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

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."

 

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?"