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Post by dans on Jan 29, 2021 13:29:01 GMT
Interesting. So, they aren't in the past at all? 2 questions spring immediately to mind. 1) How did they get to Earth-2? and 2) How is this connected to the Crown of Scales?
Why, Yes, yes, they are in the past. The magic spell that sent them to the past also sent them to Earth 2 - in that order... and I don't know yet. The bad guy who set the trap must have used the power of the Crown - I think...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jan 29, 2021 16:53:25 GMT
Keep going. This is great. I really hope I can find time to write more on my own stories.
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Post by dans on Jan 30, 2021 2:25:49 GMT
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
What About... Sun Metal! "Hey, wait a minute!" Atom suddenly yelled. "Don't you guys even want to know how Miss Joanna and I stopped OUR missiles? And what are we going to do about the guys that launched them at us, anyway?" "Sorry, Atom - of course we want to know!" Alex concurred and Carol nodded vigorously in agreement. "Well, it was Atom's idea originally," Zephyr started telling the story. "He noticed that the missiles must have jet engines instead of rockets, because they had air scoops to draw in air and compress it for use in burning their jet fuel. When he used the term air-breathing, it got me thinking - suppose we could take away their air source?" "And then Miss Zephyr had a great idea - suppose we could block the scoops with ice? But she was worried that it would be like dropping hundreds of bombs on the ground and ocean below us if we just shut them down, and we have no idea who or what might be down there, so we flew higher and over the volcano before we attacked THEM, and they all followed us like a bunch of lemmings, and then Miss Zephyr made a poem..." His face twisted up as he tried to recall her words "Maybe like 'Great balls of ice, don't be nice, fill each scoop so they drop like poop!'" He stopped, terrified by what he'd just said. "Or at least something like that... geez, I'm sorry, Miss Zephyr, you guys know she really didn't say 'poop'..." He was turning red and almost pleading. When he realized the three women were just laughing and he wasn't going to be chastised, he brightened up again. "But we sure flushed them like poop, didn't we?" "That you did, Atom, that you did!" Carol laughed. "Tell you what, though - I don't really care who launched them. If we get back home, by then, the people that sent them will be dead for 100,000 years or so, and we'll still be alive. So let's just forget about them and figure out how to get home!" "You don't think our missile attackers had anything to do with bringing us here, then?" Alex asked. "No, the trap that brought us here was magic, and the missiles were technology. I don't think they're related," Carol the detective was thoughtful as she deduced. "Totally different modus operandis usually indicate totally different perps..." "In my studies, I've found some stories about the last years before the continent of Lemuria was destroyed," Joanna sounded almost as if she were giving a lecture. "The continent was being wracked by natural disasters - earthquakes, volcanoes such as we've seen, tremendous storms, over and over again. The people were all driven nearly insane by dread of what would come next, and it was tearing the Mu civilization apart. All the nations on the continent were engaged in a desperate arms race, paranoid over invasions from other nations. I think we triggered an automated alarm of some kind against aerial invasion, rather than that some particular enemy of ours launched those missiles specifically against us. But we had better not stick around too long - sooner or later, someone might come to investigate. And that someone might not be friendly!" "So how do we get home, anyway?" Alex asked. "My ring doesn't include time travel. I tried when Green Lantern was training me, and I've tried over and over since then - but no luck." She sounded very sad; she had tried desperately to see her departed father just one more time, but no matter how she concentrated, no matter how urgently she commanded her ring, she never moved even a second through time. She had been shaken to her core when she'd discovered that her ring had altered her personality and her memories of her father, and even after she was sure she'd fixed the ring and restored her memories, she wanted to see her father just one more time, to reaffirm her memories. "I've tried too, over and over, and nilch... nada... nothing..." Carol sounded as sad as Alex; her parents and sister had died while she was trapped in S'ville's errant time stop spell, and she really wanted to see them just one more time, to have closure to her loss. But she'd had no more luck than Alex. "Time Travel is a ThD Graduate Study course at Grimoire," Atom chimed in. "I don't know anything about it yet..." All three turned to Zephyr. "What, me? Well..." she spoke slowly. "I DO have control over natural forces - but I've never even considered time travel. I'd want years of practice before I tried a jump of 100,000 years. But I don't think any of us want to wait for years - and I doubt if we have that much time anyway, before someone discovers us - and that someone might not be friendly." There was silence for a few minutes as they each thought urgently about their problem. And then suddenly, Atom shouted exultantly. "I got it! Sun metal!"
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jan 30, 2021 14:07:10 GMT
I'm wondering something. Why did the mystic trap on Earth-S also transport Zephyr and Corona to the past? were they both in the Cook Islands on Earth-2 at the same time?
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Post by dans on Jan 30, 2021 14:46:08 GMT
Well, this excerpt explains part of it... as to why there was a trap in both places on both Earths, that hasn't been revealed yet. In fact, I just finished working out the backstory. It should be worked into the rest of the story soon...
"You guys were in the Museum of Mu on your Earth? That's where we were too, in the future," Alex told her companions excitedly. Then, of course, she and Joanna had to explain why they had been in that museum together. Alex, a freelance photojournalist, had successfully pitched a feature series on the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis to Continental Geographic Magazine and the publisher of the magazine had enthusiastically accepted the proposal. Alex had recently attended a lecture on ancient Egypt by Gotham City University Associate Professor of Archeology Joanna Andre, who had mentioned the influence of Atlantis on Egyptian civilization, so Alex had arranged a meeting with the professor as part of her research. Neither Alex or Joanna mentioned that at the beginning of their trip neither had known the secret heroic identities of the other, but keeping their identities secret had become a very minor issue when the trap had sprung! "I almost didn't believe it when Continental Geographic accepted my proposal and decided to sponsor my investigations. And it was so great of Joanna to change her vacation plans so she could come with me to Rarotanga!" Alex ended her story. "Well, you can't really say I had 'plans'," Joanna replied with a smile. "If I hadn't come with Alex, I'd probably be back in Gotham now, probably helping them catalog dusty artifacts at the Gotham Museum of Natural History." "And you guys got caught in a trap similar to the one that caught us," Carol concluded sadly.
and of course, the similar power sets of Corona and Zephyr to Sunbeam and Atom helped them survive the similar trap as well...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jan 31, 2021 13:46:24 GMT
I'm so sorry! I guess I missed that part the first time through.
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Post by dans on Jan 31, 2021 14:39:28 GMT
I'm so sorry! I guess I missed that part the first time through. Absolutely no need to apologize, John! Thank you for reading and your comments! Actually, as I was re-reading that section, I changed it around just a bit to make it more clear.
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Post by dans on Jan 31, 2021 14:55:38 GMT
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
Wisar the One, Emperor of All In an ornately decorated, heavily magically-warded and protected room in the long-abandoned city of Telos Under the Mountain, almost 11 miles beneath Mount Shasta in California on Earth 2, Wisar the One, Emperor of All, called to order the meeting of the Global Ruling Council of The Worldwide Empire of Mu. Seven gaudily-clad men and women sat along the convex curve of a crescent shaped table, facing a 3' high dais on which rested a massive throne. Most of the Councilors were wearing robes, many of them spangled with mystical symbols, and each of them had within easy touching distance at least 2 items often associated with the casting of magic, including several wands and scepters and various items of jewelry. An astute observer might notice that many of these items seemed to have an ocean-related theme - fetishes and jewelry in the shape of fish, snakes, and swimming monsters, a preponderance of pearls among the jewelry, with many of the other gems and jewels in ocean colors of green and blue, mother of pearl carvings of water creatures and water plants on the staves, a horn made from a polished-until-it-glows conch shell, decorations made from the shells of many different water-going creatures, and even a couple of items that shimmered like moving water. The members of the Global Ruling Council were very diverse, comprising five men and two women. Two of the men were extremely tall, one wide and one scrawny, two more were very short, again one wide and the other scrawny and albino as well. The two women had exotic features and coloring, one the color of an old copper penny, while the other was more similar, perhaps, to the brass of an expensive saxophone. None of the Councilors looked particularly healthy, which wasn't surprising, considering that they had all been homeless on the streets of Los Angeles just over a year ago before when they had been kidnapped recruited by Wisar. Though they all looked a lot better today than they had then! Dominating the room even while seated on the raised thrown, Wisar himself was an incredibly impressive figure, seemingly the archetype of the phrase 'Larger than life'. Physically, he looked like a burnished bronze statue of a world-champion bodybuilder brought to life, a few inches over 7 feet tall with bulging muscles on top of sculpted muscles. His brown-bronze hair was cropped short into a skullcap and he moved with the grace of a professional dancer. His upper body was bare with leather cords tied around his biceps, just below the shoulders and just above the elbows. Softly glowing white seashells dangled from each cord. On each bicep was a tattoo of a mushroom cloud which expanded realistically whenever he flexed his arms (which was very frequently), and tattooed across his chest and rock-solid abs was an incredibly detailed and realistically colored shark swimming through ocean surf, the mouth incredibly wide open showing hundreds of deadly teeth. When he moved, the shark's body seemed to thrash through the surf, and the teeth slowly rotate like some kind of deadly grisly meat grinder. He was wearing khaki jodhpurs with a black leather belt with a massive silver buckle, shaped like a squid, and open-top sandals with no socks. Around his neck he wore a leather cord from which dangled a dinner plate-sized pendant made from a single, highly polished almost triangular tooth of a prehistoric megalodon shark. And on his head, he wore a massive, ornate, bejeweled crown made of shiny platinum, polished until it seemed translucent, studded with huge gems and jewels in the colors of the sea and worked to look like the scales of an armored fish. The Council had been told that this was the hereditary crown of the the Empire of Mu, the Lamina Crown, worn by each of the thousands of Emperors of Mu, the powerful advanced civilization that had dominated the continent of Leumuria for tens of thousands of years before it had been destroyed a hundred thousand years ago. His voice was deep, powerful, and perfectly modulated, and could shake the walls when he raised it in anger. His face was square-jawed and composed of planes, reminding observers of Robert Redford, though they always added 'much more handsome' to their mental descriptions. His powerful, almost hypnotic eyes conjured infinitely deep pools of ocean green and blue, and constantly swirled like whirlpools. Before he could announce the first item on the agenda, his head jerked slightly and his eyes widened visibly as the softball-sized ruby half embedded in the arm of the throne as a hand rest under his right hand began to glow. He quickly lifted his left hand, and stared intently into the glowing white crystal ball, twin in size to the ruby, that his motion revealed. While the Councilors couldn't seen the details, they could see cloudy figures moving inside the crystal. A puzzled expression flitted across Wisar's face, then he shook his head decisively and stood, facing the Council table. When he could see that all eyes were upon him he spoke in a forceful, commanding tone. "Behold!" the table shook slightly from the power of his voice. "Two of our enemies are eliminated even before they could move against us!" He waved his arm, and an illusion appeared in the air near the throne. We've seen the scene before, from a different point of view... A tall blonde woman and a small boy holding her hand walked hesitantly into view and stood uncertainly facing a museum diorama behind a wall of glass: a gaudily-clad man sitting on a massive throne, similar to that currently occupied by Wisar, though not as large or as elegantly decorated with jewels and precious metal, wearing a crown similar to that currently worn by the Emperor of All. The sign over the figure read: "Merodak Mu-paku, the last Emperor of Mu, wearing the legendary Crown of Scales". Suddenly the youngster looked alarmed, and shouted something, and then the two disappeared. "More sacrifices to our patron, Kunakarai Ino, the God of Volcanoes," Wisar rumbled in his deep, powerful voice, as he flicked his hand, banishing the illusion. "A good omen for our work here today. Let us begin!" A few minutes into the first agenda item, the ruby began to glow again. Again, Wisar appeared to be startled, but this time, as he watched a scene in the crystal, he didn't show any signs of puzzled, but instead appeared extremely pleased. Again he stood, demanded the attention of the Council, and projected an illusion. We readers haven't specifically watched this tableau yet, though it was eerily similar to the one that had played out only minutes earlier. A pair of woman, one blonde and one with black hair, walked hesitantly into view and stood uncertainly in front of a museum diorama behind a wall of glass: a gaudily-clad man sitting on a massive throne, wearing a crown visually identical to that of the Emperor of All. The sign over the figure read: "Kumari Kandama, the last Emperor of Mu, wearing the legendary Lamina Crown". Suddenly the black haired woman looked alarmed, and shouted something, and then the two disappeared. "Another excellent omen. With two such portentous omens today, let us wrap up our planning! It is time to take action!" Wisar was in a good mood. The councilor at the left end of the table, the brassy-colored woman, discreetly jabbed her neighbor with her elbow; the jab was passed along until it reached the scrawny albino man at the other end, who barely nodded his head one time in acknowledgement. The Council knew then that Wisar's good cheer was not destined to last for long!
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Post by dans on Feb 1, 2021 2:21:53 GMT
Edit: Exposition it shall be. Let me know how you think it goes!
All, I'm wondering what to do here. I know Wisar's background, but I'm having a hard time working it into the story. Would this be a good time for some exposition as I explain who he is, tell you about Telos Under the Mountain, and how he is related to the traps at the Museum of Mu, or should I try to work it into the story in pieces here and there? Maybe with an expository flashback on Wisar's back story?
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Post by dans on Feb 1, 2021 12:43:25 GMT
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
A (Very) Quick History of Wisar the One In a way, the story of Wisar started 100,000 years ago, so we'll start there. At that time, the Earth was wracked with a deadly series of natural disasters, which resulted in the sinking of the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the destruction of their respective civilizations. Some of the survivors of the civilization of Mu, on Lemuria, were able to reach the West Coast of North America, where they chose Mount Shasta, in what is now California, as the site of the gigantic city they built as a refuge for Lemuria survivors. Under Mt. Shasta, using Lemurian magic and technology, they created a city they called Telos Under the Mountain, more often referred to as just Telos. Telos extended more than 11 miles below the mountain, and over the centuries, the population grew to a maximum of at least half a million. But eventually, the citizens needed wider horizons and began leaving the city, and by 1900 it was deserted... In another way, Wisar's story began in 1931, when a hiker in California discovered a secret entrance to Telos, partially explored the city, and wrote a book about that experience. He published the book, Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific, under a pen name. The book referenced Telos, but though the author described the location of the secret entrance in careful detail, no one, including the author himself, was ever able to locate that entrance again. For the rest of his life, the author was thrilled he'd used a pen name - he was able to retreat to his original identity and escape much of the ridicule that the book generated with the public. In yet another way, Wisar began his adventures in 1970, when the author's grandson visited Mt. Shasta himself, determined to erase the cloud from his grandfather's legacy. Following the directions in the book, the young explorer easily located the same secret entrance to Telos, exactly where his grandfather described it, a cave entrance set on a small shelf partway up the western face! There was ample evidence on the small plateau that since the book had been published, many other people had visited this exact same spot and NOT been able to find the entrance, including a large hand-lettered wooden sign that was covered in mostly pornographic graffiti that almost obliterated the original words: "X Marks the Spot, but there's nothing here!". The shelf was littered with the remains of dozens of campfires and piles of trash discarded by the many pilgrims over the years who had visited this exact spot and been disappointed. As soon as he entered the vast city of Telos, the young man had renounced his birth name and adopted another.
"Forevermore will I be known as Wisar Spenle Cerve, my grandfather's pen name!"
Wisar Spenle spent years exploring the city, and quickly realized that the ancient society of Mu had controlled great powers, and many keys to those powers were to be found in the deserted libraries and universities of Telos as well as in the private, long abandoned studies and libraries of the personal residences of many great wizards and technologists. He realized that he had been shown the secret entrance as part of his destiny, and the tomes and scrolls around him would provide him the power he needed to grasp his rightful destiny - Emperor of All!
Another beginning began when Wisar Spenle finally determined that his long studies were at end. Through his magical studies, he had learned that his own ability to create and cast magical spells was limited. But by collecting relevant spells, written long ago by powerful mages and recorded in their writings, and laboriously editing those spells, he could produce miraculous results. He humorously called his spells 'frankenspells' in his mind because he built them by drawing components from many pre-existing spells, and while they always did something, his frankenspells did not always function exactly as he expected!
More importantly, he discovered that many of the ancient mages had created artifacts which could store magical power for their use, augmenting their own natural powers to incredible levels! No such artifacts remained in Telos, but utilizing ancient clairvoyance frankenspells to spy on the world, he eventually discovered a trove of such artifacts - not in the closely-guarded possession of some living, jealous, powerful mage who Wisar Spenle was still unable to challenge, but in an unguarded museum display, open to the general public! He quickly made plans to gain possession of those artifacts.
In another sense, our introduction to Wisar begins with an announcement to the world, made in an empty room. In his study, surrounded by scrolls, mystic tomes and mysterious magical apparatus, deep below Mount Shasta in the long-dead city of Telos, last refuge of Lemuria, in late 1983, exactly 13 years to the day of his discovery of the secret entrance, Wisar Spenle announced to the world (though most of the world wouldn't learn of this announcement for some time yet): "From this moment forward, I shall be known as Wisar the One, for none following me shall ever again bear this name! And soon, I shall assume my rightful destiny as Emperor of All!"
He carefully cast a powerful frankenspell, which he had assembled from bits and pieces of ancient spells crafted by wizards long dead and carefully recorded by them on scrolls and in tomes. The magnificent spell reached out to the Museum of Mu on distant Rorotanga Island and pulled from there all the mystical artifacts on display; in a cleared corner of his cluttered study, a pile of artifacts appeared. He was a bit puzzled - there were more artifacts in that pile than he had expected to scoop up from the Museum, but he quickly congratulated himself - his frankenspell had proved even more powerful than he had expected, finding and returning things he hadn't even known about! He followed up with another spell that replaced the collected artifacts with illusions, in the dioramas in the mundane Museum of Mu, and finally, his most complex frankenspell - a trap spell surrounding the illusions in the museum - any who suspected they were less than real would be instantly transported through time and space into the giant volcano of Kunakarai, the dwelling place of Kunakarai Ino, the Lemurian God of the Fiery Underworld.
Wisar hurried to his new trove of artifacts, searching for the Lamina Crown, the Crown that had been worn by thousands of Lemurian Emperors, the Crown that would give HIM access to their awesome ancient powers. He was confused again when he saw two similar crowns - but quickly discerned that one must be an imitation. He grasped the real Lamina Crown and struggled to just lift it - it must weigh 40 pounds or more! He laboriously raised the heavy crown to his head and carefully donned it. And almost instantly screamed in exquisite agony as the spirits of the thousands of Emperors who had worn the Lamina Crown in the past, powerful wizards each and all, trapped eternally in the Lamina Crown, began a pitched battle for control of his mind and body. Only the fact that he had instantly collapsed to the floor and the Crown had been knocked from his head had saved him from either eternal possession by one or more of the dead Emperors, or death, or perhaps worst, eternally being trapped in a dead body controlled by another being as a zombie after his death. When he'd finally awakened, sore and sick but still alive and himself, he'd begun more years of tedious study - how to control the power of the Lamina Crown without having to wear it!
(What Wisar had never learned, but we can know, is that the presence of two large collections of similar and similarly powerful mystical artifacts in the same location at the same time, the History of Lemuria exhibits in the Museums of Mu in the Earth 2 and Earth S universes, created a temporary 'crossover nexus' between those two universes in the museums, similar to the nexus between Earth 1 and Earth 2 in Central City on E1 and Keystone City on E2 discovered by Barry (Flash) Allen. The powerful (but edited by a neophyte) frankenspells created by Wisar and cast on the Museum of Mu on Earth 2 somehow reached through that nexus and affected both displays! And we can know that this mystical nexus, which had only come into being a few years before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, had been closed and locked shut by the barriers between the universes that were created by some of the most powerful beings on the remaining Earths after the Crisis).
And finally, the story of Wisar the One, Emperor of All, begins with the scene you have just read previously - the gathering of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Emperor of Mu, during which Wisar planned to kick off his plans for conquest of Earth!
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 1, 2021 16:33:35 GMT
This is fantastic! I love the little differences between Earth-S and Earth-2.
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Post by dans on Feb 1, 2021 18:47:33 GMT
I'm being very careful about the barriers here; I hope it is OK that I created (and then quickly destroyed) a crossover nexus between Earth 2 and Earth S... before it could litter the literature with dozens of crossover stories!!!
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Post by dans on Feb 2, 2021 2:44:16 GMT
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
Return to Lemuria The four time-and-space-displaced castaways decided that they needed a place for Atom to work. Several mountain peaks stood high in the center of the island - they decided on a cave, carved into the side of one of these mountains with their combined powers if necessary. Soon the four companions were flying toward the largest peak.
"This looks a LOT like Maloana Island, 100,000 years in the future," Atom commented; he'd had an aerial view of that island a couple of years before, when Jim and Sue Barr had transported him there to cancel S'ville's runaway time stop spell. "I wonder if it is the same place Lance O"Casey will eventually call home?"
"Well, that assumes there is a Lance O'Casey on Earth-2," Carol reminded him.
"Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting about that," Atom was somewhat abashed.
"It seems very unlikely that the geography of an island would remain constant through 1000 centuries," Zephyr commented. "Especially as we know that sometime between now and then, the entire continent to our west will be destroyed."
"Say, we never did find out what number our own Earth has!" Atom changed the subject. And then he screamed and pointed upward: "Incoming! Flashing NOVAS, it's a Quetzalcoatlus. It's as big as a P-40 Warhawk! And it SEES US!" Well above them, a giant flying reptile had launched from near the top of the higher mountain, and was falling toward them like a dive bomber!
"Giant reptile who can fly, ignore us now and pass us by!" Zephyr commanded calmly, and the 30 foot long flier did as she commanded. The head at the end of the 18' long, snakelike neck looked away from them, then the body followed, and the flying reptile made a graceful banking turn toward the peak of the other mountain.
"That thing could swallow me like an M&M!" Atom shuddered in horror. "It's hard to believe an animal that big can really fly!"
"Remember, this isn't our time," Alex reminded him. "I sure wish I had my camera with me! What a hit that would be, a picture of a living dinosaur! That would be perfect for my feature story on Lemuria!" A thoughtful look flitted across Atom's face, then he filed his thought for later.
"Where we find one dinosaur, we are likely to find others," Zephyr reminded her friends. "We should keep a close watch lest they get so close, I haven't time to spell them away."
"Well, if we stick together, this should keep us safe," Carol replied, raising her outstretetched hand slightly, and a large yellow globe appeared around them. "Guaranteed dinosaur proof!"
"Hey, that's my trick!" Alex complained, with a laugh to show that she was (mostly) joking.
"I'm sure you'll get other chances to glow, Ms. Yellow," Carol teased her. They both laughed.
"Right now," Alex gloated. "That looks like the place we're looking for," Alex had been scanning the peak as they flew closer; she pointed and Carol turned their bubble in that direction.
Apparently not long in the past (not long geologically speaking, anyway) a part of the peak had fallen away, leaving behind a sheer rocky face over a ragged, narrow ledge. "Now it's MY turn to glow, Ms. Yellow! Let me out, please."
The large yellow sphere vanished, leaving the four each floating on air via his or her own power maybe 20' from the face. "A little leveling first, to give us a place to land..." A giant yellow chisel formed just above the ragged ledge, and above it, a giant yellow hammer. The hammer tapped gently on the head of the chisel, the blade sank into the stone, and Alex carefully smoothed the ledge at its widest point. Carol kept a flat shield between the fliers and the chisel work being done, in case of flying shards. In a few minutes, Alex had carved out a flat porch, wide enough, and flat enough to stand on without fear of falling over the edge.
Working together, they quickly created their refuge.Alex was astounded at the raw blasting power Carol's yellow energy could generate, shattering tons of rock with each full-power blast, while Carol was jealous of the precision work Alex could produce with her own yellow energy by creating complex energy constructs such as hand and power tools. Of greater concern to Carol was the progressive weakening of her power as she made continuous use of it; after each hour's work she had to concentrate a little harder to produce the same effects as the hour before.
Alex had brought her power battery with her using a trick she'd been taught by Green Lantern Alan Scott when he had trained her, a trick he had learned from the Earth 1 Green Lantern Hal Jordan - causing the yellow power battery to float invisibly and intangible and always follow near her until she needed it. So she was able to recharge her ring as required. During a break, with Alex's amused approval, Carol tried placing her fist in contact with the yellow power battery in case their energies were the same, but she didn't absorb any energy.
"Well, at least it didn't blast me!" Carol laughed, a little dejected as she pulled her hand away. After they had finished their blasting and shaping, Carol sought out privacy, and did some of that detective stuff, heavy deductive thinking about her diminishing power.
Meanwhile, in their new cave sanctuary, Atom and Joanna were at work. They used their respective magical powers to smooth the floor and walls, and then to reshape some of the leftover stone rubble into tables and chairs. When they were finished, they discussed Atom's proposed project: creating enough Sun Metal to re-create the Sunergy Ring Atoms's father had given him almost fifty years ago.
"Sun Metal is a radioactive compound created by my father before I was born," Atom explained. "The radiation is called Sunergy, and it is incredibly powerful - and deadly dangerous. Dad combined samples from every known element together. So all we need to do is gather samples of every element and mash them all together!"
"With my powers over nature I MAY be able to somehow gather samples of every element... maybe. I'm not sure how long it will take, I'm not sure how we will hold them when they get here, and I'm not sure how we will 'mash them together' as you put it so elegantly," Zephyr said thoughtfully. "I'm also not sure if I will need to issue one command, or many, or even one per element..."
"Hold on a minute," Atom suggested. He had reappeared his traveling bag and it was open on one of the tables they'd created; he searched through it, pulled out several vials, one of which seemed to contain ground glass, mixed them together in the palm of his left hand, and then flicked the resulting power into the air with his right hand while chanting in an unknown language. The glittering powder formed into the shape of a large bottle (think a glass 5 gallon water cooler jug) which was sealed at the top. He mixed different vials, flicked the resulting powder over the new bottle, and chanted again. This time there was no observable effect. He then turned back to his friend.
"Unbreakable bottle filled with vacuum!" he said proudly. "We don't need very much of any one element, maybe one hundredth of an ounce of each, or around 10 to the 21st atoms of each, on average. Or in more rigorous technical terms, 'just a smidge of this, a pinch of that'. If you can make each smidge and pinch appear inside the bottle, we'll be all set. While you're working on collecting, I'll work out the 'mash 'em together' process like my father did long ago." Sometimes it was difficult to remember that Atom was a 64 year old super genius, regardless of his current appearance!
"You don't want anything difficult, do you, professor?" Zephyr smiled while shaking her head. "I'll need to think on this for a while!"
Meanwhile, Carol had made some deductions and come to some tentative conclusions, which she tried out on Alex. "Jim Barr, my super genius scientist friend, thinks my power may be recharged by absorbing energy from the environment around me, perhaps from sunlight. But he's not totally sure just what energy I actually use. Not very long ago - immediately after I arrived in this time, actually, I was exposed to an extremely energy-intensive environment - the light, heat, and sound created by the incredibly hot lava in the volcano. Suppose my power comes from absorbing light, or heat, or even sound - and the short exposure to that environment supercharged me?"
Alex had been exposed to that same energy-intensive environment, and it hadn't done a thing for her, other than terrifying her! "So what, you want to be dropped back into the volcano again? What if you're wrong?" Alex wasn't quite as incredulous as she was trying to sound - she already had an idea what might be leading up to. "It could be, instead, you got all charged up when you were zapped through time or pulled into a new universe and not related to the volcano at all, you know. That's a pretty dangerous environment to just play around in!"
"You're right," Carol acknowledged instantly and easily. "Either of those theories fit the facts that we know as well as my own theory does," she agreed. "A good detective can't get married to a theory without testing it! I can't easily test your theories, though - but I can test mine, pretty easily, and, I think, safely. Like you say - NOT by being dropped back into the caldera!" She smiled at her new friend. "I plan to fly, very carefully, overhead, and then drop lower, slowly and carefully, and see if my power starts feeling stronger again as I descend. If it works, I can hover until I charge up again; if it doesn't, I just fly away."
"Well, I'm coming with you, then!" Alex insisted. "Just in case you encounter any more missiles or other enemies - and besides, I want to see if it works!" They went off to tell their friends about their plan... and walked in just as Zephyr prepared to cast her newest and most powerful spell.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Feb 2, 2021 3:21:00 GMT
I'm being very careful about the barriers here; I hope it is OK that I created (and then quickly destroyed) a crossover nexus between 2 and S... It makes perfect sense. Crossovers became more and more common in the years leading up to the Crisis, as the barriers between worlds weakened.
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Post by DocQuantum on Feb 2, 2021 19:47:55 GMT
This is a fantastic story! I only now had a chance to read it. There’s a quest for a mythical object, time travel, magic, and some great super-heroes who deserve the spotlight! What’s not to like?
By the way, this won’t touch in your story most likely, but I think the old wizard Shazam closely monitors all transactions between universes, so he’d be aware of this one from his vantage point on the Rock of Eternity. If he saw it as a threat to the time-space continuum, I think he’d do his best to shut it down.
Some exceptions to the barriers do exist, and they involve Shazam already. The Grimoire School founding was helped by Shazam, and he could be considered to be on its Board of Trustees for lack of a better term. And then there’s All Access, formerly known as Pariah, who can freely and uniquely travel between the Five Earths at will, putting things right that went wrong during the Crisis. Only the Five Monitors know of his abilities.
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