Disclaimer: This is a cross between JLA (Season 5) and Rorscharch’s Blot’s Make A Wish Story. Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling and various publishers. Henchgirl, The Professor, and other such objects are Rorscharch’s creation. DC Comics own the Justice League and associated characters/plot devices. The lack of plot, however, can be attributed to me.
The Next Generation, Part Two
“This stinks, Brainy!” Chuck Thane complained. “I hate running from a fight!”
If he actually possessed the human’s range of emotions, Querl Dox would have rolled his eyes. “They’ll never think to look for us here,” the biological descendent of the artificial intelligence Brainiac explained. “That gives us a chance to mount a counterattack.”
“Attack, how?” Bouncing Boy demanded. “There’s only the two of us left!”
“Yes, I’ve been giving that problem some thought,” Brainiac Five agreed. He led his fellow legionnaire to a covered object in the storage room and pulled off the tarp.
“Oh, no!” Chuck immediately commented. “I know you’re a Level Twelve mega-genius, but you are seriously out of your mind!”
“There is no other option,” the other Legionnaire continued as he moved to the spherical device’s control panel. “All of our teammates have been captured. To save them, we’ll have to break the laws of time and recruit heroes from the past.”
Chuck Thane did not look convinced. “But messing with history?” he hesitated. “That’s risky – even for us.”
Brainiac continued preparing the time bubble. “Incomplete records from the twenty first century show that three members of the legendary Justice League once came to the future. My research indicates now is that time.”
“I did my homework too, Brainy,” Chuck replied grimly. “The histories say three heroes came to the future…”
“… But only two of them ever made it home,” Querl completed his friend’s statement with a tone of regret.
After a few hours of cleanup and explanation, the group began returning to their respective cities. Harry, after informing Raven of the nature of her new physiology, accompanied the young witch back to her room in Titans’ Tower. Once there, he created a spare doorway and linked it to an extra passage in his room to allow her unrestricted access to him whenever she wished. Passing on the care package – consisting of a new uniform, wand, and several new books – from the Doctor and Henchgirl, Harry left the girl to spend some time relaxing with her friends – after scheduling a magical ‘reorientation’ session for later that evening, of course.
After all, the young witch seemed to get into almost as many strange confrontations as himself – it simply would not do for the newly christened Raven Black to remain ignorant of her new powers.
‘Hmm,’ he mused silently, ‘perhaps a tutoring session on Avalon is in order. Nem would certainly enjoy meeting her…’
Despite his recent brush with the ‘super demon’ – as Raven’s friends referred to the unlamented Trigon – Harry was in a rather good mood. This trend was surprisingly unaffected when the girl mentioned a certain book-bound Horcrux in her possession. In fact, the wizard was all too eager to accept the dark artifact. As things now stood, the new parent was still undecided as to the fate of the trapped spirit who nearly succeeded in hooking his daughter on dark magic and using her soul to free his self.
After all, throwing an enchanted book into an active volcano was certainly dramatic and all, but a bloke could always use the extra paper for the loo.
In any event, after seeing to the young witch’s wellbeing, Harry accompanied the League back to the Watchtower – where Kara extolled the virtues of the buddy system while he pretended to listen. Once the blonde powerhouse ran out of steam, she and her sister reported to the training room with Green Lantern for an assessment. Harry found himself drifting to the monitoring station, where he tracked the pair’s progress along with Superman and Green Arrow.
After John gave Galatea a battery of ‘entrance exams’ – which she passed with nearly as good a score as Kara’s record – the holographic chamber was reset and Kara stepped forward. The computer system rendered a crowded metropolitan area terrorized by two lower-echelon villains.
Needless to say, Kara ripped through the two holographic droids in a matter of seconds without effort.
“Queen Bee and Dr. Cyber?” the petite blonde-haired woman bemusedly questioned her supervisor. “Not much of a work-out.”
The Green Lantern smiled and keyed his comm. link. “You hear that, Ollie?” the man voiced, “Kara thinks it’s too easy.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want her to get bored,” Green Arrow smirked as he keyed in a new simulation.
A few seconds later, Kara was sent flying, courtesy of a blast from the faux Atomic Skull.
“I hate you,” she grumbled in John’s direction before setting to work.
Harry leaned against the back wall behind Superman and Green Arrow as the two heroes were discussing Kara’s performance in the training room. Truthfully, he was not paying them much mind, finding it far more interesting to watch the blonde girl rip the artificial enemies into small pieces. Kara might have been many things, but helpless was most definitely not one of them.
He suddenly felt Superman’s gaze on him shortly, indicating that at some point the subject of the conversation changed from Kara to him. He started listening more closely.
“He seems to be a good influence on her,” Oliver Queen pressed, “and she really should get out more.”
“So what do you want to do?” Clark Kent queried.
“How about this…?” the archer started before turning to face Harry directly. “Mr. Black, I’m going to go down to the big city with Dinah, grab some pizza, and have some fun. You think you and Kara might like to join us?”
Harry shrugged. “Sure, as long as Kara feels up to it. Of course, it’s sort of Tea’s birthday, too. Would you two mind if she tagged along as well?”
The archer looked undecided. “Are you sure she’s trustworthy?”
The wizard nodded. “We did spend several months together,” Harry reminded the other man. “She’s fine; she’s just got a few issues she needs to resolve with Cadmus, is all.”
“Alright,” Oliver acquiesced, “why don’t we go and ask them, then?”
Harry nodded in agreement and followed Ollie to the simulator.
“Well?” Kara asked her trainer as the session ended.
Eyebrow raised, the Green Lantern questioned, “Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to give me notes about all the stuff I screwed up?” the blonde girl demanded.
“No notes, Kara,” John informed her in a pleased tone. “I’ve got nothing left to teach you.”
Galatea smirked. “I admit; you might even have some small skill.”
Kara glared at her ‘sister’ as Oliver and Harry approached the trio.
“Not bad, Kiddo,” Green Arrow complimented, “you set a new course record for that simulation.”
As the billionaire patted the girl’s shoulder, a strange glowing sphere engulfed the group. Without a second thought, Harry quickly Apparated the remaining distance to Kara’s side just before the globe could vanish.
The glare faded and Harry found himself, alongside his four friends, standing in futuristic-looking surroundings. In fact, one might even describe the apparent storage facility as ‘disturbingly futuristic’ – as in a futuristic avant-garde of die-hard futurists.
While he might not yet have all the answers, the wizard was willing to bet that the two individuals approaching them could shed some light on the matter. At the moment, however, they seemed slightly confused as well. His enhanced hearing managed to pick out the sentence ‘I thought there was only supposed to be three of them?’ before the strange pair drew up in front of them. The blonde teenager with a quite unusual skin color spoke.
“I’m certain that this must be disorienting for you,” the strange figure announced. “My name is-”
“Brainiac!” Kara growled.
“Yes, but how did you… uh oh,” the apparently biological Brainiac managed to say before Supergirl threw herself at him.
Following her lead, Harry had both of the potential hostiles levitated, body-bound, and facing the business end of his scythe before Kara could punch Brainiac’s force field a second time.
“So this is Brainiac, eh?” Harry questioned as he inspected his prisoners. “I was expecting something less… organic.”
“Last time I saw him, he was,” Kara barked out shortly, her gaze never leaving the pair of now-panicking individuals – if the frantic motion of their eyeballs was any indicator. “Not that it’ll matter in about three seconds.”
“Whoa, Sparky!” Green Arrow cautioned as he caught her raised fist. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Harry looked at Kara questioningly.
“Alright, fine, but if it so much as blinks wrong, I want you to trash it, Joe,” the Argosian finally relented.
The wizard nodded. “As you wish,” he confirmed before canceling the spells on the pair. “You heard the little lady,” Harry addressed the former captives in an emotionless tone as they picked themselves up off the ground. “Explanation! Now!”
“Thank you!” the cybernetic being said gratefully. “Yes, I am a Brainiac, but I’m not a machine; I’m organic. The universe-conquering Brainiac that you knew is my distant ancestor. Over time, he learned how to pass his code down biologically. I am Brainiac Five. Think of me as the black sheep of my family, dedicated to doing good to make up for my ancestors’ legacy of evil.”
“And you demonstrated that by kidnapping us,” John dryly followed up the introduction.
“We’d never have done it if the situation wasn’t so dire,” Brainiac’s companion pleaded.
Harry groaned. “Not again!” Looking at Supergirl and the Green Lantern, he grumbled, “One of the two of you is a bad luck charm. I just don’t know which one – yet.”
“Whatdya mean?” Oliver questioned.
The wizard took a deep breath. “We’ve been brought here because there is some sort of evil person in this time… reality… whatever, that our new friends here can’t handle. It’s bloody Skartaris all over again!”
“Umm… yeah. That pretty much covers it,” the squat man admitted embarrassedly, “except I don’t know what a ‘Skartaris’ is.”
“Where are we, anyway?” Galatea asked curiously.
“Approximately one thousand years into your future,” Querl Dox supplied levelly, “in what you would call the thirty first century.”
John crossed his arms and glowered. “Time travel… swell.”
“It’s a real thrill for me to meet you, Sir,” Brainiac’s friend address the Green Lantern. “You’re the famous John Stewart, father of-”
“You want to shut up before you create a time paradox?” the ex-Marine barked irritably.
“Sorry,” the other man uttered before smiling again and holding out his hand. “Chuck Thane. Code name: Bouncing Boy.”
The other Leaguers introduced themselves and shortly, it was Harry’s turn.
“Alright, I can understand how Galatea’s and Kara’s records might have been jumbled and throwing off the count, but history never recorded you, either,” Brainiac Five acknowledged. “In fact, I don’t recall reading anything about you.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he questioned. “Well, that’s remedied easily enough.” The wizard dug into his wallet in search of one of his Chocolate Frog cards. Finally grasping the elusive paper, he held out a card for their perusal, belatedly recognizing that he had seized the wrong card. Instead of the brief biographical info, Harry was mistakenly holding one of Zatanna’s tarot cards that she had misplaced earlier.
More specifically, he was holding the Death card.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” the mage offered as he replaced the card in his pocket and selected the proper target on his second attempt. “This should prove more useful to you,” Harry announced as he passed them one of the self-updating ‘Mr. Black’ frog cards.
Privately, Harry gained a certain amount of satisfaction from the expressions on their faces once they recognized him. Idly, he wondered what effects the journey forward in time had on the card’s automatically updating content.
Chuck Thane shivered as he suddenly realized the depths of their situation. In their desperate recruitment of heroes from the past for assistance with the current crisis, they had made a mistake.
A very serious mistake.
Being a historian, Chuck was the Legion’s keeper of knowledge and, as such, had complete access to all of the inherited databanks from Earth’s previous heroic organizations. While some names appeared with more than one group, there was one common listing, one name that kept turning up again and again, sometimes years apart, sometimes as much as a century apart.
Mr. Black.
Under the Legion’s most stringent encryption, Chuck had read the original Justice League members’ reports on the – according to some – nonexistent entity. Among the others, the common opinion was that Mr. Black was simply an extremely powerful immortal – or perhaps, some sort of god.
Chuck Thane, however, knew better. He was staring into the very face of Death itself, a being that the League’s documentation purported as containing both the beginning and the end of the universe in the palm of his hand.
A being who, if he so wished, could turn off the universe in an instant.
Nothing in any of the League records indicated that Mr. Black had left on this temporal trip with Supergirl and the others, which made him even more nervous.
What else was missing from those records?
For a long moment, the two were completely and utterly silent. Finally, the blonde boy spoke in a carefully mastered, perfectly calm voice of someone who just learned that one unfortunate word could bring the Apocalypse down upon his head.
“I… apologize for our rash actions, Mr. Black,” the Legionnaire said apologetically. “If I may, I can explain the situation in greater detail.”
Crossing his arms, Harry stared at the suddenly reticent teenager and nodded sharply. “Let’s have it,” he grumbled. “Why did you bring us here?”
Brainiac walked to a computer console and showed the time travelers a short presentation regarding the ‘Legion of Superheroes’, as well as the trouble currently plaguing them.
Once it was finished, Harry snorted. “So, let me recap. You had a galaxy-spanning force consisting of metahumans of virtually every level and ability, and five costumed freaks – these Fatal Five – took down everyone but the two of you? I must admit; I can’t decide whether to laugh at you or pity you.”
“Okay, so how can we help?” John Stewart asked, ignoring the wizard’s rather apt assessment.
Harry shot the dark-skinned man a faintly betrayed look as Kara verbally protested.
“Whoa! Time out!” she called before motioning for the Leaguers to retreat a few paces.
“The date we pulled her from is exactly when Supergirl vanished from the historical records!” Chuck whispered fiercely as the Justice League members retreated to the other side of the room. “Brainy, she’s going to die! We have to tell her.”
“No,” Brainiac disagreed, “telling her could change history. Keep quiet, Chuck. That’s an order.”
Chuck frowned at the taller man. “You know, Brainiac? For being a twelfth-level mega-genius, you’re being remarkably stupid. In case you missed it, she seems really close to Mr. Black – you know, Death Incarnate? If we don’t tell them, He. Will. Kill. Us. He might even resurrect us… just so he can kill us again! Then where will our teammates be?”
The blue-skinned mastermind looked over at their… reinforcements speculatively. “Your objection does have a certain amount of logic to it,” Querl allowed. “I will consider the matter further.”
Kara looked at the huddled Leaguers and asked, “Am I the only person to think that we shouldn’t trust a Brainiac?”
“I’m not getting a bad vibe off the kid,” Oliver commented.
The wizard looked over at the pair exchanging urgent whispers that his doubly enhanced hearing easily overheard. “They haven’t lied, true, but they’ve not being entirely open with us either – on Brainiac’s order.”
Judging by the startled looks on both Kara’s and Tea’s faces, he was apparently the only one who had eavesdropped on the other conversation.
“All right then,” Green Lantern decided. “Let’s call their hand.” The group approached the future heroes. “We’re in,” John announced, “provided that you explain exactly why you hid important information during your mission briefing.”
“You know?” Bouncing Boy asked, startled.
“He did,” the Green Lantern pointed at Harry. “Now, I advise you to come clean with us right now before I ask Mr. Black to return us to our own time and do with you as he will.”
Recognizing the obvious cue, Harry grinned wickedly at the Legionnaires and began playing with his scythe.
“Well…” Bouncing Boy hedged as the two future superheroes exchanged a look. “The thing is that Supergirl… she…”
“According to the historical records,” Brainiac interrupted gloomily, “Supergirl didn’t survive the mission.”
There was a sharp intake of breath at his side. Harry turned to see that Kara had gone slightly pale. Pulling the shorter figure in for a one-armed hug – which was immediately accepted and returned – Harry bent down and asked lowly, “You don’t think I’d let anything happen to you, do you?”
“But history shows she didn’t return with the rest of the Leaguers-” Brainiac began to insist.
“She. Shall. Not. Die.” Harry interrupted with a barely withheld growl. “I will not allow it! Your continued survival, on the other hand, isn’t looking too good at the moment,” he threatened, gesturing with the scythe for emphasis.
Kara closed her eyes for a second as she tried to collect herself. Taking a deep breath, she said in an almost normal tone, “Alright, let’s get this over with. What’s next?”
Brainiac led the group down a lit corridor. “The lab’s this way,” he supplied. “The tech is out of date but we should find enough-”
Whatever they would find enough of would remain a mystery as a bright light erupted in front of the group, heralding the arrival of a strange group – including a giant, floating eyeball. The emerald orb immediately began shooting energy at them, which John shielded against with his ring.
Frowning in annoyance, Harry stretched out one hand and the crimson aftereffect of the Reductor Curse stained the air as the hovering sphere blew apart in a wave of magical energy. Oddly enough, the scantily clad woman whom Harry recognized from their briefing as the Emerald Empress immediately fell to the ground, writhing in agony, as the wizard decorated the walls with the eye’s remains.
The sole remaining invader, the Persuader, stood gob smacked at the sudden reversal in fortune, and Harry smiled grimly as he summoned the man’s hefty axe to his own hand. The sudden loss of his weapon returned the hooded figure to reality, and he backpedaled from the ominous man easily twirling the stolen axe in one hand.
Harry twitched his finger and the other man flew towards him. A swift swing of the axe diverted his flight to an uncomfortable landing at their feet. Turning to the two Legionnaires with a satisfied air, Harry said, “Alright, Junior, there’s a stool pigeon for you. Now you won’t have to waste so much time finding their new headquarters.”
John lowered their shield with the sudden absence of hostiles, and Brainiac began making disconcerted noises. “I can’t… you couldn’t have… how did you do that?”
“Lots of practice,” Harry admitted. “Now, interrogate the prisoner so we can go home.”
“The Fatal Five have psionic blockers; I can’t get through its jamming to scan his thoughts,” Brainiac protested.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of… All right, pay attention as Uncle Joe teaches you how to question a stoolie.” He looked over at Kara and Galatea, winked, then drew back one booted foot and kicked the prostrate figure against the wall. The mage grinned at the man’s renewed groans of pain.
“Let me start off by introducing myself,” the wizard began. “I’m Mr. Black.” He smiled at the recumbent figure’s widened eyes; if his embellished reputation extended to this time, then he should be able to get answers much easier than he would otherwise.
“Listen up, mate, here’s the deal,” Harry continued in a decisive tone. “I just finished killing a real nasty demon named Trigon a few hours ago -” another flinch betrayed the future denizens’ knowledge of that event as well “- and it’s left me rather irritated. Then, I get dragged a millennium into the future because you and your friends are being naughty, which upset me even more.”
Harry grabbed the man around his throat with one hand and slammed Persuader’s back against the wall – hard.
“So, you’ve got five seconds to tell me where your mates are hiding the Legionnaires, or I’m gonna take my frustrations out on you!” the non-human wizard growled.
Though visibly shaken, the masked man remained silent.
“That’s it, you skanky little tosser!” Harry shouted, sending his other fist through the metal plating next to the Persuader’s head. “I’m gonna rip out your spine and use it to floss!”
Kara grabbed hold of Harry’s arm as he withdrew it from the wall. “Joe! No! That won’t help! Calm down!”
Throwing the now bruised man back on the floor, Harry pledged, “I’ll going to kill that waster! I’ll have his guts for my boot laces!”
As Kara made to restrain Harry, Galatea leaned over and helped the man to his feet. “Sorry about that,” she said sheepishly, “are you ok? We’re trying, but my sister and I can’t hold him off forever. If you can just give me the Legionnaires’ location, though, I’ll be able to use that to protect you. Just that one thing. Go on, where are your friends hiding them?”
The pressure finally caught up with the axe-wielding criminal. “All right! All right! I’ll talk! Just keep him away from me!”
Out of his field of view, Harry and Kara exchanged smiles. After the man confessed to a rather large number of crimes – including the fact that he cheated on grammar tests in primary school – Galatea punched the man hard enough to ensure several hours of unconsciousness.
“Nice job, ‘bad cop’,” Galatea praised as she rejoined the group.
Harry smiled as he mercifully stunned the still-screaming Empress. “Thanks. You don’t think that it was too… over the top?” he asked mildly.
The clone shook her head as Kara looked at him disbelievingly. “You threatened to floss with his spine?” she protested. “Eww! That’s disgusting!”
The wizard shrugged. “It was the first threat that came to mind,” he tried to excuse himself.
“Wait a minute,” Brainiac interrupted. “You mean that you were only pretending to be angry?”
Harry fixed the two Legionnaires with a firm stare. “Oh, no, I’m quite irritated at the situation in general and you two in particular. I’m just not at the berserker stage – yet.”
He gave his latest acquisition a final glance before stowing the sleek battle-axe in his gauntlet. “So, how about you show us to your transport ship and we can go save your friends?”
“I heard a joke about you once, E,” John Constantine commented as he waited with Mister E and the Stranger.
“A joke?” the blind man queried.
“I think it was a joke,” John clarified. “Bloke I met in a bar in Katmandu said you always carried a pocket full of stakes in case you met a met a vampire. And a gun loaded with silver bullets in case you met a werewolf.”
The man pulled a bloodstained wooden stake from his coat.
“Blimey!” John exclaimed softly. “I take it you hammer first and ask questions afterwards.”
“The only good vampire is a dead vampire, Constantine,” the Bostonite said levelly.
John smirked. “I’m sure they’d agree with you on that score,” he commented. “You ought to watch it, you know. One day the bogeymen are going to come out of their closets and start parading down the high street. They’ll be marching for equal rights, free blood, and your head on a platter.”
The visually challenged man cocked his head to the side. “Is that some kind of joke, Constantine?”
“If you’re lucky,” he fired back. “Cigarette?”
“Unlike you, I do not defile the temple of my body, Constantine,” the man rejected snobbishly.
John’s smirk grew wider. “In that case, I suppose a quick-”
“Quiet, you two,” the Stranger interrupted. “They are returning.”
“Hullo, Tim,” John greeted. “How was fairyland?”
“I-I’m not sure I remember it all properly, John,” the teenager responded confusedly. “It’s all gone a bit fuzzy. There were these women… and a house with chicken legs… and… It was like a dream. I sort-of-remember it, but I don’t think I can talk about it. Not in a way that would make sense.”
“Are you hungry, child,” the Stranger considerately asked, “or are you ready for your final journey?”
“I don’t know,” Tim answered honestly. “I think I’m ready. And I suppose that he’s going to be my guide?” he asked while pointing at the blind man.
“Yes,” Mister E replied. “I, too, am ready.”
“Okay, Yo-yo,” the young wizard-to-be cautioned the bird, “we’re going to see tomorrow…”
His new guide seemed to have a different plan, however. “No. The owl is a bird of darkness and night; it shall remain here.”
“Tim?” the Stranger prompted.
“Yeah, okay. You stay here then, okay?” he told the owl, who flew to the Stranger’s outstretched arm.
“Hold my arm, boy,” Mister E instructed.
Tim looked at him confusedly. “I thought that if you were, well, blind, then you’d want to hold my arm.”
“Where we are going, it is you who will be walking blind,” the man advised. “Now, close your eyes and step forward, child.”
“Just walk?” Tim questioned.
“Yes, and keep your eyes tightly closed as you walk,” the man repeated, “until I tell you to halt, and to open them.”
As the pair disappeared, John said, “I don’t know about you two, but I have a bad feeling about this. He’s not exactly what you’d call well-balanced, is he?”
“No,” the Stranger admitted, “he’s not, but we have no other choice. Can you travel into the future, John Constantine?”
“Only like everyone else, Boss,” he replied. “You know, one minute at a time. Now that you mention it, though, there is another guy who can time-walk that I meant to ask you about.”
“Oh?” the Stranger queried as both he and Dr. Occult showed signs of interest.
“Yeah, I bumped into him while I was showing Tim around the States,” John continued. He calls himself Mister Black. You know anything about him?”
The Stranger paused in thought for a moment as his glowing eyes seeming to widen slightly. “He is… an Enigma,” the other man finally uttered.
“You’ve got to know more than that!” John said after a few seconds before muttering something unintelligible.
The man huffed in amusement. “Black has a… reputation… as you know. He has been identified as many things, many beings, including Death, Gabriel van Helsing, the Leader of the Four Horsemen, and more. Some worlds hold him responsible for the destructions of many civilizations, such as Atlantis or the Roman Empire. In fact, he was once even thought to be a famous wizard by the name of Harry Potter, although that has been traced to a… questionable… magazine.”
John sighed in relief and took another hit on his beer. “So, he isn’t the Archangel Gabriel, then?” he asked hopefully. He had enough problems with those on high as it was; he really did not want to complicate them with an unknown factor like Black.
“I… cannot be certain of that,” the Stranger reluctantly admitted. “His actions do reflect those of the leader of the Cherubim and Seraphim – especially his protective actions towards the innocent children. Again, I cannot say that for sure, however.”
Constantine’s eyes bugged before he took another drag off his cigarette. “You’re bloody telling me that he may be Gabriel?! Then why is he here, and why now?” John demanded while signaling for a refill.
The Stranger just shrugged. “Gabriel has not been… on a vacation… for a while. From what I can gather, most of Mr. Black’s more interesting… exploits… occur when he is on vacation.”
“Nice ship!” Kara reluctantly admitted as the group flew through space towards the capital city of the United Planets.
“It’s strictly no frills, but its fast,” Brainiac acknowledged with a slight show of pride. “What do you pilot back home?”
The Argosian looked off to the side. “Usually just a pickup,” she muttered.
“A… ‘pickup’?” Brainiac repeated confusedly. “Is that a type of star cruiser?”
“Yes. Yes, it is,” Oliver interrupted in an attempt to keep Kara from feeling even more embarrassed.
As Kara shot Green Arrow a brief smile, their pilot announced, “We’re going into orbit.”
“And we’ve got company!” Supergirl called from her seat in navigation.
Chuck brought up an image on the main screen showing an orbiting cannon-shaped spaceship.
“Nice,” Harry muttered from his conjured recliner on the forward deck. “I want one.”
A door in the side of the enemy vessel suddenly opened, and a swarm of mind-controlled Legionnaires exited the ship. Unexpectedly, however, the minions headed planet side, towards the city, rather than Brainiac’s fast-approaching cruiser.
“Alrighty then,” Harry acknowledged as he turned to the two future heroes, “what sort of non-lethal weapons does this tub have? Tractor beam? Energy nets?”
Brainiac grimaced. “Sorry, but I did say ‘no frills’. This vessel was built for speed, not combat.”
The wizard rolled his eyes before standing and Vanishing his chair. “Fine, I’ll go introduce myself while you lot find this mind control gadget and smash it,” he grumbled. “I probably couldn’t tell the difference between this ‘psion transmitter’ and a futuristic coffeemaker, anyway.”
“Hey!” Kara protested. “Even you would be hard pressed to track that many opponents at once without letting a couple slip through. You’re going to need some help; I’m coming.”
Harry smiled. “Sorry, Kara, but we need you to find this gizmo and get that bunch back to normal.”
“Galatea, Green Arrow, and myself can hold off the remaining three Fatal Five members,” John announced authoritatively. “That will free Brainiac Five and Bouncing Boy to locate and disable the device. Kara, you and Mr. Black restrain those Legionnaires until they do.”
“Righto,” Harry acknowledged with a jaunty wave before turning to Kara and proffering an arm. “Coming, milady?” he asked facetiously.
Kara smiled in anticipation and threaded her arm through his. “Wouldn’t miss it. Hit it, Joe!”
One Apparation later lessened the ship’s passenger roster by two.
“Alright, Genius,” Green Arrow stated when the two Legionnaires remained staring dumbfounded at where Harry and Kara had just been, “how about you put that big brain of yours to working finding the best way onto that ship?”
The organic Brainiac looked at the other ship with narrowed eyes. “I’ll get us in,” he promised before throttling the ship to full and dodging the laser battery fire. Once he neared the other vessel’s cockpit, he dove the arrowed fuselage into his target – the docking bay.
“I love the direct approach!” Oliver cheered as he pulled a bolt from his Never Ending Quiver.
“You can open your eyes now, Boy,” Mister E announced. “We are fifteen years in your future – or rather, one of them. There are very few stable futures, Boy.”
At Tim’s confused look, the man expounded. “The way my father told it to me, the future is a series of infinitely searching possibilities. When we walk it, we walk down the most probably paths, those with the greatest likelihood of occurring – but nothing in the future is definite. Some times are periods of great flux – the next hundred years or so are a wash of conflicting events. Others are relatively stable – so that almost any future path you walk takes you to the same universe.”
“But we aren’t really traveling into the future, are we?” Tim questioned. “This is more like when the guy in the black coat showed me the past, isn’t it? We’re just watching it?”
His guide shook his head negatively. “No. We are truly in the future. Or futures.”
Tim looked around disgustedly at the massive battle around them. Scattered throughout the carnage, the boy could spot certain individuals he had met on his trip with Constantine. “What’s going on?”
“We are at the final magical conflict of this age,” the blind man explained. “The battle between good and evil, between life and death. You watch the last battle, child. Fifteen years in your future; they fight, and they fall. Possibly, possibly…”
A group of demons scrambled past the two time travelers, drawing Tim’s attention.
“Those are the creatures of darkness, Timothy,” the man answered the unasked question. “The hordes of M’Nagalah, the great god of cancer, all sharing their lord’s grim mind, and his desire to consume the world.”
He began gesturing at other groups of combatants. “The Vampire queens of the cult of the blood-red moon. Eclipso, the lord of the no-man’s land between light and darkness-”
“Look! That’s Zatanna!” Tim interrupted, pointed at the battered Enchantress. “She’s hurt! Can’t we do something?”
“Why should we do anything?” Mister E asked honestly. “This world is a possibility. Don’t you understand? It hasn’t happened yet. It may never happen – or not like this.”
“So, who wins?” Tim resignedly inquired.
“Either side,” the man admitted. “In some futures, one side; in other futures, the other. The line-up changes as well. It is sad but true that the dividing line between good and evil blurs in the realm of magic. Sometimes, I think that I alone am pure.”
A sudden cough drew Tim’s attention to a crumpled figure. Tim approached the man, shocked to find himself staring at a wounded John Constantine.
“More ghosts?” the blonde man grunted weakly.
“Sort of,” Tim replied. “We’re from the past. Can you see us?”
John snorted. “I don’t know. I think I may be delirious.” He coughed harder, bringing up some blood. “Huh. Blood. I don’t want to die.” His eyes suddenly grew sharper. “Tim? Tim Hunter?”
“Yes,” Tim nodded in agreement.
“You little bastard!” John cursed spitefully. “I thought you were such a nice kid. I should have strangled you myself, fifteen years ago. Or let them kill you. Would have saved us all a lot of grief. E had the right idea…”
Tim looked at his friend worriedly. “Wh-what are you talking about, John? We’re friends…”
“What am I talking about?” the dying man demanded incredulously. “Do you see him, up there?” he asked, weakly pointing at a high-flying figure firing energy on the various forces of good.
“In the blue suit?” the boy inquired. “Sure.”
Constantine coughed again. “That’s you, Tim. You as you are now.”
The young wizard looked horrified. “No! It’s not true! I wouldn’t do that!”
“I’m sorry, kid,” John said tiredly. “It already happened. Could you… could you light this cigarette for me? The lighter’s on the ground. It’s just that I can’t seem to move my arm.”
Tim did as he bid, earning a weak ‘Thanks’.
“Is he me?” Tim asked his guide. “Was that true?”
“Yes,” the blind man replied bluntly.
“Really?” Tim asked, downcast.
“It… it’s not the only future,” the man admitted. “There are others in which you are a mage supreme, the champion of light – and there are an infinite number of others where you are entirely uninvolved in this battle on either side. Indeed, there are many futures in which this battle will never occur.”
“I don’t understand,” the boy cried out, frustrated. “So is this one more likely than the others?”
“No,” the man said simply.
“Then why bring me here? Are you just trying to upset me?” the child demanded.
“I felt you should see it. That was all,” Mister E supplied.
Tim frowned. “I don’t like you, Mister E – or whatever your name is,” he finally said.
“And I do not permit affection – or lack thereof – to influence my actions. There is good, and there is evil. The good must be protected, the evil eradicated. I have shown you the triumph of evil, as a caution.”
“I’m just a kid!” Tim protested. “I shouldn’t have to see this stuff. Take me away from here.”
“Very well,” his guide complied, and the scene dissolved.
“Alright, no biggie,” Kara said aloud to herself as the she and Harry stood on top of the capital building. “It’s just like a training session.”
Harry smiled at the girl’s show of nervousness and tried to take the edge off her mind from the impending battle. “Care for a wager?” he asked.
“Like what?” she asked suspiciously.
“We see who can take down the most Legionnaires before they snap out of it,” the wizard explained. “You’re twenty one today so… loser buys the drinks?”
The blonde-haired woman narrowed her eyes at the challenge. “You’re on!” She checked the sky again. “Here they come!”
The pair suddenly had their hands full trying to defeat the involuntary army without doing any serious harm to it in the process. Still a beginning student in magic, Kara resorted to purely physical means to subdue her opponents, while Harry employed a variety of charms and hexes in addition to the aerial brawling.
Harry grinned wolfishly. This hero stuff was actually pretty fun.
Galatea knocked down the door leading to the cockpit with virtually no effort. Immediately following her lead, John and Oliver ducked into the room. As expected, the three Leaguers encountered Tharok, Mano, and Validus.
“The giant tin can’s mine!” Kara’s sister called before rushing the tall cybernetic creature.
“I’ll take Toasty,” Green Lantern decided when the chemically-altered mutant melted through a support beam’s base, nearly sending it on top of them.
As Tharok began stalking towards the billionaire, Oliver fired an electric arrow into the villain’s mechanical half. “I guess that means you’re my dance partner, Half-a-Man,” the archer quipped as he readied the next salvo. “How’s it coming, Kids?” he called over his shoulder.
“Almost got it!” Brainiac Five replied, elbow deep in the strange coffee table-shaped device.
“Incoming!” the white-clad female metahuman called out, causing the two Legionnaires to flee. An instant later, the broken remains of Validus landed on the psion transmitter, crushing it and canceling the nefarious carrier wave.
“That was easy!” Galatea quipped as Green Lantern’s boxing glove construct sent the now-unconscious Mano careening in Tharok, ultimately melting through most of the cyborg’s systems and shorting out the sole remaining threat.
Brushing her hands off dismissively, the cloned Argosian commented, “You know, I’m kinda hungry!”
“Eight!” Harry called out cheerfully as he banished a mechanical gorilla into spandex-clad redhead with – of all things – a lighting bolt scar across one eye. “Nine!” he revised.
Kara grabbed the leg of the giant-sized opponent she had just K.O.ed and swung the figure like a club, rendering another four Legionnaires unconscious. “Twelve!” she announced through a bright smile.
Harry glared half-heartedly at the smirking blonde figure. “That still only counts as one!” he protested.
Another three caught her unaware and hit the girl with three separate energy blasts. Harry instantly shielded the girl before stunning her attackers.
Supergirl dove forward and caught the three comatose bodies before they could splatter against the ground. “Thanks!” she yelled in gratitude.
Harry shot her a jaunty salute before pivoting to hex a couple of Legionnaires approaching him from behind. “That makes me fourteen to your twelve!” he noted loudly.
A burst of energy suddenly swept through the crowd, vaporizing the control disks as it passed.
“Game, set, and match!” the wizard called into the sudden ceasefire. “The winner, and still champ – Mr. Black!” he rubbed in as Kara flew up to his side.
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered good-naturedly. “I was winning and you know it.”
Harry smiled. “You know, we make a pretty good team,” he noted.
“Yeah, we do,” Kara replied quietly while staring at him.
The wizard held out a hand to shake. “Well, here’s to a long and successful partnership,” he offered.
The Argosian looked down at the hand for a moment before batting it aside. Before Harry could comment, she leaped the remaining distance and wrapped both arms and legs around him in what nearly anyone else would consider a painful embrace.
“Sounds like a plan,” she murmured before proceeding to occupy the wizard’s mouth with much more entertaining activities than commentary.
A couple of hours later found the Leaguers and Legionnaires essentially cleaning up the area and debriefing each other.
“I still cannot fathom how the Fatal Five’s battle cruiser could simply disappear from orbit!” Brainiac Five repeated for the seventh time in a frustrated tone. “We made sure that no one was left on board, and I disabled the automatic systems myself. There is no rational explanation for why it suddenly vanished.”
“Listen, Brainy, the important thing is that we stopped the Fatal Five and saved the United Planets,” Chuck Thane soothed. “The ship is no great loss, even if the case is never solved.”
Kara looked suspiciously over at Harry, who was once again wearing his leather tri-corn hat and humming what she could have sworn was a pirate’s song under his breath.
Apparently, she was not the only one who had an inkling of the spacecraft’s fate, seeing as how both Galatea and Oliver – both of whom had been on the Avalon expedition when Jason Blood made mention of the notorious pirate Blackbeard – were looking askance at the wizard as well.
“Yeah, a real mystery for the ages… right, Joe?” the Argosian sarcastically questioned her oblivious – and now, official – boyfriend.
“‘We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot! Drink up me hearties, yo ho! We kidnap and ravage and don’t give a hoot! Drink up me hearties,’ – Did you say something, Kara?” the wizard asked as he heard his name mentioned.
“Never mind, Joe, I just answered my own question,” the blonde girl replied resignedly.
Harry nodded. “Right, then. Can we leave now?” he asked the muttering Brainiac.
“Well, we don’t have transportation for everyone to get back to Legion HQ, so we’ll first have to…”
Harry tuned the teenager out and sighed. Apparently, he would have to resolve this mess as well. Withdrawing an extra large Black Hole from his coat, Harry tossed it on an available wall and set it for the Legion’s hanger.
“Somebody can fly the cloud-hopper through that portal,” he ordered. “Everybody else, come on.” Without waiting for a reply, he walked through the inky black transport.
Within moments, the entire Legion plus a few Leaguers and one pocketed spacecraft was standing on another planet. After Brainiac’s ship appeared, Harry returned the portal to his pocket before looking at Brainiac expectantly.
“Right,” the blue-skinned boy said distractedly. “Follow me.”
He led the group back to the storage room with the time traveling device. Once the goodbyes were exchanged, the Leaguers took their place on the platform and Brainiac activated the device, transporting the group back to their proper time.
Unfortunately, the universe was not yet finished with its spittoon and, by extension, the blonde figure holding onto the spittoon. This, of course, would explain how that, when the time bubble arrived ten centuries previous, its only passengers were Galatea, John, and Oliver.
Superman, who was anxiously standing watch over the training room as Steel scanned the energy signatures, immediately charged over when the strange bubble appeared again. Within a fraction of a second, he inventoried the new arrivals and discovered the shortage.
“Where’s Kara?” he demanded.
The three time travelers looked at each other confusedly before Oliver took off his cap and scratched his head. “Uhm… about that…” he began.
“Shouldn’t they be back by now?” Dr. Occult questioned.
The Stranger nodded, and simply answered, “Yes.”
“Is there a problem?” John Constantine demanded.
“I am afraid so,” the Stranger expounded. “They are lost to me. Wherever they have gone, it is so far in the future that I can no longer feel them. Occult?”
“Yes, they are gone,” the other man confirmed. “Completely.”
“This is ridiculous!” John shouted. “What are you saying? That they’ve headed off into the far future, and there nothing you can do to get them back?”
“Not without help, no,” the Stranger admitted calmly.
John shook his head wildly. “I can’t believe it! You’d trust Tim to a loony whose dad popped out his eyes with a sharpened spoon? I mean, after what happened to him and his sister, it’s hardly surprising that he’s not dealing with a full deck, is it? I can’t believe you did it. There are beds of kelp smarter than you, Mate!”
“I have made a mistake, Constantine, I realize that,” the Trench Coat Brigade’s unofficial leader admitted. “I apologize.”
“That’s not going to bring Tim back,” the British Occult specialist protested. “He’s just a kid; he trusted us to keep him safe. I don’t-”
“-Believe it,” Dr. Occult interrupted. “We know. To err is human, John Constantine.”
“If he’s human, then I’m a toast-rack,” the blonde man mumbled.
“We must concentrate our efforts on getting them back,” the Stranger said intently. “This bickering is futile.”
John looked back at his ‘boss’. “Can’t you reach them? Aren’t there any gods or demons or anything you could send to get them back?”
“No, I cannot,” the man said regrettably, before suddenly smiling slightly.
“What?” Constantine demanded suspiciously.
His eyes shining slightly brighter, the leader of the Trench Coat Brigade announced, “However, the Universe itself is not without its instruments. I do believe that one has been dispatched to retrieve young Tim.”
“Truly?” John asked with a certain amount of hope.
“Yes,” the other man confirmed in a satisfied manner. “You know him as Mr. Black.”
“Where are we now?” Mister E asked. “What do you see?”
Tim looked around at the lack of surroundings. “Nothing,” he informed his blind guide, “it’s not even black. It’s just nothing.”
The man nodded. “I can go no further. This is the end, Tim.”
“Oh. Great,” the boy said sarcastically. “Well, once you’ve been to the end of the universe, what else is there to do? I’d write my name on something, but there’s nothing to write on.” He sighed. “All right. Let’s go back home. I’m bored.”
“Very well,” the guide said with an odd hitch in his voice. “Come here. Let me hold you.”
Tim eyed the strange man suspiciously. “What’s that behind your back? What are you holding?”
“Come here, I said!” Mister E yelled as he leaped towards the sound of his charge’s voice, the bloodstained wooden stake in hand.
“What’s going on?” Tim demanded as he backpedaled. “What’s with you?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Timothy,” the man exclaimed as he dove blindly again, stake swinging. “I want to protect you from the world – because it could corrupt you. There are women out there, Timothy, legs and breasts and thighs and… and… believe me, this is for your own good.”
As the man drew nearer, the young wizard expressed his gratitude by sinking his teeth into his guide’s questing hand.
“You cannot hurt me,” Mister E confidently stated. “Mine is the glory of rightness. Mine is courage unsullied.”
“So you bring me here, where there’s absolutely no chance of anyone rescuing me?” the boy demanded incredulously. “Yeah, that’s courage, all right.”
“Say goodbye, Child,” the man responded quietly before leaping again, this time finding his mark in the young wizard’s heart.
It was at this moment that the Universe chose to intervene, as Harry and Kara appeared in the void just as the blow landed. The wizard staggered where he landed as, at the very precipice of the end of all things, time itself became meaningless, and knowledge that he had not yet acquired became temporarily accessible. Upon further reflection, he realized that the additional information was actually the unprocessed ‘gift’ from Death’s ring.
Shaking his head as if to clear it, the emerald-eyed immortal took in the scene before him with cold, piercing eyes. “No,” he commanded sharply, and the raving lunatic was Banished far from the boy he had sworn to protect. Rushing to the child’s side, Harry could clearly see the grievous wound in his chest.
“You would protect the one that will become the greatest evil of all?!” the insane blind man shouted at Harry.
Two smoldering green eyes, carrying the promise of swift retribution, locked onto the man’s unseeing orbs. “Be silent!” Harry ordered, and the mortal was.
“Kara, come here,” the wizard entreated, struggling to keep his voice calm. Applying every applicable healing charm he could, Harry succeeded in temporarily stabilizing the boy’s condition.
The blonde girl gasped. “Is he…?”
“He is alive… for the moment,” Harry announced. “His pulse is weak and irregular; breathing’s shallow. I’ve slowed things down slightly, but his condition is still worsening.”
“Can you not do anything for him?” Supergirl asked anxiously as she knelt by the boy’s side.
Harry considered the situation through the vantage point that his current temporal location allowed. “If I filter out the poisonous aspects, my blood has certain restorative powers,” he admitted, “but it would still be too potent for a normal human to incorporate.”
Kara frowned in thought. “What about my blood?” she offered. “It is mostly compatible with humans.”
The wizard shook his head. “You simply don’t have a fast enough recovery rate to do him any good.”
“Not alone,” she theorized, “but you did say that we made a good team. Perhaps together…”
“It could work,” he finally admitted, “but his life would be forever altered. Our blood – and our curses – will forever be his to bear as well. Could you accept that, knowing that he would – biologically, at least – be our son?”
“At least he’d have a life,” Kara insisted passionately. “So, how do we do this? By injection?”
Harry nodded before conjuring the necessary instrument. After employing his blood-filtering armband, the wizard opened a vein and filled the vial to the halfway point. Kara offered her arm, and he collected her contribution as well.
Gently easing the needle into the boy’s major artery, Harry quietly pleaded, “Forgive us for what we are about to do,” and depressed the plunger. Tim’s body arched once in pain before relaxing into unconsciousness.
“If he’s got any of my powers, then we should put him under a yellow sun lamp,” Kara informed him. Harry nodded and conjured several freestanding mirrors, replete with tanning charms.
“Come on, Tim,” the girl urged as she wiped his brow. “Don’t give up on us now.” Waiting, she reflected, was one of the hardest things that she ever had to do. It was frustrating that, for all of her power, there was absolute nothing more that she could do.
Harry caught a glance of the perpetrator attempting to sneak off into the void, and took great satisfaction in sending several debilitating curses at the man. Once he was certain that his prisoner would not escape the party prematurely, the wizard settled in to wait.
After about ten minutes, Tim started to make a marked improvement.
Harry breathed a sigh of relief and stated, “He’s okay. His breathing’s improved and his pulse is steady.” His eyes turned to the magically restrained figure. “Now, I have something else to attend to.”
At finally acknowledging his fury, Henchgirl’s latent potion activated, transforming his visage into a skull with blazing emerald sparks in the eye sockets.
Kara nodded in morbid – if not vicious – agreement. “Make sure that he pays for this,” she ordered from her place at Tim’s side. “A lot.”
Harry looked back at the kneeling metahuman and nodded sharply. “He shall,” the man-shaped magician vowed in a taut voice.
He transported himself behind the blind zealot with a thought and levitated the insane man to eye level. “What do you think you were doing?” the time-traveling wizard demanded in a frigid voice.
“I must kill him,” the blind time walker shrieked, “before he becomes the most evil being on the planet!”
Harry’s intense eyes narrowed. “So, you would commit this great evil… just to eliminate the possibility of this innocent boy becoming evil? Has he yet committed a wrong?”
Doggedly determined to carry out his holy mission, Mr. E continued, “No, but if I kill him now, then he will never turn to evil. It is for the greater good!”
The wizard growled. “Then by your own rules, I should terminate your worthless existence,” Harry intoned without the slightest sign of regret, “for the darkness you spread is equally as vile as that which you strive to destroy.”
In a desperate maneuver, the insane man once known as Erik used an underhanded thrust to embed his stake in the chest of his opponent. Much to his surprise, however, the wooden rod broke against his opponent’s chest.
His skull-clad chest.
“Shall I do as you have done?” Harry smiled darkly at the man’s slowly dawning look of horror. “Shall I stop the evil before it has been committed?”
“Wh-what are you?” Mister E stuttered.
The wizard’s grin grew even more sinister. “I’m Mr. Black. Timothy Hunter is under my protection. Now answer honestly; shall I exterminate you by your own rules or are you a hypocrite?”
“I am a Guardian of truth,” the hoisted man exclaimed as steadily as he could, “dedicated to protecting humanity from evil. The boy will be powerful – too powerful. It matters not whether he is a mage, scientist, or writer; his very footsteps will cause shudders throughout the universe. We should be responsible and stop this before it starts, before the power corrupts him completely,” gasped Mr. E as Harry wordlessly hexed his airway shut.
“You were given this gift,” Harry stressed the last word, “the ability to see what may happen, not what will. Such an accomplishment is beyond your power, which is something you seem to have forgotten. You are truly blind; not just physically, but spiritually.”
The mage shook his head disgustedly. “I have promised to extract payment in full for your misdeeds, but I find you so far beneath contempt that I scarcely have the stomach to kill one such as you. You do not deserve the relief that such a quick end would allow. Perhaps I shall strand you here at the end of all things, unable to leave until you learn the error of your ways.”
Harry snorted. “I wonder… who would dare speak on your behalf now?”
“I would,” a voice answered from behind him.
The wizard looked over his shoulder at an eerily familiar figure with glowing eyes. The man – if you could call him such – was dressed in a trench coat and hat.
“You would speak for this one?” Harry demanded in a calm tone. “You, the one who treads the way of humans but never becomes close to them?”
“Yes,” the Phantom Stranger replied, projecting both his confidence and his need to redeem his colleague.
Harry considered the wandering being’s proposal for a time. “I will release him to you on two conditions,” the dimension-traveling mage finally decided. “First, you and the ones who released Timothy Hunter to his care are to be his watchdogs, his keepers, for as long as he exists. Second, you all will see that he receives help, both to understand his gift and to understand what it is to be human. You will ensure that this betrayal here today does not happen again. Should these demands not be followed, you and the others who let Timothy accompany this garbage shall share this wretch’s fate.”
“I will see to it,” was the quiet reply.
Drawing on the information he could temporarily access, Harry turned to the Stranger, eyes burning with conviction. “See that you do,” he ordered. “Only for whom you are, am I being this lenient. I shall now take Timothy into my custody, to protect him to the best of my abilities. He shall be to me as my own. He shall be my family. So I have declared.”
“So it is declared,” the Stranger echoed in confirmation.
The man walked to his restrained colleague, and the pair disappeared as suddenly as the stranger first arrived.
His business concluded – for the moment, at least – Harry returned to the only other two beings still present at the End. “How is he?” the wizard asked.
“Steadily improving,” Kara noted. “He should hopefully wake up soon. So, can we move him now?”
Harry nodded and, drawing one last time on Death’s legacy, willed the three remaining objects in creation hundreds of millions of years into the past.
A/N: Thus concludes Chapter Eleven of Terminal Justice, weighing in at a decent 9,000 words. I had originally considered joining this chapter with the last update but decided that it would be too long. I managed to use a few more omakes in this chapter, namely Luinlothana’s A Bit Further From Home; and Chris Hill’s Justice Legion, New Generation.
Additionally, certain passages regarding Tim Hunter and the Trench Coat Brigade were lifted straight from The Books of Magic. I highly recommend reading the series if you have not yet done so.
Many thanks to James for proofreading this chapter, and to Chris for his background information on the various DCverse fixtures.
The exact extent of Harry’s ‘temporary abilities’ at the end of the chapter will be addressed in the next chapter alongside the ‘Ancient History’ story arc. In the meanwhile, please feel free to speculate as to what side effects (if any) Harry accrued from reabsorbing his Trigon-generated ‘twin’.
Thank you for your interest, and please remember to review.