[Archive] With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Story Only)

12th February
11:53 GMT -6

William leads the way as the six of us exit the car park's front entrance. No further sign of demonic unpleasantness. I guess Mister Karnes was supposed to be the only sacrifice at this location. Police manning the cordon outside quickly raise their weapons at the sight of movement and are just as quick to lower them again as he strides into view.

"Captain!" Chief McGinnis clambers over the bonnet of a police car. "You had us worried. Glad to see you're okay."

"With a little help from my friends." His face turns serious. "How bad was it down here?"

"Pretty bad. I've got five people in critical and a lot more wounded besides. Captain…" He looks around at the relatively light damage to the street. "What the hell just happened?"

"Pretty much, mate." John strolls up alongside William. A little odd, that. He's usually much more reluctant to put himself forwards where officialdom is concerned.

"What..? That was Hell?"

"In the diabolical flesh."

McGinnis shudders. "My God. I was half hoping it was just one of Sivana's biological experiments or something. Are they gone?"

John nods. "For now. Should probably get…" I'm not sure what the expression is. "Is that priest still alive?"

"Yeah, he's checking out some of my guys who got grabbed by one of those jellyfish things. You need him for something?"

"Should probably do some sorta purification ritual on this place. Doesn't have t'be him, but if he's already here…"

"Um. There's a pile of meat on the top of the car park he should probably pay a certain amount of special attention."

McGinnis looks at me, then around the group. "You get him, then? That new Sabbac guy?"

William nods. "His name was Ishmael Gregor and he got pulled into Hell. The remains are from a couple of the Demons who gave him his powers and.. um… Some guy called the First of the Fallen."

"'First'.. as in..?" John nods. "Is it safe to go up there?"

John tilts his head to the side. "You could walk around up there without worrying. Long as you didn't touch it. But… Should probably be the first thing Mattias deals with."

Alright, they can handle the clean up. I don't really have anything special to add. I turn back to M'gann and Kon. "We'll do a quick fly over, make sure that the roads are clear for emergency vehicles."

Kon nods. "Right."

The three of us rise into the air as I activate my armour's communications gear. "Orange Lantern to Mary and Lieutenant Marvel. You there?"

"Is Captain Marvel okay?"

"Right as rain, Lieutenant. Plus he now owns a sword that lets him fire lightning."

"Cool!"

Though unless he wants the glow on his chest to completely give away his secret identity he'll need the scabbard from the cave before he changes back. "Mary? You there?"

"Yeah, I'm here. Sorry I wasn't more help with Sabbac."

"He was about five times your size. I'm amazed you kept him off me for as long as you did."

**Paul, can I talk to you about something?**

"Hey, um, y'know you offered to fix my spine?"

"Sorry guys, one moment." **Of course, M'gann.**

From this height I have a good view of central Fawcett City. When the demonic fortifications they were suckling on disappeared my Praexis Demons spread out into the streets, something that's probably done its part in keeping the natives in their homes. There are a few cars that look like they've been trampled on by Maulers and several fires, but from the looks of things the Marvels and my Demons kept the attackers' attention fairly well. I take a cold gun out of subspace and turn it to 'refrigerate'. "Superboy, fire fighting." I throw the gun towards him and he nods, catching it and flying towards the closest not already being attended by the fire service. **M'gann, we'll take that one.** She nods and we fly towards it. **What did you want to ask?**

**That.. was…** I can hear the uncertainty in her mental voice. Not fear, just… **That was horrifying. Did all those things.. used to be people?**

**Probably.** Flames are visible billowing from the roof. Ugh, building will probably need to be pulled down anyway but we need to stop it spreading. Bloody flaming skull things will probably end up doing more damage than anything else just by missing. I create a cold gun construct. **What's the Martian afterlife like?**

**I don't know! I've never died!**

I set the ring to take control of the cold gun, firing thermodynamic inverting beams into the blaze. **You said Martians had magic users, right? Surely they can see something?**

**Well… Yes, but… Dead and horribly mutilated Martians don't come back from there and try and kill people! How…**

**Okay. Basic thanothaumaturgy. A soul is a magic energy construct bound to the world by a living body. When the body stops living, that soul's connection is severed and it's drawn to one of the.. magic energy… Realms isn't quite the right word, but you get what I mean.**

**I think I do. So why would.. anyone get drawn to a place like that?**

Flames gutter and die, though the air's too dry for frost to form. I give the next building along a zap to prevent anything from catching alight.

**The answer a Human monotheist would give you is 'evil'. The actual answer is quite a bit more complicated. An evil person who nominally followed the Olympian gods would go to the Fields of Punishment, not Hell. It's just that monotheism is so big on Earth and so many people have those ideas in their heads as how things are…**

**What about you and Conner?**

**As he's favoured by Helios, Kon's soul would most likely go to Elysium. It's supposed to be a slightly less abstract version of Heaven. Me… No idea, to be honest. I think I'd like to give immortality a go, but if that doesn't work out I've got a sneaking suspicion I'll get sucked into the Orange Central Power Battery.**

**Are you okay with that?**

**At the moment, no. But once it gets taken off Larfleeze… I don't know. All things considered… Spending eternity watching over my Corps doesn't sound like such a bad thing.** Infrared shows nothing. I lead M'gann through the air towards the next fire. **I can give you a primer on Demons if you want, though I want to be clear that this sort of thing is very unusual.**

She shakes her head. **This isn't the sort of conversation I ever thought I'd be having with someone.**

**Welcome to my world.** "Lieutenant, we can meet up once the last of the fires are out."

"Awesome!"

"Robin, anything to report?"

"Sky's clear, other than your Praexis Demons. I think we're good."

"Right. Since the emergency's dealt with, Batman's order to keep out of sight comes back into force. Kid Flash, Robin, Cornwall, head back to the zeta tube. Superboy, Miss Martian and I will be with you once the fires are out." I pause for a moment. "Good work everyone."

 

12th February
15:32 GMT -6

Mm-hm, hm-hm-hm, hmmm-hmmm-hmmm…

I step through the hush tube into Fawcett City right next to the-

"Shit shit shit!"

-aid station and roughly shove aside one of the medics desperately trying to stem the bleeding from the stumps of Captain Marvel's arms. A valuable lesson on the dubious wisdom-

"Uh ah uh-uhhhh ah uh"

-of trying to block a sword with one's limbs. They've clearly done their best with bandages and tourniquets but his own super toughness is working against them.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"I'm the man who's going to save the Captain's life." I extract a smallish glass bottle from one of my pouches. A bottle of Innocent's Tears, gifted to the Closed Order of the Alexin by Pope Innocent the Third about eight hundred years ago and stolen barely two minutes ago by me. The ring removes the stopper as I press down on Captain Marvel's chest. "Captain? I need you to swallow this." No, he's too far out of it. Okay, grab his right shoulder, pour some of the liquid in the bottle over the cut surface… The blood stains on the bandage disappear almost immediately. If we can get the bleeding under control… Ah, good. I release his right shoulder and transfer the pressure to the left side of his chest. His left shoulder… It isn't in any state to have pressure applied. Another glug and the blood flow drops off there as well.

In the air not too far away I hear a tremendous bang and look around just in time to see a blue streak hurtle out of control through the air and slam through the brick frontage of a nearby building, spraying ceramic fragments and glass in all directions. I raise a barrier to protect the aid station. Sabbac apparently doesn't consider the younger Marvels to be enough of a threat to use the Sword on, and on the basis of current performance I'm forced to agree with his assessment. Lucky for them. Right. I shift my attention back to Captain Marvel's still shivering form. "Captain, try and keep your mouth open." I.. think he just nodded. I send a small tube construct into his mouth and use a suction construct to pull as much of the bottle's content into him as possible. Twice he bites down and cuts through the tube, water spraying across his face and nearly causing him to choke. I re-establish the tube and clear his airway as quickly as possible. I'm not sure exactly how fast this stuff works… Not within a tactically useful timeframe, it appears.

I dismiss the tube once the bottle's empty and turn my attention to the medics around me. Sabbac may have been focusing his attention on the Marvels but his attendant Demons haven't exactly been slow to attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. I guess the Captain just warrants a little special attention. "Which of you is in charge?"

One of them -a black woman- nods at me. "I am. What did you just give him?"

"High-end magic healing potion. Here." I restopper the bottle and hand it to her. "The bottle should refill itself within the next half hour. Keep pouring it down his throat until his arms grow back."

She hesitates for a second and then takes it. "Fine, but unless someone deals with Sabbac it won't matter."

"Nil desperandum, doctor." My goggles show me Sabbac posing in the air near the police command position. Sure in his invulnerability. Posing, daring them to attack him. "That's my next stop." I transition over to stand next to… What's his name? Chief McGinnis. "You seem-" Men wheel, raising firearms as they do so. "-to be having a slight Sabbac problem." My goggles give me a ping as Frederick tries to stagger out of the rubble but collapses on his face.

Chief McGinnis stares at me for a moment, then nods his head to the side. The others lower their weapons. Drawback of not being widely recognisable. Guess no one here was watching the Rhelasian peace conference footage. Or maybe the small measure of public renown that earned me has long since evaporated. "We'll take whatever help we can get."

"Slight problem there. See, I don't actually have any legal authority to act in this country."

His face creases in irritation. "What the Hell kinda-."

"I know what it sounds like, but this one time I handed four guys over to China and I have never heard the end of it. What I need you to do is deputise me and give me one of those shield badge things." Stares. "I'll deal with Sabbac and hand it right back."

"You crazy-!" He shakes his head. "I don't have time to argue this. Hey, Wright-" He looks to his right and one of the police officers perks up. "-gimme your badge." Officer Wright hesitates for a second, then reaches up to his left breast and unclips his badge before handing it over to his boss. "Here." He offers it to me and I take it with a smile. "Welcome to the force. Now get the bastard!"

"Certainly, sir." Ring, just in case I've misread the nature of the man we're dealing with, prep an emergency Garrick formula infusion.

By your command.

I rise slowly into the air, taking care to school my expression. Once I've cleared the top of the nearby buildings I start flying towards Hell's Mightiest Champion. No weapon constructs, my x-ionised sword is back in subspace… Ah. I attach the police badge to my armour. Barely a fig leaf really but I'll work with what I can get.

Sabbac has the Sword of Second and Third. If that thing can kill the First of the Fallen then it can most certainly kill Klarion. And me, of course, but nothing ventured…

"Excuse me! Mister Sabbac! May I-" He looks around. "-have your attention for a moment!?"

"Who are you?"

"Officer Grayven." I reach across my chest with my right hand and tap the badge. "And I'm very much afraid that I'm going to have to ask you to accompany me to a police station, in order to answer questions relating to accusations made against you in my presence, including but not limited to: assault, murder and appearing naked in a public place." Damn that last one. Doesn't Hell make trousers?

"And if I do not?"

"Then -though it would pain me to do so- I am authorised to use force in order to compel you, up to and including lethal force if I judge it necessary to protect either myself or the honest citizens of this fair city."

He grins. "You can try."

"Sir, I am armed. Are you telling me that you intend to resist arrest?"

He shakes his head in bemusement. "What the fuck is-?"

"Sir, are you telling me that you are resisting arrest?"

His grin widens. "I will tear your heart from your still living chest and feast upon it before your dying eyes."

I pause for effect, tilting my head slightly to the right and squinting with my left eye. I really hope that someone's getting this on camera. I give it a moment, then raise my left forefinger. "Is that a 'ye-?"

And now he gets that I'm taking the piss. He brandishes the Sword with his right hand, Marvel's blood still evident along the blade. "OF COURSE IT'S A FUCKING 'YES'!" Good enough for me. "And-."

Holy water, sword, Gacrrick, transition. The universe around me slows to a crawl. Sabbac has speed as part of his suite of enhancements but I'm pretty sure that he isn't Flash-fast. Vipra-blessed water from the Ganges sprays across his face while I stab my sword into the hand holding his Sword, slicing down the back in an attempt to cut through the muscle fibres allowing him to grip it. Demonically empowered flesh resists the blade, but I manage to make it bite deep enough that his grip loosens. Next step, a beam of orange envelopes the hand and eliminates the friction between his palm and the grip. Takes more power than it should, but his expected resistance is reduced by the fact that the construct isn't directly targeting him. Blood red flames begin to materialise around him but for the next… Six seconds subjective, he's slower than me. I bring my right hand around and slap the bottom of his right hand, the Sword popping free and jumping into the air. Face burning from the effect of the sanctified water, he tries to orientate on his weapon and starts swinging his left hand around to grab for it.

Too slow.

I bring my right hand up, take hold of the grip with my little finger nearest the blade, twist at the wrist, bring the Sword around and stab him through the chest. Right in the pentagram.

"Awworah?"

I pull myself free, zipping around to his front. Back to normal speed and he's faster… No sense taking the chance that he'll recover. My right hand flashes from left to right, slicing cleanly through his neck. His head leaps upwards propelled by his own blood pressure as I swing back right to left, bisecting his torso across the pentagram. Thrust, and the two prongs of the Sword neatly pierce the falling head through the eyes and penetrate the brain, the very tips of the blade just exiting through the back of his skull. His falling body flickers as the pentagram fails and the red tainting his skin fades to his natural Caucasian.

Gotcha.

Two destructive pulses destroy his body and I float back down towards the police command post. The faces looking up at me stare in shock and amazement. Oh, that feels good. Worship me, mortals.

As I touch down I gently remove the badge from my armour with my left hand and toss it back to Officer Wright. "Thank you, officer." He fumbles the catch as I turn to Chief McGinnis. "How did I do?"

He looks at the freely bleeding and now clearly Human head impaled on my Sword. "For your first day? Pretty good, I'd say."

 

13th February
06:51 GMT +8

I narrow my eyes slightly as the ring feeds me an image of Vandal Savage's current location. Have to credit him. Despite the unexpected nature of my call he's still perfectly at ease. His company… Oh, for goodness sake. "How old are they?"

"Old enough to have flowered. I find feminine beauty to be at its height when it is freshly ripened." Swear to me, second against the fucking wall… "I assume that you have news for me."

"The Klarion matter should be dealt with by the end of the week. In the meantime, how do you want to handle the situation in Bialya?"

"Hm. You have not yet joined the Light. Matters of policy do not concern you."

"I ask because I'm about to assist Crown Princess Adilah in becoming monarch in fact as well as in theory, and I thought you might like to.. make your feelings known."

His eyes narrow ever so slightly. "I regard civil conflict as a necessary part of social renewal. In this instance, however, the Light has an interest in maintaining our present relationship with the Bialyan government."

"Good to know. I'll… Excuse me, sniper." I transition myself to his vantage point, appearing just behind him in complete silence. Scan says local. Worth assimilating, just so I can have an actual professional? … No. I create an agony matrix construct on my right hand and jab him in the kidneys with it.

"Hhhhhhhhhhegh…"

What a fascinating noise. He doesn't scream so much as perform a prolonged gasping inhalation as he drops to the ground. If the last three were anything to go by he'll stay there for at least the five minutes it should take me to wrap this up. Just in case I have the ring take a picture and subspace his gear. I will be handing these chaps over to the Singaporean police when this is over.

"Sorry about that. I'll let the Princess know."

"Perhaps you should hurry. It sounds as though someone has spent a great deal of money on this attempt."

Yes, I saw your bank balance. I'm not sure who he wanted to come out on top of the civil conflict but it certainly wasn't the Crown Princess. "I think I will. See you next week, Savage." A sentence that works both ways. Hang up. And show me the princess.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but it looks like both of her bodyguards have forgotten that they're meant to work for Queen Bee. Either that or they think their own interests lie in actually looking after their principal now that their former boss is dead. They're actually pretty good at their job; they got her moving as soon as the rumours of Queen Bee's death started sounding credible and they've been avoiding places the Princess is known to frequent. But now they're trapped in a hotel being stalked by someone I'm probably supposed to be scared of. I-. Oh, right.

"Grayven to Batman. Only one last would-be assassin I can see. Permission to get this over with?"

"Have you identified them?"

"Slade Wilson. And please don't tell me he's dangerous, he's a bloke with a couple of swords." I am also a bloke with a couple of swords. Only mine cut through titanium armour and deities. The disparity in our relative power levels momentarily amuses me. "I'd appreciate a rapid decision, he's one short abseil away from-."

"I expect him alive."

"He isn't enough of a threat for me to need to-" On the roof of the princess' hotel I watch him check his descent path before pushing off. "-kill him."

Slade stops just above the window and sprays something onto it before pushing off the wall and slamming through the window feet first.

"You have my authorization."

"Thank you." Slade rolls to his feet, a knife already flying towards the first bodyguard. It pierces the man in the right arm, forcing him to drop his gun. Transition. Slade's got his sword out and he's lunging for the second bodyguard as I appear behind him and wrap my right arm around his chest. "Hey Wade."

His momentum immediately arrested he uses the rebound to strike at where he thinks my nose is with the back of his head. This actually results in him resting the back of his head on the armour covering the upper part of my chest, allowing his one eye to look straight up into my face. Does he recognise..? Probably not.

The angle's awkward but he jabs his sword into my side with his right hand while bringing up a knife with his left and making a spirited attempt to drive it into my right arm. Negative impact on both. And… I'm getting bored. I reach around with my left hand and snap his left radius and ulna, his armour proving absolutely no defence against my strength.

"Gkh!"

Wasn't there… Some sort of Star Wars computer game where they had that stupid random encounter levelling system which meant that after a certain point mook mobs had all cortosis gear to allow them to fight your high end Jedi? I was.. half expecting a man of Slade's reputation to have… I don't know… Personal force field? X-ionised blade? But.. I guess.. in reality, even a renowned mercenary assassin is stuck using stuff that's available on the market. High end, but essentially mundane.

I shift my grip on his torso to grab his armour just under the ribs, then twist and shove my right arm down, slamming him into the floor with significant force and driving the air from his lungs in a wheezing cough. I pull his sword free with my left, then in a moment of pettiness I pull off his faceplate and shift his patch across to cover his good eye. Picture, take his stuff.

"Assassins fighting over the right to kill me. You really are the lowest people."

"Princess, you must flee!"

"He can teleport. Where could I run to?"

I feel three bullets strike the back of my armour as I stand and move my right foot to Slade's chest, putting all my weight on it as I turn to face the room's other occupants. "Princess. Is this a bad time?"

"There is no God except Allah." I have the decency not to laugh. "I will ask you to spare my protectors, since I doubt anyone is paying you to kill them as well as me."

I smile. "Actually, your majesty, I've been ordered to keep you alive."

The guard who shot me sags slightly with what I'm going to assume is relief. Adilah herself appears to be withholding judgement. "Who has given you this order?"

"My superiors in two entirely separate organisations. Firstly, the Justice League." That gets a slight reaction. "Batman was most emphatic that I was not to allow Bialya to disintegrate into a civil war and as far as I can tell keeping you alive is the best way to achieve that." I glance at the injured guard. "Allow me." An orange beam flares from my eyes, transferring the knife to subspace and mending his injury as I return my attention to the princess. "I can have you back in Bialya in minutes."

She nods, appearing to relax slightly. "What is the other organisation?"

"Some friends of your late sister-."

"Half sister."

"Quite. They had a particular working relationship with her that they would like to continue with you. All told it's worth quite a lot in both money and raw materials."

Her face hardens. "I have no interest in working with anyone who was 'close' to that bitch."

"That is a very stupid thing to say. How were you expecting to run the country without the politicians she oversaw, the bureaucrats she appointed or the military officers she promoted?"

"I will work with government officials. They cannot be held responsible for what they did under her control. You implied these people knowingly consorted with her."

"Lots of people 'consort' with heads of state. Princess, I can protect you, but I can't make you their ruler. I can't force anyone to pay any attention to you. Your life will be very much harder if you refuse their help."

She looks away for a moment. "What form would this 'help' take?"

I take a small spray bottle out of subspace and hold it out. "The fastest way for you to take charge is if you step into the Queen Bee shaped hole in their lives. This will allow you to do so."

"What is it?"

"A synthesised version of the pheromones Queen Bee used-."

She jerks back. "To control the minds of men. Like my father."

"Most men and some women. Spray it on.. and a quick visit to the offices of state later, the country is yours. Otherwise? Good luck."

Slade tries to grab my leg and I give him a rib-cracking stamp to dissuade him. "Uuh-ugh."

I raise my eyebrows with a smile. "Well?"

Her jaw tightens as she considers the matter and arrives at the inevitable conclusion. "Give me the perfume."

"Of course, Highness."

 

14th February
15:21 GMT -5

"Soooo…" Zatanna grins at me as we walk towards my workshop. "February fourteenth, huh?"

Ring? "Yep. Certainly is."

"And you wanted to meet me right after school."

"Oh, I'm sorry, if you had something you needed to do-."

"No, that's fine." She's… Skipping? I'm a little worried that I may have missed something. "So, what's the hurry?"

"I've got a present for you."

"You have?"

She didn't need to sound that surprised. It's not like it's the first time I've got her stuff. "And, um… If you don't have any other plans, there was a place in England I was hoping that you wouldn't mind visiting with me."

Her grin widens. "No, I'd… I'd like that."

Oh good. "Great. Because I've got to be honest-" I wait while the door scans me and step aside so Zatanna can get scanned as well. "-it wouldn't really work with just me."

Zatanna gives me a confused look as I lead the way inside. Oh dear, has she decided that I meant one thing while I actually meant something completely different? Best clear that up as soon as possible. "You remember… When I was merged with the Ophidian… When we left for the moon we dumped everything we had in subspace into the mountain. One of the things we dumped was our efforts to rewrite a war game I used to play."

"That was what all that paper was?"

"Most of it. We had to test thousands of different components and their interactions, with enough documentary evidence to prove our conclusions to other people. Well, I've finally managed to get an appointment with the people who run the company which makes the game to discuss the whole thing."

She stops walking as I approach the crate holding my gift for her. I say crate, it's actually more 'walk-in wardrobe' size. I tried setting up one of those automatic installation systems like in Starcraft or Iron Man but it turns out those are actually… Pretty much impossible to make. The nearest I could get would be a system which created the armour anew whenever it was activated and that.. sort of defeats the whole object. To say nothing of running a one in two hundred risk of cooking the person it was trying to armour up.

Armoury cyborg-zombies are right out.

"So… The place we're visiting… Is a model wargaming company?"

"Yes. If you want to. I mean, you don't have to come. Mum…" Heh. "Made it clear to me at a young age that just because I find something interesting that doesn't mean that everyone else does."

"No, it… Could be fun. And you've been places you didn't find interesting with me."

"Okay then. The other thing was, I thought it could be fun if we went in costume. You know, prove that I'm a fan and not just a celebrity paid for an endorsement."

"Costume."

"Yes."

"Exactly what sort of costume did you have in mind?"

"Science fiction warrior nun."

"Science fiction warrior nun, huh?"

"Yes. They do do fantasy warrior nuns, but those costumes aren't really practical."

"And I'd hate to wear something impractical."

I press my right hand against the palm reader. Bit excessive, but I like the look it gives the thing. Looks 40K-y. The scan comes up green and I step back as the sides of the crate whir and clank, before pulling off to the side. The undersuit, jump pack and the fripperies like the robe bits go on one side and the fully functional bolt pistols and eviscerator go on the other. Since I don't come from the grim, dark and technology regressed future of the forty first millennium the jump pack is in reality a flight pack and can keep Zatanna up for quite a while.

This project was actually kind of fun. I had to learn a lot about space suit design -especially for the undersuit- that I've never really had to worry about for my own armour due to having a power ring. Add to that the fact I was going for form over function, I had to investigate dozens of different technological forms before I found one that would let me make it look like it needed to look while still letting it function. I'm so excited about this that I've even added an unnecessary smoke effect for the unveiling.

I glance back at Zatanna as the black-with-red-trimming armour comes fully into view. Her eyes have widened slightly, though that could well just be surprise. "I know you said that you weren't really keen on power armour-."

She steps forward and runs her right hand down the material covering the cuirass. "This is what nuns wear in that game, is it?"

"The Adepta Sororitas are the military wing of the Ecclesiarchy. I designed this.. interpretation of the armour the models wear to work as proper power armour."

"I was just expecting…"

"Boob armour?"

"Kind of. It does.. have-" She taps the left boob plate. "-boob plates."

"Those are an intentional part of the design. After the Age of Apostasy they got banned from keeping 'men under arms'… So they have to make it clear that they're.. not. Don't worry, I didn't compromise the protectiveness of the armour at all. In fact, it includes a molecular bond reinforcement field which means you could probably spar with-."

"Is that a jetpack?"

"Actually, it'll let you fly for about eight hours before needing to recharge. And without setting fire to the rest of it."

"What's with all the fleur de lyses?"

"The Ecclesiarchy isn't Christian, so they don't use crucifixes. The Sororitas use the fleur de lys while most other institutions use the aquila."

Still staring, she walks around to the armour's right. "And what-. Is that a gun?"

"Bolt pistol. A semi-automatic armour-piercing high-explosive rocket launcher."

"It's just for show, right?"

"As long as you don't press the button on the side and say 'Ave Imperator', yes."

She takes a step back. "Okay. This.. isn't quite what I was expecting, but it is.. pretty impressive. What are you wearing? Some sort of crusader armour?"

"No, the Frateris Templar were never rebuilt after the Age of Apostasy and they never really featured in the game." I turn away from her and move to the second crate. "I'm wearing this." I bang the orange sigil with my fist as the Star of Horus decorated crate begins to open, revealing…

"Is that a guitar?"

"Sonic blaster."

"Are those eyes looking at me?"

I nod. "I had the Praexis Demons infest it. The people who wear it in the setting are Demon worshippers so I thought adding actual Demons would make it more authentic. They're perfectly safe."

"And the amps?"

"Your armour has them too. I thought it would be fun to fly into the car park and do a performance of Dragonforce's 'Through the Fire and the Flames', but we can skip that if you'd prefer."

She nods slowly. "Through.. the Fire and the Flames?"

"It just sounded like fun to me."

"Bet M'gann doesn't have to deal with this." She appears to give the matter some thought. "Sure, why not? I'm sure it'll be… Interesting."

 

15th February
10:58 GMT +2

"Orange Lantern two eight one four here to see Professor Demetrios Prokopios."

The armed Greek police officer guarding the door nods and reaches for his radio while his partner keeps me under close observation. Professional, but.. a bit pointless. Sure, I just look like a man in a suit with unusual choice of jewellery but I just told him who I am. His colleagues at the front entrance already checked me for mundane weapons and they nearly made me late while they checked whether power rings counted or not. I had to point out that I wasn't legally able to hand them over to get them to let me come up here.

"Okay." The officer lets go of his radio and steps aside. "You can go through. Take a seat and wait for the Professor to call for you."

"Thank you." I smile at both of them, then step forwards and push the door open. I was a little surprised by how easy getting this appointment was. I'm not sure if Diana put in a good word or if I now qualify for the red carpet treatment in my own right these days.

Fallout from Fawcett City was fairly minimal. Batman appeared to be surprised by what I did to the First, but a quick discussion on Demonology -or whatever the study of things like the First is called- and he agreed that it was probably the right decision. No one's in a hurry to rescue Mister Gregor, if that would even be possible. Lord Satanus and 'Theo' -apparently that's what the First went by when he worked as a fisherman during his last fling with mortality- have been added to Interpol's watch list. Father Mattias said that he would have a go at exorcising Mister Printwhistle but at the moment the man is occupying Mister Karnes' old cage in the Fawcett City Prison. Frederick let me know yesterday that Timothy has regained consciousness and appears none the worse for his experiences. Only time will tell I suppose. Yesterday's visit was fun, though I'm not sure how much of my help they're actually going to use. I was slightly disappointed not to recognise any of the current generation of Games Workshop higher ups. Not sure whether that was due to time or being in a parallel universe.

I nod to Professor Prokopios' secretary and sit down on one of the red leather upholstered seats at the side of the room. Most of the free time I've had lately not being spent following up possible leads on arcane weapons has been spent with Ted preparing for our first major product launch. We've pencilled in the first meeting of my brain trust for three weeks from now and I want to get something out in the public arena before then so everyone can get good and excited by it.

The reason I'm here is that I want to make sure that we're not about to crash the world economy by doing this.

The door in the side of the room opens and the Professor strolls out, favouring me with a broad smile. He has a neatly trimmed grey beard and short grey hair, noticeably thinning on the top. He's wearing a pale blue short sleeved shirt and pale grey trousers. I stand and take his right hand as he offers it to me. "Orange Lantern! Good to meet you!"

"Likewise, Professor. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"Oh, it is no trouble. Katerina-" His secretary looks up. "-could you please arrange to have some tea sent up?" She nods. "Thank you." He returns his attention to me. "Please, come into my office."

"Thank you." He leads the way through the interior door into his work space. "I saw the police outside. I'm a little surprised that a former finance minister needs a bodyguard."

"Of course I have a bodyguard! I'm the man whose job it is to make Greek people pay their taxes!" He grins at the entirely serious joke and I smile along with him. He gestures to the chair on the opposite side of his desk. "Please, sit. What have I done to warrant a visit from a superhero?"

I pull the chair out slightly and sit as he does the same on his side of the desk. "I needed to talk to someone about the world economy and, um-" A quick glance around the room and I immediately spot his Nobel Prize certificate. I wave my right forefinger at it. "-you're the leading expert."

He turns his head around to see what I'm pointing at. "Oh, pff. They gave that to me for developing 'catastrophe theory'. You see, economic systems are so co-dependent these days that an apparently minor failure in one market can rapidly.. ripple outwards and cause.. weak but basically functional sectors to collapse as well. It was nice to be recognised, but I'd rather spend my time creating wealth than convincing people not to wreck their own markets."

"I'm just glad that people listened to you."

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Sometimes it is like explaining to little children why they should not piss in their own pants. Are you aware of what a subprime mortgage-?"

"Painfully so. My… I come from a parallel universe, and our Earth's economy crashed due to the very things you've convinced regulators to prevent."

"Really?" He thinks for a moment. "I have a certain morbid desire to find out what actually happened, but I do not think I could afford the loss of sleep it would cause."

"How is the tax gathering going?"

"Twenty six years I have been on that job! You know that when I first started I had to fire my entire staff?" I nod. Having the army collect taxes was certainly an interesting way to start. But this version of Greece decided to get its house in order so they could join the European Union, rather than lying through their teeth to cheat on the criteria like they did back home. "Quite a lot of people paid money, but most of it was going on bribing tax officials. The rich, pfff! We were lucky if they paid a lepton on the drachma! Now..? Eh, it's okay. The system works, I just need to oversee it. Gives me time for my other work."

"Secretly masterminding the world's economy?"

"Hah!" He chuckles. "Me and the rest of the Bilderberg Group, yes. Who have you been talking to?"

"Hephaestus."

"Hephae-." The smile vanishes. "Oh."

"I know full well that you are really Ploutos, god of-."

He shakes his head and waves his right hand. "Call me Demetri, please. I don't think that a country full of Christians really want to know that a pagan god is in charge of their revenue service. I get enough people wanting to burn me on the stake as it is."

"I don't think they'd…"

"No, but it would be awkward. 'Demetrios Prokopios' doesn't have particularly good documentation. Not if someone was prepared to look hard enough." He takes a deep breath and slowly exhales. "So. What can an out of work god do for you?"

"Out of work? You're the hardest working god on Olympus."

"I haven't been back to Olympus for centuries. And I saw that Queen Hera has a job now, as a relationship advice columnist."

"I didn't know the two of you were in contact."

"I manage her finances. She needed me to explain how credit cards work. 'Do they still use sestertii, or should I trade with unmarked coins?'" He shakes his head, then looks me over. "Why are you here?"

"How bad would it be if I introduced a form of power generation that could reduce electricity costs to a hundredth of what they are now?"

"How quickly?"

"I'm planning to demonstrate the first generator this weekend. We need to upgrade the transmission infrastructure before rolling it out over a large area but.. my friend Ted Kord already got the nod from the New York City mayor's office."

"No, no. Wider implementation. Are you going to be able to supplant existing power generation technologies… Within.. say.. five years?"

"Not unless a bunch of things turn out to be a lot easier than I think they're going to be. In five years… Hopefully, we'll be supplying power to a few dozen major cities and industrial areas. The bottleneck is producing the jovium wires we need. We've got plans to-."

He waves me off again. "Then do not worry. Markets can adapt to new technologies, even highly disruptive ones, as long as they have enough lead time. Gas and coal production will decrease over time… I doubt oil will be affected significantly for two decades at least. Do you have a full prospectus with you?" A folder appears from subspace and I float it over to him. "Let me have a quick look through and I'll give you a more detailed analysis."

 

17th February
07:02 GMT -6

I can barely believe this is actually happening. I mean, I know I offered months ago but they actually.. accepted. A minute or two from now Guy and I are going to start our first tuition session, instructing other members of the Green Lantern Corps on how to resist orange light techniques.

"Guy-."

He doesn't look around, still staring up at the sky. "Don't even talk t' me."

And it would be just perfect if Guy wasn't still throwing a massive snit about me sending that Guardian spaceship to Maltus. We're back in the Chihuahuan Desert and the sun is only just coming up over the horizon. Even at this early hour there's a crowd watching from the force field protected stand we built for them. We told them what was going to be happening and I think they think it'll look awesome because of all the extra Greenies. In fact, unless something goes very wrong there won't be much to watch at all.

"Guy-."

"J'onn actually yelled at me. You know that?"

Guy never showed any interest in power armour, but his uniform is noticeably more armoured these days. None of that exposed arms nonsense. His sidearm is attached to his hip. Combined with the overcoat he's taken to wearing he looks a good deal more professional than the tank top look he was sporting when I first met him.

"The Guardians did kind of wreck his planet."

"His species wouldn't even exist if it wasn't fer the Guardians. They'd still be those.. crazy Burner things."

"There's no way to know what they might have become if they'd been left alone. Would you try and use the worst examples of Human behaviour as evidence that we all needed our brains rewriten?"

He looks at me from the corner of his eye, a slight frown appearing. "What're you talking about? I read M'gann's report, those things were crazy."

"We only met one, and the fragments of Guardian reports I read were just the Guardians' impressions. I have no logical basis for concluding that what they said was either absolutely true or the whole of the truth." He takes a breath to argue back and I raise my hands. "But even if it was, once there were no Burners left, why exactly didn't the other Guardians restore Mars? There wouldn't have been much risk to them."

"They're busy people. It's a big universe. And anyway, what about the Burners hunting down the other Martians on the ship?"

"If an alien race came to Earth and started altering people to serve them, how friendly do you think the rest of us would be towards the people they modified?"

He goes back to watching the sky with a slight shake of his head. "Controllers got in contact with you yet?"

"No." That makes him look around. "I can't even reach the ship anymore. Did they.. talk to the Guardians about it?"

"Think so. They don't tell me about that sorta stuff but there was a ship I didn't recognize docked near their tower fer a while."

"Will detected." / "Will detected." / "Will detected."

Our rings chime at the same time, prompting us both to look down at them.

"Who are we getting today, anyway?"

"Katma Tui,-" Eeeee! "-Jack Chance,-" Eeeeee! "-and Saarek."

"The Vulca-?"

"He's not a Vulcan." I raise my eyebrows. "Yeah, okay, that's what I thought first time I saw him too, but he isn't."

I see a tiny green light high up in the sky. Though I transition pretty much everywhere, standard Green Lantern Corps protocol is to appear in normal space a good distance from the planet and fly the rest of the way at high speed. No interdiction fields on Earth but they're doing it anyway. Goodthinkful compliance with proper procedure or evidence of excessive rigidity? Not really sure.

Guy smiles slightly and a large Green sigil appears over our heads. I'm sure they can find us perfectly well without that but that approach is classic Guy.

"Shame John couldn’t be here." Guy looks blank. "What with Lantern Tui attending."

"Wouldn't Hal..? Oh yeah, she was his teacher, wasn't she?"

"Bit more to it than that." I can see individual humanoid shapes now.

Guy gives me a look of disbelief which gradually turns into a grin. "No way."

"Yes way. You're talking to a chap with empathic-." Greengreentoomuchgreen. I blink and turn the empathic vision down as much as possible as Guy floats forwards to greet our new students. Three standard pattern humanoids and he totally looks like a Vulcan! He's even got the haircut! His uniform is black, save for the green sigil on his chest and the green across his shoulders. Which makes it look exactly like a Starfleet uniform. According to the Stewart-ring he's also some sort of necromancer. I wonder if he'd be interested in picking up a few books on the subject while he's here?

This Lantern Tui isn't the oddly Human looking one from the DCAU. She's got the purply red skin of a Korugaran and a short blob of black hair. Her uniform has a sort of green swimming costume thing with black material covering her arms and legs. She's wearing green boots and she appears to have copied Harold's white gloves but a quick scan shows the whole ensemble to be reasonably well armoured.

Lantern Chance appears to be from considerably earlier in his career than the version Parallax killed during the Sinestro Corps' attack on Oa. Red coat, cargo trousers and a waistcoat make him look the part of science fiction gunfighter every bit as much as the four firearms I can see. Only one of those guns matches Guy's Corps approved sidearm. No body armour but he does have a personal force field generator. He's also got his left hand resting on the butt of.. some sort of fusion pistol? It appears designed to look like an antique but the internal systems are top of the interstellar line. His skin is pale blue, his unkempt mullet a darker blue and his irises a striking red colour.

All three of them are staring at me. I raise my left hand and wiggle my fingers at them, orange ring clearly on display.

"Okay guys, thanks fer coming."

Lantern Tui nods at him, not taking her eyes off me for longer than politeness demands. "Lantern Gardner." As the senior Lantern here she has authority over this gathering. "Lantern… Paul."

"That's actually my personal name, but never mind." I zip over to Lantern Chance, who instinctively responds by reinforcing his environmental shield and pulling his sidearm free. "Lantern Chance, I am a huge fan of your work."

He keeps looking at me for a moment longer before responding. "Thaaaanks?"

"The whole backup weapons thing, I just took it and-" A part of my subspace arsenal appears in the air around me. "-ran with it."

"You can get his autograph later, Paul."

"Right, right." I return them to subspace and transition back to Guy's side. "Though that's not a bad first lesson. Orange Lanterns are greedy. If you meet an Orange Lantern of a combative turn of mind they will have all manner of additional weapons. The second is: Praexis Demons, rise."

My horde burst from the ground beneath us, shaking themselves free of the sand before rising into the air. Tui responds with construct armour while Saarek studies them with curiosity. "Demons. You use Demons."

"Construct Lanterns." I turn to look at my classroom assistant. "Guy?" A green bubble forms around me. "As you can see, they're autonomous. There's no orange light connection between me and them. Now, I don't do this to people but Orange Lanterns you encounter out in the wild almost certainly will. Scan the area of engagement carefully."

Chance shakes his head and pulls a roll up out of one of his pockets. "We ain't here for basic, Orange. Why don't we just skip on to the important-."

"Will detected."

Another Green Lantern appears from a transition. His -I'm guessing his- uniform is similar to Lantern Tui's and his skin is a mottled blue green. "You would be wiser not to."

Lantern Tui frowns at him. "Lantern Green Man?"

"I have been tracking the Construct Lanterns leaving the Vega Systems. One is entering the system now. In fact, I would advise against any use of the orange light at all."

Oh poop.

 

17th February
13:16 GMT

Lantern Tui nods. "Show us."

Lantern Saarek feeds ring power into the Watchtower as a green image appears in the air in the middle of the meeting room. In addition to myself and the five Greenies who brought me here, Mister and Missus Hol, Kal-El and Mister J'onzz are in attendance as well. I guess that's what Thanagarian casual clothing looks like. Or.. maybe those are dressing gowns?

The image shows us a top down view of the Sol system to real scale. The sun is a tiny dot in the middle while the planets are visible only by the thin green thread which marks out their orbit. The image expands a section towards the edge of the Oort cloud. Then expands again, and again and ooh dear.

A giant glowing construct head floats through the void. A long tentacle undulates slowly at each end of its upper lip, ends glowing brightly. Two slightly smaller tentacles sit between them, just under where its nose would be if it had one. Its chin is studded with what appear to be manipulator tendrils while other tentacles which might at some point in its species' evolutionary history have been used for swimming flail around on the other end of its neck-collar.

That's Lantern Blume.

Kal-El looks at Lantern Tui. "Is it coming this way?"

Her eyes flash. "I can't tell. It's moving in-system, but it isn't coming directly towards Earth."

Guy turns his head towards me. "You assimilate a giant tentacle head and forget to tell anyone?"

"No. No, that's Lantern Blume, the God of Hunger."

Mister Hol raises his right eyebrow. "God?"

"I don't know if he was actually a god before Larfleeze assimilated him or not. That's just what he calls himself when he lands on a planet and demands all of their precious materials. He was a planet killer, then he gained Lantern powers." That gets a few concerned nods. "Oh, and one time? The world he ended up on didn't have much in the way of mineral wealth. So he took their children instead."

Kal-El's face falls. "Good Lord."

I remove the rings from my fingers. "I'll just be taking these back to the mountain now." Ah, heck. "Sirs? You're going to need to get hold of Red Tornado and ask him to bring Doctor Morrow to the mountain as well."

Missus Hol nods. "It's already being taken care of."

"Heh." Lantern Chance smiles. "Running and hiding? You really think that'll help?"

"The mountain's warded against -among other things- ring scans. As long as my personal lantern and the rings stay there, Blume shouldn’t be able to feel them."

"Warded? Magic? You really believe that stuff?"

Lantern Saarek nods. "You may want to consult your ring's database. Earth has an unusually active arcane energy network." He looks at me. "I assume that you have tested the effectiveness of the wards." I nod. "Then that may work. Green Man?"

"They don't usually stay in a system all that long. But this.. 'Blume' is a long way ahead of the others. Even if he moves on, he may return if you continue to use your rings. Do you believe that you could defeat him?"

Do.. I..? "Maybe? Umm…" I shake my head. "Probably-yes? But destroying his construct body just makes him respawn at Larfleeze's ring. I might be able to sneak up on him and seize control of him but that would be a dead give away to Larfleeze that there was someone here who knows how to use the orange light better than a newly empowered Lantern should."

Lantern Tui nods. "And what about us?"

"He'd-."

"Assimilate you." Guy crosses his arms. "Which was why you were comin' here in the first place."

"Could you defeat it?"

"Yeah, I think I could."

"Guy-."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did you become a member of the Justice League or the Green Lantern Corps Honour Guard when I wasn't payin' attention?"

"No, but-."

"Then I don't take orders from you. Tui? How about it?"

She watches Lantern Blume for a moment. "No. Not without a better idea of its capabilities or if it moves to threaten Earth or Mars."

"Oh, come on." Guy's ring is sparking with suppressed mental drive.

Korugari don't shake their heads to indicate a negative. Their equivalent gesture is the slight inclination of the head Lantern Tui is doing now. "Ice it, Gardner. That was a 'no'."

"Guy, we could take Blume. You could probably take Blume. We might even-" I pat the scabbard at my leg which contains the Sword of Second and Third. "-be able to take Larfleeze. Maybe. But he's got hundreds of Construct-Lanterns at least. We can't reliably protect the Earth from that many."

Guy looks around the group, eyes finishing on Kal-El whose eyebrows are slightly raised. "Yeah… Okay. So what's the game plan?"

There's a sort of rippling across Green Man's skin. "Lantern Blots of two eight four nine reported that he approached a Construct-Lantern when it flew near his homeworld. It did not react, even to close proximity scans."

Saarek looks concerned. "I thought orders were not to approach them?"

"He took initiative. He claimed that he felt that his planet was under threat, and so sidestepped the specific prohibition."

"I hope someone explained to him that he might have triggered the attack."

"I considered doing so, but I have been lobbying Salaak for permission to probe them more assertively since they left Vega. It seemed dishonest."

Missus Hol activates a holoscreen and begins flipping through what looks like an inventory list. "If it won't react to a Green Lantern flying up to it, could you drop some probes around it? Might give us a better idea of exactly what these things are, or how Larfleeze controls them."

I didn't know she cared. I'd have been happy to let her play with the Praexis if I'd known.

Lantern Tui looks sceptical. "Having seen Earth's general level of technology, I'm not sure what a locally produced probe could tell us that a power ring couldn't."

Missus Hol flares her wings slightly. "Do I look local to you? Besides, if you've only been here a few minutes you won't have seen some of the crazy stuff Humans can build. This one-" A hologram of a double ended triamid shape appears. "-was created by Doctor Fate to read arcane signatures.. and-" She glances at her husband. "-we've got some from Thanagar."

Lantern Tui looks over to Lantern Green Man. "It's your mission. What do you think?"

"I don't see any harm. If you make them ready I will fly them into position myself."

Mister Hol looks over to Lantern Tui. "Would Earth's conventional detection devices be able to see 'Lantern Blume' yet?"

Another flicker. "No, it's nothing like bright enough. Technically, a small amount of the light it's emitting is reaching here, but it won't be bright enough to see until it reaches the inner system."

He nods. "Superman, I'm going to suggest that we hold off notifying the authorities until it gets closer. It doesn't seem to be behaving in an aggressive way and I'm not sure that any level of preparation they could make would actually help."

Kal-El nods. "Agreed. We'll reconsider if it passes Jupiter orbit. Orange Lantern?"

"Sir?"

"Your tattoos should make it impossible for Blume to be homing in on you personally, correct?"

"Yes sir."

"Then I'm not going to confine you to the mountain, but your rings, personal Lantern and the Ophidian stay there until further notice." I nod. "We'll keep you informed in case we need your expertise or assistance. Dismissed."

 

18th February
19:37 GMT -5

Holly leans forwards slightly, her eyes wide. "You killed Satan?"

"Well… No, as I said, there isn't-."

"You basically killed Satan."

"… Yes."

What with one thing and another we never got around to coming back to Tikka Nights, so I thought I'd treat her. A reward for three and a bit months' good behaviour and for her getting a job. Killing the First appears to have impressed her. She looks off to the side as she reloads her fork. "How come you're not on the Justice League already?"

"Did I tell you how I got started?" Fortunately for me Holly's learned to eat with her mouth closed since we first met. She just nods. "The year I'm spending here is effectively a year's probation. I'm only going to be eligible after it's over, and I don't know how much time I'm going to spend on Earth afterwards. After that… I don't know, maybe."

She swallows. "So what happened to Doctor Sivana?"

"Captain Marvel had a chat with her. They.. decided they'd be okay with her knowing who he is."

Holly makes an amused exhalation. "I bet he's okay with her knowing who he is." The story loses a little something when repeated to someone who doesn't know that Marvel's secret identity is that of a ten year old. Holly just heard a story about a superhero and his enemy's beautiful-yet-innocent daughter getting closer. In reality I think Doctor Sivana ♀ just wants to pretend the whole thing never happened. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen."

"And she's really a Doctor? Like a doctor-Doctor?"

"Oh yes. Doctor… Thaddeus and Professor Venus Sivana home schooled their children intensively. Beautia decided that she wanted to study medicine…"

She points at my left hand with her fork. "How come you're not wearing your ring?"

Ah. We're not mentioning Blume, so… "I… Ehr… It turns out that if you.. slice a guy up like a deli ham.. they don't let you stay on.. active duty. " Her eyebrows rise slightly. "I'm benched… Pending.. psychiatric assessment."

"You sliced up Satan! That is total bullshit!" A couple of people on a neighbouring table look around.

"Yeah, but he was.. Human shaped at the time… It's.. it's standard practice, police do the same thing when they shoot someone dead until the investigation's over." I don't feel bad about it, but I did deliberately kill a person. Perhaps telling Lantern Jordan 'I hope not' when he asked if the First would get up again like Ra's did suggest an inappropriate flippancy. "And it doesn't even matter. I could do with a few days off. There's some stuff I'm doing with Ted Kord-."

"Who?"

"He runs a company called Kord tech. They're the ones-."

"Oh yeah, you said. Magic metal, right?"

"That's the one. We're about ready to launch a product, and there's this whole press conference and speech thing we've got to plan... I don't need a power ring for that."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Power generation. And.. the infrastructure upgrades needed to make it worthwhile."

"Oh."

"What?"

"Just sounds kinda dull."

"The economy runs on power; electricity for machinery and computers, petrol for cars and lorries… If we can reduce costs enough-."

"Yeah, but it's not… Superhero-y, is it?"

"Oil being a less important international commodity should help increase political stability in oil rich regions.. because other countries won't need to fight over control of them. Cheaper heating…" She doesn't look convinced. "As far as I'm concerned, my job is to help as many people as I can in whatever way I can. That doesn't always mean.. slicing up Satan."

She nods and smiles. "Kinda hard to top that, anyway."

"So, how's work?"

"Dull. Boring." She shrugs. "I dunno. Me working makes Karon happy and I guess it's good for me. I'm just glad it isn't near where I used to live."

"Why's that?"

"I…" She takes another forkful as she tries to work out how to explain it to me. I do the same. The food here really is quite excellent. "The kinda.. people I used to hang around with… Karon… I don't… I don't really think they're good for me. You know?"

If I'm honest, not really. Not as if I've ever lived that life. "Get on alright with your co-workers?"

"They're okay." She shoves some of her food around her plate. "I guess it's.. normal? Get up, go to work, get paid, come home. I've never really.. had that, until now."

Out of the corner of my eye I see a patron gesturing angrily at something while a waiter tries to placate him. Once I'd have done the same 'awkwardly trying to pretend it isn't happening' thing the tables next to it are doing. Now I'm seriously considering just getting up and joining in. No, that probably wouldn't help.

"I've known.. people who.. had trouble coping with that sort of transition." I reach across the table with my left hand and rest it on her right. "If you feel the same way and you want to talk about it, you can always talk to Karon, to Selina or to me. You know that, right?"

She looks a little surprised by my touch. "Um." Oh, was that a bit much? I can see that she doesn't fear me but there's still a lot of yellow in there and I can't completely predict what's going to bounce off what. "Yeah."

I remove my hand. "Did you decide whether you wanted to take Selina up on her offer of tuition?"

"Iiiii guess I do. House is all fixed up and.. I need a new hobby..?"

"Think it takes a little more enthusiasm than that to reach her level of athleticism."

"Oh, no, I mean… Selina's like my cool big sister, you know? Spending time with her's always fun. It's just, I see the stuff she can do and the stuff you can do and there's this huge gap."

"If you're interested in becoming an Orange Lantern, I can give you some books on moral philosophy to read."

She lights up. "And a power ring to practice with?"

"Not until I'm reasonably confident it's not going to drive you clinically insane. And yes, that can happen."

"I can read a book."

"And you'd have to go and see a proper therapist. Not like me, someone with an actual diploma and a licence to practise. Orange rings mess with your head; if it's not on straight-" The argumentative customer is now standing and openly remonstrating with someone I believe to be the manager. "-very bad things will happen. If you want to try it, I know a great guy." Even if he isn't talking to me at the moment.

"I think I'll pass then."

"Selina's skills would be useful anyway and.. there are other types of superpowers you could-" The angry man shoves the manager. O-kay. "-acquire. But if you'll excuse me, I'm afraid that I need to go and deal with that."

 

18th February
19:41 GMT -5

"Excuse me, sir? Does there seem to be a problem?"

Alright, let's see how much of what Batman taught us stayed in my head. The one remonstrating with the manager… Younger, expensive clothing, expensive watch, plain rings. The two other men are older and heavier set. A few small scars are visible. Good clothing, but not… Ah, a slight tug at the jacket as one orientates on me. Armed, then. Bodyguards most likely. In most places I'd say 'celebrity making an arse of himself', but this is Gotham. Younger member of a successful crime family? My phone has a 'name that crim' app courtesy of Robin but I can't exactly whip it out right now.

"And who the FUCK are you?"

Mouthy youth turns towards me, eyes blazing in a way that might be intimidating if he wasn't about ten centimetres shorter than me. And if I hadn't cut Satan to ribbons last weekend. Behind him the restaurant manager shakes his head at me. Kind of him.

I smile. "I understand that my sobriquet is 'The Cake Man'." Bodyguard one shifts forwards a little in his seat, becoming more alert. Would he..? Yes, he'd be just old enough to have been professionally active when the old crime families started losing out to the 'freaks'. Someone introduces themselves by a silly name in Gotham, you assume that they should be taken completely seriously if you know what's good for you.

"Please, sir." No, manager guy, don't draw attention to yourself! "If your service has not been satisfactory, you have my humblest apologies. Please, have a complimentary round of drinks by way of apology."

"Take a fucksight more than that! You know who I am!?"

No. "Yes, you're that mouthy nuisance who's ruining my dinner. Now, you can either accept what I'm going to assume is an undeserved apology and finish your meal. You can storm out and write an unflattering review on your blog. Or you can step outside with me." Is he armed? Yes, probably. Meh, unless he's packing a laser I'm not worried. "I would encourage you to take option one. The food here really is quite good."

"Mister Inzerillo, sir-" Ooh! I recognise that name. I was right about the gangster thing. That makes him… "-your father said-" Don'ttellmedon'ttellme! "-we shouldn't-" Jack! That was it! "-get involved in any trouble. 'Specially with-."

"This prick wants to pick a fight? Fine!" He nearly tears off his jacket before throwing it at the bodyguard who suggested that he simmer down, momentarily blocking his line of sight in a way I just know would irritate a professional. "Outside, now!"

As I turn towards the door Jack storms past me, taking the opportunity to try and shove me sideways. He fails. Oh dear. I glance back at his bodyguards, one of whom is going for his phone. "I'll let him off with a few bruises. No need to get excited." I follow the junior mobbie towards the door, being careful not to pay any attention to the concerned look on Holly's face as I walk by her. Though the temptation to say 'superheroy enough for you?' is strong enough that I can feel it.

I pass through the door to find Jack bouncing up and down on his toes like a very amateur boxer. Musculature… Well, he works out but I've got more muscle mass and a longer reach. "Well? Do you know who I am? You know who you just pissed off?"

"Jacopo Inzerillo. Younger son of Enrico Inzerillo."

A slight scowl at hearing his full first name. "Cops are gunna have to identify you from your dental records, prick."

"Ah. My employer prefers that I resolve matters fully before the police arrive. Don't leave them in any doubt as to what happened."

"Yeah? Who you workin' for? Is it those Ibanescu pricks? Odessa? Fuckin' push you all into the sea for this."

I relax, hands slightly to the side. "I work for Batman."

Just for a heartbeat I see a look of shock on his face. Then his face hardens, his fists come up and he dashes towards me. Okay, let's see how much of Ms Lance's lessons stuck. He telegraphs a right, and from the angle of the limb it looks like it'll include an elbow chaser. Doubt he'll extend enough for a throw. "Ragh!"

I move left, my right comes across to turn his arm aside. Still hurts without the ring or power armour but it does put me in position to trip him and hit him in the side of the head with the heel of my left palm. He staggers a step and collapses onto the ground and I step back as he rolls to his feet. "I really do recommend calling it a night. These sorts of affair are seldom dignified."

He approaches again, slower this time. Hmm, Robin or Artemis would have gone for a pin or a choke there, wouldn't they? I'm probably too analytical for good melee fighting. The skills are just-. He throws a series of jabs at my head and I step back as he does so. Not like we've got a ring-out line here. So opposed to how it makes sense to fight as a Lantern. I step back just ahead of his next strike then surge forwards, pushing his left arm aside with my left hand while my own right fist uppercuts him under the chin. I follow up, turning side on, pushing off with my calves and shoving my shoulder into his chest.

Off to the side I hear the restaurant door open as he falls backwards, unable to stop himself hitting the pavement hard. "Agh!" Right, does he-? He reaches into his belt and pulls out a tiny flick knife. The hand holding it is swiftly met by the toe of my right foot, sending the knife flying. I then drop onto him, hands going to his shoulders and my right knee to his diaphragm. "Owgh!" Right fist up and hope he gets the messa-.

Bang!

Impact in the right side of my torso. I collapse to my left as Mister Inzerillo crawls away. Screams from the people watching through the restaurant window. Low calibre rounds so the body armour took it. Armour I'm wearing there shouldn't be too much of a bruise. Fun time over. I tap my belt buckle with my left hand, bringing the flight belt to normal operating power.

Bang!

Shoulder. Oh, the younger bodyguard. Nice lot of witnesses at the windows.

"Hah! Fuck you, you fucking Bat-fuck!"

And these sorts of people are allowed to rise to high criminal office these days. I'm just lying here and he kicks me in the chest. If that bullet had done anything I'd be bleeding like nobody's business right now and he's so caught up he-. Head that time, hasn't noticed. Ah well. Another tap and the belt switches to 'repulse'.

"Boss, we gotta go."

"And fuck-!" His toes break. "Aaaaaghfuck!"

I push myself up and float off the ground. "That wasn't very clever. And now you're both under arrest." Through the window behind them I notice the relief on Holly's face. "Please don't do anything-" The bodyguard aims for my centre of mass and pulls the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

"-stupider." I create a kinetic bubble around him. "You know, my revolver has eight shots."

"rAAAAaagh!" Jacopo pulls himself upwards, balancing on his good foot. Bodyguard takes a look at the situation and tries pushing against the barrier around him. It is weaker against gradual application of force, but not enough for him to be able to do anything about it. Realising that, he stops, shakes his head dejectedly and holsters his weapon.

Ugh, no convenient construct manacles. I create a second bubble around Jacopo and he hops into it before falling down again. I see Holly take a step back from the window and I meet her eyes for a moment and give her a tiny head shake. Really don't want her getting the attention of Gotham organised crime. Further inside the restaurant the other bodyguard is speaking frantically on his phone. Keeping both hands in the barrier generation position does make it somewhat difficult for me to move but I angle my body to drift back towards the restaurant.

"Could somebody please phone the police?!"

 

18th February
20:07 GMT -5

"Think that's about everything, Orange." Detective Bullock scratches the side of his head with his pencil as he looks over the notes he's taken. "We got about twelve witnesses who'll testify that they saw you defending yerself and only really going after him when he pulled a knife. Plus, the manager's tellin' me they were trying to shake him down for protection money. Have to talk t'the Commish about the other one but we can take these two-" He nods at Jacopo and the chap who shot me. "-down town right now." He takes a step closer to me and looks over to where the older bodyguard is talking to a couple of people in suits. "You.. sure you didn't see.. or maybe hear him try anything? Y'know, maybe somethin's come back to you?"

Yes, I can work out what he's asking. Think I'll pretend not to, though. Don't really see the point of locking a man up when all it might do is weaken the case against the others. "Sorry, Detective. I don't really forget things like that, even without the rings."

"Fuckin' mob lawyers." He rolls his eyes. "And… Sorry, but I gotta ask you for contact info. Those slimy bastards were makin' noise about pressin' charges against you. Probably just angling to try an' make us drop the charges…"

"I don't have any problem giving you contact details, Detective. But.. they.. can't press charges."

"Well, yeah, they shouldn't be able to but, y'see-."

"I have a diplomatic passport."

He grins. "Fer real?"

"I'm a citizen of Themyscira these days. Technically, I'm part of Diana's staff. I really.. only have it because there isn't a regular Themysciran passport but it does save me from having to fill out immigration paperwork. I'm not sure having a power ring qualifies me for a green card when there are already four Americans with the same thing."

"Maybe you could have them declare your ice fortress t'be its own country?"

"Bit of a stretch." Probably wouldn't be the smallest, though. Maybe I could ask Queen Hippolyta to declare it Themysciran territory? "Here." I hand him a business card with my contact details. "Do you need anything else?"

Detective Bullock looks curious, then looks past me at the crowd watching events. "This interrupt a hot date or something?"

"I was having dinner with someone, yes."

"Anyone I know?"

"She does have a record but I don't think-. Oh, you mean socially. No, I don't think so. And she's not still in the crowd, I didn't want that lot-" I nod at the lawyers. "-seeing me with her, just in case."

Detective Bullock grunts. "Okay, I won't keep yah." He pockets the card. "I'll be in touch in a day or two, let you know how things are going."

"Thank you, Detective." He turns away. "Oh, did you.. reach a decision? About the weight loss thing?"

"I'm, ah…" He glances down at his gut. "Still thinking."

"When you decide, let me know. Good evening." I activate the belt and fly directly upwards as Detective Bullock turns around.

"Funny, how you're so much more polite than Bat-" He sees that I'm not there anymore. He tries looking up but it's dark and the flight belt doesn't cause a glow in flight mode. "-man. And yet you still do that. Now I get how the Commish feels."

I grin as I gain more height and start looking around for Holly. She wouldn't have gone far… Ah! There she is, on a rooftop. Easier to spot from the air, harder to spot from the ground. I angle my body and fly towards her, landing just in front of her. "Sorry about that."

"You're sorry? You got shot!"

"I was wearing body armour and a personal force field. There wasn't-."

"I didn't know that! … Ass!" She steps forwards and lightly punches me in the upper arm with her right hand. Wait, I haven't-. "Oww."

"Sorry! Personal force field's still on. Let me just.. change the setting." I fiddle with the buckle as she rubs her aching hand. "Oh here, I've got a-" I reach into my jacket's inner pocket. "-healing potion."

"A what?"

"Healing potion. Give me your hand a minute." She gives me a sceptical look before holding it out. I lightly take hold of her right hand with my left and squirt a small amount of potion onto her knuckles with my right before returning the bottle to my jacket. Has a fairly viscous texture so… I move my hands so that my fingers are supporting her palm and start rubbing the potion in with both thumbs. Slightly more potion left over than I need, so I switch to performing a simple hand massage. "Better?"

"Um. Yeah. That feels.. nice…"

"Glad to know those massage lessons weren't a waste of time. Most people I know get a bit weird when I offer." I release her hand. "Well. Should probably get you home. I don't think walking is a good idea after.. that, but we could get a taxi?"

She goes to speak, then hesitates for a moment, prompting me to raise my eyebrows. "Um… Can you… Fly with me?"

Would that..? "Don't see any reason why not."

"I wouldn't get, like, bugs in my mouth or anything would I?"

"No, we wouldn't be going that fast and the belt tends to deflect them anyway." I press the belt again. What was the 'passenger' setting? "Would you prefer to ride on my back or would a bridal carry be better?"

She giggles for a moment, then realises that I'm being serious. "Oh! Bridal carry."

"Okay then." I crouch down slightly. "If you put your left arm around my shoulder-" She does so. "-then I can…" I put my left arm against the back of her knees and my right behind her shoulders. "Ready?"

"Uh-huh."

Aaand lift. She feels oddly light. Last time I scanned her the ring told me that her diet was improving, something I'm largely attributing to Karon's influence. But she's never going to be anything like as large as she could have been with better nutrition in early life. "Got a decent hold?"

She smiles a little nervously. "I sure hope so."

I check my grip. Yep, should be fine. And up we go. This part of Gotham doesn't go up beyond about five storeys, but I take us up higher anyway. I mean, if you're going to fly hanging onto someone you might as well get a decent view, right?

"OohmyGod."

"Enjoying it?"

"Do I have to do therapy to get one of these?"

I do have spares. "Nnnnno, but there's a training course and you'd have to be supervised. These things can be very dangerous." Holly and Karon's home is in Coventry, just north of Robinson Park. Expensive place to live if no one's been murdered in the master bedroom recently. Tikka Nights is in Upper West Wide so we're pretty much flying north north east over the park. In the dark it just shows up as a patch without any lights in it. Maybe I should bring some ambient lighting goggles next time?

"Is anything you do not dangerous?"

…

"I sleep, sometimes."

 

18th February
20:19 GMT -5

"And we're dropping down in an alley instead of at home because..?"

I crouch slightly and release her legs, maintaining my hold around her shoulders while she steadies herself. "Superman says that the best way to prevent anyone from seeing you flying to your home is to avoid flying home. And since he's an expert on maintaining a secret identity while-."

"Superman has a secret identity?"

I raise my eyebrows, then realise that in this light there's no way she can see me doing that. "Yes. He does."

"Huh. Guess I just figured… Why would he?"

"Normalcy. Hard to find when you're the last member of your species and got brought up by aliens, but he has a full time job and everything. Anyway, he's an expert on maintaining a secret identity under close observation. Not something I bother with most of the time, but…"

"I don't really wanna get visited by the Inzerillo mob."

"Right." I look toward the main road. "I also don't want to stand in this alley all night, so… Um."

"Oh! Yeah, sorry." She turns away and starts heading towards the end of the alleyway. "Shame we had to miss dessert."

"I don't mind baking something once we get back to your house."

"Really?" I see the outline of her head turn in my direction. I.. think she's smiling. "You must be, like, the most domestic guy I've ever met."

"It's hardly-. Oh, sorry, I need to check for messages. Give me a second?" Good manners required me to put my phone off during dinner but it's not impossible that there's been some sort of alert. I think she nods, then keeps going until she's on the pavement. Right. I usually just have the ring handle this type of-.

"Hey, Holly!" Ah. Nice to know she's making frie-. "How much these days, uh?"

Oh shoot phone back in pocket and jogging!

"Uh, hiii…" Holly standing in the middle of the pavement, frozen in place. Pulled up near her is a car with a group of young men in it. A fellow with at least five ear piercings is leaning out of the passenger side window, leering at her.

His eyes briefly flick to me. "Ah, hey, if you need five minutes and some mouthwash…"

"Oh, the universe just lays you idiots on for me, doesn't it?"

"Fuck you, limey. I was breaking off a piece in-" I tap my belt buckle and lift the car off the ground. "-fuuuuuuck!" The wheels spin in the air as the driver stamps on the accelerator pedal. "Go go go!"

I saunter closer, shaking my head slightly. The other people in the car… I look across at the driver. "I know you. Didn't I give you a pizza last year?"

"Fuck."

"Nice to be recognised. Now: I'm clearly a serial killing sociopath with superpowers, we're in Gotham, and you're ruining my evening." I set the car down with only a slight bump. "Go."

Tires screech as they take my advice. Damn it. I turn back towards Holly she's shaking too much yellow. I can't tell for sure if… Chance it. I put my arms around her shoulders and pull her into my chest. A moment or two passes and I start to fear that I've undone the progress-. Then I feel her press her head into my shoulder and her hands at the small of my back. Aaaaaaah.

"Nasty shock, that."

"Uh-huh."

"But I think they're going to keep going until they hit the Gotham River…" She sniffs… Okay, I'll just have a ring clean this jacket when I get home. "I'd offer to carry you the rest of the way, but I wouldn't want to make Karon jealous."

She turns to take up position on my right, still pressing herself up against me. "New neighborhood… Thought I'd gotten away from all that."

I start in the direction of her home, my right arm around her back encouraging her to move with me. She's not looking up but she does manage to put one foot in front of the other. "I'll… Say again. Anything you want-."

"Nothing special." She sniffs again and I use my left hand to fish a tissue out of my left trouser pocket, then pass it over. "Thanks." She wipes her eyes and nose with her right hand, not moving her left from around me. "Broke, no skills or qualifications. No family." I squeeze her around the waist. "'Cept Selina." I never actually asked if this version of Selina was a prostitute or not. No.. simple way to find out. "Didn't really seem like such a big deal. Suck a guy off, get money." She shakes again.

"That part of your life is over."

"Is it? Those guys just… And, and I know Karon checks my purse to see if I'm carrying any pills and… I think she looks at my arms sometimes, y'know?" S-hit. "I've been keeping busy an' clean and then one little fucking thing happens and I'm falling apart again."

"As I understand it, the Human brain basically.. shoves stuff it can't cope with out of the way so its owner can keep functioning. The fact that you're reacting like this isn't.. unusual or weird; it just shows that you're stopping being numb to all the messed up stuff you've gone through. Shit, Holly, no one should have to live like that."

There's a tiny laugh. "You sound funny when you cuss."

"Donkey-molesting faeces-eater." More of a snort this time, but at least she's starting to recover a little. "What time does Karon get off work?"

"Uh? Nine? So she should be home by nine thirty. Ten past if she can get a ride."

"Okay, so, any preference with regard to pudding?"

"Mmm, pudding like 'chocolate pudding'? Or does it mean something else in British?"

"In English-English the word pudding co-opts the meaning of the Colonial-English word 'dessert', and it was in that context that I was using it." Actually, 'dessert' means dessert as well, but it's usually only used in formal settings. And I'm trying to amuse Holly with my Old World eccentricities, not win a lexicography contest.

She doesn't exactly recover, but she's supporting her own head and holding me a little less tightly. I'll take that as progress. "Maybe.. muffins..? I dunno."

"Since I can't check recipes on the rings.. or monitor the status of the muffins during cooking, I can't promise my usual quality."

"It doesn't matter."

"I mean, pancakes or something would probably be easier. Or doughnuts. You've got a deep fat fryer, right?"

"You don't wanna do muffins?"

"I can do muffins. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of non-muffin alternatives."

"Muffins."

"Muffins it is."

I can see her house from here. No lights on. Good job the heating system I installed is pretty much immediate; Gotham's cold at this time of year.

"You.. get any messages?"

"Didn't look. Doesn't really matter."

 

18th February
21:13 GMT -5

I peer into the oven. "You know… They're surprisingly hard to judge."

"What!?"

I stand up and mosey towards the open door between the kitchen and the living room. Holly's fiddling with the television. "I said I'm having trouble telling whether they're done or not."

"Well.. just.. make your-" The screen lights up and she rises to her feet. "-best guess. It's not like-" She turns around. "-you're.. not wearing a shirt."

"It's hot in there." She stares at my chest. "Um. If it's a problem, I.. can.. just-."

Her eyes have widened slightly. "That's a lot of tattoos."

"Strictly speaking it's two overlapping sets of tattoos."

"I didn't really think you were the.. tattoo… Type..?"

"These are magic tattoos." Um. "Well, strictly speaking the tattoos themselves aren't magic, but they serve as the attachment point-" She starts walking towards me, staring at them. "-for the spells. Erh, can't honestly say I recommend getting them done yourself if there isn't a good job or soul-absence related reason."

"Is that a.. burn..?"

"Huh? Where?"

She bends down slightly and pokes me just below the bottom of my right rib cage. Then flattens her right hand to briefly feel my abdominals. "And… Whaw. You're… Buff."

"Ring-sculpted physiology. And, no, those are… That's more of a.. brand…" She looks up and shakes her head slightly in incomprehension. "They heat up some metal and sort of.. stick it on you…"

"Ow! Who did that!"

"No, no, it's part of the design. It wouldn't work without-." My watch's alarm starts beeping. "Okay, that's the time in the recipe book." I step back and turn towards the oven. "Is your oven a bit fast, a bit slow or just right?"

"I dunno. How much difference does it make?"

"I'm not sure. I don't even remember the last time I made a muffin that didn't have chocolate in it." I pick up the oven gloves and open the main oven, bend down slightly and pull out the tray. … Yeah, I think they're done. "They look alright to-?"

There's a rattle as someone opens the front door and Holly hurries back into the living room. "Hey Karon!"

"Hey Holly."

"Good evening, Karon!" Right, wire rack… Can't just float them out… I look down at my belt. No, not in a kitchen I'd have to clean if I miscalculated. Turn them upside down? Awkward with oven gloves, and it would alter the pleasant dome shape they've acquired.

"Hey Paul. I didn't realize mpf!"

Heh. Okay, just put them down in the tin. I take off the oven gloves and leave them on the work surface before leaning around the doorway. "Do you want to eat them now, or…" Okay, they're not listening. I don't know if it was the thing with those guys in the car earlier or what, but Holly appears to be very glad that Karon's back. She's on the tips of her toes, leaning into Karon with both hands around the back of the taller woman's head and is pulling down into an enthusiastic kiss. Karon's still got her bag over her shoulder and her coat on and from how she's moving her arms isn't quite sure whether to pull away and get rid of them or to hug Holly back. She settles for hugging her with one arm and sort of shaking her other shoulder in the hope that the bag will just slide off, all the while matching Holly's passion with her own.

I keep watching for a few moments, until Holly decides that Karon is sufficiently greeted. She then drops back onto the flat of her feet and presses her left cheek into her girlfriend's chest. Karon licks her lips then frowns slightly as she looks down at the top of Holly's head. "Okay… What was-" She looks up for a second. "-that shirt?"

"I left it in the kitchen."

"Wait, were you just..?"

"Watching? Yes." She blinks. "You've made out in front of me enough times that I'd rather got the impression that you didn't object…"

"But you always just get weirded out and.. uncomfortable."

"Ah, yes, I was suppressing my testosterone production, so.. I found it socially awkward and I didn't really have any drive to see the appeal… Now, I do." I flick my right hand at the door. "If that's a problem I can just go back in the kitchen while the two of you…"

Holly half turns, head still pressing against Karon's chest. "You're not gay?"

"Um… Well, there are men I find attractive, but for the most part, no. I tend to think that interest in only one gender is more the result of social conditioning rather than neural physiology-."

"Ooh. 'Cause I was getting totally the wrong signals here."

"Yes, Selina said. Look, I'm perfectly happy to duck out if I'm making it weird for you…"

"Um…" Holly pulls away from Karon slightly, and Karon uses the opportunity to move her bag and coat to a hook near the door. "No…" She walks over to me, takes hold of my left arm and gently pushes me back into the kitchen. "Yeah, just a minute. You could, like, frost the muffins or something."

"They're still warm, that's not-." She smiles, steps back and closes the door.

Huh. I look at the muffins. Okay then, I… Guess she really likes her icing. Um. Butter based icing would just melt. I could just sieve icing sugar over them, but that’s probably not what she has in mind. Peanut butter muffins, what goes with peanut butter? I'm not usually a huge fan of the stuff. When I was little Dad used to say that it's the one food he doesn't like. I walk over to the cupboard and open it, taking out the jar. Sugar and salt content..? Dark chocolate, maybe? Do Americans call that something daft? I pick up my phone. Translation app… Bittersweet. Okay. Bittersweet, one bar of that, put it on the side. Mix it with anything? No, there're only six muffins and I expect we'll be eating them all this evening. I pour a small amount of water into the kettle and switch it on. Small saucepan-

"Are you-!" I look around at the door, then decide to not hear it. "Are you serious?"

-on the stove. I'm used to using gas, but this house is all-electric. I remember one time in Food class at school I managed to melt a plastic tub onto an electric hob because I didn't realise it was still hot. Small Perspex bowl, and I break up the chocolate and put the pieces inside. Saucepan goes on the hob, water-. The kettle clicks off. Hob on, water in the saucepan, bowl on the saucepan. Now, where did I put that spatula? Right, draining board. I put it down next to the hob, far enough away not to melt.

"You said if-."

"It was a big 'if'!"

"It might not be that big."

I carefully touch the muffin tin to check its temperature, then move it off the wire rack and then gingerly pick the muffins out by the cases and putting them down on the rack. Water's bubbling so I turn the hob down and give the chocolate pieces a prod with the spatula. It's a little melted but nothing like ready to be applied to the muffins. Probably a minute or two until it reaches that stage. Dark chocolate has a higher melting point than milk chocolate, after all. Smells nice.

Hmm. I pick up a tea towel and finish drying the rest of the cutlery on the draining board and return it to the proper places around the kitchen. Another poke at the chocolate. Getting there. Maybe I could get a metal spoon and break it up to speed-?

The door opens and a slightly flushed Holly leans into the kitchen. "Hey, um-."

"Not quite ready, yet."

"Yeah, um." She looks at the unit next to her, then at the floor. "So, Karon.. and me were going to go take a shower and.. go to bed."

"Oh. Right. Ah, sure, I'll leave the muffins in your ca-."

"You wanna join us?"

…

…

"I'm sorry?"

"You know..?" She nods and makes a circling motion with her right hand.

"No, I… I got the implication, I was just… Rather under the impression that you were lesbians."

"Mostly. Not like I've never been with a guy before-" A quick shot of empathic vision give me a rough idea of the quality of those relationships. "-and Karon's… A little bi-curious? And you're a great guy and we think it could be fun. So?" She looks directly at me with a smile. "How about it?"

…

"Can I think about it?"

 

18th February
19:29 GMT -7

Looking down from above it doesn't take me all that long to spot the Arrow clan. Using an app to ping Artemis' phone helped, but red, green and yellow do rather stand out against the background. Can't actually tell what they're doing… Which means that I can't tell whether it's alright for me to drop in. My training has included how to fight with a flight belt or my fists but I wouldn't call myself superhero level at either. Uum, but this is.. kind of.. urgent.

I manoeuvre myself directly overhead, about two hundred metres above them. It's probably quite blowy up here but the belt prevents me from feeling it. I pull my mobile out of my jacket pocket and try phoning Artemis again. Come on, Law and Order episodes only have about forty minutes of actual program in them! Ugh, okay, either she's just ignoring it or she's… No, she's taking it out of a pouch. Good good.. and she's turned it off.

Okay. Mister Queen and Roy One (yellow hat) are on top of a building over there while Artemis and Roy Two (dark gear and actually slightly harder to see) are on top of a building over there and they're all focusing on that shop. But they're not-. Okay that.. bed probably didn't fire itself through the window. Roy Two and Artemis dive out of the way as it slams into their roof in between them. The ring would probably have something intelligent to say about that. The bed doesn't visibly appear to have been altered in any way and it isn't exploding… This is what I get for not memorising Green Arrow's enemies when I was on Earth Prime.

I fly in the direction the Arrows aren't covering. There are some police a few streets back and it looks like a patrol car has been crushed under a heavy.. chest of drawers? Okay, so that's a furniture shop and someone inside is wasting their talents on stealing a fraction of the amount of money they could make applying their abilities legally. Typical Friday night, really. Are they going to have any hostages? Maybe. Hmm. The motive to intervene personally is still pretty strong, even though I know this should be well within the Arrows' collective abilities to deal with. Ah, heck with it, they don't appear to be under immediate threat.

I loop around and drop, aiming for just behind Mister Queen. Roy One spots me as I close in and turns, arrow on string. I raise my hands as I drop down, feet first. "Don't shoot! Friendly!"

Green Arrow looks around and then goes back to staring at the shop below. "Thought you were taking some time off."

"I am, but I need to talk to you about something…"

"You wearing your belt?"

"Yes sir."

"Four hostiles inside. Three with guns and one of them has some kinda telekinesis. We can't get a shot off from here and last time Artemis went down to street level she got thrown hard against a building."

Roy One nods. "Gas arrows just get tossed away and we don't really want to use explosives or incendiaries in the middle of the city."

And Artemis' flight belt is in a locker in the mountain. "I can draw their fire if you like? The belt can take pretty much any amount of being thrown against things."

Mister Queen peers over the edge of the roof again. "Can it take having your internal organs crushed?"

"Assuming the force was applied internally, no. But M'gann told me that's very hard to do and if you rushed me back to the mountain I'd still survive anyway."

"How fast can you move?"

"If I go through the shop's wall and don't have to steer? I can be in the middle of the building in about five seconds."

"Right. Here." He pulls an arrow out and holds it out to me. "Flashbang arrow. Get in there and set it off. Try and hit the metahuman, or at least get their attention. Artemis, Red Arrow, flashbang the west side and prepare to assault. Speedy? You ready?"

"Hm. Completely."

"Orange Lantern, go as soon as the flashbangs go off."

"Sir." I keep looking at my approach route. I'm not going to risk looking at the place the flashbangs are going to go off without the ring protecting my eyes-. There! I run off the edge and swan dive down towards the building! Breeze blocks explode out of my way as I force my way through and in the second available to me I take in that the shop is large and open plan. Two guys with guns behind a makeshift barricade and I can't see anyone in a costume. Shots come from ah! There they are! I head towards them and down, closing my eyes and holding my left arm across them and I throw the arrow into the floor with my right!

Ow! Ow! Bang! Fucking-! Really hope that didn't rupture my eardrums. I blink and push myself up. Eyes are fine, thankfully. I look around just in time to see Artemis break down a door on the far side of the shop floor and fire an arrow in my general direction. There's a puff of… Gas arrow. Thanks, Artem-.

19th February
Later

"Uuuuuhhgh." Oh, I heard that. Not deaf, then.

"You awake?" I'm lying on a bed… On the roof. Okay. Mister Queen is standing over me. "Good work with the distraction. You okay?"

I sit up. Ow. "Slight headache, nothing major."

"Gas arrow took 'em all out. Police stuck a control collar on -get this- 'Auntie Gravity'-."

"Seriously?"

He nods. "Yeah. The other three were her nephews. According to them, the plan was to float out a load of expensive furniture after closing time."

"Rather than get a job in a container port, or working in air travel or anything?"

"You know how that goes."

I really do. "How long was I out?"

"Few minutes. I gave you the antidote. So, ah… What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Ah… Well, it's a bit personal."

"I don't need to be anywhere else, but you sure you wouldn't rather talk about this with Diana or Gardner?"

"I don't think any of my usual go-to people would have any… Useful insight, sir. And Guy and I have had a bit of a falling out."

"Okay." He leans back slightly and shrugs. "Shoot."

"There's a young woman whom I've been seeing-."

"Are we talking about Zatanna here?"

"No, her name's Holly. I caught her stealing a painting a few months ago and I.. said I'd let her off if she kept her nose clean and sorted her life out. Which she has."

"Sounds like a good deal."

"Yeah. So… We've got to know each other pretty well-."

"Okay, stop." He smiles and waves his right hand at me. "It's not a conflict of interest. Never had any.. luck getting women to go straight-" I wince inwardly. "-like that myself, but if it works for you and her, go for it."

"There's a little more to it than that, sir. She's already in a relationship-"

"Ah."

"-with a woman-"

"Ah?"

"-so it would be the three of us." He blinks. "So I was sort of wondering if you had any advice?"

 

19th February
18:38ish GMT -7

He freezes for a moment, then spreads his hands in a gesture of appeal. "And you came to me why?"

"Of all the people I know, sir, you're the only one I could conceive of as having been in this situation-" His right hand covers his face. "-yourself."

He sighs. "Look. I don't know what Artemis has been telling you about me-."

"It was really more the.. Star City Register, sir. You weren't exactly subtle back in your.. hell raiser days."

"Aw, jeeze…" He removes his hand from his face and carefully checks our surrounding environment for Black Canary. "Okay, look. Sure; while I was young and stupid I did all kinds a' stuff that I wouldn't want you to copy. And.. maybe a couple of times… More than one girl was involved. And you're younger than I was so I'm not really in any position to get on my moral high horse here. But.. that was fun. I didn't know 'em all that well and I didn't hang around much afterwards. That's not the situation you're in."

"I know."

"You sure there's no one else you'd rather talk to? How about..?"

"Diana's eighty five years old and even her closest friends can't remember her ever being in a serious relationship, Alan's advice would be 'make sure she's not a crazy supervillain before you marry her' and Guy would most likely try to repossess my 'Man Card' for hesitating at all." I glance to the side. "I don't really think any of them could help."

"Okay, yeah, you've.. got a point." He does another Black Canary check. "I'm guessing you're talking to me because you want to.. with them?"

I shrug. "I.. enjoy their company and find them both attractive. Beyond that I don't really have any experience to draw on, and I certainly don't have any idea how it could change our relationship afterwards."

"Way I see it… Making poor choices about who you have sex with is part of growing up. Being with Dinah means more to me than any of the women I used to go with, but I don't feel all that bad about the stuff I used to do." I raise my eyebrows. He spots my intent, nods, then looks away for a moment. "Until one of you kids comes to me for advice. I'm making up for lost time now." He sighs. "How long ago did you meet them?"

"Just over three months ago. Right before the Roanoke thing."

"So they've gotta know that you're not helping them out just 'cause you're looking to score."

"Yes, they know that."

"Alright. This doesn't get back to Dinah, but I'm not seeing the problem. You like them, they like you..?"

"The problem is twofold." I stop. "There are two main problems. Firstly, I know that the chances of a person reoffending are lower the better their social support networks are. I.. can't be in Gotham full time, it's just not practical. Karon likes me, but I know she's not as in to the whole idea as Holly is."

"Then… Maybe both of you just make love to Holly."

"I'd be fine with that, but… Holly likes me a lot. I'm starting to see violet light and-."

Mister Queen frowns slightly. "Violet li-. Oh yeah, aren't you telepathic or something?"

"I'm empathic, but if someone hasn't been in a situation before it's very hard for me to judge how they'll feel about it. Karon doesn't have any obvious red flags but.. people get jealous. I don't want to harm their relationship, particularly if I'm going to still be around."

"Okay, good… Violet light is love, right?"

"Yes sir. You sort of pulse with it whenever you mention Black Canary."

"So does she love you already..?"

"It's not quite that simple. It’s not an on-off thing… Sometimes, the way we interact is enough to trigger a particular response from her. Her love of Karon is a more constant thing, her happy thoughts arrange themselves around it.. and there're.. sort of.. lines of light running between them? I can't really explain it."

"She loves Karon and sort of likes you too. Okay, so.. tell me about Holly."

"And we're sort of moving onto problem two. Holly… Used to be a prostitute, aaaand her clients weren't exactly fussy about how old she was."

He looks shocked. "I think some kinda therapy would be a better-."

I shake my head. "I've suggested that, she doesn't… She isn't keen and since she's been coping well I haven't wanted to pressure her about it." He doesn't look happy, but he lets me continue. "Now, I know she doesn't currently put me in the same mental box as them, but it's a pretty extreme situation and I can't completely predict how she's going to feel afterwards."

"She still doesn't sound like someone you should be doing this with. It's 'safe, sane and consensual'. If she's not in a place where she can make good decisions…"

"Right, and I'd… Normally I'd agree, but… In her mind, there's a close association between mutually enjoyable sex and.. safety and happiness. Her relationship with Karon started as a hook-up where the other person stayed and they actually had.. conversations. If I.. reject her… I'm not sure whether it's riskier for me to say yes or no. Or if this would really be a one off thing."

"Damn. And how quickly do you have to decide?"

I check my watch. "Holly said I had until the end of Law and Order… So about half an hour, including travelling time."

He exhales slowly and looks out across the Star City skyline for inspiration. "And how do you feel about it?"

"I'd like to go for it and for my fears about the possible emotional fallout to be unfounded. I come from a very stable home environment… And since I've pretty much dismissed ideas of appropriate norms from my considerations of my own wants… I would prefer a long term relationship. And I don't have a problem with it being with more than one person. But, I can look at a person and know moment by moment exactly what they want and why. If I put my mind to it and spent enough time I'm confident I could make a long term set up work… It just seems like a really manipulative and underhanded way to behave. I think I'd be fine with it being a one off, but my self awareness only extends to what I want now. There are just too many unknowns for me to make a rational decision."

Mister Queen tenses the left side of his face. "You could just say you had to work."

"Yes, but I don't want to treat them like that. They're my friends. Whether I decide yes or no I should tell them to their face."

He sighs again and turns back to me. "Look… Nothing about me fooling around in college gives me the sort of insight you're looking for here. You'd need to be some sorta super relationship guru-" Damn! Didn't get Hera's phone number! Gah! "-to work this one out." His eyes dip to the roof surface for a moment as he considers the matter. "These bad things that could happen with Holly if you decide wrong. Which scenario makes them more likely, saying yes or saying no?"

"I think 'yes'."

"Then that's probably your answer. I know you don't wanna hurt them and you can't be sure, but if you really think saying yes is more likely to do that than saying no, then…"

I nod. "Yeah. You're right." I stand up. "I was hoping you'd think of something I'd overlooked."

He nods. "We'll probably both think of something tomorrow."

"Heh." I check my watch again. Shouldn't be a problem getting back. I hold out my right hand to Mister Queen. "Thank you for listening to me, sir. I really appreciate it."

He shakes my hand. "No problem. Glad I could help." His eyes slide past me and his face drops. "Oh no."

I turn. Two rooftops over I see Artemis with a directional microphone.. pointed right at us.

…

I need to get back to Gotham.

 

18th February
22:41 GMT -5

I'm forced to turn away from the training room's holo display as Teekl shoves herself against my shins again. I think she understands why she needs to stay inside but she really hasn't liked being confined even for a day. And there's only so many times she can clean Wolf's coat before getting bored. "Okay Teekl." I bend down and rub her head with my right hand. "How about I get you something to chase?"

She moves her head around my hand and stares at me. "Not strong-mouse."

"Not strong-mouse. Okay… I can get you a robot or a Praexis Demon."

"Oldman?"

I glance up at the entrance to Red Tornado's quarters. He's actually out in his John Smith chassis at the moment. His father's up there though, continuing his task of transcribing everything he knows about robotics, AI programming and elemental magic into our database. I've been tempted a few times to call him back into the ring to partake of that knowledge myself, but aside from the obvious moral issues involved in doing that to a person when they're in no condition to give informed consent I'm concerned about what putting that much knowledge into myself would do. My brain doesn't need even more exotic effects applied to it. "No, you can't have Doctor Morrow."

Teekl looks away in displeasure. "Fatman."

I flick my left hand out to the side and release one of my Praexis Demon swarm. Not Fatty or Tubbs and I haven't bothered naming any of the others. I think this one was created during the fight with Sabbac. It drops to the floor, sniffs and then waddles around to face me. "Food now?"

"Yes, you are. Teekl, all yours."

"Ahh?" Teekl crouches, bum raised and wiggling. The Praexis Demon spots her and for a moment looks confused. Then its eyes widen as it gets it. "Aaah!" It waddles around and flees, arms extended in front of it. Teekl takes that as her cue and dashes after it. It catches sight of her out of the corner of its eye and leaps into the air, flying as fast as it can manage down a passageway with Teekl at its heels.

Okay, back to work. Blume got to Jupiter's orbit, sort of. There aren't actually any planets in that part of the system at the moment. As I'm looking at it on this display, Earth, Saturn and Venus are on one side of the sun and the other planets are on the opposite side. If Blume's coming towards Earth then he's certainly in no hur-.

"Recognised, Artemis, B zero eight."

Oh joy. I look around as she steps out of the tube. I don't know how much she overheard, but whatever it was is making her glow red. Holly took me saying 'no' well enough, though she did say to let her know if I changed my mind. Karon was more relieved, though it was more of an orange 'comfortable normalcy not being disrupted' relieved than a yellow 'intruder fear' relieved. I might end up taking her up… But I probably won't. Certainly I need to talk to Karon about things first.

I give Artemis a mild smile. "Artemis, good evening. How was the rest-?"

Her posture changes from 'tense' to 'attack'. Since we're in the mountain I've got both rings on so even if she gets physically aggressive I should be alright. Still not sure-. "How could you?! How could you even think about doing that!?"

She marches closer. "Could you narrow it dow-?"

"To-to Zatanna! With them!"

Eh? "Zatanna's under aged, I wasn't going to inc-."

And now she's up in my face. "Oh, is that why?!"

Oh, for goodness… "Artemis, what are you talking about?"

"You, cheating on Zatanna!"

What? "Artemis, I'm not dating Zatanna."

That does not compute. "What?"

"She… What's the phrase? Asked me out at New Year. I turned her down, you know, politely but firmly."

The red recedes a little. "Oh. But-. You went.. out on Valentine's Day."

"We did?"

"Yes!" She waves her hands around as she tries to get her thoughts in order. "That.. place in England, with the.. fancy armor."

"I thought Valentine's Day was in March."

"How can you think Valentine's Day is in March!?"

Ring, when is..? Oh. "Being.. single.. and not seeing.. any… You know, advertising? I only watch television to be sociable and I don't really.. go to.. shops anymore…"

She stares at me while she tries to work out whether I'm serious or not. Then she sags slightly, looks away and shakes her head. "You're unbelievable. You're unbelievable!"

"Thank you?"

"If you're not dating, how come you're spending so much time together?"

"Because she needs my support. I was.. spending lots of time with Kon when he first started living here for the same reason. I take trips to India with Wallace-."

"What about when you come out of her room at night!?"

"Zatanna has trouble sleeping sometimes and I'm a masseur. We've.. found it helps. Look, she just lost her father, and -even if she wasn't outside my half plus seven-" By eight years. "-her depending on me like she does, that's not a healthy way to start a relationship."

Artemis frowns. "Half plus seven."

"I'm eighteen, she's fourteen. That would make me a creep."

A slight awkwardness enters her stance. "She's.. fifteen in, like-."

"That doesn't make her sound older. That makes it sound like she's a five year old claiming to be five and a half."

"Oh. Ah…" Red's almost fully dissipated, thank goodness. "Huh. What exactly did you say to turn her down?"

I think for a moment. "'I don't think kissing me is appropriate. Leaving aside the fact that you're four years younger than me, you're depending on me a lot at the moment, emotionally. And I'm here for you, I'd just feel I was taking advantage if we did that. I'm sorry.'"

"Well, yeah, that's… I'm just not sure she.. heard it, y'know?"

"I know, I can see the violet light, but I can't keep saying it, can I? That would be mean. And she still needs me so I can't just.. stop seeing her." Artemis nods. "We good?"

She gives me a slightly unhappy nod, then switches over to a smirk. "Two girls, huh?"

"I said no. Too many unpredictable emotional variables."

She snorts. "And you built Zatanna a suit of armor just as a costume?"

"And the bolt pistols and eviscerator."

"What's.. an.. eviscerator?"

"Imagine if a sword and a chainsaw had a very angry baby. Which showed unusually extreme hybrid vigour."

She takes a moment to process that image, she shakes her head to get rid of the image. "Back in Star City, how come you weren't wearing your rings?"

I turn back to the holo display and expand the image of Lantern Blume. "This chap."

"There's one of Larfleeze's Construct-Lanterns coming here?"

"Slowly but surely."

"But your tattoos mean he can't detect you, right?"

"Yes. However…" I pull over a hologram of the globe with patches marked in different intensities of orange. "This shows everywhere I've used orange light. Ring users can detect this. Since neither Blume nor Larfleeze know how strong I am they can't tell how recent any of it is, but they know someone with an orange ring has been here. If I use orange light in an unwarded location, they'll know I'm still here."

"That would be bad."

"Yes. Since I don't want to be on the bench permanently I'm trying to come up with a better solution."

"Could you give it that Truggs guy?"

"Can't find him. I even tried a quintessence waveform scan thing for an hour or two."

"But you still got his finger, right?"

I nod, ideas beginning to arrange themselves around that fact. "Yes. I do."

 

18th February
23:02 GMT -5

Uuugh. "My appraisal? My appraisal is that she's a homophobic bitch sailing upon a river of entitlement a mile wide at its narrowest point! Gods!" I try to rein it in. Remember the exercises Guy taught me. Woosah. "She wants to rule but she doesn't actually have the skills to do the job and treats the people around her who could help her get through the situation like dirt. My appraisal is that the Justice League should start looking for someone else to take over when the situation implodes because it will."

The Sphere warbles at me and I pat her hull as I lean back in my seat. Six days I was stuck with Princess Adilah. Certainly cured me of any lingering idea about a political marriage. She got crowned on Wednesday but Batman ordered me to hang around until a few hours ago. I'm going to have to come up with something brilliant to make up for missing Valentine's Day to Jade. First time I've actually had something to celebrate and I had to work instead.

"Are you really sure she's that bad?"

Over the phone Diana can't see me roll my eyes. "Queen Beena knew she wanted to rule the country since she was a child. She studied Political Science at university, read everything relevant she could that would help, worked long hours, sacrificed everything related to a personal life-."

"She was an usurper."

"She was an usurper who created political stability, reduced crime year on year and -once you account for the effects of sanctions- improved the economy. And frankly, I don't see why being the 'legitimate' patrilineal descendant of a great grandfather who was the French Colonial Department's favourite local patsy should be the measure of legitimacy. Queen Beena did the job."

"And you don't think Queen Adilah will?"

I shake my head. "Ask me again tomorrow. I'm having a hard time clearing her screeching out of my ears well enough to be objective about it. I mean, she studied art history! Art history!"

"She wasn't allowed to study-."

"Politics, yes. She could have studied economics or history. She could have kept up with events in her spare time! Heck, she could have requested asylum. All it would have cost her was the stipend she got from Beena but nooo!" Woo-sah. "Can I go off duty now?"

"Yes. But before you do, I want to let you know that we won't be taking any further action against you-" Duh. "-regarding Sabbac. Having reviewed reports from the scene at length we've been forced to conclude that your actions -while unfortunate- were both legal and probably necessary."

"Glad you think so. How's Marvel doing?"

"He's made a full recovery. We've returned the bottle of Innocent's Tears to the Closed Order of the Alexins."

Mpf, fine, wasn't expecting to get that back anyway. And it's not like I don't know where they keep it. "Okay. I'm going to take care of one or two things, then I'm heading back to the mountain. You want anything else?"

"I think we should have a further talk about your comportment, but that can wait until you are fully rested."

I'll certainly look forward to that. "Good night, Diana." I dismiss the phone construct and look down at the house below me. Kate said that she had things set up, but given that I didn't know until a short time ago that I was going to be freed-. Ah! Secret Service agents move into place on the patio, adding to those already in the grounds. Scan. All armed, but not with anything that could threaten me if it came to it. Not that I'm planning anything, oh no. Best behaviour. I've got a lot riding on this meeting going well. A flunky comes out to hold open the door and there's the man himself. President Horne, his Chief of Staff Adrian Myer and.. Kate. Good.

"…from a surprising number of people, Ms Spencer." Horne strolls out onto the middle of the patio as he talks, apparently completely at ease. "And this isn't exactly my first time at one of these cloak-and-dagger meetings, but I've left a lot of very powerful people back there and I'd like some assurance that this is going to be worth my time."

"I believe it will be, sir." Her eyes flick upwards. She can't see me but she knows I'm either up here or at the other end of a Hush Tube.

Right then. Calm and confident. Woosah. I rise and step off the Sphere, falling towards the patio until I get to about ten metres up and activate my aero discs to slow my descent. "Mister President." Horne looks up, curious but not alarmed, as agents cluster around him with their guns drawn and pointed at me. "Thank you for taking the time to see me."

He looks me over as I touch down. "Okay, guys. Stand easy." The distinctly unhappy looking agents lower their weapons and part as he walks towards me. "Your name's Grayven, isn't it? Caught the thing in Fawcett City on GBS."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry for the delay. I wanted to speak to you immediately after that but I had to prevent a civil war from breaking out in Bialya."

"The Secretary of State will be pleased about that. So: what did you want to talk about?"

"Mister President, what do you know about events concerning the Roanoke Island incident?"

He looks away for a moment. "A group of four magic-using supervillains cast a spell that split the world in two, adults and children. My grandkids slept right through but a lotta people weren't anything like so lucky. After the League shut it down China somehow got hold of the guys who did it and killed them."

"Essentially accurate, but missing one or two details. Firstly, I was the one who handed them over to the Chinese."

He looks me over again. "You're not exactly winning points with me there."

"Then the Justice Department shouldn't have tried to let Werner Vertigo get off scot-free. I had no faith in America's judicial system and took the course of action most likely to see them punished as they deserved." He nods. He's not agreeing with me, just taking in another data point. "Secondly, the Chinese killed four hirelings. The individual responsible for the ritual was able to escape and is currently at large."

"Jesus!" He turns to Mister Myer. "Adrian, did we know about that?"

Mister Myer shakes his head. "I think the Justice League's report said that there may have been other people involved."

"As one of the people on-site at the time, I can tell you there definitely was. Now, I'm sure that you are fully aware of exactly how much China's stock rose after that, even among the Republican right. That Texan Senator-."

"Senator Davis' motion of thanks was so uncharacteristic we nearly had him checked for mind control."

"Just so. Mister President, I am in a position to bring you the head of the ringleader, Klarion the Witch Boy." I generate a construct of how he was that night, at his most inhuman. Don't want anyone thinking he actually is a boy. "I have no way to bring him in alive, and if I did no one knows of any way to contain him. Including the League."

He nods again. "I doubt anyone could stop you. You clearly wanna do it." He shrugs. "What are you talking to me for?"

"I will undertake this action not as part of some private grudge or because I was incensed by his evil. I will do it to prevent his next attack, be it against America or some other country. And I would like some formal.. political sanction before I act. To be specific, I would like for a Presidential Pardon to be waiting for me once I'm done. In exchange, I am willing to-."

"Heh." He shakes his head. "Mister Grayven, you can't just let a President know that you're planning to murder someone and ask to be pardoned in advance."

"Mister President, you're looking at being the first elected President since Franklin Pierce to fail to secure his party's nomination to run again. You only won the last election because that thing with your opponent and the fifteen year old cheerleaders came out during the last week of the campaign. If the election happened now you'd lose to just about anyone the Republicans could throw up. You know this. I'm offering you a place on the podium alongside the man who killed someone responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly of young children. The world is scared. America is scared. You have the opportunity to be responsible for the slaying of the individual who caused that fear."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"I have no desire to live the rest of my life on the run." I nod my head to the side. "Also, the opportunity to show the Justice League that the killing of sufficiently bad people is the right thing to do."

"Hn." He folds his arms behind his back and slowly walks towards the fence at the edge of the patio. "Still can't do it. I can't approve a murder in advance."

Darn. China it is, then. "That's… Unfor-."

"Of course… Were a person whose continued existence posed a clear and present high level threat to the American public… If a person like that were to be killed… This administration would likely respond in a practical way rather than a puritanical one." He leans on the fence. "Recognizing the relative dangers the two individuals represent to the country, and.. what a serving member of the military or the intelligence services might have done in a similar place. After all, having used the army to fight Colombian farmers I can't really claim to have clean hands."

I glance at Kate, who seems ever so slightly pleased with the pronouncement. I nod. "I'm glad to hear it, Mister President. That sounds like a measured and appropriate response. Thank you for taking the time to see me."

 

19th February
06:11 GMT -5

"Goooood morning campers!" I turn my attention away from the waffle iron and beam at M'gann, Kon and Wolf as they walk in.

Artemis looks up as well. "Hey guys."

Kon nods. "Hey." Someone's not full of the joys of spring. He's not glowing either, but dawn isn't for another twenty minutes or so.

"Good morning Paul, good morning Artemis." M'gann's her usual upbeat self. "What brings you to the cave so early?"

"I crashed here last night. I was on patrol with Green Arrow, then there was some stuff I needed to talk to Paul about… Zatanna not with you?"

I shake my head. "Zatanna does not get up at six o'clock on Saturdays." Artemis and I spent an hour or so last night sketching out a rough draft of a plan for dealing with Lantern Blume. It's not anything like ready to put into practice but I'll try and get hold of Diana today to talk… I glance at Kon. Right. Kal-El is taking over supervision duty this week, isn't he. He's given lessons before but this will be the first time he's been around full time. I'm not really all that sure why he volunteered. Okay, he doesn't have to be in the Daily Planet offices full time.. and most of the editorial meetings are probably during school hours, but I would have thought that he'd struggle to do the job and spend the required hours around here.

Right, waffles should be… Yep, done. I attach filaments to each of the four waffles and transfer them onto two plates. M'gann levitates plates off the work surface and over to her and Kon's places. Artemis looks around to me as I use the rings to transfer another load of batter onto the iron. "Don't think I've ever been here this early before. What time does everyone usually show up?"

"Kaldur's up at six, but he goes for a swim before breakfast. He should be here at about half past. Tula and Garth.. vary a lot. They haven't fully adapted to Eastern Standard Time and they're still spending a lot of time in Poseidonis… Zatanna's up at seven, Rob gets here about eight and Wallace usually turns up at about nine if there's a morning session."

"What about Robin, Raquel and…" Her face goes blank. "Wonder.. Troy."

She forgot..? I suppose we haven't used it much. "Troia hasn't come often enough to have established a pattern. Robin and Raquel usually get here just before the training sessions start." M'gann spreads blueberry compote over her waffles while Kon squirts on some golden syrup. Another convert! "I've been wondering something for a while."

**What is it?**

Ah, M'gann talking with her mouth full. "Do you three.. not know.. Robin's name?"

Artemis blinks in surprise, then turns to look at M'gann and Kon. After meeting blank looks she turns back to me. "No… Wait, you do?"

"I do, Wallace almost certainly does… I've sort of been assuming that Kaldur and the Roys do, but I wasn't sure about the rest of you. You want more waffles?"

"Ah, yeah." She frowns slightly. "Did you find out with your ring, or did he tell you?"

"With the ring, but I only really interacted with his civilian identity just after-."

"When you fixed Mom's spine." She nods. "Because he had to when you fixed whoever it was for him."

I nod. "I think it's a bit odd he still hasn't told anyone, but if that's how he wants it I don't think I should... You know, spill the beans."

Kon chews a piece of waffle and then swallows. "Maybe he just prefers being called Robin? I've only just started preferring 'Kon' to 'Superboy."

M'gann looks mildly put out. "What about 'Conner'?" Waffle in the mouth at record speed. Well done that Kryptonian.

"Aaaaaa-!"

Artemis snorts. "Or maybe his real name's something completely embarrassing. Oh,-" She turns around to look at me again. "-do you know what time Superman's getting here?"

"About eight I think. Though he could end up getting delayed by the Blume thing."

Artemis nods while M'gann shakes her head. **Blume thing?**

"-aaaaa-!"

"Yeah, one of that Larfleeze guy's Construct-Lanterns came into the solar system on Thursday. There's a bunch of Green Lanterns up on the Watchtower right now working out how to get rid of it."

Kon's eyes widen slightly. "Isn't that, like, really bad?"

"It's certainly inconvenient. It doesn't become 'really bad' until it actually reaches an inhabited planet or assimilates a Lantern. So far it's just ignoring them."

"-aagh!" The Praexis Demon flies into the living room area, over the work surface and tries to hide in the table lighting. Teekl runs with her claws extended along the floor after it, fur puffed up and eyes wide and staring.

"Hey Teek." Artemis moves her chair, leans down and reaches towards Teekl with her right hand before swiftly pulling it back when Teekl turns her frantic gaze upon her.

Ooh, someone's gotten over-stimulated, haven't they? I hold my right arm out towards the Demon's hiding place. "Back in the ring you go." The Praexis Demon peers over the edge of the light fitting for a moment before diving just as fast as it can towards the ring, disappearing inside. Annnd now I know exactly what it's been up to since I let it out last night. Teekl's a lot scarier when you're a fat dwarf rather than the Lantern in nominal control of her.

Teekl's eyes fix on the ring for a moment, her tail twitching. Then her fur flattens and she raises her right paw to her mouth and starts grooming herself.

"So what's the plan, then?"

"Hm?" I turn away from my Cat and look at Kon. "Basically, we pretend that one of the rings I called ended up here and that Nylor Truggs got it."

"You said you couldn't find him. You got a lead?"

"No. I have a finger. More importantly, I have a finger that used to wear the ring. The basic plan is that we have the Green Lanterns kill 'him' somewhere Blume can see it and just leave the finger behind."

M'gann frowns. "I thought Green Lanterns weren't allowed to kill people."

"They're not, but I doubt that Larfleeze knows that. And if he did, he hasn't been outside Vega for thousands of years. For all he knows they've changed policy. Anyway, once he's seen that, I destroy him from behind with Crumbler rounds. He reappears where Larfleeze is and Larfleeze gets told that there was an Orange Lantern here but the Greenies killed him. If we're really lucky that will be enough to make him call off the whole thing and go back to his cave."

Kon looks at his now empty plate as he thinks it over. "What happens if he comes here to check?"

"Then we have a hell of a fight on our hands. I wassss… Hoping that the Controllers could make me some sort of supercharged neural chaff generator for.. when I was planning to fight him. Try and take him alive. If he comes here... I'm probably just going to have to kill him with the Sword of Second and Third. I'm not entirely happy about it but I can't think of a better option. He's far too dangerous to be allowed in an inhabited system."

Kon nods while M'gann decides to change the subject. "How did dinner go?"

"It was going fine until this.. Gotham gangster decided to pick a fight with the restaurant manager. He and one of his bodyguards are now guests of the Gotham constabulary." I turn back to the waffle iron and flip open the lid. So nice to have ring-assisted cooking back. "Who's up for seconds?"

 

19th February
07:56 GMT -5

"Recognised, Green Lantern, zero five." I smile as Lantern Jordan steps out of the zeta tube. "Green Lantern, one seven." And Guy…

Wallace leans a little closer to Kaldur. "I thought Superman was babysitting this week?"

"Green Lantern, A three two." Katma Tui's next.

Wallace frowns and I smile at him down the line of my team mates. "This could take a while."

"Green Lantern, A three three." Green Man. "Green Lantern, A three four." Saarek.

Robin grins. "Guess it's a field trip."

"Green Lantern, A three five." Jack Chance, who's frowning at the zeta tube as he slouches clear. "Superman, zero one." Kon looks away slightly, then makes a small shrugging gesture with his face. "Hawkwoman, one zero." I wait for a moment but no one else emerges. Oookaaaay. Not really sure what's-.

Jordan approaches the line-up. "Okay team, since this is the only facility under Justice League control that's warded against detection by power ring I'm afraid that we're going to be borrowing your training area today." I notice how hard Rob's trying not to jump for joy. "In lieu of combat training, Hawkwoman's going to be giving a class on tactical planning in one of the briefing roomsss…" He stops and stares at Zatanna's new armour. "Huh."

Missus Hol takes it in her stride. "Orange Lantern, stay put. Everyone else, follow me."

I remain standing at ease as they file out. Near the back of the Lantern-huddle Lantern Chance nudges Lantern Saarek. "Thought this planet was isolated?"

"You thought correctly."

"'Cause I'm counting nine different species in this 'Justice League' alone, plus.. whoever sold them that zeta tube. That don't say 'isolated' to me."

Kal-El takes a couple of steps towards them. "Unless the roster's changed since the last time I checked, there are only five different species in the Justice League. And the zeta tube system we use was developed on Earth by a man named Doctor Saul Erdel."

Chance raises his eyebrows. "You can manipulate zeta beams and you still burn hydrocarbons for power?"

"I'm not sure I see the connection."

I do. As part of the speech I'm planning to give I've looked up the order in which other species have developed particular technologies. Non-magical teleportation before exotic power generation is practically unheard of.

"Okay, forget that. Different species." Lantern Chance counts off on his fingers. "Kryptonian, Human, whatever that Wonder Woman is-."

"I think you'll find that Diana's Human."

Lantern Chance shakes his head. "Not what my ring says. And then you've got.. Aquaman,-"

"Aquaman's Human."

"Humans can't live at the bottom of oceans and breathe water. Then there's a Martian and two Thanagarians-"

"Sir?" I look at Lantern Jordan and Lanterns Green Man and Tui also approach. "Have you had a chance to review my outline?"

"-an Aurakle-."

"I'm.. not sure I know what that is."

Jordan nods. "Yeah, and we've got some fairly major concerns. The whole point of having you train Green Lanterns in how to resist assimilation was to make sure we could confront things like Blume safely. Your plan requires all of us to fly out where he can see us and do something that will definitely piss him off."

"That Captain Atom guy. Some energy creature takes a shine to a normal person and merges with 'em."

"Captain Atom… Well, we're not exactly sure what happened to him, but he's as Human as most people on Earth are." Lantern Chance gives him a look of incredulity.

"Probably piss him off, yes. I'm happy to use our remaining time to train your lot in orange light resistance but we've got a very finite amount of time and I know from Guy's efforts that railgun constructs don't come naturally to greenies."

Lantern Tui frowns. "Why would we need to use railgun constructs? If we can learn to hurt 'Construct' Lanterns-" I can see how much that idea makes her uncomfortable. "-with our constructs at all, what does it matter what form they take?"

"You've got a full on artificial intelligence, who's gotta be a couple of hundred years more advanced than anything else I've seen around here. You've got a Terminan, an energy being stuck in a helmet and a thing made of some sort of organic rubber."

"Look, Plastic Man is Human as well."

"Whatever you say, pal."

I take a Crumbler round out of subspace and hold it out to her. "Because railguns and coilguns can fire these. Did Guy tell you what they can do?" Slight inclination of the head. Right. I rise into the air and fly backwards to the far end of the room. "Please create a construct barrier. Not around yourself, obviously." I toss the round into the air and form a railgun construct around it. Lantern Tui extends her right hand and generates a slightly convex rectangular barrier.

Lantern Jordan backs off slightly as the rest of the Lanterns form an arc to spectate.

"Metahumans can have a wide variety of physical characteristics, it doesn't mean that they stop being Human."

"In point of fact, Kal-El, I don't think that Diana's Human either. Given how she was created, classifying her as a young Titan makes more sense." He looks mildly embarrassed about talking in class. "I'm well aware that Green Lanterns are taught to focus on single powerful barriers for their defence in combat. In our training sessions Lantern Gardner and I have switched over to using multiple layers of ablative shields." I aim the railgun and charge it up. "Here's why."

There's the signature hum- "Ow!" -as the gun fires and the round shatters Lantern Tui's defensive construct. She opens and closes the fingers of her right hand in an attempt to work out some of the feedback pain.

"If it hits a construct, the construct goes down. At full speed I can fire one of these-" I take another round out of subspace. "-every second per construct gun, and if I really tried I could probably increase that further. Lantern Chance, you're familiar with firearms, aren't you?"

"Yeah?"

"Front of the class then." He trudges slovenly forwards, keeping both eyes on me. I move my railgun construct over to him. "Can you make one?"

He carefully looks it over and-. Ah, that's interesting; he doesn't point his ring at it as he scans it. "If it's that important, why don't we just carry a real railgun? Or a gravity pulse gun?"

"Because it's faster to make another construct than fix a real gun if someone damages it. I'm not talking about mass production here, just about Lantern combat. And.. gravity pulse guns are a bit of a risk in an atmosphere or close to an inhabited planet. The damage is getting done by the warhead, not the kinetic force, so a comparatively lower speed isn't a negative while racking up a massive number of friendly fire kills would be."

Saarek raises an eyebrow in a totally Vulcan way! "Would this not risk violating the Guardians' prohibition on the use of lethal force?"

"If you hit someone directly and they're not wearing a force field of some sort, yes. So don't. I give the ring-" I raise my left hand slightly. "-instructions on targeting and have it automate the actual shooting, though as I understand it that's a lot more difficult for you Greenies."

"Gun." Lantern Chance visibly strains as a green railgun… A green railgun that's slightly larger than mine materialises alongside mine. "Heh."

"Right then. Let's see if you can use it."

 

19th February
08:22 GMT -5

"…itdrokitdrokitdrokit…"

"Identity theft twelve percent complete."

"Come on Jackie, I'm soft-peddling you here."

"…itdrokitdrokitdrokit…"

The wave of orange is briefly pushed back a little, until an air rifle propelled paintball hits him on the cheek.

"Identity theft twenty two percent complete. Identity theft thirty percent complete. Identity theft-."

I shake my left hand and dismiss the effect. "Lantern Chance?"

Guy comes up alongside him and nudges him with his right elbow. "Looks like maybe someone shouldn't'a skipped basic after all."

Saarek looks thoughtful. "Or perhaps Lantern Gardner's technique is not something readily applicable to other Lanterns."

Lantern Chance wipes some of the paint off and flicks it onto the floor. "Like to see you do any better."

Results on creating railguns have been less than brilliant. With practice they can now all generate them but only Lantern Chance can maintain it under pressure. They all use the fat construct connections that Guy used to, though in this case that probably won't hurt.

"Just to check: can I assume that skipping basic training means that you've never done the M'eelam Na'aquall either?"

"The what?"

Lantern Jordan shakes his head. "Most Lanterns don't. Out of everyone here it's just me and Gardner." He thinks for a moment. "Do you mean you think Lanterns who haven't done it can't learn-?"

"Naw." Guy shakes his head. "I was doin' it before I did mine."

"Perhaps a new volunteer? Lantern Jordan?"

"Sure, I'll give it a shot." The glow of his environmental shield intensifies. "Hit me."

I don't want to assimilate him. But I do want to take it up to about sixty percent and then turn it off manually. Guess that's the testosterone talking again, but gosh darn it! I turned down a threesome yesterday. I need this.

"Rings." I hold my hands out to the sides and allow orange light to precipitate out in the form of a knot of mini-Ophidians. "Hitting now."

"Wait a sec-."

Mouths open they surge forwards and bite into his environmental shield, covering him in orange light.

"Identity Theft in progress. One percent complete. Warning, will detected."

Credit to Jordan, he did actually pay attention when Guy explained how it works. "From Will arises the Self. All that I am-" The air rifle paps as I aim it at his eyes. He doesn't react at all, doesn't even blink. "-I will to be."

"Warning, will intensifying." One of the snakes starts to shimmer and fade.

Come on! Make him mine!

"Identity Theft in progress. Five percent complete."

"I am."

Rays of green light burst through the orange cocoon. Aargh, I'm going to lose. I could… No, I'm not simulating a plane crash here to distract him, there's no way that Blume or Larfleeze would know to do that. Cracks form between the rays and-.

"Identity Theft interrupted by will pulse. Do you wish to resume?"

Darn it.

Jordan glows a brilliant green, both inside and out. He nods to his audience, looking pleased with himself. "And that's how it's done."

Guy nods. "Good job, Hal. Now let's see you do it while firing a railgun construct."

Some of the 'pleased' leaks away. "Well how about you show me how it's done first?"

"Lantern Jordan? That's what we do out in the desert. Gu-." Guy glances at me with his left eyebrow raised. Still annoyed, then. "Lantern Gardner can simultaneously fly, protect himself from assimilation, shield himself from Crumbler rounds and fire Crumbler rounds back at me. He has a little trouble with short FTL hops but aside from that I can't fault his Lantern to Lantern combat abilities."

Guy grins, spreading his arms out to the side and makes beckoning gestures with his hands. "Heh-hey, check me out."

"What precisely do you mean by 'short FTL hops'?"

"Should I be calling you 'Lantern Green Man' or 'Lantern Man'?"

"Uxorians do not generally have individual names. In my language my name just indicates that I am a male member of the Green Lantern Corps, a 'Man of the Green'. I've never really thought about how it should be parsed by people from cultures with multi-part names. Which sounds better to your ears?"

"Lantern Green Man it is. What I mean, is.. this." The room flickers as I move from where I'm standing to a position in the air next to the entrance to Red Tornado's room. "I can perform-" Flicker. "-short ranged-" Flicker. "-FTL jumps in order-" Flicker. "-to evade attack and improve-" Flicker back to the start. "-my position. I haven't got the hang of using the ring to phase quite yet. On the other hand-" I generate a railgun turret pointing at each of them, don my heavy power armour and generate multi-layered construct armour over the top of it. "-I've pretty much got the basics down." I look at Jordan. "No giant green boxing gloves here, thank you very much."

Guy grins at Jordan. "Oh no he didn't!"

Jordan takes a deep breath. "It makes sense to use familiar objects for construct attacks-."

"When you're just starting out, sure. But you've been doing this a while now. I mean, Guy hasn't used construct-armour that looks like American football armour in… Days, at least."

"Oh, you are not off my shit-list enough t'say that."

"Lantern Chance, I think the problem is that -having missed out on having Lantern Kilowog shout at you for months on end- you aren't used to sparring. It's not a 'real' fight so in your head.. you don't give it your all."

"If you wanna make a real fight of it, Orange, then be my guest."

"Thank you, but I don't fight against other Lanterns inside a mountain whose sides are the only thing preventing Blume from discovering me." I shake my left hand, causing Fatty to fall out.

"Food now?"

"See the bloke in the red coat, with the guns?"

"Uhhay?"

"You can eat him."

"Yay!" Jack draws his fusion pistol and shoots Fatty in the mouth. Fatty sucks the energy ball down and then belches.

"Crumblers are all that will stop him. Anti-assimilation techniques are your only defence. Think you can focus now?"

 

19th February
11:49 GMT -5

"I… I assert my individuality!"

"Identity Theft interrupted by will pulse. Do you wish to resume?"

"Well done Lantern Green Man." As far as I can read Uxorian facial expression he looks pleased with the outcome as well. "At least Blume won't be able to ow!" I open and close my hand as the Praexis Demon that just returned to the ring shares its experiences with me. I stare at Guy, who is tapping his right foot, staring at the ceiling and whistling. "Thank you Lantern Gardner for establishing that Construct Lanterns haven't somehow become immune to Crumbler rounds."

He looks at me with an expression of pantomimed innocence. "I dunno what you're talkin' about."

"You're the only one here aside from me who can do filament control."

"You should be glad these guys are such quick learners." The tone says sincerity. The eyes say something rather different.

"Okay, well done everyone. Why don't we have a break, recharge our rings, get something to eat. Reconvene at thirteen hundred local time?" Nod, or other affirmative gestures as appropriate. Jordan and the visiting Greenies begin heading back to the zeta tube.

"Lantern Chance, could I borrow you for a moment?"

He turns away from the others. "Sure. Hey, how many o'those Crumbler things you got?"

"Several hundred in my subspace pocket."

"Something like that could come in pretty handy back on Hellhole."

"I'm sure it could."

Guy smirks. "Careful there, Paul. Jackie's ring usually only works on his homeworld. The Guardians had t' give him special dispensation t' come here."

Jack looks rather proud of that fact. "What I do ain't pretty, but I'm the best there is at it."

Did he just mangle a Wolverine quote? "Guy? Kal-El? Would you mind giving us a moment?"

Kal-El looks at me askance, but nods anyway. "I'll tell Hawkwoman to recess the class. I'm sure they could use a break too."

"Thank you, sir."

"Ah. Yeah, I'll… Go find the kitchen or somthin'. Hey, Paul?"

"Yes?"

There's a flash of green and he's gone. Ring? Hah! Getting there! Kal-El looks at the space Guy had occupied for a moment before rising into the air and flying down the corridor leading to the classroom.

Lantern Chance nods. "So. You want something you don't want them to know about."

I hold up my left index finger and project a soundproof bubble shield around us. Then I take an anti-eavesdropping charm out of my pocket and hold it out to him. He frowns slightly before taking it from me. "No, not really. I just want to give them plausible deniability. If I wanted to avoid detection completely I'd have a third party telepath transmit a message to you when you're off duty."

"Your species isn't supposed to be telepathic."

"It's not a common trait, but there are a few Human telepaths."

"Sheesh. I got so used to my ring being right about stuff the whole time I got outta the habit of questioning it. Anything else not on here I should know about?"

"Did they just… Not update your database or something? Jordan, Stewart and Gardner's reports should have contained this stuff even if Abin Sur and Starkaor didn't spend enough time here to notice."

He shrugs. "My homeworld's a warzone. I don't have time to spend just flicking through the database."

"Okay. Um. A small subset of Humans -a good deal less than one percent of the population of six billion- manifest unusual abilities. These people are referred to as 'metahumans' and can end up being able to do just about anything, though an individual's abilities are usually fairly limited."

"So you've got telepaths, people my ring thinks are bonded Aurakles, people made of some sort of weird plastic, people who can breathe under water-."

"That last one was the result of magic engineering. And.. the.. middle two, the metahuman ability was more likely to be the ability to survive being exposed to the things that gave them those abilities. Plastic Man wasn't always plastic."

He starts assembling a new roll up. "Back home, there's a bunch of different species and I don't always know what they can do, but the ring could tell me. This place… You never know what you're getting into. Anyway, what was it you wanted for a supply of Crumblers?"

"There's a man, his name is Alan Scott. About seventy local years ago he got hold of a damaged Green Lantern ring and equally damaged personal lantern. The Guardians didn't send someone in to take it back because it was off the network, but the basic functions still worked."

"Okay. And?"

"Alan's an old man now. When I arrived on Earth, he gave me his lantern and… Well, it's difficult to describe precisely. In essence, his own body is partially a construct. In theory, if he kept his ring charged he could go on pretty much forever. As it is he'd be lucky to see out the year. "

"He can't have mine."

"Not permanently, no. And after this I imagine that the Guardians expect you to go right back to… Hellhole, you said?"

"Its actual name is 'Garnet'. Hellhole's just more descriptive." A green flame appears on the signet of his ring and he lights his cigarette with it. "So, you want me to let him recharge off my lantern and in return… You give me as many Crumblers as I can carry?"

"Maybe not quite that many, but that's the general idea."

"You've got three Green Lanterns here already. Why not just ask them?"

"They've been forbidden from doing so. And I imagine that the same general ordinance applies to our other guests. You, on the other hand-."

"Aren't covered by the rules." He exhales a cloud of surprisingly white smoke. I suppose there was no reason to assume that he was smoking tobacco. "Guardians excluded me from all that drok when they let me use lethal force. Which means I'm the only guy in the Corps who can do this, 'cause there sure as hell aren't any others like me."

"My alternative is a smash and grab on Apokolips and hope they kept some as trophies."

He thinks for a moment, taking another drag. "I'd take the deal -though you better believe you'll be giving me a good price- but after this is over I'm not going to be coming back. Unless a Construct-Lantern turns up in my Sector I'll be stuck on the planet again."

"I'm planning to get a new one built for him in about five months. I just need to keep him topped up until then. One full recharge should do it."

"Alright. Your money, or other fungible assets. Let's say… Ten thousand rounds?"

"I don't have ten thousand rounds, and I don't want to take the chance that someone on your homeworld gets the design. I'll offer you two hundred." He sneers. "And I'll throw in a freeze ray."

He waves his right hand dismissively. "Those things are never worth it. Never enough water vapour in the air to stop someone-."

"This is an Earth freeze ray. It fires a beam that reduces the target to zero degrees Kelvin."

"Heh, wipe that drok off your tongue or you'll start tasting it."

I take a freeze ray and an apple out of subspace. I attach the freeze ray to a construct targeter and pass him the apple. "One Earth fruit. Would you confirm that it's room temperature?" He rolls it around his hand for a moment before nodding. I take it back, drop my construct barrier and throw it into the air. At the apex of its flight I trigger the freeze ray. The beam strikes it dead centre and it crashes back to the ground, shattering on the floor. I smile at him. "Satisfied?"

 

19th February
12:13 GMT -5

"I think we might need to get a larger kitchen."

Robin nods. "I think you're right." Ten of our team mates plus Hawkwoman, Superman and Guy in our not all that large kitchen at once is not a great idea. Robin glances at Jack. "How come you didn't go with the others?"

He shrugs. "Not like I know any of them either. I spent about seven minutes on Oa total just after I got my ring. Apart from that, never left my homeworld."

M'gann uses telekinesis to valiantly rescue what's left of the bread from Wallace's super sandwich construction area and floats it over the crowd to the work surface on the opposite side of the kitchen. He turns back from talking to Zatanna to find that he's buttered lettuce. The Atlanteans are trying to get to the fridge but their way is blocked by Lantern Gardner, who's rummaging in the cupboard above it. Since he's only been in this kitchen once he clearly has no idea where anything is. Kon wants to get to the microwave but Kal-El is too close to it for comfort so he's stuck with a tub of frozen lasagne in his hand and from the way Missus Hol just grimaced I think Rob knocked her wing again.

"So, how did the planning exercise go?"

He smirks. "We spent three hours going over your plan for attacking Lantern Blume."

"How bad?"

"Some of it wasn't terrible. You know. For a first attempt."

Artemis rolls her eyes, picks Guy up- "Hey, what-?" -around the waist and carries him out of the way. Garth lunges for the suddenly available space and yanks open the fridge door before his path can be blocked again. Maybe we need some sort of lunch rota? Usually people just eat when they get hungry so things don't get this crowded. Dinner's a lot better organised. "Oh, hey Paul. Chance." Artemis puts him down and he steps away from her, straightening his jacket, before turning and smiling at her. "You been eating yer greens there?"

"Ah, mooore using an alchemical muscle enhancement formula. But I try and eat right too."

I take two plates out of subspace, each with a baked potato, a small salad, a knife and a fork. "I suggest avoiding the scrum."

"Thanks Paul." Artemis takes a plate and makes her way over to the table.

Guy looks less impressed. "What, no crab?"

"I've eaten crab once in my life, Guy. It was a weird tasting mush I've never wanted to revisit."

"You ain't had crab done right 'til you've eaten Baldamore Blue. Tell you what, if Blume don't kill us all I'll take the whole gang back home so you can marvel at my city's culinary brilliance."

"It's the way you can say such bullshit with such utter conviction that always impresses me."

"We can probably find a lime for you to squeeze on yours."

We stare at each other for a moment before we both chuckle and look away. Jack takes the opportunity to take hold of the plate with his left hand and pick the potato up with his right. "What is this?"

"That's a potato. It's a starchy tuber. Oven baked, so the skin's slightly-" He bites into one end and chews for about a second before realising that it's still oven hot and then doing the not-touching-the-sides-of-the-mouth-dance. I take pity and take a glass of water out of subspace. He puts the potato back down on the plate then grabs it and gulps down a mouthful.

Guy smiles at him. "You alright there, Jack?"

Jack swallows, then hesitates for a moment. "Yeah." He nods. "Tastes okay, actually. You make this with your ring or what?"

"I like cooking. Sometimes I'll just spend a day baking the same thing again and again until I get it perfect. "

"'Cause that's not crazy at all."

"As opposed to doing it once and not recording what went wrong? Anyway, when I get something down I stick whatever it is in subspace storage until I need it." Hmm. "If you like, we could probably include some fresh fruit and vegetables with those railgun rounds you wanted. I don't know how good our stuff is for your species…"

"Eh, maybe. See how long the Guardians let me stick around." Glass of water in one hand and plate in the other he walks over to the table and sits down opposite Artemis.

Robin gazes after him. "Of course, if the Green Lanterns start taking themselves out with baked potatoes we might need to rethink our plans. How did the training go?"

"They are now all capable of resisting assimilation and firing construct railguns. Lanterns Tui and Jordan can even do both at once."

"Might have longer than we thought to plan this." Robin calls up his arm computer. "Given how fast he was going we expected Blume to reach Earth some time next week, but it looks like he's stopped."

Odd. "He's not eating Voyager or anything, is he?"

"No, don't think so." He switches to a solar system view with Blume's position marked, just past Jupiter's orbit. "As far as I know there's nothing-."

"Oh yes there bloody is!" Ring, check for me. "That's where I keep the metal I've taken out of the asteroid belt."

Robin raises his right eyebrow. "Is that a problem? Does having more money make him stronger or something?"

"No, it's… I think that before he met Larfleeze he used to hibernate once he got a certain amount. It's just really inconvenient." Is it a problem? "I suppose… It makes Larfleeze slightly more likely to come here, but honestly..? It shouldn't matter."

The Atlanteans walk past us with plates carrying some sort of stuffed flatbread. Kal-El takes his soup bowl out of the microwave and moves away, allowing Kon to step in.

Guy nods at Robin. "So what's the plan, kid?"

"We realized that since we've got no idea what senses Blume's species has, creeping up from behind wasn't going to work. Not reliably, anyway."

"Even if I have my power armour phased?"

"There are ways to detect it, and if the Orange Central Power Battery came with a Maltusian database-."

"Yeah, you could be right."

"Plus, we found the whole 'cloning Truggs' to be pretty creepy."

"It wouldn't be conscious."

"Wait, what?" Guy looks from Robin to me. "You were gunna clone the guy?"

"I wanted Blume to be able to compare DNA samples-."

"Which don't matter because he can't scan you anyway."

"So what you're saying is, rather than having a fake fight-."

"You'll be fighting the Green Lanterns yourself."

"I know that I can cut off whole limbs and leave them behind, but that doesn't mean that I particularly want to."

"I know. Ideally, you'd leave one of your rings there as proof-."

"No."

"We figured. And it makes more sense for one of the Green Lanterns to destroy Blume than it does for you to do it. Just in case he can detect what fired the railgun rounds."

"I… Suppose. And.. one of the Green Lanterns does a rapid FTL transition so I'm not there after my 'death'? The only one of them who knows how to do that is..."

Guy grins. "Which city has the best food in the world again?"

 

19th February
19:52 GMT -5

Jack looks away from checking over his pistols for a moment to glance at Teekl. "Hey, how come we didn't practise with that.. four legged construct thing?"

Teekl looks up at him and makes the most harmless-innocent face I've ever seen her wear. "Maow?"

"Because I was fairly confident you could beat the Praexis Demon, and pretty confident Teekl would eat you."

Jack actually looks slightly pained by the implication. "Eh?"

"She was the familiar of a Lord of Chaos before I assimilated her. She's not an animal, she has Hu-. Um, humanoid equivalent intelligence. She can't use constructs herself but she can modify her own body and phase. And she likes hunting things."

Jack doesn't look like he believes me. Teekl rolls on her back and waves her legs in the air in a kittenish display. Oh, she's baiting him.

"Okay everyone, the probes have confirmed it." We both look around as Lantern Jordan starts his pre-engagement speech. "Blume's moving again, which means we're a go." After eating my entire metal reserve. Bastard thing. Maybe it won't have been able to fully digest it before we destroy it? "Remember, after Orange Lantern 'dies' we're going to try talking it into leaving first. Our lives will all be a lot easier without a bunch of Construct-Lanterns all over the place and Larfleeze is the only one who can call them back."

A last minute addition to the plan I'm really not happy about. Oh, sure, Larfleeze can project… Larfleeze could project through his Construct-Lanterns in the comic. I don't know if he can here. Buuuut even if he can't, he must have some way of keeping in touch. We can still destroy Blume to send the message back.

Jordan holds his right hand forwards and slightly up. There's a faint wave of green as his personal lantern materialises from subspace. I notice the other Green Lanterns are following suit, bringing out their personal lanterns for a recharge.

"In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight."

Lantern Tui remains silent, light simply flowing into her ring without a verbal trigger. Jack slouches slightly. The Green Man, Guy and Saarek begin their oaths as well. Have to say, said as a group it loses something when they're all different.

"Bring light to the ring,
I charge thee--unveil every evil around me!"

"On worlds afar or scenes at home,
wherever the cause should make me roam,"

"…that evil's dark can ne'er demean.
The light of justice must be seen…"

"Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!"

A beam of green light flows from Jordan's lantern into his ring, causing it to sparkle brilliantly. I turn my head to Jack. "Not joining in?"

"I like to go last. Makes it more memorable." He clears his throat loudly. "You ready?"

"Blow me away."

"You who are wicked, evil, and mean,
I'm the nastiest creep you've ever seen!"

He grins, eyes wide, clearly not taking it even slightly seriously. From the expression on the other Lanterns' faces they haven't heard it before and certainly don't approve. I think Guy's muttering something.

"Come one, come all; put up a fight;
I'll pound your butts with Green Lantern's light.
Yowza!"

"Recharge complete."

That's a… Rather sexy ring voice. Jack continues ignoring the looks his fellow Greenies are giving him. "Hey, you got one?"

I float my own personal lantern up from the ground and take hold of it with both hands. I could use the Ophidian version, but if we're trying to convince Blume that I'm just a regular orange ring user… I'm not sure the mountain's wards could take her getting involved.

Let them come anyway!

Not yet, Ophidian. Soon, but not yet.

"This is my cause, this is my fight,
Shine through the void with orange light,
I've claimed all within my sight,
To keep what is mine, that is my right."

Orange energy flows from the lantern, into the rings and up my arms until I'm standing in the middle of an orange bonfire. Ophidian, that's not helping.

"Charge complete. Two hundred percent normal maximum power available."

"Nice. Where'd you get the second ring?"

"Lantern John Stewart's finger." I put my lantern back down and then float off the floor. "Think you can fight well enough to make this look even slightly realistic?"

"I've been fighting my whole life."

"Right then. I'll be in Sydney." I fly directly for the zeta tube. "You got the finger?" He nods and raises his middle one at me. "Oh, har-"

"Recognised, Orange Lantern, B zero six."

20th February
10:55 GMT +10

"-har." Beach house. Good place for changing. Power armour mark… Four..? Phase shifter, stealth generator, molecular reinforcement field, flight belt, backup flight belt, air purification system and combat virtual intelligence. Basically proper non-ring user power armour. Or a strangely man-shaped spacecraft. I sigh from inside my work of military beauty. And I'm going to have to wreck it. What a blasted waste. I activate the phasing and stealth systems and fly up through the roof.

Looks like the beginning of a nice day here in Australia. Early Autumn's my favourite time of year. Hmm. I'm not using a great deal of ring power to do this but Blume should be able to pick me up. A thought and the armour starts displaying his location as relayed from the Justice League probes. Blume's just over the horizon from me at the moment. Usually I'd just transition but since I'm trying to look like a beginner… I accelerate out across the Tasman Sea. My top speed is now a good bit higher than what caused me to lose control when I first started flying with Diana, though unlike Superman I can't react to things that happen suddenly at that speed. Not without ring assistance, anyway.

No response from Blume, yet. I leave the stealth system running and create the large orange barrier around me that I need for serious speed. Gives away my approximate position but not my exact position. Mach one, mach two, mach three… No booms yet. Working properly, then. I angle up slightly, gaining altitude. The Greenies should start intercepting me as I reach the edge of the atmosphere. From there I'll be using some of the less efficient forms of FTL on the ring's database to get somewhere Blume can't help but spot me. Unless he just comes in for a look on his own initiative. I don't think that'll scare people. They must be used to me making weird constructs by now.

Will detected.

I don't try and look round, letting the armour's HUD mark the position for me. That should be Jack now. A good distance-

A bolt of green light blasts past me.

-away. Hmm. I've got plenty of power to play with… I create particle beam turret constructs and fire at him. At this range single shot slower than light weapons are a matter of luck more than anything… He evades with little difficulty and a few seconds later the beams strike the Pacific Ocean far below us.

Will detected.

More Green Lanterns on course to intercept. Right then. Let's have a little fun.

 

20th February
01:07 GMT

A railgun construct appears right alongside Lantern Jordan and teaches him the folly of using a kite shield in space. I'm only using titanium rounds so as to preserve the Crumbler surprise for Lantern Blume but long hours of shooting them at Guy means that I know exactly how much force to apply to bruise someone through an environmental shield. Jordan lurches away from the attack, curling up and surrounding himself in a bubble shield. A second later a green beam from Lantern Tui blasts my construct apart and a wave of green from Lantern Green Man destroys the rest of my trailing filaments.

They can learn!

A freeze ray splashes off my construct armour as Jack tries out his new pistol again. Only works on matter, Jack. I expand the glow around my left arm before stabbing it in his direction, firing a wide beam of orange light. He evades with a short transition before retaliating with… I'm not sure, some sort of gun construct. Sub light, Jack. Tut tut. Basically worthless in these conditions.

I bend gravity around me in a genuine Star Trek style warp jump, leaping closer to Lantern Blume's position. He's definitely moving and he's accelerated since we started but he doesn't exactly appear to be in a rush. He shouldn't be able to scan me directly but since Teekl and the Praexis can see me fine with their eyes I'm going to assume that he's spotted all of the light flashes. We're getting to the point in the exercise where I have to contact him by ring. And I can't check in with Guy first just in case he can pick up on that.

I dump fragmentation bombs out of subspace into my emergence area and continue in the direction of my old space-based piggybank. Might as well try and get a look at the damage he's done. Maybe he's so sluggish because he's glutted himself? Or maybe he just can't be bothered. How afraid is Larfleeze of regular Green Lanterns? No idea. He didn't seem to be significantly afraid of them at any time during the comics… But maybe that had something to do with the Controllers breaking the truce? Right, two light-seconds. I fire a series of laser pulses back towards the area I warped to, followed by a smattering of railgun shots. Pure luck if I hit anythi-. There's a flash as the bombs detonate. Really? One of them was dumb enough to play follow-my-warp? Honestly Kilowog, when my year's up we're going to have a chat about what you've been teaching these people.

We've left the Earth far behind now. Without the rings or my VI's visual assistance I'd have no idea where it was. Unnerving, rea-. I swiftly evade as green energy pulses blast past me. Sub-light attacks, guys… I drop my construct armour and reactivate invisibility and phasing, warp again and drop bombs again. Come on, don't depress me again. Okay, I can just about see Blume unaided and he.. shouldn't be able to see me. Deep breath. Ring, open a channel to Lantern Blume.

Please specify-.

I hold out my left arm in Blume's direction.

That one there.

Compliance.

No immediate response. Now, how should a desperate Orange Light neophyte sound? "Oi! You! Head-thing! Make yourself useful!"

There's a very slight change in how Blume positions himself. His mouth tentacles wiggle slightly. Did he hear-?

"Thief!"

Yes. Yes he did.

"I hunger for you!"

"You're food. You got eaten. You don't get hungry." I warp a little closer and his tentacles all yank towards the place I just appeared in. Mov-ing. He swivels around but I've already evaded. No constructs or energy blasts yet. No Larfleeze either. Would he recognise me?

Still moving around him I drop neural chaff generators out of subspace-. Another jerk of the mouth tendrils. He felt that. This time his mouth opens and orange light spills out. I rush to get out of the way… The chaff generators in the affected area are swiftly drawn into his mouth. He isn't opening it fully, but if he were? I could stand there with room left over above and below me. Blume's head part is about thirteen metres tall but he appears to be able to open his mouth to about six or seven metres. Looks like he doesn't have jaw bones. Okay, ring, monitor his response and detonate the chaff generators.

Compliance. All remaining neural chaff generators detonated. No noticeable response from Lantern Blume.

He's an alien with no organic brain. That was really a hope-attack more than anything. Still, it would have been nice…

"Show yourself, thief!"

"This isn't your ring! ISN'T! I got it, I'm KEEPING it!"

"Thieeeeeeef!"

Yes, this about sets the tone for Orange Lantern communication.

"My shiny metal! Where's my shiny metal?! What did you do with my metal, stupid head?!"

"I am Blume, God of Hunger!"

"You are Stupid Head, God of Heads! What did you do with my metal?"

Blume wheels around once more, spraying orange light around him. Dodge, pull back a little, dodge-.

Will detected.

Oh, thank goodness. And no explosions. I don't really want to show myself at this juncture so I'll let the Greenies handle this bit. They form a small cluster about a kilometre from Blume and Jordan generates a large Green sigil.

"Orange Lantern, your kind are bound by treaty with the Guardians of the Universe-" Heh, 'universe', right. "-to stay within the borders of the Vega Systems. Get the hell back there right now."

"Thieeeeeff!"

I drop stealth and phasing right behind him, armouring myself and shoving my hands forwards. Guy, you better be ready… "Thief this, Stupid Head." Destruction! The orange beam blasts from my hands, hitting Blume just above the collar.

"Raaaaaaaghh!" Blume lurches in space for a moment before wheeling around, eyes and mouth glowing brightly. Um. Okay guys, whenever-.

A beam of green energy hits me right in the chest. That's a bit stronger than is strictly necessary. Guess, ah… Guess Jordan's a bit annoyed about that railgun thing. I form a weak shield construct and block the follow up green light pulses, only for Jack to shoot me in the back. Oh, come on, there's no way he's going to believe-. That's a giant boxing gl- okay that actually hurt. Shield construct's gone, armour construct's cracking… I generate some construct missiles and launch them at the Greenies. Micro-transitions and a flare of green… Oh, come on! Okay, boring old railguns it is then. Maybe.. filaments aren't always the correct ow! Okay, he's taking the piss with these boxing gloves now. Just because this whole thing relies on me not fighting back effectively doesn't prove gahh!

Okay, enough. I set my construct armour to flicker. Blume's.. pretty much just watching, though that could be because of the green wall Lanterns Tui and Green Man have set up.

"Last chance to surrender, criminal."

"Eat a dick, Jordan!"

Hah! He actually looks shocked as I open up with orange lightning, forcing him to shield himself, giving Jack the shot. Simple green bolt this time and I drop my construct armour. Finger at the ready! "No! If I go down, I'm taking you with me!" I radiate orange beams out in all directions and use the brilliant light to transition myself to outside of my armour. Jack should detect-. He just froze it to minus two hundred and seventy three point one five degrees Celsius. And that's a plasma torpedo launcher. The ring shows me him grinning as he aims it. Okay Guy, timing is everything…

"The thief is mine!" Blume batters at the green barrier which begins to fail under his assault. Interesting that he doesn't seem to be attacking it directly, rather he's just ramming into it like a goldfish head butting its bowl… "Mine!"

The plasma missile strikes my armour and detonates in a brilliant explosion of energy. Immediately I drop my attack beams and release the finger. Okay Guy, you've got about-

Alert! Involuntary FTL transition.

19th February
20:11 GMT -5

-five.. seconds.

I look around as we hit the water, Guy's construct dragging me into the mountain's hangar. Back in Happy Harbour. We surface and he throws me onto the shore. I land and remove the rings.

"Did it work?"

He floats out of the water after me, removes the residual water and then shrugs. "Let's get upstairs and find out."

 

19th February
20:13 GMT -5

"…best if y'don't use the Ophidian or do any real high-end stuff anyway."

I nod, arms folded across my chest as Guy flies us both into the training room. Slightly frustrating thing about not being a member of the Justice League is that -as long as it's for mission related reasons- he can order me not to use the rings. We already know that Blume can't detect me in here... At least when I'm limiting myself to only regular power levels… "And this has nothing to do with me having to spend a day bringing veteran Green Lanterns up to scratch at all?"

Guy grins. "Would I?"

My team mates, Kal-El and Missus Hol are already watching the holo screen in the middle of the room. Most of the people facing away from us look around as we fly in and Guy puts me down. It's a little hard to judge but I think that Blume is pretty much exactly where I left, holding a chunk of what I assume to be my armour in a chin tentacle.

"Supes." Guy nods at him. "Hawkgirl. How's it goin'?"

"So far so good." Kal-El presses something and a smaller screen appears, showing a zoom of Truggs' finger. It's directly in front of Blume at eye level and he's staring at it intently. "He's ignoring the other Green Lanterns but it looks like he's taken the bait. Can you patch into the other Lanterns' rings so we can hear what they're saying?"

Guy makes a fist with his right hand and holds it up. "No problem." His ring sparks and-.

"…still in violation of your agreement with the Guardians. Go back to Vega or we will remove you by force."

Orange light lances from Blume's eyes and disintegrates Truggs' finger. Ah, I already have full scans and tissue samples from it. "You will not tell me what to do! I am a god! I will travel to your planet and you will feed me gahhr-!"

Green Man and Jack just shot it in the mouth with a wide beam of green energy. Jordan shakes his head. "You don't make policy decisions, Blume. Put me through to Larfleeze or we'll treat the treaty as rescinded and take all his 'shinies' back."

"YOU IMPUDENT-!" Blume suddenly freezes, as if every muscle spasmed at once. Orange light begins precipitating out of his mouth, eyes and the orange sigil on his collar, coalescing into the form of a humanoid torso.

"So." Missus Hol's eyes narrow slightly. "That's Larfleeze."

"You have no right to stop me! My precious rings were stolen! They're my property!"

"You told the Guardians that you'd stay in Vega if they let you keep your Central Power Battery. If you can't keep hold of your rings then that's your problem."

I can see Larfleeze's nostrils flare as he snorts, his head shifting from side to side and his eyes darting around at the Green Lanterns surrounding him. Oh, that's right, he's probably never seen them before. Does he.. think they're some sort of strange new Guardian?

"No! I said I'd stay! Blume… Blume took his own initiative!"

"Dooon't give me that, Larfleeze. Blume doesn't have any initiative. And anyway-" Jordan points at the remains of my armour. "-the guy who took your stuff's already dead."

"I didn't get my ring back."

"Well, that's too bad. You shoot a Lantern, sometimes rings get destroyed. Do you want us to come to Okaara and shoot some more rings?"

Larfleeze's construct body leans forwards, the end of his snout stopping under a metre away from Jordan. "You don't have the power to take my things!"

"Oh don't I?" Jordan leans to the side a little. "How about we put that to the test?" Larfleeze snorts again. "I say I can destroy Lantern Blume over there without even using my ring. If I can do that, there's no way you could stop me."

Larfleeze's eyes narrow. "You're lying."

"Really?" Jordan holds up his right hand. "Guardians made some improvements to these rings since you last saw them. You've got no idea what we can do." He leans forwards slightly. "None of your property is on Earth anymore. Do the smart thing, Larfleeze."

Larfleeze's eyes dart around again. After a moment he appears to reach a conclusion, nodding to himself. He pulls back to his original position and raises his right hand. "I can't feel the ring. I can't feel the Ophidian. Maybe you're right." He nods again. "OR MAYBE I NEED YOUR RINGS TOO! BLUME-!" Blume jerks back to life and the Green Lanterns brighten their auras as they prepare to resist assimilation. "-CONSUME THEM!"

Behind Blume, Jack and Lantern Tui form railgun constructs as Jordan lazily shakes his head, makes a pistol shape with his right fore and middle fingers and 'fires' it at Blume. A second later Blume's construct body shakes and shimmers as a barrage of Crumbler rounds slam into it.

"Raaaaaagh!"

"Goodbye Larfleeze. Remember this."

Blume pops in what looks like a shower of orange dust. Jack and Lantern Tui drop their constructs immediately as the Larfleeze construct looks around at the now-evaporating tether which anchored him to Blume. "No! That's impossible!" His attention switches back to Lantern Jordan. "You're impossible!"

"Yeah, that's what Carol says. Don't come back, Larfleeze."

Larfleeze opens his broken-tusked mouth wide and throws up his arms as he evaporates from the waist. "Aaaaaaaaaaagh-!"

And gone.

The Green Lanterns stay on station for a moment, auras still glowing.

"Hey Hal, thought you said bullshit wasn't a job-skill?" I look around and see Guy holding his ring near his mouth, grinning all the while.

Kal-El gives him a disappointed look before pressing another button. "Green Lantern, report."

"He's gone, Superman. I'm not detecting any other orange power rings anywhere near the Sol system."

"Good work. What about the other Construct-Lanterns who were in other Sectors?"

"We won't know what that means for the other Construct-Lanterns for a while yet. Green Man?"

"I will go to ensure their return to Vega, whether willingly or-" He creates a railgun construct. "-otherwise. Now that we know they are not truly alive there is no reason to hold back."

Lantern Tui floats a little closer. "The rest of us should return to Oa. Now that we understand the underlying methodology, the Guardians will want us to demonstrate how to resist orange light attacks to as many other Lanterns as possible."

You're welcome. Oh dear, was that an order? Is Jack-?

"Hey, ah..." Jack floats a up to Lantern Tui. "I'd like to stick around for a bit. Make sure I got the whole.. green.. glow.. thing down."

Lantern Tui narrows her eyes slightly. "Lantern Chance, the Guardians only let you leave your world because it was under threat. Now that threat is gone-."

"We don't know it's gone gone. They could come back whenever they feel like it. And anyway, the Guardians ain't gunna let me teach anyone anything. Hellhole's going to be just as much of a frag-pile if I wait a day as if I go back right now."

Lantern Tui glances at Lantern Jordan, who shrugs. "Very well." She raises her ring. "I'm extending your permission for one Earth day. Automatic recall-."

"Yeah, yeah."

Kal-El nods. "Green Lantern, we'll see you back on the Watchtower." He presses a button to deactivate the holo screen, then looks up at me. "Give it a couple of days, then you can start using your rings outside again. Everyone else, dismissed."

 

20th February
08:21 GMT -5

Alan sighs heavily and raises his ring.

"You who are wicked, evil, and mean,
I'm the.. nastiest.. creep you've.. ever.. seen."

He closes his eyes for a moment and gives his head a tiny shake.

"Come one. Come all. Put up a fight.
I'll…"

He gives Jack a withering look, then rolls his eyes.

"'Pound your butts' with Green Lantern's light.”

He waits. Jack's personal lantern does nothing. He gives Jack a puzzled look.

Jack shrugs. "You ain't finished it yet."

"Oh for God's s-. Yawzah." Nothing happens. "Yohzah?"

"No, no. Like this: Yowza!"

"Y…" Alan rolls his eyes again. "Yowza!" A brilliant stream of green light blasts forth and pours into Alan's ring, causing it to sparkle and gleam.

Jack regards it for a moment, stroking his chin. "I ain't ever seen a ring like that before. How old yah think it is?"

"I really have no idea." Alan's looking better. We tried getting his ring to infuse him with its remaining power directly before he recharged and it seems to have rejuvenated him at least a little. He doesn't look as good as he did when I first arrived, but he looks better than he has since just after New Year. It won't last, of course, but hopefully that should tide him over until I get back from Maltus. "It didn't come with any sorta database, and I haven't been able to contact the previous owner for the service-" The lantern shuts down. "-history."

"Feeling better?"

He nods. "Yeah, I'd say so. Thank you, Lantern Chance."

"Just hold'n up my end of the deal." He picks up his lantern in his right hand and returns it to subspace. "Ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How long you been a Lantern?"

"Well… I, ah, I haven't been on active service for years. If you want to know how long it's been since I first got my ring, it's about.. seventy years now."

Jack purses his lips and nods. Looks like he's impressed. "I asked my ring once. Told me that Green Lanterns don't usually make it past four years on the job. If you're not active now, how long did you do it for?"

"Twenty five years." He tilts his head to the side. "Depending on what you count as 'full time', I suppose. I had a life to live outside of being Green Lantern."

Jack frowns. "Didn't this Sector's old Green Lantern die a little while ago?"

I nod. "Lantern Starkaor died eight years ago and Lantern Sur died eleven years ago."

His frown deepens. "So, Jordan and Guy and that other guy-?"

"Were called up in preference to Alan."

Alan shakes his head. "Are you still going on about that? I'm not sore about it."

"I'll be sore about it on your behalf, then. Harold Jordan got his ring because he was the closest capable person to where Lantern Sur crashed. Lantern Sur was dying and he wanted to be sure that he had time to explain what was going on to his successor before Legion arrived."

"Jordan got lucky?"

"However he got the ring, Hal's done a great job with it. And he did pass the evaluation criteria; I durn near tripped over mine."

"Yes."

"And Guy got his when Starkaor died?"

"Yes. Which was bullshit as well." That earns me a frown from Alan. "Pardon my language."

"That wasn't why I was frowning, Paul. I thought you and Guy were getting on okay?"

"We are. I mean… Look, I like Guy, but I'd be shocked if he was actually the most strong willed heroically inclined person in the entire Sector. Your existing connection to the green light should have made you show up like a bonfire in the dark! Even if you weren't active in two thousand, plus… It didn't exactly escape my notice that he's from the same planet, country and gender as his predecessor. And so's Lantern Stewart."

"America does encourage individualism, and we've probably got the longest tradition of super heroes of anywhere on Earth."

"Jack, how did you get recruited?"

"The guy before me… Think it was a guy anyway… His name was Pathavim Seth-Ottarak. Green Lanterns don’t last long on Hellhole-."

"On where?"

"My homeworld. Its real name's Garnet, but everyone calls it Hellhole. Anyway, they'd had a bunch of them die trying to fix it, so Pathavim told his ring to find someone who could cope with the place. Me. Wouldn't exactly say I've managed to clean up the place, but at least it isn't on fire the whole time anymore."

"Place like that must be a lotta work."

Jack shrugs. "It's what I'm used to." He looks around Alan's living room and out through the net curtained windows. "It's places like this that weird me out. I haven't heard a gunshot or a scream since I got here."

"Plenty of places where you can, if you really want."

"Nah. You people still use chemical-explosive slug-throwers. Only thing worse than no sounds is wrong sounds." He checks the freeze ray strapped to his leg. "Got the ammo for me?"

I take four cases out of subspace and deposit them on the floor. "Fifty each. Don't use them-" He crouches down and opens a case, carefully checking the contents over. "-all at once."

"Don't worry about it. I'm all about focused application of force."

"Are you sure the Guardians won't get on your case about this?"

Jack takes a Crumbler out of its padding and looks at it closely. "They prefer pretending I don't exist. I get tolerated 'cause I do the job, but they're not going to look too closely into anything I do. They even send the other guy, Larvox, to keep an eye on me sometimes."

"Even so…"

"I don't send in reports and I don't think you're going to tell them." He puts the round back, closes the case and looks up at us. "Well? Are you?"

"No, I wasn't planning to."

"Then there's no problem. You know…" He looks at me. "I'd have gone down to fifty. Once I'd checked out the freeze ray. I don't like screwing people over."

"They don't cost me all that much. Though… While you're here…"

"Yeah? What?"

I pull Stewart's ex-ring off my right ring finger. "If you ever get tired of Guardian bullshit… Send me a message."

"Oh, no can do." He stands, floating the cases up with him. "I made a deal with the Guardians. I'm in for life, less they break it first."

"Did they ever say you can't have other rings as well?"

Jack blinks in surprise. "That's a thing?"

"Do you want it to be?"

"Ah." He thinks for a moment. "Papa Chance always told me: 'if it looks too good to be true-".

"It probably is." I nod. "If that's your decision." I return the ring to my finger, then hold out my right hand. "Thank you for your help. With Blume and with this."

"No problem." His eyes glow for a moment, then he grips my hand. "Nice to get away for a while. Oh, and just so you know? I put money on you beating Larfleeze so, y'know, make sure you do, okay?"

"I'll do my best."

 

22nd February
10:04 GMT -5

"Doctor Morrow was building AIs in the nineteen thirties and today they're just about the only ones that exist." The hologram shows a family photo of him with his three creations. "Why? Clifford DeVoe built a cybernetic implant that made him telepathic and telekinetic in the forties, a device that let a pudgy man in his fifties take on the Justice Society." The display shifts to show a newspaper picture from the time. "Not 'a member of the Justice Society'. All of them. At once. In a straight fight." I take a metal helmet out of subspace. "This is as accurate a recreation as I can make. This thing uses transistors, for goodness sake." I spread my arms wide. "So where's my gods damned telepathy machine?" I take the new and improved model out of subspace. It takes the form of a skullcap. "This is what it looks like if you make one using modern technology instead. We're still working on how to safely and removably attach it to someone's brain." I send them both back into subspace.

"But the thing that really got to me, the thing that reduced me to hissing, eye watering apoplexy? Doctor Thaddeus Sivana." A picture of the man in his younger days. "You all know him as a supervillain who occasionally goes on the rampage in Fawcett City before Captain Marvel stops him. But he was actually a legitimate scientist for far longer than he's been a supervillain. Know what pushed him over the edge?" I pause. "No, me neither. Pretty much the first thing he did as a supervillain was try and take revenge on those who rejected his ideas and destroy all publically accessible records of his work. But I've read the reports from the survivors. Smart viruses that could target and replace damaged DNA segments, economic hydrogen fuel cells… If he'd been a better businessman…" I sigh. "I had a conversation with Lex Luthor last September.. at the Rhelasian peace summit last year. He hadn't heard that before James Dyson went into business for himself he'd tried to sell his bagless vacuum design to Hoover. They turned him down. Later on, after it became a massive success they told him that if they'd known in advance they'd have bought the design and sat on it simply because they liked the market as it was. But for a quirk of fate British superheroes might have ended up fighting Vacuum Man." The hologram shows a mock up of James Dyson as a supervillain, but this time there's no laughter.

I hold out my left arm. **Now, please.** A moment later a G-Sprite flies in from off stage and lands on my arm. "Those of you who attended Dubbilex's public.. unveiling may remember these." I have the holo display play footage of our press conference. "This, is a G-Sprite. Cadmus Labs created them as… Just about the only commercially applicable result of their study into Kryptonian physiology. I should point out here that Cadmus is not in any way a wholly owned subsidiary of LexCorp." Ms Lane manages a wry half-smile at that claim. "All the stuff Kryptonians can do is… Well, it's basically impossible to replicate with Human technology. But that doesn't mean that it's no use at all. These little guys-" I run my right forefinger along its glowing abdomen. "-generate electricity. Inside here is a suspension of cloned Kryptonian cells. When they're exposed to sunlight… Or the right frequencies of artificial light, organelles inside Kryptonian cells undergo some rather interesting exotic energy processes. This gel converts it to electricity which G-Sprites are designed to be able to discharge safely." I take a metal cable out of subspace and earth the far end. **If you please?**

The G-Sprite flaps its wings and rises off my arm, extends its forelegs and flashes of electricity start leaping from their tips into the cable. "G-Sprites aren't intelligent. Even if the Sophont Recognition Act.. or whatever they end up calling it, passes, they wouldn't be covered. I've got a G-Gnome backstage relaying my instructions to it. Unfortunately, they really aren't practical for anywhere that isn't a bleeding edge biotechnology laboratory to use, and as such Cadmus has no plans to expand production." **Thank you, that will be all.** The G-Sprite stops shocking the cable and flies back off stage.

I return the cable to subspace and change the display back to the graph. "So let's go back to the graph. If we were actually using the technology that we have, how would we be doing? I'll show you." I recreate the construct baton. "We're currently here and we could be here." I point to a spot just inside the top quarter. "Quite a big jump. This is where we could be, and if you don't really care about advancing faster than alien species… Then think about how much easier your life could be."

I eliminate the baton, but leave the two points on the graph visible. "Superheroes usually limit themselves to law enforcement and helping during natural disasters. I don't want to live a life where all I do is stop things getting worse. That's why I've been working with KordTech to see what other underutilised ideas and technologies there are floating around and helping their development. For the next part of my act I'm going to need a volunteer from the audience and- " I generate a construct arrow over the head of an overweight neckbeard in the sixth row. "-since you, sir, were the only one to say the correct date for Doctor Erdel's experiment the moment I put the picture on the screen-" He looks shocked, points to one of his chins and mouths 'me?' at me. "-I'm going to give you first refusal. Well done, by the way. I respect people who know their stuff."

He stares for a moment then stands and begins making his way out of the row of seats. "Okay, if we could lift up the curtain, please?" It rises, revealing a pair of Dolmen Gates. "These are Dolmen Gates. Arcane technology. The Fae have used the same sort of system for thousands of years but this is the first time they've become commercially available to the rest of us. For those of you with your ears most closely to the ground, you may have heard that their designer and I did a demonstration for the London City Council a while ago. Before long, these will be installed in a specially designed building in London for people to get used to."

"What do they do? Simply put, anything that goes through one comes out of the other, including-" I rise off the floor and float towards the one on the stage's left, facing the ring. "-light." I can clearly see the audience out of the other ring and I give them a wave before turning back around and dropping to the floor. "Their range isn't unlimited, but we tested them with one on the Moon and the other in our laboratory and there was no problem there. Price per journey? Zero. No money. Let that sink in for a moment."

Neckbeard has climbed up onto the stage, hardly wheezing at all. I walk over to him and hold out my right hand. "Welcome aboard. What's your name?"

He shakes it. "David Roscoe. I'm from Seed magazine."

"Glad to meet you, David. What I need you to do is very simple: walk through one of the rings. Don't worry, they were checked over just before everyone came in, they're in perfect condition."

"Okay!" He grins, nods, looks at the one on the right and heads towards it.

I walk off to the side so that the audience can get a unobstructed view of each Gate. "Set up costs are 'we don't know yet'. They're made in Atlantis and there's no established exchange rate. Estimates are 'less than a billion dollars a time'."

Mister Roscoe slows down slightly as he gets to the right hand Gate. Doesn't stop though. He carries on straight through and reappears through the left hand one. "That it?"

"That's it. How did it feel?"

"Iiiit… Didn't really feel like anything. Just walking through air."

"That's how it's supposed to feel. Thank you for your help, please return to your seat. David Roscoe, ladies and gentlemen." There's a smattering of applause as he shambles back towards his seat.

"One last thing before I hand over to Ted. People have asked some of… Those of us who have access to alien technology: 'why aren't you sharing'? And a perfectly reasonable answer is: 'because we don't want to make you dependent on us for stuff'. All the stuff I've shown you, all the things Ted will be showing you in a minute are the products of Human ingenuity. Except this last thing. I had to think long and hard about this, because a lot of the arguments I'm using to justify doing this could justify a lot of things. I had to.. find a sector of the economy that was completely moribund, uncreative and generally not serving the interest of the population as a whole. A market failure, a monopoly… Something where the negative consequences were spilling over into other sectors and distorting not just world economics but politics as well."

"Simply put, the area I chose was electrical power generation. Coal pollutes. Gas pollutes. Green fuels aren't reliable and nuclear builds up waste we can't deal with other than by burying it. Perhaps more importantly, according to the graph? A species in our position really should have moved on to hydrogen or exotics by now. So that's what we're doing. The city of-." A stage hand wheels a trolley on from the wings. "Thank you. The city of New York has kindly agreed to be our field testing ground for a Bleed Torsion Generator. Things like this-" I indicate the device. "-are used for civilian power generation and non-critical military power generation by dozens of spacefaring species. This device alone can meet about a New York City and a half's peak power demand. We can't get that much to people's homes due to loss in transmission, but fixing that problem is something Ted wants to talk to you about now."

I pause for breath. Yes. This is… This is good. This is exactly what a superhero should be doing with his life. "I'm Orange Lantern two eight one four and thank you very much for listening."

The applause is thunderous as I exit the stage.

 

22nd February
09:17 GMT -6

I've got a buzz going. This is exactly the sort of thing a superhero should be doing: identifying a threat no one else can deal with and permanently removing it.

The people of Central City aren't quite as blasé about huge grey people walking down their streets as the people of Metropolis or New York are, but after a quick stare and a slight shrink back most of them clock that I'm not really doing anything particularly fearsome and settle for just keeping an eye on me. If my armour had pockets I'd put my hands in them to further defuse my potential for causing alarm. Since it doesn't, I settle for doing a sort of tuneless near-whistling. Before I came to this place I couldn't whistle beyond the occasional single note. Going venom buster took away what little ability I had. Now… A few notes.

Yeeeess, I missed my target date for killing Klarion buuut I didn't have a deadline, so killing him today isn't significantly worse than killing him when I originally planned to. Jade was surprisingly okay about me missing Valentine's Day, and the substitute date I set up in the habitat I've been building on Ceres for Ra's' resurrected animal species appears to have smoothed over any lingering irritation. Constructing the place took some doing, but the artificial systems for atmosphere regulation, gravity and keeping the whole thing from melting the planet around it are all set up. Really, I've done as much as I can until he lets me know what biosphere he wants me to start with.

I think.. Jade likes the fact that I'm making an effort at making allies with another member of the Light. Building bridges to further my career. I felt good about it… Until about half way through the conversation when I became painfully aware that I haven't done anything equivalent for a member of the Justice League. My team mates, sure, I've done things for them, but… I don't know, maybe a bit of effort earlier on…

I suppose that given how they're going to react to this, it's just as well I didn't waste the time. Ah, here we go; Global Broadcasting News' Central City office. I've left the Sphere and Mister Tawny behind for this one. I want to be clear that it's a solo effort. Just me, Father Box and hopefully Catherine Grant and her camera and sound men. Or women, whichever. I have backup journalists in mind if she turns me down, but this is her beat. Now, where is she? The car park? No no, we can't have that. Father Box, connect to the Hush Tube and get me down there.

Ploong.

Thank you. I step through into the grey concrete car park and let it close behind me. It's fascinating, my own development as a minor divine. I can now perceive the aperture of a hush tube unaided as a sort of white purple tunnel, though I can't quite work out how to fully describe how it moves in the English language.

"…setting up as soon as possible. I doubt anything's happening quite yet, but I want to get a good set-up location."

A couple of people in GBS jackets are loading things into a news van. Miss Grant herself is talking to her camerawoman next to the passenger side door. With hush tubes being.. hushed, they haven't heard me.

Hmm. I start walking slowly in their direction and pointedly clear my throat. Not enough noise to demand their attention but enough that they become aware that someone is sharing the space with them. The people loading equipment don't bother looking around. Miss Grant glances my way for a fraction of a second, returns her attention to her co-worker without really registering what it is she's seen, then turns back towards me with the 'Do I need to run?' look on her face.

"Miss Grant, good morning. How does the day find you?"

The camerawoman looks around and I can just about hear the "Oh shit." she mutters under her breath.

Miss Grant blinks and mentally steadies herself. "Um… Well, thank you." She gives me a slightly closer look. "You're Grayven, aren't you?"

"That's me."

"I saw the footage from Fawcett City."

"We met before that, actually." She looks a little blank. "Taipei? Rhelasian peace conference? I was a little larger?" I hold my right hand out to indicate my former height and receive a cautious nod. "You ended up cutting me from just about every rebroadcast?"

"Ah…"

"It's fine. Big grey man fighting other big grey men. Confusing visual, and it ends up being hard to know who to root for if you're channel hopping." I come to a halt about five metres from her. Far enough away not to loom, I hope. "Listen, have you got… Half an hour? It'll be worth your while."

"Well I…" She looks around to the rest of her crew, then back at me. "What did you have in mind?"

"I intend to lure the primary actor behind the Roanoke Island incident into an ambush, then kill him. Then hand myself over to the Central City Police." Not what she was expecting. "While we're waiting for him to turn up I can also give you more information on that whole period. I was.. in at the death, so I can tell you things which the Justice League never released to the public."

"You're.. going to kill him?"

"Yes, yes I am. I have no way to imprison him or depower him and the alternative is leaving him out in the wild to attack again, which I consider to be unconscionable." I smile at her. "I would appreciate a quick decision."

She looks at her co-workers again. They're all looking at her. "Ahh… Legally.. I don't think-."

"There's no way you can stop me or warn anyone who could. The most you can do is make sure that there is a good recording of it."

She's still a little stunned, but it looks like she's considering it. "Would we be safe?"

"No complete guarantee. I've set up a warded and force field protected viewing area and I've got a dead man's switch that will alert the Justice League if I die." The Sword of Second and Third is strapped to a scabbard on my left leg, and I run my left index finger over the pommel. "Knock down drag out fights with things like Klarion are a terrible idea so I don't intend to take long about it. If he's still alive after about ten seconds then I'm probably going to lose."

"Clarion?"

"That's his name. Klarion the Witch Boy. He's a Chaos Lord, which essentially means…" Hold on. "I should probably explain that on camera, don't you think?"

"I don't know…"

"Oh, come on. Your network got hours out of the execution of his co-offenders and you had to pay the Chinese for the privilege of using the footage! I hardly think you're in a position to be precious about this. You'll also note how I'm not in prison after I killed Sabbac Two on live television a couple of weeks ago."

Miss Grant opens her mouth slightly, then glances at the camerawoman who seems quite happy to let her make the decision. She looks down for a moment, then nods to me. "Okay. Do you want to.. do it here?"

"In the middle of a city? You crazy? No, I'm not fighting him here."

"Okay. Where-?"

"Father Box, boom tube."

"Ploong."

There's the signature bang and rush of displaced air as the tube opens in the air next to us.

"A field outside Central City, presently left fallow." I trigger my aero discs, rising off the ground and drifting forwards. "I've spent some time preparing the ground to give me every advantage." As well as picking a time Mister Barry Allen would be occupied with laboratory work and surrounded by colleagues in such a way that he couldn't easily sneak out.

Miss Grant looks out over the grassland for a moment and then grimaces. "Knew I shoulda worn flats."

"Allow me." A burst of orange from my eyes dumps her actually quite expensive but ridiculously impractical high heeled shoes into subspace and replaces them with comfortable walking boots. "Better? I'm.. storing the shoes, you can have them back afterwards."

"Thank you." She turns back to her crew. "Guys, finish packing up then come on through." There are a few nods and the camerawoman hurries around the van to get into the driving seat. "So." She turns towards me and starts walking towards the tube. "Mister Grayven, what made you want to become a vigilante serial killer?"

I make a show of giving the question careful consideration. "I think it was mostly Father's influence…"