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

Discussion in 'Creative Writing' started by Mr Zoat, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. Syphi

    Syphi Reading four stories at a time.

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    I actually don't think this situation is OL's fault. Just uh...my thoughts.
     
  2. Stsword

    Stsword Versed in the lewd.

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    Technically Zoat made it up, which would be why.

    It's a logical enough conclusion- the king cobra imagery (being native to India among other places), the occasional use of Sanskrit "Naga-naga!" using the Hindu term Kali Yuga.

    I do not believe that DC comics ever actually officially linked the Kobra cult to Hinduism however.

    Perhaps they didn't wish to link crazy snake terrorists to a major real world religion.

    DC being DC, the Lords of Chaos and Order also use the Hindu term Kali Yuga so he could have just as easily canon wielded Kobra so that they are Chaos worshippers and Kobra is a wannabe Lord of Chaos.

    Actually I'm kind of surprised Zoat hasn't done more with them. In the comics, they have their own magicians, they mass produced snake people, and they made Strike Force Kobra by reverse engineering the incidents that gave Batman villains their powers.
     
  3. Ngamer11

    Ngamer11 Experienced.

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    Mr Zoat, the latest threadmark is missing it's number.
     
  4. Handlewithcare

    Handlewithcare Versed in the lewd.

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    sound of shit breaking

    ...

    "Grandmaaaa?"

    "Oh for the love of the Source...WHAT???"
     
  5. Chojin Patriarch

    Chojin Patriarch Veteran Lurker

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    There are some things that just feel right. A brooding general looming over a map of the world. Troop movements ticking in, updating in real time. Intelligence reports from all over the world. Yes, X-COM is a good metaphor. Let's hope there's no 'failing to hit on a 95% chance of success attack', though.

    What use would he be? A warm body to throw in the way? a martial artist of middling skill compared to some? Eh.

    That's about all the use some of these goons will be, I think. Dumb muscle to fill out squads.

    In other words, you won't be rolling him out for every fight you get in. Smart.

    I mean, Satanus wasn't exactly guiltless or likely to walk free, but I can still see Batman being annoyed that OL basically executed him.

    Well, at least they're safe. Guess all those wards paid off.

    So, it's basically some of the League, the Team and Task Force X to fight the entire world. Hoo-ray.

    ...Not sure off-world backup is going to be much use. Not if they aren't resistant or immune to Anti-Life, and that seems unlikely.

    Now, would John accept that order? Like hell he would. Which would result in his ring being revoked.

    Would any Green lantern, no matter how blindly loyal, accept such an order? Well, other than the ones who don't like their homeworld.

    Heh. One guess why, and she's a very pretty blonde.

    Though I think 'mass alteration of humanity's desire networks' might be on the back-burner for now. That's one hell of a Godzilla Threshold.

    OL might not be able to, but Satanus...

    Though, as noted, unless said aid is resistant to Anti-Life, they're more likely to become part of the problem...

    Ah, Arcane architecture. Always so picturesque.

    Might be a matter of being able to get signal in here. The Tower isn't exactly part of normal space right now.

    Ah, the power ring equivalent of one bar.

    Probably the best memorial to him they can get, what with Nabu erased from the Helmet.

    Good plan to check that. Never know if they might have a Justified telepath or similar out there just waiting for a chance to crack a few brains.

    Once was enough for a lifetime, thank you. ...Maybe after the next time you die, then.

    Very sensible precautions. No doubt the Tower has plenty of unseen Servants ready to make use of said murder holes.

    ...Oh, that's not creepy at all, no. :confused:

    ...Not unless you feel like putting on a Justifier helmet, I suspect.

    Sounds like they're receiving instructions, but each is carrying them out individually. Like, if they see someone else is moving to answer, they stay silent. ...Like automata made of meat.

    And no doubt the Dark Side is looking through their eyes, trying to work out what you're doing.

    ["Wake Up" intensifies.] Classy.

    The anti-life Broadcasts must be futzing up the Spectrum signal. It's like 'Can you hear me now?' all over again.

    Still in atmosphere, and thus within the metaphysical boundaries of 'Earth'. Gonna have to go a little further. Like the Moon?

    "Before I explain, let me say: This was not my fault."
    "Bullshit."
    "
    It wasn't! I swear!"

    Ah, finally got a little bit of reception, huh? Let's hope all is well over on Maltus. I rather suspect the Ophidian has been a little surly since the broadcast started. At any rate, I suspect Hinon will be hitting the red-alert button once she hears what's going on. After all, White Light Entity holding pen plus Anti-Life outbreak is not a good combination...


    Double Space.
     
  6. iamnuff

    iamnuff Connoisseur.

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    Oh it's almost like somebody went very far overboard when warding the mountain.
    For some reason.
    Who was that again, I can't quite remember?
     
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  7. Vaermina

    Vaermina Well worn.

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    No, it is.

    He half assed his original inspection duties when the towers first started going up and relied solely on his Ring scans even knowing the proliferation of ring blocking stuff making its way around the globe.

    After which he started low key supporting the Alliance because they were doing a thing he liked.
     
    Eld_Tiger likes this.
  8. Ganurath

    Ganurath Apologizes For Nothing

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    Catalyzing event was the League raid on Apokalypse, which was caused by butterflies he set in motion when he initially fused with Ophidian.

    So, it's Martian Manhunter's fault.
     
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  9. NightmareWarden

    NightmareWarden Versed in the lewd.

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    I hope Weaponer Kalmin interrupts the call and decides to join the fun personally. Destroying a piece of the Source (some anti-life) beyond recovery could be fun. There is SCIENCE! to be done.
     
  10. crazygrox

    crazygrox Versed in the lewd.

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    I mean, if you take an extreme view of his ability to accidentally passively influence others into following his wants, then you could blame the general success of the Alliance of the Just on his desire that superheroes be more organized.
    And there may have been opportunities to be more nosy when they were setting up those unscannable quantum communication systems briefly mentioned around the chapters involving the heartland, or the more recent teleportation systems.
    And his action led to the League of Shadows' destruction, which halted their policy of assassinating neophyte superheroes, and may have significantly enhanced the rise of the Alliance of the Just.

    But it's pretty reasonable to miss that they were up to up to anything, and he's not really directly responsible for their existence or infiltration, I don't even buy the desire influence explanation myself, unless it was something he primarily did by accident during the Ophidian possession that's effects are only gradually making themselves known ages later.

    OL is clever guy and a good strategist, but maybe the lesson to learn from this incident is to be more unreasonably paranoid about making sure he knows everything about everything going on? So as to be even better prepared.
     
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  11. Pinklestia

    Pinklestia Well worn.

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    Yeah is actually certain British mage fault.
     
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  12. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Hinduism had Thugees. I think they'll live with a fictional demonimation of evil.
    Thank you, corrected.
    Her hair's white.
    Thank you, corrected.
     
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  13. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    It kinda is, since Paul's fusing with the Ophidian lead to the Forever People staying away from the mountain and that allowed them to confront Desaad and Manheim and lose, which lead to this.
     
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  14. Clell65619

    Clell65619 Making the rounds.

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    There is nothing quite like a judgmental supervisor.
     
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  15. Windona

    Windona Beetle Queen of Crackshipping

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    Well, it is interesting to see how the broadcast interferes with ring communications. And to see Batman side eying Paul even as he let's those actions slide.

    Aha! It's Martian Manhunter and Batman's fault!
     
  16. BartlettMagic

    BartlettMagic peekaboo, you fucks you!

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    yay! i love grumpy old Aunty Orange!
     
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  17. Bud-E

    Bud-E Stand up so I can push you down!

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    Um, actually it's grumpy old Granny Orange.
     
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  18. BartlettMagic

    BartlettMagic peekaboo, you fucks you!

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    my mistake. the "generally wise and curmudgeonly" types around here are usually Aunts, so that's where i tend to default.
     
  19. Duke Long

    Duke Long Glomerulus

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    The first two of these are from previous days.
    ‘in an’, or something like that.
    ‘organisational’
    Should they all have /s between them, or is it deliberate to show asynchronicity?

    Just caught up from the last few chapters, and I liked them quite a lot. Thought the theology was neat, and the idea that this is going to be a protracted campaign is interesting. When Paragon sorted people from Belle Reve into groups, did the wizard group only include staff wizards, or was it also criminal wizards? If the latter, I wonder if he also sent his wizard constructs. He has a couple of those now. Also, wonder how Construct-Lantern Morrow is doing right now. He’s still around, right?
     
  20. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
    Wizards in America are either very powerful (like Mr. Zard) or barely worth mentioning, and they're pretty rare in either case.
     
  21. Duke Long

    Duke Long Glomerulus

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    ’destroy’

    From Anti-thesis, ages ago. Was looking back because I remembered liking that episode, especially the part where they discuss Kalmin’s philosophy.
     
  22. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Thank you, corrected.
     
  23. Bud-E

    Bud-E Stand up so I can push you down!

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    Mr Zoat I know it was stated earlier that there is only a handful of Guardians left is that also true for Controllers and Zamorons?
     
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  24. Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    Sort of. There aren't all that many purely Maltusian Zamarons, but there are plenty of hybrids. Controllers slightly outnumber the Guardians, but the significant thing there is that there are unaligned maltusians who are more inclined to join them than another faction.
     
  25. Doccer

    Doccer I trust you know where the happy button is?

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    "Apparently make you look like an aborted fetus that didn't die."
    "Look like a what if a human and a warthog had a furless baby that grew up in a very angry home. With insomnia."
    "Acts like G-Virus lite, now with less eyeballs, lucky you."
    "I wanna make a Stevenson reference but there's no 'Dr. Jekyll' here. More of an outside matches your insides. Which is butt ugly really."
    "Was that with or without years of you drinking contaminated water from a chemical factory?"
    And the number one burn is! *Drumroll*:
    "By the way I am all about giving people superpowers, for free, and hardly anyone accepts them, but I've personally Dannered several people without them looking like the Thing we sell to the circus. The US could've just called me up to Danner their distinguished soldiers. My phone number is public, you know?"
     
  26. Threadmarks: Jet Fighter (part 4)
    Mr Zoat

    Mr Zoat Dedicated ragequitter

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    31st December 2012
    15:42 GMT -5


    "Nice to hear from you, Controller Hinon."

    "What. Did. You. Do?

    "Summoning the Ophidian into myself caused a group of New Gods to go directly to their secondary objective instead of visiting Mount Justice. This… Indirectly contributed to them being captured and imprisoned on Apokolips. That led to the human who masterminded the Earth-end of the fight being turned into some sort of avatar of Darkseid, and he's just Anti-Lifed the entire planet Earth."

    "… Ah."

    "Given what's buried in the Earth, that's obviously really bad. The problem is that while I'm familiar with normal Anti-Life broadcasters, there doesn't appear to be any equivalent thing in use at the moment. My current theory is that Mannheim -that's the avatar's original name- has done something clever to use the thaumosphere itself as the broadcast medium."

    "What is the current state of your species?"

    "It doesn't.. look like the death toll is too high, at the moment. I'd say… There are…" Atlantis has a total population of about twenty million, plus Kahndaq's eighty million... If we assume that their shielding is completely successful… "Let's say a hundred million definitely free, an unknown number at least in the thousands fully Justified and everyone else suffering from something like clinical depression."

    "Fleet elements?"

    I look around.

    "Nothing yet. Since I'm still active I could attack fleet elements myself. I can't do that on the ground due to a lack of targets and the fact that the 'enemy army' are effectively hostages."

    "Other New Gods?"

    "If you mean 'Apokoliptians', I haven't seen any Elite so far. There's a giant god-robot in Washington but that's about it as far as direct support. Aside from some giant insectoids we've already killed."

    I send her an image of my scans of the thing. She nods.

    "A last hurrah for the insectoids, and a field test for the robot."

    "I don't think it's worth calling in any Lanterns, but-."

    "Good, because we can't. Dox has actually been trying to get hold of you."

    "Oh? Ah, why?"

    "Oh, a combination of factors. Most importantly, the Reach appear to have authorised the deployment of one of their inner circle fleets. Possibly more."

    I frown. "We weren't expecting them to do that for.. months. Deploying one of their inner circle fleets when their core isn't threatened is contrary to their Writ. They're religious about following their Writ."

    "It appears that your Reach-shadow has decided that it made them too predictable. We don’t have a copy of their Writ that we could trust to be completely accurate. It may well be that there are exceptions that we don't know about."

    "Can we.. cope with it?"

    "Dox's estimates say 'yes', but we will take considerable damage doing so, and it will undermine the confidence of our affiliates. If they deploy a second fleet, we won't. Maltus will survive, but that will be all."

    "Their inner circle fleets aren't unlimited. There are reasons why they don't deploy those."

    "Yes, it appears that for some reason they don't think that Apokolips will take advantage of their distraction to remove them as competition. And of course other galactic powers are content to let us take our swing at them without offering aid."

    "And we can't take a strike force past their lines while their rear is less defended?"

    "That's part of why Dox is so eager to get you back. Or, he's ordering you back, I should say."

    Darn. Objectively, that's the right choice. Five billion or so on Earth versus hundreds of billions who've thrown their lot in with the organisation I created explicitly to fight this war.

    But…

    "Am I needed right away?"

    "That depends on what you consider to be the limits of 'needed'."

    "Are the Reach about to capture any inhabited world?"

    "Not… Immediately. I would say that you have approximately two Earth days until that world where you saved the young of their entire species is returned to Reach control."

    "So realistically I've got about a day."

    "Every moment you delay is a moment where our allies die unnecessarily, but if 'people I actually know getting hurt' is your definition of 'needed', then yes."

    "I need all data we have on the Anti-Life. All the records. Everything on Darkseid, including anything we've 'acquired' from the Guardians and Green Lanterns. Because actually, due to… A certain thing being stored here, it actually might be worse if Earth falls than if Maltus falls."

    She considers, but she knows that I'm right.

    "Are they actually looking for it?"

    "Not as far as I've seen. And we've got a man with a direct-ish line to it and he hasn't noticed anything."

    "Then the simplest solution would be to move it."

    "Are Maltusians immune to the Anti-Life Equation?"

    She hesitates before responding.

    "Not… Entirely."

    "Given how powerful your species are, and how you're ageless, I don't think that exposing any of you is a good idea."

    "You will have our data. And I will hold my nose and reach out to our cousins. Will your people survive?"

    "If we can work out what we're supposed to be hitting, sure. This might well cause the final collapse of our current social order and I might still end up evacuating the planet, if only temporarily. But I believe that we'll win in the end."

    "One day, Illustres. Do what you can for the humans."

    "One more thing. Do we know where any of the other Central Power Batteries or Light Fountains are?"

    "I'm not aware of any besides Orange and Green even existing. Unless the Zamarons have finally found something to act as the core of their Violet Central Power Battery. I will check in with them as well. What are you planning?"

    "Using the White Light to purge the Earth's thaumosphere."

    She thinks for a moment.

    "We were never able to firmly determine the White Light's limits. It was too alien to our mindset, even in those days. And we had no contemporary contact with the Anti-Life Equation at all. I will not veto your attempt, but I strongly suggest that you be mindful of your more immediate problems."

    I nod.

    "Then I will expect you tomorrow. Relaying data now."
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2022
  27. Lord Ernest

    Lord Ernest At the End...

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    Why are all the bad guys working so much at New Year's Eve?!

    There's just no rest, Earth Anti-Life'd and now the Reach are sending an Inner Circle Fleet?! What next, the Spider Guild are gonna send a massive offensive to Vega and the Dominion will show up as well?

    Still, great to see the Illustres just taking it in stride. Got a day to save his planet and then gotta hurry up to stop the Reach advance, business as usual.
     
  28. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    "Violet"
     
  29. thepsyborg

    thepsyborg Not too sore, are you?

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    Gee, I wonder who might have tipped off the Reach about things ahead of time.
    While hilarious, this is probably a typo.
     
  30. Darko

    Darko Connoisseur.

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    Because it's the nature of evil to destroy the holidays.
     
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