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

BOOM!

17th November 2017
15:35 GMT +8

"Tenzin Cering!" I stride through the portal into the Chinese black site, and because I know that the Chinese are a bit more on the ball with summary executions that the Americans I've come out next to his cell and disarmed the soldiers on guard. No, not soldiers. Some sort of Chinese K.G.B. types? They were armed, anyway, and now they're not. "I'm looking for Tenzin Cering!"

"I am here."

One of the guards lunges for the wall-mounted alarm, and gets sonic blasted by Subjekt-17 until his bones fracture. He falls to the ground with a quiet, high-pitched moan.

^{"Auuuhhhhauuuuuuhaaauuuhhhh…"}

The other guard runs at me and punches me in the-. In the groin armour, and promptly breaks his fingers. He pulls back, shielding it as he tries to work out what to do next.

"Funny thing. Prior to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese Communist Party tried to restore order using local army units. But confronted by people handing them flowers, some of whom they knew personally, they weren't prepared to break heads in the way the Party wanted. So they pulled them out and sent in soldiers from rural areas, as indoctrinated as they could find, who wouldn't have those sort of normal human hang-ups about killing peaceful, unarmed people."

I rip the cell door out of the wall and chuck it down the corridor.

"So I'm curious. How much violence have you two been dolling out to defenceless prisoners? Subjekt Seventeen?"

"A great deal."

"A great deal." I bow my head and wave my right hand from Subjekt 17 to the guard. "Oh dear. Then do as you-."

"No." Mr. Tenzin limps out of his cell, face swollen. "Do them no violence. Please."

"Really? I mean, I understand that you're a Buddhist, but I think that a little corrective chastisement might, you know, burn off a little karmic debt?"

"You are here to free me?"

"Free you and load your head with your past life memories."

"Then violence against these people would only be retribution. It would serve no greater purpose." He leans against a wall to steady himself. "Though if you have an aspirin, I would not be averse to receiving it."

Subjekt-17 takes hold of the guard who is still standing and slams him against the wall. Hard enough to severely injure him, not hard enough to kill him.

Mr. Tenzin looks at the fallen guard in concern, then at Subjekt-17. I shake my head. "He's had a rough seventy years. Does the 'no violence' thing extend to Gods of Evil?"

"It does not extend to humans. I try to limit unnecessary violence, but it is not an absolute prohibition." He looks down the corridor. "Please. There are many other prisoners here."

I take a purple healing ray out of subspace and hand it over to him. "Point it at yourself and pull the trigger to heal your injuries. What are the other prisoners in for?"

"This is a prison for political prisoners. Some of them may have committed normal crimes-."

"If you were guilty, there are a thousand prisons in China where they would lock you away." I sigh. "Fine. I-."

"What?" Subjekt-17 glowers at me. "What does he ask?"

"Humans are so evil, Subjekt-17, that they sometimes treat other humans as Subjekts. These human Subjekts want us to help them escape. Do you think we can do that?"

He looks around, the-

Someone in the guard post finally looks at their camera screen and activates the alarm.

-telepathic portions of his brain activating as he takes in our environment. "Such cruelty. Disgusting. Keep them away from me."

I nod. Ugh. I need to get Mr. Tenzin powered up myself, Subjekt-17 isn't interested in rescuing people and Queen Hippolyta isn't bullet-resistant. I'll have to interrupt Captain Adam, which is poor form, but I think he might appreciate something morally unambiguous.

Mother Box, boom tube.

BOOM.

Pin-

Captain Adam flies backwards through the hole and slams into the wall!

-g.

"Ah, are you alright?"

He straightens himself up. "I'm not hurt. I was handling the invisible guy, then someone hit me from behind."

"Can I assume that your training focused on aircraft more than infantry combat?"

"That's fair." He looks around. "Where are we?"

"Chinese political prison. Please break everyone out and send them through-"

BOOM!

"-that boom tube. Allies of mine will have food and medical aid waiting."

"China-. Are you crazy? Even Nixon didn't-."

"You're a man made of silver. As long as you don't tell anyone your name, I don't see how anyone can trace it to anywhere. I speak with an English accent and I'm an alien. And you can't tell me that they don't have it coming."

Mr. Tenzin has finished with the healing ray, so I grab it off him and hand it to Mr. Adam.

"This is an anti-gun. It makes people healthy by shooting them."

"That-. That doesn't make sense."

"If you want to make it an actual ray gun there's a dial on the side." He checks, and avoids touching it. "That's a bit superfluous for you, but I understand if you have a childish desire to play with a death ray."

"Healing ray gun. Sure, why not. How many people?"

Looks like… "Thirty eight."

The door to the next cell along vanishes in a flare of purple. "On it."

I nod. "Mister Tenzin, where do we need to take you?"

"Tibet. My father's temple."

Sinestro, scan for his father.

There is a slight issue there, Lantern.

What? Oh, no. Of course. The Chinese have their own candidate. No matter that forcing past life memories into some random arsehole will at best do nothing, with permanent mental damage being the intermediate result, I don’t want a Party-approved arsehole getting those powers. Though that's almost certainly why they left his father outside of prison himself.

I armour Mr. Tenzin and open a new boom tube.

BOOM!

"Please, as little violence-."

Subjekt-17 walks through ahead of me, and I shrug.

"No promise."

 

1st April 1995
21:55 GMT +1

My giant drill construct bores into the rock, cutting a hole big enough for one of the medium-yield nuclear devices.

"What is this?"

To be fair, Goldar didn't complain about carrying the crates, but it's clear that patiently working through a plan isn't really his thing.

"What do you know about tsunamis?"

"Great waves. I've seen them triggered by ships falling from orbit and striking an ocean. Do you mean to trigger one with your bomb?"

"No. This is a multi-stage trigger. You see…" I turn in a circle, right arm extended. "This entire coastline is poised to fall into the sea. When it does, it will trigger a tsunami that will spread across the Atlantic Ocean-."

Squatt tilts his head to the side in confusion.

I point to the ocean. "That one."

"Errr…" He looks at it, then back to me and Goldar. "I knew that."

"Seriously, how long have you people been here? Which of you is responsible for intelligence analysis?"

Squatt shakes his head. "Not me!"

"Our Mistress can see anywhere on Earth with a wave of her staff. What more do we need?"

"Do you think that Ms. Repulsa might be willing to make more potion? My fiancée specialised in the field. It's helpful to be able to know where the points of vulnerability are before you attack them. For example, the Power Rangers have launched their zords from the same hangar for years now. Do you know where the hangars are?"

"No. Fine. You've made your point." He strikes a pose, clenching his right fist. "It would be nice to confront them at the source of their strength and watch them fall powerless to the ground before ending them once and for all."

I dismiss the drill and replace it with a construct crane, gently lowering the crate into the hole.

"Uh." Goldar and I make momentary eye contact as we brace for incoming stupid. "Isn't this a long way away from where the Power Rangers live?"

"Yes. In fact, this won't directly affect Angel Grove at all, as there's a continent in the way. It will however ruin all of the cities on the east coast of North America if it's allowed to detonate."

"So are we gunna turn it off?"

"No. The Rangers will."

Goldar smiles. "You will lure them here with a threat to North America, and then detonate the bombs when they try to retrieve them? Magnificent!"

"No. If I detonate the bomb, the coast will be destroyed, and that will significantly reduce the economic capacity of the planet. I want Ms. Repulsa to take possession of a planet that is as pristine as possible. The bomb is a lure, and it could serve as a contingency, but the primary purpose is to force the Rangers to split up. Once that is done, I will take the Red Ranger, you will take the Blue and Squatt and the putties will take the Yellow."

"What about the other two?"

I shrug. "Who cares? All of their most powerful weapons and zord combinations require all five of them to be active. They could conceivably draft one replacement, but three-." I pointedly look at Squatt. "Or two, would be harder. And the replacements would have no experience."

"Why those three?"

"Black and Pink have heavier ranged weapons: the bow and the axe's gun mode. Red, Blue and Yellow have to either engage at short range or use their weaker sidearms, and we can all take those."

"Mm." He nods. "A sound decision. But why are you so confident of your ability to take their leader?"

"I'm not. But I know that I'm joining the team late in the day and I want to prove my value. I have a lot riding on this."

The crate reaches the bottom of the shaft, so I dismiss the crane construct and use a bulldozer construct to push soil back into the hole. Wouldn't want anyone tripping and falling down the hole. Workplace health and safety is important.

"Okay, that should do for now. Goldar, would you please trigger the teleportation system? Our next destination is Yellowstone Park."

He looks blank-.

I generate a construct globe and make it with a targetting reticle.

"Here."

"That's not on a coast."

"No, it's over the magma chamber of a supervolcano."

"A supervolcano?!" Squatt.. sort of hornpipes, waving his arms excitedly. "That sounds super! Ah… What do they do?"

Goldar smiles. "They explode, devastating the land for miles around with molten rock and cover the atmosphere of the entire world in choking dust and ash."

"There are four that could be activated with these devices. But I don't want to repeat myself too often. Two should be fine. The teleporter?"

Ring, scan.

Compliance.

The putties go first, drawn upwards for a moment and then vanishing. Then Squatt, then Goldar and then… The space around me blurs for a moment before the universe reasserts itself.

1st April 1995
14:59 GMT -6

I watch as the putties caper off to form a perimeter.

Data?

Partial analysis available.

Hm.

I didn't detect any mundane power source when I was on the moon base. As far as I could tell, everything runs on magic. And I can't see Rita Repulsa having a super-powerful magic artefact somewhere where she can't get hold of it. Which means that her staff is it. It's powering everything, including the teleporter.

The crystal on my pendant has dimmed. Not a lot, but it's noticeable. Everything I know about my ring and magic energy says that I should be able to siphon it… But everything I know could just be wrong.

Goldar looks at me. "Well?"

"Just considering the best site. It's not every day one plants a fission bomb on a supervolcano. Something to tell the grandchildren about."

Of course, I took medium sized fission bombs. We don't exactly need to place it right in the geyser field. Which is good, because I don't want to encounter any tourists. Given that the civilian deaths so far have been zero somehow it doesn't seem as if Rita's followers actively want to inflict collateral damage, but… Let's not push things.

"Ah, I've got it." I nod. "This way."