22nd July 20:59 GMT -5

With OrangeVision I can see the guy through the trees. He's carrying a large briefcase and doesn't appear injured. He's still coming downhill towards me. I double check his equipment. Yep, nothing that poses a serious threat to me unless the ring charge gets to around five percent. I'm currently at forty nine percent.

He must know I'm here. I glow orange. What exactly is he planning on doing?

I scan his weapons again. Even if the plasma weapon -which is shaped a bit like a crossbow for some reason- could be overcharged, he's still not a threat.

This is creepy. If he were just a courier, he would have headed for civilisation. Or hidden. His other behaviour and his weapons suggest a competent mercenary. So why is he coming towards an obvious threat?

DC mercenaries… Not Slade Wilson, he only has one sword and it's a rapier. Not Deadshot, he doesn't have a sniper rifle. Can't think of any others I'd call competent. Merlyn? Man's a clown, and this guy doesn't have a bow. Prometheus? He's good, but without his helmet and some very specialised equipment I'd still win. Must check whether or not neural chaff is a real thing.

I triple check this guy isn't carrying any.

Everything I can see tells me that I shouldn't be concerned, and I'm more nervous now than when I attacked Big Flinders. It must be the build up. I did consider just dropping in on him but I wanted to drop my cargo out of the way. And give whoever this is a chance to surrender. I should be able to drop him without causing permanent harm but there's always a risk. I don't think I'd be able to heal an adversary in normal circumstances; Flinders' wounds were just that disturbing.

Alright, he's quite close now. I'll just ask him to come quietly, and drop a ShockCrown on him if he refuses. No need to draw this out.

Amplification please, ring. "Please drop your weapons and come out with your hands up."

I don't have arrest authority. Well, I might be able to make some sort of Corps-based claim if interstellar law might have been breached, but I certainly don't have that authority on Earth. Maybe the 'please' was a bad idea? He's slowing down. Good. He's now about fifteen metres away through medium foliage, and I get my first look at his face with my normal vision. He's pulling his right arm back…

Why is he wearing a hockey mask?

Ahh! Javelin! I'm being attacked by Casey Jones!

I didn't even realise that DC owned the Turtles!

The javelin bounces off the construct armour around my chest and explodes. The explosion does nothing to me in terms of injury, but I have to expend effort to avoid getting blown off my feet by the force.

Did Casey Jones ever work undercover? As I ignore another exploding javelin I try desperately to remember everything about this character. It's mostly from the first two animated series, and he wasn't that big in either of them. At least he hasn't tried a hockey stick, the sheer shock of that might have caused me to drop my armour.

No, no, focus. Knock out Casey Jones now, deal with angry mutant Turtles later.

I really hope they don't mix that mutagen from Turtles with Venom or anything. Too much weirdness.

I rise off the ground and fly towards him, jinking to avoid getting knocked around by any more explosives he has. He's gone for his plasma crossbow but it's a simple matter to yank it from his hands and 'ring, subspace' it. He keeps it together though, dropping into a fighting crouch and moving towards me again. For goodness sake, I just tanked exploding javelins, you're just going to bruise your fists. He throws a smoke canister, then sprints to close the distance faster than someone watching him before would have been expecting. Might work on someone without OrangeVision, but I can still see him perfectly well. I extend a loop of construct rope from my right hip and send it forwards, closing it around his left leg as he shifts weight to his right, and yank backwards. He tries to roll with it, possibly assuming that he's snagged on an exposed root, and ends up flat on his face. I extend a ShockCrown from the loop and drop it over his masked head.

I don't know why I was so worried. Double check, yes, definitely paralysed.

Now, what happened to the case he was carrying? Fan constructs disperse the smoke as I begin to look. He was standing there when I last saw him with it…

It's propped up against a tree. A scan reveals that it's rigged to explode if not opened properly. A burst of orange light renders the explosive inert, and I open it. Some sort of injection device, and a single vial of purple liquid. So, that's what this stuff looks like.

I walk back over to Mister Jones. Damn. Maybe if I talk to the Turtles first? His mask is more sophisticated than it looks so I shut down its electronics before removing it. I thought that Casey had darker skin than that? Or maybe that was just in the second cartoon.

Whatever.

Ring, where is everyone?

I feel a pull from different directions. The airfield, for most, but also… New York? Oh, I just thought 'ingroup' and it's telling me where Alan and Diana are as well.

No, just the team.

Just the airfield this time. Seems like they've beaten everyone into submission. Right. Taking the case in my hand I extend flight auras around Flinders and Jones and fly up above the canopy. There's some smoke where the helicopter went down, but it'll probably put itself out. Should probably collect any Venom Buster samples that survived. Still got plenty of ring power left…

I head towards the helicopter, felled opponents in tow. It smashed into the trees sideways, which arrested most of its lateral movement but caused it to flip over. I drop the two guys and the case and take a closer look. A moment of work with a cutting construct later and I step back to avoid being buried in boxes. I can see liquid Venom Buster on the ground where the containers have cracked, and I'm honestly not sure that I can fly all of this stuff. Hah, I'm overthinking it.

"Ring, destroy all Venom and Blockbuster formula in the helicopter."

An orange pulse shines outwards from me, and the ring rests. No point checking for electronic data, the EMP would have wiped it. I pick up my stunned foes and the case once again and continue on to the airfield. As I come over the rise where we fought Bane I notice that he and his men are no longer there. Stupid, stupid, of course he had more fighters in the area! Ah, no point worrying about it now. A quick look at the airfield shows me that other than that we've won. The only people upright are my team mates. I eagerly hasten my flight.

Wallace is the first to notice me, and he waves as I approach. **Hey, Oh El's back. How'd it go, 'cause we pretty much cleaned up here.**

I float Big Flinders over my head and drop him down in front of him. Kon and M'gann stay standing guard over the bound and blindfolded Kobra cultists while Aqualad and Robin walk over. Aqualad asks the important question.

**Were you able to stop the courier?**

**Yes.** He smiles faintly as I float the case over to him. **One sample of Venom Buster. I destroyed the other containers in the helicopter at the crash site.**

**And the courier himself?**

I float Casey forwards. **No threat, really. I think his name's Casey Jones. Can't really remember-.**

**His name is not Casey Jones.**

**It isn't?**

**That is Sportsmaster, a noted mercenary.**

Oh. Guess DC don't own Turtles, then. **Erm, what's his real name?**

Robin peers at his face. **Lawrence Crock. Why'd'you wanna know?**

**I tend to feel that using their 'supervillain' names just encourages them.**

Wallace come to a realisation. "Casey Jones. The guy from the Turtles films? You seriously thought that you were fighting the guy from the Turtles films?"

Aqualad hasn't watched much surface television. **Turtles… films..?**

I rub my brow with my right hand. Wallace is happy to heap on the embarrassment. **It's a film about four mutant ninja Turtles who live in New York and fight evil ninjas.**

Aqualad looks like we've put him off surface television for life. He turns to me. **Did you… Why would you think you were fighting a fictional Turtle?**

Wallace is quick to correct him. **No, dude, Casey Jones isn't a Turtle, he's a Human vigilante with a hockey mask…**

I hold up Sportsmaster's. Aqualad holds up a hand to stop Wallace talking. **The point still stands. Why did you believe that you were being attacked by a fictional character?**

I throw up my arms. "My home parallel doesn't have superheroes! I have to pinch myself when I look around the room, or in a mirror! So, yeah, being attacked by a fictional character did seem possible." I drop my arms and sigh. "These guys aren't all going to fit in the Bio-Ship. When do the League get here?"

I rise off the ground and fly towards him, powering forwards to avoid drawing this nonsense out any longer. He's gone for his plasma crossbow but it's a simple matter to shoot it before he can fire. He hurls it aside before the fuel cell vents and ignites in a brilliant flare of red. He keeps it together though, dropping into a fighting crouch and moving towards me again. I just tanked exploding javelins, idiot, you're just going to bruise your fists. He throws a smoke canister, then sprints to close the distance faster than someone watching him before would have been expecting. Might work on someone without OrangeVision, but I can still see him perfectly well.

Ring, access League database. Who is this fool?

Lawrence Crock, aka Sportsmaster. Noted mercenary and assassin.

Not Casey Jones then. I feel a bit silly now.

I drop a lasso construct onto him from above and pull it tight under his arms, lifting him off the ground. He reaches for a weapon from his pack, but I cut the pack loose and spill his equipment on the floor. I also target the smaller weapons on his belt for the same treatment.

Now, what to do with him? Before I can reach a conclusion, he speaks to me.

"Not bad. But you're in way over your head, kid. If you know what's good for you, you'll let me go and forget this ever happened."

Hmm.

"Yes. I recovered the drug sample, but was unable to prevent the courier from escaping."

He regards me for a moment. "I'm a little surprised that you're taking the deal. Most people like you are a bit more self righteous."

"Oh, forgive me Mister Crock, I'm not taking the deal. That's just what I'm going to tell the others. Ring, assimilate."

Feb 2, 2019

NightmareWarden, DeviantD, Niberts and 58 others like this.

Mr Zoat

Mr Zoat

Dedicated ragequitter

22nd July

21:04 GMT -5

Now, what happened to the case he was carrying? Fan constructs disperse the smoke as I begin to look. He was standing there when I last saw him with it…

It's propped up against a tree. A scan reveals that it's rigged to explode if not opened properly. A burst of orange light renders the explosive inert, and I open it. Some sort of injection device, and a single vial of purple liquid. So, that's what this stuff looks like.

[​IMG]

Ring, did you detect any damage to Mister Flinders' brain from the Venom Buster use?

Minor changes in neurotransmitter levels from Human norms. No significant deviations detected.

I insert the vial into the injector.

Just in case, take a snapshot of my current brain state, and resist major changes from those levels.

Compliance.

Wait, why am I thinking of using this injector?

Ring, inject Venom Buster formula into me at optimal locations. Monitor vital signs and prepare to reset to default in the event of danger. Seven orange needles appear around me, each with a link to the injector. I barely feel it as they pierce my arms, legs, neck, heart and groin. I see purple move beneath the orange as the formula flows. The orange light reknits the flesh as the needles dissipate.

Oh. Oh.

There's still no pain, I note, as my ribs break and swell outwards. The expansion of my thighs throws me to the ground. Again, I am dully aware of bones being pulverised and reforming, longer and stronger. Now I can't notice any one thing, everything is twisting and expanding, and unlike on the moon, now that I know what is happening? I embrace it.

My armour is an impediment, so it vanishes into subspace. My hands expand, and the ring grows to fit around my enlarged fingers. My skin darkens, toughens, and begins to split as it fails to keep up with the growth of the other parts of my body but oh no you don't… Better.

The wave of mutation slows, then stops. I push myself off the ground a little gingerly. A mirror construct forms in front of me. I'm naked, but the ring can probably turn some of my clothes into a pair of shorts until I can visit Mister Gambi again. I'm now about two and a half meters tall, though I've kept my body proportions better than Mister Flinders did. The ring tells me that my skin has turned out a little darker than his, but it's all dark at night. I hold out my right arm and flex the muscles for a moment.

Ring, do not assist.

I brace, then swing my fist directly through a tree trunk. It's like punching jelly, it just parts around my hand. The top part of the tree collapses onto my shoulder and I barely feel a thing, just brush it off like fallen leaves.

I smile. Intellectually, I realise that I haven't added much to my powers as a Lantern, but… There's something viscerally pleasing about this sort of physical power that I rather enjoy.

I've never actually been naked in a communal shower before. Sure, at the swimming pool I'd rinse off before getting changed but I still had my trunks on. And this is a really terrible time to remember that mass circumcision is still a thing in the US. And now I'm trying to work out which of my team mates… Superboy was grown in a pod, right? They wouldn't have… Aaagh! Bad brain!

Fortunately, I have a power ring.

"Ring, I really want to be clean. Okay, see you guys later!"

I leave my slightly bemused male team mates in the changing room and walk back to the main living area. We formally resolved the leadership question on the flight back. Aqualad had secured everyone else's support and they wanted to make sure that I was in agreement. When I said that I hadn't mentioned it before because I thought it was completely obvious that he was the man for the job Wallace sniggered and Robin glared.

Apparently, Aqualad's plan for attacking the airfield involved everyone putting on the clothing of Bane's irregulars over their uniforms, and then Kobra robes on top of that. They more or less just walked up to the landing area and doffed the robes once the attack began. Not sure that counts as 'maintaining cover', but Kobra can't be sure that Bane didn't just employ metahumans amongst his thugs. In a way Bane's escape makes that more believable. I violated cover worse than they did, though it's not like Kobra knows that Orange Lanterns exist.

The Santa Priscan authorities have moved troops in to secure the factory, but I imagine that Bane will be back in there before long. Wallace put Bane's mask in the same room as the robot eye from Mister Twister, and I added Mister Crock's hockey mask. Tragedy and Comedy. He wants to make it some sort of trophy room, but given the violent nature of our work I'm not sure that's entirely in good taste. I thought about adding the plasma crossbow thing, but the room isn't secure enough at present to house a weapon.

Batman didn't look too happy when we got back, but I think his eyes widened just a little when Jeffrey Burr and Lawrence Crock were marched off the League's transport jet in manacles. He also unclenched slightly when I handed over the Venom Buster sample. He wants our mission reports submitted by six tomorrow for a debrief at nine, which means that everyone else gets to stay up all night writing them. I did mine on the Bio-Ship on the flight back.

My personal failings? Not keeping track of Bane, obviously. I'm not going to include 'thinking that a lightly armed baseline Human was a threat to me' on a list I'm submitting to Batman, for goodness sake. Not directly sorting out the leadership question before the mission was an oversight, but we all did that and I honestly assumed it had been dealt with. Should I have gone back to the airfield immediately after dealing with Flinders? Maybe. It is possible for me to monitor someone at a distance for a long period of time, but I wouldn't have known exactly what he was doing unless I really needed to, and I would have been focusing on the prisoner transportation and the possible arrival of the local military. That ended up being dealt with by a surprisingly diplomatic Hawkman, and the captain in charge was more than happy for us to remove 'foreign terrorist criminals' once he was sure that we weren't accusing his government of anything.

Anything else? Attracting attention to myself with glowing lights is on the list, but there isn't much I can do about it. I tried asking the ring about shifting the colour a bit and it started talking to me like I was an idiot. As far as it is concerned avarice construct equals orange construct. Constructs which project other kinds of energy are possible, and I'm planning to head out to somewhere isolated to practise them. I was thinking Titan.

Should we have intercepted the helicopter as soon as we first saw it? Maybe, but I don't think so. Should I have bypassed the jamming signal? After my 'completely obvious' comment Robin was more than happy to explain at great length how I should have used the ring to get around that, so yes, but I didn't know how at the time.

Maybe I could have used some sort of neural interface construct to knock Flinders out earlier? That… It could work, but I'm not comfortable with practising that sort of thing. I know I eat animals. Logically, I shouldn't have a problem testing things like that on them, but I'm not sure that I could look a cat in its bewildered face as it tried to work out why its legs were moving on their own. I could probably bring myself to test the assimilation beam like that, but I'm not sure I want my team mates knowing that it exists.

I reach the living room and M'gann's already here, sitting in a chair. Can't smell anything. Do Martians not sweat, or did she just take the fastest shower ever? She's set up a civilian version of Robin's personal hologram computer on the coffee table and is typing up her report. I walk over and sit on the next door sofa.

"How's it going?"

Her eyes twitch in my direction, then go back to her work. "Slowly. There's parts of the mission where I wasn't really doing anything much, and then the fighting started and so much was going on that it's hard to keep it all straight. Are you going to start yours?"

"Already done."

"Really? Did you do it on the flight back?"

"Yeah. Took about five minutes."

"Five minutes?!"

"I have a power ring. Power rings are awesome."

She slumps slightly. "I don't suppose I could borrow-?"

"No. Quite aside from the fact that there were bits you saw that I didn't, report writing is a valuable skill to learn. Bit surprised you're not using a telepathic computer of some kind."

"I've got one, but it isn't compatible with Earth technology. Only other telepaths would be able to read it."

I suppose Martian tech is very different from Earth tech. There was something else… "I noticed that once you established the telepathic link I got a lot more, erm, imagery than I was expecting. I mean, not just words, but pictures and feelings."

Her eyes widen in surprise. "That was you? I though it was Conner!"

Eh? "Why would you think it was Kon?"

"Well… Well… One of the pictures was of him…"

"Yeah, sorry about that. I was creating weights for him to lift earlier, and it just sort of slipped out. I mean, he wouldn't have been looking at himself, would he?"

"No, I suppose not. It's not that unusual, actually. It just requires the person who joins the link to have their mind more-" She circles her hands, trying to find the right word. "-open? To be more open with their thoughts than most people not used to telepathy are. The other reason I thought it would be Conner is because of all the time he spent with the G-Gnomes. His mind should be used to receiving information that way."

"I was wondering because it didn't happen when we practised earlier."

She frowns. "Yes it did."

What?

"And, um, I'm glad you like the way I look, but that bikini was probably a bit too risqué for me."

OoOoOoOoOo.

My face freezes into a nervous smile. "Didn't realise that you got those. I was, I was sort of trying to see how forward things had to be in my mind before you heard them, and I tried to think about something that might get an involuntary reaction."

"Oh. Well, this isn't-" She looks around the room to check no one has walked in, and lowers her voice. "-like you said, this isn't my Martian body. Seeing me wearing that sort of clothing doesn't have a strong enough effect to get that result."

"Makes… Makes sense. Um, sorry."

She smiles. "It's fine. It's perfectly normal for you to be interested in girls."

I'm wincing like hell on the inside. "Soo, Kaldur's in charge now."

She turns back to her report. "His plan was a little more sophisticated than Wallace's 'run in and hit everyone'."

"Plus, he organised all of the group training we've been doing. That was sort of why I'd assumed he already had the job."

"I was a little surprised that you didn't want to be leader."

"Why?"

"You were keeping us all organized during the mission."

"That was coordination, not leadership. It really isn't the same thing, and I wasn't even doing that once the fighting started. Our team leader needs to be able to direct people during combat, and I just go all 'Mine!' and lose perspective."

"Is your ring giving you trouble already?"

"No… I don't think so. I think that was just a normal desire to keep my friends safe, but I stopped thinking about the mission when it happened. I mean, you could probably have handled Bane and co without me. I left my post and stopped monitoring Kobra. If something big had happened, I'd have missed it."

"There were a lot of guns pointing at us. I know I felt a lot better when you removed them."

"Won't be my decision next time, I suppose."