---

From within an inner sanctum in the faraway Arctic, a figure divides his attention between several television screens at once while seated with a glass of a vintage 1838 Cabaret. A laptop at his side, he occasionally glances over to a software program in action, cycling tabs between the front pages of all of the major online publications that are reporting one particular issue of interest. He catches only glimpses of them as they switch from one site to another, but his mind has been conditioned to read them at a much faster speed - he takes in, if not the full articles, then at the very minimum the portions that pertain the most to his findings.

Each article largely reads the same, anyway. Scientists explaining how their 'miraculous' vaccine was so easily cracked, from different points of production. The unfortunate-but-deemed-necessary loss of life that occurred in the three-stage trial process. The unearthed, formerly redacted findings that were leaked by The Daily Planet through a series of documents. He takes it all in, doing the math in his head. Knowing that their discoveries play into a much different purpose than they even realize. It would be so simple to ignore them and press on with the next phase, undeterred.

But he wants to learn. He wants to know how, precisely, to adapt his methodology and execute his orders in these crucial days ahead.

Turning his attention back to the screens, he pours himself another glass of the Cabaret, swigging it gently so as to enunciate it's distilled flavor. A young man, barely into his thirties, is sitting upon the throne of one of the world's most accosted countries as of late. He wears a suit that projects modesty, surrounded by gold and silver trinkets that project a contrary statement. Nevertheless, his body language and facial expressions speak with sincerity - though his actual words are drowned out by an English translator, imposed over the Markovian's native tongue.

"No, I do not think it is fair of the media to have named the pandemic after us. The evidence that Markovia was the originator of this catastrophe was minimal, at best, and most seem to choose to forget that when the virus reached it's month-long peak, Markovia saw the most casualties of any nation. But my family understands the need to make a villain out of this scenario, however simplistic that viewpoint inarguably remains. It is a racist ideology that has permeated throughout Europe and spread to the United States, who have been the most vocally critical of us. But I assure you, Markovia is innocent of any wrongdoing. We have suffered with you, not independent of you. Please respect this as we move forward..."

The individual watching the screen smiles to himself, his lips touching the wine after a moment's pause. What none realize is that despite the young Prince's perceived arrogance, he is speaking the truth. Markovia had nothing to do with the virus' spread, nor did it originate the strain that created it. The truth is that the person, not an entire people, who created this is the same man that now watches the reaction that the world's media has with a clear and focused anticipation.

As misinformation spreads, the waters will become murkier. Markovia will attempt to reclaim it's own narrative, but it is already too late. The smokescreen was successful in it's diversion, and those looking for retribution for the relatively few lives lost, in comparison to what could have happened, will focus their hatred on a militarily compromised monarchy.

"How wonderfully unfortunate,", the individual tells himself. "Because that's exactly what's about to happen. Just not in any way you expected, you inbred twit."

A door behind the individual opens.

A woman appears, carrying a L-Pad that illuminates her bespeckled face as she approaches.

"What is it?"

"Dr. Jace's latest findings bid us welcome news.", the woman replies, flatly. "You should examine these. The test subjects in Sector 17 have responded considerably better to the new strain. It's beginning to have an effect."

The man turns, taking the L-Pad as it's handed to him. With an almost bored expression, he mentally cycles through the highly delicate and extremely complicated research notes with ease, processing them as easily as a five-year-old takes to reciting the alphabet. Handing the device back, the man rises from his seat and snaps his fingers. Each of the television screens immediately cut to black, deactivated.

"That woman is a fool."

Leading his assistant to the right side of the massive compound's room, the individual takes his seat at a desk adorned with highly unusual relics - glass-encased rusted bullets taken from the Revolutionary War. Baubles and trinkets that were kept from the same period as the fall of the Romanovs. A series of arrowheads that are progressively refined, starting from ancient stone and ending at a titanium tip. Each item tells a story of it's own, one that the woman has spent her lifetime wondering if they hold any validity. After all, anyone could fake the significance of such a collection.

"Tell her that the research is flawed in key areas, without telling her which areas, and ask that she start again in Sector 18. Have the test subjects in 17 liquidated. I want complete and total resistance first. The desired effects will manifest only after immunity is achieved, not before. We can't afford to cut corners."

But not this man. Not with the conviction, the vivid recollection that he imdues the stories with. These are merely part of a tapestry that has yet to fully unfold, and the person that sits behind the desk is eager to begin unfurling the next piece.

"And if she refuses to give the order, father?"

"Then remind her that any disobedience will earn my wrath, as her many missing predecessors can attest."

The woman nods, making note on the L-Pad.

"And what about the crisis response? Did you still need me to compile the data on that, too?"

"I already have. I've already learned everything I need to know. The first phase of this strain has worked beyond our wildest dreams, with each of the expected variables playing their parts to the absolute letter. It's nothing short of amazing to think that by this time tomorrow, it will be a brand new world. A world of miracles to some, horrors to others. But most importantly, a world of the impossible becoming irrefutable fact."



"A world that we must meet with utmost savagery."

---

"Okay, you can do this," Ted Kord murmured to himself as he powered up the airship. He felt the low rumble of the high density battery packs sprung to life through the floor. His eyes swept over the instrumentation panels around his field of view, and everything read as it should. No power spikes like the last time, which almost resulted in the damn ship exploding here in the lab...which of course would have lead to his death. Which wouldn't have been ideal.

He took another deep breath in and flipped a switch on the console next to him, and through the long, almost 180 degree view port, he saw the hanger doors he had installed begin to open. Thanks to the Bug's, as he called the airship thanks to its beetle-like shape, slim profile, he had managed to make the hangar doors fairly inconspicuous in the small cliff-side of his father's old house.

"Welp, here goes nothing," he winced as he pushed the throttle forward. The ship zipped in that direction almost whisper quiet, and Ted let out a triumphant yell that he was immediately ashamed of afterwards. The anti-gravity tech he had managed to gleam from the Scarab worked beautifully in small scale applications, that much he knew. Kord Sciences was already rolling out new anti-collision technology for cars that featured it, allowing passengers to be encased with a bubble of protective antigrav energy. But the idea that it could allow something as big as the airship to move almost silently through the air was nothing more than theory.

At least it was nothing more than theory before tonight.

Bringing the Bug to a higher altitude, he put the craft on autopilot towards the city and flipped on the police scanner. He had little hope that it would turn up anything useful. The police seemed more intent on keeping the outward appearance that the city was under control more than dealing with the actual problems of the city lately. But it was somewhere to start.

Ted rested his chin on his hand, leaning on the armrest of the Bug's pilot chair, and peered out the window as he went. Not long ago, the traffic he saw bellow would have been a rare sight after the pandemic brought the world to a grinding halt for a short time, especially here in New York. The city had been one of the initial epicenters, and while other cities across the country had the time to prepare, they didn't. More people died here than almost anywhere else. The unrest that followed had brought the city, once the crown jewel in the country, to a level of crime more like Gotham or Hub. That wasn't good. Ted had to admit he was happy to see people getting about their lives again, even if the world they came back to seemed awfully different.

Once the pandemic had really shown itself, Kord Sciences had went into overdrive to support mitigation efforts. Their self-disinfecting mask technology and miro UV air purifiers supposedly save the city from even more pain. He had been hailed as a hero, though he passed along most of the credit to his team. He didn't feel like a hero. Not yet. He felt like he could have done more. Maybe that was why he cooked up this harebrained scheme to start fixing the crime problem in the city. Maybe that was why he was flying in the most advanced aircraft in the world dressed like something out of a comic book. He wasn't sure, but he was going to go through with this one way or another.

He could hear Dan Garrett's voice, like an echo of the past, filter through his head. "That's what you said when you barnstormed the world with me." Was Ted just too much of a thrill seeker to sit behind a desk and help the world? He didn't know. Maybe.

The radio crackled, drawing his attention away from his inner thoughts, "All units, we have a report of a break in at STAR Labs up in Harlem. Requesting someone go check it out."

"Harlem?" a voice on the other end scoffed. "You think we're going up there any time soon? After last week's protest. They can bite me."

"Well, girl," Ted shrugged and spoke to the airship, "they're calling our number."

He piloted towards Harlem, realizing this was the first time that he'd really be testing out the stealth capabilities of the Bug. Kord had some smaller drones he used to test some of the other potential capabilities of the Scarab tech, and they had passed through the city completely undetected. Of course, they were about 1/100th the size of the Bug, so this was a big gamble he was taking.

Luckily, as the Bug floated silently over the city, no air traffic bulletins came over the police scanner. He exhaled and smiled, obviously pleased with his own work. Well, mostly his work. Cribbing the basics from some alien technology didn't hurt, either. The Scarab had shown him so much and allowed him to push his inventions further than he could have ever dreamed of before.

The Bug came to a stop above STAR Labs, and Ted started a scan of the building as he double checked his gear. His suit was made of a titanium nano-weave, with thicker pieces of plate on the major joints. Overall it was lightweight and protective. It would stop a knife and resist some small caliber arms fire, but it was far from impenetrable. Its tones of blue were reminiscent of the way the light shone off the Scarab when he first saw it. Pulling the cowl over his face, he felt the nano-weave fiber tighten across his face and lock on. Once it did, the subtle heads up display activated in his goggles, showing him the progress of the Bug's scan.

"Scan complete," a computerized voice came through the cowl's communication system.

"Thanks, Kha," the Blue Beetle responded to the simple AI he had integrated into his systems. "Display it in the HUD."

A small, 3D display of the building appeared on the lenses of his goggles. It was rudimentary, just showing walls and stairs, but he also saw eight heat signatures strewn across the building. Two were on the roof access, and six were further down in the building, all in the same room. He assumed they were rummaging through, trying to find anything of value.

"Eight. Okay, eight. I can do eight. Right?" he murmured to himself.

"I am unable to perform that calculation, sir," the AI responded dryly.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Ted sighed.

"You are welcome, sir."

Ted, or as he fashioned himself now, "The Blue Beetle", shook his head and smiled wryly to himself. For an emotionless, simple algorithm, Kha certainly had some good dry wit.

Making his way to the center of the Bug, he took a hold of the ripcord quick drop system he had designed for quick insertion or extraction from an area. His boot snapped into the t-bar at the bottom, and took a hold of the strong metal cable.

"Well, here goes nothing."

He pressed a button next to him, and the floor of the Bug opened up to the night sky, and the Blue Beetle dropped into action for the first time.

”Well, I think that’s about all of the business we’re going to get today,” Mister Abel says, flipping the old “Come in, we’re OPEN” sign on the door to say “Sorry, we’re CLOSED.”

”One person who talked himself out of buying anything, a hipster couple who were ‘just looking around,’ and a homeless guy who needed to use the bathroom,” I say as I count down the register-- more of a ceremonial gesture than anything, since nobody actually bought anything all day. ”I don’t know how we’re ever going to keep up with all of this demand.”

Mister Abel chuckles. ”Oh, we’ll get by, I imagine. Which reminds me,” He roots around in his pockets, before producing a wallet that somehow looks even older than him, and plucks out a single fifty-dollar bill and two twenties. He hands them to me with an apologetic smile. ”I’ve already taken the liberty of deducting your rent and utilities, which I’m afraid doesn’t leave much left over.”

”It’s fine,” I sigh. The fact that it isn’t much doesn’t really bother me-- I’ve got a place to sleep and some groceries in the refrigerator, and I spend most of my free time reading the books in the shop anyway. What bothers me is how bad he feels about it not being much. ”It really is, Mister Abel. I appreciate you taking me in, giving me some honest work.”

And being discreet about the identity of his new tenant, so as not to draw the attention of people looking for me, of course, but that goes without saying. As far as I know, my “father” and his band of hooded weirdos are still tearing Southern California apart trying to find their sacrificial lamb. Lucky for me, it’s a big state, and I was able to put plenty of ground between them and me before going to ground.

I had alternated between walking, hitchhiking, and taking the bus from Los Angeles to Jump City, which was, as one might expect, a terrible idea. The open road has no shortage of creeps who would be all too happy to take advantage of a teenage girl traveling alone. I made it a point not to go straight to any one city, to sleep in rest stops that were well-lit and had 24-hour staff, and to tell anyone who looked a little too eager to ‘help out’ to go to hell. Even then, there was every chance I might have wound up buried in a ditch somewhere. Which, to be honest, wouldn’t have been that much worse than what I was running away from.

I’d wandered into the ‘House of Mystery’ just looking for a place to spend some time before finding a shelter for the night, and found myself striking up a conversation with Mister Abel. I’d never mentioned the fact that I was on the run, or that I had nowhere to go, but he seemed to sense it, and let me know he had a room for rent and was looking for someone to help watch the shop. I let him know I was armed and would stick him like a pig if he ever got any ideas. He chuckled, said I was hired, and a month later, I’ve more or less settled in to what might generously be called a ‘life’ here.

”Oh! I’d nearly forgotten!” Mister Abel once again fumbles about for his wallet. ”While I was out attending my afternoon errands, I couldn’t help but notice that in the park they are making preparations for some rather large event. I asked about, and saw that one of the larger video-game companies, the ‘Control Freaks,’ were launching some new device or another, and having a party to celebrate it.”

He pulls out a crisp new hundred-dollar bill and offers it to me. ”Your bonus for your first month of good work. Enjoy yourself.”

I look at the money, then back to my kindly old boss, and shake my head. ”Thanks, Mister Abel, but….I don’t really do parties. Or video games. Or going outside, for that matter.”

He chuckles. ”Or concerts, or plays, or art festivals, it seems. My dear Rachel, it seems as though you don’t really ‘do’ much of anything.”

”....I guess not.”

Mister Abel places the hundred in my hand, and closes my fingers around it.

”I insist. You’re a wonderful young woman, and I know it isn’t my business to ask what’s troubling you, but….well, making some friends might do you a world of good.”

I let out a sigh. ”I’ll give it a try. For your sake. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up…..”



”I don’t really do ‘friends,’ either.”

---

Long have I looked to the stars, the glittering points of light at play in the endless heavens, and saw beauty and infinite majesty. Now, looking through the viewscreen of my escape shuttle, those stars seem cold, the vast distances between them empty and uncaring. Am I to drift forever in the unending void?

”Sister….” I find myself asking, holding back my tears, ”How could you have done this?”

Far behind me, Tamaran is in ruins. Long we had fought against the Citadel, repelling their soldiers, burning their ships, bringing down their orbital bombardment platforms. I had taken up our father’s mantle, the Starfire, light of hope and champion of the innocent, to lead our people from the front. Komand’r, on the other hand, had coordinated the war effort from afar, controlling the logistics and communications that made our victories possible. Her work was vital, but she envied the glories heaped upon me.

And so, she had betrayed us. She had given the Citadel secret knowledge of the vulnerabilities in our defenses, and when we most needed to fight together, struck me from behind. I could not bring myself to kill my own sister, and she made me pay dearly for my mercy.

”There must be one,” I say to myself as I search through the navicomputer’s archives. ”Merciful X’haal, let there be one….”

Our world fell, and the Citadel made my treacherous sister nominal Queen of Tamaran in exchange for fealty to their greater empire. Our generals were executed, our monuments toppled, our palaces burned. I was paraded in chains through the streets by Komand’r-- the self-proclaimed ‘Queen Blackfire’ in mockery of my own title-- and was to be made the plaything of the brutal and salacious Lord Damyn.

I had fought like an animal to free myself, and stole one of the escape shuttles from my father’s-- now my sister’s-- flagship. After disabling the tracking signals to make sure I would not be followed, I began searching the stars for a safe haven, one where the Citadel and my sister could not find me.

Even if I do find one, though, what then? Hide away forever? I am a Champion of Tamaran; I would never dishonor myself with cowardice. Seek vengeance against my sister? I have no armies, no fleet, no weapons to wield. Perhaps once I find safety, I can then begin to gather allies. Perhaps the Lanterns, or the people of Rann....

ATTENTION, the navicomputer sounds, SEARCH PARAMETERS HAVE YIELDED ONE POSITIVE RESULT. M-CLASS PLANET, DOMINANT SPECIES A LEVEL-1 TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY. INTERSTELLAR CONTACT: MINIMAL TO NONE.

Viewing the data, it is a small planet, barely noticed by any of the great space-faring peoples. Its people are primitive, little more than savages, but by astronomical coincidence, happen to look like Tamaranians. It may be possible to seek asylum here, but finding allies is out of the question. They will be of no help to me when it comes to freeing my people.

Still, I have no other options. I set a course for the shuttle to jump…..and I finally allow myself to cry.

YOUR STRESS LEVELS ARE ELEVATED. WOULD YOU LIKE SOME SOOTHING MUSIC, OR A CHEMICAL RELAXANT?

”No,” I say, drying my eyes as the wormhole-drive begins to whir.



”What I need now….is a friend.”

In my dreams I fly...

I soar through clouds of tangerine coloured mists and every cloud plays different music. I dive through a fog playing Big Band by Count Basie, and sweep through a wisp of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

I bend physics and kick off of a floating dandelion seed, spinning and rising through Billie Holiday backed by Louis Armstrong. I briefly feel saddened at the realization that Dian can not experience this with me, but then dream distracts just as life does and my spirits soar once again, as I do, with Sinatra.

I feel the familiar tug and experience a flash of existential dread, as I know what it means. The dream’s once again taking control. Believing I need to know something, filling me with purpose. I plead for it to let me go. I’m an old man now. Haven’t I earned the right to peaceful sleep? To sweet dreams?

The answer comes abruptly as I’m dragged down to Earth. I produce my mask from the back of my head and put it on in preparation of the turmoil to come.

It would not take long. I’m surrounded by others wearing similar masks. Soldiers, pushing forward in a war before my time. The telltale sign of horror – THE CREEPING DARK GREEN MIST pushes towards us. A gas I would never have used myself in my own past, I see soldiers first try and outrun the gas, before those it had already caught slowed as trained. It would attack the respiratory system more insidiously if the victim were running and taking larger breaths due to fleeing. But the officers also knew it helped disperse the gas. Which one of these two facts was the greater reason the officers trained the men so remained to be seen. As men's clawed hands grasped at their own throats, some men frothed, others eyes wide with terror from the seeming inevitability of their demise.

I look on in horror unable to help, my own mask perfectly sealed and keeping my own lungs clear of the poison. I had long ago made alterations to my own mask to better prevent the passage of gas. It was important in my task. But I suspect my mask’s complete immunity has more to do with my own dream state and the message I’m supposed to take from it than from any alterations I had made to it in the real world.

I see one soldier stagger right to me, his mask foaming and eyes wide. The gas has started to dissipate. Its purpose complete.

This man.

He’s drowning and panicked by the thought of the end. His airway blocked, despite the gas’s passing. I throw the man down onto the ground and pull the mask off to try and allow air, and am suddenly met with the rising froth and foam as he tries to spit the obstruction clear.

The dark green of his army uniform starts to bleed into the dirt as I pat him down, looking desperately for some kind of solution. Anything that can help this man.

The dark green uniform has bled out into a lime green suit, somehow repelling all of the mud from the trenches to remain in pristine condition. I keep patting down and feel a solid object in his breast pocket. I hold it to the light, its significance clear. It’s some kind of pen. The man still squirms, drowning in his own fluids.

I jam it into his throat, attempting to perform some kind of field medic tracheostomy. Blood starts to pour from his throat, he raises his hands to his neck from the pain, but I pin his arms so I can keep trying to save his life. I pull the pen back out and am met with muffled moans. I try to quickly dismantle the pen to separate the tube from the rest for a makeshift cannula whilst he screams even more violently. Wincing slightly at the unpleasantness of what must be done I push the pen’s outer tube into the hole I created and watch bubbles of blood burst through the pen.

I push back to a seated position and hope I’ve done enough. The blood keeps pouring from his throat and bubbling out of the pen. I watch and hope. The blood pours into a sort of sideways figure ‘8’ shape across his neck, before rapidly clotting into what is instantly recognizable as a bow tie. It starts to change colour as it dries in the hot afternoon sun. Still the bubbles of blood continue to rise from the pen, then finally.

He gasps a final rustle as whatever’s left of him leaves this mortal coil, his eyes left wide-open in terror but empty.

I look down at my hands but they’re not bloody. Just… hands.

I gasp and jerk upright in my bed, trembling from the nightmare. My old wrinkled hands envelope my face, trembling from the shock of what I’ve just experienced.

“Wesley, dear… Are you alright?”

I look beside me in the bed and see Dian. Lying in a wedding dress, stroking my leg and trying to calm me from the vision.

I smile, and she takes my hand and pulls it under the covers. At first I wonder where exactly she’s taking me, but then she places my hand on her stomach. But it’s not her stomach. I flip the quilt back and find her holding my hand to her pregnant belly. A smile crosses my old wrinkled face, and a tear falls to my cheek. I cling to this despite my cognitive dissonance. Wedding bells.

And then a crack of THUNDER and a flash of LIGHTNING and for a second I can see Dian’s skin go translucent and the outline of her skull through her face. The chiming of bells.

I jerk upright with a start. Alone. And I can hear the old landline phone besides my bed ringing.

I struggle and wonder whether I’m still asleep or awake and then conclude it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out soon enough. After all, if I’m awake then I know exactly what this phone call is.

I look to the empty space in my bed besides me and immediately feel worse. Then I look to the phone. It rings again.

“No point in putting this off any longer…” I murmur to myself as I lift the phone off of it’s receiver.

“Hello?” “Yes, speaking.” “…” “Yes.” “Look, this isn’t…” “Jay…” “Just tell me. Enough of the small talk, you’re going a mile a minute.”

I’m awake.

“Funeral’s Tuesday at three?” “Okay. I’ll be there.” “Talk to you then, Jay.”

I’m wide awake and it happened. Johnny Thunder is dead.

When I’m awake I can’t fly.

_{Some Shithole, Texas, USA - Present Day}

Issue 1.01.01: Taste of Violence

---

_{Interaction(s): None}

Previously: None

"How do you do it? How do you just live like this?"

Sitting across the table from the speaker was a red-headed, lean man in a sleeveless red mechanic's vest. He had on a simple baseball cap with an American flag emblazoned across the front of it, and blue jeans that were ripped and worn around the knees. He was currently in the midst of devouring a triple bacon cheeseburger, juices and sauces dripping down his chin and onto the plate below. Roy Harper set the burger down for a moment, chewing the giant bite of food that he took as he grabbed a napkin from the dispenser on the side of the table to wipe the liquids off his mouth before responding. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Jason Todd sighed. He felt out of place in a run-down bar in some basically no-name town in Texas. He was wearing a designer black turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks. His hair was carefully constructed and gelled to look somewhat messy. As Roy answered, Jason leaned back in his seat. "How do you not want to get back into the action? You were the best sharpshooter in the business. If you made a call, you could be back in Team 7 in a heartbeat."

Roy plucked another napkin to begin wiping away the sauces on his fingers as he gave a sly smile. "I did my time. Followed orders, had some fun. But you know... I never really saw this country. Traveled around it for competitions, but was never allowed to actually see anything. I've never been to the Alamo, or the Empire State Building. And neither was my dad."

That last word hung in the air for a moment. Despite the distance from his death, that fact still stung Roy. As for Jason, it made him stop in his tracks and rethink what exactly he was asking his former coworker to do for him. And as the two men sat in silence, another sound from outside the bar cut through the awkward silence.

The two men watched the scene unfolding outside. There, a few men with pick-up trucks that were proudly flying the confederate flag pulled up into the parking lot just as a black man in a t-shirt and jeans was walking towards the bar. The confederate-supporters got out of their pick-up and started surrounding the guy, blocking his path to getting into the bar. Jason's eyes narrowed as he watched one of the large men start shoving the victim of their hate.

Jason turned his gaze back to Roy, who was watching his dinner companion with concern.

"I need to use the bathroom."

"Don't."

"Don't what? I need to take a piss."

Roy simply shook his head as Jason stood up from the small two-person table and made his way towards the back of the restaurant. He went into the back of the bar, finding the small closet that was marked as the men's restroom. As soon as he entered and locked the door, Jason looked up towards the ceiling for window near the top of the bathroom. He went to try and lift open the very wide and simple window, only to find it to be a bit stuck. The former spy sighed as he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small utility knife. He flicked it open and ran it along the bottom of the window, removing a layer of grime and filth that was keeping the window a bit stuck down. With another attempt, the window was able to swing out. Jason then sighed and quickly jumped up into the air, using his momentum and strength to kick from one wall to the other and then up towards the window sill. He slid himself out from the window and landed behind the bar.

As Jason circled around the side of the bar, he could hear the situation had escalated. He could hear a cry for help as there was grunting and the sound of kicking and groaning. So Jason rushed around the side of the building, his fists clenched and at the ready. As he rounded the corner, about five men were gathered around their victim. They were kicking him in the head, chest, back, and legs. One of them, the one stomping down on the guy's legs trying to break them, shouted out, "Get back on to your ghetto now, boy! This place ain't for your kind."

Jason could feel the rage boiling inside him as he began rushing forward around the corner of the bar. With each kick and hit, he remembered the sensations coursing through his chest, his arms, and his skull. He almost thought the painful sensation in his hand was just a sensory memory until Jason was brought back to reality at the sound of a different voice yelping in pain. One of the racists was clutching the side of his ear as he fell down to the ground over the bloody mess of his victim, and was trying to scramble back onto his feet as his compatriots stared in shock.

The next moments were a blur of adrenaline and pure instinct. When one came in on his right with a right hook, Jason stepped back and provided a small redirecting shove to have the man clock one of his friends in the face. Another came forward trying to tackle the former spy to the ground, but Jason simply stepped to the side and provided a quick kick to the man's knee. The sound of the crunch was satisfying as the Team 7 operator decided to go on the attack in delivering a quick strike to the man he had first attacked in the neck by the time he got to his feet, leaving him choking for air.

While caught up in the chaos of the hand to hand combat, Jason was surprised and petrified with fear as he saw the two other assailants has run back to their trucks and were loading up their shotguns with appropriate shells. He had only a moment to duck back behind another car in the parking lot before the shotguns began firing off in his directions, followed by whooping and hollering. That is, until Jason heard something he wasn't expecting. He heard screams of pain coming from where the two men were firing. As Jason peered around the hood, he saw that the men had been struck by arrows in their shoulders. It didn't take long for Jason to put two and two together, especially when his marksman friend stepped out from around the other corner of the bar holding his bow with an arrow nocked and drawn. Roy turned his gaze towards Jason for a moment and nodded for him to make his way over. The vigilante did so, and began running towards the archer. Without so much as a word, Jason and Roy fled to a beaten up red van and got in. The latter threw van into drive and spun out onto the empty evening road, taking off from the scene of their crime.

Without sharing a single word, the two men knew what they had just done. And they knew that it wouldn't take long before the police were called and the authorities were looking for them.

As far as they were concerned, Jason Todd and Roy Harper were now Outlaws.

Los Angeles
7:57:292 AM, Central Standard Time

The semi-trailer truck careened out of control down the 405. Its diver’s hands were clamped tightly on the wheel, but his mind was elsewhere. The security and safety of his fellow motorists were low on his priorities as his heart seized up and squeezed the life out of him. Cars moved as quickly out of the truck’s path as they could, but even this early in the morning it was difficult on the crowded freeway. The truck crashed into the back of a compact car. The impact caused the smaller car’s rear end to crumple and collapse under the truck’s massive front. The young man in the driver’s seat of the compact screamed as the truck prepared to run over his car and crush him inside it.

But in the blink of an eye he was gone. The truck crushed an empty car and skidded to a stop on the freeway. The young man now stood on the side of the freeway, confused about how he had arrived there. The cab of the truck was also empty. The driver was two miles away on a gurney at a hospital’s ER. Nurses swarmed the man who had suddenly appeared in front of them writhing in pain.

The man who had swooped in and saved two lives was now skating across the water of the Pacific at forty-six times the speed of sound. He was going faster than he usually did on his morning workout.

He was running late.

---

---

London
7:58:002 AM, Central Standard Time

“Everyone settle down! You fucking move and we all go to meet God.”

The nearly thirty customers and employees at the upscale West Kensington bank huddled together on the floor of the bank's lobby just in front of the teller cage. The man in the snake mask stood over them. Strapped to his chest was enough plastic explosive to level the bank and the adjoining buildings on both sides. The only thing that kept it from happening was the dead man’s switch in his hand.

A phone somewhere in the lobby chirped nonstop, but the bomber ignored it. It was probably Special Branch trying to negotiate. He’d already told the Met his demands -- full immunity and the release for his brothers unduly arrested by imperialist thugs -- and they balked. No doubt MI5 would start the hostage negotiation playbook and try to get him to slowly release the hostages one by one. But the time for talk was over. He either got results or he would act and blow up himself and all these….

“Wait…”

He didn’t know how, but he was now in the bank all by himself. Every single hostage was gone, the floor that had been filled with people was now empty. Where the fuck had they gone? He felt a brush of movement in front of him before a hard pull shook him. A loud clatter made him look down. His vest and explosives lay at his feet, disassembled and now fully unarmed. He held up the dead man’s trigger and saw the disconnected wire dangling at the end where C4 had once been attached.

“What the fu--”

A fist moving at incredible speed cold-cocked him. He collapsed to the floor and lost consciousness about the same time his attacker hit the the United States’ eastern seaboard running west.

---

---

Metropolis
7:58:546 AM, Central Standard Time

The woman on the side of the road didn’t know what to do. Her old car had blown a tire on the way to dropping her kids off at daycare. She was going to be late for work and her boss did not tolerate lateness. She was already on thin ice with him after what happened last week. Being late might be the last straw, and she really needed the job for her and her boys.

Cars passed by her on the freeway, ignoring her plight and going about their day. Inside the car her youngest began to cry. She leaned against the side of the car and closed her eyes. She willed back the tears and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t cry. If she cried now, she'd lose control.

Something fast blasted by the car and made her look up. She noticed the car was sitting funny and her eyes widened when she saw the spare tire sitting on the car, ready to go. She looked around confused at who or what had saved her day.

But her savior was already in Indiana and racing west.

Class was about to start.

---

---

Central City, Missouri
8:00:002 AM, Central Standard Time

“Oh, come on,” Bart Allen grunted as he pulled at the lock door. “Come on, come on.”

The door to Physics 150 wouldn’t budge. He rapped against it. When nothing happened he pounded later and waited before the door opened and the tall, lanky man with dark hair looked down his long nose at him.

“Allen,” he said in a measured voice. “Class begins at 8 AM.”

“It’s eight right now, Professor Thawne.”

“8:01 by watch," he said with just a hint of condescension. "And I have already had to interrupt my lecture thanks to your disturbance.”

A smile crept onto Thawne’s face as Bart stammered and tried to come up with an excuse.

“You have no consideration for my time, or the time of your fellow students, Mr. Allen. By showing up late you show us that you have no respect for us. You expect the world to cater to you. You are a very selfish young man. Try to make it on time next class.”

Thawne shut the door in Bart’s face without another word. Bart clenched his fists. It would be the easiest thing in the world to blast the door off its hinges with a supercharged kick. Kick it in and shout in Thawne’s smug face about all the lives he had saved in just the past minute while he was here in his little world where he was the boss.

But instead he took a deep breath and shifted his backpack to another shoulder. The fantasy of confronting Thawne was just a fantasy. He couldn't let him or anyone else know what he was capable of. Maybe being branded a flake was the lesser of two evils? He walked away from the classroom and headed for the library. He would miss Thawne’s boring lecture, sure, but he could at least study. He couldn't get revenge by showing Thawne what he could really do, but he could at least ace his tests. That would wipe the creepy smile from his face.

---

"Hey... hey... hey!"

The last hey was loud enough for Bart to hear over the sound of the synthwave playing in his earbuds. He looked up from his physics book and almost gasped. The cute dark haired girl from class was standing in font of him. He took the earbuds out and tried his best smile.

"Hey there."

"What's wrong with your face?" She asked with a furrowed brow.

"Sorry, that was me smiling... or at least trying to."

"Need to work on that," she said with a sigh. "I'm glad I ran into you. I figured that was you Thawne was giving a hard time earlier."

"Correct. I'm starting to think my sole reason for existing is to be berated by that man."

"Well, you didn't deserve it. You weren't that late. Umm... if you want, I can let you copy my notes from the lecture."

"Yeah?" Bart asked, a smile creeping on to his face.

"See there?" she said with a laugh. "That smile is much better."

"Well I had your great advice to work with."

"You know, I don't see you around a lot outside class," she said as she looked through her backpack. "Do you live in the dorms?"

"I live off-campus with my family. I'm a townie."

"Well, townie." She laid her notes on the table in front of Bart. "Copy those and give them back to me. I'll be at another table."

"You can sit here if you want," Bart said. He motioned towards the three empty chairs at his table. "I'm not exactly expecting any other study buddies."

"Oh, so we're study buddies? Maybe I should know your name first. I've just been calling you Late Guy."

"I'm Bart," he said with a laugh. "Bart Allen."

She raised her eyebrows. "Wow."

"What?"

"I just didn't think there were any Barts under the age of sixty."

She pulled out one of the chairs and sat down across the table from Bart.

"I'm Valerie Perez. Call me Val."

"Wow," said Bart with a grin. "Now who has the old name?"

"You know, I can always go back to calling you Late Guy."

"Valerie is an old name, but it's making a comeback I hear."

They shared a laugh and Bart shook his head. It looked like Thawne had ended up doing him a favor.

"Well," I say to myself as I'm herded toward the large stage in the middle of the park, my words completely drowned out by thumping bass that makes my intestines rumble, "So far everything about this is awful. So at the very least, I was right."

From what I've gathered on my very few trips outside in the month or so I've been in Jump City, it's that the people here are massive neophiles. This close to Silicon Valley, and with a few of the biggest video game developers in the world setting up headquarters here, they get first access to the latest gadgets, the newest games, the hottest toys before everyone else gets them. And they've been conditioned to eat it all up, kids and teenagers and young adults throwing billions of dollars at big tech corporations who lure them in with gaudy, flashy events like....well, like this one. Trained like a city full of Pavlov's dogs. Ring the bell, and watch them all salivate.

I'm here out of obligation, because Mister Abel more or less guilt-tripped me into trying to have "fun" with other people my age. Having grown up around cultists who think that melting their brains with psychotropic drugs is the same thing as contacting higher dimensions, and then having a completely different group of cultists kidnap and try to murder me, I'm not exactly jumping with excitement over the prospect of being surrounded by a bunch of....normal people. I'm just here to take a picture or two for photographic evidence and buy one piece of overpriced merchandise to prove to Mister Abel that I had a "good time."

For as much as I absolutely do not want to be here, just getting in was an ordeal. I was stopped at three different checkpoints: once by the event staff to make sure I didn't have any symptoms of the crud, a second by the JCPD to turn my backpack inside out to make sure I wasn't sneaking in a gun (or worse, food or water that isn't from the concession stands), and a third by some private security goons called HIVE who frisked me for reasons they didn't bother disclosing. Those last guys in particular seemed to take their time in patting people down, and even inside the event, they have guards patrolling around the stage like they're overseeing a maximum security prison.

Speaking of the stage, two massive screens show off the new Control Freaks console and a clip-show of what I assume are the upcoming games, while on the stage itself, some technicolored thing fumbles through the worst music I have ever heard. A throng of people-- most of whom look to be about my age, barely old enough to have a driver's license-- gyrate and dry-hump amidst a storm of seizure-inducing lasers, strobes, and fog. If they're not drunk or high, then they're doing a good job of pretending to be. For a second, I'm reminded of the degeneracy I saw at the party my "father" Sebastian took me to in Los Angeles the night he tried to put a knife through me.

And to think, this is all just to sell some crappy--

God, Allie is so hot in that dress. I've gotta--

--can't believe I let them talk me into this, but--

--see him around Jackie again, he's fucking dead, I'll--

--guess another drink couldn't hurt, as long as I don't--

--anyone actually like this guy's music? How do you--

--can't believe this is what my career has come to. I was Hamlet at Juliard, for God's sake! Now I'm up here peddling this puerile dreck for--

--best song I've ever heard! How can anyone not like--

"Nnngh! What....what the hell?!"

Voices, all around me, come crashing in. At first, I think it's just a part of the music. But I know better. I've had...'episodes' for the past few weeks, ever since Sebastian and his band of creeps first came for me. I'll think someone's talking to me, but they won't move their lips. I'll suddenly have picture-perfect recollection of places I've never been, people I've never met. Someone will start shouting down the block, and I'll be the one who starts to feel angry or afraid.

Internal monologues, half-formed prototypes of sentences, bits of songs, images of memories and fantasies and secret fears. It's pushed by a wave of emotions, raw and unchecked by rationality, strengthened by the hormones of a few thousand excitable, horny, angry, tortured, oblviously happy, and terminally insecure teenagers. A pure, unfiltered deluge of thought overwhelms me. It's all I can do to stay on my feet.



A voice that sounds like an avalanche roars over everything.

"....who.....what are you--"

"I, uhhhhh, I said my name's Alex," says the boy standing in front of me when I open my eyes. He's grotesquely overweight, with long stringy red hair done up in a top-knot, a patchy beard with bushy mutton-chops, a long black trenchcoat, and an ill-fitting T-shirt with the logo of something called 'Pretty Pretty Pegasus' on it. "But, erm, online I go by Count Del Freako."

"....uh-huh....," I nod, barely giving him any attention as I struggle to get my bearings.

"I, well, uh, I saw you looked like you could use some assistance," he says, "and I thought I could see if there's, uhhh, anything you need?"

I take a few deep breaths, then shake my head. Mister Abel said I should try to make friends.

"It's...fine," I say. "Just a migraine. So, um.....'Count Del Freako'......do you play video games?"

Even if I didn't just have another episode, I am still awful at small talk.

"Yeah, I mean, I'm a pretty big gamer, I guess," he says, trying to play it cool. "I've had all the Control Freak consoles since first-gen. I'm ranked number one on Freak Fest All-Stars Melee for the region, won a couple of big-money tournaments, so my mom lets me pretty much do whatever I want now. I mean, it's not a big deal or anything, I could teach you--"



There it is again. The voice like the ground splitting open. Like Hell opening up wide. It's in my head.

"--cus, like, All-Stars Custom Brawl was basically made for babies and casuals, the kind of losers who play with items on. But, I mean, if you like it, it's cool, I just like the more technical--"



Shut up......



.....shut up......





"SHUT UP!!!!"

"....okay, sorry. I'll.....I'll leave you alone," Alex shrinks away, before muttering to himself "_{....fuckin' bitch, why don't girls like nice guys like me?}"

I stagger away, trying to find somewhere to clear my head. Everywhere around me, there's more brain-dead guys and vapid girls spewing their triteness into my thoughts. Those armed guards from HIVE patrolling around the stage keep staring at me. And that godawful music won't stop. It's too much.

Finally, I stagger into a bathroom, and splash some cold water on your face.

"....calm down," I say to myself, "You're going to be okay.....you're going to be okay....."



".....everything's going to be okay....."

---

Kathas and Palamar have fallen. Myrynnian has become a cauldron of nightmares. And now glorious Tamarus herself is in ruins.

Citadel drones strafe the city streets, disruptor bolts reducing warrior and innocent alike to dust.

Green-skinned stormtroopers from the Gordanian hordes kick down the doors of living quarters, dragging women and children away to be used as slaves and chattel.

Maltusian Psions send out blasts of despair and fear to demoralize and disrupt our lines, in order for them to be crushed and swept aside by hulking crag-faced Branx warriors.

Multi-limbed horrors from the Spider Guild climb across the city's broken towers, snatching up unlucky souls in their slavering acidic jaws.

Flames engulf the Royal Palace. The Floating Gardens where we had played as children, the Hall of Glory where we trained as warriors, the Temple of Knowledge where we had learned as scholars, and the Inner Home where we had grown as family. All now are shattered and burned, the people inside either dead or dying.

"I want you to know, dear sister," Komand'r says, a cruel smile on her face as she tightens the electro-leash around my neck, "that this is all your fault. You could have stopped any of this from happening. All you had to do was kill me when you had the chance."

"I showed you mercy," I spit, still full of futile defiance. "I am no monster."

"Oh?" She asks, chuckling as if the comment itself were absurd, before lacing her voice with venom. "And what would you call a creature who drains the love of her parents, so they have none left over for their other daughter? What would you call a being who sucks out the adoration of the masses, forcing her equal to be forgotten and left behind? What would you call a thing who has spent her entire life hoarding glories and honors and affection and attention for herself alone, while letting her sister rot in the shadows?! What, Kory, would you call that...if not a monster?"

She leads me out to the front steps of the palace, where the few surviving people of the city of Tamarus have been corralled by the Citadel soldiers.

"I have suffered the agony of humiliation all my life, sister," Komand'r scowls, as a pair of Citadel soldiers force me to my knees. The crowd looks on, hollow-eyed and defeated, as she retrieves a weapon from an eager-looking officer: a Neural Lash, a weapon that is considered a war-crime to even own, let alone wield. "It is well past time you knew what that was like."

She winds the lash back to strike.....

....and I wake, the escape shuttle still traveling at several orders of magnitude above the Speed of Light.

BE ADVISED, YOU HAVE EXITED HYPER-SLEEP DURING JUMP MANEUVERS, the navicomputer warns. PROLONGED CONSCIOUSNESS DURING HYPERSPACE TRAVEL CAN RESULT IN NEUROLOGICAL DISTORTION. YOU MAY EXPERIENCE DISORIENTATION AND MEMORY LOSS UPON RE-ENTERING PHYSICAL SPACE. ADMINISTERING ANESTHETIC....

"Just a dream," A sharp needle jabs into my arm, and I feel myself drifting back into unconsciousness. "Just a little further now....I will be okay......I will be okay...."



".....everything will be okay...."

Ace Chemical Processing Plant
Gotham City, NJ
1:26 AM Local Time

The guard was big, maybe 6'4” and 230 pounds. The scything right would have done some damage if it connected. The chances of that were low, however. He was a poor fighter. Not uncommon for big guys, their size prevents fights from starting in the first place so they never take time to learn.

Dropping the big man was simplicity itself. Wing would approve. Two gloved palms clapped over the ears to disorient. A swinging heel to the knee to take his footing. And with a firm grip already on the man's head, three sharp knee strikes directly to the face took him out of the fight. The big man crumbled on himself to the concrete production floor.

The Crimson Avenger allowed himself a triumphant grin, which quickly turned into a grimace as he heard shouts behind him. He glanced back, squinting in the dim after-hours lights to see the white shirts of three or four more uniformed security guards pointing at him. He had what he needed already, no point in sticking around. With a brief pat at his coat pocket to reassure himself the plastic container was still sealed and unbroken, the Crimson Avenger set out at a run between the tall uncovered storage tanks, ducking below thick rusted pipes. He knew his red coat would be difficult to spot in the underlit factory.

Shots rang out, and the Crimson Avenger heard the ping of a ricochet. No good. The guards were undertrained, like everyone on the Ace Chemicals payroll. They were just shooting in his general direction, not stopping to aim, not stopping to consider what might happen if one of their wild shots struck a rusted tank filled with say, chlorine gas or methyl isocyanate.

He crouched low as he ran, moving in a zigzag to make a harder target. He jumped railings, ducked under low-hanging catwalks as he moved through the labyrinthine facility. He had no intention of pulling his own .45s to engage the guards. No reason to kill them, and besides a pitched gunfight in this corner-cutting facility could easily turn Gotham City into another Bhopal. Just had to make it out of there with the sample intact. And ideally without any holes in his body.

In the half-darkness, two red lights caught his attention. As he charged towards them, the glowing letters E and T became visible. Of course Ace Chemicals couldn't even be bothered to change the bulbs in the fire exit sign. Even the simplest and most obvious safety protocols were too much.

Another crack of a .38 revolver behind him, and this time the bullet dug into the dirty concrete floor just a few feet to the Crimson Avenger's left. Maybe it was pure luck, or maybe they had spotted him. The Crimson Avenger pushed himself even harder, covering the last twenty feet to the fire escape at a dead sprint and slamming against it with his shoulder. It sprang wide open, somewhat to the surprise of a cynical part of his brain that had expected the management to have bricked it up for some absurd reason.

He dashed across the open ground of the parking lot, scarlet coattails fluttering in the wind. Sweat beaded underneath his mask as his feet pounded against the pavement- he was beginning to think wingtip dress shoes might not be the best choice for this line of work. Finally he found himself at the chain link fence surrounding the Ace facility, rusted and ill-maintained like everything else here. The Crimson Avenger quickly clambered over it, dropped the eight feet to the ground, tucked and rolled. He was immediately up and running, making his way deeper into Gotham's industrial district, trying to put a few blocks between him and Ace Chemicals. It was three blocks later, behind one of the hundreds of abandoned warehouses of this city, that he finally skidded to a stop, sucking in lungfuls of dirty Gotham air, hands shaking slightly as the adrenaline flowing through his body finally began to slow.

He did it. The Crimson Avenger almost didn't believe it. He gingerly patted his pocket, was relieved to find the container undisturbed. He really did it. Not bad for only his third time out.

Now to complete the getaway. He quickly looked around for any security cameras or potential witnesses. Finding none, he pulled the burner phone from his pocket, quickly texted Wing Hao with his location. The car would be here in a few minutes. He peeled off the coat, hat, and mask, removed the shoulder holster with the twin .45s. Pulling a well-folded grocery bag from his pocket, he dumped everything into the small cloth bag and waited patiently.

Now to casual prying eyes he was just Lee Travis, a millionaire wearing a rumpled and sweaty suit and clutching a wrinkled grocery bag on a street corner in the warehouse district waiting for a ride in the middle of the night. Come to think of it, that still sounded pretty suspicious, and he had no idea what he would say to any cop or passerby who confronted him. Lee admitted to himself that this part was going to need some work.

East End Legal Clinic
Gotham City, NJ
12:13 PM Local Time

“Fiat panis,” Lee Travis said as he let himself into Jill Carlyle's cluttered office. She looked up from a brief in annoyance, but her look of irritation softened at the smile on Lee's angular face, and melted altogether when she saw the paper sack he held up from Big Belly Burger. “#3 with extra pickles and a strawberry shake. Your usual.”

She snatched the bag away, hungrily began wolfing down the burger. “Alright, Lee,” she managed between bites. “I know you didn't come down here to bring me lunch out of the kindness of your heart. What exactly do you want?”

“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes,” he chuckled ruefully. “Am I that transparent?”

“Usually, yes,” she replied with a smirk as she shoveled a handful of fries into her mouth. “Not so much lately. Come on, out with it.”

He moved an overflowing banker's box off one of her threadbare chairs and sat down. “I've been following with interest the class-action lawsuit you've been working on against the Ace Chemical Processing Plant on behalf of several citizens of the East End and The Narrows.”

“You need to read your own papers, Lee,” Jill sighed. “I gave a statement to your reporter last month, that Barker lady.” She briefly looked uncomfortable. “Look, Lee, you don't suppose that's why-”

“No, no,” Lee said with a practiced aristocratic wave. “Her killer was not related to Ace Chemicals. Claudia, bless her, was very much in the habit of turning over stones. It's been left to others to stomp out what crawls out from underneath them.”

“That's very colorful imagery to use on a woman eating her lunch.”

“Mea culpa. But please, tell me more about this suit.”

She shrugged. “It's stalled, there's not much to tell. During the pandemic, Gotham City had the highest mortality rates in neighborhoods just downstream of the Ace plant. Their staff there fared even worse. There was some medical research, nothing conclusive, to suggest exposure to certain chemicals might worsen the Markovian Virus. A chemical and biological tag team on the same sets of organs.”

“And your clients suspected Ace Chemicals was releasing these chemicals into the groundwater.”

She nodded vigorously as she drained the milkshake. “Exactly. I commissioned a study of the water in these neighborhoods and did find higher than usual amounts of lead, arsenic, and several of the other chemicals listed in the study. But Ace refused to allow independent investigators to inspect the plant. They wouldn't confirm or deny whether the suspect chemicals were at their plant. They've paid top dollar to an uptown attorney and even threatened a countersuit against the people of those neighborhoods. People living from paycheck to paycheck below the poverty line. As you can see,” Jill said with an expansive wave around her overcrowded, cheap office, “I don't really have the resources to directly challenge a white-shoe firm like that unless I come up with some kind of smoking gun. Which I suspect brings me to your sudden interest in the case,” she concluded, staring at him expectantly over the rims of her glasses.

He grinned disarmingly, leaned back. “At my office this morning, some anonymous Good Samaritan dropped off photos of dramatically unsafe storage from the high-security area of Ace Chemicals. Not to mention a jar of chemical waste alleged to have been collected from open and improperly stored barrels stacked haphazardly in a side room with open drainage. I've sent a sample for analysis but I think it'll match with your groundwater tests.”

Jill was skeptical. “Anonymously donated evidence like that would be torn to shreds in court. Without going through proper public channels there's no way to verify these claims. Photos can be faked, chemicals obtained from just about anywhere. A good lawyer will think of this and a judge won't allow it.”

Lee grinned. “So I publish the photos in the Globe-Leader and all of my other newspapers. I write editorials pressuring industry leaders not to patronize Ace. I publish the findings on this chemical evidence and interview the people affected. Media can change perceptions. Eventually the public outcry will force them to allow you to have your independent inspection. They're caught in flagrante.”

Jill stared, before a small chuckle. “It'll take a lot of luck, but it might work.”

“It'll work.”

Jill finished the last few fries, patted her lips contentedly with a napkin. “You've been acting different the last month or so, Lee. Not in a bad way. But you're more focused. Driven. Used to be you would just write an op-ed about this kind of thing and call it a day.”

Lee's smile faded. “Let's just say I had a wake-up call around that time. Call it white guilt, noblesse oblige, whatever. But I can't just sit by anymore. I have to do something. And I'm guessing you feel the same way, otherwise you'd be in some uptown skyscraper instead of this run-down shopfront.”

“The greater good, eh?”

“Bonum commune communitatis. Anyways, Jill, I'm sure you're busy, I won't take up any more of your time. Keep an eye out for the Globe-Leader. We're going to do this together.”

The Travis Residence
Gotham City, NJ
6:43 PM Local Time

“Lee, the time is right for acquisitions. Print media is hurting and publications are going cheap,” Amos Vangilder insisted, his voice oddly tinny over the phone. Lee guess the CEO of the Travis Group was driving.

“If print media is doing so badly, then what's the point of buying up newspapers? Why spend money on a dying field?” Lee asked as he walked into the kitchen of his Gotham Village brownstone. He dabbed at sweat running down his face and hoped Vangilder couldn't tell over the phone just how out of breath he was.

“We take over, beef up their online presence, sell more space to advertisers. There's plenty of smaller cities like Hub City, Fawcett City, and Vanity with broadsheets independently owned by small-time businesspeople who don't have the experience or capital to make these operations profitable, especially after losing staff to the pandemic. They'll be happy to take the payout and reinvest in something they understand. Gold mines and restaurants.”

“Well, Amos, that sounds fascinating and I'd love to discuss it with you when I'm less distracted,” Lee said as he drank down a sports drink and took a few deep breaths. “Have a report on my desk soon, okay?” He hung up without saying goodbye, held up an apologetic hand to his martial arts tutor Wing Hao, waiting impatiently in the doorway.

“Break's over, Lee,” Wing growled. “We have to get back to work if you want to keep living through these nighttime excursions.”

Lee set the towel down on the counter and nodded in agreement. “Run me through it again,” he said as both men took fighting stances and prepared to spar once more.

TARGET PLANET: M-CLASS, SPACE SECTOR 2814
GRAVITY: 0.62 TAMARANIAN STANDARD
ATMOSPHERE: 78% NITROGEN, 21% OXYGEN, REMAINING 1% ARGON, CARBON-DIOXIDE, AND TRACE ELEMENTS
DOMINANT SPECIES: BIPEDAL, OPPOSABLE THUMBS, ESTIMATED SIXTH-LEVEL INTELLECT ON AVERAGE
TECHNOLOGICAL LEVEL: 1. INTERPLANETARY CONTACT: MINIMAL TO NONE.

PROGNOSIS: MOSTLY HARMLESS

TARGET LANDING ZONE ACQUIRED. DECELERATING TO DESCENT SPEED. WILL BREACH ATMOSPHERE IN 30 MILLICYCLES.

ENGAGING STEALTH FIELD. DEPLOYING ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE TO DISABLE DETECTION IN 3....2....1...

---

The lasers, strobes, and unbearable music suddenly cut off, and the park is plunged into darkness. There's a collective "AWWWWW" from the crowd, and people begin booing, as if the blackout was part of the show.

"Ohhhhh darn," I say amidst the din, "I guess I'll have to go home now without seeing the rest of the show. What a shame."

The cops and those burly HIVE security guards begin funneling people out of the park, some of the more colorfully-decorated kids in the crowd navigating with the glow-sticks they had been twirling with the music. I notice one person leading a group out with what looks like a plastic sword lined with LED lights-- that Alex kid from earlier. I should probably apologize for snapping at him, but now's not exactly the time for it. Besides, I heard what he said under his breath, so I'm hardly brimming with sympathy.

"Don't forget to keep your wrist-bands!" a pimply-faced member of the event staff shouts, his voice cracking several octaves in both directions. "So we can let you back in when we start again!"

"Don't worry about it," I tell him as I peel the wristband off and drop it into the trash can beside him.

---

TARGET LANDING AREA IS CLEAR.

BEGINNING FINAL APPROACH.

---

The walk home is only a few blocks, but with all of the lights out and the crowd seeming to disperse down every street but mine, it feels like miles.

What a complete waste of an evening. I could have spent that time reading, or going through some old notes, or.....hell, counting the cash register again just for the fun of it. Anything would have been a better time than--



I feel it. A powerful wave of feeling, surging as it gets closer. A hunger. Not hunger like you feel in the late afternoon well after lunch but before dinner. And not hunger like someone who's lost everything and doesn't know when or where their next meal will be. Hunger like a wolf that's closing in on a deer. An excited, predatory sort of hunger.

"Excuse me, Miss?"

An SUV slows down to roll alongside me, without its running lights on, engine barely making a sound. Leaning his head out of the driver's side window is an older man wearing shades, a black "tacti-cool" top, and a ball cap with the word HIVE embroidered on the front. "We'd like to have a word with you, can you stop for a moment?"

Why would some rent-a-cops want 'a word' with me? I didn't do anything illegal-- last I checked, there weren't any laws about hearing voices in your head. Or hating crappy music.

Whatever they want, it's not good. Keep walking, Rachel.

"Miss, we just want to--"

"Last I checked, the park was that way," I point behind me, "And that's where your jurisdiction ends. If I did something I wasn't supposed to, take it up with the actual cops."

Shades frowns. "We saw your 'episode' at the concert, Miss," he says, more authority in his voice. "The readings you were giving off were off the charts. We have some questions--"

"And I have an answer," I cut him off, not even looking as I raise my middle finger.

'Readings?' What kind of 'readings' are event security--

SKRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEECH!!!

The SUV heaves forward, then swerves to cut me off. Shades steps out of the driver's side, and three more big guys in tactical gear step out. Two of them have tasers, the other two have guns.

I start to take a few steps back. "B--....back off," I say, trying to keep a brave face. "You....you don't kn-know what y-you're dealing with."

The four of them start to laugh, but I'm telling the truth. They have no idea what I'm capable of.

And neither do I.

A month ago, Sebastian Blood tried to kill me. He and a few dozen followers had chained me to an altar in the bowels of his Hollywood mansion, and proceeded to do all sorts of obscene things to each other in the name of some entity they called "The Great Trigon." Sebastian said I was the "gateway to the infernal realm," and that sacrificing me to his great big evil master would get him honors and glory in the world to come. From what I gathered, the saying "there's a special place in Hell for you" wasn't a threat to him, but a promise.

Just as the dagger was coming down, all my fear, all my anger, all my confusion, just....erupted. I heard the cry of a bird, and then a shadow poured out of me, washing over the room like a geyser of ink. It tossed Sebastian aside like a ragdoll, broke my chains like strands of tissue paper, smashed tables, pounded holes in the walls, and left his band of cultists in heaps of broken limbs and spinal trauma. I don't think I killed any of them, but I won't shed too many tears if I did.

All well and good, but I don't know how the hell I did it. I was scared and confused then. But I'm scared and confused now, and I don't seem to be throwing these jerks into the river yet.

"Now I'm going to ask you to be a little more polite, young lady," says Shades with an eager sneer as he clicks the safety off of his pistol. "You've got until the count of three to apologize for being rude, and come with us, or else we'll have to show you some manners. One.......two........"

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

---

.......my senses reel. The world begins to spin as I stumble forward.

...the world?.....a world, perhaps. Not my world.

Strewn about me are bodies, knocked unconscious by the force of the landing. One of them, on the ground before me, begins to stir, and scrambles to its feet.

My head swims, as the creature speaks.



I do not know its language. It does sound like any variation of Interlac I have ever heard.

"Where am I?" I ask. "What is this place?"

The creature-- a female, by appearance, though I may be mistaken-- babbles an answer.



For a moment, I think of attempting to communicate with hand gestures, find something with which to scribe, starting with the universal language of mathematics.

Then I see the others begin to stir, and reach for what appear to be weapons.

"I apologize, but we have little time," I say, and approach to initiate a psychic meld through the most direct means I can manage.

---

My head hurts. My back hurts. My bones hurt. Everything hurts. So on the bright side, that means I'm not dead.

I open my eyes, and as I stagger to my feet, I see....something has crashed down on top of the HIVE goons' SUV. It's like a big, silver egg, encrusted with gems and lined with gold lace. It looks like something out of either a fairy tale, or a bad SyFy movie, I'm not sure which.

Stepping out of the egg-thing is a girl. Slender, with long flowing red hair, tanned skin, and bright green eyes-- bright as in literally, glowing green. She stumbles and staggers, and by instinct, I call out to her.

"Hey, are you.....okay? What.....what is that thing?"

I know what that thing looks like. It looks like a crashed UFO.

But it isn't. It can't be. Because that would be stupid.

The girl turns her eyes to me, and speaks.



It's pure gibberish, not even remotely sounding like any language I've ever heard.

"I'm sorry, I....don't know what you're saying."

There's a pained groan, and I see Shades and his friends are regaining consciousness....and going for their guns.

The girl from the sp---the whatever-that-thing-is, not an alien spaceship, that would be stupid-- sees it too, and walks toward me.



She cups a hand to my cheek....

"Hey, wait, what are you--?!"

Her lips press against mine, and my mind explodes.

Images of a lush tropical world, three vibrant colored moons hanging in the sky like ripe fruit.

Muscular men and statuesque women, all with bright red hair and luminescent green eyes, living lives of wonder and adventure.

A happy childhood. A loving mother and father. A sister who never opens up and says what's bothering her.

A betrayal.

A war.

A desperate escape.

Words, feelings, memories, slam into me with the force of a hurricane.

Then she pulls away, breaking the kiss, and I'm back in what passes for the real world.

Taking a few steps and a deep breath, I manage a .......what?!"

"I apologize for the sudden intrusion into personal space," she says, suddenly speaking fluent English, "But direct contact between high concentrations of nerve endings is the best way to achieve a psychic meld. And this was the best way I could make learning of the language occur with the most of fast."

.....well, fluent-ish.

".......WHAT?!"

"Nnnnngh," Shades pulls himself up, and puts a hand to his ear as he calls for backup. "Attention, attention, a second target has appeared. Inform Doctor Johnson. Requesting Class-3 backup."

"Come," the orange-haired girl says as she takes me by the wrist, "we must find a more defensible location if we are to be the victors in the combat!"

She snaps her fingers, and the giant silver egg sitting on the ruins of the SUV shrinks down into the size of an actual egg, then gently floats into the palm of her free hand. Then she begins to.....drift upwards, floating into the air.....taking me with her.

".........WHAT?!?!?!"

---

---

>S.H.A.D.E. NET LINK ESTABLISHED, AGENT PALMER.
>PLEASE ENTER PASSWORD ___________________
>PASSWORD ACCEPTED! THANK YOU, WELCOME TO S.H.A.D.E. NET.
>QUERY: WHAT IS “THE ANT FARM”?
>QUERY PROCESSING; STAND BY [//--------] 20%

The world around Ray Palmer was awash with static, fizzing white planes of light arcing off into the far distance before levelling, curving upwards, and rolling back into themselves like the tide. Ray might’ve liked it. Lie down and coast off the end of his morning coffee into a nap that might ease the dark circles below his eyes and the caffeine twitches in his hands, Ant Farm be damned. He would have, anyway, if the familiar buzz of background static was enough to drown out the teleporter matrix screaming in the background.

>QUERY PROCESSING; STAND BY [///-------] 30%

“Palmer!” And then there was the shouting, the only shrieking whine of a voice loud and commanding enough to edge out the violent thuds of the teleporter array and nest in Ray’s ears like an overgrown gnat. Father Time.

“S.H.A.D.E. Net, downcycle teleporter test procedure -- listen for Agent uplinks as normal. Send time-stamped logs to my L-Pad from the last... Call it ten minutes. Deactivate mind portal.” Ray said, sweeping his hand at the static that flowed around him.

>EXECUTING COMMANDS, AGENT PALMER.
>QUERY PROCESSING; STAND BY [/////-----] 50%

There was a schlorp as reality bled in from around the static’s edges, ripples in signal folding itself away, back to the world of curved metal and office chairs, lab coats and half-destroyed packets of Twizzlers across each workstation.

“Well?” Father Time’s shrill voice raked across Ray’s ears. He blinked what remained of the static out of his eyes and turned to face the other man. Father Time’s head came up to about Ray’s waist, but he held himself like a man twice as tall, shoulders set and arms poised at his sides, staring up at Ray through the eye-slits of the cartoonish domino mask plastered across his face. He might’ve mistaken him for a Japanese schoolgirl playing dress-up, wandered into The Ant Farm through pure coincidence and trying to play it off like she was meant to be here. Might have, anyway, if it weren’t for the hard look in his eyes that betrayed centuries of experience; and the way Father Time insisted on busting his balls at every available opportunity.

>QUERY PROCESSING; STAND BY [////////--] 80%

“Well, the ah teleporter frequency is definitely reducing S.H.A.D.E. Net’s operational efficiency. Even standard queries get met with significant loading time.” Ray fiddled with his labcoat as he spoke, searching for wherever the Hell he’d crammed his L-Pad.

“And your solution is?” Father Time had already turned on his heel, starting his disappearing act into the labyrinth of The Ant Farm, and expecting Ray to follow.

>QUERY PROCESSING; STAND BY [//////////] 100%
>THE ANT FARM: A MACRO CITY COMPLEX STORED IN THREE-INCH MICRO SCALE SPHERE, DESIGNED BY S.H.A.D.E. OPERATIVES RAY PALMER AND SCIENCE AGENT BELROY. THE ANT FARM SERVES AS S.H.A.D.E.’S PRIMARY HEADQUARTERS, OPERATIONAL CONTROL, AND PRIMARY TESTING FACILITY, AS WELL AS SERVING THE NEEDS OF S.H.A.D.E.’S FULL AGENT COMPLEMENT.

Ray ignored the buzzing of S.H.A.D.E. Net in his head, stumbling forward to keep step with Father Time as he practically skipped ahead like a grade schooler. The Ant Farm before them was a maze of criss-crossing hallways that seemed hand-molded out of the metal that always lead to another laboratory or Agent Apartment Complex secreted away into the body of the metal.

“Uh, Father Time, isn’t this more of a Computer Engineering concern?” Ray’s sweaty palms finally closed around the shape of his L-Pad and he wrenched it from his labcoat pocket, nearly losing his balance and careening into a wayward Agent.

Father Time looked back at him, face blank, “and?”

“Well, sir, I’m a, uh. Physicist.” Ray stammered, trying to look tall in his oversize coat. Father Time rolled his eyes.

“Labcoats like you are what’s keeping S.H.A.D.E. from evolving, Palmer. Get another doctorate, learn another discipline. Two, while you’re at it. It’ll put some hair on your chest.” Father Time’s voice cracked and he resumed his walk. A S.H.A.D.E. Agent wheeled a child past in a bright pink stroller, with Father Time’s S.H.A.D.E. Logo emblazoned on its jumper, marking it as an agency-approved non-agent family member.

“Besides,” Father Time gave Ray a glance, “the nerds in engineering are convinced it’s something to do with your shrink tech keeping us at micro-scale. No issues on their end.”

Ray slowed, gripping his L-Pad. His tech? All Ray was doing was compressing matter, it shouldn’t have affected S.H.A.D.E. Net or the teleporter array’s frequencies. In all likelihood it was the bastards in Computer Engineering passing off a job they didn’t want to handle. And Father Time had to know as much. Ray opened his mouth to comment and found that his legs had carried him off with Father Time deeper into the winding halls of The Ant Farm.

“Where, uh,” Ray began, “where are we going?”

Father Time stopped where they had started -- The Teleporter Labs. The machine whirred to life once again, metal armiture pinwheeling around a central yellow pad.

“I am going to a meeting to convince a board of Pentagon stiff-necks that the energy blip in Tibet was just a blip -- bastards want to make another Roswell out of it. You are going to deal with this.” Father Time jerked his thumb at the open door, as the smell of flash-burned silicon started reaching Ray’s nostrils. Somebody was teleporting in.

“Deal with wh--” Ray was cut off by the ‘WHUMP’ of the teleporter, whizzing bands and thuds and electronic whines as it enhanced a simple signal into the form of a man, piece by piece of the teleporter, transitioning from one space to another. He was huge, mottled, and green, with a sword that had to be bigger than Ray’s whole body hanging off of his back.

“Frankie!” Father Time shouted, “welcome home!”

“Father,” Frankenstein's monster still smoked from the teleporter, “where is my wife?”

---

The Blue Beetle hit the ground quietly, the small gravitational dampers he had installed on his boots and the knuckles of his suit doing their job as designed. He flipped open the padded gauntlet on his left forearm and pressed one of the buttons underneath, shooting the ripcord back up into the Bug and sending the craft to hover higher, ensuring it was out of view from prying eyes.

Not fifteen yards away, Ted could see the two men guarding the rooftop entrance. His goggles enhanced his vision in the dark, and what he saw surprised him. The two of them looked like they had been in a paint store explosion. Clearly divided streaks of technicolor swirled on them like they were something that popped out of a fun house. Each of them had white hair that almost seemed to glow even in the darkness. To say they looked bizarre would be an understatement, but then again he was dressed in a blue, beetle-themed getup, so maybe he wasn't the best judge of such things.

Moving silently as he could towards them in the shadows, he listed in on their conversation, attempting to gleam anything he could from their conversation.

"Why the hell are we here?" one asked the other. There was something odd about the way he talked, as if he was partly here and partly not. "I thought we were going to tear this city apart? That we'd really wake the normies up."

"There's gonna be plenty of time for that," the other one responded, that one with less of a tranced cadence. "Boss said he needed something here. So here we are."

"What does he need?" the first one asked.

"Dunno," the second shrugged. "Doesn't pay me to ask questions."

"Does he pay you to look like unicorn vomit?"

Blue Beetle sprung into action with a quip he couldn't help but blurt out. Catching the two men by surprise, he swept the leg out from the closest one, being the one that sounded like he was half drunk in their discussion. He fell backwards, hitting his head on the roof which in turn knocked him unconscious.

The other rainbow criminal yelped with surprise and lept backwards in a twisting backflip. The man's agility was surprising, almost superhuman. But Ted didn't let it throw him too much. He tracked the colorful criminal through the air and kicked off the ground to reach his landing point. When Ted reached it, the acrobatic criminal sprung back once again, attempting to land on his hands to escape once again. Instead, Ted managed to snag the man's foot out of the air and slam him into the roof. He crumpled, and Ted took the opportunity to zip tie his hands and feet together with a proprietary restraint he had designed.

"Who the hell do you think you are!?" the technicolor goon yelled at Ted.

"I'm the Blue Beetle, nice to meet you. Oh my god did I just say 'Nice to meet you' to a bad guy? Gotta work on my witty retorts."

"What are you, some kind of cop?" the criminal stopped struggling against his restraints, realizing it was in vain.

"No, I'm what the cops should be," Ted responded without thinking. That's what he wanted. It's why he started this project in the first place. Too often he saw things that turned his stomach on the nightly news, especially in the wake of the pandemic and the unrest that followed. If he could be better, if he could show that there was a better way, maybe he could affect some real change in the city. "What are you, a reject from Burning Man?"

Still got it, Teddy boy.

"We are the chaos that is the true state of every man. We are the kaleidoscope of emotions that society tells us to hold back."

"Ah, so you're coo-coo, got it," Blue Beetle responded as he made his way towards the door. Before he reached it, however, he noticed the unconscious man he had taken down first had reverted from the brightly colored state to looking like a normal guy. It made absolutely no sense, but Ted didn't have any time to stay and figure out how that worked. He had business inside.

Stepping into STAR Labs felt odd to Ted, he had to admit. They were technically a competitor to Kord Sciences, even if the two had worked together in the past. This lab, if he remembered correctly, was more focused on the biological sciences. They had been one of the spearheads in the development for the vaccine to the recent pandemic.

That thought sent alarm bells off in his head. If someone was here, they could be stealing information on the vaccine or the virus itself. In the wrong hands, that could lead to devastating consequences.

He brought up his HUD again, and saw the six remaining criminals were farther in the building on the floor he was now occupying a room at the end of the hall. As ted approached, he saw that the door was closed. He flipped the setting on his HUD, bringing up the heat signatures in said space. One of the intruders was leaning against the door, and Ted had to smile to himself for that.

Rearing back, he slammed into the door, flinging it open and slamming the man behind it into the wall. He bounced off back towards Ted, who slapped a quick set of restraints on his hands and pushed him into two of his friends.

"Well, looks like it's time to go," a tittering voice said from the other side of the room. Ted looked up to see another multi-colored menace, but he was different. The colors on his body wavered and waned like a lava lamp in full tilt. His white hair looked like it crackled with energy. He took something off his belt and tossed it at a window behind him. The device created a small explosion, and the rainbow many tossed a pack over his shoulder and made his way towards it. Before he jumped, he called to his men, "Make sure he doesn't follow."

With that he jumped, and something cracked on the back of Ted's head. As he was distracted by the human kaleidoscope, one of his goons had circled around and hit Blue Beetle with a chair. The suit was strong and protective, but that didn't mean it made Ted impervious to pain. He saw stars and dropped to one knee to try and regain his bearings. He sensed another strike, and rolled out of the way. Unfortunately, he rolled right into a kick across the jaw from another one of the goons.

Pain shot through his face, and he quickly realized that this was not going the way he expected it to. The one who kicked him attempted another swift strike, but Ted's instincts and Judo training kicked in. He shot out with a hand and pulled on the outstretched leg of his attacker. Using his momentum against him, the Beetle directed him into the guy with the chair. Their heads collided into one another, and each crumpled to the ground.

The stars started to fade from his eyes as he stood and readied himself for the two remaining interlopers. One sprung over a table in a head first attempt to spear the Beetle, who spun out of the way, allowing the man to crash through a table on his own.

The last man standing was larger than his counterparts, and cracked his massive knuckles as he approached Blue Beetle. He lashed out with some devastating looking punches, but Ted easily avoided them, even in his semi-punch-drunk state. The man was big, but he was slow and clearly untrained. Meanwhile, Ted had decades of gymnastics and martial arts training behind him. Ted studied the pattern of attack, and waited for his opportunity. The man missed wildly with a right hook, which Kord spun around and delivered a spinning elbow to his chin. The blow felled the big guy, and Blue Beetle got to work restraining the incapacitated criminals.

Heading to the hole in the wall, he pressed the button on his gauntlet again, and almost instantly the ripcord up to the Bug lowered in front of him. He zipped up and checked the scanners for any sign of the leader. There were none, and he cursed at himself under his breath.

"Good job, Teddy boy. Blew it on your first night out."

Talking to himself brought shooting pain through his jaw. He flipped back his cowl and looked at his reflection in the glass of the Bug. He could dimly see the swelling starting where he was kicked. Sighing once again, he instructed the Bug to return home on autopilot while he went to go get an ice pack from the small first aid section of the airship.

---

I give a muffled grunt of pain, biting deeper into the dishrag Tot gave me. It turned out that hit to the head gave me a pretty hefty gash and it needed stitches. Can't risk going to a hospital these days, too many sick with the Malkovian Virus. If I didn't have Tot, I think I would have taken my chances with an untreated head wound rather than risk catching that thing. "Shid, carnt yew wark any fasher?" I ask around a mouthful of cotton. Tot quirks a brow, indicating he didn't make that out. He sets the suture and needle down before pulling the cloth out of my mouth, leaning in closer and cupping a hand around his ear to hear me better. "I said 'shit, can't you work any faster?' This fucking sucks, Tot."

"You know what else 'fucking sucks', Charlie? Being woken up at two-thirty in the morning to tend to the wounds of my idiot protege." He shakes his head and gives a "tsk". "I'm not as young as you. I can't go days on end without sleeping. We can't all be unwavering machinations of some ungodly force like you are." Tot smiles slightly and I can't help but give a grin back.

"Point taken, old man. And for the record, I've been sleeping better lately. Got a full eight hours the other night," I add with a cocky grin. Of course, that's a lie and Rodor gives me a pointed look for it. The truth is my sleep has been getting worse. Insomnia has plagued me since my late teens but it's never been this bad. Last month I went for two weeks with only little scraps of sleep every few days to recuperate. It left me wondering if I was going to die. I finally sigh at Rodor's disapproving look and shrug. "Okay, I slept for three hours two days ago. Haven't slept since."

Tot merely shakes his head again, then picks up the suture to get right back to stitching my wound shut. Another pained grunt from me. Tot doesn't even blink at it. Just keeps on stitching. "You stopped drinking coffee before you went to bed, right?"

"Yeah."

"No TV or other such electronics."

"Nope."

"Have you been taking those sleeping pills your doctor prescribed to you?"

"They haven't work- agh! They haven't worked. I haven't taken them since last month."

"Try them again."

"Oh, come on, Tot. If they were gonna work they would- fuck! They would have worked last time."

"Try them again."

"... You know talking to you is like talking to a brick wall?"

"I could say the same of you."

It wasn't long before Tot had finished stitching my wound up and I was popping a few painkillers. This isn't the first time he's played doctor for me. Back in college, I used to get into fights almost daily. Sometimes it was a broken finger or two, sometimes a busted lip, sometimes a broken nose. Once I had to get him to stitch up a stab wound. I still have the scar from that, right next to my belly button. Getting it stitched up was so painful that I bawled my eyes out between curses and prayers to God. I don't think I've ever cried that much in my life.

I cooked breakfast as a thank you while Tot brewed coffee. I set down two plates of eggs and bacon on the dining table while Rodor set down a cup of coffee next to each plate. We both took our seats and I immediately went for the sugar shaker, pouring greedy amounts of the sweet dust into my coffee. "Are you sure you don't want coffee with that sugar, Charlie?" he asks. I don't answer. Too busy giving my coffee the consistency of syrup. Tot simply shakes his head.

I finish pouring the sugar into my coffee and begin to stir it. Tot quirks a brow at me. "So tell me. Who gave you that wound?"

I stop stirring my drink and lift the mug, staring into it for a moment. "Some no good asshole in Hupert Square. He and two of his buddies tried robbing me. You think this was bad? Well, one of them is gonna have to be eating out of a tube until Christmas." I took a drink of my coffee, feeling my teeth slowly rotting from the excess amounts of sugar. Perfect.

Tot takes a sip from his coffee. "You've been getting angrier since the pandemic broke out. And now, you're beating up muggers in the park. Why is that?"

That gives me pause. I don't have to think about my answer. I don't even really need to think about whether to tell Tot or not. The man knows me better than I know myself half the time. Might as well tell him. "... I don't know. I think it's this pandemic. Ever since it's started, I've been looking out my window and seeing all sorts of things. Robbery. Mugging. Assaults. Drug deals. Rioting. This city isn't exactly paradise, but lately, it's given Gotham or Detroit a run for their money with all this crime." I clench my fist. "I feel like I need to do something but I don't know what."

Tot takes a deep breath through his nose at my response, as if stopping himself from saying something because he's waiting for me to finish. "Really?" he says. There's no tone in it but I know what he's doing. He's being condescending. I can already tell. He's acting like I'm some fucking toddler babbling nonsense and he's playing along.

A hot burst of rage rips through me. He thinks that I'm lying through my teeth. Thinks I'm shoveling bullshit right at him. "Let me guess. Out of character, right? I'm the fucking punk that used to break into houses to steal jewelry and TVs and pawn them off. I used to beat the shit out of all the rich kids in college to feel better about myself. I used to abuse drugs and alcohol because I thought it was fun and would enrichen my life. And now suddenly, I have all this righteous rage over the injustices this city is facing. What a fucking joke, right?" Rodor continues to stare at me while I rant and rave at him. It just pisses me off more. "You're trying to stop yourself from rolling your eyes at me. I know you are. Laugh at me! Laugh at me because you think I'm lying you old fucking prick!"

Tot's passive expression morphs into an icy glare and it's enough to stop my rant in its tracks. "You're delusional, Charlie. I don't think that at all and I'm insulted that you think I do. I know you. It doesn't matter how much you keep it buried, I know how much you hate seeing people gain from the suffering of others. You did it and all it did was make you hate yourself and anyone who was like you. Right?" I look down at his words, slightly ashamed. "Right?"

I give a shaky nod in response. He is right. I'm a fucking mess. I'm not some righteous crusader leading the charge against the wicked. I'm just some asshole projecting his self-loathing onto criminals. I'm a joke. Tot might not think it, but I do. "... It's not just that, Tot. I do want to do something about the state of this city. Something I can't do as Vic Sage. I want to take it down from the source. Stop criminals before they have a chance to do anything instead of just telling people about it. Everyone already knows this city's a shithole, but no one has been doing anything about it."

"What do you have in mind, Charlie?"

"What does it sound like? Vigilantism. I want to go out and do what I did tonight. Find crimes, stop them before they happen." I say, then find myself giving a disappointed sigh at my own words. Saying it out loud makes me feel like an idiot. This is the start of some bad Taxi Driver rip-off. What would they call it? Investigative Journalist? No, that doesn't roll off the tongue that well. Starting to wish I went to med school instead. That opens the door for a lot of cool titles.

"That sounds like a terrible idea, Charlie. You could get killed." I should have known he'd say that. Leave it to Rodor to call me out on my dumb ideas. I turn away and take a sip from my coffee, now cold after I ignored it for so long. Rodor's disapproval doesn't mean I won't do it of course because I know I have Tot to fall back on. That's the cycle of our relationship: Tot warns me not to do something, I do it, he patches me up while he says "I told you so." Rodor seems to pick up on what I'm thinking because he sighs and rolls his eyes. "... Who the hell am I kidding? You're going to do it anyway. I might as well try and help you do it properly."

I smile at that. Leave it to Tot to have my back. "I had a feeling you'd say that." I yawn slightly and find myself feeling genuinely sleepy for the first time in a while. I guess the excitement of tonight had finally calmed down and I could sleep again. "... If you'll excuse me, your couch and I have an important meeting to attend to," I say, standing up from the table and heading to Tot's living room.

I can't see it, but I can feel Tot shaking his head and tutting in disapproval. "Of course you do. Sleep well, Charlie. You need it."

"You've never been more right in your life, Rodor!" I call out, before collapsing face-first onto the sofa.

I'm out like a light in seconds.

"This is stupid," I say to myself over and over as I'm dragged by the hand through the night sky, "this is stupid, this is stupid...."

"I am perplexed as to how a set of circumstances can be lacking in mental acuity," says the orange-skinned beauty queen dressed in what looks like a futuristic cheerleader's uniform, one hand holding onto mine, the other flinging bolts of green fire down at the black SUVs down below that are chasing after us.

"Because it's not real," I say, the initial terror and confusion of the situation having given way to a flat denial of it. "I got hit on the head, or drugged, or something. I did not get rescued at the last second by a magical flying space-girl. Chances are I'm actually being hauled away by those HIVE guys right now, and this is all just an elaborate fantasy in my head to escape from the trauma."

"I fail to see how that is preferable to rescue."

".....I guess it's not," I admit.

"Then if being rescued is the more desirable outcome, may I continue rescuing you?"

I sigh with resignation, and give in to the ridiculous hallucination. "Sure. Ohh, thank you so very much for saving me, magical space-girl."

"My gift of flight is due to a complex set of nerve endings and glands that generate graviton particles around my body on command," she explains, quickly juking to one side to avoid a burst of gunfire, and retaliating with another flung bolt of fire. "And my ability to superheat the air in compressed gravitational fields and project them as Star-bolts is due to the work of the Tamaranian Gene-Weavers when I inherited the title of Starfire, Protector and Champion of the Innocent. None of my abilities are 'magical,' if that helps."

"Oh yeah," I say between gasps, trying to hold onto my lunch. "I feel better already."

"Wonderful!" the girl exclaims, performing a celebratory barrel-roll that drags me along and makes my guts heave. "Once we have eluded our foes, I will--"



Everything goes black for a moment, and when my senses return, I wish they hadn't.

The world is tumbling head-over-heels, everything a blur of motion. My ears are filled with the roar of wind, my nose filled with the smell of smoke, and for the second time tonight, my body hurts all over. I'm falling.

I'm vaguely aware of magic-space-girl tumbling through the air beside me, her body covered in ash and trails of smoke. Whatever they hit us with, she's out cold, and we're both plummeting through the empty air. We must have been at least a hundred feet up, now much less than that. Part of me wants to scream, but it feels pointless. Screaming is something you do to call for help, and there's nothing that can possibly help either of us now.

Instead I force my eyes shut, grit my teeth, and in one last futile gesture, brace my body like it will keep me from being splattered on the asphalt.

"Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Azar," I hear myself spouting out to whoever or whatever might be listening, "I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't--"

......the falling stops, and I feel nothing. Which I guess is what you should expect at the end of a fall that turns your body into a mess of red paste. So why can I feel my teeth chattering?

I open my eyes....and I see darkness. Not darkness as in nothing, like I'd kept my eyes closed. Darkness like the living, ink-like shadow that had burst from my body the night Sebastian was going to kill me. And not just see it, but I can feel it. There's a strain to it, like stretching or flexing a muscle for too long.

That shadow, it's....connected to me. No. Not connected to me. It is me, somehow.

Looking around, I see the rest of the world, and start to regain my bearings. I'm upside-down, an arm of my living-shadow-self propping me up off of the ground. I'm holding out one hand, and from it, another tendril of shadow has shot forth, and is holding space-girl, who seems barely conscious. With effort, I turn the both of us rightside-up, in time for three of HIVE SUVs to pull up.

The guy with the shades pops out of the top of the lead SUV, holding what looks like a large machine gun and setting it up like a turret.

"Targets have been grounded," Shades says into his earpiece. "Preparing to neutralize."

"Get the hell away from us," I snarl, feeling the shadows swirl around me.

The rest of the HIVE goons surround us, guns at the ready, eager to shoot us full of holes if we don't play along.

"Okay, little girl, you've had your fun," he calls out, venom in his voice, "but it's over. I tried to be nice last time, I gave you to the count of three. Now you've got to the count of one to stand down, or be put down. Whu--"



"I said GO AWAY!!!!"

The shadow erupts from me again, like a tidal wave. The SUVs go flying like toys, Shades and his HIVE henchmen pinwheeling after them. I try not to kill them, but admittedly, I don't try all that hard.

When the smoke and dust settles, I see a few of them struggling to their feet, and begin to flee. I'm sure they'll be back, but it looks like they're at least going to leave us alone for the time being. Turning back to space-girl, I see she's fully conscious now, and staring at me moon-eyed.

"You have gifts of power as well?" she asks. "Why did you not inform me you were a Champion of your world?"

I let her go, and the shadows flitting around me dissipate like wisps of smoke.

"Because, ah, I didn't really know if I had them," I admit. "And I'm not any 'Champion,' I'm just....different. And I think those guys wanted to capture me or cut my brain open or whatever, to see just how different I am. This whole thing is....a lot to take in."

"I see," she nods, before extending her hand. "You have my gratitude for rescuing me from a fatal fall. In exchange, I will keep you under my protection to prevent any cutting of your brain."

"Thanks, but I don't need to be under anyone's protection," I say, leaving her hand hanging. "Especially from someone whose name I don't even know, and whom I'm not really convinced is actually real."

Space-girl's eyes widen in surprise. "Oh! My apologies! I have not yet made a formal introduction!" She gives a flourishing curtsy. "I am Princess Koriand'r, scion of the Royal House of Tamaran, Watcher of the Seals of Xhaal, Commander of the Grand Armada of Tamarus, and bearer of the title Starfire."

_{"Of course you're a princess, why wouldn't you be,"} I mutter to myself, before returning the curtsy. "Okay, um, Princess Starfire, I'm Rachel, runaway ex-cultist who works part-time in a bookstore with no customers."

Starfire gives me a big smile. "Well met, Friend Rachel! We must celebrate the dawn of a new and glorious friendship, as well as our first victory together!"

She comes towards me, arms wide and lips pursed for another kiss, but I push her away. "Hey, no, that's not okay--"

There's a quick burst of darkness as the shadows put up a wall of tendrils between her and me, and Starfire backs away.

"....I have offended you with my affection?" she asks, confused and sad.

"No, it's just...." I let out a sigh of exasperation. "You need to learn about personal boundaries if you're going to stick around here."

Starfire nods. "I see. There are many things about this world I must learn. First, however, I must seek asylum. Can you bring me into contact with your ruling class so that we may begin the diplomatic negotiations?"

I raise an eyebrow. "'Take me to your leader?' Really? I don't know if that's the best idea. But that's something you can deal with later."

"For the later then, yes. What, then, shall we do in the now?"

"Right now, it's late, and I'm tired, and I'm still pretty positive this is all some stupid hallucination," I say, beginning to walk down the street towards the bookstore and my loft. "So I'm going to go home, take a shower, go to sleep, and when I wake up back in the real world, I'll forget all about this and go on with my day."

"May I join you? I currently have no place to do the washing and sleeping."

I shrug. "Sure, why not, this isn't real anyway. I've got a futon you can crash on while I'm still imagining all of this."

"Then I look forward to seeing this 'foo-ton.' If you will help me acclimate to this world, then I will help you with your hallucinations. This will be wondrous!"

"I'm sure," I say as I make my way down the sidewalk, my imaginary friend floating beside me.

---

"....underestimated the target's capabilities, sir. Two of my men are in critical condition, the rest with light to moderate injuries. Both targets managed to escape. Sir, if we're going to go after them, I request that we--"

"Request denied. For the moment, you are strictly going to observe and report their activities. We must have a greater understanding of their abilities before we strike again. The Roth girl is clearly more than a standard Empath. And the other is a complete unknown for the time being. Find them, Sergeant, but do not engage. When we have sufficient data on the two..."



"....my students and I will deal with them ourselves."