E P I S O D E Z E R O
2994 Everything hurts. God damnit--that means I must be alive. I’m in terrible agony, but not so much that I can’t string together a coherent sentence. I can’t necessarily repair the damage myself, at least not immediately, not in these conditions, but I can brush it under the rug and treat the symptoms. Yes, that’s better. All these humans I’ve been hanging around must be rubbing off on me. Just as they willfully disregarded the damage to their home world’s fragile ecosystem, using my innate shapeshifting powers, I can unplug a couple neurotransmitters here and there… and..
Voila! Self-induced congenital analgesia. I could get lectured by the UN for six-hours straight without wincing. To be truly pain free. Of course I wouldn’t notice if I was impaled on the spot either. Eh, you win some, you still kinda win some others.
My eye stalks rise above the lazy knot of biomass I’ve become. I’m repulsive and I don’t even have the luxury of blaming it on the stasis. I started letting myself go months before I went under.
“Is that what I think it is?” There’s a giant steel door that distinctly says “KEEP CLOSED” in big boxed letters. I can feel the hot air whispering through the vents from across the room. I look at it, lazily, wanting it to open and for the room to come over to me, but I am not so lucky as to be seated in Metron’s chair. Heck, even an earthstyle wheelchair would be preferable to making legs. I still haven’t worked out the biomechanics of how to propel myself with wheels or, you can believe me, I definitely would have by now.
With the bones and muscles in place, I walk over there, or hobble really. I am both literally and figuratively sorely out of practice. Planting my feet firmly, I wrap my upper body like a snake around the door handle, save myself the hassle of remembering how to make hands, tugging it open and feeling the frigid air stiffen my form. I’m not the only thing that had been kept on ice for the last couple millennia.
“Greetings Master Daggle. You’ve successfully arrived in the year 2994. You’ve been in stasis for roughly ten thousand years, give or take a hundred when adjusted for gravitational time dilation. Earth’s reputation as a breeding ground for superpeople has since been largely dismissed as unfounded legend. The Green Lantern and Nova Corps have long since dissolved. You look well.”
“Stop lying to me, Computo.”
“It wasn’t a lie, sir. When you’ve abstracted yourself like that, there is literally no other point of comparison and according to the laws of beauty that means that you are definitively the most well-crafted example of an anatomy like that.”
“I’d be flattered by that if I weren’t so bored. Let’s get down to business. Now that we’re here, how can I assemble a Legion of Super-Heroes that can protect the entire universe?”
“Interesting question. What do you mean protect the entire universe? Protect who? And from what?”
“You sound like your father. There’s a lotta what’s we’re gonna be staving off. What all options do we have for who?”
Earth
2999 His bangs are absolutely saturated with sweat as he steps through the chilly halls outside the magno ball arena. His lungs have heartly ever been stretched thinner. He takes air in and kicks it back out, but just can’t seem to get enough of it. It might just be that Earth doesn’t have enough oxygen at this altitude, or maybe the oxygenerators can’t keep up with a crowd this large. Both possibilities are concerning. Someone could get hurt.
“Hey man, great game,” a familiar voice calls to him before expositing: “You seriously hurt my chances of nabbing the scholarship I’ve spent the last two years pursuing and I might not be able to get into DC U, become a doctor, or meet any of my other life goals because of it, but hey.. you’re a damn good magno-ball player and I thought you should know.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Rokk says, struggling to breathe. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, when the match starts back up, I need you to do me a favor, man to man, pretty please. Look there is no way I can beat you. Honest. Your ferrokinesis is fucking uncanny and you’re obviously going to be a very rich man one day. Unless I can get over on you today, sometime in the next half hour, and impress the college scouts, my family is pretty much damned to spending an eternity in the underclass, living under the drug pushers and pimp daddies. I’m the only one in my family with anything resembling a work ethic.
Hate to sound like a dick, but I’m their only hope. I have a plan, I’m not entirely depending on the kindness of strangers, but I need your help. Whattaya say?”
Looking kinda lost, Rokk says, “But that’s entirely dishonest. Is that really how you want to rise to the top?”
“Listen man, it is kinda dishonest, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Hear me out: My mother has been working three jobs to get my brothers and sisters and I where we are and she is, unfortunately, pregnant and not legally allowed to call it off. She has worked hard her entire life because she wants me to be happy and I can’t be knowing that that is how I got here and why I still am.
I’m not rich, Rokk. I’m not super smart or well educated or anything like that, but I work hard enough to outpace every talented casual who didn’t have an empty plate or who could afford to see a doctor when he was sick. Yes it’s kinda dishonest, but it’s not evil. I just need your help to pay back everyone who got me here.”
Rokk wasn’t sure if it’s because it felt like his lungs were on fire or if it was because of the young man’s candor, but he had started crying halfway through. “Yeah, sure. I’ve got your back. And, hey man, I’m sorry, but what was your name again?”
“Pol.”
“Ah, I’m Rokk. What’s your last name.”
“It’s Krinn, exactly like yours actually.”
“Funny how many of us are out there.”
“Yeah, kinda. I just chalk it up to our ancestors losing touch with their homes and their own ancestry under various iron-fisted administrations, but sure, I guess it’s kinda funny.
“Is it me or is the air kinda thin in here to you?” Rokk says, finally deciding that it couldn’t reasonably just be that he had gotten winded.
“Super.”
“Let’s go talk to maintainence. They really should get on that.”
So, the two young Braalians made their way out of the field, through the locker room and into the general backstage areas, but most of the usual staff seemed to be suspiciously absent. Including security, which was hella alarming.
“What’s going on?” Rokk asked.
“Probably something dangerous,” Pol responded. “If you’re scared, don’t worry, I’ll look into it.”
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get hurt?”
“No, not at all. I’m not afraid, I’m confident that I will get hurt, but that’s okay because someone has to be brave.”
“That’s remarkably selfless for a cheater.”
“You’re an asshole, Rokk. I need you to know that.” At that, Pol started walking down the hall prowling for hostiles. He turned a corner and faded out of Rokk’s sight and, shortly afterward, out of Rokk’s earshot. Rokk sat there, allowing his brand new friend to be brave for him. He was going to sit there as a bystander and Pol was going to die saving everyone from whatever was going on around the corner.
“No. Not happening. Don’t worry, Pol,” he said to himself before he started jogging behind him. “You’re not alone.”
When Rokk rounded the corner, he slipped and fell, smacking the ground after his hip caught on a water fountain and his heel had hydroplaned on fresh blood. Rokk cringed as he took in the sight of a dozen security guards, tasting the bitter iron taste in the air as red mist seemed to hang perpetually. There was blood on the walls and floor and it was somehow dripping from the light fixtures.
BWAAANGYEW Rokk came around the corner and saw that Pol was battling against a pair of gunmen, one of whom had seemed to have shot the other, almost certainly due to Pol’s ferrokinetic powers bending the bullets trajectory. The men were side by side and chasing Pol back towards Rokk’s point.
Still feeling the fresh ache in his hip, he used his ferrokinesis to uninstall the sink from the wall, feeling it’s heft increased by the chunks of concrete sealed on the back of it.
All the better to smash you with, Rokk thought as the metal ball cascaded against the gunmen, mashing them into a mess of flesh that happened to be holding two guns.
“Aaaugh!” Pol screamed, not understanding what had just transpired until his wide-eyes crashed into Rokk’s concerned gaze. “Heh, I’m probably not gonna unsee that any time soon.”
“Nah. No more than I can unsplash those men.” Rokk huffed, “Guess I don’t know my own strength.”
“Yes,” Pol said under his breath, “You’re a very special little snowflake of death. Let’s go turn the air back on.”
And so the two boys made their way further into the maintenence tunnels, encountering no one who was alive until they found the security room, which they identified based on the fact that it’s door was thicker than all the others. When Rokk ripped it off its hinges, they found several monitors with live video feed. One of the screens featured a ginger boy, about their age, barbecuing a contingent of hostiles resembling the fellows they’d just encountered by the boiler room, while another featured a video of a blonde girl standing perfectly still while a purple plasma boiled out of her eyes, a pile of unconscious hostiles bordering her every direction, getting thicker as they continued to stab one another in the back. At that point, Pol found a map that confirmed the oxygenerators were in fact in The Boiler Room.
“Looks like Electrikid over there has that taken care of,” Pol said.
“I dunno, man. He just keeps fighting, I’m not sure he’s figured out what they’re after or trying to protect. I’d imagine he would. We probably would’ve figured it out by now.” Rokk shrugs his shoulders. “Better go back him up and turn the air back on.”
And so they made their way on over entirely without a hitch. It’d seem that the hostiles realized that they weren’t going to win that way. Either that, or there just wasn’t an infinite amount of hostiles. When they got there, they saw lightning forks froth off of the redheads hand and start to reach over toward the two athletes before he restrained himself, realizing they lacked any weaponry or tactical gear.
“Easy, we’re just here to turn the air back on,” Pol said.
Rokk noted, “That’s some arm you got there.”
The redhead, kinda grinned, or maybe he kinda coughed. “It’s a long story. Not so long that I can’t tell it, but long enough that I get pissed off halfway through no matter how I try to rush it. But yeah, the air is off, you say? I hadn’t noticed. Guess I figured I was just getting a workout.”
“Nope,” Pol said, “That would be the feeling of your brain cells dying off.”
The redhead gave a look that probably almost stung as much as one of those lightning bolts would’ve, unable to tell if that was meant passive aggressively, he decided to play it safe and take offense. “Asshole.”
“Name’s Pol Krinn, what’s yours?”
“Garth Ranzz.”
“That, in the boiler room, is my friend Rokk.”
“Yeah, I recognize him. He’s your friend? Your last names match, I would’ve assumed you were brothers.”
”Well, that’s fair enough of an assessment after the last twenty minutes. But still, you know what they say about assuming.”
“I did it,” Rokk barked victoriously. “Evidently the oxygen hadn’t been turned off at all, it was being pressurized in the upper levels of the arena by the skybox, mostly around box number nine: The one that RJ Brande was seated in.”
“I don’t think Brande would do all this just to freshen up the air in his room,” Garth commented. “I mean, rich people aren’t like the rest of us, but still.”
“Nah,” Pol said, “This smells like an assassination attempt to me. If it weren’t for all the corpses, I’m not sure I would’ve even been sure that anything was up. Thank god for those,” he says as he drags his hand over his forehead skin and over his sweat slickened face. “If anybody would’ve lit a match, then they all would’ve been nice and toasty.”
“Shit,” Garth barks, “we gotta go open a window ASAP,” before barreling down the hallways towards a staircase.
<Already on top of it. Imra Ardeen speaking, by the way. I caught wind of the goings on and you’re location a couple minutes ago. Let’s rendezvous by the front gate in ten minutes to sort this out and see what all we know.>
