Mandated (part 20)
- Location
- Hampden Park
24th October
17:31 GMT +9
Laser constructs. And if Souma is still alive, find him.
Compliance.
Three five-metre long laser cannons appear alongside me, and images of different parts of Japan flick through my mind. The heavy anti-air defences and fighter screens both China and Japan used during the war made it extremely hard for nuclear bombers to get through. The remains I detected when I first arrived were from impacts which occurred weeks or months apart. Now…
The Home Islands hadn't really been the centre of the Japanese government since the Imperium War -that's in New Tokyo in.. where Peru would be-, and they've never had the same population density as they once did. But there are-. There were a good thirty million people down there. And the centre of Japan's magic education and research program. The shockwaves and heat from the simultaneous blasts have… It's.. just gone. Heck, the winds are visibly tearing at my construct armour even up here. I don't… Think that the place is going to come back from this one.
But I can scan through the clouds.
Target located.
Beams of focused ultra-violet light shimmer through the air between myself and Vandal Savage, burni-.
He turns to look upward at me as my beams vanish entirely about a metre from him.
"Ah, the Orange Lantern. I did think that you would be the first to arrive, though I had assumed that it would take you a little longer."
There's no way that his voice could be heard through the hurricane winds presently levelling what's left of the Home Islands. His voice is at conversational volume, but it sounds like it's coming from everywhere at once. Okay, beams vanishing. Switch to visible light.
"In a way, it is fitting that you and I have time to converse-" Visible light doesn't have a greater effect. I spread my laser constructs out to see if his shield has a limited arc of coverage. It appears not to. "-before the final confrontation. I had doubted that the version of your origin which you put into the public domain was accurate, but your presence here indicates that you were being honest all along."
I try scanning him to get a better idea of how his shield is working. Usually, the shield being invisible means that visible light lasers should go through unobstructed but that's clearly not what's happening here. No, I… The scans I'm getting are distorted. The winds and nearby nuclear detonations make it hard to tell, but I don't think that my lasers are increasing the local temperature. If that's true, they aren't hitting any sort of barrier that I'm familiar with. Energy isn't being absorbed or shunted.
Savage.. floats upwards, rising through the dust clouds without any difficulty at all. Rather than any of the historical aristocrat clothing I'm used to comic and television versions of him wearing, this one has gone for… Some sort of hard body armour and a.. cloak, which is strangely still even in the high winds.
Ring, anything alive in the vicinity of Mount Fuji?
None detected. However, be advised that scans are currently unreliable due to environmental conditions and novel technology.
Understood.
I dismiss the lasers and switch to plasma. Shimmering purple-white ions leap from the gun and.. fade out just before they reach him. Okay, I know there's nothing wrong with the shot. The clouds it passed through were affected appropriately. I dismiss the plasma cannon-
"Please! Take all the shots you want! I can think of no better way to show how utterly ineffectual they are!"
-and generate a beam singularity gun.
"Orange Lantern to all allies. I am about to use a singularity weapon. Stay back."
"A reasonable choice. Still, I am afraid to say that-"
Firing.
The universe.. skips, light being distorted as the beam fires. The dust clouds are sucked inwards, clearing a path where a moment later I can see Savage himself… Entirely unaffected once more.
"A sound choice again. I think you may have just inadvertently caused the Toba catastrophe."
The airborne dust is rapidly refilling the hole I created, but I finally get a clear look at him. Purple robes over golden armour. The armour appears to be of a similar design to what the gynoid had as her outer surface. He's a good deal larger than her, so he clearly hasn't just stripped off her outer casing. Purple robes… Was he making a stable time loop and telling his past self how to do this?
"Given all the history I have seen, it feels a little strange to mention an extinction event I did not personally witness. Of course… Now." He clenches his fist and the ash cloud is gone. "That's hardly a concern."
Ash cloud gone. Teleportation? Not that my ring detected. Transmutation? No, there was no increase or decrease of local temperatures. Volume for volume, ash-filled air has a lot more mass than normal air. Around the.. edge of his cleared zone the air is trying to break back in. I can clearly see the air currents as different textures in the ash, and they're… Just vanishing before they get within one hundred metres.
"And now a small group of third century farmers are wondering why there is a single black cloud in the sky. And will shortly be suffering the first cases of radiation sickness in human history." He looks up at me as he continues to rise. "Do you see, Lantern, what I can now accomplish with a mere wave of my hand?"
Third century-? He sent it backwards it time, bringing the equivalent volume of air forwards. That's… The bombs, they-. No, there weren't any reports of them having only half the expected yield or anything. He can make time repeat as well as transpose it.
Um.
"You really have no recollection of our past conflicts, do you?"
There are ways to take advantage of that, but none that are readily accessible to me. Ugh.
"Where's Souma?"
"Dead. Given his many years of honourable service, I felt it only just to kill him swiftly and painlessly. It's so rare to find that level of dedication in this.. modern era. He didn't even moan when I stuck the knife in."
Kill. Him.
"I see so few familiar faces in this new world. In a way, we-."
ASSIMILATE!
The sky turns orange, Savage's hundred metre exclusion zone battered back centimetre by centimetre as the orange light seizes whatever exotic process he's using to do this. MORE! GET HIM!
"Ah, of course. A fearsome attack in most circumstances. I imagine that you would very much like to make me your puppet in revenge. Sadly for you-" The assimilation effect has covered nearly half the distance now, YES! "-even this is inadequate."
He waves his right hand and-. The orange glow appears to contract. It now stops two metres away from me in all directions. Push harder!
"I have surrounded you in a tiny sphere of the past. Your orange light is reaching past it perfectly well. It simply isn't coming anywhere near me." He comes closer, smiling smugly. "I realise that this iteration of you is not the one who confronted me aboard the Justice League's Watchtower. Intellectually, I understand that the you responsible for me spending two months being continually eaten by hyenas has gone, along with the rest of that troublesome time line. Still, I think I will derive no small measure of satisfaction from killing all of your new allies while you watch."
He turns his head away slightly. I can't hear anything from outside but him, but it looks like a sound has caught his attention.
"And here they come now."
17:31 GMT +9
Laser constructs. And if Souma is still alive, find him.
Compliance.
Three five-metre long laser cannons appear alongside me, and images of different parts of Japan flick through my mind. The heavy anti-air defences and fighter screens both China and Japan used during the war made it extremely hard for nuclear bombers to get through. The remains I detected when I first arrived were from impacts which occurred weeks or months apart. Now…
The Home Islands hadn't really been the centre of the Japanese government since the Imperium War -that's in New Tokyo in.. where Peru would be-, and they've never had the same population density as they once did. But there are-. There were a good thirty million people down there. And the centre of Japan's magic education and research program. The shockwaves and heat from the simultaneous blasts have… It's.. just gone. Heck, the winds are visibly tearing at my construct armour even up here. I don't… Think that the place is going to come back from this one.
But I can scan through the clouds.
Target located.
Beams of focused ultra-violet light shimmer through the air between myself and Vandal Savage, burni-.
He turns to look upward at me as my beams vanish entirely about a metre from him.
"Ah, the Orange Lantern. I did think that you would be the first to arrive, though I had assumed that it would take you a little longer."
There's no way that his voice could be heard through the hurricane winds presently levelling what's left of the Home Islands. His voice is at conversational volume, but it sounds like it's coming from everywhere at once. Okay, beams vanishing. Switch to visible light.
"In a way, it is fitting that you and I have time to converse-" Visible light doesn't have a greater effect. I spread my laser constructs out to see if his shield has a limited arc of coverage. It appears not to. "-before the final confrontation. I had doubted that the version of your origin which you put into the public domain was accurate, but your presence here indicates that you were being honest all along."
I try scanning him to get a better idea of how his shield is working. Usually, the shield being invisible means that visible light lasers should go through unobstructed but that's clearly not what's happening here. No, I… The scans I'm getting are distorted. The winds and nearby nuclear detonations make it hard to tell, but I don't think that my lasers are increasing the local temperature. If that's true, they aren't hitting any sort of barrier that I'm familiar with. Energy isn't being absorbed or shunted.
Savage.. floats upwards, rising through the dust clouds without any difficulty at all. Rather than any of the historical aristocrat clothing I'm used to comic and television versions of him wearing, this one has gone for… Some sort of hard body armour and a.. cloak, which is strangely still even in the high winds.
Ring, anything alive in the vicinity of Mount Fuji?
None detected. However, be advised that scans are currently unreliable due to environmental conditions and novel technology.
Understood.
I dismiss the lasers and switch to plasma. Shimmering purple-white ions leap from the gun and.. fade out just before they reach him. Okay, I know there's nothing wrong with the shot. The clouds it passed through were affected appropriately. I dismiss the plasma cannon-
"Please! Take all the shots you want! I can think of no better way to show how utterly ineffectual they are!"
-and generate a beam singularity gun.
"Orange Lantern to all allies. I am about to use a singularity weapon. Stay back."
"A reasonable choice. Still, I am afraid to say that-"
Firing.
The universe.. skips, light being distorted as the beam fires. The dust clouds are sucked inwards, clearing a path where a moment later I can see Savage himself… Entirely unaffected once more.
"A sound choice again. I think you may have just inadvertently caused the Toba catastrophe."
The airborne dust is rapidly refilling the hole I created, but I finally get a clear look at him. Purple robes over golden armour. The armour appears to be of a similar design to what the gynoid had as her outer surface. He's a good deal larger than her, so he clearly hasn't just stripped off her outer casing. Purple robes… Was he making a stable time loop and telling his past self how to do this?
"Given all the history I have seen, it feels a little strange to mention an extinction event I did not personally witness. Of course… Now." He clenches his fist and the ash cloud is gone. "That's hardly a concern."
Ash cloud gone. Teleportation? Not that my ring detected. Transmutation? No, there was no increase or decrease of local temperatures. Volume for volume, ash-filled air has a lot more mass than normal air. Around the.. edge of his cleared zone the air is trying to break back in. I can clearly see the air currents as different textures in the ash, and they're… Just vanishing before they get within one hundred metres.
"And now a small group of third century farmers are wondering why there is a single black cloud in the sky. And will shortly be suffering the first cases of radiation sickness in human history." He looks up at me as he continues to rise. "Do you see, Lantern, what I can now accomplish with a mere wave of my hand?"
Third century-? He sent it backwards it time, bringing the equivalent volume of air forwards. That's… The bombs, they-. No, there weren't any reports of them having only half the expected yield or anything. He can make time repeat as well as transpose it.
Um.
"You really have no recollection of our past conflicts, do you?"
There are ways to take advantage of that, but none that are readily accessible to me. Ugh.
"Where's Souma?"
"Dead. Given his many years of honourable service, I felt it only just to kill him swiftly and painlessly. It's so rare to find that level of dedication in this.. modern era. He didn't even moan when I stuck the knife in."
Kill. Him.
"I see so few familiar faces in this new world. In a way, we-."
ASSIMILATE!
The sky turns orange, Savage's hundred metre exclusion zone battered back centimetre by centimetre as the orange light seizes whatever exotic process he's using to do this. MORE! GET HIM!
"Ah, of course. A fearsome attack in most circumstances. I imagine that you would very much like to make me your puppet in revenge. Sadly for you-" The assimilation effect has covered nearly half the distance now, YES! "-even this is inadequate."
He waves his right hand and-. The orange glow appears to contract. It now stops two metres away from me in all directions. Push harder!
"I have surrounded you in a tiny sphere of the past. Your orange light is reaching past it perfectly well. It simply isn't coming anywhere near me." He comes closer, smiling smugly. "I realise that this iteration of you is not the one who confronted me aboard the Justice League's Watchtower. Intellectually, I understand that the you responsible for me spending two months being continually eaten by hyenas has gone, along with the rest of that troublesome time line. Still, I think I will derive no small measure of satisfaction from killing all of your new allies while you watch."
He turns his head away slightly. I can't hear anything from outside but him, but it looks like a sound has caught his attention.
"And here they come now."
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