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#1
DEC 11 |
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“32 Day Month”
Prelude
“I dunno, Doc,” Mercury said to the unshaven, unwashed and under fed form of Doctor William Magnus above him. Mercury, being created solely from the liquid metal found in three thermometers, was little more than a few inches in length, dribbling and recollecting himself over the doctor’s duffle bag that sat by his crumpled body. “You need to eat something, or get some help.”
“Rrn, I don’t need help, Mercury, I just need to think,” he said, scratching at his beard like a wild animal.
“You need help, darling,” ‘Tina said, crawling up the tiny distance between his top pocket and his face, stroking his bare cheek gently. He batted her away and pulled the touch screen tablet from his bag, tapping away at the keys.
“I do robots, I am a robotics expert. How can I be expected to work under these conditions and with this knowledge?” Magnus asked, clutching his head with frustration. “I don’t do physics. I’m not even sure this is physics.”
“M-M-Maybe you s-should calm down, D-Doc?” Tin twittered from his resting place inside the doctor’s duffle bag.
“Calm down? How can I be calm? Have you seen what I am working with here?” Magnus asked, thrusting the screen towards Tin.
“Come on, love, come on...” ‘Tina said, stroking his face gently, planting false kisses on his cheek, fearing what the man she had loved once had become.
“It’s a wave! Not like an electromagnetic wave, but a wave of…something. I don’t EVEN know what!”
“D-Doc…” Tin retracted into the bag as he looked up, clutching the sides of his head.
“God…that INFERNAL BUZZING!” Magnus got to his feet as the hissing grew louder and louder. “We need to move again.”
He shoved his tablet into his deep coat pocket and grabbed his bags, stealing into the darkness behind him. The hissing floated into the distance, past where Magnus was slumped. A chest of drawers pulled in front of him, his eyes forced closed and his hands clamped over his mouth to try and dull the sound of his breath. ‘Tina clung to his beard, stretching her metal limbs to wipe away the tears that clung to the edges of his eyes from fear and sheer exhaustion.
She worried for him and the rest of the world. If what Magnus had discovered was correct, and it WAS hunting him, then the world would cease to exist as she knew it.
Post-Crisis
Within the wreckage of Supertown, heroes stood together, an assemblage that could make empires drop to their knees, but right now they were more concerned with what had befallen them.
“I…I don’t think I can do this right now.”
Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter stood in quiet silence, stunned by the response from the man they considered to embody the Justice League. Superman rubbed the back of his head gently and looked away from the two heroes.
“You don’t think you can do it?” Aquaman asked, clasping his hands together to attempt to contain his anger. “We’ve literally been through hell and back together, worse than hell, and you don’t think you can sit in a space station and stop evil in this world?”
“I...”
“Arthur,” J’Onn said, putting a hand on the King of Atlantis’ shoulder. “Please.”
Aquaman let his hands hang at his sides in impotent rage and looked away from Superman, over his shoulder into the distance.
“Please, understand, it’s not that I don’t want to or that I am leaving for good,” Superman continued, “but all of this, it’s made me think. We all nearly died, and I know that isn’t something that should bother us but the connotations of this battle…”
“We understand, Kal. We do. It is just a shock to us. We wanted to consolidate our power and our hope, and you are a large chunk of the latter.”
“J’Onn...Arthur…I am flattered, but I need time with Lois; time to try and make sense of what happened to us in there, in my head.”
J’Onn nodded silently while Arthur balled his fists again. “So, you leave us without a Superman. We have no Wonder Woman either! The JLA as we know it lacks a power house of either of your standards.”
J’Onn stood for a moment before he looked away from Aquaman. His rage, his trauma from this…the responsibility weighed heavily on him. He still thought of himself as this general, this leader of heroes. He wasn’t anymore. He was Aquaman.
“Arthur,” Superman said, placing his hand on the King’s shoulder, “what about J’Onn? He’s hardly a street level hero, now is he?”
Aquaman watched Superman smile at him, before he knocked his arm off his shoulder. “High and dry is the term, isn’t it? Like a barnacle on a stone, that’s what we are. Sun beating down and drying us out.”
Superman took a step back and looked to J’Onn. “I’m not doing that. I’ve got a replacement for me, Arthur. Someone I can vouch for who’s just as strong as me and just as moral…and perhaps a lot more clever.”
“Oh?” Aquaman asked, feigning interest. “Who might that be? What symbol of hope do you have for us? Supergirl? Steel?”
“Not a symbol, Aquaman,” a gravelly voice said from behind Superman. “An Icon.”
Now
“I do not think this is the best approach,” Icon said, staring down in incredulity at his bloodied fists. “Direct action has not benefited us so far. We’ve been fighting this creature for nearly twenty minutes.”
“Hrn,” Batman said, charging towards the beast. Icon watched as it deflected the vigilante with ease.
“See? I believe we should consider another course, or perhaps retreat and reconsider our plan and leadership structure.”
“Hrn,” Batman knelt down against the ground, blood dribbling from his fractured nose. It wasn’t the first time it had been broken and it most certainly wouldn’t be the last. Alfred would have to fix it when he got back from this mission.
If he got back, that was.
Since the Crisis, the stakes had been amplified as monsters were let loose throughout creation or finally released from centuries of imprisonment. One such creature, currently dissecting huge chunks of the Russian Wasteland between Siberia and China, was facing the full force of the brand new, fully reinvented, Justice League.
“Physician, what is it?” Batman asked as the Tibetan smeared blood over his own face, attempting to summon enough air back into his lungs to attack the creature which Blue Devil, Icon and Doctor Light were all bombarding with little effect.
“Batman,” he said quietly, not appreciating the tone from the hero, it being far too reminiscent of the way he was treated by the August General in Iron. “I do not take orders well.”
The Bat bristled at the idea of it and then gave the Physician his best stare. “I don’t care. What is it?”
The Physician sighed and watched the lobes of the creature rub against one another, an interlocking system of bio-mechanics. Gears and levers made from bone and flesh, linked with clinking teeth and gumming stops, all powered by a string of thick, vascular tissue that pumped blood to the appropriate parts.
“In China there is a thing known as the Zodiac, of which you have something similar to this in the West,” the Physician began.
“I know of the Chinese Zodiac,” Batman said with frustration, letting loose a fist full of Baterangs which exploded, froze and glued whatever they could, wherever they hit.
“Twelve Signs for Twelve Months is the system. However, there is a Thirteenth Sign,” the Physician said, a smirk creeping over his features as Batman turned to him in shock. “Have your attention now, do I?”
Then
“Yao Fei.”
The Accomplished Perfect Physician turned around and looked up from his Ramen with a mouth full of noodles…the perfect time to ambush him. He quickly slurped the food into his mouth and attempted to return the favor.
“I’m not from the Politobureau,” the man who owned the voice said as he adjusted his costume from where he stood behind Yao.
“You’re who I think you are, then?” Yao asked. He returned with confidence to his noodles, “You obviously know me, Westerner. Your Chinese is flawless. How is your Cantonese?”
“I get by,” the man replied, pushing his fingers into his temple and eyeing the man from the corner of his eye. “You’ve heard of me?” Batman stated.
Yao Fei looked up from his food and put his hands flat on the table. “I’m done,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.
“Wait a moment,” Batman said, watching the Physician charge passed him. “We only want a moment of your time.”
“We? I’m not interested in anything you have to offer. Perhaps you would be better off speaking to the August CAPTAIN in Iron?” Yao Fei threw some money onto the table and stormed away from the Bat, who stood in silence. Perhaps he had over-estimated the Physician; he didn’t want to believe that he could have been wrong in his approach.
As Yao Fei exited the building and quickly darted down a nearby alleyway, he was stopped almost immediately. Two large men stood before him.
“Accomplished Perfect Physician,” the first of the two men said as he stepped from the shadows. To Batman, who stood in the entrance to the alleyway, it was a sign for him. Batman had always been at the centre of nearly every league, had always been their leader and he had always been their brains, but perhaps now he wasn’t as crucial as he had previously thought he was.
This was clearly J’Onn and Arthur’s League.
“I already told Batman back there, I am not interested in anything you have to offer…”
“How would you like to join the Justice League?” Arthur asked, losing his patience with the countenance of the man.
“Unless what you have to offer is Justice League membership, of course, I was just going to say.” The Physician paused, looking at the forms of the King of Atlantis and the Martian Manhunter. “I have a few prerequisites before I go ahead, however.”
Now
“This wasn’t quite what I was expecting!” Blue Devil yelled as he rammed his trident down in between the flesh cogs. It jammed for a moment and he expected his trident to shatter, but to his surprise it didn’t, though the energy erupting from one of the sacs of power that encircled the creature’s head (?) ejected its load, hitting him in the chest.
He arced into the air, hitting the ground hard and discovered that he had momentarily been transformed into the Orange Devil, before his normal hue returned.
“Wha?”
“Do not waste time asking question, Blue Devil,” Doctor Light barked, avoiding with a well timed bank, a secondary burst of energy. “I do not have the time or the inclination to explain it to you.”
“Hrn,” he said, pushing his lips to the side of his face in bemusement. “You must be the informal Welcome Wagon, right?”
He charged forwards, lowering his head and ramming his body into the side of the creature’s impossible form. Danny Cassidy’s experience and abilities leant themselves to the Supernatural. More than that, his body did something to magic, a new ability that was slowly manifesting. It changed the rules. In fact, it broke them almost completely.
“Just keep punching, Danny.” It was becoming something of a mantra for him.
Then
“I’m pleased that you came to meet me, Danny. It has been too long.” the Manhunter took Blue Devil’s hand firmly and shook it.
Danny held on for a little too long so that when the Manhunter retracting his hand he pulled Danny with it slightly. “Sorry. Been a while since you wanted me,” he said quietly, rubbing the back of his head as the pair of them stood in silence once more in the Christy Street shop of Madame Xanadu.
“It has been a while since we needed your area of…expertise,” the Manhunter said as Xanadu continued to ‘watch’ them, her eyes bound from looking at her guests, as she placed a number of cards face down on the table. A quick glance confirmed that even though it appeared to be a blue demon meeting a normal man, things were not as they seemed.
“You saying you need me now?” Danny asked with excitement in his voice.
The Manhunter’s human guise nodded slowly. “Exactly that, Danny; the old League lacked something, a spark or the ingenuity that we hope to bring with this League. We need new blood.”
“So, you bringing in old guys as much as me then?” Danny asked, flatly. He knew that the Manhunter was referring to him as new blood, he just didn’t realise how much it stung until someone forgot he was a card carrying JLA member of years.
“Yes, of course,” J’Onn said flawlessly, but Danny knew. “We heard what you did during the Crisis, Danny. We were impressed.”
“Yeah?” Danny asked, smiling widely.
“We heard there was a break-out of wild magic, Danny. We heard that you punched it into submission.”
The Blue Devil stared at his fists and nodded. “Not a lot of people say they can punch magic. I can definitely do that. In fact, that’s pretty much all I did.”
“UGH!”
The pair of heroes turned to see Xanadu wiping her hands across her table, throwing the cards before her onto the floor, and slumping forwards, her head hitting the surface heavily.
“Xanadu!” Danny called, running to her aid. He touched her neck gently to get her pulse, before he pulled her upright, staring into her eyes. “What is it?”
“The cards, Danny…the cards are wrong,” she looked up at him, blood dripping from her eyes.
Manhunter knelt down on the floor and picked up one of the offending cards. He flicked it between his fingers, eyeing it as thought it were some strange object. “These are tarot cards?” he asked.
“They’re supposed to be,” she said quietly, smearing the blood over her cheeks with her fore-fingers, “but they’re not.”
“No,” he said, putting it face up on the table in front of the three of them, “this clearly isn’t.”
The image on the card clearly had an inscription on it, featuring a blue woman with a number of thick, decorated tendrils that rolled from her head as hair, standing on the impaled body of what appeared to be someone wearing Superman’s colors.
“What does it say?”
“It reads ‘Culture’,” Manhunter said, pushing the card towards Xanadu and turning toward the door, “and it’s written in Martian.”
Interlude
“I don’t like this, Weeja,” the dread-locked man said to his companion, who made sure that the thick coat she wore protected her from the reality-weather that lashed against her. She touched Uotan’s shoulder softly, and gestured for him to get to his feet.
“We should go, Uotan, this is no place for us with the wave approaching so quickly.”
He sighed and patted down the dusty edges of his long, almost militant looking uniform.
“It is frustrating. He is so close to discovering this and bringing it to the right people but we can never get here in time to push him in the right direction,” he said as he ran a hand over his corn-rows and turned to his lover.
“We must go,” she said, taking his hand as they both faded from existence, a purple cape floating into view moments after they left.
“Grn,” the owner managed to extract before he too was gone.
Now
“I can’t hold it!” Donna’s forehead didn’t just give the suggestion of strain, her entire face was sweat covered and wrinkled into a point just slightly before recognition.
Finally, after her gargantuan effort of attempting to keep the creature before her, ‘the 32 Day Month’, from escaping the grip of her glowing Blue Lasso, she had to relent. Falling from the sky, stopping her descent mere inches from the ground before falling exhausted the final distance, she stared at the sky, barely able to register anything for a few seconds. Sounds deleted themselves from her memory and all she could see above her was the silent blur of the other heroes attacking the creature. How could they defeat something that contravened physics itself?
She rolled onto her elbows and stared at it for a moment. Magic was not working, as she and Blue Devil could attest. So far, science had failed, and brute strength was nothing more than a waste of time. Icon seemed to bounce repeatedly from its form.
Where were they leaders? Icon and Batman were present, but Aquaman? Manhunter? How could they just abandon them?
Then
“I’m sorry about Diana,” Batman said, clinging to the very edge of a building in Gateway City. Donna landed the Harpy she had been wrestling with, pushing its face against the mortar of the roof and twisting its body until the neck snapped.
“Aren’t we all,” Donna said, bowing her head in respect and whispering a few silent prayers to the Harpy. “Surely you’ve not come all that way just to say that, Batman.”
He said nothing, watching her.
“Are you all right, Batman?” she asked, walking toward him and touching his face gently. He retracted quickly, brought out of his concentrated focus. Diana was what had caught his attention; he hadn’t realised how much she affected his life.
“Is it, Diana?” she asked. His head snapped up to look at her. She nodded slowly, letting her hands fall to her side. “I miss her too.”
Again, silence fell between them until Donna began to speak again.
“You had, or still have, a special connection, a sort of love that you are too afraid to continue because of the consequences. I understand that.”
“That isn’t what it is,” Batman protested.
“It is, though, isn’t it?” Donna said. It could be considered that Donna possessed some form of empathic ability; however, in reality, she was just very, very kind and more than a little astute. “You can talk to me if you want too. I know you won’t but, the offer is there.”
“Gnh. Welcome to the Justice League, Donna Troy.”
Batman didn’t even offer her the position, at this point; he just wanted her to talk about something else. Emotions weren’t high on his list of priorities.
Now
Doctor Light scoffed at the fight below her. The major heroes were fighting against this monster before them and having little in the way of impact. Oddly, their leaders remained unseen.
“This is getting us nowhere. Have you all taken leave of your senses?” she called, diving from another energy burst from the sacs and revolving discs on the creature’s body. She was appalled, fascinated and deeply concerned neither that Batman, nor any of the other “long standing” Leaguers had noticed the Sacs, and their undefended nature. The others attacked the symptoms of the creature, the spinning discs, the body that should never be, but Doctor Light did not. She attacked the creature itself.
Blasts of light shot from her hands, striking the creature whose body reared up to meet her, thousands of turning disks now shifting and moving into a giant, staggered circle, a shield to protect it from her blasts.
“DAMN!” she yelled. Why did she not think it would do that? Could do that?
Then
“I have heard that you are creating a new Justice League,” Doctor Kimiyo Hoshi stood before the Martian Manhunter and a bemused Aquaman. “I wish to put myself forward for this new team. Here are my qualifications as a scientist, as well as what I have achieved as Doctor Light.”
She slid a manila folder toward the two heroes, who stopped and looked at each other.
“You’re…applying?” Aquaman asked, picking up the folder and looking at the papers inside.
“Correct. I believe that while my research is important and my children my all, the recent economic downturn of the world as well as the Crisis, of which I played a minor role, it is important that I represent both my country and my gender in your League.”
She stood watching the two awkward and bemused heroes exchange glances. Manhunter smiled gently and offered a hand to the scientist. “Well, in that case…Welcome to the Justice League.”
Now
“Tandem.”
Orders were broadcast into the minds of the Justice League now, as a wave of frozen water washed over the battle scene. Instructions of where to hit and when appeared in the forefront of the team members minds, as J’Onn had no time to be subtle. Carried in his arms and released as though she were a human bullet, was the hero known as Donner. The tall and muscular blonde woman pulled her fists together and hurtled towards what could be considered the lower back of the monster. Followed shortly afterwards was Donna Troy, Icon, Blitzen and J’Onn, as they all aimed themselves like human missiles toward the beast.
A flick of the tail deflected Donna, her star-scape body clattering against the ground and digging a trough through the soft grass.
“Better late than never,” Doctor Light said, landing heavily next to Batman. He turned to look at her as Aquaman strode past the pair, not even registering their presence.
“Aquaman?”
He said nothing, his trident lowered and aimed toward the creature. At his side, holding a huge frozen trident in her hands was the woman known as Ice. Known for her kind and caring as well as almost introverted nature, the concept of seeing her charging towards battle with a weapon of ice in her hand nearly knocked Doctor Light over.
“What has happened while I have been away?” she asked Batman. He said nothing, watching Blue Devil run up to the pair, his own trident in his hand. They broke into a run and a scream of pure anger and exhilaration erupted from Aquaman, then a slightly higher and less controlled yell from Danny Cassidy.
“Aquaman got smarter,” Batman said as the trio ploughed their weapons into the 32-Day-Month. Running after the other heroes, Batman waved for Light to follow. “Come on.”
Light followed him quickly as the creature’s energy blast took Ice off her feet. The wave of frozen water above them fractured, raining meter-long shards of ice onto the beast, which bucked and stormed against the edges of reality. Another clunking of energy nearly took Aquaman off his feet, but his trident split the beam and simply pushed the defensive hero across the dirt.
For a moment, everything seemed to hang in place. J’Onn held himself, his form now transformed into something that could almost physically contain the beast, a cage of flesh and bones that jutted violently in all manner of direction and prevented the 32-Day-Month’s escape.
“I fail to see how this relates to the Zodiac,” Batman said under his breath as he stormed past the fallen Yao Fei, leaping to the side to avoid an energy blast that caught Light in the chest and blasted her into unconsciousness. A hissing filled the air, which quickly caught the attention of the rest of the League. A bright light that evaporated the beast they’d been fighting for the better part of an hour and gave itself to the form of a sphere being born into existence, a sphere that slowly became real rather than a faded afterimage coming into view.
The wave of reality broke over the collected Justice League, washing Tachyon energy and fluxes across their bodies. Those amongst them who were observant enough to be paying close attention to the visible parts of their own bodies, or their team-mates, noticed that their forms oscillated between variant ages. Batman’s chin became saggy and grey for a mere second before shrinking and transforming itself into the chin of a young man.
“…rry, I just didn’t get the coordinates right, someone was back-seat driving!”
“Backseat driving? Booster, the only way you’d be able to drive this thing is if the controls were a merchandising deal, and even then you’d crash it within ten minutes.”
“Hey…I’ve got stocks, Beetle. People invest in me,” Booster Gold thumbed into his chest as the pair stood at the bottom of the steps of the time sphere. The pair, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, stood for a moment before the assembled Justice League. The League was beaten, bruised and more than a little confused at why the pair had appeared now.
“Another threat?” Icon asked, touching his split lip gingerly.
“Nah, we came to help save the day,” Booster said, hands on his hips. Beetle just covered his face with his hand and drew his arm around himself. “Hey, did we miss it?” Booster asked, pursing his lips.
Ted Kord nearly doubled over in rage, punching Booster in the arm. “We didn’t miss it, you idiot! We defeated it! You think the league would look this shoddy on their first proper mission if they hadn’t started yet?”
Booster rubbed his arm and looked across at Ted, hurt being the only emotion on his face. “But I don’t see any monster.”
“That’s because we defeated it, you idiot! Don’t you remember? That’s why you took control of this thing! I was busy coming up with a way to beat it!”
“Hrn. You?” Batman asked, smearing his face with blood as he wiped the back of his glove under his nose. “How?”
“It was the 32-Day-Month, Bats,” Beetle said with pride. “We’re in a machine that controls time. We just deleted a day off the end of it. Then it could have been January, or…I dunno, October?”
“Or September,” Booster added.
Beetle punched him in the arm again. “September has thirty days, you idiot!”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Some time traveller,” J’Onn said, with a smile on his face. “Good work, my friends. How can we thank you?”
“Oh,” Beetle said, with a wide smirk, “I think two cards and a place to stay might be all it takes, J’Onn. Nothing too big!”
Aquaman turned away from the group and began to walk away.
“Hey, what’s his problem?” Booster asked as the group began to tend to its unconscious and wounded.
“His problem,” J’Onn said quietly, taking the pair aside, “is that he feels it was too easy today. That it was a prelude to something else. He feels as though there is something left undone.”
J’Onn looked over his shoulder at the grim and slowly shrinking form of Aquaman as Ice chased after him. “What worries me more is that I think he might be right.”
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To Be Continued...
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