Post by redsycorax on Sept 5, 2018 0:52:14 GMT
"I'm sorry, but this whole coffee prohibition situation is getting ridiculous. It's not working, just like the Thirty Third Amendment to the US Constitution back home. Latin America is making a mint out of the North American Confederation's thirst for caffeine based products. Let them clean up their own mess." Coagula protested.
"True, but it does result in organised crime and that is our concern." Danny Architecture replied.
"Wait a minute, everyone. Looks like there's a more legitimate emergency heading our way. Supervillainous in orientation. Who the hell is Detweiler Morgan?"
Already, the Freak Show was responding to the development in North America. Crazyjane, Avemaria and Hysterike alighted on the manicured red lawn before the Presidential Bright House in the District of Hollywood, capital of the Greater American Confederacy.
"Yes, I'm afraid it is him. Blazes."
"Ida, who or what is this Detweiler person?"
"A profound headache. We think he may have been responsible for numerous temporally related events back up the Bleed. I'd dial up your potential to maximum, Kay. Looks like we're going to need some of your hardcore alters."
"More background needed. Oh. Coagula just telepathed 'Per Degaton' to me. ...What?!!"
"No, it can't be him. He no longer exists. He's the product of a deleted former iteration of Earth-2."
"Except that apart from you and Ave here, most of the rest of the Freak Show are from Earth-15. And don't forget that." Crazyjane pointed to the distant seething pinpoint of light that was the distant Croesus white hole, which had forever changed their universe. Inside her mind, Crazyjane reached for an alter that could help them out with this particular situation...
Lady Purple flickered into being and regarded the distant image of Per Degaton- or Detweiler, as he was called here. She spoke only a few words:
"Recoherence. The pre-Crisis multiverse is still present. The forcible reduction to the "One True Earth" never happened, thus there is still an Earth-2 Iteration 1. He became aware of Earth-49 through his dimensional transit capabilities and thought our unique situation worth exploiting."
Then that alternate personality was gone and Crazyjane became Mama Pentecost:
"He wants Croesus. I can read it in his non-verbal communication, the way he keeps looking up at it."
"But Croesus is a white hole. It cannot be controlled." Avemaria frowned
"Except as a barrier. It's why Earth-50's Authority and Justice Lords can't cross into this universe, because of the turbulence it causes in the Bleed. They're not even aware of us, it blocks the Doctor's additional sensory endowment and meta-intelligence. Even Superman and Apollo would get shredded in transit and their phase door teleport system would be inoperative." Hysterike said.
"The only reason that we could make it here from Earth-15 was due to the turbulence associated with the Final Crisis event several years ago and that was only temporary. The Earth-15 Justice League didn't make it- Lor-Zod, Jason, Donna, Kyle, Garth, Wally, all destroyed by that psychotic bastard Superman Prime, with the Freak Show and Jimmy (Steelman) Olsen of Earth-28 the only survivors. And Earth-15 is a ruined ghostworld." Mama Pentecost replied.
"Yeah, I never got that. If some Earths recover from past cataclysms that scrubbed them clean of life, then how does that either stick or not stick? From the intel we've got from elsewhere in the Multiverse, Earth-2 is in the process of regenerating and Earth-3 has apparently done so multiple times. Earth-51 used to be a desolate wasteland as well, but look at it now." Hysterike asked.
"Wait. There may be a reason that your homeworld has not regenerated. I sense a lantern. A green lantern power battery, imbued with unnatural power and tenacity." Avemaria said, as a ball of emerald power suddenly shone into existence near Degaton/Detweiler.
"Time to call in reinforcements..." Crazyjane said, as an eye-aching shaft of inverted light shone through the gathering clouds and stormfront. Simultaneously, she began her grisly genesis into Black Annis, her vicious, predatory, misandrist alter.
Detweiler sneered: "Ah, the so-called Freak Show. I was wondering how long it would take you to show up here."
"I call upon Hera Ops, guardian of this home and world to encircle and contain your unlawful power." Avemaria intoned, as a spherical cage set in around him:
"Ah, that's right. You're the lady who used to be Daniel-Paul Schreber in this universe."
"I am this world's guardian sorceress. Indeed, I am the magestate of this man whom you describe, for his treatise Memoirs of My Nervous Illness was the literal truth in this universe. You cannot fight the legacy of a demiurge. Desist and withdraw."
The redhaired figure's stolen green lantern power battery coursed a sinister green and Avemaria's cage shattered. At the same time, she screamed as she was involuntarily returned to her normstate, nineteenth century German immortal judge Daniel Paul Schreber. Detweiler only had a moment to gloat before Rebus barrelled into him, and Hysterike grabbed the power battery. But then there was a surge of green light and the metahuman hysteric screamed as it consumed her.
"Ilse! Is she..?"
"Gone. Where you'll never find her. Your blasted and cankered homeworld- Earth 15."
"Exuent!" Avemaria said, and Crazyjane and Rebus pursued their Freak Show colleague, leaving Avemaria to face the intruder. He smiled levelly at her, with no real trace of warmth or self-knowledge. The female side of Tiresias replied:
"What is your purpose here?"
"I found this world on the outliers of the Core Multiverse. It has so much potential, but you weaklings protect it from the darkness. Life is a surrealist comedy to all of you, isn't it?"
Avemaria shook her head: "Kay- Crazyjane is an incest survivor and the Abject is never far from her. Body and soul and her precious multiple minds, she is the strongest person I have ever known on this world."
Detweiler snorted: "Spare me the cloying aphorisms, sorceress. It is you and I. And on most worlds, your male side was a hopeless delusional individual with schizophrenia."
Avemaria's eyes flashed red:
"True, perhaps. But as you have so correctly observed, Earth-49 as they call it is not 'most worlds."
Earth-15.
Instants ago, Hysterike had materialised in what should have been a desolate vacuum, but that wasn't what confronted her now. Around her, trees wove their verdant tapestry and the world was visibly regenerating around her- as it moved to another iteration and repaired the damage that Superman-Prime had inflicted on it.
In the matter of a breath, animals from bestiaries lurched and rose and fell to bone shards around her and one such creature, an early hominid, swung down from the trees and began to walk upright as she watched.
Where was the threat in this? Why had Detweiler sent her here:
"Ilse!"
"Kay, Rebus. For some reason, Detweiler's plan must have failed."
Rebus pointed: "No, it has not. This regeneration is being warped. It is being steered back onto the path that led to its earlier iteration's destruction."
"You and me, then, Rebus. Time sorter boxes. Not very original, is he?"
Earth-49.
"You see, my plan is to dominate the multiverse, not just this boxed in corner of it. And to do that, I need a sacrifice. It was going to be Earth-51, but it recovered before I could utilise its mortococcus plague against the rest of realities. Then I encountered Earth-15."
"Your plan misses one important detail, Detweiler. Superboy-Prime was wiped out in the last reiteration of Earth-33. He no longer exists to destroy Earth-15. Therefore, it is...No. What are you doing?"
"Can your sorcery not tell you, mage? I've set up a feedback paradox. I have plucked Superman-Prime from oblivion at Vanishing Point. He will still devastate that world. And I will harness that energy to trigger a new multiverse-erasing crisis. Only this one will erase all but the Universe of Antimatter from existence."
As the threesome watched, history wound its way through Earth-15's version of history. Around the sixties, it began to diverge, as Lor-Zod arrived on Earth from Krypton and began to romance Lena Luther. In time, they were married. As the alternate Earth reached the eighties, other metahumans experienced transitions in their lives and made way for their former teenage sidekicks, if the latter had survived. When the Joker murdered Batman, the now-adult Jason Todd took up his mentor's mantle as Batman. Wally West became the Flash as the Reverse-Flash killed Barry Allen who perished saving his Iris from the attentions of the psychotic future speedster. A seabourne pathogen devastated Atlantis, and Arthur (Aquaman) Curry was amongst the victims, succeeded by his protege Garth. On distant Paradise Island, Queen Hippolyta was felled by an invasion from a rival Amazon sect and Diana returned to govern the matriarchy in her mother's stead. Donna Troy succeeded her older sister as Wonder Woman. Oliver Queen married Dinah Lance and the couple retired- leaving Roy Harper to become Green Arrow.
And then, one day, darkness fell from the skies. In an insane quest for illusory perfection, the darkclad twisted Superman Prime appeared above the planet. He scowled at the domesticity at the Fortress of Solitude and began what would have been a death dive. He was unprepared for the red pulse of light as Crazyjane's Mother Sun alter activated and began bombarding him, repeatedly. Her telepathic voice said:
-No! No, you will not do this. You will not wipe out six billion people on this planet because of your senseless obsession with a vanished phantom world. You won't kill. Cliff. And the strongest woman on Earth-15 kept up her deadly bombardment as Superman-Prime cried out, and fell from the firmament, like the mythical Lucifer. She watched as the former Superman of Earth-Prime screamed and cried out in agony, as Rebus blotted out the sun, depriving him of the G class star's reparative strength.
And in a moment, Superman-Prime- Kal-El of Krypton-Prime- breathed his pain-ridden last. Kay smiled:
"I wanted to do that to him so many times in fantasy. Now... what is it, Rebus?"
"This isn't over, Kay."
"What do you mean? Prime is dead. He won't be able to destroy this iteration of Earth-15 the way that he did to its predecessor, our home." Crazyjane replied.
"This may have been a diversion, Kay. It is likely that the resurrection of Earth-15 and the reappearance of Superman Prime was not the core objective of Detweiler's machinations."
"What else could it be? There's nothing else exceptional about our particular alternate Earth. Except for the fact that the USSR here never got involved in Afghanistan, the Shah crushed the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Yugoslavia survives as a coherent nation-state and Northern Ireland voted to join the Irish Free State in the 1920s. None of those qualify as a decisive dealbreaker."
"Those time sorters are not the ones that were used against the Legion of Superheroes on pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Earth-1. They seem to be designed to redistribute the energies released during the conflict between you and Superman-Prime away from Earth-15 to another alternate Earth."
"Then where...?"
"I suspect that Detweiler wants the signal difference that distinguishes our adopted world from the rest of the Core Multiverse."
"You mean the Croesus white hole itself?"
"Exactly. And look around you. While this iteration of Earth-15 resembles our own lost world in so many ways, it is not the original. There is no Doom Patrol here, and you never became Crazyjane. Cliff Steele died in the racecar accident that transformed him into Robotman in the original timeline."
"It's okay, Rebus. Earth-15 as we knew it is gone, I've accepted that for a long time. Time to go back to our real home now." Crazyjane cycled into her Flit persona and teleported her colleagues offworld.
Detweiler had focused his time sorter array on the distant Croesus white hole, despite the best efforts of Avemaria to halt his efforts. When the others materialised back, Crazyjane switched to Mother Sun and resumed her bombardment, while Avemaria called:
"Kay. We're only energising his project. Which appears to be the use of our Earth as a mobile inter-alternate platform to raid and plunder the other worlds of the multiverse. But if you overload it..."
Crazyjane nodded: "Switching to blue-white stellar energies. Rebus, get Ave out of here. Ave, generate a thaumaturgic shield to keep others sheilded from the radiation output."
By the time Detweiler registered the thwarting of his plans, he was too late. His time sorters flamed and fused. With his remaining reserves of energy, he cursed his luck and disappeared back into the past.
Back at the Freak Show base, that evening, Kay looked down at the photograph of Cliff. She gently held it to her face and kissed it. Better this way. Better that this Cliff Steele be at peace and never knew her new iteration. Better that he never became Robotman and ended up dying defending his world from that insane Kryptonian bastard like so many others. A single tear slid down her face as she turned and left the room.
THE END
"True, but it does result in organised crime and that is our concern." Danny Architecture replied.
"Wait a minute, everyone. Looks like there's a more legitimate emergency heading our way. Supervillainous in orientation. Who the hell is Detweiler Morgan?"
Already, the Freak Show was responding to the development in North America. Crazyjane, Avemaria and Hysterike alighted on the manicured red lawn before the Presidential Bright House in the District of Hollywood, capital of the Greater American Confederacy.
"Yes, I'm afraid it is him. Blazes."
"Ida, who or what is this Detweiler person?"
"A profound headache. We think he may have been responsible for numerous temporally related events back up the Bleed. I'd dial up your potential to maximum, Kay. Looks like we're going to need some of your hardcore alters."
"More background needed. Oh. Coagula just telepathed 'Per Degaton' to me. ...What?!!"
"No, it can't be him. He no longer exists. He's the product of a deleted former iteration of Earth-2."
"Except that apart from you and Ave here, most of the rest of the Freak Show are from Earth-15. And don't forget that." Crazyjane pointed to the distant seething pinpoint of light that was the distant Croesus white hole, which had forever changed their universe. Inside her mind, Crazyjane reached for an alter that could help them out with this particular situation...
Lady Purple flickered into being and regarded the distant image of Per Degaton- or Detweiler, as he was called here. She spoke only a few words:
"Recoherence. The pre-Crisis multiverse is still present. The forcible reduction to the "One True Earth" never happened, thus there is still an Earth-2 Iteration 1. He became aware of Earth-49 through his dimensional transit capabilities and thought our unique situation worth exploiting."
Then that alternate personality was gone and Crazyjane became Mama Pentecost:
"He wants Croesus. I can read it in his non-verbal communication, the way he keeps looking up at it."
"But Croesus is a white hole. It cannot be controlled." Avemaria frowned
"Except as a barrier. It's why Earth-50's Authority and Justice Lords can't cross into this universe, because of the turbulence it causes in the Bleed. They're not even aware of us, it blocks the Doctor's additional sensory endowment and meta-intelligence. Even Superman and Apollo would get shredded in transit and their phase door teleport system would be inoperative." Hysterike said.
"The only reason that we could make it here from Earth-15 was due to the turbulence associated with the Final Crisis event several years ago and that was only temporary. The Earth-15 Justice League didn't make it- Lor-Zod, Jason, Donna, Kyle, Garth, Wally, all destroyed by that psychotic bastard Superman Prime, with the Freak Show and Jimmy (Steelman) Olsen of Earth-28 the only survivors. And Earth-15 is a ruined ghostworld." Mama Pentecost replied.
"Yeah, I never got that. If some Earths recover from past cataclysms that scrubbed them clean of life, then how does that either stick or not stick? From the intel we've got from elsewhere in the Multiverse, Earth-2 is in the process of regenerating and Earth-3 has apparently done so multiple times. Earth-51 used to be a desolate wasteland as well, but look at it now." Hysterike asked.
"Wait. There may be a reason that your homeworld has not regenerated. I sense a lantern. A green lantern power battery, imbued with unnatural power and tenacity." Avemaria said, as a ball of emerald power suddenly shone into existence near Degaton/Detweiler.
"Time to call in reinforcements..." Crazyjane said, as an eye-aching shaft of inverted light shone through the gathering clouds and stormfront. Simultaneously, she began her grisly genesis into Black Annis, her vicious, predatory, misandrist alter.
Detweiler sneered: "Ah, the so-called Freak Show. I was wondering how long it would take you to show up here."
"I call upon Hera Ops, guardian of this home and world to encircle and contain your unlawful power." Avemaria intoned, as a spherical cage set in around him:
"Ah, that's right. You're the lady who used to be Daniel-Paul Schreber in this universe."
"I am this world's guardian sorceress. Indeed, I am the magestate of this man whom you describe, for his treatise Memoirs of My Nervous Illness was the literal truth in this universe. You cannot fight the legacy of a demiurge. Desist and withdraw."
The redhaired figure's stolen green lantern power battery coursed a sinister green and Avemaria's cage shattered. At the same time, she screamed as she was involuntarily returned to her normstate, nineteenth century German immortal judge Daniel Paul Schreber. Detweiler only had a moment to gloat before Rebus barrelled into him, and Hysterike grabbed the power battery. But then there was a surge of green light and the metahuman hysteric screamed as it consumed her.
"Ilse! Is she..?"
"Gone. Where you'll never find her. Your blasted and cankered homeworld- Earth 15."
"Exuent!" Avemaria said, and Crazyjane and Rebus pursued their Freak Show colleague, leaving Avemaria to face the intruder. He smiled levelly at her, with no real trace of warmth or self-knowledge. The female side of Tiresias replied:
"What is your purpose here?"
"I found this world on the outliers of the Core Multiverse. It has so much potential, but you weaklings protect it from the darkness. Life is a surrealist comedy to all of you, isn't it?"
Avemaria shook her head: "Kay- Crazyjane is an incest survivor and the Abject is never far from her. Body and soul and her precious multiple minds, she is the strongest person I have ever known on this world."
Detweiler snorted: "Spare me the cloying aphorisms, sorceress. It is you and I. And on most worlds, your male side was a hopeless delusional individual with schizophrenia."
Avemaria's eyes flashed red:
"True, perhaps. But as you have so correctly observed, Earth-49 as they call it is not 'most worlds."
Earth-15.
Instants ago, Hysterike had materialised in what should have been a desolate vacuum, but that wasn't what confronted her now. Around her, trees wove their verdant tapestry and the world was visibly regenerating around her- as it moved to another iteration and repaired the damage that Superman-Prime had inflicted on it.
In the matter of a breath, animals from bestiaries lurched and rose and fell to bone shards around her and one such creature, an early hominid, swung down from the trees and began to walk upright as she watched.
Where was the threat in this? Why had Detweiler sent her here:
"Ilse!"
"Kay, Rebus. For some reason, Detweiler's plan must have failed."
Rebus pointed: "No, it has not. This regeneration is being warped. It is being steered back onto the path that led to its earlier iteration's destruction."
"You and me, then, Rebus. Time sorter boxes. Not very original, is he?"
Earth-49.
"You see, my plan is to dominate the multiverse, not just this boxed in corner of it. And to do that, I need a sacrifice. It was going to be Earth-51, but it recovered before I could utilise its mortococcus plague against the rest of realities. Then I encountered Earth-15."
"Your plan misses one important detail, Detweiler. Superboy-Prime was wiped out in the last reiteration of Earth-33. He no longer exists to destroy Earth-15. Therefore, it is...No. What are you doing?"
"Can your sorcery not tell you, mage? I've set up a feedback paradox. I have plucked Superman-Prime from oblivion at Vanishing Point. He will still devastate that world. And I will harness that energy to trigger a new multiverse-erasing crisis. Only this one will erase all but the Universe of Antimatter from existence."
As the threesome watched, history wound its way through Earth-15's version of history. Around the sixties, it began to diverge, as Lor-Zod arrived on Earth from Krypton and began to romance Lena Luther. In time, they were married. As the alternate Earth reached the eighties, other metahumans experienced transitions in their lives and made way for their former teenage sidekicks, if the latter had survived. When the Joker murdered Batman, the now-adult Jason Todd took up his mentor's mantle as Batman. Wally West became the Flash as the Reverse-Flash killed Barry Allen who perished saving his Iris from the attentions of the psychotic future speedster. A seabourne pathogen devastated Atlantis, and Arthur (Aquaman) Curry was amongst the victims, succeeded by his protege Garth. On distant Paradise Island, Queen Hippolyta was felled by an invasion from a rival Amazon sect and Diana returned to govern the matriarchy in her mother's stead. Donna Troy succeeded her older sister as Wonder Woman. Oliver Queen married Dinah Lance and the couple retired- leaving Roy Harper to become Green Arrow.
And then, one day, darkness fell from the skies. In an insane quest for illusory perfection, the darkclad twisted Superman Prime appeared above the planet. He scowled at the domesticity at the Fortress of Solitude and began what would have been a death dive. He was unprepared for the red pulse of light as Crazyjane's Mother Sun alter activated and began bombarding him, repeatedly. Her telepathic voice said:
-No! No, you will not do this. You will not wipe out six billion people on this planet because of your senseless obsession with a vanished phantom world. You won't kill. Cliff. And the strongest woman on Earth-15 kept up her deadly bombardment as Superman-Prime cried out, and fell from the firmament, like the mythical Lucifer. She watched as the former Superman of Earth-Prime screamed and cried out in agony, as Rebus blotted out the sun, depriving him of the G class star's reparative strength.
And in a moment, Superman-Prime- Kal-El of Krypton-Prime- breathed his pain-ridden last. Kay smiled:
"I wanted to do that to him so many times in fantasy. Now... what is it, Rebus?"
"This isn't over, Kay."
"What do you mean? Prime is dead. He won't be able to destroy this iteration of Earth-15 the way that he did to its predecessor, our home." Crazyjane replied.
"This may have been a diversion, Kay. It is likely that the resurrection of Earth-15 and the reappearance of Superman Prime was not the core objective of Detweiler's machinations."
"What else could it be? There's nothing else exceptional about our particular alternate Earth. Except for the fact that the USSR here never got involved in Afghanistan, the Shah crushed the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Yugoslavia survives as a coherent nation-state and Northern Ireland voted to join the Irish Free State in the 1920s. None of those qualify as a decisive dealbreaker."
"Those time sorters are not the ones that were used against the Legion of Superheroes on pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Earth-1. They seem to be designed to redistribute the energies released during the conflict between you and Superman-Prime away from Earth-15 to another alternate Earth."
"Then where...?"
"I suspect that Detweiler wants the signal difference that distinguishes our adopted world from the rest of the Core Multiverse."
"You mean the Croesus white hole itself?"
"Exactly. And look around you. While this iteration of Earth-15 resembles our own lost world in so many ways, it is not the original. There is no Doom Patrol here, and you never became Crazyjane. Cliff Steele died in the racecar accident that transformed him into Robotman in the original timeline."
"It's okay, Rebus. Earth-15 as we knew it is gone, I've accepted that for a long time. Time to go back to our real home now." Crazyjane cycled into her Flit persona and teleported her colleagues offworld.
Detweiler had focused his time sorter array on the distant Croesus white hole, despite the best efforts of Avemaria to halt his efforts. When the others materialised back, Crazyjane switched to Mother Sun and resumed her bombardment, while Avemaria called:
"Kay. We're only energising his project. Which appears to be the use of our Earth as a mobile inter-alternate platform to raid and plunder the other worlds of the multiverse. But if you overload it..."
Crazyjane nodded: "Switching to blue-white stellar energies. Rebus, get Ave out of here. Ave, generate a thaumaturgic shield to keep others sheilded from the radiation output."
By the time Detweiler registered the thwarting of his plans, he was too late. His time sorters flamed and fused. With his remaining reserves of energy, he cursed his luck and disappeared back into the past.
Back at the Freak Show base, that evening, Kay looked down at the photograph of Cliff. She gently held it to her face and kissed it. Better this way. Better that this Cliff Steele be at peace and never knew her new iteration. Better that he never became Robotman and ended up dying defending his world from that insane Kryptonian bastard like so many others. A single tear slid down her face as she turned and left the room.
THE END