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

[Mr Zoat]

'me'

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Thank you, corrected.

Wait, is this the real Starbreaker, or does this copy just think/act as if it is the real one?

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Grayven doesn't know for certain, but believes it to have been a fake.

For a sufficiently wide definition of killed. All Grayven did was talk to him. Artemis is one one who struck the actual blow.

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It was a team thing.

 

[Ciber]

Is the sword of the fallen causing all these fake constructs to reincarnate as humans?

 

[Mr Zoat]

Is the sword of the fallen causing all these fake constructs to reincarnate as humans?

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Grayven doesn't know, but assumes not.

 

[NightmareWarden]

If this is an angel, I wonder if its powers can destabilize the Sword of the Fallen. Angels apparently destroyed Paragon-OL's blade after his death.

If the Angel has been here for billions of years, then he might not recognize the Second of the Fallen and Third as demons, merely "creations of the Lord" based on their magical presences.

I wonder if this world is associated with a particular afterlife? Or if something like the New Cronus arc is happening, but it was aborted before it could flourish? Aimless energy remains, for the angel to stew in.

 

[Attention Counting]

If the Angel has been here for billions of years, then he might not recognize the Second of the Fallen and Third as demons, merely "creations of the Lord" based on their magical presences.

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Wouldn't an Angel notice the Second's and the Third's demonic nature though? They're still demons, just ones directly created by God.

 

[NightmareWarden]

Wouldn't an Angel notice the Second's and the Third's demonic nature though? They're still demons, just ones directly created by God.

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Depends how strongly the sword-energies are disrupting them. The normal rules for demons don't really apply to them right now.

I'm assuming demons have a scent which is recognized, rather than a mental flag of "demonic entity, flagged as anti-God's-Plan, Ex-TER-Min-ATE!" So the angel would need to have been informed that demons exist and are bad. If demons were first widely identified after it was exiled, then it'd be ignorant.

 

[Steelplaza]

If the Angel has been here for billions of years

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I sincerely doubt that long. Whatever is going on almost certainly arrived in the strike on the surface that left the impact crater, and that wasn't billions of years ago. What Hinon said:

And there's some evidence of an orbital strike, or… Significant planetary impact, in the recent past.

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Now that's "recent past" by Hinon's standards, of course, but even for her that probably means thousands or tens of thousands of years, not millions much less billions.

 

[Attention Counting]

Depends how strongly the sword-energies are disrupting them. The normal rules for demons don't really apply to them right now.

I'm assuming demons have a scent which is recognized, rather than a mental flag of "demonic entity, flagged as anti-God's-Plan, Ex-TER-Min-ATE!"

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Why would the "sword-energies" be separate from the demonic nature and origin of the sword? What special energy does the sword emanate that would distract from the sword's demonic energy? I don't remember anything like that.

I'm assuming demons have a scent which is recognized, rather than a mental flag of "demonic entity, flagged as anti-God's-Plan, Ex-TER-Min-ATE!" So the angel would need to have been informed that demons exist and are bad. If demons were first widely identified after it was exiled, then it'd be ignorant.

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As far as I remember it, Demons existed either before matter was created or shortly (comparatively) after so I find it unlikely that there any Angels don't know about Demons. Also, we have seen Angels in this story have an instinct in being able to identify all things demonic and "wrong" so even hypothetical ignorance can't shield them from seeing it being antithetical to themself.

Also, it's not impossible that Hinon managed to not notice an Angel who would presumably been there since the Big Bang (or a similar early time as they would have not known what Demons are in your hypothesis) but I do find it similarly unlikely.

 

[Darko]

This might not be an Angel, bit it could be a Source-powered entity.

There were those angel-looking aliens that left a powerful device that Actually Grayven wanted.

 

[Mr Zoat]

This might not be an Angel, bit it could be a Source-powered entity.

There were those angel-looking aliens that left a powerful device that Actually Grayven wanted.

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In an earlier outline, it was.

 

[Prince Charon]

It was a team thing.

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Ah, and because of how Grayven has developed his God-Name/metaphysique/whatever, that matters narratively more for him than it would for a New God who isn't a team player?

 

[Mr Zoat]

20th August 2013
12:46 GMT -7

And in the centre of the crater is…

Not a lot. Iname is twitching, jerking from place to place as if what's here will have change since the last time she looked. Persuader's kicking at the ground, oddly-shaped stones-.
Magistrate's Judgement
Ah. That's not a stone.

Iname looks around. "Master, there's nothing-."

I silence her by raising my right hand. Then I bend down next to one of the larger 'stones' displaced by Persuader's boot, pick it up and brush it off…

"Master, is that metal?"
Lawful Investigation
"Scan."

"Well spotted, Lantern Grayven. Metal composition matches alloy used in the hull armour of Knights of Passage capital ships. It's impossible to determine exactly what ship this came from, and advanced armour is highly resistant to corrosion."

Iname looks around. "A spaceship crashed here? Is that what killed everything?"

I shake my head. "Not unless they've started building super dreadnaughts." Or death stars. "But it is a little odd that they haven't recovered it."

And now that I look across the landscape, other erosion-resist shapes start to stand out. Given how long ago it would have had to have been, and how extensive the damage appears to have been, I can't even tell how… Many ships there were.

Hah.

"New question, girls. We're at the bottom of a crater and it only stops raining when the opposition act against us. Where's all the water? This should be a sea."

"Um." Iname looks around with new eyes, but doesn't appear to have any idea.

"Err, evaporated?"

I shake my head, though it's nice that sending Persuader back to high school has produced a positive result. "No. Not enough sunlight or heat. Sinestro, what's happening beneath us?"
Lawful Investigation
"Your surmise is correct, Lantern Grayven. There is a large hollow beneath us, apparently held in place by a combination of rock and wreckage. The surrounding rock has enough fractures to allow a truly vast quantity of water to be stored there."

"Master? You said that the Knights fought your grandfather?"

"Yeah. I don't remember anything about them fighting in this system, but there was a lot of fighting going on all over the galaxy."

I consider Sinestro for a moment. Cutting our way down makes a degree of sense, but if our best way to remain empowered is to use our New God powers then it's probably best to use compatible technology.

Mother Box?
Direct the War
Ping.

BOOM!

Iname's through before I can say anything, while Persuader hangs back for a moment. "Is that safe?"

I step through, and she can come through or not. Dark down here, and there's a constant noise of water dripping down rock and running down the metal wreckage in rivulets. Where I'm standing isn't under water, but by the echo…

Iname tosses a couple of glow sticks around, but that's not really doing much to light the place up. Really, all it's doing in emphasising the darkness.

"…thing!" Persuader comes through behind me, looking around. "Oh, hey, we didn't die."

"Did you bring any sort of lights?"

"My phone's got a light."

"Perhaps not."
I Am Above This
Ring, fabricate light globes.

By your command.

Ah, much better. Yes, this actually looks like… Like someone took the wreckage and deliberately shaped it. Or at least boarded the ships while they were still functional and smashed holes in convenient locations. Right, unless I'm very much misremembering, we're in a Deterrence class battleship… Or bits of it, at least. What I can see looks a little too even to be the result of a fortuitous crash.

Stranger and stranger.

"Iname?"

She appears in front of me. "Master?"

"Found anything?"

"Yyyyes, Master, but… You should take a look."

I nod. "Lead the way."

Whoever built this place at least wedged everything in solidly. Flying here would be awkward so I settle for picking my way across the wreckage carefully, gripping the solid-looking places above me with my hands, and gingerly testing the resilience of the floor beneath me. It doesn't even creak, and I'm not sure if that's the results of centuries of sediment and settling or the work of whoever built it.

Iname just dances across like it's Baby's First Parkour Course. An advantage she has from weighing about a hundredth of what I do.

"Here, Master." She stands on… I think that's an observation platform which an officer would use to oversee the Knight's marines. Someone's ripped it out and torn off one of the walls-.

"I.. see." And I carefully don't get closer to the Apokoliptian Transferral Node. Big model, far larger than anything I've used anywhere except the Absolute Dominion. Looks like it should be able to handle bigger applications of spiritual power than I'm capable of exerting-.

And there's another one over there.

"Well spotted, don't touch them with your hand or your soul."

"No, Master."

Persuader approaches from behind me. "How about my axe?"

"Not at this stage."

"So is there, like, a New God down here?"

"No, we'd all have felt that. My best guess is that there's someone trapped down here… And whoever put them here did something to prevent them ever leaving."

"A good guy, or a bad guy?"

"Apokolips and New Genesis use the same sort of technology, so it could go either way. And don't assume that the prisoner isn't bad just because they fought Apokolips. We don't like people diluting our trademarks."

Iname nods. "Should I look for them?"

"No. We don't know what whoever put that there did to this place. I've been assuming that they were interfering with our arcane abilities, but if someone really strong put that there, it might be them instead."

Persuader looks up. "And all the dead people?"

"No, that took active control. Whoever did that is on site." I stare at the supersized Transferral Node. "And what I'm really worried about-."

Iname's eyes widen. "Your grandfather."

"Yeah. Because I've never heard of someone on the Source Wall being aware of anything, but if I was trying to build a machine that could make that happen… It would involve things like that. Proceed carefully."

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

20th August 2013
12:46 GMT -7

And in the centre of the crater is…

Not a lot. Iname is twitching, jerking from place to place as if what's here will have change since the last time she looked. Persuader's kicking at the ground, oddly-shaped stones-.
Magistrate's Judgement
Ah. That's not a stone.

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Not the same kind of material as the rest of the crater, eh? So if it's not stone, it's probably metal. Something had to make this crater, I suppose, and a spaceship crashing at speed would do the trick...

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

Iname looks around. "Master, there's nothing-."

I silence her by raising my right hand. Then I bend down next to one of the larger 'stones' displaced by Persuader's boot, pick it up and brush it off…

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Sometimes, ladies, it pays to observe, not just look around.

"Master, is that metal?"
Lawful Investigation
"Scan."

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Reinforcing Ringnestro just as he did the Orange Ring, I see.

"Well spotted, Lantern Grayven. Metal composition matches alloy used in the hull armour of Knights of Passage capital ships. It's impossible to determine exactly what ship this came from, and advanced armour is highly resistant to corrosion."

Iname looks around. "A spaceship crashed here? Is that what killed everything?"

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Maybe if it came in at near-lightspeed? Though the faster the impact, the less likely there's be any intact pieces.

I shake my head. "Not unless they've started building super dreadnaughts." Or death stars. "But it is a little odd that they haven't recovered it."

And now that I look across the landscape, other erosion-resist shapes start to stand out. Given how long ago it would have had to have been, and how extensive the damage appears to have been, I can't even tell how… Many ships there were.

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So this is something more like an antlion's pit. Attracting ships in only to pull them out of the sky... Or controlling the crew into crashing.

Hah.

"New question, girls. We're at the bottom of a crater and it only stops raining when the opposition act against us. Where's all the water? This should be a sea."

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That's a good question, Renegade. Well spotted.

"Um." Iname looks around with new eyes, but doesn't appear to have any idea.

"Err, evaporated?"

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Ah well, can't expect everything from them. They're still young.

I shake my head, though it's nice that sending Persuader back to high school has produced a positive result. "No. Not enough sunlight or heat. Sinestro, what's happening beneath us?"
Lawful Investigation
"Your surmise is correct, Lantern Grayven. There is a large hollow beneath us, apparently held in place by a combination of rock and wreckage. The surrounding rock has enough fractures to allow a truly vast quantity of water to be stored there."

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A vast cave, flooded? Oh, that's never a good sign.

"Master? You said that the Knights fought your grandfather?"

"Yeah. I don't remember anything about them fighting in this system, but there was a lot of fighting going on all over the galaxy."

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Maybe a battle that never went recorded? Or some coincidental fighting.

I consider Sinestro for a moment. Cutting our way down makes a degree of sense, but if our best way to remain empowered is to use our New God powers then it's probably best to use compatible technology.

Mother Box?
Direct the War
Ping.

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"Seismic scans complete. I can put you on the edge of the vessel's structure." Presumably there's quite a lot of rock between them and the epicenter...

BOOM!

Iname's through before I can say anything, while Persuader hangs back for a moment. "Is that safe?"

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That's going to get her into trouble at some point. Hopefully she learns before it costs her dearly.

I step through, and she can come through or not. Dark down here, and there's a constant noise of water dripping down rock and running down the metal wreckage in rivulets. Where I'm standing isn't under water, but by the echo…

Iname tosses a couple of glow sticks around, but that's not really doing much to light the place up. Really, all it's doing in emphasising the darkness.

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I'm guessing there are millions of micro-fissures, acting like drains to let the water in through sandy soil...

"…thing!" Persuader comes through behind me, looking around. "Oh, hey, we didn't die."

"Did you bring any sort of lights?"

"My phone's got a light."

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I don't think a single LED is going to cut it here. Especially since those are battery-hogs and I don't think you're gonna find somewhere to charge it out here.

"Perhaps not."
I Am Above This
Ring, fabricate light globes.

By your command.

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I suppose that's one way to work around the whole issue. Though them having light also means they'll be advertising their presence to anything around here.

Ah, much better. Yes, this actually looks like… Like someone took the wreckage and deliberately shaped it. Or at least boarded the ships while they were still functional and smashed holes in convenient locations. Right, unless I'm very much misremembering, we're in a Deterrence class battleship… Or bits of it, at least. What I can see looks a little too even to be the result of a fortuitous crash.

Click to shrink...

So it set down with some measure of control, possibly blasting its way into the surface and... Somehow pulled the ground over it like a blanket.

Stranger and stranger.

"Iname?"

She appears in front of me. "Master?"

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Already scouting about, I expect. Risky, given they don't know what could be around here. At least she'd more than likely not be ambushed, given she'd be faster than almost anything.

"Found anything?"

"Yyyyes, Master, but… You should take a look."

I nod. "Lead the way."

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If she's nervous about it, then it must be something troublesome indeed.

Whoever built this place at least wedged everything in solidly. Flying here would be awkward so I settle for picking my way across the wreckage carefully, gripping the solid-looking places above me with my hands, and gingerly testing the resilience of the floor beneath me. It doesn't even creak, and I'm not sure if that's the results of centuries of sediment and settling or the work of whoever built it.

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Hopefully the designers foresaw the risk of a crash-landing in a full-gravity environment and designed for it. Some fictional starships really do not look like they'd do well touching down on a planet's surface, externally or internally. Not all such ships are designed to withstand their own weight...

Iname just dances across like it's Baby's First Parkour Course. An advantage she has from weighing about a hundredth of what I do.

"Here, Master." She stands on… I think that's an observation platform which an officer would use to oversee the Knight's marines. Someone's ripped it out and torn off one of the walls-.

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Wonder if it was done with bare hands or tools? Either would leave clear marks.

"I.. see." And I carefully don't get closer to the Apokoliptian Transferral Node. Big model, far larger than anything I've used anywhere except the Absolute Dominion. Looks like it should be able to handle bigger applications of spiritual power than I'm capable of exerting-.

Click to shrink...

Okay, I doubt that's standard equipment in any sort of ship fighting against an Apokaliptian fleet. Might be an after-market modification to allow Narrative combat, or someone jammed it in after the crash...

And there's another one over there.

"Well spotted, don't touch them with your hand or your soul."

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Somehow, I don't think he wants to try channelling power through them anytime.

"No, Master."

Persuader approaches from behind me. "How about my axe?"

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So glad Artemis isn't here or she'd probably need to make a joke about 'her bow.'

"Not at this stage."

"So is there, like, a New God down here?"

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Good question. There's been no Godspeech from anything except them, hasn't there. And if whatever was creating illusions was capable of Narrative combat, it's have been doing it to them by now.

"No, we'd all have felt that. My best guess is that there's someone trapped down here… And whoever put them here did something to prevent them ever leaving."

"A good guy, or a bad guy?"

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Consider what you've seen so far, and ask that again.

"Apokolips and New Genesis use the same sort of technology, so it could go either way. And don't assume that the prisoner isn't bad just because they fought Apokolips. We don't like people diluting our trademarks."

Iname nods. "Should I look for them?"

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And run into something gribbly down here?

"No. We don't know what whoever put that there did to this place. I've been assuming that they were interfering with our arcane abilities, but if someone really strong put that there, it might be them instead."

Persuader looks up. "And all the dead people?"

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So it may be that the nullifying effect is part of the prison, not an act by the prisoner...

"No, that took active control. Whoever did that is on site." I stare at the supersized Transferral Node. "And what I'm really worried about-."

Iname's eyes widen. "Your grandfather."

"Yeah. Because I've never heard of someone on the Source Wall being aware of anything, but if I was trying to build a machine that could make that happen… It would involve things like that. Proceed carefully."

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Especially if Yuga Khan was a New God of Fear. He did also have illusion powers...

And now we've gone from open fighting on a near-featureless plain to dungeon-crawling through a spaceship. Getting Doom³ vibes now. Or 'Event Horizon'. At least the Renegade doesn't have to decide between light or gun. Really getting the feeling they inadvertently stepped into someone else's prison by mistake... And they may have to break it to leave.

 

[Darko]

here will have change since the last

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"changed"