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

Day 5
16th March 2013
07:31 GMT

Neron sneers at me as his giant henchmen carry me into his presence, one holding my right arm and the other holding my left.

And then I fall towards the floor as the pair of them double over in pain. Activating my aero-discs I stabilise before I actually land, and reorientate myself so that I'm feet-downwards.

"I didn't say carry him by his arms! I said rip his arms off and then drag him before me!"

Neron stomps towards his fallen flunkies as green-black runes burn from their foreheads, hearts and… Well, there's a faint glow from their loincloths that I'm trying to ignore.

"Off! OFF! How hard is it for you stupid creatures to understand!"

I raise an interrogative finger. "Lord Neron-."

His head jerks around so that he can better glower at me. "Oh, I'll get to you."

I shrug. "It's the First's time you're wasting."

"ARMS!" He leans forwards slightly and then kicks upwards with his right leg, the demon's left shoulder exploding as he smashes its arm from its torso. "THESE THINGS!"

I knew this would happen when I started with the best, but I'm not even halfway down the list yet.

"ARMS!"

Soon enough, the spasming giants are denuded of both arms while Neron-

"Well!?"

-is still glaring at them. They can't actually respond due to him not having turned off the torture spell he's got running on them, and they're both bleeding freely from their wounds… I'm pretty sure that sort of damage would kill a human.

"Neron, they can't respond while you've-"

"I don't need your help in disciplining my slaves!"

"-got that spell running. They literally can't respond."

"I'm not shouting at them for their benefit! I'm shouting at them for the benefit of everyone in range of my voice!"

If he has nothing else to recommend him -and I'm beginning to suspect that he doesn't- Neron has a powerful set of lungs.

I smile. "This does actually remind me of the way the First acted out after being told how to kill his 'brothers'. Just wrecked his whole palace. But please, carry on. I'd like to see how strong the resemblance is."

He gurns, and I fairly obviously fail to keep my amusement from showing. That act of profound disrespect results in him getting himself under control and making a slashing motion with his right arm. The runes flare and then die, and-

"Uuuuuuuuunrrrrr…"

-they regain control of their bodies, though they might be in too much pain to really do anything with that ability. Neron strides back towards me, waving negligently at his groaning guards.

"Drag them out. And staple their arms back on."

Flunky demons who had been lurking around the corners of his throne room scurry/scuttle/slime to obey, though they're all much smaller than the objects of their attention and it looks like they're a bit confused about how they're supposed to actually carry out the order.

But Neron has already shifted his attention back to me.

"I want your arms."

"Good for you. 'May all your dreams come true but one', as the Ventrians say. And to be clear, while I am not authorised to kill any of Hell's inhabitants at will I can kill in self-defence."

"Kill me?" His demeanour changes at once. He appears to find the idea genuinely amusing. "Ha! Me… Kill-."

He thrusts his arm out to the right, and-. Green fire is everywhere! The wall explodes, and the wave of fire erupts out across his castle ground. It eats through the walls and converts them into shrapnel, through demons and converts them into carbonised skeletons or simply ash, and then out through the curtain wall into the Province of Gull.

It burns through streets, houses and markets, arcane shields flickering and failing around some of the better properties but failing moments later. It burns and spreads until a wedge of destruction has been wrought upon the unsuspecting metropolis.

"Me."

He keeps looking at me, still smiling.

Yes, killing a great swath of people far weaker than you to show off to someone who isn't interested in competing with you. What am I supposed to take away from that, exactly? That you're childish and insecure? That you have no interest in promoting your province's strength? In building at all?

"I see. Then there isn't much else to say. I suspect that I've learned… Everything useful that I can here." I land, and walk towards the coagulating stone at the edge of the blast zone. "Thank you for your time, my lord."

"Yes, go, you wretched waste of my time."

I look around for a moment and then jump, landing on a parapet that was just out of the arc of the fire.

It appears that my earlier idea about focusing work on the more powerful demons was misguided to say the least. I failed to take their arrogance into account. Top end demons aren't going to be interested in service jobs because there isn't anything that can 'pay' them a meaningful amount. Satanus's human heritage lets him bypass the normal limits on demons getting to Earth and staying there, but for the others…

They don't have the same needs that mortals do, even if their drives are fairly similar. I think it was in… Hellblazer, where the First remarked that angels and demons have just enough free will to occasionally wonder what the point of that sort of existence is. With nothing to work towards, they become childish and self-destructive.

But weaker demons… They need to cooperate. They need to overcome their instincts and cooperate because they can't get through the day without each other.

I glance upwards as I hear the work crew manage to slide one of the giants a short distance across the stone floor.

I activate my aero-discs again as the still-burning fire eats one of the supports beneath the parapet I'm standing on and causes it to crumble into rubble.

The First must know what sort of being Neron is, surely? So why leave him in position? I'll have to speak to some of the other-.

"Begging your pardon, milord."

A demon dressed like a butler stands a little way along the parapet. From the slight disordering of his clothes I'd guess that he was in the line of fire but was able to throw himself out of the way before it would have hit him.

"It's not my place to pardon anyone here, but you have my attention."

"My mistress suspected that you might find Neron's presence tiresome, and bid me offer you the hospitality of her house."

"I doubt that was particularly hard to guess. Who is your mistress?"

"The Lady Rosacarnis, milord."

"Hospitality, I don't need. Information and intelligence I would appreciate. I am after all here to perform a task."

"As your say, milord. I am sure her ladyship knows best."

"Then lead on. Goodness knows I'm not going to learn anything else of value here."

 

16th March 2013
09:37 GMT +2

Filippos Sachinidis, the current Greek Finance Minister, stares at the machine that so much of Greece's economy will be based on.

"And you say this can make anything?"

"In theory, yes. In practice, it's only really good at making simple things. Pure ingots of metal, perfectly regular wooden beams, regular stones or bricks, things like that. You can put anything in, but it's more efficient if what you put in is mostly contains what you want to take out." I shrug. "Put an old mostly steel tractor in and you'll get out steel ingots faster than if you put in random waste."

"But we… Can put in random waste?"

"Yes, certainly. As I said, it won't be as efficient, and it would be better if you could compact it down first, but it would work perfectly well."

"And it is safe? I have heard horror stories about nanotechnology."

"Science fiction nonsense, for the most part. A little over two years ago the League of Shadows used a nanotech weapon that was about ninety five percent airborne coolant, and they still lost most of their cloud in a two minute attack. If they'd been trying to kill people then using the nanobots to transmute explosives would have been more efficient. These nanobots are designed to be more vulnerable to changes in temperature, so that they need the fabricator's cold field to remain functional. If they leave that area-. You see the yellow line?"

I point inside the fabricator, and he nods cautiously.

"Then they melt the moment they try to do any work, get exposed to sunlight-." I point upwards. "You see the ultraviolet lights up there?"

He peers upwards, then nods.

"Those will destroy them. Or if they get exposed to electricity or radio waves or the human body."

"The.. human body can destroy them? Surely they are too small for the immune system to attack."

"Oh, far too small. But human bodies are hot and filled with reactive chemicals. Without something cooling them, they can't cope."

"Can the cooling system from this machine be removed?"

"Yes, but not easily. It's built into the whole thing to keep the field strength even and prevent people detaching it and weaponising it. Leonard really doesn't like people doing that."

"Leonard Snart."

I raise my right forefinger. "Doctor Leonard Snart."

"Who is the American supervillain 'Captain Cold'."

"He was. Between what we're paying him and the respect he got for fixing the icecaps… And the reports of the prison's counsellor, we're confident that he's happier doing legitimate work than he would be robbing places."

A decision that's aided by the collapse of quite a few currencies. Mildly pleased to be ahead of the curve there. I mean, they were based on faith anyway and governments were constantly inflating their supply with their overworked printing presses… But faith is gone after the second global crisis in two years. Barter has become even more widespread, particularly given that Mannheim focused on America which made it through the Sheeda Incursion mostly intact.

"But the Justice League's funding comes from the United Nations. Doesn't it?"

"Ah… No. I mean, it did, but we spotted pretty quickly that with the… Collapse, that wasn't going to work."

It's interesting. In the American context, the ability of Congress to control military funding is supposed to restrain the President's ability to make war. It adds a new dimension to something like Command and Conquer when you realise that the Global Defence Initiative has the ability to be completely financially self-sufficient through tiberium refining. A military that isn't funded by taxes but by expanding into new territory, that is technically incentivised to let the tiberium infestation of Earth get worse, would have been profoundly disturbing to the Founding Fathers.

He looks at me in an interrogative manner.

"The Justice League is… Issuing its own precious metal-based currency."

"Can the Justice League do that?"

"Legally or practically?"

"Practically."

"We have several members and associates capable of casual space travel. There's basically no competition for space mining, and… I already had a big pile of gold I was using for my own expenses." Plus the stuff I took off Larfleeze. It was still a big pile after I returned everything I could identify as coming from a specific place and giving all of the pieces of technology which Dox wanted to him. "Honestly, choosing a design and a weight was more difficult. I wanted a full metal coin, but Mister Atom pointed out that was excessive, and that with so many currencies in freefall any precious metal would be a stabilising influence…"

"And legally? Does the treaty between the Justice League and the United Nations allow the League to issue currency?"

"The subject wasn't really covered. Technically, the League can get income from other sources of appropriate moral probity, and while 'commemorative tokens' it issues aren't legal tender anywhere we've got to the point where the dollar isn't accepted in most of the United States."

I mean, it is, but only at Weimar Republic inflation levels, and you better have actual coins or notes. Coins actually trade slightly better than paper money. There was a period in British history where the old pure copper 1p and 2p coins were worth more as metal than their face value, but the metal value of modern coins is nearly nothing. But without anyone leaning on them, people seem to value them more highly than paper.

It's like they've overcome one level of nonsense only to get tripped up by another layer of nonsense that's an exact copy of it.

"Is that a good idea?"

"Having a stable currency? Yes, it's an excellent idea. I've checked the records of millions of civilisations and Mister Atom ran a lot of simulations." And used more than the egg cup full of common sense that most economists in government seem to share between them. "Apropos of nothing, if Demetrios Prokopios could be found and returned to-."

"Do you know where he is?"

He's staring at me with an expression of pure desperation.

"Um. Only approximately. I'm trying to track him down, but stabilising the world is more urgent. So… If he came back, you'd-."

"I was always clear that I was taking this job as a caretaker. Is he a demigod? Is that how he did it?"

"I'm afraid that I'm not inclined to betray confidences in that way."

"We’re losing physical currency, did you know that? People know that the Justice League are working on something here and the drachma is suddenly in demand in other countries. That is not something that Greece has had to worry about since the City State period. I don't know how to handle it. We need him."

"Then… I will make that my highest priority." I look over to where a forklift truck has carried in a pallet of scrap metal. Excellent, they're ready for the demonstration. "Do you want to see it in action?"

"Yes. Yes please."