Post by redsycorax on Sept 21, 2018 4:24:13 GMT
On Earth-80, there were no Republican US presidents after George H. Bush. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, he was succeeded by his former Vice President Al Gore, who successfully averted a potential terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of New York on September 11, 2001. Nor did Gore start protracted wars of attrition in Afghanistan and the unrelated theatre of Iraq. Instead, he targeted the compound where the Saudi architect of the would-be terrorist attack had relocated himself and his core command, and then bombarded it with cruise missiles. The show of strength also lit the fuse beneath Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was overthrown and had his throat slit during an uprising against his decades of tyranny, conducted by his endlessly suffering people who could finally take no more. However, for the United States, the first decade of the twenty first century was not to be as placid as it might have seemed to alternate universes whose histories diverged from their own at that point.
For one thing, the domestic history was somewhat more turbulent. As Al Gore served his two terms and appointed liberals to the frontbench of the US Supreme Court, the dreams of social conservatives for a return of an idealised golden age of values around reproductive health, sexual identity and other aspects of social policy receded. Some found peace and solace in their particular avenues of faith, but others did not. Domestic terrorism escalated within the United States as strengthened trade union laws and more comprehensive welfare protection rebuilt the former northeastern rustbelt states, and drove investment and employment away from the South. Despite this, in a robust economic environment, China, Brazil and India steamrollered ahead in terms of international growth and market revenue. As Gore gave way to Barack Obama gave way to Hillary Clinton, the turmoil of a bloody and ravenous 'culture war' convulsed the United States, polarising the country.
And its metahumans, the Justicekeepers of America?
Superwoman had been born Kara Zor-El in Argo City. However, in a twist of fate, it was Kryptonopolis which had adopted Zor-El's weather control dome, not his native city, and so, when Krypton's unstable radioactive core reached critical mass and detonated, Zor-El and Alura tearfully kissed their beloved baby daughter goodbye as the cities of an advanced civilisation that had prevailed ten thousand years splintered, caught aflame and then perished. Except for Kryptonopolis, where Jor-El and Lara saw their own infant Kal-El grow into a youth, with years denied their alternate iterations in other articulations of Kryptonian history. On Earth, Kara was found by a kind-hearted Kansas couple, the Kents, adopted, and raised as their daughter, Claire Kent. When she reached ten years of age, Kara became Supergirl and at thirteen, she joined the Legion of Superheroes in the thirtieth century. As time went on, she grew to womanhood and her fosterparents died. Travelling to Metropolis University, Claire Kent became a journalist at the Daily Globe. Larry Lane, her colleague there, learnt to love the Kryptonian. In distant Kryptonopolis, a meteor shower shattered the city's radiation proof canopy and holed its ground, exposing the inhabitants to anti-kryptonite. Jor-El and Lara dusted off their abandoned starship design and shot their son Kal-El earthwards, where he met his cousin Superwoman and became Superboy, at first Superwoman's 'secret emergency weapon', and then, triumphantly, her partner. There was a decade of happiness as Kal-El matured, became a young man, graduated from high school and attended university. However, Kara's hopes for Kal-El were never to be realised, because at that point, the Anti-Monitor invaded Earth-80 with his shadow force and Kal-El sacrificed his life to save his beloved cousin and adopted world. As the turmoil increased on the planet afterward, Kara abandoned her Claire Kent identity and ceased to masquerade as a human journalist. At forty five, she wondered if normality would ever return and she could have a life of her own.
Nightwing was Richard Grayson, who at thirty had inherited Bruce Wayne's fortune as his only surviving relative. Bruce had never had time to marry or father children, let alone abandon his nocturnal responsibilities as the Batman. As Commissioner Gordon, Catwoman and Batgirl were gunned down and Commissioner O'Hara murdered in his turn, Wayne aged prematurely, until one dark day, R'as Al Ghul impaled his mentor on the edge of a sword. On the premise that there could only ever be one Batman, Grayson refused to become Batman II, instead retaining his Nightwing identity and joining his mentor in the JKA in his place. Grayson only ever had ephemeral relationships with comrades like Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, otherwise known as Starfire, until her parents died and she became queen of her world. At forty, he wondered how long he could sustain his dual existence, and whether, like Bruce before him, Nightwing would die alone, bleeding to death in a Gotham gutter amidst the shroud of night.
Diana Prince had once been known as "Wonder Woman," but then her Amazon sisters and their island sanctuary of Themiscyra left this dimension and without that nexus, Diana lost her metahuman abilities. Learning martial arts expertise, however, Prince reinvented herself as a technologist and humanitarian, and used her intellect and discipline to become The Huntress after a period as one of the core agents of the ARGUS intelligence agency. Her name had been linked romantically to Bruce Waynes once upon a time, but both of them denied involvement. And then, R'as al Ghul murdered Batman and possibly, her heart was silently broken.
Alexandra de Witt was a newspaper photographer, then the unexpected recipient of a green power ring that enabled her to become a Green Lantern, encouraged by her graphic designer boyfriend Kyle Rayner. And then, one dark day, an old adversary of the former Green Lantern of Earth, Hal Jordan, Major Force, tracked Alex down, learnt her secret identity, strangled Kyle and cut him up, leaving him in pieces in her refridgerator. That would have shaken a lesser woman to her core, but Alexandria had her revenge on Major Force and the secret government initiative that had employed him, banishing Kyle's murderer billions of years in the future, in a lifeless universe despite his immortality, well off significant time travel lanes of transit.
What had happened to the Flash was the saddest episode of all. Barry Allen had lost his wife Iris to the murderous Reverse-Flash/Professor Zoom. No-one would blame Allen for what happened next- Allen strangled Zoom while both were in the timestream and jettisoned his body into the future, at a time when the Earth's red giant sun had grown so immense as to consume the planet, and Eobard Thawne's body. But what happened next wasn't so easy to accept- Allen decapitated Captain Cold, who hadn't even raised his cryogun from its holster. He reached into Mirror Master's body and tore out his heart. He even murdered Al Desmond, the long-reformed Mr Element, in front of his children. And at that point, there was the question of collateral damage. Renaming himself Darkspeed, Allen had long resigned from the Justicekeepers. While Green Arrow had tried to intercept him, Darkspeed deliberately crippled him in the course of the rescue attempt. Black Canary resigned from the JKA to care for her afflicted lover in her turn. As it turned out, there was only one way to stop the insane renegade speedster, although it tore the responsible party's heart out. Wally West pursued his former mentor, surpassed him and plunged his vibrating hand inside Allen's head, killing him instantly. And so, in April 1985, Wally West became the Flash. The trauma of what he had had to do to stop his former mentor's murderous trail would haunt him for years afterwards.
The Atom left Earth for the Microverse a few months later. The Hawks shortly thereafter returned to Thanagar and never set foot on Earth again, and Adam Strange shut off his zeta beam transit to Rann and resettled on his adopted planet fulltime. The Martian Manhunter returned to his own period of Martian history and was reunited with his long-lost family. Which left a depleted JKA at a time when it could ill afford to be short-staffed.
As ever, Alex had one of her dreams. She was somehow on an alternate Earth, with a male Green Lantern who looked like her beloved Kyle. And Kyle took off his mask and it was him, as if Major Force's murder of the man she loved had never happened. In a rush of emotion and pain, she related the tragedy that had befallen them- her recruitment as a Green Lantern, Major Force's strangulation, murder and dissection of Kyle's body, standing alongside the rest of the JKA at Negative Hour, stopping Hal Jordan when he became too much of a threat to the Earth while possessed by the Parallax parasite, and the void in her life after Kyle's death. Alexandra was a committed and resolute Green Lantern, and an asset to the JKA. But she had failed to save Kyle Rayner's life and while she used her newfound abilities responsibly and seriously, she wondered at times whether she had anything else to live for...
"I don't know how this is possible, but I'm not from your past or future. Probably some alternate Earth. In my world, I inherited the last Green Lantern ring, fought Hal Jordan and resisted the onset of Zero Hour. In my world, I'm the only Green Lantern."
"Who are you?"
"Alex, this is so hard for me. I don't know if you've even met me in this world. My name is Kyle Rayner."
"Kyle?! But you're dead- Major Force murdered you."
"I was afraid you were going to say that. On my Earth, that happened to you."
"Kyle, I..."
"I love you too, Alex. But we both know it's time we said goodbye. You need to move on now. You have to let me go."
Wally West was on duty on the JKA satellite. He looked up as Alex materialised in the teleport tube:
"Lexie. How was last night?"
"I had one of those dreams again, Wally."
"I know. Mine are about Barry. I want to remember him as he used to be, before Aunt Iris died, but... I can't. It's always about his time as Darkspeed. Lexie, am I cracking up?"
"I'm supposed to be the last Green Lantern. Every time I fail to protect someone from an act of senseless violence, I keep thinking about Kyle. I wish I had Kara or Diana's strength."
Superwoman closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the tattered remnants of Superboy's combat suit, the last remnants of her cousin. At some point, he would have become a Superman and several decades later, she could have retired. That wasn't going to happen now. In Metropolis, Larry Lane had never married anyone else and still waited for her when she visited her former adopted city. He was still dedicated to her, and still wrote advocacy pieces in the Daily Globe whenever people like Victor Vale in the tabloid Gotham Times slandered her, or the rest of the Justicekeepers. With others, though, like the widowed Dinah Queen, that was more difficult. Dinah had never forgiven the JKA for Oliver's mutilation and his subsequent death from its complications five years ago. She didn't blame Dinah, even though she was gentler when it came to Superwoman, given the recognition of Kal-El's earlier sacrifice. Nightwing, Huntress, Flash and Green Lantern didn't deserve the animosity, though. And moreover, there were problems of another kind. Over time, the last remaining supervillains had died, resigned or reformed themselves. Most of their time was spent as an adjunct of central government, intercepting the depredations of domestic terrorists. In itself, that was problematic, although Diana had always had connections to the US armed forces and had even spent time as an agent for ARGUS after the death of her mentor I Ching in one of the earliest domestic terrorist assaults on the US mainland. At times, she was grateful for her friend's presence in the JKA, a symbol of continuity with an idyllic and more innocent Silver Age- one quite unlike the "Iron Age" that the Earth's surviving metahumans found themselves trapped within.
Nightwing stopped in at the Nightcave, touching the artefacts of his life fighting alongside Batman. The Giant Penny. The Joker's card. Then there were the wax figurines that depicted Batman himself, Batgirl, Catwoman, Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hara, Harvey Bullock, all of them dead and gone now. And most poignant of all, he saw the memorial stone that had been laid when the years of service and loyalty finally took their toll on Alfred Pennyworth. The place was like a mausoleum, he thought to himself. He was the only one left and there was every chance that he'd die on the streets of Gotham one night. At least that psychotic bastard the Joker had gone too, and couldn't gloat at having survived his lifelong nemesis- because he had died with him. Wrinkling his nose at the smell from the last trial by combat, Nightwing sat and removed his boots, pulled off his uniform top and felt the refreshing warmth of the Nightcave's shower between his fingers. Doffing his tights, he stepped into the heaing susurrus and spray and let it purify and regenerate him.
He was unprepared as a certain scarlet clad figure blurred through the wall and blurred to a halt: "Oh $#!*! Dick, I..."
"Need a towel, buddy." Dick accepted the towel from an embarrassed Wally West and knotted it around his midriff, as Wally looked around the Nightcave:
"You haven't changed it much, have you?"
"Ah, well, I'm not a family man like you are with Jay and Iris."
"Do you have the others around?"
"From our Titan days? Nope. Gar runs Dayton Industries with his stepfather permanently incapacitated, Victor's in deep cryogenic suspension until someone figures out how to cure the omnivirus he's harbouring, Raven and Koriand'r preside over Azarath and Tamaran and haven't got the time for Earthbound vacations, and Roy and Garth are estranged from the Titans for reasons to do with the deaths of Oliver Queen and Aquaman when the Legion of Doom sent Chemo against us. And Donna's retired. We ain't teenagers anymore, buddy."
"So I noticed. I always thought I'd succeed Barry one day. It's just that the circumstances were so damned wrong and so was the event that led to it."
"If wishes were dreams, it'll still be Bruce here, or he'd be upstairs living with Selina in peace and comfort. I wanted him to be happy, but there was no woman for him after Selina was killed by the Joker."
"Alexandra still feels she's too inexperienced."
"She's joking, right? We are talking about the woman who single-handedly revived the Oan Power Battery and enabled it to locate more potential green ringbearers?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell her. It's not so bad for you and me, you're a stud and I have Linda, Iris and Jay. But she's on her own and Green Lantern Corps cohesion will take a long time to recoalsce. Hopefully, Kara and Diana can talk her around."
"I hope so. The JKA is short staffed as it is and if Alex goes, it's a major blow to our skill set and combat configuration."
"Hey, can I grab a foot long sandwich uptop before we get going?"
"We can indeed."
At length, the Justice Keepers of America assembled at their table. Superwoman cleared her throat:
"We have a serious situation in deep space. Several large Kuiper Belt objects have left their regular orbits and are converging on the Earth."
Green Lantern nodded: "That's too deliberate to be brownian motion from Bacchus, the ninth planet, isn't it?"
"Exactly, Alex. I guess that means you and I go out there and find out what's going on. Dick, Wally, Diana, you get to handle Earthbound threats, if any come up within the timeframe of that mission."
Diana nodded: "I'll do a news event threat projection scenario on the mainframe."
Dick said: "I do have some good news. Red Arrow, Roy Harper? Said he was interested in getting back into active duty."
"That's great. The last new membership intake we had was five years ago. Well done, Dick."
"Thanks, Kara. Okay, both of you. K antidote injection for Kara, emergency force screen for Alex should she get sideswiped by anything containing vanadium"
And with that, the two troupes seperated. In a Metropolis office, a red haired woman in her late forties smiled to herself. Excellent. Her deadliest enemy was leaving the Earth, which meant she had time to prepare. Lana Lang nodded to herself as she summoned a series of specs from LangCorp's itinerary and set to work calculating how they could best be used to attack Superwoman and her comrades.
"Penny for them?"
"Eh? Oh, my old adversary Lana Lang. She and I have been fighting each other since we grew up together in Smallville. Initially, we were best friends- she even developed a prospective kryptonite cure for me. And then came the day her lab blew up and I rescued her only just in time. Except on one level, I was far too late. Her body was minimally damaged, but her mind... it'd been taken over by a dissociative alter personality, Lana Black, and it's remained that way ever since. Her considerable intellect was perverted against me."
"LangCorp Lana Lang?"
"The same. I wish things had gone differently, Alex. Hey, I meant to say, good work with that Spectar incursion last month."
"Thanks, Kara. Yeah, Wally told me his predecessor had faced off against them and shared some information about their specific vulnerabilities. It's easier doing that than fending off idiots like that $#!*head who called Dick a 'xenophile pervert' after we appeared before that Congressional hearing the other day and threw that bottle at him."
"Which you caught and blowtorched."
"Yeah, some people. I mean, they haven't got a hate on for you, because you're a 'naturalised' alien and have lived on Earth for most of your life. I'm viewed as less than 'optimal' because I work for an 'alien' policeforce. But Dick had an intimate relationship with Koriand'r, so he gets subjected to anti-alien xenophobia..."
"Heads up, here comes the asteroid array."
"Kara. I'm picking up severe concentrations of kryptonite loaded onto them. More than enough to overwhelm your K antidote's safeguard period after it wears off. Hang back. I'll tackle this." Alexandria dove downward to confront the barrage and Kara marvelled at the younger woman's self-discipline and resolve.
On Earth, an alarm rang out as Dick looked up from the monitor:
"It's a reproductive health clinic in Phoenix."
"So what's the situation?"
"There seems to be this religious conservative riot going on, and they have an identifiable terrorist metahuman onsite. We think it's Todd Clayton, aka "Christian Soldier." Okay, so his powerset includes superstrength, limited superspeed and invulnerability, superagility but not to the point of flight and that's about it. Covert drug testing reveals a cumulatively toxic chemical mixture designed to stimulate latent metagene activity, but ultimately fatal."
Wally nodded:
"Diana?"
"These individuals are loathsome. A religious warrior is the worst of our kind, Wally. They mask their real motives behind sanctimonious rhetoric and lofty moral attributes, however cruel and monstrous their actual actions are, in the name of self-justification. They may fool themselves but they do not fool me."
With that, the Huntress checked the tensile strength on her crossbow and the three of them teleported down to New Mexico.
However, another figure had arrived there first. Helena Kosmatos (Fury) had been inactive for several decades, but an invocation near her place of suspended animation had awoken her and her guardian spirits had informed her about the situation in adjacent Phoenix. When she turned up outside the protest perimeter, she said to her spirits:
"What you are showing me is abhorrent."
"Within an infinite multiverse, there are many variations, with some that display beauty and horror side by side. This is a democratic world, but these individuals seek to impose their religious code on those who do not share it."
"What are they doing?"
"THey seek to obstruct women's access to reproductive and sexual health. Those classified as 'anti-life' will be killed and those forced into compliance will be made to breed new foot soldiers for the cause."
"This is unacceptable. As you suggest, I will confront this "Christian Soldier", but..."
"I am afraid that this confrontation is one amongst dozens of others within this country. It will produce infinitesimal benefit."
"It will do some good. What these individuals are proposing is grim and merciless." At the sound of riflefire from the Saviours of Unborn Lives, she pitched forward and decapitated the assailant, who had killed a clinic escort and one of the clinic clients.
I will not pray to mercy to the Kindly Ones for you as I would a worthier adversary. For your crimes, I will slaughter you like the soulless monster you are.
When Flash, Nightwing and Huntress arrived, Dick gasped: "What the hell! Who...?!"
"I...know her. I fought alongside her in the Second World War. Helena?! Sister?! Y-you did this?!"
"Diana, my friend. I had no choice. As you can see, I did not begin this. This Christian Soldier being worked the crowd into a frenzy, inciting it to attack this medical centre. They had firearms, machetes and other weapons."
"That did not justify decapitating him, Helena. This is not total war and there had to be some more humane way of restraining him."
"'Humane', Diana? I was doing my duty, protecting medical staff and law enforcement officers from armed assailants."
"You may have escalated an already heated social conflict beyond any hope of peaceful resolution."
"If I still had my lasoo and Amazon skills-"
"But you do not, Diana. And this world is in sore need of an additional female metahuman guardian apart from you and Superwoman. I will intervene when I witness situations like this in the future. Count on it."
And Helena Kosmatos/Fury was as good as her word. She intervened whenever there was justifiable cause and saved the lives of countless women and men as the abortion conflict escalated. Conservative Christians quailed before her and feared her, but womens groups and the courts cautiously embraced her, despite her sometimes brutal tactics. Diana read about the 'turning of the tide' within that social debate, and feared the outcome. Who had returned Fury to existence? Then she remembered. She turned to Kara and Alex: "I think we need to pay a visit to a certain New York mage."
"It's her, isn't it?"
"Who are you two talking about?"
"Ask your ring about Thessaly."
The figure lay on her couch, impassive. Superwoman was implacable:
"Damn you, Thessaly! Who gave you leave or sanction to do this?"
"I am a free agent, Kara Zor-El. I appreciate that you regard yourself as under moral constraint given the extent and scope of your abilities and that is to your reknown."
"That isn't the point, lady. This is not ancient Greece, and you are comporting yourself like a barbarian."
"Ah, the Green Lantern. I hear that that Major Force barbarian murdered your mate. You banished him to the utmost area of time."
"But he is alive."
"Does he deserve to be, Alexandra de Witt? Truly?"
"Don't answer that, Alex. You did the right thing."
"Like you did when you hunted down Steven Trevor's killers and killed them one by one in Athens, Diana?"
"That was different, Thessaly. They planned to kill other NATO operatives. In fact, they had already killed one Frenchwoman, a grandmother with a disabled adult child and multitudes of grandchildren."
"I do not criticise you, Diana, my sister. Any more than I criticise Alexandra for the elegance of her solution to the murderous threat that Major Force presented."
"With great power comes great responsibility, Thessaly. Look, we could go around killing and castrating rapists. We don't."
"And meanwhile, our sisters die by their thousands, victims of foul male assailants and batterers. Men of the quality of your Kyle Rayner are indeed rare, Alexandra. You have every right to halt Major Force by any method that you see fit."
"Stop trying to corrupt her, Thessaly."
"Am I the corrupt one, here, Diana? Or are you the weak one?"
"Damn her!" Diana said, stalking from the JKA teleporter.
"It's okay, Diana. Wow, did you really kill a whole retinue of KGB agents in Athens that time?"
"I did, Alex, and I'm not proud of it at all. But in addition to Steve, they had already assassinated that woman I told you about. And yes, I do regret it and I still have nightmares about it."
"If only Zatanna was still here, instead of the Sorcerors World."
"Could we call her? Would she come back for this?"
"I tried when I worked out that it was Thessaly behind this. She won't. She has a world to oversee and responsibilities beyond our immediate world. And Kara's Phantom Zone projector won't work on Thessaly. She has millennia of magic behind her. Only another mage of comparable experience and prowess could. The problem is, what if there is one out there?"
Unfortunately, as it turned out, there was. One day in 1985, a firestorm of antimatter descended on an unfortunate alternate universe which had housed Earth-658. Here, in seventeenth century England, Oliver Cromwell had lived until 1668, and the Commonwealth of Great Britain was set in iron. While there was technological progress, the same could not be said of social change, albeit at an impossibly glacial rate. The same applied in the American Commonwealth that was founded as its colonial outpost in North America. Devolution was granted so as not to trigger calls for national independence, but it was not a democratic political settlement. A Lord Protector, Privy Council and Star Chamber were the primary branches of Commonwealth theocratic government. Here, a Kryptonian had been sequestered and when it had become impossible to control him, quietly executed through use of kryptonite. Here, obscene human experimentation was carried out on water-breathers, and on those who had acquired metamorphic and hyperspeed capabilities. And unfortunately, here too, a homo magii had been perverted and brainwashed into serving those who had once incinerated thousands of her ancestors. Here, a Batman whose parents had been slaughtered for 'reproductive crimes' and assisting lesbian and gay 'sexual psychopaths' fought back, until the regime unexpectedly encountered its day of judgement. But the Witch would not be caught and killed by the act of a random cosmos like a brute animal. She opted for survival and magicked herself away from her doomed world.
Decades passed. Initially, it seemed as if the forces of righteousness were making strong headway on her adopted alternate Earth, and she retired into suspended animation, awaiting the dawn of a new age where her home had metamorphosed into something akin to her beloved, perished homeworld. She lay in a crystal casket, sleeping the decades away, until the powerful magicks that Thessaly used to awaken Fury had an unintended side-effect. "Mrofni em fo eht stneve taht evah dessap no siht dlrow."
The Witch's brow furrowed in dismay and then anger as she was made aware of what she considered an unwelcome turn of events. She hissed:
"Ekat em ot Atnalta ta ecno!" She materialised in the audience of Theodore Stryker, a particularly influential conservative evangelist and intoned:
"Netsil ot em, nam fo dog. Nmednoc eht snamuhatem, eripsni noissecces!"
And for the second time in two centuries, the United States was rent asunder as the seductive voice of a charismatic demagogue provoked long-suppressed anxieties and smouldering anger out into the open. In the South, gay bars were put to the torch, lesbians and gay men were lynched, abortion clinics were blown up and their clients, doctors and guards killed by summary firing squads. In Washington DC, a dark faced Hilary Clinton warned the subversives of the consequences of their actions, as the Justice Keepers awaited for a telephone call. But the Witch was not done with her murderous initiative, despite the growing anger that beset Thessaly as she watched the unfolding events. Abruptly, an earth to satellite link phased into existence within the JKA satellite, 22,300 miles above the Earth.
"Madam President?"
"I've just received word of a massive launch of nuclear weapons from across the Southern United States. Their trajectories appear to take them to termination points above most Northern cities. Superwoman, can you and your colleagues intervene, for the sake of humanity?"
"You heard the woman, Justice Keepers. Let's move."
In many ways, perhaps, it was one of the most glorious hours that would have crowned accounts of the legendary Justice Keepers of America, as Superwoman, the Flash, Green Lantern and, much to their surprise and relief, Fury, crisscrossed the Northern United States, defusing nuclear weapons in flight and neutralising their deadly, radioactive payloads. Thessaly sat back with a mug of camomile tea and smiled to herself as the act of rebellion's worst excess petered out. Then her brow furrowed as she detected a thaumaturgic influence behind the unprovoked attack. To her horror and amazement, it was a sister sorceress- true, not one as aged and experienced as she, but certainly as adept. She telepathed to Fury:
This attack was incurred by a sorceress whose thaumaturgy is controlling its legions. She resides in the Church of Redeemed Humanity in Atlanta, Georgia. I will join you there, Helena. Be prepared.
In Atlanta, the Justice Keepers met outside the Atlanta skyscraper that housed the ministry of Theodore Stryker.
"Remember, Stryker is only her pawn in this. He doesn't even get scratched. Do you hear me, Helena?"
"He is nought but a weak male. My apologies to your fellow warriors, Sister Diana, but our target must be the Witch known as Zee D'Anya."
"Blazes. You mean the person who did this is an alternate version of our former JKA ally Zatanna?" Dick exclaimed.
'Dick, Diana, with us. And I repeat, Helena, no lethal force."
Thessaly shook her head: "Do not be so moralistic, Kryptonian. Consider that this woman was almost responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths."
"Precisely. Every life is precious in this context. We take her alive if we can. No precipitous action. Dick?"
"I have the building schematics, Kara. Let's go."
While Wally, Diana and Dick fought Stryker's "Purity Force" on the floors below, Superwoman, Green Lantern, Fury and Thessaly ascended to the control chamber. Froth-mouthed, Theodore Stryker brandished a gun, only to be knocked out by sleeping gas provided by Green Lantern. Malignant and glowing at a web of eldritch energies, Zee D'Anya the Witch sneered at the Justice Keepers:
"So you are the 'strongest' this world has to offer. A purportedly mighty Kryptonian vulnerable to sorcery, the pawn of a once-mighty interstellar police force and...ah. At last we meet, hellspawn pagan."
"If anyone serves the infernal realms in this conflict, it is you, dressed in vestments of purity that shield the corruption and madness festering inside her carrion heart."
"And you? You have outlived your stolen lifetimes, archaic crone. Hctac emalfa, sserecros!"
Thessaly's brows furrowed as she held back the flames: "You're not dealing with non-mages now, young fool. Is that all you think it takes to vanquish the legendary warrior-witches of Achaea, mere words spoken in inversion? Well, then..."
Slash her throat. Despite having been advised not to take matters into her own hands, Thessaly was the daughter of an older, more primeval morality than modern day societies. If she could have done so herself, she would have, but that would have been certain suicide. Instead, her mind took control of the only instrument that could accomplish such a feat as a scarlet blur swept through the room. Kara yelled: "Wally, no!!!" As a deep rip coursed through Zee D'Anya's throat, and blood sprayed from it, the last surviving Witch of Earth-658 managed one last brutal spell: "Emalf-foorp reirrab, esaec! Eof, nrub!" And in that instant, Wally West, the Flash, burst into incandescent flame and light, screamed and perished.
"No!" Dick said, cradling the figure of his old Teen Titans ally in his arms, as his eyes flickered into sightlessness and he breathed his last. Thessaly took a dagger and stabbed the prone, struggling Zee D'Anya as she tried to get away until Kara restrained her. But by then, Zee D'Anya was long dead, in any case, and there was no assailant to halt.
EPILOGUE
High above the Earth, the survivors of the ordeal met.
Superwoman stopped Dick as they entered the meeting room:
"So I hear Koriand'r and you are getting hitched?"
"Well, we have to, don't we? Kori's pregnant!"
"Dick!" Kara exclaimed, embracing him and lifting him high into the air.
"It was sad to say goodbye to Alex, but..."
"But, the new Green Lantern Corps needs a leader and she has wisdom and self-discipline beyond her years. And at least her Kyle won't haunt her out there."
"Larry and I talked things over. He's done some Pulitzer class journalism and he may have finally proven that Lana Lang was behind Lex's murder. I love him so much, Dick. Not to even told me what he was doing, and the fact that Lex was a one-time romantic rival for my affections...he's been through enough. You may not be the only ones tying the knot shortly."
"With Roy joining and Helena amongst our number now that Thessaly's released her from her thrall, the JKA is looking stronger than ever."
But in a secluded corner of the JKA satellite, Diana Prince, the Huntress, gazed down at a photograph of her precious Steve Trevor and gently kissed it. There were some things that time could not relent upon, no matter how earnestly one wished. But she was a former Amazon Princess and warrior and could seperate her heart and her will. She set the photograph down on her dresser table and walked toward the sound of the klaxon within the JKA meeting room as the organisation that she had helped found so long ago entered a new era.
THE END
For one thing, the domestic history was somewhat more turbulent. As Al Gore served his two terms and appointed liberals to the frontbench of the US Supreme Court, the dreams of social conservatives for a return of an idealised golden age of values around reproductive health, sexual identity and other aspects of social policy receded. Some found peace and solace in their particular avenues of faith, but others did not. Domestic terrorism escalated within the United States as strengthened trade union laws and more comprehensive welfare protection rebuilt the former northeastern rustbelt states, and drove investment and employment away from the South. Despite this, in a robust economic environment, China, Brazil and India steamrollered ahead in terms of international growth and market revenue. As Gore gave way to Barack Obama gave way to Hillary Clinton, the turmoil of a bloody and ravenous 'culture war' convulsed the United States, polarising the country.
And its metahumans, the Justicekeepers of America?
Superwoman had been born Kara Zor-El in Argo City. However, in a twist of fate, it was Kryptonopolis which had adopted Zor-El's weather control dome, not his native city, and so, when Krypton's unstable radioactive core reached critical mass and detonated, Zor-El and Alura tearfully kissed their beloved baby daughter goodbye as the cities of an advanced civilisation that had prevailed ten thousand years splintered, caught aflame and then perished. Except for Kryptonopolis, where Jor-El and Lara saw their own infant Kal-El grow into a youth, with years denied their alternate iterations in other articulations of Kryptonian history. On Earth, Kara was found by a kind-hearted Kansas couple, the Kents, adopted, and raised as their daughter, Claire Kent. When she reached ten years of age, Kara became Supergirl and at thirteen, she joined the Legion of Superheroes in the thirtieth century. As time went on, she grew to womanhood and her fosterparents died. Travelling to Metropolis University, Claire Kent became a journalist at the Daily Globe. Larry Lane, her colleague there, learnt to love the Kryptonian. In distant Kryptonopolis, a meteor shower shattered the city's radiation proof canopy and holed its ground, exposing the inhabitants to anti-kryptonite. Jor-El and Lara dusted off their abandoned starship design and shot their son Kal-El earthwards, where he met his cousin Superwoman and became Superboy, at first Superwoman's 'secret emergency weapon', and then, triumphantly, her partner. There was a decade of happiness as Kal-El matured, became a young man, graduated from high school and attended university. However, Kara's hopes for Kal-El were never to be realised, because at that point, the Anti-Monitor invaded Earth-80 with his shadow force and Kal-El sacrificed his life to save his beloved cousin and adopted world. As the turmoil increased on the planet afterward, Kara abandoned her Claire Kent identity and ceased to masquerade as a human journalist. At forty five, she wondered if normality would ever return and she could have a life of her own.
Nightwing was Richard Grayson, who at thirty had inherited Bruce Wayne's fortune as his only surviving relative. Bruce had never had time to marry or father children, let alone abandon his nocturnal responsibilities as the Batman. As Commissioner Gordon, Catwoman and Batgirl were gunned down and Commissioner O'Hara murdered in his turn, Wayne aged prematurely, until one dark day, R'as Al Ghul impaled his mentor on the edge of a sword. On the premise that there could only ever be one Batman, Grayson refused to become Batman II, instead retaining his Nightwing identity and joining his mentor in the JKA in his place. Grayson only ever had ephemeral relationships with comrades like Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, otherwise known as Starfire, until her parents died and she became queen of her world. At forty, he wondered how long he could sustain his dual existence, and whether, like Bruce before him, Nightwing would die alone, bleeding to death in a Gotham gutter amidst the shroud of night.
Diana Prince had once been known as "Wonder Woman," but then her Amazon sisters and their island sanctuary of Themiscyra left this dimension and without that nexus, Diana lost her metahuman abilities. Learning martial arts expertise, however, Prince reinvented herself as a technologist and humanitarian, and used her intellect and discipline to become The Huntress after a period as one of the core agents of the ARGUS intelligence agency. Her name had been linked romantically to Bruce Waynes once upon a time, but both of them denied involvement. And then, R'as al Ghul murdered Batman and possibly, her heart was silently broken.
Alexandra de Witt was a newspaper photographer, then the unexpected recipient of a green power ring that enabled her to become a Green Lantern, encouraged by her graphic designer boyfriend Kyle Rayner. And then, one dark day, an old adversary of the former Green Lantern of Earth, Hal Jordan, Major Force, tracked Alex down, learnt her secret identity, strangled Kyle and cut him up, leaving him in pieces in her refridgerator. That would have shaken a lesser woman to her core, but Alexandria had her revenge on Major Force and the secret government initiative that had employed him, banishing Kyle's murderer billions of years in the future, in a lifeless universe despite his immortality, well off significant time travel lanes of transit.
What had happened to the Flash was the saddest episode of all. Barry Allen had lost his wife Iris to the murderous Reverse-Flash/Professor Zoom. No-one would blame Allen for what happened next- Allen strangled Zoom while both were in the timestream and jettisoned his body into the future, at a time when the Earth's red giant sun had grown so immense as to consume the planet, and Eobard Thawne's body. But what happened next wasn't so easy to accept- Allen decapitated Captain Cold, who hadn't even raised his cryogun from its holster. He reached into Mirror Master's body and tore out his heart. He even murdered Al Desmond, the long-reformed Mr Element, in front of his children. And at that point, there was the question of collateral damage. Renaming himself Darkspeed, Allen had long resigned from the Justicekeepers. While Green Arrow had tried to intercept him, Darkspeed deliberately crippled him in the course of the rescue attempt. Black Canary resigned from the JKA to care for her afflicted lover in her turn. As it turned out, there was only one way to stop the insane renegade speedster, although it tore the responsible party's heart out. Wally West pursued his former mentor, surpassed him and plunged his vibrating hand inside Allen's head, killing him instantly. And so, in April 1985, Wally West became the Flash. The trauma of what he had had to do to stop his former mentor's murderous trail would haunt him for years afterwards.
The Atom left Earth for the Microverse a few months later. The Hawks shortly thereafter returned to Thanagar and never set foot on Earth again, and Adam Strange shut off his zeta beam transit to Rann and resettled on his adopted planet fulltime. The Martian Manhunter returned to his own period of Martian history and was reunited with his long-lost family. Which left a depleted JKA at a time when it could ill afford to be short-staffed.
As ever, Alex had one of her dreams. She was somehow on an alternate Earth, with a male Green Lantern who looked like her beloved Kyle. And Kyle took off his mask and it was him, as if Major Force's murder of the man she loved had never happened. In a rush of emotion and pain, she related the tragedy that had befallen them- her recruitment as a Green Lantern, Major Force's strangulation, murder and dissection of Kyle's body, standing alongside the rest of the JKA at Negative Hour, stopping Hal Jordan when he became too much of a threat to the Earth while possessed by the Parallax parasite, and the void in her life after Kyle's death. Alexandra was a committed and resolute Green Lantern, and an asset to the JKA. But she had failed to save Kyle Rayner's life and while she used her newfound abilities responsibly and seriously, she wondered at times whether she had anything else to live for...
"I don't know how this is possible, but I'm not from your past or future. Probably some alternate Earth. In my world, I inherited the last Green Lantern ring, fought Hal Jordan and resisted the onset of Zero Hour. In my world, I'm the only Green Lantern."
"Who are you?"
"Alex, this is so hard for me. I don't know if you've even met me in this world. My name is Kyle Rayner."
"Kyle?! But you're dead- Major Force murdered you."
"I was afraid you were going to say that. On my Earth, that happened to you."
"Kyle, I..."
"I love you too, Alex. But we both know it's time we said goodbye. You need to move on now. You have to let me go."
Wally West was on duty on the JKA satellite. He looked up as Alex materialised in the teleport tube:
"Lexie. How was last night?"
"I had one of those dreams again, Wally."
"I know. Mine are about Barry. I want to remember him as he used to be, before Aunt Iris died, but... I can't. It's always about his time as Darkspeed. Lexie, am I cracking up?"
"I'm supposed to be the last Green Lantern. Every time I fail to protect someone from an act of senseless violence, I keep thinking about Kyle. I wish I had Kara or Diana's strength."
Superwoman closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the tattered remnants of Superboy's combat suit, the last remnants of her cousin. At some point, he would have become a Superman and several decades later, she could have retired. That wasn't going to happen now. In Metropolis, Larry Lane had never married anyone else and still waited for her when she visited her former adopted city. He was still dedicated to her, and still wrote advocacy pieces in the Daily Globe whenever people like Victor Vale in the tabloid Gotham Times slandered her, or the rest of the Justicekeepers. With others, though, like the widowed Dinah Queen, that was more difficult. Dinah had never forgiven the JKA for Oliver's mutilation and his subsequent death from its complications five years ago. She didn't blame Dinah, even though she was gentler when it came to Superwoman, given the recognition of Kal-El's earlier sacrifice. Nightwing, Huntress, Flash and Green Lantern didn't deserve the animosity, though. And moreover, there were problems of another kind. Over time, the last remaining supervillains had died, resigned or reformed themselves. Most of their time was spent as an adjunct of central government, intercepting the depredations of domestic terrorists. In itself, that was problematic, although Diana had always had connections to the US armed forces and had even spent time as an agent for ARGUS after the death of her mentor I Ching in one of the earliest domestic terrorist assaults on the US mainland. At times, she was grateful for her friend's presence in the JKA, a symbol of continuity with an idyllic and more innocent Silver Age- one quite unlike the "Iron Age" that the Earth's surviving metahumans found themselves trapped within.
Nightwing stopped in at the Nightcave, touching the artefacts of his life fighting alongside Batman. The Giant Penny. The Joker's card. Then there were the wax figurines that depicted Batman himself, Batgirl, Catwoman, Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hara, Harvey Bullock, all of them dead and gone now. And most poignant of all, he saw the memorial stone that had been laid when the years of service and loyalty finally took their toll on Alfred Pennyworth. The place was like a mausoleum, he thought to himself. He was the only one left and there was every chance that he'd die on the streets of Gotham one night. At least that psychotic bastard the Joker had gone too, and couldn't gloat at having survived his lifelong nemesis- because he had died with him. Wrinkling his nose at the smell from the last trial by combat, Nightwing sat and removed his boots, pulled off his uniform top and felt the refreshing warmth of the Nightcave's shower between his fingers. Doffing his tights, he stepped into the heaing susurrus and spray and let it purify and regenerate him.
He was unprepared as a certain scarlet clad figure blurred through the wall and blurred to a halt: "Oh $#!*! Dick, I..."
"Need a towel, buddy." Dick accepted the towel from an embarrassed Wally West and knotted it around his midriff, as Wally looked around the Nightcave:
"You haven't changed it much, have you?"
"Ah, well, I'm not a family man like you are with Jay and Iris."
"Do you have the others around?"
"From our Titan days? Nope. Gar runs Dayton Industries with his stepfather permanently incapacitated, Victor's in deep cryogenic suspension until someone figures out how to cure the omnivirus he's harbouring, Raven and Koriand'r preside over Azarath and Tamaran and haven't got the time for Earthbound vacations, and Roy and Garth are estranged from the Titans for reasons to do with the deaths of Oliver Queen and Aquaman when the Legion of Doom sent Chemo against us. And Donna's retired. We ain't teenagers anymore, buddy."
"So I noticed. I always thought I'd succeed Barry one day. It's just that the circumstances were so damned wrong and so was the event that led to it."
"If wishes were dreams, it'll still be Bruce here, or he'd be upstairs living with Selina in peace and comfort. I wanted him to be happy, but there was no woman for him after Selina was killed by the Joker."
"Alexandra still feels she's too inexperienced."
"She's joking, right? We are talking about the woman who single-handedly revived the Oan Power Battery and enabled it to locate more potential green ringbearers?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell her. It's not so bad for you and me, you're a stud and I have Linda, Iris and Jay. But she's on her own and Green Lantern Corps cohesion will take a long time to recoalsce. Hopefully, Kara and Diana can talk her around."
"I hope so. The JKA is short staffed as it is and if Alex goes, it's a major blow to our skill set and combat configuration."
"Hey, can I grab a foot long sandwich uptop before we get going?"
"We can indeed."
At length, the Justice Keepers of America assembled at their table. Superwoman cleared her throat:
"We have a serious situation in deep space. Several large Kuiper Belt objects have left their regular orbits and are converging on the Earth."
Green Lantern nodded: "That's too deliberate to be brownian motion from Bacchus, the ninth planet, isn't it?"
"Exactly, Alex. I guess that means you and I go out there and find out what's going on. Dick, Wally, Diana, you get to handle Earthbound threats, if any come up within the timeframe of that mission."
Diana nodded: "I'll do a news event threat projection scenario on the mainframe."
Dick said: "I do have some good news. Red Arrow, Roy Harper? Said he was interested in getting back into active duty."
"That's great. The last new membership intake we had was five years ago. Well done, Dick."
"Thanks, Kara. Okay, both of you. K antidote injection for Kara, emergency force screen for Alex should she get sideswiped by anything containing vanadium"
And with that, the two troupes seperated. In a Metropolis office, a red haired woman in her late forties smiled to herself. Excellent. Her deadliest enemy was leaving the Earth, which meant she had time to prepare. Lana Lang nodded to herself as she summoned a series of specs from LangCorp's itinerary and set to work calculating how they could best be used to attack Superwoman and her comrades.
"Penny for them?"
"Eh? Oh, my old adversary Lana Lang. She and I have been fighting each other since we grew up together in Smallville. Initially, we were best friends- she even developed a prospective kryptonite cure for me. And then came the day her lab blew up and I rescued her only just in time. Except on one level, I was far too late. Her body was minimally damaged, but her mind... it'd been taken over by a dissociative alter personality, Lana Black, and it's remained that way ever since. Her considerable intellect was perverted against me."
"LangCorp Lana Lang?"
"The same. I wish things had gone differently, Alex. Hey, I meant to say, good work with that Spectar incursion last month."
"Thanks, Kara. Yeah, Wally told me his predecessor had faced off against them and shared some information about their specific vulnerabilities. It's easier doing that than fending off idiots like that $#!*head who called Dick a 'xenophile pervert' after we appeared before that Congressional hearing the other day and threw that bottle at him."
"Which you caught and blowtorched."
"Yeah, some people. I mean, they haven't got a hate on for you, because you're a 'naturalised' alien and have lived on Earth for most of your life. I'm viewed as less than 'optimal' because I work for an 'alien' policeforce. But Dick had an intimate relationship with Koriand'r, so he gets subjected to anti-alien xenophobia..."
"Heads up, here comes the asteroid array."
"Kara. I'm picking up severe concentrations of kryptonite loaded onto them. More than enough to overwhelm your K antidote's safeguard period after it wears off. Hang back. I'll tackle this." Alexandria dove downward to confront the barrage and Kara marvelled at the younger woman's self-discipline and resolve.
On Earth, an alarm rang out as Dick looked up from the monitor:
"It's a reproductive health clinic in Phoenix."
"So what's the situation?"
"There seems to be this religious conservative riot going on, and they have an identifiable terrorist metahuman onsite. We think it's Todd Clayton, aka "Christian Soldier." Okay, so his powerset includes superstrength, limited superspeed and invulnerability, superagility but not to the point of flight and that's about it. Covert drug testing reveals a cumulatively toxic chemical mixture designed to stimulate latent metagene activity, but ultimately fatal."
Wally nodded:
"Diana?"
"These individuals are loathsome. A religious warrior is the worst of our kind, Wally. They mask their real motives behind sanctimonious rhetoric and lofty moral attributes, however cruel and monstrous their actual actions are, in the name of self-justification. They may fool themselves but they do not fool me."
With that, the Huntress checked the tensile strength on her crossbow and the three of them teleported down to New Mexico.
However, another figure had arrived there first. Helena Kosmatos (Fury) had been inactive for several decades, but an invocation near her place of suspended animation had awoken her and her guardian spirits had informed her about the situation in adjacent Phoenix. When she turned up outside the protest perimeter, she said to her spirits:
"What you are showing me is abhorrent."
"Within an infinite multiverse, there are many variations, with some that display beauty and horror side by side. This is a democratic world, but these individuals seek to impose their religious code on those who do not share it."
"What are they doing?"
"THey seek to obstruct women's access to reproductive and sexual health. Those classified as 'anti-life' will be killed and those forced into compliance will be made to breed new foot soldiers for the cause."
"This is unacceptable. As you suggest, I will confront this "Christian Soldier", but..."
"I am afraid that this confrontation is one amongst dozens of others within this country. It will produce infinitesimal benefit."
"It will do some good. What these individuals are proposing is grim and merciless." At the sound of riflefire from the Saviours of Unborn Lives, she pitched forward and decapitated the assailant, who had killed a clinic escort and one of the clinic clients.
I will not pray to mercy to the Kindly Ones for you as I would a worthier adversary. For your crimes, I will slaughter you like the soulless monster you are.
When Flash, Nightwing and Huntress arrived, Dick gasped: "What the hell! Who...?!"
"I...know her. I fought alongside her in the Second World War. Helena?! Sister?! Y-you did this?!"
"Diana, my friend. I had no choice. As you can see, I did not begin this. This Christian Soldier being worked the crowd into a frenzy, inciting it to attack this medical centre. They had firearms, machetes and other weapons."
"That did not justify decapitating him, Helena. This is not total war and there had to be some more humane way of restraining him."
"'Humane', Diana? I was doing my duty, protecting medical staff and law enforcement officers from armed assailants."
"You may have escalated an already heated social conflict beyond any hope of peaceful resolution."
"If I still had my lasoo and Amazon skills-"
"But you do not, Diana. And this world is in sore need of an additional female metahuman guardian apart from you and Superwoman. I will intervene when I witness situations like this in the future. Count on it."
And Helena Kosmatos/Fury was as good as her word. She intervened whenever there was justifiable cause and saved the lives of countless women and men as the abortion conflict escalated. Conservative Christians quailed before her and feared her, but womens groups and the courts cautiously embraced her, despite her sometimes brutal tactics. Diana read about the 'turning of the tide' within that social debate, and feared the outcome. Who had returned Fury to existence? Then she remembered. She turned to Kara and Alex: "I think we need to pay a visit to a certain New York mage."
"It's her, isn't it?"
"Who are you two talking about?"
"Ask your ring about Thessaly."
The figure lay on her couch, impassive. Superwoman was implacable:
"Damn you, Thessaly! Who gave you leave or sanction to do this?"
"I am a free agent, Kara Zor-El. I appreciate that you regard yourself as under moral constraint given the extent and scope of your abilities and that is to your reknown."
"That isn't the point, lady. This is not ancient Greece, and you are comporting yourself like a barbarian."
"Ah, the Green Lantern. I hear that that Major Force barbarian murdered your mate. You banished him to the utmost area of time."
"But he is alive."
"Does he deserve to be, Alexandra de Witt? Truly?"
"Don't answer that, Alex. You did the right thing."
"Like you did when you hunted down Steven Trevor's killers and killed them one by one in Athens, Diana?"
"That was different, Thessaly. They planned to kill other NATO operatives. In fact, they had already killed one Frenchwoman, a grandmother with a disabled adult child and multitudes of grandchildren."
"I do not criticise you, Diana, my sister. Any more than I criticise Alexandra for the elegance of her solution to the murderous threat that Major Force presented."
"With great power comes great responsibility, Thessaly. Look, we could go around killing and castrating rapists. We don't."
"And meanwhile, our sisters die by their thousands, victims of foul male assailants and batterers. Men of the quality of your Kyle Rayner are indeed rare, Alexandra. You have every right to halt Major Force by any method that you see fit."
"Stop trying to corrupt her, Thessaly."
"Am I the corrupt one, here, Diana? Or are you the weak one?"
"Damn her!" Diana said, stalking from the JKA teleporter.
"It's okay, Diana. Wow, did you really kill a whole retinue of KGB agents in Athens that time?"
"I did, Alex, and I'm not proud of it at all. But in addition to Steve, they had already assassinated that woman I told you about. And yes, I do regret it and I still have nightmares about it."
"If only Zatanna was still here, instead of the Sorcerors World."
"Could we call her? Would she come back for this?"
"I tried when I worked out that it was Thessaly behind this. She won't. She has a world to oversee and responsibilities beyond our immediate world. And Kara's Phantom Zone projector won't work on Thessaly. She has millennia of magic behind her. Only another mage of comparable experience and prowess could. The problem is, what if there is one out there?"
Unfortunately, as it turned out, there was. One day in 1985, a firestorm of antimatter descended on an unfortunate alternate universe which had housed Earth-658. Here, in seventeenth century England, Oliver Cromwell had lived until 1668, and the Commonwealth of Great Britain was set in iron. While there was technological progress, the same could not be said of social change, albeit at an impossibly glacial rate. The same applied in the American Commonwealth that was founded as its colonial outpost in North America. Devolution was granted so as not to trigger calls for national independence, but it was not a democratic political settlement. A Lord Protector, Privy Council and Star Chamber were the primary branches of Commonwealth theocratic government. Here, a Kryptonian had been sequestered and when it had become impossible to control him, quietly executed through use of kryptonite. Here, obscene human experimentation was carried out on water-breathers, and on those who had acquired metamorphic and hyperspeed capabilities. And unfortunately, here too, a homo magii had been perverted and brainwashed into serving those who had once incinerated thousands of her ancestors. Here, a Batman whose parents had been slaughtered for 'reproductive crimes' and assisting lesbian and gay 'sexual psychopaths' fought back, until the regime unexpectedly encountered its day of judgement. But the Witch would not be caught and killed by the act of a random cosmos like a brute animal. She opted for survival and magicked herself away from her doomed world.
Decades passed. Initially, it seemed as if the forces of righteousness were making strong headway on her adopted alternate Earth, and she retired into suspended animation, awaiting the dawn of a new age where her home had metamorphosed into something akin to her beloved, perished homeworld. She lay in a crystal casket, sleeping the decades away, until the powerful magicks that Thessaly used to awaken Fury had an unintended side-effect. "Mrofni em fo eht stneve taht evah dessap no siht dlrow."
The Witch's brow furrowed in dismay and then anger as she was made aware of what she considered an unwelcome turn of events. She hissed:
"Ekat em ot Atnalta ta ecno!" She materialised in the audience of Theodore Stryker, a particularly influential conservative evangelist and intoned:
"Netsil ot em, nam fo dog. Nmednoc eht snamuhatem, eripsni noissecces!"
And for the second time in two centuries, the United States was rent asunder as the seductive voice of a charismatic demagogue provoked long-suppressed anxieties and smouldering anger out into the open. In the South, gay bars were put to the torch, lesbians and gay men were lynched, abortion clinics were blown up and their clients, doctors and guards killed by summary firing squads. In Washington DC, a dark faced Hilary Clinton warned the subversives of the consequences of their actions, as the Justice Keepers awaited for a telephone call. But the Witch was not done with her murderous initiative, despite the growing anger that beset Thessaly as she watched the unfolding events. Abruptly, an earth to satellite link phased into existence within the JKA satellite, 22,300 miles above the Earth.
"Madam President?"
"I've just received word of a massive launch of nuclear weapons from across the Southern United States. Their trajectories appear to take them to termination points above most Northern cities. Superwoman, can you and your colleagues intervene, for the sake of humanity?"
"You heard the woman, Justice Keepers. Let's move."
In many ways, perhaps, it was one of the most glorious hours that would have crowned accounts of the legendary Justice Keepers of America, as Superwoman, the Flash, Green Lantern and, much to their surprise and relief, Fury, crisscrossed the Northern United States, defusing nuclear weapons in flight and neutralising their deadly, radioactive payloads. Thessaly sat back with a mug of camomile tea and smiled to herself as the act of rebellion's worst excess petered out. Then her brow furrowed as she detected a thaumaturgic influence behind the unprovoked attack. To her horror and amazement, it was a sister sorceress- true, not one as aged and experienced as she, but certainly as adept. She telepathed to Fury:
This attack was incurred by a sorceress whose thaumaturgy is controlling its legions. She resides in the Church of Redeemed Humanity in Atlanta, Georgia. I will join you there, Helena. Be prepared.
In Atlanta, the Justice Keepers met outside the Atlanta skyscraper that housed the ministry of Theodore Stryker.
"Remember, Stryker is only her pawn in this. He doesn't even get scratched. Do you hear me, Helena?"
"He is nought but a weak male. My apologies to your fellow warriors, Sister Diana, but our target must be the Witch known as Zee D'Anya."
"Blazes. You mean the person who did this is an alternate version of our former JKA ally Zatanna?" Dick exclaimed.
'Dick, Diana, with us. And I repeat, Helena, no lethal force."
Thessaly shook her head: "Do not be so moralistic, Kryptonian. Consider that this woman was almost responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths."
"Precisely. Every life is precious in this context. We take her alive if we can. No precipitous action. Dick?"
"I have the building schematics, Kara. Let's go."
While Wally, Diana and Dick fought Stryker's "Purity Force" on the floors below, Superwoman, Green Lantern, Fury and Thessaly ascended to the control chamber. Froth-mouthed, Theodore Stryker brandished a gun, only to be knocked out by sleeping gas provided by Green Lantern. Malignant and glowing at a web of eldritch energies, Zee D'Anya the Witch sneered at the Justice Keepers:
"So you are the 'strongest' this world has to offer. A purportedly mighty Kryptonian vulnerable to sorcery, the pawn of a once-mighty interstellar police force and...ah. At last we meet, hellspawn pagan."
"If anyone serves the infernal realms in this conflict, it is you, dressed in vestments of purity that shield the corruption and madness festering inside her carrion heart."
"And you? You have outlived your stolen lifetimes, archaic crone. Hctac emalfa, sserecros!"
Thessaly's brows furrowed as she held back the flames: "You're not dealing with non-mages now, young fool. Is that all you think it takes to vanquish the legendary warrior-witches of Achaea, mere words spoken in inversion? Well, then..."
Slash her throat. Despite having been advised not to take matters into her own hands, Thessaly was the daughter of an older, more primeval morality than modern day societies. If she could have done so herself, she would have, but that would have been certain suicide. Instead, her mind took control of the only instrument that could accomplish such a feat as a scarlet blur swept through the room. Kara yelled: "Wally, no!!!" As a deep rip coursed through Zee D'Anya's throat, and blood sprayed from it, the last surviving Witch of Earth-658 managed one last brutal spell: "Emalf-foorp reirrab, esaec! Eof, nrub!" And in that instant, Wally West, the Flash, burst into incandescent flame and light, screamed and perished.
"No!" Dick said, cradling the figure of his old Teen Titans ally in his arms, as his eyes flickered into sightlessness and he breathed his last. Thessaly took a dagger and stabbed the prone, struggling Zee D'Anya as she tried to get away until Kara restrained her. But by then, Zee D'Anya was long dead, in any case, and there was no assailant to halt.
EPILOGUE
High above the Earth, the survivors of the ordeal met.
Superwoman stopped Dick as they entered the meeting room:
"So I hear Koriand'r and you are getting hitched?"
"Well, we have to, don't we? Kori's pregnant!"
"Dick!" Kara exclaimed, embracing him and lifting him high into the air.
"It was sad to say goodbye to Alex, but..."
"But, the new Green Lantern Corps needs a leader and she has wisdom and self-discipline beyond her years. And at least her Kyle won't haunt her out there."
"Larry and I talked things over. He's done some Pulitzer class journalism and he may have finally proven that Lana Lang was behind Lex's murder. I love him so much, Dick. Not to even told me what he was doing, and the fact that Lex was a one-time romantic rival for my affections...he's been through enough. You may not be the only ones tying the knot shortly."
"With Roy joining and Helena amongst our number now that Thessaly's released her from her thrall, the JKA is looking stronger than ever."
But in a secluded corner of the JKA satellite, Diana Prince, the Huntress, gazed down at a photograph of her precious Steve Trevor and gently kissed it. There were some things that time could not relent upon, no matter how earnestly one wished. But she was a former Amazon Princess and warrior and could seperate her heart and her will. She set the photograph down on her dresser table and walked toward the sound of the klaxon within the JKA meeting room as the organisation that she had helped found so long ago entered a new era.
THE END