The fuck, dude?
Torchbearer (DC SI)
- Thread starter jcw3
- Start date
- Superhero
Well, I don't know. I come from a small town in the south. I've never met one. Joseph hasn't until now, either.
There was a reviewer of Suit of Souls who was upset that Rory was portrayed as Aryan, so I assumed that Jews usually aren't blonde.
Scarlett Johansson, Alicia Silverstone, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Foster, Scott Caan.
Come on.
I literally did not know that any of those people were Jewish.
I don't know how much you'd thought of this, but IMO even if social media came around earlier (which is more of a conceptual issue than a technological one), I doubt it's as mainstream as today. Part of what made the internet what it is today were millennials growing up with it. Some things just take time for a society to adapt to. If the world wide web, PCs and DARPANET came about 10-15 years earlier then I suppose it'd work out, in which case it would've been Gen X that helped shape the internet, and baby boomers wouldn't be quite as clueless when it comes to digital technology.
IIRC, Ashkenazi Jews are 50% European (central and eastern european in particular), 50% Middle Eastern by their DNA. There's a good amount of them with blonde hair.
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Cybandeath
Lord Darkness, and Representative of Mad Science
- Location
- The United States of America
meanwhile the evil souls either A. freak out or B. even have a existential crisis possibly believing all their work for redemption might be meaningless or C. start plotting
*cough* *cough*
The 10 Most Amazing Feats Performed By Batman
Well, it's either they fight for redemption or they stop existing altogether. Most usually give up and become a bit melancholy after a few months in the Suit, only rejuvenated when they go without getting a new 'roommate' for a while, or when they see something that causes them all great emotions.
'Normal' means a different thing where Joseph comes from. And I'm ignoring most Batwank for this story.
I can confirm, my mother is European and my father Middle Eastern and a lot of people think I'm a Jew when they look at me, I can't even tell you how ironic it is to be victim of discrimination because you're Arab, White AND Jew in the eyes of different people depending on how much they know about me...
The world is a strange place.
Wait I think i misread that... Oh well.
Regarding the story I always wondered at the wisdom of airing secrets in a public place, and really aren't there multiple instance of heroes and villains both getting their Big brother on? Especially in a place like Gotham and one of the more likely target of such surveillance would be a 'super'. I feel like there's a weird lack of paranoia tough I understand it's possible and doesn't really break my SOD after all neither of them are at their best I think.
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Vox De Harlequin
Consequences are for other people
- Location
- Hyalean Theoric World
Have you heard of the concept of the unreliable narrator?
Since as we're experiencing the world through Joseph's thoughts, it shouldn't be strange that something that is completely obvious to you would not be expressed in the text, because jcw himself just said he had genuinely no idea and this is his self insert.
Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 7
Torchbearer Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 7
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Weng's Chinese Restaurant is like most of the buildings in this Gothamite neighborhood. Humble, quiet, a little-run down. It's one in the afternoon, according to Rory, and the exhaustion from being awake so long, plus all the walking I've done today, is starting to catch up with me.
That's why I'm a little annoyed that Rory's chosen a poorly-lit, out of the way spot in the back of the restaurant. Sure, no one will hear us talking about confidential superhero stuff, but the temptation to fall asleep is really great. I order a local brand of soda at random, none of it is familiar to me, so I'm assuming this universe has different brands of food than my own.
"Mrs. Weng probably won't be back for a few minutes. Can you show me your powers real quick?"
I glance at the aisleway, before nodding reluctantly. I move out my hand, willing that aura forth, and a golden light starts shining.
"Whoa," Rory blinks. "You can do more than that, right? What with those guys you, ah…"
"Killed, yeah. I can make laser blasts, I've got a form of telekinesis, and enhanced vision powers, plus some other stuff I haven't figured out yet. I, um, wanted to ask, am I a... candidate for your Suit?"
He shakes his head. "No, I can tell that from a glance. You're a bit... gray, but nowhere near enough of a bastard for the souls to be interested in you."
"Good to hear. So, you aren't upset with what I did at the docks?"
"Nah. Technically, I kill all the people I take into the suit."
Oh. I guess I should have figured that much. I lean forward. "So, um, since I have these powers, and you need to go hunting for souls- you do need to go hunting, right?"
He nods. I continue. "Well, I was thinking I could train up my powers. Help you out with capturing souls for the Suit. In exchange, you give me room and board. Because, ah, I'm homeless. With no money. And while I think I know how some other people could help me with that, you were my first choice. I think I can help you and vice versa."
Rory purses his lips, and we're interrupted by a short, elderly East Asian woman scurrying over to our table with a platter of our drinks. Looks like mine is a lemon-lime, sort of like Sprite or Sierra Mist, while Rory's is a traditional cola.
We give polite smiles to Mrs. Weng, and Rory orders something called beef chow fun. I don't know what that is, but I don't really get anything else on the menu either, so instead of ordering a burger and looking like an asshole, I'm going to go with that as well. She leaves, and Rory turns back to me while I'm taking a greedy sip from my glass of soda. "You're sure you don't have anywhere else?"
I have plenty. Just none convenient to get to in my current state. "I do, but they're all on the other side of the country, or they require me talking to some dangerous people. Or both."
I wonder if I could contact Dharma if this goes south. I bet he'd be able to get me set up and trained. On the other hand, he's neurotic, isolated, secretive and power-hungry, even if he's working to save the world. The next option that comes to mind is shouting 'Clark Kent is Superman' at the sky until the Man of Steel shows up, and that doesn't sound like a great idea. Baron Winters? No, that's even dumber than Dharma.
He bites his lip, thinking, looking down at the tabletop, before back at me. "That shop, Rags 'N' Tatters. It's the last thing my dad left to me before he died."
Um. Okay. He continues. "If I let you stay there… I want you to promise that you won't steal anything, that you won't fuck with anything, that- yeah. Basically, promise along those lines."
I nod almost immediately. "Yeah, of course. I promise. I'm not that- I'm pretty sure I'm not kind of person."
He sags back into the booth. "I can tell. Your soul only shows the marks of some minor selfishness towards loved ones and other... misdemeanors, I guess that's a good way to phrase it. Outside of that killing in self-defense, anyway."
"That's good to hear, at least," I say. At least I'm sitting in a heated building, rather than walking through the freezing cold. There's something nice about this awkward situation. "So, do you have a couch or something I can sleep on?"
"Yeah, there's a pull-out bed on the couch upstairs, where I live. I'll show you when we get done here."
"Awesome. Thanks," I reply. Rory gives a tight-lipped nod in response.
There are a few moments of awkward silence, before Rory speaks up again. "How do you plan on training with your powers?"
I shrug. "I really don't know. I can feel this... instinctive force inside of me, this sort of aura, and I know that I can shape it in all sorts of ways. I might not be able to train the explode-y laser blasts inside your home-" he sort of smiles at that, "-but I think my enhanced vision abilities and other stuff might work. I really don't know how long that would take. I figured out some basic abilities in maybe... a couple hours? So who knows."
"This weekend, I can probably drive you to my dad's cottage in the Pines. It's all alone in the woods, so you can practice the more explosive stuff freely if you'd like."
"Oh, thanks," I say, before frowning. "What's 'the Pines'?"
"It's, ah, this really forested area. Not much of it since Gotham, Bludhaven, New York and Philly are growing every day, but there's more than enough for privacy."
"You're sure there's no one there?"
He considers the possibility, before shaking his head. "The campers and hunters, maybe, but it's not really the season for it, I don't think. Even Dad rarely used it once he got a hold of the Suit."
"Got a hold of it? Like, keeping the souls from getting antsy?"
"Yeah. They can get rowdy when you don't give them new roommates. Was that in the comics?"
"Sort of. I know that in the older comics, from the early 90s and before, that you- or, sorry, the depictions of you- struggled to keep the souls in check, and that you had to rein yourself in from absorbing souls."
He looks absolutely befuddled. "Why would I care what happens to a child molestor or a guy who beat his wife to death? Hell, they're getting redemption from going in the suit. Otherwise, well, I'm guessing you know what happens to them."
I try to churn the gears of my memory, thinking back to Cry of the Dead and the Batman crossover (what a missed opportunity that was. A bunch of skinheads? That was the bad guy you picked? Just because he's Jewish? Always pissed me off.). "I think it was because y- the depiction of you in the comics- he was concerned with losing control of himself to the souls."
Rory nods. "That's something that can happen if you go into the Suit blind. If I went in without preparation, those bastards would have eaten me alive," he explains. He leans forward, folding his arms on the table. "But before the leukemia got him last year, my dad called in a friend. Rabbi Benjamin Sinnowitz."
I nod. "I've heard of him. He was a supporting character in a comic called Xombi. Ever heard of two women named Nun of the Above and Catholic Girl?" I ask, belatedly remembering a man named Julian somethingas well.
"What the hell? No," he laughs. "Are those real names?"
I can't help but chuckle with him. "In the comic, yeah. They worked with a guy named David Kim, who became immortal and gained high-speed regeneration thanks to an accident with nanobiology. He became something called a xombi, spelled x-o-m-b-i. Immortals, basically. Somehow the accident was magical in nature, and he got involved with Dakota City's magical world."
Rory takes a moment to absorb that information. Xombi's one of my favorite comics, sure, but I understand the premise is more than a little weird. Then again, I guess it's not a comic anymore, it's reality. Or part of it, anyway. You know, come to think of it, I guess that people like Vandal Savage and Mitch Shelley would be xombis, too.
"Dakota. That's where Icon's from. Rabbi Sinnowitz, too, obviously," he hastily adds. "Did he use golems in the comics, too?"
I nod. He continues. "I... don't want to go into too many details, because it's not a fun thing to talk about, but my dad, the rabbi, and a friend of the rabbi's, Julian Parker, managed to cook up a ritual to help bind the souls to me, and the reverse as well. That way, the souls would mostly have to listen to me. They still act up when I get anxious, and whenever I get too close to an evil soul, the Suit flares up entirely, so I try not to go out into crowds too much, but otherwise, it's a lot better than it could be."
"Was... was this voluntary?" I ask, almost meekly. Because if it wasn't, bonding your kid's soul to a bunch of evil souls could be seen as a… Suit-worthy prospect.
"Oh, yeah. It definitely was. Dad had practically raised me from birth to prepare for this. Freaked the hell out of me. But... when he was on his deathbed, he begged me to take up the responsibility, so that the Suit wouldn't just go around and take control of some poor sucker."
"Do all Ragmen have to go through those rituals?" I ask. "I don't want- you don't have to talk to me about the ritual if you don't want to, but how did your dad manage it when he put on the Suit? Or those before him?"
"Either taught by their parents or self-taught, I guess. I feel bad for those guys who were on their own. The souls can be a handful at the best of times."
Mrs. Weng starts walking down the aisleway right as I was about to ask another question. Beef chow fun... looks like a mixture of beef, noodles, and greens? Ah... onions. Oh well. I suppose I can handle it. I won't be rude to Rory, he is paying for this meal, after all. She handed us chopsticks, and each of us gets a little paper baggie with a fork in case we're sissies. Well... nah, fuck it, I'm going to use the fork.
The two of us dig in, our conversation quieting down, both of us hungry as hell. It's... weird tasting, but not that bad. It's probably just not something I'm familiar with. Whatever. It could be made of bugs and I would still devour it in my current state of hunger.
We finish our meals, Mrs. Weng handing Rory the bill, and after she scurries off, he speaks up first. "So... what kind of comics was I in exactly?"
Author's Notes: Accidentally uploaded this without links. That would have been bad.
Also, I've written up to 1.9 thus far, but I'm going to take a break from the story after posting the latest updates (1.9, probably), for personal matters. This story will return someday. I'll continue updating every other day until 1.9 is up, and then a hiatus.
Also! If you want to understand Ragman, most of Shadowpact #8 is accurate for this story, and it should be all you need to understand the basics. There are differences. The Jewish mystics created the Ragman suit earlier than WW2 in this universe, Rory is an only child in this universe, Rory doesn't operate as Ragman that publicly yet , and so on, but the basics are the same. PM me if you want a link. Hopefully, though, I'll explain it well enough so that it won't be necessary.
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Weng's Chinese Restaurant is like most of the buildings in this Gothamite neighborhood. Humble, quiet, a little-run down. It's one in the afternoon, according to Rory, and the exhaustion from being awake so long, plus all the walking I've done today, is starting to catch up with me.
That's why I'm a little annoyed that Rory's chosen a poorly-lit, out of the way spot in the back of the restaurant. Sure, no one will hear us talking about confidential superhero stuff, but the temptation to fall asleep is really great. I order a local brand of soda at random, none of it is familiar to me, so I'm assuming this universe has different brands of food than my own.
"Mrs. Weng probably won't be back for a few minutes. Can you show me your powers real quick?"
I glance at the aisleway, before nodding reluctantly. I move out my hand, willing that aura forth, and a golden light starts shining.
"Whoa," Rory blinks. "You can do more than that, right? What with those guys you, ah…"
"Killed, yeah. I can make laser blasts, I've got a form of telekinesis, and enhanced vision powers, plus some other stuff I haven't figured out yet. I, um, wanted to ask, am I a... candidate for your Suit?"
He shakes his head. "No, I can tell that from a glance. You're a bit... gray, but nowhere near enough of a bastard for the souls to be interested in you."
"Good to hear. So, you aren't upset with what I did at the docks?"
"Nah. Technically, I kill all the people I take into the suit."
Oh. I guess I should have figured that much. I lean forward. "So, um, since I have these powers, and you need to go hunting for souls- you do need to go hunting, right?"
He nods. I continue. "Well, I was thinking I could train up my powers. Help you out with capturing souls for the Suit. In exchange, you give me room and board. Because, ah, I'm homeless. With no money. And while I think I know how some other people could help me with that, you were my first choice. I think I can help you and vice versa."
Rory purses his lips, and we're interrupted by a short, elderly East Asian woman scurrying over to our table with a platter of our drinks. Looks like mine is a lemon-lime, sort of like Sprite or Sierra Mist, while Rory's is a traditional cola.
We give polite smiles to Mrs. Weng, and Rory orders something called beef chow fun. I don't know what that is, but I don't really get anything else on the menu either, so instead of ordering a burger and looking like an asshole, I'm going to go with that as well. She leaves, and Rory turns back to me while I'm taking a greedy sip from my glass of soda. "You're sure you don't have anywhere else?"
I have plenty. Just none convenient to get to in my current state. "I do, but they're all on the other side of the country, or they require me talking to some dangerous people. Or both."
I wonder if I could contact Dharma if this goes south. I bet he'd be able to get me set up and trained. On the other hand, he's neurotic, isolated, secretive and power-hungry, even if he's working to save the world. The next option that comes to mind is shouting 'Clark Kent is Superman' at the sky until the Man of Steel shows up, and that doesn't sound like a great idea. Baron Winters? No, that's even dumber than Dharma.
He bites his lip, thinking, looking down at the tabletop, before back at me. "That shop, Rags 'N' Tatters. It's the last thing my dad left to me before he died."
Um. Okay. He continues. "If I let you stay there… I want you to promise that you won't steal anything, that you won't fuck with anything, that- yeah. Basically, promise along those lines."
I nod almost immediately. "Yeah, of course. I promise. I'm not that- I'm pretty sure I'm not kind of person."
He sags back into the booth. "I can tell. Your soul only shows the marks of some minor selfishness towards loved ones and other... misdemeanors, I guess that's a good way to phrase it. Outside of that killing in self-defense, anyway."
"That's good to hear, at least," I say. At least I'm sitting in a heated building, rather than walking through the freezing cold. There's something nice about this awkward situation. "So, do you have a couch or something I can sleep on?"
"Yeah, there's a pull-out bed on the couch upstairs, where I live. I'll show you when we get done here."
"Awesome. Thanks," I reply. Rory gives a tight-lipped nod in response.
There are a few moments of awkward silence, before Rory speaks up again. "How do you plan on training with your powers?"
I shrug. "I really don't know. I can feel this... instinctive force inside of me, this sort of aura, and I know that I can shape it in all sorts of ways. I might not be able to train the explode-y laser blasts inside your home-" he sort of smiles at that, "-but I think my enhanced vision abilities and other stuff might work. I really don't know how long that would take. I figured out some basic abilities in maybe... a couple hours? So who knows."
"This weekend, I can probably drive you to my dad's cottage in the Pines. It's all alone in the woods, so you can practice the more explosive stuff freely if you'd like."
"Oh, thanks," I say, before frowning. "What's 'the Pines'?"
"It's, ah, this really forested area. Not much of it since Gotham, Bludhaven, New York and Philly are growing every day, but there's more than enough for privacy."
"You're sure there's no one there?"
He considers the possibility, before shaking his head. "The campers and hunters, maybe, but it's not really the season for it, I don't think. Even Dad rarely used it once he got a hold of the Suit."
"Got a hold of it? Like, keeping the souls from getting antsy?"
"Yeah. They can get rowdy when you don't give them new roommates. Was that in the comics?"
"Sort of. I know that in the older comics, from the early 90s and before, that you- or, sorry, the depictions of you- struggled to keep the souls in check, and that you had to rein yourself in from absorbing souls."
He looks absolutely befuddled. "Why would I care what happens to a child molestor or a guy who beat his wife to death? Hell, they're getting redemption from going in the suit. Otherwise, well, I'm guessing you know what happens to them."
I try to churn the gears of my memory, thinking back to Cry of the Dead and the Batman crossover (what a missed opportunity that was. A bunch of skinheads? That was the bad guy you picked? Just because he's Jewish? Always pissed me off.). "I think it was because y- the depiction of you in the comics- he was concerned with losing control of himself to the souls."
Rory nods. "That's something that can happen if you go into the Suit blind. If I went in without preparation, those bastards would have eaten me alive," he explains. He leans forward, folding his arms on the table. "But before the leukemia got him last year, my dad called in a friend. Rabbi Benjamin Sinnowitz."
I nod. "I've heard of him. He was a supporting character in a comic called Xombi. Ever heard of two women named Nun of the Above and Catholic Girl?" I ask, belatedly remembering a man named Julian somethingas well.
"What the hell? No," he laughs. "Are those real names?"
I can't help but chuckle with him. "In the comic, yeah. They worked with a guy named David Kim, who became immortal and gained high-speed regeneration thanks to an accident with nanobiology. He became something called a xombi, spelled x-o-m-b-i. Immortals, basically. Somehow the accident was magical in nature, and he got involved with Dakota City's magical world."
Rory takes a moment to absorb that information. Xombi's one of my favorite comics, sure, but I understand the premise is more than a little weird. Then again, I guess it's not a comic anymore, it's reality. Or part of it, anyway. You know, come to think of it, I guess that people like Vandal Savage and Mitch Shelley would be xombis, too.
"Dakota. That's where Icon's from. Rabbi Sinnowitz, too, obviously," he hastily adds. "Did he use golems in the comics, too?"
I nod. He continues. "I... don't want to go into too many details, because it's not a fun thing to talk about, but my dad, the rabbi, and a friend of the rabbi's, Julian Parker, managed to cook up a ritual to help bind the souls to me, and the reverse as well. That way, the souls would mostly have to listen to me. They still act up when I get anxious, and whenever I get too close to an evil soul, the Suit flares up entirely, so I try not to go out into crowds too much, but otherwise, it's a lot better than it could be."
"Was... was this voluntary?" I ask, almost meekly. Because if it wasn't, bonding your kid's soul to a bunch of evil souls could be seen as a… Suit-worthy prospect.
"Oh, yeah. It definitely was. Dad had practically raised me from birth to prepare for this. Freaked the hell out of me. But... when he was on his deathbed, he begged me to take up the responsibility, so that the Suit wouldn't just go around and take control of some poor sucker."
"Do all Ragmen have to go through those rituals?" I ask. "I don't want- you don't have to talk to me about the ritual if you don't want to, but how did your dad manage it when he put on the Suit? Or those before him?"
"Either taught by their parents or self-taught, I guess. I feel bad for those guys who were on their own. The souls can be a handful at the best of times."
Mrs. Weng starts walking down the aisleway right as I was about to ask another question. Beef chow fun... looks like a mixture of beef, noodles, and greens? Ah... onions. Oh well. I suppose I can handle it. I won't be rude to Rory, he is paying for this meal, after all. She handed us chopsticks, and each of us gets a little paper baggie with a fork in case we're sissies. Well... nah, fuck it, I'm going to use the fork.
The two of us dig in, our conversation quieting down, both of us hungry as hell. It's... weird tasting, but not that bad. It's probably just not something I'm familiar with. Whatever. It could be made of bugs and I would still devour it in my current state of hunger.
We finish our meals, Mrs. Weng handing Rory the bill, and after she scurries off, he speaks up first. "So... what kind of comics was I in exactly?"
Author's Notes: Accidentally uploaded this without links. That would have been bad.
Also, I've written up to 1.9 thus far, but I'm going to take a break from the story after posting the latest updates (1.9, probably), for personal matters. This story will return someday. I'll continue updating every other day until 1.9 is up, and then a hiatus.
Also! If you want to understand Ragman, most of Shadowpact #8 is accurate for this story, and it should be all you need to understand the basics. There are differences. The Jewish mystics created the Ragman suit earlier than WW2 in this universe, Rory is an only child in this universe, Rory doesn't operate as Ragman that publicly yet , and so on, but the basics are the same. PM me if you want a link. Hopefully, though, I'll explain it well enough so that it won't be necessary.
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Yes...? Are the posts appearing in some other order for you? One where jcw3 said he had no idea before I listed them? Because if they are, you should get that checked.
Vox De Harlequin
Consequences are for other people
- Location
- Hyalean Theoric World
I did, but you seemed to be implying that he should retroactively change it in the story because he knows now.
Which would be a tad silly, since the SI split at an earlier point in his personal timeline.
You're seeing an implication where there is none, especially because I didn't bring it up again after he made his post. What are you hoping to accomplish?
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Vox De Harlequin
Consequences are for other people
- Location
- Hyalean Theoric World
Well with that post I was explaining why I made the previous one, and with said post I was trying to clear up what I thought was a misunderstanding on your part that this story may have been written with an omniscient narrator, so that maybe you wouldn't get so offended, as your own posts implied.
I'm looking forward to the next when you come back to it.
Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 8
Torchbearer Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 8
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
"... so outside of the older comics, where you were just some guy who thought green rags would look intimidating-" Rory laughs, "-which I really didn't read, since they were old and the dialogue was all dumb, there was Ragman: Cry of the Dead."
He grins. "Sounds dramatic."
"Oh, it... basically, it was a sort-of confusing comic from, like, the late eighties or something. At that point they had figured out the Suit was made of evil souls, so that's what they were writing. You just didn't have much control over it, and didn't like taking people into the Suit. I remember there was this scene in that comic where the rags left the Suit and converged on this one woman, and you were absolutely horrified that they consumed her."
Rory looks at the ground thoughtfully. "I don't... think I've ever cared that much about the souls I absorb. Whenever I take them in, I get a flash of the... just horrible shit they've done."
There's a brief interlude as Mrs. Weng stops by to return Rory's credit card. As we leave our seats, I ask him, "How many souls have you taken in?"
"I do my best to take in at least one per week. The long nights are annoying, it's rarely fun, and I usually don't wind up with very useful souls. Sometimes I'll get lucky and find a couple thugs, but... that's about it. Hopefully, when you get trained up…"
I catch his drift. "We can start going after the big wigs. Who exactly are they, anyway?"
We exit the restaurant through the door, waving to the couple who own the restaurant as we do so, starting the ten minute walk back to Rags 'N' Tatters, before Rory answers. "Too many to list, really. The Bat and the cops have been hitting Falcone, the local mob boss, pretty hard, taken down a couple of his top guys, but the mafia are still alive and kicking."
Carmine Falcone. I remember him. A minor character from the comics. "I guess we aim to change that."
"Fuck yeah. I've seen what those assholes do to people. Someday, hopefully someday soon, Falcone will get his own rag like anyone else."
"Who else is there? I remember when I read a comic about Gotham City's cops, there seemed to be a lot of division within the gangs."
"Oh yeah, definitely. Falcone keeps order, the mob has its own hierarchy and 'clans', I guess you could say, but there are plenty of other gangsters we need to worry about if we're going to eventually step up our game. Casa Nostra, Rupert Thorne, the Bertinelli's, the Sullivan's, Ibanescu's, the skinheads, the other, lesser gangs. Then there are the lunatics, like the Joker. He ever pop up in those comics?"
I nod. "Batman's arch-nemesis. Somehow still alive after years of being a murdering psychopath."
Rory sighs, running a hand through his hair. "He's a fucking lunatic, and the cops can't catch him. Bat hasn't found him, either. Showed up last year sometime, and he's killed seventy-four people since then. Sixteen kids."
I get the feeling I don't want to know, but… "The kids. What did he-"
"Nerve gas. He calls it Smilex. He videotaped it, and sent it to their parents," Rory bites his lip as he finishes that sentence, his hands clenched into a fist. Pisses me off, too.
"We see him, he dies," I say, looking straight ahead at the street. Did I just... am I suddenly the kind of person a-ok with premeditated murder? I don't even have the power to reliably enforce this threat yet!
Rory turns to me, a sober look on his face. "That was never up for discussion."
Well, I guess it's the Joker. I don't give two shits if he dies. "I've still gotta train."
"Yeah, me too," he agrees.
I frown. "Thought you'd already had the suit for a year?"
He shakes his head. "Yeah, but I haven't been using it consistently enough. It's... an intimidating thing to wear, and while I do have fairly full control over the Suit, it's…really hard to resist the urge to just jump on someone and drag them into the Suit kicking and screaming. Which would normally be... not fine, but tolerable, I guess, but when it's a cop or something, and you risk bringing the whole GCPD down on your head, it gets worrying, to say the least. 'Course, I might just be a coward. That could be it, too. Or both," he mutters to himself.
We arrive back at Rags 'N' Tatters, and Rory unlocks the door. "His name was Marcus Wise. He was a bastard, but... a useful one. Since I picked him up a couple months ago, I've been talking to him. Getting data on the gangs of Gotham. I was going to see about attacking the mob bosses in their sleep, once I worked up the courage. But-" he opens the door for me, "-now that you're here, I think I might have some more options."
"When we go to the Pines, will you be training too?"
He nods, taking the closed sign out of the window. "Definitely. I've been putting it off way too long, acting on pure instinct."
"In the comics, you had to call on your souls to give you extra strength. Is that still the case here, in the... the real world?"
"Yeah. It's not pleasant, but I can do it. If the souls volunteer, they get one step down the thousands of years of redemption. If not, they get bupkis. Either way, they help me out."
"What about injuries? I remember comics-you used the souls to take on his wounds."
Rory returns to the space behind the counter, pushing past a small, waist-high door. "The souls take those on for me, too. They usually heal over time, but if they're seriously lethal, then the souls could be destroyed. I have to spread those kinds of wounds out among the souls, and do it quickly. One of the many reasons I usually go after soft targets."
I lean over the glass counter, facing him. I glance down at the antiques in the aforementioned counter. Clocks, toys, figurines, the whole menagerie. Not my scene, really.
"Do you have a laptop or computer or something?" I ask him.
"Dunno what a lap top is, but yeah, I've got a portable upstairs. Why?"
"I'd like to do research on the state of the world. I'm relying on contradictory info from the hundreds of comics I've read, and this world already seems way different from most DC universes."
"Makes sense. It's the black one on the coffee table upstairs. Press the red button on the front and it'll flip open."
"Thanks."
He shrugs. "No problem. Oh, hey, we never finished talking about the comics that I- that the depiction of me was in!"
"Shit, you're right."
He smiles teasingly. "Come on, dude, I've got an ego to feed here."
I laugh. "Okay, uh, we were on Cry of the Dead, right?" He nods. "Okay. Well, comics-you fought voodoo beings in New Orleans. It was pretty confusing and bizarre, but there were some neat visuals of the Suit of Souls."
Rory frowns. "What's New Orleans?"
What? "It's... a city in Louisiana? Mardi Gras? Creole? Gumbo?"
"That's St. Roch, isn't it?" he says, pronouncing it like rock, instead of roash, like how I always pronounced it.
"Isn't St. Roch where the Hawks live?"
"Hawkman and Hawkwoman? Yeah."
"Huh. I... guess it makes sense that if you guys have extra cities, then you're also missing some."
Rory leans forward, confused. "Extra cities?"
"Ah, Gotham doesn't exist on my... my homeworld."
"What?"
"Neither does Metropolis, Bludhaven, Coast City, and so forth."
He purses his lips, and looks down at the counter. "Weird."
"You know, I'm absolutely astonished that you believe me. I figured you'd call me insane for saying I read comics about you on my earth."
Rory grins wryly. "After I saw my first golem, I figured, hey, anything's possible."
"Sensible. So, um, after Cry of the Dead, there was a Batman crossover. Or maybe before that. I dunno. The two of you fought skinheads."
"Sounds fun. I've been trying to build up enough courage to take those fuckers down."
I look out the window as a woman looks in the shop. "You know a guy named Rabbi Luria?"
He suddenly gets a worried look on his face. "He's like a... yeah, I know him. I know him well, in fact. Dad was usually out using the Suit when I was a kid, so Rabbi Luria taught me most of life's lessons. Why?"
"In the comics, I don't remember how, but he wound up dying."
His expression darkens. "The skinheads, right?"
"Probably."
He stares off into space. "Then I know what I'm doing for the next couple of nights. Thanks, Joseph."
I should probably feel a bit guilty about this, but... ah, they're Nazis. Fuck 'em. "No problem."
The window shopper, an elderly white woman of a skinny stature, walks in, and I'm guessing now's probably a bad time to continue talking about extradimensional comics. "Can I head upstairs? Specifically, to sleep? I've had a pretty long day."
"Ah, sure. Door's open, just head up the stairs. There's a spare blanket in the closet by the bathroom. Couch is in the living room, you'll see it."
I wave goodbye, and follow his advice.
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002
"... so outside of the older comics, where you were just some guy who thought green rags would look intimidating-" Rory laughs, "-which I really didn't read, since they were old and the dialogue was all dumb, there was Ragman: Cry of the Dead."
He grins. "Sounds dramatic."
"Oh, it... basically, it was a sort-of confusing comic from, like, the late eighties or something. At that point they had figured out the Suit was made of evil souls, so that's what they were writing. You just didn't have much control over it, and didn't like taking people into the Suit. I remember there was this scene in that comic where the rags left the Suit and converged on this one woman, and you were absolutely horrified that they consumed her."
Rory looks at the ground thoughtfully. "I don't... think I've ever cared that much about the souls I absorb. Whenever I take them in, I get a flash of the... just horrible shit they've done."
There's a brief interlude as Mrs. Weng stops by to return Rory's credit card. As we leave our seats, I ask him, "How many souls have you taken in?"
"I do my best to take in at least one per week. The long nights are annoying, it's rarely fun, and I usually don't wind up with very useful souls. Sometimes I'll get lucky and find a couple thugs, but... that's about it. Hopefully, when you get trained up…"
I catch his drift. "We can start going after the big wigs. Who exactly are they, anyway?"
We exit the restaurant through the door, waving to the couple who own the restaurant as we do so, starting the ten minute walk back to Rags 'N' Tatters, before Rory answers. "Too many to list, really. The Bat and the cops have been hitting Falcone, the local mob boss, pretty hard, taken down a couple of his top guys, but the mafia are still alive and kicking."
Carmine Falcone. I remember him. A minor character from the comics. "I guess we aim to change that."
"Fuck yeah. I've seen what those assholes do to people. Someday, hopefully someday soon, Falcone will get his own rag like anyone else."
"Who else is there? I remember when I read a comic about Gotham City's cops, there seemed to be a lot of division within the gangs."
"Oh yeah, definitely. Falcone keeps order, the mob has its own hierarchy and 'clans', I guess you could say, but there are plenty of other gangsters we need to worry about if we're going to eventually step up our game. Casa Nostra, Rupert Thorne, the Bertinelli's, the Sullivan's, Ibanescu's, the skinheads, the other, lesser gangs. Then there are the lunatics, like the Joker. He ever pop up in those comics?"
I nod. "Batman's arch-nemesis. Somehow still alive after years of being a murdering psychopath."
Rory sighs, running a hand through his hair. "He's a fucking lunatic, and the cops can't catch him. Bat hasn't found him, either. Showed up last year sometime, and he's killed seventy-four people since then. Sixteen kids."
I get the feeling I don't want to know, but… "The kids. What did he-"
"Nerve gas. He calls it Smilex. He videotaped it, and sent it to their parents," Rory bites his lip as he finishes that sentence, his hands clenched into a fist. Pisses me off, too.
"We see him, he dies," I say, looking straight ahead at the street. Did I just... am I suddenly the kind of person a-ok with premeditated murder? I don't even have the power to reliably enforce this threat yet!
Rory turns to me, a sober look on his face. "That was never up for discussion."
Well, I guess it's the Joker. I don't give two shits if he dies. "I've still gotta train."
"Yeah, me too," he agrees.
I frown. "Thought you'd already had the suit for a year?"
He shakes his head. "Yeah, but I haven't been using it consistently enough. It's... an intimidating thing to wear, and while I do have fairly full control over the Suit, it's…really hard to resist the urge to just jump on someone and drag them into the Suit kicking and screaming. Which would normally be... not fine, but tolerable, I guess, but when it's a cop or something, and you risk bringing the whole GCPD down on your head, it gets worrying, to say the least. 'Course, I might just be a coward. That could be it, too. Or both," he mutters to himself.
We arrive back at Rags 'N' Tatters, and Rory unlocks the door. "His name was Marcus Wise. He was a bastard, but... a useful one. Since I picked him up a couple months ago, I've been talking to him. Getting data on the gangs of Gotham. I was going to see about attacking the mob bosses in their sleep, once I worked up the courage. But-" he opens the door for me, "-now that you're here, I think I might have some more options."
"When we go to the Pines, will you be training too?"
He nods, taking the closed sign out of the window. "Definitely. I've been putting it off way too long, acting on pure instinct."
"In the comics, you had to call on your souls to give you extra strength. Is that still the case here, in the... the real world?"
"Yeah. It's not pleasant, but I can do it. If the souls volunteer, they get one step down the thousands of years of redemption. If not, they get bupkis. Either way, they help me out."
"What about injuries? I remember comics-you used the souls to take on his wounds."
Rory returns to the space behind the counter, pushing past a small, waist-high door. "The souls take those on for me, too. They usually heal over time, but if they're seriously lethal, then the souls could be destroyed. I have to spread those kinds of wounds out among the souls, and do it quickly. One of the many reasons I usually go after soft targets."
I lean over the glass counter, facing him. I glance down at the antiques in the aforementioned counter. Clocks, toys, figurines, the whole menagerie. Not my scene, really.
"Do you have a laptop or computer or something?" I ask him.
"Dunno what a lap top is, but yeah, I've got a portable upstairs. Why?"
"I'd like to do research on the state of the world. I'm relying on contradictory info from the hundreds of comics I've read, and this world already seems way different from most DC universes."
"Makes sense. It's the black one on the coffee table upstairs. Press the red button on the front and it'll flip open."
"Thanks."
He shrugs. "No problem. Oh, hey, we never finished talking about the comics that I- that the depiction of me was in!"
"Shit, you're right."
He smiles teasingly. "Come on, dude, I've got an ego to feed here."
I laugh. "Okay, uh, we were on Cry of the Dead, right?" He nods. "Okay. Well, comics-you fought voodoo beings in New Orleans. It was pretty confusing and bizarre, but there were some neat visuals of the Suit of Souls."
Rory frowns. "What's New Orleans?"
What? "It's... a city in Louisiana? Mardi Gras? Creole? Gumbo?"
"That's St. Roch, isn't it?" he says, pronouncing it like rock, instead of roash, like how I always pronounced it.
"Isn't St. Roch where the Hawks live?"
"Hawkman and Hawkwoman? Yeah."
"Huh. I... guess it makes sense that if you guys have extra cities, then you're also missing some."
Rory leans forward, confused. "Extra cities?"
"Ah, Gotham doesn't exist on my... my homeworld."
"What?"
"Neither does Metropolis, Bludhaven, Coast City, and so forth."
He purses his lips, and looks down at the counter. "Weird."
"You know, I'm absolutely astonished that you believe me. I figured you'd call me insane for saying I read comics about you on my earth."
Rory grins wryly. "After I saw my first golem, I figured, hey, anything's possible."
"Sensible. So, um, after Cry of the Dead, there was a Batman crossover. Or maybe before that. I dunno. The two of you fought skinheads."
"Sounds fun. I've been trying to build up enough courage to take those fuckers down."
I look out the window as a woman looks in the shop. "You know a guy named Rabbi Luria?"
He suddenly gets a worried look on his face. "He's like a... yeah, I know him. I know him well, in fact. Dad was usually out using the Suit when I was a kid, so Rabbi Luria taught me most of life's lessons. Why?"
"In the comics, I don't remember how, but he wound up dying."
His expression darkens. "The skinheads, right?"
"Probably."
He stares off into space. "Then I know what I'm doing for the next couple of nights. Thanks, Joseph."
I should probably feel a bit guilty about this, but... ah, they're Nazis. Fuck 'em. "No problem."
The window shopper, an elderly white woman of a skinny stature, walks in, and I'm guessing now's probably a bad time to continue talking about extradimensional comics. "Can I head upstairs? Specifically, to sleep? I've had a pretty long day."
"Ah, sure. Door's open, just head up the stairs. There's a spare blanket in the closet by the bathroom. Couch is in the living room, you'll see it."
I wave goodbye, and follow his advice.
Are the comics really like this? It's like they're stuck in the 50s, with the exception of skinheads but that was an 80s thing at the latest. All the gangs on the east coast, or at least where I live are black, hispanic, russian, chinese or korean. The Italian and Irish mobs were taken out decades ago, thanks to the govt. and competing gangsters like Nicky Barnes.
They are. The explanation I'm going for is that Gotham is a whiter city than most of America's cities, and that most of America's gangs, while there are more mafia holdouts than in our world, are more like our own.
There are black, Hispanic, Asian gangs, but they aren't as relevant as the psychos or the mafia types.
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Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 9
Torchbearer Arc 1: Rags and Tatters 9
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Rory, using some type of weird mini-binoculars and a pair of tweezers, looks over a small piece of jewelry, as an elderly woman looks on with what looks like a bit of apprehension. I can't tell what the jewelry is from this position, both from my limited powers and my own lack of knowledge... it's green. My scrying and microscopic vision don't combine that well yet... it's still so cool that I get to say that now. Even if the situation itself is a bit inconvenient.
I laugh, dispelling the scrying effect. I'm getting a bit greedy, aren't I? I turn my gaze to the tablet/laptop hybrid on the coffee table in front of me (the portable, I recall idly). Since I went to bed around two in the afternoon yesterday, my day was already starting at one in the morning, and while I did my damnedest to fall asleep again after that, I didn't find much success.
So I worked on my visual abilities, and another of my powers, one that I was hoping I had and was ecstatic to find out that I did. Wound up going back to sleep around five in the morning, and woke up at ten or so.
Transmutation. Now, for the record, I'm going to spare you long, lurid descriptions of how exactly I train. When I reach out for a power that I think I might have, there's this instinctive feeling that I either have it or don't. From there, I need to extend my will, focusing on what I want to happen, and eventually, it will.
Control over this ability is minimal at first, to say the least. When I first started training transmutation this morning, for instance, I practically had a hernia trying to change the color of the lined paper to a darker shade of gray. I managed it, but I had to focus on a spot the size of a freckle, and it took a little over a minute. I was able to repeat that trick quicker after a while, but it was still goddamn exhausting. Essentially useless outside of being a parlor trick, thus far, anyway.
Telekinesis, on the other hand, is progressing well. Developing finer control over it is going fairly smoothly. I managed to lift the coffee table with my mind today, and it's among the coolest things I've ever done. The crash it made when it fell a couple inches to the ground was, admittedly, a bit worrying. But fortunately it's not broken. That would have been a fun conversation to have with Rory.
After the coffee table incident, I decided to tone it down for a while. No need to push my luck any further, after all. I used Rory's portable to do a bit more research on this world. I started with the Gotham (apparently, when it comes to those cities that have City after their names, you usually just refer to them as the first part, rather than the whole name, so instead of Gotham City, it's just Gotham) crime scene.
There wasn't that much, I'm afraid. People going free when they probably shouldn't have, the Bat taking down minor gangs and crippling the Bertinelli's, nothing too terribly useful. I took the time to create a Twunter account, and I made sure to follow as many superhero and newspeople types as I could. I, ah, wasted an embarrassing amount of time on there.
The fact that I can follow both Clark Kent (seventy thousand followers, regularly uses shorthand, spends way too much time talking about baseball) and Superman (one hundred and twenty-four million followers, I'm assuming some are bots, only updates every couple of months with some news on a supervillain takedown or something) on the Twitter-equivalent is hilarious.
There's also Lois Lane (she tweets a lot, reminds me of Maggie Haberman, more libertarian than I was expecting). As for superheroes, most of their accounts aren't used very often. Knight, an obscure British street-leveller I vaguely remember from the comics, has a fair following, but I get the feeling most of it is ironic, considering his feed and reputation alike are essentially watching a man's life fall apart, and I'm just not interested in that.
The Flash keeps people updated with numerous daily tweets (I think they're called wuns in this world) on criminal activity and civic awareness in Central and Keystone Cities, as well as Missouri and Kansas in general. Wonder Woman has a representative from the Themysciran Embassy (who I do follow, even if they're mostly run by American associates), who tweets for her about matters of Themysciran relations with the outside world and women's issues worldwide.
Green Lantern regularly wuns (gonna be weird using that instead of tweets, but okay) out facts about the galaxy, and the workings of the Green Lantern Corps and its affiliates, and it's genuinely fascinating. It looks like it's mostly stuff about Sectors 2813-2815, which is still details and factoids about hundreds of species, of the roughly four hundred and eighty thousand sapient species which exist in the Milky Way. On average, each sector patrolled by the Corps has one hundred and thirty-four naturally occurring sapients.
This is so fascinating! I'm getting caught up in it... okay, the predominant organization in Sector 2814 is the Cooperative, founded by the far kraan (better known to comics fans as the Xudarians) and the mikdufs(better known as the Terminans). It was founded in the seventh century, by an alliance of the reigning mikduf civilizations and the far kraan-unified Xudar, when an alien race called the yoongar, who had invaded the area using wormhole technology, attacked them both.
After the yoongar were defeated and 'civilized' (Taldegan propaganda says that it was a regrettable treatment, but understandable at the time, I respectfully disagree), Terminus and Xudar agreed to a formal alliance, which grew into a peaceful federation between them and one hundred and sixty-eight other sapient races.
They've got matter replication and teleportation technology, which puts them as one of the greatest powers in the galaxy, if they put their minds to it. But the Cooperative, based out of the 'Justice Moon' of Taldega, which I vaguely remember from Icon, is strictly non-interventionist. Well, at least Earth probably doesn't have to worry about any alien invasions beyond stuff like the Star Conquerors. Seems like we're under the nuclear umbrella of the Cooperative.
I just jinxed it, didn't it? I take some more looks at the member-species of the Cooperative. Ungara's one of them. Looks like Abin Sur regularly had meetings with Cooperative leadership to help defend Sector 2814, before his untimely demise. No public details about that, by the way, beyond the fact that he died and the current Lantern took his role as the protector of 2814. Guess the Guardians don't want the world knowing about Atrocitus.
Zauriel, Aztek, and Martian Manhunter all have verified Twunter feeds, but they have tweeted- sorry, wunned- exactly zero times. Ted Kord's feed goes over my head most of the time, but I follow him anyway. President Suarez and Vice President Laig get follows as well.
I won't go into detail about the twenty to forty newspeople I also followed, but suffice to say, I spent a couple minutes making sure they weren't kooks. To be honest, I only followed one woman because she regularly seems to diss G. Gordon Godfrey, who seems like a Sean Hannity equivalent. Wonder if he's Apokoliptian here as well?
Rory walks up the stairs as I continue scrolling through Green Lantern's feed, reading about crecks, an alien species that looks sort of like a taller E.T. with a wider neck. Apparently they were a nomadic, bronze age civilization from Sector 2813 uplifted by the far kraan in the fourteenth century… "Hey, dude. What's up?" he asks, taking a seat in the chair opposite from the pull-out bed on which I'm sitting.
"Ah, nothing much. Reading through Green Lantern's Twitter feed- ah, sorry. Twunter."
Rory nods. "Heavy reading."
I laugh. "Yeah, I probably know more about the Cooperative now than I do most South American countries."
Rory frowns, as if remembering something, opens his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then apparently a lightbulb goes off in his head and he waves his hand, as if saying 'forget it'. "Ah, I was going to ask what that was, but then I remembered. Icon's from there, right?"
I purse my lips, pondering the question. "He was in the comics. You closing down for the night?"
He nods. "Yeah, it's six right now. You get anything done with your powers today?"
"Just a little work on my vision powers and telekinesis. Baby steps with transmutation. Once I got to a stopping point, I decided to use the portable to do a little research. Got, ah, out of hand," I chuckle.
"I've been there before."
I look at him cautiously, not sure if I should ask this question or not. "Heard you leave last night. You take care of the skinheads?"
He nods. "Richard Allen Green, Elmer Christopher Rees, and David Kilroy McCoy. Three souls for the suit," he says, and a flash of dark blue and green appears on one of his arms. I belatedly realize those are their souls as I see three faces suddenly appear. Cool. He dissipates the effect. "Two others. I told them in the scary Ragman voice to turn themselves in."
"You found them easily enough?"
Rory sinks back into the chair. "Oh, yeah. Rees and Green liked to hang around my synagogue and sneer at old ladies," he says, balling his hands into a fist. "But, they won't be doing that anymore."
Oh shit. "Wait, was it really a good idea to let them go to the cops? What if they tell the GCPD about you?"
The soul redeemer shrugs. "Dude, in a couple weeks we'll be at all-out war with the gangs," he says. "They're going to know we're here. Plus, they might not even believe them. That, and what was the other option? Killing them? They might be Nazis, but I don't kill innocents."
"It just... seems reckless."
"It... probably is. But I just... when you told me how they killed Rabbi Luria, it- it turned off the rational side of me."
"I guess I understand."
He smiles politely. "Thanks, I guess."
"When we spoke yesterday... you said something about building up courage to take on those guys. I didn't pay it much mind at the time, but what did you mean by that?"
Rory grimaces. "I don't like fighting groups. Too much risk of one of the souls getting damaged because I've lost control of the situation, or getting destroyed, or something horrible. I was lucky that the quote-unquote Aryan Reich didn't have any guns on them at the time. Just switchblades, brass knuckles, the gangster basics."
He points at me. "That's what I'm hoping you can help me with. That radar vision you've got... hopefully you can warn me of potential attackers."
"Or just take them down myself and let you eat them."
"That, too."
We bask in an awkward silence for a bit, Rory slouching back into his chair. "You know... you never finished telling me about those comics."
"You're right. I didn't. Um... we finished the Batman crossover, right?" He nods. "Okay... after that, you- sorry, comics-you- was a member of a team called the Sentinels of Magic through most of the... I wanna say, late 90s, early 2000s? They never really had their own title, as far as I can remember. They had guest appearances whenever magic stuff showed up. You were in JLA: Black Baptism, some magic demon things knocked you into your suit to take you down."
"JLA?" he frowns.
"Justice League of America."
Rory looks confused. "The Justice League protects the world, not just America. Are you sure you aren't confusing them with the JSA?"
I shake my head. "No, some comics had them called the JLA. There was a Justice League International for a while, though. Ah, anyway, the Sentinels didn't really do much. Then there was this event, Day of Vengeance. Event comics are basically tie-ins that are super-duper, everything you know will change, yadda yadda."
I lean forward. Rory's still listening. "You've heard of the Spectre?"
"Um, yeah. He was one of the original JSA guys, right?"
"Sssort of. I don't really know the story there, he was in the comics, too, but his thing is that he's God's Angel of Wrath, and he goes around being super-powerful and punishing the guilty."
Rory's face scrunches up as he thinks. "I... think the JSA guy had that gimmick?"
I shrug. "Well, a supervillain manipulated the Spectre into falling in love with her, and convinced him that all magical entities needed to be destroyed. You were part of a team called Shadowpact who formed to take him down."
I decide to show some tact, and leave out the scene with him and the Enchantress. "Two things," Rory holds up two fingers, "number one, how in the world did I help, and number two... what happened to the Sentinels of Magic?"
"I don't know the answer to either of those questions. But, ah, after the Spectre was defeated, and in doing so, somehow started a new age of magic, you were part of a team called the Shadowpact, the 'representatives of lost causes'."
"Who else was there?" he asks.
"Blue Devil, I think he's active in San Francisco now. Enchantress, comics-you, Detective Chimp, Nightshade. Couldn't find any of them on Giggle or DigiPedia. The team leader was a guy named Nightmaster, who got sent to a fantasy world and got a magic sword for his trouble."
"Shadowpact's the comic where I was first introduced to you as a character."
"I hope you were a fan."
I nod. "Yeah, I guess you could say I was a fan of that portrayal of you. Relatable. Cool concept for a character. I just... I don't want that to impact our acquaintanceship. You're a real person. That guy was a fictional character."
"A... startlingly accurate portrayal of a real person," Rory raises an eyebrow.
"Inaccurate in a lot of places, though," I mildly retort. "I just... you're a real person, and I'm damn sure this isn't a dream. I don't want to rely on comics for how I look at this... this new world, and I sure don't want it to affect how I treat people."
He nods. "I understand. It's... that's a good way to look at things. I used to- heh. I used to write self-insertion fanfiction for some of my favorite fantasy series. Empyrion, Daemonstorm, Space Wars. I wonder how I'd actually cope with meeting Dirk Firmwalker or Morokin, outside of, you know, dumb wish fulfillment stuff."
I... wait. "You used to write self-insert fanfics, too?"
Author's Notes: From here on out, Torchbearer is on indefinite hiatus.
Location: Gotham City, New Jersey, United States of America, Earth, Sol, Sector 2814, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe-1 (DC-Prime)
Date: Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Rory, using some type of weird mini-binoculars and a pair of tweezers, looks over a small piece of jewelry, as an elderly woman looks on with what looks like a bit of apprehension. I can't tell what the jewelry is from this position, both from my limited powers and my own lack of knowledge... it's green. My scrying and microscopic vision don't combine that well yet... it's still so cool that I get to say that now. Even if the situation itself is a bit inconvenient.
I laugh, dispelling the scrying effect. I'm getting a bit greedy, aren't I? I turn my gaze to the tablet/laptop hybrid on the coffee table in front of me (the portable, I recall idly). Since I went to bed around two in the afternoon yesterday, my day was already starting at one in the morning, and while I did my damnedest to fall asleep again after that, I didn't find much success.
So I worked on my visual abilities, and another of my powers, one that I was hoping I had and was ecstatic to find out that I did. Wound up going back to sleep around five in the morning, and woke up at ten or so.
Transmutation. Now, for the record, I'm going to spare you long, lurid descriptions of how exactly I train. When I reach out for a power that I think I might have, there's this instinctive feeling that I either have it or don't. From there, I need to extend my will, focusing on what I want to happen, and eventually, it will.
Control over this ability is minimal at first, to say the least. When I first started training transmutation this morning, for instance, I practically had a hernia trying to change the color of the lined paper to a darker shade of gray. I managed it, but I had to focus on a spot the size of a freckle, and it took a little over a minute. I was able to repeat that trick quicker after a while, but it was still goddamn exhausting. Essentially useless outside of being a parlor trick, thus far, anyway.
Telekinesis, on the other hand, is progressing well. Developing finer control over it is going fairly smoothly. I managed to lift the coffee table with my mind today, and it's among the coolest things I've ever done. The crash it made when it fell a couple inches to the ground was, admittedly, a bit worrying. But fortunately it's not broken. That would have been a fun conversation to have with Rory.
After the coffee table incident, I decided to tone it down for a while. No need to push my luck any further, after all. I used Rory's portable to do a bit more research on this world. I started with the Gotham (apparently, when it comes to those cities that have City after their names, you usually just refer to them as the first part, rather than the whole name, so instead of Gotham City, it's just Gotham) crime scene.
There wasn't that much, I'm afraid. People going free when they probably shouldn't have, the Bat taking down minor gangs and crippling the Bertinelli's, nothing too terribly useful. I took the time to create a Twunter account, and I made sure to follow as many superhero and newspeople types as I could. I, ah, wasted an embarrassing amount of time on there.
The fact that I can follow both Clark Kent (seventy thousand followers, regularly uses shorthand, spends way too much time talking about baseball) and Superman (one hundred and twenty-four million followers, I'm assuming some are bots, only updates every couple of months with some news on a supervillain takedown or something) on the Twitter-equivalent is hilarious.
There's also Lois Lane (she tweets a lot, reminds me of Maggie Haberman, more libertarian than I was expecting). As for superheroes, most of their accounts aren't used very often. Knight, an obscure British street-leveller I vaguely remember from the comics, has a fair following, but I get the feeling most of it is ironic, considering his feed and reputation alike are essentially watching a man's life fall apart, and I'm just not interested in that.
The Flash keeps people updated with numerous daily tweets (I think they're called wuns in this world) on criminal activity and civic awareness in Central and Keystone Cities, as well as Missouri and Kansas in general. Wonder Woman has a representative from the Themysciran Embassy (who I do follow, even if they're mostly run by American associates), who tweets for her about matters of Themysciran relations with the outside world and women's issues worldwide.
Green Lantern regularly wuns (gonna be weird using that instead of tweets, but okay) out facts about the galaxy, and the workings of the Green Lantern Corps and its affiliates, and it's genuinely fascinating. It looks like it's mostly stuff about Sectors 2813-2815, which is still details and factoids about hundreds of species, of the roughly four hundred and eighty thousand sapient species which exist in the Milky Way. On average, each sector patrolled by the Corps has one hundred and thirty-four naturally occurring sapients.
This is so fascinating! I'm getting caught up in it... okay, the predominant organization in Sector 2814 is the Cooperative, founded by the far kraan (better known to comics fans as the Xudarians) and the mikdufs(better known as the Terminans). It was founded in the seventh century, by an alliance of the reigning mikduf civilizations and the far kraan-unified Xudar, when an alien race called the yoongar, who had invaded the area using wormhole technology, attacked them both.
After the yoongar were defeated and 'civilized' (Taldegan propaganda says that it was a regrettable treatment, but understandable at the time, I respectfully disagree), Terminus and Xudar agreed to a formal alliance, which grew into a peaceful federation between them and one hundred and sixty-eight other sapient races.
They've got matter replication and teleportation technology, which puts them as one of the greatest powers in the galaxy, if they put their minds to it. But the Cooperative, based out of the 'Justice Moon' of Taldega, which I vaguely remember from Icon, is strictly non-interventionist. Well, at least Earth probably doesn't have to worry about any alien invasions beyond stuff like the Star Conquerors. Seems like we're under the nuclear umbrella of the Cooperative.
I just jinxed it, didn't it? I take some more looks at the member-species of the Cooperative. Ungara's one of them. Looks like Abin Sur regularly had meetings with Cooperative leadership to help defend Sector 2814, before his untimely demise. No public details about that, by the way, beyond the fact that he died and the current Lantern took his role as the protector of 2814. Guess the Guardians don't want the world knowing about Atrocitus.
Zauriel, Aztek, and Martian Manhunter all have verified Twunter feeds, but they have tweeted- sorry, wunned- exactly zero times. Ted Kord's feed goes over my head most of the time, but I follow him anyway. President Suarez and Vice President Laig get follows as well.
I won't go into detail about the twenty to forty newspeople I also followed, but suffice to say, I spent a couple minutes making sure they weren't kooks. To be honest, I only followed one woman because she regularly seems to diss G. Gordon Godfrey, who seems like a Sean Hannity equivalent. Wonder if he's Apokoliptian here as well?
Rory walks up the stairs as I continue scrolling through Green Lantern's feed, reading about crecks, an alien species that looks sort of like a taller E.T. with a wider neck. Apparently they were a nomadic, bronze age civilization from Sector 2813 uplifted by the far kraan in the fourteenth century… "Hey, dude. What's up?" he asks, taking a seat in the chair opposite from the pull-out bed on which I'm sitting.
"Ah, nothing much. Reading through Green Lantern's Twitter feed- ah, sorry. Twunter."
Rory nods. "Heavy reading."
I laugh. "Yeah, I probably know more about the Cooperative now than I do most South American countries."
Rory frowns, as if remembering something, opens his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then apparently a lightbulb goes off in his head and he waves his hand, as if saying 'forget it'. "Ah, I was going to ask what that was, but then I remembered. Icon's from there, right?"
I purse my lips, pondering the question. "He was in the comics. You closing down for the night?"
He nods. "Yeah, it's six right now. You get anything done with your powers today?"
"Just a little work on my vision powers and telekinesis. Baby steps with transmutation. Once I got to a stopping point, I decided to use the portable to do a little research. Got, ah, out of hand," I chuckle.
"I've been there before."
I look at him cautiously, not sure if I should ask this question or not. "Heard you leave last night. You take care of the skinheads?"
He nods. "Richard Allen Green, Elmer Christopher Rees, and David Kilroy McCoy. Three souls for the suit," he says, and a flash of dark blue and green appears on one of his arms. I belatedly realize those are their souls as I see three faces suddenly appear. Cool. He dissipates the effect. "Two others. I told them in the scary Ragman voice to turn themselves in."
"You found them easily enough?"
Rory sinks back into the chair. "Oh, yeah. Rees and Green liked to hang around my synagogue and sneer at old ladies," he says, balling his hands into a fist. "But, they won't be doing that anymore."
Oh shit. "Wait, was it really a good idea to let them go to the cops? What if they tell the GCPD about you?"
The soul redeemer shrugs. "Dude, in a couple weeks we'll be at all-out war with the gangs," he says. "They're going to know we're here. Plus, they might not even believe them. That, and what was the other option? Killing them? They might be Nazis, but I don't kill innocents."
"It just... seems reckless."
"It... probably is. But I just... when you told me how they killed Rabbi Luria, it- it turned off the rational side of me."
"I guess I understand."
He smiles politely. "Thanks, I guess."
"When we spoke yesterday... you said something about building up courage to take on those guys. I didn't pay it much mind at the time, but what did you mean by that?"
Rory grimaces. "I don't like fighting groups. Too much risk of one of the souls getting damaged because I've lost control of the situation, or getting destroyed, or something horrible. I was lucky that the quote-unquote Aryan Reich didn't have any guns on them at the time. Just switchblades, brass knuckles, the gangster basics."
He points at me. "That's what I'm hoping you can help me with. That radar vision you've got... hopefully you can warn me of potential attackers."
"Or just take them down myself and let you eat them."
"That, too."
We bask in an awkward silence for a bit, Rory slouching back into his chair. "You know... you never finished telling me about those comics."
"You're right. I didn't. Um... we finished the Batman crossover, right?" He nods. "Okay... after that, you- sorry, comics-you- was a member of a team called the Sentinels of Magic through most of the... I wanna say, late 90s, early 2000s? They never really had their own title, as far as I can remember. They had guest appearances whenever magic stuff showed up. You were in JLA: Black Baptism, some magic demon things knocked you into your suit to take you down."
"JLA?" he frowns.
"Justice League of America."
Rory looks confused. "The Justice League protects the world, not just America. Are you sure you aren't confusing them with the JSA?"
I shake my head. "No, some comics had them called the JLA. There was a Justice League International for a while, though. Ah, anyway, the Sentinels didn't really do much. Then there was this event, Day of Vengeance. Event comics are basically tie-ins that are super-duper, everything you know will change, yadda yadda."
I lean forward. Rory's still listening. "You've heard of the Spectre?"
"Um, yeah. He was one of the original JSA guys, right?"
"Sssort of. I don't really know the story there, he was in the comics, too, but his thing is that he's God's Angel of Wrath, and he goes around being super-powerful and punishing the guilty."
Rory's face scrunches up as he thinks. "I... think the JSA guy had that gimmick?"
I shrug. "Well, a supervillain manipulated the Spectre into falling in love with her, and convinced him that all magical entities needed to be destroyed. You were part of a team called Shadowpact who formed to take him down."
I decide to show some tact, and leave out the scene with him and the Enchantress. "Two things," Rory holds up two fingers, "number one, how in the world did I help, and number two... what happened to the Sentinels of Magic?"
"I don't know the answer to either of those questions. But, ah, after the Spectre was defeated, and in doing so, somehow started a new age of magic, you were part of a team called the Shadowpact, the 'representatives of lost causes'."
"Who else was there?" he asks.
"Blue Devil, I think he's active in San Francisco now. Enchantress, comics-you, Detective Chimp, Nightshade. Couldn't find any of them on Giggle or DigiPedia. The team leader was a guy named Nightmaster, who got sent to a fantasy world and got a magic sword for his trouble."
"Shadowpact's the comic where I was first introduced to you as a character."
"I hope you were a fan."
I nod. "Yeah, I guess you could say I was a fan of that portrayal of you. Relatable. Cool concept for a character. I just... I don't want that to impact our acquaintanceship. You're a real person. That guy was a fictional character."
"A... startlingly accurate portrayal of a real person," Rory raises an eyebrow.
"Inaccurate in a lot of places, though," I mildly retort. "I just... you're a real person, and I'm damn sure this isn't a dream. I don't want to rely on comics for how I look at this... this new world, and I sure don't want it to affect how I treat people."
He nods. "I understand. It's... that's a good way to look at things. I used to- heh. I used to write self-insertion fanfiction for some of my favorite fantasy series. Empyrion, Daemonstorm, Space Wars. I wonder how I'd actually cope with meeting Dirk Firmwalker or Morokin, outside of, you know, dumb wish fulfillment stuff."
I... wait. "You used to write self-insert fanfics, too?"
Author's Notes: From here on out, Torchbearer is on indefinite hiatus.
- Location
- pennsylvania
can you give an answer why if not thats ok?
For now, I'm a bit daunted by the massive scale of creating a new universe. Where I want to go in the short term isn't complicated. Rory and Joseph clean up Gotham, annoy Batman, some characters I like show up, Joseph speaks to some people he think could help him and the world. It's just that the DC Universe is so goddamn big, I would feel like I was missing something with every thing I wrote.
I'm going to come back to this once I've read more comics. Here's all the DC titles I've read now to completion. There are still dozens, hundreds more I want to look into before I fully finish this story.
DC Comics
[*]Xombi (2011, 6 issues)undefined
- All Star Superman (2006-2008, 12 issues)
- Arrowsmith (2003-2004, 6 issues)
- Aztek: The Ultimate Man (1996-1997, 10 issues)
- Batman: Scottish Connection (1998, 1 issue, graphic novel (64 pages))
- Blackest Night (2009-2010, 9 issues)
- Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps (2009, 3 issues)
- Bloodhound (2004-2005, 10 issues)
- Blue Beetle (2006-2009, 36 issues)
- Brightest Day (2010-2011, 25 issues)
- Captain Atom (1987-1991, 57 issues)
- Chase (1998, 9 issues)
- Conjurors (1999, 3 issues)
- Day of Vengeance (2005, 6 issues)
- DC Universe: Decisions (2008, 4 issues)
- El Diablo (2008-2009, 6 issues)
- Empire (2003-2004, 6 issues)
- Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns (2008, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Gotham Central (2003-2006, 40 issues)
- Green Lantern (2005-2011, 67 issues)
- Green Lantern Corps (2006-2011, 63 issues)
- Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005 (2005, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Green Lantern Sinestro Corps Special (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn (1989-1990, 6 issues)
- Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn II (1991, 6 issues)
- Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors (2010-2011, 13 issues)
- Green Lantern: Larfleeze Christmas Special (2011, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Green Lantern: Rebirth (2004-2005, 6 issues)
- Green Lantern: The New Corps (1999, 2 issues)
- Green Lantern Corps: Recharge (2005-2006, 6 issues)
- Faultlines (1997, 6 issues)
- Hard Time (2004-2005, 12 issues)
- Hard Time Season Two (2006, 7 issues)
- Hardware (1993-1997, 50 issues)
- Haven: The Broken City (2002, 9 issues)
- Hawkgirl (2006-2007, 17 issues
- Hawkman (2002-2006, 49 issues)
- Heroes (1996, 6 issues)
- Icon (1993-1997, 42 issues)
- Ion (2006-2007, 12 issues)
- Infinite Crisis (2005-2006, 7 issues)
- JLA (1997-2006, 125 issues)
- JLA Classified: Cold Steel (2006, 2 issues)
- JLA: A League of One (2000, 1 issue, graphic novel with 200 pages)
- JLA: Foreign Bodies (1999, 1 issue, one-shot)
- JLA: Paradise Lost (1998, 3 issues)
- JLA: Scary Monsters (2003, 6 issues)
- JLA/Haven: Anathema (2002, 1 issue, one-shot)
- JLA/Haven: Arrival (2002, 1 issue, one-shot)
- JLA/Spectre: Soul War (2003, 2 issues)
- JLA: Black Baptism (2001, 4 issues)
- JSA (1999-2006, 87 issues, 1 annual)
- JSA All Stars (2010-2011, 18 issues)
- JSA Kingdom Come Special: Magog (2009, 1 issue, one-shot)
- JSA Kingdom Come Special: Superman (2009, 1 issue, one-shot)
- JSA Kingdom Come Special: The Kingdom (2009, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Justice Society of America (2007-2011, 54 issues)
- Kingdom Come (1996, 4 issues)
- Knight and Squire (2010-2011, 6 issues)
- Kobalt (1994-1995, 16 issues)
- Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (2005, 5 issues)
- Magog (2009-2010, 12 issues)
- Milestone Forever (2010, 2 issues)
- Muktuk Wolfsbreath: Hard-Boiled Shaman (1998, 3 issues)
- Nightmaster: Monsters of Rock (2011, 1 issue, one-shot)
- R.E.B.E.L.S. (2009-2011, 28 issues)
- Ragman: Cry of the Dead (1993-1994, 6 issues)
- Ragman: Suit of Souls (2010, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Resurrection Man (1997-1999, 27 issues)
- Shadow Cabinet (1994-1995, 17 issues)
- Shadowpact (2006-2008, 25 issues)
- Showcase '93 (1993, 12 issues)
- Simon Dark (2007-2009, 18 issues)
- Starman (1994-2001, 80 issues)
- Static (1993-1997, 45 issues)
- Static Shock Special (2011, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool (2001, 4 issues)
- Superman/Shazam: First Thunder (2005-2006, 4 issues)
- Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom (2009, 5 issues)
- Superman: Birthright (2003-2004, 12 issues)
- Superman: Silver Banshee (1998-1999, 2 issues)
- Superman: Up, Up and Away (2006, 8 issues) (TPB, reprints of issues of other Superman titles)
- Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Cyborg Superman (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Ion (2008, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Parallax (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Brave and the Bold (2007-2010, 35 issues)
- The Great Ten (2010, 9 issues)
- The Flash: Iron Heights (2001, 1 issue, graphic novel (48 pages))
- The Helmet of Fate: Black Alice (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Helmet of Fate: Ibis the Invincible (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Helmet of Fate: Sargon the Sorcerer (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Helmet of Fate: Zauriel (2007, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Human Race (2005, 7 issues)
- The Joker: Devil's Advocate (1996, 1 issue, one-shot)
- The Long, Hot Summer (1995, 3 issues)
- The Monolith (2004-2005, 12 issues)
- Vixen: Return of the Lion (2008-2009, 5 issues)
- War of the Green Lanterns: Aftermath (2011, 2 issues)
- We3 (2004-2005, 3 issues)
- Xombi (1994, 21 issues)
[*]Xombi (2011, 6 issues)undefined
Someone on this thread or the other mentioned that perfect is the enemy of good. Well, they're probably right. But I still don't like the idea of missing something. What's the point of making a rational DC Universe if you don't fully understand the DC Universe?
Vox De Harlequin
Consequences are for other people
- Location
- Hyalean Theoric World
Well.
Good luck.
I'll be waiting for the next installment.
Don't count on a baited breath though.
Good luck.
I'll be waiting for the next installment.
Don't count on a baited breath though.
