PJCG
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With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)
- Thread starter Mr Zoat
- Start date
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- Tags
- self-insert young justice
Darko
Connoisseur.
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"no further"
Chojin Patriarch
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Also, the absolutely bizarre metallic biology of the native population. Doesn't really fit with the other planets in the system, does it? I see they don't really have any dog in the fight against the Thanagarians, though. Wonder if they'll keep out if it...
Though I expect they're very careful with their use. Not really the kind of thing you want running loose in an unfamiliar ecosystem.
Heh. They sound like the classic 'ultimate defensive build' sort of 4X race. Hard to deal with a planet that's unpleasantly hostile to any ground troops that might land, especially if the locals are resistant to the same conditions.
Some sort of metal-eating plant, perhaps.
Naturally patient folks, eh? At least when it comes to important things.
OL getting a little distracted, eh?
Never know how some small detail might become important.
To be fair, she is a bit more vulnerable to death than OL is. He's a bit shot of it, having done it a couple of times now.
Not the time, OL.
He was very apologetic about the tentacle thing, though. And the Ring thing did a lot of good for the Vietnamese.
Ah, right, nearly freezing to death at the hands of Killer Frost.
Admittedly, that was the League or the Courts, not OL personally.
Guessing the planet has a lot of claims laid on it by the other polities. And it's hard to have a solid relationship misunderstanding with an Empath.
He's just a bit blase about the whole dying thing these days, isn't he?
Ah, he just understands that Jade can take care of herself and hovering concernedly isn't helpful, eh?
I mean, a little spice in the bedroom never hurt anyone..
I think they're starting to get a little distracted with this little discussion...
I suppose he should, if only to touch base.
And if he isn't in a high position anymore, he can always point OL towards someone who is.
No time-wasting with pleasantries, I see. I'm Guessing Kromm has been steeling himself for this call once they saw him in orbit.
What, no defiance? I'm surprised.
...Relatively speaking, anyway.
What's the bet it was far better than anything Hyathis had beforehand?
Evidently those hopes were in vain.
Not that there's much need to make a personal showing or anything, given the radiation.
Ah, still chasing this lead. Hopefully it's not made from Mosteelian bodies or something.
Might have been a trick the Dhorians worked out that wouldn't work for Mosteel.
Huh. So it doesn't rule out someone copying the tech involved on all sides.
Oh, that's definitely bad.
That sounds like a system-wide issue, because stars really aren't meant to move like that. At the least, there's going to be massive solar flares as the surface stabilises. The real worry is who did that and how. There were ships over there, right? I didn't think Thanagarian technology had anything capable of this, does it?
Vaermina
Well worn.
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Man, Orange Lantern has really really made things worse for this star system.
BR549
This is filth! FILTH!!
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To be fair, considering the evolutionary adaptations of the Mosteel themselves, radiation is, metaphorically, their hammer, and we all know what one does with a hammer when it is all you have.
'past'
I don't think it's the Thanagarians. They might want to blow up five-sixths of the solar system, but the fact their entire fleet went charging in indicates they're not doing that; even if they're simply going to slingshot through the system at max burn, you don't send twelve command carriers to chuck a sun-killer at the star and run, you send one cruiser.
Meanwhile, recall that Hyathis was caught completely off-guard by being informed that gamma gongs had been used to control a Thangarian official; the Dhorians didn't outright deny it but didn't confirm it either while pointing OL to look elsewhere for the culprit, and the Mosteel basically said "yes we know how to make them but why would we?".
I have a feeling somebody is playing every party in this conflict, and they've just started their endgame.
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ziggrrauglurr
Stood behind the last guy when Gravitas was given
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Now that's a cliffhanger!
Is it wrong that the political exploits in fallout verse is more appealing then the main story?
Mr Zoat
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Thank you, corrected.
Being in the minority doesn't make you wrong, except mathematically.
Artemisnemo
Getting sticky.
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Ah, gotcha it's a surviving Psion.
mastermenthe
Mint Thistle
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Do you think OL has what it takes to singlehandedly stabilize the sun?
Steelplaza
Custom Title
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The premise of this entire investigation is wrong.
The story hawk guy intel chief told is that he was mind controlled to only act in ways that would benefit his controller's objectives, and he managed to convince himself that striking OL would do that, when really he wanted to reveal himself so as to end his ability to sabotage Thanagar.
The controlling party didn't want OL dead. That was the intel chef's idea. At least that is how I understood his explanation.
The story hawk guy intel chief told is that he was mind controlled to only act in ways that would benefit his controller's objectives, and he managed to convince himself that striking OL would do that, when really he wanted to reveal himself so as to end his ability to sabotage Thanagar.
The controlling party didn't want OL dead. That was the intel chef's idea. At least that is how I understood his explanation.
PDV
Revelation That Uncertainty Is Itself An Answer
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Striking OL and failing didn't serve their objectives. That doesn't narrow it down. Best not miss.
Mosteel is acting like they want to deny it but expect to be facing a lie detector. Interesting on both sides.
Zig
Not too sore, are you?
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The Earth's or Tamaran's suns maybe. Some random sun like this? Probably not.
BR549
This is filth! FILTH!!
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Zig
Not too sore, are you?
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Not that significantly and he has pointed out he has no strong preference for her vs Thangar
Replanting (part 19)
New
Mr Zoat
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8th September 2013
11:02 GMT
'See' on my ring's instant scan, obviously. The light won't reach us for about five hours. And maybe by then I'll have recovered my equanimity, because making stars wobble is hard. Massive magnetic fields can do it -I read a science fiction novel before coming to this universe where an A.I. species used a powerful electromagnet to expose a star's core and sterilise a nearby planet with radiation, and I checked the physics involved after I got here- but the machine required to do something like that isn't exactly small. I'd certainly have noticed if there was one in this system.
A sun eater would make it shrink as more energy was extracted, but that's not what that was.
Um.
The images of half a dozen theoretical doomsday weapons appear in my mind, but I'm reasonably sure that Dr. Sivana hasn't been anywhere near Antares.
I need-.
To not rush off, and I need to not assume that people are telling me the truth just because there's no obvious reason for them to lie.
I look down, following the tread of intent to find Kromm. There he is, and there's… An air of fulfilment about him that suggests that he isn't expecting this to end with his surrender to anyone.
"Jade-."
"The Thanagarians have noticed. Their scouts are redirecting for a closer look."
"And the Alstairans?"
"No reaction."
"I'm going to forcefully interrogate Kromm. If it turns out that this isn't a-."
"Go. I'll continue monitoring."
I
step out, moving towards the place where Kromm's desires exist in the Honden. But it's not just him. I can see similar structures with enough differences to show them as belonging to different people, desires to destroy and become supreme. And if they were thwarted desires then they'd look different, but they appear to be very much in place. I
appear in their… Command centre, heavy armour appearing around my body as I do so and just about catching the first volley of incoming fire because these people didn't survive hundreds of years of war by being slow off the mark.
Kromm is already being hustled out of the room by his bodyguards, but not fast enough to escape my construct claw. An alarm rings out and guards with heavier weapons dash in, but my railgun construct shoots holes in their guns before they can bring them to bear. No sense in worrying about the smaller weapons.
Kromm's face looks fairly blank as I haul him closer.
"If it turns out that you were being honest, then I'm sorry about this."
Brand.
Compliance.
There's a brief flare of orange light, and though the brand itself is covered by his armour, his eyes are glowing the classical orange.
"You want to be honest with me."
"That is true."
"Sir-!"
Another surge of orange light sends the soldiers slamming into the walls, though their metallic nature means that they're not really injured by the impact.
"What's going on?"
"You're attacking our command centre. It's been almost two hundred years since-."
"With the sun."
"At the moment, it should be stage one."
"Of?"
"Our plan to end the war in our favour. Our interdiction fields should be going back up shortly; they're not controlled from here. We couldn't risk it."
"Why not?"
He points to-. Ah.
A radiotrophic plant growing from the ceiling. The flowers add some pleasant colour to the room, but that's clearly not a native organism.
"Hyathis already won. But we already knew that was going to happen, and so we prepared for it."
"Are you sending your sun nova?"
"Not yet. We have to lure in the thanagarians first."
"Jade, warn them."
"They're using broad-spectrum jamming."
And it's not like we have a-.
"Bleez is a spy. Is there a-?"
"I'm looking for it now."
"Okay, so you bring a thanagarian fleet here and send your sun nova. Prevent them escaping and you turn a defeat for you into a defeat for everyone."
"Technically, our sun won't go nova. It doesn't have enough mass. It will just begin turning into a red giant."
"Which-." Ring, calculate the-. "You're outside of the peak expansion range."
"And we quite like the increase in radiation. The worlds of our rival will be consumed, along with the thanagarian fleet. Thanagar could attack us, except that they won't have the spare fleet capacity any longer."
"And they'll probably blame either Alstair or Dhor anyway."
"We're not relying on it. Most of our fleet are in our subterranean hangars."
"Even if you triggered the expansion phase, the sun expanding should take enough time that the thanagarian fleet could just turn around and fly out at sub-light."
"The sun will expand at a massively accelerated rate. More slowly after the inner planets are consumed, but fast enough that the thanagarian carriers won't be able to turn around quickly enough to escape it. Not when their crews are paralysed."
"Paral-?"
My body freezes, a sensation I remember well from the last time I was exposed to a gamma gong.
"Like that. It actually doesn't affect my species in the way it does yours. That 'wobble' you saw from the sun was it ejecting just enough matter to cause the effect to precipitate across the entire system. Honestly, I feel that I should apologise. If I'd realised that you were going to be this much of a non-issue, I wouldn't have made our agent on Thanagar try to kill you."
11:02 GMT
'See' on my ring's instant scan, obviously. The light won't reach us for about five hours. And maybe by then I'll have recovered my equanimity, because making stars wobble is hard. Massive magnetic fields can do it -I read a science fiction novel before coming to this universe where an A.I. species used a powerful electromagnet to expose a star's core and sterilise a nearby planet with radiation, and I checked the physics involved after I got here- but the machine required to do something like that isn't exactly small. I'd certainly have noticed if there was one in this system.
A sun eater would make it shrink as more energy was extracted, but that's not what that was.
Um.
The images of half a dozen theoretical doomsday weapons appear in my mind, but I'm reasonably sure that Dr. Sivana hasn't been anywhere near Antares.
I need-.
To not rush off, and I need to not assume that people are telling me the truth just because there's no obvious reason for them to lie.
I look down, following the tread of intent to find Kromm. There he is, and there's… An air of fulfilment about him that suggests that he isn't expecting this to end with his surrender to anyone.
"Jade-."
"The Thanagarians have noticed. Their scouts are redirecting for a closer look."
"And the Alstairans?"
"No reaction."
"I'm going to forcefully interrogate Kromm. If it turns out that this isn't a-."
"Go. I'll continue monitoring."
I
step out, moving towards the place where Kromm's desires exist in the Honden. But it's not just him. I can see similar structures with enough differences to show them as belonging to different people, desires to destroy and become supreme. And if they were thwarted desires then they'd look different, but they appear to be very much in place. I
appear in their… Command centre, heavy armour appearing around my body as I do so and just about catching the first volley of incoming fire because these people didn't survive hundreds of years of war by being slow off the mark.
Kromm is already being hustled out of the room by his bodyguards, but not fast enough to escape my construct claw. An alarm rings out and guards with heavier weapons dash in, but my railgun construct shoots holes in their guns before they can bring them to bear. No sense in worrying about the smaller weapons.
Kromm's face looks fairly blank as I haul him closer.
"If it turns out that you were being honest, then I'm sorry about this."
Brand.
Compliance.
There's a brief flare of orange light, and though the brand itself is covered by his armour, his eyes are glowing the classical orange.
"You want to be honest with me."
"That is true."
"Sir-!"
Another surge of orange light sends the soldiers slamming into the walls, though their metallic nature means that they're not really injured by the impact.
"What's going on?"
"You're attacking our command centre. It's been almost two hundred years since-."
"With the sun."
"At the moment, it should be stage one."
"Of?"
"Our plan to end the war in our favour. Our interdiction fields should be going back up shortly; they're not controlled from here. We couldn't risk it."
"Why not?"
He points to-. Ah.
A radiotrophic plant growing from the ceiling. The flowers add some pleasant colour to the room, but that's clearly not a native organism.
"Hyathis already won. But we already knew that was going to happen, and so we prepared for it."
"Are you sending your sun nova?"
"Not yet. We have to lure in the thanagarians first."
"Jade, warn them."
"They're using broad-spectrum jamming."
And it's not like we have a-.
"Bleez is a spy. Is there a-?"
"I'm looking for it now."
"Okay, so you bring a thanagarian fleet here and send your sun nova. Prevent them escaping and you turn a defeat for you into a defeat for everyone."
"Technically, our sun won't go nova. It doesn't have enough mass. It will just begin turning into a red giant."
"Which-." Ring, calculate the-. "You're outside of the peak expansion range."
"And we quite like the increase in radiation. The worlds of our rival will be consumed, along with the thanagarian fleet. Thanagar could attack us, except that they won't have the spare fleet capacity any longer."
"And they'll probably blame either Alstair or Dhor anyway."
"We're not relying on it. Most of our fleet are in our subterranean hangars."
"Even if you triggered the expansion phase, the sun expanding should take enough time that the thanagarian fleet could just turn around and fly out at sub-light."
"The sun will expand at a massively accelerated rate. More slowly after the inner planets are consumed, but fast enough that the thanagarian carriers won't be able to turn around quickly enough to escape it. Not when their crews are paralysed."
"Paral-?"
My body freezes, a sensation I remember well from the last time I was exposed to a gamma gong.
"Like that. It actually doesn't affect my species in the way it does yours. That 'wobble' you saw from the sun was it ejecting just enough matter to cause the effect to precipitate across the entire system. Honestly, I feel that I should apologise. If I'd realised that you were going to be this much of a non-issue, I wouldn't have made our agent on Thanagar try to kill you."
lancelot
Grand High Poobah
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There is no reason Paul should need to move an inch to use his ring or to get his ring to move his body around. Branding, or knocking out everybody else in the command center than commanding them to turn off the doomsday device and the gong should be child's play.
If there's one thing I dislike about this story is Paul's repeated need to overcomplicate everything.
If there's one thing I dislike about this story is Paul's repeated need to overcomplicate everything.
Ngamer11
Experienced.
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To be fair, we ended with Paul just getting paralyzed. I'm confident that he'll have his Construct-Lanterns take care of enemy combatants while he finds out from Kromm how to undo what happened, assuming it's possible.
inglorius
Know what you're doing yet?
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Indeed, just like he already did a couple chapters ago. This Kromm dude is underestimating lanterns.
Chojin Patriarch
Veteran Lurker
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Something like that would have to be the size of a moon, at the least. Stars are not small, nor are the kinds of devices that could successfully interact with anything past their outer shell of stellar plasma.
I imagine that looked more like a giant slap to the surface...
Which says concerning things about the kinds of thing Doctor Sivana can and has created.
...Oh, he is totally behind this.
Sensible, but quite dangerous, I suspect.
That's also suspicious.
Well, diplomacy is out the window. Time to be the big sledgehammer of Lantern power.
So him and his subordinates were all aware of this happening, from the sounds of it.
Impressive reaction time.
"Get over here!" No escape for this guy.
Sadly, I fully expect he was honest about 'submitting' to Thanagar. But if Thanagar isn't going to be an issue...
At least their minds work normally enough to that to work.
At least now he'll want to monologue.
More of a 'sit down and shut up' reminder than anything.
Ha, ha, totally literally minded. You know what he means, Kromm.
...Of how many? That doesn't sound good.
Blocking off at least their part of the system. Won't stop people fleeing via other routes, though.
Ah. The Alstairian equivalent of a security camera, perhaps?
Seems a bit nasty, but given that they don't seem to use much of it anyway here at the outer rim of the system...
Because of course they are.
Quantum-entanglement communicator or similar. Something that won't give a flying fudge about jamming signals.
Although the Mosteelians are likely to shrug off the electromagnetic effects, I bet.
Whereas the other life-bearing planets are not. An extremely vicious method of claiming victory.
Given the evidence they've seen, anyway. They might well assume the expansion was an unintended result of a super-weapon or something.
Since it's limited to light-speed. Unless they somehow made it super-luminal.
Oh, hell. Gongs.
Thing is, OL doesn't need to move his body to do stuff.
So, the Mosteelians have basically enacted a doomsday weapon release, because they don't need to worry much about the side-effects like the paralysis. Naturally, there's no off-switch, either. So OL's going to have to send off his Construct Lanterns and possibly have to learn how to partially constructify himself to get all this sorted out.
ziggrrauglurr
Stood behind the last guy when Gravitas was given
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So not at all!
Wonderful moment with self actualization there with "I need.... To not rush off"
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mastermenthe
Mint Thistle
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Hyathis Ruins Everything. Again.
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WereDragon
Bookwyrm
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Hubris
noun
(in Greek tragedy) an excess of ambition, pride, etc, ultimately causing the transgressor's ruin
Paralysis is not an effective weapon against Lanterns. Or constructs. Or the Ophidian.