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Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Perry White, the Editor in Chief of the Daily Planet in Metropolis, was not having a good day.
He was hardly alone. A lot of people were having a bad day.
One of his best journalists, Clark Kent, looked about ready to keel over if a stiff wind would hit him.
"I don't care which alphabet agency you're spookin' for!" Perry shouted into his phone as he walked the office floors, barely dodging his editors and cameramen. "You want our documents, you get a subpoena!"
Unlike a normal day, the people causing Perry's headache weren't the same ones he was paying.
"-the department of metahuman affai-" the woman on the other end tried to speak up, but Perry wasn't having it.
"-Does not have the jurisdiction to ignore the damned law!" he interrupted, correcting the woman who seemed to think whichever three-letter agency she worked for didn't actually have to follow legal procedures.
He'd had to field the same damned answer from the FBI, the CIA, DOD, NRO- Perry almost had enough letter to fill out the alphabet!
Perry hated Lois Lane. He really did. Today wasn't the first time he'd had to stand in between her and an employee of the government 'Who just wanted to help'.
Damned fool girl, Lois had the nose of a bloodhound and the common sense of a lemming!
"Jimmy!" Perry shouted after hanging up on the drone. "You get those photos edited yet?!"
"Almost!" a gangly redhead shouted back. "Between the lighting and the angles, most of 'em are no good!"
"Keep at it," the older man instructed as he moved on. And as his phone started ringing again. "We need a few more for the online article."
Pulling his phone up, Perry barely dodged Kent Clarkson (a rather small and wiry blond man) as he saw it was -another- unlisted number.
"What is it?" the old man demanded as he made his way to one of his editors.
"Is this the Daily Planet?" a surprisingly deep voice on the other end asked.
"Yeah, it- Janice, break up the paragraphs! Folks barely pay attention anymore, they ain't gonna read a wall of text! -yeah, this is the Daily Planet."
"Ah, good. I am Director Steel, of the Department of Metahuman Affairs," the voice on the other end of the line stated, introducing themselves. "And I'm afraid that we will, in fact, need access to your files. Unedited."
Perry would have rolled his eyes if he weren't busy. Some highfalutin desk jockey, the same as everyone else he'd dealt with so far.
"I already told your intern- You want our photos? Go to a judge!" Perry didn't bother wasting a second more of his time on his phone. He just clicked 'End Call' as the 'Director' on the other end tried talking some more.
"Hey, Lou!" Perry called out, getting the attention of one of his senior journalists. Once he was sure the man was paying attention, Perry threw his phone at the man. Lou, old and gray and visibly angry, caught it in one hand. The man played football with Perry back in college, now Lou was the man in charge of sports. "Get that to Denny in legal. He knows my password."
With one major irritation handled, Perry turned his attention to the bigger irritation.
Lois Lane, sittin' pretty with a great big grin on her face and radiating an aura of pure smugness. She knew the chaos in the Daily Planet was her doing and, by the way she matched Perry's glare with an arrogant little smirk, she was enjoying it.
Clark Kent, sitting at a terminal across from her with about half a dozen empty coffee cups around him, looked the exact opposite.
"You finish writing everythin' up for the full article, Lane?" For all that the woman irritated the absolute hell out of him, Perry couldn't and wouldn't say that she was anything less than one of his best. The girl could ferret out a news story from halfway across the city before anyone else even had a clue that things were going down.
'Course, half the time Lois Lane needed to get herself rescued by Superman because the girl just didn't feel bothered to think ahead.
"Just finished up," Lois told him as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "Just waiting on your final approval before I press 'Send'."
"Good. Send it to me, I'll look it over when I'm back at my computer." Turning his gaze away from Lois and over to Clark, Perry scowled at seeing the man rubbing at his face while struggling to stay awake. "Get it together, Kent! We're all gonna be working against the clock, here!"
"I know, Chief," Clark told him, the man was so tired that Perry felt exhausted just by looking at him. "The story won't wait for us- Gotta get the facts before someone else does."
"Good, good," Perry said with a sharp nod. He turned around, ready to stomp off to another desk before he half-turned to glare at the man. "And don't call me 'Chief'!"
Grumbling under his breath, Perry reached down to his pocket for his phone before remembering he'd sent that off to the already incredibly overworked lawyer they kept on staff.
Used to be, they didn't need one. They just had a firm that handled things for them.
Then they hired Lois Lane.
With a deep scowl, Perry stomped off to continue his rounds.
It was only going to be a matter of time until one of the alphabet agencies figured out how to follow the law. If they wanted to get the story about what happened in Bialya out to the public, they had to be fast.
Still, the need for speed didn't stop Perry from slowing down as he looked out over Metropolis from his vantage point, high above the city. Sometimes, when a flight of fancy took over the aging man, he wondered if Superman saw Metropolis the same way that he did.
Shaking away those maudlin thoughts, Perry got back to work. He didn't have time to worry about the spandex brigade and whatever game of grabass they were playing.
-----
Count Werner Vertigo found himself enjoying the unfolding chaos that seemed to paralyze the world.
What did he need to care if some middle-eastern sand-pit disappeared overnight? Vlatava was not so weak or feeble a country!
He resided there, after all.
It was a shame that Queen Bee had been lost alongside the capitol but that was hardly his problem.
"Uncle," the Count's young niece, Queen Perdita Vladek, tried to get his attention. The two were enjoying a quiet dinner after a long day of politics. "Your tax increases are simply too high. Our steel refineries cannot afford to operate under them."
"That's rather the point, dear," Werner told the silly little thing. He knew how much those refineries turned in profits every year, he'd had to research the numbers exhaustively before he began writing up new tax codes. "I shall raise their taxes, they'll raise the prices of their goods, customers will go elsewhere for cheap metal and those refineries will swing back and forth as they try to find a middle ground where they still bring in a profit."
"You... want our citizens to fail?" the Queen asked, quite clearly confused. "For what purpose would you do such a thing?!"
"Why, to nationalize the steel mills, of course." Werner really didn't understand why the girl was struggling to understand things. He wasn't even using any of the truly fiendish or evil plots and plans he'd thought up. "Bringing them under my direct control, I can set the prices as I see fit."
Werner hummed happily to himself as he carved apart a meal of roast duck with fall vegetables. Really, his plans were quite simple. Poor Perdita just continued to prove, day after day, that she was wholly unsuitable to the realm of politics.
"But, uncle, that's illegal!" Perdita exclaimed, standing up from her seat across from him.
Werner merely raised a single eyebrow as he looked at the girl, calmly glaring directly into her eyes. After several seconds, red began to creep up the waif's neck until she was blushing ashamedly for her display.
"Uncle... that would violate many of our trade agreements."
"Nobody really cares, Poppet," the Count told the girl, waving at her with a chunk of duck. "China and Russia have both done the same thing and their trade partners have whined and complained but they're still doing business with them."
The little Queen sat back down, her hands on her lap and her gaze downcast. "What of Bialya, then? I've approved several emergency bills to send them support but they were one of our key financiers."
"My financiers," Werner corrected the girl, earning another sharp glare that passed him by entirely. "The Queen and I had an understanding. Well, with her out of the picture, we could always make a bid to colonize what's left. A terrible waste of effort but at least they already have refineries for their oil."
"...I can't let you do this, Uncle," Perdita declared, her voice dangerously soft as several members of the royal guard entered the small sitting room the two were dining in. "The people of Bialya, our people, none of them deserve this!"
"It's not about what people deserve, Puppet," Werner told the foolish girl as he continued to enjoy his roast duck, heedless of the men and women filling the room. "It's a matter of what one can get and what it will cost them."
The Count savored the fatty fowl as he looked around the room, to the royal guards. Swallowing thickly, the man met the eyes of the most-decorated officer in the room. "Adriana, if you'd be so kind?"
"What?!" Perdita shrieked, turning to look at her most loyal officer. "Adriana, what is the-"
The child-Queen was interrupted as two other men grabbed her, pulling her out of her chair even as she fought and kicked for her freedom.
"Take her to her room," Werner commanded as he slowly carved away a fresh piece of duck. "I believe the rigors of court have been too much for our ailing Queen. Do be so kind as to ensure she is not disturbed."
Count Vertigo watched on in pleased silence as his darling niece was dragged away, kicking and screaming.
The simpering little thing had such lofty beliefs in things like 'Honor' and 'Integrity'. Fine ideas, the Count was sure, but they would hardly fill an empty belly.
Speaking of which...
Count Vertigo reached across the table and pulled Perdita's plate to himself.
The cook had done a truly wonderful job on the duck today. It would be a terrible shame to waste it.
-----
Neither Batman nor Robin knew precisely what Alchemist was doing but the duo followed along behind him as he cast spell after spell.
The cement Alchemist had poured had been leveled out by the mage using a green orb to cast a small but localized tremor, then he'd cast another spell on the entire block. Before Robin's eyes, patches of the material quickly turned to stone and the change in coloration quickly spread.
At five meters in from each corner, the wizard had embedded massive I-beams, made of the same black metal that he'd conjured all of the knives that Batman had distributed out to the Justice League. They were connected to another set that he'd only just caught Alchemist conjuring in place underneath of the artificial stone, running across the ground on the bottom of the pit.
Now, Robin followed along behind the wizard as he was conjuring walls. Literal walls. With stairs that went up in a spiral along those walls, which Alchemist was typically conjuring just before he would even step towards them!
It didn't escape Robin's notice how Alchemist was slowly able to create more and more material out of nothing as they went along.
"What's the point of building this tower?" Robin eventually asked. Looking over the guard rail (so uncool) he guesstimated that they were about twenty meters up. Alchemist had been leaving notes along the rail at every five meter interval, which kind of helped.
"It'll serve as a landmark, that's one part. I'll be keeping the fire crystal inside of it, that's another one." Alchemist's explanation was surprisingly simple, something the Boy Wonder really appreciated after everything that'd been said, earlier. "And... well, I'm a wizard. Or I like to say I am. Wizards do towers, y'know?"
Robin pursed his lips as he considered that.
He could feel the magic coming off of the fire crystal, left downstairs on the bottom floor of the tower. It felt like sitting just a bit too close to a bonfire, a prickling burn that's comforting but also warning him away from getting too close. How it could stand on its narrowest point and just spin in the air with a little nudge, Robin had no clue.
"I guess," Robin agreed, more to fill the silence than from any solidarity. "Still, all this serves some kind of purpose, right?"
"It does, actually. To explain why I'm doing this, I'll have to offer some context. Do you mind?" Alchemist stopped and turned around to look at both Batman and Robin as they reached a point roughly twenty-five meters in the air.
Alchemist had done all of that, making most of a shell of a tower in about an hour and a half. And Robin knew he was just getting better at it, faster at it.
"I would appreciate it, actually," Batman answered from just behind Robin.
Alchemist nodded amicably to the man and snapped his fingers, conjuring thin beams of material that stretched out of the wall in a grid. With another, sheets of metal began to form overtop of the grid, expanding the space available for the group to stand on.
"Well, during our group training session with the Boss Rush, I ended up staying behind for a bit after you all left so I could work on a few things. Player One stayed behind as well, she had some questions she wanted answered. Among them was information about a few groups of space gods." Alchemist stopped what he was doing to turn around and look at the dynamic duo. "Did she pass on the notes that she took?"
"Uh... no," Robin admitted as he followed Alchemist while the wizard slowly walked in a spiral, creating more and more floor. "She's kind of been avoiding the mountain since, uh, we sort of locked her up until the Martian Manhunter could dig through her head."
"...And she let you?" Alchemist asked, stopping in the middle of the room. He turned a very confused gaze on Robin, then to Batman. "I'm not saying the girl could out-fight most of the Justice League, yet, but she could hop into Zombie Earth at anytime, go wherever she wants to and then pop back out."
"She did let us," Batman confirmed, confusing Robin greatly. He hadn't thought they'd given her a choice. "And she was cleared of any persistant mental influences. If we could focus on the topic at hand?"
"Right, right. Sorry. Space gods- Two groups. Hippies on one side, ultra-violent space-nazis on the other side being run by turbo-Hitler. They've been fighting a stalemate for a long, long time and they like to do proxies on under-developed planets. Like ours," Alchemist explained as he dug through an invisible window in front of him, coming back up with a piece of chalk and a string. "The Sphere you guys came across from Bialya came from the hippy side of the equation. Lunatics come from a place called New Genesis. Space Nazis come from Apokolips."
"Now, I'm a little bit iffy on the timeline here," Alchemist grunted out as he crouched on the ground in the center of the room. With one hand, he held the string in place. With his other hand, he held the chalk, now tied to the string, and awkwardly used the two to make a circle in the middle of the floor. "But I'm pretty sure the Green Lanterns depopulated Sector Six-Six-Six and went to war with the Empire of Tears long before the New Gods became a problem for the universe at large."
"...Did you say that the Green Lanterns depopulated an entire sector of space?" Batman asked, voicing the question that was caught in Robin's throat. When Alchemist nodded distractedly, Batman had only one more question, "Why?!"
"By accident," Alchemist answered, a simple statement that failed to explain anything. "The Guardians were experimenting with using androids, programmed to follow orders to the letter. We've imagined all the ways that can go wrong but they don't have the ability to do that, as I've explained. So when one of the robots determined that the most effective method of keeping peace and order was to kill all potential sources of chaos and strife...?"
Robin swallowed dryly. The silence in the tower was only matched by the growing pitch of tinnitus in his ears.
"Right. So. They killed a sector. The few survivors, reality-warping magical Forces, went to war against the Guardians seeking revenge. They lost, thankfully, and the Guardians decided to over-react and attack the source of their foes' power. Magic." With a snap of his fingers, a black ribbon formed in the air in front of Alchemist. It flowed down, cutting through the incredibly durable black floor as though it were a hot knife through Styrofoam and carving out the circle that Alchemist had marked with the chalk. "They tracked down all of the ambient magic throughout reality and stuffed it into a hyper-critical mass. Which was kind of a dick move, all told. Magic is forged through life and the spark of life is lit by magic."
Robin, about to comment on the mage-priests that M'gann would occasionally bring up, clicked his mouth shut.
If magic was a byproduct of life, then it made sense that it would reform over time. But that begged the question of just what the lack of magic did to the rest of the universe?
"So, that's the story of Alan Scott's Green Lantern. One of the greatest magical artifacts, holding something like eighty percent of all the magic in creation, and he's using it as a paper weight." Alchemist shrugged at the disbelieving look Robin sent him.
That, that was just...
That was just absurd!
"So, all in all, it's fair to say that the New Gods haven't had to deal with a lot of magic users. A few powerful ones, yeah, but..." Alchemist smiled, or at least Robin thought he was trying to. The expression was all teeth, it left the mage looking just a little unhinged. "What if they were dealing with an entire population of people that could twist and bend reality to their will? It's no guarantee of victory, nowhere near, but if I could kickstart that little spark that most people never even realize they have...?"
"...Do you have any idea the amount of chaos this could cause?" Batman asked as their group headed back to the stairs and began to descend.
"If it caused the change all at once, it'd be immeasurable," Alchemist admitted as they stopped at the next landing down, five meters below the top floor. With a snap of his fingers, Alchemist began to forge the floor. "But Infinity Island isn't sitting on a nexus of the Dragon Lines. Even when I put up the other seven towers and get the full elemental balance set up, it's still going to be a trickle-feed of magic into the world. This is going to take years, literal years before the changes start to matter."
"Besides," Alchemist turned around and looked at them as he began to walk backwards. "Chaos can be a good thing. Too much order and things just stag- Whoa!"
Alchemist... Fell off the edge.
Batman and Robin both ran to the end of the incomplete floor. Robin dropped to his knees, his hands gripping the edge-
"...I'm okay!" Alchemist shouted up at the duo.
Looking down, Robin silently sighed in relief at seeing that, yes, Alchemist was okay.
"I'm immune to fall damage!"
