The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

Alfred, Gabe, Pete, Ceri, Bruce, Jamie, and Chloe

Standing out on the front porch, Alfred accepted the lead glove from Damian with a puzzled but gracious nod.

Isn't half inscrutable, this one, he mused, eying the glove. Was very nearly expecting him to slap me with it, challenge me to pistols at dawn. Something positively medieval about him.

There was something else about him, too. Now that Alfred could see his face.

He had the eyes of Thomas Wayne.

Dragonslayer eyes.

Alfred had just seen a ghost, though he didn't let this haunted feeling find his face.

Despite all this, he took that glove, and he tucked it into a pocket for the time being, and waited while Damian returned to the warm depths of the house.

Gabe was troubled by the thought of one of these so-called Kryptonians being immune to the effects of this so-called Kryptonite, simply because of his chosen morality.

Mind over matter can be a frightening thing.

Oh, so very frightening.

Because it sounds to me like 'Zod' doesn't have much room for grey, either. He does evil things but believes himself right and that's the most frightening absolute of all.

Maybe it's just this other 'Kryptonian' was immune to 'Kryptonite' from 'worlds' other than his?

No-one should have that manner of power unchecked.


"I always dug this show, 'Due South,'" Pete murmured, half to Bruce and half to Wraith. "Last episode had this great pep talk, this 'March The Eleventh' speech. Guess it was a parody of th' whole King Henry thing? But Leslie Nielsen delivered that baby and he owned it. It was silly as crap but it still managed t' be inspirin'."

"Rosy always liked the one from Serenity," Ceri noted. "She would rewind it and rewatch it so often I could almost recite it. I don't remember all of it now, but I like the way it ended: 'I aim to misbehave.'"

Bruce's face was unreadable. "I'll take your suggestions under advisement."

But he was more focused on Merick Tennylson, watching him all of a sudden like a hawk. (He would give Alfred one of the deadly rings, but first things came first.)

"Tell me," he murmured, getting intimidatingly close to the young man, "who did you say your grandfather was again?"

Ceri watched Merick, and she watched Bruce, and she said nothing, and her eyes gave nothing away.

"I wouldn't make too much noise," Jamie cautioned Odin, rubbing behind his ear with a fingertip as he talked, "Ragnarok, about the body and flying and things? Having a corporeal form has its share of headaches, many of which are literal. On top of this, the last man to propose a flying android and keep a straight face wound up in an institution in Central City, bloke by the name of Thomas Oscar Morrow. Stark-staring-bonkers. Too much television with that boy. Rots your brain, it does.

"(Well,)"
he corrected himself, absently, "(it rots organic brains; I'm sure yours is fine.)"

"I've been trying to figure out where the worst damage was," Chloe frowned at Merick, "as part of an ongoing chronicle, but some idiot prankster has file-shredded the vast majority of satellite photographs of Smallville during the corresponding period."

Jamie blinked, hands in his pockets, and stared everywhere and nowhere whilst whistling "Waltzing Matilda."

"Fortunately," Chloe continued, Jamie's whistling having gone unnoticed, "while I don't have a record of the hardest meteor strikes from this most recent event, I do know that there's some pretty-hard hit areas still from the first shower that haven't been cleared. The Creekside Foundry, for one, and the old mill. Shuster's Gorge. Lemaris Pond, by the old folks' home, and Hob's Pond, neither of these were properly dragged because the caretakers thought the rocks were 'ornamentally appealing.' (I know, right?) And, of course, there's the new wing of the high school, I guarantee you that hasn't been properly cleaned up yet."

She smiled thinly.

"If we lose this thing," she murmured, "if we fail at this, and Zod manages to usurp control of the planet, at least we'll have enough firepower to mount a halfway decent attempt at a Resistance. But I just don't see how this helps us right now. There's no time."
 
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Merick smiled at Bruce. He liked Bruce and all, but sometimes... sometimes he was a bit scary. This... was sometimes.

"My grandfather is Edmund Tennylson. Owner and head of Tenn-Tech. He's a great guy. Smart, big buff on military tactics and what not. Hell of a shot too. I never saw him miss dead center. Not once. I think he was in the military once. Every once and a while him and his butler, Mr. Wintergreen, they get going on about old times, places they went, missions they worked on. They have a thousand stories those two. Kinda wish he was here. He would have an idea or two I'm sure. You might know him, I mean, don't all you rich guys have like a secret handshake or something?" Merick stopped juggling the bag.

He warmly fixed Chloe in his eyes once more. Merick swooshed across the room, putting his hand on Chloe's shoulder, "We won't lose. We will succeed. This is what we are here for. God, Fate, something, aligned all this just so, to put us altogether. I mean, I like the idea of random events, but seriously. Whatever grand cosmic being played the dice with fate to get us here, I believe he made Fate his bitch. I have to. Or else, I just couldn't make any sense of any of this. Ok, so Creekside I know. A lot of kids used to play hide and seek out there. I always got picked last, but I know it well enough I think. Perhaps, one big mofo rock, and we port in, smack him upside the head and run?"
 
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"Oh, some of us you know already. But so far as I know, they don't know you're you."

Kara nodded at Rose, and already her mind was trying to piece together a list of people that she might have figured were in on their plan of action. But as she had limited contact with the other students... that list ended up being rather small.

In fact she couldn't really come up with anyone aside from those present in the room.

Kara did, however, blush when she was told that she had her fathers eyes. All this time she had seen Jonathan Kent as her father, and when she found out that she wasn't exactly from around Earth she began trying to imagine what her biological parents were like.

Now she knew at least a part of that connection, for Zor-El, the brilliant scientist from Krypton, lived on through the eyes of his daughter.

"As she matures," J'onn explained to Rose, "her powers will continue to expand until she reaches her age of maturity. Just as in your species, this will come depending upon her unique cellular make-up. In time, though, Kara will cease to age physically, as long as she lives under the protection of this yellow sun. Her powers, however, will be without measure, much like mine."

"I guess that explains all the weird things that have been happening to me lately," Kara said.

She remembered once when she woke up hovering over her bed. Then the laws of gravity kicked in and she came crashing down onto her bed again. Her father hadn't been particularly pleased with having to build her a new bed, but he couldn't blame her for what happened. The most recently strange occurrence had been when Kara finally developed her sense of super hearing. She still hadn't quite mastered it yet, but she was getting better at it as the days went on.

Either way, she was glad that there was someone around that could possibly teach her how to harness her inner strengths. If they were to face someone such as Zod, then Kara would need every ability at her disposal.

Once Diana returned, Kara figured that it was just about time for them to head out.

"So where are we going?" she asked curiously, feeling slightly like Peregrin Took before his adventure with the Fellowship of the Ring.
 
Lex and The Countess

Outside the window, the full moon shone, painting the clouds below in endless greys and whites.

Lex knew for a fact their cruising velocity was extraordinary, but all he could think about was how slow they were going. The United States crawled by below them, and still there was the entire Pacific Ocean to cross...

First thing I do, Lex growled to himself, drumming his fingers on the arm of his seat, when I get my feet back down on terra firma? I put in to buy an SR-71 Blackbird at military auction. I'll be damned if my private jet can't be the fastest thing in the sky.

The woman with the dark hair and the pretty eyes brushed past him with a soft smile.

"Can I get you a warm-up, Mister Luthor," she suggested softly, with a nearly-invisible smirk that Lex, despite the fact that she was, oh, a tiny bit older than he, found absolutely hypnotic, "on your Irish coffee?"

Lex eyed her for a moment, his eyes lingering on that smirk just long enough for her to notice that he was looking for too long.

He then glanced at the glass he held, and raised it so that she might take it.

"Make it a water," he replied, with a perfectly-affected air of reluctance. "Skies are clear ahead, but the ground's going to be rocky. I should like to keep my wits about me."

"Prudent," The Countess replied, accepting the glass and inclining her head with a perfectly-affected air of obsequiousness, "as ever, Mister Luthor."

She moved off and away again, and Lex took a moment to examine her thoroughly from behind as her high heels carried her towards the mini-bar.

He'd never seen her before. But all the same...

He'd never seen her before, that much he knew for certain. But her... aura. (For lack of a more scientific term.) Her aura was familiar.

She had an air about her.

Her uniform didn't fit quite right, and it rode up a little in back, and he thought he caught a glimpse of a tattoo.

A tattoo in a very provocative place.

He smiled a languid smile. Wicked girl.

Still, tattoos weren't exactly dress code. (Not that he was complaining overmuch.) Maybe he should call Mercy in Metropolis, have her double-check this woman's background check. Just to be on the safe side.

He didn't remember seeing her name-tag, when last she had gone up on tip-toe beside him to double-check the secure closure of the overhead compartment, and he'd looked her up and down fairly thoroughly then, too.

So I'll ask her her name, he resolved, wryly, when she comes back with my water.

As far as ice-breakers go, after all, sometimes the classics are best.
 
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Bruce, Ceri, Pete, Chloe, Alfred, Jamie, and Gabe

"Rich men do have a secret handshake, yes," Bruce growled, his nerves grated, his drive for combat thrumming in his veins, That Voice demanding that he get a move on, "but my father couldn't teach it to me. Because he died. Shot by a man with a voice like broken glass mixed with gravel, who had, ostensibly, been ready to Dance when The Devil asked to cut in, that night under the moon. Does your crack-shot grandfather have a voice like broken glass mixed with gravel? If he does, I might like to have a word."

He took out one of the rings, and gazed at it again for a moment.

"Merick," he growled, "we got lucky, out by The Cave. I got one good hit in. I shouldn't be alive right now. I sincerely doubt the same harebrained strategy will work twice. We need a strategy. Strategy will get you through times of no luck better than luck will get you through times of no strategy."

He turned to walk down the hall to give Alfred the meteor ring, but Ceri reached out, touched his shoulder, stopped him. Handed him the folded-up bundle of grey fabric.

"Will you give this to Alfred,"
she wondered, "to give to The Chosen One? It should protect them."

Bruce nodded, and took it.

He eyed the fabric for a moment.

And then he squinted at Ceri.

"I need to have words with you, too," he growled. "About Rose's 'Auntie Claire.' About your sister. This line is a damned epidemic, or a poison in aerosol form. Can't draw a breath these days without catching a whiff of it."

"We'll talk," Ceri promised him. "All things in their time."

"Of course," Bruce harrumphed, and walked out of the room.

Pete sidled over to Chloe, and murmured: "Okay, so maybe D.D. Cain here's got it all over Bruce in th' 'crapped in my cereal' category, but whatever got crapped into Bruce's cereal just mutated into life, crawled up his ass-end and done died."

"Guano,"
Chloe murmured. "With bats, you don't call it 'crap.' You call it 'guano.'"

"Knew that," Pete nodded, though he had forgotten.

Bruce stopped at a locking walk-in closet before the sitting room.

He retrieved Alfred's shotgun, checked that it was loaded, and with the radiation suit under his arm he also plucked Alfred's favourite nine-iron out of the selection of golf clubs leaning against the wall.

He strode out onto the front porch.

"Nice weather we're having," he commented to his Gentleman and his friend.

"Oh, I dunno, sa'," Alfred replied, sniffing at the air. "Bit of a frost coming, I should think. Early this year."

"You should offer this to our most honoured guest," Bruce suggested, holding up the radiation suit, "as shelter against the cold."

Alfred arched an eyebrow. "And the weapons, sa'?"

"The weapons are for the guests," Bruce replied, with a faint little smirk, "who are without honour."

Alfred took the artefacts from Bruce with utmost dilligence, setting the shotgun down along the top of the front porch's wooden railing, and leaning the nine-iron against the railing.

Bruce held up the ring. "This hurts them," he explained, "the aliens. Robs them of their world-shaking abilities, once you get it in close enough. But one of them, it seems, is on our side. And we don't want it to hurt... him, them, her. 'Damian' gave you that glove? Wrap it up in that glove, for now. And give her the suit, maybe she can put it on in the sitting room before she joins us in the kitchen. Better to be on the safe side."

"Always is, sa'," Alfred agreed, doing as Bruce suggested, tucking the ring into the glove and putting the glove back in his pocket.

Bruce nodded gratefully, and then turned to go back into the house.

He hesitated. And glanced back over his shoulder at Alfred.

"I'm sorry, Alfred," he murmured. "I know you never signed on for this."

Alfred smiled a tiny little smile. "I beg to diffa', sa'," he objected. "I signed on to care for you and shield you through thick and through thin, and while I've never entirely been clear on which is thick and which is thin, I know this is one, or it's the otha'. I'm still here, Masta' Bruce."

Bruce smiled faintly, wearily.

"Still haven't given up on me, Alfred?"

"Neva'," Alfred declared, intent, intense, fatherly, that tiny smile like the most potent force for good in all the world.

Bruce nodded, quietly, gratefully.

And then walked back to the kitchen, though he cinched himself back up as he went.

He wasn't trained for this.

But training is nothing.

Will is everything.


As he re-entered the kitchen, Jamie was talking.

"I'm afraid rightness is no guarantee of victory," he murmured to Merick. "'Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred,' and all that. Just because Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, doesn't mean it won't still triumph when good men stand up and give it their all. We've no assurance of victory. But we must still stand. We can second-guess Fate all we want, but Fate still second-guesses us right back."

"There's no question that we fight,"
Gabe Sullivan agreed, a tiny little tremble in his voice, though he surprised himself by sounding as brave as he did. "It doesn't matter whether or not there's a question that we win."

Bruce heard this as he returned, and kept his own counsel.

He said nothing more, right yet.

Back on the front porch, out of curiosity, Alfred unwrapped the radiation suit.

It had a helmet that doubled as a breathing mask, whose plastic faceplate was tinted, polarised to keep out radiation and intense amounts of light but still allow the individual to see. This had the effect of preventing anyone from seeing in. The dark grey material was clingy, and mostly featureless, except for a couple of patches.

These resembled NASA mission patches, except for The Stars and Stripes on the right shoulder, reversed in the way that it was on the shoulders of military uniforms to suggest that the flag was blowing backwards in the wind of the soldier's forward motion and certainly not blowing forwards in the slipstream of the soldier's retreat. The patch on the left shoulder was circular, with a stylised picture of an atom-- complete with nucleus and electron orbits --and in the foreground in front of this picture were the words "THRESHOLD PROJECT."

The patch on the left side of the chest, over the ceremonial position of the heart, was an emblem that resembled that of The United States Marine Corps.

Except, instead of "USMC," the emblem read, "USUMC."

"United States Ultramarine Corps."

"Where on Earth,"
Alfred breathed, "did we find this?"
 
Merick looked at Bruce. This was not the Merick that had been jovially juggling the bean bag round a moment ago. All hint of the jester was gone. "Bruce, this is your house. I respect your hospitality, but I am gonna have to ask you not to insult my Grandpa Edmund. I respect that you lost your parents. That's rough. Fact is, I met and lost my brother in the same day. So I get it. And Bruce, I promise you this, you ever need my help to get the bastard that hurt your family you just call. But don't defame my grandpa." Merick took a deep breath.

Merick smiled at Jamie. "You ever read His Dark Materials? See, in the book, there comes a point where no matter the choice the character makes, they lose. If they choose one option, their life is better, but the world will suffer, if they choose another, they suffer and the world is better for it, and if they do nothing then all worlds cease to be. It is better to choose the path that damns yourself, than to damn other's so you might be happy. Greater good. The bigger picture and all. Merick seems lost in thought for a moment as he thinks.


Suddenly back to juggling the bag, he looks at everyone once more."Plans are a good thing. But better lucky than dead. Sometimes luck has more to do with fate. My grandfather told me once, about this mission he went on. He was to get into this building, unseen, and do something or other. Anyway, he watched the place for a full day. Then he mugged the night maintenance guy, stole his gear and just walked in the next night. Did what he needed and left. What's stopping us from the same. This guy just gathered a group of thugs right? So we go in dressed and pretending to be them. First chance you break off and go for the artifact. Sound feasible?"
 
Wraith

Ok Bruce has issues.

Hell, Bruce has back issues and special editions.


"I agree we need a plan, but we don't need to just pop in there. You saw what the other one did to those rebels. If we are posing as them and he has no more use for us, what then? Also, we don't speak spanish except for Pete. Big problem there. We need more intel on what this guy can do. We need the martian back."


I still think my idea of porting us there underwater was the best one. Only problem, the others needed to breathe every now and then.
 
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Damian

Damian looks at Wraith and nods for a moment.

HE then says, "As far as that is concerned my predecessor found the gifts to be a constant, Nearly unmeasurable strength, Speed only to be beaten out by the crimson speedster in that regard, x-ray and telescopic vision, a heat vision, a powerful breath that if used right can freeze. One inconsistency but my predecessor said its was probably a mind of matter issue on nearly all other multiverses, the kriptonians can fly but one was found to only be able to jump a course of several miles at a time..

He then looked away and walked over to his bag and pulled out both cowls the one he had been wearing he moved to the side part of the wetsuit lining and checked a usb plug. He blew it out and checked it one more time, whispering, "And then there are the Bazaros."

He walked over to Chloe and placed his cowl down in front of her asking, "Can you link with these by satalite link up? If so I need either you or TARDIS here to start working on a virus bundle that can affect Brainiac. He won't be far behind when we start to attack his master." He goes to one of his pouches and pulls out a piece that is about as long as his fist and with a button on one side and a usb nub on the other. "Im sure stabbing him with a security spike with the proper virus should be enough to stop him."
 
Gabe, Chloe, Jamie, Ceri, Bruce, and Pete

"Well," Gabe murmured, more than a little sardonically, reacting to Damian's recitation of the laundry list of Kryptonian powers, "it's good that our foe isn't entirely insurmountable."

"A certain Subtle Knife," Jamie muttered, "might also come in handy."

"Makes me sad," Ceri replied, under her breath, "that Rose's 'Uncle' John and 'Uncle' Ted are all the way over in England. Could use their help."

"Could use whose help," Jamie pondered, "the nutter magician or the bitter expatriate former heavyweight?"

"Arse," Ceri grunted.

"'The proper virus?'" Chloe asked Damian, squinting her eyes at the young man with the old eyes who had brought her her father. "Speaking of 'Independence Day,' I don't know that human science is capable of constructing viruses compatible with extraterrestrial computers, unless you've stolen the hard drive from Jeff Goldblum's Powerbook?"

She picked up the cowl, though, and ran her fingers over it, glancing at the inside of it and squinting into the lenses.

"You're more likely to have sci-fi viruses than we are, Ibn al Xu'ffasch," she smirked wryly, "being from your alternate future, and all."

Jamie rubbed his palms together slowly, fingers spread, looking pensive.

"If we can get a sample of his operating code," Jamie murmured, "I might be able to bang something out. Might. Miiiiight. Be able to bang something out. No promises. But a hacker footprint isn't enough to compose a virus out of. Need something more concrete."

"Don't listen to him," Ceri chuckled. "He's worked with less before. Remember that Thanagarian--"

"Psssh," Jamie dismissed. "That, I just reseated the cables, and voila. This is entirely different."

"Are you saying you're not that good?" Ceri arched her eyebrow, goading him.

Jamie's eyebrow quirked, just a bit. Took the bait.

"Oh, I am," he replied, eyes dark, his lip curving into a smirk. "Oh, I am so that good."

"We can't formulate a strategy,"
Bruce growled softly, "'till we know all our assets. Wraith's right, we need The Martian. And we need McCrimmon, and we need The Last Scion of Krypton, and we need any other allies they can bring into our corner."

"The badder-ass our assets are," Pete noted, "the better. Bad-assets."
 
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Odin

"Need I remind you Mr. Hamilton that you also have ME! Kyle gave you and Miss Sullivan level 3 admin status. I am your humble.. Stop laughing Spooky, servant and I bet I can get a piece of this guys code. Whaddaya say doc, wanna go for a ride. Put on the glasses and I'll take you on a little virtual jaunt."
 
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Jamie

Jamie grinned.

"Far be it from me, Douglas Rain," he replied, easing himself into the chair behind the black Alienware, "to refuse such an intriguing invitation."

He slipped his glasses off, pocketed them, and then picked up the sunglasses, pondering them for a moment.

"Not the first virtual jaunt I've ever gone on, mind you," he noted. "Back in school there was this fantastic moon-surface topography program. Of course, the goggles were much larger, heavier than the average head, you needed a neckbrace even to use the thing. But oh, I plugged into that machine, every day of the week except Sundays. You might say, virtually speaking, I became an expert in lunar amblings."

He ran his tongue over his teeth.

He slipped the shades on.

"Let's see what other worlds I can visit," he murmured.
 
Damian

Damian looks over to Ceri and shrugs saying, "The good Doctor decided to take another ride on TARDIS." and he ran his fingers under the material and began looking under to the circuits.

"How much of the Arabic Languages do you know Ms Sullivan." said Damian. He figured his questions never sounded like questions anyways he might as well stop trying. His voice was made for making demands. Another thing it was made for was making the criminal element afraid, very afraid. But he was forcing his voice not to go that dark.
 
Ceri and Chloe

"What he said," Ceri murmured, a haunted little look in her eyes as she remembered. "'Just like old times.' Rosy, on the other hand, would probably quote Billy Joel, here. 'The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems.'"

She rubbed her arms with the palms of her hands and tried to find her inner steel again.

(It had been there a minute ago.)

Chloe handed the mask back to Damian and set to work on the green Alienware, fingers flourishing over the keys.

"I'm not fluent, if that's what you're asking," she responded, as she typed, glancing up at him occasionally. "I know a few words, here and there. Vocab is easy, syntax is tough. I can't read The Qur'an without Cliff's Notes. I always meant to brush up, but I got caught up in Russian and Latin. Why do you ask?"
 
Damian

Damian looks a little more softly to Ceri for just a moment, sorry he brought up hard memories. He then went into work mode. and looked over to see if he could find Bruce.

Absentmindedly he answered Chloe's question, "You knew the meaning behind my name. Have you looked up the name which translates The Ghouls Head? That in itself is quite a read. Especially if you like looking further back than one life time."
 
Merick stood there, juggling the bean bag. He was trying to rack his brain for ideas. He had nothing. Merick looked at those around him. Such power. Simmering just beneath the surface.

"You know a magician?" Merick grinned at Ceri. "Like a kids birthday party magician? I don't get it. How would that be of any help? If you want I could go get them? I mean, Dad can find them, and then I can go and, well, kidnap them if you want."

Merick looked about the room. He wished Grandpa Edmund were here. It had been so long, but Grandpa E always had the answer. Was always a step ahead. Merick wished so hard that Edmund would be there and just give them the answers, he was sure he could do it.

"I'll be back." with that Merick swooshed off.

The ride car rocked as Merick landed in it. Marcy was startled but Dale was just glaring.

"Hey guys. Dad, I'm scared, confused and don't know what to do. I have people counting on me. I have always been a bit of a screw up. And if I blow this, people could die. What do I do?"

The man before Merick, the man that looked like Dale, but seemed darker, more menacing, faded away. It was like the transformation of wolf and man from so many horror movies.

"Merick, things like this are never easy. But I will tell you this. I would never trust anyone more than you with my life on the line. You are smart. Gifted. Willing to do the right thing. That is the meaning of courage. You have looked this stuff in the eye, unflinchingly, and have not given up. Push through. If you believe in your powers, if you believe in the people that have your back, nothing can stop you."

"Thanks big guy." Merick smiled as he swooshed. But something didn't feel right.

As Merick reappeared in Bruce's kitchen, he was not alone. Dale crashed hard to the floor. He had grabbed Merick just as the boy left. Dale landed with such force his left leg buckled. His ankle snapped in half. He grimaced but refused to acknowledge the pain in any other way. He straightened up.

"I'm in this with you. You will not get rid of me."

Merick grinned at his father. "Fine. Sit down and help us plan then. Ms McC? About those abductions?"
 
Chloe

"'The Ghoul's Head,'" Chloe murmured. "Also could be translated, 'The Demon's Head.' I was put onto his trail by a man called Smith with a jones for history. (You would have liked him, I think.)"

She smiled thinly, faintly.

"'Ra's al Ghul,'" she described, "as he's called, has been around a very long time. At first I thought it was all mythology, like Kit 'The Phantom' Walker in the comic strips, a hereditary title. The so-called 'Lazarus Pits' were obviously part of the concoction, canon to the myth, the explanation for his longevity, whilst the whole time, Ra's would die and pass the name onto the next man, each of whom would continue the rule of The League of Shadows with an iron fist."

She shrugged one shoulder, and she offered Damian a tight, tired smile.

"That's what I thought, anyway,"
she confessed, "earlier today. But it's been a long day (you wouldn't believe how long), and kind of a lot's happened since then. Now I'm not so sure death is a career-ending injury. (Mostly, sure, but not always.) So maybe there's more to this 'canon fodder' than might be perceived at first blush."
 
Ceri (and Pete)

Ceri stared at Merick with eyes way wide.

And then she narrowed her eyes again.

She'd found her inner steel once more. There it was again, like picking up a penny.

(Pete helped the man, Merick's dad, into an unoccupied chair.)

"Merick," she murmured, "yeh've got a good soul. I've not seen many a good soul in my life, but I can see yeh've got one of the best. Impulse control, on the other hand, maybe not your strongest suit?"

She smiled faintly.

"John Constantine," she explained, and she pronounced it tīne, like the tines on a fork, "is not nor has he ever been a stage magician. He dated one, once, after he and I... afterwards, and she was really good. But he's not a stage magician. He's the other kind.

"And he's gone mad,"
she admitted. "The last time I saw him, he was curled up on the floor of a padded cell, blowing bubbles in his own drool and reciting passages from an Erasmus Fry novel. Passages about The End of The World. (I loved the man, once. Broke me heart to see him like that.)"

Her smile became fainter.

"As for Teddy Grant?" she murmured. "(Mind you, I'm only one of three people in the world that get to call him 'Teddy.') Between The HUAC in The Forties and the NSA assassination of his friend Prez Rickard in The Seventies, retired boxer Ted 'Wildcat' Grant swore that he would never again set foot on U.S. soil. 'There's no Justice in America's Society,' he said, before setting up shop at a gym in Stevenage."

She put her hands in the pockets of her jacket and shrugged her shoulders hard.

"So we could get them," she opined, "but I'm not altogether sure either of them would be exactly happy to see us."
 
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Honduras

They dug well into the night. They sweated, they groaned, their hands bled from hours upon hours of shoveling earth.

And yet they persevered.

To stop was to invite the wrath of Zod, the alien god of legend that stood over them.

That watched them.

Sometimes one of them would stop, and gesture to a higher-up, who would run over and look upon that which had been uncovered. In most instances, it was a clear form of compressed carbon. These diamonds were of no interest to Zod, and he allowed his workers to keep the ones they found.

This was brilliant strategy. Now, not only did they work for Zod, but they worked for their own greed.

Greed was a powerful motivator.

Zod knew it so well.

And, as he learned, humans did, too.
 
"So where are we going?" Kara asked.

Diana heard that as she entered the barn, still full of the energy from her exposure to the emerald diamonds. "I am sorry to have delayed our trip," she said, "But I have hidden some weapons that may help us in our fight. At least I hope they will help. But for them to be used Kara cannot be near them, I believe."

She turned to face the Martian and Rose, her hand resting on the rope on her hip. "I am ready, shall we go deal with this?"
 
The Martian Manhunter

J'onn tilted his head inquiringly to Diana's statement about 'hidden weapons'. He then nodded and spoke in his cosmicly deep voice.

"The fragments of meteor rock," he stated, "are pieces of the sub and mediary power crystals from Krypton. When the planet exploded, these fragments fused with the planet's molten core, cooled, and were then hurled into outer space." He directed his eyes to the Daughter of Zor-El. "Some of them found their way into the hyperspace vortex created by your starship. They fell to Earth, as did you.

"They retain all of the power of Krypton's red sun, but amplified exponentially. These meteor rocks, this Kryptonite's poison, is deadly to a being from that world."

The Martian Manhunter looked to Rose, and then his gaze swept to encompass all of them. "We now travel to a lair where allies await us. To the home of Bruce Wayne, our sanctuary, and the place from which this destiny shall begin."
 
Damian

Damain went to the Closest unoccupied PC which was the red one. He then started working on a comunications network. He not asking anyone particular but still needing to know the information, "What do we have for feild comunications? And..." He stops for a moment seamingly lost, "Does the computer have a name?" He then shakes it off, "Computer do we have enough memory left to actually set up a scrambler network or do I need to route the scrambler myself?"

Damian pulls out the jump drive and puts it into one of the USB ports and pulls the information for both cowls linking them to the audio network he just set up.

Mouthing it to himself he starts counting the people involved. He sits back placing a hand on his chin. A motion he picked up from his father when he was working on a case. He then asks one more question, "How many more people are we expecting."
 
Merick grinned at Ceri. "Impulsivly impish at times, I'm afraid. And if one is a nutter and the other likely to box me upside the head, I think it is best if I not go. Unless of course, you want to tag along, plead our case? I mean, one can never have too much Might & Magic." Merick smiled. "Dad, can you locate these guys?"

Dale looked from Merick to Ceri. For a moment she had seemed almost hopeful at the thought of these two arriving. Dale cleared his mind. He blocked out the pain from his ankle. "Ted Grant... John Constantine... Give me a second. Which am I looking for first? Which is most likely to help?"
 
Rose

Rose drew herself up as tall as she could.

Though she couldn't quite match Kara Kent's unshakable stance, and she certainly couldn't match Diana's regal demeanour, and The Martian Manhunter was...

Rose McCrimmon drew herself up as tall as she could.

She had thought herself ready, a few minutes ago. She knew now she'd never be ready.

But the world wasn't going to wait for her to be ready.

She might die tonight.

And she had never been more frightened.

But the world wasn't going to wait for her, and she wasn't going to keep it waiting.

"Lead the way," she murmured, "Manhunter From Mars."

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."
-Charles DuBois.
(from Quotations on Courage, compiled by James Hamilton)

"In a world full of people
Only some want to fly
Isn't that Crazy?"
-"Crazy," by Seal
(scribbled by Rose McCrimmon in the margins of Quotations on Courage)
 
Ceri

Ceri McCrimmon's father had died when she was sixteen, and her sister had been twelve.

Uncle Dai was gone, only a few years ago, recently enough that Ceri still felt the hurt when she thought about it.

As far as father figures went, Teddy Grant was the only man left alive that Ceri McCrimmon had ever believed in.

She believed in him still, and rightly so. Ted Grant was a stand-up guy; he was the very definition of a stand-up guy.

He was stalwart.

...and as far as former lovers...

John Constantine was wicked. He was addicted to adrenaline and to mystery and to pushing back the boundaries of the obscure and the profane. He swore like a sailor, drank like a fish, and smoked like a chimney.

He had no especial power to his name, no power to call down fire from The Heavens or to cause The Sun to rise in the middle of the night.

But he had his wit and he had his wickedness and there was something about him.

James had a purity about him that John Constantine lacked, and certainly James had saved his share of days back in their former existence?

(James and John were more alike than Ceri would ever have liked to admit.)

But John Constantine had a way of breezing in the door when the hour was darkest with that wicked witty grin on his face and a Silk Cut cigarette between his finger and thumb, had this way of showing up in the very nick of time...

'Holy shite, it's John. We're saved.'

All of Ceri's life, she had done the rescuing. She'd had to rescue Claire more times than she could easily recount, and saving James had been a full time job.

Maybe, somewhere in the depths of her heart and her inner steel, she wanted to be the one rescued for a change. Maybe she wanted Ted and John to ride to her rescue. Selfish.

(But wasn't it her turn?)

"John," she murmured. "John's padded cell was in a sanitarium not far from Tyne and Wear. I'm afraid I don't know the coordinates. Ted's gym, as I said, is in Stevenage, near a retail park called Roaring Meg. Though there's no guarantee he'd be there, this time of night. Given the circumstances, I'm not sure which is the safer bet.

"(Actually,)"
she laughed faintly, "(I'm not convinced either is exactly what yeh'd call 'a good idea.' Not exactly.)"
 
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Jamie

Chloe was a fast typist.

But Jamie was in a class by himself.

His fingers seemed not ten but ten dozen, and all of them precisely placed, exactly where they needed to be.

Odin's VR HUD provided him a realtime view of data patterns that no mere laptop could ever have produced. A scrolling matrix of old footprints and timestamps, starting with the vault in New York and continuing then through the hops skips and jumps throughout cyberspace, overlaid itself upon the foreground. In the background, however, was a map of the seas of the sum accumulation of human knowledge, vast vistas of information, and where energy discharges and footprints met, there began to form nodal points of data.

That's where you've been, Jamie growled inwardly, Mr. Twelfth-Level Intellect. But where are you now?

Out loud, his typing fingers never slowing, Jamie replied to Damian: "The computer's name is Odin. Say ''Ello, Odin.'"
 
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