Amalgam [Young Justice / Ben 10 SI]
- Thread starter Hmmaster
- Start date
- Location
- Colorado
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wait GREG is in charge of the resistance? Now that's interesting...
That alien that Cassian fought, although not directly namedropped, appears to match the description of a Vaxasaurian (the same species as Humungousaur), seems the Reach is using all sorts of aliens now as part of their plan. It's also interesting to see Aggregor being the resistance leader, and if the Plumbers are gonna have to intervene on Osmos V to help protect the Osmosians.
- Location
- Alabama
I was expecting someone to notice that it was Aggregor that met Jula, back during the start of the invasion, when she was hiding in the Capital. I didn't name drop him then, but that was the intent!
And yes, that was a Vaxasaurian. Carnifex does not have a lot of records for different species across the cosmos, because Osmos V is not a space age planet. There are a few whose Plumber classification names have been told to the media, by the Reach most likely, but not every assailant in this fake invasion has been identified.
Last edited:
I'm glad that Osmosians are a thing. The Omniverse retcon about them was really unnecessary.
0.14
- Location
- Alabama
OSMOS V
May 12, 23:11 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Jula was likely the last truly familiar face I'd see before our largest scale operation to date would begin. The woman had not stopped tinkering for weeks in preparation, her assistants following her every order like worker bees. In the hive that was her sanctum, on the eve of the operation, she barely had time to look me in the eye as I settled in nearby to watch and, if I can, help.
"Shouldn't you be getting rest?" She did not look toward me, instead gesturing to something rather large on a nearby platform.
I lifted what appeared to be retrofitted Reach plasma cannon with ease, its metal cool to the touch while an active power core delivered heat. I narrowly avoided three other nearby workers in the cramped factory floor, swinging the barrel of the too-large thing around to pass it to her upon her perch. She was affixed to a stationary arm, a metal cord holding her stable, while she worked on her latest series of prototypes.
"I tried to sleep," I muttered. "I couldn't stop spiraling. Everything… everything could go wrong tomorrow, and I could be the reason- what even-?"
"Cass," she warned, this time looking away from the tools in her hand and nearly knocking the arm out of place. "You are one piece of an immense puzzle. You won't be the only Gifted out there, and you won't be the only kid out there either. Stop hoarding all the burden, or you'll worry yourself into your horns."
Point taken. "But Jula, they're trusting me to lead a squad."
She blanched, face frozen beneath her glasses.
"Oh. I thought you knew," I mumbled. "Aggregor's tasked me with guiding a group tomorrow. Orders are-"
She dropped suddenly from her perch, dangled by the cord until she unlatched it. With a snap her fingers, two of her assistants hurriedly finished their tasks so that they could finish hers. This place did not function without her, and watching her worker bees assemble what very well might be our ace in the whole tomorrow was almost fun to witness.
"What is Aggregor thinking?"
Jula hastily left the interior of the factory through the tunnels leading to other sections of the compound, and I followed in her footsteps.
"Where are you goin-"
"To give the bastard a piece of my mind," she angrily explained, nearly running right into a group of toddlers playing tag amid the shadowed corners of the complex.
I frowned. "Jula, I didn't tell you so you could-"
"I know you didn't, Cassian," she interrupted tersely. "You don't have any responsibility in what is about to happen."
"But I don't-"
"Cass, please-"
"Stop goddamn interrupting me!"
Her pace slowed to a stop in front of the ration line, re-opened from dinner for any civilians who were going to be staying behind tomorrow. Several onlookers watched us with interest, and I did not want this to be some kind of show.
"Fine. Talk."
I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for the permission to talk."
She had the decency to act mollified.
"Jula, don't bother him with this tonight, there's too much at stake."
"Like your life?" she interjected. "Kid, you're a kid! If I don't-"
"You and I both know I haven't been a kid for a long time." In more ways than she was even aware. "My piece of the plan is simple, Jula – take and hold Distinian Mine long enough to arm the workers within to our side, then wait for naval support to arrive. If any Triarchy forces come that way, we give them hell – analysts aren't predicting that it will be a heavy focus during the battle, as our main forces will be elsewhere."
Jula paced slightly and then whirled on me. "Good to hear you so confident then. I guess the scared little boy from four minutes ago is gone?"
"No, but I… I'm trying to think it all through."
Jula started to reply and then held her tongue. With a single spin, she continued her race down the steel corridors, this time fully bowling over an elderly Osmosian with a fish-like face. I muttered an apology to the woman and followed after my aunt, knowing that I couldn't stop her if I tried.
Where this woman went, people noticed. Everyone who had even the slightest inkling into how the fight had progressed thus far knew she held one of the most central roles. A pretty face, media savvy, and a frankly ingenious intellect. With each invention of hers – or of her underlings – she turned the tide both literally and metaphorically, and Carnifex would have likely already lost without her expertise in robotics alone.
When she approached the closed session of the council leadership, the guards did not put up a fight as she barreled through the door and I followed after, by virtue of her and not of my own importance. I knew that.
Carnifex had always held a council of advisors as their upper echelon, and it had only become more rigid in structure as the years passed. Within the large circular chamber, the room alit with screens displaying live maps of the northern hemisphere and other important pieces of data, there were a few dozen men and women gathered together to be party to the decision-making. Former artists, lawyers, Legionnaires, carpenters, teachers – the list went on. At the center of the throng of people lay the statuesque Osmosian man whom everyone seemed to admire and respect. He'd carried the group through several trials and tribulations to reach this pivotal moment, and none of us would have gotten this far without him.
I slipped through the crowd as deftly as I could, a crowd that nearly split for Jula's brisk walking pace. She planted herself in front of Aggregor with a look of challenge on her face, and I pushed my way through to the man's side. There were clearly important last minute discussions about logistics, tactics, or other matters we were interrupting.
"We need to talk," the woman snappily demanded.
Aggregor met her gaze and then found mine. "If you've a problem with my placement of your nephew's talents, know that it was not my decision alone."
My brow furrowed.
"You're entrusting a key part of the plan for Vincendis to a thirteen year old. A mine mere blocks away from the harbor we're delivering the naval support and the Aggrebots."
… Oh.
"I have full faith and trust in Cassian," Aggregor answered simply. "He has the most intimate knowledge of your drones, Jula, and he has a record of established successes with arming and recruiting more rebels."
"That district will be a war-zone."
"The whole area will be a war-zone," Aggregor corrected. "Rest assured that we are invested in total victory. An escape hatch is in place, and we will provide reinforcements as necessary. The council did not make this decision lightly, and as mentioned, the decision was not mine alone." The man scanned the room until his eyes settled on a familiar figure.
One of the representatives of the un-Gifted, the un-exceptional: my Grandfather, Maximus. When Jula realized, she rolled her eyes.
"It was my idea," Maximus called out from across the chamber. "A kid leading that offense will make it low-profile. Their intelligence will expect key maneuvers from others with more experience, in other areas. And let's face it – no one his age has more experience."
"You're all insane," Jula said. "All of you. Insane. When this fails, know that I told you so."
"Jula, I-"
"Don't want to hear it, Cassian," the woman replied tersely. "I have work to do. Actually get some rest this time, because you'll need it now more than ever."
As she left the chamber in a hurry, business for the council returned to usual, as though there had not been an interruption at all. I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. Maximus patted me once comfortingly.
"I believe in you, kid."
… Did I believe in myself enough to lead an offensive like this?
OSMOS V
May 13, 06:28 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
An hour after the broadcast ended, the first boots hit the ground on the outskirts of the city streets and began moving slowly into position, building by building, block by block. Volleys of blaster-fire erupted into the city-state from multiple angles, while vehicles moved into position to accost the offenders and the defenders.
The streets were unfortunately not entirely empty – Carnifex gave the civilians an hour to escape the city or to shelter in place, but promised them thirty additional minutes. Maximus supposed it was the only way to ensure that we gave the innocents a chance to get to safety or even to fight back, while also ensuring that the Triarchy did not have as much time to mobilize a defensive. Unfortunately, what advantage that really gave them was not particularly strong, for Vincendis was a powerfully reinforced location.
Maximus had read the reports. The city had been under periodic siege from a group of aliens who could fly, could swim, and shoot biotic energy from their bodies. They moved as fast through the sea as they did through the sky, and it was an insidious play on the part of the Reach. They could squat as many forces as they wanted within perhaps the only city in all of the world that could hold a candle to the resources of the Capital. They'd been under heavy occupation for months now, likely from knowledge that Carnifex were gunning for it.
Liberating this place? Well, it would be a lightning rod offensive to gather others to their cause. Carnifex would have the faith of the people, and open rebellion would start everywhere.
Maximus believed it anyway.
The man himself was one member of a larger offensive. Several key locations were targets within the city, places that could become defensible positions for a longer siege. He was one of many men and women sent to capture the largest bank, use its vaults as a command post. Heavy ordinance, dozens of soldiers, and several Gifted and Exceptions were among their resources.
Maximus was not in charge – he was not a prize among the council – but he served his role well.
Clutching at the seat of the convoy vehicle, three inches of solid metal were the only things between him and the soldiers that were beginning to swarm the streets, firing into the vehicles that ran, full speed ahead, to break apart blockades and pierce into the city's interior. If they moved quickly, if they held strong, they would be in a good position by nightfall, and so Maximus heard and felt the vehicle speed into a higher gear.
They slid – almost tumbled – through a narrow side passage, leaving a blockade on a major road just behind them. Plasma struck the siding from all angles but one, and Maximus gripped his weapon tighter by his side. Nervous energy filled the cabin, and each superheated shot that hit might be the one that hits a pivotal component and takes the vehicle down.
"All right, gonna peel off. Rendezvous on the main thoroughfare in ten."
Maximus blinked at the woman in uniform. He'd never met her, and from the look of her horns, she was older too. It was not the first time someone tried something like that, but it wouldn't be the last.
With a hand on the ceiling above them, the Gifted rebel became the same material as the vehicle. A heavy kick later, and the back panel slid open. She leaped into the space behind them, rolled through the dirt, and tanked two plasma shots in the torso. In but a split second, she became the primary target of any soldiers nearby, and she darted toward the blockade and began ripping it apart.
The vehicle turned a sharp corner, and Maximus lost sight of her.
Not a moment later, the man took a breath and joined the others on foot. He fired his rifle into the line of defenders, while others took shots toward those at sniper positions. Amid the chaos, someone sent the order, and a chrome Jula-Drone launched itself from the top of the vehicle, beeped audibly once, and then went active camo. It integrated into the squad's communication channel, and Maximus heard the orders from on high that would define the next several hours of his chaotic life.
OSMOS V
May 13, 06:46 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
The Distinian Mines had been turned into a prisoner labor camp – specifically, one for high-profile prisoners, like soldiers or other turncoats who refused to play along with the Triarchy's games. Put them all inside and get them mining. Ore, precious metals – resources that were historically in abundance for Vincendis and a large part of why they were able to compete. Add in the Gifted and how our powers interact with materials like gemstones? It was a wonder they weren't even richer than they were.
The mine formed in a large region of the island's northern face and was close to the city-state's largest harbor. Logistically, this must have been a boon for them, but right now? It only terrified me, and the others in the small squad were in a similar state.
One Gifted – a man nearly three times my age who had never fought in anything before now, today, and only a couple of months of training.
Three Exceptions. A college-aged woman with a minor telekinetic tether. A nearly geriatric man with a peg-leg and the ability to spout potent acid snot. An athletic man with an attitude problem who could turn into a bestial form, complete with claws and razor sharp teeth.
Five unpowered Osmosians who each had a plethora of experience from different walks of life, but all had been trained on stealthier tactics. One pair of them – the twins – were among the best lockpicks in the business, and nifty with all sorts of knives and other weaponry; they were among the only members of the group I could count on to be helpful, here.
Approaching the mine had been surprisingly easy. We'd arrived in the area more than three hours ago, long before the fighting was due to start. Under the cover of the early morning light, we'd bypassed security measures on its perimeter, killed a few guards, and successfully managed to secure one of the four observation towers overlooking the mine's complex. It had not been so easy to take this particular tower, but we'd managed by the skin of our teeth to hold it for now.
I looked toward the bestial man, whose features were still rugged and human-looking. "Sardon, when you hear the signal, rendezvous with the reserve trio. Get these workers armed, get them dangerous, and escort them to the escape hatch."
Sardon gruffly nodded. "Got it."
The reserve trio were two teenagers – older than me but unpowered – who'd been chosen to stay behind on the outskirts of the mine, to lie in wait for extraction. They were there as manpower when it came time to arm these former soldiers and turn them against the Reach, against the Triarchy. This trick had been effective before, though perhaps not on this scale, and I could only hope that I'd manage to get inside and liberate the prisoners before they were discovered.
The last of the trio was the only member of the mission younger than me: Marcilia, a girl I refused to put into direct harm's way. She'd developed an Exception, one that helped her to heal others, and if not for its strategic use, I'd have complained more and forced her to stay home.
Our collective signal to get started interrupted the last vestiges of leadership I could offer to the assembled before we were set to begin.
The fighting in the city had begun.
From the angle of the tower, we could see bombs, explosions, flickers of light and plasma. Vehicles were on the move, people were fleeing, people were fighting. It was madness.
Madness that lit up the mine's administration like a stick disturbing an anthill.
The twins had been trying to hack the observation deck's terminal, to access the camera feed and display it for us, but they hadn't had the time to finish. We weren't the perfect oiled machine for this job, but we didn't have the most important job. Jula had been right to worry, but at the end of the day, we were one piece of a larger whole.
"Let's get cracking."
OSMOS V
May 13, 08:18 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Aggregor launched himself from a large building and landed atop an upturned vehicle, the engine burning with an intense flame. As it licked his skin, he allowed it to become part of himself, putting out the fire and invigorating his overall ability. He sent the energy into his muscles, into his flesh, into his bones and felt himself become immensely stronger, even if for a time.
The staff in his hand spun with energy and exploded with power, cascading pure concussive force in blasts of red light. Each impact emitted a shockwave that forced assailants to go flying, bludgeoned to death on contact with wherever they landed. He fired three more times, creating three more explosions, before he roared with challenge, "Is that the best you can do? Challenge me!"
The Triarchy renewed their efforts and delivered a wave of soldiers into the inferno that had once been a park. A Gifted soldier rushed at Aggregor, abandoning the ineffective blaster as he became like concrete, and aiming to tackle the leader of Carnifex to the ground. The Osmosian rebel leader saw the motion coming and prepared to evade and then punish the soldier for trying, but the loyalist was not alone. Peppered shots from weapons nearby provided covering fire, and Aggregor missed his chance.
A concrete-covered man slammed into his body and threw him to the ground.
For a moment, there was a struggle, but Aggregor had the strength advantage due to the foreign power pulsing through his veins. With a solidly-placed kick, the stone torso snapped backward so hard it cracked slightly in the back, revealing a line of skin under the stone.
Aggregor raised his spear, performed a twisted swipe of its superheated edge, and bifurcated the man for leaving himself so open.
The rebel roared once more and launched himself as high as he could with a bounding leap. On the downward arc, he spun his spear in every direction that he could, blasting more of the loyalist scum to pieces. As he landed, some of his allies entered the fray alongside him and began to overtake the territory, engaging with the enemy, and leaving him room to make adjustments.
He swept his weapon over the park, feeling the swirling heat of its flames entering the spear's edge and empowering it to even higher levels. Its pointed edge was so hot that he could feel the heat beneath his fingers, several inches away from the blade.
Loyalists continued to pour from every angle in droves, vehicles unleashing each small group into key points of defense. From the reports in his ear, the city had yet to field any Reach soldiers or even any Reach tech, but it was only a matter of time until they drew them out.
Aggregor could not wait.
He aimed his spear true and unleashed a line of super-heated energy that cut through three oncoming vehicles. Metal, glass, plastic, and flesh scattered in wind and fire.
OSMOS V
May 13, 08:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
I pressed a finger against a security panel and felt its delicious energy become mine. I don't have time to enjoy the taste, the expression, though, as my comms continue to ramble in my ear.
"Aggrebots in boot sequence," Jula's voice called over the encrypted channels to everyone with the need to know. A few others barked orders to her, but I tuned it out.
A single pulse of borrowed electricity from my finger later, and the door in front of myself and my partner in this operation opened. Beyond it, like we expected from pilfered blueprints, was the mine's on-site medical bay. We were not taking any prisoners, so when two guards sensed our presence, shot up from their perches, and readied a call for backup, they were instead splattered into a melted mess. Nirocinio lifted his finger from one nostril when the coast looked to be clear and gave a small nod.
"Your powers are gross."
"At least I'm not a snot-nosed brat."
… "Touche."
"What?"
"Never mind," I redirected. "Grab as much medicine as you can carry and be ready to hand it off to the twins when you see 'em."
Distantly, a bestial scream followed by the whistle of blaster shots echoed throughout the mine.
"You got three minutes, maybe. I'm moving ahead."
Nirocinio gave a nod and swiftly began pulling for supplies, while I slipped through the adjoining rooms and exited back into one of the central hallways. A flurry of activity greeted me, though the assembled mining staff and soldiers headed away from me and toward the sound of the disturbance: a beastly Exception. Only one managed to notice me, but he met a face full of fist and collapsed onto the ground, pooling in blood, his communicator blaring with a voice and asking for an update.
I crushed it for good measure.
I used the furry distraction to my advantage, and as practiced, so should the others. I made it through the next segment of the complex undisturbed, until I linked with them. The only other Gifted, Florian, alongside his telekinetic partner, Zenia, were engaged in a fight with guards near the entrance to the miners' quarters when I finally arrived there. Bits of rock and loose metal swirled around the girl like a planet while she ran directly at her opponents, caught in her debris field. Meanwhile, Florian boxed two soldiers, his upper body only partially metal. The enemy were getting the upper hand, but they weren't prepared to be third-partied.
I bounded on them, transformed fully into the iron paneling on the wall, and took them down with surprising ease. One managed a lucky shot on my side with a plasma pistol, but it did not manage to do much besides burn hot for a few lingering seconds.
"Alarm thoroughly signaled," Zenia declared, gesturing in the direction where Sardon should be. "We need to work this out."
"Others moved ahead," Florian added, winded as his metal form faded. "First batch of prisoners should be coming through here in a few."
"Guide them," I muttered, metallic reverberation to my voice. "Anyone else come through? Take 'em down."
With their acknowledgement, I dashed down the corridor, holding onto my metallic transformation. Voices ahead preceded the sound of blasters – a significant number of rounds fired in quick succession. Electricity crackled in the air strongly enough I could taste it on my tongue, and I barreled through an open passageway.
Three automated turrets – as high as thirty feet – blasted toward the scene with fiery plasma. Already, three bodies lay burned at a makeshift entrance, and with solemn terror, I realized that one of them was a member of my crew. The entrance was a blast door that had been opened so narrowly that only one person could shimmy through it at a time, the doors themselves on either side of the gap scorched with plasma blasts. More of the miners were threatening to force their way through the doors, only to wind up as targets for the turrets.
"Stop!" I tried to shout over the whirring of the turrets. Reaching into my belt, I produced a small pistol of my own and took aim. The first shot impacted against the turret's underside, but hit nothing critical. All three began to whirl toward me, but I wasn't about to let them hit me.
I gripped the wall hard enough to pull a panel away, holding it in front of myself as I leaped upward. The shots impacted against the makeshift shield, hot enough my still armored hands threatened to drop it, but the defense turned into offense as the paneling bashed against the turret and reduced it to a dented mistake in a single slam.
Before I could fully land, a shot from one behind me managed to peg my upper shoulder, searing pain erupting as it started to melt through the armored plating. I ducked to the side, crouched, and readied another leap through all of the insanity, my breath ragged as pain rattled through me. The next turret was closer and a more direct jump, but when I landed, I managed to grab hold of the barrels and swing with all my might. The turret twisted until it was roughly aiming at the other turret, reducing it and the wall around it to melted slag. With a rending pull, I yanked the whole machine down, electricity sparking for several seconds as I tossed its debris.
I raced toward the blast doors and began pulling with all of my might. I could see men and women on the other side pulling as well, to make the exit wider. It budged a few inches – if only because one side of the door bent out of place – and a string of gaunt, overworked, and grimy prisoners began to stream from the opening. Some were covered in blood, some were wounded, and some were carrying the too injured to move.
"Head straight that direction! My team have readied an exit strategy, and they will start guiding you to safety. At the end of the line, should you wish to contribute, Carnifex has arms for you to join us in the fight to liberate the city. Vincendis will be ours with your help!"
I repeated the mantra to a string of individuals, lamenting the loss of one of my own. Maintaining the chain of fleeing prisoners was their job, and I could not break away long enough to…
A pair of familiar faces pulled me from my reverie.
My heart skipped a beat, and with my focus gone, the metal coating bled away, revealing softer flesh beneath. The thought almost distracted me from the elation in my chest, and hope escaped into the air.
"Gabriel? Father?"
I nearly tripped over myself to give the latter the heaviest hug that I could, not knowing his arm was broken and that his hip was sprained. The man could barely stand, let alone accept a hug, but he hugged back nonetheless as tightly as he could. Gabriel was in better shape, but only just, and the shock on his face was evident.
"Son, but how did you…?"
"None of that matters right now, we need to get you both out of here," I answered quickly, a sea of faces continuing to pass by like waves. "I can't believe that you're here, that you're alive!"
"What's going on outside?" Gabriel demanded, eyes scanning ahead like he could see it.
"We're arming any of the miners who will join us," I explained, eyes studying Father. "Carnifex has launched a siege on the city. We're taking back our planet, starting today!"
"Carnifex?" Father mumbled. "Cassian, you…?"
Gabriel's face paled and the moment hung in the air. "I hope not."
What…? I don't-
"I know you're not one of us," I blurted, confused, "but you can't mean that! After everything, you can't expect us to just-"
The man placed a hand on my shoulder. "If you don't handle the Reach the right way," Gabriel warned, "they glass the planet and start over somewhere else. There won't be a world to take back."
May 12, 23:11 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Jula was likely the last truly familiar face I'd see before our largest scale operation to date would begin. The woman had not stopped tinkering for weeks in preparation, her assistants following her every order like worker bees. In the hive that was her sanctum, on the eve of the operation, she barely had time to look me in the eye as I settled in nearby to watch and, if I can, help.
"Shouldn't you be getting rest?" She did not look toward me, instead gesturing to something rather large on a nearby platform.
I lifted what appeared to be retrofitted Reach plasma cannon with ease, its metal cool to the touch while an active power core delivered heat. I narrowly avoided three other nearby workers in the cramped factory floor, swinging the barrel of the too-large thing around to pass it to her upon her perch. She was affixed to a stationary arm, a metal cord holding her stable, while she worked on her latest series of prototypes.
"I tried to sleep," I muttered. "I couldn't stop spiraling. Everything… everything could go wrong tomorrow, and I could be the reason- what even-?"
"Cass," she warned, this time looking away from the tools in her hand and nearly knocking the arm out of place. "You are one piece of an immense puzzle. You won't be the only Gifted out there, and you won't be the only kid out there either. Stop hoarding all the burden, or you'll worry yourself into your horns."
Point taken. "But Jula, they're trusting me to lead a squad."
She blanched, face frozen beneath her glasses.
"Oh. I thought you knew," I mumbled. "Aggregor's tasked me with guiding a group tomorrow. Orders are-"
She dropped suddenly from her perch, dangled by the cord until she unlatched it. With a snap her fingers, two of her assistants hurriedly finished their tasks so that they could finish hers. This place did not function without her, and watching her worker bees assemble what very well might be our ace in the whole tomorrow was almost fun to witness.
"What is Aggregor thinking?"
Jula hastily left the interior of the factory through the tunnels leading to other sections of the compound, and I followed in her footsteps.
"Where are you goin-"
"To give the bastard a piece of my mind," she angrily explained, nearly running right into a group of toddlers playing tag amid the shadowed corners of the complex.
I frowned. "Jula, I didn't tell you so you could-"
"I know you didn't, Cassian," she interrupted tersely. "You don't have any responsibility in what is about to happen."
"But I don't-"
"Cass, please-"
"Stop goddamn interrupting me!"
Her pace slowed to a stop in front of the ration line, re-opened from dinner for any civilians who were going to be staying behind tomorrow. Several onlookers watched us with interest, and I did not want this to be some kind of show.
"Fine. Talk."
I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for the permission to talk."
She had the decency to act mollified.
"Jula, don't bother him with this tonight, there's too much at stake."
"Like your life?" she interjected. "Kid, you're a kid! If I don't-"
"You and I both know I haven't been a kid for a long time." In more ways than she was even aware. "My piece of the plan is simple, Jula – take and hold Distinian Mine long enough to arm the workers within to our side, then wait for naval support to arrive. If any Triarchy forces come that way, we give them hell – analysts aren't predicting that it will be a heavy focus during the battle, as our main forces will be elsewhere."
Jula paced slightly and then whirled on me. "Good to hear you so confident then. I guess the scared little boy from four minutes ago is gone?"
"No, but I… I'm trying to think it all through."
Jula started to reply and then held her tongue. With a single spin, she continued her race down the steel corridors, this time fully bowling over an elderly Osmosian with a fish-like face. I muttered an apology to the woman and followed after my aunt, knowing that I couldn't stop her if I tried.
Where this woman went, people noticed. Everyone who had even the slightest inkling into how the fight had progressed thus far knew she held one of the most central roles. A pretty face, media savvy, and a frankly ingenious intellect. With each invention of hers – or of her underlings – she turned the tide both literally and metaphorically, and Carnifex would have likely already lost without her expertise in robotics alone.
When she approached the closed session of the council leadership, the guards did not put up a fight as she barreled through the door and I followed after, by virtue of her and not of my own importance. I knew that.
Carnifex had always held a council of advisors as their upper echelon, and it had only become more rigid in structure as the years passed. Within the large circular chamber, the room alit with screens displaying live maps of the northern hemisphere and other important pieces of data, there were a few dozen men and women gathered together to be party to the decision-making. Former artists, lawyers, Legionnaires, carpenters, teachers – the list went on. At the center of the throng of people lay the statuesque Osmosian man whom everyone seemed to admire and respect. He'd carried the group through several trials and tribulations to reach this pivotal moment, and none of us would have gotten this far without him.
I slipped through the crowd as deftly as I could, a crowd that nearly split for Jula's brisk walking pace. She planted herself in front of Aggregor with a look of challenge on her face, and I pushed my way through to the man's side. There were clearly important last minute discussions about logistics, tactics, or other matters we were interrupting.
"We need to talk," the woman snappily demanded.
Aggregor met her gaze and then found mine. "If you've a problem with my placement of your nephew's talents, know that it was not my decision alone."
My brow furrowed.
"You're entrusting a key part of the plan for Vincendis to a thirteen year old. A mine mere blocks away from the harbor we're delivering the naval support and the Aggrebots."
… Oh.
"I have full faith and trust in Cassian," Aggregor answered simply. "He has the most intimate knowledge of your drones, Jula, and he has a record of established successes with arming and recruiting more rebels."
"That district will be a war-zone."
"The whole area will be a war-zone," Aggregor corrected. "Rest assured that we are invested in total victory. An escape hatch is in place, and we will provide reinforcements as necessary. The council did not make this decision lightly, and as mentioned, the decision was not mine alone." The man scanned the room until his eyes settled on a familiar figure.
One of the representatives of the un-Gifted, the un-exceptional: my Grandfather, Maximus. When Jula realized, she rolled her eyes.
"It was my idea," Maximus called out from across the chamber. "A kid leading that offense will make it low-profile. Their intelligence will expect key maneuvers from others with more experience, in other areas. And let's face it – no one his age has more experience."
"You're all insane," Jula said. "All of you. Insane. When this fails, know that I told you so."
"Jula, I-"
"Don't want to hear it, Cassian," the woman replied tersely. "I have work to do. Actually get some rest this time, because you'll need it now more than ever."
As she left the chamber in a hurry, business for the council returned to usual, as though there had not been an interruption at all. I felt a hand rest on my shoulder. Maximus patted me once comfortingly.
"I believe in you, kid."
… Did I believe in myself enough to lead an offensive like this?
OSMOS V
May 13, 06:28 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
An hour after the broadcast ended, the first boots hit the ground on the outskirts of the city streets and began moving slowly into position, building by building, block by block. Volleys of blaster-fire erupted into the city-state from multiple angles, while vehicles moved into position to accost the offenders and the defenders.
The streets were unfortunately not entirely empty – Carnifex gave the civilians an hour to escape the city or to shelter in place, but promised them thirty additional minutes. Maximus supposed it was the only way to ensure that we gave the innocents a chance to get to safety or even to fight back, while also ensuring that the Triarchy did not have as much time to mobilize a defensive. Unfortunately, what advantage that really gave them was not particularly strong, for Vincendis was a powerfully reinforced location.
Maximus had read the reports. The city had been under periodic siege from a group of aliens who could fly, could swim, and shoot biotic energy from their bodies. They moved as fast through the sea as they did through the sky, and it was an insidious play on the part of the Reach. They could squat as many forces as they wanted within perhaps the only city in all of the world that could hold a candle to the resources of the Capital. They'd been under heavy occupation for months now, likely from knowledge that Carnifex were gunning for it.
Liberating this place? Well, it would be a lightning rod offensive to gather others to their cause. Carnifex would have the faith of the people, and open rebellion would start everywhere.
Maximus believed it anyway.
The man himself was one member of a larger offensive. Several key locations were targets within the city, places that could become defensible positions for a longer siege. He was one of many men and women sent to capture the largest bank, use its vaults as a command post. Heavy ordinance, dozens of soldiers, and several Gifted and Exceptions were among their resources.
Maximus was not in charge – he was not a prize among the council – but he served his role well.
Clutching at the seat of the convoy vehicle, three inches of solid metal were the only things between him and the soldiers that were beginning to swarm the streets, firing into the vehicles that ran, full speed ahead, to break apart blockades and pierce into the city's interior. If they moved quickly, if they held strong, they would be in a good position by nightfall, and so Maximus heard and felt the vehicle speed into a higher gear.
They slid – almost tumbled – through a narrow side passage, leaving a blockade on a major road just behind them. Plasma struck the siding from all angles but one, and Maximus gripped his weapon tighter by his side. Nervous energy filled the cabin, and each superheated shot that hit might be the one that hits a pivotal component and takes the vehicle down.
"All right, gonna peel off. Rendezvous on the main thoroughfare in ten."
Maximus blinked at the woman in uniform. He'd never met her, and from the look of her horns, she was older too. It was not the first time someone tried something like that, but it wouldn't be the last.
With a hand on the ceiling above them, the Gifted rebel became the same material as the vehicle. A heavy kick later, and the back panel slid open. She leaped into the space behind them, rolled through the dirt, and tanked two plasma shots in the torso. In but a split second, she became the primary target of any soldiers nearby, and she darted toward the blockade and began ripping it apart.
The vehicle turned a sharp corner, and Maximus lost sight of her.
Not a moment later, the man took a breath and joined the others on foot. He fired his rifle into the line of defenders, while others took shots toward those at sniper positions. Amid the chaos, someone sent the order, and a chrome Jula-Drone launched itself from the top of the vehicle, beeped audibly once, and then went active camo. It integrated into the squad's communication channel, and Maximus heard the orders from on high that would define the next several hours of his chaotic life.
OSMOS V
May 13, 06:46 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
The Distinian Mines had been turned into a prisoner labor camp – specifically, one for high-profile prisoners, like soldiers or other turncoats who refused to play along with the Triarchy's games. Put them all inside and get them mining. Ore, precious metals – resources that were historically in abundance for Vincendis and a large part of why they were able to compete. Add in the Gifted and how our powers interact with materials like gemstones? It was a wonder they weren't even richer than they were.
The mine formed in a large region of the island's northern face and was close to the city-state's largest harbor. Logistically, this must have been a boon for them, but right now? It only terrified me, and the others in the small squad were in a similar state.
One Gifted – a man nearly three times my age who had never fought in anything before now, today, and only a couple of months of training.
Three Exceptions. A college-aged woman with a minor telekinetic tether. A nearly geriatric man with a peg-leg and the ability to spout potent acid snot. An athletic man with an attitude problem who could turn into a bestial form, complete with claws and razor sharp teeth.
Five unpowered Osmosians who each had a plethora of experience from different walks of life, but all had been trained on stealthier tactics. One pair of them – the twins – were among the best lockpicks in the business, and nifty with all sorts of knives and other weaponry; they were among the only members of the group I could count on to be helpful, here.
Approaching the mine had been surprisingly easy. We'd arrived in the area more than three hours ago, long before the fighting was due to start. Under the cover of the early morning light, we'd bypassed security measures on its perimeter, killed a few guards, and successfully managed to secure one of the four observation towers overlooking the mine's complex. It had not been so easy to take this particular tower, but we'd managed by the skin of our teeth to hold it for now.
I looked toward the bestial man, whose features were still rugged and human-looking. "Sardon, when you hear the signal, rendezvous with the reserve trio. Get these workers armed, get them dangerous, and escort them to the escape hatch."
Sardon gruffly nodded. "Got it."
The reserve trio were two teenagers – older than me but unpowered – who'd been chosen to stay behind on the outskirts of the mine, to lie in wait for extraction. They were there as manpower when it came time to arm these former soldiers and turn them against the Reach, against the Triarchy. This trick had been effective before, though perhaps not on this scale, and I could only hope that I'd manage to get inside and liberate the prisoners before they were discovered.
The last of the trio was the only member of the mission younger than me: Marcilia, a girl I refused to put into direct harm's way. She'd developed an Exception, one that helped her to heal others, and if not for its strategic use, I'd have complained more and forced her to stay home.
Our collective signal to get started interrupted the last vestiges of leadership I could offer to the assembled before we were set to begin.
The fighting in the city had begun.
From the angle of the tower, we could see bombs, explosions, flickers of light and plasma. Vehicles were on the move, people were fleeing, people were fighting. It was madness.
Madness that lit up the mine's administration like a stick disturbing an anthill.
The twins had been trying to hack the observation deck's terminal, to access the camera feed and display it for us, but they hadn't had the time to finish. We weren't the perfect oiled machine for this job, but we didn't have the most important job. Jula had been right to worry, but at the end of the day, we were one piece of a larger whole.
"Let's get cracking."
OSMOS V
May 13, 08:18 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Aggregor launched himself from a large building and landed atop an upturned vehicle, the engine burning with an intense flame. As it licked his skin, he allowed it to become part of himself, putting out the fire and invigorating his overall ability. He sent the energy into his muscles, into his flesh, into his bones and felt himself become immensely stronger, even if for a time.
The staff in his hand spun with energy and exploded with power, cascading pure concussive force in blasts of red light. Each impact emitted a shockwave that forced assailants to go flying, bludgeoned to death on contact with wherever they landed. He fired three more times, creating three more explosions, before he roared with challenge, "Is that the best you can do? Challenge me!"
The Triarchy renewed their efforts and delivered a wave of soldiers into the inferno that had once been a park. A Gifted soldier rushed at Aggregor, abandoning the ineffective blaster as he became like concrete, and aiming to tackle the leader of Carnifex to the ground. The Osmosian rebel leader saw the motion coming and prepared to evade and then punish the soldier for trying, but the loyalist was not alone. Peppered shots from weapons nearby provided covering fire, and Aggregor missed his chance.
A concrete-covered man slammed into his body and threw him to the ground.
For a moment, there was a struggle, but Aggregor had the strength advantage due to the foreign power pulsing through his veins. With a solidly-placed kick, the stone torso snapped backward so hard it cracked slightly in the back, revealing a line of skin under the stone.
Aggregor raised his spear, performed a twisted swipe of its superheated edge, and bifurcated the man for leaving himself so open.
The rebel roared once more and launched himself as high as he could with a bounding leap. On the downward arc, he spun his spear in every direction that he could, blasting more of the loyalist scum to pieces. As he landed, some of his allies entered the fray alongside him and began to overtake the territory, engaging with the enemy, and leaving him room to make adjustments.
He swept his weapon over the park, feeling the swirling heat of its flames entering the spear's edge and empowering it to even higher levels. Its pointed edge was so hot that he could feel the heat beneath his fingers, several inches away from the blade.
Loyalists continued to pour from every angle in droves, vehicles unleashing each small group into key points of defense. From the reports in his ear, the city had yet to field any Reach soldiers or even any Reach tech, but it was only a matter of time until they drew them out.
Aggregor could not wait.
He aimed his spear true and unleashed a line of super-heated energy that cut through three oncoming vehicles. Metal, glass, plastic, and flesh scattered in wind and fire.
OSMOS V
May 13, 08:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
I pressed a finger against a security panel and felt its delicious energy become mine. I don't have time to enjoy the taste, the expression, though, as my comms continue to ramble in my ear.
"Aggrebots in boot sequence," Jula's voice called over the encrypted channels to everyone with the need to know. A few others barked orders to her, but I tuned it out.
A single pulse of borrowed electricity from my finger later, and the door in front of myself and my partner in this operation opened. Beyond it, like we expected from pilfered blueprints, was the mine's on-site medical bay. We were not taking any prisoners, so when two guards sensed our presence, shot up from their perches, and readied a call for backup, they were instead splattered into a melted mess. Nirocinio lifted his finger from one nostril when the coast looked to be clear and gave a small nod.
"Your powers are gross."
"At least I'm not a snot-nosed brat."
… "Touche."
"What?"
"Never mind," I redirected. "Grab as much medicine as you can carry and be ready to hand it off to the twins when you see 'em."
Distantly, a bestial scream followed by the whistle of blaster shots echoed throughout the mine.
"You got three minutes, maybe. I'm moving ahead."
Nirocinio gave a nod and swiftly began pulling for supplies, while I slipped through the adjoining rooms and exited back into one of the central hallways. A flurry of activity greeted me, though the assembled mining staff and soldiers headed away from me and toward the sound of the disturbance: a beastly Exception. Only one managed to notice me, but he met a face full of fist and collapsed onto the ground, pooling in blood, his communicator blaring with a voice and asking for an update.
I crushed it for good measure.
I used the furry distraction to my advantage, and as practiced, so should the others. I made it through the next segment of the complex undisturbed, until I linked with them. The only other Gifted, Florian, alongside his telekinetic partner, Zenia, were engaged in a fight with guards near the entrance to the miners' quarters when I finally arrived there. Bits of rock and loose metal swirled around the girl like a planet while she ran directly at her opponents, caught in her debris field. Meanwhile, Florian boxed two soldiers, his upper body only partially metal. The enemy were getting the upper hand, but they weren't prepared to be third-partied.
I bounded on them, transformed fully into the iron paneling on the wall, and took them down with surprising ease. One managed a lucky shot on my side with a plasma pistol, but it did not manage to do much besides burn hot for a few lingering seconds.
"Alarm thoroughly signaled," Zenia declared, gesturing in the direction where Sardon should be. "We need to work this out."
"Others moved ahead," Florian added, winded as his metal form faded. "First batch of prisoners should be coming through here in a few."
"Guide them," I muttered, metallic reverberation to my voice. "Anyone else come through? Take 'em down."
With their acknowledgement, I dashed down the corridor, holding onto my metallic transformation. Voices ahead preceded the sound of blasters – a significant number of rounds fired in quick succession. Electricity crackled in the air strongly enough I could taste it on my tongue, and I barreled through an open passageway.
Three automated turrets – as high as thirty feet – blasted toward the scene with fiery plasma. Already, three bodies lay burned at a makeshift entrance, and with solemn terror, I realized that one of them was a member of my crew. The entrance was a blast door that had been opened so narrowly that only one person could shimmy through it at a time, the doors themselves on either side of the gap scorched with plasma blasts. More of the miners were threatening to force their way through the doors, only to wind up as targets for the turrets.
"Stop!" I tried to shout over the whirring of the turrets. Reaching into my belt, I produced a small pistol of my own and took aim. The first shot impacted against the turret's underside, but hit nothing critical. All three began to whirl toward me, but I wasn't about to let them hit me.
I gripped the wall hard enough to pull a panel away, holding it in front of myself as I leaped upward. The shots impacted against the makeshift shield, hot enough my still armored hands threatened to drop it, but the defense turned into offense as the paneling bashed against the turret and reduced it to a dented mistake in a single slam.
Before I could fully land, a shot from one behind me managed to peg my upper shoulder, searing pain erupting as it started to melt through the armored plating. I ducked to the side, crouched, and readied another leap through all of the insanity, my breath ragged as pain rattled through me. The next turret was closer and a more direct jump, but when I landed, I managed to grab hold of the barrels and swing with all my might. The turret twisted until it was roughly aiming at the other turret, reducing it and the wall around it to melted slag. With a rending pull, I yanked the whole machine down, electricity sparking for several seconds as I tossed its debris.
I raced toward the blast doors and began pulling with all of my might. I could see men and women on the other side pulling as well, to make the exit wider. It budged a few inches – if only because one side of the door bent out of place – and a string of gaunt, overworked, and grimy prisoners began to stream from the opening. Some were covered in blood, some were wounded, and some were carrying the too injured to move.
"Head straight that direction! My team have readied an exit strategy, and they will start guiding you to safety. At the end of the line, should you wish to contribute, Carnifex has arms for you to join us in the fight to liberate the city. Vincendis will be ours with your help!"
I repeated the mantra to a string of individuals, lamenting the loss of one of my own. Maintaining the chain of fleeing prisoners was their job, and I could not break away long enough to…
A pair of familiar faces pulled me from my reverie.
My heart skipped a beat, and with my focus gone, the metal coating bled away, revealing softer flesh beneath. The thought almost distracted me from the elation in my chest, and hope escaped into the air.
"Gabriel? Father?"
I nearly tripped over myself to give the latter the heaviest hug that I could, not knowing his arm was broken and that his hip was sprained. The man could barely stand, let alone accept a hug, but he hugged back nonetheless as tightly as he could. Gabriel was in better shape, but only just, and the shock on his face was evident.
"Son, but how did you…?"
"None of that matters right now, we need to get you both out of here," I answered quickly, a sea of faces continuing to pass by like waves. "I can't believe that you're here, that you're alive!"
"What's going on outside?" Gabriel demanded, eyes scanning ahead like he could see it.
"We're arming any of the miners who will join us," I explained, eyes studying Father. "Carnifex has launched a siege on the city. We're taking back our planet, starting today!"
"Carnifex?" Father mumbled. "Cassian, you…?"
Gabriel's face paled and the moment hung in the air. "I hope not."
What…? I don't-
"I know you're not one of us," I blurted, confused, "but you can't mean that! After everything, you can't expect us to just-"
The man placed a hand on my shoulder. "If you don't handle the Reach the right way," Gabriel warned, "they glass the planet and start over somewhere else. There won't be a world to take back."
Last edited:
Sounds like Exterminatus and that's scary.
0.15
- Location
- Alabama
OSMOS V
May 13, 10:28 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Jula's fingers flew across the control terminal, her voice hoarse from frequently shouted orders. A collection of men, women, and children – the ones deemed too unfit to physically join the fight against the government – were assisting in other ways from the safety of a secretive bunker, deep in the Magnus Desertus. Sweat dripped from their faces, a combination of the lack of air conditioning and the tension of their required tasks. With each order she made, redirected from the council's authority, they nervously followed through as swiftly as they could. She was losing her voice, but she could not stop now, could not take a break.
Today was the day their destiny would change.
"Triarchy soldiers, three clicks out from reinforcements in the southern convoy!"
"Aggrebots completing boot sequence in fifteen minutes."
"Heavy casualties along the coast from both sides. Exceptions deployed!"
"The northern front has breached into the city center!"
"Where's my mommy?"
The voice of the small child cut through the chaos, and she spared a moment from glaring at readings to meet the child's gaze. A young boy, barely six years old, carried a stack of sealed papers under his arm. Every pair of hands they could spare had a role, but the kid had frozen with terror, disturbed by the noise or the pressure of what was a simple task for him, but one of likely monumental importance for the world outside.
Cassian….
Jula pushed the worrying thoughts from her mind. The brat had gotten himself into this mess. Her idiot of a father supported it. At the end of the day, if she had no one left, then they had none but themselves to bla-
"Central command."
Aggregor.
Jula pressed a button to activate her microphone on the console. "Command to Aggregor, this is Jula speaking. Status update?"
"I've breached the city center," he explained in a digitized voice. The console updated to show his location on the map projection before her. "No sign of Reach forces."
A spark of hope revitalized her body. "Are we in good shape then to hold the city through the night?" Even holding the place for one day greatly increased their chances to rally others across the planet to fight back. Each hour of success was an hour of footage they could use to display to the masses.
"We can hold Cato's Legion. If Gordia or Seneca join them before we are more firmly established, we stand heavy risks-"
"Central command! – No, aunt Jula!"
She snapped her fingers, forcing one of her assistants to swap the signal immediately. Cassian's voice boosted louder in her ear. "I'm listening!"
"We- we found Father. And Gabriel!"
Jula's heart skipped a beat. The assistant, a mousy-haired woman with horns, gaped at her upon hearing the news. The former businesswoman could barely hold herself together. "Are you sure?"
"He's here!"
A hesitation in the feed brought with her a pit of fear. What if this were some trick? It could not be true. Perhaps the Reach had-
"Jul, I- I don't know what to say."
Hope filled every thought in her mind. "Brother, you- this is too much."
"Jula, Aggregor is-"
"Not now," she barked to the assistant. "It can wait a few seconds."
"We don't have much time for a reunion," Cassian's voice continued through the audio. "Gabriel has information that must be shared immediately. The entire operation could be at stake."
She had mixed feelings on the man, but she was glad to hear he was alive. At the end of the day, the man's involvement in their lives had drastically set them on a different course.
"Put him on," she replied carefully.
"What I am going to say will be difficult to hear, but I am an alien from another planet. An agent of a secretive organization called the Plumbers, that works across the cosmos in places the Guardians of the Universe cannot directly touch." He paused, and she could hear shouting as fighting progressed in the background.
Jula had no context for what this man was saying, and she had little reason to believe him unless what he was going to say actively helped them in some way.
"I don't have time for the full damn story. My bosses can't get directly involved in the Reach's war crimes, so they send Plumbers like myself to investigate and subvert enemies like them. I have a lot of knowledge about how they operate, and the shit they do could fill the damn Library of Congress a hundred times over. Know this now, Carnifex – if you continue along this path, you may doom the entire planet. Everything you've been fighting for? Reduced to ash."
The bunker largely continued its operations, as they could not all hear the words of this strange man. The one's who could hear it though? They had completely halted, hands hesitating to input commands, to activate headsets, to send updates. Jula herself struggled to wrap her head around the information.
"Cassian."
The child's voice, heaving with breath, entered the feed. "We h-have to stop, uh, to -"
"You trust him?" she asked carefully, a significant portion of her hoping that Gabriel was a liar, a Triarch sympathizer. Someone who was just trying to turn them away from their path.
"I do. For more reasons than you know." He hesitated for a long moment. "He kept Father alive and sane. That's good enough for me."
"It's true. I was a wreck, Jula," her brother added into the communicator a second later. "Gabriel told me stories, entertained me, gave me reasons to hold on."
Jula sighed. All around her, those nearby were waiting with bated breath. Other members of the council were issuing orders, preparing the launch of the Aggrebots, readying logistics to support the operation. Her own Father was out there, holding the line alongside a group of soldiers and maintaining an on-site defensive position.
"You believe this?" the assistant closest to her asked. "This- surely they can't be right-"
"How bad is it?" she asked. "Gabriel, if the Reach go through with what you're saying, how bad is it?"
"Total annihilation of the planet's biosphere," he replied grimly. "They've got the tech to do it in a matter of hours. A few different kinds of death – orbital bombardment, atmosphere incineration, magnetic field disruption, gravitic manipulation…"
This…
This was far too specific to be a lie.
"Patch him through to Aggregor," she ordered without fanfare. Then, "Inform the council of the stakes."
OSMOS V
May 13, 10:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
With only a few words, my understanding of the cosmos had shifted.
I now knew what the Earth was like, and the idea both excited and terrified me. With the knowledge that there were, in fact, Guardians of the Universe patrolling their sectors, the death-defying fight that Gabriel had had with the Scarlet Scarab now made far more sense. The green energy he'd utilized must have been connected to the same power as the Green Lanterns, but he had no ring. I didn't know what a Plumber was either. The DC universe was real, and I'd been born and raised on a planet I didn't recognize from any of the comics.
I couldn't dwell on any of the information, because I needed to keep moving. Reflection would come later.
I couldn't stop fighting, and I had more reason to do it now, not less.
Father could barely walk, and Gabriel refused to let me help support him because I could still fight. Others in my team were dead, injured, or separated. Only the twins were nearby, trying to provide covering fire for the newly assembled crowd of prisoners. The beastly Exception had fallen sometime in the last few minutes, putting the crosshairs on the fleeing group.
The mine around us as we fought on was largely a wreck, some buildings were on fire, and it was honestly a wonder that we hadn't accidentally exploded the whole place. Turrets fired automatically from various high positions, though most had been swiftly disabled earlier. One particular sniper popped blaster fire into the crowd, but there were too many bodies for him alone to stop. It had become a mad dash to the perimeter, and I refused to leave Father's side.
"Son, how are you doing this?"
"Not the time," I shot back before he could argue. My metallic arm held up a solid piece of debris – one that must have weighed a half ton or more – and hurled it as swiftly as I could. The makeshift fastball impacted bodily into an oncoming soldier, the man's torso caving in on itself as his body dropped two more behind him. "I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm keeping you alive."
He said nothing else and followed under the support of Gabriel's arms, though it was clear he was biting his tongue.
"You got any more explosions in your tank?" I asked the human, thinking back to the tech he'd used years ago.
"'Fraid not, or the last few years would have been very different." Gabriel gestured to his temple with a free hand. "I still have some active implants, but they aren't useful in a fight and don't have enough charge to do much of anything at all. Need to return to my ship to recharge and restock, if it still exists."
I nodded, the idea of a ship bringing me such joy. "Any chance it could serve as an escape hatch if the Reach go doomsday?"
Using that word is confusing now. Was Doomsday a thing here?
"Unless it's parked outside?" Gabriel shrugged. "I couldn't get more than a few dozen people off-world. Don't have the resources for a long trip either, so it's not a viable option."
That was more than frustrating to hear, but I let it sink into the back of my mind. There was a job to do.
With a heavy leap, I crashed like an iron meteor atop a supporting wall on the edge of the mine's quarry. The platform beneath my feet cracked under the force of it, and three men tried and failed to take me down. A fist to the throat left one sputtering blood until he drowned, while the other two fell to gunfire from the twins below.
"Through the gate!" I repeated, hoping the reserve trio were ready to assist in arming anyone who managed to make it out. Gabriel and Father managed to exit the interior of the mine alongside others and enter the outskirts of the city proper.
A few blocks away, the coastline stretched before us. A sight that contained a few promising vessels in the distance, one's likely in place to deliver the best force multiplier we had.
The soldiers and guards manning the Distinian Mine certainly had not stopped gunning for us, but those that managed to meet with the trio were already arming themselves and doubling back to assist.
All things considered, this had been an overall successful operation.
The city itself, however, was on fire. Dozens of newly armed prisoners, fitted with weapons and simplistic vests to keep at least their torsos safe from small arms and ordinance, were ready to take the fight to its streets, while dozens more were equally as ready to avoid the inferno.
I did not blame them in the slightest.
Once it was clear that the operation shifted into the second phase, I raced to my Father and embraced him a second time, flesh having returned just before.
"I've missed you. So much. Everything – it was all for you."
And for Mother.
And for myself.
The man gripped me tightly, covered in rags and coated in soot. I was equally disgusting, and I doubted I would get better before the day ended.
"You joined Carnifex."
"I, uh, did. It's bigger than it was, when you were invovled. Full-on resistance to the damn Triarchs."
For what it had been worth.
Now, I wasn't sure we should be continuing. The Reach could, at any point, destabilize any semblance of safety to live on the planet. As tyrannical as the Triarch Elders could be and had been in the past, it was nothing to the hold the Reach had on us. They could flip a switch and escape a doomed world.
"I'm… proud of you."
My eyes widened.
Misty tears welled, but I didn't let them fall.
This was more than overwhelming to hear from the man, and it was something I wished I could hear from my real father again. As strained as things were with Hortatio, the overprotective instincts were better than no instincts. Dad had been too autistic to be a good father, without the tools in his pocket to compensate for any social graces he lacked.
Now, I could barely believe I was here, that Horatio was here, and I wanted nothing more than to return to the site I once called home, rebuild, and live out my days with the man at my side. I'd fought to find him, I'd lost Lucrecia in an effort to save him, and now I'd gotten him back.
We just had to live through all of this.
The freed prisoners who joined forces were halfway to the proper city battle when the sky alit with activity.
Dozens of creatures flew between buildings, over rooftops, and exited the coastal waters. Shaped almost like manta-rays, the creatures would stop in mid-air, fast speeds reduced to nothing, and unleash bolts of energy into the populace, into buildings, into friends. A flying swarm of aliens were fighting on the side of the Triarchy, aiming their energy blasts from tails and eyes toward the rebels.
"Aerophibians," Gabriel clarified in a Southern drawl. "Natural fliers and swimmers. Can survive in space. That light they fire hits you, your nervous system breaks down about as well as any Taser, if not more."
"Great to hear," I muttered and then tapped the communicator. "Central Command, this is Cassian. Mining operation a success. New reinforcements incoming. But the Reach have unleashed a flock of damn space aliens with energy weapons."
Someone- not Jula- responded, "Standby for update."
"No," I say simply as a realization hits. "If we stand any chance at saving the planet, we need to draw out Xandros and any other Scarab warrior. We take them down, and it will be that much easier to-"
With an influx of displaced air that sent shockwaves for miles, strong enough to nearly throw me to my feet, the sky above Vincendis became a field for what must be Reach ships. There were a half dozen of them, covered in almost insectoid plate and featuring segmented limbs, and each was spaced equally throughout the city. They were larger than any buildings, flying with unknown propulsion systems.
From them dropped soldiers - Osmosians and Reach alike – to descend upon the city. To my absolute horror, each dropship released plasma bombs into the city, explosive acidic bursts of heat and smoke that could melt stone and corrode metal. Towering buildings collapsed into piles of steel in seconds, and their allied forces began to sweep across the city. We would be overrun in a matter of hours, if we were lucky.
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath.
Gabriel blinked, not at the sight of the intense explosions and renewed fighting, but instead at me. "What did you say?"
My brow furrowed. "Uh… fuck?"
The man whipped his hand up to check something behind his ear. "My translation implant still works. Did you, uh – what does that word mean?"
…
Oh.
I decided to be honest. "It's a not-so-nice expletive."
"How- how do you know that word?"
I lean into his space and whisper, in perfect English, "I know a lot of things about Earth, but if we don't figure out what to do, everyone I love will die."
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
The Ambassador watched the scene unfolding from the orbital station. Probing machines and monitoring scanners revealed the extent of the battle below, and it was so very wonderful to see the thorns in the Triarchy's side finally come into the open to challenge them. They perfectly placed themselves into the path of the Reach, and nothing would stop them now.
Why Carnifex decided to do so now instead of earlier was a mystery to the Reach Ambassador, but he was not going to complain. When the day was over, the rebels will have had no choice to but to surrender to their ultimate control or die trying.
Once the Triarchy had no enemies from within, the Reach's true hegemony over Osmosian meat could begin in earnest. Generations from now, the universe will no longer have the capacity to stop their enhanced forces, and they will truly have an army worthy of dominating any celestial empire. All will be in the hands of the Reach.
"Ambassador, vessels along the sea have sparked with intense power outputs."
That Analyst struggled to see the bigger picture the way the Ambassador did.
"A volley from a dropship will do."
The order reflected within moments. A viewing panel expanded into view, displaying the maneuver for them all. One of their vessels – a single segment of their hidden fleet – shifted toward the boat in the harbor swiftly. Its weapon systems activated, primed, and -
Exploded.
Like dozens of gnats, automata entered the sky en masse. Armed, apparently, with enough firepower to destroy one of their ships while working in tandem.
"Dropship down," an Analyst shouted.
A flurry of activity erupted within the chamber, and the Ambassador could not believe their bad luck.
The Aerophibian Assets moved with the push of a button to engage the swiftly-flying robots, shaped like the men but made of intricate pieces of metallic plate. The converted aliens clashed with them, easily able to fly faster than the Carnifex machines, but the machines had the numerical advantage. It was a wonder that they'd managed to build this many, and the Ambassador doubted that this was the full extent of their numbers.
He had an option.
"Xandros."
"But he is-"
"Deploy the Scarlet Scarab!"
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Central Command had not changed their mind.
I raced through city streets as explosions rocketed the ground and the sky in every conceivable direction. The Aggrebots had evened the odds, as we had hoped, and their heavy weapons were capable of harming even the toughly defended Reach ships. Even still, they could not do enough damage quickly to stop the dropships altogether, and more plasma bombs ripped the city apart. Each second that passed was another second where I might be caught in the blast radius of something I could not predict, but I couldn't stop here.
Boots on the ground fought and died for every inch of territory gained on either side. Every death was a number, one that was likely going to be uncountably large if we did not change our methods.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
Behind me, Gabriel followed alongside the soldiers I had rescued, the soldiers that were working incredibly hard to fight an additional front. Carnifex swarmed the city from all directions, and I suspected that we'd have covered nearly every inch of the place by now if not for the Aerophibian swarm and the Reach's reinforcements. A few of us had broken off each block at a time to secure shelter, to hold in position, to grip our feet firmly into the area. Somewhere amidst that chaos, Father had settled in with the reserve trio to recieve healing and to watch over Marcilia for me – deep enough, I hoped, that there would be no chance of a plasma bomb barrage breaking the defenses.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"This is not going to end well," I shouted to Gabriel. Something downed an Aggrebot, the machine shattering into a hundred pieces as it landed ahead, an impact crater in its wake. "Can't you do something? Even a hoverboard…?"
He shook his head, a blaster pistol releasing its charge into an oncoming vehicle. "I'm limited, Cassian, to what I have on hand. What I have on hand is not going to save the planet."
"Then we need to stop this madness!"
"I agree, but Central Command did not change their mind."
My mind wracked with activity to think of something – anything – that could stop this insanity.
A Gifted soldier nearby turned to glass to avoid a blaster shot from Gabriel, only to recieve a stone fist from myself into the back of the head for the effort, leaving him a shattered stump for a neck.
Until they stopped throwing themselves at us, this wouldn't stop.
"Central Command to all available elites," Jula's voice declared across every communicator. "Open rebellion has begun in every in-range population center. Protests, riots, violence – we ignited a revolution today. Aggrebots deployed across the globe to maintain the momentum."
I locked eyes with Gabriel, ready to denounce everyone and everything before it was too late, until I saw him.
Him.
A red armored figure rocketed across the sky, insectoid wings outstretched from the back of his scarab. The Osmosian unleashed a sonic attack from his gauntlet that single-handedly destroyed three Aggrebots in pursuit of an Aerophibian, the alien caught in the crossfire and downed in a heap.
Gabriel gripped my arm. "Cassian. You can't-"
…
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"Don't tell me what to fucking do."
I launched into a full sprint, not for Xandros, but for the manta-ray like alien around the corner, lying prone and bloody in a heap against the side of a garage. I ignored Gabriel's shouting voice, raced toward the Aerophibian, and gripped my hands against its torso before it could blast me with its weakened laser eyes.
…
Delicious.
Everything became mine.
The Aerophibian became nothing. Dead. A husk.
I launched myself into the sky at incredible speeds, an energy hidden beneath my skin and my eyes just waiting to be unleashed. I was flying – a feeling that was almost incredible enough to ignore the guilt over what I'd just done – but I had no time to dwell. Nor time to think.
With a snap of my hand, a bolt of crackling green light erupted against the Scarlet Scarab. Armor tanking the blow, I zipped to the side of the counterattack from one of his extra limbs, a turret-like attachment launching a projectile that would have certainly downed me had I given him the chance.
I pointed my hands at him and readied another blast, flying under my own power without difficulty. I was not as fast as the Aerophibian's fastest potential, but I was fast enough to be a nuisance. I'd bank on that.
"Xandros! I've waited for this goddamn day. Everything you've done, everything you are – I'm crushing you under my boot!"
The Scarab's helmet peeled away, revealing the haggard man's face behind the mask. "Who are you?"
"Fuck off! You killed my mother in the desert!" I activated my communicator with a press of my finger. "She died protecting me. You betrayed yourself to the Reach, your people! An invasion, supported by you, all to make you look good?"
Recognition must have finally hit, because he smirked. "You're the runt. Just as in over your head now as you were then!"
All around us, Aggrebots and Aerophibians continued to dance throughout the sky. New dropships could arrive any minute, and I could only hope that Osmos V had the numerical advantage against the Reach, now that a true rebellion had begun. Perhaps we could take them down before they ruin everything.
I released the energy charge, the lightning crackling once more. Xandros evaded it with an application of his flight suit, the energy narrowly avoiding his face. Blaster fire from below tried to impact our fight – our side or theirs, I was not sure – but I weaved through them and released a beam of light from my eyes. It struck a hastily-formed shield from the beetle-warrior's hand, but the guns below managed to impact his back, searing into the foreign metal.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
"Call off the attack!"
I raced away from him as I shouted the demand, the Scarlet Scarab attempting to skewer me with a mantis-like bladed sword.
"You idiots started this!" he shouted. "All you had to do was lie down, trust the Triarchs, and you'd be part of a glorious future!"
Someone with an Exception hurled an esoteric shadow monster at Xandros from a nearby rooftop, before getting swallowed in a horde of canine aliens – the same aliens that started me down this very path. The conjured apparition made purchase with the man's armor long enough to slow him down, but dissipated as soon as its creator died amid fang and claw.
All around us, similar moments were happening, powers and weapons clashing with twisted alien soldiers. Some threatened to intervene in the battle, while others remained isolated and momentary.
I blasted him in the helmet, hoping it was the least armored piece, but the green lightning-like shock did nothing to the Reach warrior. My borrowed power was not strong enough to stop the man, but I was fast enough to avoid him. I couldn't take on the full abilities of another species, but even a portion of speed from this creature was enough to hold my own. He tried his damndest to pin me with a tentacle-like whip, but I merely gripped the thing and pulled with as much strength as I could muster.
The metal of the Scarab covered my arms up to the elbow. A swipe of a bladed limb cut downward, and I was not fast enough to dodge completely. A gash nearly split my torso in twain, had I not lifted my arms in time to divert most of its force. Following through with a zip through the air forward, I leaned back.
"Fuck your glorious future!"
And unleashed an uppercut to the man's jaw.
The satisfying crunch of the armored chin was like music to my ears, and I would have celebrated for longer had it not been for the armor almost immediately healing from the damage. My hands alit with borrowed power once more, green light trying to follow up, but the headbutt that sent me crashing through the top of a ruined tower surprised me. In a shower of debris, I landed three stories down, feeling every ounce of hurt.
"No single Gifted warrior can stop, especially no child. I don't care how motivated you are," the Scarlet Scarab decried, "you can't hope to stand against Reach superiority."
I coughed, blood pooling to my chin.
"You're their dog, how could you be superior? How could you stand to see your people?"
Aggrebots intercepted another drop ship nearby, the explosion flashing such light that it brought ominous shadows across the Scarlet Scarab for a split second.
"I will become part of something greater, while you all will merely die, forgotten! You could have been part of it too."
He reached his hands together, and they morphed before my eyes to become a truly massive cannon. A cannon pointed toward me.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
The energy cascaded through the air in a near instant, and it is all that I can do to brace myself for impact. The air, the smoke, the ashes obliterated in but a moment, searing the space between us. I held my hands together in front of myself and pulled.
A distant warning raced through my memory.
"Son… abuse the Gift. Greatest danger… Psychosis. Paranoia. Hallucinations."
Mother, I need you!
OSMOS V
May 13, 14:26 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Gabriel felt the implant within his ear activate for a fraction of a second.
The sensation tore him away from the scene of the battle around him long enough to send hopeful tremors throughout his arms. Hands shaking, his blaster pistol missed its nearly stationary target, and he pushed himself to the ground to take cover and to take stock in what he heard.
In the distance, the Scarlet Scarab unleashed a truly massive amount of power in a weapon that could eradicate the thickest of walls and penetrate the smartest of defenses. The light flashed with such intensity that it nearly hurt his eyes, and Gabriel turned away from the certain doom that Cassian suffered. His heart hurt for the teen for a moment, but a longer sound burst through his communicator once more.
This was not the implant picking up the local chatter.
This was someone trying to reach him.
And if someone was trying to reach him, perhaps they had hope after all.
"Plum-er Vas-uez." The familiar sound was like music to his ears. "'elp is i-bou-"
Gabriel glanced upward to the sky, expecting to see them arrive at any moment.
Instead, he watched a small boy lift himself out of the rubble, golden light drifting off of him in pulsing waves. Everywhere they touched turned to ash, and the air grew intensely hot for reasons that were difficult to quantify. Had all of his implants been operable, Gabriel might be able to scan to see what type of energy that was, or what type of weapon had just fired.
He didn't need them to see that Cassian had become a walking embodiment of it, climbing out of a crater that had destroyed several city blocks.
The Osmosian boy launched himself at Xandros with such speed that he broke the sound barrier. The Reach warrior tried to dodge the full-body tackle, but his armor began to deteriorate under the presence of concentrated heat. When the boy managed to grab the traitor's shoulder, the metal plating melted away and forced Xandros to scream in agony.
Cassian whipped around so fast that if Gabriel blinked, he'd have missed it. With that motion, the beetle warrior flipped end over end and barely managed to control his flight in time. Cassian was all instinct, shooting through the air after him for but a moment. As soon as he made contact, he gripped and pulled the armored greaves away, hands searing with light as he torched the man's lower leg.
The same place the boy himself had been injured.
The same place the boy's mother had been injured.
Nearby assailants forced Gabriel to look away as he downed three Reach soldiers in quick succession, taking one of the plasma staffs to use as a back-up. An Aggrebot landed nearby and began providing support, letting the man focus for a moment on trying to increase his implant's viability. While the rest of the city continued to erupt, while the rest of Osmos V continued to erupt, Gabriel tinkered.
He looked toward the site of the nearby battle long enough to see the energy starting to fade from Cassian's skin, while the boy stood over the prone form of an armored Reach warrior more than a hundred yards away. The armor was in pieces – he could see that much from here – but he knew better. It would be a matter of time before it healed, and Cassian would be a sitting duck from whatever counter-attack Xandros unleas-
With a scream of defiance, Cassian reached down with a fist to impale the elder Osmosian's chest. The armor contorted to defend itself, to defend its host automatically, and halted the attack just before it made flesh. Several appendages held the boy's arm in place, preventing him from reaching the finishing blow, and the kid screamed in righteous anger. He struggled, he pressed forward, he tried again, but the fight was slowly slipping from him.
When the emerald twilight descended upon the skies of Osmos V, Gabriel felt the fight slip from him, too.
In a matter of hours, everything would be over.
OSMOS V
May 20, 09:34 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Cool water spilled over my face, and I shot forward and gripped the nearest person as tightly as I could, their shirt ripping beneath my fingers. For several impossible seconds, I tried to focus on anything at all beyond the thrumming in my chest, the pounding headache in my ears, the throbbing ache in my muscles.
"Cassian, you have to-"
I let him go as suddenly as I grabbed him, the surroundings slowly returning to my focus. A room – one not on fire or coated in debris – expanded around me in the shape of a hospital or a medical tent or a triage center. With a blink, it was clear this was a temporary shelter, and that the man in front of me was none other than my father, Horatio.
"Sorry," I muttered, face fallen. The headache continued long after I apologized, long after I came to realize where I was. A panel beyond the tent shone with an eerie green light for a few seconds, and I blinked with recognition. Gabriel!
"You're okay, you're safe," Father repeated, before I even realized he'd said the same words three times. "Cass, look at me. Take a breath."
"I can't sit here, there's more. More out there, more to do, more to punch, more to-"
"Cassian, it's over."
I leaned back in disbelief. The words made no sense. I heard them, but I didn't hear them. They couldn't possibly be true.
"The attack on the city?"
"Yes," Father replied. "Jula expects the fighting will be over planet-wide in a matter of days."
What…?
That doesn't.
That doesn't make any sense.
"Son, you've been unconscious for a week. You have a lot to catch-up on, but I think you need to eat first. Drink some fluids."
I blinked. A week- that was wrong.
"Tell me now."
"Lat-"
"No. Tell me now."
Father held the moment for a long few seconds and then began to speak, rubbing at a new scar that had formed over his left eye. "I don't really understand all of it myself, but Gabriel's allies finally arrived. They call themselves Green Lanterns," Oh god! "and they threw some muscle around and managed to stop the fighting. The Reach fled into space or were captured, and only a few more areas are challenging us."
The Green Lanterns.
I forced myself to my feet, wobbling and dismissing Father's concerns in the same breath. I'd be fine, I repeated more to myself than to him.
A coastal encampment stretched before us, the largely destroyed city in ruins. Temporary buildings and shelters were packed to the brim with various folks, and I spotted the reserve trio helping with triage. Marcilia gave me a smile, and I returned the wave until I realized…
… I realized she was missing her leg from the knee down.
I promised myself that I'd check on her later, ignoring Father's continued protests as he followed me using a cane to help him walk. I spotted Grandfather atop a nearby ladder, helping to hang a light fixture above one of the larger tents in the area, but he didn't spot me. I'd check on him too, I told myself, and forced myself toward any sign of green.
Finally, as I climbed an embankment, I spotted them, a slight glow to their features revealing their presence before I could see them properly. A pair of Green Lanterns – wearing the unmistakable body suits of black and emerald green – stood side by side as they spoke quietly with Gabriel, who stood across from them in a white and black outfit. I recognized both figures immediately even from just their silhouette, and I was giddy. A male figure with broad shoulders, a thick gut, pink skin, and a pig-like face: Lantern Kilowog. A female figure with a thin figure, gray skin, and red hair: Lantern Laira.
"Oh hey!" Kilowog yelled as he saw me, and Gabriel walked to greet me with a shake of the hand. "It's the poozer who managed to down a Scarab."
"Not much of a poozer if you ask me," Laira replied with a half-grin. "You're the kid, then?"
"You, uh, you know of me?" I asked nervously, before the reality of what they'd said truly hit me. "I mean, yeah, I guess I am."
Gabriel shook his head. "Give the kid some space. He's earned it."
Kilowog grunted. "Yeah, yeah, Plumber. Catch me later – you'll need to make another statement to the bobbleheads."
Laira gasped in mock surprise. "Jordan rubbing off on you, Kilowog?"
They continued to argue as they effortlessly took to the skies, power rings flickering with green light that enveloped them.
Holy shit.
"Only two of those guys stopped the war?"
Gabriel shook his head. "No, no, it was less about that and more about intergalactic politics. The GLC and the Reach do not get along. Old treaties keep 'em from going at each other directly."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why did they come, then?"
The human considered the question. "Carnifex found proof that they were experimenting on the local populace and were using those experiments in intergalactic conflicts. That proof was broadcast, the local Sector House AI picked up on it, and sent for aid. Would have come sooner, but Oa's a long ways away, even by ring standards."
I understood several of those concepts better than I thought I would, and I'd ask for clarification later. "What do we do now? Is everything really… over?"
"Nothing's ever over, Cassian. The planet'll be fighting over who should lead for a while. There's a revolution out there still ongoing, and if I had to guess, Aggregor'll have the spot in a matter of weeks."
I frowned as the question came to mind. "Yeah, but what should I do?"
Gabriel hesitated and then placed a hand on my shoulder. The touch nearly forced me to back away, even as friendly as it was. "You can start by telling me how you know about Earth."
May 13, 10:28 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Jula's fingers flew across the control terminal, her voice hoarse from frequently shouted orders. A collection of men, women, and children – the ones deemed too unfit to physically join the fight against the government – were assisting in other ways from the safety of a secretive bunker, deep in the Magnus Desertus. Sweat dripped from their faces, a combination of the lack of air conditioning and the tension of their required tasks. With each order she made, redirected from the council's authority, they nervously followed through as swiftly as they could. She was losing her voice, but she could not stop now, could not take a break.
Today was the day their destiny would change.
"Triarchy soldiers, three clicks out from reinforcements in the southern convoy!"
"Aggrebots completing boot sequence in fifteen minutes."
"Heavy casualties along the coast from both sides. Exceptions deployed!"
"The northern front has breached into the city center!"
"Where's my mommy?"
The voice of the small child cut through the chaos, and she spared a moment from glaring at readings to meet the child's gaze. A young boy, barely six years old, carried a stack of sealed papers under his arm. Every pair of hands they could spare had a role, but the kid had frozen with terror, disturbed by the noise or the pressure of what was a simple task for him, but one of likely monumental importance for the world outside.
Cassian….
Jula pushed the worrying thoughts from her mind. The brat had gotten himself into this mess. Her idiot of a father supported it. At the end of the day, if she had no one left, then they had none but themselves to bla-
"Central command."
Aggregor.
Jula pressed a button to activate her microphone on the console. "Command to Aggregor, this is Jula speaking. Status update?"
"I've breached the city center," he explained in a digitized voice. The console updated to show his location on the map projection before her. "No sign of Reach forces."
A spark of hope revitalized her body. "Are we in good shape then to hold the city through the night?" Even holding the place for one day greatly increased their chances to rally others across the planet to fight back. Each hour of success was an hour of footage they could use to display to the masses.
"We can hold Cato's Legion. If Gordia or Seneca join them before we are more firmly established, we stand heavy risks-"
"Central command! – No, aunt Jula!"
She snapped her fingers, forcing one of her assistants to swap the signal immediately. Cassian's voice boosted louder in her ear. "I'm listening!"
"We- we found Father. And Gabriel!"
Jula's heart skipped a beat. The assistant, a mousy-haired woman with horns, gaped at her upon hearing the news. The former businesswoman could barely hold herself together. "Are you sure?"
"He's here!"
A hesitation in the feed brought with her a pit of fear. What if this were some trick? It could not be true. Perhaps the Reach had-
"Jul, I- I don't know what to say."
Hope filled every thought in her mind. "Brother, you- this is too much."
"Jula, Aggregor is-"
"Not now," she barked to the assistant. "It can wait a few seconds."
"We don't have much time for a reunion," Cassian's voice continued through the audio. "Gabriel has information that must be shared immediately. The entire operation could be at stake."
She had mixed feelings on the man, but she was glad to hear he was alive. At the end of the day, the man's involvement in their lives had drastically set them on a different course.
"Put him on," she replied carefully.
"What I am going to say will be difficult to hear, but I am an alien from another planet. An agent of a secretive organization called the Plumbers, that works across the cosmos in places the Guardians of the Universe cannot directly touch." He paused, and she could hear shouting as fighting progressed in the background.
Jula had no context for what this man was saying, and she had little reason to believe him unless what he was going to say actively helped them in some way.
"I don't have time for the full damn story. My bosses can't get directly involved in the Reach's war crimes, so they send Plumbers like myself to investigate and subvert enemies like them. I have a lot of knowledge about how they operate, and the shit they do could fill the damn Library of Congress a hundred times over. Know this now, Carnifex – if you continue along this path, you may doom the entire planet. Everything you've been fighting for? Reduced to ash."
The bunker largely continued its operations, as they could not all hear the words of this strange man. The one's who could hear it though? They had completely halted, hands hesitating to input commands, to activate headsets, to send updates. Jula herself struggled to wrap her head around the information.
"Cassian."
The child's voice, heaving with breath, entered the feed. "We h-have to stop, uh, to -"
"You trust him?" she asked carefully, a significant portion of her hoping that Gabriel was a liar, a Triarch sympathizer. Someone who was just trying to turn them away from their path.
"I do. For more reasons than you know." He hesitated for a long moment. "He kept Father alive and sane. That's good enough for me."
"It's true. I was a wreck, Jula," her brother added into the communicator a second later. "Gabriel told me stories, entertained me, gave me reasons to hold on."
Jula sighed. All around her, those nearby were waiting with bated breath. Other members of the council were issuing orders, preparing the launch of the Aggrebots, readying logistics to support the operation. Her own Father was out there, holding the line alongside a group of soldiers and maintaining an on-site defensive position.
"You believe this?" the assistant closest to her asked. "This- surely they can't be right-"
"How bad is it?" she asked. "Gabriel, if the Reach go through with what you're saying, how bad is it?"
"Total annihilation of the planet's biosphere," he replied grimly. "They've got the tech to do it in a matter of hours. A few different kinds of death – orbital bombardment, atmosphere incineration, magnetic field disruption, gravitic manipulation…"
This…
This was far too specific to be a lie.
"Patch him through to Aggregor," she ordered without fanfare. Then, "Inform the council of the stakes."
OSMOS V
May 13, 10:49 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
With only a few words, my understanding of the cosmos had shifted.
I now knew what the Earth was like, and the idea both excited and terrified me. With the knowledge that there were, in fact, Guardians of the Universe patrolling their sectors, the death-defying fight that Gabriel had had with the Scarlet Scarab now made far more sense. The green energy he'd utilized must have been connected to the same power as the Green Lanterns, but he had no ring. I didn't know what a Plumber was either. The DC universe was real, and I'd been born and raised on a planet I didn't recognize from any of the comics.
I couldn't dwell on any of the information, because I needed to keep moving. Reflection would come later.
I couldn't stop fighting, and I had more reason to do it now, not less.
Father could barely walk, and Gabriel refused to let me help support him because I could still fight. Others in my team were dead, injured, or separated. Only the twins were nearby, trying to provide covering fire for the newly assembled crowd of prisoners. The beastly Exception had fallen sometime in the last few minutes, putting the crosshairs on the fleeing group.
The mine around us as we fought on was largely a wreck, some buildings were on fire, and it was honestly a wonder that we hadn't accidentally exploded the whole place. Turrets fired automatically from various high positions, though most had been swiftly disabled earlier. One particular sniper popped blaster fire into the crowd, but there were too many bodies for him alone to stop. It had become a mad dash to the perimeter, and I refused to leave Father's side.
"Son, how are you doing this?"
"Not the time," I shot back before he could argue. My metallic arm held up a solid piece of debris – one that must have weighed a half ton or more – and hurled it as swiftly as I could. The makeshift fastball impacted bodily into an oncoming soldier, the man's torso caving in on itself as his body dropped two more behind him. "I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm keeping you alive."
He said nothing else and followed under the support of Gabriel's arms, though it was clear he was biting his tongue.
"You got any more explosions in your tank?" I asked the human, thinking back to the tech he'd used years ago.
"'Fraid not, or the last few years would have been very different." Gabriel gestured to his temple with a free hand. "I still have some active implants, but they aren't useful in a fight and don't have enough charge to do much of anything at all. Need to return to my ship to recharge and restock, if it still exists."
I nodded, the idea of a ship bringing me such joy. "Any chance it could serve as an escape hatch if the Reach go doomsday?"
Using that word is confusing now. Was Doomsday a thing here?
"Unless it's parked outside?" Gabriel shrugged. "I couldn't get more than a few dozen people off-world. Don't have the resources for a long trip either, so it's not a viable option."
That was more than frustrating to hear, but I let it sink into the back of my mind. There was a job to do.
With a heavy leap, I crashed like an iron meteor atop a supporting wall on the edge of the mine's quarry. The platform beneath my feet cracked under the force of it, and three men tried and failed to take me down. A fist to the throat left one sputtering blood until he drowned, while the other two fell to gunfire from the twins below.
"Through the gate!" I repeated, hoping the reserve trio were ready to assist in arming anyone who managed to make it out. Gabriel and Father managed to exit the interior of the mine alongside others and enter the outskirts of the city proper.
A few blocks away, the coastline stretched before us. A sight that contained a few promising vessels in the distance, one's likely in place to deliver the best force multiplier we had.
The soldiers and guards manning the Distinian Mine certainly had not stopped gunning for us, but those that managed to meet with the trio were already arming themselves and doubling back to assist.
All things considered, this had been an overall successful operation.
The city itself, however, was on fire. Dozens of newly armed prisoners, fitted with weapons and simplistic vests to keep at least their torsos safe from small arms and ordinance, were ready to take the fight to its streets, while dozens more were equally as ready to avoid the inferno.
I did not blame them in the slightest.
Once it was clear that the operation shifted into the second phase, I raced to my Father and embraced him a second time, flesh having returned just before.
"I've missed you. So much. Everything – it was all for you."
And for Mother.
And for myself.
The man gripped me tightly, covered in rags and coated in soot. I was equally disgusting, and I doubted I would get better before the day ended.
"You joined Carnifex."
"I, uh, did. It's bigger than it was, when you were invovled. Full-on resistance to the damn Triarchs."
For what it had been worth.
Now, I wasn't sure we should be continuing. The Reach could, at any point, destabilize any semblance of safety to live on the planet. As tyrannical as the Triarch Elders could be and had been in the past, it was nothing to the hold the Reach had on us. They could flip a switch and escape a doomed world.
"I'm… proud of you."
My eyes widened.
Misty tears welled, but I didn't let them fall.
This was more than overwhelming to hear from the man, and it was something I wished I could hear from my real father again. As strained as things were with Hortatio, the overprotective instincts were better than no instincts. Dad had been too autistic to be a good father, without the tools in his pocket to compensate for any social graces he lacked.
Now, I could barely believe I was here, that Horatio was here, and I wanted nothing more than to return to the site I once called home, rebuild, and live out my days with the man at my side. I'd fought to find him, I'd lost Lucrecia in an effort to save him, and now I'd gotten him back.
We just had to live through all of this.
The freed prisoners who joined forces were halfway to the proper city battle when the sky alit with activity.
Dozens of creatures flew between buildings, over rooftops, and exited the coastal waters. Shaped almost like manta-rays, the creatures would stop in mid-air, fast speeds reduced to nothing, and unleash bolts of energy into the populace, into buildings, into friends. A flying swarm of aliens were fighting on the side of the Triarchy, aiming their energy blasts from tails and eyes toward the rebels.
"Aerophibians," Gabriel clarified in a Southern drawl. "Natural fliers and swimmers. Can survive in space. That light they fire hits you, your nervous system breaks down about as well as any Taser, if not more."
"Great to hear," I muttered and then tapped the communicator. "Central Command, this is Cassian. Mining operation a success. New reinforcements incoming. But the Reach have unleashed a flock of damn space aliens with energy weapons."
Someone- not Jula- responded, "Standby for update."
"No," I say simply as a realization hits. "If we stand any chance at saving the planet, we need to draw out Xandros and any other Scarab warrior. We take them down, and it will be that much easier to-"
With an influx of displaced air that sent shockwaves for miles, strong enough to nearly throw me to my feet, the sky above Vincendis became a field for what must be Reach ships. There were a half dozen of them, covered in almost insectoid plate and featuring segmented limbs, and each was spaced equally throughout the city. They were larger than any buildings, flying with unknown propulsion systems.
From them dropped soldiers - Osmosians and Reach alike – to descend upon the city. To my absolute horror, each dropship released plasma bombs into the city, explosive acidic bursts of heat and smoke that could melt stone and corrode metal. Towering buildings collapsed into piles of steel in seconds, and their allied forces began to sweep across the city. We would be overrun in a matter of hours, if we were lucky.
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath.
Gabriel blinked, not at the sight of the intense explosions and renewed fighting, but instead at me. "What did you say?"
My brow furrowed. "Uh… fuck?"
The man whipped his hand up to check something behind his ear. "My translation implant still works. Did you, uh – what does that word mean?"
…
Oh.
I decided to be honest. "It's a not-so-nice expletive."
"How- how do you know that word?"
I lean into his space and whisper, in perfect English, "I know a lot of things about Earth, but if we don't figure out what to do, everyone I love will die."
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
The Ambassador watched the scene unfolding from the orbital station. Probing machines and monitoring scanners revealed the extent of the battle below, and it was so very wonderful to see the thorns in the Triarchy's side finally come into the open to challenge them. They perfectly placed themselves into the path of the Reach, and nothing would stop them now.
Why Carnifex decided to do so now instead of earlier was a mystery to the Reach Ambassador, but he was not going to complain. When the day was over, the rebels will have had no choice to but to surrender to their ultimate control or die trying.
Once the Triarchy had no enemies from within, the Reach's true hegemony over Osmosian meat could begin in earnest. Generations from now, the universe will no longer have the capacity to stop their enhanced forces, and they will truly have an army worthy of dominating any celestial empire. All will be in the hands of the Reach.
"Ambassador, vessels along the sea have sparked with intense power outputs."
That Analyst struggled to see the bigger picture the way the Ambassador did.
"A volley from a dropship will do."
The order reflected within moments. A viewing panel expanded into view, displaying the maneuver for them all. One of their vessels – a single segment of their hidden fleet – shifted toward the boat in the harbor swiftly. Its weapon systems activated, primed, and -
Exploded.
Like dozens of gnats, automata entered the sky en masse. Armed, apparently, with enough firepower to destroy one of their ships while working in tandem.
"Dropship down," an Analyst shouted.
A flurry of activity erupted within the chamber, and the Ambassador could not believe their bad luck.
The Aerophibian Assets moved with the push of a button to engage the swiftly-flying robots, shaped like the men but made of intricate pieces of metallic plate. The converted aliens clashed with them, easily able to fly faster than the Carnifex machines, but the machines had the numerical advantage. It was a wonder that they'd managed to build this many, and the Ambassador doubted that this was the full extent of their numbers.
He had an option.
"Xandros."
"But he is-"
"Deploy the Scarlet Scarab!"
OSMOS V
May 13, 13:51 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Central Command had not changed their mind.
I raced through city streets as explosions rocketed the ground and the sky in every conceivable direction. The Aggrebots had evened the odds, as we had hoped, and their heavy weapons were capable of harming even the toughly defended Reach ships. Even still, they could not do enough damage quickly to stop the dropships altogether, and more plasma bombs ripped the city apart. Each second that passed was another second where I might be caught in the blast radius of something I could not predict, but I couldn't stop here.
Boots on the ground fought and died for every inch of territory gained on either side. Every death was a number, one that was likely going to be uncountably large if we did not change our methods.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
Behind me, Gabriel followed alongside the soldiers I had rescued, the soldiers that were working incredibly hard to fight an additional front. Carnifex swarmed the city from all directions, and I suspected that we'd have covered nearly every inch of the place by now if not for the Aerophibian swarm and the Reach's reinforcements. A few of us had broken off each block at a time to secure shelter, to hold in position, to grip our feet firmly into the area. Somewhere amidst that chaos, Father had settled in with the reserve trio to recieve healing and to watch over Marcilia for me – deep enough, I hoped, that there would be no chance of a plasma bomb barrage breaking the defenses.
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"This is not going to end well," I shouted to Gabriel. Something downed an Aggrebot, the machine shattering into a hundred pieces as it landed ahead, an impact crater in its wake. "Can't you do something? Even a hoverboard…?"
He shook his head, a blaster pistol releasing its charge into an oncoming vehicle. "I'm limited, Cassian, to what I have on hand. What I have on hand is not going to save the planet."
"Then we need to stop this madness!"
"I agree, but Central Command did not change their mind."
My mind wracked with activity to think of something – anything – that could stop this insanity.
A Gifted soldier nearby turned to glass to avoid a blaster shot from Gabriel, only to recieve a stone fist from myself into the back of the head for the effort, leaving him a shattered stump for a neck.
Until they stopped throwing themselves at us, this wouldn't stop.
"Central Command to all available elites," Jula's voice declared across every communicator. "Open rebellion has begun in every in-range population center. Protests, riots, violence – we ignited a revolution today. Aggrebots deployed across the globe to maintain the momentum."
I locked eyes with Gabriel, ready to denounce everyone and everything before it was too late, until I saw him.
Him.
A red armored figure rocketed across the sky, insectoid wings outstretched from the back of his scarab. The Osmosian unleashed a sonic attack from his gauntlet that single-handedly destroyed three Aggrebots in pursuit of an Aerophibian, the alien caught in the crossfire and downed in a heap.
Gabriel gripped my arm. "Cassian. You can't-"
…
Central Command had not changed their mind.
"Don't tell me what to fucking do."
I launched into a full sprint, not for Xandros, but for the manta-ray like alien around the corner, lying prone and bloody in a heap against the side of a garage. I ignored Gabriel's shouting voice, raced toward the Aerophibian, and gripped my hands against its torso before it could blast me with its weakened laser eyes.
…
Delicious.
Everything became mine.
The Aerophibian became nothing. Dead. A husk.
I launched myself into the sky at incredible speeds, an energy hidden beneath my skin and my eyes just waiting to be unleashed. I was flying – a feeling that was almost incredible enough to ignore the guilt over what I'd just done – but I had no time to dwell. Nor time to think.
With a snap of my hand, a bolt of crackling green light erupted against the Scarlet Scarab. Armor tanking the blow, I zipped to the side of the counterattack from one of his extra limbs, a turret-like attachment launching a projectile that would have certainly downed me had I given him the chance.
I pointed my hands at him and readied another blast, flying under my own power without difficulty. I was not as fast as the Aerophibian's fastest potential, but I was fast enough to be a nuisance. I'd bank on that.
"Xandros! I've waited for this goddamn day. Everything you've done, everything you are – I'm crushing you under my boot!"
The Scarab's helmet peeled away, revealing the haggard man's face behind the mask. "Who are you?"
"Fuck off! You killed my mother in the desert!" I activated my communicator with a press of my finger. "She died protecting me. You betrayed yourself to the Reach, your people! An invasion, supported by you, all to make you look good?"
Recognition must have finally hit, because he smirked. "You're the runt. Just as in over your head now as you were then!"
All around us, Aggrebots and Aerophibians continued to dance throughout the sky. New dropships could arrive any minute, and I could only hope that Osmos V had the numerical advantage against the Reach, now that a true rebellion had begun. Perhaps we could take them down before they ruin everything.
I released the energy charge, the lightning crackling once more. Xandros evaded it with an application of his flight suit, the energy narrowly avoiding his face. Blaster fire from below tried to impact our fight – our side or theirs, I was not sure – but I weaved through them and released a beam of light from my eyes. It struck a hastily-formed shield from the beetle-warrior's hand, but the guns below managed to impact his back, searing into the foreign metal.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
"Call off the attack!"
I raced away from him as I shouted the demand, the Scarlet Scarab attempting to skewer me with a mantis-like bladed sword.
"You idiots started this!" he shouted. "All you had to do was lie down, trust the Triarchs, and you'd be part of a glorious future!"
Someone with an Exception hurled an esoteric shadow monster at Xandros from a nearby rooftop, before getting swallowed in a horde of canine aliens – the same aliens that started me down this very path. The conjured apparition made purchase with the man's armor long enough to slow him down, but dissipated as soon as its creator died amid fang and claw.
All around us, similar moments were happening, powers and weapons clashing with twisted alien soldiers. Some threatened to intervene in the battle, while others remained isolated and momentary.
I blasted him in the helmet, hoping it was the least armored piece, but the green lightning-like shock did nothing to the Reach warrior. My borrowed power was not strong enough to stop the man, but I was fast enough to avoid him. I couldn't take on the full abilities of another species, but even a portion of speed from this creature was enough to hold my own. He tried his damndest to pin me with a tentacle-like whip, but I merely gripped the thing and pulled with as much strength as I could muster.
The metal of the Scarab covered my arms up to the elbow. A swipe of a bladed limb cut downward, and I was not fast enough to dodge completely. A gash nearly split my torso in twain, had I not lifted my arms in time to divert most of its force. Following through with a zip through the air forward, I leaned back.
"Fuck your glorious future!"
And unleashed an uppercut to the man's jaw.
The satisfying crunch of the armored chin was like music to my ears, and I would have celebrated for longer had it not been for the armor almost immediately healing from the damage. My hands alit with borrowed power once more, green light trying to follow up, but the headbutt that sent me crashing through the top of a ruined tower surprised me. In a shower of debris, I landed three stories down, feeling every ounce of hurt.
"No single Gifted warrior can stop, especially no child. I don't care how motivated you are," the Scarlet Scarab decried, "you can't hope to stand against Reach superiority."
I coughed, blood pooling to my chin.
"You're their dog, how could you be superior? How could you stand to see your people?"
Aggrebots intercepted another drop ship nearby, the explosion flashing such light that it brought ominous shadows across the Scarlet Scarab for a split second.
"I will become part of something greater, while you all will merely die, forgotten! You could have been part of it too."
He reached his hands together, and they morphed before my eyes to become a truly massive cannon. A cannon pointed toward me.
Central Command had not changed their minds.
The energy cascaded through the air in a near instant, and it is all that I can do to brace myself for impact. The air, the smoke, the ashes obliterated in but a moment, searing the space between us. I held my hands together in front of myself and pulled.
A distant warning raced through my memory.
"Son… abuse the Gift. Greatest danger… Psychosis. Paranoia. Hallucinations."
Mother, I need you!
OSMOS V
May 13, 14:26 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Gabriel felt the implant within his ear activate for a fraction of a second.
The sensation tore him away from the scene of the battle around him long enough to send hopeful tremors throughout his arms. Hands shaking, his blaster pistol missed its nearly stationary target, and he pushed himself to the ground to take cover and to take stock in what he heard.
In the distance, the Scarlet Scarab unleashed a truly massive amount of power in a weapon that could eradicate the thickest of walls and penetrate the smartest of defenses. The light flashed with such intensity that it nearly hurt his eyes, and Gabriel turned away from the certain doom that Cassian suffered. His heart hurt for the teen for a moment, but a longer sound burst through his communicator once more.
This was not the implant picking up the local chatter.
This was someone trying to reach him.
And if someone was trying to reach him, perhaps they had hope after all.
"Plum-er Vas-uez." The familiar sound was like music to his ears. "'elp is i-bou-"
Gabriel glanced upward to the sky, expecting to see them arrive at any moment.
Instead, he watched a small boy lift himself out of the rubble, golden light drifting off of him in pulsing waves. Everywhere they touched turned to ash, and the air grew intensely hot for reasons that were difficult to quantify. Had all of his implants been operable, Gabriel might be able to scan to see what type of energy that was, or what type of weapon had just fired.
He didn't need them to see that Cassian had become a walking embodiment of it, climbing out of a crater that had destroyed several city blocks.
The Osmosian boy launched himself at Xandros with such speed that he broke the sound barrier. The Reach warrior tried to dodge the full-body tackle, but his armor began to deteriorate under the presence of concentrated heat. When the boy managed to grab the traitor's shoulder, the metal plating melted away and forced Xandros to scream in agony.
Cassian whipped around so fast that if Gabriel blinked, he'd have missed it. With that motion, the beetle warrior flipped end over end and barely managed to control his flight in time. Cassian was all instinct, shooting through the air after him for but a moment. As soon as he made contact, he gripped and pulled the armored greaves away, hands searing with light as he torched the man's lower leg.
The same place the boy himself had been injured.
The same place the boy's mother had been injured.
Nearby assailants forced Gabriel to look away as he downed three Reach soldiers in quick succession, taking one of the plasma staffs to use as a back-up. An Aggrebot landed nearby and began providing support, letting the man focus for a moment on trying to increase his implant's viability. While the rest of the city continued to erupt, while the rest of Osmos V continued to erupt, Gabriel tinkered.
He looked toward the site of the nearby battle long enough to see the energy starting to fade from Cassian's skin, while the boy stood over the prone form of an armored Reach warrior more than a hundred yards away. The armor was in pieces – he could see that much from here – but he knew better. It would be a matter of time before it healed, and Cassian would be a sitting duck from whatever counter-attack Xandros unleas-
With a scream of defiance, Cassian reached down with a fist to impale the elder Osmosian's chest. The armor contorted to defend itself, to defend its host automatically, and halted the attack just before it made flesh. Several appendages held the boy's arm in place, preventing him from reaching the finishing blow, and the kid screamed in righteous anger. He struggled, he pressed forward, he tried again, but the fight was slowly slipping from him.
When the emerald twilight descended upon the skies of Osmos V, Gabriel felt the fight slip from him, too.
In a matter of hours, everything would be over.
OSMOS V
May 20, 09:34 UTC
TEAM YEAR NEGATIVE TWO
Cool water spilled over my face, and I shot forward and gripped the nearest person as tightly as I could, their shirt ripping beneath my fingers. For several impossible seconds, I tried to focus on anything at all beyond the thrumming in my chest, the pounding headache in my ears, the throbbing ache in my muscles.
"Cassian, you have to-"
I let him go as suddenly as I grabbed him, the surroundings slowly returning to my focus. A room – one not on fire or coated in debris – expanded around me in the shape of a hospital or a medical tent or a triage center. With a blink, it was clear this was a temporary shelter, and that the man in front of me was none other than my father, Horatio.
"Sorry," I muttered, face fallen. The headache continued long after I apologized, long after I came to realize where I was. A panel beyond the tent shone with an eerie green light for a few seconds, and I blinked with recognition. Gabriel!
"You're okay, you're safe," Father repeated, before I even realized he'd said the same words three times. "Cass, look at me. Take a breath."
"I can't sit here, there's more. More out there, more to do, more to punch, more to-"
"Cassian, it's over."
I leaned back in disbelief. The words made no sense. I heard them, but I didn't hear them. They couldn't possibly be true.
"The attack on the city?"
"Yes," Father replied. "Jula expects the fighting will be over planet-wide in a matter of days."
What…?
That doesn't.
That doesn't make any sense.
"Son, you've been unconscious for a week. You have a lot to catch-up on, but I think you need to eat first. Drink some fluids."
I blinked. A week- that was wrong.
"Tell me now."
"Lat-"
"No. Tell me now."
Father held the moment for a long few seconds and then began to speak, rubbing at a new scar that had formed over his left eye. "I don't really understand all of it myself, but Gabriel's allies finally arrived. They call themselves Green Lanterns," Oh god! "and they threw some muscle around and managed to stop the fighting. The Reach fled into space or were captured, and only a few more areas are challenging us."
The Green Lanterns.
I forced myself to my feet, wobbling and dismissing Father's concerns in the same breath. I'd be fine, I repeated more to myself than to him.
A coastal encampment stretched before us, the largely destroyed city in ruins. Temporary buildings and shelters were packed to the brim with various folks, and I spotted the reserve trio helping with triage. Marcilia gave me a smile, and I returned the wave until I realized…
… I realized she was missing her leg from the knee down.
I promised myself that I'd check on her later, ignoring Father's continued protests as he followed me using a cane to help him walk. I spotted Grandfather atop a nearby ladder, helping to hang a light fixture above one of the larger tents in the area, but he didn't spot me. I'd check on him too, I told myself, and forced myself toward any sign of green.
Finally, as I climbed an embankment, I spotted them, a slight glow to their features revealing their presence before I could see them properly. A pair of Green Lanterns – wearing the unmistakable body suits of black and emerald green – stood side by side as they spoke quietly with Gabriel, who stood across from them in a white and black outfit. I recognized both figures immediately even from just their silhouette, and I was giddy. A male figure with broad shoulders, a thick gut, pink skin, and a pig-like face: Lantern Kilowog. A female figure with a thin figure, gray skin, and red hair: Lantern Laira.
"Oh hey!" Kilowog yelled as he saw me, and Gabriel walked to greet me with a shake of the hand. "It's the poozer who managed to down a Scarab."
"Not much of a poozer if you ask me," Laira replied with a half-grin. "You're the kid, then?"
"You, uh, you know of me?" I asked nervously, before the reality of what they'd said truly hit me. "I mean, yeah, I guess I am."
Gabriel shook his head. "Give the kid some space. He's earned it."
Kilowog grunted. "Yeah, yeah, Plumber. Catch me later – you'll need to make another statement to the bobbleheads."
Laira gasped in mock surprise. "Jordan rubbing off on you, Kilowog?"
They continued to argue as they effortlessly took to the skies, power rings flickering with green light that enveloped them.
Holy shit.
"Only two of those guys stopped the war?"
Gabriel shook his head. "No, no, it was less about that and more about intergalactic politics. The GLC and the Reach do not get along. Old treaties keep 'em from going at each other directly."
I raised an eyebrow. "Why did they come, then?"
The human considered the question. "Carnifex found proof that they were experimenting on the local populace and were using those experiments in intergalactic conflicts. That proof was broadcast, the local Sector House AI picked up on it, and sent for aid. Would have come sooner, but Oa's a long ways away, even by ring standards."
I understood several of those concepts better than I thought I would, and I'd ask for clarification later. "What do we do now? Is everything really… over?"
"Nothing's ever over, Cassian. The planet'll be fighting over who should lead for a while. There's a revolution out there still ongoing, and if I had to guess, Aggregor'll have the spot in a matter of weeks."
I frowned as the question came to mind. "Yeah, but what should I do?"
Gabriel hesitated and then placed a hand on my shoulder. The touch nearly forced me to back away, even as friendly as it was. "You can start by telling me how you know about Earth."
Oh boy, it feels nice to see that the Osmos V Arc is behind us.
Next chapter, to Team Year Zero!
Next chapter, to Team Year Zero!
If you're referring to their comic counterparts, let's not go there.
So now it happens, the Reach is beaten, and Osmos V isn't destroyed. I wonder how the stories of Cassian, Jinx, and Kyle Rayner may eventually line up with those of the Team, when that happens, and with all the other Ben 10 stuff out there, there's the likelihood other Ben 10 elements may be reimagined for this world.
Interlude - Legacy
- Location
- Alabama
GOTHAM CITY
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Jinx pressed her hand to the concrete sidewalk, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the ebb and flow of nature. Jackson Park seared into her mind in stunning detail, a kaleidoscope of sensations that remained even as her sense of touch, smell, hearing, and sight faded to a dull haze. Each leafy tree, each grassy patch, each crawling insect, each hungry pet, each distracted jogger – their life force opened to her, and with a fraction of effort, she could slip into their senses, their lives, for but a moment.
With that connection to the park solidified, an undercurrent of foreign emotions and experiences rushed through her awareness. Like trying to stop a raging river with simply the palm of her hand, she tried and failed to hold any one connection for long, the rest slipping through her focus as easily as water through her fingers. A snapshot impression of the moment showed the rot at the core of the city and the people it fostered, with very few fragments of hope scattered amidst the anxiety, the anger, the depression, the guilt, the avarice, the obsession….
And this was, frustratingly, only what she could feel from the park itself. Like a dull ache she could not scratch, the rest of Gotham's metropolitan streets were out of reach. It was not an impossibility – she could brute force some with serious, straining effort – but it had always been easier the closer a place was to natural elements. As easy as it was to feel the life within Jackson Park, it did not hold a candle to the swift and vibrant synchronicity she felt atop the Himalayas, within the Sahara, or among the Amazon.
"It will become easier with time."
Jinx let the connection fade, her normal senses returning in time to see the familiar figure, his words echoing in her mind.
"You look awful today."
The man chuckled. "Long gone are the days of vanity, my friend. Lately, I'm merely grateful for the shape I'm in."
If the shape was, "could drop dead any second," she didn't think she'd ever be grateful for that.
She frowned and stood up, ignoring any strange looks she might have gotten with the flash of her gray skin. "What do you need, Kent?"
"I have no need for anything. I am this close to the promised land, little Jinx, where all my worries will fade away."
Hm. She tried and failed to hold back her scoff. With everything she had seen, all the lives lost in her life, she doubted there was anything afterward. At least, nothing resembling consciousness. When someone died, their life force merely returned to the environment to be used again.
It was painfully close to the kind of beliefs the folks back home held, but she could see the truth.
Jinx wasn't going to tell him, but the twinkle in the man's eyes told her that she didn't need to say anything at all.
"It's rude to read emotions like that."
"You must be very rude then, considering what you were trying to pull a few minutes ago," he said cheekily. "All those park-goers and their little secrets were nearly yours."
Jinx decided that she didn't want to indulge the man today. Today was supposed to be her time, away from responsibilities, away from supervision.
Instead of sticking around to listen to the impending lecture, she adjusted the pendant around her neck that kept her skin tone appearing normal and found the nearest hotdog stand. Said stand was a five minute jog away, one she could have made quicker, but he would undoubtedly have stopped her.
She was halfway through the meal – purchased with honest money, nature be damned – when Kent sat down on the bench beside her. Frustratingly, she hadn't even heard him coming, and she could feel no magic around him to make it happen.
"Now, Jinx, you'll get the hang of it. You young magic talents always try so hard to rush, to focus on the big picture and to ignore the little things about the Art. It's the little things that will keep you from getting ahead of yourself, and sometimes, all you need is to tweak something small to get what you want."
She rolled her eyes. "Maybe that's how it was for you, but I've been making Art since I was a toddler. Turned a stuffed giraffe into a real one once and didn't even get to play with it before my dad killed it, thinking it had escaped some exhibit."
She paused, considering. "You know, it says a lot about him that he went straight for a gun."
The man did not respond, and she almost took the invitation to give more examples to her point. Instead, she merely finished her meal and stood to leave.
"Magic responds to need, Jinx." He smiled. "Perhaps the little thing you needed was a friend."
Of course, he had an answer ready.
"You don't get to do that."
Kent hesitated, looking up at her with twinkling eyes. "Jinx, you've always denied yourself what you need, by going after what you want. That impulsivity is dangerous in this profession-"
"Profession?" Jinx rolled her eyes. "Being magical isn't a job for me. It isn't some m-mask I wear."
Her voice betrayed her.
"It is unique for you, yes." His voice softened. "I can't take away your pain from that, Jinx, but you must learn to not let it define you."
She had heard this all before.
Some part of her appreciated hearing it, but it was a small part that she refused to unpack then and there.
"I'm not impulsive," she argued finally. "If I were impulsive, I'd have tried to force a connection to the rest of Gotham and wound up with a killer migraine."
"Building your skill with urban magic, to me, feels as though you are trying to force yourself to become left-handed."
"I am lefthanded."
He chuckled. "Not even you are that obtuse."
She saw his point. "Yeah, well, all the big events happen in cities. If I can get urban, I'll have more to use in the event of a crisis."
And she meant that.
The only expression of her magic she possessed at full strength at all times was the bundle of chaos that she could twist into fortune or misfortune. By its very source, it was difficult to twist into her advantage, and she hardly knew at times where someone's luck would take them when ebbed in one direction or another. More often than not, she jinxed them into whatever would be the worst outcome.
In contrast, her more elemental affinities worked best in environments with hardly any civilization at all. A column of fire produced during a cruise across the Caribbean would be monumentally easier and more potent than one created amidst the dingy alleys of Gotham City.
She wanted to make the city sing for her the way nature did.
"Why are you worried about a crisis?" asked Kent. "You are one of many who can respond in the event of an emergency."
Jinx wanted to refuse to elaborate, but knew better. Kent Nelson always rubbed his thumb against the back of his hand when he was serious, a sign she should listen.
"I know there are others, but there are never enough to be everywhere at once." Jinx frowned as she considered her next words, hands gripping the wood of the bench. "Where were you in December 2004?"
The elderly man glanced down at his pocket-watch. "Ah. You…" He frowned. "You blame yourself."
"No!" She interjected. "I'm not gonna hold myself responsible for a damn disaster. But, if I had been there instead of gallivanting through Europe? A lot less folks would be dead."
Untold devastation across India after the "tsunami of the century" destroyed homes, separated families, and ended others. She'd left long before all of that, to pursue petty crimes and heists at the behest of folks who'd abandoned her when the going got tough. Like everyone else.
Cities, towns, villages of people gone in a few hours, left the pick up the pieces. The all day news coverage of that had been staggering to watch, and the curry she'd prepared with stolen money that day had left a particularly bad taste in her mouth.
Those people had never cared for her, and she wasn't going to lie to herself or anyone else to say that she was torn up it had happened. Years later, and things were mostly back to normal.
But she remembered the Justice League putting all hands on deck in its aftermath. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – and others – were there on the news helping people.
"Were you there, too?"
Kent closed his watch. "I'm afraid not, Jinx."
"Why not?" she challenged. "Were you busy scouring the Nether Realms for mystic artifacts? Fighting back the hordes of Hell? Tangling with eldritch murderers?"
Jinx could go on, repeating stories she'd heard from the man of his many adventures.
"I was on holiday with my niece and her family."
Jinx frowned, more at the loss of her point than the reminder of those she'd lost. "Must be nice."
He smiled faintly. "It was a lovely time of year to visit Cancun. I got to bond with her husband and son, whom I'd only met once before when he was a toddler."
One point stood out to her. "And are they talented like you?"
"Oh, quite, though the jury is out for whether Khalid will embrace his potential one day or choose to remain muggle, a choice his mother made."
She rolled her eyes. "Why are you using that word?"
"It's catching on, Jinx! I have friends at Oxford who think it might be added to the dictionary one day." He chuckled. "Of course, they have no idea what such an action may do to the metaphysical underpinnings of mundanity."
His attention returned to her after a few wistful seconds. "Jinx, I know this focus on responsibility is new. You're grappling with the needs of the many and struggling to adapt. Everyone who takes on this task -"
She glared at him.
"I do not mean the task of magic itself. I know dozens of folks by name who have talent in the Art but do not throw themselves in front of tsunamis." She relinquished the point. "You need not try to rush the development of your abilities. Urban magic or natural magic, good fortune or bad fortune – you are already talented beyond measure for one of your age. I am convinced that you will achieve wonders, in time."
OSMOS V
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Jula settled into her new office, drones having cleared the debris and detritus of the place a long time ago. Before, she had merely been a high-level executive of Vir Actus. Now, she was the head honcho of the company, and she planned to take things into a new direction. Humanitarian efforts were well underway in most major cities, and she would direct her company to assist in the creation of new products to assist in those efforts.
There was still much to be done, many jobs to fill, and a lot of new roles to be created. Her experience as one of the faces of a movement meant that she had no shortage of applicants vying for her attention. Her Aggrebot bodyguard ensured that those who wished for her negative attention would recieve a metal boot up their asses for the attempts.
Maximus stretched up from the couch, a movement that required effort. He'd sustained injuries during the last of the fighting, and what they'd been able to cure so far was only part of it.
"Jula, come sit with me."
She shook her head. "No, no, Father. I have a mountain of work ahead of me, and not enough assistants to delegate the work load. Unless you'd like to take this stack of logistics reports to file?"
"No thank you. I want nothing more than to sit on this damn couch with my daughter."
"Too bad you don't have another daughter," she replied coolly. "Now, truthfully, I have many things to do."
"You think I don't?" Maximus shook his head. "I'm barely keeping this family together. You'd think after everything that happened, we'd be closer than ever, but now we are just drifting apart again."
Jula thought about his qualm for a long second. "Father, you do not have to be the glue for us. The crisis is over. The military has changed hands, and they are fighting tooth and nail to clean up any residual Reach messes. We can go back to the way things were before."
Jula missed the pre-Invasion days dearly, as dearly as anyone would. People who knew her from before likely believed she had it made now, but that could not be farther from the truth. It was difficult to be so involved with Carnifex and its success and to not have had its traumas affect her.
"So Horatio can take his family as far away as possible, I can go back to drinking my life away in a dive bar, and you can go back to pretending none of us exist?"
Jula couldn't help but be flippant. "Pretty much, yeah. You going to-"
The bell to the office beeped a short warning from her clerk, before the doors slid open to reveal an imposing figure.
Long dark hair, quaint horns, and a thick metallic spear in his grip. Jula was surprised to see the figure of Aggregor.
"May I have a word with your daughter?"
Maximus glanced between the two of us and then slowly nodded, mumbling an offer to help her if she needed anything.
When the two of them were alone, she felt the tension relax from her shoulders, in a way that only he could induce in her.
"How goes the transition?"
She considered the question and nodded. "Well enough for now. Going to be a long road ahead, but it's nothing compared to the work you have in store for yourself."
He stepped closer to lean over her desk, a tall and imposing figure. She felt small in comparison.
"I am glad that things are going well for you." He stepped to the side of the desk and more into her personal space than she expected. "We both have much to be done in the coming months, a burden difficult for either of us to shoulder alone."
… Oh.
"But together, we share in those burdens. We have grown close in these past few months. I met you as a bright mind amid the darkness of shelter, on the first day of the invasion. You've acted, Jula, as a light for me throughout this process, and without your contributions, I would certainly have died."
She listened quietly, feeling a flush come to her cheeks.
"I believe the two of us can unite those still struggling to come to heel, and lead us all to a prosperous age."
He finished quietly.
Jula mulled the facets of her reply in her mind over and over, before she finally settled to speak.
OSMOS V
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Horatio studied the wreck of his family home. A sinkhole had formed beneath unstable earth, swallowing the edifice on the edge of Sanitas. It was a modest place for modest means – despite what some might say, Cassian and Lucrecia never had to want for anything.
The sun room was gone, the kitchen buried, and the bunker he maintained more out of habit than necessity over the years now lay barren of purpose and function. Memories, both good and bad, flooded his thoughts, and he found it difficult to imagine life would ever be the same again.
He resolved not to cry, not to let himself feel the weight of his grief, not while he was trying to move on to greater pastures. His life returned to the surface from the depths of that mine, and he had little idea what to do with it.
He gripped the badge in his hand, a circular disc outfitted with green, white, and black sigils. A gift from Gabriel and Cassian, one that would never leave his side.
Carnifex needed Horatio. Needed every hand they could to maintain dominance over the loyalists to the former Triarchs. Aggregor's control was tenuous and likely would be for the foreseeable future, and he could help ensure that the man stayed on top.
The city of Sanitas needed workers, builders, city planners, farmers, hunters. Not many of those things were in his wheelhouse, but there was plenty of work to be found here.
The Capital, too, needed assistance on many fronts. Volunteers to help house, clothe, and feed refugees were asked for on every corner. Food logistics alone would need recalibrating so that the communities that existed on the fringes could still gain their survival and rebuild.
"Sir, Horatio?"
He turned to see a small girl peeking out from behind rubble. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, she held scars from a hard-lived life, unable to be healed by her own Exception. Cassian had helped the girl once, and she had nowhere to go when it all ended.
"Hello again, Marcilia. Be careful where you step."
The girl nodded fervently and stared at each meticulous step before finally joining him.
"Do you miss it?" she asked. "I bet it was a beautiful place."
"It was," he admired wistfully. "I raised my son here and lived with my wife. Our bedroom was right over there, and Cassian's room was on its opposite side. The attic was my favorite place, and we had all kinds of fun things in storage. I'll miss decorations the most."
Marcilia gave a nod. "I had an attic too, once! My mother had us hide there when everything started, and it worked for a little wh…"
Her voice trailed off with a sniffle.
"I know, it's hard. This is probably the hardest thing you'll ever have to do, Marcilia." He leaned down to meet her tearful eyes. "But know this – you are not going to be alone. I'll make sure of it."
She let a small smile escape her sad expression.
LOS ANGELES
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Kyle put the pencil down and smiled – he couldn't wait to show Terry and Alexandra, this was his best one yet. Mr. Johns was bound to give him full credit for their art project, and he was convinced that he could ship this off to a publisher. Or two or three – he wasn't unaware of his chances.
The Daring Aaron: Hero Extraordinaire was bound to get some attention. Add some coloring, do some line editing, and his time traveling tale about a father from the forty-fifth century protecting his son from interdimensional ninjas would kick ass. He suspected that it would be shipped as a weekly comic strip or a monthly comic book; he'd take the work either way gladly. He'll, he was tempted to ship it off to Jump.
He reached for a blue colored pencil when the doorbell rang, startling his late-night work session. He already knew he wasn't going to get to bed in time now, and the next day would suck… And he still had to study for his history test.
No one else was home. His mom had a late shift, so he ignored the doorbell like a good little student and picked up his textbook instead.
Who really cared about the All-Star Squadron's influence on the Cold War anyway?
The bell rang again.
With a deep sigh and heavy footfalls to perhaps intimidate away any dangerous intruders, he approached his apartment door, nearly tripping over his calico cat. "Listen, if you're an axe murderer, know that I'll kick your ass before you get the chance!"
Kyle took the time to check the peephole – he wasn't stupid – but the figure stepped away from view and began descending the stairs.
He almost ignored it, but the curiosity compelled him to check. "Hey, what do you…"
The figure turned away from facing the landing, but not quickly enough if he wanted to hide his identity from Kyle. Dark hair, blue eyes, handsome and confusingly familiar for the kid.
"Gabriel?"
The man paused on the stairs and turned around slowly, a small smile creeping across his face. "Hey, Kyle. Is your, uh, mom home?"
The kid hadn't seen this man in years. Good memories with the guy rolled through his mind, like that day trip to the comic convention, the sci-fi movie marathon, and that historic Dodgers game. They'd been so close to catching a foul ball!
"Nope, just me. I didn't know you were in town."
"Yeah," Gabriel said as he climbed back to the top of the stairs. "I came back into the area only a few hours ago. Thought I'd stop by."
Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Wow, you and Mom must have really had it bad for each other if she was the first person you wanted to see."
Gabriel turned a bright shade of red and rubbed the back of his neck. "Something like that. Can I come in?"
"Guess so." Kyle held the door for the man. "Just so you know, Mom's seeing someone, but I don't like Harry too much. If you wanna sweep her off her feet, you've got my blessing."
Harry was a tool. The kind of guy who was in a relationship because he liked the idea of it, but didn't like anything else around it. Like dating a woman who had a teenage son.
"I, uh, will take that under advisement," Gabriel said as he stepped into the kitchen. Kyle wished he had known there would be company. Mom would hate that Gabriel was seeing a mess. "Kyle, how are things with you?"
"Oh, they're fine!" he explained simply, pouring a glass of water for the man before realizing he should have offered the man a different drink – coffee, tea, or a glass of wine. Kyle wasn't sure the protocol, but Gabriel took the water in stride. "I'm in high school now, and it sucks, but I know it's important."
Gabriel gave him a funny look, one that the boy couldn't place. Pain? Confusion? Both?
"That's good to hear, buddy." He looked away from Kyle for a moment and then returned to meet his gaze. Before he said anything, he took a long gulp of water.
"Listen, I was hoping your mom would be here for this, but you and I need to have a discussion. I wanted to wait – I should wait, probably, but it's all fresh on my mind, and I just need to do it now before I regret it."
Kyle's brow furrowed. "Oh… uh, okay."
Where was this going?
"My name is Gabriel Vasquez, but I went by a different name when I met your mother. At the time, I was undercover with the CIA on a long-term assignment," he began to explain, and Kyle held the countertop for support. This was not at all what he expected. "Your mother knew me as Aaron Rayner."
…
"What?"
This man was his father?
"I know this is a hard thing to accept, to hear."
Kyle felt an undercurrent of frustration building in his mind. "You… you expect me to – to believe that?"
Gabriel stepped closer, a pleading look in the man's eyes, but Kyle moved back a half-step. "Son, don't-"
"Don't call me that," he interjected without looking the man in the eye. His whole world had shattered, and he needed a minute. "Not – not now. Maybe never."
For a long moment, there was silence. Broken only by the sound of the neighbors fighting a few doors down and the purring of Kyle's cat as she danced between Gabriel's feet.
"Okay, whatever you want. I don't want you to be uncomfortable, Kyle. I merely want to explain."
"Why now?" Kyle challenged. "What changed? You could have called, you could have emailed, used snail mail for all I care. You could have-"
"I couldn't," Gabriel explained, and Kyle nearly raised his voice to shout in anger, but the man held up a hand to pause. "There is much much, more involved in this situation than you could possibly know, and I'm going to break protocol and tell you now. Everything that I say and do for the next few minutes does not leave this room, even to your mother."
Kyle's mind raced at the possibilities of what that could mean. Secret… secret agent missions? My dad? That was- that was cool, but it meant, it meant too much was lost!
"I worked for the CIA for nearly three years, fresh out of college. While working there, another group noticed me, noticed that I had potential for something more, something greater. This group were so secretive that the government didn't know they existed, and they made an interesting recruitment pitch. They called themselves the Plumbers – and no, it has nothing to do with pipes and sewage and drains."
Kyle listened, if only out of respectful curiosity and because this was, thankfully, distracting his brain from the more worrisome revelation from earlier. The whole thing was wild as all hell.
"The reason I couldn't call you, couldn't email you, couldn't reach out is because the Plumbers are an intergalactic organization."
Intergala…galactic?
"My d- you work with… aliens."
Gabriel nodded sincerely and then upturned his hand, revealing the skin of his wrist just beneath his sleeve. A single press of his thumb revealed an undercurrent of green light that pulsated beneath his skin, as though his veins were glowing.
"Wha- you're serious. You're t-telling the truth."
"Yes," Gabriel replied. "The Plumbers recruit from tons of planets in the known universe, and I was one from Earth. When I met your mother, I had recently returned from an assignment on a war-torn planet called Tamaran."
Kyle needed to sit down. "You've been to other planets-"
"Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"
He started to pace back and forth as he tried to wrap his mind around everything the man was telling him. His mother – "Did she know?"
The man nodded, nervousness on his sleeve as he studied the boy's pacing. "She knows enough. I told her when I last left Earth that I'd be gone on assignment to Frontier Space, which is outside the traditionally patrolled area of my bosses. There's a lot of detail to understand there, but when I said that I got back a few hours ago, I was telling you the truth."
Kyle's dad was a secret agent for an organization of aliens….
And he returned to the planet a few hours ago, not LA…
That was much cooler than a time traveler from the future.
"Why are you risking telling me about this?" Kyle asked finally, torn between showing the man the comic pitch and listening to a wilder story about Aaron Rayner from the man himself. "You said it was a breach of protocol."
The man held his breath for a long moment and then slowly nodded. "I've been gone for years, Kyle. I met a kid there who is in a similar situation to you, with a father keeping secrets about membership to a secret organization. That kid fought like hell to get his father back, to get me back. I owe him my safety, so that I could come to you."
Kyle didn't know how to process that. He didn't know how to process any of it, truth be told.
"I'm glad you're home, but I don't know what to do with all of this."
Gabriel had the decency to shrug. "You and me both. We can take it one step at a time." He paused, considering his next words carefully. "But I know this, Kyle: I don't want to be apart from you any longer. I want to be in your life, I want to be a mentor, I want to be the shoulder you lean on when time gets tough, to make up for lost time."
By the end of the moment, the man had tears in his eyes, and Kyle could feel the emotion was genuine.
Gabriel leaned forward and gripped his son's upper arm. "When I am called for another mission, I want you to join me."
Kyle sputtered with surprise.
OA
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
The Ambassador glared at the emerald glow that surrounded him on all sides. Each wall was likely more than a foot thick, coated in pure willpower, and a transparent yet unbreakable opening revealed the space beyond: a brilliant cityscape so dense and so bright that he had no idea where he was, nor what he was going to do with the information he could readily see from his position.
Were the Guardians of the Universe truly so confident in the inability to escape the science cell that they would give him a nice, almost unfiltered view of their most private sanctum? He could see dozens of Green Lanterns from here, a cavalcade of activity leaving and entering the planet's atmosphere in equal measure. Aliens of all shapes and sizes arrived by ring or entered by ship, many adorned with the circuit-like designs of black and green.
The Ambassador had been in that cell for months. Before that, he was in a similar cell onboard an interstellar ship for even longer. Time had almost ceased to have meaning for him altogether.
But time was on his side.
With each passing day, the former Thanagarian Enforcer was likely closer to hatching an escape plan for him. Getting one Reach Ambassador off of Oa would be an easy task, if you used the right numbers and the right tactics. Perhaps there was an Exception among their dominated Osmosian recruits that could be useful in disabling the technology that held him at bay.
"I needn't dip into the structure of your emotional wells to know you are thinking of escape."
A tiny grey-skinned man floated into view, a large head atop a small body with thick, beady eyes. Faint green light emanated from his skin and his red robes, allowing him to effortlessly hover.
The Ambassador was prepared to meet a Guardian, though he was not prepared to meet one alone, nor this late into his imprisonment.
"I have been afforded no trial."
"You needn't recieve one," the Guardian explained. "A Reach Negotiator has already begun discussions on your behalf."
He couldnt help but smile in response, a tight expression on his insectoid face. "My people work fast."
"In the schema of an immortal's life, this is no more than a blink in the eye, Ambassador. This conversation will not register for me within months, if not days."
The Ambassador blinked. "You think so little of me, Guardian?"
The glowing entity merely nodded. "I think of many things, but the safety of yourself and your empire are near the bottom of the list."
The Ambassador roared. "You'll reconsider that list when your actions bring war to the cosmos. Interfering on Reach property is a direct violation-"
The Guardian laughed, a show of emotion that surprised the Ambassador, faint gill-like markings visible amid the man's cheeks. "Your empire violated intergalactic law in any recognized jurisdiction when you began tampering with the genetic stock of a sentient species. You interferred en masse with the ecosystems of Osmos V's biosphere by introducing invasive species on such a scale, all for a proxy war that you lost."
The Ambassador slammed a fist against the ground. "That is our right! You hold no direct influence over us, Guardians, and your laws mean little."
"The interventions of our Lanterns and our Plumber were perfectly reasonable, given the suspected crimes and the spirit of the original law."
"You care about the spirit of the original law?!" The Ambassador bristled. "Your-"
"Of course I care about the spirit of the law. I am Guardian Krona, the author of the treaty between the Reach and the Green Lantern Corps. My intent was clear. Should you reject that intent, Ambassador, know that the Guardians of the Universe will do everything in our power to end the expansion of your empire and release its tributary colonies from your grip. You will have nothing."
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Jinx pressed her hand to the concrete sidewalk, closed her eyes, and concentrated on the ebb and flow of nature. Jackson Park seared into her mind in stunning detail, a kaleidoscope of sensations that remained even as her sense of touch, smell, hearing, and sight faded to a dull haze. Each leafy tree, each grassy patch, each crawling insect, each hungry pet, each distracted jogger – their life force opened to her, and with a fraction of effort, she could slip into their senses, their lives, for but a moment.
With that connection to the park solidified, an undercurrent of foreign emotions and experiences rushed through her awareness. Like trying to stop a raging river with simply the palm of her hand, she tried and failed to hold any one connection for long, the rest slipping through her focus as easily as water through her fingers. A snapshot impression of the moment showed the rot at the core of the city and the people it fostered, with very few fragments of hope scattered amidst the anxiety, the anger, the depression, the guilt, the avarice, the obsession….
And this was, frustratingly, only what she could feel from the park itself. Like a dull ache she could not scratch, the rest of Gotham's metropolitan streets were out of reach. It was not an impossibility – she could brute force some with serious, straining effort – but it had always been easier the closer a place was to natural elements. As easy as it was to feel the life within Jackson Park, it did not hold a candle to the swift and vibrant synchronicity she felt atop the Himalayas, within the Sahara, or among the Amazon.
"It will become easier with time."
Jinx let the connection fade, her normal senses returning in time to see the familiar figure, his words echoing in her mind.
"You look awful today."
The man chuckled. "Long gone are the days of vanity, my friend. Lately, I'm merely grateful for the shape I'm in."
If the shape was, "could drop dead any second," she didn't think she'd ever be grateful for that.
She frowned and stood up, ignoring any strange looks she might have gotten with the flash of her gray skin. "What do you need, Kent?"
"I have no need for anything. I am this close to the promised land, little Jinx, where all my worries will fade away."
Hm. She tried and failed to hold back her scoff. With everything she had seen, all the lives lost in her life, she doubted there was anything afterward. At least, nothing resembling consciousness. When someone died, their life force merely returned to the environment to be used again.
It was painfully close to the kind of beliefs the folks back home held, but she could see the truth.
Jinx wasn't going to tell him, but the twinkle in the man's eyes told her that she didn't need to say anything at all.
"It's rude to read emotions like that."
"You must be very rude then, considering what you were trying to pull a few minutes ago," he said cheekily. "All those park-goers and their little secrets were nearly yours."
Jinx decided that she didn't want to indulge the man today. Today was supposed to be her time, away from responsibilities, away from supervision.
Instead of sticking around to listen to the impending lecture, she adjusted the pendant around her neck that kept her skin tone appearing normal and found the nearest hotdog stand. Said stand was a five minute jog away, one she could have made quicker, but he would undoubtedly have stopped her.
She was halfway through the meal – purchased with honest money, nature be damned – when Kent sat down on the bench beside her. Frustratingly, she hadn't even heard him coming, and she could feel no magic around him to make it happen.
"Now, Jinx, you'll get the hang of it. You young magic talents always try so hard to rush, to focus on the big picture and to ignore the little things about the Art. It's the little things that will keep you from getting ahead of yourself, and sometimes, all you need is to tweak something small to get what you want."
She rolled her eyes. "Maybe that's how it was for you, but I've been making Art since I was a toddler. Turned a stuffed giraffe into a real one once and didn't even get to play with it before my dad killed it, thinking it had escaped some exhibit."
She paused, considering. "You know, it says a lot about him that he went straight for a gun."
The man did not respond, and she almost took the invitation to give more examples to her point. Instead, she merely finished her meal and stood to leave.
"Magic responds to need, Jinx." He smiled. "Perhaps the little thing you needed was a friend."
Of course, he had an answer ready.
"You don't get to do that."
Kent hesitated, looking up at her with twinkling eyes. "Jinx, you've always denied yourself what you need, by going after what you want. That impulsivity is dangerous in this profession-"
"Profession?" Jinx rolled her eyes. "Being magical isn't a job for me. It isn't some m-mask I wear."
Her voice betrayed her.
"It is unique for you, yes." His voice softened. "I can't take away your pain from that, Jinx, but you must learn to not let it define you."
She had heard this all before.
Some part of her appreciated hearing it, but it was a small part that she refused to unpack then and there.
"I'm not impulsive," she argued finally. "If I were impulsive, I'd have tried to force a connection to the rest of Gotham and wound up with a killer migraine."
"Building your skill with urban magic, to me, feels as though you are trying to force yourself to become left-handed."
"I am lefthanded."
He chuckled. "Not even you are that obtuse."
She saw his point. "Yeah, well, all the big events happen in cities. If I can get urban, I'll have more to use in the event of a crisis."
And she meant that.
The only expression of her magic she possessed at full strength at all times was the bundle of chaos that she could twist into fortune or misfortune. By its very source, it was difficult to twist into her advantage, and she hardly knew at times where someone's luck would take them when ebbed in one direction or another. More often than not, she jinxed them into whatever would be the worst outcome.
In contrast, her more elemental affinities worked best in environments with hardly any civilization at all. A column of fire produced during a cruise across the Caribbean would be monumentally easier and more potent than one created amidst the dingy alleys of Gotham City.
She wanted to make the city sing for her the way nature did.
"Why are you worried about a crisis?" asked Kent. "You are one of many who can respond in the event of an emergency."
Jinx wanted to refuse to elaborate, but knew better. Kent Nelson always rubbed his thumb against the back of his hand when he was serious, a sign she should listen.
"I know there are others, but there are never enough to be everywhere at once." Jinx frowned as she considered her next words, hands gripping the wood of the bench. "Where were you in December 2004?"
The elderly man glanced down at his pocket-watch. "Ah. You…" He frowned. "You blame yourself."
"No!" She interjected. "I'm not gonna hold myself responsible for a damn disaster. But, if I had been there instead of gallivanting through Europe? A lot less folks would be dead."
Untold devastation across India after the "tsunami of the century" destroyed homes, separated families, and ended others. She'd left long before all of that, to pursue petty crimes and heists at the behest of folks who'd abandoned her when the going got tough. Like everyone else.
Cities, towns, villages of people gone in a few hours, left the pick up the pieces. The all day news coverage of that had been staggering to watch, and the curry she'd prepared with stolen money that day had left a particularly bad taste in her mouth.
Those people had never cared for her, and she wasn't going to lie to herself or anyone else to say that she was torn up it had happened. Years later, and things were mostly back to normal.
But she remembered the Justice League putting all hands on deck in its aftermath. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – and others – were there on the news helping people.
"Were you there, too?"
Kent closed his watch. "I'm afraid not, Jinx."
"Why not?" she challenged. "Were you busy scouring the Nether Realms for mystic artifacts? Fighting back the hordes of Hell? Tangling with eldritch murderers?"
Jinx could go on, repeating stories she'd heard from the man of his many adventures.
"I was on holiday with my niece and her family."
Jinx frowned, more at the loss of her point than the reminder of those she'd lost. "Must be nice."
He smiled faintly. "It was a lovely time of year to visit Cancun. I got to bond with her husband and son, whom I'd only met once before when he was a toddler."
One point stood out to her. "And are they talented like you?"
"Oh, quite, though the jury is out for whether Khalid will embrace his potential one day or choose to remain muggle, a choice his mother made."
She rolled her eyes. "Why are you using that word?"
"It's catching on, Jinx! I have friends at Oxford who think it might be added to the dictionary one day." He chuckled. "Of course, they have no idea what such an action may do to the metaphysical underpinnings of mundanity."
His attention returned to her after a few wistful seconds. "Jinx, I know this focus on responsibility is new. You're grappling with the needs of the many and struggling to adapt. Everyone who takes on this task -"
She glared at him.
"I do not mean the task of magic itself. I know dozens of folks by name who have talent in the Art but do not throw themselves in front of tsunamis." She relinquished the point. "You need not try to rush the development of your abilities. Urban magic or natural magic, good fortune or bad fortune – you are already talented beyond measure for one of your age. I am convinced that you will achieve wonders, in time."
OSMOS V
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Jula settled into her new office, drones having cleared the debris and detritus of the place a long time ago. Before, she had merely been a high-level executive of Vir Actus. Now, she was the head honcho of the company, and she planned to take things into a new direction. Humanitarian efforts were well underway in most major cities, and she would direct her company to assist in the creation of new products to assist in those efforts.
There was still much to be done, many jobs to fill, and a lot of new roles to be created. Her experience as one of the faces of a movement meant that she had no shortage of applicants vying for her attention. Her Aggrebot bodyguard ensured that those who wished for her negative attention would recieve a metal boot up their asses for the attempts.
Maximus stretched up from the couch, a movement that required effort. He'd sustained injuries during the last of the fighting, and what they'd been able to cure so far was only part of it.
"Jula, come sit with me."
She shook her head. "No, no, Father. I have a mountain of work ahead of me, and not enough assistants to delegate the work load. Unless you'd like to take this stack of logistics reports to file?"
"No thank you. I want nothing more than to sit on this damn couch with my daughter."
"Too bad you don't have another daughter," she replied coolly. "Now, truthfully, I have many things to do."
"You think I don't?" Maximus shook his head. "I'm barely keeping this family together. You'd think after everything that happened, we'd be closer than ever, but now we are just drifting apart again."
Jula thought about his qualm for a long second. "Father, you do not have to be the glue for us. The crisis is over. The military has changed hands, and they are fighting tooth and nail to clean up any residual Reach messes. We can go back to the way things were before."
Jula missed the pre-Invasion days dearly, as dearly as anyone would. People who knew her from before likely believed she had it made now, but that could not be farther from the truth. It was difficult to be so involved with Carnifex and its success and to not have had its traumas affect her.
"So Horatio can take his family as far away as possible, I can go back to drinking my life away in a dive bar, and you can go back to pretending none of us exist?"
Jula couldn't help but be flippant. "Pretty much, yeah. You going to-"
The bell to the office beeped a short warning from her clerk, before the doors slid open to reveal an imposing figure.
Long dark hair, quaint horns, and a thick metallic spear in his grip. Jula was surprised to see the figure of Aggregor.
"May I have a word with your daughter?"
Maximus glanced between the two of us and then slowly nodded, mumbling an offer to help her if she needed anything.
When the two of them were alone, she felt the tension relax from her shoulders, in a way that only he could induce in her.
"How goes the transition?"
She considered the question and nodded. "Well enough for now. Going to be a long road ahead, but it's nothing compared to the work you have in store for yourself."
He stepped closer to lean over her desk, a tall and imposing figure. She felt small in comparison.
"I am glad that things are going well for you." He stepped to the side of the desk and more into her personal space than she expected. "We both have much to be done in the coming months, a burden difficult for either of us to shoulder alone."
… Oh.
"But together, we share in those burdens. We have grown close in these past few months. I met you as a bright mind amid the darkness of shelter, on the first day of the invasion. You've acted, Jula, as a light for me throughout this process, and without your contributions, I would certainly have died."
She listened quietly, feeling a flush come to her cheeks.
"I believe the two of us can unite those still struggling to come to heel, and lead us all to a prosperous age."
He finished quietly.
Jula mulled the facets of her reply in her mind over and over, before she finally settled to speak.
OSMOS V
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Horatio studied the wreck of his family home. A sinkhole had formed beneath unstable earth, swallowing the edifice on the edge of Sanitas. It was a modest place for modest means – despite what some might say, Cassian and Lucrecia never had to want for anything.
The sun room was gone, the kitchen buried, and the bunker he maintained more out of habit than necessity over the years now lay barren of purpose and function. Memories, both good and bad, flooded his thoughts, and he found it difficult to imagine life would ever be the same again.
He resolved not to cry, not to let himself feel the weight of his grief, not while he was trying to move on to greater pastures. His life returned to the surface from the depths of that mine, and he had little idea what to do with it.
He gripped the badge in his hand, a circular disc outfitted with green, white, and black sigils. A gift from Gabriel and Cassian, one that would never leave his side.
Carnifex needed Horatio. Needed every hand they could to maintain dominance over the loyalists to the former Triarchs. Aggregor's control was tenuous and likely would be for the foreseeable future, and he could help ensure that the man stayed on top.
The city of Sanitas needed workers, builders, city planners, farmers, hunters. Not many of those things were in his wheelhouse, but there was plenty of work to be found here.
The Capital, too, needed assistance on many fronts. Volunteers to help house, clothe, and feed refugees were asked for on every corner. Food logistics alone would need recalibrating so that the communities that existed on the fringes could still gain their survival and rebuild.
"Sir, Horatio?"
He turned to see a small girl peeking out from behind rubble. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, she held scars from a hard-lived life, unable to be healed by her own Exception. Cassian had helped the girl once, and she had nowhere to go when it all ended.
"Hello again, Marcilia. Be careful where you step."
The girl nodded fervently and stared at each meticulous step before finally joining him.
"Do you miss it?" she asked. "I bet it was a beautiful place."
"It was," he admired wistfully. "I raised my son here and lived with my wife. Our bedroom was right over there, and Cassian's room was on its opposite side. The attic was my favorite place, and we had all kinds of fun things in storage. I'll miss decorations the most."
Marcilia gave a nod. "I had an attic too, once! My mother had us hide there when everything started, and it worked for a little wh…"
Her voice trailed off with a sniffle.
"I know, it's hard. This is probably the hardest thing you'll ever have to do, Marcilia." He leaned down to meet her tearful eyes. "But know this – you are not going to be alone. I'll make sure of it."
She let a small smile escape her sad expression.
LOS ANGELES
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Kyle put the pencil down and smiled – he couldn't wait to show Terry and Alexandra, this was his best one yet. Mr. Johns was bound to give him full credit for their art project, and he was convinced that he could ship this off to a publisher. Or two or three – he wasn't unaware of his chances.
The Daring Aaron: Hero Extraordinaire was bound to get some attention. Add some coloring, do some line editing, and his time traveling tale about a father from the forty-fifth century protecting his son from interdimensional ninjas would kick ass. He suspected that it would be shipped as a weekly comic strip or a monthly comic book; he'd take the work either way gladly. He'll, he was tempted to ship it off to Jump.
He reached for a blue colored pencil when the doorbell rang, startling his late-night work session. He already knew he wasn't going to get to bed in time now, and the next day would suck… And he still had to study for his history test.
No one else was home. His mom had a late shift, so he ignored the doorbell like a good little student and picked up his textbook instead.
Who really cared about the All-Star Squadron's influence on the Cold War anyway?
The bell rang again.
With a deep sigh and heavy footfalls to perhaps intimidate away any dangerous intruders, he approached his apartment door, nearly tripping over his calico cat. "Listen, if you're an axe murderer, know that I'll kick your ass before you get the chance!"
Kyle took the time to check the peephole – he wasn't stupid – but the figure stepped away from view and began descending the stairs.
He almost ignored it, but the curiosity compelled him to check. "Hey, what do you…"
The figure turned away from facing the landing, but not quickly enough if he wanted to hide his identity from Kyle. Dark hair, blue eyes, handsome and confusingly familiar for the kid.
"Gabriel?"
The man paused on the stairs and turned around slowly, a small smile creeping across his face. "Hey, Kyle. Is your, uh, mom home?"
The kid hadn't seen this man in years. Good memories with the guy rolled through his mind, like that day trip to the comic convention, the sci-fi movie marathon, and that historic Dodgers game. They'd been so close to catching a foul ball!
"Nope, just me. I didn't know you were in town."
"Yeah," Gabriel said as he climbed back to the top of the stairs. "I came back into the area only a few hours ago. Thought I'd stop by."
Kyle raised an eyebrow. "Wow, you and Mom must have really had it bad for each other if she was the first person you wanted to see."
Gabriel turned a bright shade of red and rubbed the back of his neck. "Something like that. Can I come in?"
"Guess so." Kyle held the door for the man. "Just so you know, Mom's seeing someone, but I don't like Harry too much. If you wanna sweep her off her feet, you've got my blessing."
Harry was a tool. The kind of guy who was in a relationship because he liked the idea of it, but didn't like anything else around it. Like dating a woman who had a teenage son.
"I, uh, will take that under advisement," Gabriel said as he stepped into the kitchen. Kyle wished he had known there would be company. Mom would hate that Gabriel was seeing a mess. "Kyle, how are things with you?"
"Oh, they're fine!" he explained simply, pouring a glass of water for the man before realizing he should have offered the man a different drink – coffee, tea, or a glass of wine. Kyle wasn't sure the protocol, but Gabriel took the water in stride. "I'm in high school now, and it sucks, but I know it's important."
Gabriel gave him a funny look, one that the boy couldn't place. Pain? Confusion? Both?
"That's good to hear, buddy." He looked away from Kyle for a moment and then returned to meet his gaze. Before he said anything, he took a long gulp of water.
"Listen, I was hoping your mom would be here for this, but you and I need to have a discussion. I wanted to wait – I should wait, probably, but it's all fresh on my mind, and I just need to do it now before I regret it."
Kyle's brow furrowed. "Oh… uh, okay."
Where was this going?
"My name is Gabriel Vasquez, but I went by a different name when I met your mother. At the time, I was undercover with the CIA on a long-term assignment," he began to explain, and Kyle held the countertop for support. This was not at all what he expected. "Your mother knew me as Aaron Rayner."
…
"What?"
This man was his father?
"I know this is a hard thing to accept, to hear."
Kyle felt an undercurrent of frustration building in his mind. "You… you expect me to – to believe that?"
Gabriel stepped closer, a pleading look in the man's eyes, but Kyle moved back a half-step. "Son, don't-"
"Don't call me that," he interjected without looking the man in the eye. His whole world had shattered, and he needed a minute. "Not – not now. Maybe never."
For a long moment, there was silence. Broken only by the sound of the neighbors fighting a few doors down and the purring of Kyle's cat as she danced between Gabriel's feet.
"Okay, whatever you want. I don't want you to be uncomfortable, Kyle. I merely want to explain."
"Why now?" Kyle challenged. "What changed? You could have called, you could have emailed, used snail mail for all I care. You could have-"
"I couldn't," Gabriel explained, and Kyle nearly raised his voice to shout in anger, but the man held up a hand to pause. "There is much much, more involved in this situation than you could possibly know, and I'm going to break protocol and tell you now. Everything that I say and do for the next few minutes does not leave this room, even to your mother."
Kyle's mind raced at the possibilities of what that could mean. Secret… secret agent missions? My dad? That was- that was cool, but it meant, it meant too much was lost!
"I worked for the CIA for nearly three years, fresh out of college. While working there, another group noticed me, noticed that I had potential for something more, something greater. This group were so secretive that the government didn't know they existed, and they made an interesting recruitment pitch. They called themselves the Plumbers – and no, it has nothing to do with pipes and sewage and drains."
Kyle listened, if only out of respectful curiosity and because this was, thankfully, distracting his brain from the more worrisome revelation from earlier. The whole thing was wild as all hell.
"The reason I couldn't call you, couldn't email you, couldn't reach out is because the Plumbers are an intergalactic organization."
Intergala…galactic?
"My d- you work with… aliens."
Gabriel nodded sincerely and then upturned his hand, revealing the skin of his wrist just beneath his sleeve. A single press of his thumb revealed an undercurrent of green light that pulsated beneath his skin, as though his veins were glowing.
"Wha- you're serious. You're t-telling the truth."
"Yes," Gabriel replied. "The Plumbers recruit from tons of planets in the known universe, and I was one from Earth. When I met your mother, I had recently returned from an assignment on a war-torn planet called Tamaran."
Kyle needed to sit down. "You've been to other planets-"
"Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"
He started to pace back and forth as he tried to wrap his mind around everything the man was telling him. His mother – "Did she know?"
The man nodded, nervousness on his sleeve as he studied the boy's pacing. "She knows enough. I told her when I last left Earth that I'd be gone on assignment to Frontier Space, which is outside the traditionally patrolled area of my bosses. There's a lot of detail to understand there, but when I said that I got back a few hours ago, I was telling you the truth."
Kyle's dad was a secret agent for an organization of aliens….
And he returned to the planet a few hours ago, not LA…
That was much cooler than a time traveler from the future.
"Why are you risking telling me about this?" Kyle asked finally, torn between showing the man the comic pitch and listening to a wilder story about Aaron Rayner from the man himself. "You said it was a breach of protocol."
The man held his breath for a long moment and then slowly nodded. "I've been gone for years, Kyle. I met a kid there who is in a similar situation to you, with a father keeping secrets about membership to a secret organization. That kid fought like hell to get his father back, to get me back. I owe him my safety, so that I could come to you."
Kyle didn't know how to process that. He didn't know how to process any of it, truth be told.
"I'm glad you're home, but I don't know what to do with all of this."
Gabriel had the decency to shrug. "You and me both. We can take it one step at a time." He paused, considering his next words carefully. "But I know this, Kyle: I don't want to be apart from you any longer. I want to be in your life, I want to be a mentor, I want to be the shoulder you lean on when time gets tough, to make up for lost time."
By the end of the moment, the man had tears in his eyes, and Kyle could feel the emotion was genuine.
Gabriel leaned forward and gripped his son's upper arm. "When I am called for another mission, I want you to join me."
Kyle sputtered with surprise.
OA
March 10, 13:27 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
The Ambassador glared at the emerald glow that surrounded him on all sides. Each wall was likely more than a foot thick, coated in pure willpower, and a transparent yet unbreakable opening revealed the space beyond: a brilliant cityscape so dense and so bright that he had no idea where he was, nor what he was going to do with the information he could readily see from his position.
Were the Guardians of the Universe truly so confident in the inability to escape the science cell that they would give him a nice, almost unfiltered view of their most private sanctum? He could see dozens of Green Lanterns from here, a cavalcade of activity leaving and entering the planet's atmosphere in equal measure. Aliens of all shapes and sizes arrived by ring or entered by ship, many adorned with the circuit-like designs of black and green.
The Ambassador had been in that cell for months. Before that, he was in a similar cell onboard an interstellar ship for even longer. Time had almost ceased to have meaning for him altogether.
But time was on his side.
With each passing day, the former Thanagarian Enforcer was likely closer to hatching an escape plan for him. Getting one Reach Ambassador off of Oa would be an easy task, if you used the right numbers and the right tactics. Perhaps there was an Exception among their dominated Osmosian recruits that could be useful in disabling the technology that held him at bay.
"I needn't dip into the structure of your emotional wells to know you are thinking of escape."
A tiny grey-skinned man floated into view, a large head atop a small body with thick, beady eyes. Faint green light emanated from his skin and his red robes, allowing him to effortlessly hover.
The Ambassador was prepared to meet a Guardian, though he was not prepared to meet one alone, nor this late into his imprisonment.
"I have been afforded no trial."
"You needn't recieve one," the Guardian explained. "A Reach Negotiator has already begun discussions on your behalf."
He couldnt help but smile in response, a tight expression on his insectoid face. "My people work fast."
"In the schema of an immortal's life, this is no more than a blink in the eye, Ambassador. This conversation will not register for me within months, if not days."
The Ambassador blinked. "You think so little of me, Guardian?"
The glowing entity merely nodded. "I think of many things, but the safety of yourself and your empire are near the bottom of the list."
The Ambassador roared. "You'll reconsider that list when your actions bring war to the cosmos. Interfering on Reach property is a direct violation-"
The Guardian laughed, a show of emotion that surprised the Ambassador, faint gill-like markings visible amid the man's cheeks. "Your empire violated intergalactic law in any recognized jurisdiction when you began tampering with the genetic stock of a sentient species. You interferred en masse with the ecosystems of Osmos V's biosphere by introducing invasive species on such a scale, all for a proxy war that you lost."
The Ambassador slammed a fist against the ground. "That is our right! You hold no direct influence over us, Guardians, and your laws mean little."
"The interventions of our Lanterns and our Plumber were perfectly reasonable, given the suspected crimes and the spirit of the original law."
"You care about the spirit of the original law?!" The Ambassador bristled. "Your-"
"Of course I care about the spirit of the law. I am Guardian Krona, the author of the treaty between the Reach and the Green Lantern Corps. My intent was clear. Should you reject that intent, Ambassador, know that the Guardians of the Universe will do everything in our power to end the expansion of your empire and release its tributary colonies from your grip. You will have nothing."
This is the last we will see of Osmos V for a while. It has been a lot of fun building this place up and tearing it down. Now it is building again, with Aggregor and Jula as a power couple? Fantastic!
I am also enjoying the incorporation of Ben 10 elements into the world of DC. This is one such fun change - the Guardians have Galvans among their number, and that in this universe, the infamous GL villain Krona is a Galvan. Not all the Guardians are Galvans though, rest assured - the bobbleheads are still largely of Maltus.
The Thanagarian Reach Enforcer is still out there, apparently lugging a group of Osmosian "turncoats" with her, the product of Reach experiments.
The story of how Jinx came to be under Kent Nelson's tutelage is one that will be told.
And Gabriel wants to bring Kyle into the fold. Lots of fun elements to play with as we finally enter Team Year Zero.
I am also enjoying the incorporation of Ben 10 elements into the world of DC. This is one such fun change - the Guardians have Galvans among their number, and that in this universe, the infamous GL villain Krona is a Galvan. Not all the Guardians are Galvans though, rest assured - the bobbleheads are still largely of Maltus.
The Thanagarian Reach Enforcer is still out there, apparently lugging a group of Osmosian "turncoats" with her, the product of Reach experiments.
The story of how Jinx came to be under Kent Nelson's tutelage is one that will be told.
And Gabriel wants to bring Kyle into the fold. Lots of fun elements to play with as we finally enter Team Year Zero.
Last edited:
It's interesting to see that Galvans are among the Guardians. At first glance, it might not make much sense, but then I remembered that the Ultimate version of a Galvan does happen to be a telekinetic floating being similar to a Guardian (even if MODOK was the main inspiration behind that particular design).
- Location
- Alabama
Yeah! Part of me wanted to play around with the planet of Galvan, but Oa serves basically the same role that Galvan does. The Plumbers in Ben 10 canon are essentially the Green Lanterns of that universe. It made sense to meld them together in an interesting way, to make those similarities pop.
Here, the Plumbers and the Green Lanterns coexist but do not serve the same role. Plumbers are akin to the short-lived Green Lantern Corspe idea from the comics - black ops agents who go to places that the GLC can't publicly go or would be too ostentatious and glowing to deal with. There's a similar deal between the JL and the Team, which is a neat parallel.
1.1
- Location
- Alabama
OA
March 21, 00:59 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
I placed the misshapen cup onto the too-small table, foreign scents wafting into the sterile chamber. Along the wall, holographic panels displayed real time information in a language I couldn't read, while faint music with discordant melodies sounded throughout the room. The only things pleasant in the chamber were the dazzling lights beyond the window panels and the cushioned seat – I could spend hours here, studying a shimmering foreign cityscape.
I had always been a city boy, even in my first life. When I'd left to go to college, I had never looked back and had attached myself to a suburb of the largest city in the state. Then I woke up in a new life, a new childhood, and had to backtrack to an even smaller hometown. That short time living with Jula had been nice, but it had not started for voluntary reasons.
…. I exhaled.
My second parents had had their reasons. Understandable ones, relatable ones, the reasons any parent would shelter their child. I'd taken a long time to accept that, and seeing Oa merely brought up everything all over again. There had been a whole new world to explore, one filled with fantastical people, cultures, technologies, and abilities. But I hadn't come there with the freedom to decide anything for myself.
I sighed again and tried a sip of what Lantern Salaak had called "tea," to put old business to bed. Whatever the drink was, it wasn't even as good as British tea. A sour aftertaste accompanied an umami flavor, and how they managed that combo, I would never know.
The metallic door leading to the office opened with a whir of sound. A figure in a high-tech white and black suit, similar to the one in Gabriel's possession, strode into the room and settled behind the desk. Masculine in stature, the alien held fish-like features including purple scaly skin, a tall, thin head, and eyes at the top of the skull. A transparent helmet covered everything from the neck up, providing whatever atmospheric conditions he needed to breathe. Wide lips turned down in something that could be a frown, but it was difficult to tell if he showed emotions the same way more humanoid aliens did.
He tapped a spherical object on his desk that began to audibly glow with a green color. "Translation active."
"Cassian of Osmos V," he began to read, a tablet in his hands. "My name is Plumber Magister Labrid. I'll be addressing your concerns today."
The Magisters were officers in the Plumbers, the intermediate bosses just above agents like Gabriel. Above her was the Magistrata, a "tough as nails" agent, according to the human who'd introduced all of this to me. Presumably, she answered to the Guardians.
"Addressing my concerns?" That was one way to put it. "I expected an audience with someone more… official." I didn't say the Magistrata or the Guardians, but I thought my tone was clear. In my mind, an active space empire like the Reach should be the highest of priorities for an organization like this.
"I assure you that I am the official available within the jurisdiction that can address your concerns."
Hm. "I'm sorry, but you're giving me the vibe of middle management."
Labrid tensed. "This is a highly improbable meeting, and I have much more important business elsewhere. I assure you, boy, that you will not receive a higher audience than myself. If I am so unfit in your mind, then you are free to leave Oa with your concerns."
A deep, deep breath.
"I requested this meeting to understand what your bosses plan to do about the Reach. You speak for your bosses?"
Labrid took the words in stride and glanced down at the tablet. "I represent the interest of the Plumbers. As magister, I am among the top decorated agents in the organization. You, boy, have an-"
"Respectfully," I warn, letting the first one slide but not the second, "don't call me boy."
Labrid ignored me. "- attitude problem. I think we are done here."
He stood to leave, and I shoot to my feet. For a moment, we merely glared daggers at one another.
Finally, I broke the silence, waving my hand toward the window. "These are the Guardians of the Universe. They intervene in times of strife all the time. My people were manipulated! Were fucking mad science experiments! Were dying! You send one Plumber, and then when the man gets captured, you don't send another until the planet revolts years later? You expect me to be grateful that Lanterns swooped in when they did?"
Labrid showed an expression I suspected was anger. "I assure you that this is well within the proto-"
"If your protocol doesn't have plans in place to address that, then your protocols are ineffective at best, incompetent at worst."
From the reaction, as alien as he was to me, I knew I'd gone too far.
I was well aware of the stint in the comics where the Guardians were the villains, and it was difficult to not consider them in that light in this moment. Any organization of people has the chance to become corrupt, and how could I not be suspicious of corruption when they were billions-old aliens in the position to manage everything in the universe? If not for places like New Genesis and Apokalips, they would be the ultimate power in the cosmos, and arguably still were in light of that.
Status quo of the comics be damned, why couldn't they just end them already?
Labrid hummed. "I admire your passion. I do. But I cannot properly identify every protocol we followed to you without revealing core secrets of our operations." I roll my eyes, though if he understood the meaning, he said nothing. "Rest assured that the Guardians have placed the Reach Empire higher on the list of active threats to the cosmos."
I frowned, but cleared my face after a second. It was the best we'd get. "Thank you." I evened out my tone. "That tells me almost nothing though? Did they move up to the top? Are they in the top ten? Top thirty? How many active threats are on this list, and why haven't the Green Lanterns stepped in to deal with them?"
For a long moment, the Plumber merely stared, evidence of thought in his eyes. Finally, he offered, "Your concerns are heard, and know that discussions are underway about next moves."
He gestured for the door.
I stood as calmly as I could, forcing myself to hold back my tongue. This was a waste of my time. I'd spent months in a space ship, a few days waiting in Oa's megacity for a sanctum for a meeting, let Gabriel head to Earth without me, and I couldn't understand why I'd bothered. Before he'd left, Gabriel had discussed my intentions with his immediate supervisors, and that had not gotten us anywhere.
"I'll have Lantern Salaak prepare an escort," Labrid offered as I stepped into the hallway, ceilings high enough for several layers of Lanterns to fly through the complex.
"Don't bother, I know the way out."
I left the ground under my own power, gravity holding no sway over me any longer. As a consequence to grabbing that Aerophibian and draining it completely, I could achieve a childhood dream whenever I wanted.
WASHINGTON D.C.
March 21, 01:46 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Deep in the bowels of Washington D.C., a single man stood at the console. His brilliant mind had guided each and every one of his assistants to this very moment, at the behest of his organization's benefactors. The most promising minds in medicine, weapons manufacturing, and genetic engineering were gathered here for the moment of a lifetime.
Their second most impressive failure to date, a genetic horned freak with only limited telekinetic abilities, stood at the doorway of the cavernous chamber, a clawed finger lightly caressing a bulbous sack of fluid along the wall that contained a still-growing elf variant.
"What are you doing here? This moment is not for any of you."
His right-hand woman, Dr. Spence, cleared her throat. "You should allow it, Desmond."
Dr. Desmond laughed. "That failure deserves nothing."
The lithe, thin creature gestured with a pointed hand toward the waiting pod in the center of the room. "Dr. Desmond, I merely wish to watch the successful launch of your most ambitious project. I feel I have earned that much."
"Dubbilex," Desmond began, "your assistance to our efforts since your own birth have been worth merit, true, but you were meant to be much, much more than you are. I am not sure you are worthy."
The other scientists watched the byplay quietly, and it made Desmond proud to see that none of them stood up for the genomorph failure. He had run a tight ship throughout this process, and he could not wait to share the success today with the board of directors.
"And besides. I feel your presence is merely bad luck for the proceedings. I don't want to see a failure on this auspicious day."
At that, the horned genomorph left without another word. Dr. Spence turned away from Desmond and focused on administering the machines through the procedure, readying its beginning stages.
"Initializing sequence," an analyst read before a monitor nearby. "Insemination tools active."
"Haploid Sample L at the ready," another stated.
"Haploid Sample K at the ready," Spence added.
Desmond witnessed the whirring of machines, the application of microscopic tools, the preparation of two cells capable of forming a zygote.
"Genormoph stability matrix at the ready," Desmond declared giddily. "Begin fertilization sequence."
The display above the pod revealed the introduction of their two gamete samples together. At a microscopic level, two cells were injected into a larger matrix of modified material, a playground that would allow exactly what they would need.
Their prior attempt had failed to produce a stable product, but every test they had run revealed this particular combination would work.
And in dramatic fashion, the cells began a period of rapid division, starting from a successfully formed zygote. Everyone else began to clap and cheer as the computer models proved the reality correct, and they had done it.
Suspended in the fluid-filled pod, the genomorph stability matrix produced the necessary components to induce accelerated growth. Things would be touch and go for the next few hours as fetal development occurred, but Desmond expected to see a fully viable infant clone of the Man of Steel by the end of the day.
As each minute passed, his confidence grew. Prior thresholds to failure were passed with flying colors, and he saw no evidence of Project Match happening again.
With a final clap, Dr. Desmond smiled.
Project Kr was a success.
OA
March 21, 02:22 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
I flew swiftly through one of the openings on an upper floor, aiming not for the nearest atmospheric checkpoint high in the sky above but instead for a local building's rooftop. I couldn't tell the purpose of the spire, but I suspected it was something akin to tenement housing. Or maybe a church. What use they had for church, I had no idea.
The megacity stretched in all directions before me and below me, a beautiful mixture of architecture designed to house incredible technology. Oa was as much a planet as it was a citadel, and there were likely countless traps, turrets, and other treacherous schemes hidden under every corner. For all I knew, every building could have secret defenses I'd trip just by sitting there, and I had no doubt I was being watched. Paranoia gripped my thoughts, but they were the good guys – usually.
Still, an unknown did not get to check-in to Oa without expecting that kind of close attention.
I pulled the Plumber Badge I'd been allowed to keep, a green and white hourglass symbol set into a disc that reminded me of something that I couldn't place. The badge was not official, was not keyed into the greater network of communications, was not truly active. But Gabriel ensured it had a few purposes still available for me, and until I had something better, I'd take it.
I could track the others on its smaller network and use that to navigate through space. Assuming I had enough oxygen on standby to refresh my breath and food to nourish me, I could make the incredibly long trip to Osmos V whenever I wanted. I could make a much, much shorter trip from here to Earth in days.
I could contact Father and Gabriel as needed. Messages to Osmos V would have a few minutes of delay, but it was near instantaneous to message Gabriel from here.
I turned the dial in my palm. Eventually, Gabriel answered, speaking fully in English to me instead of Osmotin through his translator implant.
"They blew me off."
"Who?" he asked. "Was it Buckley? Or Arnux?"
I didn't know who either of them were. "Magister Labrid. Didn't take me seriously. Told me that they were having discussions about what to do, which is just a complete non-answer."
I can admit I was also a dick.
Of course, they'd had at least one discussion, after Gabriel gave his report. They'd left the Reach to exist for so long already, why would I think this would be any different? I wanted to force their hand!
"Labrid's a good guy. By the books, but he does the right thing in the end when the going gets tough. He's got some fun stories if you get him to loosen up."
I grunted. "I doubt I will get the chance."
"Maybe not," Gabriel admitted. "Plan B, then?"
This long shot felt more like Plan C or D, but I knew appealing to the Guardians would be far too easy. A fool's errand. They were quickly proving themselves to be as ineffective as their comic counterparts sometimes were.
"Yeah, Plan B. Gonna overstay my welcome if I don't leave soon. Probably already have."
"You need me and the ship to come get you?"
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see me. "No. I wanna test the trip myself. If you get a distress signal, though, be ready to intercept."
"Will do."
I paused as I tried to think of more positive news. "How are things with your son going?"
"It's an adjustment for him. I am doing what I can to prepare him for the next steps, and he's excited at the prospect. His mom is, uh, apoplectic."
He was deliberately vague, something we'd agreed would be a good idea over the badge when talking about this topic. Gabriel was not a tech genius, and he couldn't be certain that they were not monitoring communications. They likely were, given the circumstances.
"She might come around," I offered with a fair bit of hope. "I'm sure she knows how important it will all be."
"Maybe so," he said in agreement. "I'll head to the Sector House with him. It'll be easier to get out of there in case you need us in space. And, well, Kyle wants to thank you."
OA
March 21, 06:39 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Do not be discouraged."
I flipped around while tying the bag of trip supplies around my hip, nearly tripping over myself. Leaning against a nearby wall was Lantern Laira, one of the two Lanterns I'd met in the aftermath of the battle against the Reach. Her red hair tied back in a pony tail, she had an affable air about her, her green aura nearly too bright to see her properly. I knew a bit of her story from the comics. Something about an evil father - what else was new about heroes?
"I'm not," I answered quietly. "Annoyed? Frustrated? Yes to both. But discouraged? No."
The glow around her dimmed to almost nothing, revealing her almost elfin features more prominently. "Why does the prospect of what lay ahead not discourage you?"
A loaded question.
"Would I like to have the full support of the Guardians of the Universe to launch an attack on the Reach Empire?" I ask candidly. "Yes. That support would greatly encourage me. Until someone takes the fight to them, then they'll keep doing whatever the hell they want to do. Planets like mine get overlooked in the 'grand scheme of the universe.'"
Laira listened the entire time without breaking eye contact. When I finished, she finally nodded once. "So you wish to invite a full-scale war?"
I frowned at the question. "If that's what it takes to end them? Yes. And I'm not discouraged if the Guardians aren't willing to help."
She tilts her head. "Are we not your people's best chance?"
"Of course, you are," I mutter bitterly. "Sheer scale, utility, and numbers alone? But Oa is not the only power in the universe. You aren't the only chance to end the Reach."
And I believed that.
Laira nodded after a long moment. "I look forward to seeing where this ambition takes you, Osmosian. It has already taken you off your planet, something that has not been done for millennia."
My eyes blinked. "What does that mean?"
Laira grinned. "I am certain you will learn." And with that annoyingly cryptic statement, she rocketed into space with a flickering trail of green light.
NEAR SECTOR 2814
March 27, 16:16 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
If flying through the atmosphere of Oa was cool, flying through space unaided was truly unbelievable. Unlike what you'd see in cartoons and sci-fi movies, it was utterly and completely silent. A vista of wondrous sights surrounded me at all times, pinpricks of light from distant stars becoming like fixtures in the view. After all, some were so far away that they were nearly stationary to me, despite my top speed passing into something Gabriel called "hyperspace."
I was not as fast as an Aerophibian yet it boggled my mind that I could still move far, far faster than light. I casually warped the laws of physics, and I couldn't help but wonder where this compared to someone like the Flash, if he existed on Earth. Couldn't perform that speed in atmosphere, however, but I didn't need to. With a navigational tool and specialized supplies, I could go nearly anywhere on my own, with enough time, and I could still fly fast enough in a planet's sky to be nearly anywhere within a few hours.
Gabriel had given me a spare oxygen tank, special fluid pills I didn't understand, and nutrient packets that tasted like nothing. Unlike an Aerophibian, I'd need air, fluids and food far more often on a long trip than they would, but that was a small price to pay for a truly awesome ability. The excitement of the whole thing nearly made me forget about cryptic redheaded lanterns and annoying fish-head magisters.
I came out of hyperspace to a comparable screeching halt for a snack, admiring the view once more. The brick of nothing did not distract me from admiring a fast-moving star – nope, that was a comet – streaking through the area to my left. Still munching on the bar, I sped up to it to admire it from only feet away, its speed far slower than my own. It was cold, its icy trail streaking behind it, but the cold did not bother me as I reached forward to grab hold of the silent, massive object.
I let the comet carry me, holding off on the impulse to giggle just at the sheer awesome. It was a miles long ball of ice and rock, and I allowed it to pull me for several minutes. With a change in stature, I was standing on it, gripping the object with my powers to take on the material of the comet through bare feet. I wish I had a camera, and I could not wait for the chance to buy one on Earth just for moments like these – no one else could say that they had comet surfed!
With a mighty strike of my fist, I spider-web-cracked a significant chunk of the back of it. Twin charged blasts of light from my eyes made the area more brittle, and with another slam, several pieces of the comet broke away. I slid as many of the the smaller pieces into my jacket as I could, admiring the trophies for the trip I'd just secured. How could I resist? It was my first flight!
I reached into my pants pocket to pop a fluid pill and release from the comet. I came to a near zero speed, the object speeding away so rapidly that I lost track of it in a fraction of a second. I didn't question how or why the fluid pill worked, but that would carry me through the final leg of the journey.
Once the liquid had properly settled into my new physiology, I let go of the comet armor and raced into full speed again, ramping higher and higher until space warped around me. With nothing but the Plumber Badge in hand to keep me headed in the right direction, I edged closer and closer to the Sector House of 2814, where Gabriel and Kyle were waiting.
March 21, 00:59 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
I placed the misshapen cup onto the too-small table, foreign scents wafting into the sterile chamber. Along the wall, holographic panels displayed real time information in a language I couldn't read, while faint music with discordant melodies sounded throughout the room. The only things pleasant in the chamber were the dazzling lights beyond the window panels and the cushioned seat – I could spend hours here, studying a shimmering foreign cityscape.
I had always been a city boy, even in my first life. When I'd left to go to college, I had never looked back and had attached myself to a suburb of the largest city in the state. Then I woke up in a new life, a new childhood, and had to backtrack to an even smaller hometown. That short time living with Jula had been nice, but it had not started for voluntary reasons.
…. I exhaled.
My second parents had had their reasons. Understandable ones, relatable ones, the reasons any parent would shelter their child. I'd taken a long time to accept that, and seeing Oa merely brought up everything all over again. There had been a whole new world to explore, one filled with fantastical people, cultures, technologies, and abilities. But I hadn't come there with the freedom to decide anything for myself.
I sighed again and tried a sip of what Lantern Salaak had called "tea," to put old business to bed. Whatever the drink was, it wasn't even as good as British tea. A sour aftertaste accompanied an umami flavor, and how they managed that combo, I would never know.
The metallic door leading to the office opened with a whir of sound. A figure in a high-tech white and black suit, similar to the one in Gabriel's possession, strode into the room and settled behind the desk. Masculine in stature, the alien held fish-like features including purple scaly skin, a tall, thin head, and eyes at the top of the skull. A transparent helmet covered everything from the neck up, providing whatever atmospheric conditions he needed to breathe. Wide lips turned down in something that could be a frown, but it was difficult to tell if he showed emotions the same way more humanoid aliens did.
He tapped a spherical object on his desk that began to audibly glow with a green color. "Translation active."
"Cassian of Osmos V," he began to read, a tablet in his hands. "My name is Plumber Magister Labrid. I'll be addressing your concerns today."
The Magisters were officers in the Plumbers, the intermediate bosses just above agents like Gabriel. Above her was the Magistrata, a "tough as nails" agent, according to the human who'd introduced all of this to me. Presumably, she answered to the Guardians.
"Addressing my concerns?" That was one way to put it. "I expected an audience with someone more… official." I didn't say the Magistrata or the Guardians, but I thought my tone was clear. In my mind, an active space empire like the Reach should be the highest of priorities for an organization like this.
"I assure you that I am the official available within the jurisdiction that can address your concerns."
Hm. "I'm sorry, but you're giving me the vibe of middle management."
Labrid tensed. "This is a highly improbable meeting, and I have much more important business elsewhere. I assure you, boy, that you will not receive a higher audience than myself. If I am so unfit in your mind, then you are free to leave Oa with your concerns."
A deep, deep breath.
"I requested this meeting to understand what your bosses plan to do about the Reach. You speak for your bosses?"
Labrid took the words in stride and glanced down at the tablet. "I represent the interest of the Plumbers. As magister, I am among the top decorated agents in the organization. You, boy, have an-"
"Respectfully," I warn, letting the first one slide but not the second, "don't call me boy."
Labrid ignored me. "- attitude problem. I think we are done here."
He stood to leave, and I shoot to my feet. For a moment, we merely glared daggers at one another.
Finally, I broke the silence, waving my hand toward the window. "These are the Guardians of the Universe. They intervene in times of strife all the time. My people were manipulated! Were fucking mad science experiments! Were dying! You send one Plumber, and then when the man gets captured, you don't send another until the planet revolts years later? You expect me to be grateful that Lanterns swooped in when they did?"
Labrid showed an expression I suspected was anger. "I assure you that this is well within the proto-"
"If your protocol doesn't have plans in place to address that, then your protocols are ineffective at best, incompetent at worst."
From the reaction, as alien as he was to me, I knew I'd gone too far.
I was well aware of the stint in the comics where the Guardians were the villains, and it was difficult to not consider them in that light in this moment. Any organization of people has the chance to become corrupt, and how could I not be suspicious of corruption when they were billions-old aliens in the position to manage everything in the universe? If not for places like New Genesis and Apokalips, they would be the ultimate power in the cosmos, and arguably still were in light of that.
Status quo of the comics be damned, why couldn't they just end them already?
Labrid hummed. "I admire your passion. I do. But I cannot properly identify every protocol we followed to you without revealing core secrets of our operations." I roll my eyes, though if he understood the meaning, he said nothing. "Rest assured that the Guardians have placed the Reach Empire higher on the list of active threats to the cosmos."
I frowned, but cleared my face after a second. It was the best we'd get. "Thank you." I evened out my tone. "That tells me almost nothing though? Did they move up to the top? Are they in the top ten? Top thirty? How many active threats are on this list, and why haven't the Green Lanterns stepped in to deal with them?"
For a long moment, the Plumber merely stared, evidence of thought in his eyes. Finally, he offered, "Your concerns are heard, and know that discussions are underway about next moves."
He gestured for the door.
I stood as calmly as I could, forcing myself to hold back my tongue. This was a waste of my time. I'd spent months in a space ship, a few days waiting in Oa's megacity for a sanctum for a meeting, let Gabriel head to Earth without me, and I couldn't understand why I'd bothered. Before he'd left, Gabriel had discussed my intentions with his immediate supervisors, and that had not gotten us anywhere.
"I'll have Lantern Salaak prepare an escort," Labrid offered as I stepped into the hallway, ceilings high enough for several layers of Lanterns to fly through the complex.
"Don't bother, I know the way out."
I left the ground under my own power, gravity holding no sway over me any longer. As a consequence to grabbing that Aerophibian and draining it completely, I could achieve a childhood dream whenever I wanted.
WASHINGTON D.C.
March 21, 01:46 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Deep in the bowels of Washington D.C., a single man stood at the console. His brilliant mind had guided each and every one of his assistants to this very moment, at the behest of his organization's benefactors. The most promising minds in medicine, weapons manufacturing, and genetic engineering were gathered here for the moment of a lifetime.
Their second most impressive failure to date, a genetic horned freak with only limited telekinetic abilities, stood at the doorway of the cavernous chamber, a clawed finger lightly caressing a bulbous sack of fluid along the wall that contained a still-growing elf variant.
"What are you doing here? This moment is not for any of you."
His right-hand woman, Dr. Spence, cleared her throat. "You should allow it, Desmond."
Dr. Desmond laughed. "That failure deserves nothing."
The lithe, thin creature gestured with a pointed hand toward the waiting pod in the center of the room. "Dr. Desmond, I merely wish to watch the successful launch of your most ambitious project. I feel I have earned that much."
"Dubbilex," Desmond began, "your assistance to our efforts since your own birth have been worth merit, true, but you were meant to be much, much more than you are. I am not sure you are worthy."
The other scientists watched the byplay quietly, and it made Desmond proud to see that none of them stood up for the genomorph failure. He had run a tight ship throughout this process, and he could not wait to share the success today with the board of directors.
"And besides. I feel your presence is merely bad luck for the proceedings. I don't want to see a failure on this auspicious day."
At that, the horned genomorph left without another word. Dr. Spence turned away from Desmond and focused on administering the machines through the procedure, readying its beginning stages.
"Initializing sequence," an analyst read before a monitor nearby. "Insemination tools active."
"Haploid Sample L at the ready," another stated.
"Haploid Sample K at the ready," Spence added.
Desmond witnessed the whirring of machines, the application of microscopic tools, the preparation of two cells capable of forming a zygote.
"Genormoph stability matrix at the ready," Desmond declared giddily. "Begin fertilization sequence."
The display above the pod revealed the introduction of their two gamete samples together. At a microscopic level, two cells were injected into a larger matrix of modified material, a playground that would allow exactly what they would need.
Their prior attempt had failed to produce a stable product, but every test they had run revealed this particular combination would work.
And in dramatic fashion, the cells began a period of rapid division, starting from a successfully formed zygote. Everyone else began to clap and cheer as the computer models proved the reality correct, and they had done it.
Suspended in the fluid-filled pod, the genomorph stability matrix produced the necessary components to induce accelerated growth. Things would be touch and go for the next few hours as fetal development occurred, but Desmond expected to see a fully viable infant clone of the Man of Steel by the end of the day.
As each minute passed, his confidence grew. Prior thresholds to failure were passed with flying colors, and he saw no evidence of Project Match happening again.
With a final clap, Dr. Desmond smiled.
Project Kr was a success.
OA
March 21, 02:22 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
I flew swiftly through one of the openings on an upper floor, aiming not for the nearest atmospheric checkpoint high in the sky above but instead for a local building's rooftop. I couldn't tell the purpose of the spire, but I suspected it was something akin to tenement housing. Or maybe a church. What use they had for church, I had no idea.
The megacity stretched in all directions before me and below me, a beautiful mixture of architecture designed to house incredible technology. Oa was as much a planet as it was a citadel, and there were likely countless traps, turrets, and other treacherous schemes hidden under every corner. For all I knew, every building could have secret defenses I'd trip just by sitting there, and I had no doubt I was being watched. Paranoia gripped my thoughts, but they were the good guys – usually.
Still, an unknown did not get to check-in to Oa without expecting that kind of close attention.
I pulled the Plumber Badge I'd been allowed to keep, a green and white hourglass symbol set into a disc that reminded me of something that I couldn't place. The badge was not official, was not keyed into the greater network of communications, was not truly active. But Gabriel ensured it had a few purposes still available for me, and until I had something better, I'd take it.
I could track the others on its smaller network and use that to navigate through space. Assuming I had enough oxygen on standby to refresh my breath and food to nourish me, I could make the incredibly long trip to Osmos V whenever I wanted. I could make a much, much shorter trip from here to Earth in days.
I could contact Father and Gabriel as needed. Messages to Osmos V would have a few minutes of delay, but it was near instantaneous to message Gabriel from here.
I turned the dial in my palm. Eventually, Gabriel answered, speaking fully in English to me instead of Osmotin through his translator implant.
"They blew me off."
"Who?" he asked. "Was it Buckley? Or Arnux?"
I didn't know who either of them were. "Magister Labrid. Didn't take me seriously. Told me that they were having discussions about what to do, which is just a complete non-answer."
I can admit I was also a dick.
Of course, they'd had at least one discussion, after Gabriel gave his report. They'd left the Reach to exist for so long already, why would I think this would be any different? I wanted to force their hand!
"Labrid's a good guy. By the books, but he does the right thing in the end when the going gets tough. He's got some fun stories if you get him to loosen up."
I grunted. "I doubt I will get the chance."
"Maybe not," Gabriel admitted. "Plan B, then?"
This long shot felt more like Plan C or D, but I knew appealing to the Guardians would be far too easy. A fool's errand. They were quickly proving themselves to be as ineffective as their comic counterparts sometimes were.
"Yeah, Plan B. Gonna overstay my welcome if I don't leave soon. Probably already have."
"You need me and the ship to come get you?"
I shook my head, even though he couldn't see me. "No. I wanna test the trip myself. If you get a distress signal, though, be ready to intercept."
"Will do."
I paused as I tried to think of more positive news. "How are things with your son going?"
"It's an adjustment for him. I am doing what I can to prepare him for the next steps, and he's excited at the prospect. His mom is, uh, apoplectic."
He was deliberately vague, something we'd agreed would be a good idea over the badge when talking about this topic. Gabriel was not a tech genius, and he couldn't be certain that they were not monitoring communications. They likely were, given the circumstances.
"She might come around," I offered with a fair bit of hope. "I'm sure she knows how important it will all be."
"Maybe so," he said in agreement. "I'll head to the Sector House with him. It'll be easier to get out of there in case you need us in space. And, well, Kyle wants to thank you."
OA
March 21, 06:39 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Do not be discouraged."
I flipped around while tying the bag of trip supplies around my hip, nearly tripping over myself. Leaning against a nearby wall was Lantern Laira, one of the two Lanterns I'd met in the aftermath of the battle against the Reach. Her red hair tied back in a pony tail, she had an affable air about her, her green aura nearly too bright to see her properly. I knew a bit of her story from the comics. Something about an evil father - what else was new about heroes?
"I'm not," I answered quietly. "Annoyed? Frustrated? Yes to both. But discouraged? No."
The glow around her dimmed to almost nothing, revealing her almost elfin features more prominently. "Why does the prospect of what lay ahead not discourage you?"
A loaded question.
"Would I like to have the full support of the Guardians of the Universe to launch an attack on the Reach Empire?" I ask candidly. "Yes. That support would greatly encourage me. Until someone takes the fight to them, then they'll keep doing whatever the hell they want to do. Planets like mine get overlooked in the 'grand scheme of the universe.'"
Laira listened the entire time without breaking eye contact. When I finished, she finally nodded once. "So you wish to invite a full-scale war?"
I frowned at the question. "If that's what it takes to end them? Yes. And I'm not discouraged if the Guardians aren't willing to help."
She tilts her head. "Are we not your people's best chance?"
"Of course, you are," I mutter bitterly. "Sheer scale, utility, and numbers alone? But Oa is not the only power in the universe. You aren't the only chance to end the Reach."
And I believed that.
Laira nodded after a long moment. "I look forward to seeing where this ambition takes you, Osmosian. It has already taken you off your planet, something that has not been done for millennia."
My eyes blinked. "What does that mean?"
Laira grinned. "I am certain you will learn." And with that annoyingly cryptic statement, she rocketed into space with a flickering trail of green light.
NEAR SECTOR 2814
March 27, 16:16 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
If flying through the atmosphere of Oa was cool, flying through space unaided was truly unbelievable. Unlike what you'd see in cartoons and sci-fi movies, it was utterly and completely silent. A vista of wondrous sights surrounded me at all times, pinpricks of light from distant stars becoming like fixtures in the view. After all, some were so far away that they were nearly stationary to me, despite my top speed passing into something Gabriel called "hyperspace."
I was not as fast as an Aerophibian yet it boggled my mind that I could still move far, far faster than light. I casually warped the laws of physics, and I couldn't help but wonder where this compared to someone like the Flash, if he existed on Earth. Couldn't perform that speed in atmosphere, however, but I didn't need to. With a navigational tool and specialized supplies, I could go nearly anywhere on my own, with enough time, and I could still fly fast enough in a planet's sky to be nearly anywhere within a few hours.
Gabriel had given me a spare oxygen tank, special fluid pills I didn't understand, and nutrient packets that tasted like nothing. Unlike an Aerophibian, I'd need air, fluids and food far more often on a long trip than they would, but that was a small price to pay for a truly awesome ability. The excitement of the whole thing nearly made me forget about cryptic redheaded lanterns and annoying fish-head magisters.
I came out of hyperspace to a comparable screeching halt for a snack, admiring the view once more. The brick of nothing did not distract me from admiring a fast-moving star – nope, that was a comet – streaking through the area to my left. Still munching on the bar, I sped up to it to admire it from only feet away, its speed far slower than my own. It was cold, its icy trail streaking behind it, but the cold did not bother me as I reached forward to grab hold of the silent, massive object.
I let the comet carry me, holding off on the impulse to giggle just at the sheer awesome. It was a miles long ball of ice and rock, and I allowed it to pull me for several minutes. With a change in stature, I was standing on it, gripping the object with my powers to take on the material of the comet through bare feet. I wish I had a camera, and I could not wait for the chance to buy one on Earth just for moments like these – no one else could say that they had comet surfed!
With a mighty strike of my fist, I spider-web-cracked a significant chunk of the back of it. Twin charged blasts of light from my eyes made the area more brittle, and with another slam, several pieces of the comet broke away. I slid as many of the the smaller pieces into my jacket as I could, admiring the trophies for the trip I'd just secured. How could I resist? It was my first flight!
I reached into my pants pocket to pop a fluid pill and release from the comet. I came to a near zero speed, the object speeding away so rapidly that I lost track of it in a fraction of a second. I didn't question how or why the fluid pill worked, but that would carry me through the final leg of the journey.
Once the liquid had properly settled into my new physiology, I let go of the comet armor and raced into full speed again, ramping higher and higher until space warped around me. With nothing but the Plumber Badge in hand to keep me headed in the right direction, I edged closer and closer to the Sector House of 2814, where Gabriel and Kyle were waiting.
Fun fact - Superboy's birthday is March 21st, 2010 (Team Year Zero). The first arc began on the same day as Superman's debut as a hero, while the second arc begins here.
Don't look too closely at any particular numbers with the speed of travel through space. Also, travel speed =/= combat speed. To give a super rough estimate, it takes a Green Lantern a couple hours to travel to Oa from Earth, but takes Cassian a few days. The trip to Osmos V is "very long."
Don't look too closely at any particular numbers with the speed of travel through space. Also, travel speed =/= combat speed. To give a super rough estimate, it takes a Green Lantern a couple hours to travel to Oa from Earth, but takes Cassian a few days. The trip to Osmos V is "very long."
Last edited:
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
the Lanterns might have been the ones to put them there?
i wonder if those would help KF?
and i could see a lot more uses as well.
- Location
- Alabama
Thank you. And you are correct, will fix later.
1.2
- Location
- Alabama
SECTOR HOUSE 2814
March 29, 00:33 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
The Sector House of 2814 was a cylindrical spire of rock, stone, and metal. A mixture of harvested space material and alien technology, it was clear evidence that the Guardians provided their operatives across Guardian Space with the best of the best. Complete with a space port akin to the side of an Imperial Star Destroyer, the interior structure stretched throughout the overall spire, many floors hidden behind space rock formations. Scattered drones flew around the structure in elliptical orbits, likely acting as environmental sensors to ferret out threats or study the mysteries of space. Inactive engines remained dormant at what might be its base, or perhaps it was the top: the disorienting truth was that there was no objective up or down in space.
Three of the orb-like machines made of sleek chrome metal approached and bathed me in the emerald light of their scanners. I prepared for the worst, if only because it was unfamiliar tech. But a few seconds later, I saw the green energy field covering an entrance open, and my badge vibrated and lit up with a written message.
"Welcome aboard, Cassian."
Permission achieved, I touched down within the space, disoriented slightly as the artificial gravity of the station activated. The moment the port closed with the activation of the energy barrier, thick metal doors closed behind it with a whir of sound, the first I'd heard in days. I let out a whistle just to hear my own voice for a second, a half-smirk emerging.
"Optimal atmospheric conditions restored." The female voice of a computer declared. "Life support enabled."
A deep breath of natural enough air was soothing magic to my poor lungs. I'd had to take pressurized air canisters a few times throughout the trip, and to smell and taste normal, if packaged air? It was genuinely wonderful.
I almost longed for the polluted air of an industrial planet again.
The space port was empty apart from a familiar sleek white ship, one I'd essentially lived in for months. The primary body was roughly spherical, while two wings stretched forward. It was not a freighter, according to Gabriel, but was instead a cruiser meant to support only a handful of people comfortably. The amenities inside were quite nice despite that, and ultimately, I wanted one. That with combination of my abilities meant I could truly go anywhere, do anything.
"Cassian!"
I glanced up to see, approaching from an upper balcony, two figures. Gabriel carried a small bag in hand, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. A kid roughly my age stood behind him holding a case of bottled water, a leather jacket across his torso. The resemblance between them was uncanny – dark hair, blue eyes, dimples, of Hispanic descent. They descended the stairs to greet me, and I grinned.
With two fervent shakes of the hand, I quickly ripped into the case of water and downed a bottle as quickly as I could, real fluid flowing into my system properly for the first time in days.
My stomach protested.
"So the pills weren't great?"
I finished the first and started a second, taking smaller sips. "No, they, uh, did the job. I'm a little surprised they worked as well as they did. They were just uncomfortable, and I left a pile of my vomit floating somewhere outside of Saturn."
"That is so cool," the boy declared with awe on his face, still holding the twelve pack. "Do you need another?"
"Probably, but I think I'm okay for now." I offered him a smile. "It's nice to meet you, Kyle. I've heard good things."
"Thanks, nice to meet you too." He hesitated for a moment. "I thought you'd be taller. And green or purple?"
I laughed, surprised he mentioned my height because I had a good six inches on him. "Green and purple are great alien colors, but no, my skin's just pinker than a human's."
My own skin tone was noticeably pinker than the average white man's skin tone, but it was fairly subtle. I hadn't even noticed that was a predominant difference between Osmosians and humans until meeting Gabriel, and my people had differing skin tones too.
Gabriel added, "Put him under an X-Ray, and you'll see more differences. Like the horns that haven't grown in yet."
I rubbed at my forehead.
"That's cool, bro. Are we talking devils, tieflings, goats? Ooh, a hercules beetle?"
Oh, Kyle Rayner would be a D&D nerd.
Gabriel cut in. "You'll have to show him pictures of what those are."
"I can draw them for you," he said with a smile. "It's just crazy to think you're an alien. The first alien I've met!"
"I doubt it will be the last," I suggested, earning a beaming smile. He was my age in this new world, but even if you did not count the years of experience in dangerous situations, he was clearly a child. I taught kids his age.
But the kid was Kyle Fucking Rayner. One of my favorite Lanterns from the comics, and I half-expected a power ring to come crashing through the wall at any moment to declare him a member of any of the corps. I vaguely knew through cultural osmosis that he had become a White Lantern with a lot of hard work, harnessing each of the colors. He'd been the only Lantern at a time when the whole Corps was temporarily dead.
And yet, the teenager was just a teenager here. I wasn't sure what to think about it. Was I inadvertently stopping him from doing any of that? If Hal goes evil, will someone else have to step in to stop him?
Gabriel pulled me from my reverie. "We should have the med-bay look you over for any malnutrition or dehydration symptoms," he offered, gesturing for one of the adjoining metal-plated hallways. "When I've been on spacewalks-"
"You've done a spacewalk?" Kyle interrupted. "Can I do one?"
"Maybe later," Gabriel said with a curious expression on his face. "Keep heading down this path, and I'm sure that you'll get your chance."
Kyle beamed.
The man continued, poking a thumb at his chest. "My Plumber suit keeps me mostly okay in space, but I can't handle more than short bursts, not long trips. And none of that without a helmet."
I could tell the kid wanted to ask about the suit, but there were too many other things to discuss. I filed it away to bring up myself: how Gabriel's implants and tech worked were as much a mystery as the Plumbers themselves were.
We entered the deeper parts of the structure, and both Gabriel and Kyle made a note of a few chambers that might be useful in the future. A gym, a data center, a fabricator, a lounge. Residential chambers, some of which were marked with glowing nameplates like 2814.1, 2814.2, and 2814.3.
One of those was for Stewart.
My lantern, John Stewart.
As we entered the medical bay, I tried to tamper down my excited thoughts. "Anyway, the trip was wonderful. More than anything I could have expected, and I look forward to the chance to do it again," I explained simply. "I've already thought of a few things that might help future jumps."
The two of them nodded. "You need a cool suit too," Kyle suggested excitedly. "Maybe one that could build in ways to have an air supply or water supply?"
I remembered the kid was an artist in the comics. "You wanna design it?"
The teenager blue-screened. "Wait. I could – I could do that! Can I, Gabe?"
Gabe. Not Dad. I glanced at the man, but if he was uncomfortable with that name, he didn't show it. That was not a situation I wanted to touch.
"Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Our fabricator can make it a reality, if we have the right base materials."
The kid's fingers twitched with excitement at the prospect.
The hall was filled with complex sensors and diagnostic tools. Earth hospitals would pay a fortune for any of these things, because noninvasive scanning tech like this? They would be invaluable. A medical drone hovered in one corner, corded implements dangling beneath its central, near spherical body. The thing was more than a little creepy, reminding me of, coincidentally, a grell from D&D.
A half-hour and a series of tests later, and my prognosis was ultimately that I'd face a few days of exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. Nothing debilitating, and I suspected that there were adjustments I could make for future jumps to help avoid such difficulties. All in all, I'd made it to my destination with only a mild case of what I'd call "jump sickness" in the future.
Within the medical bay, I noticed a few gathered supplies and materials were left on the counter, while most other items were stored away. These were supplies for wound care, and I considered them for a long moment.
"Are those for me?"
Gabriel followed my gaze, but it was Kyle who answered. "No, those are for me. When I'm ready."
I looked between them both for a long second. "You're planning to give him the implants?"
The man nodded uneasily. "Not quite yet. I'm in the process of preparing, should they be necessary."
Kyle would be ready for them. This was a teenager destined for greatness in a few years. Gabriel mentioned a few things he was looking for first, but I turned to the kid.
"How will you know when you're ready, Kyle?"
"Oh. Well, Gabe mentioned pain tolerance, decision making, mental fortitude – I'm trying to prove him right every day."
That was the bare minimum.
"And the responsibilities that come with it?" I asked. "Once you have these, you'll have the basic tech to operate as your dad does. What does he do?"
Gabriel watched me intensely and crossed his arms.
"Cleans up the aliens and other weird things that slip between the cracks," Kyle explained. "Plumbers are agents that operate from the shadows to monitor planets and respond to threats from other worlds."
A fairly simple summation of what I knew. They weren't from the comics or any other adaptations I had seen, so everything about them I understood came from experience with Gabriel. That was what he'd done on Osmos V, and the impressive tech he'd displayed would have wonders against simpler foes than the Reach.
"We got a lot of work to do before you're ready," Gabriel explained simply. "But I hope to give you the chance. Don't want to distract you from schoolwork."
Kyle guffawed. "Gabe, there's no chance I'll ever need that. Even before I learned this was an option for my future, I didn't need to know anything about trigonometry."
Gabriel smiled conspiratorially. "He's trying to extend his spring break."
"Come onnnn! I'd rather be up here reading about space empires and studying Plumber rulebooks than going back to that place."
"I'm sure you would, but your mother made the arrangement very clear."
Kyle seethed.
It was certain that they'd had that conversation before, if not multiple times before. I wanted to help the kid out, but I also understood that school was important for most folks to get a good foundation for any career. Osmosian school had ended for me when I'd had to go into hiding, and some in Carnifex had tutored the children who'd gotten involved. Back in my previous life, I'd been a public school teacher. This topic was especially relevant for me.
But did I step in to help the kid? No. It ultimately was not my business to intervene in their relationship. Gabriel and Kyle needed to build that bond, without my input.
That didn't stop Kyle from trying to pull me into it.
"Cassian isn't in school. He's billions of light-years away from home!"
I held up my hands in surrender. "Not my call to make, Kyle."
"He's right."
Kyle sighed. "But if you had to choose? If it was your call?"
I studied the boy's father, whose expression was a mixture of emotions. I couldn't imagine being in Gabriel's shoes. It would be so difficult to not spoil the child you're reconnecting with, especially one who is already a teenager, to try to build a relationship. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure that taking him to the Sector House was not a mistake, this early in their reconnecting as father and son.
There were some challenges ahead.
But still, I did have an opinion.
"If I had to choose for you, I'd try to find a balance until your school is over. If you're really wanting to pursue Plumber business, wait 'til you get older to do it full time."
Kyle wasn't happy to hear that. "How does anyone expect me to go back to caring about the history of our tiny country when I just learned there are aliens conquering galaxies out there?"
I didn't have any answers for that. Not ones that would support going back to school or caring about the little things.
"The scale of the universe is much bigger to you, now," Gabriel began, "but you can't throw away everything you've ever known overnight. I did that, and I regret it. Maintaining ties, maintaining a connection to your homeworld? That's invaluable."
Kyle still grumbled, but the point had been taken.
LOS ANGELES
March 31, 15:58 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Terry, you're not gonna believe this."
Kyle breathed hard as he recovered from his full sprint to his friend's place after-school, the first day back after spring break ended.
The gangly blond kid with too many pimples to count fished the work uniform from the pile of unwashed clothes on the floor. "I can't hang today, Kyle. Big Belly Burger needs me."
Kyle pulled his sketchbook and flipped to its latest entries. "No, but seriously, you're gonna have to check this out."
Terry sighed and studied the pages for a long moment and then shrugged. "You're shifting Aaron from a time traveler to a space cop?"
Kyle huffed loudly. "No! I mean, maybe – that's not important. What's important is that I found him."
His best friend had a dumb look on his face, hands still clutching at the visor in hand. "Found who?"
"Do you remember how weird I was those last couple days before break?"
Terry scoffed. "I guess so. We were supposed to hang out over break, but you ignored my texts. Figured you were in one of your moods."
… "I'm not moody!"
"You change moods on a dime."
Kyle shook his head. "None of that fucking matters, Terry. I found my dad!"
Terry blinked. "What…?"
"I can't get into the why or how, but he showed up at my house. Turns out that my mom's friend Gabriel is actually my dad." He pointed to the sketch of a comic strip still in development. "He knew my mom as Aaron, a fake name! He couldn't tell me all this time for some really important reasons, and-"
Terry clutched the visor harder. "What kind of reasons keep you from your kid?"
"You don't even know!"
Terry said nothing for a moment, checking his watch. "Kyle, I really gotta go. If you wanna chat about something real later, hit me up. Otherwise-"
"But I'm telling you the truth," Kyle argued. "I wouldn't lie about this."
Terry shrugged. "You're probably right. Good for you. I got a shift."
And with that, Kyle himself was dumbfounded. Terry blew him off, and Alexandra wasn't answering the phone. He'd wanted to hang, to tell someone in his life about all of the cool things that were happening.
Instead, he settled for catching a bus back to his apartment to wait for his mom to come home. On the way, he couldn't get the inspiration to draw more detail for Cassian's suit.
But he did sketch his own.
SECTOR HOUSE 2814
April 1, 09:07 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Plan B."
I sat up from my bunk aboard the Sector House, grogginess filling my head. Interrupted dreams about Darkseid, about Nightwing, about Luthor, about Wonder Woman, about the Reach still filled my head.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, munching on what might be a breakfast burrito. Two steaming mugs of liquid rested in one hand, and the smell of fresh coffee filled my nostrils.
Real coffee.
Coffee.
I practically danced on the way to the man and took the offered drink, downing a significant chunk of it with a first swallow. "Oh man, that's delicious."
"Glad you like," he chuckled. "But we need to discuss your next steps."
I nodded and palmed some of the comet rock I'd salvaged in one hand. Ice flecks had long since melted, leaving the object mostly a cool paperweight in anyone's hands. For me, it was enough for a gauntlet of space rock to the face of an enemy.
"I can't just call them up," I argued. "You said you don't have a good relationship with them."
Gabriel considered it for a moment and then shook his head. "'Fraid not. It's a long story, and I'm not above trying to make amends, but that's easier said than done."
He hadn't explained why he didn't get along with the Justice League, and the fact that he wasn't willing to be more candid frustrated me. He was entitled to that respect, though, so I left it alone.
"I tried to just request help from the Guardians, and that didn't work." I wanted to pace back and forth, a habit I formed in my first life and repeated here. "I want to approach them, but I also want them to understand who I am, what I'm about, why I'm doing what I'm doing."
Gabriel nodded, taking a swig of his own cup. "Making a name for yourself is not a bad plan. The Lanterns could just read your file, though, and learn all there is to know."
Point taken, but not enough. "Maybe so. I never planned to come to Earth and sit on my ass. I'm not under any illusion that I'm strong enough to fight the Reach single-handedly. If the GLC are going to blow the bugs off, then I'll earn the League's trust first, maybe gain more powers for myself in the meantime. Asking them to get involved in an intergalactic war that doesn't involve them directly is a tall order."
The Justice League were paragons, but they were new. From what the man had told me, many of their most iconic faces were members, including Lantern Jordan and Lantern Stewart. They had the means to step into intergalactic affairs, but a more established Justice League would do it better. As they were, they might not be ready or able to intervene.
The Justice League in the comics, the movies, the cartoons – they were capable of breaking a space empire over their knees. Superman and Wonder Woman alone were so close to invulnerable that the Reach would be hard-pressed to put them down, and what was a Beetle going to do against the damn Flash? With Batman at the head of their strategy, I was certain that the League could squash the bugs.
"They won't abandon Earth for some punk alien kid," I almost whispered. "But an ally with a good record? With Plumber connections? One with a planet's dictator for an uncle?"
The recipe was there, but there were several missing ingredients. I wanted to avenge the injustice against Osmos V. I wanted to stop the Reach from ripping apart more planets, from killing more mothers or fathers, to end their scourge. I had my sights set on the Reach, but I did not wish to simply fly to their homeworld and ineffectively throw myself against their defenses. Osmos V would need time to prepare for an offensive, and I had to prepare myself.
"It's a solid plan," Gabriel stated carefully. "Get in their good graces, make friends, convince those friends to help you do the universe a favor."
They were far more likely to spend resources to prepare for a problem if they knew and cared for someone affected. The Justice League were powerful, but there were dozens of space empires as bad or worse. The Thanagarians, the Khundians, the Gordanians -
…. Oh.
I laughed.
"What?"
I'm a moron. My first outing in Sanitas, the day my mother first showed her abilities. The story of Osmos V fighting off an alien horde of bird-men. In my defense, they never talked about nth metal or Thanagar directly – I thought it was a metaphor for damn angels or something!
"Never mind, I just made myself laugh."
If I had known this was the DC Universe all that time ago, I might have changed the way I'd done things.
"From what I've read since I've been gone, a lot of the League's heavy hitters have started training sidekicks over the last few years," Gabriel suggested finally, "kids around your age. Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman and Troia, Flash and Kid Flash - you'd do well to approach one of them."
Hmm.
Maybe this was the one time looking fifteen would be an advantage.
March 29, 00:33 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
The Sector House of 2814 was a cylindrical spire of rock, stone, and metal. A mixture of harvested space material and alien technology, it was clear evidence that the Guardians provided their operatives across Guardian Space with the best of the best. Complete with a space port akin to the side of an Imperial Star Destroyer, the interior structure stretched throughout the overall spire, many floors hidden behind space rock formations. Scattered drones flew around the structure in elliptical orbits, likely acting as environmental sensors to ferret out threats or study the mysteries of space. Inactive engines remained dormant at what might be its base, or perhaps it was the top: the disorienting truth was that there was no objective up or down in space.
Three of the orb-like machines made of sleek chrome metal approached and bathed me in the emerald light of their scanners. I prepared for the worst, if only because it was unfamiliar tech. But a few seconds later, I saw the green energy field covering an entrance open, and my badge vibrated and lit up with a written message.
"Welcome aboard, Cassian."
Permission achieved, I touched down within the space, disoriented slightly as the artificial gravity of the station activated. The moment the port closed with the activation of the energy barrier, thick metal doors closed behind it with a whir of sound, the first I'd heard in days. I let out a whistle just to hear my own voice for a second, a half-smirk emerging.
"Optimal atmospheric conditions restored." The female voice of a computer declared. "Life support enabled."
A deep breath of natural enough air was soothing magic to my poor lungs. I'd had to take pressurized air canisters a few times throughout the trip, and to smell and taste normal, if packaged air? It was genuinely wonderful.
I almost longed for the polluted air of an industrial planet again.
The space port was empty apart from a familiar sleek white ship, one I'd essentially lived in for months. The primary body was roughly spherical, while two wings stretched forward. It was not a freighter, according to Gabriel, but was instead a cruiser meant to support only a handful of people comfortably. The amenities inside were quite nice despite that, and ultimately, I wanted one. That with combination of my abilities meant I could truly go anywhere, do anything.
"Cassian!"
I glanced up to see, approaching from an upper balcony, two figures. Gabriel carried a small bag in hand, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt. A kid roughly my age stood behind him holding a case of bottled water, a leather jacket across his torso. The resemblance between them was uncanny – dark hair, blue eyes, dimples, of Hispanic descent. They descended the stairs to greet me, and I grinned.
With two fervent shakes of the hand, I quickly ripped into the case of water and downed a bottle as quickly as I could, real fluid flowing into my system properly for the first time in days.
My stomach protested.
"So the pills weren't great?"
I finished the first and started a second, taking smaller sips. "No, they, uh, did the job. I'm a little surprised they worked as well as they did. They were just uncomfortable, and I left a pile of my vomit floating somewhere outside of Saturn."
"That is so cool," the boy declared with awe on his face, still holding the twelve pack. "Do you need another?"
"Probably, but I think I'm okay for now." I offered him a smile. "It's nice to meet you, Kyle. I've heard good things."
"Thanks, nice to meet you too." He hesitated for a moment. "I thought you'd be taller. And green or purple?"
I laughed, surprised he mentioned my height because I had a good six inches on him. "Green and purple are great alien colors, but no, my skin's just pinker than a human's."
My own skin tone was noticeably pinker than the average white man's skin tone, but it was fairly subtle. I hadn't even noticed that was a predominant difference between Osmosians and humans until meeting Gabriel, and my people had differing skin tones too.
Gabriel added, "Put him under an X-Ray, and you'll see more differences. Like the horns that haven't grown in yet."
I rubbed at my forehead.
"That's cool, bro. Are we talking devils, tieflings, goats? Ooh, a hercules beetle?"
Oh, Kyle Rayner would be a D&D nerd.
Gabriel cut in. "You'll have to show him pictures of what those are."
"I can draw them for you," he said with a smile. "It's just crazy to think you're an alien. The first alien I've met!"
"I doubt it will be the last," I suggested, earning a beaming smile. He was my age in this new world, but even if you did not count the years of experience in dangerous situations, he was clearly a child. I taught kids his age.
But the kid was Kyle Fucking Rayner. One of my favorite Lanterns from the comics, and I half-expected a power ring to come crashing through the wall at any moment to declare him a member of any of the corps. I vaguely knew through cultural osmosis that he had become a White Lantern with a lot of hard work, harnessing each of the colors. He'd been the only Lantern at a time when the whole Corps was temporarily dead.
And yet, the teenager was just a teenager here. I wasn't sure what to think about it. Was I inadvertently stopping him from doing any of that? If Hal goes evil, will someone else have to step in to stop him?
Gabriel pulled me from my reverie. "We should have the med-bay look you over for any malnutrition or dehydration symptoms," he offered, gesturing for one of the adjoining metal-plated hallways. "When I've been on spacewalks-"
"You've done a spacewalk?" Kyle interrupted. "Can I do one?"
"Maybe later," Gabriel said with a curious expression on his face. "Keep heading down this path, and I'm sure that you'll get your chance."
Kyle beamed.
The man continued, poking a thumb at his chest. "My Plumber suit keeps me mostly okay in space, but I can't handle more than short bursts, not long trips. And none of that without a helmet."
I could tell the kid wanted to ask about the suit, but there were too many other things to discuss. I filed it away to bring up myself: how Gabriel's implants and tech worked were as much a mystery as the Plumbers themselves were.
We entered the deeper parts of the structure, and both Gabriel and Kyle made a note of a few chambers that might be useful in the future. A gym, a data center, a fabricator, a lounge. Residential chambers, some of which were marked with glowing nameplates like 2814.1, 2814.2, and 2814.3.
One of those was for Stewart.
My lantern, John Stewart.
As we entered the medical bay, I tried to tamper down my excited thoughts. "Anyway, the trip was wonderful. More than anything I could have expected, and I look forward to the chance to do it again," I explained simply. "I've already thought of a few things that might help future jumps."
The two of them nodded. "You need a cool suit too," Kyle suggested excitedly. "Maybe one that could build in ways to have an air supply or water supply?"
I remembered the kid was an artist in the comics. "You wanna design it?"
The teenager blue-screened. "Wait. I could – I could do that! Can I, Gabe?"
Gabe. Not Dad. I glanced at the man, but if he was uncomfortable with that name, he didn't show it. That was not a situation I wanted to touch.
"Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Our fabricator can make it a reality, if we have the right base materials."
The kid's fingers twitched with excitement at the prospect.
The hall was filled with complex sensors and diagnostic tools. Earth hospitals would pay a fortune for any of these things, because noninvasive scanning tech like this? They would be invaluable. A medical drone hovered in one corner, corded implements dangling beneath its central, near spherical body. The thing was more than a little creepy, reminding me of, coincidentally, a grell from D&D.
A half-hour and a series of tests later, and my prognosis was ultimately that I'd face a few days of exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition. Nothing debilitating, and I suspected that there were adjustments I could make for future jumps to help avoid such difficulties. All in all, I'd made it to my destination with only a mild case of what I'd call "jump sickness" in the future.
Within the medical bay, I noticed a few gathered supplies and materials were left on the counter, while most other items were stored away. These were supplies for wound care, and I considered them for a long moment.
"Are those for me?"
Gabriel followed my gaze, but it was Kyle who answered. "No, those are for me. When I'm ready."
I looked between them both for a long second. "You're planning to give him the implants?"
The man nodded uneasily. "Not quite yet. I'm in the process of preparing, should they be necessary."
Kyle would be ready for them. This was a teenager destined for greatness in a few years. Gabriel mentioned a few things he was looking for first, but I turned to the kid.
"How will you know when you're ready, Kyle?"
"Oh. Well, Gabe mentioned pain tolerance, decision making, mental fortitude – I'm trying to prove him right every day."
That was the bare minimum.
"And the responsibilities that come with it?" I asked. "Once you have these, you'll have the basic tech to operate as your dad does. What does he do?"
Gabriel watched me intensely and crossed his arms.
"Cleans up the aliens and other weird things that slip between the cracks," Kyle explained. "Plumbers are agents that operate from the shadows to monitor planets and respond to threats from other worlds."
A fairly simple summation of what I knew. They weren't from the comics or any other adaptations I had seen, so everything about them I understood came from experience with Gabriel. That was what he'd done on Osmos V, and the impressive tech he'd displayed would have wonders against simpler foes than the Reach.
"We got a lot of work to do before you're ready," Gabriel explained simply. "But I hope to give you the chance. Don't want to distract you from schoolwork."
Kyle guffawed. "Gabe, there's no chance I'll ever need that. Even before I learned this was an option for my future, I didn't need to know anything about trigonometry."
Gabriel smiled conspiratorially. "He's trying to extend his spring break."
"Come onnnn! I'd rather be up here reading about space empires and studying Plumber rulebooks than going back to that place."
"I'm sure you would, but your mother made the arrangement very clear."
Kyle seethed.
It was certain that they'd had that conversation before, if not multiple times before. I wanted to help the kid out, but I also understood that school was important for most folks to get a good foundation for any career. Osmosian school had ended for me when I'd had to go into hiding, and some in Carnifex had tutored the children who'd gotten involved. Back in my previous life, I'd been a public school teacher. This topic was especially relevant for me.
But did I step in to help the kid? No. It ultimately was not my business to intervene in their relationship. Gabriel and Kyle needed to build that bond, without my input.
That didn't stop Kyle from trying to pull me into it.
"Cassian isn't in school. He's billions of light-years away from home!"
I held up my hands in surrender. "Not my call to make, Kyle."
"He's right."
Kyle sighed. "But if you had to choose? If it was your call?"
I studied the boy's father, whose expression was a mixture of emotions. I couldn't imagine being in Gabriel's shoes. It would be so difficult to not spoil the child you're reconnecting with, especially one who is already a teenager, to try to build a relationship. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure that taking him to the Sector House was not a mistake, this early in their reconnecting as father and son.
There were some challenges ahead.
But still, I did have an opinion.
"If I had to choose for you, I'd try to find a balance until your school is over. If you're really wanting to pursue Plumber business, wait 'til you get older to do it full time."
Kyle wasn't happy to hear that. "How does anyone expect me to go back to caring about the history of our tiny country when I just learned there are aliens conquering galaxies out there?"
I didn't have any answers for that. Not ones that would support going back to school or caring about the little things.
"The scale of the universe is much bigger to you, now," Gabriel began, "but you can't throw away everything you've ever known overnight. I did that, and I regret it. Maintaining ties, maintaining a connection to your homeworld? That's invaluable."
Kyle still grumbled, but the point had been taken.
LOS ANGELES
March 31, 15:58 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Terry, you're not gonna believe this."
Kyle breathed hard as he recovered from his full sprint to his friend's place after-school, the first day back after spring break ended.
The gangly blond kid with too many pimples to count fished the work uniform from the pile of unwashed clothes on the floor. "I can't hang today, Kyle. Big Belly Burger needs me."
Kyle pulled his sketchbook and flipped to its latest entries. "No, but seriously, you're gonna have to check this out."
Terry sighed and studied the pages for a long moment and then shrugged. "You're shifting Aaron from a time traveler to a space cop?"
Kyle huffed loudly. "No! I mean, maybe – that's not important. What's important is that I found him."
His best friend had a dumb look on his face, hands still clutching at the visor in hand. "Found who?"
"Do you remember how weird I was those last couple days before break?"
Terry scoffed. "I guess so. We were supposed to hang out over break, but you ignored my texts. Figured you were in one of your moods."
… "I'm not moody!"
"You change moods on a dime."
Kyle shook his head. "None of that fucking matters, Terry. I found my dad!"
Terry blinked. "What…?"
"I can't get into the why or how, but he showed up at my house. Turns out that my mom's friend Gabriel is actually my dad." He pointed to the sketch of a comic strip still in development. "He knew my mom as Aaron, a fake name! He couldn't tell me all this time for some really important reasons, and-"
Terry clutched the visor harder. "What kind of reasons keep you from your kid?"
"You don't even know!"
Terry said nothing for a moment, checking his watch. "Kyle, I really gotta go. If you wanna chat about something real later, hit me up. Otherwise-"
"But I'm telling you the truth," Kyle argued. "I wouldn't lie about this."
Terry shrugged. "You're probably right. Good for you. I got a shift."
And with that, Kyle himself was dumbfounded. Terry blew him off, and Alexandra wasn't answering the phone. He'd wanted to hang, to tell someone in his life about all of the cool things that were happening.
Instead, he settled for catching a bus back to his apartment to wait for his mom to come home. On the way, he couldn't get the inspiration to draw more detail for Cassian's suit.
But he did sketch his own.
SECTOR HOUSE 2814
April 1, 09:07 UTC
TEAM YEAR ZERO
"Plan B."
I sat up from my bunk aboard the Sector House, grogginess filling my head. Interrupted dreams about Darkseid, about Nightwing, about Luthor, about Wonder Woman, about the Reach still filled my head.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, munching on what might be a breakfast burrito. Two steaming mugs of liquid rested in one hand, and the smell of fresh coffee filled my nostrils.
Real coffee.
Coffee.
I practically danced on the way to the man and took the offered drink, downing a significant chunk of it with a first swallow. "Oh man, that's delicious."
"Glad you like," he chuckled. "But we need to discuss your next steps."
I nodded and palmed some of the comet rock I'd salvaged in one hand. Ice flecks had long since melted, leaving the object mostly a cool paperweight in anyone's hands. For me, it was enough for a gauntlet of space rock to the face of an enemy.
"I can't just call them up," I argued. "You said you don't have a good relationship with them."
Gabriel considered it for a moment and then shook his head. "'Fraid not. It's a long story, and I'm not above trying to make amends, but that's easier said than done."
He hadn't explained why he didn't get along with the Justice League, and the fact that he wasn't willing to be more candid frustrated me. He was entitled to that respect, though, so I left it alone.
"I tried to just request help from the Guardians, and that didn't work." I wanted to pace back and forth, a habit I formed in my first life and repeated here. "I want to approach them, but I also want them to understand who I am, what I'm about, why I'm doing what I'm doing."
Gabriel nodded, taking a swig of his own cup. "Making a name for yourself is not a bad plan. The Lanterns could just read your file, though, and learn all there is to know."
Point taken, but not enough. "Maybe so. I never planned to come to Earth and sit on my ass. I'm not under any illusion that I'm strong enough to fight the Reach single-handedly. If the GLC are going to blow the bugs off, then I'll earn the League's trust first, maybe gain more powers for myself in the meantime. Asking them to get involved in an intergalactic war that doesn't involve them directly is a tall order."
The Justice League were paragons, but they were new. From what the man had told me, many of their most iconic faces were members, including Lantern Jordan and Lantern Stewart. They had the means to step into intergalactic affairs, but a more established Justice League would do it better. As they were, they might not be ready or able to intervene.
The Justice League in the comics, the movies, the cartoons – they were capable of breaking a space empire over their knees. Superman and Wonder Woman alone were so close to invulnerable that the Reach would be hard-pressed to put them down, and what was a Beetle going to do against the damn Flash? With Batman at the head of their strategy, I was certain that the League could squash the bugs.
"They won't abandon Earth for some punk alien kid," I almost whispered. "But an ally with a good record? With Plumber connections? One with a planet's dictator for an uncle?"
The recipe was there, but there were several missing ingredients. I wanted to avenge the injustice against Osmos V. I wanted to stop the Reach from ripping apart more planets, from killing more mothers or fathers, to end their scourge. I had my sights set on the Reach, but I did not wish to simply fly to their homeworld and ineffectively throw myself against their defenses. Osmos V would need time to prepare for an offensive, and I had to prepare myself.
"It's a solid plan," Gabriel stated carefully. "Get in their good graces, make friends, convince those friends to help you do the universe a favor."
They were far more likely to spend resources to prepare for a problem if they knew and cared for someone affected. The Justice League were powerful, but there were dozens of space empires as bad or worse. The Thanagarians, the Khundians, the Gordanians -
…. Oh.
I laughed.
"What?"
I'm a moron. My first outing in Sanitas, the day my mother first showed her abilities. The story of Osmos V fighting off an alien horde of bird-men. In my defense, they never talked about nth metal or Thanagar directly – I thought it was a metaphor for damn angels or something!
"Never mind, I just made myself laugh."
If I had known this was the DC Universe all that time ago, I might have changed the way I'd done things.
"From what I've read since I've been gone, a lot of the League's heavy hitters have started training sidekicks over the last few years," Gabriel suggested finally, "kids around your age. Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman and Troia, Flash and Kid Flash - you'd do well to approach one of them."
Hmm.
Maybe this was the one time looking fifteen would be an advantage.
1.3
- Location
- Alabama
NEW YORK CITY
April 9, 01:47 UTC-5
TEAM YEAR ZERO
An old-fashioned shoot out.
A kidnapping attempt.
Maybe narcotics trafficking?
Ooh, a car chase!
I was not willing to take bets on which of the classic heroic scenarios would make the perfect debut to the world of Earth. Any one of them, among others, would suit what I wanted to do, and I needn't be too picky. Supervillain or no, I had the means to help people anywhere across the globe, and I wouldn't turn my nose up to make a difference.
Unlike Superman who could merely hear trouble from miles and miles away, I relied on my jail-broken Plumber's Badge. Gabriel had set the thing up to tune into local frequencies, including radio, so I could connect to police communications and potentially get updates on where to go. Where I might be needed.
Frustratingly, it was so sophisticated a device, even with many of its larger Plumber organization functions disabled, it had difficulty doing much of anything else with Earth technology, like connecting to the Internet. A smart phone would fix that issue, but it would take time before I managed to earn some meaningful cash. I had ideas on that front though – it wouldn't do to live in squalor while on Earth. I could be here for months, if not longer.
The next biggest question would be deciding where to begin building a reputation. Any country on Earth was within a few minutes of flight, and I didn't want to limit myself to necessarily one city as so many capes tend to do. I'd have to mostly stick to places that spoke English though, because I didn't have Gabriel's fancy implant to translate whatever I heard. Europe, Australia, North America – most of the Western countries were easiest in that vein, but I wouldn't limit myself arbitrarily. I'd have to cross the language barrier sometimes to do the most amount of good.
In light of all that, I settled for New York City as a primary stomping ground, at least for now. For one thing, it was physically mostly the same as back in my first life. Five boroughs, Ellis Island, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero – I knew a bit about what to expect before I even arrived. Culturally, it appeared to be as much of a cosmopolitan melting pot as I remembered, with people of all backgrounds and connections walking its streets and running its businesses.
Unlike unique cities like Metropolis or Gotham, the Big Apple would have less alterations - and hopefully less supervillains. I had nowhere close to the kind of strength or durability as someone like Superman, so tangling with his foes in Metropolis did not sound like a good time. And no sane person would choose to live in Gotham, if they had the entire world as their playground. I could do some good in either place, so I wouldn't arbitrarily stay out if I was needed, but I wanted to build a reputation first.
New York had little cape presence, from what I had gathered. Even from the comics, I couldn't think of any major heroes with a presence there. I hadn't read every comic that has ever been published, but if I recalled correctly, Nightwing was stationed here for a while. Compared to Marvel, where you couldn't walk two feet without getting obliterated by Sentinels, clobbered by the Thing, or webbed by the Wall-Crawler, it was almost surreal to see such an important place narratively untouched. I had no doubt all sorts of things were hidden within, crimes and gangs waiting to be thwarted. Heroes and villains waiting to become known.
That decision was how I ended up sitting atop the famous copper torch, admiring the beautiful scene of the city from the perch above its nasty harbor. I could breathe down there now, but I had no desire to drink that garbage. The way the lights of the city reflected on the surface of the harbor almost masked how disgusting the water below must be.
The sounds of the city were muted from this distance, a dull roar of shrill horns beneath the cool wind billowing my blonde hair. The breeze smelled faintly of rubber even from this high, and I wondered idly if the streets would stink of pee in the DC Universe too. It had to be better than Gotham, a place that famously contained a mutated crocodile man in its sewers and a, well, sludge monster.
"Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence," I reminded myself. For all I knew, I'd tangle with a whole family of Clay-codiles by the end of the week.
Fiddling with the dial on the badge, a faint green light flickered to life. With each twist and prod, new voices emerged into the night air, from ads about dentures to the classic oldies tunes I hadn't heard in too long.
The words to Journey's "Faithfully" pounded in my ear, a snapshot into the past that reminded me that things were much the same here as they were back home. The song had become one of my favorites after, regrettably, Glee released their cover of it. I loved that show growing up, and if it still existed in this universe, then its first season would wrap up soon. It had its moments, and the nostalgia of the whole idea and the song playing brought me joy to be here.
This was Earth. I was home-adjacent. I was in America, and I could speak my native tongue. Foods, drinks, books, television, the Internet - I would enjoy everything about Earth for as long as I could.
I didn't plan to abandon Osmos V, but I didn't plan to rush back without accomplishing a plan. I liked Kilowog, but I didn't trust his prediction that the Reach would stay away from the planet forever, now that their efforts had been exposed to the intergalactic scene. Still, while I worked on pieces that could help, I planned to embrace the comforts of a place that felt more like home.
I scribed a message to Father and sent it to his makeshift badge. It would take several days to reach him – space was simply that large, without specialized tech to boost a signal farther than even the Plumber Badges or Power Rings could – but I wanted to keep in touch. An open line of communication would let me know of an emergency or other notable developments, and I wanted to know of any sign at all that the Reach were planning to finish what they started. Gabriel had a similar line of communication open, to monitor, but he had his own duties to attend to.
And, well – I missed them. Jula and Father. Maximus. Marcilia. Even Aggregor, now Imperastos Rox. A title for the new government that came from Osmos V's ancient roots, long before the Triarchy. The title sounded badass, but it only puzzled me again why the language of Osmotin was so similar to Latin. Convergent development, maybe? A coincidence, more likely.
Interrupting my thoughts, a police frequency finally sounded within the calm night, and within minutes, there was an APB out for an attempted helicopter high-jacking.
…
Superhero universe criminals were strange. I hoped this was a mere gang of thugs and not the actions of the horrible Helicopter Harlot.
I donned no mask as I rose into the air and raced through the sky, weaving in and out of spaces between high-rises and business complexes. I stopped long enough to admire my reflection in the glass panes of an office building, a thick brown jacket and jeans my current get-up until something better could be fabricated. I stopped too long, apparently, because a group of tourists atop the Empire State Building nearby began snapping pictures and video, some frightened but far too many were unphased and excited. I waved slightly without slowing down.
The scene below was chaos. Police gave chase to the helicopter, which barely flew above the streetlights. Even still, their squad cars were limited in their ability to follow due to thick traffic. The stolen police helicopter ignored all warnings. Megaphone and loudspeakers shouted for them stop, to land immediately, to return the property.
From the angle of my flight, I could see more cruisers, armored vans, and other police vehicles attempting to join the scene, many still blocks away. The distant sight of more helicopters lifting off to give chase accelerated how much of a clusterfuck this whole thing would be in minutes.
Then it got worse: gunfire started on either side.
Men armed with rifles kneeled in the open door of the copter, firing into the streets behind them. Civilians raced away in terror, screams becoming a cacophony of noise alongside the popping of gunfire. A lucky shot on a cop car's tire caused it to spin, end over end, and crash through a shop front.
When one of the men pulled a rocket launcher into view, I poured on the speed to intervene, reaching a speed just below the sound barrier. When my fist smashed into a rifle's barrel, the whole thing shattered to pieces. The man holding its splintered remains cursed in confusion, hand bleeding, and his brain seemed to catch up to his senses as he scrambled away from me.
"What the fuck?"
The pilot sensed the panic, and the copter started to ascend, even as the rest of the riflemen wheeled themselves onto me. The rocket launcher barrel reached for me, and I grimaced.
"You hit me with that from here, you bring down this rig. If any of you or your friends survive, they'll be pulling shrapnel from your lungs until you're ninety. You don't wanna-"
The man with the heavy weapon, face obscured with a ski mask, hesitated long enough that I could see a tattoo of a snake peeking from beneath the collar of his neck.
The others did not face the same difficulties with firing their weapons. As rifles settled on me, I tapped the side of the helicopter and held the connection. The armored plating of the copter became mine a moment later, bullets smashing small dents into my otherwise covered flesh. It was a muted, dull pain, but they had no armor-piercing rounds or other heavier ammo.
"I'm afraid that won't work on me!" I challenged, bullets from the criminals and, frustratingly, from the cops pinging nearly uselessly off of me.
The nearest criminal tried to smack me with the butt of his pistol, but all he accomplished was pinching his own hand and destabilizing his footing.
He tumbled out of the fast moving helicopter, and I inwardly cursed as my foot stretched and caught the hood of this jacket. Even as it snapped taut, it slowed the fall just enough that he tumbled into the helicopter's landing skids instead of falling several yards and impacting against pavement below. I moved to grab for the next man's gun, muzzle flashes stinging my eyes, and twisted it into a pretzel. One trigger pull later, and the barrel itself exploded and stung my fingers. With a careful pull, my foot came free of the jacket below. A quick glance down, and the man who had nearly fallen was completely shell-shocked.
The pilot shouted. "Shoot this damn asshole!"
"We're trying, here, ese!"
Gunfire pegged me from the third and fourth assailant in the back of the vehicle, but I barely felt anything when they hit directly. The eyes of the man with the rocket launcher were still hesitant to engage, and he had yet to drop the heavy weapon to grab for the pistol at his side. I was glad I had stymied him there, but he also had not yet turned to try to hit anything below with an explosive round.
The attention should be on me, yes.
Two men shoved forward, trying to tackle me. The move did not surprise me, but what threw me off had been the copter's change of angle, sharp enough I lost my footing. I hit the back of the pilot's chair with such ferocity that I hear bone snap.
Blood splattered the windshield.
The copter began to fall.
I cursed and grabbed for the controls, but merely broke the handle in my haste. Bullets pinged against the armor on my back, and I heard scrambled orders below in Spanish. The copter tipped forward, a nosedive that would surely cause it to lose lift any second…
I pushed past the assailants, leaped to the side, and flew to the nose of the copter. With heaving might, I poured speed into my flight and strength into my reinforced arms.
The remaining, conscious hijackers jumped from the side and fell into traffic, more than twenty yards down. A rocket launcher tipped out, hit a manhole cover below, and exploded in the midst of the street from a misfire. I lost track of the rest as I focused on how much strength to use, because I had no special ability to carry something this heavy in flight without potentially breaking physics in half.
I would just as quickly crumple the metal frame of the helicopter around me as I might actually control its flight, and if I were Superman-level strength, could likely pierce its entire structure just by flying through it.
There was no easy science behind this. And yet, inch by inch, the helicopter tilted back to a neutral position until it finally began to level out. This helicopter would need a facelift at the end of this, because I had thoroughly dented its surface structure. Below me, squad cars caught up, voices shouting warnings for me to "stand down."
I dropped the helicopter onto the ground and released a green neural shock from my eyes, the energy powerful enough to partially melt through the still rotating motor controlling the top blades. It was enough to slow it down, and when I caught one of the blades and snapped it in half, the cops and civilians were flabbergasted.
I checked the interior of the now stationary helicopter for any thugs who remained, tossing unconscious criminals into the street at the feet of very confused NYPD officers. Several more arrived by squad car to witness the end of the confrontation.
"Sorry I had to bust it up," I offered with a thumb toward the helicopter, as I touched down in front of them. "The controls were broken. I, uh, wish I could move it out of the street for you."
A growing crowd of civilians worked themselves into a fervor as soon as they realized that the chaos had ended.
"New cape!"
"New York has a hero!"
"He's like a metal man!"
I sheepishly pointed to the scene of carnage, maintaining the silvery-sheen of metal covering my skin. "Did you get the ones who fled?"
One of the officers finally got up the courage, a heavyset man with salt and pepper hair beneath his cap. "W-we did. You – I can't say I expected anything you just did."
Another officer – a woman with a harsh nose – cut in. "Are you connected to Captain Atom?"
Confusion set in for a long moment before I realized what I must look like.
"Oh, no – he's a good hero, but we're not connected." I cleared my throat. "Just in the right place, right time," I argued, having to raise my voice over the din of other police arriving by helicopter, hovering in place above the scene and shining spotlights below. "You got any idea what they were doing stealing that?"
A few broke the silence to comment a negative. Another of the police broke the mold and said, "We suspect it's an inside job. It would almost have to be for them to have access."
"Why though? A helicopter theft in the middle of the city is so high-profile," I countered. "There's a story there."
The officer didn't look too certain, but he gestured towards those headed to lock up. "There's always rot in places you least expect it. Bet it won't be too hard to look into these fine wastes of space and figure out what makes 'em tick."
I nodded. "I wish you luck, officers. Love to stay and chat, but the city needs me!"
With that, I flew off into the sky and readied the badge for my next mark. A news helicopter was likely only minutes away, and I'd hold off on a news interview. Let the story spread. The night was young, yet. I didn't want to waste the rest of the evening waiting to interrogate the perps for the first crime I stopped, or become the center of a journalist's exposé.
Not when I could continue to work through the night to look for more trouble.
NEW YORK CITY
April 15, 01:47 UTC-5
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Robberies, human trafficking, muggings.
I'd settled into a routine rather quickly. Patrols in New York, more often than not, had lent themselves well for what I needed, though none were quite as high-profile as the first. I wasn't an investigator like Batman or a reporter like Superman, so many of my activities had involved stopping active crimes, not investigating ongoing ones. I trusted the police would handle the details of those I rounded up for them, to keep assholes off the streets.
By the end of the first week, I'd stopped a dozen and a half crimes of various shapes or sizes, and intervened in a few situations that could have developed into major crimes if left unchecked. I considered these to be major successes for a first batch.
It was not glorious work, but I didn't need it to be. Would stopping a huge crime lord or a supervillain get the attention of someone faster? Certainly, but I would settle for now, carving a dent into New York City's criminal underworld. Word of mouth, grainy cell phone camera footage, bad CCTV videos – these had become the closest thing to viral as something could be in 2010, before the true explosion of social media.
"Living the life?" Gabriel directed through the badge.
I leaned into the makeshift hammock, wiping away sweat from the summer sun. In a few minutes, shade would return to this rooftop, and I'd avoid such a direct tanning. Two high-rises towered on either side of me, and this was as good a place as any to take a rest and recuperate. Rooftops were often ignored, and they became my go-to for quick and easy lodging, as long as the weather permitted.
"You could say that," I answered. "I'm thinking of dipping into pocket money to rent a motel, get some more comforts. You know any that would lend a room to an illegal alien?"
I was not broke, but Gabriel was not a rich man. Plumbers were not paid especially well for their services, but I had a few hundred from him to get by. Add in the complicated layer of no legal identity, and things became hairier.
"'Fraid not. Could do some digging."
"I'd appreciate it," I answered. "Did you manage to find anything else with your digging?"
Gabriel hesitated for a long moment. "I have an address." Hope sparked in my heart. "Cassian, if you approach them, you should be prepared for anything."
"I'm ready," I announced, more to myself than to him. "I am surprised that they exist, Gabriel. It's hard to believe. The odds alone are…"
The man said nothing for a moment. "I haven't dealt with a situation like your own before, but don't start shooting fireworks in celebration yet."
That was admittedly good advice.
"I know, I know. Things are never as good as they seem."
Gabriel displayed the address on the badge's map. I could be there in minutes, and all I could think to do was shower beforehand.
I finagled a public shower in an open gym then hurried as quickly as I could, crossing state lines in a matter of moments. To remain clean of any bug residue from a flight in-atmosphere, I became like concrete before starting the flight, planning to shed the layer once I landed. The flight became slower as I approached the destination, until I came to a stop hundreds of feet high.
A quaint townhouse on the edge of a suburb. A local high school only a couple miles away, in walking distance. A grocery store across the street. A small pool with all the fixings for something fun for the kids, though the color of algae tainted the water.
The nostalgia was real. So, so real. I lived in a house like this once, as a small child.
I descended into the backyard and approached the windows to the kitchen, above the nearly empty back porch. The lights were on, and the sound of Dolly Parton lightly blasted from speakers somewhere within. A smell of chocolate pie, baked beans, and barbecue chicken wafted from a partially open window.
A kid rushed by the window. A ginger little girl with bright blue eyes giggled as she played with bubbles from the dish soap in the sink. A small black terrier pounced on her, the two playing for several seconds, while she cried out for her daddy to come help her.
When the man approached from around the corner, my heart skipped a beat.
That was my dad.
My real dad, from my first life.
Beer gut so stacked he could use it while standing as a shelf for the beer can typically in his hand. A thin mustache and goatee framed a smiling face as he rushed to play with his daughter, and it was incredibly hard not to notice that the laughs from the man were the same as I remembered.
He was tired – he was the type to carry unseen burdens, to hold those behind a mask that you never let someone know was there. I could see past it better than most, and all the same signs were present.
"John, what are you doing?"
My heart sang.
Mom.
A mousy-haired ginger woman entered the room, giggling as she readied to play along. She pulled the reading glasses from her face and prepared to play with her daughter and her husband, and I lost track of where she was or what she was doing as tears flooded my eyes.
My parents – or, people who looked like them – played with someone who could genetically be my little sister, though I never had one. A family portrait revealed that she was an only child, and they looked so happy together.
Neither I nor my brother existed here.
With a heavy breath, I backed away and nearly collapsed over a toy in the yard. When the puppy started to yip in response, I took off into the sky, disappearing into the clouds above before it could alert them.
"That was them," I sent Gabriel. "That was them!"
The man responded a few seconds later. "That's incredible. What are you going to do?"
I didn't know.
How could you possibly know what to do with an alternate version of your parents? A version that had not gotten a divorce, a version that had a young daughter.
"Truth be told," Gabriel said, "I wasn't sure what to make of your story when you finally told me. Reincarnation into another world? It's a bad science fiction plot at best, a Hinduism faux pas at worst. But to see your parents again? That is wild to me."
I tried and failed to wipe away the next tears, instead letting them fall. I did not cry often, but when I did, I wanted to let it all out.
"It's truly a strange one." It would be stranger, still, if I'd told Gabriel that it had been a world filled with comic books starring the Earth's greatest heroes. "I don't know what to do with any of this."
"If you're thinking of talking to them," Gabriel warned, "don't overwhelm them. They… won't know."
…
And they never would.
I turned in the skies northward and flew swiftly back to NYC.
"You sure?"
"No, I'm not sure of anything," I argued finally. "That was them, but they've had a life together. One without me, one without my brother. I don't know if they have the same careers, the same friends, the same siblings. It's all just a massive coincidence."
Gabriel did not say anything for a long moment, and when his voice finally responded, I almost did not hear the response over my flight near a storming cloud somewhere over Virginia.
"What if it isn't?"
I blinked and halted my return, hovering in the midst of the sky above an interstate. The Appalachian Mountains stretched into the horizon. "But that's-"
"Anything could be possible, Cassian. Those could be your actual parents, who reincarnated like you and found one another. Maybe they remember like you, maybe they don't."
Hope I could not dash.
The idea that I could reunite with them, that I could become connected to them again, that I could forge a new path through this new world with them?
This thought had to be better than heroin.
But I knew better. I'd read too many comics, too many stories. They were far more likely to be versions of the same people on a different Earth, in a different alternate universe. Even if I wanted to build a life with them, they didn't remember me. We had no shared history. Even if all things were the same except my presence, there were enough differences there that I wouldn't meaningfully connect. It would always be there, in the back of my mind, that that woman should be my mother, but she wasn't, really.
I couldn't decide if I preferred knowing or staying in the dark. The knowledge had... unsettled me, in ways that would take a long time to decipher.
April 9, 01:47 UTC-5
TEAM YEAR ZERO
An old-fashioned shoot out.
A kidnapping attempt.
Maybe narcotics trafficking?
Ooh, a car chase!
I was not willing to take bets on which of the classic heroic scenarios would make the perfect debut to the world of Earth. Any one of them, among others, would suit what I wanted to do, and I needn't be too picky. Supervillain or no, I had the means to help people anywhere across the globe, and I wouldn't turn my nose up to make a difference.
Unlike Superman who could merely hear trouble from miles and miles away, I relied on my jail-broken Plumber's Badge. Gabriel had set the thing up to tune into local frequencies, including radio, so I could connect to police communications and potentially get updates on where to go. Where I might be needed.
Frustratingly, it was so sophisticated a device, even with many of its larger Plumber organization functions disabled, it had difficulty doing much of anything else with Earth technology, like connecting to the Internet. A smart phone would fix that issue, but it would take time before I managed to earn some meaningful cash. I had ideas on that front though – it wouldn't do to live in squalor while on Earth. I could be here for months, if not longer.
The next biggest question would be deciding where to begin building a reputation. Any country on Earth was within a few minutes of flight, and I didn't want to limit myself to necessarily one city as so many capes tend to do. I'd have to mostly stick to places that spoke English though, because I didn't have Gabriel's fancy implant to translate whatever I heard. Europe, Australia, North America – most of the Western countries were easiest in that vein, but I wouldn't limit myself arbitrarily. I'd have to cross the language barrier sometimes to do the most amount of good.
In light of all that, I settled for New York City as a primary stomping ground, at least for now. For one thing, it was physically mostly the same as back in my first life. Five boroughs, Ellis Island, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero – I knew a bit about what to expect before I even arrived. Culturally, it appeared to be as much of a cosmopolitan melting pot as I remembered, with people of all backgrounds and connections walking its streets and running its businesses.
Unlike unique cities like Metropolis or Gotham, the Big Apple would have less alterations - and hopefully less supervillains. I had nowhere close to the kind of strength or durability as someone like Superman, so tangling with his foes in Metropolis did not sound like a good time. And no sane person would choose to live in Gotham, if they had the entire world as their playground. I could do some good in either place, so I wouldn't arbitrarily stay out if I was needed, but I wanted to build a reputation first.
New York had little cape presence, from what I had gathered. Even from the comics, I couldn't think of any major heroes with a presence there. I hadn't read every comic that has ever been published, but if I recalled correctly, Nightwing was stationed here for a while. Compared to Marvel, where you couldn't walk two feet without getting obliterated by Sentinels, clobbered by the Thing, or webbed by the Wall-Crawler, it was almost surreal to see such an important place narratively untouched. I had no doubt all sorts of things were hidden within, crimes and gangs waiting to be thwarted. Heroes and villains waiting to become known.
That decision was how I ended up sitting atop the famous copper torch, admiring the beautiful scene of the city from the perch above its nasty harbor. I could breathe down there now, but I had no desire to drink that garbage. The way the lights of the city reflected on the surface of the harbor almost masked how disgusting the water below must be.
The sounds of the city were muted from this distance, a dull roar of shrill horns beneath the cool wind billowing my blonde hair. The breeze smelled faintly of rubber even from this high, and I wondered idly if the streets would stink of pee in the DC Universe too. It had to be better than Gotham, a place that famously contained a mutated crocodile man in its sewers and a, well, sludge monster.
"Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence," I reminded myself. For all I knew, I'd tangle with a whole family of Clay-codiles by the end of the week.
Fiddling with the dial on the badge, a faint green light flickered to life. With each twist and prod, new voices emerged into the night air, from ads about dentures to the classic oldies tunes I hadn't heard in too long.
The words to Journey's "Faithfully" pounded in my ear, a snapshot into the past that reminded me that things were much the same here as they were back home. The song had become one of my favorites after, regrettably, Glee released their cover of it. I loved that show growing up, and if it still existed in this universe, then its first season would wrap up soon. It had its moments, and the nostalgia of the whole idea and the song playing brought me joy to be here.
This was Earth. I was home-adjacent. I was in America, and I could speak my native tongue. Foods, drinks, books, television, the Internet - I would enjoy everything about Earth for as long as I could.
I didn't plan to abandon Osmos V, but I didn't plan to rush back without accomplishing a plan. I liked Kilowog, but I didn't trust his prediction that the Reach would stay away from the planet forever, now that their efforts had been exposed to the intergalactic scene. Still, while I worked on pieces that could help, I planned to embrace the comforts of a place that felt more like home.
I scribed a message to Father and sent it to his makeshift badge. It would take several days to reach him – space was simply that large, without specialized tech to boost a signal farther than even the Plumber Badges or Power Rings could – but I wanted to keep in touch. An open line of communication would let me know of an emergency or other notable developments, and I wanted to know of any sign at all that the Reach were planning to finish what they started. Gabriel had a similar line of communication open, to monitor, but he had his own duties to attend to.
And, well – I missed them. Jula and Father. Maximus. Marcilia. Even Aggregor, now Imperastos Rox. A title for the new government that came from Osmos V's ancient roots, long before the Triarchy. The title sounded badass, but it only puzzled me again why the language of Osmotin was so similar to Latin. Convergent development, maybe? A coincidence, more likely.
Interrupting my thoughts, a police frequency finally sounded within the calm night, and within minutes, there was an APB out for an attempted helicopter high-jacking.
…
Superhero universe criminals were strange. I hoped this was a mere gang of thugs and not the actions of the horrible Helicopter Harlot.
I donned no mask as I rose into the air and raced through the sky, weaving in and out of spaces between high-rises and business complexes. I stopped long enough to admire my reflection in the glass panes of an office building, a thick brown jacket and jeans my current get-up until something better could be fabricated. I stopped too long, apparently, because a group of tourists atop the Empire State Building nearby began snapping pictures and video, some frightened but far too many were unphased and excited. I waved slightly without slowing down.
The scene below was chaos. Police gave chase to the helicopter, which barely flew above the streetlights. Even still, their squad cars were limited in their ability to follow due to thick traffic. The stolen police helicopter ignored all warnings. Megaphone and loudspeakers shouted for them stop, to land immediately, to return the property.
From the angle of my flight, I could see more cruisers, armored vans, and other police vehicles attempting to join the scene, many still blocks away. The distant sight of more helicopters lifting off to give chase accelerated how much of a clusterfuck this whole thing would be in minutes.
Then it got worse: gunfire started on either side.
Men armed with rifles kneeled in the open door of the copter, firing into the streets behind them. Civilians raced away in terror, screams becoming a cacophony of noise alongside the popping of gunfire. A lucky shot on a cop car's tire caused it to spin, end over end, and crash through a shop front.
When one of the men pulled a rocket launcher into view, I poured on the speed to intervene, reaching a speed just below the sound barrier. When my fist smashed into a rifle's barrel, the whole thing shattered to pieces. The man holding its splintered remains cursed in confusion, hand bleeding, and his brain seemed to catch up to his senses as he scrambled away from me.
"What the fuck?"
The pilot sensed the panic, and the copter started to ascend, even as the rest of the riflemen wheeled themselves onto me. The rocket launcher barrel reached for me, and I grimaced.
"You hit me with that from here, you bring down this rig. If any of you or your friends survive, they'll be pulling shrapnel from your lungs until you're ninety. You don't wanna-"
The man with the heavy weapon, face obscured with a ski mask, hesitated long enough that I could see a tattoo of a snake peeking from beneath the collar of his neck.
The others did not face the same difficulties with firing their weapons. As rifles settled on me, I tapped the side of the helicopter and held the connection. The armored plating of the copter became mine a moment later, bullets smashing small dents into my otherwise covered flesh. It was a muted, dull pain, but they had no armor-piercing rounds or other heavier ammo.
"I'm afraid that won't work on me!" I challenged, bullets from the criminals and, frustratingly, from the cops pinging nearly uselessly off of me.
The nearest criminal tried to smack me with the butt of his pistol, but all he accomplished was pinching his own hand and destabilizing his footing.
He tumbled out of the fast moving helicopter, and I inwardly cursed as my foot stretched and caught the hood of this jacket. Even as it snapped taut, it slowed the fall just enough that he tumbled into the helicopter's landing skids instead of falling several yards and impacting against pavement below. I moved to grab for the next man's gun, muzzle flashes stinging my eyes, and twisted it into a pretzel. One trigger pull later, and the barrel itself exploded and stung my fingers. With a careful pull, my foot came free of the jacket below. A quick glance down, and the man who had nearly fallen was completely shell-shocked.
The pilot shouted. "Shoot this damn asshole!"
"We're trying, here, ese!"
Gunfire pegged me from the third and fourth assailant in the back of the vehicle, but I barely felt anything when they hit directly. The eyes of the man with the rocket launcher were still hesitant to engage, and he had yet to drop the heavy weapon to grab for the pistol at his side. I was glad I had stymied him there, but he also had not yet turned to try to hit anything below with an explosive round.
The attention should be on me, yes.
Two men shoved forward, trying to tackle me. The move did not surprise me, but what threw me off had been the copter's change of angle, sharp enough I lost my footing. I hit the back of the pilot's chair with such ferocity that I hear bone snap.
Blood splattered the windshield.
The copter began to fall.
I cursed and grabbed for the controls, but merely broke the handle in my haste. Bullets pinged against the armor on my back, and I heard scrambled orders below in Spanish. The copter tipped forward, a nosedive that would surely cause it to lose lift any second…
I pushed past the assailants, leaped to the side, and flew to the nose of the copter. With heaving might, I poured speed into my flight and strength into my reinforced arms.
The remaining, conscious hijackers jumped from the side and fell into traffic, more than twenty yards down. A rocket launcher tipped out, hit a manhole cover below, and exploded in the midst of the street from a misfire. I lost track of the rest as I focused on how much strength to use, because I had no special ability to carry something this heavy in flight without potentially breaking physics in half.
I would just as quickly crumple the metal frame of the helicopter around me as I might actually control its flight, and if I were Superman-level strength, could likely pierce its entire structure just by flying through it.
There was no easy science behind this. And yet, inch by inch, the helicopter tilted back to a neutral position until it finally began to level out. This helicopter would need a facelift at the end of this, because I had thoroughly dented its surface structure. Below me, squad cars caught up, voices shouting warnings for me to "stand down."
I dropped the helicopter onto the ground and released a green neural shock from my eyes, the energy powerful enough to partially melt through the still rotating motor controlling the top blades. It was enough to slow it down, and when I caught one of the blades and snapped it in half, the cops and civilians were flabbergasted.
I checked the interior of the now stationary helicopter for any thugs who remained, tossing unconscious criminals into the street at the feet of very confused NYPD officers. Several more arrived by squad car to witness the end of the confrontation.
"Sorry I had to bust it up," I offered with a thumb toward the helicopter, as I touched down in front of them. "The controls were broken. I, uh, wish I could move it out of the street for you."
A growing crowd of civilians worked themselves into a fervor as soon as they realized that the chaos had ended.
"New cape!"
"New York has a hero!"
"He's like a metal man!"
I sheepishly pointed to the scene of carnage, maintaining the silvery-sheen of metal covering my skin. "Did you get the ones who fled?"
One of the officers finally got up the courage, a heavyset man with salt and pepper hair beneath his cap. "W-we did. You – I can't say I expected anything you just did."
Another officer – a woman with a harsh nose – cut in. "Are you connected to Captain Atom?"
Confusion set in for a long moment before I realized what I must look like.
"Oh, no – he's a good hero, but we're not connected." I cleared my throat. "Just in the right place, right time," I argued, having to raise my voice over the din of other police arriving by helicopter, hovering in place above the scene and shining spotlights below. "You got any idea what they were doing stealing that?"
A few broke the silence to comment a negative. Another of the police broke the mold and said, "We suspect it's an inside job. It would almost have to be for them to have access."
"Why though? A helicopter theft in the middle of the city is so high-profile," I countered. "There's a story there."
The officer didn't look too certain, but he gestured towards those headed to lock up. "There's always rot in places you least expect it. Bet it won't be too hard to look into these fine wastes of space and figure out what makes 'em tick."
I nodded. "I wish you luck, officers. Love to stay and chat, but the city needs me!"
With that, I flew off into the sky and readied the badge for my next mark. A news helicopter was likely only minutes away, and I'd hold off on a news interview. Let the story spread. The night was young, yet. I didn't want to waste the rest of the evening waiting to interrogate the perps for the first crime I stopped, or become the center of a journalist's exposé.
Not when I could continue to work through the night to look for more trouble.
NEW YORK CITY
April 15, 01:47 UTC-5
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Robberies, human trafficking, muggings.
I'd settled into a routine rather quickly. Patrols in New York, more often than not, had lent themselves well for what I needed, though none were quite as high-profile as the first. I wasn't an investigator like Batman or a reporter like Superman, so many of my activities had involved stopping active crimes, not investigating ongoing ones. I trusted the police would handle the details of those I rounded up for them, to keep assholes off the streets.
By the end of the first week, I'd stopped a dozen and a half crimes of various shapes or sizes, and intervened in a few situations that could have developed into major crimes if left unchecked. I considered these to be major successes for a first batch.
It was not glorious work, but I didn't need it to be. Would stopping a huge crime lord or a supervillain get the attention of someone faster? Certainly, but I would settle for now, carving a dent into New York City's criminal underworld. Word of mouth, grainy cell phone camera footage, bad CCTV videos – these had become the closest thing to viral as something could be in 2010, before the true explosion of social media.
"Living the life?" Gabriel directed through the badge.
I leaned into the makeshift hammock, wiping away sweat from the summer sun. In a few minutes, shade would return to this rooftop, and I'd avoid such a direct tanning. Two high-rises towered on either side of me, and this was as good a place as any to take a rest and recuperate. Rooftops were often ignored, and they became my go-to for quick and easy lodging, as long as the weather permitted.
"You could say that," I answered. "I'm thinking of dipping into pocket money to rent a motel, get some more comforts. You know any that would lend a room to an illegal alien?"
I was not broke, but Gabriel was not a rich man. Plumbers were not paid especially well for their services, but I had a few hundred from him to get by. Add in the complicated layer of no legal identity, and things became hairier.
"'Fraid not. Could do some digging."
"I'd appreciate it," I answered. "Did you manage to find anything else with your digging?"
Gabriel hesitated for a long moment. "I have an address." Hope sparked in my heart. "Cassian, if you approach them, you should be prepared for anything."
"I'm ready," I announced, more to myself than to him. "I am surprised that they exist, Gabriel. It's hard to believe. The odds alone are…"
The man said nothing for a moment. "I haven't dealt with a situation like your own before, but don't start shooting fireworks in celebration yet."
That was admittedly good advice.
"I know, I know. Things are never as good as they seem."
Gabriel displayed the address on the badge's map. I could be there in minutes, and all I could think to do was shower beforehand.
I finagled a public shower in an open gym then hurried as quickly as I could, crossing state lines in a matter of moments. To remain clean of any bug residue from a flight in-atmosphere, I became like concrete before starting the flight, planning to shed the layer once I landed. The flight became slower as I approached the destination, until I came to a stop hundreds of feet high.
A quaint townhouse on the edge of a suburb. A local high school only a couple miles away, in walking distance. A grocery store across the street. A small pool with all the fixings for something fun for the kids, though the color of algae tainted the water.
The nostalgia was real. So, so real. I lived in a house like this once, as a small child.
I descended into the backyard and approached the windows to the kitchen, above the nearly empty back porch. The lights were on, and the sound of Dolly Parton lightly blasted from speakers somewhere within. A smell of chocolate pie, baked beans, and barbecue chicken wafted from a partially open window.
A kid rushed by the window. A ginger little girl with bright blue eyes giggled as she played with bubbles from the dish soap in the sink. A small black terrier pounced on her, the two playing for several seconds, while she cried out for her daddy to come help her.
When the man approached from around the corner, my heart skipped a beat.
That was my dad.
My real dad, from my first life.
Beer gut so stacked he could use it while standing as a shelf for the beer can typically in his hand. A thin mustache and goatee framed a smiling face as he rushed to play with his daughter, and it was incredibly hard not to notice that the laughs from the man were the same as I remembered.
He was tired – he was the type to carry unseen burdens, to hold those behind a mask that you never let someone know was there. I could see past it better than most, and all the same signs were present.
"John, what are you doing?"
My heart sang.
Mom.
A mousy-haired ginger woman entered the room, giggling as she readied to play along. She pulled the reading glasses from her face and prepared to play with her daughter and her husband, and I lost track of where she was or what she was doing as tears flooded my eyes.
My parents – or, people who looked like them – played with someone who could genetically be my little sister, though I never had one. A family portrait revealed that she was an only child, and they looked so happy together.
Neither I nor my brother existed here.
With a heavy breath, I backed away and nearly collapsed over a toy in the yard. When the puppy started to yip in response, I took off into the sky, disappearing into the clouds above before it could alert them.
"That was them," I sent Gabriel. "That was them!"
The man responded a few seconds later. "That's incredible. What are you going to do?"
I didn't know.
How could you possibly know what to do with an alternate version of your parents? A version that had not gotten a divorce, a version that had a young daughter.
"Truth be told," Gabriel said, "I wasn't sure what to make of your story when you finally told me. Reincarnation into another world? It's a bad science fiction plot at best, a Hinduism faux pas at worst. But to see your parents again? That is wild to me."
I tried and failed to wipe away the next tears, instead letting them fall. I did not cry often, but when I did, I wanted to let it all out.
"It's truly a strange one." It would be stranger, still, if I'd told Gabriel that it had been a world filled with comic books starring the Earth's greatest heroes. "I don't know what to do with any of this."
"If you're thinking of talking to them," Gabriel warned, "don't overwhelm them. They… won't know."
…
And they never would.
I turned in the skies northward and flew swiftly back to NYC.
"You sure?"
"No, I'm not sure of anything," I argued finally. "That was them, but they've had a life together. One without me, one without my brother. I don't know if they have the same careers, the same friends, the same siblings. It's all just a massive coincidence."
Gabriel did not say anything for a long moment, and when his voice finally responded, I almost did not hear the response over my flight near a storming cloud somewhere over Virginia.
"What if it isn't?"
I blinked and halted my return, hovering in the midst of the sky above an interstate. The Appalachian Mountains stretched into the horizon. "But that's-"
"Anything could be possible, Cassian. Those could be your actual parents, who reincarnated like you and found one another. Maybe they remember like you, maybe they don't."
Hope I could not dash.
The idea that I could reunite with them, that I could become connected to them again, that I could forge a new path through this new world with them?
This thought had to be better than heroin.
But I knew better. I'd read too many comics, too many stories. They were far more likely to be versions of the same people on a different Earth, in a different alternate universe. Even if I wanted to build a life with them, they didn't remember me. We had no shared history. Even if all things were the same except my presence, there were enough differences there that I wouldn't meaningfully connect. It would always be there, in the back of my mind, that that woman should be my mother, but she wasn't, really.
I couldn't decide if I preferred knowing or staying in the dark. The knowledge had... unsettled me, in ways that would take a long time to decipher.
Last edited:
1.4
- Location
- Alabama
STAR CITY
April 18, 02:12 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Roy Harper leaped from the top of the highway overpass sign to the ground level of the nearby complex. He collapsed into a rolling leap just on the inside of the private estate, vanishing into the shadows of the only corner that he'd pegged as a blindspot for the cameras. What few security guards were here were on their rounds, and he had a small window to move.
Roy knew this task like the back of his hand. Knew what it would take to succeed, had the skills necessary to pull off the job of a damn lifetime. Ollie would never expect it, to him having solved something like this solo. When this was done, Roy was certain that the League would have to respect him, perhaps even offer him membership.
With a controlled breath and the snap of a taut bowstring, a tech-infused arrow pinged against the wall just below a trio of cameras, each pointed at different viewpoints of the complex's exterior. A second later, his tech looped the camera feed between himself and the exterior access window he planned to use to enter the warehouse. He scanned with his eyes for any movement of potential guards, a possible change in rotation, and then sprinted forward to close the distance.
For a facility so vaunted that they claimed military sponsorship, security was far more lax than he might have suspected. Or perhaps he was truly that good. Either way, Roy would take advantage of their lapse in judgment.
He rappelled up the building and slipped within the window, careful to snap the button in place that would retract the corded line he used to ascend to that position. With a whirring release of pressure, the line whipped into the coiled ready position again, and he slipped it back onto his quiver.
The railing he had landed on was nothing more than a maintenance access walkway, far above the main interior of the facility. Below him, a storage deck revealed military hardware – ammunition, medical supplies, vehicle replacement parts, and other various technologies that might be useful in times of war. And in times of peace, not that the government often considered the difference between the two.
Before Roy moved, he carefully checked for signs of cameras. Noticing one, he looped another before alarm klaxons could alert the entire compound to his position. From this vantage point, he could drop to anywhere in the main floor of the warehouse without being seen, so long as he readied himself to move when he landed.
Gripping a pair of binoculars, he activated their scanning functions and glanced through them. Designed to pick up on text he couldn't see with his own eyes, Roy read description after description of just what they had in storage. Tags revealed military-grade ordinance, auxiliary scopes and silencers, grenade pins and bandoliers.
"Serious equipment here," he muttered into his collar, a microphone built into the fabric designed to record messages and link to the main computer systems he and Ollie used. Lately, they had adopted the broader League-affiliated tech, but he remembers when they instead relied on Queen Consolidated and its monies. It had not been that long ago, and despite Oliver's joining the League several years ago, they had slowly begun to rely on the League more over time.
The fact that they had yet to recognize Roy's talent frustrated him more, in light of that. He could use the resources of the League, but without any of the perks?
With a breath, he focused on the task at hand, continuing his quiet verbal report. "If the motive is theft, then they must have been taking small amounts of inventory from each. Before they rig the whole warehouse to explode, that is."
Roy couldn't be sure why any of this was happening just yet. Over the past several months, there had been a series of explosions in various cities across the United States. Some larger, some smaller, but there were a few links that confused him enough to want to investigate. No signs of common explosives. No casings, no residue. And each of these bombings were connected to a few shell companies, with spurious links to military contractors. The most recent bombing had only been two weeks ago, and Roy had done everything in his power since to confirm this would be the likeliest target: a warehouse practically in his backyard, owned and funded by mogul Maxwell Lord and a few subsidiaries.
If his knowledge had been correct, then he was certain that he would find the team doing this, take them out, and save the damn day. Government contractors, shady business dealings, terrorist bombings – this was the damn big leagues, and he'd be respected.
Roy waited with bated breath for any signs of change from below, studying the late-night crew like a hawk. They performed all the expected routines of a graveyard shift: checked inventory, reorganized supplies, prepared for new clients the next day. Ammunition cases were not live, nor were many of them touched. Given the connections to the military and these explosions, Roy expected the source of the bombs were likely a cover-up. But for what, for whom, he could not say.
Vehicles came and went into the complex on a regular interval, and the crews responded to them with expected results. So routine that Roy barely clocked when a semi moved onto the loading dock that they had not scheduled. One worker checked a clipboard, while two moved closer to understand exactly why this guy had moved into the line. The semi had no discerning details – it matched many of the other nondescript trucks that had been moving into and out of the warehouse.
Roy moved closer in time to see the door to the back of the truck swing open from the inside. A ginger woman dressed in khaki fatigues hopped down onto the warehouse floor, sidearm on her belt, a thick rifle on her back. Roy's fingers twitched against his bow, hand already reaching for something in his quiver. When three more men dropped out of the back of the vehicle and brandished their weapons in the direction of the night crew, Roy moved into position and released an arrow.
Twin bolos disabled two, weapons trapped against them at odd angles as they crumbled to the floor. The woman's head snapped up to clock his position immediately, and he began to move before her gaze even settled on him. Gunfire peppered against the railing behind him, and he rappelled down into the warehouse floor to take advantage of the additional cover of the rows and rows of storage shelves. They continued firing – not wildly in his direction, but instead into the direction of security. He watched a guard ahead, more than thirty yards away, fall in a spray of blood.
Roy prepared for his next moment, took aim, and fired. With a burst of light, a flashbang arrow detonated right at the space where the group had been standing moments ago. The two he'd trapped were still there, struggling to see, but the last two assailants had moved. Another security guard fell, and Roy cursed.
"Which one are you again?" a female voice demanded over a loudspeaker, interrupting whatever normal channels their intercom systems must have used. That was so swiftly done that Roy wondered if they had backing elsewhere, perhaps someone in the security office? "Kid Flash or Speedy?"
Roy ignored the jab with a bit of difficulty. He had heard far worse.
"Has the Green Arrow come to play?"
The grip tightened on his bow.
A crate nearby exploded into smithereens, wooden and metal shrapnel showering the space around it. He braced himself, but it wasn't close enough to do more than cover him in dust. Had they thrown a grenade and he'd missed it?
Roy darted from that position, angling for a better vantage point, and grimaced when he rounded the corner in time to see another security guard fall in a splatter of blood.
He activated an amplifying microphone beneath the collar of his jacket. "Why the change of MO? All the rest, there were barely any casualties. Now, everyone's dropping like flies." Roy shifted his position again swiftly.
"Why does it surprise you that our methodology would change with you present?" the woman taunted. "Can't leave any survivors, now."
A three-tiered storage shelf full of medical supplies began to glow a soft pink light. A moment later, it exploded in a shower of metal, plastic, and cement. Unfortunately, Roy was closer to its epicenter, this time, metallic shards hitting his defending arms and clipping into his armored clothing.
"Source-less explosion," he coughed into his recording, rubbing at two places that had taken a glancing cut. "Possible female with explosive abilities."
One of Oliver's cardinal rules – never face an enhanced alone. Roy had broken that promise on more than one occasion over the years, and so had GA, but it was one of the earliest forms of advice the archer had given his student. By and large, it was good advice.
Roy zipped to the maintenance walkway above the warehouse floor. Flipping up and angling his torso into the shadows, he readied a shot for the woman and any more of her goons.
A thick arrowhead slammed into the torso of a gunmen, knocking him clean off his feet and throwing him back a few yards. He came to rest in a heap at the base of a storage shelf full of power tools and tank treads.
Another explosion rocked the ground below, this one larger than the other two had been, but he was far outside of its ring of destruction.
Police sirens sounded in the background. Roy hadn't needed to hit the panic button – there were far too many explosions and gunshots for Star City to not eventually send someone to investigate.
"Sound the retreat!" The woman's voice carried throughout the complex. He trained his eye on her as she came into his view, but he had maintained his hiding place.
A wall of metal, wood, and plastic began to glow with pink light, while a line of that light drifted from the ginger woman's left hand. A second light held like a tether from her right hand, ending in a warbling crackle of energy.
A second later, the line of storage shelves exploded in a shower of smoke, ash, and debris. Roy reached with practiced fingers and released a tracking arrowhead at the back of the truck. The beacon was in place.
"Definitely a woman with powers," he muttered more to himself than the speaker.
When the smoke cleared, three of the assailants and their vehicle were gone. The only one who remained behind was unconscious from his knockback arrow, and he was thankful for the chance to get some information.
He had no easy way to chase her down, and he had to hope she was dumb enough to not abandon the getaway vehicle at the first opportunity. Where she chose to drop it could still give useful information, but he hoped she took it straight to her headquarters.
Speedy turned to sweep the building of anyone else that did not belong, while at the same time, connecting to the Star City PD radios. "Speedy here. Unknown woman with enhanced abilities over explosions fleeing a scene on Fifth and Fox. Highly dangerous. In an unmarked gray semi-truck heading east, northeast. Do not engage. Send paramedics to warehouse eight on Fifth and Fox."
He did not wait to hear confirmation that they had gotten the memo. He and GA had left many a message like that over the years, and it was honestly a 50-50 if they bothered to listen. At the very least, paramedics would arrive in time to provide aid for the men who bad been injured.
He finished as quickly as he could, confirming the lack of any normal explosives and other members of her gang. The workers left behind were stunned when he hefted the thug onto his shoulders and ascended onto the roof to have a quiet chat.
Police would be here any second, but he wanted all the information that he could.
The man groggily grumbled under his breath when Roy finally managed to wake him, before he realized very quickly what was in store for him.
"What's the deal?" Roy demanded. "Street crime not lucrative anymore? Escalating to terrorism?"
"You thi-in-k I'll talk to you?"
Speedy didn't skip a beat. "I think you will if you wanna keep your fingers."
The man's eyes widened. "You wouldn't-"
Roy reached into his quiver and produced his sharpest arrowhead. "You see the vents on the side? That's where the heat comes out. This thing gets so hot, you won't bleed much at all." He activated it with a flick to the arrow's fletching, and a hiss of hot air escaped the vents. "Talented surgeon could maybe even re-attach them, but I don't think they pay prison docs well enough for that."
Did Roy have any real plans to follow through on the threat? No, but the man didn't need to know that.
"Who is your boss? What does she want?"
The man said nothing.
The police sirens and lights burst into view from his vantage point.
Roy brought the arrow closer, its internal motor still spinning. The man couldn't move his hands due to the bindings, but his fingers tried and failed to move away. The red and blue lights flickered across his face, and the sirens of incoming paramedics joined the police who had arrived.
"Tell me, or you'll never play pocket pool again."
For a second, Roy was certain that the man would hold his ground, but then his mouth opened. "Plastique!" the man cried out in desperation. "Her call-sign is Plastique. I don't know about the rest, just that we are hitting military targets."
A swift hit to the head brought the man down once more, to be left on the roof for the police to find.
Plastique was not a name that Roy recognized, but he had a place to start. Lifting the receiver from his belt, he checked the still-moving location of his tracker and made to follow, rooftop after rooftop. A Speedy-cycle of his own would be nice, he realized, and he promised himself to make it happen.
STAR CITY
April 18, 03:49 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Star City, Speedy, and Green Arrow was not my first choice, but it was a choice all the same. I had feelers out through Gabriel's tech for any big news involving one of the teenage disciples of the League. The first high-profile hit was through one Roy Harper.
Or at least, I was pretty sure it was Roy, because Speedy wasn't half-black like Connor or a woman like Mia or Thea or someone else.
Roy was a cool character though, and I vaguely recalled a daughter, a drug addiction, and a few different identities from the comics like Arsenal or Red Arrow. Speedy was the retro identity, and when I saw his picture on the internet, the uniform was easily just as old-school as the name might suggest.
Were the sidekicks all in their early Teen Titans days? Robin's uniform didn't have the booty shorts to match them, assuming blurry pics of the Boy Wonder was accurate. Some of the other Titans were either hidden or didn't exist yet, and it was more than a bit unclear where in the timeline we were.
If we were at all. DC had more Elseworld stories and adaptations than many of its contemporaries.
I brought my thoughts back to the coastal city, currently under threat by an explosive woman, according to his message to the police. There were so many characters that could be that I didn't recognize her, not that I always would. This terrorist could be an alien, a metahuman, a magician, someone using advanced tech, or something else entirely. And, I imagine, not every threat I come across will be one I recognize. I didn't recognize the Reach or Osmos V from DC stories, after all.
Speeding through the city's skyscape, I had only two goals in mind. One: find the woman. Two: find Speedy. I hoped the two happened at the same time, because I didn't want to step on Speedy's toes. An ally, not a scene-stealer.
My Badge sounded with announcements by police across the city and their responses. Given the severity of the threat, I overheard a sergeant call for the National Guard, and the situation looked to escalate rather quickly. A woman with exploding powers could range anywhere from Piper Halliwell-level to a living nuclear bomb like Peter Petrelli. I hoped for the former, rather than the latter.
Conflicting reports of strange sightings and potential assailants rattled across every frequency at once. A breaking news alert on GBS had already begun, with the famous Cat Grant's face displayed on the screens overlooking Roberts Square. She had little information about the ongoing event, but I suspected news helicopters and cameras would be all over this place within minutes.
That lack of information did not last long when something exploded only a few blocks away from my flight path. A column of heat and smoke rose into the sky, and I sped toward the sight at just below the speed of sound.
From the window of a speeding semi, something pink lashed out like a whip toward the front of a cop car that aimed to tail them. Where it struck, the metal melted from intense heat and then sparked, exploding the pursuing vehicle with such force that shopfront windows and high-rise balcony windows shattered nearby.
The traveling truck took advantage of a momentary reprieve to push past a blockade that had yet to solidify in time. The truck barreled through one squad car, sending it spinning into an armored van that didn't arrive in time to put a dent into its path.
I gained momentum, grabbed a concrete layer from a cement wall, and dropped into the road in front of it. Breaks squealed on the driver's instinct for a good half-second before it continued to accelerate unabated, with me in its path.
I angled a pair of neural shock blasts toward its tire. One missed, but the other hit, and with a green crackle of light, the tire collapsed, and the vehicle lost control of its momentum.
The semi-truck struck with such force that I only managed to hold my ground for a second until I flew backward and crumbled against the side of a parked taxi, caving in its frame.
The pain was immense, from mere blunt force trauma, and the concrete armor had cracked under the pressure. Bruises were in my future, my lungs hated me, but I would heal.
The truck, however, would not.
Its engine block sundered under the impact pressure, the front of the truck a shattered, splintered mess. The windshield had cracked, and smoke billowed from its weakened front. The vehicle had driven for a few more yards before coming to an abrupt stop, the weight of a parked van finally ending its forward momentum.
I floated to a hovering position, just over the ground, and studied the interior through the spider web of cracks in the glass. The ache from what had happened still rang in my ears, thrummed in my torso, and I felt myself losing altitude from a lack of concentration.
The driver, blood dripping from his forehead and ruining his left eyesight, opened the door, raised his side arm, and fired. I braced with my arm, but the bullets that managed to aim true pinged against my abdomen, my hip, my shoulders – all still coated in concrete.
"Y-you won't do much there," I offered through gunshots. "Maybe save your ammo for the cops to identify later."
The explosive woman in question, perhaps, climbed into the cab next to her lackey from the back. Red hair in a tight bun, khaki fatigues, her appearance screamed military. The expression on her face was not happy. A small burst of light and sound preceded the truck door flying from its hinges, crashing through a nearby window to an office building.
She launched herself from the truck and landed on the street. Her hand crackled with pink light, while the other held a rifle at the ready.
"I don't know why you freaks keep interrupting tonight, but you signed their death warrants."
The rifle spun around, not in my direction but toward the line of cop cars behind her that had begun to form. I ran forward quickly to grab for the barrel, each step one of frustrating pain, but I was too late as her shots began to ring into the night. Cops fell, while others began to exchange fire.
As I approached to cut off her assault, she brandished her other hand in a swing of energy. I held off to keep some space between us. However her powers worked, I doubted I was durable enough to survive that if she managed to tag me.
"Not cool," I argued, keeping my distance. Cops didn't stop shooting, some shots wild enough that I was as much a target as her. "If you stand down now, I'm sure a judge will-"
The woman's bark of laughter unsettled me, and she crouched behind the cover of a Camaro's engine block. "You civilian hero types have faith in the system? That's priceless."
I frowned, knowing that was not true. Earthbound governments were just as likely to be corrupt as the Oans could be, as Aggregor could be.
"Nope. I don't have much faith in that or anything else, but if you add another kill right now? The years will just keep adding on. That's a fact, not faith."
She chuckled again, raising her crackling hands in surrender. "I've already raked in more than a life sentence. What's another forty years?"
Forty years for me would only be a fraction of how long I might live.
"Ma'am, do you know how many superpowers accidentally result in a longer lifespan? Quite a few of them."
That stymied her.
"Stop shooting! Throw down your weapons, put your hands up where we can see them!" A cop bellowed from his megaphone, and I made to maneuver around to put myself between her and them. She flicked the energy like a whip, charging a nearby manhole cover with pink light. The warning was clear, and I held off before Gambit turned me to paste.
"Whoa, whoa. Let's not get hasty. You have to realize that even if I don't take you down, you've caught so much heat now that you have no chance of escaping this."
The woman chuckled, though it was not a chuckle of confidence this time. I was getting to her, and all I needed now was to delay until Speedy caught up.
"I know you could torch that whole line of police back there," I added. "But what are a few more lives lost going to do? They aren't connected to your plotting. Your 9/11 hands aren't -"
The woman's eyes flashed with the same light, and I forced myself into flight despite the pain, the weakness. I didn't cover enough distance, and when the asphalt exploded beneath where I had been standing, the force of it sent me tumbling through the air, end over end. I smashed hard into brick, more of my skin exposed as a person-shaped impact fracture formed behind me.
Bullets sang through the air as the police tried again to intervene. The pink whip of light moved again, not aiming toward them, but instead toward me. I peeled myself from the building, but not fast enough -
Something exploded just in front of me, showering me uselessly with pieces of wood.
I fell, controlling my descent through sheer force of will, and crouched behind a newspaper kiosk. Glancing upward, I smiled. The red-wearing archer in his silly yellow cap took aim with a volley of arrows.
"Plastique!"
Oh, that was her! I knew nothing except that she existed. Maybe a name from Suicide Squad?
A trick arrow trapped a fleeing lackey in a net. A second tied her legs together, forcing her to lose her balance. She reached with her finger to tap the corded line, but a third hit the center of her back, trapping her arms to her sides before she could.
"Unless you wanna blow yourself up," I challenged from my crouching position, "I s-suggest you listen to Speedy."
"This won't hold me!" Plastique hurled back.
A fourth arrow released a cloud of visible gas just beneath her nose. She breathed in the fumes and was out like a light in seconds.
STAR CITY
April 18, 04:51 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Roy, furious, threw his finger in the new kid's face, half-obscured by the darkness of the alleyway. Dumb, overconfident newbie without a proper costume or even a simple mask. The most he could say the idiot had done was to give Roy time to arrive, but he'd been reckless to himself and others.
"Who are you to operate on my turf?"
The boy's brow rose. "I wasn't trying to- I just wanted to help."
From the looks of it, despite the half-hour that had gone by since the police and the feds took over, he was still recovering from the explosion he'd tanked. Or maybe it was the semi-truck that he'd let try to run him over.
"I don't care how durable you are, I think if you'd been hit by her powers-"
"I'm not a moron, Speedy," the kid challenged. "I knew to not get hit directly, so I maintained my distance. In that way, same as you."
Roy fumed. He couldn't believe this. "What, exactly, were you thinking then?"
"I was trying to stall, to give you an opening," the boy spat. "If you'd have gotten there faster, I could have followed your lead. Had to improvise."
"I don't want you following my lead," Roy grunted. "I'm not wasting my time with someone so new. Go fuck off in someone else's city."
"I'm not new," the blond replied sharply. "I won't stick around if you don't want me here. There's plenty of other places for crime-fighting. But, I'll warn you now – if I see an opportunity to help, I'm gonna take it and you'll just have to swallow your pride."
With that, the boy flew off into the sky and disappeared into the night.
Because of that damn kid, the League won't even register any of this.
April 18, 02:12 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Roy Harper leaped from the top of the highway overpass sign to the ground level of the nearby complex. He collapsed into a rolling leap just on the inside of the private estate, vanishing into the shadows of the only corner that he'd pegged as a blindspot for the cameras. What few security guards were here were on their rounds, and he had a small window to move.
Roy knew this task like the back of his hand. Knew what it would take to succeed, had the skills necessary to pull off the job of a damn lifetime. Ollie would never expect it, to him having solved something like this solo. When this was done, Roy was certain that the League would have to respect him, perhaps even offer him membership.
With a controlled breath and the snap of a taut bowstring, a tech-infused arrow pinged against the wall just below a trio of cameras, each pointed at different viewpoints of the complex's exterior. A second later, his tech looped the camera feed between himself and the exterior access window he planned to use to enter the warehouse. He scanned with his eyes for any movement of potential guards, a possible change in rotation, and then sprinted forward to close the distance.
For a facility so vaunted that they claimed military sponsorship, security was far more lax than he might have suspected. Or perhaps he was truly that good. Either way, Roy would take advantage of their lapse in judgment.
He rappelled up the building and slipped within the window, careful to snap the button in place that would retract the corded line he used to ascend to that position. With a whirring release of pressure, the line whipped into the coiled ready position again, and he slipped it back onto his quiver.
The railing he had landed on was nothing more than a maintenance access walkway, far above the main interior of the facility. Below him, a storage deck revealed military hardware – ammunition, medical supplies, vehicle replacement parts, and other various technologies that might be useful in times of war. And in times of peace, not that the government often considered the difference between the two.
Before Roy moved, he carefully checked for signs of cameras. Noticing one, he looped another before alarm klaxons could alert the entire compound to his position. From this vantage point, he could drop to anywhere in the main floor of the warehouse without being seen, so long as he readied himself to move when he landed.
Gripping a pair of binoculars, he activated their scanning functions and glanced through them. Designed to pick up on text he couldn't see with his own eyes, Roy read description after description of just what they had in storage. Tags revealed military-grade ordinance, auxiliary scopes and silencers, grenade pins and bandoliers.
"Serious equipment here," he muttered into his collar, a microphone built into the fabric designed to record messages and link to the main computer systems he and Ollie used. Lately, they had adopted the broader League-affiliated tech, but he remembers when they instead relied on Queen Consolidated and its monies. It had not been that long ago, and despite Oliver's joining the League several years ago, they had slowly begun to rely on the League more over time.
The fact that they had yet to recognize Roy's talent frustrated him more, in light of that. He could use the resources of the League, but without any of the perks?
With a breath, he focused on the task at hand, continuing his quiet verbal report. "If the motive is theft, then they must have been taking small amounts of inventory from each. Before they rig the whole warehouse to explode, that is."
Roy couldn't be sure why any of this was happening just yet. Over the past several months, there had been a series of explosions in various cities across the United States. Some larger, some smaller, but there were a few links that confused him enough to want to investigate. No signs of common explosives. No casings, no residue. And each of these bombings were connected to a few shell companies, with spurious links to military contractors. The most recent bombing had only been two weeks ago, and Roy had done everything in his power since to confirm this would be the likeliest target: a warehouse practically in his backyard, owned and funded by mogul Maxwell Lord and a few subsidiaries.
If his knowledge had been correct, then he was certain that he would find the team doing this, take them out, and save the damn day. Government contractors, shady business dealings, terrorist bombings – this was the damn big leagues, and he'd be respected.
Roy waited with bated breath for any signs of change from below, studying the late-night crew like a hawk. They performed all the expected routines of a graveyard shift: checked inventory, reorganized supplies, prepared for new clients the next day. Ammunition cases were not live, nor were many of them touched. Given the connections to the military and these explosions, Roy expected the source of the bombs were likely a cover-up. But for what, for whom, he could not say.
Vehicles came and went into the complex on a regular interval, and the crews responded to them with expected results. So routine that Roy barely clocked when a semi moved onto the loading dock that they had not scheduled. One worker checked a clipboard, while two moved closer to understand exactly why this guy had moved into the line. The semi had no discerning details – it matched many of the other nondescript trucks that had been moving into and out of the warehouse.
Roy moved closer in time to see the door to the back of the truck swing open from the inside. A ginger woman dressed in khaki fatigues hopped down onto the warehouse floor, sidearm on her belt, a thick rifle on her back. Roy's fingers twitched against his bow, hand already reaching for something in his quiver. When three more men dropped out of the back of the vehicle and brandished their weapons in the direction of the night crew, Roy moved into position and released an arrow.
Twin bolos disabled two, weapons trapped against them at odd angles as they crumbled to the floor. The woman's head snapped up to clock his position immediately, and he began to move before her gaze even settled on him. Gunfire peppered against the railing behind him, and he rappelled down into the warehouse floor to take advantage of the additional cover of the rows and rows of storage shelves. They continued firing – not wildly in his direction, but instead into the direction of security. He watched a guard ahead, more than thirty yards away, fall in a spray of blood.
Roy prepared for his next moment, took aim, and fired. With a burst of light, a flashbang arrow detonated right at the space where the group had been standing moments ago. The two he'd trapped were still there, struggling to see, but the last two assailants had moved. Another security guard fell, and Roy cursed.
"Which one are you again?" a female voice demanded over a loudspeaker, interrupting whatever normal channels their intercom systems must have used. That was so swiftly done that Roy wondered if they had backing elsewhere, perhaps someone in the security office? "Kid Flash or Speedy?"
Roy ignored the jab with a bit of difficulty. He had heard far worse.
"Has the Green Arrow come to play?"
The grip tightened on his bow.
A crate nearby exploded into smithereens, wooden and metal shrapnel showering the space around it. He braced himself, but it wasn't close enough to do more than cover him in dust. Had they thrown a grenade and he'd missed it?
Roy darted from that position, angling for a better vantage point, and grimaced when he rounded the corner in time to see another security guard fall in a splatter of blood.
He activated an amplifying microphone beneath the collar of his jacket. "Why the change of MO? All the rest, there were barely any casualties. Now, everyone's dropping like flies." Roy shifted his position again swiftly.
"Why does it surprise you that our methodology would change with you present?" the woman taunted. "Can't leave any survivors, now."
A three-tiered storage shelf full of medical supplies began to glow a soft pink light. A moment later, it exploded in a shower of metal, plastic, and cement. Unfortunately, Roy was closer to its epicenter, this time, metallic shards hitting his defending arms and clipping into his armored clothing.
"Source-less explosion," he coughed into his recording, rubbing at two places that had taken a glancing cut. "Possible female with explosive abilities."
One of Oliver's cardinal rules – never face an enhanced alone. Roy had broken that promise on more than one occasion over the years, and so had GA, but it was one of the earliest forms of advice the archer had given his student. By and large, it was good advice.
Roy zipped to the maintenance walkway above the warehouse floor. Flipping up and angling his torso into the shadows, he readied a shot for the woman and any more of her goons.
A thick arrowhead slammed into the torso of a gunmen, knocking him clean off his feet and throwing him back a few yards. He came to rest in a heap at the base of a storage shelf full of power tools and tank treads.
Another explosion rocked the ground below, this one larger than the other two had been, but he was far outside of its ring of destruction.
Police sirens sounded in the background. Roy hadn't needed to hit the panic button – there were far too many explosions and gunshots for Star City to not eventually send someone to investigate.
"Sound the retreat!" The woman's voice carried throughout the complex. He trained his eye on her as she came into his view, but he had maintained his hiding place.
A wall of metal, wood, and plastic began to glow with pink light, while a line of that light drifted from the ginger woman's left hand. A second light held like a tether from her right hand, ending in a warbling crackle of energy.
A second later, the line of storage shelves exploded in a shower of smoke, ash, and debris. Roy reached with practiced fingers and released a tracking arrowhead at the back of the truck. The beacon was in place.
"Definitely a woman with powers," he muttered more to himself than the speaker.
When the smoke cleared, three of the assailants and their vehicle were gone. The only one who remained behind was unconscious from his knockback arrow, and he was thankful for the chance to get some information.
He had no easy way to chase her down, and he had to hope she was dumb enough to not abandon the getaway vehicle at the first opportunity. Where she chose to drop it could still give useful information, but he hoped she took it straight to her headquarters.
Speedy turned to sweep the building of anyone else that did not belong, while at the same time, connecting to the Star City PD radios. "Speedy here. Unknown woman with enhanced abilities over explosions fleeing a scene on Fifth and Fox. Highly dangerous. In an unmarked gray semi-truck heading east, northeast. Do not engage. Send paramedics to warehouse eight on Fifth and Fox."
He did not wait to hear confirmation that they had gotten the memo. He and GA had left many a message like that over the years, and it was honestly a 50-50 if they bothered to listen. At the very least, paramedics would arrive in time to provide aid for the men who bad been injured.
He finished as quickly as he could, confirming the lack of any normal explosives and other members of her gang. The workers left behind were stunned when he hefted the thug onto his shoulders and ascended onto the roof to have a quiet chat.
Police would be here any second, but he wanted all the information that he could.
The man groggily grumbled under his breath when Roy finally managed to wake him, before he realized very quickly what was in store for him.
"What's the deal?" Roy demanded. "Street crime not lucrative anymore? Escalating to terrorism?"
"You thi-in-k I'll talk to you?"
Speedy didn't skip a beat. "I think you will if you wanna keep your fingers."
The man's eyes widened. "You wouldn't-"
Roy reached into his quiver and produced his sharpest arrowhead. "You see the vents on the side? That's where the heat comes out. This thing gets so hot, you won't bleed much at all." He activated it with a flick to the arrow's fletching, and a hiss of hot air escaped the vents. "Talented surgeon could maybe even re-attach them, but I don't think they pay prison docs well enough for that."
Did Roy have any real plans to follow through on the threat? No, but the man didn't need to know that.
"Who is your boss? What does she want?"
The man said nothing.
The police sirens and lights burst into view from his vantage point.
Roy brought the arrow closer, its internal motor still spinning. The man couldn't move his hands due to the bindings, but his fingers tried and failed to move away. The red and blue lights flickered across his face, and the sirens of incoming paramedics joined the police who had arrived.
"Tell me, or you'll never play pocket pool again."
For a second, Roy was certain that the man would hold his ground, but then his mouth opened. "Plastique!" the man cried out in desperation. "Her call-sign is Plastique. I don't know about the rest, just that we are hitting military targets."
A swift hit to the head brought the man down once more, to be left on the roof for the police to find.
Plastique was not a name that Roy recognized, but he had a place to start. Lifting the receiver from his belt, he checked the still-moving location of his tracker and made to follow, rooftop after rooftop. A Speedy-cycle of his own would be nice, he realized, and he promised himself to make it happen.
STAR CITY
April 18, 03:49 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Star City, Speedy, and Green Arrow was not my first choice, but it was a choice all the same. I had feelers out through Gabriel's tech for any big news involving one of the teenage disciples of the League. The first high-profile hit was through one Roy Harper.
Or at least, I was pretty sure it was Roy, because Speedy wasn't half-black like Connor or a woman like Mia or Thea or someone else.
Roy was a cool character though, and I vaguely recalled a daughter, a drug addiction, and a few different identities from the comics like Arsenal or Red Arrow. Speedy was the retro identity, and when I saw his picture on the internet, the uniform was easily just as old-school as the name might suggest.
Were the sidekicks all in their early Teen Titans days? Robin's uniform didn't have the booty shorts to match them, assuming blurry pics of the Boy Wonder was accurate. Some of the other Titans were either hidden or didn't exist yet, and it was more than a bit unclear where in the timeline we were.
If we were at all. DC had more Elseworld stories and adaptations than many of its contemporaries.
I brought my thoughts back to the coastal city, currently under threat by an explosive woman, according to his message to the police. There were so many characters that could be that I didn't recognize her, not that I always would. This terrorist could be an alien, a metahuman, a magician, someone using advanced tech, or something else entirely. And, I imagine, not every threat I come across will be one I recognize. I didn't recognize the Reach or Osmos V from DC stories, after all.
Speeding through the city's skyscape, I had only two goals in mind. One: find the woman. Two: find Speedy. I hoped the two happened at the same time, because I didn't want to step on Speedy's toes. An ally, not a scene-stealer.
My Badge sounded with announcements by police across the city and their responses. Given the severity of the threat, I overheard a sergeant call for the National Guard, and the situation looked to escalate rather quickly. A woman with exploding powers could range anywhere from Piper Halliwell-level to a living nuclear bomb like Peter Petrelli. I hoped for the former, rather than the latter.
Conflicting reports of strange sightings and potential assailants rattled across every frequency at once. A breaking news alert on GBS had already begun, with the famous Cat Grant's face displayed on the screens overlooking Roberts Square. She had little information about the ongoing event, but I suspected news helicopters and cameras would be all over this place within minutes.
That lack of information did not last long when something exploded only a few blocks away from my flight path. A column of heat and smoke rose into the sky, and I sped toward the sight at just below the speed of sound.
From the window of a speeding semi, something pink lashed out like a whip toward the front of a cop car that aimed to tail them. Where it struck, the metal melted from intense heat and then sparked, exploding the pursuing vehicle with such force that shopfront windows and high-rise balcony windows shattered nearby.
The traveling truck took advantage of a momentary reprieve to push past a blockade that had yet to solidify in time. The truck barreled through one squad car, sending it spinning into an armored van that didn't arrive in time to put a dent into its path.
I gained momentum, grabbed a concrete layer from a cement wall, and dropped into the road in front of it. Breaks squealed on the driver's instinct for a good half-second before it continued to accelerate unabated, with me in its path.
I angled a pair of neural shock blasts toward its tire. One missed, but the other hit, and with a green crackle of light, the tire collapsed, and the vehicle lost control of its momentum.
The semi-truck struck with such force that I only managed to hold my ground for a second until I flew backward and crumbled against the side of a parked taxi, caving in its frame.
The pain was immense, from mere blunt force trauma, and the concrete armor had cracked under the pressure. Bruises were in my future, my lungs hated me, but I would heal.
The truck, however, would not.
Its engine block sundered under the impact pressure, the front of the truck a shattered, splintered mess. The windshield had cracked, and smoke billowed from its weakened front. The vehicle had driven for a few more yards before coming to an abrupt stop, the weight of a parked van finally ending its forward momentum.
I floated to a hovering position, just over the ground, and studied the interior through the spider web of cracks in the glass. The ache from what had happened still rang in my ears, thrummed in my torso, and I felt myself losing altitude from a lack of concentration.
The driver, blood dripping from his forehead and ruining his left eyesight, opened the door, raised his side arm, and fired. I braced with my arm, but the bullets that managed to aim true pinged against my abdomen, my hip, my shoulders – all still coated in concrete.
"Y-you won't do much there," I offered through gunshots. "Maybe save your ammo for the cops to identify later."
The explosive woman in question, perhaps, climbed into the cab next to her lackey from the back. Red hair in a tight bun, khaki fatigues, her appearance screamed military. The expression on her face was not happy. A small burst of light and sound preceded the truck door flying from its hinges, crashing through a nearby window to an office building.
She launched herself from the truck and landed on the street. Her hand crackled with pink light, while the other held a rifle at the ready.
"I don't know why you freaks keep interrupting tonight, but you signed their death warrants."
The rifle spun around, not in my direction but toward the line of cop cars behind her that had begun to form. I ran forward quickly to grab for the barrel, each step one of frustrating pain, but I was too late as her shots began to ring into the night. Cops fell, while others began to exchange fire.
As I approached to cut off her assault, she brandished her other hand in a swing of energy. I held off to keep some space between us. However her powers worked, I doubted I was durable enough to survive that if she managed to tag me.
"Not cool," I argued, keeping my distance. Cops didn't stop shooting, some shots wild enough that I was as much a target as her. "If you stand down now, I'm sure a judge will-"
The woman's bark of laughter unsettled me, and she crouched behind the cover of a Camaro's engine block. "You civilian hero types have faith in the system? That's priceless."
I frowned, knowing that was not true. Earthbound governments were just as likely to be corrupt as the Oans could be, as Aggregor could be.
"Nope. I don't have much faith in that or anything else, but if you add another kill right now? The years will just keep adding on. That's a fact, not faith."
She chuckled again, raising her crackling hands in surrender. "I've already raked in more than a life sentence. What's another forty years?"
Forty years for me would only be a fraction of how long I might live.
"Ma'am, do you know how many superpowers accidentally result in a longer lifespan? Quite a few of them."
That stymied her.
"Stop shooting! Throw down your weapons, put your hands up where we can see them!" A cop bellowed from his megaphone, and I made to maneuver around to put myself between her and them. She flicked the energy like a whip, charging a nearby manhole cover with pink light. The warning was clear, and I held off before Gambit turned me to paste.
"Whoa, whoa. Let's not get hasty. You have to realize that even if I don't take you down, you've caught so much heat now that you have no chance of escaping this."
The woman chuckled, though it was not a chuckle of confidence this time. I was getting to her, and all I needed now was to delay until Speedy caught up.
"I know you could torch that whole line of police back there," I added. "But what are a few more lives lost going to do? They aren't connected to your plotting. Your 9/11 hands aren't -"
The woman's eyes flashed with the same light, and I forced myself into flight despite the pain, the weakness. I didn't cover enough distance, and when the asphalt exploded beneath where I had been standing, the force of it sent me tumbling through the air, end over end. I smashed hard into brick, more of my skin exposed as a person-shaped impact fracture formed behind me.
Bullets sang through the air as the police tried again to intervene. The pink whip of light moved again, not aiming toward them, but instead toward me. I peeled myself from the building, but not fast enough -
Something exploded just in front of me, showering me uselessly with pieces of wood.
I fell, controlling my descent through sheer force of will, and crouched behind a newspaper kiosk. Glancing upward, I smiled. The red-wearing archer in his silly yellow cap took aim with a volley of arrows.
"Plastique!"
Oh, that was her! I knew nothing except that she existed. Maybe a name from Suicide Squad?
A trick arrow trapped a fleeing lackey in a net. A second tied her legs together, forcing her to lose her balance. She reached with her finger to tap the corded line, but a third hit the center of her back, trapping her arms to her sides before she could.
"Unless you wanna blow yourself up," I challenged from my crouching position, "I s-suggest you listen to Speedy."
"This won't hold me!" Plastique hurled back.
A fourth arrow released a cloud of visible gas just beneath her nose. She breathed in the fumes and was out like a light in seconds.
STAR CITY
April 18, 04:51 UTC-8
TEAM YEAR ZERO
Roy, furious, threw his finger in the new kid's face, half-obscured by the darkness of the alleyway. Dumb, overconfident newbie without a proper costume or even a simple mask. The most he could say the idiot had done was to give Roy time to arrive, but he'd been reckless to himself and others.
"Who are you to operate on my turf?"
The boy's brow rose. "I wasn't trying to- I just wanted to help."
From the looks of it, despite the half-hour that had gone by since the police and the feds took over, he was still recovering from the explosion he'd tanked. Or maybe it was the semi-truck that he'd let try to run him over.
"I don't care how durable you are, I think if you'd been hit by her powers-"
"I'm not a moron, Speedy," the kid challenged. "I knew to not get hit directly, so I maintained my distance. In that way, same as you."
Roy fumed. He couldn't believe this. "What, exactly, were you thinking then?"
"I was trying to stall, to give you an opening," the boy spat. "If you'd have gotten there faster, I could have followed your lead. Had to improvise."
"I don't want you following my lead," Roy grunted. "I'm not wasting my time with someone so new. Go fuck off in someone else's city."
"I'm not new," the blond replied sharply. "I won't stick around if you don't want me here. There's plenty of other places for crime-fighting. But, I'll warn you now – if I see an opportunity to help, I'm gonna take it and you'll just have to swallow your pride."
With that, the boy flew off into the sky and disappeared into the night.
Because of that damn kid, the League won't even register any of this.
It's really too bad that Cassian's first experience with one of the sidekicks involved a case of "Broken Arrow"-itis. If you know, you know.
But we're cooking! If I had to guess, a proper YJ Plastique analogue would probably be the result of a metahuman experiment post Season 2, but until/if we get future seasons that also include her, she's a fun villain of the week to throw around. Expect to see her again in the future, though sooner or later is up in the air.
But we're cooking! If I had to guess, a proper YJ Plastique analogue would probably be the result of a metahuman experiment post Season 2, but until/if we get future seasons that also include her, she's a fun villain of the week to throw around. Expect to see her again in the future, though sooner or later is up in the air.