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

[Darko]

Which suggests the anti-scanning is fairly new, then

Click to shrink...

Not really.

Several years ago it was mentioned that Luthor was apparently adding anti-scrying wards in the logos of his company's products.

Granted, that would protect just the products, not necessarily the whole structure, and Lonnie is unlikely to use LexCorp products.

Damn. Good thing they gave up, that could have been bad.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if Reb was behind it.

Maybe after taking out Sam, he wanted to destroy the Heartland, but ran into the budget issue, or figured out that if the shady agents get access to the Heartlands then they may also get access to the Badland.

How did he manage to collect all that, anyway? I'm pretty sure electronics stores and supermarkets would take note of a ten-year-old boy by himself. Unless he's been raiding abandoned locations...

Click to shrink...

After Anti-Life a lot of places are probably abandoned.

Heck, after Anti-Life it wouldn't be too strange if a lot of children are taking care of themselves.

 

[Darko]

S.H.A.D.E. build it in the

Click to shrink...

"built"

 

[Sordid Snake]

Is the dog evil? Can dogs be evil?

Click to shrink...

I'm more interested in "Can a dog be an anarchist? Or would that turn it into a cat?"

Edited to add:

Mr. Machin

Click to shrink...

<insert "Rage against the Machin" joke here>

 

[Mr Zoat]

"built"

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

 

[Dur'id the Druid]

Unless you're thinking of rebranding as the Handicapper General, isn't that a good thing?

Click to shrink...

Huh, I remember a video short about that. Didn't know it was an old sci-fi story too. And the short had a diffrent ending than what the wiki says.

Is amazing how you even remember so much half forgotten things like this, and then use them well!

 

[Steelplaza]

"I've been to parallel universes. In some of them, certain personal stories are further along, and a matter of public knowledge. I'll take that address and then leave you in peace until I've given Batman a chance to explain what he's doing."

Click to shrink...

Shouldn't OL ask about Enginehead, the AI that Lonnie kidnapped, and what that was about?

 

[Darko]

Shouldn't OL ask about Enginehead, the AI that Lonnie kidnapped, and what that was about?

Click to shrink...

I think they got him back.

 

[CrazyNoVa]

I seriously hope OL at least applies some way to track Lonnie now that he's met him. I doubt simply pinging him via the Honden will be all that reliable, given how many ways Lonnie's used to hide his existence. And why leave him be at all, given how much trouble OL went through to find him? You know he'll be gone by the time OL comes looking again, if he's got any sense. Dangit, OL!

Click to shrink...

That is going to come back to bite him.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, it's probably a good thing that OL didn't arrest Lonnie, because that way, he will stay out of Batman's reach. There's no telling what Bruce might do to Lonnie for ratting him out to OL, especially in his mentally unstable state. He might decide to coerce, brainwash or blackmail Lonnie into working for him for the greater good, or maybe even mindwipe and lobotomize Lonnie altogether. And don't tell me it couldn't happen, because we've seen Bruce pull this sort of crap in other continuities.

 

[Vaermina]

And why leave him be at all, given how much trouble OL went through to find him?

Click to shrink...

Because Orange Lantern is a goldfish.

He hunted Lonnie down because it annoyed him that he couldn't. And now that he has, he's going to fly off to whatever next catches his attention.

 

[Prince Charon]

Huh, I remember a video short about that. Didn't know it was an old sci-fi story too. And the short had a diffrent ending than what the wiki says.

Is amazing how you even remember so much half forgotten things like this, and then use them well!

Click to shrink...

They made us read an illustrated version of it in high school, but probably completely missed the irony of doing that.

 

[Jirachi]

I do wonder about the implications for the reach war of this guy having the ability to make boom tube generators - it seems like at least the midcore of the reach can't effectively interdict boom tubes, at least as a matter of routine, so there's definitely a world where some sort of lantern and/or effigy strike force ends up doing skirmishing and/or scouting deeper within for a while. But I suppose that dox already knows how to do it and hasn't been onscreened as doing it quite yet, though I definitely think it's a reasonable path to go down trying to see if they can make it more practical, especially given they have a ship commanding godling on staff.
Wonder if Anarky would be interested in the chaos magic position - or just the rest of his magic files. He's so charmingly driven that I want to see him protected and flourish.
The wards really are awkward, sometimes, though they're rarely that that big a problem. Might be worth looking into seeing if Guy and/or Alan are ready to do quintessence waveform scans yet - seems like that'd open up some doors for superhero debugging work that sort of only the SI (and perhaps Doctor Mist and maybe theoretically angelica) are qualified for, and it'd probably help a lot in the sort of worldwide intrigue setting that the last justice league readiness test was all about.

 

[xSieg]

I hope Paul adopts Anarky, honestly. He'd be such a horrible dysfunctional role model to him that it'd be a nice contrast to Renegrayven.

 

[Vaermina]

I hope Paul adopts Anarky, honestly. He'd be such a horrible dysfunctional role model to him that it'd be a nice contrast to Renegrayven.

Click to shrink...

Orange Lantern doesn't have the attention span to raise a kid sidekick.

 

[Mr Zoat]

10th July 2013
10:21 GMT -5

"Ah…" Karon's reluctance to talk about it is obvious in her voice, but I also know that she's a responsible woman. "Okay. Okay. What do you need to know?"

"When you were… Mistress, did you sponsor any sort of technological research..? If you remember."

"I can remember just about everything. But I'm.. pretty sure I wasn't doing anything like that. Uh. That wasn't how I… How I ran things."

"And you didn't use devices like that which were created by someone else?"

"Some… Weapons, and some of Joker's gas grenades. Nothing… Nothing sophisticated. Ah. What are you looking for?"

I carefully study the defunct bank below me. "Something which merges the left and right halves of someone's brain together."

"Doesn't the corpus callosum already do that?"

"It connects them, but they're still distinct units. Actually, did you know that there's a treatment for severe epilepsy which involves destroying the corpus callosum so that the seizure can't cross from one side to the other?"

"No? Does it work?"

"Yes, though there are some strange side-effects to cutting a brain in half. It-."

"Eh, you know, actually? Don't tell me. And… I don't need to know who built that or why they… Thought that was smart."

"I'm hoping that it can be used to undo traumatic brain injuries, but that's probably a bit hopeful. Thank you for your help."

"Sure. Any time you want me to tell you I don't know anything… You know where I am."

"And how are you doing? Generally."

"Do you have..? Time to-."

"Yes, I absolutely have time for you. And I've.. run into enough anti-scan devices that I'm sending in robots to check the building first and I can't move in until they report back."

"Ah… Well… The travel company I used to work for is definitely gone. They found the new owner, but there's just… No demand. No one even wants to travel to other places in the U.S. anymore. On the other hand, working logistics isn't all that different. And who can say no to cheap chocolate?"

"Someone watching their figure?"

"Hey!"

"In general! In general." … "What did you think of the adverts?"

"The first time it was pretty funny, now it's just… Again? Really?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not a good enough writer to do more than a few."

"Those dogs were okay, right?"

"You have my personal guarantee that no dogs are harmed in the making of Cadbury's chocolate."

Incoming message.

"Yeah, but how about Hershey's?"

"You'd have to ask them. And I'm afraid that I'll have to cut this short. The robots confirmed all clear."

"Okay. Good luck with your weird brain merging gizmo. Uh, you're not going to use it yourself, right?"

"Of course not-"

"Good."

"-until I've tested it. Bye!"

Power armour humming and construct armour glowing, I drop down and push through the bank doors. They locked the doors when it was closed down, Blüdhaven not really being sophisticated or rich enough for banking scams to keep it afloat. The doors were forcibly unlocked during the Anti-Life period, and forced open again when a crew came through to remove the bodies.

And apparently Lonnie spent some time here. I'm not sure why he would have come in here… The vault might be safe, but it's not like there's much left in here. No food, not much to burn for warmth… The roof is solid, but that's about all I can say for it. I suppose that with a boom tube generator a locked vault might be secure enough…

And he found a brain-altering machine. That says 'supervillain', but I can't really think of any Gotham supervillains who do brain alterations. Not chirurgical ones anyway. I'd wonder if it was Sivana but his security would be better. I'll have to scan it thoroughly when I get inside.

The place is warded, but flicking out orange tendrils lets me pick up genetic samples directly. Mostly people whose bodies were identified, a few… Samples which I assume are from other Blüdhaven residents. No one I recognise as being… 'Significant' sounds harsh, but it's essentially true. No one who would have the ability to build this, no one who would have any reason to build this, no one where there would be a reason to use something like this on them.

I float around the service desk and head towards the vault.

Of course, the style of the design might give me a clue as to the identity of the creator. It would be out of character, but the Joker did work with the other members of the Injustice League. It's not impossible that they collaborated on other projects before the Smilex vines. I'll ask Dr. Isley.

The vault door is closed but… Not locked. Attach a construct to the rotor mechanism and turn it, and then swing the door open.

Some empty shelves, and…

Huh.

I float inwards. It looks a little like a sawn-off C.A.T. scanner. There's a 'bed', but the machine itself is only deep enough for the subject's head. The machine itself… It looks like it was made by a mid-range supervillain. They had the money for parts, but not to make it look like a unified device in the way that someone with serious money would; parts of the casing don't match the colour of the other parts, and in places the angles are off where something has been laid over innards that it wasn't originally built to contain. The custom parts would have been built here… Yes, there's the work bench and… What was once a clean room. A petrol-powered generator appears to have been the power source.

Prints?

Not found.

Wearing gloves the whole time? Perfectly possible. And unusually there's no sign of habitation; no discarded food containers, no chemical toilet or sleeping bag. So living somewhere else? Except this is a big project. For a single individual, this is what they'd have to be focusing on. They wouldn't want to commute. But it's a big building. Plenty of room in the offices upstairs.

Scan for genetic material.

Orange filaments flicker out, and… Find hairs.

Match found. Jervis Tetch.

…

Oh.

I jam filaments into the machine, taking note of every part and component. Access the data storage components…

What..? Was he doing? And why?

 

[Whenever Possible]

Looking for Alice, presumably

 

[BR549]

Match found. Jarvis Tetch.

Click to shrink...

Mad Hatter's given name is Jervis.

 

[Ngamer11]

"Eh, you know, actually? Don't tell me. And… I don't need to know who build that or why they… Thought that was smart."

Click to shrink...

That should say 'built'.

 

[Duke Long]

"And you didn't use devices like that were created by someone else?"

Click to shrink...

Extraneous 'like'?

"Any how are you doing? Generally."

"Do you have..? Time to-."

"Yes, I absolutely have time for you. And I've.. run into enough anti-scan devices that I'm sending in robots to check the building first and I can't move in until they report back."

Click to shrink...

'And'
Clever. Has he ever done that before?

"Of course not-"

"Good."

"-until I've tested it. Bye!"

Click to shrink...

Haha. I doubt he'll actually use it, but he has made some minor adjustments to his brain, right? So not impossible.

I float inwards. It looks a little like a sawn-off C.A.T. scanner. There's a 'bed', but the machine itself is only deep enough for the subject's head. The machine itself… It looks like it was made by a mid-range supervillain. They had the money for parts, but not to make it look like a unified device in the way that someone with serious money would; parts of the casing don't match the colour of the other parts, and in places the angles are off where something has been laid over innards that it wasn't originally build to contain. The custom parts would have been built here… Yes, there's the work bench and… What was once a clean room. A petrol-powered generator appears to have been the power source.

Click to shrink...

'built'

Match found. Jarvis Tetch.

Click to shrink...

He was my first thought upon hearing of a nearby villain who works with brains, but I didn't expect him to actually be involved. We already know he was mucking about with kidnapping people recently. I wonder what he's been up to, and how there's a link between him and Lonnie.

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

10th July 2013
10:21 GMT -5

"Ah…" Karon's reluctance to talk about it is obvious in her voice, but I also know that she's a responsible woman. "Okay. Okay. What do you need to know?"

"When you were… Mistress, did you sponsor any sort of technological research..? If you remember."

Click to shrink...

An interesting choice, but she did basically run the town during Anti-Life. I'm guessing he's consulting her out of interest in her doings during the broadcast. Hopefully she and Holly have been well since.

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

"I can remember just about everything. But I'm.. pretty sure I wasn't doing anything like that. Uh. That wasn't how I… How I ran things."

"And you didn't use devices like that were created by someone else?"

Click to shrink...

Doesn't mean someone or something more resistant wasn't active in the city. Probably keeping their head down to avoid interference, of course.

"Some… Weapons, and some of Joker's gas grenades. Nothing… Nothing sophisticated. Ah. What are you looking for?"

I carefully study the defunct bank below me. "Something which merges the left and right halves of someone's brain together."

Click to shrink...

Hopefully no fatalities from it, though anything during the Anti-Life probably has amnesty.

"Doesn't the corpus callosum already do that?"

"It connects them, but they're still distinct units. Actually, did you know that there's a treatment for severe epilepsy which involves destroying the corpus callosum so that the seizure can't cross from one side to the other?"

Click to shrink...

The brain is a funny thing. It's like two separate CPUs with different optimisations that talk via that one bit.

"No? Does it work?"

"Yes, though there are some strange side-effects to cutting a brain in half. It-."

Click to shrink...

Joy of trying to poke around in stuff while it's still running. Do that with modern computers and it usually breaks things. Our meat-brains are a bit more stable, but there's still lots of side-effects.

"Eh, you know, actually? Don't tell me. And… I don't need to know who built that or why they… Thought that was smart."

"I'm hoping that it can be used to undo traumatic brain injuries, but that's probably a bit hopeful. Thank you for your help."

Click to shrink...

I wouldn't go poking around with it anytime soon without lots of simulations first.

"Sure. Any time you want me to tell you I don't know anything… You know where I am."

"Any how are you doing? Generally."

Click to shrink...

Any problems OL can fix while he's here, or..?

"Do you have..? Time to-."

"Yes, I absolutely have time for you. And I've.. run into enough anti-scan devices that I'm sending in robots to check the building first and I can't move in until they report back."

Click to shrink...

Gee, how thoughtful. Sensible, though.

"Ah… Well… The travel company I used to work for is definitely gone. They found the new owner, but there's just… No demand. No one even wants to travel to other places in the U.S. anymore. On the other hand, working logistics isn't all that different. And who can say no to cheap chocolate?"

Click to shrink...

Yet another result of global social upheavals.

"Someone watching their figure?"

"Hey!"

Click to shrink...

I'm sure she gets enough of a workout to account for any potential health problems.

"In general! In general." … "What did you think of the adverts?"

"The first time it was pretty funny, now it's just… Again? Really?"

Click to shrink...

Ah, yes. There's only so many times you can see something before it gets old.

"I'm sorry, I'm not a good enough writer to do more than a few."

"Those dogs were okay, right?"

Click to shrink...

He obviously wouldn't have fed dogs chocolate, right? Any suggestions were left purely to the imagination.

"You have my personal guarantee that no dogs are harmed in the making of Cadbury's chocolate."

Incoming message.

"Yeah, but how about Hershey's?"

Click to shrink...

Can you imagine that bad PR? I doubt they'd risk that sort of thing.

"You'd have to ask them. And I'm afraid that I'll have to cut this short. The robots confirmed all clear."

"Okay. Good luck with your weird brain merging gizmo. Uh, you're not going to use it yourself, right?"

Click to shrink...

Oooh, good insight. I'm sure OL wouldn't go poking around in his brain like that, even if he could restore it from backup... He's just got it running the way he wants it to, after all.

"Of course not-"

"Good."

"-until I've tested it. Bye!"

Click to shrink...

OL, no. No plugging yourself into mind-altering devices. Other than your Power Ring, anyway.

Power armour humming and construct armour glowing, I drop down and push through the bank doors. They locked the doors when it was closed down, Blüdhaven not really being sophisticated or rich enough for banking scams to keep it afloat. The doors were forcibly unlocked during the Anti-Life period, and forced open again when a crew came through to remove the bodies.

Click to shrink...

Makes it sound like the place was being used as a refuge. Or merely a mass tomb.

And apparently Lonnie spent some time here. I'm not sure why he would have come in here… The vault might be safe, but it's not like there's much left in here. No food, not much to burn for warmth… The roof is solid, but that's about all I can say for it. I suppose that with a boom tube generator a locked vault might be secure enough…

Click to shrink...

Though depending on air-venting, you may want some sort of recirculating system. Don't some high-security vaults use pressure sealing tricks, after all?

And he found a brain-altering machine. That says 'supervillain', but I can't really think of any Gotham supervillains who do brain alterations. Not chirurgical ones anyway. I'd wonder if it was Sivana but his security would be better. I'll have to scan it thoroughly when I get inside.

Click to shrink...

On the other hand, there's one or two who do brain-affecting stuff. Hatter, Scarecrow...

The place is warded, but flicking out orange tendrils lets me pick up genetic samples directly. Mostly people whose bodies were identified, a few… Samples which I assume are from other Blüdhaven residents. No one I recognise as being… 'Significant' sounds harsh, but it's essentially true. No one who would have the ability to build this, no one who would have any reason to build this, no one where there would be a reason to use something like this on them.

Click to shrink...

How very curious.

I float around the service desk and head towards the vault.

Of course, the style of the design might give me a clue as to the identity of the creator. It would be out of character, but the Joker did work with the other members of the Injustice League. It's not impossible that they collaborated on other projects before the Smilex vines. I'll ask Dr. Isley.

Click to shrink...

Though any sort of cooperative thing would probably crumble in short order anyway due to personality conflicts.

The vault door is closed but… Not locked. Attach a construct to the rotor mechanism and turn it, and then swing the door open.

Some empty shelves, and…

Huh.

Click to shrink...

Well, it probably is one of the biggest empty, secure spaces in the building. Makes sense.

I float inwards. It looks a little like a sawn-off C.A.T. scanner. There's a 'bed', but the machine itself is only deep enough for the subject's head. The machine itself… It looks like it was made by a mid-range supervillain. They had the money for parts, but not to make it look like a unified device in the way that someone with serious money would; parts of the casing don't match the colour of the other parts, and in places the angles are off where something has been laid over innards that it wasn't originally build to contain. The custom parts would have been built here… Yes, there's the work bench and… What was once a clean room. A petrol-powered generator appears to have been the power source.

Click to shrink...

In other words, not an orky junkyard kludge, but not the sleek built-to-spec of someone like Sivana. Small clues but not clear ones.

Prints?

Not found.

Click to shrink...

Well, there goes the easy option. At least for anyone not using a Power Ring.

Wearing gloves the whole time? Perfectly possible. And unusually there's no sign of habitation; no discarded food containers, no chemical toilet or sleeping bag. So living somewhere else? Except this is a big project. For a single individual, this is what they'd have to be focusing on. They wouldn't want to commute. But it's a big building. Plenty of room in the offices upstairs.

Click to shrink...

Bet you'd find all that upstairs, then.

Scan for genetic material.

Orange filaments flicker out, and… Find hairs.

Match found. Jervis Tetch.

Click to shrink...

Well, then. It makes sense, as he has the most neurologically-focused skillset of the likely suspects. His mind-control devices already work on brains, after all.

…

Oh.

Click to shrink...

Kind of anti-climactic, I know.

I jam filaments into the machine, taking note of every part and component. Access the data storage components…

What..? Was he doing? And why?

Click to shrink...

What rabbit hole was he running down with this thing?

Curiouser and curiouser. This promises to be a most peculiar trail of plans. I wonder if someone else had Jervis make this, and whether they also used it to augment themselves the way Lonnie did. Of course, it's unlikely Lonnie himself arranged it, but not impossible. Hopefully he can track down Jervis and ask him directly.

 

[Signaller]

You wouldn't get fingerprints, but if someone was wearing gloves and touched something could you guess their height by the spread of the dust disruption?

 

[Lord Ernest]

So the Mad Hatter again? And the other place, where the kidnapped individual was found, I think the Illustres found it by following leads on Anarky as well, no?

Where is Tetch, anyway?

 

[Mr Zoat]

Mad Hatter's given name is Jervis.

Click to shrink...

That should say 'built'.

Click to shrink...

Extraneous 'like'?
'And'
'built'

Click to shrink...

Thank you, corrected.

 

[Darko]

As I have made very clear,

Click to shrink...

"made it very"

 

[Mr Zoat]

"made it very"

Click to shrink...

No, that's fine as it is.

 

[NightmareWarden]

This is a villain Grayven encouraged Gotham PD to kill by giving them a gun that can shoot through walls.

Is it possible that Jarvis' obsession with finding some Alice is actually important in this universe? Like, he was tasked to do it by an outside source, and he's an unethical pawn in a larger plot. Someone dangerous yet neutral akin to Swamp Thing.

Uhh. Huh... Alices are always blonde, right? And Mad Hatter would want an Alice who thinks she is Alice?

Spoiler: Prediction

So he makes a portable version of this device, adds in some brainwashing. and blasts Kara with it. This could go in a very strange direction with the golden age Supergirl. And the chapter title generally refers to aliens, which Kryptonians count as.

 

[Steelplaza]

I was reading through the Mad Hatter wikipedia entry to remind myself of the various takes on the character. There was an interesting note about the Final Crisis version of the Justifier helmets being a combination of his technology and Apokoliptic technology. That's not necessarily the case with the helmets in WtR, though on the other hand "mind control helmets to transmit Anti-Life" isn't a technology we typically see from Apokolips so it's possible that Tetch was involved in their creation in some capacity.

It seems like there haven't really been a lot of comic stories on Tetch as a "brain expert", though given that he invented purely technological mind control he must know a lot about brains. He appeared for a Secret Six arc where his mind control was able to counteract Dr. Psycho's purely psychic mind control. (I actually recall reading that one when it came out, not just on the wiki.) That arc was interesting because it also had Tetch using his technology to affect his own mind.

One thing that gets me about Tetch is how fundamentally unimaginative his psychosis is. The Joker or Two Face or the Riddler or so on... they work with broad themes. But despite Alice in Wonderland being a work of whimsy and imagination, Tetch doesn't use it as inspiration. He uses it as a script. He's got to be "the Mad Hatter", a very specific character, who has specifically tea, with specifically a girl who must be named Alice. Say what you like about the Joker, but at least he's creative and tries to come up with original material. The Mad Hatter is like a man stuck in a loop, unable to extract his mind from a specific scene in a specific book. What comes after the tea party? He doesn't know; can't imagine it. It's the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, repeating forever. It's like he can't even access the creative part of himself anymore.

Which would imply interesting things about an attempt to fuse the hemispheres of his brain together. Who would Tetch even be if he could imagine things beyond Alice in Wonderland again?