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#1
OCT 11 |
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“I can't even begin to understand this,” Doctor Mist said quietly, raking his fingers over his goatee. He looked over at the two assistants that stood watching him as he poured over the news outputs on huge screens before him. “How did this happen?”
The French woman known as Belphegor, former administrator of the Global Guardians and currently the only woman on the planet who could stand to be in the same room as Doctor Mist for more than ten minutes. Next to her stood the huge Clay body of the new hero of Prague, Golem. The massive former Leyman had only recently returned from Europe on the business of Doctor Mist, where he had gained some infamy by solving petty crimes and generally being unafraid to show his face in public. After all, a sexless nigh immortal defender of the Jewish faith needed no secret identity. Nor Publicity.
“I believe this is something more in the Justice League’s capabilities, non?” Belphegor said with more than a little hint of venom.
Golem said nothing, simply inching toward the Doctor, his massive finger pointed toward one of the huge screens. “All over the world,” the huge stone man said without emotion.
“It certainly is,” Doctor Mist said, this time placing his temples against his fingertips. He stared at the ground in contemplation. Ever since the Global Guardians had been disbanded he'd sought a way to bring them back into the fore. The world needed more than the Justice League; it needed an international contingent who did more than just fight for America and everything in it. Each nation needed a protector...more over, a team of protectors to give their country the proper defence and reaction times needed. Not rely on the diligence of American heroes based a thousand miles from what was happening.
“No, this is the time,” Mist said, sitting up and getting to his feet. He walked past Golem and the dark haired woman, who removed her sunglasses slowly.
“It is?” she asked, moving into step beside him. Her fingers instinctively reached out for his. Their affection for each other was often masked by her hatred for damn near everything else.
“It is, look.” Mist pointed toward more screens which lined the walls. “I am sure there is a pattern here. I am sure that this is something the Global Guardians can solve.”
Mist paused and crossed his arms. He would be the one to work out the pattern. In the mean time, the Guardians would do their bit for their countries. “Re-Activate the Dome Systems, Belphegor. Re-Active the Global Guardians completely. It's time we came in from the Cold.”
The French woman paused for a moment. She never thought this day would come. She had been the one to shut down the computers, to put an end to the Dome the first time around. Now it was her responsibility, as one of the first of the new gathering of the Global Guardians to re-activate it.
She could hardly contain her excitement, although to an on-looker, she was making a very, very go of it.
“Forward, my Vixens!” yelled the Crimson Fox, her long costume trailing behind her. Pausing and posing on a burning rooftop, she looked down at the women below her. Wearing a variation of the same costume as hers but in different shades of red, brown and white, they fought alongside the other French National heroes. The roof of the building they had taken refuge in was a state, broken and fractured as though it had been hit by a bomb or two. Which it almost had.
The swarm of black creatures swelled against the sides of the building in which the Fox Set and the heroes where holed up. It seemed to be the focal point for the attack of the creatures; more specifically, communications with other female heroes of the Justice League, about the only heroes the Crimson Fox communicated with these days, revealed that a woman inside the building was the repository for the powers of the Earth Soul, although, Fox was unsure what abilities she held aside from rocking in place and crying at the feet of Fleur de Lis.
“Do we know what these creatures are?” the newly minted and recovered form of Chrysalis asked, her robotic wings batting against a still air inside the building. Her chest cavity was open and hundreds of butterflies swarmed from her inner body, fluttering and unsteadily flying toward their intending targets. They exploded on impact, with each explosion rocking the building the heroes stood inside of.
“The Justice League, or rather members thereof, have identified them as Lilin. Apparently the Great Ten have been neutralized in China and the Super Young Team has deferred to Rising Sun and Big Science Action,” the Yellow Vixen said, bowing her head to their leader. Crimson Fox looked down at the woman at their feet. She was the key to their violence and their victory. Perhaps there was a way that Chrysalis could evacuate with her?
“This is becoming frustrating, Fox,” Fleur de Lis said, unloading another pair of Uzi clips into the monsters clawing against the side of the building.
Suddenly, the woman, who had spent the last three hours rocking, got to her feet, her hands glowing with energy as runes lifted from her fingertips; runes which none of the heroes recognized save for the Blue Vixen at her leader’s side.
“That is the sign of the Leymen,” the blue-clad woman said, looking up at her leader from the crouch she had adopted, while the Fox was standing.
“Leymen?” she asked in return.
The Blue woman nodded. “A group run by Doctor Mist that dealt with magic and nature-based problems. The Leymen is a symbol that allows the person to tap into the Leylines of the planet, like the life blood of magic.”
Crimson Fox sighed and shook her head as the transponder that hadn't activated itself in years began to beep and flash in the back of her costume. “I might have known Mist was a part of this. Yellow Vixen, open up a dialogue with him.” Crimson Fox threw her communicator through the air toward the smallest of their group as she leapt toward an open window in defence of their now wandering and babbling ward. It was going to become a long evening.
“Well, of course that makes perfect sense,” Cyril Sheldrake said, pulling a large sword from the monster that was dribbling crimson and glowing blood into the soil before him. He wiped the blood off on his forearm and stepped backwards, his back against his young side-kick, Squire, and Godiva, whose golden locks whipped through the air, decapitating monsters all around them.
“It’s certainly an interesting theory, Beyrl, but how exactly did you come to that conclusion?” Godiva asked as a Lilin broke through, its claws raking across her chest and dropping her to her knees. As if in reference to the quickly flagging small group of heroes, a giant hammer smashed through the Lilin’s head, revealing the new Captain Albion, as well as a revamped Iron Lady.
“Don't worry, boys, we're here to help!” Mr. Albion said, swinging his massive hammer into the side of another Lilin as the sound of broken ribs filling the air. “So, what's the sitch?”
“We've got a sitch like bloody Zulu, here,” Knight continued, dropping down onto his knee as Albion fell in to the side of him, Iron Lady and a small group of British Commandos known as the Super Army Soldiers surrounded them, their rifles and machine guns rattling and firing shot after shot.
The Knight looked down at his glowing Global Guardians transponder and smirked a little. “Beryl, tell Mist what's happening, the Leylines and such; I'm sure he'll have a blood blast with this information...”
“We got that information about twenty minutes ago,” Mist said into the communicator. It was met with some of the saltiest and the most varied profanity he'd ever heard from a teenager’s mouth. Clearly, England was a place of excellent breeding once again. He looked away from the communicator and toward the lit up board of operatives.
“It’s the Leylines, obviously. They're attempting to use the magical version of Gaia, which is located in France, to tap into the Leylines. Then they have the power of the planet at their disposal. Tuatara already told me this.” Mist was becoming somewhat frustrated; everyone was calling in with some variation on the theme of Leylines. He knew it was the Leylines. He was a magician. He just couldn't be in all the places in the world at once.
“Just guard the Henge…it’s the only place in England where Magic is natural anymore. We'll be along as soon as we can.” Mist ended the call and turned to Belphegor and Golem. “Get me Meridian and the rest of the Leymen, all of them, and connect the Network to my Contemplatorium.”
Mist held up his hand in the air to silence any further questions and walked toward the long, pure white tunnel that arched above him. He closed the door quietly behind him, leaning against it and breathing more heavily than he imagined he would when faced with potentially ending magic on the planet.
Of course that was a last resort; as it stood currently, Mist had two or three other plans to put into play. Most of which involved the Guardians coming back into the fore. The Justice League was nowhere to be seen and the world was being ravaged. He would need to stand for those countries that were often ignored by the League: Iran, China, India, Tibet…they all needed defending. Australia, the Galapagos Islands, they all needed and deserved to exist as much as America, if not more.
He removed his clothes carefully and stepped toward the center of the room where the black markings etched into the white ceilings and floors began to vibrate and glow as he sat down and began to scratch out his plan into the soft floor with his fingernails, much as he had done when he was first granted these powers and immortality.
“Guardians...” Doctor Mist spoke directly to their minds. Some of the people he contacted had never been Global Guardians and some had never even been heroes when their first incarnation existed, while still others were founders of the very group. Mist appeared and appealed to them all.
In Mexico, Acrata wove her dark energies across the ground to create a huge pit for the Lilin to fall in. Hovering above her, unable to tear his attention away from the huge, naked ethereal African man, iMan allowed the Lilin from their rear to break through and attack the only other hero defending Mexico City from these monsters, the man known as El Muerto.
The blue skinned, almost dead looking form of the man with a bag over his head fought with every last part of his breath and his body. Fists broken and bloodied, crashing against far superior flesh and bone, his skin torn to shreds by blades, claws, teeth and even the stare of one such creature. He held his sides to prevent his organs from spilling onto the streets, his teeth grit with anger. He would protect the people of Mexico even if iMan and Acrata did not, though only iMan was the weak link in their battlefield now.
But even as he thought he was lost, the form of the glowing Mexican woman who could control the magnetic fields of the planet was filled with knowledge she never knew she possessed. Her fingers and arms danced as she revealed her civilian identity to the rest of the world, weaving metal beams, lamp posts and cars into a huge structure, a twisted dome of metal, electronics and destroyed streets.
“What is that?” Acrata asked.
Although it was more of a rhetorical question, iMan answered anyway. “It looks like a tuning fork...”
“You have been chosen to become the new conduits of my power, my energies and my role...” Mist continued, his attention quickly shifting to casting the energies of himself loose. The Defenders of New Delhi, Aruna and Maya, stood firm. The Devi, their team, would return soon to assist them. In the mean time, it was simply down to the pair of them to defend the city from ruin against the ever growing mass of creatures before them. Maya's burning bow and arrow cast flaming missiles into the writhing group of animals. She wiped the sweat from her forehead as the sun beat down.
Aruna was currently charging across the rooftops, leaping from solid structures onto the shanty towns that lined the streets and gaps between buildings. Her form constantly shifted as she attempted to avoid the gaze of the creatures, her body switching sexes, ethnicity and size. As she ran she grabbed levers, threw spears and burning barrels toward the creatures. The Devi had been fore-warned by the Global Guardians and had allowed themselves to build what was a city of weaponry around them before the rest of the group was dispersed across the rest of the country to try and protect whoever they could.
‘Wait,” Maya said, holding her hand up to Aruna as she halted her free run across the shanty below her. She dropped into a roll and paused, ready to spring into action once again. “I think I know what to do.”
Maya threw her hands into the air, shaping the fire and water she could now conjure and moulded it through the sky. Burning bars and supports swirled around the twisting, levitating mass of water without extinguishing or evaporating each other, creating once again another fork.
“My designs burn through you,” Mist continued, his hands gesturing outward to everyone he addressed as the Red Rocket Brigade dove through the sky, their gauntlets lighting up the Russian air-space around them. Lilin exploded into fleshy bursts as the Brigade slowly lost numbers to the swooping creatures.
“WE MUST DESTROY THEM ALL FOR MOTHER RUSSIA!” Gavril Ivanovich yelled, his Rocket Red armor whirring and clicking with every action, the oldest of the entire group assembled around him.
“Gavril, try and control yourself. Stalin is not in power these days,” the Squadron leader screamed in return, banking through the air as one of the largest monsters dove through the sky, triple mounted spinning claws ripping through the jet pack of a Rocket and sending him toward his doom in a fiery explosion…or it would have were it not for the burning red form of the Red Star, who hurtled through the sky and intercepted the man, landing comfortably in a burning cage of radiation.
“Wha?” the former Titan asked as the cage slowly stretched into the sky. His body could feel it was unearthly, it was heavy and deadly with elements; were it not for the armor the man in his arms wore he would surely be dead within minutes.
The former Firestorm partner, now known as Pozer, hovered in the air creating a tower of energy, something that didn't appear to be anything he knew how to design. As Red Star looked up at him, the burning hero said nothing and simply shrugged his shoulders.
“As my designs become yours, you understand their purpose and their role. They are not to destroy and they are not to contain. They are to channel.” Mist paused, looking down at the scene before him. The ground had split into pieces to allow him to witness both the events happening in Scotland, and in Turkey.
Rising high into the sky was a powerful Psionic Tower created by the ginger-haired woman known as Rosemary Fields, more commonly known for her encounter with Batman where her Id had come to life. The creature, a fairly good natured ‘fae’ who dressed like a slightly more homeless John Constantine with a higher hairline, protected her voraciously, destroying anything that came into contact with Rosemary.
Similarly, in Turkey, the woman clad in a red burka wielded the ceremonial sword high above her head, creating a similarly-shaped tower from weapons that gathered and clung to each other in the air. The book of spells that orbited her occasionally spat energy and destruction at the Black Death of Lilin that threatened to spill upwards and grab at her.
“These tuning forks, these Elemental capture points, they are my connection to the magic of the planet…the only way to do this, the only way for me to truly become part of the planet, is to tune myself to the countries of the world,” Mist spoke, the final part of his great unifying speech.
Knight looked up at his Squadron of miniature planes exploded into the Lilin in front of him, as Beryl hobbled away from the practically dead Mr Albion, her arm broken in three places and her face covered in blood not entirely her own.
Stonehenge stood erect, transforming itself in a Mystical Transponder.
Super Malon continued their wild run, animals and cars speeding around them as the heroes mystically created a fork from their flesh, from the life around them. Birds and insects manoeuvred into place by direction, by power and by magic. A swirling mass of life to connect Mist to the planet, as the less quick members, the leopard-skinned Yaguarite speeding around the Lilin, while Lobizon tore at the beasts with his claws and horse-headed El Bagual stomped the beasts into the ground with his hooves.
“It is only now that I dive into the recesses of the Leylines to save the planet from itself. From devouring from these beasts...” Mist felt a great elemental gathering and saw a brief glimpse of heroes such as Buddy Baker, the Animal Man, the Red Tornado and the Plant Elemental Kudzu…but that was a story for another telling. This was about the Global Guardians; this was about the connection to the people of the countries, not of the planet.
Mist said his final goodbyes as Belphegor stood in the doorway of his Comtemplatorium. He smiled and offered her a nod as he slowly began to dissolve into the ground. She removed her glasses and showed him her eyes, along with a shot of sorrow and vulnerability. Her eyes were not something anyone had ever seen, at least anyone human, and now they were all for him, full of love and grief.
Inside the Leylines, Mist was treated to a world and a person he rarely saw. A world of pure magic and, hovering inside of her, a smile on her glowing face was the woman known as Meridian. She wielded the ability to teleport through and to any Leyline on the planet, an ability that Mist would have need of if he were to travel across the planet.
“Meridian...I know we've had our differences...” Mist began, as the glowing woman was instantly beside him, fingertip on his lips.
“Now is not the time for reconciliation,” she said quietly, taking his hand tightly. “Now we've got to save the world and its Guardians.”
He gave her a firm nod and listened to the call of the planet. “There is one more structure that needs to be built, Meridian. We must go to Australia.”
“This is it,” Mist said, looking up through the now transparent surface of the Australian Outback. Fighting against the Lilin tooth and claw was the hero known as the Dark Ranger, a Batman-link entity in a space suit who fought with a combination of modern technology and Aboriginal Shaman abilities. Next to him, wielding a technological spear and defending the fallen body of Tuatara, was an unknown hero even Mist didn't know but he was a proper Aboriginal, a man wearing only salt markings and a loin cloth who appeared to be wizened and gnarled by the sun.
“Our final tower is here,” Mist said as the older man threw his spear into the air. It twisted and spun as though it were a compass which had a magnet under it. Violently twisting, it began to generate and twist the air, creating the final tower from the final element: the Tower of the Air.
“We're going to need more than just Guardians of the Globe in the future...” he said, looking over his shoulder at Meridian. She nodded slowly as he transmitted the final parts of his mystical quest to her.
“We need Leymen to guard the Leylines.” Mist turned to face the Australian heroes above him. “And Guardians for the Globe...”
“We won't be either/or. We shall be both.” Mist gave Meridian the final nod as she began to teleport, quickly, building her velocity with each port to every tower across the globe. From the mass of plant life that spiralled into the sky in Germany, protected by their version of the Rocket Reds, to the twisted buildings that towered over the streets of the Netherlands.
“Death claimed my friends before and gifted me with eternal life...now I turn the tables upon it!” Mist yelled, his face draining of color and vigour until his skin was transparent and flimsy. All over the world the Leylines lit up and figures began to rise from their snaking forms.
In Denmark, the small and frail looking body of the Little Mermaid pulled herself from the energy, dripping with liquid magic.
In Germany, a horse reared from the depths of mysticism itself, a near naked bearded man clinging to its back wielding a huge axe.
In Ireland, a man whose face was covered in black cloth carved in the form of a Jack O'Lantern sprung forth, high into the sky.
All over the World, from Australian to Argentina, Global Guardians who had died in the line of duty, or national heroes who had not yet been realized, were coming to life…or back to life. Gifted with a connection to Doctor Mist, every risen entity, every human being connected to the countries which held a Guardian member or a Tower of Mysticism, found they were now, inextricably bound to each other.
They were all Global Guardians.
Yet, even as the new Guardians rose from their death beds, their enemies did the same. In Bialya, the Queen Bee rose from her resting place, clutching the sides of her head as she felt the wants, desires and knowledge of Doctor Mist disseminating down into her.
She wanted nothing to do with this and, of course, the only reasonable way to remove herself from this connection was to remove the source.
To Kill Mist.
Meridian held the Doctor tightly, teleporting the pair of them back to his Comtemplatorium. He smiled, looking up at her, color slowly swelling through his veins and arteries to give him a very different and interesting look. “Are you all right?” she asked, laying him flat on the ground.
“Of course I am, you stupid girl! We just saved the world form itself! The Crisis is over!” Mist said confidently, only for the walls and ceilings of the dome to explode and rain debris over the residents inside.
As the New Gods started to rain from the Sky.
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To Be Continued in Crisis ad Infinitum #5
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