Post by dans on Jul 29, 2017 23:42:14 GMT
This story is sort of a prequel to the Jr. Justice Society story Starsky is writing now...
Darkstar Setting
Nightmare
"Amanda! This way!" She might have known that voice, if she'd had time to think, and then she saw him - a tall, darkly handsome young man in a red robe, trimmed in black, standing near a strange doorway in the middle of an otherwise blank wall. "Through here - it's safe!"
She thought she should know him, and she definitely felt uneasy about trusting him, but Grundy was getting closer, and she could think of nothing but escape, and the possibility of safety overwhelmed her - and she plunged frantically through that dark doorway, and as she passed him, his face changed, and his smile changed to a snarl, and his teeth change to fangs, and his welcoming expression turned to a triumphant sneer.
"You are mine now, Amanda! You belong to… Faust!" And then she was surrounded by darkness and then she was falling, falling, still unable to scream her terror…
Until she hit with a thump, and her eyes snapped open, and she realized she was alone in her own dimly let dorm room lying on the floor and "It was only another stupid nightmare!"
She knew a lot of other adjectives that were much more appropriate than 'stupid' - her Jr. Justice Society teammate Batwing seemed to have an endless supply of curse words - but her instructors at Holliday Academy for Young Ladies, and more importantly, her Jr. JSA mentor Ma Hunkle, the Red Tornado, had trained her out of using that type of unladylike language - even when she had just been scared almost to death by a nightmare. But 'stupid' wasn't very satisfying - and Ma Hunkel and Headmistress Etta Darnell couldn't overhear her thoughts, could they? She could be demure and ladylike at #?{[ing cotillions!
'I #?{[ing thought I was #?{[ing over that crap!' she screamed inside her head. And it helped - in her mind, she could hear Batwing laughing at her for her unimaginative repetition of such a mundane expletive. He would have used a half dozen words she'd never heard before! She slumped to the floor, suddenly feeling totally drained, both physically and emotionally.
"The downside of an adrenaline rush will do it to you every time!" she whispered to herself. "I'm not getting any more sleep tonight. Glad I didn't wake anyone else, makes it easy to slip out for a fly.”
'Star! Uniform me!' A command to the gem on her invisible necklace, and her nightclothes were replaced by her latest costume - still pink and purple, but a little more stylish and showing a little more skin than the original, perhaps more than a little bit influenced by the sexy costumes of some of her older teammates such as Corona and the Huntress - and she flashed out her dorm window and over the dark campus.
Early Morning Fly
As she headed for downtown DC, she felt a familiar tug on the sapphire stone on her necklace. Last time, she had been unable to resist this tug, but she'd been training her powers for months since then. Last time, the tug had been from Candy Davis, Darkstar, trying to recover the 'stolen' half of 'her' Star Sapphire gemstone. Amanda knew Darkstar had recently escaped from prison - this had to be her.
'Good to know I could just ignore her, but a good fight might be JUST what I need to forget that awful nightmare!' she reflected. She sped north-east through the night until she was well into Maryland. 'Hope I’m not going all the way to Opal City? I don’t want to miss breakfast!’
On the outskirts of Baltimore, she finally saw her apparent destination - a ramshackle farmhouse with boarded up windows on a property overgrown with weeds and vines. Her recent Jr. JSA training in observation kicked in.
'The weeds overgrowing the driveway are all crushed. Somebody has been using this place recently!' She drifted to a stop a hundred yards away, and spent several more minutes in observation. 'The Star Sapphire is definitely sensing its other half in there! And using my own power, I can sense three people, outside the house, probably lookouts. But nobody inside near the gem.' It was a puzzle - why would Candy take off her stone? Amanda had learned the trick of willing her own gem and necklace to be invisible, and now rarely took them off - would Candy be any less careful?
There were memories of conflicting lessons running through her mind from earlier training sessions:
"When you don't understand something, proceed cautiously," Red Robin had advised the Jr. JSA.
Sometimes Amanda and her teammates had wondered how the two older heroes managed to work together so well…
She remembered that she hadn't been able to sense Grundy, either, and a chill ran down her spine as her nightmare flashed through her mind. 'Dammit, I KNOW I can take Grundy now - easily! He's less powerful and a LOT dumber than Coral and Damage, and I can handle them.' This flash of anger and impatience helped her make up her mind. ‘OK, I can do this…’ She started humming in her mind: ‘I’m a little bit Robin, I’m a little bit Power Girl!'
She floated closer. 'If Darkstar is in there, she has to know I'm here, since I can sense her stone. It MUST be an ambush. Caution first, Red Robin!' She mentally reached out to the the human auras she could detect, and slightly enhancing her own power with the power of the Star Sapphire, she put them to sleep one by one. 'If she’s near one of the lookouts, now she knows for sure I'm around. But, if she’s here, she already knew. So big deal…’
‘Star! Force field!’ A command to her gem, and she was surrounded by a dense purple force field. ‘Star! Disco Ball!’ Not far away, a volleyball-sized globe covered with small mirrors popped into existence, floating patiently. 'Now, it's POWER GIRL time!'
Power Girl Time
Now that she could see her foe, Star Sapphire reached out with her own innate power, planning to grab Candy's nervous system and paralyze her - but she was totally unable to sense the woman, even though Darkstar was definitely right there in front of her. ‘Like Grundy!’ a quick thought ran through her mind as a chill of fear raced along her spine before Candy started talking.
"Your feeble mind tracks can't ever work on me again, you little witch!" Darkstar boasted loudly. "My own gem now protects me from your feeble mental attacks. You have two choices right now, surrender your own gem or die."
“Why do you villains think us heroes are so stupid we believe you would let us live if we choose A? I choose, ‘none of the above’ and I’m adding an option of my own: beating the crap out of you whether you surrender your gem or not,” Amanda snarled.
“Such bravado! Did you learn that from one of your new punk teammates?” Darkstar laughed. “Well, soon you’ll be begging for mercy!”
A pulse of purple energy blasted from Darkstar’s forehead gem, but it simple splattered off of Star Sapphire’s purple energy shield. Amanda pointed at her ‘disco mirror globe’ and a similar burst of purple energy flashed out at the globe. The mirrors on the spinning globe fractured the burst into a volley of hundreds of smaller bursts, which fell on the still reclining Darkstar like a meteor shower. With as little affect as Darkstar’s own blast had created.
The living room hadn’t fared so well, though - the entire room was devastated, and everything fell into the cellar when the floor was destroyed. Even when her recliner was vaporized, Darkstar hardly moved. Then, slowly but inexorably, she floated up from her chair, and the two purple-shielded figures hovered face-to-face for almost 2 minutes, each ordering her gem to deliver the most devastating attacks she could think of. The house was destroyed, but the energies of the gems had no effect on the forcefields created by their counterparts.
A New Power
Frustrated by the ineffectual exchange, Darkstar employed a new trick. “We can’t touch each other this way, and I’ve already proved that your mind tricks don’t touch me! But can you say the same about mine?” Darkstar laughed as she spoke. “My foolish brother invented the ‘Mindstorm helmet’ to use starlight for power, and then fell to that bimbo Liberty Belle - but I’ve improved his invention to use my own gem to power my purple brain blasts!”
The next blast of purple energy passed through Star Sapphire’s field and stabbed sizzling knives into Amanda’s brain, breaking her concentration. She fell from the sky, temporarily escaping from her foe’s new form of attack, and barely recovering in time to keep from crashing into the jagged debris in the basement of the now demolished house. Meanwhile, ever since Darkstar’s first boast, something had been nagging at her, and now out of the line of fire, she had just an instant for reflection.
‘She was right, I WAS hoping my bravado would scare her into surrendering,’ she thought. ‘Batwing said it works for him - sometimes! But he told me something else, too…’ She was out of time, another blast struck her, and again searing agony tore through her mind. Her vision clouded, and all she could see was flashes of jagged yellow.
‘Star! UP!’ she commanded her gem reflexively, and she shot skyward at rocket speed, an emergency move Ma Hunkel had drilled into her over and over again until it was almost instinctive. In the split second it took for Darkstar to react, she heard Batwing again. “Don’t give away anything when you boast. And when the bad guys boast, pay close attention to what THEY give away!”
Now, what had Darkstar said? "Your little mind tracks can't ever work on me again, you little witch! My own gem now protects me from your feeble mental attacks.”
“That’s IT!” Amanda shouted. “If her gem can do that, why can’t mine?”
‘Star! Shield me from all outside mental influences!’ Another purple bolt passed through her shield and struck her head - and she felt nothing! Now what, though - Darkstar was immune to her gem, and her mental attacks, and she was immune to Darkstar’s gem and mental attacks. Were they doomed to hang here forever, flailing away ineffectually at each other? And once again, something she’d learned in training popped into Amanda’s mind. ‘Damage!’
Darkstar’s next barrage caused Star Sapphire to scream, and she once again fell from the sky, this time landing heavily in a patch of low bushes. Darkstar followed eagerly, and landed next to her now motionless foe. "Foolish, feeble tramp! You never had a chance against the power of Darkstar!"
Amanda Strikes Back
‘Star! Absorb her power!’ Her teammate Damage could absorb the energy of attacks against him, and grow stronger; why couldn’t she do something like that? She could feel power flowing from Darkstar’s gem to her own. A quick burst, and then the flow lessened, and within seconds, almost ceased. She felt more powerful than ever before! She knew her own stone recovered slowly after being totally drained (another training exercise!); it would be hours before Darkstar was dangerous again. Looked like maybe she could turn the unconscious villain, and her minions, over to the authorities, and still get back to the dorm in time to get a little more sleep tonight.
Nightmare, Again
Amanda was racing through a dimly lit house, pursued by two large, dead white hands - the hands of Kid Grundy. She knew Grundy was chasing her, not just his hands, and suddenly she stopped, and turned, and faced her pursuer as Star Sapphire. A brilliant pink light illuminated the room, revealing a 7 foot tall, white, undead golem. A purple beam flared out, and Grundy was engulfed in a purple energy sphere, which lifted him clear of the floor. He hung for a second, twisting helplessly, and then, she thought a command to her gem.
‘Star! Get rid of him!’ Suddenly, the ball containing Grundy shot away, crashing through walls without slowing down, like a cannonball, shrinking rapidly until he vanished. “So much for Grundy!” she announced to the walls in satisfaction.
"Amanda! This way!" She knew that voice, instantly recognized the tall, darkly handsome young man in a red robe, trimmed in black, standing near a strange doorway in the middle of an otherwise blank wall. "Through here - it's safe!"
He no longer made her uneasy. “This dream was always just a warning, wasn’t it? Even though I clobbered you the last time we fought, you somehow managed to put some kind of mind control spell on me, didn’t you, you slimy bastard? Well, you’re gonna get a NASTY surprise when you try and cash in on it. One thing for sure, this is the last time I’m gonna see you in a dream!” Suddenly she was standing in front of a TV, and Faust and his door way were only black and white images on the screen, and she reached out and shut it off. And that was the end of that dream!
Start of a Great Day
She awakened an hour later, more refreshed than she’d felt since before Grundy had put her into the hospital. It was going to be a great day!