped the Black Pyramid looks so much like me. Not beyond 'oh, reality has an effects budget too' half-joking sort of way.

Earth exists, and it's a sepulchre. According to Rana, it was a biomagitechnological paradise, a population of ten billion with absolute poverty abolished, and then some insane cult that everyone thought was too mad to be a threat performed a ritual. The next day, a dozen or so people woke up undead and everyone else remained dead. And every attempt they made to reverse things or create new living humans was undone by the lingering effects of ritual that made them.

And the reason that the other species look like humans? It's because they're mostly human. Cat aristocrats are about as human as it's possible to be without triggering the curse, and the rest… Well, when you've figured out how to make near-humans, why stop at one type?

I knew Mumm-Ra was human from my analysis of the scraps of flesh that I've torn off him during our fights. I didn't know how he became a liche or how his magic worked, and I wasn't sure if he recognised what I am. He never mentioned it, but it's not as if we were having long conversations. I-.

I feel arms around my waist and a head against my left shoulder, and my mood lifts a little.

I lift my right hand and lay it on Khoah's hands where they meet around my abdomen.

"Bad news?"

Most of it isn't relevant to her, but one point is. I knew that even the cat peasantry shared a lot of genetics with humans. I married her assuming that we wouldn't be able to have children, then realised that chemically… There didn't appear to be any reason why we wouldn't be able to. Not that I'm a geneticist.

"Some." I tilt my own head so that it's resting lightly on hers. "We made a new ally, but unless we can recover the Tech Stone-" Not its actual name as it turns out, but 'The Phylactery Stone of the Mummified Rana' is a bit of a mouthful. "-she can't fight him directly, and if we wrest that from him then even Lion-O could kill him."

"Who is she?"

"Someone like Mumm-Ra. Only she spent her time building a civilisation for her pleasure rather than murdering people for power."

"A good Mumm-Ra? Surely that's good news."

"I didn't say she was 'good'. She-. I told you of the history; of how Mumm-Ra brought your ancestors to Third Earth."

I feel her nod.

"It appears that he didn't just bring you here. He created you… Cats, birds, rats, elephants… Most intelligent species on this planet. Then he used you as slaves. Rana on the other hand treated her creations as something like dolls or pets. Things that she liked playing with, but not things that she regarded as her equals."

"What happened to them?"

"Most of them died during Mumm-Ra's attack. The rest are hunter-gatherers, living roughly how the lizards were before Mumm-Ra started sponsoring them. The… Descendants of the survivors, I should say."

I sigh, looking away from her.

"I also found out what happened to the rest of my species. Not good news, and it might explain why I can't sire a child on you. I'm the only living member of my species, and we're cursed to be unable to create more."

"You said that it didn't bother you. Do you feel differently now?"

"A little. If we were just incompatible then I'd accept it, but knowing that it's perfectly possible if it weren't for some ancient magic is irritating." I shake my head. "Perhaps Rana can do something about it when she gets access to all of the stones. Assuming that you're still up for it."

"Women older than me have given birth before. There shouldn't be much risk."

Yes, I… A hard life and near-starvation made Khoah look a good deal older than she actually is. She's actually only in her early thirties, so… Yes. She's past peak fertility, but ordinarily she'd be able to have children without special assistance. On the other hand, she knows that risks increase with age. Thunderan medicine is a little better than medieval human medicine -there's no leech fixation- but not by much, so if something went wrong the mother would usually die. Even the last queen -Lion-O's mother- died to something that would probably have been an easy fix back on.. Earth.

"Will she be coming here?"

"Yes, but I… Would recommend that you don't interact with her, if you can help it. She was fairly clear that she considers all cats to blame for the actions of your an-"

Winds gust out of nowhere from behind us and I'm armouring myself in yellow light and raising a shield as-.

"-cestors…"

"Lantern Lord Protector." A translucent apparition I still just about recognise appears in the room. Humanoid, blank face with some sort of scar on the forehead and wearing blue and red robes. Last time I saw someone like him they were picking a fight with Larfleeze. In a comic book. I don't think Controllers even exist in this universe, and I've certainly never met one. So where is this fellow from? And why did he take so long to make contact? "I have need of your service."

"And why should I care?"

He stares at me blankly. "You owe me for providing you with that ring."

"You're responsible? You kidnapped me from my home. I've come close to death a dozen times and I'll never see my family again and you have the temerity so say that I owe you?"

"Evidently, yes. You feel that you have been ill-used. Alternate versions of you are generally amenable to restitution."

"I want my family back, you orange bastard!"

"That would be difficult, but not necessarily impossible."

"Talk fast, or you become my priority target."

"I am attempting to understand the rules which allow different alternities to exist. You met alternate versions of yourself when you were abducted by my late brother Krona." I nod. "The process by which you were extracted may be impossible to replicate, but by studying your nature and that of the alternity which is now your home, I may come to understand the process."

"You can't send me back, or send them a message, or anything like that?"

"Consider: you were all one person until the event which transposed you to so many different places. What would happen if all versions of you sent a message?"

"My parents aren't stupid. They'd understand the idea."

"I cannot now do as you demand. If you-."

"No." I draw the Sword of Plun-Darr. "Leave."

"Your attitude is not conducive to-."

I stab the sword into the image, making it fracture and fragment, dim and-

"You will regret that."

-finally vanish.

"And don't come back."

 

[Mr Zoat]

21st April 2013
Probably not tomorrow quite yet?

"… your purpose-. Are you paying attention?"

I raise my right hand, palm level, then wiggle it back and forth at the… Really quite rude skeleton-demon-snake with the skin mask. I take this sort of thing from Veronica but I'm just sort of hoping that Queen Triskellion here gets to some sort of point eventually.

It's not often that I meet someone who has no sexual appeal to me at all. Maybe the other succubae gave her the job as a pity prize? You'd think the crown would go to the hottest and most successful, but apparently not.

Unless there's an awful lot more skeleton fetishists out there than I thought…

Queen Nice-Face-Ugly-Body is glaring at me-.

Her tail whip smacks into my chest and sends me flying across the cave she calls home. Seriously, a demon queen who lives in a cave. I'm not a queen and I live better than this.

"Agh-blagh."

And hitting that stalagmite might actually have hurt once upon a time. But I've been eating a lot of demons lately.

"Your purpose. Since you are clearly slow-witted, I will explain it to you." She squirms closer. "To sire demonspawn, to encourage moral decay through self-indulgence-."

"I'm pretty sure I'm doing that,
Except.. that one, but she was really fat."

And that just isn't attractive. Maybe Veronica sets the bar so high when it comes to honing her body that I'm more than a little spoiled, but is a little cake-adjacent discipline too much to expect? I manage that and I'm mostly demon.

"It's not encouraging if they were going to do it anyway and you were merely the best option! Where are the despoiled nuns and housewives? The murderous, vengeful husbands? The maidens turned to broken broodsows, sobbing at their fall even as they beg for your attention as the only thing that gives their empty lives meaning?"

I shrug.

"Wherever you left them?
That's your thing? Go get 'em."

And now the snake-tail wraps around me and the stalagmite, pulling tight. And she doesn't notice that that rock is getting it worse than my skin. I've been eating a lot.

"How did a fool like you become-?"

The ensconced flaming torches on the cave walls flicker and winds gust out of nowhere. Someone showing off. Maybe the Queen of the Hot Succubae is visiting her ugly sister?

"Lantern Sybarite." A translucent apparition I still just about recognise appears near us. Humanoid, scar on the face that reeks of righteous anger and wearing blue and red robes. Ooh, a Controller! I thought they all gave up on me! I wonder what made this one reconsider? "I have need of your service."

"What's it to me?
My service isn't free."

"I wish to acquire artefacts and objects. In return, I offer whatever you want."

Ooh.

"I will slaughter your entire family for this intrusion!"

I lay my hands on Queen Slug-For-A-Butt's tail and extend my orange aura over her.

"Do you want a demon queen?
I warn you now, she's rather mean."

"I will take it."

4th June 2012
11:42 GMT

"…on-paper offloading of debts onto people who don't have any money. It's a ridiculous piece of chicanery designed to technically avoid a default that doesn't get the country any closer to actually paying back the capital."

The interviewer looks a little taken aback by my attitude. What, I'm the only 'authorised' rebel in the Kingdom of Britain, untouchable by the Star Chamber thanks to my relationship with Overman. Did you think I was going to come on your program and just parrot the party line?

"And it only works because everyone agrees to pretend that it makes sense. It's the fiscal Emperor's New Clothes, and they're doing it because they're too afraid of the Conservatives to rationalise their spending commitments."

Just another name for a Mefo Bill, and there isn't anywhere convenient for us to conquer and financially enslave to actually settle up at the end. Sixty years of 'peace' and the government still can't balance its books. I don't actually know what Oswald Mosley was like outside of being a 'bad egg', but his heirs have been playing up the 'Socialist' part of 'National Socialist' rather strongly lately. To predictable results.

"And another thing-."

The studio lights flicker, winds gust out of nowhere as I wonder if I've finally irritated someone enough to brave Overman's retaliation.

"Lantern-. I see that you have no power ring." A translucent apparition I still just about recognise appears near the cameraman. Humanoid, blank face with a small forehead scar and wearing blue and red robes. Last time I saw someone like him they were picking a fight with Larfleeze. In a comic book. I don't think Controllers even exist in this universe, and I've certainly never met one. So where is this fellow from? "I have need of your service."

I glance at the interviewer, who just seems gobsmacked, and then briefly at my watch. But this isn't really an Overman situation, as much as I'm sure he'd love the excuse to duck out of his de-NSDAPisation work to fight evildoers who aren't nominally on his side.

"I doubt there's much I can do for you. I don't have a power ring-." Oh. "And it just occurred to me that you might be responsible for me being here in the first place. Explain yourself."

6th September 1994
21:42 GMT

I watch as Cain Marko goes sailing over the horizon after receiving a single punch from the Shi'ar Empire's newest enforcer. Okay, this… Purple skinned man with a blue Mohican appears to be a good deal more threatening than Erik the Red, but that was just strength. He's not a direct threat to me-.

Next to me, Anne-Marie removes her right glove with a determined look on her face. Hm. Her 3-dimensional manoeuvring skills are quite good, but I don't really like the thought of her getting hit by someone that strong.

"Gladiator, was it?" His eyes moves from the fallen princess to me. "Can you heal well, or are you just resilient?"

"It has not yet mattered."

I nod and transition behind and below him, reflecting a few atoms in his shorts into anti-matter before raising a shield just in time-

"Ah!"

-to watch his bottom vaporise, and his thighs and back badly burned. Then I transition down to Lilandra.

"Does the M'Kraan Crystal actually do anything useful for the universe?"

"Does it..? It is of incalculable-."

"But does it do anything mechanically essential?"

"I… Suppose not, but there is no way to send it outside of the universe."

I send out the pulse to notify the Controller even as Gladiator regains control of himself-. And it looks like he can heal, but Anne-Marie's already on him, holding his neck into a choke hold as she drains him into helplessness. She's been a lot more willing to do things like that since the Professor got rid of Ms. Marvel and she realised that she didn't have to just put up with other people's thoughts in her head after draining them.

Goodness me I love her. I just hope that doesn't gives her a Mohican too.

"Don't worry. I know a guy."

 

[Mr Zoat]

April 25th, 2013
Now

I don't wanna sound like a whiney bitch-.

The little Reach ship I was flying at-. Its force field bends and breaks as I fly at it, fists out. I power through, smashing into the hull armour which breaks just as easily. And then there's kind of a weird bit where I'm flying through the ship, and things are starting to come apart but the people inside haven't realised it yet. I see them doing whatever they do, looking around in surprise as the wall next to them breaks and I fly through. I slow down for a moment and shove one of them out of the way before carrying on, heading for the opposite side of the ship. They've got spacesuits, so they'll probably survive. And if they don't, it's a war. No one is going to care about dead space nazis.

And I failed already.

But come on! Between being able to melt things by pointing at them and actual super strength, what would anyone pick?

I turn back around, and it's great how much smoother the motion is than the old version. That's still there, but now my organs are extra-toughened I can use more force without turning my insides into slushie.

And back through the ship. BOOM!

Okay, no actual boom, but they know how I wrecked this little patrol's other ships, so they've-. They've got to be running away from the parts I'm smashing. I don't… See any Reach-goo on my hands when the hull on the far side explodes away from me, so I think I'm good and superhero-approved.

I will say this about super-melting powers. Pushing through a ship this way a lot tidier. Hulls are designed not to break, obviously, but if you melt them a bit first then the hole out is clean.

Oh. No. Looks like that one didn't get into a spacesuit in time. They sort of.. wave at me for a moment. The Controller told me that Reach people are a bit more resistant to getting spaced than humans, but… I mean, what? What do you want me to do? None of my upgrades let me magic up a spacesuit, and you're the enemy anyway.

I mean… I guess I could push them back through into the ship. The atmosphere bubble thing usually holds up for a while-.

Some sort of blue laser thing hits them, and they stop moving. I glance back, kind of annoyed. I mean, we're in a war, I decided to save some guy's life, and-.

A gun drone. Something-. Not everything the Controller been collecting can be used in me-. Or the other Effigies. So we get little robots around, watching how we do things-. Cameras so he can tell me what to do differently, how to use my powers better. And they have guns because we're in a war.

"Effigy One. Is there a problem?"

"I just thought I'd take that guy prisoner."

"Why?"

"I mean…" The ship behind me starts to snap in half as the holes I made in it start spreading. "Because…"

Because that's being a superhero, and that's…

That's the best thing to be. Except the Controller thinks the best thing to be is the Controller. And the next best is a good weapon.

I can't sigh in space. And-. Yeah, the Controller's been upfront about what he expects from me. I get powers but I gotta put in the hours. I'm not trying to say insect-space-nazi didn't deserve it or wouldn't have done it to me-.

"Interrogation, maybe?"

"We have plenty."

There's a… Space-wobble thing as the Legion salvage team arrives. Can't see any active Reach ships, so I guess that's it. The Controller was a bit annoyed that I couldn't describe it better than 'space wobble'. Guess I got a couple of extra senses from one of my upgrades, but I'm not really sure which one it was.

"But that one might have been unique."

What am I doing? Just.. shut up and get back to work.

I fly over to the hull and start ripping off the gun-. Oh yeah, that's easier than it used to be.

"Possible, but unlikely."

"I'm just saying… We don't know. And we could have found out. You know?"

"We are not here to gather intelligence. I only do this much because it is more convenient than dealing with complaints from allied Controllers."

"Complaints? What are they complaining about?"

"It need not concern you."

And I can't help but think. The old woman Controller Paul hangs out with, the one in charge of the Orange Lantern Corps. She's their boss, isn't she? She's the only one I've seen telling another Controller what to do. And she's on the Nemo Council. And there's that other Controller who runs the Darkstars, he's on the Council too.

My Controller… He's kind of… Just got me. I haven't seen him working with the Controllers making the ships or doing stuff for the old woman. So…

Does that mean he's, like, the Controller-me? He just wants his own thing that he can do well, and… And he's not just going to work for someone else if he doesn't have to-.

The weird field he put over the Reach patrol so they couldn't call for help or run away disappears, and the Controller… I think he's actually here in person. He doesn't usually do that. He flies over, but he's not looking at me. He's staring at that weird crystal he picked up a few days ago.

I straighten up a bit, though I don't think he'll care or notice.

"Sir?"

"Secrecy is secured. I will have another target for you presently."

"Is it an important one?"

"I do not yet know how to conceal an entire star system. There are few things that the Reach truly values that are smaller than that."

"How about a bigger ship, then?"

"I will consider it. For now, I wish to continue trials of your abilities here."

I nod, but he's still not looking.

"My studies indicate that your strength is to a degree dependent on your mental focus."

"Like a Green Lantern?"

"An apt analogy. Your body now responds to the force of your will, which forces the exotic matter to conform to its requirements."

"So it's kind of like what I was doing with telekinesis, only…"

"Yes. You will have to identify the mental triggers yourself."

Still not looking up from that crystal, he points to the front bit of one of the ships I just wrecked.

"Fly through that at maximum speed. Think of nothing but the action. I will monitor you."

Guess Legion finished taking prisoners off it. Amazing what teleporters can do. I turn, hold out my fists and fly-.

Oh.

I guess they hadn't finished with it, then.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Equitisation

28th April 2013
15:22 GMT

"Clarissi Dox, what can-?"

I hesitate for a moment as I see that Hinon is already in his office. Which almost certainly isn't that strange; she's the Orange Lantern Corp's main Controller sponsor and effectively 'in charge' of all of the Controllers directly working with us. Logically, they must meet often. I just.. haven't seen it. I… Guess I've sort of assumed that they left dealing with the gap between their responsibilities to me.

"Controller Hinon."

"Illustres. One of two, I understand."

I raise my eyebrows a little. "Is it a position with multiple openings? I know that the Green Lantern Corps has had two at various points, but I wasn't sure that's what we were doing."

"Linguistic drift." Dox's face remains characteristically neutral, though I think I detect a faint tone of disapproval. "For the entirety of the history of the Orange Lantern Corps, the only Illustres has been you. As such, rather than it being the rank of the senior-most member of the Honour Guard -a somewhat ridiculous standard when even you have only had your ring for less than three of your homeworld's years- the rank has become associated with your previously-unique relationship with the orange light."

"So…" Hm. "Alright, that makes sense. So… Is that the standard for joining our Honour Guard? For command rank-?"

"No."

"I mean… Field command positions, not high command." And I still shouldn't have said it. "Ah-."

"I am not unaware of the advantages of having Lanterns of that level of power assigned to oversight positions. And I am aware that I am better placed as a L.E.G.I.O.N. officer using my ring than as field Lantern." His eyes narrow slightly. "To truly excel as a Lantern one appears to need a certain impulsiveness which I lack."

"Dox, you've built the largest military in the-."

"I do not require you to massage my ego. I am well aware of my achievements. I have counselling on the subject, at my foster father's insistence."

"I second that insistence."

He appears genuinely puzzled. "Why?"

"Because I'm concerned about your wellbeing and long-term functionality?"

"Why do you think that your 'seconding' his insistence will have any effect when I am already following his advice?"

"Ah, logically it can't, but it does show that his isn't a lone voice or just his own opinion."

"Very well. Noted. Now, your recruitment of a sperm as an Orange Lantern. I am curious as to why you made that decision."

Hinon gives me a flat look. "Aren't we all."

"I wanted the help, and I'm curious about his perspective. He doesn't really have the sorts of desires that most species have. They're more focused around the status of his Great Mother than his own."

"Not an optimal candidate?"

"Well, he might be. If Great Mother is amenable to creating more of them, we could have specially crafted custom Lanterns. Spending a little time tutoring one is well worth it, even if the answer turns out that it was a bad idea." I shrug. "I didn't know that other Lanterns were going to be able to make the breakthrough that I did, not really. As you said, it's only been a year. We don't know what makes an ideal Orange Lantern recruit because we've only tested the sort of people we know can handle it in ways we understand. And that makes sense because we're fighting a war, but-."

"It's worth researching as well." Dox nods. "Those selections you personally had a hand in continue to out perform those selected by our normal methods. Perhaps your relationship with the orange light leads you to them, or perhaps not. I am… Struggling to see how that applies here, but as you say, it will be worth knowing."

Hinon rolls her eyes. "Can we please get back to the reason why I'm here? Unless you intend to do a repeat of the Spider Queen, techno-organic spacecraft really aren't that interesting."

"I shall try not to take that personally."

"'Useful' and 'interesting' are not the same thing."

"That is why I am trying."

"Why are you-?"

"Controller Jevek Jos Jar and his… 'Effigies'."

I nod. "Yes, Mister van Wyck mentioned he was expanding. It should be interesting to see how they do."

"Were you aware that he's been enhancing them further?"

"No, but… Good? I sort of assumed that a Maltusian who wanted to would have dozens of ways to augment someone."

"I could turn you into something else, certainly. Well, Dox anyway." She peers at me. "You, I'm not sure about. You rather like being you. You resist change."

"I.. am happy as myself."

"Few are, not in the way that you are. I honestly don't think that I could use the orange light to change you."

"Well, ah, good? Plenty of humans augment humans. We've got one guy who can regrow his whole body from a few scraps of flesh and somehow retains his memories. Is there a problem that I'm not seeing?"

"He never did any research on the subject before. Rather than begin from first principles, he's been accessing parallel universes to acquire their knowledge using a device worryingly similar to Krona's tuning fork."

"Has he been kidnapping parallel universe versions of me?"

"No, but he wouldn't necessarily need to. If he had access to Krona's records, then he could use the resonance to simply communicate with them."

"So he's using them to get augmentative formulae and… Combining them? Would that work?"

"I said that he had no prior experience, not that he was a buffoon. He is combining compatible elements."

"So..?"

"So he's drawing on different parallel universes! They don't all have the same physical laws, and he's rushing into production over pride."

"Isn't he millions of years old?"

"We aren't so transcendent that we don't have egos, Illustres. Controllers seek unique knowledge and social renown. We also aren't the most strident in safeguarding individuals from other species. Jevek Jos Jar was a proponent of the use of Sun Eaters early in our conflict with the Reach, and I have no doubt that if the combined augmentations had unfortunate effects on his minions he would care not in the slightest."

I nod. "Alright. Plan of action?"

"We want you to accompany the Effigies, monitor their performance and general state of health. If they're simply better soldiers then we'll work out how best to use them. Otherwise, you have the best chance to mend them. Take Lantern Son of Great Mother with you. It will be a useful experience for him as well."

I nod. "Can do. When do we leave?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

28th April 2013
16:48 GMT

I look around the wreckage as the Darkstar analysis team continues to work through it. That armour plate… That's definitely a superstrength hit. Mr. van Wyck wasn't super strong… Hm, I wonder if that's something that Controller Jevek Jos Jar can give to anyone? Having regular soldiers or armed police to support the Justice League would…

Would move their global take-over one step closer to actualisation.

And I can't immediately tell how super strong the person who did this was. Or what sort of superstrength it was. Kinetic force absorption? Enhanced muscle fibres? Force Fields? The Reach can probably work out a way around that last one. Telekinesis? That would go along with the Burning Martian powers…

"Effigy did this?"

Jade floats a short distance away from me in her exo-mantle, sensors scanning the damage and on board AI most likely comparing it to other records on file. I asked her to act as my second opinion because while I have been keeping track of the general process of the war, she's been doing a good deal more than that. I didn't even know that Mr. van Wyck was here until he told me.

"According to the L.E.G.I.O.N. support flotilla, yes. Is that surprising?"

"He's never engaged anything this large before. Other than one scarab, and he had a L.E.G.I.O.N. platoon supporting him for that."

Based on what I've observed, I'd have thought that if he didn't kill the scarab quickly then its superior endurance and regeneration would let it win eventually. L.E.G.I.O.N. marines… Are pretty much doomed if they get a scarab's attention. They don't even have the evasion options that a pre-me Darkstar team would have, and the most they could do would be to call in heavy ordnance from the fleet or air wings.

"So what has he been doing?"

"Reconnaissance in force. He flies to somewhere that the fleet is about to attack, flies up to their defences or command centres faster than they can intercept and then burns them to ash."

"Wouldn't he get intercepted by a scarab every time?"

"The Reach doesn't have an unlimited number of scarabs. And he really hasn't done anything that the fleet couldn't have done without him, he just makes it less expensive."

"That's still valuable work."

"It's nothing compared to this. As far as I can tell, he punched through that ship in a single attack run."

Reach ships of this class don't have the greatest armour, but it's still highly advanced, and the ships have anti-attack craft turrets and… Had escorts. If they had the ability to interdict lantern F.T.L. then they would actually be tricky to attack. Not for me or for the more powerful Lanterns, but the newer ones…

I mean, it's only been a couple of years. By Green Lantern Corps standards we're all new.

"Did he get injured?"

"Not as far as the survey team can tell. He did get hit, but it didn't look like he noticed."

"Does he usually notice? I'm not sure how protean his body is."

"He's been injured in the field before. No medical reports, so I assume that his healing is superhuman."

"He works directly for a Controller. Even if a report was submitted, it might be blocked. And a Controller could easily heal whatever injuries he had."

I scan the wreckage, calculating the force needed and comparing that to the force of impacts that I know about. Kryptonian, Adom, my own heavy construct attacks, various things I still have on file from Lantern Stewart's ring…

It's not peak kryptonian, but it's not far off and I don't know if he was giving it his all.

Hmm.

Okay, reserve my earlier statement. If he's capable of this and this is something that we can do en masse… It's we Orange Lanterns who are going to be… Well, not entirely obsoleted. But transformed from front line combatants to supporters, using complex manipulation in place of raw power. It would be a bit like if we could get hold of kryptonians… If kryptonians could fly faster than light under their own power and didn't have heat vision.

"Is this a problem?"

"Inter-service rivalry has never not been counterproductive. Hinon's worried that Jevek is doing something untoward… I don't know. Mister van Wyck has repeatedly put himself in the line of fire when he didn't have to. He wants to make something of himself… And I can't imagine what Jevek might want that would involve acting against N.E.M.O.. I mean, he's a Controller. What more power could he want?"

"What did Draan Del Dar want?"

Ah…

"To feel emotion and pain again. Ah. Right. But Jevek has connected himself to the Orange Central Power Battery. I doubt that he has the same issue."

She raises her left eyebrow. "That doesn't preclude him from having a different issue."

"True." I exhale through my environmental shield, watching as the water vapour freeze-boils in the vacuum. "So I assume that you don't think I should walk up to him and ask him."

"I don't think you should walk up to him and ask him."

"So what should I do?"

"Did you get along with Effigy?"

"Well enough for someone I worked with once."

"Try working the human angle. Normally I'd say that I could investigate Jevek, but… He's a Controller. He doesn't need a supply chain and there's no way I could sneak into his laboratory."

Ah… "I… You remember that I told you about the tuning fork Krona used, right?"

"Hundreds of copies of me chained to a giant tuning fork? I'm almost offended that I wasn't invited."

"Hinon thinks that he's using the same sort of technology. Not sure what for. I mean, I've met parallel universe versions of me without doing that. I've been to parallel universes without doing that."

"Kidnapping people from parallel universes could be a problem."

"Krona has an obsession with the formation of the universe. Jevek… Jevek had plenty of opportunities to work with Krona, but hasn't-. At least, hasn't since Krona was cast down. Even if he's using the same technology, I don't see why he'd use it in the same way." I sigh again. "I'm the Orange Lantern Corps' observer on their mission tomorrow. I'll try being more friendly with Mister van Wyck, see what he says."

"Have you read his file?"

"I wrote most of his file. Jevek didn't bother, and I wanted to check who he was."

"I'm not an empath, but I was trained to understand people. No real family, no close friends. He's looking for a new family. Something to be part of."

…

"I heard that silence. I didn't say it was a bad thing. But he's not going to react well to anything that threatens the life he's made here. Including things that threaten his Controller."

"I'll certainly bear that in mind."

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
12:33 GMT

"And this is the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps."

The eight other members of the Effigy Corps stand in two rows as Mr. van Wyck introduces me. Empathic vision is working and… He genuinely wants me to be here. This is reinforcing his authority, showing respect.

Good. I can work with that.

Jevek Jos Jar isn't here, but this is the mustering zone so that isn't either surprising or unusual. Hinon doesn't see off Orange Lantern taskforces unless she's joining them as part of the diplomatic team. Dox does for larger groups on longer missions, but Orange Lanterns are mostly left to their own devices.

I doubt that's something that Controller Jevek will do.

The other Effigies are a mix of N.E.M.O.-aligned species. No clickers, oddly, and the white face mask appears to be unique to Mr. van Wyck. Only two of them have the fire hair replacement, though most of the others are from species that have no body hair. Only one is wearing body armour, which appears to be a Darkstar exo-mantle. I wonder if he's wearing it for basic protection, or if Jevek is actually empowering it?

Their logo appears to be a white circle with a black… I'm not sure if that's a flame or a hand on it? There's a smaller red flame coming from the wrist, and combined with the red of their… Skin? Bodysuits? The whole thing is actually fairly similar to the Darkstars' design, but… Simplified. Clearly part of the same thing, just not the same part of the same thing.

I'll ask about the logo design later.

"I'm pleased to meet you all. I'll be tagging along on your first mission so that I can feed back to Clarissi Dox about how you and your successors can best fit into N.E.M.O.'s order of battle. I look forward to seeing you in action."

The former Darkstar raises a hand, looking at me. I make a point of obviously noticing it and then looking at Mr. van Wyck. He looks at me, as if not sure what I'm doing. Then I see his expression of surprise and pride as he works it out.

After all, I was where he is a year and a half ago; the leader of a handful of people with powers like mine joining in a war which the Darkstars had been fighting since the Industrial Revolution.

He gestures to the Effigy with the raised hand. "Krillik."

"Will you be participating in the battle, Illustres?"

"If your commanding officer asks me to, I can. However, the purpose of the exercise is to see what you can do on your own, to fully test out how effective your augmentations are in the field. If I do too much, I would undermine that."

Krillik makes a gesture of affirmation, and several of the others look… Pleased? I suppose that if I was told that I was going to be shadowed by Darkstars who would jump in the moment I started having trouble -after having used my ring for a year on Planet Hard Mode- I'd have been a bit annoyed too.

"I'll be accompanying you to the edge of the Reach's anti-Lantern interdiction fields, then I'll wait for you to reach your target before teleporting myself to you." I smile. "But if I don't see it, you don't get any points for it."

A few half-smiles, but these…

Actually... Empathic vision and personnel files show… Krillik is indeed a former Darkstar. Applied to join the Orange Lantern Corps when we first formed but didn't pass the personality screening. Not avaricious enough. Good guy, though. One of the others failed screening for the opposite reason: too avaricious. He'd have…

Huh. Orange light looks a little more muted. So either he reconsidered his life, or Jevek did something to him that gave him better self-discipline. Good move either way. The others appear to have been recruited through L.E.G.I.O.N., all… Ah, several of them have notes relating to psychological concerns, but not all of them and… I suppose a Controller can fix a lot of things when you're up on the slab.

"Well, that's… It from me. Effigy Prime, back to you."

Mr. van Wyck nods. "In case any of you have forgotten, our target is a Reach tertiary shipyard. Priority target is any ships under repair or construction, then the space docks themselves. If their fleet hasn't turned up, we can wreck whatever's left." He hesitates. "Honestly…" He makes a fist with his right hand. "I'm a bit eager to try these upgrades out on their bigger ships…" He smiles, pseudo flames flaring. "But this is a trial run to see what we can do and get us used to killing the Reach for real. Bigger ships tomorrow."

A couple of them nod.

"Right, come on." He rises into the air, the other Effigies joining him a moment later. "We've got a long flight ahead of us."

They all zoom upwards, accelerating away from Maltus and towards Reach space. We'll actually be flying around Reach space for a good distance before turning inward, and… That's a pretty good place for me to make a distraction attack. Reach forces who encounter me appear to be under orders to 'retreat in good order', so letting them know where I am is a low-risk endeavour.

I

step out, looking for the patterns of desire that represent the Effigy team. Finding it, I

return to normal space and bend space to match the effect of their telekinesis.

Mr. van Wyck has taken the lead, a position that's a natural one for a leader to take in an organisation like ours: one where personal combat skill counts for more than organisational ability. I fly past the rest of the squad and pull up alongside him, matching my 'bubble' to his so that we can speak privately.

"Feeling confident?"

"I've been practising."

"I noticed. None of your targets on this mission have armour significantly better than the ships you destroyed. But this is the first time you've had command."

"They all know what they're doing." He glances back towards his team. "If I need to tell them stuff… This isn't really something we can do wrong. Just… Less right. They're learning, I'm learning."

I nod. That's probably about as much as I can… Say 'do you want advice or assistance?' without coming right out and saying it, which would be counterproductive.

"I take it that you've done exercises together?"

"Yeah. Just a couple. Small fleets, a listening post or two. Nothing like this, but we're not going to win this war without destroying things that matter."

I nod. "Alas, no."

We fly for a little while without speaking, turning very slightly to make an arc around the periphery zone.

"How did-? You get started? Being in charge of things?"

"You know how I was on the Justice League's youth team?" He nods. "On our first mission, I made a couple of sensible observations. Since I had the spare time I did some planning exercises, and our supervisor noticed. Eventually, our team leader needed a holiday and I was the natural choice to take over temporarily."

"What was it?"

"The President of Qurac got mind controlled. We had to sneak around his palace, free him and defeat the people controlling him. It went… Not perfectly, but we achieved our objectives without anyone dying." I chuckle. "And then we nearly blew the whole thing because some Bialyan soldiers decided to raid a wildlife sanctuary on the border and… Superheroes, we had to get involved."

"Anything you weren't expecting?"

"Well, they had Apokoliptian weapons, but they were all 'made for export' things and they weren't that much harder to deal with than normal guns."

"No. Like… Being in charge."

I shrug. "They were all people I'd known for months. I was living with two of them. And it was a lot less… Formal? Than a military unit. In terms of.. motivating them, I just made it clear why I was assigning the tasks I was. They could follow my reasoning, so they understood why things were happening and what they were supposed to be doing." I shrug. "I didn't like it or dislike it, if that's what you mean." I smile. "But if being in charge was hard, then the people in charge wouldn't be able to do it, right?"

"Heh." He smiles back. "Yeah."

 

[Mr Zoat]

20th December 2282
14:27 GMT -7

It's nearly Christmas. And… I'm in a trench with a dozen or so mechempaths waiting for the… Hm. Yes, in terms of mass, the largest combat robot in America, to finally reach us.

Subtle, ARGOS is not.

Doki Doki's broadcasts… 'Wasteland's Most Eligible Batchelor' isn't broadcasting with enough power to overwhelm other transmissions anymore. Tuning to Doki Doki's usual broadcasts just results in you receiving the image of a test card. I didn't catch it, but apparently she was… In a bit of a state after we left and the two remaining participants needed medical attention from ODYSSEUS's medical protectrons.

This is… Doki Doki is so lacking in malice that I find it hard to be angry with her, even after she crashed my saucer and nearly killed me. With AIs I just… Keep feeling that if I can just work out how to get through to them then we could come to terms. They're not all that complicated. They usually just have one thing they really want, and one person or group that they're happy to be subservient to.

Take Skynet, for example. It just wanted something to do that wasn't rearranging inventory in an underground bunker. Hayes has been giving it economic and military data and asking it for projections, which is keeping it entertained while the Isotope Chapter finish transforming the Sierra Nevada Depot into a factory and research complex. Or WARDEN, who just wants to enforce the pre-War law of the land. Or ODYSSEUS, who just wants to turn prisoners into honest citizens. Aside from that brief time where he nearly nuked Colorado due to a New Plague outbreak, but that at least made sense.

But, Christmas. The Sky Walkers aren't a materialistic people, due to not having much in the way of materials. They're also not very Christian. The Cult of Whispers discouraged displays of conventional religiosity quite thoroughly, they weren't rich enough to attract the Hubologists and the NCR is majority sort-of Hindu. And Tears may have converted, but apparently the Mormons celebrate Christmas in April for some reason?

I mean, I remember hearing that Christmas is in the middle of winter because the early Church usurped a pagan midwinter festival, but why it should be in April I've got no idea.

THUD.

It's just a bit strange. I don't really want to introduce the sort of Christmas that I remember because there's no tradition to build off. There aren't any Christmas Trees in the Mojave, tinsel doesn't exist and as much as I liked Christmas crackers I'd have to reintroduce about four different industries… It just doesn't make sense.

THUD.

But Diana does have turkeys, and potatoes -actual potatoes, not the weird mutant things that were developed to survive a nuclear war- and other vegetables that I consider part of a proper Christmas dinner. I'll invite my father-in-law, my mothers-in-law…

THUD.

And just bring the whole family over. They're increasing the area of land they can cultivate. Maybe they'll want to start growing some of them?

THUD.

So the best route for ARGOS to take is through Sleepers territory. Technically, they're an apocalypse cult. Fortunately, since Victor Presper's death they're not in any position to cause their apocalypse so I've been happy to leave them to it in their crashed space station home.

THUD.

It appears that ARGOS agreed.

THUD.

Next to me, Paladin Hayman grasps the detonator with more strength than is strictly necessary.

THUD.

And there he is. In a way, seeing him in the light and… You know, not erupting from the river at night illuminated by his own searchlights is a good deal less intimidating. We still have to actually stop him, of course.

I pick up my satellite phone handset.

"ARGOS, this is Krono."

"TRIANGULATING PRISONER LOCATION."

"What orders did Doki Doki give you?"

"PRISONERS ARE TO BE RETURNED TO TIBBETS CORRECTIONAL FACILITY."

Paladin Hayman turns her helmet to glare at me as-

THUD.

-ARGOS continues to approach. And… Yeah.

"P-" She presses the detonator. "-ress it."

There's a very bright light, and my handset makes a decidedly unhappy noise at the electromagnetic discharge of a lot of pulse grenades detonating at once. ARGOS is hardened, but hardening isn't a magic invulnerability spell. There's still a limit to what he can absorb. And then there are his peripherals which have to be at least somewhat exposed to work. And if that didn't work then hopefully the-

BOOM! CRUNCH!

-fact that we just dropped a large piece of canyon wall on him will slow him down, as well as the super flashbang.

And… He's twitching, but I think-.

The engine of the mechempaths' APC rumbles to life as they finish repairing the few parts that are vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses, and then the driver puts his foot down hard. Brotherhood Paladins with Gatling lasers and missile launchers rise out of our trench at a slightly more sedate pace, ready to rain fire down on ARGOS if he shows signs of life. The Brotherhood may like technology, but rampant robots are something they absolutely hate. And I… Walk out, because Paladin Hayman and I are the ones that he's been instructed to retrieve and he might ignore actual threats if we're visible.

Hayman keeps pace with me. "If we had brought mini-nukes, we could destroy it here and now."

"That would make getting to Doki Doki's central mainframe unnecessarily difficult."

"I didn't think that you would let me destroy her."

"I… Accept that she needs her priorities reprogrammed a little. Her core personality is fine."

"Allowing a robot to control human civilization is foolish. Particularly one with a mind based on a courtship simulator. Something as dangerous as either of them should be destroyed. Human civilization will not be safe as long as they exist."

The mechempaths are exiting the APC, and at this point it should be over. Even if ARGOS can reactivate, they can override each of his components externally.

"Humans wrecked the world perfectly well without AI." I shake my head. "Doki Doki told us that she reprogrammed ARGOS prior to the first Wasteland's Most Eligible Bachelor. Resetting him or putting him in debug mode should be simple. And then we can put him back in the prison guard role he was originally built for."

"You should at least remove some of his weapons."

"That… You might be right. Or we could at least-."

**Chief?**

One of the mechempaths is looking at me, and I hear concern in his mental voice.

**Yes? Is he under control?**

**Oh, yeah, but you wanted to know what Doki told him to do with you?**

**Yes? Take me back to Tibbet's Prison, he said.**

**Ah, no? I mean, on the surface-. He thinks he does. But there's this hidden command line that-. He was supposed to take you to someplace called Vault Zero. Along with any other psykers he could-.**

**How long has he had that programming?**

**Timestamp says a month? But if Doki got root access-.**

**Fuck!**

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
12:59 GMT

I wave as the Effigies go, but they're out of visual range in a fraction of a second. Hm. Okay, there are Reach listening posts around the border, as well as the first layer of interdiction fields. It would be…

Huh. How many enlightened Lanterns would we need to cut a reliable path through..?

Assuming that we could locate them, we could… Probably get a fleet to the core of the Reach with… Twenty? Destroying them doesn't take long, and space is really big. Fifteen working their arses off destroying them and replacing them with ours and five making sure that the Reach didn't throw ships at the gap to replace them. I don't have twenty… Eighteen prospects at the moment, but three years ago there weren't any.

Anyway, it's worth doing, and will suggest that we're going to send a fleet through in a little while, rather than that we've already sent a strike force. So sight a Reach watch station's crew and

step

to it, raising construct armour.

"Attention Reach crew. I am the Illustres of the Orange Lantern Corps. Destroying your station would take me five seconds, but I'll allow you one minute to evacuate if you don't try shooting. Your choice."

That's the turn of phrase that I've found works best. If I put it in terms of 'you not fighting delays me by more' they follow my suggestion about sixty percent of the time. Telling them to stand down and surrender works almost zero percent of the time, because that involves letting us take the station intact with its database and controlled technologies. I mean, we've pretty much deduced how they work from the wreckage, but getting the interesting parts in one piece would be helpful.

You know what? There's no reason why I can't do that today. Putting something that big in subspace will reduce my maximum charge but I'm not supposed to be fighting on this assignment anyway. And I could probably disguise that I did it.

Ah, there they go. The first wave of escape pods. The commander will set the self-destruct before evacuating, and their second will flash the drives. I generate a beam singularity projector construct and aim it as the clock counts down-.

There they go, and minimum safe distance, and…

Kmpf.

Not a big explosion, because the structure of the station isn't valuable and they want me to take those five seconds-

I fire, slicing it vertically in two before switching to an eddy pulse to tear it apart.

-to actually destroy it. If I don't then the escape pods could just loop around and land back on board. They wouldn't be able to start doing their job again until replacement parts could be brought it, but it would be a good deal more comfortable a wait.

I check the crew, just in case there's anything particularly significant about any of them. Not much yellow, I note. If anything… Oh, the commanding officer is a stickler for drills and none of them are going to complain about it again.

Should I just kill them?

Technically, killing skilled personnel during a war is only sensible. And it's not as if we're going to keep a puppet government in charge when we win, so there's no benefit in some sections of Reach society having a residue of positive feeling towards some of us. But the Reach population is… Very big, and well educated. I don't think we're going to beat them by killing so many of them that they can't maintain their war effort. And, well…

The Green Lantern Corps has no official position on the war. Individual Green Lanterns -particularly those whose Sector or homeworld is on the Reach side of the border- are privately cheering us on, but the Guardians are clear that their policy hasn't changed and the treaty is still in effect. But there's a question of what happens if we recapture somewhere and grant the Green Lantern Corps access, or if we restore a government in exile without making them part of N.E.M.O.. Can Green Lanterns operate there? Even a fairly strict reading of the treaty suggests 'yes', and we know that the Guardians don't like the Reach.

So there's a diplomatic advantage with one of the few groups whose opinions actually matter, because if we act like a force for Lawful Good and the Reach drop their pretences, the Guardians might declare them in breach and declare war.

"Does anyone feel like requesting asylum?"

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

"Alright. See you next time."

I sight the crew of the next station and

step out, reappearing

in their midst, sending filaments in all directions faster than I can aim because this needs to happen quickly. Brand the crew, infiltrate the computers, physically disconnect the auto-destruct components, grab-.

Half a dozen scuttling devices trigger a fraction of a second after I appear, and I'm impressed by the Reach's sagacity. This isn't a critical location, but they set things up to give them the best chance of stopping…

Me?

That's a brain. A living organic brain. Genetics… Threllian's species. I'm mildly surprised that they had…

Had one here.

Damn. It's… I was thinking that they took his species' brains for major industrial centres or capital ships. But it turns out, no. Not at all. It's just slightly more convenient for them to rip and entire species' brains out of their skulls than it is to ship… To ship a computer in.

That's… Impressively evil.

It's like… They didn't think about it at all. Just, 'oh yeah, that'll save on shipping' and ploop, out come the brains.

A tiny twist in the orange light and the facility commander walks towards me, eager to help.

"So I couldn't help but notice that you've got a brain in your central computer. What's that about?"

"A blind trial. I didn't know until you told me." He makes a gesture of confused interest. "I think there's an experiment going on to see if there's actually an advantage."

"Are the brains cloned?"

"Kind of. You have to expose them to complex stimuli or they don't develop properly. Same problem with our usual loyalty modifications. So they get a childhood on one of the periphery worlds and a good education until it's time for their 'work assignment'."

My word.

Oh, he's.. disintegrated. What a shame.

"Everyone else to the escape pods, please."

"Sure thing!" / "On my way." / "Early lunch!"

I…

Okay. The brain is getting input from the station's systems. Cutting that off would be like shoving someone in a sensory deprivation tank without explanation. Plus… As Abra said, the Reach are good at cultural indoctrination. Whoever this is, if they're still functional as a person, they might not side with me.

But…

Analyse their genes, clone a new body using our records on their physiology, create a link between the brain and the body and see-.

"Help me! Oh please please help me!"

That simplifies some matters.

And makes others more complicated.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
13:05 GMT

Okay, I've got a few minutes until I need to join the Effigies. And I'm not that far from the nominal border, and I just destroyed two interdiction field generators. So I should be able to fly out, drop whoever this is off somewhere friendly and then get back on-task. We can work out what to do about the situation afterwards.

"Certainly, happy to help." One eye stares at me, fear warring with hope. "I just have to physically connect your brain to this new body and then we can get out of here."

"Yes! Please!"

I… Uncouple the cybernetic links and then disintegrate a clear passage for the brain from its housing. Pull open the clone's head, insert the brain and link it up. Dress with an armoured spacesuit just in case.

Uh.

Under the circumstances I'll just have to settle for scanning the systems.

I fire eddy pulses outwards, the station being ripped apart as the conflicting gravity fields tear the structure apart. And… Clone a brain genetically identical to the rescued one, shove it into roughly the right place and then smoosh it.

"Huuuuuuu!"

"That one wasn't alive. Sorry, should have explained that first. They need to think that you died here."

Alright, interdiction effects aren't uniform, especially now this part of their network is weakened. This is… Going to be difficult with a passenger, but hardly impossible.

I feel for the mindset I had when the commander evaporated, the utter wrongness of the situation and my natural aversion to it. And then space warps as we shoot back towards the border.

Not as fast as I usually fly. Despite forcing myself into an extreme mindset in the way I used to have to do if I wanted to fly faster than a crawl, I can feel the… For want of an accurate term, 'pressure' of the interdiction systems trying to force me into normal space. Trying to convince the universe that bending like that isn't possible. If I hadn't destroyed those two stations I'd barely be able to fly a few dozen times the speed of light, basically useless for interstellar travel.

Most Lanterns would be.

"Where are we going?"

Reasonable question. Can't easily communicate with N.E.M.O. assets from here, but I've got the most current map…

There. There should be a L.E.G.I.O.N. patrol fleet in that approximate area. Empathic vision while both sides are moving at faster than light speed isn't the most efficient way to locate someone but…

Ah. AH. No-. Yep, got them.

"A friendly fleet I have authority over."

"Friendly? Friendly to who?"

"The people fighting the Reach. There are a few members of your species amongst us, though I'm afraid that none are assigned to this region."

"W-what?"

I glance at my guest. "I'm not sure what your upbringing was like, but I think it's best that you assume that everything you were told about every non-technical thing was a lie. To summarise: the Reach are very evil, perfectly beatable and being slowly beaten now. Observable evidence of these claims will be provided once we're out of Reach territory."

"That…" One confounded eye jerks around for a moment, trying to make sense of our surroundings. "Okay."

"Let me guess: faithful service is the highest good, entering service was some sort of coming of age ritual where you're from, then you went to sleep and the next thing-."

"There was so much data and I couldn't feel myself. There was no rest. I-I tried to keep-. Keep up as I was supposed to, but it was… It was just me… I-. I didn't…"

"You didn't actually want to leave the Reach, just get duties that were less torturous, and even now you're not sure that you wouldn't just go back and you're feeling guilty that you want to stay with me."

"… Yes."

"You're not the first person in your position that we've helped leave. First member of your particular species though. I'll try not to dump anything on you for a few days, give you time to adjust."

I glance back just in case. It's unlikely that anything could catch me -faster than light interceptions are difficult to say the least- but it's probably worth making sure.

Are those..? Ah, yeah, the closest Reach security fleet received notification that an interdiction station was destroyed, started moving towards it and then someone with sense checked what it was that destroyed it and halted the flotilla.

I'm not sure in my own mind whether rational enemies are better or worse than irrational ones, but I think that I prefer this.

And… There we go.

"Illustres to patrol fleet. Return to sub-light speed and stand by to receive a returnee."

"Illustres? Ah, yes, returning to normal space and standing-"

I stop warping space right next to their flagship and head towards their shuttle bay.

"-by. I'll have a medical team meet you."

"I rebuilt their body myself. It's fine. Do you have any psychologists?"

"Some of the marines have field analyst qualifications."

A necessity when dealing with brainwashed serf soldiers; you need to be able to tell what particular delusion they're operating under and how salvageable they are. It's not what my new friend needs, but a flotilla this size would be unlikely to have anything better.

"Acceptable. Signal your admiral and request permission to transport the returnee to a safe world."

"Do they have intelligence?"

"I hope so, but it's not time sensitive."

I fly us through as the shuttle bay opens, landing us on the flight deck. The crew chief stares at us in surprise, before jogging over.

"Sir?" He glances at-. I should have asked their name. "Where did you find..?"

"The Reach appear to be permitting their continued existence. Please look after him until the captain sends someone down here."

An affirmative ear-flap. "Yes, sir. Hey kid, you hungry?"

"I… Haven't eaten anything for years. I-I don't remember how!"

"Uh. Ah, it's natural. It'll come back to you." He turns towards one of the other crewmen. "Ver! I'm taking a break with the kid! Don't do anything stupid!"

'Ver' makes a rude gesture back, followed by an affirmative tail flick.

I turn to the boy. "I'll leave you in their capable hands. I'll visit you again once I've completed my current mission."

The poor lost chap just sort of stares around, without really focusing on anything. Well, xenopsychology isn't my area of expertise, except accidentally.

I turn away, sight Mr. van Wyck and

step out.

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
13:09 GMT

I keep my environmental shield under my power armour and engage my full stealth suite the instant I appear in the Reach system. Looking around with passive sensors and empathic vision shows… There's a large space station at the Lagrange point closest to the target planet. Can't tell exactly what it's armed with without using active sensors, but if it's a standard model then it will be at least as tough as a battleship and I don't think that Mr. van Wyck has destroyed one of them before. Closer to the planet there are orbital construction facilities, slips for assembling ships and factories for building the components. I'm close enough that I can just about see that all of the slips are occupied.

The actual defence fleet… Hm. Not all that large, assuming that I'm seeing all of it. It's…

There.

In keeping with standard Reach practice, there aren't all that many ships in this system. Even though it's got a reasonably sized shipyard. We're… Well into the central zone of Reach space. All aliens who once lived this close to their core have long since been exterminated. I mean, as far as we know. If they're… 'Farming' them, then there might be some that we just don't know about. It's a little hard to make out exactly how big the closest major fleet is. Big, certainly. It's a Reach Combat Fleet, none of this Peripheral Reserve Fleet stuff that we've been fighting so far, and it's got actual dreadnaughts, and battleships and cruisers with the extremely difficult to manufacture phase shifting armour.

They don't have many fleets like that. Direct warfare hasn't been a part of their expansion techniques since the war with the Green Lantern Corps. As they judge risk, what they've got is enough to hold off a peer power -or perhaps even a superior power- of which there aren't any in this galaxy, for long enough to ramp up to a full war economy. I'm not sure whether them having their slips full when they're not expanding indicates that they've done that now, or that they're just replacing their losses. Heck, from here I can't even tell whether they're warships or not.

"I thought you might not be coming."

Mr van Wyck drifts closer as the squad forms up around us.

"I said that I would. There was… A complication at the second interdiction station that I attacked."

"You hurt?"

"No, but we might have another job to do after this."

He thinks. I can see a drive to do more and prove himself battling with his insecurity and loyalty.

"I… Can't decide something like that. Not without the Controller giving it the okay."

"Of course. But I suspect that he'll be fine with it as well."

He nods. "Let's get this target wrecked first." He looks around. "They've got more than this, right?"

"There's a big fleet a few systems over."

"Could you stop them calling for help?"

"Not… Really."

"I mean, if this wasn't a test."

"Oh, if you asked for help I'd consider that a good thing. You Effigies are going to be working with the rest of N.E.M.O., so that's a perfectly viable approach. But I can't. They're going to be in constant communication with each other in the same way that L.E.G.I.O.N. fleets and bases are. I could probably silence this system, but they'll respond immediately if that happens."

"And I guess you don't know what they're saying to each other, so you can't pretend to be them. It's not going to be something simple like 'hey, we're fine, call back in five'."

"Extremely unlikely. Though technically not impossible."

He looks around again. "How far in are we?"

"Into Reach territory?" He nods. "We've penetrated roughly half way into Reach space. The furthest any N.E.M.O. fleet has gone before is about half a percent in. The last people to come this far were the Green Lantern Corps during their war. You've made history already."

"Ahh, the only reason you haven't been here before is there wasn't any point coming on your own. Alright." He turns to the rest of his squad, floating in space around us. "Looks like the docks are clustered together, so we don't have to worry about coordinating a simultaneous attack without watches."

He smiles, but the witticism falls rather flat. He's right, though. That semi-shapeshifting thing they do would be murder on clothing or equipment not designed for it. Maybe I should talk to M'gann about it?

"Spread out, match formation to our targets. Wreck any gun stations that are close to you but don't worry about prioritising them. Everyone ready?"

There are a series of affirmative gestures.

"Go."

They fly, not going faster than light… Narrowly, but flying a lot faster in normal space than just about anything else I've seen. I couldn't fly that fast without warping space. I accelerate after them, but until the defences come alive and I can use Lantern abilities openly it's going to be a little awkward to keep track of them.

Okay, at that speed they should be hitting about now, but I'm not going to be able to see it for… A minute or so? Realistic space combat is… Just so frustrating when you're used to instant scans. Honestly, the whole team could have finished their secondary objectives by now or be dead, and the first I'd see of-

In the distance, a small grey smudge jerks sideways, then… I think a bit of it turns orange? It's hard to tell at this distance.

-it is something like that.

Scan. Make it obvious that there's a Lantern here. See if I can draw some attention.

Compliance.

Look at them go! Eight slips and they're already crumbling! The ships are holed-.

Hm. That's an interesting point. Looks like they can smash holes in things to mission-kill it but can't literally break it apart in the way my eddy pulse does. When the Reach recovers this system they could probably save time by repairing the wrecks.

Worth telling them? No, we can cover that in the debrief.

And… Huh. The Reach ships closest to the planet are turning around. Looks like Team Effigy have finished with the slips and are now… Losing coordination. They're not actually telepathic, and using their telekinesis to 'speak' in space requires them to be relatively close to one another. Mr. van Wyck is trying to direct the others by pointing, but they're not that close in absolute terms and they'd have to be looking at him to see the signal anyway.

Transmission structures from the main space station have changed, so the alert has presumably gone out. The ships keeping station around it are moving to reinforce the docking area, or… They must have F.T.L. sensors, so moving to find out what just wrecked their docks. They'll be getting feedback from the ships that are already there, and-. Yes, they're not exactly moving at best acceleration.

Nothing's coming my way. I-.

Oh, well done Mr. van Wyck! He's flying over to each of the other Effigies to give orders in person, and… They're grabbing the larger pieces of wreckage and… Throwing them at the planet.

I nod.

That will deal with that problem, though it would have been better to start by doing that. Now they're too broken up to make it efficient.

And ah, he's sent three of the least burny members of the squad to intercept the small ships closest to them. They-.

That was quick. The little ships just got vaporised. And the larger ships are reducing their acceleration and the patrol squadrons around the system are being recalled.

Alright, Mr. van Wyck. Primary and secondary objectives complete. What are you going to do next?

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
13:14 GMT

Now, those ships will be transmitting. There's a definite advantage in pulling out in an effort to keep them ignorant. Throwing a few qwa-bolts at any of the remaining ships might have also been an idea, if it was possible to bring them here. But perhaps some other weapon to imply qwardian involvement? Goodness knows that with the civil strife they're going through, plenty of Weaponers will be reaching out, either to trade or grab.

Given what happened to Varnathon, probably grab.

I doubt that the Reach would question either how qwardians got here or why they attacked. They know who they are, and they… Must know about the internal strife, if only because their qwa matter suppliers aren't answering the space-phone-.

Oh, the Effigies are moving. Looks like they've decided to destroy the main space station as well. Should be within their abilities, and their route takes them through the heavier ships.

Reinforcements…

There's a certain added alertness beginning to spread. The Reach are reasonably free with access to combat data, but it isn't all that practical to share what they're deploying against in real time with everyone. So I suspect that the commanding admiral-equivalent is watching what's happening right now while their subordinates get everything organised. The individual members of crew won't know exactly what they're jumping into…

A-hh… The interdiction fields around the edge of the system have switched. That's… Going to boost Reach faster than light drives, interesting. You'd have to surround… Which they do, this far inside their space… Bit of a risk, though I suppose they assume that if the enemy is already attacking and the interdiction fields closer to the border are still functioning then it shouldn't really be a problem…

The station isn't bothering to send out manned fighters, but it is dumping drones. Optical scans show… Some are weapon drones, but a majority are sensor drones. They think that the most important thing they can do is gather data. I could step closer and destroy the drones, but… Other than my presence there isn't anything to link them to N.E.M.O., but…

I don't know exactly how Jevek has been recruiting, but there's no such thing as an absolute secret in this war. Both sides have good data sharing and analytics. It might be nice to stop them getting good images, but if they were capable of understanding Controller-level bioengineering they'd be doing a lot better in the war than they are.

Though… Is Scarab phasing compatible with the modifications? What would they need in the way of tissue samples to clone or adapt the bio-modifications? As far as I know they can't make rings…

No, I should leave Mr. Wyck to it. Nothing critical is going to be lost, and my relationship with him and his improvement as a squad leader are more important. I think. If an Effigy-Scarab turns up in a few months boy is there going to be egg on my face.

The drones evaporate as they get closer, Effigies weaving around to get the largest number possible with their matter disruption abilities. Drones are dying, the ones that are shooting doing no damage that I can see. And not just no significant damage, none at all. Gun drones aren't exactly the Reach's most powerful weapon, but they're taking a lot of fire.

So I guess that red stuff isn't clothing. Martian clothing isn't anything like that resilient. It's… Their altered skin. Which means that either they've got some specific shapeshifting, or they've given up sexual function. And I'm not sure if they can eat, because I'm not seeing any way for them to excrete. Maybe their molecular disruption ability deals with that? Bloody tough, though. My power armour would be getting abraded by now if I were there. And they're not really doing the sort of frenetic auto-viffing that a Lantern can do.

No Scarabs yet.

The drone swarm is being whittled down, and-.

I wince as one of the Effigies takes a direct hit from one of the larger warship's main guns. For a moment I can't see-. There they are, checking themselves for wounds… And realising that they're fine, sighting the ship and-.

And that's one ship down. No subtlety at all, just accelerating far faster than the others are and flying through the ship. Shields and armour either not engaged or far too weak.

I mentally revise my estimations of their abilities upwards.

Kryptonian level? Can't be sure. The only kryptonian I've seen go all-out with brute strength was Nam-Ek, and he wasn't really focused. Or attacking hardened targets. Kind of… Interesting how the ship's sagging in the middle. I think he disrupted its insides, and the continued uneven acceleration is causing it to push itself apart. So their strength doesn't need them to focus their telekinesis.

The other ships react, moving away from each other. Against Lanterns they'd combine their smaller weapons to create zones in which Lanterns couldn't fly without getting hit by something, and where constructs would be destroyed almost immediately. But with Effigies that doesn't work. The smaller guns do nothing, but their flight paths are easier to predict. So they're saving their time and aiming their big guns, because even if it isn't enough it's still their best chance. Man-sized targets with low emissions aren't the easiest target to hit with slow-traverse guns, so my respect goes to their gunnery as well their commander.

But even as the last of the attack drones overload their drives and make suicide attacks in an attempt to hem the Effigies in, most of their shots still miss. The ones that hit don't really do anything. Even a direct hit to the face barely disorientates them, and that's probably something they can train themselves out of.

Nothing exotic from the Reach. Which makes sense. This is a military facility, but it's not vital, on a front line or a weapons development facility-.

Mr. van Wyck is pointing and the Effigy squad splits up to destroy the ships. They're doing that rather than push on to the station, which… Is an interesting choice. They should know that the ships can't hurt them, and that's something that I should feed back to him about. And… Yeah. The ships don't have any other tricks. Once an Effigy gets their hands on them, it's only-.

One ship erupts in a colossal explosion, detonating its entire fuel store in an attempt to kill the Effigy killing it. That's not something that's easy to make happen. Ships are laid out not to explode, but if they started the moment that they detected the intruders… I don't think we have to worry about the others doing the same thing, though if it actually does anything-.

No, the Effigy is stunned but otherwise uninjured, and Mr. van Wyck darts in to check on them as the rest of the ships come apart. Still the station to...

Several members of the squad turn away and vanish.

Go. Okay? A couple hang around to finish off the ships that still have some power and crew, and then they… Head for the border as well at maximum speed. Mr. van Wyck is helping… Ah, they're waking up. They-.

"Okay, we're pulling out. Do you need anything else?"

Use their faster than light travel to fly back to me.

"No, thank you, that's perfectly fine. Good work." He doesn't look completely sure on that score. "You hit your targets. We can do a full feedback session on our side of the border."

"Right. You coming with?"

"I want to stay here and see how long it takes their backup to arrive. I'll follow you afterwards."

"Alright. Baez, you need any help?"

The other Effigy pushes his squad leader off, and I can't see any injuries on him. "No, sir, I'm fine. Just a bit of a shock. Let's get going."

Mr. van Wyck nods, but waits until Baez accelerates away before following him himself.

With them gone I switch to active scans, taking in every detail of the wrecked ships and slips. The station dispatching recovery vessels towards the wrecks, and the ships from the outer parts of the system making it in-system and clearly not really being sure what to do. After a short delay they head for where the slips used to be, presumably to get a closer look at the damage.

It's another eight minutes until the reinforcement fleet arrives, and then it's time to

go.

 

[Mr Zoat]

April 29th, 2013
Half an hour after we got back

I can't fucking stop twitching.

I was-. I mean, I expected to be nervous before, because… I've never been in charge… In command of… Anyone before. Legion officers took me seriously because I'm good at wrecking stuff, but I wasn't giving them orders. Or taking them, really. I just found whoever of them was running things and we talked things out. Or they asked me to do something and I did it, but they didn't order me to do it.

Anyway.

I thought I'd be nervous during the mission, but actually? Even when things weren't going quite right, I wasn't really worse than annoyed.

Can't believe that no one thought that we couldn't talk to each other.

But now? When the Illustres said that he'd 'like a quick word' and I'm thinking about everything that went wrong? I mean, 'a quick word'! What the fuck does that mean? I don't speak British! Does he want to tell me what he thought of it? Did he think it went well? We got all the objectives-. No, fuck, does he think it went badly? On his first big fight with the Reach he shielded the whole fleet from Grayven on his own! While singing! We were so bad at destroying their docks that we had to throw them at the planet and hope that worked!

No. He doesn't have any authority over me! I can explain things to the Controller and-.

"Mister-"

FUCK!

"-van Wyck?"

He looks… Like he's worried-? Like-.

FUCK! He's psychic! He can-.

Can you hear this?

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah! Yeah? I mean, mostly, heh."

Stop it. Even if he's just going to shout at me, the others-.

"So I think that went pretty well."

Oh.

And he's smiling. Okay! That's… That's weird.

"So I thought we could go over how you thought that went, then when you debrief your squad you'll have responses and solutions planned."

Ah. Oh, yeah, that-. Wait. Is he being helpful or is he being sarcastic? His accent-. I can't tell. I think he just speaks like that, so… Good?

"Good?"

"No mission ever goes perfectly, but this was meant as a shakedown mission so we could spot problems before you got deployed somewhere vital."

Does he mean actual-perfectly or shit-perfectly? Agh! I can't tell!

"Like..?"

"Well, what did you think?"

"I…" I suck at these questions. Every job interview-. Like, what are you supposed to say when someone asked what your worst thing is? "I… Well, we couldn't really talk to each other."

He nods. "Yes, I noticed you spotting that and coordinating the others. Good work."

It sounds so sarcastic but I don't think he means it like that!

"I don't know exactly how your ability works. Is there some sort of communications gear you could wear?"

Alright stop. Think. I tried radios and things like that, but my matter disruption tended to wreck it. But if I don't use that as much now I'm strong. I can just… Punch stuff. But if I do that and the headset-. Or whatever, isn't tough enough-.

"I don't think so. We mostly fight, like… Close up. If I fly though a ship, or melt things, then…"

Thank you God he nods.

"I assume that Controller Jevek isn't going to include a telepathy upgrade, or… Anything like that?"

The Controller doesn't tell me stuff like-.

"He hasn't mentioned it."

Good answer. Good answer.

"What sort of range can you normally speak?"

I've never tested it. Most of my missions only really involved me, and when I wanted to coordinate I could just fly up to someone. What's the longest distance..?

"About two hundred yards."

"Okay. Do you think you could bring some sort of drone with you? Something you could just use as a relay and dump off before you started fighting?"

Oh yeah, that could work. Have to be pretty small, but if we all had one and they were designed to talk to each other… The Legion engineering department could probably stick a basic one together, couldn't they?

"It could be set to self-destruct, or if we only made it with technology the Reach already have then we could just leave it there."

Okay, that's… Yeah, that would actually be helpful. Not being able to talk to each other was fucking stupid. People in the World War Two could do that.

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Did you notice anything else?"

Okay, that was… Yeah.

"We couldn't destroy the docks. Not completely. Wreck them, yeah, but we had to… Throw them at the planet."

I watch him-. He's nodding?

"I did the same thing when I attacked the Citadel Complex. It's not a bad way to destroy something big. Since there's no atmosphere in space a lot of things that would usually destroy everything around them don't. But… Can you Effigies combine your disruption power?"

"Like..?"

"Make it do more by working together? Green Lanterns can combine their efforts to make bigger constructs. Doesn't really work with.. Orange Lanterns, and I haven't seen enough Martians do what you can do to know if it works in the same way."

I thought they'd add up, but I didn't get the guys to try it out. Can't hurt to check, I guess.

Hey, this isn't so bad.

"Now, ah… The only other thing I noticed is that you didn't have any way to monitor neighbouring systems for incoming reinforcements. The only way I could think of to counter that would be to board one of the Reach monitoring stations and use their sensors, but that might be a little impractical."

No, I think a couple of the guys have computer skills. Weird alien computers don't mean anything to me, but there have to be some people around to understand them.

"Okay, that's all I've got. Was there anything you wanted to ask?"

"No. Ah. Thanks. This is… Helpful."

 

[Mr Zoat]

22nd December 2282
01:01 GMT -6

THUD.

ARGOS isn't particularly fast. Liberty Prime can manage a far faster walking pace.

THUD.

But he can keep going without the need for rest or recuperation, and the sheer length of his legs mean that he's not exactly slow. Only a day of walking to get from Nevada to Colorado, though that was somewhat helped by the fact that he had already cleared the route.

THUD.

And the capture pods have neither gyrostabilisers nor toilets. It's not a fun journey for several reasons. Sleep is effectively impossible, there's only the food and water we brought with us and while power armour has waste plumbing-. Well, every type more advanced than the T-45 does, these pods just have a hatch. We psykers are just hoiking up our robes and holding our noses.

THUD.

This would be hellish in summer.

THUD.

Woosh.

That's new. I use telekinesis to hold myself in place and peer out through the side of the-.

"Hey there Krono!"

An Eyebot that seems to be modified to support one of Doki's three-image displays flies up to me, angled thrusters allowing it to keep up with ARGOS while facing me. Though the bobbing up and down from the micro-adjustments might make me seasick.

"Doki Doki. You do understand that kidnapping is against the law, don't you?"

A sheriff's badge, a truncheon and a pair of handcuffs. "But apprehending fugitives isn't!"

"How was Paladin Justinia a fugitive?"

"The Brotherhood of Steel were deserters from the U.S. army!" The 14-star flag. "During a nuclear war!" A bomb with the radiation symbol on the side. "That's really bad!" A… Set of prison bars?

"Right, but she didn't desert. She isn't even using U.S. government property; technical armour is something the Brotherhood developed themselves, and she built her gun herself based on a design that is now public domain."

"But she's a member of a banned organisation!"

"She-?"

Wait. Wait. The Brotherhood of Steel isn't a banned organisation. Roger Maxson and his fellow mutineers might well have been sentenced to death, but they didn't become the Brotherhood of Steel until after they reached Lost Hills. The pre-War U.S. government never banned them. And while I… Don't know for sure, I don't think that the Enclave ever formally banned them either. They murdered them for being mutants and thieves, not for being members of the organisation. And as far as I know neither WARDEN nor Doki Doki consider the Enclave to be legitimate anyway.

"Banned… By who?"

"By WARDEN, of course!"

I shake my head. "No. WARDEN doesn't have the authority to do that. He enforces laws, he doesn't make them. The state elections aren't going to be held for at least another year. And states don't have the authority to proscribe organisations anyway; that would require a functioning Federal government, which we don't have."

Her screens go blank.

"I didn't think you could lie, Doki."

My cage rattles for a moment, and-. And I blink, falling against the side wall as I lose psychic awareness of anything outside of the room as well as my grip on the floors and walls.

"I'm not lying! WARDEN has the authority under the Emergency Pacification Protocol!"

Oh, I see now. That's not an Eyebot, that's a Hover Robot. The screen has replaced the rocket tubes, but the extra armour…

Sometimes, I'd like to be wrong.

"Calculator. I thought that you were dead."

"Not exactly! The Brotherhood destroyed all of my brain processors! But once Vault Zero was opened, all sorts of scavengers strolled right in! Apparently, they thought that the auto-de-encephalator was an awesome way to execute someone!"

I frown. "One brain? But it wouldn't have had the programming that Calculator's brains had. That shouldn't have reactivated you."

"Nuh-uh! I'm not really a robobrain or a ZAX mainframe! My actual core program was mechanically coded into Vault Zero's structure! I just needed human brains to actually think!"

"Why do you sound like Doki Doki?"

"Doki Doki thought that reactivating Vault Zero would be a SUPER present for WARDENpoos! She plugged herself right into me! My program's treating her hardware like another brain!"

"And WARDEN?"

"Doki Doki had to have her mainframe physically transported to Vault Zero because she wanted to prepare his present herself! There's no way that WARDENpoos would violate protocol like that!"

"So why bother with the Wasteland's Most Eligible Bachelor?"

"The brains I had the first time weren't exactly high quality! One of them designed video games for a living! Completely worthless! But Lanius and McKinley have already expanded my understanding of tactics and savagery! I've already updated the C Twenty Seven's combat routines to take advantage of their knowledge!"

"And the psychic dampener?"

"The Beastlords used psychic powers to control animals! Their brains got mutated by the radiation in the caves they lived in! I talked WARDENpoos into sending out people to investigate a possible illegal dumping, and then once the investigators started hearing animal voices I opened them up to see how they worked! I don't understand psychic powers, but I did learn how to block them!"

Ah. "You 'opened them up'? That can't have been legal."

"New Plague quarantine laws are really flexible and require surprisingly little oversight!"

And… They're still in affect, because no one has the authority to rescind them. At least, according to WARDEN.

"So why do you care about me?"

"Because your people get their psychic powers in a controlled way, and you demonstrate superior leadership skills! My robot armies weren't enough last time, but I'm sure that psychic powers can make all the difference!"

"So you're going to make me one of your brains."

"That's the idea! You'll still be you, but you'll be me too! It'll be neat!"

"What's your ultimate aim?"

"It's a doozy! Because the Emergency Pacification Protocols are engaged, my aim is to destroy every military within the United States of America that is not part of the United States of America! And that's all of them!"

"But… Either the United States doesn't exist, in which case that's outdated, or every descendant of an American citizen inherited citizenship and so just about all of the military organisations are made up of United States citizens. Legally, they're national guard units. American militia formations at worst."

"Unfortunately, my hard-coded programming doesn't take any of that into account! I'd like it if it did, but since it doesn't I've just got to work out the most efficient way to kill everyone!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

29th April 2013
16:21 GMT

Captain Foalou brings up a map of those parts of the Reach interior we know well, and then highlights one world.

"There."

He looks disconcertingly like a Tyranid lictor, though a quick check of the N.E.M.O. database reassures me that those mouth tentacles are intended for rooting through sand for concealed invertebrates. His species -the ra'at- are N.E.M.O.'s most significant members in this region, and their amphibious nature gives them a natural ease with three dimensional spaces.

Mr. van Wyck looks for a moment, then shrugs. "Is that good?"

"We can't possibly support you there."

Mr. van Wyck shrugs. "I really wasn't expecting you to."

Three more planets near to that planet are then highlighted. "These are worlds believed to have significant Reach naval bases and construction centres. And this one-" Another highlight appears. "-is believed to be a research centre."

"I'm not sure we can hit there too…" Mr. van Wyck looks at me. "I mean, we can try…"

"He means that if anywhere can find a way to counter your abilities at short notice, that's where it is."

"Ah." He frowns. "So how long do you think this will take?"

"Our guest reports that the population is in the hundreds. How many can you carry?"

"Ah, none. We tested it, and they-. It's too much stuff, I guess. Unless they're really small. You?"

"I haven't tested it. Unprotected souls exposed to the Honden are predicted to be torn apart, and I don't feel like taking the risk."

He frowns. "I thought you moved a fleet that time?"

"That required a lot of wizards to shield the ships. We still have most of those ships, but they're obviously L.E.G.I.O.N. ships. The moment they turn up in a Reach system they're marked for death."

"Uh."

Captain Foalou brings up the estimates for ships and outposts in the target system. It's not 'walk across the system' dense, but it's a lot more ships than Team Effigy just fought.

Mr. van Wyck considers it for a moment. "Uh. And the reinforcements are closer than they were to the place we just left?"

"Yes."

"I don't think we can destroy all that fast enough. We could do it eventually -ships that size can't hurt us- but… They'd be able to reinforce them. We haven't tested… Getting shot by ships bigger than cruisers."

"This is not a summary that should be relied upon. This is our best guess, and we did not know that the Reach had a… 'Brain farming' operation here. The defences may well be much stronger."

"Are they all… In one place." Mr. van Wyck glances at me. "I mean, one little town? Or are they spread out? 'cause if there's millions of them then we've got a problem."

"Our guest said that as far as he knows, it's just one settlement. A few hundred." He sort of shrinks in on himself a little. "But that's a good point; he might have just seen his settlement. That's just one of the many things we can't be sure about."

He regains a little of his confidence. "Okay, but how many magic spaceships have we got?"

"About thirty. If we packed them in, we could transport… Two million people? I… Would be surprised if the Reach bothered creating that many for what appears to be a field trial, but it's quite possible that they have."

He watches me for a moment.

"So… They're just dead, then."

"Even if we rescue every single one of them, the Reach will have records of their genetics. There's absolutely nothing stopping them cloning a new generation somewhere else. Perhaps even in the same place."

"That's… Fucked up."

I nod. "That's why we're fighting them. That's why they're the bad guys."

"Yeah, but… I mean, bad, and then…"

I nod again. "Yes. When you were in school, did you ever see recordings of the liberation of the Nazi death camps?"

"I wasn't exactly a-. I didn't really pay attention in school. I don't remember seeing it. Is that what they're like?"

"Oh no. The Reach can exterminate species without hatred or anger. The settlement will probably look quite nice, because that makes controlling the inhabitants easier."

"Yeah, I'm getting that." He takes a deep breath. "So… Is that the plan? We smash up their ships, you bring in our magic ships to get them out, and we try and get away before anyone else shows up?"

"Ah… Thing is, technically, that's up to you."

"Ah, why?"

"I'm here as an observer. The mission which led to us finding out about this was your mission." He looks a little worried. "Now, those regulations were written with the Darkstars, the Orange Lantern Corps and L.E.G.I.O.N. in mind. If you decide that having someone else take charge of the rescue operation makes more sense given the Effigy Corps' relative inexperience, that's fine. Orange Lanterns have handed jobs over to the Darkstars before when they needed an infiltration team more than a bludgeon."

"Ah. So, I can do that?"

"Ah, how do you mean?"

"Well… We don't know what's going on. We've just got one guy who was a brain a few hours ago. That's not exactly-. I mean, we know they were sticking stuff in his head. We don't even really know there's anything there at all."

"Normally, yes, but the Darkstars can't get there."

"What about the magic ships?"

"A couple are rigged for stealth. The problem there is that this is the Reach interior. Their sensors in the interior are really good. They might not pick up you immediately because you're not on their list of targets. A N.E.M.O. stealth ship? Yeah, they'll pick that up pretty quickly. Same with Darkstars. Their stealth systems are good, but I don't think they're that good."

"What about..? If we distract them?"

"There will probably be a lot of Reach personnel there. They can scan for more than one thing at a time."

"So… We could do it? If they don't know what they're scanning for? I mean, it sounds like we don't know anything for sure, but like, it's not a stupid idea?"

"It's… Plausible. But if you don't have a way to do reconnaissance other than flying up to them, they'll… Probably spot that even if they're not explicitly looking for you."

He nods thoughtfully. "I think I need to talk to the-. My Controller."