Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

Hestia&theCourt · Apr 14, 2017

Markala said:
"the telepathic impartment of some basic survival skills and teaching."

I think, impairment of basic survival skills is like, the opposite of what one would need for a growing, self-perpetuating species.

To be fair, the original phrasing is pretty accurate to Civilization gameplay.

Obloquy · Apr 14, 2017

DarthThrawn said:
Malatium mistings?
Huh. Learn something new every day.

Yup. Gold Mistings are Augers, Electrum are Oracles, and Atium Mistings are seers.

The most 'official-sounding' name I've come with is Malatium Detectives. Investigators, or Tracers, might also work, but my favorite name is... Snoop.

Malatium Snoops. Burning a God-alloy to Snoop someone's past. It just has this nice ring to it.

Edit:

DarthThrawn said:
Where's this from, anyway? Word of Sanderson hidden in the chapter annotations?

The names are in the back of the Alloy of Law books. Since they knew these people existed, some form of those names might have been around at the Catascendre too.

Interregnum said:
Renka is a Young Earths creationist

Renka is also (or will be when the subject is raised and she gets some education about it) a proponent of the death penalty, abstinence only education, and relaxed gun-control laws.

And to be fair, she's perfectly willing to believe that Earth is millions or billions of years old.

She's a Young Scadrial Creationist, which is an entirely different thing.

Lokpik89 said:
Hmmm would harmony have any trouble keeping up with a speedsters thoughts? Foolish of me I forgot he is also a ferochemist. But really how would that conversation go lol

Well given that he is inherently capable of steel-minds, zinc-minds, compounding, and messing with time via cadmium or bendalloy style investitures... We have to wonder if any speedster could keep up with Harmony's thoughts when he doesn't bother to slow down.

Markala said:
"the telepathic impartment of some basic survival skills and teaching."

I think, impairment of basic survival skills is like, the opposite of what one would need for a growing, self-perpetuating species.

Fixed.
...No, wait, spell check caught it after I fixed it.
Okay, now it's fixed. ...I think.

Also, it would depend on how ass-ish or benevolent said precursors happen to be. Impairing certain abilities that would let the creations rise above their masters might be intended. If, you know, it were Ra's al Ghul or Vandal Savage who was the Intelligent Designer.

DarthThrawn · Apr 14, 2017

Obloquy said:
Yup. Gold Mistings are Augers, Electrum are Oracles, and Atium Mistings are seers.

The most 'official-sounding' name I've come with is Malatium Detectives. Investigators, or Tracers, might also work, but my favorite name is... Snoop.

Malatium Snoops. Burning a God-alloy to Snoop someone's past. It just has this nice ring to it.

Where's this from, anyway? Word of Sanderson hidden in the chapter annotations?

Obloquy · Apr 14, 2017

Life Ore Death

* September 4

[Get. Out Of My Head!]

[Answer my questions, and I will let you go.]

[N-no.]

[Are you sure? Your friends are in danger.]

[No! They're… they're strong. They'll beat you!]

[I will find them. The soldiers under my command are bringing them in as we speak. What you will not tell me, I will strip away from their minds, shred, by shred, by shred. Do they peel vegetables on Mars? It is much the same.]

[Liar! Y-you said… You said before! You can't find us, and you can't catch us!]

[I caught you, little girl.]

[Because I stayed! Because I fought! You haven't beaten me, and you will never beat them!]

[My soldiers already leave to gather them around. They have forgotten you. There will be no one to rescue you. They have forgotten that they are in danger. I will go begin to peel the first prisomer's mind now, and leave you to think about that.]

[No.]

[W-what? What are you-?]

[No. I will not let you go, Psimon. Megan says stay!]

[You! Release my mind!]

[Uncle J'onn taught me about mental intrusions. I can't keep you out, but I can keep you in. You won't lay one mr'ack on them.]

[Psimon says suffer! Suffer!]

…
…
…

[Now then… Psimon says, let me free.]

[…N-no.]

[You… little alien, you will suffer all the agony I can bring to bear until you untangle the knots between us.]

[If you… I-if you want to threaten me… you'll need to use something worse than that. I can handle it. But I won't let you hurt them. I don't care what you say, Psimon. This is my mind you've intruded into. My world. I d-don't… don't ca-are what Psimon says. It's what I say that goes. And Megan says that you. Don't. Go. Anywhere! Stay!]
[...]
[...hhghhhgrhrh......]
[...There. My, my, my. ...Well? Very well then. If you wish to hold me here, then I will hold you to account, little alien. Prepare yourself.]

Episode 8: Stripped Away - part 1

* September ¾ [Ferris PoV]

[-get … says for … Psimon … Psimon … get … for Psi …

for … says Psimon

get … psimon … for

mon says for …

Psimon … Psimon … Psimon … Psimon …says Psimon …for for for Psimon …says for … get for … Psimon

Psimon. Psimon. Psimon says Psimon …for … for… for mon … Psi says … says Psimon … says get…

get Psimon … for Psimon … for Psimon … says Psimon …

for Psimon …says Psimon … for Psimon …says Psimon … for Psimon …says Psimon …

for … for … for … for… Psimon for…

says for Psimon …says Psimon … Psimon for for Psimon …says Psimon … Psismon for … for… for… for…

says for… for… for… for…

get… get… get… get…]

["Get. Out Of My Head!]"

Agony. Weeping. Desperation. Abandonment.

Heat. Pain. Light. Heat. My head swam. The world spun. I burned.

Almost instinctively, I had already poured warmth into my brass-mind and… 'and… my brass-mind?'

'These are not my metal-minds.' I felt them. 'Except they are, but not ones I know. I never… I don't remember storing these. Father? Harmony? Sazed? Father?' I reached out with my mind, and I found nothing. Then the various forms of pain and discomfort I was in drew my attention back to my physical, mortal situation.

"Is this-?" I looked at the source of my most immediate sense of pain.

'Well, of physical pain. The spiritual agony of having someone unwelcome in my mind again is a different matter entirely.' That had felt far more personal and precise than Soothing and Rioting were capable of, and I- 'No. I'm distracting myself again.'

I looked at the source of my most immediate sense of pain.

I held a torn off scrap of bloody flesh in my very bloody right hand, with a hard bit still attached.

It was an ear.

My ear.

'That seems extreme. How did-? I was only trying to pull out my spike. How did I end up tearing off that'snotmyearring!'

My heart nearly jumped up my throat. The two glints of metal were the wrong size, shape, and number to be my Harmonian earring. One of them was in a variation of Father's chosen Pathian pattern, yes, but that part was not itself the spike. The spike part had been bent and remade to flatten out on both sides of my earlobe. Nothing short of a knife to cut it free would remove it.

"Or bare hands to tear it off," I muttered to myself. My head throbbed.

The next thing I looked at, even as my mind raced ahead at top, non-zinc speed, was the sand on which I crawled and the bright sunlight which poured down on it.

'I'm in a desert with… yes, there are rocky outcroppings. Now, do I seek shade and cover, or do I worry about running into other things that also seek shade and cover? I know of nowhere like this in the Elendel Basin, so the best possible scenario is that I am somehow somewhere in the Roughs.' I tried not to think about any of the many worst-case scenarios. 'Two things I need to worry about: things in the rocks and things not in the rocks. If I go to the rocks, I might run into things there, and things not in the rocks may go to the rocks and find me for the same reason.

'Out here, anything in the rocks should see me, though I'll see them if they try to come after me. I'm also in plain view of things also not in the rocks, as are they of me. …I will eventually need food and water, and there should be something to find or someplace to hide in the rocks. Rocks it is.'

I began to tramp toward the rocks.

'Situation: I am alone in the desert with no resources. I do not know where I am. I do not know how I came to be here. I am wearing unfamiliar metal-minds.' I cautiously examine the contents of my armory. 'For that matter, I do not know how I came to be wearing this very odd set of… clothes? Armor? Light armor,' I decided, checking the resistance, weight, and flexibility of the brown, wraparound not-metal-not-leather chest plate I wore.

'I am wearing unfamiliar metal-minds, but they appear to be keyed to me. Certainly, I can store into them with no ill effects as yet.' Had I been properly rational, I would not have stored into an unknown brass-mind, but as I was already doing so without issue I saw no reason to stop. The pool of warmth inside was far more than I could have stored in the time I could remember, so I clearly must have stored more away before I forgot having done so.

Thinking of forgetting prompted another check. 'Rusts. I'm not wearing any copper-minds, as per usual, which leaves me with no way to retrieve any memories, but I am wearing four small metal-minds made of two unknown metals. Rusts. Rusting Ashmounts spewing out Rashek's stinkin- no. Swearing will not help, and I do not feel better. My best guess had been that I stored away several weeks of memory for some insane reason, and I was hoping I could tap it and solve this.'

'Oh. And now I realize that I don't know if it is safe to tap these metal-minds.' I fidgeted my hands, felt what I was holding, and realized that I was not painfully oozing fresher blood. I confirmed: 'Despite holding my ragged, torn off right ear, I still have a whole and healthy right ear attached to my head. The skin tenderness suggests it was recently regrown, meaning I tapped a gold-mind when I tore it off. I just wasn't paying attention. And one of the two Mists be Ruined gold-minds is very low.'

Still walking, I gave the rest of my body as unobtrusive a once-over as was doable, because the thoroughly blood soaked state of my hands was too much to have come from only one ear. Most disturbing to me were the irregularities and tenderness among my eyebrows and lashes.

'Did I truly claw my own eyes out?' I scrunched my face, and realized for the first time exactly how much gore had caked onto my cheeks and lips. 'Yes. I believe I must have done so two or three times, even, before I got the earring off. Speaking of…'

I focused on the pieces of atium in my hand. I stored.

My body shifted. I added on a few inches, and my ganglier figure was firmed up with an extra layer or two of muscle and fat. My skin stretched and loosened. Aches and throbbing magnified in my joints and organs. I atrophied.

'I should be about seventy now. And hold it for one… two… three… four… five… six… seven… eight… Done.'

I tapped.

Mody body shrunk, and my flesh became softer and leaner. Places in my chest twinged in memory of the metal piercings once stabbed there, and then those feelings disappeared as I passed before they occurred. My armor did not change with me, so I must have looked odd, an eleven-year-old walking around in a seventeen-year-old's clothes. The tight black cloth bunched up on my limbs, and the part of the armor around my torso, abdomen, and groin clunked uncomfortably against my thighs with each step.

The atium-mind exhausted its charge of stored youth. I regressed to my current body. I sighed.

"Now what?" I whispered. My eyes thanked me in relief when I stepped under the shadow of a large rock face. I leaned my back against it, slid down to sit on the cooler sand, and thought.

'Three, no, four important questions to answer. 1) Where am I? 2) How did I come here? 3) Why can I not remember the answers to 1 and 2? 4) What was that thing in my head, because it probably caused question 3?' I exhaled sharply. '5) Can I kill it? Because I really, really want to.' Having acknowledged that thought, I then put it on the backburner.

'Observations about 1),' I listed. 'I am in a desert. There are no such deserts in Elendel Valley. If I am on Scadrial, I may be somewhere in the Roughs or on the supposed-to-be arctic southern continent. This does not seem arctic. If I am not on Scadrial…' Those possibilities were not pleasant. There were many planets, many of which had deserts, but the two with the most prevalent desert ecosystems also had metaphysical 'DANGER! LETHAL DANGER! YOU WILL BE LUCKY TO DIE!' warnings attached, as they were the domains of unyieldingly isolationist Autonomy and unimaginably malicious Odium.

'And, of course, having that voice in my head and Father unable to intervene or reach me suggests exactly that. On the flip side, I am still alive. If one of them wanted me dead, then I can't imagine-!'

The possibility that something on the scale of a god might viciously want me dead was concerning.

The possibility that something like another god might viciously want me not dead chilled me to the bone. If that was the case, I knew I was unlikely to figure anything about this situation out, or get out, or whatever, ever.

But I would still try, so I moved quickly on.

'I'm certainly neither more insane nor possessed yet. Unless this is me trapped in my own mind while something else puppets my body. But why the metal-minds? To keep me quiet while I think I can fight the physical enemies? No, no, moving on.'

'I will need to find food and water eventually, even if the heat does not threaten me as much. When night falls, I can use the stars to check whether or not I am still on Scadrial. In the meanwhile, I will stay here and search this area. If I find people, I will observe before approaching, because they may be responsible for this situation. What are my resources?'

I re-examined my body.

'I have: 5 small tin-minds, 1 middling iron-mind, 2 moderate steel-minds, 1 middling pewter, 1 small bronze-mind, 2 middling zinc-minds, 1 small and 2 moderate brass-minds, 1 each of small middling and moderate gold-minds, 2 small electrum-minds, 1 small aluminum-mind for some weird reason, 2 small duralumin minds, 2 small pieces of uncharged atium, 1 small unknown metal-mind, and 3 small different unknown metal-minds.'

'3 unknown metal minds. Ashes take it all!'

'...There is at least several hours of 50% equivalent charge in all of them – and I really need to get around to working out and naming beter units of Investiture – except for the nearly empty gold-mind and the almost empty electrum-minds. I probably drained them pretty heavily fighting off whatever mental influence that was. Okay.'

'I also have unknown armor of unknown material and origin, some pockets with nothing useful, a few loops of cord, a small… knife made out of non-feruchemical steel, something small and hard but not made of metal or stone from out of my left ear, and two long, weighted rods not made out of a Feruchemical metal. I can do this. Or at least, I can not embarrass myself horribly when I die trying.'

'I have four things I need to do: search the rocks for resources, search the rocks for people, store away more things for my metal-minds, and discover what is in my unknown metal-minds. And I don't think I should try to do more than two at once.'

'But I think I can do this.'

I set my eyes back on the stones, and I continued to walk.

Phant0m5 · Apr 14, 2017

Itty bitty writing. Is that intentional? Because it would be nice if you could enlarge it.

NemoMarx · Apr 14, 2017

The earrings are modified so that they can't be forcibly removed, right?

So Psimon ordered her to take them off anyway, I'm guessing. Which means he figured out what they were for somehow?

Obloquy · Apr 14, 2017

Life Ore Death

Stripped Away - part 2
* September 4 [Robin PoV]

'Maintain radio silence at all times,' I reminded myself. I'd had my head screwed over by drugs and hypnosis and telepathy before, and Batman had trained me in how to handle it. Like always, one of the most important rules was Do Not Panic. 'Fear is the mind-killer.' That was why he ran around dressed like a giant winged rodent in the first place.

'Man, I am so glad he never heard KF say that.'

I quickly summed up what I knew: I was in Bialya and supposed to maintain radio silence; there were hostile Bialyan soldiers in the area; I was not alone, because someone had torn up part of a Superman shirt since I'd found the rag; my mind had been altered obviously in a way that suggested telepathy like Martian Manhunter's or mind-control tech like the Mad Hatter's caps.

"Man, talk about a brewing disaster," I griped to myself. I began scaling the rocks, looking for more people from higher ground while keeping hidden as much as possible. There only appeared to be a limited number of trucks, convoys, and soldiers in the area, so this clearly wasn't a major military mobilization.

'Queen Bee probably isn't even in the area, thankfully.'

I caught the sound of explosions.

"Mortar fire," I mused. Then I checked my belt. My equipment caches were fully stocked. "So at least I didn't see any fighting before whatever it was." 'I'm guessing a mind-control radio tower satellite-broadcasting thing. Or even just mind blanking. Maybe Queen Bee wants to brainwash people into believing she's always been their rightful ruler.'

There were two annoying things about this situation; just annoying as opposed to the dangerous soldiers and holes in my memory.

The first was the bright sunlight that could threaten heatstroke and practically gleamed against my outfit. Luckily, I knew how to handle that. I could travel in it, I could protect myself from it, and I could use it.

The other pain was, while I could be as stealthy as was sufficiently awesome for my taste, there was a sharp limit to how fast I could travel over such treacherous terrain.

I spent a solid two hours traveling around in an attempt to get the lay of the land, find out who else was here with me, and track the Bialyan mooks back to wherever they were based. More than half of that time-spent-of-my-life-that-I-want-back was mind-numbing climbing and hiking with no one near enough to hide from and no one close enough to spy on.

'Is that Kid Flash?' I caught a colored, super speed figure racing down a canyon, weaving its way between falling rockets.

The colors were wrong (black and green), the outline was wrong, and the speed was barely half of what I was used to seeing him manage, but hope surged up in my chest anyway.

The pursuing tanks kept me from trying to signal him, and he raced around a corner and out of sight, but now I knew that there was probably at least one friendly in this mess with me.

'One friendly and me against how many armed soldiers? I still don't think those poor guys stand a chance.'

And then, as the explosions faded into the distance, the sounds of soft impact alerted me that a few of those 'poor guys' had got behind me, and probably had the high ground to boot.

'Shit, shit, shitake mushrooms growing on a beaver damming firetruck!' I swore, suppressing my panic. If they hadn't already started shooting at this range, then the orders were probably to take us alive if possible.

That was not a comforting thought.

I didn't let my behavior change. I showed no tension in my face or shoulders. I did not turn around to see who it was, because that would goad them to attack.

My eyes behind my mask immediately began scouting out ledges, outcroppings, and paths I could jump to and flee. In a move Batman had made me practice for hours in front of mirrors, cameras, and screens, I concealed the way my hand slid to and past my belt to palm a few bird-a-rangs.

Now I was armed, alerted, and all the more dangerous. And in the ten seconds since I became aware, they still hadn't-

"Hradma?"

I didn't recognize the language of the word, and I really didn't recognize the woman's voice, so I spun around with my bird-a-rangs ready to throw and my body balanced to retreat to my chosen ledge.

And I stopped.

For one, brief, ecstatic moment, I actually was naïve enough to think that back up had arrived.

My common sense then kicked in, kicked me where the sun didn't shine, and pointed out that no, this was actually a nearly-the-worst case scenario that I couldn't possibly have planned for.

I took in the sight again.

I swallowed hard.

'Okay. Chill. Don't get over-whelmed. Stay whelmed. You are Robin, the Boy Wonder. You're an inspiration to underage heroes across the globe. You've been fighting demented criminals and dangerous meta-humans longer than people half-again your age, using no special powers to do so. You are the goddamned Batman's apprentice and his eventual heir to the cowl. If there's a way to win, you can find it. Here is what you have to deal with:

'Bialya's military has picked up a new and completely unknown special ops agent who is probably a metahuman with indeterminate powers and probably not a distant cousin of Queen Bee herself (but she potentially could be). This unknown woman is sharp enough to identify and track me when I'm sneaking. She is skillful enough to get within eight yards behind me on higher ground without my notice, and analytic enough to watch me instead of attacking immediately. This unknown is also dangerous enough to walk out of a fight with Aqualad still combat capable.'

'Oh, and Robin, the reason you know this last factoid is because she accomplished the aforementioned acts of skill after beating Aqualad into submission, tying him up, and carrying his unconscious weight along for the ride to use as a hostage.'

'She also may or may not indulge in cannibalism, because her face and hands are soaked in a disturbing amount of caked on gore. Your time limit is either until she gets bored enough to start cutting bits off your friend, or until whatever Bialyan reinforcements she could have coming finally arrive. You do not know how long either may take to happen. Solve.'

Violence should not be my first choice, I determined. Any attempt to get to the ledge for melee would take too long and leave me a giant target. I couldn't attack at range, because Aqualad was the perfect human shield. If I fled, I left him to her gore-covered mercy. If I stayed, I was captured.

"Hradma? Dohl ên bœgeł?"

If I reasoned with her, I wouldn't understand what she said.

Because I didn't understand what she just said.

"Uh," I managed, still calculating angles and approaches and weapons and ricochets and odds that I would overcome.

The unknown said something else, and frowned. It was clearly language, but not one I knew; certainly not the Arabic dialect that was Bialya's official national language.

"English?" I tried. "I speak English? Español?" The two of us cycled through half a dozen languages each, and I saw her become more frustrated with each grimace of incomprehension.

But she wasn't attacking, wasn't threatening murder and maiming, so I started to relax. It was a very rude surprise when she pulled out the knife.

It was a folding knife, like a Swiss Army knife, maybe as long as a grown man's finger. But it was unfolded, and it gleamed bright in the sunlight, and it was more than enough to cut a man's throat.

"Don't even think about it!" I snapped, tensing back to attention and preparing to throw my bird-a-rangs no matter the consequences. There was no way she understood what I was saying, but I hoped my voice and aggression could get the point across. "Drop the knife, now!"

She did. 'Huh?' The unknown woman put one foot down in a very deliberate step forward, and she looked pointedly at my hands with a frown. I just… waited, for another second, and she grimaced and gestured impatiently with her free hand.

'Oh. She dropped the knife and… stepped on it! As a… gesture of trust? Goodwill? Either way, she disarmed herself and she wants me to do the same. Though she still has those things on her back. But I'm going to have my belt, too… Man.'

To be very clear, I nodded my head slowly twice. The bird-a-rangs tumbled down, and I very deliberately brought my foot forward on top of them.

The unknown woman gave me a slow, exaggerated nod before she moved on to the next stage of our game of gestures. Thumbs up, she tapped the thumb to her chest. 'Not sure if it matters, but she has a serious hitchhiker's thumb.' Her next move was to extend her index finger and point it at me. Then she pinched thumb and finger together and shoved them diagonally down. I glanced down.

'Seems simple enough.' I bent my legs, but she extended her hand to stop me. 'Or not so simple.' Then she crooked her pinkie. 'Oh.'

Ring finger.

Middle finger.

Index finger. 'I wonder what an outdex is, anyway,' I thought as I bent my knees again.

Thumb.

We both jumped in the same instant, and we landed almost simultaneously on the larger ledge below. Slowly, we inched closer toward the middle. I raised my hand and pointed to myself.

"Robin," I enunciated. The unknown nodded.

"Renka," she replied cautiously. The name didn't ring a bell, but six months was, of course, a long time to meet new people. Or she might have been the one we were supposed to meet here in the first place. I pointed at Kaldur.

"Aqualad." She didn't particularly react. 'Great. How do I communicate friend instead of prisoner, or foe…? Ah! Thank you, Wally, for your useless useful advice!' I was carrying a few food bars. Making no sudden moves, I pulled out and unwrapped one. Then I hoped she wouldn't do anything rash when I pulled out another bird-a-rang. Renka tensed, but no one's soft flesh was introduced to anyone's severe trauma infliction skills.

I let this bird-a-rang drop too, and I stepped on it. I bit off a third of the food bar, broke the rest in half, and extended one piece in each hand toward Renka and her unconscious prisoner. She…

'Come on…' I mentally begged.

She took the piece held towards Aqualad as well, but she also set him down, leaned him against the cliff, and stepped back to let me get at him. After a brief staring match, she nibbled a bit at her part of the bar, but put the rest in a pocket even as she stepped further back. I quickly ducked in to apply first aid.

'You know, other than the bloodstains that probably rubbed off from her and the whole unconsciousness shindig, I don't think Aqualad is injured. But he is pretty dehydrated. Definitely overheated, too.' There wasn't much in my canteen, but I dribbled most of the rest between his lips, holding his head and rubbing his throat to make him swallow.

Kaldur shifted, muttering something in Atlantean Greek. After another swallow, his eyes slowly opened.

I waited, and when they closed again, I fed him another dribble.

"My friend? Robin? What are…? Where are we? Why am I…?"

"I'm not sure," I told him. Meeting Renka's eyes, I gestured at his bonds. She nodded slowly and made an upward gesture that wasn't quite clear. I nodded anyway as I undid Aqualad's bindings. I got a better idea of it when Renka jumped several yards into the air and landed on the ledge where I had been. "Other than Batman's instructions to maintain radio silence, my most recent memory is of March. My computer says it's September, by the way, and we're currently in Bialya being hunted by the Bialyan army."

"Ah," Aqualad managed. Over our heads, Renka jumped again back up to the ledge I'd first seen her on. "Who is our companion?"

"Her name is Renka, we don't speak any shared languages, and despite her literally blood-soaked hands she didn't hold you hostage against my surrender, so she probably isn't an enemy. Right now." I reconsidered. "She might have saved your life, too, if she took you with instead of leaving you to roast under the sun. Ooor she might also be a merc Queen Bee sent after us and she'll try to axe us if she gets over the memory loss before we do. Either-or?"

Aqualad barely managed a smile. "I will need to thank her. If you cannot speak-," and Renka dropped down, her impact unnaturally light, back beside us. My other dropped bird-a-rangs were in her hands, but she didn't extend them back to my keeping. Instead, she methodically placed one in her armor's pocket thing. Then she bent over and placed one in Aqualad's limp grip. Only after that did she extend the others back to me.

I nodded deeply and put them back in my belt.

'So we're allies now. I hope we can stay-!' Renka had suddenly got a lot closer to my face. I jerked back reactively, 'Crap crap crap what was that!' and she pulled away again just as fast. Her hand slipped something small out from her pocket.

"Aqualad." I quickly double-checked my guess. "She just pulled out the same radio ear bud you and I are wearing. Either we're on the same team together for whatever this is, or she got it from Speedy or Kid Flash."

"Are they both here?"

"I thought I saw Kid Flash in different colors running around, and he was carrying someone in green."

That was the beginning of a more complicated game of non-lingual communication.

After getting as far as we could with gestures, drawings in the dirt proved to be more successful. In the end I had sketched out stick figures of me, Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Speedy. I'd placed one of my bird-a-rangs on each to show that we were all together on the team, and I added Aqualad's A symbol, KF's lightning, and a bow and arrow for Speedy. Another stick figure got a bird-a-rang and I managed to communicate that Renka should mark it to represent her place on the team, which she did with a zigzag that turned into a triangle.

Then I spent a looong time getting across that the people with guns in the tanks and trucks were enemies, who could be knocked unconscious or tied up, and our other two friends were out and about fighting them. Renka sketched out her willingness to fight as well, and we shared a nod.

A brief tangent to tend Aqualad's health also revealed that her metahuman powers involved ice as well as some physical enhancement. Her generated cold did a lot toward getting Aqualad stable again.

'I always thought that ice powers in the desert would be the worst possible place match-up. I wonder what she's doing here.'

Renka had offered to scout around, and though it galled me, I let her go. Leaving her to fix up Kaldur alone was a bad idea when I didn't know whether she'd taken that radio off of another friend's body before we all lost our memories.
________________________________________________________________________________________________

* September 4 [Renka PoV]

I turned my back on Cape and Neck, who used the names "Robin" and "Aqualad" respectively, still half expecting the exposure to provoke an attack. Instead, they let me leave unmolested, and I worked my way up the cliffs to the top of the rock. Once there, I looked around again to get a lay of the land.

I tapped tin. Like well water, sounds trickled up from around and seeped into my ears. I held my breath, because even that rumbled like thunder in my ears.

I heard animals fleeing, hiding, hunting among the rocks.

I heard people, people's voices, many voices that barked words in this language that I did not understand.

I heard the buzzing grind of running machinery, like in the Lord Ruler's canning factories.

I heard cracking impact as stone shattered. As I tapped more tin, I discerned similar sounds, like the pops from a campfire. Then there was the whistling whine of some projectile too large to be an arrow, too small to be a catapult stone, and too fast to be a thrown spear.

It exploded.

I winced, and then I finally caught what I had been listening for.

Two of the voices, a male and a female, were much younger and more anxious than everyone else I heard. And from the same area (presumably from the same person, but I couldn't be that accurate), I heard the distinctive thwap of a bowstring.

I stored as much into my iron-mind as I could, tapped small streams of strength and speed, and I moved. I soared. It was not the near-flight of a Coinshot, but my legs ate up distance at an incredible rate. I kept up my tin-mind auditory enhancement, and I also tapped a separate one for better sight. Soon after, I saw what I had been tracking.

'Are those metal carts? Without horses? How are they moving so quickly?' I tapped zinc and rapidly assessed. 'Three carts with armed men are in pursuit of two immature pubescents, at least one of whom uses a bow, suggesting s/he is one of Robin and Aqualad's compatriots. The other one appears to be tapping a steel-mind or something similar while carrying the first. I count 17 soldiers in the two uncovered carts, and the covered one launching the explosive ballista bolts could fit an estimated 6 at a tight squeeze. These allies are outnumbered 10 to 1.'

I loped along the top of the cliffs, behind and to one side of the chase, impressed by their paces.

'I can't see the physical projectiles, but those staves appear to be some cross between Coinshot powers and crossbows. I'd say the steel-mind user can hear and dodge the bigger bolts with ease, and the harassing spray of shots should be my priority. The carts are arranged in a diagonal formation, with the covered cart in the center. The covered cart's different wheel type, heavy armor, and unique weapon should make it unable to act at close range, which is why the other two conveyors are needed.'

I remembered lessons I had given to rookies accompanying me on past explorations, and re-paraphrased.

'When holding the high ground, a cart's vulnerable areas are its true center and front-center. With the low ground, targeting the wheels when feasible is preferred.'

All I needed to do was decide whether I preferred the surprise value of attacking from behind, or the shock value of attacking the front cart. I rather liked the idea of showing off for shock value and derailing the whole chase…

'Oh, oops. I think the man in the rear cart spotted me.'

That rather took the decision out of my hands. 'Oh well….'

I calculated the pace I required to meet my target, I achieved it, and a moment later I jumped.

Darth Locutus · Apr 14, 2017

She's about to do the classic 3-point landing though the hood of one of the vehicles, isn't she?

Kurkistan · Apr 14, 2017

Hrm. Interesting that she picked the atium symbol to represent her.

Obloquy · Apr 14, 2017

Kurkistan said:
Hrm. Interesting that she picked the atium symbol to represent her.

Actually, she went with Feruchemical Steel in the original version, because it was easy to draw and descriptive. But I couldn't find an insertable version with a white background.

So went with Allomantic Atium instead. I still might change it back, depending...

DarthThrawn said:
Where's this from, anyway? Word of Sanderson hidden in the chapter annotations?

There are names for all the individual Misting and Ferring possibilities in the back of the Alloy of Law books

Darth Locutus said:
She's about to do the classic 3-point landing though the hood of one of the vehicles, isn't she?

...Not the hood, no.

DarthThrawn · Apr 14, 2017

Obloquy said:
There are names for all the individual Misting and Ferring possibilities in the back of the Alloy of Law books

Not that, I should have been clearer. I'm already familiar with the Misting/Ferring names, and the Alloy book for the RPG even has a table with names for a solid fraction of the possible Twinborn combinations.

No, I meant the Malatium Mistings thing.

Chunq · Apr 15, 2017

Skipped on over from SB to read more.

Those pictures of ears. The 3 pictures. What? And that last one looks like it's from something from liveleak. Strange choices.

And I saw several comments about difficulties with fonts on both forums, so here's a thing:
If you're pasting from another word processor, paste into the BB Code editor rather than the default rich text. There's a button for the BB Code editor in the toolbar, on the top right of the reply box. Copy-pasting from Word or Docs, or whatever, into the rich text editor brings formatting with it, which can cause problems. The BB Code editor will take in only the raw text.
Once you have the text in without any extra crap, you can switch back to the rich text editor to size, color, etc. Or you can use BB Code tags which is what I prefer. So with raw text, you won't have problems with text colors or size, no matter people's different settings, since it will just get the default style sheet.

And here's a small feruchemical steel image that was surprisingly bothersome to make and upload:

I really hate that media embed on both SB and SV that comes with imgur links and other crap. Also, could have just hyperlinked like you did with those... ears.

Obloquy · Apr 15, 2017

Chunq said:
Skipped on over from SB to read more.

Those pictures of ears. The 3 pictures. What? And that last one looks like it's from something from liveleak. Strange choices.

And I saw several comments about difficulties with fonts on both forums, so here's a thing:
If you're pasting from another word processor, paste into the BB Code editor rather than the default rich text. There's a button for the BB Code editor in the toolbar, on the top right of the reply box. Copy-pasting from Word or Docs, or whatever, into the rich text editor brings formatting with it, which can cause problems. The BB Code editor will take in only the raw text.
Once you have the text in without any extra crap, you can switch back to the rich text editor to size, color, etc. Or you can use BB Code tags which is what I prefer. So with raw text, you won't have problems with text colors or size, no matter people's different settings, since it will just get the default style sheet.

And here's a small feruchemical steel image that was surprisingly bothersome to make and upload:

I really hate that media embed on both SB and SV that comes with imgur links and other crap. Also, could have just hyperlinked like you did with those... ears.

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it enough to investigate the cross-posting. Just don't drop too many spoilers on Spacebattles please, since this is ahead.

Regarding the ear things, that weird and sort of disgustedness is the impression I was going for. The last picture is different because it's for some reason harder to find pictures of women of color with missing ears than it is to find pictures of cats and dogs missing ears. So I went with the closest thing I could find.

Thank you very much for getting Feruchemical Steel to start working. I tried but I'm not tech-savvy enough, and I wanted it more self-evident than a hyperlink would be. I've changed it, and you've earned a cookie!

Or an omake, or a spoiler, or a request to have someone show up in LOD. Go wild.

And thanks a million for the BB Code suggestion. I'll try it when I'm at a good point to upload another update.

Obloquy · Apr 15, 2017

Life Ore Death

Stripped Away - part 3

* September 4 [Artemis PoV]

I was being carried by some wannabe Kid Flash with enough to speed to back up his boasts, and we were fleeing from murderously angry Bialyan soldiers. On top of that, I couldn't remember who changed my outfit and gear, suggesting someone did it while I was asleep. 'Even by Dad's standards this is one messed up test, and that really is saying something!'

'And doesn't he do work for Bialya every now and then? Why wouldn't he sic Qurac's troops on me instead?'

"Incoming," I warned again, squeezing Kid Dash's shoulder in the direction I thought he should go to dodge this next missile. Since I was looking back over his shoulder, our lefts and rights were screwed up, and that was what we'd got to work.

He zigged again. "Really running low on fuel here. Think we can outlast their gas mileage?"

"Not happening. I've got some arrows left, but I don't immediately recognize-," he zoomed around a hard corner, "-what they do. Should I risk it?"

"Can it make our situation," he broke off and panted for a moment, "any worse, Arrowette?"

I wanted to say yes, but instead I snapped, "Don't call me that!" and strung an unknown arrow. 'Yes, I like bows because I can carry them around the city or in the park and say it's for archery club, but bows are not a warzone weapon! Why did Dad not give me a gun? Am I supposed to steal a soldier's, or is this some completely different and unplanned SNAFU?' I still couldn't aim properly with Kid Dash's zigzags and sudden turns. On impulse, I shifted my hips and ankles to check. 'Come on, I'm not even carrying one knife! I feel naked. Arrows are not good things for melee stabbing, no matter if I can do it.' "Slow down for a sec!"

"Can't. The bullets." I grimaced.

'He's right. Just have to hope this is something where aim doesn't matter.' I let fly. Halfway to the target, the heavier head exploded into a net. The jeep drove over it without issue.

"Of course," I hissed.

I tried two more arrows as Kid Dash kept running. The second puffed out a cloud of gas affected the tank not at all, and the third's expanding polythene foam would have been useful if it hadn't missed by a mile.

I had strung what I really hoped was another foam arrow, and a mortar had just missed by far less than was comfortable to think about, when the game suddenly changed.

Something smashed into the rear jeep like a meteor out of space. The metallic crunch rattled through my skull. Parts went flying a good twenty into the air, and not just jeep parts. I barely heard any men scream, so I guessed, 'Half of them were probably killed on impact; we're moving at least 70-80 miles/hour and I bet only the driver had a seatbelt. And you all just realized something is wrong and don't know what to do.'

I'd seen the men in the forward jeep react, and they didn't know whether to stop and investigate what just happened – 'Make that, investigate who just happened,' I corrected when I caught sight of a body with a clearly broken neck thrown back into view for a moment – or whether to keep pursuing us and get the hell away from whoever it was.

The jeep slowed a moment, fell behind the tank, and then abruptly sped up again.

"I'm not sure that's a good sign," I muttered, because, "The guns aren't all aiming at us anymore."

"So they're not shooting at us so much? Great! Maybe they ran out of ammo," Kid Dash suggested.

"Not great," I countered. "Something just flattened one of the jeeps like the foot of invisible Godzilla, and now the other jeep is driving away from it even faster with half their guys shooting back behind them!"

"Invisible Godzilla? I'm totally gonna steal that one, Arrowette."

"Stop calling me that!" I snarled.

"Well you haven't told me what I should call you, and you do sort of have a Green Arrow fetish theme going."

"Someone stuck me in this while I was asleep, jackass! I'm better with a knife than I am with a bow, and I-," 'Don't want to tell an obvious metahuman how to find me unless I want to kill him, or else Dad will do him and his family slow after he punishes me for the security breach.' "-was born in Central City while my mom got her degree there! I grew up with my grandparents in Vietnam! Never been to Star City in my life!" All of which were lies, but 'That should be a good enough cover story to pass muster.'

"If you say so." He almost stumbled mid-run but kept going at his holding speed. "You speak English pretty good for a girl who grew up in Vietnam."

I kept my face still. "Incoming." We dodged again, but we were steadily dodging by less and less. "They're getting closer."

"Running on empty here! Like, literally!"

Something had happened with the second jeep, and now none of them were shooting at us. I heard at least one of the back tires explode, and the entire thing rocked and swerved.

"Incoming."

"Hey, no bullets," Kid Dash finally noticed. The jeep was slowing and getting out of sight. The tank was keeping pace.

"We've got two options," I told him. "One: keep doing this and try to outrun the tank or last long enough for whatever downed the jeeps to catch up. Two: double back and hope whatever it was will accept our help fighting the jeeps and tank."

"Any idea-,"

"Incoming."

That mortar was much less of a close call than the previous two.

"-what hit the jeeps?"

"Nope." I popped the p in that annoying way. "Incoming."

We dodged; it was close, but we were gaining a lot more distance on the tank now. "So what do you wanna do, since you saw it?"

"What or whoever definitely is willing to kill, but these guys are Bialyan soldiers," I hedged. "If they have to go after the tank without any help, why not go after us next? Assuming it isn't some crazy alien war beast," I added faux lightly.

'Please let there be a limit on how screwed up this situation can be.'

"Hey, maybe we should help the soldiers then. They don't deserve to die."

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe you really are Kid Flash. You're certainly… hopeful enough." I made sure not to say naïve. Too insulting of a guy I kinda-sorta looked up to. He stopped running. "Wait, what? What! Keep going!"

"Those soldiers don't deserve to die. I have to help them. It's sort of my job."

"Neither do we, but that's not going to stop them! They aren't going to spare our lives when we're done!" I panicked.

"They'd abandon us to die without a second thought if our places were reversed," he pointed out.

"Yes, exactly! So we agree!" I had a moment of hope when the guy did run again, but it was just far enough to escape an incoming missile. He'd turned around, and we could both see the incoming tank slow down. "You-!"

"Do you want to have anything in common with the people who would leave us to die?" he asked pointedly. "I want to be better than them, personally." He leaned over to set me, gently, on my feet. The only reason I grabbed onto him was because I was a little motion sick after all of the high speeds, that was all. The tank rolled to an uncertain stop.

"They won't even thank you for saving them. After everything else is over, they'll just shoot you in the back," I whispered. 'I think I want to vomit. I haven't felt like this since-,'

-

I swallowed hard, choking down bile. I got my breathing under control. Kid Dash was saying something more.

"Nah, they'll shoot me in the front, because I won't turn my back. You should start running though. I'll buy you time." He suddenly grabbed me and zoomed us both out of range of an unexpected missile. "But, you know. Going nobly to an idiot's death to save the kidnapped princess is what being a hero is all about." He grinned back at me and cracked his knuckles at the tank. "So start running, princess. I'm too low on fuel to carry you far enough anyway, so I'll buy you time to get away. Cross the border and get out." My breath hitched.

' "I want to be better than them",' I'd heard him say. 'Well, what's death after all of this? Not much. Live by the sword, die by the sword. The thing about the family business is that no one gets out alive anyway.'

I strung an arrow. "So, how do we do this?"

"Aaahhhhh, not really sure. It'll depend on what the tank does, and if whatever-it-was that got the jeep catches up with us first." I could see worried eyes peeking out of the viewing slots in the tank. "Hey, Bialyan guys! I'm a hero! There's something in this canyon that wants to kill you! I want to save your lives! What do you say we team up?"

I wanted to smack my face in exasperation, thinking 'That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!' but…

The tank held its fire.

"Any of you guys speak English?" Kid Dash – 'No, he might be the real Kid Flash with that attitude.' – Kid Flash called out.

A second later we got a reply: "One! I speak English. I talk to friends!"

"You might actually pull this off," I told him in amazement. I considered adding a crack about God protecting fools and children, but honestly? 'He doesn't deserve me getting snippy. Not if he manages to defuse this.'

And then I saw it.

"Huh?" Kid Flash managed when I snapped an arrow straight at the tank.

"She caught up," I answered, stringing a new arrow.

Where before the woman had been crouched on top of the tank, she dodged my shot just by stepping forward. She stood, frowning down, on the middle of the tank's barrel.

Brown.

People in poems and horror stories and detective shows have always talked about blood as being bright red, but there's a truth they forget: wet blood is red when it's shed, but when the life has bled out and faded away, the blood dries to an ugly brown.

I knew that color, the many shades of wet and dried blood, and the woman's fingers and face were caked in it.

Beneath the gore, her skin was brown, her armor was brown, her black bodysuit and hair were smeared with the canyon's brown dust, but her eyes were gold, and she wore several pieces of visible jewelry.

I remembered what Huntress and Dad had told me about wearing jewelry in a fight, and swallowed to clear my dry throat. 'She's more than good enough for the handicap those give her, I don't doubt.'

"Speedy!" the woman yelled unexpectedly. I nearly shot her. Kid Flash twitched, and I looked around for Green Arrow's sidekick, but the guy who'd always been a bit too silly for me to take seriously failed to appear. "Kid Flash! Renka!" She waved. I boggled.

'So she knows his name, but not mine? She might think one of those is me, though.'

I nearly laughed at the thought of working with Green Arrow, except I was too close to imminent death.

"Ohshit," Kid Flash swore. I didn't blame him. I had no ide- "That's Robin's bird-a-rang!"

I went cold as I stared at the red and yellow thing in her waving hand. If we were fighting a woman who-

'No. Chill out. Fear is the mind killer. It doesn't look like she wants to fight. Maybe she just really hates Bialya?'

"Robin!" she called in agreement. "Aqualad!" The woman nodded emphatically. I had no idea why. I still didn't quite dare to relax, but she wasn't going on a killing spree anymore….

"Since the heroes aren't here, I guess this is Don't Take Your Sidekick to Work Day," I muttered. "What do we do?"

Answer: we dodged, because the tank shot out another missile. Kid Flash grabbed me and the world turned into a blur. When my eyes caught up again, I saw-

*SCRAAEEEEEEECH*

'Ohhh, I can not tell if that's a good sign for us.' The main gun-barrel was warped and distended, bent out of shape by the woman's brute force. I heard more yelling from the tank, and a hatch opened. The soldier who popped out tried to shoot the woman with his handgun. I was pretty sure that by the time he pulled the trigger, she had already closed the distance past the muzzle. He got hurled fifteen feet into the air for his bravery.

"Surrender! Surrender, mercy!" yelled a second soldier in English as he spilled out of the hatch. He threw away his gun and scrambled backward across the ground. The woman drew back her arm.

Faster than I could finish notching my arrow, Kid Flash got between them, his fists up in obvious challenge.

"No," he told her. She halted. I aimed my arrow, and a third soldier, babbling, threw his gun away too as he scrambled out of the tank. The woman lowered her hand, and she slowly gave an exaggerated nod. I crept closer, still tensed, as she reached into a pocket and pulled out two things. "Huh? Is that a rations bar?" Kid Flash frowned. "Sure, I'm starving, but… I'm not going to take anything from you. Especially not when you have a knife in your other hand."

Insistently, she waved one hand, then the other, before she offered them both at him again. It clicked for me.

"Knife, food, she's asking us 'friend or foe?'" I kept my bowstring taught as I moved closer. "You know, 'will we war, or will we break bread?' There are cultures where you aren't allowed to fight against anyone you've shared a table or a meal with in the past three days, or something." I finally relaxed my draw when I got close enough that melee combat would be more effective. I kept the arrow notched, though.

Kid Flash still wasn't smiling. He took what looked like a granola bar from her, to which she nodded again, and then he broke it in half.
"Here." He handed both pieces to the two soldiers on the ground. "If I share food with them, that means she can't hurt them, right?" he called to me. I kind of wanted to slap him across his hot face.

"I don't know what her rules are! Maybe you just insulted her by refusing her gift!" But the woman had put the knife away. She looked at the two men on the ground, and her face didn't seem angry. 'Not that you can get a good look through all that gunk.'

I let my bow go slack and finally stepped up beside the speedster, but I kept my feet ready to move if I needed to. "You! If you surrender, you and your friend lie on the ground, on your stomachs, with your hands on your heads," I ordered.

"I- I will! I will tell!" the English speaking soldier babbled as he obeyed. His friend followed suit. The unknown woman looked between me and them with a frown. I met her eyes when she looked at me. She nodded, turned away from them, and extended a finger at Kid Flash's chest.

"Kid Flash," the unknown stated.

"That's my name, don't wear it out." He said it accusingly rather than jokingly. I nudged him in the ribs.

"I know you don't like what she did, but she doesn't speak English, doofus. Don't talk so fast. She probably doesn't understand you either way. …You do not speak English, yes?" I asked slowly.

Her only reply was to point at me. "Speedy?"

"No, she isn't."

"Not helping," I muttered. I pointed at my own chest. "Artemis."

"Add-eh-miz? Speedy?" and she made a gesture encompassing everything around us.

"I don't know. Is Speedy here? Why are you here? Why are we here?"

"She doesn't. Under. Stand you," I reminded Kid Flash. He humphed and repeated her gesture.

"Robin? Aqualad?"

"Robin! Aqualad!" she repeated more cheerfully. She didn't look too certain of her orientation, but she pointed off generally northwesterly. Then she touched her own chest plate. "Renka."

"Never heard of you."

I glared at Kid Flash. "I get that you don't like her, but beggars can't be choosers. Those soldiers would probably have caught and killed us if she hadn't jumped in."

"So killing them is okay? Two wrongs don't make a right," he retaliated.

"Well, the world isn't perfect! Wonder Woman killed a whole bunch of people back in World War Two!" Admittedly I didn't have the most reliable source for that, but since Dad had been in his cups and bragging about it as a sign of the 'good guys' hypocrisy,' it was probably true. –ish.

"This isn't war," he snapped back. I threw out my arm at the men and the tank.

"Soldiers! Tank! Military! Trying to kill us! What more do you want!"

"They're-," he bit off. "They aren't evil people! No one just deserves to die! Those two might be good men, probably with families depending on them, following bad orders from corrupt leaders like Queen Bee because they don't have any better options! They surrendered! Don't you think the other guys would have too, if they hadn't got butchered like pigs?"

"No," I snarled back, "because if they outnumbered us like that they'd have thought they might succeed in killing us, and they'd probably have been right! These two aren't men who have seen the light, pledged to mend their ways, and sworn loyalty to peace, love, democracy and apple pie! They've fought, and even if they can't run away, they will want to fight another day."

"I don't think they had any other choice, and I wanted to offer them something better! Why are you so insistent that I trust a blood-covered murderer?"

"You- you! B-because I-!"
-

einargs · Apr 16, 2017

A wonderful chapter! I'm normally not much of a fan of "heroes lose their memories and have to learn to work together again" plotlines, but I'm actually really enjoying this one. I think part of it is that often times the plot is forced to re-hash character development that has already happened, but you've managed to skip that by using Renka's inability to speak English and Artemis' nature as a former criminal to give us insight into stuff before the story began instead just rehashing the beginning.

Or at least that's my vague, unrefined guess.

Watching the dynamic between Kid Flash and early!Artemis play out is really neat too. You can really see how much the mindset of a hero appeals to her, and it makes her defection seem a lot more real and meaningful.

The scene where Artemis is watching Renka stand up from the tank is absolutely wonderful as well. Your heart pounds, and the description gives a really neat insight into Renka as a character. Normally we only see how Renka's friends see her, not her enemies, and it's really cool to get that insight.

For me, what really sold it was the jewlery. The mental image of the sunlight reflecting off of blood caked metal is a really powerful one, and he way that Artemis identifies it as a mark of skill--despite being mostly incorrect--still makes you squirm slightly as you consider what that jewlery actually lets Renka do. It's probably one of my favorite scenes in the story so far.

Obloquy said:
"I don't think they had any other choice, and I wanted to offer them something better! Why are you so insistent that I trust a blood-covered murderer?"

Ouch. When they regain their memories, that one is going to leave a mark.

And looking at this:

Obloquy said:
"You- you! B-because I-!"

It already did.

Poor Artemis.

Chunq · Apr 16, 2017

Obloquy said:
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it enough to investigate the cross-posting. Just don't drop too many spoilers on Spacebattles please, since this is ahead.

Regarding the ear things, that weird and sort of disgustedness is the impression I was going for. The last picture is different because it's for some reason harder to find pictures of women of color with missing ears than it is to find pictures of cats and dogs missing ears. So I went with the closest thing I could find.

Thank you very much for getting Feruchemical Steel to start working. I tried but I'm not tech-savvy enough, and I wanted it more self-evident than a hyperlink would be. I've changed it, and you've earned a cookie!

Or an omake, or a spoiler, or a request to have someone show up in LOD. Go wild.

And thanks a million for the BB Code suggestion. I'll try it when I'm at a good point to upload another update.

Yup, that's working just fine.

I'm not all that disgusted by the pictures, it's the inserting "notations" onto the text in general I think is weird, and using 3 pictures to do it. Same with the colors, 3 lines. Just language is fine. Meh.

Really hard to think of a request for some reason. Extremely difficult. Have Kid Flash convert to Harmonism, get him a piercing, give him steel speed, shove him into a Speed Force I-ain't-gotta-explain-shit portal, run him into Renka's dad, then Scadriel for a few hours, then back home. Wild. No I can't think of anything good, so I'll pass.

Darth Locutus · Apr 16, 2017

After the Team's memories get fixed, I foresee quite a bit of drama over Renka's little rampage.

omori · Apr 16, 2017

Hello new here just like to say I like what I see.

Obloquy · Apr 16, 2017

Chunq said:
Really hard to think of a request for some reason. Extremely difficult. Have Kid Flash convert to Harmonism, get him a piercing, give him steel speed, shove him into a Speed Force I-ain't-gotta-explain-shit portal, run him into Renka's dad, then Scadriel for a few hours, then back home. Wild. No I can't think of anything good, so I'll pass.

Well, you gave some good inspiration anyway, so consider this one to be free of charge.

1) "You really want to convert to Harmonism?" Renka boggled.

"Well, yeah. It makes sense, I like the teachings it preaches... is there a reason not to?" Wally asked.

"I... am not sure if you will go to my afterlife. I need more study with the Wonder Woman and Erebus," Renka noted. "Also... actually..." she cocked her head. "I have an idea."

2) Wally stared down any the implements in his hand, then back at Renka. Implements, Renka. Implements, Renka.

"I think this sounds a little too insane," he told her.

"If you aren't willing to take a leap of faith, then by all means, I will not force you too convert," Renka replied mildly. "My gold-minds and aluminum-minds are enough to do this safely. I intend to do this experiment whether or not you are with me. The only question is if you get your piercing from this or not."

"I..." Wally hesitated. Carefully, he hefted the mallet, and then put the slender metal spike back on the table. "Fine. But we do this in a medical center, with trained professionals and other members of the League supervising." Renka acceded with a shrug

4) Wally jogged ten laps around the park. Running at full speed, it took him just under five minutes.

When he didn't store speed, his full speed usually took him five seconds. "Okay, I think that's enough storing. Time for the moment of truth," he sighed fingering his steel-mind bracelet.

5) A black sun hung in the sky. Caught in seemingly endless mist, Wally walked further searching. "I'm guessing I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

"Yet not so far as you fear." Wally yelped and spun around to meet a man stepping out of the mist. He wore black and white priestly robes, stood more than six feet tall, and had a shaved head. "Greetings, Wallace West."

"Wh-who are you?" The man smiled at the youth.

"I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages. But you may call me Sazed. Or Harmony, as you prefer."

6) "Right, I've finished delivering aid to the four villages in that section, and spreading the word. What's next on the list?" the redhead asked the older man.

The man's smile reached his one good eye, while the other was speared through with a steel spike. "Rusts, kid, you weren't kidding about getting it all done in a flash. Steel compounders would've had trouble pulling that off."

Wally puffed up his chest. "Well, I am going to be the next Flash. Besides, it's not like I didn't have any help." He fingered his own piercing. "So where do we go next?"

"That's all the urgent stuff on Scadrial. Good going. Now you and me are going to pop over to mists, mists, and more mists to pick up some supplies from Saze before we jog off into the horizon."

"What, like a cowboy movie?" Wally asked.

"Since I don't know what those are, no. I mean we're going to jog all the way to another planet, because there's no empty space in the cognitive realm to suffocate us, and then we're going to introduce ourselves to a bunch of Inkspren and see if we can borrow some transportation Surgebinding to get you home again."

"Home? You can do that? Yes!" Wally cheered. "I mean, not that this hasn't been great and all, but I do need to go back and tell everyone to stop worrying."

"Yeah, yeah, don't worry. And as long as we can bring some Tanavastium back for Saze to play with, he should have more than enough fuel to poke another hole in the comic continuinuum."

"I think you mean the cosmic continuum," Wally corrected.

"Yeah. No, kid, I really don't," the man chuckled, and refused to say anymore.

Zee · Apr 16, 2017

I love your story, it is very rare to see a Mistborn/Cosmere fanfic and I really enjoy the limits Feruchemy imposes.
I am quite the Sanderson fan so there was a few thing I picked up which I didn't see mentioned in the comments.

Firstly you mention that Ruin and Preservation found an empty planet to make humans which doesn't seem the case according Arcanum Unbounded

In Arcanum Unbounded, during the pre text to the Scadrial part, Khriss (a member of the Silverlight university) speculates that there was no planet in the Scadrialan system prior to Ruin and Preservations arrival.

Indeed, I am convinced from my studies that the planet itself did not exist before its Shards, Ruin and Preservation, arrived in the system. They picked a star with no relevant planets in orbit, specifically choosing this location because it was empty, so they could place there whatever they wished.

Secondly what you mentioned we should panic over, where I want to take a guess and say

"Splinter of Entropy" which means that Ferris has held Ruin, which is also where I think she got the infomation about the shardworlds.

I look forward to reading more of your story!

Obloquy · Apr 23, 2017

Life Ore Death

Stripped Away - part 4
* September 4 [Artemis PoV]

"I don't think they had any other choice, and I wanted to offer them something better! Why are you so insistent that I trust a blood-covered murderer?"

"You- you! B-because I-!"

-

I got my breathing under control and shook my head to clear it. The empty, echoing, aching feeling disappeared. Hours of scared-for-my-life stress, what-the-hell-is-happening panic, and how-do-I-not-die-ness dragged all my anger back into place.

Anger was good. At least, anger was controllable. I was used to being angry. I knew how to use anger. And this bit of rage had cooled enough to give me something better to throw in Kid Foolish's face. I met his eyes. He was still waiting

"Do you really think that they haven't ever killed anyone? They're soldiers in Bialya! Why are you more willing to trust the people who tried to kill us than the woman who backed off when they surrendered?" That last bit wasn't quite the argument I'd wanted. I knew Kid Flash could and was about to poke holes in it by pointing out how he'd had to make her back down.

"Kid Flash. Ahdemis."

"Artemis," I corrected her.

"Artemis. Kid Flash. Renka," she repeated from her position crouched on the ground. And when had that happened?

'I guess, if she can't understand, then she doesn't really care about us arguing.' In the time we'd been politely talking out our differences, Renka had been sketching stick figures. 'Pictograms? A picture is worth 1,000 words?'

"Renka." She indicated a stick person with long hair, marked by a triangle squiggle in the circle of the head.

"So, she's using that for herself. Any idea what it means?" I asked.

"Not a clue," Kid Flash answered.

"Aqualad." The second figure was also alone, but there were more scratches that… I couldn't be sure. "Renka, Aqualad." This time both figures were together, with 'her' carrying 'him'. I realized that she'd been counting up one-two-three with her fingers when she pointed.

"I think she's saying she found Aqualad while he was injured and took him with her." I was a little relieved. Aqualad had been my secon- 'Well, if this is how thick-headed Kid Flash is away from the tv cameras, I guess Aqualad might be my favorite sidekick after all.' I'd never been able to take Speedy seriously, and even if I was a Gotham girl the idea of Robin was a bit too disconcerting. 'Especially considering how likely I always thought I'd be to eventually end up on the wrong end of The Batman's bad side. Heh, Bat side.'

"That… yeah," Kid Flash breathed. "Hoo boy. If he was unconscious the way we started out, but he ended up out under the sun, then he's really bad off when he can't get enough water."

"Renka, Robin, Aqualad," she continued once we failed to keep talking over her. She tapped the figure marked by R with the bird-a-rang to emphasize. It was crouched over the second figure while the long-haired one was further back.

"So Aqualad was taking it easy, Robin gave first aid, and you just stood back and watched," Kid Flash summarized from the figures. I rolled my eyes. 'Aggressive much?'

"She might not know first aid?" I pointed out pointedly. "Probably not the first aid you give to an Atlantean. Those gills are real, not part of the costume, right?" They didn't stand out much on the videos I'd watched online, but his fan art depictions tended to emphasize them a bit more. No one seemed certain if they were real or not, since Aquaman didn't have visible gills, but I thought they were.

"Huh? Yeah, yeah. They are. I guess I can't fault her that. Not if she really brought him with." Renka waited for him to finish. In the one gesture we knew she understood, he nodded at her despite his grimace, and she continued to the next set.

"Robin." She amended the drawing with what was probably a speech bubble and stuck her finger in it. "'Kid Flash, Speedy,'" she said in a different tone of voice. In her regular voice, she added, "Renka," and made an exaggerated nod.

'Probably trying to imitate Robin's voice, what he told her. He told her about us? Well, not about me. Is this a crazy test or not?'

"Robin, Renka." These two figures were drawn a bit larger and their hands were joined. She emphasized the outline of the bird-a-rang being handed between them by tapping it with the real bird-a-rang. Renka then indicated the old picture of the three of them and quickly sketched in separate figures marked with a bow and a lightning bolt. She circled her figure and added an arrow. "Renka, 'Kid Flaaash,
Speeeedy,'" she faux yelled.

"Artemis," I repeated, tapping my chest. Renka nodded, looking at me like I was an idiot. She added a second figure right beside Kid Flash's, with the lines for long hair and a different bow and arrow.

"Renka, Kid Flash, Artemis." She moved her hand away to indicate the male archer, then waved her arm around and added flatly, "Speedy." I was pissed at her condescending tone, but I also might have deserved that. Just a little.

I kept my temper.

"Speedy, Speedy, Speedy, Speedy," I repeated, and I pointed in a different direction each time. And because I suddenly realized that I'd been a bit too mouth-offy to an unknown element, even if she was hopefully on my side- 'And since I wasn't on the list Robin gave her, crap, she might think I'm expendable,' –I tried to add in another gesture to our shared language by shrugging my shoulders. I absolutely did not let show that I might be a bit nervous. Renka slowly nodded.

"Speedy," she agreed with a circular wave of the hand. And she shrugged her shoulders. I refrained from feeling relieved. "Kid Flash, Artemis, Renka." She pointed with each name and then scuffed a mark in the dirt. Then she circled it and added another arrow leading back to, "Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Artemis, Renka?"

I nodded and glanced up to catch Kid Flash frowning. "You get all that?"

"Yeah. Robin sent her to look for me and Speedy, she found me and you instead, and now we should go back to Robin and Aqualad even though Speedy is still AWOL."

"Five of us do have a better chance of finding him together. And we can dodge or fight any other Bialyans around here," I pointed out. If he jumped down my throat about the fighting part, I wasn't going to hold back.

"Yeah, but what do we do about the prisoners?" he asked instead. I hesitated. "Kid Flash. Renka," he repeated with the pointing gesture. "Prisoners." She followed his finger and shrugged. "Prisoners."

"Pah-ree-zah-ners," Renka attempted.

"Prisoners," he repeated, pointing at each. "Prisoner. Prisoner. Two prisoners."

"Two prisoners," she repeated more firmly. Then she shrugged.

"Tie them up?" I finally suggested.

"Good idea," he told me with a proud grin. 'I had better not be blushing.' He turned back to Renka as I began to dig through my belt. "Kid Flash tie up-," he made gestures with his hands, "-prisoners. Renka have-," he made odd motions again, "rope?"

She pulled out a knife.

"No! Rope!" More gestures.

As it so happened, I was carrying a spare bowstring.

"Here let me. Kid Flash, tie up-," I demonstrated loosely on my own wrists and then I pointed, "-prisoners. Renka, Kid Flash, rope?" I mimed taking it out of my pocket again before I handed it properly to Kid Flash. "I've got nothing else to give you, by the way. I only have one other spare bowstring, and I need to keep it. You'll need more to tie their wrists and ankles well enough. Do you know knots?"

"I'm pretty good. This doesn't have to hold forever, right?"

"Rope!" Renka declared happily, having produced a few loops of cord to hand over. A thought occurred to me, and I called after the redhead.

"Remember to pat them down for useful stuff! I'm going to search the tank for anything we can use and disable it."

"Roger that!"

Renka eyed me when I clambered into the tank. 'They should always have some emergency- score!'

"Kid Flash! I found water and food and that useful stuff! You want to fill up that gas guzzling fuel tank you were complaining about?" Kid Flash laughed.

"Oh, do I ever! I guess I can't call you beautiful anymore. Any girl who comes bearing grub is flat out gorgeous!"

'Don'tblushdon'tblushdon'tblush!' I busied myself setting the stuff on the ground in the sunlight so I could see what it was. Renka crouched down curiously beside me. 'You know, if it weren't for the whole gore thing_' Even though wasting water was taboo in the desert, I was sorely tempted to hand her a wet cloth so she could clean her face off.

"Do you want a drink?" I cracked the cap of a water bottle and tasted it. 'A bit stale and warm, but oh god that is so good.' "Water?" I offered.

"Wahter." She took the bottle and started sipping as I turned to pull out the next load.

'Was it just me, or was her hand really chilly? Bad circulation? Meta-human ice super powers like Cam?'

"Need a hand? Oh. Ah, thanks," Kid Flash said awkwardly, taking the bottle when Renka offered. He took a generous swig and passed it back.

"I think those stuff might be extra ammunition or guns," I assessed. "They're heavy, and we want to be careful handling them. Can you get in, pass them out to me, and I'll put them off to the side?"

"Crawling in and out a bunch would be a hassle," he agreed. Renka still sat perched at the edge of her dirt sketches. Since we didn't have any way to tell her about anything she could do, I waved her to stay there. Then I passed her some paper-wrapped packages and – since none of us could read the labels – mimed for her to open them.

I couldn't recognize the exact type of the pieces of broken down gun that Kid Flash handed out, but I saw signs of maybe Russian make, and it was military quality.

All four of the very carefully packaged grenades, however, had LexCorp written all over them. No maker's marks or obvious identifiers, but I recognized the general type and make as the same kind Dad favored.

Given the way the world worked, I hadn't been too surprised to learn that Luthor's sterling reputation was just well-gilded lead. I wasn't sure how deep the rabbit hole went - the one comment Dad had once mentioned that implied he'd met Lex Luthor face-to-face before was probably him blowing smoke - but the fact that their subsidiaries were his favorite suppliers for equipment was pretty suggestive.

I had just accepted what the light of day revealed to be the tank crew's porn stash when a few drops of blood-

*CRACK*

-hit my cheek. An impact slammed Renka's shoulders back against the tank's side, and red hung spattered in the air between us. It had all splashed out from a dribble at the base of her neck, for some reason, and my hands had 'drop the smut papers!' already strung my bow mid-turn through the soup of molasses I was in and I drew further while I screamed I didn't know what about to put an arrow through the eyes of whoever when agony speared-

*CRACK*

-me in the stomach, missing my ribs but probably hammering a nail of pure pain through my intestines, the sledgehammer impact pounding me back against the tank and I got caught by arms even as I remembered 'I have been trained for this and I am better than this, I will-!' and loosed my shot and Kid Flash was suddenly-

*CRACK*

-twisted around me, shielding me with his body even as his weight scraped my side against the floor of the tank and my mind almost went white with agony when he shoved me further out of the line of fire a turned back to-

*CRACK*

-face mortal peril and no, no no I was better than this I would not let some two-bit with a gun get me down and just as soon as I got a weapon I would be right behind him jumping out into the fight I had already finished setting up and saw what I needed-

*CRECHK*

-reached out so my fingers wrapped around the barrel and I knew this make Dad had made me practice until I could strip it reassemble it with a blindfold and even if I was rusty I knew that this piece-

*thud*

-connected here with a twist and this like that and I wasn't even blindfolded and some man is screaming it's not in English I don't care where is that ammunition open load check squirm safety to exit finger on the trigger don't tell me I'm too-

*Crack*

-late I think it's all over because ugh heads aren't supposed to be at that angle wait didn't Renka get shot in the neck I can still see her blood but its over over oh drat here comes the adrenaline crash.

Oh.

Ow.

My throbbing everythings hurt like Dickens. My gun safety lessons were drilled in just hard enough to reapply the safety and make sure I set it down pointing nowhere near people and then I collapsed.

…

I sort of visualized the pulsing pain like white emptiness in the shape of underwater seaweed dancing before my eyes.

No, I'd never been on a drug trip. If Dad wouldn't literally kill me for polluting my body like that, he'd have made me wish he had been so merciful.

"How bad am I-?" I choked, gritting my teeth through the pain and trying to look at my wound. The hand pressed on it was slick with hot blood, slick with my blood, and I did my best to clench and grip and apply one-handed pressure.

"Easy Artemis. Renka, get the med kit!" Kid Flash rearranged me on the floor of the tank's control chamber. I was running through the breathing exercises Dad had taught me and I was already getting it under control.

"Don't man-handle me," I complained halfheartedly, "and she won't-," Renka slid in beside the both of us with three packages she was rifling through. The med-kit turned out to be the second one, and she had it open between us in another instant. Her hands stilled when I touched a finger to her collarbone. "Wet. How did you-?" Of course, she didn't understand me.

"Okay. First aid for gunshot wounds. First you-," Kid Flash tried to remember.

I sighed; even that hurt. "I'm not exactly in shock, so just give me the med-kit and I'll fix myself up." It was agony, and I had to guess a few times – like whether to risk lead poisoning leaving the bullet in or risk exacerbating the blood loss by getting it out – but in the end I was patched up and functional.

Kid Flash stocked up on his precious munchies and water, I slid a loaded handgun alongside two knives into my belt despite his concerns, and Renka carried extra things including, for some reason, a bunch of papers I didn't have the chance to read. 'Intelligence assignment?' was what I would have guessed, but it really wasn't any of my business.

We navigated back through three turns before Renka communicated – we assumed – that she couldn't tell exactly where we were located from Robin and Aqualad and needed to get to higher ground to check.

I was in more than a little awe and envy for her ability to leap up in three or four bounds while Kid Flash and I had to scramble for several minutes to get to the top of the cliff face. Those several minutes became several minutes less when I realized I had a grappling gun in my belt,- 'How did that get there and why?' -but I was not in the best of moods between my throbbing wound, the climb, and the embarrassment. So of course, just as Renka had finished orienting, the thrum of airplane engines had to reach our ears.

Obloquy · Apr 28, 2017

Life Ore Death

Stripped Away - part 5

* September 4 [Renka PoV]

'This is one of the few times in my life where I wish I had carried a copper-mind. Leaving behind memories of why I'm here, or just memories of the route I took to find these two, would be useful. Of course, sticking all my recent memories in a copper-mind and then losing said copper-mind may well be part of how I ended up in this situation to begin with.'

This had not been a good day. I had won my fights, certainly; I also had confirmed that tapping an iron-mind and falling on a cart would stop it at the cost of breaking my legs.

A gout of flame had scorched me when the metal cart caught fire – which I had no idea how that was possible – and between those incidents, the second cart, and the surprise from the man I'd thrown too softly, I had functionally exhausted my gold-mind healing reserves.

I had similarly depleted my pewter-mind, my steel-mind, and my bronze-mind, which together cut my combat capability to my basic, exhausted hand-to-hand skills. While fighting against an unknown number of people. Who all used ranged weapons. I didn't quite dare to try storing any more physical investiture, aside from the iron-mind to aid my jumping and climbing, because we needed to keep moving and stay alert in case we were attacked.

When I finally realized I was lost, I wanted to pull my hair out and cry. 'Maybe not the hair,' I conceded, 'but my soul really needs a good wash after that bloodbath. So does the rest of me, for that matter.' I shoved the pervasive sticky feeling to the back of my mind and focused.

I tapped a trickle of zinc in the unwarranted hope that it would aid my memory, tapped tin to extend my sight, and did my best to reconstruct the route I'd taken. Earlier that day I'd noticed Aqualad, tracked Robin, and found the two I was with by using a hearing tin-mind, but it had been exhausted except for bits I had since stored. 'I need to start wearing bigger tin-minds,' I resolved.

A certain pattern in the edges of a cliff caught my attention, and I did my best to line up the directions.

'That fits,' I judged, having recalled a certain set of unwieldy jumps.

Which meant…

"We should go that way," I declared. My traveling companions, who had climbed up beside me, looked blank. 'Right, no one else speaks my language. Really. If I had known other living tongues existed, I would have studied them instead of so many dead ones. Names and directions, then.' "Renka, Artemis, Kid Flash," I recited, and pointed more firmly. Kid Flash looked like he got the idea, but Artemis was looking away, over my shoulder.

An odd sound – I was reminded of the pattern Spook had rapped out when he experimented with Seeking and we both tried to describe to others the thrum of burning pewter – was growing slowly louder. Kid Flash caught it too and we both turned to follow her gaze.

I was rather flummoxed. 'How are…? Are those made of metal? Like birds? But they aren't moving those wings! How are they in the air? Maybe if you could give a device the ability to store its own weight and Steelpush against the ground? But then-,'

Artemis tackled me with a yell, Kid Flash following us both over the edge just as a *brap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap* sound roared. I was still storing my weight, but with Artemis falling with me we both ended up bruised. I had no idea how she managed to land on her feet when I could not. But, I immediately got the message 'Run!' communicated by her tugging hand.

A few steps further, Kid Flash grabbed us both and proceeded to speed down the canyon in a direction unrelated to where I had been leading. Since those things were following us, and the noise sounded similar to the soldiers' weapon, I could hardly blame him for being discombobulated. I tried not to get in the habit of complaining about people who saved my life.

Kid Flash put all but the best steel-mind users to shame when he sprinted. Truth be told, I halfway hoped to search him and find a steel-mind or two on his person later, but I couldn't understand how he would have recharged his reserves so much when he had not run nearly this quickly before I intervened to assist.

He wasn't just good at running, either, but skilled at evading as well. Kid Flash repeatedly dodged the attacks while carrying two young women and running through unfamiliar territory. He had guessed or already knew limits to the things that I was only starting to figure out, like their limit to attacking in straight lines.

He dodged sideways and kited the pursuing things to hunt in the wrong directions. He dodged in and out and through and back and among the many canyons and used rocks and overhang for momentary cover. He doubled back on several occasions, taking advantage of the things' limitation to attack only in front and turn relatively awkwardly.

But after ten or twenty minutes of continuous chasing, 'and to hold these speeds for this long I have to wonder if he is Compounding steel or something, because this cannot be normal,' Kid Flash was beginning to tire out and slow down again.

It was at this point that we rounded a corner and ran into three-dozen other Bialyan troops.

Kid Flash babbled something in a panic and Artemis spat what was probably a foul invective, but we didn't stop. Kid Flash charged the mass of troops with ropes, probably in the hopes that the pursuers wouldn't attack their own people.

Engines roared behind us, and the *brap-ap-ap-ap-ap-ap* of weapons failed to overwhelm the sound of screaming as we hit the crowd while the pursuit tried to hit all of us. Men fell around us and on us and we got separated in the crush.

'Either these people have no loyalty, or nothing but loyalty,' I considered as I lashed out and tried to struggle free. Hammer blows slammed into my back, and I tumbled to the ground. My odd armor had caught several of whatever the attacks were aimed at my back, but one had found a weakness and it felt like I had an arrowhead lodged in my right tricep.

Several men beside me had not been so lucky, though. I swung my heel into the skull of one who was still kneeling. He quickly joined the four others lying in various states of stillness on the ground. I kept one eye on the sky for the brief moment of space I had, but the flight things had pulled away and didn't seem to be returning.

I grabbed the blunt rods that appeared to be my only available melee weapons – my one folding knife was too short – and did my best to keep from being surrounded without any metal-minds to aid me.

My bastardized axe-spear-sword-what-am-I-doing style was not nearly as functional as I wished.

One man seemed to be properly trained enough to disarm my left rod, and put me in a hold while another grabbed me from behind. I would have been incapacitated in seconds if we were not all knocked off our feet by the thrown body of different soldier. I drove an elbow into someone's nose and stomped on the two who were not quick enough to get back up.

"Hhuuuurrrraaaaaaarrrgh!"

I turned to look and saw a shirtless young man inflicting havoc on the soldiers. 'A brute ferring? A pewterarm? How-?' He lifted two grown men and threw them in different directions using only one arm each. An exploding spear caught him full in the chest from another covered cart I hadn't realized was present, and I was amazed to not see a spray of blood and gore.

I quickly stomped on the one nearby soldier trying to stand up again, and I made sure to hear the crack when I broke his ribs before I went back to watching the show.

"Rrrraaaaahhhhhhyyyyyaaaaaaarrrgh!"

He used the cylinder part as a lever, tore the circular top off the metal cart, and threw it at an uncovered cart.

Both metal things burst into flame on impact. I ascribed it to a down-side of using those types of constructs. Men ran.

'They're shooting him with those crossbow slings and everything is just bouncing off of his skin! How is that possible?' I remembered the rough size and weight of the lead sling stone that had popped out of my neck the last time I healed, and ran a calculation for how hard it should be hitting when moving too fast for me to see. 'Those things were chiseling chunks out of stone and they are bouncing off of his skin! I could maybe use atium alloy metal-minds to do that, but- but how is he-!'

I grabbed one of those weapons off the ground and imitated the stance I'd seen the soldiers use. The three of them who were trying to get back up immediately dropped to the ground again. They did the position Artemis had made the two soldiers at the tank use before Kid Flash bound their limbs.

"Ggrrrraaaaaaaarrgggh!"

After a quick scan of who was where, I decided not to make the same mistake again. I stalked to a place where I could keep everyone in sight and aimed carefully. I had no idea what would make it fire, but guessing that it used the same trigger as a crossbow seemed simple enough, so I kept my finger near but not on that part.

Amusingly, the few awake men nearby seemed to take this threat more seriously than extreme-speed-boy, exploding-arrow-girl, and boy-who-makes-koloss-look-tame, since they all started imitating that lie-on-the-ground position. I tried not to laugh.

Kid Flash and Artemis had finished beating the soldiers closest to them into submission, and-

"Rraaaaaaarrrgh!"

-the last two carts had been reduced to flaming scrap, so I decided to let Kid Flash handle the negotiations with screams-and-throws-things so I could avoid having to make more illustrations. He was standing guard over Artemis as she tied up a soldier in a more elaborate uniform who was probably the commanding officer. He didn't look sure about what to do either.

"Rraaaaaaarrrgh!"

The boy without a shirt flung himself at the three of them. Artemis tackled her captive to the ground and Kid Flash dragged them both further out of the way. How-is-he-that-strong cracked the rock wall that he impacted instead, and his head swung directly to me. I tensed.

'A weapon that you don't know how to use is a weapon that belongs to your enemy,' I remembered; I still made sure to at least throw it to a patch of ground with no other soldiers nearby. 'Not that there aren't several dozen other weapons in various states of uselessness nearby.' I ducked and rolled. 'Maybe I can connect with him like I did those koloss? I have a duralumin-mind, for whatever reason, so I might as well use it as best as I can.'

I had two duralumin-mind rings, so I tapped larger store as deeply as I could, which would leave it empty in several minutes. I extended my hands to angry-boy who-is-probably-as-confused-as-the-rest-of-us, and even though he wouldn't have understood my words I spoke in a calm, clear voice.

"Hello," I greeted. He didn't pause or calm down. "Please stop fighting. Hello. I do not want to fight with-," I ducked and rolled under his jump again, berating myself for whatever I did wrong.

"God is great and I am not. God is great and I am not. God is great and I am not. God is great and I am not."

"Don't worry," I reassured the praying soldier on the ground. He whimpered and continued his prayers. "I won't let you get hurt. He isn't angry," I continued, looking once more at the young man. His face twitched in odd ways. "You aren't angry. Are you? You're confused. I want to help you. Please," I tried once more, reaching out. I pitched my voice to the way I had sung several of my siblings (most recently Athwyd) to sleep in the past. "We all are in this together. I know you can't understand me, but can you feel what I feel? Softly. Listen," I soothed.

"~All the little children now should go to bed. ~To grow up big and strong you must rest your head.~"

My lilting lullaby floated out across the field of combat, and things began to slow down.

I kept tapping my duralumin-mind, and I imagined the silvery, luminescent threads, networks of connection stretched out, pouring from me into all of the men around me, wrapping the unknown young man in a netting of comraderie and peace.

"~If all the little children are soon asleep, ~then when tomorrow comes our care you'll reap.~"

He slowly rose from his crouch. The young man's weight shifted from his toes to his heels, and though he was still bent over aggressively he had begun to relax.

I knew I would only have a few more minutes to connect with him at the rate I had tapped my first duralumin-mind, but I had a second, smaller one to supplement if needed, and without that I still had enough for a few verses.

I called up the old memories of when my mother had sung to me; the good memories where I had not yet been anything other than happy and innocent. I sang.

"~So of the misty night we have no fear, ~certain that our parents are watching near."

When I closed my eyes I could see my youngest sister tangled up in blankets. I knew her warmth and her weight in my arms as she drifted into slumber. Five days ago I had sang with the knowledge that I would be gone in the morning, and I would not see her for two months or more.

Now I knew that I might never see her again, but still I sang to her again as best I could.

"~The dark is like a blanket as we lay to rest, ~so as you close your eyes I offer one request.~"

I trusted Spook to watch over my kin with the same care that he guarded his own wife and child. Even if I never returned to them, with Father's light guidance and the love of all around I could be certain that those I held dear would outlive me and be happy as they did so.

I yearned all the same.

"~Please, give me just a kiss and now a hug. ~Know my beating heart does feel a tug.~"

I sang my wishes to Athwyd, and to Mouren, and Gurozon, and Pronira, the only ones who would let me tuck them in at night anymore. I sang hope and care and memories. I sang also to Berek, and to Maykwen, and Gallawyn, who I had been old enough to sing to when I was a child; when I helped our mother and other siblings raise us all to both be good and well.

I sang family.

"~Remember how I love you, and how I always will.~"
"~Remember when the morning dawns I love you still.~"

I opened my eyes. The memory broke. I once more was under the desert sun, surrounded by men whose like had tried to kill me and others younger than me. I stood before a young man far more dangerous than I, with no reason to not lash out at me. I stood alone and I faced-

-I was not alone. Kid Flash stood within arm's reach, slightly to the side of me and the other boy. I could see something, some emotion on his face, but whatever his feelings he also stood ready to move in my defense if needed.

It didn't seem to be needed.

The largest problem facing our more-peaceful-now-shirtless-boy was simply how to stay still. He rocked his weight slowly back and forth, uncomfortable with standing straight, sitting, or falling to his knees.

"I- I," a man whispered at my feet. "I w-want to go home and see m-my daughter. She was still asleep, and I didn't say goodbye to her before I left yesterday." I knelt down and laid a hand on the poor guy's shoulder.

"You will," I reassured him. "No more fighting. No more hurting. We'll all get out of this together." Humming the melody, I stood and walked over to wrap the wild young man in a loose hug. He didn't return it – he seemed to be at a loss for what, if anything, to do – but he leaned his weight against me, and he didn't pull away when I stroked a hand through his short black hair.

"Ummumph," he burbled against my neck. My first duralumin-mind was nearing depletion; since I would run low no matter what I decided to take a leap of faith. I slowly released bits and drips more of my draw. The shirtless young man grumphed and shifted a little, but nothing more.

Abruptly, I became aware that I was well inside melee and grappling range with a young man who could not be harmed by weapons and was strong enough to make my best pewter-mind effort looks decrepitly feeble in comparison.

'Kid Flash is still pretty close, but that won't help me at all if anything happens. I don't think there's any reason for there to be a bond between those two, so getting too close might provoke him to violence again. I probably can't coherently signal him to go back toward Artemis, but if I can catch his eye I'll try to keep him from coming closer.'

The young man and I stayed as we were, in no small part because I worried that ending the hug would start something else, and I had no better idea about what to do. He wasn't doing anything but standing against me. 'Did he fall asleep?'

'Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. I'm not exhausted, but I've been moving and stressed for hours since I woke up, and a nap would sound really good right now. Music, grooming instincts, sleeping… if I can use him as a pillow and then get him some good food that would pretty much check off the whole list of ally-friend-don't-hurt activities. Well, that and fighting side-by-side against other enemies… I'm less than certain how much koloss psychology applies to this guy, but it might...'

I considered a moment longer, still sweeping the surrounding area with my eyes. He stirred as Kid Flash began running around and taking care of the soldiers nearby: he took their weapons, did his best to tie up some of them, and kept a watch for any funny business. Artemis was saying something to the frightened commanding officer. The few tears on her face in no way made her any less intimidating a figure.

'An open field in unknown, unfriendly territory is probably not the best place to take a nap, even if I disregard the enemy soldiers still in the area,' I concluded. It was a bit jarring to think of the men as enemies again, instead of victims of circumstance and potential friends I hadn't met yet. Tapping large amounts from duralumin-mind could make connections between everyone in the area so strong that it was difficult to think of anyone as enemies. 'And considering the numbers of military people, it's possible we're trespassing on their home and they just wanted to do their jobs and fulfill their oaths of service.'

I sighed, and my breath rustled the boy's hair. 'One of the downsides of remembering to not dehumanize enemies and that human life is important – it makes it much more difficult to fight them. Not that reluctance to kill is supposed to be a bad thing, I've learned that lesson well enough, but…' I sighed into his hair again. 'Habits: old ones die hard, bad ones die harder. I wish I ran across more situations where… well, okay, I've recently had a much greater plethora of situations where good and right were mutually inclusive, but why couldn't that good streak have continued to now?'

The shirtless boy finally seemed to grow bored of being hugged, and I let him pull away. I kept humming to reinforce the memories of the connection and keep him calm, and I loosely wrapped my fingers around his wrist. My other hand fumbled through the packs of food and medicine I had been carrying – one of them had gotten crushed in the fight and another that fell away was picked up by Kid Flash, but I still had one strapped on – in an attempt to find something for the young man to eat.

'This tastes pretty good,' I decided, trying the first bite of the bar. I had figured out I possessed food and water enough for a while in my bendalloy-minds (the three unknown metal-minds, while the fourth was cadmium for breath), but I neither tapped nor stored the bite I had swallowed. Shirtless took a bite as well, and he didn't seem to dislike it. He took a second bite, and I pulled out another bar for when he finished working through the first.

Artemis's voice caught my attention, and I gently led Shirtless over to where the girl was waving her arm. Shirtless seemed peaceful, and Artemis seemed to have found something important. I idly started storing up weight, strength, and speed again, so that I wouldn't be completely stuck at my baseline if it came to another fight.

NemoMarx · Apr 28, 2017

That lullaby is really sweet.

Kurkistan · Apr 28, 2017

Nice touch with Renka all-the-sudden understanding the local dialect, but not finding it weird: Connection making it feel natural?

Decoy · Apr 28, 2017

She's used it previously in the story to aid communication, so either it was an already known benefit of connection, or one she discovered when she came to this world.
If it was an already known ability, it brings up the question of why she hasn't used it with any of the team yet for at least a brief communication. Sort of a "I don't speak your language, but I can use some power to fake it briefly. Lost. Alone. Not your enemy. Friend?" Would have made dealing with robin much simpler.

And if it wasn't a known ability before coming to this world (understandable if there's only one real language in use in her world), the sudden surge of connection/familiarity may have prevented everyone from noticing. Like a form of change blindness

Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

Turns out we're plural too.

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