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

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
20:41 GMT +5:30

"…you click on this-"

I can't help but smile as Dr. Balewa and I are led into the… Classroom? Office space? Where Prince Jivan is showing Rama Khan how a computer works. I'm getting flashbacks to me doing something similar with my grandparents.

"-and the program opens up."

Rama Khan nods indulgently. "I see. And this teaches you things, does it?"

"Yes, Grandpa Khan! You can learn just about anything you want about anything! Pick a subject! Anything at all!"

He glances at us for a moment, then goes back to looking at the screen. "Jarhanpur, of course."

"Ah, well, there's not much about us." He brings up a search engine and types the word in. "Jar-han-pur."

He presses 'enter' and a number of links appear, though no images at all.

Jivan frowns. "You should let people come and take pictures, so people know what we look like."

"Why would I want people to know what we look like?"

Jivan rolls his eyes before turning to face his tutor. "Because everyone does it! Not doing it is weird."

"Ah." Rama Khan nods. "Of course. How silly of me."

And at that point Jivan notices that we've been escorted into the room. He jumps off his chair and runs over to us-. Over to me, smiling broadly.

"Orange Lantern! And…" He looks blankly at Dr. Balewa. "Um."

Dr. Balewa raises his right hand and briefly causes us all to be enshrouded in fog. "I em called Doctor Mist."

Jivan tries bending so that his head's outside the mist while his body is still inside to see if he can still see himself. Then he looks up at Dr. Balewa. "Are you a wizard?"

"Yes, I em a wizard." He clenches his right hand and the mist vanishes, and Jivan's attention is momentarily drawn to the armoured rakshasa who moved up behind Dr. Balewa the moment the mist appeared. "But I em afraid that we are here to speak to your… Grandpa."

"Is it about something important?"

"Yes, it is."

"Like Atlantis coming out of the water?"

Dr. Balewa nods. "Yes, thet exactly."

Jivan looks back excited at 'Grandpa Khan' as he walks over, a more serious expression on his face. "Are you going to be a superhero again, Grandpa? Are you?"

"No. But it seems that those who are superheroes wish to ask for my advice." He gestures to a.. mat laid out on the floor nearly. "Please, sit, and I will give you what advice I can."

I walk over, lower myself down and… Sit, legs crossed. Dr. Balewa adopts a more relaxed position next to me. Rama Khan's matches my own posture, though I note that his joints seem a bit slower to bend than mine. He did say that he expected to start aging now. Jivan joins us too, sitting next to his mentor and carefully mirroring him.

"Jivan should hear this, as part of his education."

"Did you know that Doctor Balewa is actually older than you?"

Rama Khan looks mildly surprised. "Is that true?"

"I established the Kingdom of Kor, though I heff preferred more modest positions since then."

Rama Khan nods respectfully. "Before it fell, it was a centre of magic learning. I believe that Queen Gamemnae mentioned it as the source of Atlantis's magic tradition."

Dr. Balewa shakes his head. "No. They surpassed us long ago, even before her reign. Orange Lantern appears to be of the opinion thet you should have invited me to join your team."

"I'm not saying they should, I'm just saying that it would have made sense."

"Had we known of you, we may well have done. But we did not have these-" He angles his eyes at the computer. "-all-knowing machines. There could have been a dozen heroes of note within a short distance of our borders and we would not have known of them."

"That's why you need pictures, Grandpa. How can people tell you things if they don't know who you are?"

Rama Khan lays his left hand on his heir's shoulder. "Very well, Jivan. We shall have pictures. I will speak with Adom and Adrianna about-" Jivan sort of twitches, then controls himself. "-how it should be done."

"Not to blow my own trumpet too hard, but I did public relations for Adom while he was getting himself situated. Or I can recommend an agency."

"Thank you, but that is not why you are here."

"We were wondering if you heff any objects imbued with Queen Gamemnae's magic. The magics which heff been used to raise Atlantis appear to be based on theh system which she used, and I wish to know how safe they are. Or if you know in detail how her system worked, then I would be pleased to hear it."

Rama Khan looks increasingly concerned. "What is happening?"

"We are not certain. At the moment, we want to gather as much information as we can. In particular, we heff been attacked by animated corpses whose bodies are partially restored with clay."

"And we're not sure if Ahri'ahn is being suspicious or is just a man out of time. We'd have gone to Adom, but given what happened to him I was pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to help."

"Restored with clay?"

I glance at Jivan… And then take out a hologram projector and play the part of the fight where I sonic blasted the gorillaman.

"Like that."

"That is a spell that I could do. I would not, as it violates the cycle of samsara, and I could only use the soil and dead of Jarhanpur, but it is within my power."

"Do you recognise it, or do you simply understand how it could be done?"

"No, I know it. I taught it to Gamemnae myself." He looks awkward for a moment. "I was not as devout in my youth as I am now. I thought that… Since her people had no respect for the cycle that it was not a bad thing. Or that was what I told myself. She was very beautiful, and powerful."

"Were you married, Grandpa?"

"No. If she had not been a queen in her own land I would have asked her." He sighs. "And I would have been a fool."

"And why-?"

"She murdered our allies. Sela, Anointed One and Tezumak died so that she could take their power. She would have murdered the rest of us as well had the spirit of Jarhanpur not showed me her treachery." He sighs. "I do not know why. But I do know that it was not a spur of the moment decision. She had planned it for some time. If my mentor had not been dying and so required me to return home more frequently, she may have killed me as well."

Two out of three were total monsters, but it was still a pretty unpleasant thing to do.

"I have a small charm which she gave to me. You are welcome to it, if you believe that it will help you. I would only ask, for my own peace of mind, that you tell me what her involvement was when your investigation is concluded."

I nod. "Thank you, and certainly. One last question. Where did you put her body?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
09:22 GMT -6

I did not want to come here ever.

As far as I've been able to tell, the Aztecs only narrowly lose out to the Dahomey in the contest for being the most evil functioning pre-20th century human civilisation ever. Then the socialists happened and I'm not sure exactly how the two compare, but as a superhero and a space soldier it's sobering to realise that if they existed today fighting them would be worth my time. And it's sobering to remember that they were killed not by Spain but by their neighbours with a little Spanish guidance because they were demanding a tribute of human sacrifices from them and everyone hated them.

Really, the best you can say about them is that they genuinely believed that the human sacrifice was necessary to replenish the gods, as opposed to the Dahomey who just did it for fun.

Dr. Balewa has gotten ahead of me, and my environmental shield is dimming.

"You did not recover theh armour?"

"No. No one knew exactly where it was, and I certainly didn't want to draw anyone's attention to the magic power of ritual sacrifice. Plus it's not even that good."

"There is nothing to be gained by lying. I can see the disgust written on your face."

"I was justifying my decision strategically. I'm not denying that I hate it. The League of Ancients weren't heroes in the modern sense. Not as a group. Some of them would pass muster, but…"

"I understand your disgust at Tezumak, but why do you so dislike the others? Including Rama Khan and your friend Teth Adom."

"Remember how I went off on one at the League after I killed Nabu?"

He makes an expression of earnest enquiry. "No, it has entirely slipped my mind."

I sniff. "I understand that slavery has been normal for most of human civilisation. Adom's Kahndaq had slavery. Fine. It would be completely unreasonable for me to condemn them for something that was completely normal. I might judge them based on how they treated their slaves, but that's it. But Tezumak's people raided and murdered by the bushel and the other members treated him as a fellow noble hero. Sela was… I can't think of anyone like her in the modern era. A super powered berserker who fought and killed for fun and only joined up with the League for better fights. I suppose you could argue that it was better to keep her inside pissing out than outside pissing in, but I think that killing her would also have served perfectly well."

"And the others?"

"Anointed One was raised by the Is-. By the Hebrews before the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed. Back when they were genocide-happy, and all the rules that came from Moses were just polite suggestions. They probably weren't objectively much worse than everyone around them, but that's not saying much when everyone around you is like that."

"And you will not excuse the others for working with them as you will not accept the Justice League tolerating Nabu."

"Y-es. And you heard Rama Khan; he was regretful that he didn't warn them soon enough to save their lives, not about any of the other stuff they got up to."

"It was a long time ago."

"I consider Adom a friend because he's reformed. Mister Cantrell and Ms Parker retained their current life's morals when they got their memories back, and since they're not exactly the same people regret is superfluous. But I'm marking Rama Khan down."

"Have you considered that he believes in reincarnation?"

"So? That just means that he was fine with his comrades in arms being reincarnated as dung beetles for their cruelty." I look down. "Have you found it yet?"

"Yes. Still… I em interested in what you think of me."

"If I didn't think you were a good choice for the Justice League you wouldn't be on the Justice League. Any crimes you committed were at the dawn of civilisation, and you wouldn't repeat them. As far as your attitude to superhumans goes, I.. mostly agree, which is why I've been trying to get other people to do things rather than just building a city of the future myself and inviting the new Eloi to live in it."

He frowns faintly. "Who are the Eloi? That was a proper noun, I think."

"Read 'The Time Traveller' by H.G. Wells. Or watch the films; they explain the concept reasonably well."

"I will. Still, you are the one who used it."

"Human pets, beautiful but incapable of caring for themselves." I pointedly look down. "Can we go?"

"The area is still solid rock. For the most part. It may be easiest if I go alone."

"Not unless there's an excellent reason. Going alone is not a good idea. I can phase or teleport to you once you arrive."

"Then follow me."

He shimmers and fades, and I wait.

When they killed Queen Gamemnae they wanted to make sure that it stuck. So they opened a cavern in Tezumak's city and sacrificed her to the Aztec gods. I really hope that it's still there, but I know perfectly well that the Aztec afterlife was a mess during the Anti-Life period and that just about anything could have happened. Of course that doesn't explain why we're dealing with Ahri'ahn rather than Gamemnae, unless he's a clay zombie or she's using an illusion or… I don't know. We're not reenacting the Obsidian Age storyline, not entirely, but if King Orin has been turned into some sort of water elemental…

Maybe Robert could find him? Or at least check.

And why would he get turned into…

Authority. He's the king. If she killed him and turned him into a clay zombie, he wouldn't have the authority any longer. Then Artur inherits, and then… Ah, Atlantis isn't strictly hereditary, so I imagine that Queen Mera would take the throne? I suppose she just decided that this way was more efficacious.

And there he is. I

step out and walk towards the white glow,

emerging into a-.

Construct barrier up as the cloud of ghost crows swarms towards me, link the barrier to my tattoos and-. Yep, they're hitting a good deal harder than actual birds, but it's nothing that I can't cope with. Can't immediately see Dr. Balewa and something here is throwing off my scans.

No prizes for guessing who the problem is.

"Manitou Raven, I don't know what you think we're here for, but we just want to make sure that Queen Gamemnae is still dead. I know that you can hear and understand me."

He doesn't respond, if he's even here. He… Isn't immortal, or rather he wasn't in the comics. He just used an existing rift in time to skip the intervening time to the present. Don't know what happened here-.

A pair of glowing eyes appear in the flapping cloud of birds in front of me.

"She is gone. Slipped the bonds of the fallen gods."

"Right. We're working on that. If you like, I can take you and Dawn to Teth Adom's home while we plan the next stage?"

"He lives?"

"A great deal has happened, and lashing out without knowing the whole story isn't going to help anyone." I drop my barrier and hold out my right hand. "So how about it?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
17:33 GMT +2

"It's not that you can't go outside-" Dawn Raven looks decidedly unhappy with me, and while I doubt that's due to my actions I'm certainly the proximate cause. "-Missus Raven, it's just that I think it's a bad idea until you've had more time to get used to your new environment."

Adom actually broke off a meeting about expanding Kahndaq's railway network into its new territory in order to meet Manitou Raven. He actually hugged him, something which seems to have rather surprised Manitou. Given the man's generally unkempt appearance and Adam's perfectly tailored 'power wardrobe', the image was actually quite amusing, like a powerful head of state embracing a random crazy homeless person.

"There is nothing for me to do here, and I remember what Kahndaq looked like."

Rama Khan activated his jar of dirt, and Mister and Missus Cantrell are heading this way now, so that's nearly enough for a full reunion. Just Gamemnae herself left, really.

"It-. Ah… It doesn't look like that anymore. It's been-."

"Many years. I know."

"And if we weren't in the middle of a crisis I'd be happy to bring you up to speed. It's what I did for Adom. But right now there are a handful of places on the planet that wouldn't be completely overwhelming in their strangeness, and no one there would speak your language."

I could pry into her psyche, but I don't know what sort of protection or detection spells she's got running on her, and it would be rather rude even if she didn't. But from what I do remember about her from the comics...

She married Manitou mostly because no one else in their tribe would put up with her, he married her because he didn't want her to be made an outcast but focused exclusively on his job resulting in them never really getting close. She had an affair with Kyle Rayner because he actually paid attention to her while acting as her modernity tutor, and Manitou's reaction was 'I'm not really surprised' and then he died.

I'm probably skipping a few things.

The point is that she hates being contained, having people tell her what to do and not being in control, and while I'm doing the first two the third is firmly her husband's fault. I'm not sure why he brought her to the future with him… Frankly, it seems like it would have been better for him to handle that duty himself and suggest that she spend the rest of her life in Jarhanpur. But here she is, completely unprepared for the 21st century. And the thing is, if this had happened 200 years ago she could probably handle 1800s Kahndaq just fine.

"I could take you to Themyscira, if you like? There're a couple of women there with universal language comprehension? Or I could assign you an aide?"

"What is Themyscira?"

"It's an island in the Ag-. Off the coast of G-. Ah. An island in the land of the Hellenes? I'm a citizen, and I'm on good terms with most of their rulers."

She looks me over suspiciously. "You are.. like them? Like my husband?"

"More like the Whaler, if you remember him. As I said, we-."

She darts… To my right, towards a… Curtain-covered window-.

I lamely reach out with my right hand. "I don't think-."

She tugs the curtain aside and stares out at the Shiruta skyline. And she doesn't flinch or cringe or scream in panic, she just sort of blinks uncomprehendingly.

"You see-."

She clenches her fists, and dives at the window in.. what is actually an impressive display of athleticism. Naturally the modern hardened glass-

"Akgh!"

-survives and her hands get the worst of it.

"Our glass is much better than it used to be. Would you accept me healing you?"

"I am not injured."

"Not seriously, but that's going to hurt for a while."

She glares at me for a moment, then goes back to looking out of the window, her hands rubbing each other in front of her.

Ring, contact Lantern Son of Great Mother and ask him to come here.

Compliance.

And… Ugh. Dawn-. This is me trying to be a good person, but the fact is that I'm not going to prioritise her. I'm just giving Teth Adom and Rama Khan enough time to bring Manitou Raven up to speed without crowding him before we move onto the next stage. And I-.

Incoming communication.

From?

Zatanna Zatara.

"Excuse me."

I take a step back and raise my left hand to my ear. "Orange Lantern here."

"Does the name 'Joy' mean anything to you?"

"The nurse in the Pokémon games?"

"Is she a magical nurse?"

"No-. Probably not, but it's never really explained why there's a copy of her in every Pokémon Centre."

…

"Has Dad been talking to you?"

Huh? "Ah. Not recently? Why?"

"Oh. N-. Never mind."

"So where did you get 'joy' from?"

"The fish eaters found a group of clay zombie wizards working on a giant rune-" Send it to her. "-on one-. Yeah, just like that. Apparently it's the rune for 'joy', but I can't think of any 'joy' association that would have anything to do with Atlantis rising out of the water."

"Because it would make the people joyful?"

"No, it-. Someone could gather power through joy, but the rune would need to focus that energy and this just… Doesn't."

"But the focus could be somewhere else, couldn't it?"

"I.. think so? You'd still need some sort of mark to link them."

"Ahri'ahn used a group of triangles as his personal emblem, but… I think that the Ahri'ahn we're seeing is another clay zombie. I think the person actually responsible is Queen Gamemnae."

"Isn't she dead?"

"They sacrificed her to the Aztec gods. You know what happened to them."

"Does that change anything for us?"

"It might make removing the mental effect easier if we can dramatically blow her cover. I… Guess she's pretty joyful about the return to the surface?"

"I'll… Keep looking. Zatanna out."

I nod, lower my hand-.

There's a flash of orange as Lantern Son of Great Mother appears. Dawn turns around, knife in hand.

"I am ready to serve."

"What is that?"

"Lantern Son of Great Mother will be your escort. He can take you anywhere and tell you anything. Excuse me."

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st October 1995
10:02 GMT -5

I like America.

Took me a while to get there. Things being just that little bit different to what you're used to can be decidedly off-putting in a way you don't really… Expect. Not until you've tried living around foreigners for an extended period of time and the little things start being really apparent.

And not just the way that driving on the wrong side of the road would impede my sword-use. I haven't driven a car since I failed my second driving test, and since I'm… Not entirely sure what my legal status is, I haven't wanted to risk drawing officialdom's attention by trying to apply for one.

And then there are home owner's associations, which are sort of like local government bodies, except voluntary, except when they're not? I don't really get it, and the primitive nineties internet already has enough horror stories that I'm trying to avoid one with the shortlist I'm creating with Anne-Marie.

And I like Britain. Not because it's wonderful, but because it's mine.

But…

Okay, so I don't think of foetuses as people. Not by default. I'm-. I was an atheist materialist, then I ended up on a world with magic and other exotic… Thingies, like the one I sleep with. So sure, the existence of magic doesn't necessarily mean that souls exist, or that how they exist is how I imagine them existing… But I'm tending to err on the side of caution. And… I'm pretty sure my original Earth didn't have actual magic, so does that mean..? No souls..?

Point is, if personhood doesn't reside in a soul whose existence hasn't been objectively demonstrated, where does it reside? My answer was the brain. We don't consider it strange to limit the rights of children, whose brains are developing. We don't consider it strange to limit the rights of people who's brains are damaged or badly functioning because they can't handle normal levels of complexity or stress. But people in those categories are still people.

And is a single cell a person? Do you hold a funeral when you lose a skin cell? Probably not, though I seem to remember that Sikhs bury their hair. That's probably not the same thing. So is a foetal stem cell different? There's no processing-. Well, alright, the cell nucleus is doing some processing, but it's not person-processing. And at what point does a bundle of cells become a person? I don't know, but it's at some point…

"Y'all okay, hun?"

I sigh. "Not really. I just found out that in Britain it's legal to abort x-gene mutant foetuses at any stage of development."

She… Looks away. "Oh."

"The law… It was supposed to allow for the destruction of non or barely viable foetuses when the abnormality was detected early in the pregnancy, or when the mother's life is at risk. And… I remember a legal case where it turned out that having cleft lip and palate was considered sufficient cause despite the fact that it's easily correctable by chirurgy these days, because it's also associated with other conditions… And I don't know what the co-morbidities are for the x-gene are and the research doesn't exist."

She turns back, looking as disturbed as I feel. "Any.. stage?"

"It's 'danger to the life of the mother'. Since there's no way to tell what power the x-gene is going to grant, and since some are active from birth, the judge was technically right in that there is a risk… It's just that the people who brought the case couldn't find a single case where a woman had died as a result of x-gene related complications. And… I haven't been able to find one either."

"Is that a good thang?"

"Yes." My eyes drop to her abdomen. "Yes, it's a very good thing, but I…" I sigh. "I guess I sort of assumed that the Friends of Humanity were a uniquely American institution, and… No, it… Turns out not."

"Ya'll havin' second thoughts?"

"No. Just… Realising that we've got more work to do. And… Okay, so Britain doesn't have a constitution, so there's no… Supreme Court equivalent ruling on whether particular laws are in keeping with it. Our highest court is a panel of semi-retired judges who sit in the House of Lords-."

And I've lost her.

"Instead of Senators we… Used to have hereditary peers, though the body is about half lifetime appointees at the moment. Some senior judges get life peerages so that they can advise their pe-. Fellow members about the functions of the law that they might not be aware of."

Anne-Marie blinks. "Fer real?

"Which part?"

"Y'all really gaht…" She looks incredulous. "Lords, bein' part of the gover'ment?"

"Yes. And yes, most people aren't all that fond of the situation, but no one can really agree on what to replace it with, and it mostly works, and as I said it's gradually becoming a place elected politicians appoint people to for life rather than… Somewhere a landed aristocracy can actually exercise power. I'd be.. surprised if the Law Lords were caught up in any anti-mutant hysteria, but it's not impossible."

"And whut comes aftuh the…" She smiles, looking away for a moment. "'Law Lords'."

"The Home Secretary. The American government doesn't really have an equivalent. He's the cabinet minister in charge of law enforcement, including police intelligence, and counter intelligence. That also includes oversight of the courts, because we don't have a separation of powers."

"Y'all gaht a Secretary of State who c'n jus' overrule a judge an' jury whenevah he wants to? That don't sound so good."

I shrug. "We're a monarchy. Crown ministers exercise the monarch's authority to rule as they please in their particular area of responsibility. Of course that's not how it actually works and Home Secretaries don't actually do that very often. The only time I can remember was when… Jack Straw, I think, prevented a convicted murderer getting parole. Anyway, if we wanted to appeal the decision we'd go to the Court of Appeal first, then the Law Lords, then in theory the Home Secretary but that's very unlikely to work."

She glances around at the house we're viewing. "Y'all fixin' t' live in Britain?"

"No? It's just-. I know slightly more about the British legal system. And it-. It's my country, you know?"

She nods. "Ah know, hun. But we're suppose t'be house-huntin', an' we ain't made it outa th' hallway."

I shrug and… Yeah. "I've already scanned it in detail and…" I check for the estate agent. No, out of range. "Fixed up a little water damage. So…"

She nods. "So? What'd'yah think?"

An image appears in my head, and I consider it as she leads the way into the living room. "It's very… Wooden."

She pauses in her examining of the décor to glance my way for a moment. "Go easier if y'all just came out with it."

"I have a mild preference for houses made of brick, but the location is good for the mansion, the local primary-. Elementary school is supposed to be pretty good, the area's reasonably quiet without being isolated, there's adequate parking…" I shrug. "It shouldn't be too hard to get planning permission to replace the house, but it's not actually a bad house and I'd feel a little bad about wrecking it because it's made of the wrong stuff."

Though I suppose that I could run carbon nanotubes throughout the wood, which would dramatically increase its strength. And we're in New York State here, not the tornado corridor. The only issue would be supervillain attacks, but…

I mean, how common are those?

"There any Friends of Humanity 'round these parts?"

"There haven't been any public demonstrations." My eyes light up as I look through the walls, considering our potential neighbours. There isn't really a 'Friends of Humanity' desire per se, but there are certain patterns I've noticed… Nothing stands out. "But I'd be surprised if there weren't a few people who only know about the x-gene from Magneto who've been to a demonstration or two. I'm sure we'll have to do some outreach work, but…" I gaze at her with pointed lasciviousness. "You're a slightly easier sell than some."

She rolls her eyes. "Alright, smooth guy, ah kin make nice with the neighbours."

I nod, smiling. "I think that contact with 'mutants' who are just regular people outside from the occasional oddity really is the best way to pull the Friends of Humanity's teeth. Most people would protest against a madman openly fighting a one man war against human civilisation. No one's going to protest against Anne-Marie from two doors down who helped out at the bake sale last month."

"Ain't so sure about that mahself, but I guess it don't hurt too much to trah. What's the upstairs lahk?"

"Master bedroom, two others and a study which we could convert, and a bathroom with one of those oversized baths."

She nods, walking towards the door. "Reckon the bedroom's worth whayl?"

I consider, then nod. "Yes. The view's quite nice, the storage space is generous, and the insulation and double glazing-."

She looks back, rolling her eyes. "Ah take back wut ah said about y'all bein' smooth."

Oh, she meant-.

She grabs my arm and drags me off.

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
13:55 GMT -2

"Ah." Ahri'ahn looks up for a moment, then scribbles something on a document held by an aide and then dismisses them. The aide bows and leaves, then Ahri'ahn walks towards me. "Orange Lantern."

I… Find myself sighing.

Ahri'ahn frowns. "Is something amiss?"

"Yeah." I shake my head. "I'm probably doing something stupid, but…" Huh. "I realise that you've been busy, but have you read up on recent surface world history?"

"I've only had a rough overview. My work in Atlantis has taken priority. That's one of the reasons why I've taken Kaldur'ahm as my student; his experience should help me interact with foreign nations."

"Ah… That wasn't really the focus of his studies."

"I am aware. And I accept that there are better advisors in Atlantis. I just make use of his knowledge for a 'first reading'. But if you think that there is something that I should know, I don't understand why you think that you are being foolish. I am not so prideful that I refuse to hear advice contrary to my own thoughts."

"Before my coterie and I fought Nabu, I offered him several compromises. A thaumically active golem to replace his host-slave, my own service in finding a rotating circle of hosts… Or he could go back on a shelf. We fought when his arrogance led him to refuse, and as much as I still hate him, I do.. see it as a loss that he didn't accept. And then-. There's a man called Leonard Snart. Brilliant man. He created a weapon that can reduce the temperature of anything it hits to absolute zero. On a scale where the freezing point of water is zero and the boiling point of water is one hundred, the target hits minus two hundred and seventy. He used it for petty theft, and then he met me, and now his technology repairs glaciers and reduces refrigeration costs in a way that's making him a pretty decent income legally."

"That does not sound foolish either. You gave an enemy a chance to honourably yield and made a criminal into an honest man."

"It's-. I like making the world a better place for everyone. Ideally. And I… I get wrong-footed when I see a fight coming… There's this.. merchant prince called Lex Luthor, and I'm pretty sure that I'm eventually going to have to kill him and it's so pointless because we don't disagree about anything."

"I'm…" He gathers his thoughts for a moment. "Orange Lantern, you appear to be egotising. I don't understand what you want. And I am rather busy."

"I've been to Kor with its founder. We triggered that ambush. And we ran into Brainwave in Nanauve, and we went to the cavern where Queen Gamemnae was ritually sacrificed. We know there are more clay zombies making… Giant runic stones with the rune for 'joy' written on them." His face is quite still. "I don't know what's going on. I don't know why it's going on. I don't know if you're actually Ahri'ahn, or Gamemnae, or… Someone else entirely."

I sigh again, and this time I have his full attention.

"And it doesn't-. Doesn't matter. Please. Tell me what you're doing. Tell me why. It-. It-. I probably won't care. I might help, because that's easier than just letting you carry on in a way that causes a tonne of collateral damage."

"I.. don't know-."

I tilt my head back. "Please don't. Because you don't have time to dither. Manitou Raven was on sentry duty. He's up and about and while he's probably not as skilled as an Atlantean archmage he's back in touch with his old friends Teth Adom, Rama Khan, Prince Khufu and Princess Chay-Ara."

His eyes narrow slightly. "It sounds like Kaldur has neglected to explain certain things to me."

"Hey, don't blame him. If you didn't explain what you actually needed, it's hardly his fault that he didn't tell you about it."

"How are they still alive?"

"The Prince and Princess reincarnated a lot and regained their memories, Rama Khan was kept alive by Jarhanpur and Teth Adom took the body of someone who broke into his tomb to steal his powers. Manitou Raven put himself into some sort of suspended animat-."

"I don't-" A slight aspect of contempt enters his expression. "-care about the charm-peddler."

"I think someone willing to step out of time for five thousand years deserves a little respect, if only for their tenacity. So I am talking to former queen Gamemnae, then?"

"You are talking to Lord Ahri'ahn."

"Right, but Ged could talk, too. Were you reanimated by-?"

"Of all the attempts you could have made to rally people against-."

"That's not what this is! I'm trying to help!"

"No one would help the ruler of a foreign nation increase their power. I'm sure that as an educated man you have read 'The Prince'."

"My homeland once ruled about a quarter of the planet, and now it's just got a few islands. My adopted homeland would have happily pretended that the rest of the world didn't exist as they had for three thousand years if it wasn't for me, and they're still not that interested in it. You want Atlantis to be the new world hegemon?" I shrug and pull a face of exaggerated disinterest. "Good for you. Go right ahead. As long as you're not excessively brutal to its inhabitants it's not my concern. You want to replace technology with magic as the dominant paradigm? Good for you. Go right ahead. It doesn't matter to me. Am I getting through?"

His face slides back into neutral. "And if I simply command you to leave?"

"Oh, I'll go. But between what's happening and the disappearance of King Orin, if you're lucky then the Justice League will get here before the Ancients do. They liked Anointed One."

He half-turns away, waving his right hand in dismissal. "I am not in the habit of explaining myself to ignorant foreigners."

"Then de-ignorant me. What are the stones for?"

"The-." He turns back to me. "The rune isn't 'joy'. It's 'Delight'."

"Okay?"

"Did you think I was using Dream? I am aware of its master's return, and I know how vengeful he can be. The power of Delight will bind Atlantis together and raise it up-."

"I'm-I'm sorry. 'Delight', capital 'D', of the Endless?"

"Yes. I realise that Desire could have worked, but in my experience utilising the power of Desire results in short-sighted selfishness."

"Ah… Oh… No."

"What? You can't possibly comprehend the spellcraft involved."

"Not entirely. I've got a rough idea-. The problem is that you somehow missed Delight's… Change."

"What change? They're the Endless."

"And yet they can die. Something… I don't know what, happened to Delight. And she's not Delight any more."

"Then what is she?"

"Delirium."

"D-?" An expression of growing horror appears on his face. "What?"

"W-? What have you done?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:00 GMT -2

He steps away from me, his hands waving-.

I'm on the other side of the room, construct armour around my body as-. As an illusion of Atlantean territory appears in the air before him.

"I will not strike you. I have far more important concerns."

I walk cautiously closer as tens… Hundreds of glyphs appear. "How bad is it?"

"I-." He glances aside for a moment. "Oh, there's no-. I created a secondary layer, turning the closest part of the Earth's thaumosphere into a part of the material. It is there that the altered nature of the world spread and metastasised."

"Yes, I understood that much."

"But it goes deeper, and-." He swings his right arm through the illusion. "That joining turns Atlantis into a unified object which greater powers can work upon without crushing it."

"Okay?"

"That is what the great runes were designed to-." He shakes his head. "Do the correspondence effects still work if her nature has changed?"

"Don't know. I only know of one other person to ever try using the Endless as a spell component."

His eyes lock on me through the illusion. "Who? What happened?"

"He was trying to trap Death. He got Dream instead. A lot of people started dying in their sleep, any… Spell that required the Dream to be in good order failed disastrously, and when he finally got out everyone responsible who was still alive was tortured in their sleep for years before he forgot about them and allowed them to die."

"But he did it."

"… Yes. And I've got the only record of the ritual I know about and I'm not sharing it because I'm not insane."

His eyes drift back to the illusion. "I can't stop it."

"Stop what you unhelpful- !"

"I CAN'T STOP IT!"

His eyes are wide, staring at me as if he can make me fix things by intensity alone.

"The power that was supposed to be siphoned from Delight, that was supposed to transform all of Atlantis's people into demigods capable of mastering any field, commanding any power they had the whit to seize-. It can't be stopped! It wasn't designed to be something that could be turned off."

"So we need to get rid of the runic stones. Do you have their location?"

"It doesn't matter where they are! They're using one of the Endless!"

"Oh, does that work? I had some thoughts on using the Dream to travel the stars-."

"Yes." His right hand goes to his forehead. "Yes, it works. You could fly them to the edge of the universe and it wouldn't be enough."

"How about the Source Wall?"

"Not enough."

"Circuit breakers?"

"Can you install a circuit breaker in gravity?"

"Not easily. Would destroying the marker stones help?"

"They're partially incorporeal. Mere physical attacks-."

"Don't worry. Locations."

He flaps his left hand and the illusion-.

"Thank you. Orange Lantern to Justice League. Emergency. Emergency. Transmitting locations. Targets are magic rocks partially extended into the Earth's thaumosphere. Magic attacks and anti-magic weapons required. Destroy them as fast as possible."

"Batman here. I'll get the teams organized. Report new information to Mister Atom. Out."

I nod. "Orange Lantern to Hawkman One."

"Orange Lantern, good to hear from you. You take her down already?"

"No, we've got a bigger problem. To summarise, they've plugged Delirium of the Endless into a continent-wide magic network and we need to destroy the anchor points as fast as possible. Batman's organising the League and associates but I haven't updated him on your situation yet. The anchor-."

"I.. think I remember them. They're virtually indestructible."

"Ahri'ahn hasn't told me not to bother yet so it must be possible to break them somehow. I'll have a go at one myself once there's nothing more I can do here. Ahri'ahn, can you get Kaldur in here so he can take over from me?"

He tears his eyes away from his illusion, which… Appears to be running some sort of calculation.

"He's heading here now."

"Thank you. Mister Cantrell, I think that if Lord Rama can get you underwater then your mace might be able to do the job. If it can't, just get clear."

"Can do. Batman's calling Adom now. We'll get going right away."

"Thanks. I'll send updates if I manage to find anyone else to help."

"What did you do to Kaldur?"

"I asked him where Koryak was. He woke up and went looking. What did you do to him?"

"I thought I was sharing my own delight. But I see now that I was badly mistaken. A delirium…"

"How bad is it going to get?"

"I don't know."

"And how quickly?"

"I don't know. I don't know. Since I can't imagine a member of the Endless getting more powerful it should still work at the same rate… But it's accelerating. More than I was predicting, and I-. I can't work out why."

"Residual Anti-Life, the fact that you were actively trying to alter their minds anyway… Have you heard of someone called Boss Smiley?"

"No."

I make a simple construct depiction of his face-.

Which winks at him, and generates itself a thumb so that it can give him a thumbs up sign. "I'm rooting for yeh, champ!"

I punch it, reducing it to orange mist.

"He's… Some sort of spirit of political corruption and social inertia. He hates me, and he's everywhere. He doesn't have that much direct power but-."

"His face. Is that his sigil?"

"Yes. I think so."

"Then… Then I know where we must go."

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:06 GMT -2

"So are we on a time limit..?"

"I don't know." The air in front of him shimmers. "I don't know. I built control mechanisms into the spell architecture, but with a different sort of power flowing through I can't predict the speed."

"Is it just a matter of power flow?"

"I. Don't. Know. It's not-. Even impossible that it actually won't cause a problem. It's just astronomically unlikely."

"I ask because I can generally drain power, regardless of its form."

"That would be-. Barely better. But please: lecture me on magic."

"I don't even know who you are. And given the fight I just had against the late masters of Kor, I'm not going to assume that your knowledge is entirely up to date."

"Animated corpses can't fight as well as they could in life. The proper application of magic requires intelligence."

"Alright, let's lay out the problem."

The shimmer stabilises into… A hallway?

"Let us not."

He takes a moment to gather himself and then strides through. The portal… Stays open, and… There's basically nowhere I can go that I can't get back from if I have to, so… I step through.

"The raw energy is designed to interact with the spells you've laid out-" He's striding down the corridor, and I… Don't try flying wherever this is, and trot after him instead. This place looks like a… Early modern palace, walls panelled and decorated with friezes, roof high and vaulted. "-which in turn connect to everyone via your piscine transformation spells. Which means that the nature of the energy matters."

"There are second-order spells designed to act in response to the result of that. Except that now they won't, they'll do something else. Rather than make my people joyful at the new state of affairs…"

"They'll be driven mad by it?"

He glances back, walking faster. "I don't know."

"Where are we?"

He snorts, returning his attention to the path ahead. "You should have asked that before you followed me. I don't need you."

"I'm a superhero. Doing unwise things to stop bad things is basically what we do. I don't expect you to like me, but, again, the more that I know-."

"We are in the house of Destiny so that I can steal a picture."

"Oh, how novel." I look around and entirely fail to see a man in a grey robe chained to a book. I mean, it's not like he doesn't know that we're here. "Now I don't know how fucked we are either."

"If he hasn't stepped in by now, then I'm supposed to be here."

"Or he'll just walk up when it's most appropriate. Unless either of us are immune to destiny."

Which…

"Ah, if someone tried to find your name with a spell that runs off the Book of Destiny, and the spell fails, does that mean that you're immune to destiny?"

He hesitates at an intersection, mutters something under his breath and then turns left. "It might."

"In that case, he probably doesn't know that we're here, but he's going to be really angry when he finds out."

"How are you immune to destiny?"

"If I knew that-."

"Do not make.. glib quips when the fate of my people is on the line!"

"I come from a universe that is architecturally different from this one. No magic, and I'm going to guess that we don't have anything similar to fate for mine to have been transcribed onto the local fate-system when I came here."

"Then I can use you as a distraction. If you interfere with his system by existing then he will focus his rage on you-."

"He didn't get angry last time he ran into people with that ability. And it's possible that he's just put a basic ward on his book. Which he can't alter, so I'm not sure… What he can do against me. Or you."

"Treasure your lack of imagination."

"I guess people pay him for information?"

"How do you even breathe?"

"Well, between the two of us, I'm the one with a working relationship with two of the Endless, and as a Lantern I don't need to breathe."

"Which two?"

"Dream and Desire. Desire thinks I'm fun to prod. With Dream I assisted him with a minor matter. Do you-?"

"That's no help. Desire helps you once, then ruins everything else you do so that it sticks in your memory. And what Dream does when-."

"He takes all the worthwhile parts to put in his domain forever while the material version loses all the traits that make it worth existing, I know." Huh. "But how do you know that hasn't already happened? I mean, Atlantis fell from-."

"I asked, and he mentioned it."

"How do you even know where we're going?"

"There's a progression in the friezes. You didn't notice?"

"No."

"Magic isn't just about raw power and knowledge. You have to develop an understanding for the rule-systems that define the greatest currents of power. Awareness of your environment is essential, because every tiny clue emerges from those rules in places of power like this. It's been a long time since I've been this powerless, but needs must."

"Okay, so what are you going to do when we get… Wherever we're going."

"Short circuit my own spell and hope that the power loop doesn't drive everyone mad before your allies can destroy the anchor stones. I doubt that it will work, but it's the only thing I could think of that might."

"Just in case you die in the attempt, where is King Orin really?"

"I needed the heart of a king. He's still alive, but he doesn't-. At last!"

A large room, a table, and… Seven portrait frames. Er… Okay, Dream, Death, Desire, those I recognise. The robe with a face is… Destiny. There's a sheet over one. Destruction? One shows an emaciated woman sitting on a turntable, rocking back and forth with her arms wrapped around her legs as she spins slowly around, and Ahri'ahn is heading towards it.

The last one is empty. Uh.

"How remarkably fitting."

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:10 GMT -2

The… Person I'm looking at is short and so fat as to be virtually spherical. He or she is also naked, and the adipose flaps make it hard to tell which is appropriate. Their skin is chalk white and their hair is pitch black, done up in a topknot like a sumo wrestler but more messily. Their eyes are black, with tiny little points of white where an unusually small pupil might go.

I bow courteously. "Despair. I'd say that it's a pleasure to meet you, but I fear your power too much to lie."

I glance behind me to see Ahri'ahn backing away rather frantically.

"Huh. Do you think he's going to fail?"

"The only way to avoid failing is to avoid trying. But if he doesn't snap out of it and get a move on then he's definitely going to fail here."

Despair waddles up until she's standing besides me. "You're doing well."

"Thank you. Did you enjoy our exposure to the Anti-Life?"

"A little. It's too forced, really. I prefer it when it's more individualistic. Like being sacrificed to the Tezcatlipoca every day for centuries with no hope of-."

Ahri'ahn falls to the ground clutching at his bleeding chest.

"-being released, knowing that your friends could probably have rescued you if you hadn't betrayed them completely unnecessarily."

Lumps of… Ahri'ahn fall-. No, drip off, the cloth of his clothing becoming partially liquid and running off his outline, taking colour and physical integrity with it. Then the effect spreads to his face, his features warping like molten wax-.

"So you are Queen Gamemnae under there. Let me just-."

I step forward, intending to pull the clay off her smaller frame so that she can breathe… And clone her a new heart while I'm at it, because I guess that Despair just made Gamemnae's lowest point just a bit more real which means that she doesn't have one at the moment.

"No."

Despair takes hold of my arm-.

…

"Huh."

"Would you rather hold hands?"

"No, it's just-. I've been hit with the Anti-Life before. I was sort of assuming that physical contact with you would… Do something similar."

Despair makes an expression that might generously be called a smile.

"Try moving."

I-.

Ah. It turns out that Despair is quite strong. No matter. I-.

I.. don't seem to be able to cut off my own arm. Or remove friction. Or transition. Or extend a filament. I'm not going to try stepping out while Despair is holding on to me because that sounds like a higher order terrible idea. Instead, I reach into my armour's sheath with my free hand and pull out an x-ionised dagger.

"That's your best idea?"

"Please let me go?"

Probably-Gamemnae collapses onto her face, weakly clawing at the molten clay covering her face.

"Guess."

I bring my knife across and-. The blade doesn't cut through my armour.

"That should work. Is that you?"

"You can cut your arm off if you want. But you won't get it back."

"Promise?"

"I said it, didn't I?"

"Yes, but was it an observation or an offer of a pact? Are you guaranteeing that if I cut it off you'll use your despair powers to keep me from growing it back, or are you just saying that arms don't grow on trees because you're a busy being and you don't actually know anything about me."

"A lasting wound that you couldn't fix would undermine your entire personal philosophy, wouldn't it?"

"That's an observation, not an answer."

"Stop playing-" Gamemnae manages to claw the clay away from her mouth. "-its game! Work out what the rulesmgph-!"

That's not even slightly acting like clay. It's deliberately oozing over her mouth, nose and eyes.

Ah…

Okay, she can hear me. The problem is her despair. I'm not sure if Despair can make someone despair about something that didn't actually bother them. And despair isn't fear, so just saying 'it might not happen' isn't going to be enough if things have gotten to this stage.

I glance at the picture of Desire-.

"My sister-brother wouldn't help. They'd be fascinated to see what you want most."

Okay, er…

Rules.

Gamemnae was genuinely despairing in whatever part of the Aztec afterlife she was stuck in. Despair is making her relive that. How-?

"Gamemnae! Shout, 'Hail Hephaestaean, King of the Gods and Master of Technology'!"

"Muh?!"

"That way, if you die, you'll go to Erebus rather than Mictlān! Hades only does finite punishments! You can sidestep the whole heart thing! I mean, you'll be punished, but he might take time served into consideration!"

"Muh-ugh?!"

"I'm not good at this sort of puzzle, but it will work."

"Ugh! Mhm Muhmhmughmum, muh mh mh mugh mh muhmh mh mumumugh." … "Mughmuh?"

"It helps if you mean it, but if you've never seriously worshipped any other god then that should do." Ah… Other thing. Everyone in Atlantis going mad. "Okay, I think that the effect of any Delirium-related magic would fade if they were disconnected from the system, right?"

"Muyomugh!"

"So even if it does go wrong, then all we have to do is change them back into baseline humans and give them counselling for the induced madness. Most of them should recover eventually. Then we can shut the whole thing down, and if they want to become Purebloods or whatever again, we can do that. That should work, shouldn't it?"

"Muh… Might..?"

Queen Gamemnae looks her dry-clay-covered form over, then reaches up to her chest to check that her heart is back again. Then she awkwardly and unsteadily stands, staring wide-eyed at Despair, who lets go of my arm.

"Thank you."

Despair gestures vaguely in the direction of Gamemnae. "Carry on. You haven't succeeded yet."

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:14 GMT -2

Gamemnae doesn't pause to brush off the residual clay before dashing over to Delirium's portrait and… Touching it. I assume that she's doing something magical. I walk towards her more slowly-.

Then I pause.

"I don't suppose that you'd be prepared to tell me what turned Delight into Delirium in the first place?"

"Why would I?"

"Because if we did turn her back, she'd constantly be aware that she could flip out and go back to ruining peoples' lives and there wouldn't be anything she could do to prevent it, constantly undermining her harmony with her own nature?"

"She's aware now. Though there is a way to change her."

"I don't intend to try to kill her, if that's what you're implying. Aside from anything else, I don't have a candidate."

And while I could say that 'her death toll isn't that great', I'm not that stupid.

"Is your brother okay with us being here?"

"Which one?"

"Destiny. This is his home."

"He's visiting Earth to find out why Atlantis is out of the water ahead of schedule."

I breathe in somewhat sharply.

"Gamemnae!" I dash towards her, and… Clean up her-. Oh, she wasn't wearing-. I give her some clothes, including a couple of tracking devices just in case. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Stop talking."

"In the interests of avoiding you falling back into despair before you finish, I will make strong representations to the relevant authorities that you've served your time for your outstanding offences. Should the rulers of Earth be unwilling to keep you around, I can find a place for you to live in exile on Maltus, or somewhere else in N.E.M.O.-controlled space."

"That-." … "Thank you."

"So what are you doing, roughly speaking?"

"This painting has the most primal possible link to Delirium. If I understand how it works, I might be able to use it to supersede the one I created."

"Have you considered asking politely?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I know that it-."

"No, she's right. It wouldn't work. She'd either like the idea or babble incoherently."

Well, darn. Asking for help does come with fairly major…

For a moment a vivid image of me giving the Justice League both barrels over the Nabu situation appears in my head.

Fairly major downsides in that if the other party isn't on board with your preferred solution then they now know that you're working against them.

I… Let her work. There are things that I want to know, like exactly what she did to King Orin and Koryak, but this is both more important and more urgent. And I'm curious about why she betrayed the League of Ancients, if that's even what happened. And I'd like to give her some further reassurance about what's going to happen to her because Adom is not a forgiving man.

But, yes. Concentrating.

Wait. I assumed that she wanted to study my tattoos to learn how to bypass them in a fight. Did she intend to use the setup to improve her grand design? It doesn't exactly use the standard Atlantean epistemology…

"Despair, would Delirium be aware if I removed a portion of this painting?"

"She's dimly aware of you now. But it would make her more aware of you."

"Problem?"

"Returning Delirium's power to her isn't a problem. But I can't create a strong enough bridge quickly enough." She staggers away a step. "I.. can't do it. Even if I held the spell together manually, it wouldn't be enough!"

"Is there any object or material I could get for you that would fix that problem? I worked with Professor Sephtian on-."

"There isn't enough time to enchant it!"

"There is."

We both turn, and Despair smiles unpleasantly.

"You're just overcomplicating it."

Gamemnae frowns, clearly having no idea what Despair's talking about.

"Bringing one of the load bearing runes here would work?"

"Probably not."

"Then what are you talking a-bout…"

Gamemnae is staring into space with an expression I'm familiar with due to the vast number of Anti-Lifed people I've seen with one very similar.

"What?"

"Pay attention, Lantern. Why aren't the sharks included?"

"Because Gamemnae has Ahri'ahn's root access to the transformation spells. Is that still working?"

She nods, numbly.

"So?"

"That connection doesn't need any extra spells to maintain it." Despair's smile broadens, and that's a lot of yellow teeth. "She just needs a way to transfer the energy, after all."

I frown.

So-?

Oohhhhhhh.

"Gamemnae… If you do this, I'll try and work out how to fix things so that we can undo it. You should… Recover eventually. And if there's anything you want me to tell anyone..."

Her jaw moves without any sound coming out of her mouth.

"I-."

She nods once, extremely stiffly, and disintegrates the clothes I made for her. Then she puts her hands on her chakra points, fingers… Cutting her flesh in the shape of runes that I recognise all too well.

Despair grins even wider.

"Beautiful."

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:19 GMT -2

The… Bleeding has mostly stopped.

The burns are mostly cooling.

I really didn't appreciate how messed up that looked from the outside until I watched it myself.

"I don't know how long this will take."

Gamemnae is actually leaning on me as we head back towards the portal, Despair following on behind at a waddle. Their grin is starting to get annoying.

I don't really know what Despair does, or how they got the job, but I am slightly mollified to know that they'll die before the end of the universe. I mean… Really, I'm getting out of this lightly. Just me; Gamemnae is having just about the worst thing possible happen to her, and while she's definitely earned some time in the Punishment Fields this is… Something I actually wouldn't wish on a supervillainess.

"Does it end when we destroy the stones, or are you stuck-?"

She's shaking her head. "I mutilated my soul to accept this power. Pray that the portal is still open, because I can no longer open a new one."

"Does it get less bad when we destroy the-?"

"No." I glance back at the cheerful-looking Despair. "Not with those magics."

"I will not lift a hand against you, but I can't deny that I'll experience an unseemly amount of pleasure when you finally die."

"I just want to see if I get both of you."

"Gamemnae, is there anything I can do to make this less terrible for you? Suspended animation, perhaps?"

"Once... Once the stones are destroyed and the networks collapsed and Atlantis rests on the Atlantic floor once more, only then will it be safe to allow me to sleep."

"Okay, that's an improvement. And then we can work out a way to unmutilate you. I know a man who can cut runes into souls directly, so… Maybe he can undo them… Or reroute them-."

"Why..? Are you being… Nice? You know what I was doing."

"Because you didn't have to do this, and a lot of people are going to get to live sane lives because you are. I know plenty of people who'd just shrug and then save themselves. You could have done."

"I didn't even last a year. I just… Just wanted to make Atlantis great, and…"

"And you got over confident, didn't check your work and didn't trust anyone enough to check it for you. And you decided that you were the only way Atlantis could become great. Atlantean magicians have never been in more demand than they are today. Atlantis was becoming richer and more socially dominant. But… I.. guess I understand if that's all that kept you together in Mictlān and you got a bit fixated."

Despair claps. "Touching. I might cry."

"So as I said, I'll do whatever I can to help you. But while you're coherent, I'd very much appreciate it if you could tell me where King Orin and Koryak are. Because it's going to be a lot easier to convince other people to help me if I can give them that."

"I sent Koryak to Venturia, with a few spells to make him obedient. They won't.. find it strange that he's there. Not until you recover King Orin."

"Okay, that's an easy fix once the mental confusion ends. And King Orin?"

"Heh. Heh. HehAHheh. I'm, Sooo hEArtleSS."

We're not out yet and I don't like the sound of that laugh.

Do I still have..? Yes… There it is in the depths of subspace, the… Third? Production model.

A little nightmare talisman from the Goddess of Nightmares and Madness. I raise it to my forehead.

"Melinoë, please bless this woman with your forbearance. She will know more than enough madness and has lived more than enough nightmares. Shield her, I beg you."

And then I put it over Gamemnae's head.

She gasps, and her eyes are a little more focused. But she's leaning on me more.

"Better? Worse?"

"W-what..?"

"It's started, whatever it is. You're currently wearing a charm blessed by your new goddess of nightmares and madness. I don't know how long or how well it will work. Better or worse?"

"It's-. Worse, but it's forcing me to be coherent. The horror is all there, but I'm forced to feel it all rather than hide in delusion."

Sounds about right.

"King Orin. Where?"

"The easiest way to hide the body."

"Make sure there isn't a body."

"The site where Oceanus was bound was already tied to the royal line. An Aztec spell using his heart as the focus… Was a part of all this."

"And he's not dead?"

"He's immortal. I made him like Oceanus. We keep fish in him now."

"I.. saw the pool. Do I just put the heart in it?"

"No, that's asinine-. You'll need a magician. Nommo Balewa should be able to make the bridge. It's not that complicated once you can perceive the shape of the bindings."

"Rightoh. Will he need anything when he becomes human again?"

"I don't know. I've never used that spell before."

"That's fair."

And there's the portal.

"Nearly there. The teams will need an hour or so, then I'll put you-"

A grey-robed figure with a heavy book in his arms walks through the portal.

"-under. Destiny!"

I think he's looking at me, but his hood covers his eyes. "You aren't in my book. You never were."

"Almost certainly true. But I've got something that I really need to take care of right now. Can we put this off until Atlantis has sunk again?"

"I suppose that it doesn't cause more disruption." He steps aside. "Be on your way."

"That's it?"

"Despair. You aren't supposed to be here either. I consider myself even-handed in these matters. Do you wish to complain further?"

Despair's smile fades. "No, brother."

I turn away from the frankly terrifying superbeings, and half-carry Gamemnae through the portal.

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
16:20 GMT

Hm.

Someone's being naughty.

I look around the Earth Defence Force's base on the far side of the moon, and note with a degree of disappointment that none of the mounted guns have activated. That… Could be the result of an actual command decision, but the intruder isn't emitting much in the way of anything and Lex did insist on human-only technology.

So… Deal with it myself, or walk over to the duty watch officer and nod and cough until they notice what I've noticed? I'd certainly find the latter more satisfying, but it's probably… More than a little self-defeating.

Mother Box, hush tube.

Ping.

I step through and into near-lunar space, the black mass just in front of me flowing away from me and reforming a short distance away, newly reconstructed drive system present and warming up in case I'm a threat the pilot doesn't think he can deal with.

I crane my neck slightly, stare pointedly at the cockpit, and then raise my right hand and wave sarcastically.

And that prompts the ship to change again, wings, engines and weapons flowing back as the pilot is extruded from the front.

"Grayven."

"Chen. Been ages. How are you doing?"

His head tilts slightly to his left. "Well. Better than expected." Show Me More

"Since you're still not melted, I rather gathered that."

"No. It is… More. The Dragonwing is not something that I control. Now, its sensors are my senses, its hull is my skin…" He raises his right hand into a fist, and the portion of the Dragonwing behind him moves to mirror his action. "My fists its fury."

Ah.

"You can't disconnect, can you?"

He makes a faint shrugging gesture. "Why would I want to?"

"It is Durlan technology. I assume that you're setting off every detector in every military base in China."

"The detectors are… Imperfect."

I nod. "So, ah… What brings you here?"

"General Fang will wish to speak with you on that subject himself. I believe that you can find him?"

"Yeees. And.. I do this in the cause of not starting a pointless conflict, but do you think you could back off a little while I do? I am supposed to.. point out people doing what you're doing."

"That is within my orders."

"Glad to hear it."

Because while I've got a rough idea of the Dragonwing's capacities, I don't know how much better they are as part of a New God. Particularly if they've been using wizards to boost his spiritual development. He doesn't feel anything like as strong as me -and he shouldn't be- but the Dragonwing's stealth systems are a part of him now and it's entirely possible that he's hiding something. I very much doubt that he's a threat to me, but the E.D.F. base below is a little more vulnerable.

Ring, find General Fang Zhifu.

Target located.

Hush tube, if you please.

Ping.

I float through, coming out on General Fang's office.

8th May 2013
00:23 GMT +8

The man himself, body set to human-seeming. Two bowls of tea, a chair in my dimensions…

I give him a friendly nod, and sit down. "You could phone."

"It is standard practice to begin negotiations assertively. And if I am unsuccessful, the information Immortal Man in Darkness has gathered will justify the attempt."

I nod, then pick up my tea bowl and take a sip. "How's the family?"

"My wife is well, and our son sleeps through the night most nights. There are no sign of Durlan changes in his body, for which I am grateful. I understand that you are courting a princess now?"

"Well done for not making a joke about it."

"Qilin are auspicious animals." He picks up his bowl and takes a sip, before setting it back down. "Guan said that she does not know what you could have done to deserve such an honour."

"Ah, no, I'm alright there. They have Kirin where she's from too. They have a single horn, but they also have scales and their manes are bushy and extend around their chests rather than being straight and just covering their heads."

He smiles politely. "I will see to it that our myths are updated appropriately."

I nod. "So…"

"The People's Republic would like to know why all of our candidates for joining the Earth Defence Force have been rejected."

"Oh. Heh." I glance around the office while scanning for listening devices. Plenty, but this is his office. I make a note of their locations and draw them on my seat cushion. "They fail vetting."

"How so?"

"Obviously, we don't expect people joining us from the militaries of Earth nations to be loyal to-. Primarily, to the E.D.F.. Rather, we hope that they recognise that the defence of the Earth is everyone's concern and that they can best serve that goal by working with us. And… A few watched too much Star Trek as children, or… They're from one of the African countries that Lex and I set to rights, and they're actually loyal to the organisation, but mostly… Mostly, they're more pragmatic. And if they occasionally share deployment or.. other low security information, with their government through unapproved channels, well…" I shrug. "So be it. The ones who fail vetting are the other kind. People sent by various intelligence agencies to acquire privileged technical information, usually. To steal from us. Now, I don't know exactly what's… Happening, in the Chinese security… Apparatus, but… Somehow? Literally everyone you've sent us have either been there to steal from us… Or, in a couple of cases, outright sabotage us."

His face hardens slightly. Oooh, someone's in trouble.

"You are sure?"

"Between the telepathic probes and the magic? Pretty darn sure."

"Then I must apologise. That should not have happened."

"Honestly, I'm sort of impressed. I'd have thought that one or two genuine applicants should have made it through if only by mistake."

He nods, his face hardening. Metaphorically hardening. "I will see to it that the quality of candidates is improved."

I smile. "And I'll make sure that they get a fair hearing. Ah… If you could make it clear that having them get suborned later counts? I'd hate to kick a promising officer out of the program."

"I will ensure that their career trajectory matches that of their sponsor."

I take another sip, smiling.

"Then I look forwards to our first wave of Chinese officers."

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:31 GMT -2

Dr. Balewa carefully lowers King Orin's heart into the water, and… And there's the slight sense of presence that I associate with magic. And then…

It's sort of a reverse Invisible Man. The veins and arteries around his heart become visible but translucent. Then the colour gradually extends from the heart itself while the area of translucence spreads as well, showing lungs, brain and-.

And I stick up a modesty curtain and turn to face Sephtian.

"Is everything prepared?"

He looks a little lost. "We are as prepared as we can be. It is… I have gone my entire life without drawing power from elemental creatures, yet if Teth Adom had not offered to provide the force to maintain this arrangement Poseidonis would be almost completely torn down by the force involved. It will be unpleasant, but the city will survive."

"Well, that's really him dealing with the elemental, isn't it? Unless you're.. thinking about asking Atum to fuel this spell indefinitely."

"No. I-." He looks around, and then looks up at the sun. "To stand under the sky, on the surface… To make it permanent, I would need to rework every single one of Ahri'ahn and Gamemnae's spells, including piercing the thaumospheric realms, and… I would have to continue her policy of segregation."

"Was that a purebloodist thing? I haven't studied Atlantean history enough to know how that sort of thing was handled five thousand years ago."

"I believe that was part of her deception. All of the records which we have suggest that it is very much something which Ahri'ahn would have done. But with Gamemnae I suspect that it was practical rather than idealistic." He unconsciously runs his right hand across his scalp. "While I was under the effect of her spell I did not really think about it."

"No?"

"The spell was supposed to make us joyful. Instead, it resulted in disassociation. It did not occur to me that it was something to be concerned with. A little madness goes a long way in normalising an experience."

"And that's contained?"

He turns, and points to where some of the recent additions to Poseidonis's infrastructure are being dismantled by a group of trained wizards.

"His-. Her work is brilliant. Her… Sacrifice will prevent the bleed-over getting worse…" He shakes his head. "'Everything' may well include the spells which changed us from 'baseline' humans into Atlanteans. I will have to study the spell which the sharks used and see if it can be adapted for other species."

"Can you do that?"

"We… Can. Slowly. Her work has increased our understanding of… The inertia the bloodline spells have." He bows his head slightly. "Miss Lemaris will not be.. happy."

"Because everyone can become a Pureblood if they want."

"There are clear advantages, and I can personally attest to them. But at the same time it does feel.. like a betrayal. What would.. you do, if it was you?"

I raise my left eyebrow, then let it fall with a shrug.

"I'll show you."

I take a step back, sending my armour into subspace along with most of my clothes. Stripped to my underwear, I spread out my arms.

"Yes..?"

And then I change my body back to how it was when I first arrived in orbit.

Ugh. I feel like I'm rotting.

"A-h…"

"I know."

Oh, even my voice. And I was short sighted, but it's not just things that are on the other side of the street that are a little blurry. I lift my right hand up and stare at it. Yes, even close up I'm getting less resolution. And that nearly makes me revert back, but I haven't finished making my point quite yet.

Huh. Long hair again.

"I used to be like this. Worse senses, general… Flabbiness, weakness. A shot glass worth of heavy metals and microplastics and other industrial refuse here and there. So I changed myself."

And I do it again and you do not know what you've got until it's gone.

"So if it was me and I didn't really want to keep the magnetic sense? I'd change."

And I put my armour back on.

"As augmentations go, Purebloodism is pretty good even if you're not planning on living under water."

"As a.. change it's more substantial than… That."

"Then invent some way to change between them. She shared everything she knew with you, didn't she?"

He appears to think about it. "That is.. something that I could do. I will need-."

"Lantern!"

It sounds like King Orin has somewhat recovered. "Excuse me."

"Yes." Sephtian nods and steps back. "I have.. things to oversee."

I nod and turn, walking through my curtain construct. King Orin is whole and hale, right arm wrapped around Queen Mera while Dr. Balewa appears to be checking his work.

"Can I offer you some clothes, your majesty?"

He fixes me with a Batman-stare. "Gamemnae. Where is she?"

"She had a.. thaumically isolated containment enclosure in her workshop. I added some.. padding and a strait jacket. If you really want to have it out with her, I suggest that you wait until she's fully coherent again. Because it's a coin-toss if you get anything intelligent out of her at the moment."

That happened faster than I was expecting. Though I'm not sure if that was the power of Delirium or the despair getting to her. Could just as well be both, or the thousands of years of torture, or whatever she did to copy Ahri'ahn's appearance...

"Fine." He nods. "Yes. Thank you."

I raise my left hand and give him a toga, which he adjusts with his free hand.

"You confronted one of the Endless?"

"Um. Two, but they let us go. I think Despair finds this outcome perfectly satisfactory."

He nods, getting a better grip on himself. "Then you have the thanks of Atlantis. Once I've recovered, we'll talk about what form that should take."

"Thank you, your-"

On the rooftop behind him I see a figure in a grey robe, watching me.

"-majesty. But I'm afraid that Destiny isn't finished with me." I rise a little into the air. "In case I cease to exist shortly, I'm sure that Clarissi Dox can come up with something."

And then I fly off to meet… Destiny.

 

[Mr Zoat]

7th May 2013
14:35 GMT -2

"You are a living Orange Lantern. And you are not Larfleeze."

I float in front of him. It's a little awkward, actually. With Hades he arrayed himself as a king so I reacted to him as a petitioner would to his king. Destiny looks a little like a monk, but I don't think that's what he's going for. If he's even thought about it. What does he want me to do? What does he consider polite behaviour? There really isn't any clue.

"Yes." Ah. "Currently, by most standards of 'living'."

"Do you possess documentation on your activities?"

"Uh. I don't keep a diary, but I've got my rings' scans and my mission reports, if that's any good?"

"Yes." He holds his book out slightly. "In paper format, if you please."

Um. Ring, what sort of volume-?

"I'm not sure there's enough… Space up here?"

"Do not concern yourself with that."

Well, he's the superbeing. I systematise my first month's worth of reports and ring scans and start materialising the paper-.

And as each page is created it flies free of my control and… Into Destiny's book. It just hits the cover and then there's a sort of twist-.

Ow ow ow.

Okay, not looking at that.

Since he can clearly deal with it, I start generating paper faster and with more condensed text. I suppose he can… Probably reference anything that wasn't created by me directly.

"Um. Destiny, sir? What exactly is this doing?"

"And why would you ask that after doing it?"

"Because I'd like to know? I know there are spells which use the information in your book as a reference, so if I'm... In there now, those might start working on me."

"Then you need not be concerned. This is merely adjusting my records to reflect reality as it is. It will not create records for your future or past."

"Huh."

"Are you not relieved? From what you have written, it seems that you have little regard for the inherent majesty of 'jumped-up elementals'."

"Yes, but I also don't make a point of picking fights with fundamental parts of reality, no matter how much I might prefer a more mechanical universe without them in it. In this case, starting an argument with you, a being whose abilites I can't quantify, would be a bad idea even if I hadn't just broken into your house. And, ah, sorry about that, but I think it was necessary."

"That place is not so much my house as it is an immobile part of my body."

"Is that better or worse?"

"I do not have to allow mortals to access my book. I do so because it is written that I do. In as much as I have an opinion, I regard it as a good thing that mortal creatures have contact with the higher structure of the universe. I deny neither access to my garden or my home. Though someone who visits at the same time as my brothers and sisters may become changed by the encounter."

"Did you do something like this with the Challengers of the Unknown?"

"Yes, though in their case their missions were far smaller in scope than those which you have undertaken."

"And... Er. How do you feel about that?"

"I feel nothing. A slight irregularity is being corrected."

"But does this..? Change other things? I mean, I've spoken to people from the future a few times and I've gotten the impression that I didn't manage to have a lasting effect on anything. Is everything I do going to get erased, or..? What?"

"What would you do if it did?"

"I'd.. try and find a parallel universe which operated on different principles and move there... I guess."

"Do you believe that my existence contradicts the notion of free will? I have heard that said before."

"No. The fact that my reactions are predictable does not mean that they are controlled by someone else. But I want to have an impact, and if you're telling me that that's categorically impossible, I.. might..."

"Or you might try to find a way to change that characteristic."

"Or… That. I thought you'd be against that?"

"I am not precisely for or against anything. It will be a notable revelation should you come to understand the process by which a person can be cut loose from the words in my book, for you and for me both. For a long time I did not realise that deviation from the content of my book was possible. And then there was a plane crash, where the occupants survived when their deaths were written."

"Was that.. you..?"

"No. I have no ability to deviate from what is written, nor desire to." The flow of paper stops and he lowers his book. "Some of my brothers and sisters counselled me to destroy them, others to encourage them. For the most part I simply watched them. I neither liked nor disliked the sensation, but I did learn that many of my assumptions concerning my nature were sorely misguided."

"Do you know where I came from?"

"No. My book suggests that it does not have a system of destinies similar to those of this reality, but just as you are unwritten so too is your original home. Similarly, I have no records on how such a place could come to be."

"I don't suppose that you've got my full name written down anywhere, have you?"

"No, for what I suspect is the same reason."

I nod. "Well, until I hear differently from you, I'm going to keep trying to improve things. Ah. Let me know if I start causing you a headache, because -to reiterate- I do not want to become your enemy at any point. In fact, if you ever need something done? Let me know and I'll do it."

"That will never happen, but I understand your intent and shall ensure that my brothers and sisters understand it as well."

"Thank you."

Alright, he seems to be as helpful as he can be…

"Just… One last thing. Would you benefit from a recording of what happens when I try writing my name?"

"I would not 'benefit', but it would be noteworthy."

"Alright. Um."

I fabricate a blank piece of paper and lay it on his book. No absorption. Then I take a pen out of subspace and draw a-.

And then I pick myself up off the floor, Destiny looking down at me. The sheet of paper is gone, though the book's master is looking as blank as ever.

"I thank you for that record. It may prove illuminating."

"Happy to help. But now I've got a country to put back together."

"According to my book, it never fell apart. As such, I suppose that I must wish you… Well."

He nods and then vanishes, and I get back to work.

 

[Mr Zoat]

4th October 1995
13:24 GMT -5

"…several minor irregularities in their accounting, but…" I shrug. "Honestly… I'm not sure that we want to help them recover funds from people trying to embezzle money from them. Though…" I smile a little. "It would be kind of funny if you did."

Professor Xavier smiles back. "I'm inclined to agree, but I think that perhaps our efforts could be more effectively focused elsewhere."

"There's also a load of violations of weapon control laws, but…" I gesture with my right hand to Scott's face, Logan's hands and my ring. "Pot, kettle."

"My face isn't a gun." Scott sounds unimpressed.

Henry looks uncertain. "No, but it could well be argued that you were -as a mutant- privileged in your ability to own a highly dangerous weapon while attempting to use the law as a tool to deny equivalent weapons to your political opponents."

I nod. "Again, getting a Supreme Court ruling which overturned all U.S. weapon ownership restrictions would be amusing, but I doubt that they'd thank you."

Jean nods. "But you do have something?"

"Yes." I press a button and bring up a series of crime reports on the screen. "I've been studying the statistical links between crimes and sentencing. Now, particular groups of people getting longer sentences for the same offence doesn't prove prejudice, as a fairly wide range of injuries can be covered by the same law. But it was a place to start looking. And in these cases we have three x-gene-possessing assault victims who were hospitalised with-" I bring up the police photos. "-injuries including stab wounds, severe bruising and broken bones, and whose attackers received surprisingly light sentences. Reading the judge's sentencing, there's nothing that stands out as openly biased, but she did receive a donation from Friends of Humanity during her last election campaign. Now, if we could demonstrate that her ruling was due to underlying anti-mutant prejudice that might get her removed from her position, but there isn't anything else I can do remotely and I'm.. not a mind reader."

Anne-Marie frowns. "There ain't nothin' bettuh?"

"Not that I can find through statistical analysis." I shrug. "While I'm not trying to argue that the Friends of Humanity are harmless, the mutant population is relatively small, hard to distinguish from people who got superpowers in other ways, and a lot of illegal discrimination doesn't rise to the level of crimes, or go as far as generating criminal convictions. To be honest, this requires a large outreach effort whereby areas of concern can be identified by people on the ground, and we could perform investigations once that identification had been made."

Professor Xavier nods. "So what do you suggest?"

"Major cities usually have places where people with powers get together. The best information I have is that about three quarters of them should have the x-gene. And if we can't find them by asking politely, there's always Cerebro. Find community leaders, make sure they have our number."

The Professor nods. "I have had a few local organisers reach out to me in the past. But for the most part they were very… Angry people who wanted to pursue a more confrontational approach than I am comfortable with."

Remy actually looks up from the cards he's playing with. "When people scared, they jus' listen to whoever got de biggest mouth."

I nod. "I realise that it will take more work, but convincing people with superpowers to stay calm and rational and -where practical- obedient to the law will make it much easier to identify bad actors in the judiciary. If people with the x-gene are actually more likely to commit crimes then we're on a hiding to nothing. As for countering the Friends of Humanity generally… I think it might be an idea to expand the Institute's education program." I look around the room. "I mean, it's basically just Jubilee and me training at the moment, and in my case it's just mindfulness lessons and the occasional telepathic check-up. Each of us are easily capable of mentoring a few children with powers..."

Remy looks decidedly uncertain at that point. "I ain't sure they need mah kinda lessons. 'less you wan' the other bébé t' go home without dheir wallets."

Logan snorts. "Sounds like a valuable lesson t' me."

Henry raises his eyebrows. "Perhaps it would do less to encourage criminality if you limited yourself to card tricks? I'm certain that they would find those just as entertaining, and it would be something which they could show their parents afterwards."

Kevin nods. "Ah, okay, mutants having better self control is good, but what are we doing with the regular kids? Mutants aren't getting beat up by other mutants."

Scott fans his hand out. "Why not invite them along? My best friend growing up was-. Didn't have an x-gene."

The professor thinks for a moment. "Because while I understand the value of exposure therapy, children without powers do not require special lessons in using powers which they don't have. Also, on a more practical level, Hank and I are the only people here who are licensed to teach children."

I nod. "Yes, I considered that. My thoughts were that offering a summer camp doesn't require the staff to have teaching qualifications as long as the activities are described as 'activities' rather than 'classes'. We all know enough about camping to oversee a camping trip, and I'm sure we could all find something to keep them entertained. If we encounter a child having control issues we can help them with that, and maybe suggest that they stay on a week for focused training. Of course, if the Institute did become a full-on school-school, then the rest of us are going to have to get qualified because I have no idea what the U.S. curriculum is like."

"Problem." Logan tilts his right hand slightly and extends a claw single claw. "What'd'we do when someone shows up t' trash the place? Or when we need t'go trash someone else's place?"

I shrug. "Summer school is… A week or two long? I'm sure the world can survive for that long without us actively fighting someone. And if we did desperately need to deploy while there were children on the premises, then one or two of us could stay behind and organise a safe group activity. And we'll obviously need an evacuation plan for if we were attacked here, but… Sad to say, most regular schools have those now. Supervillains are a fact of life in a lot of places. And.. our.. defences are a lot better than what most places have, especially including our exotic abilities."

The Professor nods. "I… Think that a summer school is something that we should be able to organize. Hank, perhaps you and I can put our heads together?" Henry nods. "Scott, please take the rest of the team and follow up with this judge. And Paul, while you're there, if they have any remaining injuries-."

"Of course." I nod. Abnormal physiology can make medicine difficult, but simple things like organic damage are easy to fix.

"Make sure that you make a record of their severity first. A defense lawyer might try to claim that we're exaggerating their extent."

"Certainly."

He looks around the table. "Then.. unless there's anything else..?"

There doesn't appear to be.

"Dismissed."

Scott stands first. "Get your things and then meet up in the hangar. Jean, can you tell Ororo?"

Jean raises her right hand to her forehead for a moment, then nods. "She's on her way."

A sensible precaution when everyone else is busy: someone gets to sit by a console to decrease our reaction time. And with Lilandra acting as an advisor with S.W.O.R.D. in exchange for a green card, Ororo drew the short straw. But with the meeting over, that's no longer so much of a concern. Anne-Marie and I glance at each other when we get out into the corridor. I don't think we really need anything-.

"Fergetting something?" Kevin looks at me expectantly, right hand held out.

I nod, a folder appearing from subspace. "Friends, family, local Friends of Humanity members and professional colleagues. Please don't do anything too creepy."

He shifts into-. Director Nicolas Fury, as he takes the folder. "How about you leave the spying to the professionals, huh?"

"As well as not being teachers, none of us are licensed as private detectives."

"In that case…" He shifts into… A cartoon character I don't recognise. "Let's go commit some federal offences!"

I nod. "Again."

 

[Mr Zoat]

The Man

8th May 2013
09:23 GMT

"…and I spent most of the rest of the day feeding arcane artefacts to the Ophidian, because just removing the physical objects wasn't enough to destabilise the system quickly, but I couldn't feed her too much because-."

Queen Artemis nods. "That would risk the ire of the elementals you would hope would finish the job."

I nod, leaning back slightly in my chair. "Exactly. I mean, it's a brilliant piece of thaumic engineering, and I… I think there are other things that they could do with the system, but the planet's thaumic systems aren't something you can just reroute like that without colossal amounts of power that we don't have."

She shakes her head in amazement. "I understand the principles you have described, but I cannot imagine devising the mechanisms to put it into operation. And you believe that she did that while being tortured by evil gods for thousands of years?"

"That's my best guess. She had other concerns when she decided to be more open about what she'd been doing. Hopefully, if we eventually restore her mental clarity, we can find out."

It's not like I can check the clay she used to change her own appearance, but I wouldn't be shocked if she'd had some of Ahri'ahn's bones added to the mix. But we never found out where she found them… If that is what happened.

"What would happen to her then?"

Huh. I look around her drawing room as I think about it. The carved wood and padded furnishings put me in mind of my granny's living room or dining room, though in fact it's probably more similar to the drawing rooms of the Early Modern wealthy. I smile a little as I see some of my books on the personal reading shelf.

"I don't know. It won't really be my business either way. Adom is a head of state, but he was killed before Gamemnae could try and murder him. The people she killed died a long time ago, and she legitimised her own actions in Atlantis-. Old Atlantis, so there's no legal issue there. But attacking King Orin, taking his authority and reordering Atlantean society… That's probably a death penalty offence, which strikes me as extremely wasteful."

"But hardly unearned."

"If she hadn't been willing to sacrifice her sanity with no prompting from me at all, I'd probably be a lot less conflicted."

I mean, I'm not conflicted, exactly. I want her alive and in prison so that she can work off her debt to society. I don't think she's an ongoing threat. But King Orin doesn't want a new Ocean Master, and getting his heart cut out really hurt. I can easily understand why he might just order her death. It wouldn't be capricious or arbitrary if he did.

I wonder if the genomorphs could-? Of course they could, but would it-?

"What are you thinking about?"

"I was wondering if we could use a species of telepathic hive mind creatures to take a copy of her knowledge, in the event that King Orin insisted that she be executed."

"I suppose that you could, but where would you find such creatures?"

"Oh, no-. Sorry. We've already got them. They're called g-nomes. They're a synthetic organic species, one of several genomorph types created by a company called Cadmus Laboratories."

She appears to take that with reasonable equanimity. "Do your people use many types of vassal creature?"

"No. None, actually. I was actually responsible for the legal changes that got them manumitted; they officially have full citizenship now. Do your people use.. things like that?"

"Some do. Though I imagine that their nature is dissimilar. Can your 'genomorphs' use magic?"

"Some can, but they have to be specifically designed for it. We've still got a couple who were engineered to use demonic magic in the wind, but the other types are a good deal easier to deal with."

"Then they are living creatures whose nature makes it easier to use a particular type?"

I nod. "That's my understanding of it."

"Ours are… Partially elemental. A seed enriched with magic is placed in a vessel, and their master will usually grant it life with a drop of their own blood."

"How mentally.. complex are they?"

"They essentially run off their master's intellect, understanding their orders and situation based on their master's understanding. If their master dies or severs the bond they usually just sit where they are until the raw magic powering them is expended."

That's.. a relief, and Artemis picks up on my response.

"Were you worried that we used slaves?"

"A little. I don't know your culture."

"Then let me put your concerns to rest. They're more like an extra pair of hands that a magician can operate without a second mind."

I nod, smiling. "That's a relief."

"Have you noticed any ill-effects from contact with Despair?"

"No." I shake my head. "Other than what happened to Gamemnae there don't appear to have been any ill effects. On the other hand, Despair is fairly patient, so they might just be setting me up for something. Or… Someone I meet, or something like that."

"Is there a story there?"

"I doubt that you've heard of the planet 'Krypton'. Despair was the one who arranged for it to develop intelligent life, knowing that it would be unstable and eventually explode. That took millions of years, so, I doubt that the comparatively short span of a mortal lifetime is much of an obstacle for them."

She gives her head a small shake. "How do you know about that?"

"It happened at a party. One of the guests was a Maltusian, and I work for her descendants. Well, the descendants of her people."

Huh. Technically, she might still be alive. Might be worth looking into. And… Actually, that whole business might.. go some way to explaining why Hinon was so interested in how Dream got contained…

"It's amazing that you've directly encountered two of the Endless-."

"Four."

"Four?"

"I met Dream when a possessed madman tried spreading the Anti-Life to the Dreaming, and Desire thinks I'm entertaining viewing. I haven't met Destruction, Delirium or Death, which is actually unusual as most people meet Death twice."

She nods slowly. "At the start and at the end of their lives. But you come from a place beyond their reach, and have not yet died."

"No, I've died twice. Didn't see her the first time and I don't remember seeing her the second time, but… My memories of that death are a bit confused."

She looks at me like she thinks that she misheard me. "You.. have died twice."

"I got better."

She nods slowly, looking unconvinced. "Perhaps, if we… How do you see the return of Atlantis affecting our agreement?"

"There's no such thing as too many researchers. Regardless of Atlantis getting spare capacity, we'd still like to expand. And if we don't need your researchers for our fleets in the short term, there are plenty of research projects we'd like them to work on. Obviously it's a little less urgent, but we're still eager to proceed."

"Then let us discuss how to do so."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th December 2023
13:27 GMT -5

"I guess…"

The large gold-furred gorilla opposite me slumps a little further.

"I guess since-. I.. died… I've just had conflicting drives. Like, the ape's still in here too, rather than dying with the body he was in… Or maybe that wasn't what happened, and… I'm just the ape that got smarter because a human kept sticking his mind in my brain."

I nod. "And how does this manifest?"

"I get-. Stressed out. Human body language and gorilla body language are just-. Different. Bared teeth, staring at someone directly… I see it as a threat display. And gorillas respond by throwing stuff around, beating their chests and hitting each other. And I shouldn't just automatically do that, because I'm supposed to be a man in a gorilla's body, but… I-I do."

"Mister Glenmorgan… It's not just you. Prison is a highly stressful environment for everyone. And most of the people here feel just as threatened by everyone else as you do." He nods unhappily. "Now, have you reconsidered coming to one of our group sessions?"

"I-I don't know…" He doesn't look directly at me, but he shifts where he sits so that his leg touches mine. "What if the-? What if I act up again?"

"I can calm you down. I don't like doing it because you need to learn how to deal with these feelings yourself, but if it helps you move forwards then I will agree to do it."

He smiles, reaching towards me with his left fist and tapping me on the chest twice.

"Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, I'll-. I'll come. And I'll.. do those-."

WEEEEERP!

He winces as the klaxon goes off and a guard team enters the room. "Those exercises again." He stands up with exaggerated slowness and holds out his arms to be cuffed for transport. "Thanks."

I smile, careful to keep my lips over my teeth. "You're welcome."

One of the guards glances my way as they get behind Mr. Glenmorgan, batons at the ready. "Chaplain? Waller wants to see you when she gets here."

I nod, standing and giving my wings a brief stretch before heading out of the door myself. They're heading for the main holding area for those the U.S. government considers to not be covered by the various civil rights protections of American law. And that is why I'm here. A chaplain is supposed to confront commanding officers for their immorality, and… Well, I can think of few better places for that.

Or a commanding officer who needs it more.

I walk towards the entrance of the guard portion of the facility, and in the distance I can already hear the various armoured doors opening and closing as she approaches.

I sigh as I wait behind the line for her to arrive. Very few of the inmates are strong enough to need that degree of security. All it really does for the rest is emphasise how trapped they are. It-.

The door opens, and Amanda Waller and an.. older man step through. "…the prison chaplain."

She stops, gesturing vaguely towards me. She doesn't like having me around, considering the imposition of even a little human decency to be an affront to her authority.

The man takes a step closer, frowning at me. "A thanagarian?"

I shake my head. "No."

His frown deepens. "You're… You're an actual angel?"

I shrug my wings. "If the wings fit…"

"Like a fallen angel..?"

I shake my head. "No, I'm still a faithful servant of the Most High."

He snorts. "And what did you do to deserve this gig?"

"I'm not entirely sure why I was assigned here, but for an angel… Since we lack egos and merely wish to be as useful as possible, the most difficult tasks are the most desirable."

He nods. "Alright." He offers me his right hand. "Richard Flag."

I shake his hand. "A pleasure to meet you."

"What, you're not going to tell me your name?"

"Ah… My name is lan Waller, which…" He jerks his head around and stares at her. "Yes."

"No way. No way are you-. Is he adopted-?"

She rolls her eyes, while I shake my head. "'lan' means 'servant of'. Since I am under Director Waller's command, that becomes my name."

He shakes his head. "I'm just gunna call you 'Lan'."

I nod. "Most people do."

Waller heads towards the cell block common room. "He'll be joining you in the field. He's the squad medic. And if he gets there too late he can give them the last rites."

I shake my head. "Since I'm not ordained as a Catholic priest, I can't."

Flag looks slightly distracted. "Does..? That matter?"

I nod. "It's quite important to them."

"No, to… To God." He bows his head slightly, exhaling sharply. "Does-? What does-?"

"Are you trying to ask which religion is right?"

"I guess that's part of it. I wasn't expecting to just-. Run into an honest-to-God-. Angel." He looks more awkward. "Ah…"

"Let's agree to treat that as a literal description, rather than you 'taking the Lord's name in vain'."

"Let's."

"The most simple answer is 'none of them'."

"Oh. How?"

"Over the course of human history, many people have been spoken to by the Most High, or sent messages by the Most High. The problem is that the human psyche is fundamentally designed to deal with the corporeal universe and when it communes with the Most High it usually falls rather short in comprehension. So people receive a message, relay it to the best of their ability, and then a game of Chinese whispers takes place, and the result of that is translated through several languages or cultures… And the gist is usually still there but a good deal of the nuance is lost. And that's assuming that everyone along the way agrees to be honest."

"So the New Testament..?"

"The Gospels don't claim to have been written by Jesus, and while it's mostly accurate the content wasn't written by the people it's commonly attributed to. Broadly similar things are true of the Torah, the Quran, the Guru Granth Sahib, or any other-." I see his expression. "It's the religious book of the Sikhs."

"Right. I'm sorry, I'm just having a little difficulty processing the idea of dealing with someone who's got a direct line to God."

"Everyone has a direct line to the Most High. That's what prayer is. It's just that as a messenger spirit I don't have an ego to prevent me from hearing the answer."

"I dunno. That sounded kinda smug."

I smile warmly and place my right hand on his right shoulder. "It is perfectly natural to project your own imperfections and insecurities onto others. The Most High understands and loves you anyway."

"Right…" He's thinking hard about something. "Look, I gotta ask: do you know if someone's…? Gone to-?"

"Quit lagging behind, Flag!" Waller looks back, her expression mildly irritated. Though that's fairly normal for her. "It's time to meet the prisoners."

 

[Mr Zoat]

23rd May 2013
15:23 GMT -5

Scott Free runs some sort of probe over the bones.

"Do I wanna know where you found these?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

He gives me a side long glance before returning his focus to the femur. "You've got a reputation."

"Yes, but I'm not sure how it applies here, or what might be happening that would make you not want to know."

He stands back with a huff.

"Okay, I'll bite: where did you find 'em?"

"The moon. The light side."

"Huuuuuuuh."

"I was just double-checking that Mannheim hadn't done anything to the moon, and… They stood out."

"Yeah, well, they should. Not a lot of Neanderthal spacemen."

"I scan them as contemporary with the known period of Neanderthal existence in Europe. Do you concur?"

"Yeah, as far as I can tell."

"Ping."

"Hm. Okay, some exotic residue, but nothing that explains how it got there. I don't suppose there was a Neanderthal spaceship up there as well, was there?"

"Not unless it was made of moon stone."

"Or a teleporter?"

"I wouldn't be able to detect teleportation residue after all this time. But there was no sign of any receiver. Either on the moon or in space."

"This is interesting. This is really interesting." He lowers his probe. "I just don't think I'll have time to really look into it."

"I didn't think Mannheim had all that much stuff to go through."

"Oh, no, I already-" He shakes his head. "-disarmed all the helmets and broadcast towers. The real problem is the facilities he built. We don't exactly have a lot of people who can do anything with New God tech. And some of the things he had, even I don't recognise."

"You should complain to your head teacher."

He smiles as he puts a cover over the bones. "I was planning to."

"Is any of his stuff still working?"

"Some of it. And some of it isn't working right, and I've gotta work out what it's been doing while no one's been checking up on it."

"Not working right? What do you mean?"

"Apokoliptian technology isn't designed to have pure life running through it." He sighs faintly. "It feels like a waste, but I've been feeding the power back into the Earth's magic fields because I do not want to find out what happens if Darkseid gets a sample of it."

"Yeah." I nod emphatically. "Me neither."

"You don't wanna try making a power ring out of it?"

"Not at this stage. For one-."

"That's-? Possible?"

"As I understand it, yes. But like you said, Darkseid poking around pure essence of Life would be bad, and we don't have a special need for it."

He nods thoughtfully. "Okay, I guess that one blast dealt with everything on Earth that needed it. But shouldn't we have seen a Guardian by now?"

"What for?"

"Mannheim wasn't Darkseid, but he was pretty close." He leans back against his workbench. "Granny Goodness took us on a class fieldtrip to the museum where he keeps the remains of the Lanterns who died during the Green Lantern Corps' war with Apokolips. If this could show them how to beat him, I'd have thought they'd want it."

"Same problem, only on a larger scale. In fact, actively using it against Darkseid would provoke him to study it faster."

"But not studying how to beat him just lets him win."

I raise my eyebrows. "Have you seen the Reach?"

"You think they'll just… Leave him?"

"How long do New Gods live?"

"In theory? Forever. In practice I haven't actually met one more than about fifteen hundred years old. Though that might have something to do with the war between New Genesis and Apokolips."

"I remember reading that even if humans didn't age and were immune to disease, we probably wouldn't make it past eight hundred. So by that metric they're doing very well."

"There are always outliers. So how did a Neanderthal make it onto the moon?"

"My guess would be aliens, but I don't really know. There must have been a Green Lantern in this Sector at the time, but I've got no idea who they were and I doubt that they'd have spent much time on Earth. Vandal Savage might know, but I don't have a back channel for communicating with him and if I found him I'd probably just throw him into the sun. Without asking. I-." Huh. "There was a parapsychic I briefly met after my team killed Wolf and Albrecht Krieger who might be able to get something out of it, but I don't know if he's still alive."

Scott looks sombre. "A parapsychic who got exposed to the Anti-Life would be lucky if dying is all that happened to them. Guess it'll have to stay a mystery."

"I-. Huh. I wonder where the souls of dead Neanderthals go. There's some evidence of burial rituals but nothing about any gods they might have worshipped."

Scott holds up his right hand, thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. "I'm this close to calling Wonder Woman or Blue Lantern."

"I'm just-. Curious. I-."

He lifts his Mother Box to his ear. "I'm dialling."

"Ping?"

"Okay." I raise my hands in surrender and back towards the stairs. "I'm sorry. Let's just put the bones on hold for a while."

He regards me with comedic scepticism, but lowers his Mother Box.

"But if I knew someone with a time machine who was heading that way anyway-."

He mock-glares, and lifts the Mother Box back up.

"Going!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

6th December 2023
08:01 GMT -5

"…bother." The pale-skinned woman opposite me is clearly unhappy about getting a compulsory counselling session. She's checking the room for concealed cameras, hidden viewing windows, and… Probably for potential weapons. "Are you coming with us?"

I nod, smiling encouragingly. "I will be. I hope that it won't be necessary, but I can heal-."

"Not me, you won't." She snorts, running her right hand down one of her facial stitches. "Do you have a..? Burning sword?"

I chuckle sociably. "I left it somewhere in Iraq. I don't remember exactly where; I haven't seen it for years. Now, I'm happy to talk about myself if you like, but I'm really more interested in helping you."

She looks at me, eyes focused. "What's it like, talking to God?"

"Why not find out for yourself?"

"Because I'm a walking corpse. I'm what happens after the soul passes on."

I frown. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Waking up strapped to a slab, smelling of burnt hair from the electricity he-. The electricity that brought me back." She glares at the file on my desk. "'The Bride'. I don't even have a name."

I blink, perplexed. "You do have a name."

"It's not a name, it's a job description."

"I think that you're labouring under a misapprehension about-."

She turns to face me. "Oh, this should be good."

"About your nature. Have you ever watched Star Trek?"

"No." … "Alright, yes, a bit."

"Did you see the episode of Voyager where-?"

Her eyes narrow. "No. Get to the point."

"The brain is a fragile organ. Deprived of oxygen, it starts decaying fairly quickly. Memory loss is a common result of head injuries. Given how long it was from your initial death to… The Doctor restoring you to life, it's hardly surprising that you lost nearly everything."

"'Nearly'?"

"You learned to speak far more rapidly than an infant, and an adult brain usually isn't malleable enough to adapt so quickly." I shrug. With my shoulders. "You managed that because you weren't learning it for the first time; you were dredging up a language that you already knew."

She looks taken aback, but I've definitely got her full attention. "I was cobbled together from corpses he stole."

"You're mostly one corpse, actually." My mind briefly goes to her 'sister', keeping her head down in Orkney. "A few parts were replaced, but your entire brain is from a single individual. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, you… Are her, just with amnesia as a result of the traumatic brain injury you suffered."

"W-?" She pulls herself metaphorically together. "Who was I, then?"

"Your name is Elizabeth Lavenza."

Her eyes dip, and she mouths 'Elizabeth' to herself. Her brow folds into a frown as it fails to elicit a response from her memories.

I shake my head. "I doubt that you'll remember anything immediately-."

"You said-" Her eyes snap back to me. "-that you can heal. Can you heal me?"

"I believe that I can. However, that might undo the abnormalities which give you your enhanced abilities and long life. More than-"

"H-uh."

"-that, I don't know what it will do to your mind."

She frowns thoughtfully. "You mean it might make me forget everything that happened to me?"

"It might make you remember being Elizabeth as well. She grew up with… The Doctor, and I realise that he's a sensitive topic for you. Oh, and I can't do it before the mission anyway because that would remove the explosives."

"Oh." She slumps back in her chair. "And for a moment there I was getting excited."

6th December 2023
10:34 GMT -5

"…and I don't even know that they'd let him go if I did prove that he was innocent."

I reach forward and pat Elizabeth Bates' right hand.

"Do not despair. I don't believe that Ms. Waller considers him so indispensable that she would use… Unusual measures to ensure that he remains here. He's actually coping with the stress of imprisonment better than I was expecting."

Though he tried to use my wings as chew toys and… He isn't intelligent enough to really… 'Counsel'.

She grabs her hand back. "Do you know if he's guilty or not?"

"It is my opinion that even if he did kill them, he should not be here. He isn't intelligent enough to be legally responsible for his actions. I'm not even clear why they tried him as a human."

"But did he?"

"I have no relevant a priori knowledge. In my best judgement, he is essentially an animal. He would kill a human child, if he were very hungry and encountered them alone. He would then eat them. The autopsy reports relating to his arrest show no signs that he attempted to eat the bodies of the children he was convicted of murdering. Killing for the sake of killing would be out of character, and he isn't rabid."

"Are you willing to serve as a witness?"

"That is essentially the reason why I exist."

She makes an amused noise. "Character witness."

"Certainly." I nod. "Though quite a lot of what I could say is written in prison records which you should have access to."

"You saying it has a bigger impact. When an angel says that it isn't in a person's nature to commit a murder-."

I raise my right hand to stop her. "I also said that I believe that classifying him as a human is a mistake. If I speak in court, the prosecution may use that to try and have him reclassified as an animal. Belle Reve isn't much, but it's better than being put down. Are you familiar with the case of Doctor Kirk Langstrom?"

"I can't say that I am. Is he relevant?"

"He had a stay here. He tried to cure his deafness by plexing with bat DNA, turning himself into a part bat part man creature. As Man-Bat, his intelligence was subhuman, so it was ruled that his crimes as man-bat should be treated as a case of temporary insanity."

She scribbles a note on her pad. "I'll look into it."

"Ms. Waller made him transform for missions. Every time he changed, a little more of his human mental faculties didn't come back. If you can, I would strongly suggest asking someone to try and find out where John came from. Because if he ever was a man… It might not remain possible to bring him back forever."

 

[Mr Zoat]

23rd May 2013
23:02 GMT -7

"Huh." Oliver Queen looks over the already-apprehended group of… Clowns? "I feel kinda superfluous."

Big Barda is looking down on a clown in a set of light blue overalls with a target logo on his chest. A crushed pistol lays on the pavement a short distance away. Other clowns are being manhandled into cuffs by members of the Congregation.

"I consider you invaluable to my logistics work."

"Yeah, but I actually like being a superhero." He sighs. "It feels kinda… Stupid to complain about crime being down so much after… Y'know."

I nod. I do know. A statistically significant drop in crime across all categories and all cultures worldwide. There's been a slight increase in civil disobedience in some places. China's skirted a civil war by the skin of its teeth, and mostly because there's nowhere for opposition to coagulate around. I remember a documentary which suggested that the reason why Italy overthrew Mussolini while Hitler managed to hang on until the end was that the Italians who wanted him gone could dress it up in royalist terms and reach out to the aristocracy. But there was no point replacing a National Socialist with another National Socialist and with the Kaiser in Belgium and the military coup having already failed there wasn't anyone else.

"Why are they..? Here? I know that Congregationalists can teleport, but unless there are a lot of them in Star City… This seems a bit odd."

"Ah, well, we've got a few. But this is one of Batman's plans."

I raise my eyebrows. "Oh?"

"We can't police the whole Earth. At this point, I can keep Star City under control. We've managed to build the police force back up, and we didn't have that many supervillains. Certainly not compared to Central City or Gotham. And I like to think I pull my weight on Justice League missions."

He looks at me pointedly.

"You've improved your statistics a little. But I suspect that we're coming up to the same realisation from different perspectives."

"But… What are we up to now, thirty? Thirty people aren't enough to police a whole city on their own. To say nothing of the whole world. So, Batman got hold of some of the Congregation's organisers and offered to work with them. Big Barda keeps one with her, and then when something goes down she opens up a tube and they start calling in their friends." He shrugs. "It's a pretty good system, actually. You know how the saying goes: 'when seconds count the police are minutes away'."

It makes sense, but there are only so many people who can teleport with passengers. And then there's the issue with bringing people who don't have Justice League United Nations authorisation anywhere Batman feels that there's need.

"How long's that been going on for?"

"I think she started training them from just after Scott got her back from Apokolips, but they've only been hitting the streets for the past couple of weeks."

I nod. "I assume they've got a list of different specialists."

"Yeah. And a few people with powers who don't want to use them full time but don't mind doing their part in an emergency."

"Are any of them archers?"

"One asked me to sign her bow. But apparently she just uses it for sports shooting."

"This system doesn't give them local intelligence or policing contacts. And how do the police feel about this?"

Green Arrow shrugs. "They're just happy for the help." He considers me for a moment. "How much contact with Earth police do you actually get?"

"Next to none."

"No, I guess you wouldn't. World governments got their asses kicked when Earth got Anti-Lifed, but it's not just the governments. It's all the stuff that governments do."

"If people wanted them, they'd reconstitute them."

"Yeah, but that doesn't happen right away. And half the time police and courts exist to have a way to resolve disputes without a fistfight. And people had a month of needing to fight the whole time." He sighs. "I'm not sure how much of the drop in crime rate is fights just not getting reported."

"Ah, democratic justice."

"What's that?"

"One man, one rock." He snorts. "So are you just being paranoid, or have you actually seen that happen?"

"Eeh, maybe that's what it is. I guess it's kinda hypocritical for me to complain about us setting up a parallel institution when I'm a vigilante." He smiles. "Or I've just been listening to Doctor Mist too much."

"I didn't think he actually had a problem with people who aren't demigods doing it."

"Ain't you a kick in the ego."

"Hey, if you want to change that, I know a few gods who might make you a deal. I've got augmentative potions and power armour-"

"That's Arsenal's thing."

"-and alien technology. Even a simple bio-regulator implant would probably cause a noticeable improvement in your performance."

"If I got implants I'd never hear the end of it."

"Immortality requires a separate implant." I frown. "Did..? Anyone in the U.N. actually sign off on this?"

"Batman's not a demigod either, y'know."

"Are you sure about that? For Hellenes, there's no real difference between exquisite mundane skill and magic."

"There is for the rest of us." He shrugs awkwardly. "About half of our U.N. contacts didn't make it. And the rest are just telling us to keep doing what we're doing. Batman might have a plan for this kinda thing but as far as I can tell he's the only one who does."

"No plan survives contact with the enemy. And this is too big for me to replicate in a training scenario. Still, I guess this is kind of Peelian."

"How? They're accountable to us, not the city government."

"I'm pretty sure more people recognise you as Green Arrow than could pick the local Police Commissioner out of a line-up. And Peelian Principles are about accountability to the people being policed, not to the government at any level. Congregationalists are definitely citizens in uniform. They don't even carry guns."

"They can make light bright enough to burn someone's eyes out."

"And Tasers can cause heart attacks and pepper spray can send people into anaphylactic shock. There's no such thing as a safe weapon, you know that."

"I don't know…" He shakes his head. "You're probably right. I just never thought the Justice League would end up running its own police force, you know? It feels like… Kinda like I've become The Man."

"You were a Chief Executive Officer and then an unaccountable masked vigilante, and now you feel like you're The Man."

He shrugs. "Fine. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was that I was thinking of buying Queen Industries back."

I frown. "How?"

"Stock prices ain't doing so good, considering… Everything. Plus, I'm a shareholder in Cadbury's Logistics, and I think there's an opportunity for synergy. And I think I'd actually do the job this time."

I shrug. "As an Orange Lantern I'm obliged to say 'do what you want', but you told me that you preferred being Green Arrow."

"I like doing good more, and right now my city's as clean as it's ever been."

"Then you've made your decision. Best of luck, Mister Chairman."

 

[Mr Zoat]

12th December 2023
14:36 GMT -5

"…what do you think?"

Waller must have been shaken if she's asking for my opinion. Professor MacPherson's sidelong glance suggests that she's not sure exactly what insight I could offer.

"Are we due an apocalypse?"

I frown as an-. Images flash through my mind, of strange alien machines boring into the Earth's core, monsters roaming freely in the ruined streets, and Superman with glowing green eyes. The last is… Myself, with glowing rings?

"Lan, I need to make a decision. Tell the 'Most High' to hurry up."

The images… Vanish, as they have before, my mind quieting as I reach towards the source of existence, and feel…

No condemnation. No ultimatum.

"No." I focus on Ms. Waller. "It is a war purely of mortal making."

"I-." She shakes her head, clearly shaken. "What I saw… It was butchery, on a scale I…"

"Who was getting butchered?"

"The U.S. government, soldiers, superheroes…" She begins to recover, squaring her shoulders. "And if Circe's visions are real-."

"Then there are two alternatives." I lean slightly closer to her, wings slightly extended. "The first is that what Circe showed you is inevitable. The second is that it is preventable, and may not yet have been caused."

Her eyes narrow. "I'm not giving up."

"Good." I smile reassuringly. "Despair is a sin. But if it is inevitable as Doctor MacPherson implied, then there is no point in attacking anyone you saw in your vision."

"Maybe. But I'd like to try."

"Trying is irrational and a waste of resources. Did you see all of America ravaged, or just a few places that you know well? How about the rest of the world, and the American assets stationed there?"

She hesitates as she conducts a mental review.

"No, I didn't see everywhere."

"Then it may have been a decapitation attack. Though the losses would be grievous, the country would survive it. Most offices in the U.S. government can be replaced fairly quickly, and a county the size of Pokolistan couldn't hope to occupy America. The intelligent thing to do is to place resources in places not shown to prepare for the counter-attack. Caches of weapons and fuel, soldiers in positions of concealment, long range missiles trained on the source of the attack, the air force on alert and other things of that nature. Am I mistaken?"

She takes a deep breath. "No. But it sticks in my craw to just take it."

"Did you ever read 'The Minority Report'?"

"I saw the movie."

"Ah, no." I shake my head. "The book was rather different in respect of the visions. In the film, the villain murdered someone in the same place in which the victim had already been attacked in order to confuse the pre-crime bureau. A rather clever response to police who can see the future. In the book, the different visions were produced by the effect of reading the visions on the head of the pre-crime bureau. The first report would be true if the director took no action. The second report would be true if the director acted on the first, and the third would be true if the director acted on the second. Because he committed a murder in the first and third versions, the system reported him as a murderer, even though the circumstances were different."

"So if I send the Commandos after her, it might cause it. OR it could be what happens because Circe attacked her and I didn't do anything, and there's no way to know until it happens." Waller looks up a the ceiling, gesturing towards the heavens with both arms. "So I might just have well not seen anything."

"Are you familiar with Greek mythology?"

She glares at me. "Can you just give a straight answer?"

Professor MacPherson turns away from Circe to look at me. "Are you referring to Oedipus? Or Perseus?"

I nod. "Both. The father of the first sent away the son destined to kill him, only to be killed by him in ignorance decades later. Something similar happened to Perseus. In both circumstances, both attempts to avoid fate made the results worse. King Laius could have a normal loving relationship with his son, but his fear of his own death caused him to send Oedipus away. Oedipus heard the prophecy and left his adopted family because he didn't want to kill his adopted father or marry his adopted mother."

The professor crosses her arms across her chest. "So what's the Christian view on the story?"

"Pulvis et umbra sumus. Or in more Christian language, 'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted'. If a person's death is prophesised then they should accept that with equanimity. They should use the time to put their affairs in order, to attempt to settle any remaining disputes, reach out to old friends and make peace with their enemies. Things like that. Everyone will die, every kingdom will fall and every star will fade. Accepting that, and setting your eyes to Heaven, is the rational thing to do."

Ms. Waller rolls her eyes. "I'm not taking that to the President."

"Then perhaps a gentler option. Did you ever watch-?"

"Spare me. When did you find the time to watch so much T.V.?"

"I…" I frown. When did I..? "I don't actually remember."

I wait politely, until-.

"Fine. What am I supposed to have watched this time?"

"Babylon Five. In-."

"Oh. I did actually watch that."

I smile broadly. "Excellent! So President Sheridan is told by a techno-mage that the son of the late Emperor Cartagia will one day rise to power and destroy the Interstellar Alliance, but that he could prevent that by having the boy killed. Sheridan goes to the location the techno-mage provided, and there the boy is. So what did he do?"

Her interest is waning. "I don't remember this episode."

"He adopted him. Took him into his household, raised him alongside his own son. Dedicated himself to being the best father to the boy that he could be. And in the fullness of time the boy seized his birthright, became Emperor… And was the strongest advocate of the Interstellar Alliance the Republic ever had."

"You think we should befriend her."

"You've already befriended her; you protected her from Circe. And… Ah, the General managed rather more."

Waller rolls her eyes. "Did he. Left that out of the report." She thinks for a moment. "So we send him back there. We get him a position in the U.S. embassy. They get closer. She's happy, he's happy, and if she goes crazy then he's in position to kill her."

Breath in. Breath out.

"If she goes crazy he will be in position to ensure that she receives counselling and anti-psychotics. It may also be worth notifying the Justice League of the potential problem so they aren't taken by surprise. But… Frankly, I haven't seen anything in the Pokolistan arsenal that could threaten either the United States or the Justice League. I'm wondering if something else is going on."

"Like what?"

"A third party using them as a patsy. Perhaps a shapeshifter taking the place of the princess, or a mind-altering device of some sort. Politicians do foolish things sometimes, but as things stand I'm struggling to see how they would even get a strike force to Washington."

"So we send the Commandos as well, so they're on the ground when something happens."

I nod. "Just so."

"Fine. As long as we've got her where we can see her. I'll make the calls."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th May 2013
13:33 GMT -5

"I can't help but find this a bit weird."

I hear Richard snort over the radio. "Gotham doesn't only exist at night, you know."

Nothing in here aside from some shelving. Back outside…

"No, I mean, you not being out in the field with me."

"Why? You worried?"

"No, no… It just seems like something you'd want to do."

"I would, but… With everything that's happened with Batman… I get it. What you said about efficiency. It didn't really matter when the world was working, but if I can do more good telling other people where to go… I think that's what I need to do."

I carefully open the door of the next warehouse, tumblers rotating at my ring's direction.

"Heh."

"What?"

"Oh, I just pictured you in a gamer chair, surrounded by fast food wrappers and empty energy drink cans-."

"That's not gunna happen. I still get out into Gotham. But some of us can't move at the speed of light. And… If I wanna help make the whole world a better place, I need to affect other places. I guess… I mean, this is what Batman's been doing."

"Are you just dodging your mother?"

The lock clanks open, and I use a pair of spreader constructs to open it fully.

…

"No?"

"Robin, it's perfectly normal to-."

"Yeah, I-. Already had this talk. But talking about it doesn't mean that you don't feel it. And she's…"

I think this facility used to do paint mixing? Some of the smaller machines have been removed, but the larger pieces are still here. I'm not sure if the owners just did a runner or if they were planning on opening it back up if the demand ever materialised.

"She's what?"

"I never really thought her relationship with Batman would work, you know? I get that she's attractive, and… Yeah, I've heard the jokes about who he dates. But she's the daughter of Ra's al Ghul. The head of an international assassin cult. And she was fine with all that. I never thought she'd actually switch sides for real."

I scan the interior, searching for-. Huh. It's amazing what you miss by over thinking things, but I did learn from Richard finding Richie Simpson before me or Wallace. Don't just scan for hidden spaces, look for power lines, patterns in the dust, an air current where the architectural plans say there shouldn't be one…

"I apologise. I didn't think it would get this far either. Found it."

I drift up and over the rim of one of the mixing vats. You wouldn't think that a supervillain would have the skills to hide a false bottom in one of these. It's basically a solid piece of steel with an arm for a mixing paddle. But…

I deploy a construct crumbler arm and a construct suction cup, applying the cup to the middle of the vat before crumbling a circle around it. And lift…

A small basement with an electronics workshop, bits and pieces of circuitry arrayed in… Places which presumably make sense to the person who put them there.

I notice that I've already deployed a construct electronic components rack and started sorting them properly, and-. And I stop, and set my ring to put them back where it found it.

"Confirming the presence of a workshop. And…" I take a closer look at one of the helmets on the desk. "What's either an Apokoliptian Justifier helmet, or a very close replica. No occupants discovered yet."

"I doubt that we'll get that lucky, but keep looking anyway."

"Will do."

Regular crime is way down. Even supervillains… With the economy toast, stealing just isn't an effective way to gather resources, not compared to being hired to do something productive. But rational arguments don't matter much when you're insane.

In theory, all examples of Apokoliptian technology should have been handed in. In practice… I understand someone who got stuck as a Justifier for a month wanted to keep their helmet. Just as a memento of something horrible which they survived. Something to show the grandchildren. So when we find someone who's done that without nefarious intent, we just take out the circuitry to render it permanently non-functional before handing it back.

Now, in theory, without a way to project Anti-Life, the helmets are pretty harmless. The only other source of Anti-Life I know about is Darkseid… And possibly Despair. And if either of them start messing around on Earth then we'll have bigger things to worry about than one guy in a helmet.

But.

Earth is weird. There are probably ways to project other things through the system. There are probably people other than New Gods who can modify them and use them for… Something untoward. So we need to find out who's playing around with them.

Checking the airflows again-.

"Mmmmpgh!"

"Found someone."

It's-. It's slotted into the floor. I guess… Someone built a slot with some sort of… Restraint frame built into it, which they can raise or lower at will. It-. I check the mechanism as best I can, but Apokoliptian technology disrupts ring scans and I'm reluctant to try anything else just in case it's booby trapped.

But okay. If it's something the site owner is working on, they're going to need to test it fairly regularly. The deployment system isn't going to be that complicated, because it would create a problem for them. The control to raise the prisoner compartment is a button on a box connected to the wall by a thick cable. I can just press it, but there's a hole for a key… And the key's attached to it by a piece of string, which is lazy…

Too lazy.

I send a filament into the key hole, checking for-. Yes, that's a detonator. Which matches the key on the string. So either there's another key here somewhere or they have it with them. Why did it have to be the one Gotham criminal who's actually good at electronics?

Look around, where could it be? If he was working at the bench there, he's shorter than me, so-.

A construct filament pulls out a key that was sellotaped to the underside of the bench. Check the pattern of the teeth… Looks like it should work. Alright, but set up constructs to detect electrical impulses and another to slam shield constructs down to protect the victim just in case. All in place? Okay, insert the right key and press the button…

The vertical… Tray, rises out of the floor, a man in a stained white t-shirt and boxer shorts handcuffed to the frame with… An ersatz claymore strapped to his side and a ball gag in his mouth. I put a safe construct around the mine as the man manages to focus on me and realises that I'm not his captor.

"Mruh?"

"I'm here to rescue you. Please indicate any traps that I haven't noticed as quickly as possible."

 

[Mr Zoat]

27th May 2013
13:39 GMT -5

"Cutting now."

My construct shears snip through the handcuff around his right ankle, and his weight transfers to my support construct. He's been here a while, and his captor hasn't been generous with the food or water.

Or the toilet visits, but I cleaned up the mess without making reference to it.

Chnk!

The thin strip of plastic explosive around the handcuff goes off, but my construct box easily contains it. And-

Boompf!

-the claymore goes off a moment later. Seeing no other threat, I offer him my hands and help him out of the frame and onto his captor's chair. Having already checked it for explosives or switches.

"Thank you. Thank you."

I nod, smile professionally, and take an isotonic drink out of subspace and offer it-. I remove the lid, stick a straw in and then put it on the workbench within convenient reach.

"You've been through a rather unpleasant experience, but I have questions for you the moment you're capable of answering."

He nods, then reaches out with his right hand to take the drink. But his hand's shaking, and he has trouble getting a grip as his fingers refuse to cooperate. He then moves both of his hands around the base to stabilise it before leaning in and sucking on the straw. A suck, then he pulls back and needs a couple of tries to swallow successfully. Another suck, and this mouthful goes down a little easier.

I leave him to it. "Robin, can you hear me?"

"I didn't go anywhere, Oh El. You just stopped talking."

"One kidnap victim-. Is there anyone else here as far as you know?"

"N-. No. He said-. He said, 'one at a time'."

I nod. "One kidnap victim. Should make a physical recovery in a couple of days. Some booby traps, but it's all mundane stuff. Reasonably impressive engineering. I didn't think that was his thing."

"You'd be surprised what skills they pick up. And I think there's some sort of freelance henchmen build crew somewhere."

"And they're still operating?"

"Nothing definite, but there's no reason why they couldn't have built it before. Maybe for someone else."

I nod to myself. "Is it worth notifying the police?"

"In Blüdhaven?"

How best to describe the place that has been called Gotham's evil twin? It's like, you see Gotham, and then you find out that there's a city that Gotham doesn't mention in polite company. Well, how about mentioning the fact that Gotham actually had a pretty good survival rate during the Anti-Life period. Being under sporadic threat made its people resilient, and having Batman looking after them gave them the capacity to keep hoping.

Blüdhaven pretty much just laid down and died. It's basically a ghost city now. I half-joked about letting Swamp Thing have it and… No one argued against it.

And the half part was that I didn't say that I'd clear the site first.

"The local F.B.I. office is up and working, isn't it?"

"No jurisdiction. He hasn't committed any federal crimes."

"Gotham police?"

"Not their beat."

"Congregation? Green Arrow told me that Big Barda's expanding their repertoire."

"They don't have any scene of crime people. They can do security if you can think of a reason for maintaining the site."

"No, I-. I guess not." I look around. "I guess we don't even need this as evidence, really."

"No, we do. Just not to get a conviction. Your recordings, testimony and the victim's testimony will be plenty."

"And he's just going back to Arkham anyway, so there's barely any point bringing a.. case."

"Kinda takes the shine off it, huh? We still need to know exactly what he was doing, though, so make sure you drop off the helmet and any other Apokoliptian technology."

"Will do. Orange Lantern out."

I return my full attention to the man, who has finished the drink and is.. doing simple stretches to try and get his limbs back under control.

"Feeling a little better?"

"A little." He looks me in the eye. "You haven't got the little fuck?"

"I'm afraid not. Ah, I'm sorry. I'm Orange Lantern."

"Ah…" That makes him look away. "I'm Kai. Uh. What do you need to know?"

"Who took you?"

He frowns. "You don't know?"

"I need to hear it from you."

"Mad Hatter. Crazy leprechaun mother fucker. Got the drop on me, stuck one of them-" He glances at the partially-dismantled Justifier helmet. "-on me, and I was just-. Doing whatever he said."

"His standard behaviour involves him kidnapping girls and forcing them to take part in tea parties. I assume that he didn't do that to you?"

"He gave me tea. Just… Poured it on me, while I was…"

His eyes are drawn back to the frame he was cuffed to.

"Did he mention any sort of reason?"

He shrugs. "Something about nicer hats? I didn't-. I kind of tuned him out after a while. I guess it's…" He looks down. "I was a Justifier."

"Yes. I know. But did he say that, or-."

"It's my helmet. So either I'm the unluckiest guy in the world, or he knew."

I nod. "A few other people known to have been Justifiers have gone missing recently. Now, despite the Justice League's pronouncements, some people have been taking what happened out on them. But this is… More focused. I don't know if you're in contact with the others, but I strongly suggest that you get a warning out if you are." He nods. "Is there anyone at home? Anyone I can leave you with while you recover?"

His head droops, then he shakes it.

"Okay, well… I guess I can stick around for a few minutes. You..? Lived in Gotham long?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

12th December 2023
16:02 GMT -5

"You hate me, don't you?"

Dr. Sartorius leans back, smiling faintly. It's interesting that despite the fact that between his pitch black skeleton and translucent green flesh making his face impossible to see with normal senses, he still has facial expression. I suppose that it's an instinct resulting from decades of having a normal face.

"I don't hate you, Dr. Sartorius. I'm not capable of hate."

"No. You do. I can tell." He shifts position slightly. "Thing is, for the life of me, I can't work out why."

"I admit, I didn't prioritise your care when you first arrived. There are a lot of people here who need counsel and compassion."

"And I don't?"

"That's not-."

"It can't be Thorne. You read my file. You know what he did. That was an eye for an eye."

"Yes." I nod. "It was. He and his coterie murdered your family. You have my sympathy for that. Taking their lives in retaliation was entirely within the bounds of justice. What I think that you may have misunderstood is that 'an eye for an eye' is a limitation. You may not extract more in retribution than was done to you. They killed, you may kill them. Vengeance belongs to the Most High."

"And what's that, then?" He shrugs nonchalantly. "Because I sure felt vengeful when I was doing it."

"The right to inflict more harm than was done. Nothing is worse than Hell, which is where the souls of unshriven evildoers go. Since there is no way for anyone to cause harm equal to eternity in Hell, the Most High alone retains that authority. You inflicted considerably more harm than was done to you."

"Eh, you know: can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs." He sits back. "So is this about his wife? Because she knew."

"If she had counselled him in his treatment of you then you may be right. Otherwise-."

"What, you don't think she noticed that a guy who's official job as 'construction manager' didn't take home a little more than usual?"

"That doesn't make her a party to all of his crimes."

"Does from where I'm sitting. You know, you're disappointing me. I'd have thought that an angel would be a lot more vengeful."

"As I said-."

"Yeah, but you're kind of his instrument on Earth. I guess He sent you here to minister to us sinners. Something like that?"

"No. I am here of my own will."

He snorts in amusement. "You're the only one who is."

"Doctor-."

"Okay, so the wife didn't know. Or… Did she, but I don't get any credit for that because I didn't check?"

"Does it matter to you?"

"It didn't, but now you've got me curious. Did she?"

I take a moment to.. centre myself, which… Is unusual. Nothing in this conversation should have left me this discomported… But after a moment I feel the divine presence, directing my thoughts along the true path.

"She was not aware of the specifics of your case, though she was aware that her husband had killed someone the day he murdered your wife and son."

"Good enough for me." He leans back, hands behind his head. "But that's not why."

"Why..?"

"Why you hate me. Really, that's the only reason I'm here. I mean, Weasel ate those kids, and all you did was comb his fur a little."

"In point of fact, Weasel has not committed any crimes."

"So they were really evil kids?"

"So I very much doubt that he killed them at all."

He chuckles. "So he's just a big ole' junkyard dog."

"I'm not sure what he is, but I don't believe that he is a murderer."

"Okay, so-." He straightens slightly. "Oh. Right. His kids."

"They were entirely innocent. As unaware of their parents' sins as your son was of yours."

"Hey. I didn't do any sinning until after he was murdered."

"You didn't knowingly take money from a criminal enterprise to fund your research?"

"Except that. And I didn't give him the results he wanted."

"How do you think that he made that money?"

"Ah… Construction management?"

I regard him for a moment.

"Hey, there's good money in construction."

I continue regarding him without speaking.

"But probably not that much. Okay, yeah, I knew who I was dealing with. More or less. Now, I think my research woulda justified it eventually, but he got tired of me keeping secrets before that could happen. And taking dirty money definitely isn't enough. And he killed my son, so 'eye for an eye' means I'm okay killing his-."

"That is not what that means. Divine law does not allow you to kill an innocent person because someone else killed someone."

"Huh." He leans forwards, studying me. "That's not it either."

"If you have killed other children, then I will hear your confession."

"No, I mean it's not why you hate me. That's weird. I mean, there's not much worse than killing kids. And yeah, I do feel… A little guilty about it. I wasn't exactly thinking straight when I went to his house. But I don't know. I really can't think of anything worse I've done. So what is it?"

"I assure you-."

"Is this what I look like, from the outside? You relax when I'm telling you that you hate me, but the moment I stop a part of you goes back to… Wherever it is. Look at you right now: your wings are all tense."

I… Relax my wings.

"And your fists-."

I open my hands.

"And you must be getting your money's worth with your masseur given how tense your shoulders look."

I circle my neck and wiggle my shoulders.

"So do you just not know..?"

I sigh. "Is this the only reason why you asked for a meeting?"

"It's been bugging me. It's not like I don't know what my sins are. Not much to do around here but think about them. And thanks to Waller, now I get to add to them. But I wanna know what I did that could piss off an angel, and it turns out that you don't even know." He shrugs, standing up. "So unless you've got something to say, I guess we're done."

He's right. I am tensing-. Oh Lord of Hosts, your ignorant servant beseeches you… Why? Why is it that-?

I feel my eyes glazing with golden light, and Dr. Sartorius backs up a step.

"Oh that's what it looks like. I get it now."

"Did you ever kill a man named Doctor Theodore Knight?"

"Doc-. The A-bomb guy? Ah, no? He died when I was, like, three. I've never even visited Opal City." He stares at me as I dim my fires. "Are you..? Okay?"

Am I?

"I am not sure. But we bear our own crosses."

12th December 2023
16:06 GMT -5

In a room on the far side of the prison complex, two power rings inside a Seal of Solomon shimmer with golden light, before being extinguished.

 

[Mr Zoat]

1st June 2013
18:59 GMT -6

I hold the drug cache in a construct cube, frowning as it floats before us. "Are you sure this is alright?"

Detective O'Toole shrugs. "I ain't smokin' it."

"I mean, don't you need it for evidence?"

"Do you?"

I frown at him. "The way you say that makes it sound like I should. Should I?"

"Look, it's pretty obvious that President Knight isn't capable of running a lemonade stand, much less a country. And I guess that didn't matter before the… What'd you call it, 'Anti-Life'?" I nod. "Before what happened happened. Governor's no better. Mayor's a decent woman -unlike her husband- but things have fallen apart too much. We can't fix…" He waves his right arm at the rest of Hub City. "This. Only reason why we're trying to keep it going rather than just relocating everyone who's left is most of the criminals 're dead too. That and the Question."

"Well, I'm… Sorry to hear that, but there's only so much we can do."

"How about the twenty fifth amendment?"

"And replace him with who? It's not just a matter of the person at the top being competent and then everything works; the whole system's… Broken."

"Didn't you guys make Captain Atom the President for a month?"

"Technically, sort of. I don't know if it actually counted, and he wasn't really in control of much."

"Could he do better?"

…

I feel like I'm being a little unfair to Knight here, but…

"Probably?"

"So tell the current V.P. that he's quitting, get Congress to confirm Captain Atom and then get Knight to quit."

"That's a.. bit dodgy. And even if we did-."

"I thought you were the guy who said that the Justice League was taking over the world."

"That's not what I said."

He shrugs. "Sue me. What did you say?"

"I said-. Ah… I'm afraid that I've been banned from talking about it."

He shrugs, looking around the abandoned multi-story car park. "You see anyone listening?"

"Batman would know. He always knows. But-. Look, civilisation isn't something that can be held together by a few dozen people. And even.. seriously suggesting that we try it is… Suggesting that we admit defeat. Rebuilding civilisation has to be a grass roots thing, where people rebuild things that they actually value, and… I guess… Let the things that they don't value just collapse."

"Like… America?"

"If the people of America really don't value any of the things that the country is supposed to stand for… Yes, I'm afraid so."

"You're from England. What are you talking about?"

"Yes, I am, and I once got stuck in America's soul and got into a fight with a manifestation of the military-industrial complex."

"Did you win?"

"Yes."

"Okay. How?"

"Ah… I gave the manifested idea of President Kennedy superpowers and detoxed Uncle Sam. I also beat up some of the spineless worms infesting the idea of the city of Washington."

"Shoulda beat up some more." His eyes flick up to my construct. "There ain't no point keeping it because we don't have the people to do an investigation. Mosta the criminals either died or got outta town, so whoever dumped it probably ain't around no more, and if they are we don't have the officers, or judges, or a record of potential jurors, or a working prison."

"So… What are you doing with criminals?"

"Depends. A fine, a beating, or we stick them in a labor gang for a while. Mayor declared a state of emergency, which makes it… About as legal as Captain Atom's presidency, I guess." He considers me as I disintegrate the drug cache. "Unless that's a problem?"

"No, things don't get much more 'emergency' than the total breakdown of human civilisation. I just… I don't want this to become 'normal', you know? This is something that we should be working to get away from. What are this city's primary industries?"

"It used to be heavy manufacturing. Cars and farming equipment mostly. Oh, and hard drugs."

"Medicinal drugs or just narcotics?"

"Ah… A little of both. You need to know your chemistry to make decent meth."

"Are the narcotics here actually good quality?"

"We don't really keep records on that, but my guess is that the quality dropped as the economy disappeared."

Huh. That seems… Reasonable. There is actually…

Food variety isn't what it was, but all of the figures that the Justice League has say that we aren't looking at a starvation situation this year. But… Next year? Industrialised nations move people away from farming and into manufacturing, compensating for the lack of manpower with improved machinery. The problem there is that it means that there are fewer people in your civilisation who know how to farm. And since farming is a demanding and low-paid job, people who aren't going to inherit the family farm don't look to acquire a new farm, they get a job doing something else.

So we can't just take a bunch of homeless people, drop them off on a now-empty farm and say 'get on with it'. And keeping the equipment running on the farms that are still operating but will start to suffer maintenance issues as the factories and companies that supplied them collapse and cease functioning is going to become an issue.

And LexCorp's farming robots aren't a remotely realistic replacement.

"Do the people who used to work in those factories still live here?"

He shrugs. "Some of them probably do."

Okay. If I check with Dox that he doesn't need Queen Artemis's magicians right now, and… No further high-end magic threats arise, I can employ them to make more Dolmen Gates for Cadburys Logistics. Put a terminus here…

"Okay, I've got an idea. Let's finish sweeping this block, and then I'll need to go and talk to the mayor."

 

[Mr Zoat]

5th December 2023
13:45 GMT -5

Rick Flag Sen-.

And it hits him again. It's not as raw as it was, but it-. The horrible sucking void in his chest when he's forced to remember that he isn't ever going to see Rick Junior again.

Not in this life, anyway.

Rick… Flag, checks to make sure that the door is fully closed before turning to Amanda 'The Wall' Waller.

"So what's his deal?"

"He's really an angel, as far as we can tell." She opens a desk drawer and pulls out a dossier. He flips it open and takes in the photograph. "We found him in a crater in Jump City a couple of years ago. First responders said he was babbling something about the end of the world."

The angel in the picture looks a whole lot more ragged than the calm and collected man he just spoke to.

"If he's an angel, I guess he'd know."

"Intel tried making sense of it. Some of what he said made sense. Most of it didn't. He didn't carry any I.D. and-"

He snorts quietly in amusement at the idea of an angel carrying an I.D..

"-the lab found what appeared to be the remains of a data stick in his robes. We haven't been able to get much out of it."

The next couple of pages are lab reports, attempts to analyse his body and blood. Unsurprisingly he doesn't have a human blood type, though apparently he did have some human blood on his skin when he first appeared.

Waller looks at the dossier. "Next page."

He obediently turns it over-.

Some of these people he recognises. Harley Quinn making faces at the camera. Captain Boomerang pretending to ignore it. A few others he doesn't, but given how they look..?

"The Suicide Squad."

Waller shrugs with her face. "If we'd ever had an angel, I'd have remembered it. Our best guess is that he's from an alternate timeline of some kind."

"Not from the future?"

"No. There's a date on the file. And Captain Boomerang's dead."

He grits his teeth. Just for a moment.

"I know."

A few team pictures, including one with… Weapons that don't look like they're from Earth. A few people go missing, but that's not-. Not unusual for the Suicide Squad. Then a picture of Lan naked, pictures of his badly damaged robes and-.

His eyebrows shoot up, and he stares at Waller.

"Are these..?"

"Power rings? Sure, as far as we can tell. He hasn't asked about them since he arrived. It's possible that he's forgotten that he ever had them. Unfortunately, we can't work out how to reassign them and so they won't work for anyone else."

"So, okay, how did he get from this to working here?"

"Have you read the part about his blood work yet?"

"Ah… Silver, can't be fully analysed but doesn't look like human blood under any microscope."

"No, the other part."

Down to the notes…

That…

"He originally bled human blood, but the silver blood… Replaced it?"

"It's not a firm conclusion, but it looked like it. Look at the side view photo."

He does, frowning. "What am I looking for?"

"The scars."

Scars? The wounds are too fresh to have scarred. None of them-. Wait.

"At the base of the wing?"

"It's the same on both sides. So either someone tried to cut them off, or he didn't start with them and they got grafted on. That's also the only wound that had a silver scab."

"What did the rest have?"

"The regular human kind. Oh Positive. The med techs said that they flaked off as the silver blood replaced it."

"So what, he's not an angel? He's just a guy with wings stuck on?"

"He might not have been an angel to start with, but as far as anyone can tell, he is now. When he came around he asked for me by name. Of course, we hadn't finished getting those pictures by then. I was already heading there to oversee things. When I got there, he acted like an amnesiac who finally remembered something."

"Did he know that he was part of the Suicide Squad?"

"He hasn't mentioned it."

"You didn't mention it to him?"

"Why would I? He's happy working for me and bringing the love of the 'Most High' to the prisoners."

"If they're his power rings, he'd be a whole lot more useful with them than without them."

Waller shakes her head. "As things stand, he's useful and under control. Until we know more about what he can do and why he's really here, he doesn't get told anything. I'm only telling you this much so you can keep an eye out for any anomalous behavior."

"He thinks he's here to serve you. Why not just ask him?"

"Because he's not here to serve me. He's here to serve-" She points to a picture of a stern-looking black woman with… Waller on her name lanyard. "-her. Task Force X was still active when whatever happened to him happened."

Flag turns another page. "What are these towers?"

"Did you read the reports on Steppenwolf?"

"The guy the Justice League stomped? Yeah, what about him?"

"He came from a planet called 'Apocalypse'. And as far as we can tell, so did they. They're boring into the Earth's core for some reason, and it looks like there's a lot of them."

"And the things guarding it look like Doomsday. It looks like there's a lot of them, too."

Waller nods. "And we don't have enough kryptonite spears to kill that many."

"It sounds like making sure that doesn't happen here should have top priority."

Waller smiles bitterly. "But how do we know which side he was on?"

"Going out on a limb here, but I'd guess he was on the side of the angels."

"But does that mean he saves bodies or souls?" Waller shrugs. "If every human dies but most of their souls go to Heaven, does he think that's good? Is… Whatever this is, ordained by God and something we're just supposed to accept?"

"I've gotta say, I'm honestly impressed with how paranoid you are."

"Thank you. It's my job to suspect things like him until there's categorical proof he can be trusted. And I'd like you to try getting that, too."

 

[Mr Zoat]

2nd June 2013
11:35 GMT

"…facilities available."

Queen Artemis and a couple of her ministers nod as I make my proposal. From what I've been able to determine, since their world never industrialised their culture didn't really pick up on the idea of mass production. The closest they've really got is their basic education system, but even then they mostly do it as a master-apprentice thing.

"Now, I don't know how many people have had a chance to read through the books on thaumaturgy which I left last time..?"

Artemis and a man with an impressive Father Christmas beard and opulent purple robes nod.

"How hard would it be to convert it to your notation?"

The man shakes his head. "For something as advanced as your gateways there would be little point in converting it. The Atlantean command of thaumaturgy is far and away more advanced than ours. It would be easier to learn their notation from the beginning rather than confuse matters with an imprecise translation."

I nod. "Okay, but you'll need to be aware that some of your thaumosphere's constants are going to be different from the environment the Atlanteans are used to working in."

He nods enthusiastically. "I have already begun charting them, though it would be convenient to have an expert to refer to."

"King Orin has reverted Gamemnae's order, so after a brief break Atlantean scholars will be available for foreign employment once more. Minus the specialists who are going to be working with Venturia on the deep thaumaturgy research. At this point the techniques needed to manufacture the Dolmen Gates are well known enough to be handled by skilled craftsmen, rather than expert thaumaturgists."

King Orin seemed to think that it would be a good deal easier to get a larger pool of volunteers for a project intended to directly benefit Earth than for one which just involved hiring people for a foreign war on the other side of the galaxy. And even fairly pessimistic suggestions show that it will take millennia before the Reach reach Earth at their current rate of expansion. The galaxy is too big a place for things to be otherwise. They are a threat, and Kadabra and Truggs' historical reports make it clear that they'll eventually be one to us… But they're not now and won't be anytime soon.

"So the next question I have is… What do you want in exchange?"

A man in a red robe with a thick belt nods. "Naturally, we have no agreed-upon exchange rate."

"If we did I'd just work out what the going rate was and add a few percent. Now, I can offer payment in any Earth currency you like, but unless Dream transportation is a lot more simple than I think it will be, that's not much use to you. It would probably be easiest to either allow me to purchase a large amount of local currency with… Metal, lore, equipment, or… Whatever you want. Alternately I could issue my own currency here, but I don't know how that works within your legal system."

Red robe shakes his head rather sharply. "It is absolutely forbidden."

Artemis considers it for a moment, then shakes her head as well. "Part of the way in which we ensure that our physical coins are legitimate requires them to be the only type in circulation."

"So, no scrip?"

Red robe's mildly contemptuous expression conveys the negative. "As far as the magic we use is concerned there is very little difference."

"And a currency purchase?"

"That's…" He makes eye contact with several other councillors for a moment. "Something that we could do, though it would be… Unusual."

"Okay. Ah, don't keep me in suspense. How does it usually work around here?"

"Usually, someone from off-world would contract with a local noble. A contract would be drawn up and bound in blood. The off-worlder would provide whatever was agreed upon and the noble would arrange for the work to be carried out."

"Ah, yes, we have something similar on Earth, though I… Imagine that the intent is a little different. Is it-." I turn to Queen Artemis. "Are you able and willing to serve in that capacity? I have no idea what the royal demesne is like here."

From the.. somewhat less than pleased looks I'm going to assume that I shouldn't have asked that.

"I apologise if I've violated local custom-."

Queen Artemis raises her right hand to stop me. "I am a head of state without issue. Given the nature of the contractual binding, I have avoided putting my name to such agreements."

"It's immediately fatal?"

"It can be, if the violation is severe enough. One off-worlder once used a trade agreement to bring a large fission bomb here. Since then, we have used a clause to.. prevent the signatories living long enough to perform such a betrayal."

"And you're the queen, so you can't put yourself in position to be affected just in case you need to break the contract." I nod. "So can your castellan sign it under their own authority, or do I have to find someone else?"

She tilts her head slightly. "I am a little surprised that you aren't more concerned about the binding that you would undergo."

"Oh, psh." I shrug, smiling. "When I first came to this universe I agreed to a year's servitude under pain of being endlessly attacked by supermonsters if I disobeyed an order. A simple thing like 'pay on time and don't nuke our planet' is nothing compared to that one."

She sits back, her eyes widening slightly. "You didn't tell me about that."

"I've been involved in a lot of crazy things in the last three years. I.. needed to get some of my planet's senior heroes to trust me quickly, and making myself unable to disobey achieved that. I trusted them not to abuse that authority, and… They never did."

Let me down in a big way once, yes. Made inappropriate use of my oath, no.

"Actually, your situation reminds me of my own queen. Queen Hippolyta only had an heir relatively recently, and when Princess Diana got curious about who'd been next in line before her she tracked the woman down. She was a distant cousin of the queen, and when Diana told her that she'd been Crown Princess until she was born, she said 'That can't be right. Are you sure?'"

"I don't think it's quite the same. I came of age fifteen hundred years ago."

"You're right: you're half Queen Hippolyta's age." She blinks in shock, her expression fading. "And she had a daughter by using clay infused with titanic magic, shaping it into a girl and then getting her patron gods to bring it to life."

She stares at me for a moment, and then nods slowly. "Your homeworld sounds… Fascinating."

"The word you're looking for is 'mad'. And yes, it is."

"I think I should like to visit it."

"Um. You can? But… The Anti-Life wrecked our civilisation. If you could give us a couple of years we could probably have things running properly again, otherwise it's… Not going to look very impressive."

"I understand. But if we are to be a part of the rebuilding, I should see what it is like." I nod. "Because I see the wisdom in keeping a pact of this size under direct royal control, and the only way that could be done-" A couple of the advisors give her an odd look. And then give me an odd look. "-requires both parties to be completely certain about the relationship."

"Alright, well, give me a day to sort out accommodation and I'll await your pleasure."

 

[Mr Zoat]

10th December 2023
09:13 GMT +3

The usher opens the door for me, and while he does his best to keep his expression neutral he isn't entirely able to keep his eyes from my wings. Then he tears his eyes away and notices that I noticed him staring, and just looks awkward. I hold out my right hand and lay it on his left shoulder, smiling warmly as I do so.

"God bless you and keep you, Markuss Kalējs."

He goldfishes, then inclines his head. "Thank-thank you, sir."

I walk past into Princess Rostovic's study, the princess-. Hurriedly adjusting her dress.

"A-h." She smiles nervously. "Am I late for mass? Thank you, Markuss."

Markuss bows, then backs out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"You are late for morning mass, but that isn't why I'm here. I want to-."

The door behind me opens, there's a slight intake of breath, the Princess makes slightly panicked eye contact with whoever it is, then the door closes again.

Then the Princess sits up primly, and clears her throat.

"I.. believe that a great many people are hoping to see you at Saint Basil's Cathedral today. Which is.. where I thought that you were."

I stop a short distance in front of her desk, hands clasped across my chest inside my robe sleeves.

"You don't need to do this with me."

"Do..? What?"

I nod my head slightly towards her. "This. The pretence. The ingénue princess."

She affects an expression of awkward guilt. "Is this about Rick? I.. know that we should have waited-."

"No, it's about your intense bloodlust. " I frown slightly. "And it's not just sociopathy. A sociopath might kill if it was in their interests to do so or if someone offended them, but with you it's just… A raw, passionate desire to kill and destroy. Really, your self control is admirable."

She looks at me with false uncertainty. But it's a very good impression. If it wasn't for the Most High moving through me I wouldn't spot it. "I think that you may be confused."

"Do you think that I am here looking for a confession? This is an Orthodox country. I am here to say that the Most High knows your nature and loves you still, but… In the more practical context, you… Might benefit from some advice on how you might… Safely manifest your nature."

She shakes her head uncomprehendingly, but there's a slight… Something in her eyes.

"Circe informed us why she tried to kill you. She showed Director Waller some quite unpleasant visions. You leading an army and slaughtering all in your path. Now, as anyone aware of American history should know, they're not adverse to slaughter, they just want the slaughterees to be people they feel are deserving. Similarly, Thou Shalt Not Murder is a very specific restriction which does not prevent the killing of other people in situations where it would not be murder."

Her face is… Slightly still. She isn't doubling down on pretending not to understand, but she also isn't admitting anything.

"I believe that the Order of Saint Dumas would be able to aid you in using your innate drives for a sacred purpose, after you completed their training. And if that doesn't appeal, then I'm sure that Director Waller can find you something to kill."

"I… Will bear that in mind."

Even the hesitation was planned ahead of time for maximum effectiveness. It's impressive, if a little sad.

"The Most High does not make people 'wrong', but it can be a bit of a challenge to understand where you fit within His plan. I can always make myself available if you wish to discuss something."

I turn, and walk slowly towards the door just in case she wants to discuss something.

I put my hand on the knob, and-.

"They have bound you with magic. Did you know that?"

I stop moving. But I don't turn to look at her.

"I did not. But I am not surprised. They could hardly fit me with an explosive implant."

"Don't you want to be free?"

"Freedom is for humans. I am a simple messenger."

I wait for a moment, but she doesn't appear to have anything else to say. I wonder..? How she found out? Although I suppose she could just be making a guess.

Ah, it hardly matters.

I turn the knob and open the door, stepping through and… Finding General Flag straightening his pullover.

"General."

"Lan." His eyes flick away for a moment, before he meets mine. "I've got a… A question, I've been wanting to ask ever since I found out you existed."

"I am happy to answer any question which you may have."

"It's-. Do you know if someone's gone to Heaven? I mean, I-. I don't know if Heaven exists-."

"It does… More or less. Not all depictions in popular fiction are accurate, and virtually all miss the point. For example, the South Park depiction with the Most High as a magical Buddhist cow living in a land of clouds and Mormons is a joke with no basis in reality." I smile, but he's not receptive. "Is there someone in particular you are concerned for?"

He nods, once. "My son. Rick Junior. Suicide Squad does black ops. Even if you're not a convict, families don't get told exactly how they died. My grandson is never gunna know what happened to his father. And I'm not gunna know what happened to my son. And that's-."

He takes a deep breath.

"That's something I can live with. I've been in the game long enough… I don't expect to like everything that happens. If I'd died, he wouldn't have found out what happened to me either. But knowing where his soul went, that doesn't… That doesn't threaten national security. That's just-."

I reach out and lay my right hand on his upper left arm.

"I understand. One moment."

I clasp my hands at my chest and pray for the soul of Richard Flag Junior. I-.

"Ah."

"W-. Well?"

"Yes, his soul dwells with the Most High. He… In his final moments, he decided to completely violate his orders so that he could serve a higher good. He… Died trying to bring evidence of the wrongdoing of… Many people in the American political and military establishment to public attention."

That's.. not what I was-.

Flag grabs both of my shoulders, eyes wide and staring.

"'Establishment'. Does that include Waller?"

"I.. don't-. I can find that out to comfort the bereaved or give a salutary lesson. I can't imagine a situation where she wasn't involved, but I can't tell you for certain."

He loosens his grip, glancing away.

"General?"

"I was retired. I wanted to help out June. I only agreed to come back because I wanted to see if I could find out anything about what happened-. Do you know anything else?"

"I know who killed him, and I know that he feels tremendous guilt over-."

"Then he can confess to you before I kill the bastard."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd June 2013
07:13 GMT +2

"Ah, Bleez!" She turns around, eyebrows raise and a bar of birdseed granola in her hand. "Glad I caught you. I need your expertise."

"My-?" She frowns, squinting at me. "Are you taking up singing?"

"No. But-. Ah, are you keeping up with current affairs?"

"Kara tried getting me into that? But it's hard to read the body language when they don't have wings."

I-.

"Ah, no. I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'm pretty sure its not what I'm talking about."

"Oh. Okay. So, like, what are you talking about?"

"I'm trying to contract a planet-."

"Waitwaitwait-" She holds her free hand across her chest in a 'stop' gesture. "-wait. Is this something I'm gunna have to pretend I don't know about later?"

"Er." Is it? "Maybe? Thanagarian intelligence knows that there are other magic capable species out there, and the planet in question is quite a long way from thanagarian space."

She looks almost comedically dubious. "We can send ships quite a long way. That's how you met Lieutenant Dul."

"Yes, but the Empire doesn't have regular communication with them. A squad of agents poking around isn't really a problem, and they… Well, they've got experience in dealing with aliens. They should be able to cope."

"Oh-kay, if you say so." She wing-shrugs, then leans on the counter between us with her arms-.

I nod downwards. "You're doing it again."

"Huh?" She blinks, then follows the direction of my nod-. "Oh!"

She separates her arms, firmly planting her elbows on the work surface and allowing her mammaries to hang naturally.

"Okay, what do you need?"

"So, the queen of the planet I'm trying to contract wants to visit Earth first."

"She isn't gunna just send someone? That's the usual thing to do."

"I suspect that she may also be on the prowl for a husband. Also… It's a noblesse oblige thing. She's either the most powerful magic user on her planet, or the top fraction of a percent. If she can't keep herself safe then she can't do her job."

"I think that's more of a héroïque oblige thing? All the nobles on Havania have people for visiting business partners and doing inspections. And the husband thing."

"Really? And your mother hasn't sent a matchmaker to Earth? You've been here a while."

She gurns at me. "No. Mother only sends matchmakers to see people she wants me to marry. She'd never send one to Earth." Then she grins. "It's great!"

"You know, if you spent a tenth of the effort on finding an acceptable husband as you do on your music, you'd probably have found someone by now." I frown. "Or I… Guess I could build you an android?"

Her frown is tinged with curiosity. "Like a..? Sex robot?"

"I could build one of those. Or I could build one with advanced social heuristics programming that could play the roll of a consort. Or I could build an actual intelligent synthetic person."

"A person-person? With its own ideas and..? Everything?"

"I'm been looking into it, and it seems that most artificial intelligences like having a clear purpose, at least to start with. So while it sounds like I'm offering to make you a custom slave, really it's more like… You're the training wheels while he learns to function in a civilisation made by messy imprecise organics."

"Ah. Thanks? But nooooooo."

"Okay, as you wish. But… You've said that you want to get married eventually. Is that..? No longer the case?"

"I do. Just… You know? Not now."

"If I hadn't suggested that stupid timeline to Jade, I'd have asked her to marry me already. But…" I make jazz hands. "Hassling you about getting married is your mother's job. I just want to make sure that you're working towards what you actually want."

"It's not my mother's job…" She ruffles her wings. "Okay, so what do you want me to do?"

"Help me plan a tour. Find her… Appropriate accommodation. Help me wrangle her retinue and explain things when she actually gets here because you've got an alien's perspective on Earth."

"Accommodation? When we visit someone, we usually get a room in their keep or manor."

"This isn't.. really an embassy."

"Isn't it? Isn't that what that comic… Lord… Guy, built it for?"

"He build it as a trade post. Somewhere for people to visit, view his wares and negotiate trade agreements. An official residence would look rather different. I just haven't… Needed one. There's nothing here and there aren't any transportation links because everyone who's here can fly under their own power. And I can't really put her up in Jade's apartment in Gotham"

"What about Queen Hippolyta? Does she have spare rooms, or did they just not bother building them because of the total isolation thing?"

I nod. "That could work. The Amazons do have guest quarters, and their Dolmen Gate is a direct path to New York. I'll ask. And since she's going to be within walking distance of New York, and KordTech recently got its magic research and development team back, we can set up a showing there. Dolmen Gates, the weather control system, whatever pet projects he's got going…"

"Uh-huh, that sounds good. What was it you wanted the extra gates for?"

"Improving Hub City. But Hub City is a hole. I don't think taking her there is actually a good idea."

"No no no, you totally should. Impress her with your vision. Because even if it's a hole now, you know how to make it a not-hole."

"Okay, can do. Should I also do… Something cultural?"

"Um… No, I don't think so? I mean, have something in mind in case she says that she does? But this is a ruler coming here to check that you're who you say you are. She's got to be busy with all kinds of things on her homeworld. If everything goes well you can invite her for a social-type visit in a few years. How urgent is the husband thing?"

"She's been single for one thousand five hundred years."

"So… Not urgent, or is there some big thing coming up?"

"Not urgent, I guess?"

"Huh. Okay. Let's go to the meeting room and start getting some detail down."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd June 2013
08:39 GMT +3

Bleez comes to a halt in the air, eyes wide as she tries to take in the entirety of Themyscira all at once.

"Oh whaw! It's like a living history exhibit!"

"Ah, not quite. They actually-."

"I used to love visiting those with Daddy! Do they use any electrical power at all?"

"I think… There are two places which have electrical power? One is a workshop that was being used by someone who was exiled here and she built a generator herself… I don't think it still works. And they put a radiological decay battery in the guest suite for visitors who absolutely couldn't go without. But that's it. They don't use either themselves."

"It's so totally perfect!" She points. "Is that a real mountain?"

"As.. opposed to..?"

"Well, this one time, this place on Onneral dropped on asteroid on this continent they weren't using to make one, and it totally ruined the whole thing for me when I found out about it."

"To the best of my knowledge, this is a natural formation. Though it might have been assembled by one of the local gods. I never looked into it."

"And it was all built with period tools?"

"They went into isolation about three thousand years ago and missed the industrial revolution. They've improved their tools several times, but they're still fairly primitive."

She wing-bats me, mock-glaring for a moment. "How come you never took me here?"

"No particular reason. I hadn't realised that you like the rustic so much."

"It's not rustic, it's period. Oh, look! Look! Is that all natural stone?"

"Yes, and it's all quarried locally by burley warrior women." Huh. "Mostly by burley warrior women. Some of the oldest parts might have been mined by men."

"And the queen will just see us?"

"She's busy first thing, but after that she made it clear that she'll always make time for me."

"Is that because you're her daughter's student?"

"It's because she worries what I'll do if she doesn't keep an eye on me."

Bleez leans, ready to dive down-.

"Ah, one thing first."

She flaps awkwardly to get back into position, then give me a sour look. "What?"

"The Amazons have a nearly all-female civilisation. Most of their romantic relationships are female-female, and most of the ones that aren't are female-female-female-female-female. So while I'm sure that you're used to dealing with excessively familiar admirers, I want to warn you that you're going to draw a certain amount of attention."

"It's okay." She pats her tote bag. "I brought my mace. Now can we go?"

I fly downwards, letting her take the lead. I thought that she might like to wander for a bit, but instead she's heading directly for the inner city where I hope Queen Hippolyta can be found. Also the temples, which would be a draw for a tourists I suppose.

Huh. I just realised that they may well be more Hellenists in Accalacan than there are on Themyscira.

A couple of guards wave at me, while Bleez gets a more thorough assessment. Bleez notices one, and poses in the air before framing herself with her wings in a way which is the thanagarian equivalent of blowing her observer a kiss.

I drop down and land, smiling politely. "Althesia, hello!"

One of the other guards pats Althesia on the back. Either that or shoves her forward. She takes a moment to brace herself, and then addresses me. "Orange Lantern. Where is the fire?"

I point at the Temple of Hestia. "Over there, for the past three thousand years. Might we have permission to speak with Queen Hippolyta?"

Althesia glances at Sophi, who takes off at a run.

"It's not that… Bad."

"You overthrew the King of the Gods. Forgive us for not taking any chances."

"And I got you a better one. Besides, this is nothing like that big a deal."

"Lady Athena, grant me your wisdom." … "Very well, I am prepared. What is it that brings you here?"

"I need more Dolmen Gates than Atlantis can make. I've found somewhere else that can make them, but their queen wants to make sure that I'm on the up-and-up. So she wants to visit Earth and have a look around, and I need somewhere for her to live while she's here."

"I hear that Man's World has a thing called a 'hotel'."

"Yes, but that sort of security takes a while to arrange and I'd like to get this done quickly. Plus, it might be a pleasant change for her to be around people older than her."

She frowns. "How old is she?"

"About fifteen hundred."

She raises her eyebrows slightly. "A chit of a girl, really."

"Look, I understand that almost everyone you speak to every day is that sort of age, but outside of Themyscira that's actually really unusual."

"Yes, I know that."

"But do you feel it? Do you even remember what it was like for eighty to be old? And for everyone around you to think the same?"

"I have been through your gateway. I-."

Bleez lands a little heavily, staring at Althesia. "How old are you?"

"I… Haven't really kept track. A little under three thousand years old, I think." She looks to me, seeking confirmation. "I was born on this island, not long after we landed."

I nod. "That was about three thousand years alright."

Bleez takes a moment to absorb that. "That's really old. You're more than a hundred times older than me. Is that normal here?"

"It is."

"How come you don't know? You keep records here, don't you?"

"It took them a few years to realise that the island doesn't have seasons, and they didn't keep records early on because they didn't have anything to make records on or with. And the last two thousand years have been pretty samey."

"And then you arrived, and now everything's really chaotic?"

Althesia closes her eyes, and nods.

"I'd love to take credit, but that was Hippolyta making Diana with magic. I'm just the culmination of that."

Sophi sticks her head out of the palace, and nods.

"Right, let's go and get this sorted out."

 

[Mr Zoat]

3rd June 2013
08:31 GMT -6

"…think we'd actually see any sort of disaster relief." Mayor Myra Connelly-Fermin is attentive, but I see absolutely no flares of hope in her psyche. "What are you planning?"

"The outline is that we use Hub City for the construction and maintenance of farm vehicles. I intend to bring in-. Are you familiar with Dolmen Gates?"

She shakes her head. "I can't say I am."

"No?" I frown… But I suppose that someone trying to run Hub City had larger concerns. "Ever seen Stargate?"

"Sure? You can build those?"

Hm. Well, Dominion stellar gates are a bit like-.

"Sort of. They strictly work in pairs, but if you step through one you come out in the other. I own a company which is involved in using them to simplify global logistics. I can drop your shipping costs to.. an absolute minimum, by enabling transport vehicles to bypass the intervening space. So if you're bringing in metal ore or ingots, it's in your foundries and factories the moment it's excavated or smelted. Similarly, you gain a link to every major farming area in the country. It will be literally possible for people to walk here from central Kansas, look around a showroom, and get a tractor or combine harvester delivered that day."

"Is.. this part of the Justice League's development plan?"

"No, because we didn't have a reliable source of Gates. With Atlantis back in working order it's possible to start buying them again, and I'm trying to get another supplier online."

She shakes her head. "I don't know what that costs, but I know we can't afford it."

I shake my head. "Not a concern. I'm funding it."

"You… Personally."

"I'm authorised to mint Justice League medallions, and I have the gold reserves to.. do so for quite a while. What I need from you is city surveys-. Recent ones, because I'm going to have to demolish a lot of stuff to make way for new roads, railways and factories. Uh, planning permits, if you're still bothering with those, zoning-." I frown. "Are you still doing that?"

"At this point I'll take what I can get." But she doesn't look fully committed to that statement. "There are a couple of areas where people have congregated. I'd prefer it if those could be left as residential."

"Okay, get me those maps and I'll see what I can do. Ah, I've got a Brazilian man I know to do the design work and he's getting in touch with some other Brazilian refugees he knows to act as project leaders, but I want to use whatever local labour you've got."

"Does this man have a name?"

"Helmut Schreiber. He was in the process of completing his architecture doctorate when the Sheeda happened, and… He was starting a new course in America when the Anti-Life happened. And there aren't that many places doing much in the way of interesting building now."

"Okay, what's the catch?"

"The queen of the place that I'm hoping to have make the Dolmen Gates is visiting Earth in a few days. She'll probably want to see Hub City-."

Her eyes widen. "We're not-" She shakes her head. "-in any state to host a visiting head of state."

"No, you're in the perfect state. She'll just be visiting here so I can demonstrate what I plan on doing. The fact that this place has undergone near-complete collapse and can only keep its people fed because America's laws on preservatives are looser than Europe's just makes it clear that I'm telling the truth about why I'm putting so much effort into this."

"It's not.. quite that bad. I've had teams out making contact with farms all across the region. Since wholesalers are pretty much dead-." She stops herself. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, don't worry about statements like that. Black humour beats no humour."

"Food, clean water and sanitation we have. We've traded labourers for food, sent organised looting parties to abandoned homes-. Did you know that gas goes off if you leave it in a fuel tank for a month?"

"Yes."

"I didn't. Not before we tried siphoning from abandoned cars." She sighs. "How long will this take?"

"I don't know. It depends on how fast we can get the Gate, and how many problems the work force generates. This city didn't have the best reputation."

She flicks her eyebrows up for a moment. "As much as I'd like to defend my constituents, everyone who could leave left decades ago."

"I have emergency detox procedures."

I don't care enough to use a power ring on everyone, but according to Dubbilex the g-sanchong symbiotes are ready for human trials. Not only will they filter a lot of unpleasant things out of a human body, but they'll also react unpleasantly to any attempt to add those things to a human body. Yes, they look like a cross between a lamprey and a sea anemone, and they need to be chirurgically implanted, but they do good work.

"Though I will be trying to persuade people who've worked in the sector to move here."

She nods. "Is this part of the Justice League's reconstruction plan?"

"No, this is something I'm doing on my own. As far as I understand the plan, the League's not going to be focusing on this sort of thing until later this year. I think there's a… Nationwide Right to Repair Bill going through committee? Among other things? Ah. What's happening with reconstruction in Illinois?"

"Well, the state's basically bankrupt, and last time the state government tried issuing bonds there weren't any buyers. Tax revenue's… Plummeted, as you can imagine, so there's no money coming in that way. We got a couple of shipments of government cheese, if you're interested."

"I'm not… Keen on cheese."

She shakers her head. "I'm not either, and I've been eating it two meals a day for three months. I don't think I'll ever get the taste out of my mouth."

"Your tax dollars at work. Ah… Right. Is there anything that the city needs right now? I mean, while I'm here?"

She thinks for a moment, eyes moving over the… Paper files on the desk and the shelves all around her office.

"…" … "Everything?"

"Power? I thought that the mains-."

"The nuclear plants are still going, but coal isn't getting to the coal powered plants." She flicks the switch on her desk light, and it's anaemic to say the least. "We've got water to drink, but Hub City's infrastructure's had basically no maintenance since it was installed. We're leaking everywhere, and there literally isn't enough pressure in the system to get it up the hills. We've got enough food that no one is starving, but we're struggling to keep the freezers powered and we don't have a cannery. We're bottom priority at Federal and State level for reconstruction and a lot of people have already left. If I had any kinda life outside of this job I think I'd have just ordered an evacuation."

"Okay. Ah. Let's start with power."