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

13th September 2012
09:11 GMT -5

"Hey..!"

Kara is glaring at the man hanging from where her right hand grips his jacket.

"I didn't do it!"

"Didn't… Do… What?"

"Whatever got you pissed off!"

Okay, he does look quite a lot like Nylor, but the face beneath the beard isn't quite the right shape, the hair's too long, and the DNA and mind state are completely wrong.

"Supergirl, that's not him."

She cranes her neck to get a closer look, narrowing her eyes at him as he grins and nods.

"Are you sure?"

"Fairly sure. I mean, Mister Williams doesn't even have any outstanding warrants at the moment."

I'm going to ignore the small packet of dried hallucinogenic plant in his back pocket, because it probably came from Swamp Thing and so is safe in the conventional sense of the term. Puking up your own lungs, no. Profound revelations about the world and your place in it, maybe.

Kara frowns slightly as she puts him down.

"Though if you don't mind me asking, Mister Williams, what brings you this far north?"

"Brazil. Not all-." He straightens his jacket and clears his throat. "All that many people in the US of A know much of anything about magic plants, and I guess my name came up since the big guy wasn't answering. Ah… You know who I am?"

"I've had the pleasure of meeting Swamp Thing on several occasions. Who exactly called you up?"

"The Senate Foreign Relations committee. Normally I'd try to avoid the federal government, but I figure that if they hear me out they're less likely to try anything stupid."

Kara narrows her eyes suspiciously.

"I can see your brain."

He shifts awkwardly. "Hey, a guy's gotta live. It's not shilling if all I'm doing is telling the man to stop being the man."

"No, that sounds entirely legitimate. I'd much rather the US didn't nuke Brazil. Keep up the good work. Supergirl, might I have a moment of your time?"

"Of course!"

She turns her head upwards and starts to rise off the ground.

"But is there something that you'd like to say to Mister Williams first?"

"Oh." She nods. "Yes." She raises her right fist to her mouth. "A-hem."

She looks directly at him, her expression completely serious.

"Take a bath, hippy."

And then she shoots into the air.

Mister Williams watches her go with his mouth slightly open.

"What was that about?"

"I'm sorry, she's.. only just arrived on Earth. You look a little like a man we're looking for, and she mistook you for him. Have a nice day."

I transition up to where New Kara is staring into the distance, her eyes searching for Nylor Truggs. Or possibly a Republican rally, though I imagine that Senator Knight can win this without her help.

"Kara, I don't know how you did things on Krypton, but on Earth it's considered impolite to pick people up, insult them and then leave."

"But he smells weird!"

Oh. Right. Super smell.

"I'm afraid that on Earth, 'smelling weird' is not an excuse for treating people like that. I appreciate that super senses can take a little getting used to-."

She frowns, her eyes moving from the distance to me.

"You don't smell at all."

"Environmental shield. No chemicals are leaving my body, and the environmental shield doesn’t interact chemically with the air around me. If I took my rings off I would smell similarly strange to you."

She wrinkles her nose. "Uuuuuugh."

"Are you having a problem? I could create some sort of nose shield-."

"No, I'm okay." She exhales sharply. "I really thought I had him."

"Nylor hasn't remained at liberty by being easy to detect. Though… How good is your vision?"

"If I focus really hard, I can see your DNA molecules. But it looks like that means I smell and hear everything, too."

"Nylor's got a lot of bio-mods from the future. He should be the only person on the planet who does."

She shrugs. "Yes, but I don't know what they look-." She cuts herself off and points into the distance, perking up at once. "Is that him?"

Ring?

"No."

Her face falls, then perks up again. "Is that him?"

"No."

"Darn it! Oh, how about that?"

"Kara, I appreciate your eagerness, but I don't think this approach is going to work. There are several billion humans on the planet, and-"

"That one?"

"-you-. No, and you won't be able to see them all. You can't see through lead or other dense materials, and I wouldn't be surprised if Nylor had some sort of magic disguise by now."

Below and well behind us, the other Supergirls are catching up.

"If detecting Nylor was easy, he wouldn't have escaped from the Legion and he wouldn't have dodged the Justice League for so long."

"But-!" She sags. "Okay. Do you know how we can find him?"

"If I knew-."

Hang on.

"Exactly how good is your hearing?"

 

13th September 2012
09:19 GMT -5

I shrug as another possible number goes to an answering machine.

"Oh well. It was worth-."

"Connection made to monitored phone line."

I raise my eyebrows and Old Kara frowns, unable to believe that it was that simple. New Kara on the other hand closes her eyes completely.

"Answer."

"Hey Paul."

"Good morning, Nylor."

"How you been?"

"Gosh, it's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Lonely. You don't call, you don't write… Not like I gave you a forwarding address."

"I died again. The Reach managed to get hold of some qwa-matter."

"Ah, I've heard of that stuff. Pretty powerful. But here you are."

"Here I am. The war's going in line with expectations; the Reach are being pushed inwards and they're losing Scarabs at a satisfactory rate."

"Always makes me smile."

Dana frowns. "Are you..? Two..? Dating?"

I roll my eyes and shake my head. "Hey, do you remember Dana Dearden?"

"Heh, 'This is live?' girl?" Dana rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I remember her. Something happen?"

"Back when we had that problem with Eliminations, Inc. Do you remember some of your memories being… Disjointed?"

"Enough hits t' the head an' yah get used to it. … I remember. Something happen yah wanna tell me about?"

"Apparently, we were both briefly guests of the Legion of Superheroes in a patch of time that got erased afterwards. I don't remember it, and I assume that you don’t either."

…

"They caught me?"

"That's what alarms you about it? We had-."

"I knew they were going t' come for me. Thought I was ready for them."

"If it helps, Dana told me that you got away from them, so maybe it worked. But this sounds believable to you?"

"In one of your interviews, you said that orange power rings give people what they want. You also said you had a perfect memory. I could see you calling me up if someone made you forget something. Maybe."

"The Legion isn't happy with me, either."

"Are you telling me you actually are a time traveller?"

"No. And-. Wait, did I ever explain to you that I changed the structure of time so that alternate pasts and futures can exist?"

"N-. W-? Y-. … How?"

"Vanishing Point, Krona the ex-Guardian, giant temporal tuning forks. So while your future is still the same, this future can be something different."

"That-. I need a moment here. Ah, so you're telling me that changing the past doesn't matter, because the present would stay the same, and all you're doing is creating an alternate timeline."

"I think… Minor things get incorporated, so you could go back and hide something, then return to your original present and find it. But for big things, yes. It's an energy calculation."

"Okay, that doesn't-. I don’t think it changes what I'm doing. I mean, if we're going to improve humanity's future, it's a good thing we're not erasing a future that already exists to do it, right?"

"That was my thinking, but apparently Quirrell Dox has got a bit of a thing about us, and-."

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Quirrell Dox? Brainiac Five? Formerly leader of the Legion of Superheroes?"

"His name is 'Querl'. Querl Dox."

I frown and look at Dana, who takes a moment to notice and then nods.

"Oh. I must have misremembered."

New Kara opens her eyes slightly, squinting at me.

"Making me think I should take back what I said about perfect memory. Or is it only-."

"Perfect for anything that happened while I was wearing my rings, because-."

"Because you can't reconstruct a memory that isn't all there, yah?"

"So if you see any Legion members around the place, let me know and I’ll send them on their way. Also… Bit of a silly thing, but you wouldn't have anything to do with all of the Supergirls, would you?"

"Ah? Supergirls?"

"Yes, we've been getting a lot of them and we don't really know why?"

"Parallel universe Supergirls?"

"One is, but the rest-"

New Kara's eyes open wide.

"Found him."

"-are other women who happen to use the name."

There's a rush of displaced air as New Kara disappears, and Angelika activates a Justice League issue computer so that she can track her.

"What's that got t' do with me?"

"I'm just trying to eliminate you from my enquiries. I mean, if it's not you then I've got to try and get in touch with Ambush-."

"Ghk!"

"Ambush Bug. See you shortly."

Angelika shows me her screen. "It cannot detect her exact location, but her last known location is here."

"I'll set up a zeta tube when I arrive."

I step out

and reappear… Hm, yes, it's obvious where Kara went. Have to make sure that the road is still structurally sound later. I'm picking up runic patterns and.. novel materials that are disrupting more mundane scans. I accelerate, following Kara's path until I emerge in a… Mad science warehouse, seeing Nylor dangling from Kara's hand.

"Can I pick him up like this?"