The Gift of the One (Young Justice SI)

So, do you have these already written and are posting them at a pace we can keep up with, or are you just that fast a writer?

 

I write them every day. At the beginning I had a chapter in advance but from I think the sixth or seventh part I lost that advance and so the chapter goes freshly written on the internet.

It takes me 1h30 to 2h to write them.I have no idea if this is quick or no.

 

I assure you, to me, it is Flash levels of quick.

 

Interlude: Caretaker

HALL OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON D.C
JULY,6,2010, 3:00 PM
Even if he had a long habit of seeing his plans derailed by unforeseen complications, Bruce Wayne, called Batman in more professional occasions, hated it when a situation spiraled into chaos. And the sidekick’s matter was definitively heading this way. Things should have been easy. The sidekicks would have visited the Hall, marveled at the League’s facilities and went home awaiting to be ready to induction in the League. Ollie had decided to tell his brat (Bruce eagerly prayed Dick would have a more amiable adolescence than the red-haired archer) about the Watchtower and spoiled everyone’s mood. Dante, the newcomer had proposed to accompany the kids on a normal mission. Said mission ended out uncovering CADMUS cloning projects and put two more complications in the League’s path.

Bruce sighed. He didn’t like to deem the Superboy and Match complications. They were thinking beings, even if Match’s thinking had been artificially limited. He understood Clark’s hesitation to care for the boys even if he didn’t share it. He knew what he would do if Selina or Talia appeared at the gates of Wayne Manor with a black-haired boy obviously his child. Hell, he knew what he would have done if he had gone in the depths of CADMUS and seen his own face peering at him from a birthing vat. He would have been disconcerted, wrathful at the violation of his being. He would not have begrudged the children, victims as he was a victim for things they had no control about. He would have tried to care for them even if the Joker or another of his Rogues had created to them.

However, he was a father in heart and deed. Clark was not and Bruce suspected it had a certain influence on his appraisal of the situation. What would have become of him if he hadn’t adopted Dick into his family? Adopting the boy had been one of the best decisions of his life if not the well thought-off. Who cared? There are decisions, rare as they may be, who must be taken in the moment, even in the very throes of emotion. Dick has been difficult at times, was still difficult at times but on the whole he had filled with laughter and light a life who would have been consumed by duty.

His role as the Batman, that was duty, joyful freely-chosen duty but duty nonetheless. A debt paid to the city where he was born, the parents who had tried to improve it, the children who would inherit it, even to the boy who had seen his parents’ corpses hit the floor for no higher reason than a pearl necklace. He loved his role, didn’t deny the rush of adrenaline in the confrontation with a deranged criminal, the slow thrill of uncovering clues and piecing together a solution. There was a reason why, despite their differences in character, he was closest to Barry Allen than any other members of the League. Defective work was a passion.

Caring for Dick was a pleasure.

No the clones were no complication but Dante sitting at the end of the table, slightly cowering beneath the gazes of he, Diana, Orin, Barry and Dinah was one. Bruce appraised the young man. It was a little strange to consider his total inexperience considering that Bruce himself was not older than Dante by ten years. Still there was something boyish in the awkward manner the young man was standing, in his unshaved beard and his movements in the chair. Minor attention disorder he had explained at his arrival, still to see him twitch and shift on his chair as he feared the people arrayed in front of him. Well according to him, he feared them and would fear them for a long time. That was of no import. Batman was accustomed to dealing with people slightly or not so slightly frightened by his presence.

“I understand why you want me to do it. But I doubt I’m cut for it.”

Another thing that should have been simple. CADMUS had revealed the League’s grave deficiency when it came to gather reliable intel. They had missed an entire artificial race and Kryptonian’s clones. The former sidekicks would be a great team for covert ops and intelligence gathering. He had found them headquarters, convinced fellow Leaguers to serve with him as trainers for the team. Dante would fit right here. He was younger than any League’s member of note but still an adult and could provide assistance and counsel to the teenagers more vivid and useful than Red Tornado’s could. While the team could hesitate to go to their former mentors for advice or help in their everyday’ life, perhaps they would trust more someone bound to them.

Slight problems, Dante didn’t want the job at all. Not because he disliked the Team but he was not confident in his skill as a teacher/caretaker. Bruce was slightly angered because it was evident the young man would eventually accept their proposal, once the first moments of disbelief would have faded. Still that took time, time Batman was not eager to lose while investigations could be made.

Diana and Barry took turns to reassure the young hero he would simply act as “big brother substitute” while Red Tornado would be the main caretaker of the sidekicks. That elicited a reaction as Dante seemed to think the old robot as not the most adequate caretaker ever for a group of emotional youngsters. Bruce knew the android had asked for the job to learn more about humanity. Another task a more stable adult could help.

Yet after about an hour of conversation, Raphael accepted the job after strictly defining his own freedoms and responsibilities. Not anything out of line. Just the usual freedom to range outside of the base at night and pursue his own duties to the gods. Still there was a new complication to arise. The young hero detailed what he would need to do his job. A sentence nearly froze Bruce’s heart in thinking the storm it could cause.

“And of course as Superboy will be in our charge, we will need enough medical data to help him if he’s wounded. And I will have questions to ask Superman about his youth and Krypton.”

With any luck Clark would have calmed before Dante asked deeply personal questions or anything but Bruce was accustomed to bad timing and the Kryptonian had really taken the existence of the clones as a problem.

He had a bad feeling about this.
​

 

Interesting. Also rather Ouch.

 

Interlude: Reading

MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND

July, 8, 2010, 11:00 AM

M’gann was not sure she had calmed yet and that bothered her. Sure she understood the trials she had passed would have taken their toll on even her uncle, who had been nice enough to not bring her back to Mars when he spotted her cowering in his ship’s hold. Still she wanted, like him, to rejoin the Earth mightiest heroes, to see the world J’onn had so often spoken about, to see her idol and model in the flesh. She could not do all these things if she didn’t calm herself and cease to be flustered each and every five minutes. Still she couldn’t get pass the fact her project worked. She was on Earth, ready to begin a new life for herself.

She twitched on her chair. She didn’t know what to do with the proposal of a “game” by the eldest of the group. Strange how the rest of the team were clearly of the same age group as her while Dante appeared to be much older and having more in common with Black Canary than them. Still he had guided her through the rooms, showing her all facilities and her quarters after her introduction to the team. She didn’t quite understand why he had taken Kid Flash in a shadowy corner after the speedster had greeted her with “enthusiasm” but supposed it was an Earth’s thing. She still couldn’t remember hearing about an earthen custom involving dragging one’s comrades by the ear though.

Still Dante had gathered them all here, “seeing as they were the full team for any foreseeable time” and proposed to read them the future after they discussed with one another. Three of the heroes she knew from her time watching Earth medias and since her arrival in June where she had served under her uncle she had kept herself abroad of the superhero community. Kid Flash, Robin and Aqualad were quite famous in some circles and she was anxious to fight at their sides. The Superboy, she didn’t know and her uncle had not given her a lot of details. He was the most physically imposing member of the team and showed an ambiguous reaction to all psychic contacts. As for the last…

Dante had something about him, perhaps in his psychic presence which had made M’gann mumble a prayer to H'ronmeer god of death, fire and inspiration. After he had explained his powers, she had identified him as having a role like of the fire priests back home who kept watch on the ancient pyramids and prepared the deceased. Not the happiest role to have but a necessary one. Still she had instinctively twisted her fingers in the required gestures of respect and warding.

Yet there had been no morbidity in his gestures or attitude. On the contrary he had done all he could to assure her there would be no problems. From what she understood she, Superboy, he and Red Tornado would live in this “Mount Justice” full time, repurposing the old League’s HQ for a younger team. Uncle J’onn had adjured her to trust both the android and the young ma, arguing they were the last people to have preconceptions about the different kinds of Martians. Still she preferred keeping her human appearance, not to fool anyone. Who would be idiotic enough to look at her uncle and her and conclude it was totally normal to have one look barely humanoid and the other to be a “green skinned babe” like this internet site had called the type?

They were all around the table, even Red Tornado and Black Canary had stayed to observe, the android with something approaching curiosity and the heroine with open amusement at the idea. She had even insisted, in the fashion of those who don’t believe but think the whole process interesting or hilarious, that her and her colleague received a reading too. M’gann didn’t know much about the traditions of Earth so she had not been surprised by Dante’s pulling a deck of cards and beginning to shuffle them, more than by anything else.

“First to the lady in our gathering” said Dante drawing a card and showing it to Black Canary “The Third Arcanum the Empress, Woman in Majesty, it means endless creativity, flowering of the mind. A strong independent person who is the brain in the relationship she currently has and possessing a distinct link with birds. Can also means a tired mother. How did you survive living with Speedy for so long before he crashed out anyway?”

Black Canary laughed a little then answered: “He was much less annoying with me than with Ollie, that’s for sure. He would have ended deaf a long time ago if he hadn’t.”

Dante smiled before turning to the android and drawing another card: “Our eldest gets the Tenth Arcanum, the Wheel of Fortune. Cycles begin, cycles end. You begin your life on one form and you end it as another. It’s not surprising someone as focused as you on becoming more than what you are now would be represented by this Arcanum. Beware though, changing too quickly can make you regret what you had.” Red Tornado appraised the prophecy with a mechanical sigh, mumbling it was “illogical”

“For the youngest” he turned then to Robin “The Sixth Arcanum, the Lover, Choices and Consequences. Normally this card indicates someone torn between two paths, two options and urges to choose one of them, whichever of them, for choosing is always better than to deny a choice must be made. Of course it could also mean you’ll quickly become the local heartbreaker.” Did M’gann hear correctly or was Kid Flash mumbling about “why he’s always the lucky one.” Had to be her imagination.

“Superboy’s Strength, the Eleventh Arcanum. Not really surprising. The woman taming the lion shows the necessity of self-mastery and warns us true strength comes from the mind and not the flesh. Still it remains one of the most energetic cards of the deck and signals power beyond one’s knowledge. The woman and the lion can also represent a marriage of the contrary whether inside you or one you’ll realize with someone else.”

His eyes met Kid Flash and he drew while smiling: “Kid get the First and Last Arcanum, The Fool” Robin held back, very badly a fit of laughter while the speedster looked at him with angry eyes. “A card of relentless activity, the Fool is not held in place by anything or anyone, moves at his own rhythm. In some versions of the cards he walks to an abyss but not in this oldest one. It’s also a card of endurance in face of despair and great odds.”

He turned then to Aqualad and her before deciding to show her the last card. “Aqualad get the Fourth Arcanum, The Emperor, the Leader, the Emperor is master of the material world and a ruler on his part of the cosmos. He represents the mastery of the elements, no nonsense spirit but he bears also some vulnerabilities to imagination, love and other feelings. Strangely enough while he’s a card of truth his mirror among the Major Arcana is a card of illusion.”

He drew the final card and laughed a bit before showing M’gann the image of two buildings, two wolves, a pool and the moon above it. “Our latest arrival is represented by the Eighteenth Arcanum, the Moon or the Depths of the Unconscious. The Moon who mirrors the Emperor is associated with dreams, the mind and transformations. She is the mistress of masks and the oracle of what cannot be understood by the rational spirit. Unfortunately, she is also lacks the structure of rational thought and is driven by feelings”

M’gann didn’t know how to take the characterization but was not overly surprised when she picked a stray thought from Dante. It was the image of a family of green-skinned being with elongated skulls and thin limbs, inhuman in their proportions. Another images followed and was roughly what uncle J’onn would have looked if he were Aunt Joa”nn. Going through the images was a thought M’gann didn’t know if it were a solitary reflection or a telepathic message waiting to get picked up.

“The Moon is also mistress of lies and secrets and illusions. The Arcanum of the scene and the masks. In her depths are found few precious truths for many illusions dissipating in the morning.”

And with that M’gann M’orzz of Mars thought she had a slight problem on her hands.
​

 

Episode 3: First Arms
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
July, 10, 2010, 4:00 AM

There’s few things more infuriating than insomnia and for me it’s been a long companion. You learn to live with it, you learn to live with all sorts of things but still it’s quite painful, especially in a line of work where you can never tell when you will be called the next day, or if you will be called. Still nothing to do. I look at the alarm clock to see I got four hours of sleep. Not exceptional but not bad by my standards. 4 o’clock means an exhaustion attack at 12 or 13’. Manageable if not perfect. I drag myself out of bed. Time to be prepared for the days.

The room I took is comfortable without being luxurious. I managed to obtain a computer and even if I’m aware all my browser’ history is monitored it made my life easier. Some books borrowed from the Hall of Justice fill a rank of shelves, mostly what rare books and reports on Atlantis I managed to find. With Red’ Tornado’s permission I hollowed one of the wall with a multitude of alcoves, each containing an idol of one of my patrons. Arranging them gave me a headache while I argued with Vergil on which god would be at the center of the arrangement. I had no desire to tempt the wrath of the deities by seeming to favor one above the others. Still I’m happy with what I settled for.

At the center Shiva and Kali, member of the trinity who maintains the cosmos and keeper of the Shakti who fills the world look at me from their tight embrace. Around them in a first circle are these gods who are considered great rulers of the universe: Mot and Hades acknowledged as kings of a fourth of creation, Nergal and Ereshkigal feared even by their pantheons., Odin, Indra and Huitzilopochtli who are kings among their peers. Around them are the others, no less important, no less respected but still not greeted as kings and potentates able to challenge the will of their peers. Like I did yesterday and I will do each day I’ll be waking in this room, I advance to their images, kneel and offer thanks and obeisance. Near the statue of the Hummingbird of the Left I take a knife. The pain that courses through my nerves as I slice my palm open finishes waking me up as I anoint the statue of those gods of South America needing the blood of mortals with my own while thanking them for their service to the universe.

Then to take some clothes, a quick shower and the day can begin in earnest. I am still a bit awkward with getting my wardrobe filled up by Batman’s money but Superboy and Miss Martian are in the same case. Well Superboy is. M’gann’s clothes are organic and shift shape as she does which saves a lot in expenses. As for Superboy…

It will be a long time before he renounces the S shield on all his clothes but if by the end of our next meeting Superman decides to still hold back Krypton's informations I asked I will do my possible for him to identify as an Earthling and take a new role model. I wonder if the Hummingbird of the Left patron of warriors and the sun would accept him as a new supplicant. If the human sacrifice’s thing is non-negotiable, Nergal is more malevolent a divinity with his association with plague but he won’t ask for human victims.

But I’m rambling, shower, clothes then to breakfast. I’m not surprised to see Red Tornado in the kitchen. He seems to wait for the first of us to wake up. I don’t think he needs to sleep but that runs against all I know of minds and basic psychology. All living things needs to rest; the mind needs to sleep sometimes to not be driven to insanity. I think the android in the comics took some naps spanning months or years where he was like dead. I don’t know if this version does that and I’ve no intention to intrude as he seems to hate being reminded of the more inhuman aspect of his state.

Well if only it was just the lack of sleep. His whole existence makes very little sense to me. He’s a fully functional AI in an element-manipulating body at that. And he was created in the 40’s. Yet he’s the only example on Earth of such technology. I understand Dr. Morrow was Leonardo reborn but still, some people should have managed to make other prototypes if not fully integrated robots. That didn’t bug me when I was reading comics because I knew the Doylist reason: to have a world still recognizable by modern readers but still it’s strange when you experience it in person.

I greet him with little enthusiasm. Even after the pain of cutting my palm and the shower I’m still in a bit of a haze up until I fell the bitter tang of tea down my throat. Then I’m much better. During all the process Red Tornado seems to eye me with interest or fascination as if the simple fact of eating and drinking was a mystery to him. Must be just an impression, he had more than sixty years to accustom himself to the things flesh and blood demand.

“What are you planning to do today?”

Always the same question. Don’t know if it’s the robotic voice but even after only two days I have the feeling he will always ask me the same question each and every morning. Still I understand as the “den mother” of the team he is interested by what I’ll do with Superboy and Miss Martian. So I answer without problems.

“I’ll stay this morning to work in the greenhouses.” Food should not be a problem but after seeing what Robin and Kid Flash bought for dinner these last two days and their complete lack of concern with it I decided to take care that fruits and vegetables were at least available at all times. It’s also a good occasion to train with the Fertility aspect most of my patron master. While it has almost no combative capacity I think it will gain the gods many converts. It is my capacity even when I’m not mantling them completely to guarantee fruitful crops untouched by disease or insects, and the way to a man’s heart is often in their stomachs. The second part of my day is a little more controversial;

“I’ll be absent this noon. I’ll have lunch with Superman and ask some questions that must be answered now..”
​

 

You've got a double post, here.

 

Fixed thanks and here the next chapter

Episode 3: First Arms : Part 2
Episode 3: First Arms : Part 2
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
JULY,8, 2010 6:00 AM


I’m a bit surprised the League had installed greenhouses in their base when they use it. I mean I’m not one to complain about a touch of greenery bringing a bit of light in an otherwise dank cave, but I don’t quite understand the impetus that led to the creation of one full-sized room transformed into a garden. I wouldn’t peg any of the seven founders of the League as a gardener even if the thought of Hal Jordan merrily whistling while tending to his geraniums is a funny one. I’m sure it was not installed yesterday for I helped dispose of the old withered plants and other garbage accumulated in years of disuse. I much prefer my current work to that one.

After the place was cleaned up I decided with the full approval of Black Canary to use the greenhouses for food rather than decorations. Truth to be told it was part of my plan to test the full limits of my powers over growth before using them in public. I can’t reasonably try to bless crops and end up cursing them by mistake, can I? Adding some green to my comrades’ plates is an added bonus. I don’t think they will complain though so long I’m the one to work the garden. I’m fully intent to find an alternative solution though.

“Tell me again why you are such a race of slackers. Gods if the lesser immortals were like you I don’t want to imagine the dreadful state of Olympus.”

And a good day to you too Vergil. I’m fully aware of my inherent laziness who pushed me from doing so many things in my parallel. Here my projects are not lazy but time-efficient. I have access to the powers of nature so it’s normal to use them to lighten my load and concentrate on more important things. Such as trying to make Miss Martian and Superboy kill each other over her use of telepathy. I already stringently explained to the clone mind-communication was not mind control. I have no intention to rein her use of telepathy. If she’s too afraid to hurt people’s feeling to sense our enemies during a mission, she’ll be useless at her role.

I smile at this thought. While the three sidekicks are out doing heroics with their respective mentors I elaborated a roster I think will be acceptable to them. Well the most important is it is acceptable to my two fellow caretakers. I’m sure most of them with the exception of Aqualad and Robin will be surprised at concepts such as “defined roles” but they will adapt. Aqualad as the most experienced and the only with experience with squads will be our team leader, Robin and Miss Martian will run recon and information gathering, Superboy and I are the heavy weights of the group while Kid Flash can play double as our speedster and science expert. All in all, a balanced team.

I’m preparing to do my work. I’m just hesitating as to the god to summon, a recurrent problem seeing as I have so many at my disposal. I considered summoning them according to a set-up list but quickly dismissed the notion as impractical. Considering surprises attacks and the like, summoning according to my needs will be more efficient, I think. The small problem I have today is my coming confrontations with Superman. While he has accepted to meet me and discuss I have a bad feeling the situation will come to a conflict. In that case I was always a firm believer in Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. So no god having just a link with fertility and death.

The choice is thus between Zam of the Yazatas who rules Earth, Morena of the Slavs who rules Frost and Osiris who wields the powers of Justice. Neither of them are particularly awesome choices. Superman can fly so I doubt earth powers would be of any uses, despite how immoral I find it I doubt his treatment of Match and Superboy breaks any laws even if he refuses me. While Morena lady of winter can seem a good choice, I’m not sure what good could be ice in the heat of July. And of course I forgot lady Freya who is a sorceress and would enable me to level the playing field. Tough choice.

“Good Morning. Red Tornado told me I’d find you here.”

“Great, the Liar is here.” Shut up Vergil while I’m not comfortable with her shapeshifting and her “normal” appearance is obviously fake; I see no need to be antagonistic to M’gann. Even if Martian Manhunter represents the default of this continuity’s Martians (and I would be confident in betting his appearance is also a mask) a female version could be uncomfortable for a young teenager wanting to see another world. I’m more disturbed by the obvious desire Kid Flash express for a what is in reality a clever mask. But that’s a problem I’ll have to solve with him before than with her.

I turn to greet her as it’s polite and I’m not surprised to find her unchanged. I marked in my planning a moment for the very uncomfortable conversation about shapeshifting and its implications, at least before she enrolls in high school as seems to be the League’s desire for Superboy and her. Even discounting the moral implications on her being heavily disguised in an environment where pursuing romance is normal, there’s the problems with her form. She hasn’t gotten the knack to simulate fatigue like humans do. The eyes blink too rarely; some moves are awkward… Most people won’t consciously dwell on it but the mind can register and instill unconscious dislike and suspicion. Still I smile and address her.

“Still not accustomed to earth’ cycles?” She acquiesces. While her sleep is better than mine, she confided she still missed the cycles of Mars and tended to follow them. She was much worse when she first arrived on the planet last month but still has odd hours. Superboy is the only one of our trio to sleep soundly from midnight to eight o’clock even if he longs still for the sensation of the vat he was grown in.

M’gann actually visited the greenhouses as soon as I set them in workable shape anew. She’s fascinated with all things of Earth and was a tad disappointed to see only soil and seeds and a few bought plants. If there’s a thing Vergil says on the power of growth is the grow-a-tree-by-throwing-an-acorn-on-the-ground power is far beyond my non-mantled skill. Still what I’m doing should be a good distraction for her, especially the second part. I have decided on a god I had also forgotten and begin the chanting:

“Master of the Rain. Lord of the Third Sun. Lord of Thunder who destroyed his own kingdom. Earth hungry for blood. Eater of Children I beseech you. Tlaloc who bring those who drown and those who are struck by the arrows of the sky to his side in paradise, I call on you. Give me the strength to sustain the universe as you did. Tlaloc Rain-Maker I invoke your name and your power!”

My clothes are covered by. Well I’d call it ridiculous but blaspheming against the gods is not a sane proposition. The vestment looks like a scale armor, of crocodile, turtle or dragon I cannot say. It is adorned with brightly covered flowers though. The weapons are great gauntlets with jade wolverine-like claws. A mask of jade covers my head like a helm representing the fierce deity’s visage. I hurry to take it down and respectfully put it on a shelf until after I’m finished here.

Blessing crops is rather costly in energy. Even this room, which is far from the dimensions of a real field costs me a third of my power to bless and protect from all ailments. Still someone will have to ensure they grow and that the second part of my ritual.

I have brought two dishes and a bottle of milk to fill them. I’m still wondering how the power I’m about to use work. Vergil ensures me the lower order of beings I’m about to summon are culture-neutral but still I have never heard of Aztec fairies and I’m guessing such spirits would not have wanted milk for their services. So I’m remembering the tales of brownies,sidhes and boggarts before crying in a commanding voice:

“Come people of the plants. Come fairies and elves and sprites. There’s work and food for you.”

And they come, M’gann giggles seeing several motes of light turn around her for a moment revealing little winged humanoids. From the warm soil gnomes in blue and red clothing drag themselves laughing while standing at attention. They are perhaps a dozen quicky descending on the dishes and drinking their fill before awaiting orders. I keep them simple, to care for the plants and ensure their quick growths. They smile and get to work immediately humming a cheery tune.

Well, that was something interesting. Now to wait for Superboy to wake then training. Or I could solve the M’gann issue right now.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 3

MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND

JULY,8, 2010 6:15 AM

So how to accost this difficult subject? Well make that subjects. I want both to impress upon her the necessity of being honest as to her true form, be aware of the moral implication of her shapeshifting and be sure she knows what she is fighting for. While I’m sure Martian society has rules and customs as to not mind-rape someone, I doubt they have the same taboos about wearing the shape of others. Indeed, it would be strange a race of telepaths, by definition able to recognize each other whatever the form they’re wearing, would bother with the ethics of shapechanging, especially if they have no regular contact with other species. I don’t think she would willingly violate another person’s mind or disguise herself as a real existing person to seduce someone still accidents happen.

Also and I admit my real and grievous hypocrisy in this, I can’t abide relationships based on falsehood. And “I’m always disguised in your presence” is pretty big lie. It’s enough to forbid me to mantle in her presence lord Vayu of the Yazatas who honor truth in all things but also puts her at risk of being blackmailed if someone caught a glimpse of her true form. I approve of the idea of making human comfortable with her and not shocking them with a more alien appearance but the Team has to know what she looks like even if that puts her out of Wally’s stupid crush.

If I’m at odds with how to bring the subject up in a respectful manner, my method to judge her dedication has obvious abusive undertones even if it’s the most efficient by far. To listen to a city (with me in mind-link to be sure she’s not overwhelmed by the information flow), to feel the crimes being committed, the reasons of the criminals and the pain of the victims. At least after that we’ll both be sure she’s fighting the good fight because she wants to stop pain or protect people and not out of a misguided desire for fame.

This parallel’s heroes judge these children worthy of protecting the world with them, to assist them in their quest to stop crime. I have no doubt they have the power to do so. Still, I won’t let anyone on my watch enter a war without understanding why it is waged or what are the stakes. To do so would be playing on youthful idealism and putting innocents in danger for a cause they don’t understand. I’m sure Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash are aware the costs of failure in our job, have seen corpses and could articulate why they became heroes in more convincing arguments than “my uncle did it.” Superboy and Miss Martian, I want to be sure of why they fight.

Well if listening to a city worth of crimes is too harsh, I suppose a passage to any great city’s morgue should work too. I would prefer a method impressing on them the feelings involved though. That would avoid unnecessary traumatism in an actual mission if we stumble upon a mass grave or something.

That worked for me, no reason it won’t work for them too.

I look at her. She seems so human, the green skin excepted of course. Normal body type, a little too thin to my taste but not anorexic by any means. I suppose that if she keeps her strength equal in all forms, she can conform herself to anyone’s mad beauty standards without becoming less efficient. She smiles easily. Well in this case it has something to do with the clique of fairies flying around her creating ephemeral garlands and flowers before working on the plants. I decide to take care of things directly.

“So of you and Manhunter, who is the closest to the true Martian form”

She stops smiling, stop fidgeting, turns a nasty shade of violet and begins slightly shaking. Well at least that proves I’m right to solve this at the beginning of our adventures rather than wait for a supervillain to discover the fact. She seems plunged in deep thoughts for several minutes, wondering what course of action she’ll take. I’m waiting but my thoughts turn sluggish. I have the sentiment embarrassing her was enough and I should drop the subject.

Wait. Is she really trying to do that? Concentrating a bit, I’m actually feeling her touch on the surface on my mind, frantic and instinctive. Too instinctive by far. The change is done in a hurry and her touch is light enough I shrug off the compulsion and look at her in the eyes before starting in a false-cheery tone.

“And after all these hours I spent explaining to Superboy you were unable to compel someone telepathically. A piece of advice though, even if that worked on me I have another presence in my head who would react to the intrusion.” And then embarrassment would be the least of your problems. “Anyway, I don’t know how you do things on Mars but here it’s bad form to scramble the thoughts of someone to avoid an embarrassing subject”

I sense her mind departing mine in a hurry like if she pulled her hands from a bonfire. She is truly embarrassed by what I hope is her instinctive reaction rather than the fact I caught her doing so. At last after calming herself, she lowers her head and let her flesh changes like quicksilver.

She’s not so different. She has little to no breasts and her build is much more muscular but she’s still distinctly female. Her bald skull is less pronounced than Martian Manhunter but not at the point where it would be unrealistic. She looks like a younger female version of J’onn J’onnz, not a human girl in green coating. I smile with indulgence.

“Not the canon of human beauty but not unrealistic. Certainly not the stuff of Kid Flash’s fantasies but you seem rather disturbed by his advances anyway.” She answers my next question by advance:

“I didn’t want to look like a freak to humans and the team. Human media sent by uncle J’onn was very specific on the looks of female aliens and…”

“Men can look like monsters but women must be desirable and available for the dashing heroes.” I’m still smiling while I conclude

“I understand why you look the way you do but you can’t hide from your comrades. Imagine if something would have caused you to revert to your form mid-battle? We could have hurt you thinking you had a problem.” I decide to not mention the blackmail angle right now. It is already enough she showed me a truer version of herself. She quickly reasserts her human form while I ask sheepishly.

“I was going to propose to you and Superboy to go training outside and take a look at a real city but I suppose that’s out of the question now?”

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 4
NEAR MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
JULY,8, 2010 9:15 AM

Finally, there were no problems and I was able to discuss with M’gann the details of the training I had in mind. While she noted she would be unable to cope with the weight of an entire city if we began in one, she thought she would be fine if we began outside and approached little by little. I called the Martian Manhunter and obtained confirmation sensing few people could help her focus her psychic gifts as well as give her an opportunity to test the full range of her abilities. He commended me for thinking of linking my mind and Superboy’s to hers, acting as anchors and familiar point of references for her meditation.

So as soon as Superboy threw off the shackles of sleep and readied himself, we went off to the wilderness surrounding our bases. It was as much a nice stroll through the forest than anything else. With deliberate slowness I convinced Superboy to agree to my plan. I’m not surprised of the ambiguities our clone friend has with telepathy. While he was controlled by the G-Gnomes, he was also raised in their proximity and the touch of their mind on his psyche was a familiar one. Funnily enough I think he will be the most adept of us with telepathy if he can get past his bad experiences.

He will. If need be I will force him to do so. Communication that are difficult or impossible to trace or intercept have no price. With telepathic group link the whole team could range vast distances and act as a coordinated unit. Even if the League is careful with our choice of missions, we will often face enemies surpassing our powers. Coordination tends to win against superior odds and telepathy has the potential to turn us temporally in a single organism able to act as one.

I explained that to M’gann and Superboy and they were both surprised. I don’t understand why she wasn’t aware of that use of her powers, more useful in my mind than remote interrogation or even the sensing of life forces in a given area. We suppose it’s because telepathy is so natural to Martian they have trouble imagining how things must be for a non-telepathic species. As for Superboy, that raises some questions. Was he not expected to act with his unfortunate siblings as a units linked by G-gnomes? Perhaps the different clones were expected to fulfill very different and separate roles. We already pieced with the League Match was surely made for the sole purpose of killing Superman, while Superboy had a more complex mission to fulfill.

But these reflexions can wait. I think we have found an ideal place. The clearing is vast enough to be comfortable, with little risk of damage if M’gann react telekinetically. The forest is all around us and we emit the only recognizable sounds here. I think we have scared all the animals away and this is definitively a little too early for hitchhikers. On my signal we put towels on the grass, drink fully from our gourds and sit cross-legged, face to each other, ready to begin. Under my guidance, we close our eyes and inhale deeply before sending our thoughts to each other.

The first contact is tentative, almost timid, especially after M’gann’s actions this morning. I don’t recoil from her psychic touch and even invite her to renew the contact. Inhale then exhale, eyes turned inside, thoughts passing between us like clouds in the sky. We dance for a moment around each other, catching some stray thought through our slight link then more and more, until our three voices echo in our minds without traversing the air. That part is difficult for our thoughts are not always expressed in words alone. I feel the old caress of the fluid in the pod, the odd sensation of drowning without drowning, I remember the press of minds in the great caverns of Mars. They hear tunes I listened to with wonders, feel fear while lost in a crowd while a child. With time and concentration these parasite feelings cease and we stand separate but linked.

The next stage sees Superboy and I learn to gaze the world without eyes. This is easier than I thought for my link with Tlaloc who is shared by my two comrades allow me to perceive the thoughts of the forest. Not particularly deep or intelligent thoughts, mind you. Certainly not the conversations of the Ent in Tolkien’s works, but thoughts nonetheless. It is a deep and calm rumble. Dreams of rain falling and sun bathing, dreams of sap flowing and leaves greening. We sense them too: The spirits of the trees the Greeks called dryads, hovering at the edge of our shared consciousness, dreaming their old silent dreams for the lives of trees uncounted. We open our eyes without opening them in a plane we built like a bat sense her surroundings with sonar.

The skies are of pale blue and the clouds seem to turn and dance around an invisible center rather than being pushed by the whim of the wind. The great oaks of the forest stand near us and their size depends on their age so some of them reach to the distant heavens with grasping branches. I was wrong, there are some hitchhikers here and we scratch their minds in a hurry as they appear to us like ghosts. I laugh a moment for my nose has found glasses again for the first time in this world. Miss Martian appear as M’gann which makes me wonder if this is due to her greater command of the mind or because she sees herself as humanoid, even here. Superboy appears in the blue and red costume of his genetic donor which means he needs serious help to overcome the need to be Superman. Still I smile

“I see you both and hear you. Now it’s your choice. We can decide it’s well and good and conclude here. I can see if I can impart to you my perceptions of the realm of death and we’ll talk with the ghosts Or we can see how far M’gann’s perceptions can range and circle Happy Harbour.”

“Why do only one of these things” reply Superboy, “we can talk to the dead and see the city”

M’gann is more reserved in her agreement but she acquiesces nonetheless to the suggestion of letting me impart the gift of death to the link. Inhale then exhale. Concentrate on the sensations of the dead, on the dreams the dead dream in their long sleep and the howls of ghosts never found.

More flames rise in our line of views, some are wearing standard hikers’ clothes and marks of exposure. Some are native and I don’t recognize their costume or their language in the slightest. They seem to have died by many causes of death, disease, hunger, old age, despair and each bears the marks. The false sun of this world dims and is replaced by a pale moon in skies color of soot. There are not as many I would have thought they would be for the forest near an inhabited area but still they are numerous enough to serve my purpose.

I smile to my comrades as we rise through the air to look on the forest below. I point to the flames of the thoughts of the living and speak:” They are the reason we fight. For them to continue their life with the least pain possible is our goal.” I point then to the herd of the dead: “They are the reason we fight too. For their sacrifice to not have been in vain, for their suffering to be remembered is our goal.”

We stand a moment in the heavens, like birds afraid of jumping from the nest. We chain ourselves with links of memory and wishes. Then we dive towards the flames of the living and the dead, to the sound of their thoughts, to the memory or sensation of their lives. We dive for an instant become them and understand what we must protect.

The results are somewhat mixed.

 

Yeah, I think they needed this. Well done.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 5
NEAR MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
JULY,8, 2010 10:00 AM

How to describe what we see and hear with the senses of our minds? Martian language has words for this concept and M’gann is happy to use them but human language has to rely on simile and metaphors. To gaze on a living or a dead person with your mind is seeing what they see without seeing. It’s feeling what they are and what they were, each wound and pleasure, each shame and feeling coursing through you in a terrible instant. It is tasting them, to feel the temptation to let go, to let the very barriers of your identity melt away in a glorious riot, to feel yourself becoming one with your prey, feeling but remotely, each new sensation a new flavor for your hungry palate. It is to understand the forces that govern a person so deeply you are unable to gaze away.

Lust awakens in me at this moment. Lust deeper and keener than any I ever experienced for no experience of the flesh and bones can compare to this. The presence of my comrades is a boon for under their gaze I don’t dare to succumb the temptation of staying like this forever, feeling the emotions and the desires of others, living through them as a faceless entity with many bodies. M’gann and Superboy feel it too but they are too young to really understand what they want exactly. So like me they circle around an individual then leave for the air then dive again to take their fill of experiences. I laugh in the expanses of the “psychic plane”, as M’gann loosely translated the “place” we are standing here. They understand now, what it is to be human for they feel it as keenly as I do. I see a hint of comprehension glint in Superboy’s eyes and I see he understood why we want him to have a human life.

The living taste differently from the dead. The dead are colored by regrets and pain. At least these dead are, which is not so difficult to understand. After all they are not guardian ghosts whose anchors are their families. Some enable my comrades to awaken to the reality of violence by gross and subtle means. M’gann is the most affected as we pass through the pains of deep hunger, the black waters of slow madness, the yellow quivering of fear. Superboy frowns as he walks through the paths of anger, witnessing and feeling the consequences of rage and hatred as we pick some victims of impassionate murder. None of them, living or dead speak. The dead communicate by images and feelings while I admonish my comrades to not speak to the living but to simply gaze upon them. I summon the image of the Panopticon, the place where we see but are not seen and invite them to imitate these concepts and simply look on the world and its inhabitants without interfering.

We rise anew in the high air, our psychic forms shaking with excitement. We could stop there, separate and reach our bodies, return to the world of living sap and bright sun but I’m not the only one who has discovered a thirst for knowledge or the forbidden. We look at the city on the distance and M’gann with a deep gaze bring us here, her mind closing the distance, her perception growing until we feel the city before us, until we can nearly hear the cacophony of its inhabitant’s thought. Dangerous and alluring are these sounds for in each sentence snatched from the whole we hear a tantalizing promise to know all that is to know about humanity from worse to better if we give in.

To our credit we don’t enter right away. We circle around it like vultures or more like moths around a fire, knowing it’s dangerous but daring each other to plunge and bring back treasure from the depths. I think we’re attracted to different things in the roiling mass of thoughts. Love, normalcy, might, tales of heroism, tragedies or comedies. A whole town, even a small town like this one is a universe to a telepath. I know I should break the link and call the exercise off but I’m also driven to the city. All my life I hungered for knowledge about human nature, about how we are shaped and forged. Tasting the thoughts of a city on my tongue will be the closest I’ll ever be to this goal. To understand all the different experiences, the different variables, to understand people better than they will ever understand themselves. This too great a temptation for me. Like moths circling the flame we are.

And like moths circling the flame we dive to our doom.

I’m instantly overwhelmed by the mass of sensations, screams, smell and tastes. The cord of thoughts and shared memories we used snap with a resounding sound for what are a few days of cohabitation compared to the screams of a city. I fall into the whirlpool, unable to direct myself, unwilling to direct myself. I’m dragged from thought to thought, from act to act without really understanding what I’m seeing. For a time I’m tossed around, without even remembering my own name, just a drop in a raging ocean then I regain some of my bearings but can’t stop myself.

Some of them must sense him as the furious winds, or at least what I’m perceiving as winds, make me fall into their minds like lightning, enabling me to snatch some of their secrets great or small away. It’s useless as I have no context to replace the things I see and hear in. I’m unable to distinguish between dream and reality, fantasy and memory. With patience I try and succeed at mastering the currents, leading me to patterns I’m naturally attracted with.

Slight ache in the bones from a late awakening, furtive and loving gazes, taste of lips on mine before going to school, cry of a child making me wince in unnatural hunger. I see many of those and they enable me to extract myself from the cacophony a bit so great is my disgust of the food my master craves above all others. Tears must flow from Tlaloc’s sacrifices just as rain weeps over the earth to make it fertile. Tlaloc the hungry who I dare not blaspheme in the secret of my own soul.

I seek the others, I see them and I jump at their sides. M’gann is passing through victims and perpetrators of rejection. Is she trying to understand discrimination? Superboy I snatch while he’s immersing himself in the thoughts of children and the elderly, seeking a father who is always absent, unaware his thoughts lead him to the situation he deems the more like his own. We try to rise but the sound, the waves are too strong and we are beaten off. We collide in each other, break into each other, pain and pleasure mingled as we embrace at three like lovers, our voices, our voice a pillar of stability in the world.

We rise and the let the universe shrink, bringing us back to the forest but we are always entwined. For a terrible moment M’gann spread her perception rather than reduce it and I’m nearly overwhelmed by her power. I see, that must be state or even the whole continent before she instinctively shrink the universe back. By instinct my deepest thoughts and my fantasies retreat to the depths of my mind while my imagination spread in their places. Still I remember the press of bodies in the caves, catches the sight of some white thing whose sight made me recoil for an instant before being replaced by cold familiarity. The sight of Superman falling from the heavens, struck by one of my mortal blows as I scream to the world I’m the new Man of Steel fills me with guilty joy. From me they catch chastised attractions and broken urges. They don’t understand how my feelings must be broken to my will but I’ll explain later.

We disentangle and it’s not an easy process. To sort our surface thoughts and scrub them from our minds. We remember the feelings of oneness and the surge of power coming from this union with guilt. For a moment we truly became one, or approached this state. We understand each other now. Not rationally but we have a brief memory of what drive the others.

As I open my eyes and massage my ankylosed limbs. I wonder how much luck we had by having none of us turn mad from the sensation. How powerful is M’gann anyway? For a brief instant I had the sensation she could hear if she wished at least all the population of the U.S. Still I’m writing the exercise a success on many levels. Superboy doesn’t fear telepathy anymore. These two know now intimately what it is to be human.

Still I’m contacting Martian Manhunter right away and ask him to probe the potential of his niece in extensive details. If she turns out to be especially powerful even among a race of telepaths we must know to see how to train her and not have her fry our brains in a training exercise.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 7
Hall of Justice Washington D.C
JULY,8, 2010 13:00 AM

There are many reasons heroes fight each other, even in the relatively friendly confines of a training room. Pride and matters of ranks and privilege are the rarest but can still happen. The reckless need to prove the superiority of one’s arms and techniques is more popular. But the biggest reason is still personal disagreement. Even if the League is far too modern to call these “duels of honor “or “judgement by strength”, it is surprisingly common when two Leaguers cannot agree on a thing to settle the matter in, let’s say “involved” training. Superman and I are no different and nobody could claim otherwise. I thought what I said to him earlier, that he needs to tire himself out, to get a good rest after then getting over the situation.

And even if the chances are slim, I’d be happy to deliver him a thrashing to be remembered.

Yet I don’t need to win this training session to win my cause. Superman is a good person at heart and displays of endurance in service of a friend are sure means to gain his appreciation. Mayhaps he won’t consider Superboy evil anymore when I will finish to bleed for him. For bleed for him I shall. I’ve already begun. Small cuts for the moment but appropriate pre-combat offerings, enabling me to regain the strength I’ve spent overseeing the gardens. I stand in full costume. Not the most beautiful spectacle I know. My hands and feet are supplemented by claws of jade; so sharp I’ve asked the Man of Steel to don another costume to avoid his panoply to be shredded to pieces. The helm-mask I wear could belong to one of the Deep Ones, hideous patchwork of crocodile and batrachian with googled eyed and toothy smile. No. Compared to the costumes and ornaments of the League I’m not beautiful but terrifying, and terror is a weapon in my arsenal.

I wait at one extremity of the featureless room. The walls are thick enough to resist the going and coming of Superman or Wonder Woman so we are going to let ourselves out completely. I argued for a good fifteen minutes on the necessity for the Man of Steel to let himself go as fully as possible. I know that for him I’m built of cardboard, and that’s true for Tlaloc doesn’t preside over unearthly stamina. Still I will be using all of my powers to oppose him and knock him out. He knows I’m serious and Martian Manhunter has stayed for observe our fight and keep any accidents to happen.

I’m sitting cross-legged as if in meditation, considering the pathways of my mind. Strange that I would use this wait to ponder over the changes that happen each time I invoke a god. Even the core urges of my being are not spared the influence of my patrons but I feel little to feel angry with the changes. I don’t care the rain-god approves or not my conduct here. My duty is to the team and as the youngest Superoby needs my help the most. I have no intention to shame myself by cowering before Superman when the rights of my charge are threatened. I’m happy the gods approve of my choice but I would have done the same even if I was not channeling one of the Teotl.

Or perhaps not and in that resides all the question. I’ll have to ponder that a moment. I’ll have to clear that when I have more time.

I rise as Superman enters clad in a white training suit. He looks at me with a little amazement. I wear nothing but my weapons and a skirt of mailed scales. The scarification of my pre battle rituals are visible on my skin, their red lines display proudly as proof as my determination. I asked for as close as a combat situation as we can. Whatever the manner he’ll treat me, he will have me in full combat capacity I spread my legs a little, rooting myself in the earth below and sensing a twinge of pain as I channel her boundless strength.

Three. Two. One. Manhunter signals us to begin and he charges me head on, hoping to end quickly what he considers to be a farce. No luck for him as I let my mask work its magic. For a moment the jade is as flexible as flesh and twists in a grimace of true ugliness and power. He doesn’t fear me of course, while any mortal I would have done this trick would have collapsed in sheer horror. He doesn’t fear but he doesn’t strike me and, rooted as I am, the wind of his first blow doesn’t incapacitate me.

But here he comes again and I rise my arms to parry, seizing his wrists. For a moment we wrestle with one another, the strength of the sun against the endurance of the earth. I’m torn from my roots, forced to tilt his way and apply all my borrowed strength to counter him. I fail and with an ample movement of the arms he sends me flying through the room.

I attack as soon as I touch the ground, charging him with the speed of lightning. I take advantage of his brief surprise to strike him one, two and three times with my claws, each time scratching the invulnerable skin. He’s surprised for magic weapons are not often used against him and he’s unaccustomed to bleeding rather than burning or being punched by someone as strong as he is. I smile a moment before repeating the maneuver with this time electricity strengthening my swipes. I draw blood once more.

He quickly regains his bearings and punches me in the stomach, the blow nearly strong enough to make the organ burst. I dive and roll backwards to disengage. Not a moment too soon I do that for he looks at me with a gaze of scarlet and the ground where I stood is red hot for a moment. Yet he seizes me, rises me at the height of his eyes and for a moment I fear he’ll kill me. He only slaps me with heavy blows before casting me to the ground once more. This time I hear bones break. One does not fight the Man of Steel without consequences.

For a, moment I stay prostrate. In another training session, that would have been an unhappy accident signaling the end. And it would have been necessary. I fell on my left arm and the pain is excruciating. Still I cannot stay down. I won’t let Superman ignore his responsibilities and wait for the end of the year to decide Superboy is not evil. I rise slowly, nursing my arm. Superman is bloodied but I know he struck me more by surprise than feelings of danger. I hesitate. Mantling Tlaloc now would be a mistake I think. I must gain or lose my cause, not destroy the room and try to kill the Man of Steel. I imagine the future if Superman refuses to see reason. A team with a severely emotionally disturbed youth, bad feelings between the Team and the League if the latter seems to reject their friend, conflicts in the League itself perhaps.

I can’t let that happen. I rise limping. A surge of power down my arms force the flesh to react as bark and sap and regrow itself. Another cloaks my skin in viridian bark. I stand ready, in pain but ready.

He actually smiles. Perhaps he’s happy with my resilience. He doesn’t attack but stand at the ready, inviting me to charge. Well sir, if that’s what you want.

I let my weapons be once again traversed by lightning but reserve the last of my power. I keep it in my throat, letting it build like a storm brews itself over many days. I charge him, yes, claws before me ready to shed blood. He intercepts and dodges the blows as I thought so I let my last weapon out. If he’s deaf to the movements of mercy or empathy for his clone. Then deaf let him be.

I scream with the voice of thunder. A low pitched version of Black Canary screams. I scream to a man who is able to hear a fly beat his wing in the next building. He winces in pain as I shred my throat howling. The sentences of my wrath I let flow and they actually tear him from the ground to make him strike the nearest wall.

Still I know I failed for he launches himself to me as soon as my mouth closes. No hasty punches this time, he just pinches me strongly enough to knocks me out and I fall into unconsciousness.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 8

MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND

JULY,8, 2010 15:00 AM

How could this happen? And more importantly, how can I assure it will not happen again? How can anything like this not happen ever again?

My steps echo along Mount Justice’s hallways. I don’t run, I’m still too weak for that, the power who healed my flesh after my spat with Superman has taken its toll on my strength. Still I make haste as I can. I know their state but I’m driven to their side. It’s the least I can do even it’s useless. And I don’t know yet how useless or not I will be.

When I arrive M’gann and Superboy lie in beds in the infirmary. According to the charts on their brains’ activities, they sleep peacefully but Red Tornado explains to me it was far from the case when I was in the Hall. The responsible of this sits merrily on the robot’s shoulders, for a moment he seems to have the good sense to jump and hide as I approach. A G-gnome, of course, looking at me and at them with dog-like eyes. I feel a great desire to destroy the creature but I relent. As I understand a G-Gnome alone has the intelligence level of a well-trained parrot so we can exclude any malevolence on its part.

He must come from CADMUS but how the hell has it come to this place? I thought the Cave warded by science and magic. Don’t tell me the League has neglected our defenses. I mean, I know these gnomes can hide in the smallest nook and cranny and evade instinctively most sentries but still it’s mighty strange. Well I don’t know the details of the wards the League has built to protect their youngest members.

Because there’s wards, technological, magical or others, there must be defenses to protect the place against intrusion. I will check that in a minute after I’ll have the details of what battle they were fighting in the recesses of their minds

I ask Red Tornado what happened. He didn’t seem distressed and neither was Wonder Woman when she woke me from my post-training stupor to send me here. The android looks at me and declare in monotone.

“Superboy and Miss Martian were training together when they crumbled on the floor. I was looking at the cameras of the place and found the Gnome. Our monitoring apparels signal they were battling heavily in their thoughts before they abruptly stopped and fell to sleep.” He pauses: “They were mumbling about the Joker’s attack which caused the League to forsake this place.”

What? The League abandoned this place because the Joker found it? And they send us here without even warning us the psycho clown knows about the base. Well that’s not worrying at all. I have the reaction all people would have and asks about defenses. He candidly informs me the place is not warded against magic and if the passageways Joker used last time has been redrawn (Thanks Green Lantern), security measures rest in the fact none know the base is once more in activity.

I nearly fall on an infirmary bed laughing myself to death when I hear that. I understand secrecy can be a mighty shield but still it’s not what I would call enough to protect a whole team. Sooner or later, someone will find our location and we must be ready to defend ourselves. I send a thought down the depths of my mind:

“How powerful would be the best warding I could conjure and what it would cost me in time and energy?” The answer comes, not in words, but in a vision.

I see the mountain brimming with its own energy. The whole Mount Justice claimed as a sacred place by the power of this world, consecrated to the service of justice. In addition to provide us with sanctuary, the mountain could reinforce my comrades if they offered the proper sacrifices to it. I see in the depths of the cave another stone claiming this place as sacred and offering other strength. I see ornaments of seashells and wooden masks claiming this place as tapu, sacred and forbidden. By three pantheons special gifts I can claim this mountain as our unassailable fortress. And that’s not even counting all application by the gods of guardianship and defense, the jealous rulers of the underworld who can grant me a portion of their vindictiveness to defend their home to safeguard my home.

But it’s not only my need to be safe, but also my ambition Vergil is flattering for I see now the hallways and the rooms glistening with runes of power and talisman of protections. I see band of lesser spirits as I employ to tend our gardens patrol the corridors for the price of meagre food offerings. Not only then but all the lesser immortals of the forest who can come to the call of one who masters fertility. Dryads and Naiads and all their cousins could serve us as defenders and advisors.

Of course this establishment would have its price, a heavy price. First to consecrate the place I would need time for at least half my patron should be consulted to aid to my great work. Some I would have to mantle and use all my energy to inscribe the signs of warding. The second price would be all these creatures great and small will ask for sacrifices. I for myself am not opposed to this idea. I mean, according to Vergil, it would be enough of a beef or two sheep by month to content every lesser and greater power, and most of the meat would be ours to eat as in every sacrifice ever. It would basically mean slaughter our own meat but I’m not sure how the Team or the League would consider this.

It’s the third and final consequence that frightens me a little. For all I’ll do to protect this place will mark it as a sanctuary for the forces of death. The images in my head show me a place where ghosts will be able to manifest at leisure, where the scenery of the Underworld would be visible at the edge of an eye. It would be holy ground where even the Team and I would have to pay our respect. A secret temple to death and justice. Not the most reassuring comparison for my comrades.

Still I’m satisfied with what Vergil show me. While I’m not sure the League will approve of the whole, some of these things cost nothing I can’t pay myself. Also it will be a great design for temples and sanctuaries I will build elsewhere, great complexes where each of my patron would receive its due. I smile because that brings me to another decision.

I don’t know the result of my spat with Superman but I will lose nothing by ceasing to wait. When Superboy will wake up, I’ll talk to him of the gods. Not only of my patrons but of everyone from Zeus cloud-gatherer to Agni of the burning fire. The inspiration he asks of Superman he will find it in myths and legends of heroes. Or at least he will have the occasion to pledge himself to people who will care about him.

After all dedicating an orphan to the gods is a long and tried tradition.

 

Interlude: Change of Heart

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

JULY,8, 2010 11:00 PM

“Do you think we should put him down? Do you want me to take your burden in that task also?”

It had been a very good question. What did he think exactly about the clones? If he was honest with himself, Superman had to admit he didn’t know. He felt some kind of ill-defined disgust for the two boys. Even the terms “boys” was difficult to use in regards to these things and after this afternoon, the Man of Steel wondered why he couldn’t think of the clones as sentient. Was it because he wanted them to die and dehumanize them was a good way to accustom himself to the idea? Perhaps. In this case what was he, what was Superman if he meditated the death of thinking beings?

He sunk in a chair. He couldn’t think of that in Metropolis or DC. Here there would be nothing to push him to destroy buildings or excite his wrath. He couldn’t escape the cold fact. Even if he hadn’t tried to kill his clones, he had wished them simply to disappear of his life and die. And for what? For the violation of his intimacy, of his very flesh to breed weapons, perhaps to be used against him? For this insane mingling of his genes with those of his archenemy? Both of these reasons or perhaps neither of them. He didn’t know. There was a part of his mind that screamed the boys were unnatural and he thought it was a normal reaction to vat-grown organisms. Dante couldn’t fault him for this, he who had killed because he thought he was facing animals.

He couldn’t tell which one of them disturbed him the most. Was it Match with his raging personality? There was something terrifying to look at the clone’s youthful face and imagine it twisted in a grimace of rage, to see these younger hands and imagine them having the strength to break his neck. Bruce was right, it was the perfect weapon to use against him, it would take a fortitude he was not sure to possess to slay a mirror image of his youth. Superboy was more insidious. He looked more human, having a personality did miracles to make a good first impression, but his more advanced programming gave Kal-El pause. This was a creature created to replace it, perhaps even to fool the world once he would have killed him. That didn’t explain why CADMUS had created him as a hybrid but Superman had no doubts Luthor would have found a way to exploit even a weakened Superman.

So he was unnerved by Superboy. It was normal he thought. Bruce or Diana could perhaps gaze without fear or contempt on a weapon designed specially to kill them but he was not able to do so. Still Dante was right. Either Superboy was dangerous and should be disposed of, or he was good and would rise from his destined programming to stand among the League. There were no other options. If the clone was able to have good intentions, he should be taught to act on them. If he was irremediably led to evil, he should be taken care of.

For a brief and terrible moment, he had wavered. For an instant he was tempted to answer yes to Dante’s proposition and seal the boy’s fate. Of course, after the training session, Superman had little doubt such an answer would have left him maimed or even killed. One does not propose you to assassinate someone then fight a superior opponent for their sake and protection. To have the young hero who had previously declared himself afraid to fight Superman take the initiative to engage him a training bout had been surprising. Still he had wavered and thought about killing the clones and solving the problem once and for all.

It was the image that stopped him. Seeing his own youthful face with a dead smiling face, blood marking their throats. For a moment he had thought Dante more inclined to slay them peacefully but then remembered how himself would fight against a determined and capable opponent. To see himself, a younger version of himself but still pretty much a mirror, limbs cracked by battle, throat gouged open or head cleanly cut off was too harsh a vision. There had been also the realization of delegating the murder to someone, not because Superman himself was unable to commit it but because he couldn’t bother to do so while wishing it, would have been acting the way Luthor acted. It would have been murderous hypocrisy at its finest.

So Kal-El asked himself the only question that mattered now: Did the two clones deserved to join their brothers in the grave? He didn’t think so. Firstly, he was, as most of the League, a stanch abolitionist and he could not wish the clones submit, just for the crime of existence, to a fate he refused to visit on murderers. Secondly, the clones had not asked to be grown and exist. If murderous rampage it should be, this rampage should target scientists and CADMUS’ employees not the products of their fault. He considered the taking of his DNA like a rape but he knew it was wrong to blame the children born of the crime for the sins of their creators.

Still it chilled him to the bones he had been willing, even for a moment, to approve the murders of two boys because he couldn’t be bothered to sort his feelings out. Worse, considering the age and inexperience of Superboy and Match… He had been willing to murder children or stand while a subordinate took care of the problems for him. Forget Superman the hero, Clark Kent simple farmer’s son was appalled at what he considered.

Why had he not thought of this sooner? Because no Leaguer would have laid the possibility of making the clones “disappear” before him. None of his friends would have thought to kill them, Dante, who had argued the League should kill Match rather than leaving him a mindless berserker, had n such scruples.

In the sanctum of his wintry home, Superman thought about the meaning of his epiphany. If he couldn’t kill his clones, it meant he should be closer to them. Not as a father for he was not their father but like the young hero had mentioned as a fellow Kryptonian. He knew only bits and pieces of his destroyed planet’s history and most of it came from the Green Lanterns’ rings database. Still if what he remembered was correct, Superboy was destined to attend high school. That meant he would need a lesson or two on controlling his strength. It had taken most of a summer for Pa to teach him how to not break something or someone in P.E.

Superman knew duty and knew what was his concerning at least the sentient clone. For Match, things would have to wait.

 

Interlude: Release
NEAR MOUNT JUSTICE
JULY,9,2010,01:00 AM

“Are you sure that will even work?”

I walk along the trees, attentive to every sound. Shame weighs heavily on my heart. What I’m planning to do is wasteful. It will hurt no one but neither will it help someone other than me. It’s pure indulgence and I’m asking Vergil if his ritual will work to spare me the possible disappointment. My new comrades, my charges would laugh if they saw me there. Laugh or perhaps in Kid Flash’s case ask me if I can do the same ritual for him, with some modification obviously. Anyway I will do it and feel better afterwards.

What drives me to this? Lust has never been the sin to hold me most in thrall to the contrary. Is it the possibility to consort with creatures beautiful beyond mortal ken? Possible, after all who even in this strange world can boast to have known the embrace of a forest spirit? Vergil assured me these lesser immortals, of the same order of divinity than satyrs, nymphs and others elves are close enough to humans to make the transaction not creepy. After all, didn’t nymphs marry mortal kings in the mythology? Didn’t river spirits receive spouses and sacrifice when they asked?

I dimly remember a story about Zatanna summoning a lover in the main D.C universe and the thing not working so well for her. She tried to create him from the void and I seek to summon it from a people known for their promiscuity but I understand the risks. I smile dimly. It would have been easier to take a zeta tubes and cruise the local bars or sauna to rest my desires but I don’t trust me enough to do this. To channel a power of fertility and beauty and take this mask as my own for a night would be far too easy to my taste. Too easy to twist someone’s desires to my own.

Any relationship, as brief and meaningless it can be must be between equals. Too much power and creepiness is an issue. It’s the rule I followed in my parallel and it’s the rule I’m still following here.

The ritual is simple enough and the instruments are laid before me. A bright red towel, rose blossoms, three scented candles, incenses sticks and swan feathers. No need even to channel a god when you know how to send an invitation. Most of this paraphemilia is for show, only a means to show my intentions to the invisible. And I’m ready to do so, ready to embrace it.

Is it sad than my first try at magic outside the pursuit of my duties is for me to get laid? I don’t know. What I know it’s that’s the first thing magic is used for in many cultures. Love potions, amulets to point you in the direction, the list is long. So many ways, to charm, to invite and to command. Even demonology is often used for the summoning of incubi and succubi to one’s bed All magic is child of cruel Desire and you can’t so easily gainsay one of the Endless.

I smile softly as I light the candles and the incense, enjoying the riot of smell. My senses are far from keen, all five of them and only violent expressions like these can I feel without difficulty. As I’m bathed by the perfumed smoke I take the roses and the feathers and burn them one after the other, whispering prayers to fair Aphrodite, to Freyr and to all the others powers of desire. I send a call in the tapestry of the world, an invitation, like when Io of Argos called for the king of the gods to share her bed.

And he comes like I thought he would as an oak open itself to let him pass. Vergil whispers in my mind this one is of the tree-folk, the very spirit of the glade I’m sitting in. I could have guessed that in seeing his appearance, human and yet inhuman. Not enough to disturb, enough to be aroused by the charms of the unknown.

He’s tall but fortunately not as tall as the great trees of his domain. His skin is of the brown colour rich earth, sometimes broken by what seem to be tattoos of vines and trees and thorns. His hair is of the color of leaves and some are braided in it. He’s humanoid, four limbs, no obvious inhuman characteristics. He’s not a satyr with goat-legs and elaborate horns or a centaur with an equine body. He’s not even like the Ent to be shaped like a tree. Still he’s not human, he’s too perfect, too shaped like one of these marbles statues the Greeks crafted long ago, an Adonis or Phoebus come to life. Perfect proportions, strong yet vulnerable, enticing and disarming.

Of course I know I see his own powers at work even unconsciously. The powers of fertility and of nature are always attractive even when they seem monstrous. It’s part of their nature as it’s part of the nature of fire spirits to burn or ghosts to mourn the flesh they have lost. Still I admire the perfection of his form and the calm wisdom of his inky eyes.

He doesn’t speak but communicate by images and emotions. Sap running, saplings being born, the way of all life. Like every creature he is able to want, to long for something and in a forest nearly tamed as this one, humanity is never far. Lucky for me. I would not have wanted to sleep with a tree like the ones I sensed with M’gann and Superboy this morning. Still his request surprises me for he wants a mortal-blooded child.

I pause. Not for the mechanics of the act I don’t care about. I informed myself before coming here and know these kind of spirits are genderless able to change their forms at leisure. He is a he only because I summoned him in this shape. Still I don’t know how a child could be sane if raised only by animals and nature spirits and we don’t need another Poison Ivy.

We argue by images and smells and sensations for a while until the glade child relent. Our child will be a spirit as him with just a tad of mortal blood to make it more apt to interact with humanity and possible worshippers. I will also come back to summon rain and bless the grove as soon as I’m able.

Who would have thought spirits to be greedy?

Still I accept and as we fall in an embrace, I feel the warm touch of fresh soil surround me, making me another growing plant.

Well that’s certainly different from what I expected.

 

OMAKE: Interlude: Release
THE DREAMING
JULY,9,2010,01:00 AM

There are worlds inside one’s head. Entire realms of romance and magic whose roads begin in your sleeping minds and continue to the place where dreams are born and die. In this parallel, all are destined to follow this path to its end in the misty confines of the third of the Endless’ domain. Neither the path nor its exact destination are of your choice, your unconscious mind leads you by the hand and let you quake in wonder, tremble in terror, sometimes remembering the dream all your life, sometimes forgetting most of it as soon as you wake.

I’m not like most of this place’ visitors. The gifts of my masters apparently enable me to keep some part of choice and consciousness even as I’m surrounded by mists and keep to the path outside my mind. I could have stayed in myself, to lose myself in fancies born of memories. I could have breached the gate at the heart of my being and tried to ride the thoughts of the very gods who give me power. That one course of action was too dangerous by far. I’m not proud enough to decide to become privy to the secrets of divinity. Not yet anyway.

Quirk of this place or unconscious wish, I’m warmly clothed. One of this hooded vestments with belts of ropes the monks wear is my frock. I pulled the hood on my face and marveled to see the blue cloak outside was red outside. Passion hidden by aloofness. Nice symbol. A staff I have in my hand, not straight but bent and twisted like an old man’s spine. A lantern I show to the world, glass and iron keeping a mourning spirit. A weary pilgrim on the road. I could have a fit of laughter. *

It is not good for man to be alone and desire to be shackled for twenty days straight. In a way, I’m surprised to have taken so long to take the paths of dreams and seek among fantasies and half-remembered creatures the cure to my loneliness. I could have gone in the waking world of course but I did not dare. It is my wish to be known and for a known superhero even quick bumps in the night demand responsibilities. Also channeling the presence of the gods place my body to the peak of human capacity. I’m tempted to captivate, to seduce by enchanting voice, to marvel with illuisions, to bargain for healing, food or services. I don’t want to succumb to this temptation.

And there’s also this lust, inflamed by Vergil’s words, towards the inhuman. For how a mortal lover could compare to the kisses of the immortal? How mortal embrace could compare to the gaze of a creature of pure desire and fecundity? I’m from that world now. The pain I endured when I was marked by the gods make me part of this universe and granted the right to pursue its inhabitants.

The path leads me a to field and I nearly collapse laughing at the turn my imagination has took. The leaves are long, the grass is green, the hemlock-umbels tall and fair. Night starry and enchanting rules the heavens as sprites and nymphs dance to the music of invisible flutes. Classic, I suppose. The dream actors, I think I will think of them that way dance as soon as they are born from the trees, the grass, or the river I hear whispering. They look like these youths who form the procession of the gods, white as marble, statuesque in their traits, long hair like shadows falling on their shoulder and colored gauze for all clothing.

It’s not lust that makes me lick my lips but gluttony for I smell meat roasting over a fire. A gaze and I look at several lambs on spit slowly cooking. To smell them is to taste the hot flesh in my mouth, to scald my lips on the morsels, to sense them melt along my throat. Around the spits other greek-like youths lie on banquets beds, raising cups and laughing.

The frock that covers me fall in the grass, the staff and the lantern join them right away. I’m naked, or wearing the same colored gauze as them who don’t cover much. I walk and take a seat letting the liquid of the cup warm me like a lover’s kiss. How much time pass I there to relish in the sights, the smells and the taste? I don’t know but the trance breaks when I see them.

The first is white on white. White skin, white hair, white clothes. The only touch of color is the emerald on his naked breast and the black pools of his eyes. He has a certain haggard charm with his thin limbs and youthful traits but a half-remembered instinct drives me to stay away from him. His companion is also clad in white but his flesh is human and he wears a blindfold of black silk.

Is it because I’m so hungry for desire that I dart towards him? Is it because in the depths of my unconscious I remember which dream covers his eyes and prefer the company of men? In any case he smiles a toothy smile before beginning to run.

Our race last for a dream and a half and often we forsake our human seemings to adopt the forms of running beasts. We become wolves running after each other, he escape as mouse in a barley field, I slither as a snake behind him. I take flight as an eagle and fall in a golden rain, become swan and charging bull and even fire. Still he escapes me, leading me by shadowed paths and wooden glades. The landscape changes for the worse. Now it looks like exposed brain matter with towers of jagged glass jutting through the raw flesh. All of it pulsates at the sound of my own mad heartbeat. Here he is, standing before me and I’m nearly tempted to recoil.

He's beautiful at first glance. Lithe but strong, fascinating yet repelling. Now he wears modern clothes and the sight of the sunglasses that replaced his blindfold sends a twinge of fear along my spine. I know him and I remember his name but I don’t fear him. We’re in dreams and dreams, even nightmares can’t harm. So I hold his eyeless gaze as I walk to him. I’m shaking, true, but with anticipation rather than terror. In truth, some part of me is anxious simply to pull the glasses out and lose myself in the black pits of his eyes, to seek my reflection in the depths of this black mirror.

So I go to him and touch his skin, it feels like cold iron and ashen dust. I see superseding his form the shapes of some unknowable monster, the shape of nightmares forgotten at the first light of dawn. For a moment I see him with too-many jointed limbs.

Yet his kiss is not like the kiss of worms or the caress of barbed wire, and he signals me to descend with him in the depths of his home where shaded reflections of every act I regret gaze upon us. Where shame and fear are only memories I smile and follow the Corinthian who is of the race of the nightmares in the heart of his domain.

Dreams are of no consequences after all, aren’t they?

That was my original idea for the previous chapter. Is it less,more, as creepy as the finished result?

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 9

MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND

July,10,2010;10:30 PM

“You are not sure she’s dead! How can you be, perhaps they just captured her!”

Kid flash angry protestation drives me to the main room but, to tell the truth, I was already going here. Seeing the three sidekicks arrive together and run away to the computer to investigate would be suspicious enough without Wally screaming to everyone apparently someone’s dead. I smell bad decisions and consequences in this and don’t think I’m actually wrong. Partly for that, I decide to not enter the room but just eavesdrop their shouting match until I can learn what it is about.

I sigh though. The day had been spent so well, between mind linking and exploring the nearby countryside, beginning to teach Superboy mythology and to spur his interest for solar figures and preparing the description of the array of defenses I have in mind for the Cave to the Batman, I deemed I have worked well enough. Having a call from Superman saying he would come take Superboy for a discussion tomorrow was the icing of the cake. Well, Well. When you think you finished, you discover more and more work to do.

What they are talking about quickly works me in a frenzy though. From what I gather Robin hacked his father’s files, (I think it’s an habit for him nowadays but I wonder what the Bat thinks of that or if he’s aware of it), then asked his good friends to join him in Central City. I’m slightly baffled they didn’t call Superboy or M’gann to join but perhaps they judged them too far away. Anyway, they discovered CEO Selena Gonzales was targeted by the League of Shadows (What with that name?) and tried to protect her. Again without referring either to me, their supposed comrades or their mentors. Parsing their shouts, they failed and got her kidnapped and perhaps killed. That pisses me off for so many reasons I explictely send a thought to M’gann and Superboy to stay outside the main room for a little while. Then I decide interrupt them, walking in the room and calmly speaking.

“I can check if she’s dead or not. But don’t think if she’s alive you’ll face no consequences of this”

Their reaction is almost comical. They were so engrossed in their shouting they didn’t note my presence until I was among them. Kid Flash jumps backward and almost manage to trip himself up, Aqualad while still stoic, looks deeply ashamed and almost blushing, and Robin is positively scowling. Kaldur regain his bearing the quickest and asks:

“Please do so. We know we screwed up but not at which extent.”

I smile producing a knife from my belt. While having a gun would be difficult due my low targeting abilities, a knife is a good thing to wield in any case from my devotions to defense. I’m smiling but the smirk is all but gentle as I explain to them their blood is required to the ritual. I have no sympathy, in any sense of the terms, for this woman and wouldn’t even know how to get her if I had to do this alone. As they accept, surprisingly quickly, to shed some drops of their precious blood on the blade. I examine the dossier they brought up. Apparently Mrs. Gonzales was working with CADMUS or at least funding them Interesting.

As Robin hands me the bloody blade I wonder. Do they know how much they failed in this? Not only they obviously mismanaged their mission but they didn’t even warn their elders or me of what they were doing. They managed to beat two Shadows’ goons but they could have died and we would not have been the wiser. Do they realize whatever this ritual’ results I’m calling their mentors in? If this woman is alive, the League must help us try to get her out of the Shadows’ hands. If she is dead, they must be warned of the failure of their apprentices and enact punishment if they wish. But that will wait for a bit. Indeed, the three of them are so ashamed they didn’t even ask how I would check their charge’s death.

I hold the knife and splits my palm open with it before tracing a circle on the ground. They disappear to my gaze as I focus my eyes to look to the world beyond. If I’m authorized to clad this mountain in the iron defenses of the Underworld, that sort of thing will be easier. For now it will take all my energy.

“Selena Gonzales!” I cry out: “By your name, by the blood of your failed protectors, by the debt they owe you, I call you. Selena Gonzales by blood and ash and bone, I call your spirit from the realm of the dead. Selena Gonzales, called, called and thrice called, come in the name of the gods that rule the dark sojourn!”

And she answers unfortunately. I feel my energy wanes as the call is issued and a cold wind dance around the room. Even they see her coming through the mist. She looks like the photos, dark skin, brown eyes black hair but of course all of this has the tint of a badly done photos. She hovers in mid-hair and we can see the bullet hole in her forehead well enough. Clean and efficient, at least.

I sense her struggle against the spell, stretch her bindings for a little while before I’m forced to release her to the ether. All this time she doesn’t speak or even try to, she just looks the three sideckicks with accusatory glances before dissolving in ectoplasm.

Well that settles it. However, I’m not happy and my voice takes the smirking mocking tone I always have when I’m angered:

“Congratulations heroes. You managed your first mission alone! That was going beyond the call of duty for myself, our two comrades or even your teachers could have helped you not getting your charge killed but that’s the thought that counts I suppose. So lighten up and think about how you will present that to your mentors. I’m sure they will reward your initiative as it must be.”

Thank the gods, they seem to sincerely regret their escapade. If not, I would have bound the ghost of their failure to the Cave to greet them each time they enter. Yet I think as I shift the computer to communications and send the message to Aquaman, Batman and Flash their protégés had a new intiatibve with bad results I will feel pity for them before long.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 10
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
July,10,2010;12:00 AM

At least the shouting has ceased.

To tell the truth it surprised me. After all, I was not expecting to hear Batman or, gods forbid, the Flash shout at their protégés. A disapproving glance, perhaps a light spanking would have been what I expected from heroes. I’m surprised but not disconcerted. The League having no patience for idiotic pride and its consequences is fortunate. For obvious reasons I was not with my comrades while they were dressed down but the phrase: “If this happen again, you give your costume back” came quite often. As I foresaw, I feel a twinge of pity for the three of them. Not enough to shield them for the consequences of their mistakes though. Doing so would be an insult to the dead woman they failed to protect.

I briefly wonder which of them has it worse. Well Aquaman proved himself a maverick while he’s meant to be in the military. The trouble with disregarding procedures is you get punished when things go wrong and you discover they are there for a reason. Dick and Wallace have not only pissed their mentors off but also their family members. Indeed, I consider that for them the forced stay in the Cave is akin to grounding. Which means I got to find a way to keep them busy and not causing mischief during this time. Perhaps I could threaten them with dumping in one of the Underworld.

Yet I’m totally agreeing with the League’s punishment. The three of them will stay grounded here for the next ten days. Defense for them to go out for any reason, save direct word of their mentors. Batman and Aquaman threatened many times to take their apprentices’ equipment for the span of their detention but finally relented. While Robin and Aqualad take the thing with strides, Kid Flash tried to mouth it off. Emphasis on the “tried”. I would not have believed Barry Allen could shout this loud and his warning that he would find a way to “undo the friggin formula you cobbled up in your basement” and take his powers away seemed to shut Wally up. Gods are my witness, if any of the three try to complain for, let’s say the next three days, I’ll end them.

M’gann and Superboy are there with me. Explaining the situation to them was difficult and I wouldn’t want the dynamic trio to explain in details their fuck-up. At some moments I feel I’m petty and spiteful but that pass quickly. They were proud and refused to pause to ask for help. They sought the problem and tried to hog all the glory. I would have been angry if they lucked it out and managed to save their charge. Now? When they failed and caused a death that could have been easily avoided? There are very few things the League could have done I would not have approved. Hell if they had taken their apprentices on their knees and spanked them raw, I would not have been unhappy with the results. Childish arrogance asks for a child’s punishment after all.

They get out at last with sunken eyes and chastised air. Their mentors follow them with still angry and disappointed expressions. I think the disappointment hurt more than the anger. Aquaman, the Flash and Batman have all reconsidered the wisdom to take a teen sidekick. I think it’s the last time for a good while Robin manage to hack the Batcomputer or the League’s files. Still the sidekicks come to place themselves besides us, still not daring to look up. Surprinsingly it’s Aquaman who announces the verdict to the team.

“Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash did a great mistake.” Understatement of the year your Majesty. “They will stay here for a while, the time to think about what they done. We will discuss their mistake and use it to teach you what you are not to do in a mission” That is surprisingly pragmatic, I suppose the three mentors will try to unravel the mess they left them with. Aquaman continues, this time speaking directly to me.

“They’re grounded for all intents and purpose. They don’t go out except for training and we’ll see if we approve of that” He glares at Flash. “They stay here and learn the virtue of patience.” He turns to them next.

“Dante and Red Tornado and any hero visiting this place will act as us for the time being. Their orders are our orders for all we’re concerned. Trick them to go on others adventures and the consequences will be direr, for all of you” What? They give me authority on their brats? No it’s uncalled for, they are not that bratty. At least I’ll have a stick to make the next days livable for everyone. Batman glares at everyone with such intensity even Superboy shivers and they leave after some pleasantries. Well that makes three new hosts for the Cave. Fortunately, the rooms here are modulable and setting them up takes little time. I decide to not lose time.

“Well now that’s finished. Follow me. We need to set you up for the next days. Save if you want to sleep on the floor tonight?”

For a moment I think at least Aqualad will answer me he’ll do it. I wonder if the Atlanteeans have a concept of penitence and ritualized atonement. Judging from Kaldur (Yes I know judging a culture from a unique example is bad) I’ll pick them as adherents of stoicism or other philosophies. Yet he follows me sheepishly like the others, ignoring the comments of Superboy and M’gann trying to cheer them up.

That’s odd. I know such dressing down are not current but apparently they are more unexpected I suspected. They seem not only ashamed but also completely flabbergasted at their mentors’ attitude. What did they expect for such a fuck-up? The League leaving them go with a slap on the wrist and some harsh words? Arrogance is not a quality you want to foster in your sidekick and future hero.

Still I’m reassured the world still turns the right way when I spy a glint of malice in Robin and Kid Flash’s eyes. I have no need of telepathy to see the gears of their minds turning. Are they thinking about how to turn their grounding around with some rule-arguing? Are they thinking about how easy it would be to escape my vigilance or even convince me to let them go and do what they want? Ah teenage cockiness how I miss you sometimes. It was refreshing to think everything was possible. So I don’t crush their hopes yet and lead them in silence and let them plot silently.

I’m almost sad I will have to foil their plans if they continue to have them. But hope is only the first step on the road to disappointment.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 11
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
July,14,2010;11:00 AM

I’m surprised they took so long to act. I’m not surprised they tried something like that.

There are real advantages in possessing a skillset you are alone in your team to master. One of these advantages in my case is the knowledge to ward both sides of a door and forbid some people to be able to pass the threshold. I mantled Ereshkigal for this endeavor, channeling as much of the old Babylonian goddess who keeps the above of the dead sealed as I was able. I was very satisfied in my ward but I took the time to customize it for three days, shifting the consequences of breaching it from painful to comical. If these two had been patient enough to wait their ten days, they would only have been subjected to a cold shower.

What happened to them now they tried to escape their detention? I was very specific in my designs so they hang by the foot by the two sides of the gate they tried to pass. One of their legs is bent between the other, their hands are tied behind their backs. They were in their skin-tight costume so they are decent enough but by the gods they won’t be if they try to be smartasses. They are bound by shimmering runic ropes appearing from the thin air and I’m sorely tempted, not only to let them here but also to order the ward to coil around them and encase them like insects in amber. Staying in stasis until their guardians come forth to take them out would be a good lesson but I’m not sure I have the right to do this.

I must admit Kid Flash and Robin’s plan was good and would have worked if Red Tornado had been the one watching and had I not warded the accesses. They waited until I trained with Jonathan (Superboy new name, courtesy of Superman) and M’gann. They knew by experience mind-linking can be a little distracting and they acted. Perfect stealth, nice hacking skills on Robin’s part to grant himself access to the gate controls and they were almost outside. Unfortunately for them it’s not because you have overcome all physical obstacles you have won your prize.

I go to them, without haste, no reason to not let them simmer a bit and gaze upon them. I almost regret to have judged than to try to incorporate fire in the barriers was too dangerous. A burned hand or in this case an afternoon or two butt-naked and immobile can do wonder in teaching you not to play with fire. At least Kaldur didn’t join them. I include him in the list of person forbidden to go out but I suspected he wouldn’t try to escape detention. Still I’m sure he was aware of their intentions and didn’t try anything. I choose to believe he thought I had taken measures and wanted to see how things turned out.

“Well, Well. What have we here” I say in the smugest tone possible. I’m not surprised at all by the answer.

“That’s not what it looks like!” beat “Ok that’s totally what it looks like but besides the point. What have you done!”

“Simply ensured you couldn’t go to play outside before mommy and daddy say you could.” I keep my pitch higher than normal until I’m nearly childish in tone: “Continue like that and big bro will have to give you a spanking and send you to bed without lunch”.

They seem to be mildly offended at the idea I treat them like babies but then when they will be tired to be treated as children, they cease to act as one. Not that would be not extremely creepy considering Robin is 13 and gods know these kids deserve a shadow of youth before becoming full adults. Still they compose their face and appear as contrite as you can be when your hanging head down. Time to relieve them of their distress. And gleefully impose new ones on them. I smile and begin my spiel with obvious delight.

“Now I understand you feel bad being immobilized for more than a week, without going outside and play and laugh and cause the unnecessary death of someone you tried to protect and all. And the League are jerks by not sending us trainers to relieve our boredom.” Seriously tat’s an oversight if I ever saw one. Is there no member of the League who can be spared to at least watch over us? Except Red Tornado of course, which I enlisted in my little project. “So I have concocted a little training regimen inspired by the one the League made me do when I arrived here. It will give you an occasion to stretch your legs and tire yourself out.

Or you can stay here until I decide to let you go free.”

How surprising they choose the training, without inquiring on what it is. Well I suppose it’s also my responsibility to teach them life is full of unpleasant surprises and dangerous maniacs. I think they know that already but a reminder is always useful in these matters. I let the ward release them and guide them to the room the others and me spent so long preparing.

It’s a labyrinth of boxes and metal containers, a maze, as huge as we could be with enough nooks and crannies for someone to hide for a time. The three others are already there with Red Tornado hovering at the place we will share above them. I let everyon set up when I explain the principle of the training exercise.

“It’s very simple. Red Tornado and I will attack you from on high and you must dodge our attacks. When we’ll finish that, we’ll have a little series of fights.” I grin at the two errant sidekicks: “If after that you are not sleeping soundly tonight with no thought of mischief, I can forsake my power.”

I go place myself at the summit of a pile of boxes, giving me a nice view on half the labyrinth. Still only one thing remains to persuade them this is serious. I begin to chant; a scene familiar enough even Miss Martian is not astonished:

“Sacrifice is the way of all life and thus I call upon you who received so much. Life is a sacrifice to death and before you, people sacrificed their youth to the fire. Strength of the bull, terrible visage and great fire burning. I call upon you Moloch who in Carthage was worshipped. I call upon you Moloch who the Bible mocks and insults. By fire, death and burning sun I call upon your name and power.”

The touch of Moloch is not clean, not clean at all but it’s efficient especially when I cut to the chase and mantle him immediately. I grow a full head bigger and several inches larger while my face is transmogrified as a fanged bull. Fire comes to my breast, coils around me like a cloth and my smile is ravenous. I let a sphere of pure flame manifest in my hand and juggle with it a bit before announcing firmly.

“Three. Two. One. Ready. We begin!”

Then I send the fireball in the middle of their group and watch them jump in all directions.

 

Episode 3: First Arms: Part 12
MOUNT JUSTICE, RHODE ISLAND
July,14,2010;01:00 AM

Dodging is fun. Well no, it’s not fun at all when you are doing the dodging and I felt pity for my comrades even as I pounded upon them with fireballs. After all I had been in their place three times already. The first had been with Green Arrow generously teaching me even mundane weapons could be a threat, then Martian Manhunter taught me everything could be made to hurt me, finally Captain Atom proved the sheer variety manipulating energy could take. Each time I emerged with bruises and cuts and so I understand perfectly the faces they make after our little exercise. Unfortunately for them, I’m not finished.

It’s not their fault really. Except for Kid Flash and Robin who absolutely desserve every minutes they spent running from wind and fire. I’m loath to bother the same god twice in a day and would rather not lose a hour to gather them all in the arena for one more round. Besides, the point of this is also to see the limits of their endurance. When the League tested mine, I dueled with Hawkman for three hours straight before being overcome. Even Shiva’s legendary fortitude paled under the Thanagarian’s onslaught. Still I fill my voice with all the honey I can muster (who would have thought Moloch Baal of Carthage whose offerings are burnt children to be charismatic) while talking to them.

“You have been super on this one! No one was touched by fire and hurt. Which is better than I managed to do. Points to Jonathan for using some of the boxes as improvised shields.” To tell the truth I was very surprised he managed to break them and use a broken pane as cover. “And Robin to managing to sneak on Red Tornado.” He can be proud of it the smug bastard. Neither the android nor I managed to find him as we were busy burning and blowing the other away. “But it’s not finished yet.” I jump from my perching area to fall among them and grins while continuing:

“We’re gonna to finish this with a simple fight. A round only ending by K.O. That should tire you out quite nicely. You’ll fight me.” At this the reactions are pretty mixed. Superboy and Kid Flash are eying me with something like pleasure, for quite different reasons I wager. Robin seems ready to disappear in the shadows but he smirks too. Aqualad and M’gann are wary, they are vulnerable to fire and that was a reason I chose Moloch as my patron for this endeavor. They must learn to compensate their weakness as much as they are able.

“I will let you fifteen minutes to discuss strategies and mind link with M’gann. After that, ready or not, I’m burning you”

That’s also something they must learn before we go to missions together. I sit at the center of the makeshift arena, smiling all the way. I gave them all the advantages of coordination, preparation and cover. I don’t know if they realize yet but that will be the situation with most our targets: a team overcoming a more powerful individual. Red Tornado leaves the room to monitor time and warn us of the beginning of the fight. I close my eyes while they position themselves around me. They will need time to be accustomed to M’gann mind link but I’m sure they’ll manage. And if not, better against me who can heal them afterwards than against a live adversary.

They are five arrayed against me but I don’t expect they’ll win. Kid Flash and Robin, Miss Martian and Superboy can coordinate two to two but not all together. As for Aqualad while he can join any of the groups he’ll have problems being really part of one of them. As for me? Moloch grants only two powers in addition to quick wits and good charisma that are of limited use in a fight: The totemic might of the bull and fire. Not too shabby against five teenagers.

I hear Red Tornado announcing the time is up. His voice has not finished to resound on the speakers I’m forced to jump while a volley of batarangs arrive on my position. Ok, at least Robin is quick on the uptake. Speaking of quick… I touch the ground and i must face not one but two of them. Kid Flash arrives with his accustomed speed and tentatively punches while I flail ineffectively. Aqualad is the third to arrive and I grunt as the water blade he bears scratches my back. Well I wanted action. What are the two others doing?

I have the answer at my question when my opponents draw back for a little and I hear the whistling in the air of heavy objects launched at great speed. The item in question is one of the containers we used to build the maze of the last exercise. I’m happy to see Superboy’s definition of “using the terrain at my advantage” is still unorthodox. Well if they want to play at that. I concentrate all my power over fire in a projectile and let the metal box fall in broken melted fragments.

Aqualad being the only one to not have regained cover, he’s the target of my ire. I materialize a sword of fire to struggle against his water-bearers and fall upon him. That was not a good idea for while he’s visibly struggling with the relentless heat now emanating of my body, he’s a much better swordman than I am.

Still I don’t make it easy for him or for them. I clothe myself in living fire until my demonic-looking body seems a living shadow wreathed with flame.

Well in for a pence, in for a penny or whatever the expression is. Before any of them can jump at the help of their comrade I materialize a second weapon, a whip. Now all that we’re lacking is one of them proclaiming that I SHALL NOT PASS and we have a good set-up.

Kid Flash has joined Robin and their tactics seem to pelt me with various projectiles, not able to harm me significantly but quite enough to make my situation difficult when Superboy join Aqualad in engaging me in close combat. I suspect M’gann’s contribution to the battle is in aiming the projectile, for none of the boxes, batarang, grenades and other broken down items they launch bother their comrades. And to say I wanted them to learn coordination!

At last my capacity to materialize my weapons of flame again and again wins against Aqualad watery arms. A lucky blow from me breaks the water-bearers blades in smoke and mist. Sure my own sword is broken by the blow but still. I launch my whip forward, scratching his neck, just enough to put him out of commission. Kid Flash replaces Kaldur while Superboy send me a punch that send me flying. He gets a burned hand for that, but it places me in Robin’s reach. A handful of smoke pellets later and I’m completely blind.

Well what can I do? Burn the whole thing? No I risk to seriously burn them if they are trying to attack me in close combat at this moment. Run? In which direction? I don’t want to come again face to face with Superboy with the three others using me as a pincushion. Fortunately, we have no archer on the team. Better to stay and weather the storm.

Kid Flash runs at me with his accustomed speed. He has the time to punch me four or five times in the face better running to the end of the room and back and send me in a wall by the sheer momentum. And there I see what M’gann has been doing while my fire kept her out of close combat.

The whole maze is no more, its constituents’ elements risen from the ground and hanging in the air. Well I didn’t know she was able of that. I smile. I know I lost the moment I see she’s able to send the content of the whole room flying on me. I can burn most of them but I’ll have no strength to fight the others. Still, I said that bout would be won by K.O, so no bowing out.

M’gann finishes her Palpatine imitation by hurling the whole thing at me. I expend my energy by shielding myself, conjuring fire hot enough to reduce metal to slag and dodging the rest. She is quick enough I have not a moment to assess which projectiles are really dangerous and must expand myself to destroy them all. When she is out of ammunition. The four others strike.

I dodge with difficulty the flurry of punches by Superboy and manage to use the last of my strength tripping Kid Flash with my last fireball. I small pain in my shoulder and I see Robin’s grappling hook firmly embedded in my skin. Aqualad is still groggy from his time-out but his blows still hurt. Yet I think I can perhaps take him out.

Wait! Robin’s grappling hook is embedded in my skin?

Lightning wrack my body, making me limbs shake for a moment before I pass out from the pain.

Well, for a first time they work well together. Shame for the electrocution though. I could really have been satisfied without it.
​

 

Episode 4: Windbreak: Part 1
GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
July 17 2010: 09:00PM

It’s not the moment to have stage fright. Not when I’m so close to fulfilling one of the goals the gods gave me. It’s not the moment to let nerves spoil everything I worked for.

It’s not exactly stage fright though. I’m eying suspiciously the rafts of the warehouse I’m borrowing for this ceremony, trying to glimpse the form of the Bat. I’m not at the stage of jumping at any sound but I would certainly be calmer if I could see him appraising me from above. I know he’ll be here. He would be here even if I didn’t warn him of what I was going to do.

Which I did obviously. I mean there’s discretion and rank idiocy and not telling the Detective you are planning to form a cult in his city belongs to the latter category. I won’t say he was comfortable with the idea. Even Wonder Woman who worships the same gods I do in part is not a great fan of the whole pagan revival thing. The League is loath to intervene in the affairs of mortal men, except to punish their transgressions.

I admit I find the whole thing strange but really when you think about it, it has its explanations. The alien Leaguers are cops not technicians, Batman already spend his days improving the world as Bruce Wayne, Zatara is a homo magi and not a ritual magician able to teach his skills and so on and so on. I still don’t understand why they don’t do more than arrest criminals superpowered or not but all organizations have their own irrationalities. I think they fear the power they wield, which is a very good thing. Building cults must be considered too much an influence on society for their tastes.

Still they agreed to let me honor my masters. I refrained to point asking their permission was more a social nicety than anything else. As long as they don’t do anything overtly criminal American religious organizations can be as diverse as they come. Hail the country of the free, where all you need to start a church is a large enough congregation.

Well I’m sure in practice it needs a bit more than that but still it’s certainly easiest than in Europe and gods know I’m taking advantage of that right away. I spent a week going to this wretched city of Gotham all days after training my comrades, spending the rest of my energy healing the sick, preaching to the poor, summoning cliques of helpers for some benighted associations and all that sort of things. It was tiring work to be sure but rewarding. One of these associations enabled me to borrow this premises in Gotham’s Bowery. They use it as a soup kitchen and most of the people present here who are not converts I healed previously are customers.

All religions thrive on extremes. Who converted to Christianity when Paul and the apostles preached? The poorest and the richest, for different reasons. I don’t want to preach to the rich yet, primarily because my leftist preconceptions shudder at the idea at what they would ask for my services but gods know I have the poor covered. Now that I think of it, I should also thank Gotham’s Mayor for their help. I don’t know how they managed it or if they are an isolated case but there’s a market for miraculous healing here. When I began, I thought I would spend my healing days curing cancer or replacing amputated limbs, not purging lungs from tuberculosis or children of measles.

Well at least the good that I did will outweigh what I’m going to do.

I’m sitting at the end of the room, waiting for the last people to arrive. Word of mouth and a week of miracles have gathered a hundred people here. Most know I’m a healer and that I talk about the old gods who were worshipped in times gone by. Some I saw after having healed them, those who required the mantling of a god of health have confessed strange dreams full of pagan symbolism. I’m wondering if it’s a side effect of the divine power expressing itself through me.

Anyway I’m hesitating but it doesn’t take much time. I see maimed people in the crowd which means another row of cures and I need to be able to captivate them all to make them listen. So there’s only one goddess which can help me in this. Even if I take her powers in a direction very much unlike her.

I rise and walk to the fore where aspiring cultists have managed to raise some sort of pulpit. I smile hearing the whispers of the crowd while I speak in terms some of them are familiar with:

“Lords and Ladies be with you!”

I hear some whisper by reflex “And with your spirit” and smile before continuing: “Most of you I know. Some I healed from old wounds. Some I offered the comfort of seeing a loved one again. Some I protected against threats and some I fed. And when you asked me why I did that, I answered it was not for my sake but in the name of the gods.” I advance towards them. “Some of you asked me who are the gods and I answered and invited you here to behold them.” I spread my arms wide and embrace the crowd. “Come you who despair for you shall be consoled! Come you who are sick for you shall be healed. Come you who want to know death for you shall behold it and live to tell the tale!” That doesn’t sound very convincing, does it. I’m not an orator by trade, after all. Still magic can remedy to many deficiencies. So I invoke the lady of Hellheim, she who was imprisoned at the roots of the great Ash Yggdrasil, she who rules all the dead who fall not in battle. I invoke her name and her titles and some faces brighten with understanding or dread. And I let her power wash over me.

Even without the mantle, it’s horrendous, both burning and freezing, the venom of a snake falls down my throat and my blood runs cold for a moment. The right half of my body begins to visibly decays, nerves showing, bones protruding through diseased muscles. Yet I contain the change and force the crowd’s attention to the living part of my body, to consider the rot as beautiful and the living flesh as charming. I see their eyes transfixed towards me, unable to look away while I transform under their gaze. But I have other instruments than a pretty face. I make stark and commanding gestures, shredding the veil between the world of the living and the dead.

Three ghosts, man woman and child appear before me and kneel and sing in adoration while set my sights on the crowd. My words come naturally now, charged with power.

“My masters are not jealous gods. They simply ask for your reverence and your offerings. In return they shall heal you, disclose the riches of the ground to you, rob darkness of any fear it may hold. And after you pass in their domains you shall know peace eternal without being like these shades tormented by your errant desires.

Do you want to be prosperous, healthy and strong? The gods can provide in exchange of respect and sacrifices for from their domains spring all things and all things return to them.

Do you want to know what comes after? The gods do not hoard the secrets of death and I can describe you the worlds beyond. For those of you who are brave enough, I can even bring you there to see all.

Do you want meaning for your life? The gods can give you meaning, part of an epic struggle against the forces of chaos. Kneel before them and you are a part of their myths and their fate becomes your fate.

Do you want simply gods you are sure exist? Look at me and know you look to one the gods have touched. My powers come from them and their commands become my sermons.

For I am their soul and messenger.”

I pause a moment, leaving my speech enter their brains. I can’t compel them to believe or even worship and I wouldn’t do that even if I could. Still I need a brief pause before the second act of my piece. Besides the League was clear. Only those who are willing can be present for that will follow. So I intone a last time.

“Those who are not convinced by my words are free to go now. Those who stay will behold the divine world I represent.” Behold is a bit of an understatement there. I’m sure none of those who will stay of r my little trick will refuse to join me in worship. Still there won’t be any compulsion in that matter.

 

Episode 4: Windbreak: Part 2
GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
July 17 2010: 09:00PM

None has left the room. Good. I thought so.

Some may find a hundred worshippers very few when the preaching is done by a super-powered being. I don’t think so. Jesus preached for three years through Israel and his followers were not much more than a hundred when he died on the cross. All religions begin small, begin as cult and they end the same way, reduced to a small core of followers. A hundred people can blossom in thousands if the crop is tended the right way. Which brings me for the next part of my little act.

Mantling Hel is not a nice or even easy experience. The Lady of Hellheim’s bad temper and coarse disposition translate as pain through my nerves as I assume her form. This time I can’t contain the horror of her scarred flesh and I become something very distinctly inhuman. That was the goal after all. Let them all behold the divine in a form they can understand. Let them see me and kneel in worship. Let the face of the gods be branded on their brains so that their dreams become prayers to my masters’. And let them praise me as the Messenger who brought them to the gods’ feet.

Is this an illusion? Perhaps. I use my powers liberally to enhance my forms. I am now nearly as tall as the building, giant among men but the gods are not bound by human proportion. It is my will that shines through this glorious mantle and help me in captivating my audience but it’s the goddess’ own terrible visage I show to the crowd. The beautiful face that makes them swoon when it’s turned their way, this hint of beauty that entrances, the allure of death that seduces, all of this is hers. The scarred horror of the other side, provoking such terror rotting flesh and bone should not inspire, it’s hers also. I’m only a shadow of her divinity, still too far from the human realm to being deemed natural.

I build on that foundation, I let power suffuses my skin and show them the wonders I’ve described. For a moment the whole room seems to shift before their eyes: Green serpents are coiled along the roofbeams, their eyes ready to judge any transgression. The concrete walls have become scented and lacquered wood and the universe seem to shrink and expand at the same time. I whisper softly and they see the dragon and the well with the corpses, the bridge and the halls that await every sinner. They hear the roar of the hellhound at the gate and the laugh of the lady declaiming every fault of every soul passing through her door.

I feel their gazes upon me and I feel fate twist and shift. Something is happening, something momentous for me as their belief, as their faith is for a moment concentrated on me. I feel joy coursing through my vein, power that is not of my lady rising through my heart. Their worship is simple tribute for the gods, useful but not determining. To me? To have a hundred people, even faceless and nameless enter my story, tying their expectations to my fate? It’s intoxicating, so intoxicating I’m inclined for a moment to disregard Vergil’s warnings. For as their expectations strengthen me so I’m wondering what a full-fledged religion revering me as the bridge between humanity and the gods could do to my power, they also impose what I can do or not do. I appeared to them as a healer, a nurturer and a comforter and so they imagine me now.

It has its merits and flaws like all things. Yet at this time I feel my powers over healing attain their peak, breaching even the limits of the mantling. In their midst, at this instant, I know I’m able to anything to the human body. I could breathe life into clay and marble and rise humans from the dust. But I have a more practical thing in mind.

“You came to me as the first to recognize the old gods. So I give to you my blessing! In the name of Hel mistress of health and disease, I bless you.”

My power coils around them, go in the crowd, assessing their respective health, bathing everyone in green light while I’m concentrating. My first attention come of course to those who are maimed and handicapped. These ones are pushed gently as I remake them in the image of perfect health. Limbs regrow, eyes fill orbits, deaf ears open to hear my voice. However it’s nearly the least of my gifts to them. I give to them the gift of perfection. I can’t give them super powers and I wouldn’t want to do that before knowing them more but I can bring them to the extreme limit of human fitness and I do. All of them are immediately transformed, losing years and weight and brought to the pinnacle of mortal strength. Then I seal the deal with a rapid protection against disease, powerful enough to last years.

“Know you shall be untouched by plague and disease now. No sickness will blight you again as long as you keep your faith in the gods above and below. Know each of you is reborn. A sign for those who have yet to believe. A reward to you who came to my side.”

I use the last of my energy to make the changes in them, at least the internal ones, contagious. It’s a reverse plague destined to destroy any disease in their loved ones or friends. Just the time toweak the means of transmission and there it goes. I continue my speech.

“You are now beacons in the dark, wellspring of health for those who draw near you. You have come to me for healing of the body and the mind and you go into the world as healers yourselves. Thus you know the might of the gods!”

I look at them and smile with pride. There are only a hundred but every person they cure of something obvious, every person who will notice the changes in them, will come to my masters in the end. And when I’ll call they will come to me for a part of them will remember what I gave I can take away. I nearly laugh while spreading my arms wide and concluding in a sentence few of them will understand.

“Ite missa est! Those who desire hear more of the gods and how you can serve can come see me. The rest of you go with my blessing.”

 

Episode 4: Windbreak: Part 3
GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
July 17 2010: 09:30PM

There are merits and flaws in each action you do.

Revealing myself to found a full-fledged cult was necessary to cement the place of my patrons in the world. Each convert is like a beacon in the darkness of the World enabling my masters to reach beyond their high domain without being by Fate ensnared. Unfortunately for me, their light, their faith shone so bright when exposed to my light. Fate saw me and turn its attention to my thread of life, judging my life too mundane for the role I claim to have. Even now it takes action to rectify this mistake.

At least it was Vergil is telling me, in hushed tones as he feared to be heard. Apparently Fate exist. “At the side of the Presence” and is a power even beyond the gods. Despite the way he describes it, my advisor doesn’t know if it’s sentient or not. Apparently it’s a force able to place you in a genre and rewrite the probabilities around you in accordance with the narrative people place you in. It’s very unclear but it’s the reason why the gods don’t visit the world except in vastly downgraded forms. Because I assumed the mantle of Healer and being hailed for it, Fate will enhance my healing abilities. However, it always takes away with one hand while giving with the other. Vergil whispers the League, by instance, has renounced to some things while gaining their powers and prominence, and their legend is not yet completely written.

I’ve written the first act of mine this evening. Health, disease, the song of flesh and bone are now parts of me even if I don’t channel a god or channel a god not associated with these concepts. Could I grow in might and stature until encompassing all aspects of creation? Is it possible if I play my cards right to set my sight on the throne of heavens? To become myself a god and be worshipped as one of the deathless? For a brief moment of hubris, I even dare to think upon this girl in the comic Lucifer whose name ended up as the fundament of all creation. Yet she was Michael’s daughter and YHWH’s granddaughter so I prefer to count this place beyond even my wildest dreams. Still the possibilities are endless.

To become the cycle of life and death like so many of my patrons, dying each winter to be reborn with the sudden spring, creating a world without hunger or want, without disease or harm of any kind like a true Golden Age.

To become an avenging angel, flying with the wind and striking with the thunder, rising in the east like the dawn to take the wicked by surprise and bring hope to the just. Become the champion of the just and the power behind all who fight injustice.

To become a horror, clad in shadow and flame but only turned against the unjust, being worshipped by those who fear and answer their prayers in fire and blood. To be the vengeance and the night and wield that power to purge the world of vice and sin.

All these are tempting and all of them have their prices but every steps on the toes of those who came before, be they human or divine, I would prefer taking a place none is standing on. Still as I walk Gotham’s streets, my eyes are lit by the potential I see in every actions. Still, I laugh bitterly for at this time I’m still weak. My legend is whispered by few and has not yet taken the world. Thrones and principalities and powers are close to my mind but far from my hands.

Still it is sweet to dream and not very nice to be interrupted while pondering the future.

I almost bumps into a trio of women. While I back off whispering excuses, for one of them is positively ancient I stop. I sense, even without seeing them with the eyes of the gods the power that wreathes them. It’s not theirs. It’s something summoned by their, and my presence. Well I wanted to know more about Fate’s design. It seems I’ll have answers.

To my great frustration I can’t assess these women in details. Their features escape my eyes and my mind like flowing water. I can only say one is young, the other rotund, and the third wizened. The force that possess them make them indistinct. Only their roles are important. Clotho who birth the thread of life, Lachesis who weaves it and Atropos who cuts it. I bow with respect before them for insulting the Moirae is not a good thing to do. One of their manifestations killed the embodiment of dreams, after all.

“Kindly ladies. What news have you for me?”

They chuckle. The sound is not heartening at all. Yet I know they are bound by old rules to answer me. And besides, what would they have appeared to me, if they didn’t intend to enlighten me on a subject or another. If I could avoid their attention I would. I have no need of the cowering voice of Vergil in my head to tell me I should fear them. Still I meet their gazes and await the oracle deliver. One answer for the past, one answer for the present, one answer for the future. But first they greet me.

“Hail Raphael. Hail you who lost his path in the swamps of death!”

“Hail Raphael. Hail you who serve the gods of life and death!”

“Hail Raphael. Hail you who shall be a lord in your own right hereafter.”

It’s much better a deal that poor Macbeth had. No compulsion to commit murder on one of my comrades out of jealousy. I suppose it helps I’m not married.

“They spoke of you in the gardens of the great ones!”

Of course they talked of me, they empowered me after all, I’m sure they discussed it beforehand. Wait. The great ones. Are they talking of the Endless? No that’s not possible. Even a divinely empowered champion is beneath their notice. Except the Endless have motives of their own. Come to think of it, isn’t Death the superior of my patrons in the greater scheme of the universe? Anyway I doubt this sentence bodes anything good.

“Beware traveler! In the light you see but you are seen!”

More ominous and confirming my suspicions. Things are not going to be peaceful yet. I’m surprised the a third prophecy.

“You will follow us!”

And with that they disappear but let in the middle of the street a shimmering gate. I’m not sure what to do? On one hand I could easily snub them and thus spoil the plans of Fate. On the other, I don’t know where this gate leads. For all I know monsters could spring out and ravage Gotham. Still for the same reason I’m not going in this alone.

I take my communicator and for a time hesitate before contacting the Team.

“Dante to Aqualad. I’ve got a problem. When you have finished with Red Arrow, please send me the two of you in Gotham.” I hear him acknowledge the call and I contact the League.

I have a bad feeling about what lies beyond this portal.

 

Episode 4: Hungers: Part 4
GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
July 17 2010: 11:00PM

I am not one to question how a parent educates their child.

Scratch that. I totally always do that. It’s one of the perks of feeling like a crotchety old man at 24 and it’s far better than complain about the kids themselves. You can’t expect a child or even a young teen to be disciplined if their education has led them otherwise. No I don’t blame the dynamic trio for their indiscipline, I prefer reserve my contempt on the guys who thought crime-fighting children were a good idea. Then again, this world is so different on this topic I can’t really say anything. I mean Batman, Flash and Aquaman thought, after reflection, a week of grounding was enough to have my comrades learn their lessons. I can’t very well argue with Batman on how he punishes or not his son, or Barry his nephew.

Robin and Kid Flash were cross when they called me to say they were my teammates on this one. Apparently Red Arrow, as Roy is now known, refused to join the “kiddie Justice League” and prefer to go solo. Good for him, the world can live with heroes unaffiliated with the League. Now all he has to do to join the team of his dreams is to become a true hero in his own right and make people forget all about Green Arrow’s protégé.

While waiting for my support to arrive, the League being busy with the usual stuff and apparently having no problems with their sidekicks jumping down a portal to an unknown place, I draw the cards to see where this portal leads. I’m counting on the presence of the Fates to make this divination a bit more effective than usual. The Fool, The Sun reversed, The Ten of Swords. Chaos, unhappy childhood, ruin? What does this reading means? Never mind, that just means I’ll have to choose a practical god.

“You who wander in the shadows, you whose servants howl during the night and stalk between the tombs. You who protect tombs and whose servants devour the unburied to bring them to the dark domains. Anpu named Anubis, god of embalmers, of jackals and necropolises I summon you. Anpu the Jackal who lights the way to the abode of the dead, I invoke your name and your power.”

I smell sands and incense when my incantation is ended. I smell the dust of precious mummies and feel the weight of the scarabs replacing the heart. There is pain as I have the impression someone cut my side and take my organs away but it ceases. More disturbing is the changes of my eyes that now sees too much to my liking. I look on the gateway before me with living eyes and I hear faint cries at the edge of my vision, the scent of burned thorns (how the hell I’m able to identify that?) and a sensation of being slowly taken apart.

Robin and Kid Flash arrives at this moment while I’m thinking of getting in by myself. They do their best to not look excited. An impression that deepens when they see the frowning I make while pouring in the shimmers of the gate. That’s of no import. I try to fill the silence, to conceal my malaise without knowing what will happen when we step through. They answer better than I could do with pleasantries, tall tales of them with Aqualad busting the weapons deal Red Arrow was meant to stop. Red Arrow was not grateful for the help, which is worrying considering he was not exactly doing good when Aqualad and Green Arrow intervened. Well, not my business.

I realize what a mistake I made the moment we emerge from a seamless transition.

I think the heavens are lousily trying to emulate the colors of dusk but all they manage is the color of long dry blood. The ground we’re walking on is so parched and sterile I have doubt it ever supported life. There are dry branches and withered twigs, rotten flowers a The walls and the rusted gates seem to be in disrepair but an intuition tells me we’re not going to pass them easily. The smell of decay is nearly overpowering in its sweetness. It’s wet too, making the dust adhere to us like a veil.

And of course there are the bones on the red sands. Not piles of it or a pyramid. That would at least be somewhat dignified. No, they lie on the ground where someone cast them. What disturbs me most as I kneel to examine them is that some extremities seem to have been gnawed on like I do with chicken legs. Except that these bones are too big to be chicken. Some are human it’s sure but others seem less so.

I don’t need the eyes of a god to be wary of the mansion we see before us. We arrived in the courtyard of a small but opulent domain. The house’ is strange. It has everything a house should have: roof, gates, windows, walls but there is something distinctly off-putting in its allure. Perhaps it’s its architecture giving the impression of some great beast crouched in wait. Perhaps it the rot I see everywhere, from the withered vines growing up to the barred windows, the broken-down inner gates. Its shadows draft shapes in the air, seemingly seeking to look inviting but not really managing it. I feel in my bones the will ofthis place, for it has one. Like but not like Xibalba it is alive in a fashion and it’s distinctly hungry.

I concentrate and send my perceptions in search of an exit. The gate we passed seems to have disappeared on us but I see others all around, some are in the buildings, other in the destroyed gardens around us. Sensing none of them can be passed on the way outside heightens my malaise as the eyes I see in in the fabric of the world.

Where are we? The Dreaming? Not likely, these bones and all this scenery feel real and I think even the depths of nightmare would not outright kill their visitors. I would be on Faerie because its inhabitants can be monstrous predators. Why the Fates send me there? Are they trying to kill me? Perhaps but I think it likelier whatever is this place or whatever lives in here needs a good killing.

My comrades are eying suspiciously the mansions’ doors. I would prefer not go in there before being sure we have no choice. I approach thoughtlessly one of the statue and without meaning to let my hands course along the surface. I immediately jump in horror.

I felt flesh! Warm flesh at that! I examine the statue I believed to be representing a cherub, in rapt attention. Their gender is not identifiable at first glance but they were human. I see a soul, or what seem to be the tattered remnants of one struggling against strong bindings. What could do such a thing? I know no creatures feeding on the souls of children. Apparently the master of the house does, then he devours the flesh.

I grimly wonder what meal is the most satisfying and consider our options. Kid Flash try to run along the wall but to no avail. Robin goes near me and whispers the lock of the outer gates is jammed and can’t be opened. That doesn’t surprise me or them. This place seems like a trap. Well. Guess we have no other solution than to enter the spider’s parlor. Whatever stalks this forsaken hole will surely try to eat us. If I have my word to say on the matter, it will break its fangs on our hide.

I signal my two teammates to follow me in the creepy mansion and stay near me. In the depths of my mind, I have the impression I should recognize this place but my memory seems to actively flee and Vergil and me.

Whatever it is, I’ll find a way to burn it to the ground and salt the ashes.

 

Episode 4: Hungers: Part 4
THE HOUSE BETWEEN THE WORLDS, FAERIE?
July 17 2010: 11:00PM

This place looks creepier and creepier with each of our steps.

It was obvious from the outset it was not a normal house but it’s only when you enter you understand how bad it is to actually mimic one. Strangely the comparisons that comes to my mind is one of these old adventure games were mansions have no kitchens or bathrooms but just puzzle rooms. Even when you’re a kid, you understand something is no quite right. This place is a more sinister version of that tropes. Oh some things are well imitated. The wooden floorboard cracks just right under our careful steps, the hallways are realistic enough I suppose if you except all the slashed portraits.

We advance carefully, nearly crouching, staying on the path I divine with Anubis’ powers. Most of the time we keep to the corridors but sometimes I feel driven towards one of the secrets passages that open everywhere. The one who rules this place must take pleasure in the hunt for this is a predator’s house. The rooms that open up have no doors to lock, no furniture to barricade them. Some are even trapped with fiendish devices destined to ensnare the unwary. There are many hiding places but Robin points out each one we encountered has multiple ways for someone to sneak on the person hiding. Some of them are occupied with more abominations like the ones in the courtyard.

They are not dead. It would be easier, far easier if they were just dead. They are insects taken in amber. No, that’s not the right metaphor. They are immobilized, unable to move or even scream, they are fed on but still they live. Some of them were obviously moved together around tables, or beds in grotesque poses that make my comrades and I shudder with disgust. There are many inhuman creatures with them, unicorns, tengus with long noses, elven sprites and other mythological fauna. All are stuffed and arrayed like in a museum exhibition.

At least they are dead but even those of the children we found stuffed register as alive to my sight. How can this be? I caress the waxen skin, lightly touch the glassy eyes, even feel the straw behind the flesh and still I feel life and the essential spark of life beneath it all. My comrades don’t notice and I don’t tell them but I kill some of these abominable sculptures we come across. A simple touch on their forehead and a whispered prayer and most are gone. Unfortunately, I can do that only for the most ancient of them. The others, I dare not detach their souls from their moorings, in fear of waking whatever lives here.

The path is strange and its turns and twists are unpredictable, sometimes we walk merrily across ballrooms and corridors during what seem for hours, other times we go from room to room crawling along what would be the servants’ passages in a normal mansion. Not that the place doesn’t change as we advance. I mean we have nearly done a full turn according to my internal compass and we’re not seeing the entrance again.

The walls are now of stone broken by bleeding openings. Remarkably unsubtle. The ceiling has disappeared high above our heads and everything has grown to giant or near-giant dimensions. That doesn’t make things less creepy, on the contrary. We find bloodied piles of clothes, shackles and rank of manacles. The rooms are sometimes filthy in blood and gore with weapons on the wall taunting the living corpses within. In one we see ranks of chains holding small shadows tight. Beyond the barred windows we hear the roaring of the dark sea. In another room, this time of baroque style with beds of silk and the smell of rot hidden by incense heavy with the scent of blood, we vomit on the golden floors when we look too closely at the scenes painted on the walls. My comrades are a little too young to understand why these paintings and frescoes are for but I read enough to understand their purposes: Manuals for the room inhabitants in case they lacked ideas. And as Kid Flash point out that proves we’re not in Kansas anymore I don’t contradict him even if he’s mistaken.

We enter a gallery. More of these sculptures arrayed like a division on the parade ground. This is not a metaphor, they wear uniforms of every kind and every places. Most of them are boys but I see some girls too. Dusty plaques are fixed upon each display but they wear only numbers and not names. There are magical creatures here too but they are not so many. Is this place more connected to the human world than the realms invisibles? I cast my perceptions around, seeking the one-way gates I had previously noticed, I see them still and they are many. I’m tempted for a moment to cast my eyes beyond them, to understand where they open and when I succumb to the temptation I’m not surprised. I see oddly-angled walls in some streets, glades in deep forests, wells and ravines and all sort of holes. With most of these places it’s a miracle the owner gets his food alive and able to move. Or perhaps that’s exactly the point.

We find the boy cowering in the gallery beneath a stuffed unicorn. We almost jump when we notice him. He looks like a Harry Potter clone to me. Fourteen years old, haggard and thin, with black hair and glasses. No lightning scar on the brow still. That’s a plus. To my sight he appears as human and yet more than human. I concentrate and can’t find many faults in him. A normal boy? That makes the situation a bit more complicated.

We approach cautiously. Of course he’s afraid of us but when he looks on Robin’s costume he seems to have a moment of recognition and crawl out of his hiding place. I try to have a smile as comforting as I can make it before asking him in a low voice.

“Don’t fear. We’re here to help. What’s your name, boy?”

“Jack Bone, sir” Now that’s a lie, which means he knows a bit of magic and the importance of true names. I appraise him again and suddenly I remember him. That’s pretty fucked-up though. In the comics this story happened in winter, twenty years ago. I have no idea how much of what I know has happened in this dimension. Still it costs me nothing to try a bit. Also if he’s here, that must mean the owner of the house is… Go figures, that would make a bad situation worse. Also it looked very much not like this in the comics so no assumptions here. I retort to the boy.

“Nice thinking, but we’re not enemies. Tim can you please tell us where we are and what you know?” The look on his face tell me I’m right.

Well nice to meet you Timothy Hunter. I would have hoped we were not in this kind of stories but still, nice to meet you.
​

 

Episode 4: Hungers: Part 6
THE HOUSE BETWEEN THE WORLDS, FAERIE?
July 17 2010: 11:00PM

“So the creep with the two mouths bring me in this room where three of his friends are waiting. There was a giant and ogre made of rusted metal, bleeding oil all over the place, with eyes shining like diamonds. And a monk.” A monk? What would a monk… Ah the monk of the Children’s Crusade! Why have only one despicable defiler of children when you can have three. Actually that’s probably what saved poor Tim. “And they begin to fight with each other on what they’d do with me. The creep wanted to eat me, the giant to break me, the monk to sell me to the highest bidder.” Yep. This is the guy I thought of. “The teen with the cat was laughing his ass off at each sentence.” No idea what or who this one is. Tim described it as a guest who was trying to recruit the three others.

“And all at a sudden, they are looking beyond the room and smiling and telling about how an “unexpected luck” had served them. I ran as fast as I could when they were distracted planning.” That is very disquieting. I doubt whatever these monsters are, would consider Robin and Kid Flash an “unexpected chance”. They had to be speaking about me. I wonder what would happen if they tried to eat my soul or what remains of it. Would the gods sense their nibbling? I think yes. That could be a good strategy in a desperate situation.

Unfortunately, we are in a bit of one. Tim can confirm by his explorations and the page he holds dear we are in the presence of the Manticore. Which means I can’t let any of these three fight it as they would automatically die even if we managed to kill the thrice damned beast. I have no idea of the capabilities of the two other creatures or that teen with the cat but I must trust my comrades to prevail if that’s the case. In the best case, they won’t have to fight.

To be fair, as soon as Batman said “covert operations” in the forming of the Team, I knew it was a call I would have to make, a role I would have to play. I’m the most resistant and potentially the most visible of the company. I think Tim doesn’t register yet as an Opener for I doubt even the gods’ power could compare to one who can create worlds at will.

I will thus be the perfect bait. Especially when I’ll begin to actively empty these monsters’ larder. I address Robin and Kid Flash with what could well be my final orders/recommendations.”

“My powers detect gates leading out of here near the dwellings of these demons. You shall lead Tim through one of them. Now I don’t know wherever the gates lead but Tim has visited his share of worlds already, he should be able to recognize the place. If you find yourself in Faerie” I glare at Wallace “don’t eat or drink or accept any gifts. Don’t break a promise.”

The rest I don’t say. How could I say this boy is perhaps the most important person alive in this world and that if he dies the world’s magic will suffer a heavy blow? How can I explain to Tim what I’m not sure myself, that he’s the Merlin, embodiment of magic and, I have no doubt, the whole reason the Fates led me to this place of torment? That will have to wait.

They leave and keep to the shadows. I feel fear as they disappear from view. No not fear. Terror. I remember how the Manticore’s venom is described, I remember the state of Tamlin’s corpse when he took it into himself. Perhaps I’m mistaken and the gods won’t care or notice their champion being encased in amber for eternity, an endless spring of power for ancient monsters to consume while children’s flesh becomes anew their sweetmeat to feast upon. What if all my efforts end in me being stuffed in a grotesque display, spending millennia wishing I could scream?

The answer is simple: They won’t result only in that. I will consign their previous preys to oblivion rather to let them being bound again. They can feed on me and they will appreciate it as the only meal they can feed on until new prey comes here.

I’m terrified but what I feel has no importance compared at what I can do. I cast my perceptions around, beyond this room to embrace most of the manor, most of this putrid lair. When I’m sure to perceive most of these horrid sculptures, most of these traps, I inhale deeply. There was a reason I couldn’t bring myself to do that while the others were present. I begin to intone, my voice echoing in the hallways and the room to each and each desiccated corpse, in the tongue ghosts whisper their messages to each other. I say only a word, enough to damn myself in the eyes of the Team and the League if they come to know.

“Die!”

And so it is done. My order reverberates, echo with their own desire to be free, and one after the other, from the closest to the farthest, their souls escape from their moorings and come toward their murderer, toward me.

They coil around me and from those destroyed beyond repair, those who are reduced to only one of their fivefold parts, I forge an armor of ghostly white for myself. From their suffering and passions and desires cut short I draw an ornate axe. The rest of the wraith’s host, understanding I won’t devour them wait around me like ghostly mist.

I warn them. I warn them what will come will perhaps force them into second death. After so much time spent in the darkness they don’t seem to care. Their only wish is pain for their murderers. Well that is a task I will be happy to oblige. Now what are they waiting for…?

“Young man! Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s impolite to eat the food of other without permission”

“Or trash their possessions.”

I turn and can’t believe my luck. The three are there, ready to be kept busy while my comrades scurry away with the real prize. The first must be the Manticore. He looks like it anyway. Impeccable clothes, black smoking and white shirt. Minus the red skin, the shaggy red hair and the three rows of teeth, you would think he’s preparing to hunt with Victorian noblemen. Still as the clothing is good, the general imitation is not. Nobody would take him for human and even children would sense something foul in him. Is that a deliberate choice or simply an impossibility to disguise his nature.

To his left, the monk seems the more human of the trio, while staying the more abhorrent. Grey frock, tonsured skull, emaciated features hiding his excesses. I smell the stench of brimstone and rotten eggs from him. I hear the shuffling of chains and the moans of the slaves. Was he human once or was that always a mask put on a concept. I hope it’s the latter. I don’t even want to begin to think about what a mortal can do to being elevated to patron saint of those who drive wealth from children. He shall die today, even the Manticore fills me with less hatred than this thin.

To the right of the Manticore, stands one with no intention to seem human except in the roughest sense. He’s an idol of broken bones and teeth clad in burnished steel covered with obscene rune and a helm fixed in an eternal scream. The air around him is thick with the threat of violence. Not fight but violence. Chaplets of skulls hang from his belt and as I look at him, I hear the melody of broken bones and whipped backs, I smell cordite and burning oil. What are you representing exactly creature? What concept will, perhaps, lose its representative this day. I decide to provoke them.

“Excuse me misters” I say with the most un-sorry tone I ever had: “I just wanted to know what would happen if I brought all these children to their proper destinations.”

“This was their proper destination” roar the Manticore “they bargained with us and were ours by right”

“I’m sorry sir Core.” I continue “but the gods are very cross with all your thieving and feeding on the gardens of the dead and sent me put things in order” Beat. “I hope you will be very good little monsters and help me dismantle the rest of the thing.”

For a moment fear fight with greed in their eyes. For a moment they fear the gods’ revenge upon them and think to cut their losses. I back away in a patch of shadows, ready to mantle Anpu as soon as they make a move. I don’t have to wait long for they quickly decide they are man, or monsters I suppose, enough to take the gods if they come from me.

The Manticore takes its true form. A great lion with blood-red fur and paler skin with a human face and the tail of a great scorpion waving in the air. Its teeth break bones; none has ever healed of its venom. It lies with the whole of its being while its jaws close on your soul. In the shadows I’m still smiling while I uncrumple a sheet of paper in my hands.

It has its portrait, its description and its title on it.
​

 

God. This is really well writen.