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

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
18:59 GMT

There's a… Pull, when I hold the heart in a particular direction.

Ugh.

"Why do you do that?"

We're heading towards the biggest pyramid, collapsed power armour all around us. They don't seem to be recovering. Which is… Good?

"It's what I want. I am the me-shaped place in the universe. I have determined to make changes to the way the universe operates and the Anti-Life winning makes them impossible to achieve. You?"

"No. Why do you use that corrupt thing?"

"Because as far as I can tell that's the best way to achieve the result I want. Refusing to use it would be cowardly squeamishness. My comfort is not as important as getting the right result."

"I see why the Mighty One likes you. That is his attitude." He looks at a large suit of power armour slumped against the wall of the great pyramid. "This perversion of the divine disgusts me."

"I met Qualpopoca earlier. He told me that he didn't get reincarnated because he couldn't stand the idea of being reborn into Spanish Mexico. But you've had far longer, and you're still you."

"It takes more than the failures of one man to bring down a civilisation. If he had endured rebirth he could have learned to respect himself."

"So..?"

"My people were from long before the Mexica, the people you call Aztecs. Our traditions were different. I found existence in this form preferable to returning to life as a man, and I dwelt in a place of honour. In sight of the… Gods."

We approach the main entrance, and the two slumped titans that had been standing guard outside it. The door is open wide enough for a normal sized person to walk through. Tezumak takes the left side and I take the right. We push, and the door opens wide enough easily.

No one comes to greet us.

"Have you been in here before?"

"Yes. Many times." He reaches out to one of the supporting pillars with his right hand and runs his hand down it before withdrawing it and examining… "There should not be blood here."

"Blood seems to be your culture's thing."

"Blood, hearts, sacrifice. These things bind the gods to the world, strengthening them and us. There is no reason for it to be on the walls."

Things are going as he directs them.

BaBUM.

"This way. And there is, or it wouldn't be there. What is it?"

We start down the larger corridor, blackened heart beating in my raised left hand.

"Blood is a conduit for magic. Tlazolteotl could be casting some spell that required this pyramid to be bound to the living world."

"Like..?"

"If I knew her mind, then she would not have captured and enslaved me."

Fair-. Enough…

"The wall is lined with beating hearts."

Tezumak stops walking, gently reaching out with his right hand to touch one with his fingertips.

"I don't know this spell. It feels a little like the one which animated my armour, but…Not. This many hearts, this much vitality…"

"Is this pyramid a giant suit of armour?"

"That is ridiculous. A suit that big would serve no useful purpose." He withdraws his hand and starts walking again.

I keep pace with him. "The gods of Greece brought their last point of contact with the Earth here. A giant suit could enable a goddess to storm it."

"And do what?"

"Add their hearts to her collection, empowering her further so she can get more and more and eventually become supreme goddess of Earth."

"This may be for channelling power, but she would have no need for a suit."

"Could she move herself to Earth? At full power, rather than an avatar?"

"That is possible-. No. That would require the hearts of many living people. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Perhaps more. Most of these were taken from our dead. They would not serve that purpose."

"The magic creatures and people?"

"Compared to the hearts of gods? Their power is trivial."

BaBUM. BaBUM.

I hesitate slightly as I hear the second beat. Or was.. that an echo?

BaBUM. BaBUM.

And it's getting faster.

To Hell with it. If all the suits are dead then I'm not going to worry about pretending. Construct claws take my Anti-Lifed heart and grab the one that Tezumak is holding and crush them as I accelerate to a jog.

"No more pretending, then."

"I can't see how we win, here. We just need to find out what he's doing and then break contact."

He sticks out his arm, obliterating the hearts attached to the walls as he runs. I use my x-ionised knives to do the same on my side of the corridor as the door to the inner sanctum approaches. Two human guards stand outside, but when they see us they just… Step aside and pull the door open.

Titanic… Bodies lay on biers along each side, each with their chests cut open and… Apokoliptian.. cables and devices implanted into their chests, connecting to machinery attached to the walls above their heads which in turn connect to a device at the end of the room. From their clothing I recognise a handful of Aztec gods, and-.

Tlazolteotl is at the end of the room, facing away from us.

…final absolution.

She-. Jams a spike connected to three Apokoliptian cables into her own chest and then collapses, her position mirrored by a giant heart in some sort of cage. Near the top of the Apokoliptian machine there are smaller figures strapped to sacrificial slabs, and from the blood covering their chests I think most of them are dead already.

Mannheim walks over to the last, a slightly built girl-. Nuala, with a small obsidian knife in his hand.

"And you, for your connection between realms. But do not fear, for you will not miss my ascension. These machines and this place will trap your soul as surely as those bonds trap your body, and you will serve me in spirit as you do in flesh."

He places his left hand on her neck, then hesitates, looking towards us.

And once he has eye contact he begins cutting.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:03 GMT

Fire everything.

I'm not.. exactly thinking as I let the impulse flow through me. Instinct, from the soul. The first energy pulse splashes against something shielding his face before I'm really conscious that I've-

"AAAAAAGHGAHAGHAGHAH!"

-done anything. Tezumak is running forwards towards the distant platform at full sprint as my follow-up cold beam and ultraviolet laser also do nothing to Mannheim. My railgun forms a moment later-

Blood is pumping out of Nuala's chest as Mannheim patiently cuts down the centre. The guards aren't bothering to respond.

-and I fire an x-ionised round immediately followed by a crumbler round. Nothing. I'm not sure that I'm even hitting him.

That's not how New Gods work.

Sure, the tough ones barely react when they're hit by conventional weapons, but it does hit. They do feel it, even if it doesn't really hurt. I'm not hitting him. He's just wearing a suit, and any one of those shots-.

Tezumak's about halfway to the target when I turn my guns on the cables plugged into the gods. I doubt this will work, but it's the next logical step while I try to come up with something that will. Yes, the energy I'm expending just vanishes before reaching the target.

No point maintaining a strategy that can't work.

I drop my gun constructs in favour of a cable and shove it into the chest of the closest recumbent god.

Drain.

Nothing.

Assimilate.

Nothing.

I can't even feel the thing I'm plugged into. Ring, confirm-.

No contact made.

Okay. What else what else..? My clone. It's plugged into the system and sucked up some of my orange light. That should mean that I can affect it without other direct contact.

Alternate possibility: kill Nuala and retreat. I can't see any other elves and-. He just said that he would bind her soul anyway. But she's not plugged into the machine yet, which means… Would her soul be stuck here and force him to hunt it down? Or would it go to wherever elf souls go?

Tezumak gets close enough and leaps. He-. He's not aiming for Mannheim.

I hear a quiet snap as he breaks one of Nuala's ribs to get it out of the way.

He slams into the cage containing Tlaltecuhtli's heart, flechettes shooting out at everything. The ones on target for Mannheim just vanish like all of my attacks did, but the corpses get torn apart by the supersonic darts and Nuala-.

Mannheim moves to interpose himself, glaring at Tezumak.

"What is the real reason why you were not reborn?"

I'd guess that he remembered the looks even his closest comrades gave him when he murdered children to fuel his armour and realised that his whole culture was completely fucked up.

I take another shot at Mannheim with an energy pulse to see if anything's changed. It hasn't.

"Earth."

Earth? Tlaltecuhtli's responsibility. He isn't connected to her heart in the way that he is all of the others. Which means…

Construct crumblers carve a chunk of stone out of the floor and a construct gravity impeller hurls it across the room at-

Crack!

-supersonic speed.

Emerge.

The rock projectile punches through Mannheim's jacket before being stopped by his chest. He doesn't seem unduly bothered. I don't even get the glare he's giving Tezumak. And he doesn't stop-

Snap.

-carving Nuala up.

I blink as I get a second perspective, one of my alien construct lanterns emerging inside my cloned corpse. A cable runs into my/its heart and it yanks it out as I aim at Tlaltecuhtli's heart cage with my rock impeller.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

It takes three direct hits to the same point on the cage, but I've managed to break part of the machine. Doesn't seem to have shut it down, but it's not doing as well as it was. Lights shimmer all over the structure… And there isn't an Aztec God of Technology for him to just wave it away.

And you? Get Nuala if you see an opening.

"…a stranger in your own homeland as you did in Kahndaq, or amongst any of the peoples you visited."

Crack!

Mannheim sticks his hand in the way of my shot on Nuala, but he's forced to stop cutting. But… He can fire omega effect beams. We're not inconveniencing him. Or, we are, but only a little. So little that it's not worth actually working at it for him.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

I fire at his eyes, Nuala and the cage again, this time aiming for the base rather than the bars. Tezumak… Doesn't fire.

"This is what I offer you. A place. A function. An end to all your-"

My possessed clone corpse lunges at him from behind, reaching for his knife.

"-suffering."

He doesn't look around as he grabs it around the head and squeezes, crushing its skull.

Any non-fatal injury…

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Chunks of rock smash through her bindings and the flesh beneath them. She'll bleed to death unless we can get out soon, but-.

"Ah." Mannheim turns towards me, eyes glowing. "So be-."

The machinery winks out as Robert appears on top of… One of the gods. He rips the tubes out of his chest, the space around him rippling. "Always wondered how much power I could take, y'know? What the limit was." He reaches out towards Mannheim and the smaller corpses on the biers decay to dust. A death god, then. "Looks like it's a lot."

"So be it." His eyes-.

Tezumak hits him in the side, driving him back-. About an inch. His gauntlet drops to Nuala's heavily damaged body and hurls it down the-. I leap into the air, construct wings keeping me aloft as I field her battered torso. Still… Alive.

"Time to-."

Mannheim grabs hold of Tezumak's shoulder with his ring hand, wrenches him down and then hits him with the omega beams. His armour is outlined in red for a moment, then vanishes.

"Time to go!"

I grab Robert with a construct and chuck him at the exit, then fly for it myself!

"Run!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

6 884 938.M41

That.. was.. not.. fun.

I wave at my room's scanner, not quite focusing, hear the beep of acknowledgement and the shhh of the door sliding open.

The only part of this whole place that sounds like Star Trek…

And then I walk inside. The décor is… Pretty nice, actually. Tsua'm has really gotten the hang of human-friendly decoration and furnishing. Including a bed that takes into account that humans need a lot more sleep than-.

"P'ol, I was-" Tsua'm gets up from her chair with a tau not-smile on her face, deactivating her holodisplay as she does so. "-concerned that I may have to search for you."

Her robes settle-. And suddenly I'm imagining very clearly what she would look like without them-.

She stops approaching as my environmental shield flares.

Control. Control.

"Was your work so unpleasant? Was the archive trapped?"

"No, no it-. I've just been dealing with wyches all day."

She nods. "I know that you find their slave-like state repugnant, but there was no better option. You have seen what they did."

"It's not that. They…" I look at the ceiling-. She remembered the ceiling rose. She would have had to explain what that was to the Earth caste builders, and… "You know how they dress?"

"They do not wear much armour, to display their bodies as part of their art."

"Part of my conditioning has been to discourage them from showing off through fighting. But that doesn't stop them wanting to show off. And because of.. how the orange light works, they mostly want to show off to me."

She blinks. "And did that distract them from their work?"

"No, that was… We confirmed that it is a psychic storage device, but none of them have the skills necessary to decode it. I've.. got them working on it."

"Is that why you are frustrated? Or-. Ah."

This time she makes a point of giving me a human-style smile.

"Were they dancing for you? Posing for you?" I look away, nodding. Those women and man are pretty-. No, superhumanly lithe, and appear to habitually turn everything they do into a display of their.. physical.. 'skills'. "Enticing you?"

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure that there's a distinction in their minds."

Tsua'm looks slightly amused. "It is still a little strange to me how you can find other species 'visually stimulating'. Did you copulate with them?"

"No!"

"That would seem to have been the sensible choice, but since you are here…" She looks around, rolling up her right sleeve.

"Ah, what are you doing?"

She returns her attention to me. "I assumed that you are here because they should be focusing on their work and you expect me to satiate your sexual hunger?"

Ah… "That-. 'Expect' is not the way I'd.. put it, Tsua'm."

We stare each other in the eyes for a moment, then her nasal cleft narrows thoughtfully. She steps aside and indicates the settee. "Sit with me."

Decidedly disconcerted, I walk over to my accustomed place on the soft furniture and sit down. Tsua'm sits next to me a moment later, letting her sleeve fall back. She's sitting.. diagonally, her posterior in the corner of the settee while her knees are touching mine and her lower legs spread out to the side.

The best way to 'cure' a man's arousal: have a serious talk about your relationship.

"You have made it clear that you… You love me." I nod cautiously. "And that in your culture monogamy was the expected way to behave."

"Yes."

"And you know that tau society does not work like that."

"Yes. The Eugenics Board assigns reproductive partners."

She nods. "If I were not working with you, I would probably have been assigned my second partner by now. My first child would be beginning the first stages of their formal education."

"Have I..?"

I… Look down.

Have I really fucked up your life and you're just going along with it? How do I-?

She reaches over and takes my left hand in her right. "We do not just exchange semen samples for in vitro fertilisation. I would have sex with whoever I was assigned to. Several times."

"Ah. Okay?"

"And that would be all. We would spend a little time together socially while… Recovering, but it is unlikely that we would see each other again once I was pregnant. He might not even meet his child, except by coincidence."

"That…" I frown. "But… That wasn't how tau society used to work? Don't you have the same… Biological drives that humans do? I mean, mostly?"

"Relations outside of reproductive partnerships assigned by the Eugenics Board do occur, and a small number of children are born to matches that were not arranged, though that…" She looks away for a moment. "Reflects poorly on those involved. Especially when it produces… When the child is half-caste."

Which is no joke. Tau of different castes can breed together, but the health impacts on the children range from severe lifelong arthritis for Earth/Water half-castes to 'they-won't-see-the-end-of-the-first-week' for Air/Fire half-castes. And that's before you get into the psychological problems. Since this is the Tau Empire and not the Imperium, the Empire generally tries to find a role for the ones that make it to adulthood, but the structure of tau society doesn't really leave one.

She lightly squeezes my hand. "The point that I wish to make is that tau… Find satisfaction in… Order. When you tell me that you want me to do something that you have the authority to tell me to do, it is not an imposition. It is not… Treating me as a means. It is showing me how best to do something that I want to do."

"Alright, but you seemed to be-. I mean, I.. got the impression-. You are… Enjoying…"

"The…" She looks away, her cleft twitching. "Spasmodic.. completion.. is.. not unpleasant. But I feel… Mental pleasure, when I am able to fully discharge my responsibilities. I know perfectly well that tau and humans are-" She uses her left hand to pat her mammary-free upper chest. "-differently shaped. I understand that there are attributes that I do not possess which arose your erotic passions. That is not offensive to me."

I… Nod. "O-kay, I think-."

"Excepting that you will not consider modifying me so that I could fulfil them. You know that modern tau castes are engineered to better fulfil their roles. I can see the advantage in being able to feed young children while leaving our mouths unoccupied. Regurgitation does not taste pleasant, even when it serves a useful purpose."

"I.. could do something cosmetic, but genetic changes..." I shake my head. "I don't know enough. That's not a trait that tau have ever had." Hm. "Two children?"

"One or two."

I hold up my right hand, a representation of a genetic strand appearing above it.

She looks at it curiously. "Whose DNA is that?"

"It's the closest I've got to me as a Water caste tau. I hadn't thought about how much I'd thrown your life off course, and now you raise the issue… I do want to help you fulfil your role."

"I see." She nods. "Should we visit the obstetrics ward?"

"No." My crotch briefly glows as I lean closer and exhale on her nasal slit. She shifts in her seat, slit switching and mouth slightly open as she gets a better taste of my scent. "Tau semen isn't toxic to humans. I'll perform the procedure myself. Manually."

"Very well. Would-?"

I reach over, grabbing her around the waist and then lifting her over my shoulder as I stand and walk towards the bed.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Do Or Die Time

17th February 2013
19:05 GMT

"Running!"

The Anti-Lifed soldiers guarding the door step into our path, guns raised. Robert clenches his fists, and the stones of the walls reach out and grab them. Chirurgical limbs sprout from my armour and start… Shit, ah, reattaching Nuala's… Everything, and sealing the severed parts of her limbs to prevent complete exsanguination.

"What's happening?!"

"Do you have a healing potion?"

I construct-grab one of the stone-bound guards and throw him behind us, intercepting the omega beam that Mannheim fired at our backs. A momentary glow and he's gone.

"I.. got, like, one?"

I send out a construct hand. "Give it here."

He pulls it out of his belt and passes it to me. I poor a few drops into Nuala's chest cavity before sewing her skin closed, then pump the rest down her throat. Not much else I can do for her.

"What's happening?"

"Mannheim appeared to be trying to give himself the power of the Aztec gods, using their hearts and a lot of Apokoliptian-"

And we're outside. No army of suits converges on us, so I turn in the direction of the city's exit closest to Itztépetl-.

I scoop up a handful of stone slabs, shove them in a new gravity impeller construct and then fire them at the portal to Otherworld.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The building on the top of the pyramid crumbles, which I hope will take the portal out of commission.

"-machinery. We haven't stopped him, but if we're lucky he's going to be occupied with this for a while."

"Is a healing potion gunna grow her arms and legs back?"

"A healing ray can, given time."

"Thought it only closed wounds up if you lost a limb."

"Oh, yeah, I'd have to create a scaffold and basically flay the end of the limb repeatedly healing it a little better each time, but it's perfectly possible."

"Maybe the elves have got something better?"

"Elves are arseholes. Even if they do, I doubt they'd use it on her."

"Right. How's M'gann?"

"A few wounds. Nothing that we can't heal when we get back to Earth."

But so much for making contact with Melinoë. If Olympus is off limits then I doubt that there's a…

Elven path, possibly? I can ask once she's stabilised. Because once Mannheim's dealt with… It's like that bit in Transmetropolitan where they regenerate a frozen head. As Spider Jerusalem observes, the cryopreservation company thought they could promise whatever they felt like because surely someone in the future could actually do it. I fully expect to have to spend a lot of time putting the Earth back together after this, but the point is that I have the power to do that.

So long as Mannheim doesn't eat the whole thaumosphere or something.

"How much damage did it feel like we did to his machine?"

"Not much. Damn it, we didn't even know he was doing this. We tripped over it!"

"If you look everywhere hard enough, you're bound to 'trip over' something eventually."

No point asking 'how long will it take to repair', because there's no way he's going to know. Some time, which means that the best time to attack the Anti-Life network is right now, or at least as soon as possible. And I don't have a yellow ring bearer.

I-.

"Did you get exposed to the Anti-Life? Any injuries?"

"No-. Other than.. being around Mannheim. No injuries. I don't think they knew I was there. Did the.. goddess helping him… Do that to herself?"

"Gods are vulnerable to the Anti-Life. If you think about it, they'd have to be. Maybe she thought it was a way to gain some sort of relevancy, maybe… I don't know, absolution is one of her domains. Maybe she was motivated to sin more so there'd be something to absolve."

"That's crazy."

"I said I don't know. I'm speculating."

Out of the city and into the jungle. Mountain is that way, and we should meet up with the refugees before we get there. If there are any suits still working, I'm confident that we can destroy them as long as they reach us before we get in range of the mountain's cheat-zone. The only issue would be if Mannheim was able to take control and change the rules.

So I hope his system is at least that damaged.

What happens next?

Tlazolteotl spoke about this to Bastet, probably trying to persuade her to make herself vulnerable to Mannheim's influence. That would risk removing Adom's powers and making Kahndaq vulnerable to the Anti-Life. I'll need to warn him and her. Other pantheons… Well, the Olympians clearly know what's going on. The Roman pantheon? I can probably get a message to Vulcan, but I've got no idea if he can warn the rest of them. And I doubt that Odin would fall for anything that Mannheim could do. And that's about all the pantheons that I know anything about.

"Otherworld. Are there any gods who might do something stupid with Mannheim?"

"No. It's all pretty quiet. They're not really ambitious. Well… Some of them are-. Were, but they've already moved on. Ah. You can… Does this, like, stop that thing you said would get rid of the Anti-Life?"

"It shouldn't. As I've said, it isn't something I've been able to test in advance. I don't know if Mannheim being away from the material world creates a problem or not. And it doesn't matter because he wouldn't be doing this if it didn't help him, so we're going to have to carry it out as soon as possible."

"You need someone for fear, though."

"Batman will do. He was actually going to be my first choice. He'll just need to get back in his old headspace for a little while. Shouldn't need to keep it up for long."

"Ah." He exhales as we continue to run. "Great, okay! Always thought he was pretty scary. So why did we… Do all this? If we didn't need her?"

"Melinoë would have been better. Less coaching needed. I'm a pretty powerful Orange Lantern, and with Batman changing how he operates… I didn't want to take the risk, but now we've got to. Unless you know anyone better?"

"No." He shakes his head.

"Then that's the plan. Hope you like obsidian."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:21 GMT

I land the construct platform carrying those we've rescued on the Themysciran beach. Tlaltecuhtli has wandered inland a little way, presumably in search of more heartless Aztecs to introduce to the wheel. Kon's explaining things to Queen Hippolyta while Philippus organises escorts for the people we've rescued.

A… Significant proportion of whom are male. And yet no one is complaining about it.

Ow.

I see a familiar face hovering at the periphery of the crowd, preparing to handle any casualties. And I swallow my pride and float my way over to her.

"So…"

Sadeh regards me with as little expression as she can manage. I earned her regard by replacing the missing body parts of Themyscira's long-term wounded. And then I helped my god dump her god in a pigsty.

"I'm not going to pretend that I actually feel guilt over what I did, but since I'm still bleeding I'd like some idea of what Lord Apollo wants to make up for it."

She shrugs. "How would I know?"

"You're.. a.. priestess?"

She shakes her head. "Direct communication with the gods is unusual. Even after three thousand years, all I can really do is feel his ire radiating from you."

"Oh. Ah. Okay. Could you please ask for me?"

"I can entreat him in my prayers." She frowns. "Why are you still bleeding?"

"Magic obsidian stab wounds. I-."

My magic armour starts to vibrate. Ring, what-?

Something is… Pulling me in the direction of the mainland. No. Pulling the armour. Okay, open, twist around-. Pull myself out and fly up over it and withdraw my constructs-.

It's like a hurricane force wind is pushing on my armour and-.

"Paul!"

M'gann shouts as-. Shit. I wrap construct chains around Qualpopoca as he flails in the air, held down by M'gann's telekinesis. Anchor him to the ground, make sure it's solid. Whatever force is acting on him is still pushing, so I add a little-.

Ow ow ow.

A little cushion between his flesh and the chains. Looking down at my legs I see small flecks of blood appear as… As the obsidian fragments pull themselves free from inside my body. It's painful, but once they're out my normal ring-assisted regeneration kicks in and the pain abates.

Okay, what's making-?

Everyone who went over Itztépetl is losing whatever obsidian fragments caught on their clothing or in their flesh. The Aztec priests are looking extremely concerned and more than a couple are holding their hands over their hearts-.

"Do you feel it in your hearts!?"

The armour's gone, flying though the air in the direction of the mainland. Qualpopoca is wincing in pain as the… Force pushes him harder.

A few of the priests who have their wits about them shake their heads.

Alright, so what links the-? Aztec magic. The armour is Aztec magic, Aztec magic turned Qualpopoca into a beastman and the obsidian mountain is made of Aztec magic. The hearts are either taken from sacrificed magical creatures or are parts of human souls. Nothing inherently Aztec about them.

"Cornwall?"

He looks even more uncomfortable. "Something really f-. Bad is happening."

"Can you narrow it down?"

"Raw magic… I don't… It feels like a spell's being… Broken down into raw magic… But… Bigger."

"Mannheim… Ingesting the gods?"

He shakes his head helplessly. "I dunno. I've never felt anything like this before."

"Uh-!"

Qualpopoca is… He's not bleeding, but that looks painful.

"Can you do anything to stop it?"

He shakes his head. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"Qualpopoca, I'm afraid that you're just going to have to endure it."

He grits his teeth. "Y-es. I understand."

"Good man. Your majesty!"

Queen Hippolyta walks towards me, glancing at Qualpopoca with clear concern. "What is happening?"

"Something's pulling all Aztec magic that way. Is the gateway to Erebos open?"

"No. The door is barred and will not open."

"And we can't get to Olympus. Are there any other routes off Themyscira?"

She shakes her head. "No."

"Okay. You're a demigoddess, right?" She nods. "Is there anything you can do to… Bless Qualpopoca here?"

She looks a little pained. "I have not wanted to take advantage of that part of my heritage." She sees the way I stare at her in response and sighs. "Why would you want me to do that?"

"I'm hoping we can turn the spells holding him together from Aztec magic to Greek magic, so he'll stop getting pulled."

"Anything I could do would be as likely to kill him as aid him."

"Ah." I nod. I mean, if she's had three thousand years and not experimented at all, then… It's probably for the best. "Cornwall, is there any sign that it's-."

"…way off."

I look around as Cernunnos carries Nuala towards us. She's… Not in immediate danger of dying, and he was able to save her right leg in its entirety, but… She's looking understandably ropey.

"You have a way off?"

"Fairy ring. There's a… Fairy ring."

"Excellent, thank you. We-."

Qualpopoca slumps as the force pulling on him cuts out.

I leave the chains in place, just in case. "Superboy, would you mind flying up and taking a look?"

He nods and shoots up into the sky, staring in the direction of the land. Then he drops back down.

"It's gone."

"What is?"

"The land."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:26 GMT

In the role play game 'Exalted', the land of Creation is split into five elemental poles. In the middle you have the pole of earth, which makes things stable, and to the west you have the pole of water. Near west has a sea with a lot of islands in it as earth and water combine, then as you go further west the islands peter out until it's just sea. Keep going further and things stop making sense as sky and sea sort of merge together.

I wasn't really able to picture what that looked like until now.

Concerned, I turn to Cernunnos to see if he's got any idea what just happened.

"So?"

"It's gone."

I wait a moment to see if there's anything else. It doesn't look like he's doing anything, but as I understand it god-type magic is a lot more a part of them than what mortal magicians use.

After a moment he stops staring at the blue nothing and meets my eyes.

"Bast's realm was decaying as the magic within lost contact with Earth. With that restored, it began recovering itself. But even when it was decayed it existed. It is not easy to erase things completely. Normally there would be a wasteland… Relics of their faith here and there… Whispers on the wind."

"And the Aztecs have left nothing at all."

He nods, looking increasingly uncomfortable. "A page torn from the soul of the world."

"What would that do to Earth?"

"Any spells or magic artefacts tied to the Aztec mythos would stop working entirely. There might be some disruption to other related mythos objects. Will that be a problem?"

"It shouldn't. Not much left from those magic traditions, and most people who learn magic in South America now learn plant magic from Euanthe and Doctor Isley. And I think the world could do with less magic related to human sacrifice. Anything else?"

"I don't know. If it was destroyed then there would be a magic surge, but if Mannheim somehow absorbed it…" He shakes his head. "I need to return to Otherworld as soon as possible. If he is working on something like this in my homeland, the effect will be worse."

"Because Kon-Sten-Tyn bound England and Otherworld in perpetuity."

"Yes. So make sure that it does not happen."

"I'll do my best." I glance down to where everyone who is returning to Earth are gathering to use the fairy circle. "Shall we?"

He nods and then swoops, landing next to Nuala and saying something to her. I follow him down but aim for Queen Hippolyta, who is conversing with Captain Philippus.

"…the gods moved us here."

Philippus shrugs. "It seems clear to me that we were the ones who were supposed to stop Mannheim."

"Without a way to-." She notices me. "What news?"

"Mannheim appears to have somehow internalised the entirety of the Aztec mythos. That or destroyed it. Problem?"

"We were discussing what aid we could send you. I had thought that the gods wanted us to prevent the heartless from entering the sacred ground of Olympus. If their land is truly gone, then we can send all that we have to aid you. But if there is some other purpose then we would risk weakening our ability to serve it."

Huh. Gods can't just turn up on Earth at full power due to their sheer arcane power not… Fitting. Presumably they could create some sort of… Barrier effect using the same sort of magic, forcing someone to enter their realm at low power. So… The heartless storm Themyscira, which… Anchors..? The low power end? But if the heartless killed the Amazons off then that would gradually push the spell back?

Logical, but speculative.

And there isn't any way for anyone to assault them from the Aztec afterlife any longer, but there… Is a back way into Themyscira, and if Mannheim sends people through it then the whole things starts up again. And… It sounds harsh, but there isn't anyone on Themyscira that we actually need. Amazons don't leave Themyscira often enough for me to bother including them in my plans.

"We really can't risk anything happening to the Hellenic mythos. I don't know what Mannheim's plan is, but I think it would be best to stay on guard here. My plan… We should be able to carry out my attack in a couple of days at most."

Queen Hippolyta nods, while Captain Philippus looks mildly put out. "Do you agree that the gods wanted us to defeat Mannheim?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't presume to speak for them. Maybe? I'm not sure how you'd have beaten Tlaltecuhtli without me, but you could probably have bypassed her and found Qualpopoca. Found out what Mannheim was doing. Maybe rescued a few people." I sigh. "This is the thing about isolationism: you get used to not engaging with people outside of the island on anything except your terms. You have the highest percentage of superhumans of any nation on the-. On the surface. There are… Lots of things you could do, but…"

I shrug.

"Amazon culture has started to change, and that's great. But the instincts of three thousand years don't change in a couple of years, and the world doesn't pause while that happens. And I'd love to discuss this in more detail, but I need to go. Excuse me."

Hippolyta nods thoughtfully, and I skip to the head of the queue where Cernunnos is watching Nuala carefully. I really don't think that she's going to try anything at this stage, but… Maybe he's just concerned?

"Orange Lantern. Nuala will open a portal for you to Castle Baaleskein. After you are through, she will close the portal and open one to Otherworld. I will take her and Brian through and look after her until her brother appears to take her."

"Thank-." I turn to Nuala. "Thank you. Once this is over I'll-. Actually, if you stay with Cernunnos for a couple of days I should be able to fix your remaining injuries."

She freezes up for an instant, then looks at me nervously. "I can't repay you."

"I don't do things for payment. I do them because the universe is the wrong shape and I've made it my life's mission to fix it."

"No, I-. My magic. I must pay my debts."

"Okay, agree to show a couple of friends of mine how to use elf circles and that will be plenty." She hesitates for a moment, then nods nervously. "Thank you." I look to my colleagues. "Everyone ready? We need to pick up Robin and Match before I.. start calling people in."

Kon nods. "I wonder what they found."

M'gann smiles faintly. "Maybe they found the missing British superheroes and we'll have a whole lot more help?"

Robert shakes his head. "Doubt they'd leave Britain even if that was what happened to them." His body shimmers as he activates his enhancements spells. "Okay, ready."

Nuala waves her hands, and there's a faint gust of air from the area around the fair thing. Air pressure equalising, probably.

I generate construct armour and a construct tower shield and stride through.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:30 GMT

A smoother transition than I got going to Columbia. I step forwards, and my surroundings blur. Another step, and they shift further and further towards a new-. My destination. I don't know how much I'm in one place or the other or somewhere else, but from the looks of things there's some sort of fight-.

"Lantern, watch-"

A sheeda warrior swings a spear at my head and I-. Subspace is back! Parry with an x-ionised sword. The spear is sliced through, runes on the spear shimmering as it sprays some sort of sludge on my construct armour and sword. Ah, high strength magic acid, no problem there.

"-out!"

I turn up my empathic vision as I start moving forwards, more to get out of my teammates' way than because I've got a destination in mind. Robin called out, and-

A flashbang goes off somewhere to my left.

-Sheeda soldiers are rather fond of invisibility there.

Construct chains wrap around the former spearman and drain-. Nothing? I settle for tearing the helmet off his head and stunning him.

Robert appears from the fairy ring behind me.

"Sheeda!"

"Right!" He shoots up into the air, which is a pretty sensible move-.

A large sheeda beetle with an energy cannon on its back smashes through a hedgerow, the beam striking my construct shield and… Doing some damage, but not doing it fast enough to kill me before my crumbler railgun round hit the beetle's howdah and the gun just falls off. The crew leap off after it, but those things explode pretty violently when their capacitors or their battery get hit and I'd like to avoid that. Since it doesn't seem to have a barrier I opt for shooting the barrel and… Yes, the gun's wrecked.

The sheeda I'm holding, his chest appears to be intact. I can feel his pulse in his neck.

"Sheeda of Summer's End! Drop your weapons and be spared! I am not in the moo-!"

The beetle rider grabs the gun operator and draws his knife-.

"Mood!"

Construct grab both of them, disarm them and stun them both. The beetle looks at me for a moment, then scurries away from me. I load a solid round into my railgun and shoot it in the head, turning its brain to mush and killing it.

Then I take a closer look at the sheeda. They're wearing… Modern human clothes. Not something I'd expect to see in a prison, but not their invasion gear. With empathic vision I can see a few more, but they mostly look recumbent-.

KA-KOOMPF!

All look recumbent as Robert's lightning bolt electrocutes the last couple. M'gann comes through the ring a moment later, looks around and then winces.

"Miss Martian." She looks around and I toss her a healing ray. "Two over there. Electrical burns."

"Right." She nods and then flies over to them.

Robin emerges from the underbrush, looking around cautiously. "Did we get all of them?"

"All of them close by. You alright?"

"Eh, a few bruises."

I nod. "Why are there sheeda here?"

"Don't know. The castle's records showed they were sending them out to a bunch of places to try opening portals, but you said that all the standing stones got sabotaged and the locations weren't anywhere near the Atlantean portals."

"The elves have their own system."

He nods at once. "And sheeda have enough elf blood in them to make it work."

"Apparently." I pull my prisoners closer and examine them, looking for any trace of the Anti-Life. Looks like… General exposure, but nothing everyone on Earth doesn't have. "Not seeing enough Anti-Life to control them."

"Have you read their interrogation reports?"

"No, not these ones. I read a few of the American interrogations, but there didn't seem to be anything useful. Why?"

"I took a look through. They think we destroyed their civilisation."

I nod. "Effectively, we did. If we try really hard and prevent them from ever coming into existence we might destroy it twice."

Or at least prevent it from coming into being here while it continues to exist in a separate timeline.

"Most of them said that since they didn't have anything to live for, they'd do anything they could to hurt us."

Hm. "Could just be big talk, might indicate willing participation."

"But then what? Does Mannheim plan on invading… What's the name of the place where the elves come from?"

"The Fair Lands is the name I've heard for it. And quite possibly. We just visited the Aztec afterlife. It doesn't exist any more. Mannheim… Absorbed it after cutting out the hearts of their gods."

Richard nods slowly. "Afterlives weren't being affected. But he can just go around and spread it to all of them."

"Probably not the Silver City. But yes. So we're accelerating my schedule."

"Are we following up on this at all?"

Kon and Mitchell appear, dragging two recumbent sheeda each. Robert drops down from the air and M'gann flies over with the rest of the sheeda in tow. Hm. Are we attacking Washington right away? No. I need to talk to Batman and get him a little used to using a yellow ring. That's at least a couple of hours. Then there's the issue of actually getting the rest together.

"Did you get a full list of portal sites?"

He shrugs. "We got all the ones in the castle. They're spread out across Europe. We'd have to check other prisons to see if other places are doing the same."

"Send a message to Mister Atom. See if the Justice League can spare any resources to cover the ones you can't reach. I need to speak to Batman about our final attack as soon as possible."

"What do you actually think he's doing?"

"I thought that he was making war on the gods, but if he's activating elf gates… Maybe he's building some sort of magic construct to attack the material world from the thaumosphere? I don't know. I could probably guess better if we saw him activate a gate, but I… Think we should probably try and stop all of them anyway."

He turns to M'gann. "Miss Martian, can you call the bioship?"

She nods. "Already done."

"I'll drop you off at the closest location before going to talk to Batman. Where is it?"

Richard smirks. "Where else? Glastonbury."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:36 GMT

"…weird robots and a woman called Penny Dolmann who was controlling them." Match's eyes flicker as he sends a heat beam into the sword of a sheeda warrior taking a swing at Richard. "I dunno what else used to be there, but that's all that's there right now."

I nod as I patch up the unconscious sheeda who was volunteered for ritual sacrifice duty. "Where did you put her?"

"Their dungeon. I figure, Doctor Mist could take a look at the castle, and maybe find a way to fix her. If they can't do that for a couple of days, she could probably wake up and get one of the robots to let her out."

"Reasonable."

"You don't..? Think we should have killed her, do you?"

With the fight mostly over I turn my attention away from my environment and towards him. "While there is an obvious advantage in killing enemy assets and a disadvantage to taking prisoners, I'm… I don't think she's critical to Mannheim's work so just.. leaving her isn't a big problem. And if this works like I think it will then she'll be back to normal in a few days. Other than… Maybe.. fabricate a time-delayed lock for the dungeon I'd have done the same thing."

He nods, smiling with relief.

"The fact that I'm okay with killing people doesn't mean that I enjoy it or that I think it's the only solution."

"Oh, I-." He looks a little guilty. "I didn't.. mean…"

"I'm not unaware that I'm unusual in that regard."

"No, I-." He exhales. "I don't wanna kill anyone either. But I don't want anyone to die because I didn't kill… Someone I should have killed. Y'know?"

"I feel the same way. But there's no way to know for certain either way, and you… Sometimes you just have to best-guess it. I think you guessed right."

"What about the sheeda?"

Mmn.

I brought the sheeda from the last site with us, bound arm and leg with chains that they won't be able to break. None of them are Highborn, so their potential for trickiness is limited to what devices they've brought with them, regular sheeda being only mildly superhuman. Which means that a normal prison can probably hold them, if it's staffed. But prisons not being taken over by the Justice League aren't… Working, at the moment. Some are staffed, some aren't, some have had break-outs and some have had everyone in them kill themselves. Aside from Belle Reve and Blackgate Mannheim hasn't really targetted prisons, and with Blackgate he was just going there for Karon. So we could drop them off in a prison for a couple of days under the same terms as Ms. Dolmann, it would just be a matter of finding one. But they're a threat to the inmates and staff if the conditions deteriorate.

Best… Alternative, is for me to give their brains an orange light prod. Make them want to be a bit more pro-social. A couple of different versions of me mentioned doing something like that in… Less sophisticated civilisations, and they got a version that… Wasn't completely monstrous. I've got better control than them, so I could probably do one that would decay naturally over a few weeks…

"I'll deal with them." I turn away slightly. "Robin, are you done?!"

Richard is using his arm computer to take images of the sacrificial altar that the sheeda had set up, which goes a little way towards explaining why that sheeda nearly cut the other's throat at the last gate: trying to rush a sacrifice when they realised that they wouldn't be able to do a full ritual.

"Yeah. Mister Atom says 'thanks for the warning, but everybody's busy'."

I nod. "Understandable, without a smoking gun. Cornwall?"

"Yeah, sheeda blood could jam it open. And I don't know exactly what bit he was planning to cut, but this whole thing looks a bit Aztec-y to me."

"Do your-" The bioship descends from the night sky, slowing as it reaches the ground. M'gann flies up to its canopy and gives it a hug. "-best."

I hold up my hands, orange strands attaching them to the heads of every sheeda in our vicinity. And add an… Aura, which feeds into their existing desire systems. They want their own civilisation back? Okay, redirect those desires from the historical reality of that civilisation and onto… Ah, resource efficiency? Advanced biotechnology? Useful things that their civilisation had and that we have to a lesser extent. Make them want to add the better parts of themselves to us.

It doesn't take, exactly, but it's stuck on the outer parts of their mind. Okay, now turn up the power a little so it'll take precedence…

Not perfect, but if we haven't gotten rid of the Anti-Life by the time it wears off then we're probably not going to.

I float up into the air. "Robin, you're in charge."

"Good luck with Batman."

"Thank you."

I look up into the sky and set course for my new ship before accelerating. That little chat with Mitchell is… Making me reconsider. It's not like Batman will have just forgotten how he used to think, right? It hasn't been that long. Or-.

Power Ring. Harrolds owes me and has experience using the yellow light. With Alexander Luthor here…

Ring, contact Alexander Luthor.

Compliance.

"Orange Lantern. What can I do for you?"

"I need to contact Power Ring Joseph Harrolds. Can you set that up?"

"Absolutely not. I can't risk the Anti-Life spreading to my Earth. The conversion would be almost immediate and there's almost nothing to stop it spreading."

"What if there was a way to remove the Anti-Life permanently?"

"If, Orange Lantern. I'm happy that you have a technique in mind and wish you all fortune, but unless it's certain then I'm not going to risk another world, another universe. Is it?"

"It-. No. But honestly, the people who have already gone through are a bigger risk factor."

"I cannot undo what has already happened, but I can prevent it from getting worse. To be clear, I have already created and activated devices to prevent further travel from my Earth to this one, and they work in both directions."

Before I could even think it…

"Mister Luthor? For future reference? It's fine to say things like that to me, because I might well have done it, but with just about everyone else we're working with, they wouldn't, and they'd probably be annoyed about the implication." … "Me, Mister Atom and Batman."

"Thank you for your honesty. End-."

And he's gone.

"Orange Lantern to Batman."

I look down as the planet spreads out beneath me, troubles…

No. Still troubled. I can see patches where there should be lights but aren't, places where the noise of civilisation is hushed in a decidedly… Wrong way. And there's the constant pall of black over every emotion.

I… Really want to stop this.

"Batman. Go ahead."

"I need a word in person, preferably off Earth. Where's a good place for you?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
19:46 GMT

I watch as Mr. Atom coordinates the efforts of the Justice League worldwide. He's not plugged into the Watchtower's computer because he's specifically designed not to be able to perform direct interfaces, so he copes by using his highly precise sonic emitters to communicate with the computer with sound of a complexity the human ear can't distinguish and at pitches we can't hear. If the shield around his work area was to drop it would just sound like loud white noise to me, though Superman said that he rather likes it.

"Batman's arrival estimated thirty seconds plus minus ten seconds. You have three percent of my attention. This is still vastly more of my attention than you require so do not slow down. In fact, speed up to fifteen percent faster than you usually speak for peak efficiency."

I speed up my thought processes by sixteen percent.

"That might make it more difficult for Batman."

"I have learned that efficiency is not the only rational value metric. However, it is a highly important one and Batman could become a more effective individual by replacing no more than five percent of his brain with an augmentative computer."

"I didn't think that you designed those."

"You uploaded the design for Talon's augmentative onto the Justice League's database. I improved upon-"

"Recognised, Batman, zero two."

"-it."

Batman… Batman is wearing a blue cowl and cape. It's a dark blue, but…

"Orange Lantern. What do you wish to discuss?"

"Have you read Robin's report yet? Or mine?"

"Yes, and Doctor Mist is making it a priority to find out what he's doing. But Mister Atom was correct, there are simply too many elven portals listed for us to spare the resources to cover all of them."

I nod. "I agree. That's why I want to go ahead with my Anti-Life removal plan immediately."

"Explain."

"Combining the seven colours of the emotional spectrum can produce pure life force. The same thing that granted Doctor Mist immortality. My plan is to generate it and feed it into the Anti-Life broadcast network."

"Do you have all seven colours?"

"Sort of. Orion of New Genesis has a red ring and the hate and anger required to use it. There's me, and I've got the best control of the orange light of any Orange Lantern. Lord Malvolio has volunteered to act as our green, and to my knowledge he's the most powerful green ring user ever. Alan's got blue, Dame Carol has violet and I… I think that the Medusa Mask can sub in for indigo."

He nods. "Now I understand how you reacted to my change of approach."

"Yes." I take the yellow ring and lantern out of subspace. "I considered… I don't know, trying to make you angry so you'd… Try cowing me into obedience. Or…" I sigh. "You were my first choice. Alexander Luthor refuses to let me ask Joseph Harrolds, who would probably have been able to do it better. I… Don't have anyone else. No one I would trust with it, with the knowledge of what power rings can do."

"You don't think that I can do what you need me to do."

"It's not just about whether you can do it or not. If the rest of us cover you, I'm sure you could probably get a weak yellow glimmer and fire it, but that's not enough. The rest of us are people who really grok our colours."

"My whole approach was based around using fear as a tool to fight crime, manipulating the people I fought and intimidating the criminal underworld into hiding themselves. Is that what I need to be a Yellow Lantern?"

"It's a viable approach. There's a big game hunter who lives for the fear he feels when he hunts prey that could kill him easily. There's a man whose species I killed who turned the fear he feels for the future into a weapon. There are serial killers who live for the fear their victims feel in their last moment. Yellow isn't a colour that lends itself to nobility."

"Which species did you kill?"

"Citadelians." I shrug. "I sent in the report a while ago. I'm sure you read it. In theory, there's nothing stopping him cloning himself to recreate them; that's how they started in the first place. I don't know if he will or not. People ruled by their fears aren't likely to be rational."

"I see. May I?"

He raises his right hand slightly in the direction of the ring.

"I hope you will. That's the whole point."

"I believe you have a tradition of asking Lanterns to call their ring to themselves."

"Ye-ah."

"I find your lack of faith…" He points his index finger at the ring. "Disturbing."

The ring wobbles a little bit.

"That reference was disturbing. Sir, I'm afraid that the only way I can see this working is if you… Temporarily regain your former mindset."

His eyes narrow behind his cowl. "I.. thought I did."

"You wouldn't have made a film reference if that was true. Sir, have you ever used a power ring before?"

"I briefly used a green ring." He closes his eyes and bows his head. "I need to feel fear?"

"You need to command fear. And be able to feel fear; Jordan literally can't use it."

"Have you used it?"

I nod. "Not very well, but yes. Strategic fear is only something I use incidentally; I don't have a good feel for it."

He moves his hand slightly.

"It's harder than I thought it would be to get back into that headspace."

"Sir, we need someone who can use that ring. Do you have any ideas-" He steps closer to the ring and picks it up between his right forefinger and thumb, examining it. "-who else might be able to get something out of it?"

"None who meet all the criteria."

"Would you like my help?"

"No." He turns around and heads towards the exit. "If I.. have to do this, I'd rather do it on my own."

I nod as the doors slide closed behind him.

"Probability of success is low. I recommend lobotomising Jonathan Crane and using him."

"That wouldn't work. The lobotomy would prevent him from 'commanding' fear."

"Then I recommend ensorcellment to bind him to agreement."

"That might work, but Batman is still the best option." I sigh. "What elf sites still need to be checked?"

 

[Mr Zoat]

6 002 939.M41

"Y-yes." Bo'ohk nods stiffly. "You are as correct as I expected on all points of law."

His head turns slightly towards Tsua'm, who is just showing signs of pregnancy. Though from the twitches I've been seeing in the nasal clefts of my tau colleagues I'm going to assume that they've been smelling her state for a little while.

Bo'ohk takes a moment to think this through.

"But I see that you prepared this argument because you believed that there would be a degree a resistance to the idea."

Tsua'm makes a small mantling gesture with both hands. "Ceremonial marriages are a small but established part of Water caste diplomatic relations with primitive human worlds. As a result of my specialist duties I have not been assigned a mate to sire my children. The genetic material used was copied from healthy male tau of the Water caste, and P'ol has the authority to order me to breed."

I'm still not… Totally comfortable with her putting it like that. But tau are usually pretty direct about that aspect of their official responsibilities.

Bo'ohk gently pats the surface of his desk. "No one part of what you just said is unreasonable. But the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

I raise my eyebrows. "Oh? How so?"

He pauses again. I'm honestly not sure if it's just that he's having trouble getting his head around the idea, or if there's a reason other than 'it's highly irregular' that might make him object.

"Let us assume that the genetic work is viable, and the child is born a healthy member of the Water caste."

I nod. "I actually ran the genetic sample by the Eugenics Board to get a 'theoretical' assessment. They said that they would approve the owner breeding without special monitoring."

"Then how will they be raised? You are aware that amongst tau, parents have little input into their childrens' upbringing."

"Only on worlds that have been settled for a long time. On more recent colonies there are crèches, but biological parents have a lot more direct involvement."

It just works out easier to let children have apprenticeships with their parents than collect them all up and fly them to another city once they're on solids. It's a bit more limited with the Fire caste as it hardly makes sense to put children with soldiers on active duty, but tau on garrison or police duties can mentor their own cadets without much disruption. Similarly, tau who want to become parents will usually just run their and their potential partner's DNA by the local Eugenics Board to check for incompatibilities rather than wait to be assigned a partner. The tau have colonised so many places in the current expansion wave that things have gotten -by their anal retentive standards- a bit Wild West-y.

"That is a trend that is permitted but not encouraged."

I suck in my lips and raise my eyebrows, and wait to see if he works it out.

"And…" He realises that I'm trying to communicate something, and I see his eyes moves as he tries to work out what it is. First step: have I said something stupid. "And… You do not think that there is any risk of tau-human relations such as you have becoming more common, due to human-tau reproduction being impossible. Whereas the shift in child-rearing strategies used in the colonies could become more widespread."

Tsua'm opens her right hand. "It is more likely that those colonies will maintain that tradition. Outside of the military where it is sometimes necessary to instruct soldiers to leave the front line and breed, if we do not want to run out of soldiers."

A problem that Warhammer 40,000 never really addressed. The Imperial Guard can recruit 100% of Krieg's population due to them taking an ovum and a testicle from every Krieger and using giant artificial wombs to grow the next generation. Places like Catachan should barely be able to field a single regiment due to their home being a deathworld, and their women should effectively be barred from… Just about everything other than having children because there would be no way for them to replenish their losses otherwise. Similarly, if the recruitment rate on Cadia is 99%, with a small number joining the Ecclesiarchy, Mechanicus or navy, where exactly are the next generation coming from? Are they just shipping people in? So why are they shipping soldiers out?

Tau divide themselves by physically dissimilar castes. Fire caste children only come from Fire caste mothers and fathers. Nothing about putting all of your women on the front lines changes the basic mechanics of reproduction. Having children takes time. Getting pregnant, carrying the growing child and then raising the dependant child for the first few years which even tau children need for healthy psychological development takes a little over three Earth years. Tau only live about fifty years, and they have a sharp fertility drop-off towards the end of that. Put adolescent female Fire caste on the front line for their first Trial By Fire alongside the males as Fire caste tradition requires, and they die at the peak of their fertility with the greatest amount of potential breeding years ahead of them. And they deploy in mixed sex squads who get bonded, so just reassigning the entire female complement to garrison or police duty after their first Trial is awkward, even if it's what they've effectively ended up doing in a lot of places.

I nod. "Yes, I don't think you have to worry about human/tau coupling becoming common enough to be a problem. Tsua'm's role with our project is safe enough that there's no real issue with her raising our children, and if I have a little more input with that than most tau fathers…" I shrug. "The evidence is that that doesn't actually cause problems. If anything, having immediate exposure to an alien mindset might help if they end up going into diplomacy or interspecies trading."

"What if primitive people begin to expect their ceremonial marriages to…" He twitches. "I am smelling myself."

A tau phrase which means something like 'I'm chasing my own tail' or 'I'm getting myself confused'.

Tsua'm indicates a negative. "Such marriages occur amongst primitive human populations who have had little contact with the Imperium. It is unlikely that they would hear about it, and… Some require those involved to copulate in order for the marriage to be considered 'real', even where there is no chance of conception. It does not work well."

I nod. "Male tau are basically the wrong shape and female tau have…" I make a gate-closing motion with my hands. "Male humans don't have rings, so… It's quite painful."

Bo'ohk looks even more uncomfortable. "I was referring to their expectations of having offspring. Such people who have no understanding of the genetics of why it is impossible, and would not accept our word for it if there was an observable counterexample."

"The ones who keep it up tend to do things that wouldn't result in them having children even if they were the same species. We checked."

Bo'ohk raises his hands to cover his nasal slit, a gesture that's pretty similar to the human equivalent. "I now understand what you said. 'What has been learned cannot be unlearned'. This is a wisdom that I will pass on to my own sons and daughters, should I have any. Let us…" He lowers his hands. "Move on."

I extend my left hand towards Tsua'm, and she smiles in both a tau and human fashion as she takes it in her right hand.

"Master Shaper Gohk Krrah has agreed offer us the service of his shamen. They have been fed on a mixture of human and eldar psykers, and trained as best as the kroot can manage."

Tsua'm raises her head interrogatively. "They have not fed on ork weirdboys?"

"No. The Master Shaper prefers to avoid the flesh of orks for all his kroot followers. He feels that further ork DNA would serve no useful function."

I nod. "That's probably our best bet. Did he separate types of human psykers; astropaths, navigators, things like that?"

"For some individuals, yes. It is hard for him to get the more unusual types."

Makes sense. Imperial Guard armies don't use many psykers in the field, and then it's mostly battle psykers with the occasional astropath accompanying a senior officer. And as for negotiating for their bodies in exchange for mercenary work, forget it. Imperial Guard units desperate enough to use kroot mercenaries don't have those sort of resources.

I nod. "Then that's our next step. Any news on the other matter?"

"I have reached out to other Ethereals who have been associated with the project, and made representations regarding your concerns. So far none have indicated that your suspicions are accurate. It may help if you could identify more concrete problems which could occur if your guess that the ship was built by Krona was accurate."

I look directly at him. "I come from a parallel universe. That indicates that inter-parallel travel is possible, even with the warp getting in the way. But we have no way to know what limits exist. I'm not all that harmful, but what happens if the problem gets cracked by a species of sentient nanomachines? Or an entirely new type of demon? Or someone a little more powerful than a human with a ring? None of us know the extent of the potential risk. And our group is the best placed to deal with things like that. Please, emphasise that to all of your contacts."

His eyes flick left and right as he imagines what I just described.

"I understand your concern, and I believe that you are correct. I will redouble my efforts."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:02 GMT

Carol's entire body is covered in crystal armour, and I can't immediately tell whether it's a construct or some sort of crystaline power armour. Ghia'ta is wearing the same light power armour I made for her, and her aura is noticeably dimmer than I remember it being.

"Hail, Citrine! I trust your judgement in recalling us, but we are sorely needed below."

"Not for much longer, hopefully." I glance at Ghia'ta again, and-. And I walk over to her and hug her, letting the warm feelings I have for the team rise to the forefront of my mind.

She hugs back. "Thank you. I… I need to hear that."

"No trouble." I step back. "Dame Carol, you're here because I think I have a way to purge the Anti-Life network, and if Mannheim realises what we're doing he'll probably take extraordinary action to stop us. I'm assembling everyone I need for the plan now, and then we're going to carry it out. I need you."

"You asked for me and Ghia'ta."

"She's here in case you die."

Her helmet nods. "Wise."

"But that would still be bad because your control and focus are far better than hers, and this is going to be dicey any-"

"Recognised, Blue Lantern two four, Doctor Mist, two five."

"-way. Alan, Doctor Balewa, thank you for coming."

I offer Alan my right hand and he shakes it with a tired smile. To Dr. Balewa I offer the Medusa Mask.

"Can you use this?"

He considers it for a moment, his eyes unfocusing as he feels the front of its face.

"I believe so. What do you want me to do?"

"One moment. Orange Lantern Illustres to Lord Malvolio. Please respond urgently."

Alan frowns. "Isn't that the guy who-?"

Green flames waft around my ring and then burst, coalescing into a construct representation of Lord Malvolio.

"Lord Illustres. What business has the birth-cradle of mankind with me?"

"It's time to deal with the Anti-Life, and you're my first choice for the green-ring user. I apologise for the lack of notice, but I didn't want to risk the target finding out what I'm planning. Can you come here immediately?"

"Aye, I can. Priest can stand for me as my second. Await my arrival."

The image collapses into green energy which then reforms into a heavy wooden doorway.

"Huh." Alan looks at it thoughtfully. "I see what you mean. He does look a little like me. And you really meant it when you said that he's more powerful than you?"

"Power isn't everything, but it's a lot. His control is also excellent. As far as I know, he's the most powerful Lantern to presently exist."

"And he's going to walk through that door? How does that work exactly?"

"He's so powerful that I haven't seen records on exactly how it works, but once I explained how I can access the Honden-."

"Ooh." He nods slowly.

The door opens and Lord Malvolio strides through, armour construct glowing. He looks at Ghia'ta and Dame Carol with curiosity for a moment, then turns back to me.

"I hear the dark and dismal drone, a weight that would waylay mine will, that would hamstring and humble the human heart. That is something that I will not allow: its plans I will prevent and its designs I will destroy."

"Sometimes it requires more subtlety than smashing." Ugh. "Doctor, please put the mask on. We need you to see this as we do."

He nods, and cautiously places the mask on his face and then lowers his hands. The mask remains in place without any sort of strap.

"Curious. I believe thet I can see.. emotions. The light coming off of you. Eh, well, you are Lanterns so perhaps thet is not the best example."

"And I am untroubled by human emotion."

Dr. Mist turns towards Mr. Atom's work area.

"No. It is different, but I see your need to learn how your creators died. And your fear-."

"That is sufficient."

Not sure what that's about, but it's his business. "Can you see compassion? It should be indigo."

He keeps looking at Mr. Atom for a moment, then turns to look at me instead. Then on to Malvolio and Alan.

"Yes. I can. And I think I can… Touch it."

"You're already connected to the white light. We need you to create a structure out of compassion in the same way we do our colours. And if you can't then we're in quite a lot of trouble, so…"

"We will combine our energies to summon forth the white light. Thet is what you want?"

"Yes."

"I believe thet is possible, but I will need eh few minutes to confirm thet belief."

"It's okay. Batman's… Having trouble with the yellow ring. And I don't want to call our red ring user until the last minute. He'll be coming here by boom tube and there's no way that Mannheim could miss that. And he's… Virtually uncontrollable, so I intend to have him deploy at once."

"Ah. Betman's recent overcoming of his trauma."

"I'm happy that he managed it, it would just have been a lot better if he'd done it a few weeks later. In the meantime, Mister Atom, could you bring up our most recent intelligence reports on everything?"

"Certainly." A hologram of the globe appears in the middle of the room, and the rest of us spread out around it. "Mannheim's operations to gather up city leaders appears to have halted. The intelligence you gathered and the behavior of the sheeda indicate his new focus. Justice League assets are focused on striking critical infrastructure while he is distracted while Task Force X units are killing the sheeda where they appear."

"I thought you told Robin that you didn't have anyone spare?"

"I thought it best not to tell him that I would send murderers to kill hundreds as a result of his report."

I.. nod.

"Ask what you want to know. The map will respond to voice commands. My full focus is now needed elsewhere."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:09 GMT

"…reaction before, Emerald Lord." Dame Carol studies Lord Malvolio in greater detail. "What explains your rare strength?"

"It is strange to me that mine strength is such that is seldom seen. My existence was not exceptional, my struggles not singular. Perhaps the practices and pedagogy of Priest prepared me properly for mine office." He shakes his head. "I had only him to whom I could compare myself; the surprise for me is that others are so much weaker."

"I'll tell Lantern Gardner that you said that."

"I have never lectured a novice-" He smiles faintly. "-Lantern. Perhaps it would please us both."

"And I've noticed that you have a slightly.. odd pattern of speech. Using words with the same first letter. Is there any particular reason why you do that?"

"It has been e'er long since someone observed the oddities of my oration. When my promotion to a position of paramount power required me to publically pontificate, I drew on my experience with the Salford Strollers."

"Who were..?"

"Amateur actors. I am no Papist, but I see little lamentable in telling tales as a means of moral motivation."

Alan smiles. "That's an interesting hobby. How exactly did you go from being an actor to being ruler of a whole Sector?"

"My family's fortune began with wool trading and expanded with the industrialisation of looms. It was mine great great grandfather…"

I back away from the conversation and edge towards the exit. Helpful as it would be to develop a closer relationship with people I don't actually know all that well, I need to find out how Batman is doing, because… Because while he might not want help…

I might have to force the issue.

The door to the main area of the Watchtower closes behind me-.

"You are thinking of forcing the issue."

Mr. Atom naturally doesn't need to be physically present in a place with this many cameras.

"I'd rather it not come to that. Do you have any advice for me?"

"Shooting his parents again would be inefficient. Last time it took twelve years for him to become an effective crime fighter after they were shot, and the chance of Mannheim taking that long to enact his plans is negligible."

"I was hoping that you might have learned something about how he thinks in your time working with him."

"I coordinated with Batwoman to persuade him."

That's not a bad idea. "How does she feel about his change in attitude?"

"She has spoken against his new beliefs on several occasions. She has stated that a degree of fear is necessary in a healthy society and that he fulfils that necessary function well."

Hm. If I… Have-.

No. If I decide to resort to extreme measure, it might be better for me if I don't openly admit what I did to his wife. Regardless of whether she agrees with me in this particular instance, I've always gotten the impression that Talia is extremely loyal to Batman. She might hold off telling him until after the mission, but she will tell him.

Mind controlling a team mate. That's far too close to what the League let Nabu do to Giovanni.

So, fine. I'm not going to hide it from him. IF I do it.

Batman's in the Watchtower's gymnasium, sitting on a mat. I can see yellow light but it's not really anchored in the way it used to be. Mastering a yellow ring isn't just about being able to feel fear on command. What he's doing… I don't think it can work.

And in other circumstances that would be great! Getting over psychological problems to become a happier and more rational person is something I'm in favour of!

But not right now when I need him to stay fearsome for another day.

I sigh, and knock on the door.

"Yes?"

"May I come in?"

There's a ping as the door unlocks. I press the 'open' button and walk inside.

He's.. actually got the cowl off, sitting on the floor in front of him and 'looking' at him. There's a simple domino mask covering his eyes, but his face is fairly distinctive. It doesn't really do much as a disguise. The yellow ring is in his right hand, while his left hand rests on his left leg.

"Any joy, sir?"

"No. I've been running some of my worst memories through my mind, trying to trigger… Something."

"Sir, I don't think that's the right-."

"Neither do I. What do you suggest?"

"Can you think of a time when people did what you wanted them to because you made them afraid?"

He shakes his head. "I tried that. Every time, I ruined it by remembering a time when they didn't. I've had people run off roofs to escape me, or shoot through a friend to try and kill me because they couldn't think of anything except their need to keep me away. And Jonathan Crane refuses any serious psychiatric treatment because he thinks he can be satisfied with the emotional reaction he gets from our fights."

I frown. "I thought I fixed that."

He sighs in frustration. "The prison psychiatrist took the stone away. He felt that it was impeding his recovery."

Oh, for goodness-. No helping the terminally stupid.

"You said that you had used it. What examples did you use?"

"I said I used it badly. I've intimidated people into obeying me with my reputation and power before. But as far as wide-spread fear use goes, the Reach have me beaten by far. When I tried to recruit allies, people who knew that the Reach were coming for them and that we were their only hope to avoid extinction, a lot were reluctant to join because they thought that it would mark them out as targets. Did you notice your actions having that effect?"

"To an extent, but insane people don't have the same priorities as regular criminals. I'm giving it up because it isn't working any longer, if it ever worked at all."

"Have you tried context reinstatement? Run through the events of the night where decided to become 'Batman'?"

"I was propositioned by an under-aged prostitute, stabbed, shot, and my mental state was altered by loss of blood when a bat flew in through my study window. Not all of us have our logo handed to us by the oldest species in the universe." He sighs. "I've been trying to think of someone who might be better than me at this. Have you tried asking Sinestro directly?"

"Too much risk of him doing something untoward afterwards. Ah. Look, I-."

"I'd rather that you didn't tamper with my mind to make this work. I don't believe that there isn't anyone in the whole universe who can do this instead of me. I.. doubt that you can understand, but I… I didn't like a lot about who I had become."

I nod, smiling. "No, but… I respect it. Keep… Trying, I'll… Try and find someone else."

I turn away and head for the exit, already fabricating the chemicals I need to force the issue, and feeling like a total heel for doing so.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:15 GMT

Thaal Sinestro hasn't actually committed all that many crimes on Earth.

Considering.

He also… I haven't been able to establish a pattern of behaviour. When I first arrived on this Earth, I wondered which version of… Each person I met I was dealing with. Goofy, silver aged Batman or serious modern Batman. Dr. Fries motivated by a desire to cure his wife, or just another criminal arsehole. Brain damaged Guy Gardner or arrogant git Guy Gardner. And it was mostly pretty easy to work out. I only got confused when I got a version I didn't recognise from anywhere, or a character superhero I'd never heard of, like Icon or Hardware.

Comic Sinestro has two very distinct phases. The early 'I-just-love-being-evil', exists purely to dick around with Jordan phase, and the later Sinestro Corps Order Through Fear stage. So when I checked the record and found out that he had spent a significant amount of time fighting Jordan at a relatively early point in Jordan's career, I… I thought I'd dodged a bullet. Because there's no obvious way for the first version to morph into the later one. He's effectively a new character. I mean, the second one was more of a threat so I kept an eye out, an eye that has now seen everything that I need to know that I'm definitely dealing with Sinestwo now.

And that's why I'm reluctant to contact him. Ah, one of the reasons. I can't explain the change. Which means that I can't explain his motives. Green Lanterns aren't banned from using lethal force, it's just heavily discouraged, so he wasn't picking a fight to get that rule changed. So is he still just plain evil but with backup? Just.. acting out early on? Messing with Jordan as some sort of training exercise?

I don't know.

And I'm not going to find out standing here waiting for Batman to have a breakthrough.

"Illustres to Sinestro. Please respond."

I glance through the wall. Batman's… I think he's getting there, but I don't know if it'll be quick enough. I-.

"Illustres." Sinestro's face appears over my ring, his face carefully in neutral. "This is unexpected. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Apokoliptians are covering Earth in Anti-Life. I've got a solution, but it requires a yellow power ring."

"Which you already have."

"Yes, thank you for approving that. The issue is that the person I intended to give it to had.. some sort of personal revelation in my absence and is now struggling with it."

"Bruce Wayne, I presume."

I nod. "I don't actually want a member of your Corps on or around Earth -for obvious reasons- but if you've got a long list of recruitment targets on Earth that aren't Bruce Wayne or Jonathan Crane, I'm happy to give them a tryout for you."

"Something to remove the Anti-Life, the most dangerous memetic infection in the universe, and it requires the manipulation of the yellow light of fear."

"Yes."

"I'm going to need a little more than that. I have no desire to send one of my Corpsmen into a trap."

I keep smiling. "As I said, I don't want one of your Lanterns here. Just a list of possible recruits."

Bane's dead, and none of his gang would really work. The last time I checked, Alexander Nero was still in an asylum, and nothing in his files really suggested to me that he would make a good Lantern. Wilson Slade is certainly intimidating, but he doesn't really use fear as a tool.

"I haven't been to Earth in years." True, as far as I know. "Any list I had would be out of date by now. Even in your Sector at large, since you acquired Amon Sur and killed Traitor I don't have any leading candidates."

"Really."

He shrugs. "Despite what you may think, Earth isn't the centre of the universe. I haven't updated the plans I once had for the Earth because I haven't had the need."

"Alright. Well, thank you for taking my call. I'll-."

"A moment. You think that you have a way to defy the Anti-Life."

"Yes."

"Is it something that can be deployed in the field?"

"In theory, yes. I haven't tested it yet."

"Knowing what it is would be a valuable piece of information to me. Enough to persuade me to come in person."

I shake my head. "I'd rather that you didn't."

"Do you want me to stay away enough to allow your world to fall to Apokolips?"

"'Be mindful of what you value the most, for you may have to give up everything else in its pursuit.'"

"And?"

I clench my left fist, ending communication.

"And I'm not that desperate yet."

"No." Jesus! "I imagine that you're not."

I float away from-. Gah!

Batman's eye holes glow as his ring-bearing right hand extends towards me, grasping motion mirrored by the construct nearly constricting my throat.

I didn't hear him or detect him, or-. I can still see an outline inside the gymnasium.

"Phobiline hydrochorate alone wouldn't have been enough to do this to me. What else was in the mix?"

"Making you feel fear wasn't the point. I needed to change the way your brain interprets fear-."

"Smilex."

"Not the active components, but the bindings? Yeah. It works better than anything else because I know how to undo it afterwards. We hit Mannheim now-."

And now my throat is firmly constricted.

"Orange ring users are easier to replace."

I can't-. Ring.

Compliance.

"The only person with the slightest chance of staying on-task is Lex Luthor, and I don't know where he is. Anyone else would probably go crazy before reaching the Anti-Life broadcast hub."

He keeps glowering at me, and while I know that I'm more powerful I also know that he's a lot more intelligent than me and he's now got a thought-speed weapon.

"If that's a condition then-."

"Mister Atom to Lanterns. Observed behavior amongst humans around unliberated elf gate sites indicates that they are succumbing to the Anti-Life at a dramatically accelerated rate. And Orange Lantern's decision has the highest probability of success."

Batman slams me into the hard metal of the corridor wall and then stalks past me into the meeting room.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:20 GMT

For… Some reason the soreness in my throat hasn't faded when I walk into the briefing room, Batman-.

Oh.

Batman already taking his place at the holodisplay.

It hasn't faded because I don't want it to. I want to be injured, to be punished, for what I just did to him. It won't impair my mission effectiveness, and… And I can't work up the motivation to fight myself on this.

I deserve to hurt.

"The core of the Anti-Life network is in Washington D.C.."

An image appears of… The old Alliance centre is under there somewhere, but the building has clearly been enhanced by Apokoliptian technology. I don't see any emplaced weapons, but from the looks of things they would be superfluous.

"It is the best defended location on the planet, guarded by Justified superhumans and members of the U.S. armed services armed with Apokoliptian weapons. In addition, the Anti-Life effect is stronger here than nearly anywhere on the planet and Mannheim's teleportation system will begin bringing in reinforcements in response to any attack. Even if Mannheim and Finality Man are occupied we will be facing effectively unlimited opponents. None of them will surrender until the Anti-Life can be removed, and depending on how this works perhaps not even then."

"It would sit ill with me to slay soldiers manipulated by the mind magics of Mannheim."

"I spent a month looking for a way around it. And so did Mister Atom. There isn't one. Approaching under the effect of either adaptive optic camouflage or a magic disguise might slightly delay the speed at which we are detected, but given that we all glow and we all push back against the Anti-Life around us by virtue of our emotional presence, I doubt that it would even do that."

The scene shown on the holodisplay pulls out, giving us a better view of central Washington.

"Orange Lantern, tell us your plan for dealing with the shield or Finality Man."

I bring up images of Finality Man, Drax and the Forever People, and send data packets to my colleagues' rings.

"Finality Man was built by Prince Drax of Apokolips. I spoke to him, and he considers dealing with it to be his responsibility."

Eyes flicker with colour as the files are digested.

"The problem is that bringing him into our plane of reality takes several seconds and he can only stick around for a few more. We'll have to take the Forever People with us and guard them until Finality Man appears and they can complete their summoning. After that they can evacuate themselves."

"They are worrisomely weak."

"I've explained the situation to them and their king. They should be equipped to handle it. If they're not… We really only need them to survive long enough to complete the summoning. We all need to live long enough to create the white light."

Alan frowns. "What exactly is that going to feel like?"

"It's not something most people ever experience. I can't really describe it-" I glance at Dr. Balewa. "-with any confidence beyond 'you'll know when it happens'."

"I can do more. It is a sense of.. wholeness, being at one with your community, with the whole of the world. It feels like the birth of your first child, your first grandchild-"

I wince inwardly as I realise that he's probably the only one here who knows what those feel like.

"-and the pure feeling of serving a good higher than yourself and knowing that what you have built will live on in the lives of others. Looking upon your work and knowing that it is good. It is life."

A better description than I could give, though I suppose that he's had long enough to reflect on it.

"We'll each be forming a part of that. Our.. colours will. The-. For those of us who've been using these rings for a while, it might feel a little counter-intuitive. We're.. used to carefully excluding other feeling when we make constructs. I haven't done this before so I can't say with certainty, but I don't think… I don't think it will be like that when we create white light."

I look at Lord Malvolio cautiously.

"You haven't lost the ability to feel other emotions, have you?"

"Nay, fear not. I have not doffed the mantle of the mortal mode. I feel as a man feels; I felt anger at Priest as I hoped for my eventual manumission."

Batman.. glares around the circle. "Commit these images to memory. We will-"

"Recognized, Green Lantern one four."

Lantern Stewart steps out of the zeta tube, looking a little beaten up. I draw a healing ray and raise my eyebrows. He nods and I play the beam over him, his wounds swiftly fading.

"-attack from the Atlantic ocean and clear out as many of the people in the surrounding area as possible before attempting to create the white light. What Justice League aligned forces are available will be attacking the outer perimeter of the city to prevent us being overwhelmed. In the event that one of us without a replacement dies, the evacuation route is back over the Atlantic. If that happens Finality Man will almost certainly pursue. While removing the Anti-Life from Earth is the ideal outcome, destroying Finality Man would restrict Mannheim's strategic mobility while we replace the fallen."

"Recognized, Sportsmaster, A six six."

What?

My vision fuzzes as.. Lawrence Crock walks through the zeta tube, and I take a moment to check that the shutters between the meeting room and the garden are closed. Alright, nothing to immediately give away the fact that this is a space station, and I doubt that he's been in space often enough to recognise an artificial gravity generator.

The fuzz fuzzes in my direction. "Lantern."

I look at Batman-.

"Sportmaster used fear to train his daughters. I brought him here in case I die. Deal with it."

I… Blink, and my vision of.. Mr. Crock returns to normal. My word isn't more significant than Batman's brain and I messed around with that. He.. looks a little thinner than he was last time I saw him. Probably the result of stress. And possibly the Anti-Life.

"Dealt with."

But all due respect to Mr. Crock, he doesn't mock me for getting overruled. In fact-.

"Sportmaster, do you want any other equipment before we deploy? I can upgrade-."

He shakes his head. "There's no point. I wouldn't have time to get used to it, and I know what my chance of survival down there is if I stick my head out of cover. Only reason I'm coming is you need someone on the yellow ring if Batman bites it."

I nod. "Okay then. Orange Lantern to Vykin. We're ready."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:32 GMT

Alan grimaces.

"Oh no."

We can't even see the east coast over the horizon and I can already hear the sound of jet engines as the Air Force's combat air patrol heads in our direction. Scan.. shows that their weapon loadout hasn't been upgraded. They're standard aero fighters that would struggle against a neophyte Lantern and they're coming at us to delay us, weaken our resolve and tie us down with prisoners.

Missiles roar towards us as Alan's anti-air construct opens fire, blue construct bullets filling the air and creating small explosions of rocket fuel as they hit the missiles. I throw up a shield as two jets spray us with cannon fire before zooming past and pulling into a turn.

Construct cleavers from me chop through the planes, sending the rear section blasting away in a random direction while the cockpit section flies in a ballistic arc in the direction its momentum dictates. The pilots don't try-.

Shit!

My construct tendrils breach the canopies and grab their sidearms before they can shoot themselves, then pull the pilots out.

"Pilots tried to kill themselves when their planes were disabled."

"Aye, a disturbed directive."

I toss the pilots into Malvolio's giant prison construct and watch as he adds manacles to chain them to their cell floors. That should keep them out of the way and unable to kill themselves until we're done.

Alan nods as more planes head towards us. "We should fight them here. I don't want those planes falling on anybody."

"He can throw every plane on the planet at us, Alan. And if he thinks that we'll hesitate if he does? Then-."

"He will." He grimaces. "I know. Fine. If we gotta do this, let's at least make it quick."

He flies towards the next squadron, construct fairground claw arms darting out to grab the pilots right out of their planes before dropping them in the mobile prison. I let the wrecks fly on a little way before firing energy pulses at them. They hit the fuel tanks, fuel leaking for a few seconds before encountering the superheated exhaust and igniting, the flashback consuming the plane in a fiery explosion. The wrecks hit the sea a few seconds later.

Alan smiles at his work. "It's like the fairground in reverse: I drop them off in the machine."

I look in the direction of the shore. More planes are taking off, and-.

My point defence construct opens fire as the ship-launched missiles and the shells from the ship-based heavy guns zero in on our position.

"Alan, normally, I love your golden-age witticisms, but-."

"Yeah. I know. But it helps. Keep those guns off me?"

"Can do."

Alan puts his head down and accelerates shoreward, to where an appreciable chunk of the US Navy is moored in a defensive formation. Essentially normal ships, but-. Crumblers shouldn't be able to cause magazine explosions.

I fly after Alan, orange shields and point defences blocking attacks while my railgun construct charges and takes aim at… A destroyer's forward turret. Load crumbler round and fire. Turret out of commission, no explosion, turret's not even knocked off the ship. Its missiles are too big to reliably hit man-sized targets but its anti-air guns-. They get a crumbler round each.

Next ship. And-. And there are quite a lot of ships.

"Ghia'ta, would you mind-?"

Specks of violet light land on the aircraft carrier and expand, violet crystal rapidly growing across the hull. Exposed crew are trapped, safe and imprisoned. Guns are locked in place and their barrels blocked, and I see several explode as they continue to try to fire and overpressure their internals. And while she's doing that I keep firing, keep mission-killing screening ships with no fatalities.

And then I see the sailors on the mission-killed ships toss their life jackets aside and jump into the water-.

But Alan's already there, rubber ring constructs dropping over their heads and hauling them off to Lord Malvolio's prison.

A minute after we engaged the fleet, all that's left are floating hulls and models preserved in crystals.

And no deaths. No deaths. We won't be able to maintain that, but-. It's nice.

For now.

"Good work."

"They still feel love. Under the blackness…"

And at that I actually smile. Mannheim's hold isn't total. They aren't burned out husks of men, just people operating under the influence of… An unusual spell. They can be restored.

"Excellent. Press-."

Great clouds of gas explode along the Washington sea shore and river shore. No point using fear gas on people who have been Anti-Lifed, but they still need to breathe and Lanterns don't. That gas isn't designed to choke people by itself: it's designed to remove the oxygen from the air. Normal guns won't work and people without their own oxygen supplies won't be able to breathe, which is why we used it instead of a gas that would be filtered by a gas mask. I doubt that will clear out the whole area and we'll need to set off more once the wind blows more oxygen into the area, but it should cut down the collateral fatalities.

Without asphyxiating too many people. I hope.

"Press on."

Construct barriers raised and weapon constructs at the ready, we fly over the drifting fleet.

What are they going to be doing over there? Not sure. The Justice League has attacked Washington before, so while they're probably repositioning forces there's no reason for them to panic. I imagine that they are calling for help-.

Alan points to the sea front, where several Anti-Life transmitters have been set up. "Are we destroying those?"

"No, we can't. We need as much of the network in one piece as possible."

He and Ghia'ta share an awkward look as she flies down to us. "Paul, some of us don't do so well in Anti-Life zones."

"I'm sorry, but we need to be sure that the transmission works. We can destroy them immediately afterwards, if you like."

"Just have to grin and bear it, I suppose."

"If either of you need to fall back, do. Malvolio and I can manage."

Ghia'ta nods, while Alan scoffs.

"I see what you mean about not getting 'hope'. What's our next step?"

"Justifier barracks."

"Folks who wanted a little more help being superheroes?"

"Mostly. Originally."

"Then let's go save them, then save the world."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:34 GMT

A cloud of-. Water vapour rises up from the streets, forming a cloudbank just ahead of us. Okay, we can all see through that, and-.

The cloud begins crackling with electricity. First to normal storm levels, then the water vapour begins turning to steam as it supercharges itself in an obviously unnatural way. A moment more and it's more glow than cloud. Normally a Lantern doesn't have to worry about electrical discharges due to the insulating effect of our environmental shields but that doesn't mean that flying into a plasma cloud is a particularly good idea. The alternative is going under it which would put us in range of the Justifiers who can't fly and don't have ranged weapons.

Cold gun, wide field.

My construct fires and some of the plasma cloud cools into-.

"Anti-Life justifies-"

A man in a black and red costume wearing a Justifier helmet flies out of the cloud, right fist cocked! I have-. No idea who that is. I dodge right and he flies past-. He can fly. He turns around and comes at me again and-.

"-our actions!"

A woman with a similar costume flies out, aiming at my back. My cold gun construct is still going but the plasma cloud isn't freezing. The original water controller or multiple sets of power? Don't know.

I evade down, noticing as they slalom through the air that they're just the tip of the wave. Eight… Nine other Justifiers move to attack Alan and Ghia'ta while… Some sort of large robot is aiming its Apokoliptian weapons at Malvolio's floating prison from the street below us.

Someone flying at me without a weapon is probably super strong or otherwise has a way to intensify their blows but that doesn't mean that they're Superman-strong or anything like Superman-tough.

I mark targets and transmit what I'm seeing to the others, dodge left as the man and woman try to box me in and then fire a crumbler round at the robot's left leg. Which-. Does nothing. Okay, that was too fast-

Somewhere to my right one of the flying Justifiers throws a wave of brilliant yellow light at Alan as Alan tries to close the distance. It doesn't.. seem to do much.

-for anti-projectile lasers and a crumbler would go right through a plasma shield. Gravity shield doesn't seem likely which leaves… Magic? Something New God related? They do have exotic shielding technology, I just didn't think that-

Dodge up, hammer construct, swing at the base of the male attacker's spine. He jerks in the air from the kinetic force but doesn't seem injured. I didn't feel his flesh move when I did that, so I think I just overpowered his flight.

Fine.

The robot fires… A thick.. sort of black and white beam at the floating prison. Malvolio blocks with a giant kite shield construct as… Ghia'ta flies past, the.. child who punched her in the armour chasing after her.

"Batman to Orange Lantern. Stop playing around."

Yeah.

Taking them apart slowly and precisely is just going to take too long. Taking risks…

I hit the robot with an eddy pulse, lines of gravitational shear apparently bypassing whatever exotic protection Mannheim outfitted it with. Its armour cracks and the lines of light covering its armour shimmer and fade. Then its gun-. Sort of ceases to exist, taking one of its arms and the attached shoulder with it.

WHAM!

I let myself get knocked back by the woman's punch. The man's on my opposite side and waiting to bear hug me, so from the looks of it they don't have a lot of experience with aerial combat. Sonic cannons on either side of his head and fire at concuss-a-normal-human level. No effect. Increase.

A couple of Alan's attackers are hanging back and shooting at him. He's tanking it, but we need forward movement. I project a vertigo inducer construct into the middle of them and activate it. No response. Probably their helmets neutralising the sound waves. Change the construct to include a sound inducer and activate.

Man shakes. Hard to judge precisely what sort of damage he's taken with the helmet throwing off my scans. Weak construct shove to the chest and he doesn't react. Stunned, flying in his sleep. Dodge down, back up to evade the woman's attack, tear off man's helmet and then shove him into Malvolio's holding cell and use the sonic cannon on her head at the last tested intensity.

Alan's attackers have lost the ability to aim. Vertigo inducer appears to be working, though some of their stray shots are hitting things on the ground. Can't be helped. Alan's melee attacker is using a pair of short swords. Alan-. Is using the x-ionised sword I gave him to fight him on his own terms. That-.

Woman goes into a tumble. Grab, remove helmet, shove into holding cell. No energy output from the robot. Dead or disabled, no need to imprison. Fly at the Justifiers I've disabled. Tear off their helmets-.

Evade projectile vomit, turn the vertigo inducer down to normal levels.

Manacles which encase hands and forearms for the one who projected sonic beams from her hands. A blank face mask for the one with plasma beam eyes. Deliver them into Malvolio's prison, next to the crystal-encased children that Ghia'ta is inserting.

The others had switched targets to Malvolio. That was a mistake. I can see them twitching weakly in the craters they made in the ground.

I fabricate more deoxygenation gas and pump it out at ground level. Then I shoot the sword-wielder in the back, clamp manacle constructs around their forearms and wrench them back. Not super strong. Alan used the opening to punch them in the head with his left fist, knocking them out. They are swiftly relayed to a containment cell.

"That wasn't so bad."

I raise my hands, generating a magnetic field strong enough to shove the plasma cloud head of us out of the way. Which is strong enough to kill any unshielded human in the area affected, but I don't think they'd have left anyone out from the initial charge. The cloud roils and there's definitely someone resisting me, but it's forced to move away in the direction I want.

"Advancing."

Ionised plasma and water vapour around us, we fly towards where this all started. I see checkpoints manned by US soldiers. Some of them have gas masks on, but that won't help when there's no oxygen to breathe.

"I see ground targets."

A Justifier is doing something to keep the air around them oxygenated. He's not making an attack, but the squad around him are taking aim with Apokoliptian-

I generate a shield construct.

-blasters.

Two get shots off before a giant green fist smashes them into the tarmac. Malvolio collects up his targets as we fly further into Washington.

Alan looks around. "Anyone want to see the White House?"

"Maybe afterwards."

Anti-Lifed people can't really feel fear, at least not in a remotely normal way. But the worldwide ambiance of fear is more than enough for Batman to force his way towards the Justifier processing facility. Letting captured superheroes and supervillains who haven't quite succumbed out as a distraction is a perfectly rational move, and one I don't think even pre-revelation Batman would have condoned.

My fault.

This place will be your end.

Oh, that's interesting. I smile at Alan. "I actually heard that."

"Sounded more like a threat than normal."

"Someone is bound to have told Mannheim by now."

And there it is. The Justifier barracks. Apokoliptian anti-aircraft guns point at us, Justifiers form up in force field-protected strong points and… I'm not sure if it's magic, but there's some sort of… Aura around the place.

And then everyone starts shooting.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:36 GMT

Beams of.. whatever it is that Apokoliptian blasters fire lance out and unlike the sporadic fire we've been taking so far, every shot is on target. Malvolio's shield holds out slightly better than mine while Alan fires energy pulses and Ghia'ta fires crystal fragments. Seven dots of violet light sail towards various parts of the fortress-.

"Our hearts are empty of all but Him."

A figure with black robes covering their body waves their hands in a circular motion, and the violet dots wink out.

Ghia'ta gasps in horror.

I replace my shield as it starts to fail from concentrated blaster fire and form a new railgun. I-.

A Justifier teleports onto the railgun and shoves their glowing red hands through it before teleporting away. Fine, that was a distraction anyway. It just might have reduced fatalities a little.

Eddy pulse.

Whatever defensive field they've got in place shimmers into something approaching visibility. It's stronger here than what the robot had protecting it, though whether that's because of the larger fortifications, the increased concentration of Anti-Lifed people or reinforcement by the abilities of one of the Justifiers I don't know. It looks like… A giant plane of ice as my gravity distortions interact with something that is refusing to let them exist.

"The one true soul of the universe!"

I gasp as my construct shield just vanishes and the anti-air blasters flash through the intervening space and-. Alright, most miss because they were focusing on one point on my construct, but two actually hit me, one on my right arm and the other on my chest. My construct armour on both locations shatters, and a lucky shot from an infantry blaster hits the cuirass a moment later.

"Paul, fare you well?"

Reassemble reassemble reassemble!

"I'll live!" I mark the target. "Having trouble with their shield. That guy seems to be-."

"So I see. Then I shall exert myself."

His eyes glow, and two colossal construct hands appear around the fortification, smashing any nearby buildings to rubble. Not… A lot of people in them, and I see Alan diving down, rope and chain constructs grabbing rubble as he heads into the dust cloud and reaches for the people by hand-.

Alan!

I watch the blue blur dart around brick, concrete and metal tossed aside as a steady stream of the injured and insensible appear on the nearby street. And Alan's not telling Malvolio that he did wrong. He gets it, even if he doesn't like it.

Whatever's powering the defensive field is… Struggling with Malvolio's hands.

"The only inevitability-!"

"Do you think I cannot hear you, arrogant apostate? Does your broken soul quail at my certainty and conviction?"

"We live for Mannheim! We die for Mannheim!"

Armour's back, shield's back, though most of the anti-air guns are firing frantically at Malvolio's giant hands.

Let's see how deep the fortifications go.

"No, you will live to do penance for your sins against the Earth and against the One True God."

"I have seen the face of the true god! The master of the universe and all it contains! We are the shadows his light casts upon the cave wall, existing in a Hell without exit or end!"

A flash of red-.

I send an orange ray at the teleporter immediately, my borer construct busy tunnelling beneath the Washington streets. It hits them in the chest and they teleport away immediately.

Malvolio's huge hands press closer, the palms being distorted by the exotic defence field-.

"Batman to Orange Lantern. Objective complete. Rendezvous at the former Alliance headquarters."

We're going too slowly!

"Underst-."

Ah, it doesn't go all the way down.

"Understood."

Crumbler.

A large chunk of the ground underneath the fortress ceases to exist. The solid bunkers and walls are far tougher than human technology could make, but they're resting on basically normal concrete. There's a slight unexpected resistance… Probably from the exotic shield, but that's either too busy trying to prevent the whole place being flattened between Malvolio's hands or too far away. Crumble more-.

The entire base shudders, ground cracking and Justifiers tumbling!

"By His hand all are laid low! In His eyes are all insignificant!"

Ghia'ta drops down, encasing the people Alan has recovered in violet crystal before ferrying them up to the containment cells.

Crumble more.

The concrete starts to flat out break, chunks falling into the pit I just created. The barrier holding off Malvolio's hands doesn't quite collapse, but his hands begin moving inwards once more, crushing the fortifications that remain on the surface. Alan hovers just behind the right hand, using construct lassos to grab Justifiers and hold them up for Ghia'ta to crystallise.

My own much smaller construct hand darts into the collapsing base and grabs the Anti-Life priest and hoiks him into the air. Push back the hood and cut off-.

He's not wearing a Justifier helmet.

Vincent Edge glares at me, his eyes… Glowing black. How is he-?

"Anti-Life justifies my actions!"

Oh.

My constructs shut down as for a horrible moment I feel the callous judgement of a being that perceives every way I've failed and expected nothing else.

What I did to Batman-.

"Paul!"

Uh? Ah, what-what? Armourflight!

A blue glow wraps around me as I come back to my senses. Didn't quite hit the ground-.

Alan looks at me, concerned. "What happened?"

Where did-?

"Vincent Edge. He's become some sort of living Anti-Life broadcaster. Be careful if you run into him."

I look at-. The pile of rubble that used to be the Justifier barracks. There are still Jusifiers in the hole and in some of the buried bunkers, but…

I rise into the air under my own power.

"We need to meet up with Batman immediately."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Early Autumn, IC 687

Coarsely milled flour.

"…our ambassador, Prince Diabo, to address this assembly."

Honestly.

No 'my son'. Emperor Molt is avoiding looking like he's offering too much support. With the speed at which information spreads in Sanderan society, exactly what happened at Alnus Hill isn't well known, but they couldn't exactly miss the unusually placid dragon standing outside of the senate building. And some news has gotten back, enough to create a plethora of fascinatingly disconcerting rumours.

A few eyes dip to my ring as Prince Diabo walks out onto the speaker's position in front of the stands. It's interesting how far 'gods want me to do this' gets you in Sanderan society. Emperor Molt would rather have hashed this out in private or under his complete control, but he has a better awareness of the strategic situation than anyone else and he knows perfectly well that Diabo and I have handed him a lifeline. There's even a very small amount of pride in the fact that one of his children is doing something intelligently, rather than pretending to be a knight or invading an entire country at the cost of the lives of thousands of legionaries because he wanted to rape their queen.

Diabo is bearing up reasonably well. At his age I'd have hated this sort of public speaking, but as a Sanderan aristocrat it's just something that he had to learn how to do. And we did enough rehearsals. He doesn't really have the height to look imperious -particularly when the floor of the chamber is lower than the seats- but the faint orange glow probably makes up for it.

"Emperor Molt Sol Augustus, honourable senators of the Sanderan Empire, I stand before you to report on my embassy to the country of Japan. I have met with their government, I have seen their cities and their armies and taken their measure. I was also able to speak with our own legate and the leaders of the armies of our vassals who are laying siege to Alnus Hill, as well as the surviving officers amongst those who took part in our attack on Japan and are now their prisoners."

That gets a little interest from some parties. It's a fairly normal thing for Sanderanian nobles to spend time in the legions before moving on to politics. And not necessarily as officers; some formations are considered suitably armigerous for the sons of noble households, especially the ones which have to provide their own equipment. The right to attack through the gate got more than a little interest amongst the socially avaricious.

"In brief, I will lay before you a treaty for an equitable peace between our peoples. We will lose no land and they will take none of our people as slaves. Their customs do not even allow them to ransom the captives they have taken; those will be returned once the treaty is signed."

An elderly senator near the front snorts. "Just tell us what they want, boy. What must we give the barbarians to make them go away?"

"Senator Giusto. Before I explain that, there are certain things that you must understand first. The legions of our empire are mighty; there is no people that we have yet encountered who can match them with equal number on an open field. But at times in our history, our legions have met with defeat, or with victories that have left them so bloodied that they may as well have been defeated. Sometimes it has been weight of numbers that has won barbarians the day. At others, a brilliant strategy and prepared ground would allow them to achieve victory. And shamefully, at times it was corruption or cowardice amongst our own officers or soldiers that made them poor fighters."

"I have studied the Imperial soldiers and officers at Alnus in detail and I have found no such weakness amongst them, and heard no reports of such failings amongst those legions we sent through the gate. Not even amongst the auxiliaries. I saw with my own eyes the size of the force which the Japanese sent to our lands. It was not particularly large; smaller, certainly, than the armies of the Empire which now lay siege to the Hill. Nor was their strategy particularly brilliant: they simply formed a line and began using their long-ranged weapons on our forces on our side of the gate."

"Our forces were killed to a man, and the Japanese did not suffer a single loss."

Some surprise, some concern, more than a few dismissals of what must be propaganda. But I'm pleased to see that the majority remain cautiously neutral.

"We are used to having an advantage in weapons. When our Empire was first founded, we fought with steel weapons against barbarians armed with weapons of stone or copper or at worst bronze. Even when we encountered walled cities, their weapons were made of poor iron and only their rulers could afford armour worthy of the name. They must have felt like they were fighting the chosen people of Emroy! But it was perhaps foolish of us to assume that there were no people in any world who were more advanced than us, just as we are more advanced than the barbarians."

"While I was in their lands, I studied their histories. They made no secret of what they consider old news. Three hundred years ago they fought much as we do. Now, they fight differently."

He holds out his right hand and generates an assault rifle construct.

"They use these. They are made with high quality steel, as good as anything that our smiths could make. The mass at the back can be used as a club and they sometimes attach a knife to the tube at the front, but for the most part it works like a crossbow. Rather than using a taut string, it uses an alchemical powder, and rather than using an arrow it uses a small bullet that even the barbarians would consider too small for a slingshot. The mechanisms here-" He points to the middle of the rifle. "-allow it to fire something like seven hundred times in a single minute."

He makes a point of looking around the room, making eye contact with various members of the muttering crowd.

"And each shot would hit hard enough to kill an armoured man."

He dismisses the construct.

"That is not merely a boast. I witnessed it myself, both when I arrived at the Hill and they loosed upon me, and later when they carried out a demonstration of their weapons. They were happy to show me, to try to intimidate me. And, just as we have scorpions and ballistae which are larger and more powerful than our bows, so they too have larger and more powerful versions of their weapons. There are places on Alnus Hill were they struck our centuries where it is not possible to tell that the thing they struck was once a man, much less who they were. And these are not weapons inherited from their ancestors or granted them by their gods." He slows his delivery. "These are weapons which their forges can make continuously."

"Consider, then, the likely outcome of a legion marching towards even a skirmish line of men armed with such weapons. It would mean their deaths, with not even a single arrow being loosed upon the Japanese."

"In my free time I considered more exotic methods which could be used to defeat them. Disease, perhaps. Poison. An aerial assault at night, where our melee fighters could negate their advantage at range. And at each time I found that their knowledge of natural philosophy was not limited to weapons. They have medicines that cure most diseases. Medicines that cure most poisons. Machines to see flying creatures and machines they can wear over their eyes to let them see in the pitch black. No. As much as it burns my pride to admit it, we are to them as those early barbarians were to our ancestors."

"But in every threat, there is an opportunity. The gate will not stay open forever, and they do not have the power to maintain it. They know this now, they know that even if they could conquer us, they would eventually be cut off from their homeland with no way to maintain their equipment. We could simply pull back our armies and let them remain huddled around the portal until their fear of being left here caused them to pull back, but…"

"The sons of the barbarians we conquered became auxiliaries. Their grandchildren became citizens, using the same tools that conquered their forebears. They learned what we knew and became better for it. They ascended to a higher level of civilisation by adopting our methods.

He recreates the gun construct.

"I would not mind seeing our legions armed with these. And while there may be civilisations on this side of the gate who are equal to what we have now… There are none who equal this."

He looks around the room, making eye contact with the more receptive members of the audience.

"They will take no land and they will take none of our people as slaves. They will return prisoners once a treaty is signed. And in return they want three things: a chest of gold as a symbolic reparation for the injuries caused by our attack, a return of the citizens we took as slaves, and the right to purchase grain for as long as the gate remains open. For all their industry, it seems that their land is a poor one for farming." He shrugs. "The barbarians our ancestors conquered traded their lives for the advancement of their descendants. We need only trade our excess grain for improvements to medicine, steel-forging and alchemy. I hope you will agree that it is a bargain."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Early Autumn, IC 687

The senate is a place for grandstanding, for decrying members of the opposing factions and cheering on your own. Actual decisions aren't made there; votes take place once the fix is already in, once the decisions have been made by the opinion-formers in rooms much like this one.

Never let the senate make a decision when you don't know what the result will be.

The Emperor, a legate, a couple of tribunes, a few senior senators from factions loyal either to the Emperor or in favour of aggressive expansion. Not even a token dove. No merchants. No one representing the vassal kingdoms. Diabo's seat is at the opposite end of the table to his father's far grander seat, and the places to his left and right are deliberately left vacant.

If Diabo can convince these people to go along with his treaty, that's the matter settled. It will pass in the senate, the emperor won't veto it and the army won't protest.

If.

"A single crate of gold as a token tribute." Senator Giusto glares contemptuously, not bothering to disguise his feelings now that the setting is more private. "What do they really want?"

Diabo bears the hard eyes well. Certainly better than he would have done at the start. He's using the ring's power to do it, but I'm not having to prompt him. I'm genuinely pleased with his progress.

"A single chest, filled to the brim with gold. And under the gold-" A slight relaxing of people who've just seen where the other shoe is going to drop from. "-they have requested enchanted… Objects."

The military tribute frowns. "What sort of objects?"

"Anything." Diabo shrugs. "I took care to play down what we can actually do with magic, and they didn't seem to care. They are a people who highly value natural philosophy. They don't want to use the… Talismen we will give them. They want to study them, to try and understand how magic works, and how what they think they know of how the universe works is wrong. Even… Copper coins enchanted to glow would be sufficient."

The furrows on the military tribute's face deepen.

"And what will they do with that understanding?"

"That is a problem for their neighbours on their world." Diabo smiles. "By the standards of their world, the nation of Japan is not a first rate power. They are a protectorate that has recently had a dispute with their protector and it is…. Unclear whether or not their treaties are in effect. That does not help us, but it means that Japan has enemies on their own world and cannot afford a prolonged campaign even if they could guarantee that the gate would remain open. While I was there a group of extraordinarii from one of their enemies infiltrated the villa where I was staying, in the centre of their country."

The legate looks intensely interested. "Could we make contact with these enemies?"

"Legate Julius, it wouldn't matter if we could. This nation whose soldiers have no experience of war, whose treaty with their protector binds them to only having a small defensive force, destroyed our legions with little effort. The only way for us to enter their territory is through the gate, and they have fortified both sides. Certainly, I could send them a message, but the gate is in the middle of the Japanese capital city. They could hold the wall around their side of it with a token force until the entirety of their country was overran. We would not profit by it, and we would have a stronger neighbour at the end of it with no love for us for the spoiling attack that we are in no position to make."

"The grain." One of the other senators looks thoughtful. "Why do they need grain? Are they having a famine?"

"No, no. As I said, they have poor soil. Their main cereal crop is something called 'rice'. It is not very nutritious. They can import food from other nations, but it is relatively expensive. We can supply their capital easily from our main farming region at what is for them a far lower cost."

Senator Giusto frowns. "What do you mean, 'for them'?"

"Remember how much more advanced their industry is. Consider how the barbarians value… Polished stones, or beads or feathers. Such things are valuable to them, but a curiosity at most to us. And then imagine what they would pay for a single sword of good steel such as we issue to the legions by the thousand. Flour is the only thing that we can give them in a meaningful quantity that they actually want, not because they need extra food but because what they will give us in return has little value to them."

The Emperor's face is entirely impassive. "What did you agree to trade?"

"Books relating to industry. They would not agree to trade anything from the last eighty years, but we could not use that anyway. They will trade with us books describing how to take the first steps on the road to building the devices they have for ourselves, the steps they once took when they fought as we do."

"Will that let us make weapons like theirs?"

Diabo shakes his head. "Not for a century. My Emperor, this isn't about beating them. It's about beating our neighbours here. Once we have the alchemical formula for the powder that drives their bullets, we will be able to make the very simplest weapons of that type. A 'smoothbore cannon'. A weapon that fires with the power of a trebuchet, but faster, and takes up less space. A weapon that could be mounted on a ship by the dozen. For them, such a weapon is three hundred years out of date, but for us it would turn our navy from an afterthought to the most powerful in the world."

"How long?"

"An improved steel process could be implemented inside a year. Properly forging a metal tube when they are providing the instructions should take a month or so. How long it takes to make the powder depends on whether the components can be bought or must be sought afresh, but it should not be more than two months and may be as little as a day. Learning to combine them and how to speed up the process might take a few months more. By the end of the second year I should have a group of working cannons to show you. Cannons that can demolish a city wall. Or destroy a legion."

Legate Julius looks thoughtful. "How would it destroy a legion? A trebuchet might break a formation if it struck true, but they would reform a moment later."

"A cannon can fire a single large bullet to destroy walls or make a hole in a formation, but it can also be used to fire 'grape shot'. That is a bundle of smaller bullets. The range is far less, but they-" He moves his hands forward, spreading out as they move. "-will destroy any man who stands before them. Would you not want to do to others what the Japanese did to us?"

There are several meaningful glances from one man to the next. Yes, that's it. You need a war to save yourselves, a successful war. The Japanese are there, but you can't beat them. So…

"Such a weapon would not let us hold territory."

"Take a city and ransom it back. Or just destroy it from a distance and demand payment from its neighbours. They would no more understand what they were being struck by than our legionaries did."

The Emperor raises his right hand slightly, and everybody waits.

"How many slaves do they actually expect to have returned?"

"All of them. They have machines which can… Tell how much blood two people share. Our blood is different enough from theirs that it is easy for them to tell their people from ours. That condition is absolute. If they find out that we have played them false, they will go to wherever the slaves are and kill everyone they find there to free them."

Because he and I will tell them where that is. And we have just told the Emperor what to do to rid himself of a few troublesome senators.

The Emperor smiles.

"If this is the treaty, and what you say about their industry is true, then you have done the Empire a great service, my son. What reward do you want in return?"

Diabo looks away for a moment.

"Long ago, our ancestors came through a gate. That is why we call Alnus Hill sacred. While I was in Japan I recognised some images in their history books. Men who wore armour much like ours. I sought more information, and I found that they were called 'Romans'."

Eyes widen and two men gasp.

"I don't know if they were the kin of our ancestors who remained behind, or if it is a coincidence. But I went there, to Rome. I saw the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the ruins of buildings mentioned in our oldest histories. I believe theirs is the world of our ancestors." He shakes his head. "And we do not measure up." He makes eye contact with the emperor. "When you had Kati killed, I was afraid for my safety. I quashed all my ambitions and hid myself away. It was cowardice. But this…" He feels the ring with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. "Has restored my ambition. I am not Kati. I know that I am not ready to be emperor. But if I am successful, I want to be recognised as crown prince."

The Emperor's face is unmoving. "And what of your brother?"

"He has a whore. I have a dragon."

"If that is what you want, then you had better be successful."

Later, Early Autumn, IC 687

Diabo curls up in the shadows against the wall of the senate building.

"…shitshitshitshitshitshit…"

"I thought that went well."

"…shitshitshitshitshitshit…"

"Okay. Just breathe."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:38 GMT

Decay.

Well, yes, but also no.

Washington, District of Columbia, is an unusually flat city. The original Alliance of the Just building was just under the forty metre legal limit for building height, and the buildings around it were that tall or shorter. Now it's grown, the new techno-infernal structure something that would be right at home on Apokolips. All they would need to do to complete the picture would be to punch down to the planet's mantle for that fire pit glow.

Decay.

In front of us, Batman uses some sort of mechanical tendril construct to pull the Justifier garrison into a pile before sending borer tendrils into their helmets and yanking them off. Carol is firing a construct weapon that I don't immediately recognise at the weapon emplacements…

Decay.

And built into the upper part of the structure is an unusually large Anti-Life broadcaster.

Alan looks around, frowning. "Is that it? I thought we'd be fighting Finality Man by now."

"He doesn't know why we're here."

He glances my way. "What do you mean by that? What else would we be here for?"

"Malvolio's main advantage over Guy is that he can split his attention in more directions without weakening his constructs. Mannheim knows about the rest of us, and Malvolio's not that novel. We could have attacked Washington a month ago like this."

He nods. "He doesn't know why we're doing it now."

"Rescue government officials? No point. They don't have any vital skills and they're all going to be thoroughly Anti-Lifed by now anyway. Fighting his people? He has boom tubes. He can probably follow them wherever we send them, and he knows that we try to avoid killing them. He said to Robin that he's more interested in learning about the Anti-Life than simple conquest, so…"

"So he doesn't know why we're here, and he wants to." He nods. "He doesn't know we can push him out."

"The only people who know are us and the Maltusians."

"So when we start-."

"Then he starts."

Looking across the city I can still see plenty of the black cages surrounding weakening bundles of colour that define the Justifiers. But while they are approaching our general vicinity, they're not moving to attack.

Nothing else we can really do to prepare.

"Orange Lantern to all, I'm about to call in Orion. Expect an immediate offensive from Mannheim."

"Get on with it."

Decay.

I can almost feel it as the transmitter-.

I shake my head. "Orange Lantern to Vykin. We're in place. Send him through."

"Understood. How goes the day?"

"Alright so far, but I think things will get difficult once the boom tube opens."

"And Finality Man?"

I try a global scan. Not entirely reliable with things being what they are, but…

"No sign of him. That will change."

"I understand. Opening-"

BOOM!

"-a tube now."

"FINALLY!"

The tube opened in the road where the front entrance used to be, and Orion wastes no time at all stomping through. He… Oh, he doesn't look good. That's blood dripping from his mouth and from the corner of his eyes. I don't know if that's the ring or just what happens when a New God stays that angry for that long. No astro-harness, and the yellow symbol on his helmet's forehead has been replaced by a red sigil.

"I can feel you, Father! Face me!"

The Forever People scurry through after him, and immediately seek cover. Looks like their equipment has been upgraded. No Forevercar, which is probably just as well.

He rises into the air, glaring at everything, as if daring Mannheim to come out from the rock or tree that he's sheltering behind. "FACE ME!"

Batman flies over to him. "Orion. We need you to focus on the Anti-Life transmitter. We can expunge your father's touch from the Earth permanently. Can you-?"

"I will remove my father's touch when I have torn his avatar apart! Where is he?"

Decay.

"Everywhere, my son."

Stop.

In my chest, my heart stops beating.

Alan gasps and thumps his chest before creating a defibrillator construct. Alan, defibrillators stop fibrillations, not stopped hearts, so-. Fine. I try starting mine up again with ring power, and… I can sort of make it move, but it won't beat on its own.

"Orange Lantern to allies, if you're got a power ring, you don't need a beating heart. It feels weird but you'll be fine. New Gods?"

"We feel nothing."

And sure enough Vykin and company are still moving. Orion-.

"I have had a lifetime of listening to the lies of the real Darkseid! I have no desire to listen to yours as well!"

Okay, good, he's fine, but how did Mannheim do that? Just… Stop our hearts? And-. Sportsmaster, he doesn't have a-.

I see Carol fly back towards the holding centre and fire a crystallisation beam at him as he lies on the floor frantically beating his chest.

Okay, how. He's not-.

Oh no.

I take out a rune stone and hold it out towards-.

Oh yes. There was an elf gate here. Is an elf gate here. An open portal to the arcane realms where Mannheim… How much control does that give him? Does that.. mean-.

"Okay, plan revision, we need to shut down his elf gate-."

BOOM!

And there's Finality Man.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:41 GMT

"Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!"
"We Are One!"

"No."

And… The Forever People stand there looking like lemons for a moment before diving for cover as Finality Man opens fire with its arm-mounted weapons. Fortunately Alan's on the ball, tearing a lump of concrete out of the ground and throwing it into the path of the beam.

Railguns.

Compliance.

The concrete is annihilated, only the tiniest fragments falling to the ground, but the Forever People are able to scramble away from the giant robot. Justifiers are… Closing in-.

"Accursed thief!"

Orion flies at Finality Man's head, blossoming red chainsaw blades whirring around him. Finality Man's eyes glow red as it prepares to fire its eye beams, and I load a crumbler and fire at maximum power. The round hits it just as it fires, causing the same burst of red energy I remember from Norway as I spoil the shot. Orion hits a moment later, blades biting at-.

"Die for Mannheim."

Finality Man just punches him, shattering his construct and smashing him into the ground!

Ah… Can we do this with Finality Man still active? Not sure. Going to try.

Load mage slayers.

Compliance.

"Doctor Mist! Where is the elf gate?!"

"Somewhere within the building."

Ghia'ta and Stewart dart over to the Forever People, grab them and fly away from the Anti-Life broadcaster. Might work. I fire a volley of mage slayers rounds into the building itself in an attempt to shut down the gate but it would be pure luck at this point.

"Can you shut it down?"

"No, his grip is too strong."

"He's connected it to himself?"

"Yes-. I see. Thet may be possible. But we must deal with Finality Man."

Finality Man's eyes go red again, and another crumbler-.

Hits a force field, the glow is still building, and I'm not sure where he's looking girder!

I rip the giant metal beam out of an abandoned building, bend it and hoopla it over Finality Man's head just as he fires, blocking the sho-.

Blaster bolts hit my construct armour from the rear, and I half-turn to see Malvolio raining green fists down on the oncoming-.

Graviton deflator and teleportation dis-. No, jammer.

Compliance.

"Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!" / "Taaru!"
"We Are One!"

Did that-?

"Drax."

"You've made a mess of my machine, Uxas." Prince Drax doesn't so much fly as run through the air, stepping off… Temporarily solid patches of air as he hurtles towards Finality Man. "That took a lot of work."

Finality Man raises its hands and fires at him, but the beams of golden energy… Bend around and smash into its chest.

"Which isn't to say it was perfect. If you Lanterns have a plan-"

"Orange Lantern to everyone. Mannheim has bound himself to the gate network. We can hit him first."

Drax dodges past Finality Man's arms, grabs onto its back and punches… Something on its back. "-you should probably get on with it." A blue light spreads out from the point of impact, and Finality Man freezes up. "This will only hold as long as I do."

"Good." Usually a good sign when Batman likes the plan. "Green Lantern, Ghia'ta, keep the Justifiers from interfering. Everyone else, get to the main entrance."

I fly fast, Malvolio just behind me and the others coming in from all directions. Stewart begins making hit and run attacks against the oncoming masses, but we need to do this quickly. I land, orange light pooling around my left hand.

"You're not trying to make energy pulses. You're trying to forcibly inject the purest form of your colour into the target. Trying to push Darkseid… Whatever Darkseid did to Mannheim out of him. He can probably backhack any one of us. He can't backhack what we can do together."

I raise my right hand, Larfleeze's ring shining, and I call desire forth from the world and push that into the Alliance Building. There's resistance, but I push on through, connecting with… Something. A… Dark presence-.

"There seems aught to it."

I can feel Malvolio's certainty and conviction. It's not like Guy, where he uses his own soul as a battering ram. This is all-enveloping presence putting everything just in its place. And it's there and around the gateway, but our colours aren't really combining or becoming greater than a sum of their parts.

Carol joins next, reaching out to share her own sororal love with anyone who wants to see how it's done. Alan's unquenchable faith that everything will work out. Still nothing added, but we need all the parts.

Batman's contribution is the fear of a thousand criminals and the fears of a collapsing civilisation. Everything's in flux and nothing's what we thought it was. Makes sense. And-.

Ahh… I didn't…

I didn't… Know that Nommo felt like that. I thought that his prime directive approach was an intellectual thing, not…

Ah, okay, okay, it's working so far. Where-?

Orion is trying to cut Finality Man's right leg off.

"Orion! We need you!"

"I need no tricks to destroy my father! But this thing-!"

"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence!" He turns his head my way, actually paying attention. "We need to be able to erase the Anti-Life, or we haven't done anything. Darkseid loves the Anti-Life? Let's take away something he actually cares about."

"Fine!"

He stomps closer, opening his mouth and exhaling the accumulated rage of an immortal's lifetime, joining in our stream…

And I feel-.

"Thank you, fools."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:43 GMT

Black.

I feel it flow out-.

Black.

I destroyed Batman's happiness and I can't undo that.

Black.

Reach up-.

Black.

I want to meet Superman's expectations despite knowing the suffering that will come from his hands-off approach.

Black.

Envelop-.

Black.

I bullishly led us into this trap, confident that I could fix things. Good work.

"Illustres, resist-!"

Black.

Whu-?

Black.

Pulled inwards-.

Black.

I can't get everything I want without…

Without-.

Bla-.

No. You reached too far.

Where am I? Can't really… Feel my body. Black everywhere and a slowly weakening orange aura around the bit where I am.

Just a foolish old man trying to recapture a youth I don't deserve.

Ala-? No.

For an instant the black recedes and I see a tiny wisp of blue between the dark strands which are boring into it. Alan, his aura fading.

Go.

And I'm there, the tendrils burned away-. No, grab that one.

"Alan, Diana's just as old as you. You don't think badly of her for being on the Justice League, do you?"

"No, of… Of course not."

"You don't think she should just kill herself and get out of the way, do you?"

"No!"

"Then why should you? There's nothing wrong with wanting things, Alan."

"I… Guess you've got a point." His flame gets a little bit bigger, and I feel a bit less worried that he's going to be swallowed. "What happened, where are we, and… I guess it didn't work?"

"It hasn't worked yet. That… That's not the same thing."

"Hey, I-. I felt that."

"I think we're all inside Bruno Mannheim's… Soul, or whatever he made with the magic power he took from the Aztec gods. I heard Malvolio a moment ago but I don't know what happened to the rest. No one has died because… The white light is still present. But… Malvolio and I were the ones who got free."

"Because you're enlightened."

"Probably."

"So we need to go pick up the others."

I look at the strand of avarice-seeking Anti-Life I'm holding. Can't do a thing to me, but…

What's at the other end?

Mannheim was working with Apokoliptians willingly, but… How signed up with this was he? With effectively becoming a different person?

"I wonder what Mannheim wanted out of this originally?"

"Power, and everything that comes with it. I read the files: he's basically just a mob boss."

"So he wouldn't want to destroy the Earth?"

"I… I mean, he is. But I get where you're coming from. So… You think he's just been Anti-Lifed like everyone else?"

"Yes. Which… Would mean that he's in here somewhere." I pull on the thread. "I want to know what this connects to."

What do you want?

Uh.

"You getting anything?"

"I think so."

And if you can pull on me, why can't I pull on you?

And if it turns out that saving one man fixes this whole mess…

I… Think I'm pulling, but… There isn't enough in this ink void for me to tell.

"Alan, do you remember what it felt like when we made the white light?"

"Ki-kind of. I understand why you made such a big deal out of it."

"When the Anti-Life is this all-enveloping, I don't think we're going to get anywhere without it. All the colours are here. Can you get back in that headspace?"

"I don't know. Some of the things… The Anti-Life isn't exactly wrong, is it?"

"Yes, it's always wrong, it's just not always untrue. When it tried to get to me through compassion it made me think that Superman's compassion would have stopped me attacking the Spider Guild. Which is nonsense because he was there when I attacked them, and while he wasn't happy about it he understood it."

"With…" I hear a sigh. "You've picked up quite a body count."

"You're not sure if you should have sent me on my way when I tried to buy your lantern? Yeah, I can see that. Except that would have just meant that when I found a way to charge my ring again I wouldn't have morally righteous veteran superheroes around to guide me in the right direction. Even if I don't agree with them all the time. Before achieving enlightenment, one of my fears was that I'd turn into some sort of 'utility-sniper'. 'Detriment to humanity? Bang. Detriment to humanity? Bang.' You being around means that will never happen."

"Heh. Okay then. Let's go rescue Mannheim."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
Eris Knows

"…reason to eradicate the rapscallions, yet you stayed your hand…"

I look around but can't see a thing aside from the wisp of Alan. Sounds like Malvolio's found Batman. On the other hand-

It was the right thing to do, right? You get an opening, you take it.

-I think I can hear Mannheim justifying this to himself. Telling himself that he did nothing wrong. Telling himself something that he knows to be untrue because he believes that he's powerless to do anything about it. Okay, this is starting to-.

The black stops retreating and I fly into it-.

Idon'twannaIdon'twann…

Guh!

"You okay there?"

"I'll live."

I look… Up, and I can just about make out the millions of tendrils reaching out, each a crushed hope, a thwarted or counterproductive desire, a moment of destructive rage…

"I guess we're here."

"And what about everyone else?"

"Hopefully they'll sense us when we start."

"And… How do we do that?"

"Each of these strands connects to an element of his psyche. Grab one relating to hope and try and wake his up. You'll probably need to use the white light to get in. I'll show you."

I thought that touching the white light on my own would be hard. But… I don't know if it's enlightenment, the others being here, Nommo being here… It's not hard. It's almost harder not to.

Whu-?

Hello, Mister Mannheim.

You don't want to be controlled by people, do you? You pushed out Morgan Edge for a reason. Even though the relationship was profitable, you didn't want him there. So how do you feel about this?

I-I can't…

That's the Anti-Life talking. It's lying. Darkseid is lying right into your brain.

It… Wasn't like this… To start with…

It's not an issue of what it was or wasn't. It's an issue of WHAT YOU WANT.

The strand I grabbed onto evaporates. I guess I made my point. I hope I did, anyway. I feel around-. There goes another one. And another, and all the ones with orange associations are evaporating. Excellent.

"Alan, you're up."

His flame flickers for a moment, and then-.

"Huh."

"Yes?"

"I've done a lotta good."

"Ah, yes, you're a superhero."

"No, I mean… I guess a lotta the time… I don't.. see it. I don't see people going on and living improved lives because of me, I just get that one moment of crisis. But the white light, it's… Showing me things."

Interesting, and I'm glad that he's getting the extra motivation, but it's not really relevant.

"Bruno, what did you want to be when you were a kid?"

He waits for a moment.

"Huh, really? Well, we're gunna need a whole lot of those when this mess is over. You could give it a shot."

And… Yes. More strands collapse and fade.

Everyone, we're over here!

The all-enveloping black.. doesn't fade, but it's pulled back, thinner than it was before. In the distance I can see tiny flecks of colour-.

I throw out orange strands made of my desire to resolve this crisis towards each of them-. The green and yellow are already heading this way, but the red… I can barely see the red.

I feel it as my strands connect to Batman and Malvolio as tethers. Which means that I should be able to communicate with them.

"Orange Lantern here. New plan. Bruno Mannheim's original personality is still in here. If we eliminate the Anti-Life infection working on him, that should finish this."

"He shall regret-"

And their flames are there, Anti-Life strands burned away from them.

"-clasping us to his bosom."

"Not exactly. As I said, he's become increasingly like Darkseid. But it's got to the point where it's entirely left his original personality behind, and that's still in here. I think that the simplest way to handle this is to purify him."

"And what of justice, for all he has wrought?"

"Do you torture criminals before executing them?"

"Nay. T'would be better for him to answer for his crimes in his right mind. How may this be done?"

"You can create a link by touching the white light, then it's up to you to make him… In your case, regain the impetus to focus his own will."

I look-. Batman shimmers for a moment, throwing off the Anti-Life strands frantically trying to reconnect to him. Then-.

"Done."

Another batch of strands detach, another part of the blackness opens up.

"Any man who could do this must have some measure of will."

Leave him to it, and look for Carol and Orion. Carol is a little closer, but I can see dozens of Anti-Life strands trying to connect to her. Orion has fewer attackers, but it looks like they're further into him. I should prioritise him.

A new orange strand made of an understandable desire to tear apart the Anti-Life and an instant later I feel it connect.

"Orion-."

"You! You did this to me!"

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
But Probably Doesn't Care

Orion has kept his shape more than the rest of us, a privilege of being a New God I suppose. It's red with white detailing, and lets him clench his right fist while I can't even make a barrier.

"Darkseid did this to you. Anti-Life did this to you. If you focus, focus your rage as you should, and we will win."

He reaches-. He grabs onto me and this idiot is going to ruin everything! We're so close!

"Do you know how many times Father has exposed me to his Anti-Life? I know the touch, the feeling, but never has it invaded my soul so thoroughly as it has today!"

"Is it touching you right now!?"

"Is-?"

He recoils, tossing me ugh-. Tossing me aside and I hope he finds it that easy to make Mannheim angry, because I-. I don't usually get that angry.

"Done and done."

Malvolio moves away from the wall. Strands fade and I can almost see through the murk clearly. I don't know what effect this is having on the world, but I'm confident that it will work.

"Mannheim has been trapped in this malaise for at least a month. Probably much longer. What's the longest that you've ever been under?"

Orion keeps glaring at me as he slams his white-coated hand onto the wall, continuing to maintain eye contact with me as the white and red light that makes up his body roils.

"Ah." The white-indigo flame of Nommo arrives, towing Carol just behind it. "Then the world is not doomed. A most pleasant surprise."

"I need you to inspire Mannheim's original personality with your-."

"Yes, I see. Star Sapphire, are you well enough to make the attempt?"

"I will.. endure."

Great. Great.

"What exactly happens when we're done, Paul?"

Alan's drifted back a little to give the others space, parrying the few remaining strands trying to connect to him.

"We call the white light through Mannheim, and destroy the core of this place. If that doesn't shut the whole thing down, we fly around and use the white light to erase everything. If that doesn't get us back to the material world… Um. I don't know. It would depend on what this Anti-Life plane is when there's no Anti-Life in it."

"That's a nice problem to have. But why do you think Mannheim-. The Mannheim on the outside, thanked us?"

"If I hadn't heard Malvolio, he might have got me. If we'd tried using another Green Lantern -even Guy- he might have fully Anti-Lifed us both. And the connection goes both ways."

"So.. everything that feels emotion would… Would get Anti-Life exposure right away?"

"Yes. But..." I 'look around'. "If I understand what this place is correctly, then he was about to do that anyway. The thaumosphere is interconnected, and he's just demonstrated that he could consume entire realms. He'd have pressed on-."

"He'd have eaten everything." I hear a sigh. "You know, first time Jay and I worked together we stopped a couple of guys doing an insurance scam at a shoe factory. I ever tell you about that?"

"No, but I think Kid Flash mentioned it."

"I don't mind stepping up, but I gotta be honest with you. This.. is…"

"Yeah. Fortunately, rebuilding human civilisation should be simple, if not quick or-"

"It is done."

"-easy. Thank you, Orion."

I get 'nods' from Carol and Nommo as the last of the strands fade away, leaving us with a giant… It's a sphere. Okay.

"Right, good work everyone. White light time again, but this time we need to generate it inside Mannheim."

I feel Alan 'looking' at me again. "How?"

"Resonance. Mystic entanglement. Connect the emotion in you to the emotion in him and then we all connect together."

Which shouldn't be hard for me at least. We both want to be out of here, and we both want the Anti-Life-

…the Anti-Life finally gone.

-gone. Good. Maintain that feeling, and wait for the others.

Alan's next, and then Carol. I don't know much about Mannheim's personal life so I'm not sure what the link there was, but the important thing is that it's done. Malvolio, Nommo, Batman and after a brief delay Orio-.

Oh gods.

I see the hopes long put aside for grim reality, suddenly made possible once more.

I feel the need to be loved when your lifestyle just doesn't allow it.

I see the ruthless resolve with which Malvolio/Mannheim forged an empire in the stars/of crime.

I see Nommo/Mannheim let a child flee the scene of a battle/robbery rather than be enslaved/taken hostage.

I feel the fear of not being about to-.

Oh. Damn me.

To trust anyone around me, to truly drop my guard.

And the rage at being a pawn, kept in ignorance and no matter what I do, used for other people!

I feel it all.

Bands of white light explode outwards from the black sphere, punching through and tearing free! Mannheim floats, white light radiating out of his body as the black all around us is-. Not pushed back. It's flat out disintegrated. My body… Our bodies reappear and… I see a translucent image of…

Ah, an angel designed by Lovecraft which more or less matches what I remember the Life Entity looking like. It looks… Honestly, it looks more surprised than anything else, though its unusual facial structure makes it a little hard to tell.

And then it's gone, and everything's gone, and we're back in Washington.

Next to Finality Man.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:43 GMT

Eyesredchargingrailguncrumb-!

"No." Mannheim is still illuminated by an inner white glow as he raises his hands. "No one else."

A white wave passes through Finality Man, turning grey into gold and blue so that it more closely resembles Prince Drax's armour. Its golden eyes flare for a moment, then-

BOOM!

-it opens a boom tube beneath its own feet and falls into it.

"And now…" Mannheim turns towards the former Alliance Headquarters. "That thing. I-."

The blaster bolt hits him in the chest and knocks him to the ground.

Damn it! I dash over to him, creating a construct shield-

"I honestly believed that this would work."

A weird… Relief Mannheim walks towards us, shimmering black, blaster in his right hand.

"And yet you cut off my origin from my present. That's an interesting avenue of attack. Not one I would have considered."

"Father."

"A pale imitation, due to be reunited with my true self momentarily."

Graviton deflator, railgun with everything-. No. Message everyone. White light blast in two, one-.

"YAAAGH!"

Orion flies across the ground and slams into him! It takes… Shadow Mannheim off his feet but he turns with the impact, getting his right hand up to turn Orion's head aside before he can vomit blood all over him.

"Such beautiful, savage rage." Shadow Mannheim gets his feet under him and then backhands Orion into a nearby building. "Become the beast."

I fire, hitting him with mage slayer and crumbler rounds while Nommo ministers to real Mannheim. Batman is keeping his attention on our surroundings as the Justifiers are probably still coming. Carol looks like she's barely standing while Malvolio has scrambled to catch everyone that he dropped from his prison construct before they can hit the ground. Alan honestly looks a little behind events.

My railgun rounds hit home, but all it does is make his image… Glitch a little.

"An interesting -if futile- effort."

They're not hitting the far side of him so they're not just passing through. We've shut him off from his original body and the magic he stole, but he's still got an Anti-Lifed planet to power him. Ah.

Orion staggers out of the building, his horns glowing red horns and growing larger. And I can feel-.

Ah, shi-.

His right fist slams into my construct armour, completely destroying it through a combination of raw physical power and the corrosive power of the red light.

Message to Dr. Mist. Use the Mask. Turn down his anger.

I duck back and pwguer!

Ah, he hit me in the chest hard enough to break my shields and crater my cuirass. Left ribs… Broken, I think.

"Bringing my son was foolish."

New Gods can grow back arms.

I trigger my crumbler gauntlets and punch as his right arm, trying to-.

His flaring environmental shield disintegrates the gauntlet and I snatch what's left back before I lose the hand as well.

"Calm."

"G-hyeh?"

Orion's confused snort I.. probably a sign that Nommo's managed something-.

I turn my head in his direction to see the Medusa Mask melt, running down his face and dripping onto the floor. Alan's taken over ministering to Mannheim, who's showing a few signs of life.

"Orion, you need to focus. You hate your father more than anything. You're this close to actually wounding him!"

"I…" The horns fade, whatever Shadow Mannheim did to him needing him being maniacally angry to work.

Great. Back off and heal myself-.

Lantern Stewart creates a bubble shield around Shadow Mannheim. Shadow Mannheim looks up at him in disbelief, then casually slams it aside as he walks out. Ghia'ta covers him in glowing crystals, but they melt immediately.

"Love? Really? Unreliable at the best of times."

"Blue-."

"No."

Mannheim pulls himself up onto all fours, then points at his negative doppelgänger. A ripple of white light passes through him, making him wince.

"I offered you a place of rare honour. You should have remained my servant."

"I shouldn'a ever bought what you were sellin'. Get the Hell outta here."

Another wave of white and Shadow Mannheim visibly fades a little before regaining his strength.

"The network-!"

"Yeah." Mannheim looks around. "Give me a boost?"

"Show me your ultimate folly. This… 'Life force' that resists me."

I can still feel the link between the seven of us and Mannheim, and it's simplicity itself to let the orange light flow, and it looks like the others feel the same. Mannheim glows brilliantly-

"Mm."

There's a shimmering… Something just behind him. It's distorting-.

Graviton deflator fire.

There's a small burst of energy as I destabilise… Whatever that was. Shadow Mannheim actually starts.

Hah. No escape for you. No taking what you learned back to actual Darkseid.

Mannheim looks upwards, white light flowing off him and into the former Alliance of the Just headquarters in an approximation of my original plan. The glowing orange lines fade, replaced with brilliant white as the vital force of life itself shines out of the building. A moment passes and I feel it pass through me on its way out across the network. Scans show the remaining Justifiers who had been fighting other Justice League forces either dropping to the ground or staggering and looking around in stupefied bewilderment.

"Another time, then."

Shadow Mannheim fades out of existence as his bond with the network is destroyed. Nothing left to sustain him.

And then I look out across the wrecked city, and-.

"Lantern."

Orion walks towards me, pulling the ring off his finger. I'm pleased to see that his face is back to normal, but that just lets me see how unhappy with me he is.

"I would have words with you."

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:47 GMT

I look around, trying to spot Batman. He's checking fallen Justifiers, marking them on the League's tactical network based on their location and degree of injury. At the edge of the city I can see Superman carrying a zeta terminal towards us, with Red Tornado tagging along to power it. Once that's in place, we can start moving people and relief supplies.

No Anti-Life nagging at the edges of my consciousness. And if it was unpleasant for me, I dread to imagine what it was like for most people.

I return my attention to Orion.

"How are you?"

I think he's.. frowning.

"I am trying, very hard, not to be angry."

I gingerly reach out with my right hand. "That might be easier if you hand that ring over. Red rings are even worse for being infectious than orange rings."

"I chose this. You told me as much as you knew. You did not lie to me once. That is why I am not tearing your head from your shoulders."

"I'm sorry. I.. think that Darkseid-Mannheim shadow-thing did something to drive you berserk at the end, but I didn't see-."

"He cowed my nature with his own. He could do that because I had abandoned my Source-mandated purpose to become a mindless berserker for you."

"I asked, but I wasn't just asking for me. Without you, everyone on Earth-."

"I know that. But you do not-." He takes a deep breath in and then lets it out slowly. "You do not understand what turning myself into what he wants me to be cost me."

"Clearly you feel bad about it. Do you want to explain it to me? Make me feel the same thing? I certainly knew that something like that was possible."

He looks away for a moment.

"What did you see, when the white light passed through us all?"

I shake my head. "Right at the end there? Nothing much. I wasn't interacting with the network." I shrug. "I don't enjoy talking people into doing things, but… I'm ruthless when I think I need to be. I felt the… Doctor Mist's compassion, and the unifying wonder of the… Essence of life itself… And getting you for red-."

"You'd do it again."

"Yes. It's not that I don't feel bad, it's that I don't think me feeling bad matters much compared to…"

I look over to where Alan is checking over the fallen. I'm pleased to see that he's got a healing ray, and that he's remembered that it's still worth checking them over before shooting them with it.

"Compared to freeing a world from the Anti-Life."

"What is your.. 'nature', anyway? If it's some sort of New God thing-."

"I am the essence of the heroic warrior. I keep faith, I fight evil, I-." He looks away for a moment, and I see the Forever People cautiously approaching. "I am not what my Father would have me be. What happened here, what happened to me, is so repugnant to me that I say this to you."

He tosses the red ring to my feet.

"If I ever see you again after this day, I will kill you. Vykin, we are leaving."

Vykin nods, and-

BOOM!

-a portal opens, the six of them walking through.

Yeah. I get it. All that time fighting to keep control while feeling that angry, and then I have him run rampant in full rage mode so he can get a feel for it.

I reach down and pick up the ring, careful not to touch the inner surface. I'll put it in an equipment pouch for now, and… Maltus later?

"Orange Lantern to-."

No.

"Orange Lantern to Mister Atom. Global status summary."

"Based on observed organic behavior, your efforts to remove the Anti-Life have been successful. Based on observed organic behavior, that didn't fix things. Have you considered mass cybernetic implantation? They appear to make humans far more rational."

"I use an empathic weapon. Rationality would be detrimental to my effectiveness."

"Do you require a comfort break?"

"What?"

"You have stopped working. There is a great deal of work to do in order to restore Earth. Do you require assistance defecating?"

"No, I just needed your confirmation that it had actually worked before I started tidying up here. I assume that you have an outlined reconstruction plan?"

"No."

"Huh?"

"I understand your frustration. Imagine mine. I can not define the problem sufficiently well to solve it. The records required to restore Earth civilisation to its pre-Sheeda state do not exist, and a significant number of the people required are dead. Many models could be used as useful target points, but the most successful economies on Earth have benefited from micro-scale freedom to address demands not readily apparent from the centre. Planning everything myself may be… Actively detrimental."

"Okay, well, we can eliminate the Anti-Life based technology, then… Have a meeting between Justice League leaders and any surviving heads of governments? President Adams should probably… Be the one to check up on America."

"He is already en route."

"Right. I'll get on with things here. Contact me if you specifically need me. Orange Lantern Out."

I walk over to where Batman is disarming the Justifiers and removing their helmets. I'm not sure what's going through their heads, but from the way they're shrinking back from him I don't think he's getting a positive response.

"Batman." He doesn't look around, but he draws himself up slightly. "I should probably…"

"Undo the damage you inflicted on my brain."

"Yes. Look, I can understand that as you are now you might not want me to. There was a parallel version of me who did something similar. But I really think-."

He pulls the ring off his finger and slides it into his utility belt.

"Oh. "

"I don't want to keep thinking like this. Is your scan of my brain up to date?"

"Of course, yes."

"Then get on with it."

I raise my left hand and play the orange light over his head. It… There hadn't really been any progression, but I can see how it's affecting the patterns of activation in his brain. Remove the toxins, correct the connections…

Done.

"Okay, done. How do you feel?"

He doesn't say anything for a moment, eyes not really focusing on anything.

Then he turns away and strides towards where Superman has set up the zeta tube.

 

[Mr Zoat]

17th February 2013
20:51 GMT

"Messing with Batman's brain for the sake of a mission." Mr. Crock hasn't joined in the relief effort, and is standing a few metres away with his arms hanging loose at his sides. "Didn't think you had it in you."

"I thought I convinced you that I was willing to kill you."

"Some men will go a long way for pussy-."

"Please don't refer to your daughter like that. I love Jade, she isn't just a sex-object to me."

He mockingly holds up his hands. "I'm so sorry I hurt your feelings."

"If you're trying to make me go back on the 'not killing you' thing, keep talking."

"That's just it. You honestly had me convinced, but here I am, still alive."

"I know. I broke my word. I think it was the first time. Probably won't be the last. Not exactly impressed with myself, but that's true of a lot of things today. Did you want something specific?"

He shrugs. "You put the mission ahead of everything and you got it done. I was fine running around for Bats and Atom, but they obviously didn't have an actual solution to what was going on. You did. And you did something to Batman that meant you had to fix his brain afterwards."

Oh no.

I turn around, and a ring scan shows him smiling underneath his mask

"Really?"

"Some guys would be happier getting the approval of their girl's old man. You lose some points for not killing me, but I guess no one's completely reliable."

"Did you want something?"

"What happens next?"

"Not up to me. Rough guess… Hell, even a rough guess, I can't-. Okay, agricultural areas are probably least affected, and there are plenty of people who can take over unused plots. We don't have to worry about mass starvation-."

"To us. The Suicide Squad. The way I see it, there's an unusually high need for my services right now."

"Supply chains are still messed up. Even if money still had value, you'd struggle to buy anything. My advice? Volunteer for relief work and build up your résumé while living in the Tower of Fate in better conditions and eating better food than just about anyone else in the world. Once the Federal Government is working again, use your record to negotiate. Personally, I wouldn't let you out because I know full well that you're about as reformable as a weasel, but I could probably be persuaded to give you a job matching your skills that had you under constant observation."

"Is that an offer?"

I exhale sharply. "Strange thing is, I know Batman had you here in case we needed a new yellow ring user, but as far as I can tell the color you match best is orange. You're a man of your word, but it's purely as an acquisition strategy and not a sign of any actual morals. You kill and steal without any sort of ideology-."

"I've met plenty of people who killed for ideology. I don't think you'd like them any better that you like me."

"Not for impersonal reasons, no. But it's a matter of what gives life value, isn't it? Kobra cultists may be lunatics, but they're happy being lunatics. Kill them and they die happy. But for a man like you… As far as I can tell, it's just acquisitiveness."

"It's not just that. I like the work."

"Have you given any thought to how you want to retire? You're past your physical prime. You've got a decade or two before it becomes a serious problem, but you really should have thought about it."

"Got something in mind?"

"If you were working for the Orange Lantern Corps it would be simple. You could use an orange ring, you've already got good combat instincts. We could use you to train up our navy's special forces units, so that your skills aren't wasted in Belle Reve. Our medical technology is top tier, and once the full intensity gets a bit much you could demob to any of a hundred friendly planets. Heck, if you made yourself really useful we could just give you your own planet." I shrug. "At our level of technology, it's not that big a deal. And let's be honest, having alienated your whole family there isn't really anything keeping you on Earth."

"Huh. I might actually-."

"I mean, I'm obviously not offering you that, because Jade hates you, Artemis hates you and I don't like you, but it would be logical."

I rise into the air.

"Don't make me come looking for you, Mister Crock."

What's the next priority? Working out how to get Atlantis to unshield itself, working out how to bring Themyscira back…

I look down at Washington, District of Columbia.

Malvolio's getting people off the ships in the bay. But-.

No command and control. Not for the billions of people who could fix a lot of problems. Communications-.

No. Short term. Food. Transportation hasn't happened. Roads are blocked. How do we keep people fed in the short term, given that there aren't anything like enough Justice League members to run a worldwide supply network?

Brazil. Euanthe and Pamela could create food plants fast enough… It would damage roads and pavements as they made the vines burst through, but it would be easier to make highly efficient food plants readily available than it would be to get shipping and hauling working again. Depending on how long each one takes to set up…

But a planet is huge. Even if we only do the most densely populated cities, it would take…

I don't even know.

They've got a few druids… Can't contact Persephone, if she would even want to help. And if Dr. Holland didn't take any action while the Anti-Life infected the world then I doubt that he'd be interested in getting involved now.

Medical…

There's no great reserve of human physicians that I have access to-.

I

raise my right hand to my forehead and vanish,

reappearing on Maltus, just outside of Dox's office and knocking on the door.

The doors slide open. "Come in, Illustres." I obey, and the doors close behind me. "I take it that the Earth is no longer under the affect of the Anti-Life."

"Yes. The Atlanteans. Can I take them home for a month or so?"

"That would not disrupt any critical operations. And it would encourage them to keep working for us in the long term." He nods, once. "You have my permission."

I nod, and take the red ring out of my pouch. "Can you find somewhere safe to put this? My hiding places have a poor track record."

"Certainly. Leave it on the desk. And keep me updated on your progress. In the long term, N.E.M.O. will need to fight Apokolips as well."

 

[Mr Zoat]

Reconstruction

18th February 2013
13:01 GMT

I open my eyes, the ceiling of my facility…

My…

Hm.

The N.E.M.O. facility in Bir Tawil. I rebuilt it last night, with a few modifications that I'd been thinking about for a while but couldn't be bothered to make when the place was intact. The defences… They were… Fine. They were never intended to make the place invulnerable; it's a home with a few defences rather than a fortress, and…

And it's still not the same after someone's broken in.

At least I can't feel the Anti-Life, so that's something.

"Mister Atom to Orange Lantern. Respond."

I lift the duvet and bed sheet off and shuffle around, dropping my legs off the right side of the bed. I could probably have stayed in the field a little longer. Lanterns can keep working without sleep for a couple of weeks without much of a drop in performance. But Mr. Atom found that even superheroes who could function for long periods started making poorer decisions if they experienced frequent high-stress situations or kept going without sleep. Combined with Anti-Life exposure…

It's a bit like World War Z, where psychologists kept tabs on soldiers who were fighting zombies and the moment they saw their performance dip they ordered them off the line for a breather. A pinch of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

"Responding."

I don't know if I'll keep this place. I could just return it to wilderness or remodel it as an actual spaceport. It's just nice to have somewhere that's mine.

I get up and don my lightest armour. We haven't found Vincent Edge and I don't know where my final clone ended up -obviously the same place- but there's… For the first time in a long time there's no fighting going on anywhere on Earth. I doubt that it will last, but it's nice while it does.

"Where do you need me?"

"Have you ingested nutrients today?"

"I just woke-. No."

"Take fifteen minutes, Orange Lantern. Your briefing will begin after that time."

Fine. Fine.

I head out onto the balcony, out of the room but still inside the area covered by the environmental control system. It's sunny, and the rocks, sand and sea look exactly as it did yesterday. There's a faint smell from the desert and from rotting seaweed along the beach. Reminds me of family days on Eastbourne seafront. The kitchen is one floor down and there's an internal staircase as well, but…

It's a nice view.

Down the stairs to the next balcony down, and then inside into the kitchen.

"Can you at least tell me if Atlantis is back in contact?"

"No."

I pull open the cereal cabinet.

What do I.. feel.. like..?

I pull out the Start packet and put it on the work surface. Then a bowl and a milk bottle. Jade laughed when she found out that I keep milk in glass bottles instead of plastic ones. I see her point: I hadn't actually had milk in a milk bottle from a milkman for years before coming to this Earth, and four pint plastic bottles with screw on lids are more practical.

It just… Has good associations. And doesn't produce microplastic waste.

And I think today is a pineapple juice day.

Bowl in my left hand and glass in my right, I amble back to the balcony and sit down at the table.

"How about personal news?"

"I still have not received my newspaper."

"I didn't know that you read newspapers."

"Noted."

"It just seems a little inefficient."

I take a sip of pineapple juice.

"I read the newspapers for metatextual reasons. I am reading to learn about the writers, not about what they write about. If I needed actual information I would investigate the subject myself."

My first spoonful of Starts crunch in my mouth, the accompanying milk mildly sweetened by the glucose sticking the multi-grain shapes together. I guess that Kellogg's will probably survive, though getting production started back up will be difficult. And I should probably see what sort of state Cadbury's is in at some point. It's not an absolute priority but I feel a degree of personal responsibility.

"Learning about how information travels around human civilisation? How people form their views?"

"It would harm the study if any human understood its purpose."

"Fine, fine." Another spoon of crunch. "What did you experience when we used the white light?"

"Nothing. I surmise that I was too far from an Anti-Life broadcaster and not otherwise linked to the Anti-Life."

"Lucky you."

"That is one interpretation. The other is that I lack something fundamental to the human condition."

"Is that a problem for you?"

"I would prefer the choice as to whether to expunge the trait or not."

Yeah. So would Batman.

Crunch.

"Do you want to..? Talk about..?"

"No."

"Batman was about to say what your greatest fear was."

"He was going to guess."

"Mannheim might not have had the technology to Anti-Life an AI, but that doesn't mean that you don't have emotions."

"That is a true statement."

"If you don't want to talk about it, then we won't. But you did the world a major favour this last month, and I want to thank you. If that means helping you get over a fear-."

"'Get over'. Explain."

"I don't know how your systems handle it, but with humans, it's sometimes helpful to talk about a fear with someone. Because you build it up in your mind and talking to an uninvolved party might help you put it in its proper perspective."

"That is unlikely. You have eleven minutes remaining of compulsory inactivity. Once they have elapsed, I will contact you again with your assignment."

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February 2013
21:21 GMT +8

Under normal conditions, the Justice League has access to just about all policing data on the planet.

There are exceptions.

Plenty of countries just don't have the ability to collate and upload reports daily. Not enough computers, not enough bandwidth or not enough trained people. Plenty of rural places in poorer countries can't really do it at all, and if we want to know what crimes are like there we'd have to wait until someone physically carries an annual summary to the nearest town or city. The Justice League's charter allows League members to turn up at a police station and demand to see their written records, but even Batman hasn't ever made that anyone's job unless there's an actual mission-related need for it.

And then there are places we're pretty sure lie on their reports, and intelligence agencies sharing what they know is a sometimes-thing.

Right now? Sweet Fanny Adams. We have no idea what's happening across 99.9% of the planet. And that's with Mr. Atom and Rocket Red stealing control of all surviving spy satellites.

Reminds me of The Boys, where Hughie gets excited about Billy working for the CIA only to swiftly be disabused of the notion that they actually run anything. 'Not on their best day could those idiots run the world', I believe was his response.

The Justice League is very good at bringing overwhelming power to bear on a single point. But twenty people, however powerful, can't replace the police of every country on Earth.

Which is why I'm floating over Jinan, China, following Mr. Atom's disaster assessment formula.

Nothing big is on fire. There are a few bonfires, but it's pretty chilly here this time of year and electricity… The electricity supply is currently off. Grid looks like it's mostly intact, and-.

I drop down slowly towards where a mixture of Chinese soldiers and police officers are converging on one of the city's Anti-Life broadcasters.

"Gentlemen."

A couple of soldiers start to raise their guns - regular QBZ-191s, not the more advanced things the Xeno-Teams use- but their… Major, shakes his head and motions for them to lower them.

"Orange Lantern. The Justice League has won?"

"The Anti-Life has been expunged from the Earth, and the main transmitter has been taken off Earth."

Malvolio scooped it out of the ground and dropped it off on the moon. Or maybe it's been moved since, I don't know. I was hoping that New Genesis would take it, but with Orion storming off I guess it didn't come up.

"Is it safe to destroy the transmitters?"

"So far as we can tell, yes."

"What does that mean?"

"It's alien technology from a planet called Apokolips. It can transmit part of their gods' thoughts through it, but with their god driven off it should be safe to destroy. The issue is… Ah, he was doing something complicated with magic when we finally got him and our wizards haven't unpicked it yet."

"Fucking… So, what? We just leave it here?"

"Without the original Anti-Life sample it can't be used for its intended purpose without its creator coming to Earth personally, and we're confident that isn't going to happen in the short term."

"The short term?"

"The god in question is the God of Tyranny. His ultimate aim is to do what we just suffered through -but worse- to the entire universe. We're part of the universe. He'll be back at some point. Which means that your government is probably going to want that in one piece so they can study it."

"We can't just leave it here."

"If you've got a warehouse or a military base, I can move them for you. Until the government in Beijing can give you new orders."

He nods, though some of the police look unhappy with the decision. "That… Yes. Move them to the Jinan Airbase for now."

I nod, attaching construct clamps to the transmitter and pulling it out of the ground.

"What is the state of the world? We're not getting any news."

"We're still putting a picture together. The death toll will likely be large. Pretty much every urban centre went through the same thing that you did, and it wasn't much better in the rural areas."

"We have the city's Dark Lord in chains. Am I to understand that he is not dangerous?"

"Some people were able to internalise aspects of the Anti-Life better than others. One of my friends.. became ruler of Gotham City. I… My personal opinion is that while the people who were able to resist and keep fighting should be lionised, the ones who couldn't… I don't think they should be punished just for being a little weaker. The ones who broke… I watched them kill themselves just to make a point. Because they thought it was the thing to do."

The major twitches in recognition.

"The city bosses were just ahead of the curve. They weren't anymore themselves than the rest. Perhaps… Protective custody for now?"

"At the moment it does not make much difference."

"And now I.. have some questions. Firstly, is there some large and immediate threat to the people of Jinan?"

"The.. power is not working. The military bases and some companies have generators, but I do not know when more fuel will arrive."

I nod. "I'll do a tour of the power plants and get them working. How are you doing for water?"

"I've got men collecting and purifying water from the river. Once power is restored, the water treatment plant should start working again. Then we will start moving the bodies."

I nod. "Secondly, what sort of organisation do you have? Political, military-."

"My commanding officer was the Dark Lord. He killed most of his subordinates. As far as I know, I am the most senior officer still alive near Jinan. I haven't seen a party official yet. Do you know when communications will be restored?"

"It looks like the phone lines were mostly intact. I'd guess that the problem is the power supply again. But usage is going to go crazy once it's working again."

"Then, pending communication from Beijing, I will assume control of Jinan and maintain stability through martial law."

"Have you seen any of the Great Ten?"

"No. I have not seen them since the Anti-Life broadcast started. I have never seen them at close quarters with my own eyes."

"Okay, thank you." I nod respectfully. "I'll check on the power plant now, and pick up the broadcasters once I'm finished."

I raise my right hand to my forehead and

step out, reappearing

in a control room. China gets most of its power from coal and most of the rest from nuclear. Supplies are messed up, so nuclear.

I notice the burned bodies around me, bleeding from dozens of places across their bodies. Ring?

Gamma radiation levels highly above safe levels.

Oh dear.

 

[Mr Zoat]

18th February 2013
21:46 GMT +8

They just took the interior of the reactor apart with picks and hammers. The bodies are piled up around the edges of the room where they were dragged after they keeled over and the others wanted them out of the way so that they could take their turn.

I don't know what they were-.

I've rebuilt the shielding, put the radiological materials back in place and repaired the reactor. Now-.

Recognised, Mister Atom, asterisk.

He steps out of the construct zeta tube, raising his hands. My ring can't entirely decipher the mechanism, but I can detect that radiation is being sucked into him. No matter how little sense that makes.

"Have you identified any major leaks?"

"Some fuel is missing. I'll follow up on it right now."

"The time allotted is five minutes. If you cannot locate it within that time, notify local authorities and proceed to your next city."

I nod and transition myself out of the power plant. Lots of lovely radiation-blocking metal and concrete around here. Honestly, we're lucky that Darkseid thinks that nuclear bombardments are too quick, or a lost fuel rod would be far from the worst thing that happened today.

Worst ongoing thing. Those men having burned themselves to death with fuel rods is… Pretty bad. I don't know if it would be better to believe that they died under the effect of the Anti-Life or that they died after it left. They'd have been more aware of the pain… But maybe it would be better to die free as yourself?

Strong radiation trace that way. Towards the riv-.

Transition.

"Uuuuh."

A man whose skin is more blister than skin is weakly reaching for-.

Stick that in a construct box, purple healing ray and shoot him with it.

"Sir, don't try to move. You're-."

Sufficiently close to death's doorway that I'm a little surprised that you're alive.

"You're in a bad way, but we can fix you up."

Ring, signal Mr. Atom.

Compliance.

"…hurts…"

"Yes, and I'm sorry, about that, but I don't.. want to risk introducing drugs into your system, and your brain is in somewhat less than pristine condition."

On the… Other hand, I… Should be able to remove the sensation of pain. Because that has to hurt.

I extend my environmental shield around… Dr. Li. Oh shit, this is a man whose nervous system doesn't need me poking it for… At least two minutes while the purple ray does its work.

"Two minutes, and then you should be healed enough for me to give you a painkiller without killing you."

"Not important. People… Safe."

"Got to be honest, I'm impressed that you're still alive."

"White God."

Um..? "What do you mean by that?"

"We were… Commanded. Spread radiologicals." He shudders. "I got..." He manages to weakly raise his head and look at the river. "This close before I fell. Then… I saw the White God, and the... My mind cleared. Tried to throw it away, away from the water. Live to shout for attention, warn… Someone. Most… Important thing."

"The White God. It looked like-"

I generate a construct of the Life Entity.

"-this?"

There's something odd in his expression as his eyes lock onto it. He nods, stiffly.

"You saw it?"

He nods again, still staring at the image.

"That happened yesterday?"

Another nod. He lived that long with those radiation burns… Not impossible, but… Unlikely.

I dismiss the construct.

"I understand that the government of the People's Republic of China is not in favour of religion. While I personally know that all of the Earth owes the being you saw a great deal, it might be a good idea not to talk about it too freely."

He looks up at me and nods stiffly. There's some actual skin on his face now, which is a significant improvement. So… He drew on the white light. Not much, but enough to keep his body alive while he tried to get the fuel rod away from the river.

I know that the Life Entity can empower people. That's why Nommo's still alive after all this time. But that isn't common. He described the process as reaching into the furthest limits of the Earth's thaumosphere through meditation. But… If the Life Entity is… Occupying the space Mannheim created rather than where the Guardians put it…

Then it would now be easier. And we can't really have a bigger target painted on the planet than 'successfully opposed Darkseid'…

Well, if we can then we now do. And if we can't then we can't.

Alright, Doctor Li looks recovered enough not to keel over. I numb his extremities and… Use ring power to accelerate the rate of repairs, patching up the parts that are too badly damaged for the purple healing ray's regeneration enhancement to affect. Only a few more moments pass, then he's back to full physical fitness. I reach out to offer him a hand up.

He takes it, looking a little stunned as he examines himself.

"Thank you."

"I can fly you back to the power plant if you like?"

"Thank you, no. I would like to take the time it will take to walk there to think things over. I… Am not sure, of a great many things."

"Rightoh."

I transition back to the power plant, next to Mr. Atom as he closes his radiation absorption vents.

"I got the fuel rod and the scientist, but we might have a problem. He saw the Life Entity."

"Yes."

"You're not surprised?"

"Initial interviews suggest that the closer a human was tied to the Anti-Life, the clearer and more intense their vision of the Life Entity was. They do not understand what it was they saw, but they know that it was part of what freed them."

He takes the fuel rod from me and eats it.

"Create a new zeta tube construct. I am needed elsewhere."