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.
Cry Havoc…
Harry groaned into the tabletop’s smooth surface which currently supported his head.
‘I am never coming to Vegas again! Never! Not in a million years!’ he vowed to himself, before absently casting a climate control charm in response to the rapidly rising temperature in the crowded hotel room. ‘Probably should cut out the late night pints as well,’ he added, ‘and I’m pretty sure the coffee wasn’t helping, either.’
A certain blonde Argosian’s irate voice cut through the heavy silence. “And just why are you so happy about all of this?” Kara accused.
Wearily raising his head, the frustrated wizard eyed the pair of nearly identical, disheveled metahumans silently. The elder of the blonde pair—who wore a plain bathrobe and clutched two smoking wedding certificates in a tightly clenched fist—was almost literally glaring red-hot daggers at her larger and chronologically younger sibling. Similarly attired, the other fair-haired extraterrestrial possessed a faint smile as she studied the plain gold wedding band on her ring finger.
Galatea shrugged, her eyes looking at anything but the other two people in the room. “Let’s face facts,” she said bluntly. “It really isn’t that farfetched of an idea that we’d have the same taste in guys, now is it? It’s not my fault that Joe’s one-of-a-kind.” She glanced down at her ring again, idly running a thumb over the simple piece of jewelry. “And I kind of wanted to stay with you guys anyway. You know, really become a part of the Black and Kent families… Marriage might be a weird and extreme way to go about it but… hey, I’ll take what I can get.”
The anger slipped from Kara’s face. “Tea…”
The mood was ruined when the door to the Honeymoon Suite came crashing into the room, its ballistic entry heralding the arrival of two unexpected individuals. The first person—and the apparent cause of the door’s sudden relocation—was a woman in an ill-fitting but authentic-looking Batman suit. The Dark Lady was followed closely by Wonder Woman—who was poorly hiding her amusement of the entire escapade.
Cutting to the point as quickly as the male version, ‘Batwoman’ practically shrieked with rage. “BLACK, WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO NEVADA!?”
Harry blinked before his head slumped back onto the table with a solid thud. ‘I am never drinking beer and coffee together ever again. I am never drinking beer and coffee together ever again. I am—’
The strange scene suddenly dissolved away, inexplicably replaced by a curious Kara shaking his shoulder. “Joe? Are you alright?”
The wizard sluggishly nodded as he regained his senses.
“Why aren’t you ever drinking coffee and alcohol again?” she inquired. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”
Harry’s breath suddenly caught in his throat as his eyes jumped nervously to his unadorned ring finger. Thinking quickly, the magician hastily agreed. “Err… yes… a nightmare! That’s it exactly!”
Kara smiled mischievously and moved closer. “I know just the thing to banish those nasty nightmares,” she informed him in a husky tone.
“Err… it’s getting kinda late, and we really should make sure that everyone’s alright,” he inserted, the remnants of his dream still in the forefront of his mind. “Not to mention finding out what Grim needed last night.”
The young blonde woman moved behind him and began rubbing his shoulders. “Are you sure that you have to leave already?” she whispered into his ear.
Harry suddenly stilled. “On the other hand, Grim’s immortal. I’m sure he won’t mind waiting a while longer.”
Emil Hamilton had no sooner regained consciousness on a rather uncomfortable hospital bed when he noticed Amanda Waller sitting on a chair next to him. His attempt to question her presence failed, however, and he was soon reminded of the exact reason why he was on said bed.
“Ah, Emil, so you’re finally awake. Just out of curiosity, do you still believe that you made the right decision?” the squat department head asked sarcastically, only to be answered by a look of confusion. “You do remember what happened, don’t you?” she pressed.
“Blck,” he managed with no small effort.
Waller nodded. “Yes, he organized that initial little misfortune of yours. You might consider yourself lucky that he seemed content with giving you a… slap on the wrist, shall we say, rather than killing you outright. On the other hand, ending your rather ignoble life would spare you from the rest of his family expressing their disapproval of your actions.” She huffed in sardonic amusement. “I guess it’s debatable rather you’re lucky or not.”
“Lcky? Hw?”
“Let’s just say that you owe your life to Superman. If it weren’t for him alerting W.H.O.—who in turn alerted all the various hospitals—they would have never caught the problem before it was too late. Not to mention that everyone visiting you would be at risk of getting infected as well.”
Struggling to focus, the genetic research scientist finally recognized his visitor’s strange dress as protective clothing used in biologically-hazardous areas.
The woman continued. “As it is, you’re something of a curiosity for the epidemiologists. Apparently, Mr. Black’s sister dosed you with a strain of bacteria that’s been long considered extinct.”
“Sstr?”
“Why, yes, his sister. One of his three siblings, to be precise. History sometimes refers to their little family as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. After all, Emil, where else would you suddenly acquire a disease not seen for ages?”
“Bt… Th tgr… nh… pnthr…”
Waller smiled, though no real humor was present. “Ah, so you do remember the cat. I’m afraid that whatever the creature was, it was neither a tiger nor a panther. For what it’s worth, Black apparently considers it a housecat.”
“Blck?”
“From what I understood, when his brother came looking for you—no doubt to chastise you directly—his sister Pestilence decided to get a bit more creative. She apparently sent the `kitty’ to you with a little care package. According to the doctors who put you back together, you probably won’t be able to eat any solid foods for months to come.”
After that blunt and unfeeling prediction, Hamilton somehow paled further.
“Brthr?”
“War, who apparently refers to himself as Mr. Blue. He seemed to wish for a word with you about the situation but, after witnessing his siblings’ handiwork, apparently decided to just collect the cat and forget the direct approach.”
Before the exhausted man could materialize some visible form of relief, Waller spoke again.
“He decided on a more subtle method of vengeance instead.”
“Anthr?”
“Yes. You see, just a few minutes after our conversation, we got a word that an armed conflict broke out on the Kasnian border. It was quickly subdued but not before engulfing—and completely destroying—the industrial base of the most important private sponsor of your research. Additionally, your federal funds have been withdrawn; it’s been a tight fiscal year, and your recent actions brought your budget to the forefront when it came to cutting costs. I’m afraid that if you want to do any research after you recover, you’ll have to pay for it out of your own pocket. You’ve become too much of a liability for the United States government to continue sponsoring you.”
Waller rose to her feet. “Other than that, get well soon,” she stated in a slightly less sincere tone than normal, “and don’t say that I didn’t warn you, Emil.”
Turning around, the Director of the Department of Metahuman Affairs calmly left the man to his many regrets and even more numerous ailments.
Oddly enough, a similar sentiment was shared by many inhabitants of a certain cloaked base in the African wilderness, including a purple-haired sorceress named Tala. After enduring an hour of power outages, medium-grade tremors, and a multitude of explosions, the witch gave in to the inevitable and forewent her meditations. Instead, she elbowed her way past the overly curious gang of super villains and barged into the epicenter of the disasters.
“Lex, stop it!” she shouted to the room’s sole occupant over the din. “You will blow us all to pieces!”
Looking over his shoulder, the bald criminal sneered at the unwelcome interruption. “Not now, Woman! Something’s happening!” True to his words, the latest experiment suddenly began to hum before inexplicably illuminating itself. “It’s—”
The light and sound reached a critical crescendo as the lab equipment exploded spectacularly in the wake of yet another failure.
“It’s… just one more steaming flop!” Luthor cursed, throwing down his goggles in disgust and pounding on the console in front of him.
After watching the grown man throw yet another tantrum, Tala attempted to calm down the criminal genius. “Lex, forget about bringing back Brainiac—”
“I don’t need input from some crystal-gazing parasite!” he snarled, turning his fury on the sorceress. “One who’s confused a wench’s grip on power with the real thing!”
Tala backed up against the demolished specimen analyzer and snatched Brainiac’s remains from the rubble. Holding it in front of her in indictment of the unbalanced billionaire, she protested, “This is the real problem between us. It’s pure wild goose chase! Look, I will prove it. I will show you what is in there.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Lex resisted disdainfully. “This is science! What good is your sorcery… unless you plan to turn stone into gold… or maybe a frog?”
“Such ignorance! Transmutation is what you want to do!”
Mocking the accented magician, Lex parroted, “’Transmutation is…’”. He suddenly stopped as another possibility occurred to him. “What are you waiting for?” the man suddenly demanded. “Do it!”
“Okay!” Tala cried out indignantly, snatching the stone from his grasp. Centering herself, the witch attempted to link her consciousness with that of the artifact in her grasp. “By the slaughter of innocent, by pestilence and plague, reveal the hidden unto me.”
Several seconds passed in silence.
“There, you see?” Tala asked in a vindicated tone. “It’s just a rock, a worthless piece of—oh!”
“What?” the impatiently-waiting genius demanded.
“It’s… not important.”
“Show me!”
The witch complied, sharing with him the scene where Brainiac was destroyed in the Apokolips star system. The embedded memory continued until the space base was destroyed, severing Tala’s connection to the artifact and returning the two villains to the waking world.
Ignoring Tala’s pained collapse to the floor, Lex began walking back towards his work table. “There’s still Brainiac in the universe!” he exulted happily.
“There is no way to tell where it happened,” the woman stated.
“Wrong! I saw enough of those stars to determine the coordinates. It should be a simple matter—”
“You saw the wild goose again!” the woman interrupted, disheartened in his behavior. “Concentrate on us, Baby! Space is too far. Together, we can rule this world.”
Lex turned around and shoved her to the floor. “If you like this world so much, keep your fool mouth shut—and maybe I’ll let you keep it. Me, I’m going to be a god again!”
“You know,” Harry murmured some time later as he stared up at the ceiling, “I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
Kara raised herself on one arm and looked at the wizard curiously. “Oh, I don’t know. I think that things turned out just fine.” She considered her response for a moment before amending, “Very fine.”
The wizard coughed uncomfortably. “Yes, well, I was referring more to your lot’s reaction when you found out about… well, you know.”
The Argosian snorted. “It wasn’t exactly a big secret before, Joe. After all the times you’ve bailed the League out both on and off the clock… well, somebody’d have to be a complete idiot not to notice how different you are.”
Harry smiled listlessly. “You can go ahead and say ‘freak’,” he allowed. “It’s nothing that I haven’t heard before.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, you big dummy!” the blonde woman protested. “You’ve got at least one impossible job—which just so happens to be one of the coolest, most important gigs I can think of—and you still find time to help others. Sure, a few rules have gotten bent along the way—and you’ve got most people convinced that you’re either hyperactive, mentally unbalanced, or both—but you always come through in the end. Personally, I think it’s kinda sweet that the universe has a big brother like you to watch over it.”
The wizard stared at the female bewilderedly. “You’re taking this loads better than I was expecting, given Clark’s distaste for the supernatural.”
Kara ran her free hand along her side suggestively. “In case you missed it earlier, I’m not Clark. Personally, I think all this magic stuff is one of the coolest things ever, and I really appreciate all the lessons that you gave Tea and me. They saved my life, you know, mine and the others.”
“What do you mean?”
“While you were… resting,” Kara explained delicately, “we had to go on a quest to retrieve a key to unlock your shackles. And, of course, what expedition for a magical artifact would be complete without magical death traps?”
Harry instinctively studied the young woman’s form, as if to discover some heretofore hidden wound. “Are you and the others alright?”
The out-of-costume Supergirl patted his shoulder reassuringly. “We’re all fine. It was touch and go at times, but we pulled through thanks to what you taught us.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” the wizard responded, before his thoughts shifted to her last comment. “What happened?”
“Well, each of the stops we took had different protections—like the volcano temple that was guarded by this giant humanoid creature made out of pure fire.”
The wizard eyed the young woman carefully. “Sounds… interesting,” he offered.
“It was definitely that,” she agreed wholeheartedly. “The thing is… Bruce, Diana, and Shayera just saw it as some magically-created creature and attacked it like they would any sentient living thing. Needless to say, the hothead wasn’t fazed even a little bit. So then I thought to myself, ‘What would Joe do?’”
He raised an eyebrow curiously. “Oh?”
The Argosian nodded. “Yeah, but I couldn’t find a coffee shop anywhere, so I skipped that step.”
Harry glared mildly at the blonde.
“Anyway, Tea and I took a good look at the thing—just like how you said when you covered magical protections on Avalon—and we noticed a definite pattern in its behavior,” Kara confided proudly. “After it attacked a few times, we figured out that it was triggered by our proximity to the key’s fragment… and that it had a fixed region that it could guard. Once we knew that, it was simple to find the ward anchor thingy and break it into little bits.”
Her companion smiled. “Well done! I’m impressed.”
Kara smiled somewhat wryly. “Yeah, well… it was nothing special. There was one good thing that came out of that mission, though, aside from the obvious.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I think I finally understood where you’ve been coming from all along,” the Maid of Might admitted. “You’ve been nothing but considerate and supportive the entire time, and I’ve tried to be understanding, but there was always this little piece of me that felt… inadequate, I guess you could say.”
Harry frowned in concern. “But… why?”
She shrugged. “Well, you could happily spend the whole day discussing the proper way to turn a frog into a dustpan with Zatanna, or teaching Tim the best ways to shield himself from debris or whatever… but as far as I was concerned, magic was just that—magic. I suppose that I shared Clark’s viewpoint a bit, that it was illogical and undependable, but… when Tea and I figured out how to beat that fire golem thingy, everything just… clicked. It’s definitely not scientific, but magic really does have a certain kind of logic to it, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, more or less,” Harry agreed easily.
“I think I finally understand why you get a little cranky when people just gape when you do even the simple things,” she continued. “It would be like asking anyone else how they managed to tie their shoes or dress themselves in the morning.”
The wizard nodded his agreement before adding, “For the record, though, I don’t get… cranky.”
“Oh, of course not!” she breathed out patronizingly. “You just brood a lot. And get prickly if some disaster drags you out of bed prematurely. And—”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Oh, shut it,” he interrupted.
Kara rolled over so that she straddled the reclined magician. Smiling impishly, she verbalized a reply.
“Make me.”
The available senior members of the Justice League stared at each other silently from the seclusion of their private conference room.
“Well, at least we finally know why Mr. Black dropped by for a visit,” Wally noted, breaking the silence that had settled over the group. “He was just filling in for the super hottie Death babe.”
“Hardly,” Batman rejected derisively. “That is only the official explanation, which has done an admirable job of covering Black’s true agenda.”
Clark looked at his friend in confusion. “What do you mean? What ‘true agenda’?”
“The real reason that Mr. Black approached the League,” Diana supplied, “was to prevent a sequence of events that would have destroyed us—along with a good percentage of the Earth.”
“Allegedly,” the Wayne scion immediately added.
The Amazon princess looked at the cowled man at her side. “Do you really think that he was lying? Or mistaken? He’s gone to an awful lot of trouble for a simple deception, and what would he have to gain anyway?”
“You want to try repeating that in English?” Shayera asked sarcastically.
“Mr. Black and his… brother… possess some precognitive ability,” the Dark Knight explained, “as most likely do his ‘sisters’ and his ‘niece’. Using this foreknowledge, they were able to predict both how we would react to certain catalysts and the various resulting reactions.”
“Which were apparently dire enough for Mr. Black to intervene directly,” Diana supplemented. “Apparently, he has been subtlety voiding one of our possible futures by changing the circumstances that led us down that road.”
The Flash shook his head. “But why all the cloak and dagger stuff?” he wondered aloud. “Why not just drop by, tell us what was about to go wrong, then go back to his mansion in the clouds or wherever?”
Clark considered the query. “Aside from the fact that we probably wouldn’t have believed him?” he finally suggested. “Mr. Black told Ma Kent that there were rules that prevent him from revealing himself to us, or to interfere with our lives. When Pa was about to have a fatal heart attack, though, he broke the rules and saved him. Or, at least, he bent them something fierce.”
“As with Alfred,” Bruce gruffly admitted.
“He told us something similar on Halloween,” Shayera admitted. “In our presence, Mr. Black purposely redirected a conversation until this other guy finally asked why the Angels didn’t intervene more from day to day. Once he was asked, however, Mr. Black was able to answer without any problems. They apparently can’t just volunteer information but, when Black was asked directly, he admitted that a few beings still try to help ‘under the radar’.”
“But if Mr. Black can cross that line once, why can’t he do it again and just tell us what’s going on?” Wally persisted.
“Think about it,” the resident Green Lantern chastised. “Mankind—and the rest of the universe—is right smack dab in the middle of a cosmic game of tug-of-war. You know, light and dark, order and chaos, angels and demons, good and evil. As long as neither side drastically upsets the stalemate, then everything goes on like it always has. But if Mr. Black started indiscriminately helping us…”
Wally finally nodded in comprehension. “Then the other side starts pulling and the rope gets snapped or thrown in the mud. Bummer.” The Fastest Man Alive considered the situation for a few milliseconds before asking, “But isn’t that what he’s been doing anyway? You know, giving advice, killing bad guys—that sort of thing?”
Batman smirked in reluctant admiration. “Not exactly. If his conduct here was reviewed, all you would find is a long list of convenient accidents or dumb strokes of luck for us.”
Shayera voiced her agreement with the Gotham detective’s conclusions. “He’s stretched the rules a bit, granted, but he hasn’t technically broken the non-interference policy.” The Thanagarian smiled. “After all, he’s hardly to blame if we happen to overhear a privileged conversation or two. Besides, by giving each of us only part of the solution, he can truthfully say that he didn’t forewarn us of anything.”
“And, for the stuff that we didn’t pick up on by ourselves, in walks the helpful metahuman Mr. Black,” Wally West realized.
“Who never really came out and told us who and what he was, but always seems to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to say or do exactly the right thing,” John Stewart finished.
Shayera snorted. “At least we know why Black’s always so happy. He’s routinely stretched every rule they have, gone and done pretty much whatever he wanted… and there’s not a thing that the other side can do about it.”
“No, Dawn! You’re too young to be getting into adventures!” Xander protested resolutely. “Do you know how much trouble I’d be in when we get back if I let something happen to you here?”
Dawn pouted. It was just so unfair. She finally found a world where superheroes existed, where she could finally step out of Buffy’s shadow… and she gets stonewalled by Xander. Such an affront simply could not go unaddressed.
“Xannnder,” she whined, “I’m several billion years old. I’m not a kid anymore.”
Harry sighed. He was already rushing around trying to make up for the late start to his day—and that was before he found the invitation to some sort of Death council meeting stuck to his door that morning. That was not to say, of course, that the deviation from his originally intended schedule wasn’t entertaining. Especially when Kara… He mentally shook himself before entering the verbal arena. “Dawn, you’re still an adolescent,” he countered calmly.
“Pleeeaaasse?” she begged.
“You’re still not up on your spells, Dawn—and you’re too young!” sputtered Xander. “God, Buffy will kill me if anything happens to you! I may be immortal, but nobody’s that immortal.”
Dawn pouted. “It’s not like I just ran off or something!” she protested. “I left a note for Mom. Besides, if I didn’t hurry, I just knew that you’d find some way to leave me behind again—just like the last time you ‘went away on business.’ And do you remember how long you were gone then?” the blonde girl demanded irately.
“Six centuries,” Harry and Xander duly chorused in unison.
“Six centuries!” she spat. “Six centuries of having fun, going on adventures, scaring entire planets full of bad guys… I want to do that, too, and I’m older than either of you were when you started to do the whole ‘trounce the bad guys’ bit.” Dawn grinned at the two of them as she made her—to her mind, at least—unassailable point.
Harry and Xander looked at each other resignedly as they each contemplated their options. It seemed to be a choice between enduring several dozen hours of the girl’s whining about double standards, or give in to her demands.
Xander grumbled and pulled out his Zippo. “Henchgirl, are you there?”
After about a minute, the call was answered. “Henchgirl speaking.”
“It’s Xander,” he replied. “I need some special clothes for Dawn… a full protection suit and assorted equipment. How soon can you get it to me?”
Henchgirl was silent for a moment. “It’ll just take a few moments. I have some extra stuff here, and I have an idea for her. I’ll send the stuff through in a minute.”
Inexplicably feeling his biological age, Harry just stared resignedly at the young girl who was now cheering and bouncing around the room. “There,” the immortal wizard offered, “as long as you wear the suit, you can go on small adventures.”
True to her word, the inventive Potions’ Mistress soon returned to the Floo. “Alright, here comes the standard Lovely Angels gear, and I’ve enrolled Dawn as an apprentice for a future trouble consultant team.”
Before either of the two males present could reply, Dawn had already grabbed the package and rushed out of the room, cackling all the while.
“We got it,” Xander mournfully confirmed. “We’ll call you back later. So,” he attempted to change the subject, “where’s your better half?”
“Off on a relief mission to some backwater planet,” Harry supplied. “Apparently, the Justice League is also a non-profit courier service.”
“Huh, go figure,” the other man noted. “I guess that means that you’re free to help keep an eye on the Dawnmeister, right?”
Shaking his head smugly, Harry Apparated away as Xander resigned himself to the inevitable mess.
“Are you sure that those go in together?” Tim Hunter asked as his half-sister Raven tossed another two ingredients into the simmering cauldron.
“Of course,” the gothic teen said shortly, “Most Potente Potions clearly states that the Oblivious Unction requires both Fluxweed and Hellebore added at this stage.”
“Yeah,” the wizard-in-training agreed as he skimmed through the instructions again, “but it says to add the Fluxweed and then the Hellebore – not both of them at once.”
“It will be fine,” Raven said as levelly as she could.
“Why are you making this Unction stuff, anyway? What does it do?”
“It’s just for practice, so it doesn’t matter,” she replied abruptly, her tone warning against continuing the conversation.
“Oh, Raaaven!” Beast Boy’s boisterous voice called out from the other side of her bedroom door, providing the girl with a handy distraction. “Have you seen your brother anywhere? We were gonna hit the town, but I can’t find him.”
“I’m in here,” Tim answered back before opening the door for the other teen.
“Whoa!” the green-skinned poster boy for Attention Deficit Disorder exclaimed as he took another bite out of a pizza slice. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Working,” Raven supplied bluntly, “now go away.”
Ducking around Tim, the Teen Titan stared down into the bubbling cauldron. “Dude! Is this like a magic potion or something?”
“Step away–now!” Raven growled.
Beast Boy waved his hands frantically. “Okay! Okay! Just chill! I’m not going to–” the partially eaten slice of cheese pizza flew out of his gloved hand and landed in the mixture with a plop.
“Hehehe,” the shape shifter chuckled weakly as the room’s owner leveled a non-literal death glare at him. “Sorry?” he squeaked in apology.
The cauldron began emitted bright sparks as the contaminated potion boiled over the rim.
“Look out!” Tim yelled. “It’s gonna blo–!”
Without further warning, the concoction violently expanded, and the ensuing pizza-textured wave sent the three teenagers sailing out into the hall.
“Well, that was gross!” Beast Boy complained as he picked scraps of cheese out of his hair. His efforts were somewhat impeded when Raven picked him up by the back of his shirt and threw the green figure several paces down the hallway.
“Now look what you’ve done!” the purple-haired girl literally growled.
“Uh… Raven,” the wizard-in-training interrupted hesitantly, “is it supposed to do that?”
The female Black turned her attention away from procuring new potion ingredients out of her green teammate’s hide and followed Tim’s outstretched hand to her room. In the few moments that she had been inattentive, the amorphous cheese-and-bread mass had coalesced into a vaguely humanoid blob.
“Great,” Raven summarized in her typically dry manner as the magically-sustained creature turned and charged through her wall, escaping the tower and heading straight towards the city.
“We’re going to need a biiig napkin,” Tim agreed dully.
Lex Luthor walked into the crowded conference room and listened to the gathered villains’ grumbled complaints. After a few moments, he signaled for them to be quiet.
“Soon, People,” he addressed the mob, “the Secret Society will no longer exist. Instead, you’ll become the new ruling class of the universe. You are the lucky few, the chosen—witnesses to the moment I seize my godhead.”
“Luthor, what game is this?” an individual dressed in children’s clothes asked. “Because so far it’s not much fun.”
“Bear with me, Toyman,” the bald criminal replied duly, “you’ll get the hang of it. You’re going to help me gather some newly discovered pieces of Brainiac.”
“Swell,” Goldface retorted discontentedly. “So you merge with a living computer like you did before, you become more powerful than all of us put together… but what do we get?”
“You’ll all be my lieutenants in the new order,” Luthor pledged. “Of course,” he continued when several of the gathered criminals frowned, “if you don’t like those terms, then you’d better stop me now while you still have a chance.” Lex slowly brought his hand to his belt. “But, you’d also better remember what happened to poor Goldface,” he added, and pressed the button concealed in his belt buckle.
Almost immediately, the gold-colored individual in question collapsed, crying out in agony as smoke boiled from behind his mask.
“I’m already more powerful than all of you put together,” Lex asserted smugly as he calmly observed the other man’s anguish.
“Umm… excuse me?” another person at the table hesitantly interrupted. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… what exactly are we doing?”
“I was coming to that,” Luthor replied, before withdrawing a remote control from his pocket and activating it.
Almost immediately, the room began to tremble as the sound of igniting rocket engines echoed throughout the complex. Everyone save Lex, who knew what to expect, fell to the floor as the entire concealed base shot into the sky.
Once the complex achieved orbit, Luthor again addressed his shell-shocked audience. “I reconfigured Grodd’s cloaking field into a hyper spatial drive.”
“You’re not serious?!” Killer Frost demanded incredulously.
In response, Luthor initiated the new drive system, propelling the new space station towards his objective at light speed.
In the secured prison wing of the building, a bewildered Grodd slammed against the bars of his cage.
“Why is my headquarters moving?”
Xander was wandering around the station while contemplated his overwhelming boredom. It sort of figured, really. He was at the center of the biggest permanent good guy convention ever seen, and there was precisely nothing to do.
“Well, I could always pop on down to Gotham and check on Nuni,” he thought aloud. “And dropping in on the Bat being bossed around by Wonder Woman in his very own cave would be funny to see.” The Sunnydale resident snorted at the League’s unofficial policy of acceding to the Wayne scion’s every whim. And the supposed heroes were hardly alone in their endeavor. The villains were so frightened of the completely human ‘Dark Knight’ that Xander was seriously considering performing a blood test. Given the amount of fear that the detective spread without effort, he just had to be related to the Potter family somewhere down the line.
He momentarily amused himself by recalling a few of the many stupid, over the top plans to kill the terrifying crime fighter—each with at least one gigantic, not to mention obvious, loop hole to provide the Bat with an easy exit. Xander hummed to himself in thought. ‘Then again, villains the multiverse over seem to share that fatal flaw. Maybe there’s some sort of Evil Academy or something—that could explain the number of retarded ‘Big Bads’ of late.’
Either way, the man decided, he still needed something to do—and he somehow doubted that vampires and other creepy crawlies were going to make an obliging appearance.
Then he saw it. Him. Whatever. The answer to his problem.
Xander smiled happily. “Hey there! How are you?”
The blue-skinned being blinked as he found his hand shaken by an unknown man. It was not so much the notion that he was approached by the strange individual that surprised him—such a thing was regrettably a regular occurrence—but rather that the League’s resident ‘Weirdness Magnet’ felt that he should know this person.
“Eh… I’m ok,” Blue Devil replied. “Not to sound rude but… who are you?”
Xander shrugged. “Me? I’m nobody special. Just a guy looking for a place to drink and party.”
Dan Cassidy rolled his eyes at the man dressed in the weird leather coat that resembled a cross between a flared cape and armor. ‘Great, another mysterious Leaguer,’ he silently grumbled. ‘Couldn’t these guys ever just sit down and have a beer or something? Maybe go to a beach cookout or a bar-b-que?’
Stifling his objections, Blue Devil instead decided to dismiss the almost-routine oddity. “Whatever. I’m just about to go to Metropolis and visit some friends. Want to come along?”
Xander grinned. “As long as it involves a bar, lots of alcohol, and a good fight, I’m in.”
Dan stared for a moment before shrugging. “Ya know? This might be the beginnings of a beautiful friendship. How’re you at fighting demons, devils and other supernatural creeps, nerds and idiots?”
Xander smiled at the blue guy as they walked to the teleporter. “Oh, I dabble. You know, dusting a few vamps here, kicking Deadboy’s butt over there, double-teaming with my brother to lay the smack down on a hellbitch called Glorificus… stuff like that. I may not be the best, but I’ve been around the block a time or two.”
“Glorificus?!” Dan echoed hoarsely. He recognized the name, both from his regular job and from a book that Cain forced on him once upon a time. If it was truly the same creature as who he was thinking of… then what was this guy?
The other man nodded. “Yeah, she’s dead now—may what passes for her demonic soul rot forever—but she annoyed several people before she kicked the bucket. Come to think of it, that’s one of the reasons we killed her in the first place,” Xander admitted, laying a hand on his companion’s back. “Well, besides being an evil demon, that is. How ‘bout I tell you about it over a beer? It makes an interesting story.”
The blue-skinned figure considered his new acquaintance. The man beside him was humorous, self-depreciating, relaxed, and appeared ordinary by any standards of the word. And yet…
The Blue Devil grinned. This was definitely a being he could respect.
“I still can’t believe you talked me into this,” Tim complained from the back seat of the T-Car as he pulled at his newly transfigured uniform.
Having informed the rest of the Titans as to the nature of the latest emergency, Tim received a shock when Robin invited him along to stop the magically created creature. Batman’s latest protégé reasoned that magic might well be required to stop the impending disaster and, if it took on the abilities of the shape shifter Clayface as well, more mystics were always better.
While the Boy Wonder’s suggestion was somewhat unexpected, it was still reasonable under the circumstances. No, the young wizard’s disbelief stemmed from Robin’s rushed suggestion for a costumed alter ego. Apparently, the domino-mask-wearing teen had been giving the issue some thought, as he came prepared with a sketched proposal. The suggested design, though simple in execution, seemed to blend the uniforms of the British teen’s two new biological parents. The drawing illustrated a black t-shirt with the traditional red House of El shield across the chest with accompanying leather jacket, a pair of black jeans, and black boots. In fact, Gotham’s youngest vigilante had even thought up a codename of sorts.
Superboy.
‘At least there weren’t any knickers visible,’ Tim thought, more than a little relieved given the American superheroes odd fashion choices.
Tim shook off the mental tangent. “I mean, trademark infringement aside, you do know that it’s a tossup between Joe and Kara to see who’s gonna kill me, right?” the young wizard continued in a worried tone.
“Somehow, I think that Father will find it more amusing than anything,” Raven announced as Cyborg slid though another turn, “and I am sure that Supergirl will understand.”
“Raven is right, and you look very ‘of the hot’,” Starfire added helpfully.
Blinking repeatedly, the newly christened Superboy stammered, “Uhh… thanks. So… any ideas on how to stop the pizza golem?”
Suppressing his sudden burning curiosity as to whether the other teen was vulnerable to Kryptonite, Robin answered, “If it’s anything like Clayface, then let’s try to freeze it solid. We should be able to transport it then. I hope that it can’t separate its mass and go in multiple directions simultaneously. If it does, though, we’ll split into two teams; you’ll go with Beast Boy and Cyborg, while Raven and Starfire will go with me. Cyborg, any luck tracking this thing?”
The tall teen’s biological eye narrowed as he frowned at the vehicle’s console. “Not yet.”
Beast Boy looked over at Tim. “Dude, can’t you, like, see through buildings and stuff with X-ray vision or something?”
Tim shook his head. “I’ve just got the strength and speed—the rest of Kryptonian powers haven’t come in yet—and, unlike Joe, I haven’t learned how to use Mage Sight to see anything other than magic yet.”
“There’s the trail!” Cyborg called as the car abruptly changed direction again.
“And there’s the walking junk food!” Robin finished. “Titans, go!”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Gorilla Grodd shouted. “I demand to know what is going on!”
“Quiet, Grodd,” a harsh whisper sounded as Tala faded into view in front of his cage.
“You,” the furred telepath grumbled. “Come to gloat at me again? I’m not some monkey in the zoo throwing—”
“Shhh,” she interrupted. “I’ve been very, very bad. I backed the wrong pony. It should have been you.”
“Oh, you finally sussed it out.” Grodd smirked. “That hairless sweetheart of yours isn’t a leader—he’s a thug.”
“And how,” the sorceress agreed. “I don’t like to compete for Lex with a dead computer. I want you to be my man in charge, like before. So… Baby, what do you want?”
Grodd smiled. “Why, only you, My Dear… and Luthor’s fat head on a plate.”
“Thank you for dropping by, Mr. Black,” Pamela Isley breathed gratefully as the wizard Apparated next to her at the mostly empty nightclub. “He burst in here a few moments ago, bellowing something about having a bounty on you. Then he saw the girls rehearsing for tonight and well…” The redhead pointed over at a corner table, where the intrusive male was dubiously entertaining Harley, Roxy, and Circe.
Well, the two Gothamites seemed rather engaged with the spectacle at any rate. The purple-haired sorceress, on the other hand, seemed to be plotting what animal transfiguration would best rid her of the unwelcome interruption to her vocal practice.
He nodded. “All right then. Let’s go see what this is all about,” he decided before approaching the loud, brash man. The individual certainly stood out in a crowd, Harry decided, what with his biker clothing, wild black hair, and white skin. The unusual weapons he had strapped to his person—an over sized pistol, heavy chain, and crowbar—were rather distinctive as well. Somehow, Harry couldn’t shake the feeling of familiarity with the individual.
“Excuse me,” the wizard interrupted a crude account of the other man’s… questionably private exploits, “but I understand that you wished to see me?”
“Buzz off, Shrimp!” the monotone punk growled without looking at who addressed him. “Can’t you see I’m busy right now?”
Tilting his head sideways in confusion—and not a little amusement—Harry continued. “Yes, but I’m a little curious about this bounty that you’re supposedly looking to collect.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the strange man grunted. “The geek’s name is Black or something.”
“I see,” Harry admitted as he finally recognized the uncouth individual as being the bounty hunter Lobo. “Well, I’m Mr. Black so… what’s the deal with this bounty, then?”
That, at least, seemed to gain the other’s attention. Turning around in his chair, the Czarnian glanced over him. “You’re this ‘Mr. Black’ geek that everyone’s so afraid of?”
Grinning slightly, Harry nodded.
“The fraggin’ Grim Reaper himself?”
“Something like that,” Harry agreed.
“The universe’s very own Agent of Vengeance?”
“Umm… sometimes. Kinda.”
“The Big Cheese of Big Cheeses?”
One ebony eyebrow unconsciously rose. “Can’t say as I’ve heard that one before,” Harry admitted, “but they’re probably talking about me as well.”
“The ultimate bad boy bastich?”
Harry scratched the back of his head. “Err… possibly?”
“Hahahahaha!”
“What, exactly, is so funny?” the wizard demanded.
“The Dvarkian Privateering Syndicate sent the Main Man to the Krypton system… and then all the way out to this rat-infested mud ball after some super powered geek who tossed an asteroid through one of their cruisers… and this little pip squeak is all I got to show for it?” Lobo demanded of no one in particular.
Harry nodded in sudden comprehension. “Oh, yeah, I had almost forgotten about that.”
“Wait a minute!” Roxy interrupted. “You threw an asteroid through a spaceship?”
The wizard shrugged before repeating Teleute’s comment. “Well, they were a bunch of murdering pirates who were fixing to kill a bunch of innocent people.”
The women present just stared at him blankly.
Smiling weakly, he amended, “Would you believe that it was an accident?”
“Alright, Geekwad,” the mentally-unstable intergalactic biker blurted, “this is how things’re gonna go down. Seein’ as how you’re so small and puny, the Main Man’s gonna give you a freebie.” The hulking Czarnian hopped out of his chair and ambled over to face Harry. Jutting out his chin, he invited, “Go ahead. Clock me a good one.”
The Harry’s eye twitched as he heard little more than ‘small’, ‘puny’, and ‘clock me’. The wizard smiled—
—right before a magically-reinforced boot caught Lobo in a rather sensitive region, launching the screaming man through the roof. Calmly conjuring an Acme mallet, the slighted magician waited for the shrieking extraterrestrial to return from his unscheduled flight. Harry smoothly swept forward and—when the incapacitated thug crashed back through the ceiling—caught the falling man dead-center with the business end of the giant hammer. With another garbled expletive, the bounty hunter’s flight path abruptly turned horizontal and terminated against the far wall.
Groaning, Lobo rose unsteadily to his feet and began to advance, drawing both a large pistol and a crowbar from their holsters as he did so.
Unfortunately, an overpowered Disarming Hex sent the white-skinned adversary colliding roughly with the cracked wall again, leaving Harry juggling a total of four pistols, two sawed-off shotguns, various explosives, several rifle-like objects—whose purposes he could not begin to fathom—a large crowbar, a pair of studded fingerless gloves, a multitude of exotic bladed weapons, and a long unwieldy chain with a hooked end. Since the monochrome ruffian was rather disoriented by this point, a quick Sticking Charm successfully prevented the other man from escaping the point of impact a second time—and gave Harry a chance to dispose of the summoned weaponry.
Blinking disbelievingly at the ludicrously over sized pile of armaments—and wondering just where the apparently insane Czarnian could have possibly concealed them all—Harry stowed most of the cache in his gauntlets, save for one of the more familiarly-designed giant revolvers that wouldn’t be out of place on a dragon slayer. Considering his options, Harry thoughtfully donned his new pair of offensively-armored half-gloves as well.
“Feetal’s Gizz,” Lobo grumbled as he attempted to regain his footing—only to discover that he was completely incapable of moving more than his head thanks to the Sticking Charm.
Harry’s grinned in a rather satisfied manner as he observed his opponent. “Now, if you’re quite finished, perhaps we can discuss this bounty business.”
“As soon as I can see straight, I am so fraggin’ that bastich,” the biker muttered aloud to himself.
Sighing, the unruffled wizard casually walked up to his reeling opponent and made a show of releasing the weapon’s magazine. He pocketed all but one of the bullets and held up the last one for inspection. After assuring himself that his pale prisoner was finally paying attention, Harry slid the round back into the gun and spun the cylinder before snapping the revolver closed.
“Now, then,” the smug immortal prompted, “let’s discuss this… Dvarkian Syndicate, was it??”
Lobo grinned happily. “I ain’t feelin’ all that talkative just now, Chump.” He grinned widely and insincerely added, “Sorry.”
Harry pressed the muzzle of the gun to the bounty hunter’s abused nether region and pulled back the hammer. “You feel like talking now?”
“Nuthin’ doin’, Scum Bag!” the last Czarnian retorted. “You’re bluffin’!”
With a rather wolfish grin, Harry pulled the trigger.
Click.
“That’s one.”
Dawn was mindlessly walking down another corridor while pondering what she should call herself, now that she was a costumed crime fighter in a universe full of superheroes. Nodding politely to a passing oriental woman clad in a black-and-white outfit, the girl meandered along on her quest. The young woman did not proceed much further, however, before she was hailed to a stop by the other female.
For her own part, Doctor Light only managed to stare disbelievingly at the young woman in a bikini. Finally regaining her wits, she asked, “Excuse me, young lady, but… May I ask who you are?”
Dawn turned to face the cloaked figure and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Oh… me? I’m known as Key, apprentice with the Lovely Angels. Why?”
The woman known as Kimiyo Hoshi unconsciously stiffened. “I didn’t think that we would have anyone so… young… on station.”
Key rolled her eyes. “It was quite a surprise to me, too,” the girl admitted. “I’m here to check on my uncle, Mr. Black. But since he’s… busy… I thought I’d see what was for lunch. I can’t seem to find the cafeteria, though… you people really should put up some maps or something.”
Little of the girl’s monologue registered, however, as Kimiyo was still frozen with horror at the League’s latest guest. Shakily pointing towards the dining hall, the disheveled Dr. Light seized the earliest opportunity to flee the area in the opposite direction. When her panicked flight abruptly intersected with the Man of Steel, the Japanese woman sighed in relief. “Superman, it’s you! Listen, we have a serious problem!”
Superman looked around and noticed the lack of alarm klaxons. A few moments of super-listening was equally fruitless. Shrugging, he replied, “That’s… quite alright, Dr. Light. Accidents happen all the time.”
Kimiyo shook her head. “Not that. The new girl. Kei. Listen, I don’t think playing host to one of the Dirty Pair is a wise idea.”
As the woman elaborated on the adventures of Mr. Black’s niece, the costumed Clark Kent could only speculate on his complete lack of surprise.
“That’s one mother of a laser show,” Atomic Skull noted, as he observed their trajectory through hyperspace from the control room.
“Toyman?” Luthor prompted.
“We should be reaching the Brainiac remnants soon,” the short villain replied from one of the control chairs. “By the way, Luthor, thank you for making me your navigator. I always did love learning a new controller.”
“Just keep us on course,” the mastermind retorted. “The slightest error and we’re dead.”
The bald criminal’s orders were interrupted by the sudden explosion at the locked door.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Neanderthal,” Grodd stated as he led a large, armed portion of the Secret Society through the newly opened door. The new arrivals spread out and pointed their weapons at Luthor and those of the society loyal to him.
“The way I see it, you’re all dead either way.”
“—and aside from the space station’s limited automated defenses, there are just over two hundred and fifty bums organized into about fifty smaller groups. They’re mostly bunked on the lower decks, but the chief mooks keep the loot near their quarters… upper levels above the bridge. The best time to attack is during their pillaging runs, when there’s only a few dozen of the bastiches left to guard the place. There’s no way of knowing ahead of time when those are gonna be, though. And that’s everything I know!”
“Everything?” Harry repeated skeptically, pulling the pistol’s hammer back again.
“Yunno how I’m the last Czarnian ’cause I fragged the rest of the planet for my high school science project?” Lobo’s gaze searched their vicinity before he lowered his voice. “I was actually tryin’ to grow mold on a mug of beer, but a geek with a proton accelerator tripped and set off a chain reaction with the… well, you can guess what happened from there.”
Harry blinked in astonishment. ‘That’s pretty poor luck, accidentally blowing up your entire planet. I mean, not even my luck is that bad… I hope.’
“Well, I think that’s everything,” the wizard said aloud before Stunning the Czarnian. “Thanks.”
“So…” Pamela began. “What are we going to do with him?”
“I’ve heard that Tartarus’s weasel pit has a few openings!” Circe offered eagerly.
He considered the immortal sorceress’s suggestion for a few moments, before reluctantly deciding against it. “Perhaps something a little less… bizarre.” Inwardly cursing the Cauldron’s lack of dungeons again, the wizard Summoned a small glass bottle from the bar. After casting a few improvised Charms on the vessel, Harry shrunk the unconscious Lobo and stuffed him into the container. The addition of an appropriately ventilated cork finished off the impromptu prison, and Harry slid the finished product into a coat pocket.
“Oh, yes,” Circe remarked sarcastically, “shrinking the little cretin and keeping him in a pocket is nowhere near as bizarre as sending his soul to the underworld.”
Harry shrugged. “Hey, it got rid of him, didn’t it? Now, if you lot are all okay, I’m going to go check in on the kids. I’ll be in a conference with the other Deaths later this evening so, if you need something, the portable Floo is probably the only way to reach me.”
“Alright, Mr. Black,” the redhead answered. “Thank you for your help, and please take his pollution-spreading contraption with you. Oh, and could you patch the roof as well?”
He lazily saluted the environmentally-minded metahuman. “Sure thing, Pamela. Later, Ladies.” After meandering outside to collect the odd motorcycle-shaped spacecraft and perform a hasty Reparo, Harry Apparated to Jump City in search of a particular pair of adolescent magicians.
The wizard appeared at the kids’ headquarters, only to observe that it was completely vacant. The series of loud explosions and columns of smoke coming from town, however, gave him a reasonable idea of their whereabouts. A few moments’ flight later and Harry groaned as his hypothesis was proven. The Titans were indeed at the scene of the calamity, and were currently facing off against the instigator.
Or possibly instigators, as a cursory sweep of Mage Sight spotted four identical magical creatures wreaking havoc in separate sections of the city. The blob-like constructs were certainly a strange sight, what with their mindless drive for consumption and their odd texture. It almost looked like—
Harry fought the urge to massage his temples as his heightened sense of smell confirmed what his eyes already told him. His adopted children, along with their band of friends, were having their arses kicked by animated globs of pizza dough.
“I need a vacation,” he breathed tiredly before Summoning the magically-augmented treats. As the multitude of flour and toppings soared towards his position above the city, Harry caught the mess with several Freezing Charms. A handful of Vanishing Charms later saved both the day and several dry cleaning bills.
Catastrophe averted, Harry descended to the ground, where the adolescent heroes converged on his position. “Well,” he finally stated in a level tone, “that was certainly invigorating.”
“Y-yeah, that was pretty cool, wasn’t it?” the green shape shifter offered with a weak smile.
Remembering the hassle he endured when the changeling accidentally ruined Zatanna’s demon containment circle weeks prior, Harry turned his full attention to the emerald-skinned member of the group.
“Would you like to tell me why a bunch of cheese pizzas were rampaging down Main Street?” the elder wizard demanded intently.
Beast Boy scratched the back of his head as he shuffled his feet nervously. “Uhh… I don’t know if they were rampaging, exactly,” Gar offered. “It was more of a… threatening slide, I think.” He smiled widely—
—Before Raven slapped the back of his head and sent the green boy crashing to the ground. “It was because some idiot dropped a slice of pizza in a potion I was brewing,” she informed her adopted guardian.
Harry felt an eyebrow rise in inquiry. “Oh? That must have been one heck of a potion to do this. What were you brewing?”
The young witch bowed her head and refused to answer.
The youngest magician, however, apparently felt no such compulsion to remain silent and blurted, “Some weird recipe called… uh… Oblivious Unction, I think.”
Harry frowned in thought at the familiar-sounding title before he suddenly recalled Madame Pomfrey using the remedy to treat the welts on Ron’s arms after his run-in with the brain creatures in the Department of Mysteries. And if he was not mistaken, the potion could be used to heal any scarring left by thoughts, what with its concentrated form nearly being a match for the Obliviation Charm.
Looking at Raven sharply, he asked Tim, “Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction? From Most Potente Potions?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” the young man agreed.
“I see,” Harry declared, his surveillance of Raven never wavering. “Well, I trust that you all are well?”
Upon receiving a chorus of affirmative statements, he addressed the teenage witch directly. “Raven, when you’re finished here, I need to speak with you.”
“Go ahead, friend Raven,” Starfire urged, oblivious to the tension between the pair. “We can clean the city while you have the talking heart.”
Raven briefly glared at the other girl before sighing in resignation. “Thanks, Starfire,” the purple-haired girl muttered sarcastically before flying towards the top of a convenient skyscraper.
“You lot take care,” Harry offered as he prepared to follow Raven’s flight path. “Oh, and Tim?” he suddenly called. “Nice costume.”
“Uhh… you’re not upset?” the teenaged wizard asked confusedly.
The elder magician shook his head. “On the contrary, Kara and I both figured it was only a matter of time before you got dragged into this line of work.” He chuckled. “So, we made a little wager on the approximate time frame. She bet that you’d be at least fifteen before starting the whole costumed crime fighter bit.”
“And what was your wager?” Tim asked.
“That you’d have at least one mission before Christmas,” Harry replied promptly. “It seemed a lot more realistic.” The wizard laughed again at his anticipatory thoughts. “She should have known better than to try to made me wear pink.”
Obviously interested, Robin asked, “So… what’s her forfeit?”
Smiling brightly, the wizard replied, “Supergirl has to patrol for an entire week—in a pink bunny costume.”
“You’ve got to be joking!” Cyborg protested.
Harry shook his head happily.
Beast Boy punch the air. “That’s totally awesome!”
Tipping his hat, Harry lifted off the ground before one last thought occurred to him. “By the way, Gar… I trust that we’ve learned to be more careful around magic from now on?”
The green-skinned boy rubbed the back of his head nervously. “He he he. Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Good,” Harry replied simply. “Don’t be alarmed if Raven isn’t back in the next few hours—we may be a while.” One last nod and he took to the skies.
Suffice it to say that Harry’s Seeker skills were not required to locate the blue-cloaked girl amidst Jump City’s skyline, and the wizard quickly joined Raven at her chosen roost.
Mimicking her vertigo-inducing position upon the structure’s outermost ledge, Harry sat next to the obviously distressed girl. “So,” he began after a few moments of silence, “do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she replied monotonously, her eyes never leaving the far horizon.
“Fair enough,” Harry agreed amicably and turned to face the same direction.
Several minutes passed in companionable silence before—
“How do you do it?” Raven quietly demanded. “Why do you do it?”
Harry looked back at the downtrodden young woman at his side. “Do what?” he asked in confusion.
“This whole charade as a metamagi! Your job as a Death!” Raven gestured helplessly. “How can you just keep on helping people with the things you see? Why hasn’t it broken you?”
Despite his rather boorish upbringing, Harry recognized a cue to administer comfort when he heard it. Wrapping one arm around the shorter figure’s shoulders, he pulled the girl to his side.
Raven shook her head, lost in her memories. “I mean, I only filled in for you for a few hours, but it felt like years! I was so relieved when you woke up and called Mortis back to you.”
Harry rubbed her arm in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “I’m sorry, Raven. I never intended to saddle you with this burden.”
The young witch shrugged. “This is still better than what Trigon would have done if you hadn’t intervened,” she admitted tiredly. “It’s just… there were so many people in agony while you were shackled. I could handle the old people well enough; I mean, they had already lived their lives, and finally dying was a relief for most of them. But there were others as well… people my age… even little kids! They were so… terrified… and the only thing I could do for them was to… to rip out their souls with your scythe!”
Harry pulled her slight form into his lap so that he could embrace the girl fully. “You did the only thing you could do, Raven,” he told her gently. “It was simply their time to die, and you gave them peace.”
“Dee Dee said the same thing when she took me to her place,” Raven admitted. “My friends, too. But, if that’s true, then why does it still feel like I failed?”
The elder magician smiled sadly. “Because, Raven, despite Trigon’s influence, despite all the people who spurned you as a child because of that foolish prophecy and the enemies you’ve faced since then… you’re still a good person. You hate it when people suffer needlessly, but you hate being unable to help them even more.”
He squeezed her reassuringly. “And you know what?” he asked rhetorically. “That’s a good thing.”
She was quiet for several minutes, and Harry would have thought her asleep if he did not sense her heartbeat and breathing rate—both too accelerated for slumber.
“I know in my head that what you’re saying is true,” she finally admitted softly. “But in my heart… I still feel like I let everyone down, like I wasn’t good enough.”
Harry smiled slightly. “Oh, I don’t know. You figured things out well enough to keep the universe from imploding while I was wool gathering—I’d certainly put that one in the ‘win’ column.”
The girl remained silent, guiding him to the true heart of the matter.
“The whole ‘personification of Death’ thing threw you for a loop, didn’t it?” he stated rather than asked.
Raven chuckled awkwardly at his gross oversimplification. “You could say that,” she murmured. “I always thought of Death as just a state of being… I didn’t know it was an actual occupation! It’s… a lot to take in all at once.”
“Yeah, it sorta took me by surprise the first time I’d first heard of it myself,” Harry admitted ruefully, memories of his private meeting at the Midway City museum vividly coming to mind. “Do you think it would help if you saw the whole ‘Soul Reaping’ business from another vantage point?”
The girl looked up at him confusedly. “What do you mean, ‘another vantage point’?”
“Well, as it so happens, my home dimension is one of the attendees for the next Union meeting,” he explained. “According to the note that Grim left, this century’s meeting is being held in the Polynesian underworld. I thought I’d drop by a little early—you know, check out the accommodations and everything. You interested in joining me?”
Raven blinked. “Me? Intentionally going to the afterlife on a business trip? I mean, I know that Dee Dee said I was some sort of Death substitute, but still…”
Shrugging lightly, Harry just nodded. “Well, you are part of the family now. You may as well learn now that these sorts of things always happen to us. Remind me to tell you sometime about this mishap I had with your… uncle’s… universal remote control.”
The witch huffed in a resigned fashion. “Why not? It can’t be worse than refereeing another game of stank ball between Beast Boy and Cyborg.”
“That’s the ticket!” he approved loudly, but grew silent as another thought crossed his mind. “By the way, our host is Hine-nui-te-pō, so I’d recommend against mentioning either her father or her husband while she’s in ear shot. Actually, mum’s the word completely if you can manage.”
Raven frowned slightly. “Why shouldn’t I talk about those two people?”
Harry looked mildly uncomfortable as he replied, “Actually, it’s just the one person.”
The pair of magicians looked at each other for several moments before Raven finally found her voice again.
“Ohhh-kaaay.”
Tala fired another Blasting Hex, destroying a staircase and cutting off Luthor’s attempt to escape the civil war yet again.
“Trapped like a rat!” she almost purred in satisfaction. “It’s very weird,” the sorceress noted as she prepared to kill the former object of her affection. “You were never this much fun when we were together.”
The scorned woman released her spell, but the energy impacted an imperceivable barrier and ricocheted, sending her crashing to the floor instead of her intended target.
Lex smirked before retrieving an oddly decorated protective amulet from his shirt pocket. “You wouldn’t believe what this cost me.”
“Well, this was a complete waste of time!” Galatea grumbled from the Javelin’s co-pilot seat. “I thought that an interstellar mission would be a little more exciting. What’s the matter, all the villains out sick today?
An almost identical blonde glanced over from the piloting station. “I believe that this is the point where Joe would groan and say something about jinxing the situation.”
The white-unitard-clad woman smiled as the sparse conversation finally turned to a more entertaining topic. “Speaking of our friendly neighborhood super-god and groaning… how was it?”
“How was what?” Kara asked as she made an adjustment to the flight plan
“You know,” the fair-headed clone replied suggestively. “While you were having fun, I had to keep your boy toy’s undead coworkers from dismantling the Watchtower out of sheer curiosity of how everything worked. Now spill!” she ordered.
The original Argosian failed to entirely suppress her smile. “If you must know, he was a perfect gentleman the entire time.”
Galatea glared at her sister. “That wasn’t what I asked, and you know it!”
Supergirl smiled brightly. “Yeah, I do,” she admitted easily.
“Arrrg! Come on, already!” the taller blonde whined. “Ninety percent of the super crowd is hesitant to even nod at me when passing in the hallway. I’ve gotta live vicariously through you.”
The shorter woman snorted. “You’re pathetic, you know that?”
“Whatever,” the recently-christened Powergirl dismissed. “Now give me details before I beat them out of you!”
“Fine,” Kara sighed as she rechecked the instrumentation. “You know how Joe was during those training sessions on Avalon? How he could run through all those magic and martial arts lessons with both of us and the kids—and still had energy to burn?”
The duplicate Argosian nodded hurriedly. “Yeah, yeah. So?”
“Oh, look!” Supergirl suddenly exclaimed while pointing out the side viewport. “There’s a comet.”
Galatea stared hard at the other metahuman’s clumsy topic change. “I hate you, you miserable tease.”
“You know, Joe kept saying that exact same thing,” the pilot confided smugly.
The taller blonde growled impotently.
“Give it up, Lex!” Grodd shouted as he tracked the human with his rifle. “You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
“You’re right,” the bald genius agreed as he stepped into view wearing a pair of gauntlets. The furred primate shot Luthor point-blank, but the human successfully intercepted the energy blast with the strange articles.
Grodd shrugged and discarded the weapon. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to snap your neck with my bare hands.” He proceeded to suit actions to words, almost casually punching and kicking Luthor around the cargo bay.
As Luthor struggled to rise to his feet, the gorilla smirked. “You know, this mutiny was easy. The Secret Society hates you.”
“Like they love you,” Lex protested before launching another futile charge. “Hairy simian… half-baked objectivist.”
Grodd hoisted Luthor to eye level via the human’s shirt. “You’re ill-equipped to lead, Lex.”
“A lower primate,” the human mastermind gasped, “masquerading as an intellectual.”
“I’m the more accomplished, both physically and mentally.” To prove his latest point, Grodd attempted to use his mind control on the captive human.
Luthor quickly activated a device on his belt, turning the primate’s own mental assault against him.
“It took you long enough,” Lex retorted as Grodd collapsed. “I was beginning to think that I figured you wrong. Now, bow down to me.”
Though obviously against his will, the gorilla reluctantly obeyed the order.
“Who is master here?” Luthor demanded of the kneeling ape.
“Y-you a-are,” Grodd nearly spat the reply.
“Get up!” his captor suddenly ordered. “Take six steps forward.”
The gorilla complied, walking himself against his will into an open airlock. Once Grodd was inside, Lex shut the inner doors and cancelled the telepathic shield, releasing the monkey from his control.
Realizing his situation, Grodd futilely beat his fists against the reinforced glass. “I should have let you rot in jail.”
“Good bye, Grodd,” Luthor stated in reply. “It could have gone either way.”
“It really could have, couldn’t it?”
“No,” the bald man smirked, “but why speak ill of the dead?” Stabbing the airlock release control with a finger, Lex Luthor watched as his rival was sent screaming into the depths of space.
“Well, that felt weird,” Raven commented dryly as Harry Apparated the pair to the coordinates left with the invitation. The purpled-haired girl took in their surroundings, which resembled nothing more than an upscale tropical resort. “Are you sure that we’re in the right place?”
Before Harry could respond, a scythe-wielding skeleton on horseback appeared in front of them.
“Sorry about that,” the new arrival apologized. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“It’s quite alright,” Harry allowed. “No harm done.”
The skeleton looked in Harry’s direction and froze. “I can’t believe it!” he breathed. “You’re Mr. Black!”
The addressed wizard had a sudden and uncomfortable recollection of his first visit to Diagon Alley. “Guilty as charged, Mr…?”
“Zane!” the figure shouted as he seized Harry’s arm and began shaking it furiously. “I mean, my name is Zane,” he continued in a calmer tone. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Black, Sir. You’re my biggest fan!”
Harry blinked confusedly.
“I mean I’m your biggest fan!” he suddenly corrected embarrassedly.
Raven looked up at her adopted father. “I didn’t realize you were so popular,” she commented.
The wizard rolled his eyes at the Leaky Cauldron sequel. All that was missing was—
“Are you kidding?!” Zane exclaimed as he removed what was apparently a skull mask, rather than his actual skull. Underneath the face covering, the figure appeared to be an ordinary human. “His exploits been all over the Purgatory News Network! Oh, sorry, I mean alleged exploits. This past month alone he’s defeated two gods, a titan, and their armies more-or-less singlehandedly! Could I get a quick picture with you? An autograph, maybe?”
Harry sighed. ‘Ah, there it is.’
The girl smiled. “I know, I was there.” She glanced at Harry before asking the earnest fan boy a question. “He didn’t… get in trouble for any of that, did he?”
The excitable young man laughed. “Oh, I heard that there were a few people who would have liked to discuss the matter, but they’re too scared of him to actually confront him.”
Harry crossed his arms and huffed in irritation. “I am right here, you know,” he informed the other Death. “And, Raven, I don’t care who got miffed, I don’t regret helping you a bit.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Zane blinked. “Wait a minute!” he suddenly blurted in realization. “You’re that girl he killed Trigon over, right?”
Harry put an arm around Raven’s shoulders and gently nudged her past the self-professed fan. “It was nice meeting you, Zane, but we really must be going. I just spotted some friends of ours.”
Ignoring the babbled farewells from the crazed Death, the duo headed towards a familiar pair of skeletons. “Hi, guys,” Harry greeted. “I have to admit that I didn’t expect to have a meeting this soon.”
“Hello, Boss. Nice to see ya again, Raven,” Grim greeted. “And in case you couldn’t tell, this is Bill.”
“HELLO,” the addressed Death acknowledged the Blacks’ presence.
“Hi, Bill. I’m glad to see that Grim’s being supervised,” Harry noted with some amusement. “Sorry for the incident last night, by the way. You did kinda interrupt things, though.”
“No worries,” the Jamaican skeleton dismissed the matter. “Mandy does it to me at least three times a week. I take it dat you conquered the she-demon, den?”
Harry rubbed the back of his head. “Err… I guess you could put it that way.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Grim,” Raven asked suddenly, “but why did you come through that portal when you could have just Apparated?”
“Well,” the addressed skeleton scratched his skull sheepishly, “teleporting across dimensions kinda leaves me queasy, so I jus’ use me scythe to cut open a portal. You just t’ink about where you gonna go, push a little magic into de blade, and ‘den you just slice in front of you. Like so.”
Grim demonstrated the scythe travel technique. Unfortunately, the portal’s destination seemed to be occupied already—by some sort of tentacle monster that didn’t appreciate the new hole in the dimensional barrier. This dislike was quickly demonstrated as one of the creature’s appendages shot out and seized Grim.
Before his… assistant could be devoured, Harry launched several Reductor Curses into the… thing’s… flesh. Once the beast relinquished its hold, the somewhat battered Grim Reaper released the portal.
“T’anks, Boss,” Grim said gratefully. “I forgot dat Billy left one of his pets in dere.”
“MOST IMPRESSIVE,” Bill agreed. “I AM ALSO GLAD THAT YOUR OFFSPRING IS INTERESTED IN KEEPING WITH TRADITION. I CAN NEVER CONVINCE MY GRANDDAUGHTER TO ACCOMPANY ME ON THESE RETREATS. SHE PREFERS TO HAVE A… NORMAL LIFE.”
Grim shrugged. “I don’t know why she like dat. Dese get-togethers are neva’ borin’, what wit’ de swappin’ of stories, and games and all.”
Bill piped up, a hint of humor in his otherwise menacing voice. “I MADE SURE TO BRING THE WIZARD RINCEWIND’S LIFETIMER THIS TIME; IT TRULY HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED.”
“Well, let’s get inside and have a look at it,” Harry suggested.
“VERY WELL,” the other Death agreed. “MR. BLACK, MIGHT I ASK A FAVOR?”
“I suppose that would depend on the favor,” the wizard offered cautiously. “What do you need?”
“THE LAST TIME I ATTENDED ONE OF THESE MEETINGS, ANUBIS PLAYED ME IN SENET AND WON REPEATEDLY. SINCE THEN, HE HAS NEVER FAILED TO MAKE FUN OF HOW MUCH HE WON FROM ME. IF HE SHOULD CHALLENGE ME AGAIN, WOULD YOU PLEASE PLAY ON MY BEHALF?”
“I’m afraid that my Senet’s a little rusty,” Harry replied while inwardly wondering exactly what a ‘Senet’ was.
“I CAN REFRESH YOUR MEMORY ON THE RULES,” Bill offered immediately.
Harry just sighed. That familiar feeling that things were about to go wrong was back, right on schedule.
His mind racing, Lex led the restrained captive sorceress to his auxiliary laboratory. While Sinestro and Volcano insured that the witch remained in check, the bald criminal genius activated the lights.
“Darling, Grodd must have used mind control,” the increasingly nervous prisoner theorized helplessly. After all three members of her audience failed the plausibility of such an event, she discarded the idea. “Okay, maybe not. But, Baby, you don’t ever doubt that I love you, correct?”
Luthor only barely suppressed the involuntary eye roll, instead opting to glare at the purple-haired woman.
“I know I’ve been bad,” Tala continued piteously. “I’m a sick person. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”
Smirking slightly, the mastermind approached his captive. “Don’t worry, Darling,” he sarcastically addressed her, “You still have a big role in my plans. In fact, I can’t do this without you.”
On cue, Volcana struck the other woman at the base of the neck, rendered the magician unconscious. This deception gave the three criminals enough time to install their former colleague in an odd, chamber-like machine. Within a few minutes, however, the witch regained consciousness and Luthor continued his monologue from earlier.
“I used to think that magic was unknowable, unpredictable, and not to be trusted. You’ve taught me so much, Tala. Even my wealth of scientific knowledge would have never been up to this task. You will be the mystic conduit that will siphon Brainiac’s essence from the debris. I’ll be able to reconstitute him from that energy… but I doubt you’ll see it.”
“Y-you planned this all along,” Tala stuttered. “Even before I…”
In a low, monotonous tone, Lex confided, “I’m a sick person, too.”
“Luthor,” Toyman announced from the machine’s control board, “the collection panels are in place.”
Hearing the announcement, the sorceress made one last, desperate plea for her life. “Lex! Please! I beg you!”
“Hold that thought,” the bald man informed her mockingly before turning his attention back to Toyman. “Do it!”
After several obviously scream-free seconds, Lex began to lose his temper. “I said, ‘Do it’!”
“He cannot hear you, Lex Luthor,” a cultured voice suddenly announced in the silence.
Lex faced the voice’s source and found an oddly-dressed man seating in a flying chair.
“Time has stopped,” the strange character continued. “We exist between two ticks of the clock. In my travels through the myriad paths of infinity, I have seen the first and the last. But what you do today threatens the entire universe—past, present, and future.”
Raising an eyebrow mockingly, the last Luthor replied, “I should hope it does. Look, I didn’t catch the name.”
“Metron,” the man obligingly identified himself, “scientist and chronicler.”
“Well, Metron, I’ll soon be ready for anything the universe can throw at me. I’m about to become a god.”
Rising to his feet atop the levitating throne chair, Metron replied, “You don’t know what a god is… or what you are unleashing.”
“Tampering with forces beyond my ken and so forth?” Lex mockingly inquired. “Nice try! If you want my power, make your move. Otherwise, you can get lost.”
“You will regret your decision,” the man pronounced solemnly as his chair grew blindingly bright. “We all will.”
When the light faded, the chair and its occupant were gone, and time resumed its natural pace.
“Twinkle, twinkle, Brainiac,” Toyman sang, “Tala’s gonna bring you back.” The short figure pulled the lever.
“Lex!” Tala cried out in agony before she was no longer in any coherent condition.
Ignoring her screams, Lex pressed his face to the glass of the chamber, as the vessel began to collect the filtered energy from Brainiac’s debris field. “Brainiac!” he called out mindlessly. “I’m coming!” As the particles began to coalesce into a humanoid form, Luthor called out, “People, prepare to greet your new lord and master!”
When the haze cleared, however, Brainiac was nowhere to be found.
The newly revived Darkseid, on the other hand, was quite visible.
“It seems I have you to thank for my resurrection,” the awoken dictator announced calmly. “Though your world will suffer slowly, I grant you a quick death.”
In a blinding red haze, Darkseid’s omega beams demolished the orbiting stronghold in a single shot.
The gathered Deaths behind Harry cheered as the wizard’s latest throw of the knuckle bone allowed the last of his mushroom-shaped pawns to move to Anubis’s side of the board. The jackal god seemed to grimace before abruptly shoving his part of the wager—the supposed first edition of the ‘Book of Coming’—towards Harry’s seat.
“Right, then,” the wizard accepted the manuscript, “thank you for the interesting game, but we really should—”
“AGAIN!” Anubis growled.
“But I’m sure that some of these other Deaths would like to play, too, and—”
“AGAIN!”
Upon receiving some encouraging gestures from the crowd, Harry shrugged and turned back to the hulking part-Jackal humanoid.
“Okay, then,” Harry accepted, “but I still have my Crystal Skull and your Book. Do you have anything else you wish to wager?”
Anubis withdrew a bronze vase from his robes. “COMMAND OVER MY ARMY,” he replied before removing the jackal-head lid.
Black sand instantly boiled out of the canopic jar and filled the air. Within moments, the dark cloud coalesced into orderly ranks of jackal warriors armed with strange looking scythes. After a few moments, the Egyptian god replaced the stopper—which banished the soldiers.
“Deal,” Harry agreed. “Would you like to—” Anubis snatched the knuckle bone from the table “—go first?” he finished.
The game was both short and brutal, and it ended exactly as its predecessor. No sooner had Harry moved the last of his game pieces to the other side of the board, however, then Anubis overturned the table in disgust and stomped out of sight.
Harry blinked after the rapidly dwindling figure. “Was it something I said?” he asked his gathered colleagues, only to receive laughter in reply. Shrugging to himself, the wizard began gathering his winnings in preparation to depart—before the table and Anubis’s fallen chair righted themselves.
“Not so fast, handsome,” the… well… partially-beautiful woman called out sweetly as she took the newly repaired seat.
The new arrival was certainly a distinctive individual; half the woman’s body was the blue-black flesh one might expect on an Inferi, while the remainder would not have been out of place on a supermodel.
“My name’s Hel,” the Death goddess continued, “and I was wondering if you’ve ever heard of Nine Men’s Morris.”
Kara re-entered the cockpit after her run to the galley and glanced over the displays. “Hey, aren’t we a little close to the Apokolips system?”
“So?” her cloned twin questioned. “All the League’s reports claim that their planet’s engulfed in civil war. I’ll bet they aren’t even monitoring out this far. And even if they do, it’s not like we couldn’t outrun them at this distance.”
“Maybe so,” the shorter blonde admitted, “but their technology is pretty advanced stuff, and no one’s really sure how far those motherboxes of theirs can sense.”
“Ah, come on!” Galatea complained. “What are you afraid of, Darkseid suddenly resurrecting himself and popping out of a black hole right in front of us?”
Her sarcastic report was greeting with a sudden shrill alarm, as the autopilot’s collision avoidance system detected a new gravity anomaly directly in front of them. The two females looked out the viewport and immediately saw the new Boom Tube disgorge the very topic of their previous conversation.
“You were saying?” Kara demanded as she switched to manual controls. “Hang on!”
The blonde pilot performed several evasive maneuvers, but the new arrival’s versatile omega beam ultimately disposed of the Javelin, rendering the two women both stranded and unconscious. Within moments, Darkseid had caught up his quarry.
“Most fortuitous,” Darkseid announced calmly as he studied Kara. “Fate has seen fit to not only resurrect me but also provide the means of Superman’s destruction.” He then turned to regard his other captive. “You, I have no use for,” the tyrant decided, employing his omega beam once again.
The twin scarlet beams seemed to illuminate the unconscious Galatea’s white suit before she disappeared, leaving Darkseid alone with his Argosian prize.
With his motherbox’s assistance, another Boom Tube quickly left the sector of space vacant save for some scattered debris.
Their playing of the odd variant of Tic-Tac-Toe—in which Hel seemed most unwilling to wager stakes—was interrupted several minutes later by the sound of raucous barking. No sooner had Harry decided that the barking sounded familiar than he was tackled to the ground, as three large tongues seemed to compete against each other to slobber over him the fastest.
“Hello, Cerberus,” Harry greeted once he worked himself free—a not inconsiderable feat. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought him,” a man’s voice supplied from behind him.
Harry turned and caught sight of the brunette speaker and his attractive blonde companion. “Hello, Lady Persephone,” he greeted warmly, before his tone cooled several degrees. “Hades. To what do I owe this… honor? Were you hoping for Round Two, perhaps?”
The other man grimaced and clenched his fists—before his wife elbowed him firmly in the ribs.
“We talked about this, Hades,” the slight goddess chastised. “Now, unless you want to spend the next millennia sharing Cerberus’s bed instead of mine, tell him.”
The Lord of the Grecian Underworld frown grew even grimmer—if such a thing was possible—but he reluctantly approached the recent bane of his existence.
“I’m… sorry,” Hades bit out, sounding as if he would like nothing more than to burn the other man to a cinder.
Harry got out of his chair and faced the new arrival directly. “Apology… accepted,” the wizard replied, and everyone within earshot could almost feel his indecision on which vital organ he wanted to cut out of the other man with a rusty spoon first. The two black-haired men stared at one another for several moments in silence—before a loud and rather forced cough from Persephone prompted things back into motion.
“Would you mind keeping Cerberus from now on?” Hades asked duly. “He’s done nothing but mope around ever since you left Tartarus.”
Harry looked at the tall, three-headed dog for a few moments before nodding in agreement.
“Good,” the Greek god continued in a more interested tone, “I’ve wanted to try out the Hydra as a gate guardian anyway.”
“Really?” Harry verified with equal engrossment. “I’ve wanted to strike up a conversation with a Hydra for ages—ever since my last scuffle with a Basilisk when I was younger.”
“You can talk to serpents, too?” Hades demanded incredulously.
Harry nodded with a slight smirk, causing the other man to plant his face in one hand.
“Oh, goodie!” Persephone bubbly announced. “I just knew you two could be friends! Well, I’ve got to go. Some of the girls and I are going out for the night. Toodles!”
The woman vanished, drawing Harry’s attention back to his… former… opponent. “Is she always like that?” he asked.
Hades just dipped his head forlornly.
“You have my sympathies, Mate,” Harry offered, knowing first-hand what living in close proximity to a woman like that could do to a bloke.
After all, he had Kara and Henchgirl to contend with on a daily basis, not to mention several droves of Kitsune and Veela.
The wizard was going to comment further, but he suddenly noticed the hungry gaze in his new pet’s gaze. Neither was Harry unaware that those six eyes were firmly staring at the skeletal-appearing Deaths present.
“Tell you what, Hades,” the magician decided. “How about you take over for me here with Hel while I take Cerberus to get some lunch?”
The man nodded in assent and took Harry’s seat at the game table.
Informing Raven that he would return momentarily, Harry Apparated the hellhound away before the canine caused a diplomatic incident.
“That rodent Vundabar thinks he can rule Apokolips in Darkseid’s stead,” Bernadeth shouted to her fellow Furies and their attending soldiers. “We’ll be the ones to deliver his pestilence-ridden corpse to Granny Goodness!”
As the artillery began to fire, Granny’s co-ed infantry advanced. Not to be outclassed, Baron Virman Vundabar’s opposing forces countered in kind as the combined might of Apokolips rushed to destroy itself.
It was to this tremendous charge that Darkseid’s boom tube opened, and he strode onto the battlefield with his blonde burden casually grasped in one fist.
As one, the shocked citizens of Apokolips discarded their weaponry and knelt before their returned master.
“Welcome home, oh mighty Darkseid,” Bernadeth greeted from her prone position on the ground.
“Arise, my children,” the tyrant ordered. “Let this meaningless battle for control end.”
“Of course, Lord,” the obsequious assassin Kanto replied, not wishing to be outspoken by his female analog. “We had thought ourselves bereft forever.”
“Only the slimmest of chances has allowed me to overcome my death at the hands of Superman,” the gray-skinned behemoth admitted. “But let the universe howl in despair, for I have returned!”
Amidst the cheering of his troops, Bernadeth bowed low and asked, “What is your will, My Lord?”
“As ever, to search for the Anti-Life Equation so that I might bring order to this aimless universe… But first, Superman must suffer for killing me. His adopted world will die screaming. Only then will I seek the ultimate end.”
“Forgive me, Lord,” Kanto voiced, “but an attack on Earth will violate your pact with Highfather. New Genesis will doubtless retaliate.”
Darkseid smiled maliciously. “Where do you think I’m going next?”
“And the girl, My Lord?” Bernadeth inquired hesitantly while looking at the female metahuman in Darkseid’s grasp.
“Summon Desaad,” the tyrant ordered before throwing the unconscious Supergirl at Bernadeth’s feet. If possible, his smile grew even more vicious. “I have the specimen that he’s been waiting for since our last excursion to Earth.”
The Female Fury smiled darkly.
A/N: As promised, here’s the 14,300-word update. I apologize for the abnormally long delay, but real life has required most of my time of late. I have a complete outline for the second half of this chapter—in fact, I’ve got a good portion of it written already. With luck, the remaining couple of chapters will follow with less of a delay.
I worked a few omakes into this chapter, most noticeably the remaining portion of the Death Convention and the Threesome Wedding by Ben Sheahan; When the Four Strike by Luinlothana; and Early Dawn, Bored. Bored. Really Bored, and Dawn and Dr. Light by Chris Hill.
Many thanks to James and Chris for proofreading this chapter, and to all the CaerAzkaban group members whose suggestions appear in this update.
Thank you for your interest, and please remember to review.