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

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."

 

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."

 

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!"