Rokk Me on the Water
a legion of super-heroes crossover event with eighty big pages!
By Gabihime ( gabihime at gmail dot com )
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Waid/Kitson Legion, with the small liberty of the Time Trapper and Universo jibes which I sadly could not resist.
Thanks to all my little stars who made this story possible and special props to everyone who has ever saved the world with Rock n' Roll.
The Legion is forever.
Be excellent to each other, kids.
Originally written for Yuletide, I thought I'd share here, since there never can be enough about the founders. Review if you like this. I would write ten million founders stories if I thought anyone would read them.
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It was an old farmhouse, typically New England in style and Puritan in embellishments, the low gambrel roof heavy with the fall's last leavings, mulch and loam and skeleton leaves that had not yet been swept away with the spring cleaning might of a straw whisk broom. It was summer or it was spring or it was autumn, he couldn't tell from the color -- everything stained as if someone had spilled a vinegar vintage of Cabernet over a picturesque postcard.
Wish you were here. Love Kent and Inza Nelson. Greetings from scenic transdimensional no time.
There were hollyhocks blooming along the stone path to the front porch. That meant late summer in New England. It wasn't as if it really mattered.
His fingers rattled over the transparent polymer barrier.
"I so wish we could chat a bit, but then, I'm not altogether sure you'd be willing to offer me any friendly advice," he observed absently, studying the idyllic fisheyed ruby farmhouse he held in the criss-crossed fingers and pressed in thumbs of his two very beautiful hands. "Far be it for me to be judgmental. You and I both know that I've moved beyond my petty trials and my petty distractions, but you have never really been the forgive-and-forget type. I suppose that's not really surprising. It's not as if you call yourself Doctor Mercy or Doctor Understanding, or even Doctor Psychoanalysis." He tapped the rounded waning crescent of a fingernail against his snowglobe again thoughtfully. "Of course, I don't require your advice," he said, as if that really needed stating. The attractive force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. He never required assistance. He only ever required amusement. "It would be nice to talk about old times, I think." And here he allowed himself an altogether canine smile, "But perhaps I'm just reeling in the years."
In the end, it mattered as much as the hollyhocks in the garden. That the Nelsons chose to snub him now they might reconsider shortly.
"After all, perhaps all it takes to be admitted to the worlds of the gods is a little magic and a piece of shazam.."
-
"So she says," and here he held up both of his hands in front of him languidly, index fingers coming to the point of a loose triangle that was bounded along the bottom by the touch of blunted, nibbled thumbnails in what was more than a passable imitation of Nura Nal, "'When you see the circle, be sure to cross the T.' And then 'specially to me she says, 'Contact the nape.'" He dropped his hands and shrugged, running one hand through rust-russet hair. "I dunno about you, but I'm not exactly really reassured so far that we really know what we're going to do."
"We're going to Orando as a volunteer security detail for a historical reenactment," he repeated levelly. For any number N that equaled the the frequency of Garth Ranzz asking 'Don't-you-think-Dream-Girl-has-been-snorting-Kono-juice-exactly-what-are-we-doing?' again existed the number N + 1 which was the value that represented how many times Rokk Krinn would turn his PDA over and look up at Lightning Lad with heavy eyes strange in a young face and answer 'We are going to Orando. We are a volunteer security detail for a historical reenactment.'
It wasn't so much that Garth seemed to have a problem with going to Orando. He liked the going part well enough Rokk knew. It was nearly impossible to actually keep Garth in their newly and fondly dubbed 'Legion HQ' outside of shackling him to some piece of outdated tortureware. He was a rover of high degree. It was hard to keep lightning grounded.
Rokk didn't think it was the Orando part either. Orando was beautiful, plush, wet, and wealthy. The empty gardens of the Emerald Vale palace with their paving stones of Lapis and their colored fairy lights dancing above exotic orchids and the quiet music of a hundred jeweled streams, the brilliant patches of lawn and stone mosaic hinged together by ornate red lacquer bridges lit with will-o-wisp glow were enough to outline this place as interesting, without even counting the opiate scents that tread stealthily up the breeze from the heavier headier gardens to the south.
All this Eden, Rokk could not help but think, And no one here to enjoy it but the three of us. The gardens were deserted. The people of Orando were as content to hide inside behind the scenes and screens as the people of Earth were, as the people of Braal were, as the people of Titan were. I guess money can't buy peace of mind.
Perhaps they have already eaten of the Tree of Knowledge and they did not like what they saw and understood. He didn't know if that was Imra or himself. Sometimes it was hard to tell. She wasn't looking at him. She was watching an azure butterfly stagger through the air from flower to flower. Stagger. Skip. Skipper.
No, Orando was verdant, tropical, and an economic epicenter -- just the sort of thing to stir Garth's blood. He also doubted it was the assignment. The problem that left Garth's voiced choruses so repetitive was --
You know Dream Girl doesn't choose the visions she has. There was Imra, thoughtful and ever aware.
"I know she doesn't choose them," Garth waved one of his arms in mild exasperation, "But sometimes it seems like she stays up all night thinking just about how to give us her clues so she sounds just like the Riddler. Do you think if I searched her rooms I'd find scratch paper? Riddle me this, old chum, when is a nape not a nape?"
I don't think she stays up all night thinking of how to rhyme her advice, Garth. Skeptical.
"Well," Garth admitted, "For one thing, it doesn't rhyme."
"What she means is," Rokk said deliberately, "Is that if she stayed up all night thinking about how to word her clues, she would not have any clues to give us. Period."
Dream Girl. Imra reminded. The patented but gentle 'Duh.'
"There's that too," Garth conceded, palms up and then laughed, kicking back into his seat and stretching. "But you have to admit. It's not like we've got a lot to work with here. Cross the T of the circle and I'm supposed to contact some Nape. What in the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Garth Ranzz. Language. She was primly disapproving.
"Imra, the day you wake up and you're Mama Ranzz is the day you can call me by my whole name and make me feel bad about swearing." He grinned and he showed all his teeth, alive and suddenly full of movement as he jumped to his feet and off the low stone hummock -- the eye of a great jade dragon laid into the center pattern of the garden's mandala. "So we're here to provide security at a historical reenactment." He clapped his hands and there was the pop of a static discharge between them. "Let's get to securing and enacting."
-
Orando's Cuprum Gorge was perhaps one of the planet's ten most amazing natural wonders, if such a small number could be fairly placed on the natural wonders of such a world as Orando. The sunset pink and flagstaff orange of the cliffs laced with raw precious metals and gemstones in the rough made Rokk feel like he'd entered some strange primal mosque. The wind shaped minarets of the rock towers were sometimes pearl white and sometimes lavender pink.
Opalescent, confirmed Imra. They can't be true opals. The wind erosion would carve even these down to nothing within a few hundred years.
"Fleeting mortal beauty!" observed Garth cheerfully as he leaned over the bounding rail to watch the laborers scurrying around in the gorge, installing further rows of seating in this which was becoming the United Planets' first contemporaneously used public amphitheater. "Besides, the only thing you can be sure of in the world is death and more death. Those could be raw opal. After all, Orando is really rich. What are some opal towers every once in a while between friends?"
"It is a beautiful spot," Rokk conceded and leaned out over the railing himself. "Although I don't see a circle whose t we can cross," he admitted.
I'm sure it will all become plain in time. We will do the best we can.
Her presence was always there, warm and friendly like a child holding onto his hand. Wherever they went, she was there -- a soft, calming reminder that they were not alone -- that being Legionnaires, being together, meant that none of them had to be alone. These days she was always hand-holding the both of them, although whether it was to reassure them or to reassure herself he couldn't be sure. Six of one, half dozen of the other, would be what Garth laughed as he elbowed him in the ribs. It didn't really matter. It was good to have her there, the warm fingers of her mind wrapped around his, a chain that linked him through her wrist-elbow-shoulder-spine-shoulder-elbow-wrist to live wire Garth Ranzz. Sometimes he felt like the only thing grounding the both of them. It was so much better, so much easier to have her standing there with her arms spread wide between the two of them than it had been at first, than it would be otherwise, with her arms curled around her knees as she rolled up tight in a spidery little ball. He had discovered that Saturn Girl had much to say, even if she did not have a voice to say it with. It was better to be together than to be alone. There was too much aloneness in the universe already, aloneness out of fear of others, or the aloneness that fascism enforced on the hopeful and far-sighted.
"I gotta say, I'm not always a fast study in history, but this kind of history has got a beat I can dance to," Garth announced as a song burst up out of the gorge, a test of the acoustics of the theater, Rokk imagined, a recording of the song that had so recently swept the youth charts all across known space, but suddenly Imra was the one hanging over the railing and pointing.
Look, it's her! There she is!
It wasn't just a good audio dub. It was her and she was testing out her acoustics live, the blond froth of half an acre of golden yellow hair and magenta gogo boots that kept time as she danced and rattled her tambourine and sang a song about rainbows that was somehow moving and exciting instead of hackneyed and trite: Amethyst, brilliant white-hot star of the moment and the Princess of a planet the residents called Gemworld. In the last six months everyone in the U.P. under thirty had learned the pattern recognition of her smiling, dimpled, heart shaped face and the feel-good jive of her songs about fairy tales and rainbows and friendship and being together and never giving up. She was singing a song they wanted to hear, and when Amethyst had announced her intentions to play live at a free open-air concert on Orando with the full support of the Royal Soceress Wilimena Morgana Daergina Annaxandra Projectera Velorya Vauxhall, there had been a scandal and an uproar from the establishment of dozens of worlds. Some of them worried that a violent riot would break out from so many emotionally excited and unsupervised youths. Others were concerned that an interplanetary pandemic was sure to start from the close contact of so many xenotypically diverse and grungy underagers. Others simply found the idea of such a public congregation appalling and disgusting and certainly disgraceful -- the act of children who didn't know any better but to want something that was filthy and bad for them and they wouldn't like anyway.
It was as if the whole population under the age of legal adulthood was considered to be one of an aggressive and violent nature, disease carrying, ignorant, contrary, and generally mentally incapable of making their own life decisions, whereas the establishment, peopled entirely of those above the age of legal adulthood, were their saviors, teachers, and benefactors.
Parents forbid their rebelling underagers from catching the flights that headed in the direction of Orando or from transmattering there, but youth is canny and more than that it burns with passion and fire and an amazing Bozo the Clown style balance that allows it to wobble back to a standing position no matter what difficulties are thrown at it.
So they made their transmatter jumps or they stowed away or they hitched rides with anybody who would carry them, and in fits and in droves the youth of the U.P. came to the Starred Plain of Orando and camped out there outside the Cuprum Gorge and waited for their concert to start.
"What're they calling it again?" asked Garth as he rocked back from the railing and caught the back of Imra's silver-white cape before she lost her balance and went toppling over from the sudden shift of her perch.
Rokk couldn't help the smile that crept into the corner of his mouth.
"Goodstock."
-
In person Amethyst was only five feet seven inches even in her pink sparkling gogo boots which was rather not as tall as Cosmic Boy expected her to be. Maybe it was just her presence when she was on the stage, full of joy and movement and laughter. She tripped the light fantastic, her toe to heel as she spun with her arms out and sang, crisp, enchanted and motile. She was magic.
Anyone, they can make a miracle occur --
Imra was singing too. In his head he could hear her singing even as he could turn his head and see her fingers knit into the fabric of Lightning Lad's sleeve the same way she'd gripped his hand so needfully when they'd all gone to see the great space diva Laurel Queen in the Chicago burrough Videometrotheater while Garth had snored in his ergonomic seat. It was the first time he'd seen her really moved and the first time he'd ever seen her touch anyone by choice outside of a battle situation. During the performance her thoughts had come to him all jumbled -- listenlistenwanttosaysomuchtosaylistenlistennowordsitsthere -- so that at the end of the concert they'd both been emotionally exhausted. Garth had suggested they both take a cue from him and rest up in the future, and Imra's laugh had rippled off the both of them like liquid joy. She wanted to sing because it was pure and raw and the only way she could shape what she really felt, share what she was searching for, and this was something that he knew that Garth understood even when he slept through operatic performances because Garth Ranzz himself was a jump and a big laugh and a rush from place to place for the sheer pleasure of finding things out.
You and I, we can make a miracle occur --
Imra was finger spelling into Garth's arm a mile a minute, another habit of touch and contact she'd picked up as a result of what other people called his archaeophilia. She was going so fast, a finger jumble of letters, that he didn't think Garth had any chance of being able to follow her. When Imra was really moved to excitement -- which was a thing he was sure she only let the two of them see, like it was the heel that had not been burnt by the hearth-fire -- she was nearly incomprehensible in words, or even in images. What she traded coherence for was unbridled, emphatic empathetic emotion.
She was mute, but Rokk had a hard time thinking of Imra Ardeen as voiceless.
When we shine, from our hearts a miracle is born --
All around the railing that rimmed the gorge the campers from the plain crowded to see and hear Amethyst test her acoustics and they danced and they cheered. There were thousands of them from dozens of worlds. They were legion. At last she finished her song and her last bouyant bounce and spent some time waving at her fans with both her hands and blowing kisses at them before she retired to the backstage area where the three of them had been watching her performance. She glistened or she sparkled -- Cosmic Boy was not entirely sure which it was, six of one, half dozen of the other -- and she was so full of energy that he almost didn't notice that they were also joined by a fifth personage in the hum and shift of lights that was the backstage of this historical reenactment.
Almost. But then, it was difficult for the presence of the Royal Sorceress Wilimena Morgana Daergina Annaxandra Projectera Velorya Vauxhall to escape one's attention entirely.
"It sounded all right?" Amethyst asked breathlessly, panting slightly from the workout under the noon sun of Orando's Eye Star.
"It sounded great," Lightning Lad assured, clapping enthusiastically. "Now that I think about it, this concert is pretty much the best idea I ever heard of."
"Thanks." Amethyst sparkled and it was genuine and Rokk could see Lightning Lad gear up to continue his thoughts on exactly why he thought so, but her hands fluttered in front of her and she turned on her heel.
"Jeckie! Did you like it? I had a lot of fun. I can't even wait until we do it for real!" she stepped backwards and gave her palms outward to all of them. "Jeckie, this is the Legion of Super-Heroes. Everybody, this is the Royal Sorceress Princess Projectera Vauxhall," she gave a great flourish and then a wink, "But you can call her Jeckie. She's princess of Orando," Amethyst announced, as if this fact might have escaped any of them.
The mentioned princess had hair the color of silver spun fine into thread and a dress that appeared to be made of pearls. She was also flanked by two men so positively enormous that they had to be metahumans or genejacked. She raised one arch eyebrow. "They may call me 'Princess Projectera.'"
Amethyst didn't appear to hear this correction, possibly because she was already busy explaining how the concert was mostly possible because of Jeckie's interest and her full financial support.
To this, Projectera announced in an off-hand voice: "We are a philanthropist."
"Too bad Dirk isn't here, right?" Lightning Lad whispered as he elbowed Cosmic Boy familiarly in the ribs. "They could practice admiring themselves together."
Garth. She's only acting this way because she doesn't know any other way to act. She's not hostile, she's just awkward. She's really excited to be a part of this too. Let's try to be friendly.
Rokk sensed Imra had gone broadband. This was her public face. She could be a very fine diplomat, something she had inherited perhaps from her mother. He let her go.
The Legion of Super-Heroes is honored to meet you, Princess Projectera. She smiled, perhaps lacking the voltage of Amethyst, but it was no less genuine. This is Cosmic Boy, Rokk Krinn of Braal, formerly a professional athlete and interplanetary magno-ball champion. I am Saturn Girl, Imra Ardeen of Titan, a class eight telepath. And this is Lightning Lad, Garth Ranzz of Winath --
"Who was attacked by wild animals," Garth groaned audibly and sat down on a smoke machine. Amethyst tittered.
I was going to say 'who is an all around asset to the team due to his energy and dedication.'
Projectera was smiling, perhaps faintly, but smiling.
"We have heard much of the exploits of your Legion of Super-Heroes. With what you have managed to do so far, we had somehow expected you to be older."
Anyone, reminded Saturn Girl seriously, They can make a miracle occur.
"More specifically," Rokk said at last, "We believe we can change the face of the world and it's that belief that gives us power, not magnokinesis or telepathy."
"We -- "
"Jeckie."
At last Projectera laughed.
"I think I understand what you're saying."
-
"Anyway, we haven't seen any circles with t's to cross the whole time we've been here, and I haven't contacted any Napes even accidentally. Although maybe I'd have a higher chance of doing so if I knew what Dream Girl was talking about."
"Thank you, Encyclopedia Brown," Rokk observed dryly.
Garth was confused. "Encyclopedia Brown?"
Fictional character from the twentieth century, clarified Imra. Rokk briefly wondered if she was just guessing.
"Oh, right, right. I remember you talking about him before. The guy with the dog and the blanket -- "
"That's Charlie Brown," Rokk's breath exploded into the back of his fist.
"I'm guessing no relation?"
"No relation."
The sun had gone down and the moon (three fragmentary captured asteroids that orbited Orando nearly synchronously) had come up, and then the moon had gone down and the sun had come up and they had all made themselves comfortable in Projectera's royal box, which hovered a good thirty feet over the heads of the congregating concert crowd. The crowed had already found their seats and spread their blankets in preparation for Amethyst's historical reenactment, their hum and excitement barely contained by the rising stone walls of the gorge.
It was honestly a crowd; so many people had flooded down into the seating area like a liquid that was ready to completely occupy whatever space was available that it was hard to imagine there were still more lining all the safety lines that had been strung up and sitting with their knees drawn up on all the stairs, their fingers manacle tight on the railing like they expected the Science Police to show up in riot gear and with fire hoses and dogs to drag them away from their rainbows and miracles in a Police Action.
Rokk Krinn had quickly become aware upon acquaintance with Her Royal Sorceress Projectera that if anyone intended to crash Amethyst's concert it would not be the Science Police.
"Intervene on Orando without daddy's permission? Oh, I seriously doubt that," was what she had said when he had expressed concerns that it might be the S.P. they would come into conflict with and he had heard enough in the way that she said it to know that Daddy wasn't about to let anyone interrupt his little girl's rockstar tea party.
He saw Imra lean forward in her seat expectantly and stopped watching the crowd long enough to see that Amethyst had burst onto the stage in a show of light and color that played on the mist that came probably from the smoke machine Garth had sat upon earlier, big hair, gogo boots, sequins and metallic sateen all around.
"Orando, are you ready to rock?"
The crowd roared back in response, screaming and whistling and she opened her arms as if she would gather all of it to herself.
"United Planets, are you ready to rock?"
Apparently no one in the stands felt that this question was rhetorical because they all stomped their feet and howled their answer back at her. Her feathery little hand that was mic free made an overjoyed come-to-my-window motion that made it clear that she was still ready for a little more.
"You know what universe? I think we're. All. Ready. To rock."
From somewhere under their royal box Rokk could hear someone screaming "Amethyst, I love you!!" (with three exclamation points) as the crowd crescendoed and Amethyst burst into her first song.
"We built this city.
We built this city on rock and roll --
Built this city --
We built this city on rock and roll -- "
She was heel to toe again and then jumping with the glitter rain of her tambourine as pink butterflies exploded behind her and she danced in the kaleidescope explosion of neon lights and strobing color. The crowd whooped and wailed along with her and Rokk could already imagine them later in the night all weepy and hanging on one another as they bellowed the chorus of "We Are the World" at the apologetic and open night sky. He could also imagine Garth throwing his arms around him in a weepy masculine hug as they all sang we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving while Imra hung on his other arm. That he could foresee did not mean he could not be moved.
They were spectators, but they were also, as Rokk found he did not need to remind them, a voluntary security detail and while the rest of the crowd sang and stomped along along with their glittering purple pulsar he focused on watching the crowd with their glow sticks and their tribal beat. Garth was at his shoulder watching them with him when Imra suddenly grabbed his wrist firmly between two small fingers.
There's someone here that isn't here for this concert.
"D'you think it's the Nape?"
"Garth."
Lightning Lad raised his palms up in self defense. "Hey, it was an honest question, chief."
But Imra was already leaning dangerously over the edge of the box, her pony tail and her cape answering gravity over her head so that they both had to seize her, one arm and leg, before she went diving into the sea of resonate life below. On the stage, Amethyst was still singing, and as lights nova'd behind her she pointed a finger out into the crowd as she rocked along to her song, a sure sign that she was singing for just you. Rokk followed her finger but lost it in the massing waves of the exultant crowd.
Then he saw it. There was a round pavilion set up, perhaps ten feet in diameter, it was painted over with ads for drinks and snacks although he couldn't see a pay window or an entry slit, and even in the swarm of the dancing, bumping throng there was a dead zone of two feet fully eclipsing this tent.
"Imra." He pointed this time, but she had already seen it herself. They hauled her back into the box and he could hear her sputtering in his head.
It's there. It's there. Distorter. The tent. The tent!
He kept his head.
"Princess, is there an emergency exit to your box?"
He could think of half a hundred emergency exits at the moment, but most of them consisted of a thirty foot drop onto the heads of the screaming goodstockers.
A lot of this would be solved if we could just fly.
Always dispensing helpful advice, even live fire situations.
He took the time to answer her, since he knew she was listening.
I'll try and remember to put someone on it.
Projectera looked uncertain.
"There's a maintenance ladder that can be thrown over the side, but that's just a web ladder -- "
"That'll do," he cut her off because they were in a crush situation dealing with an unknown and unidentified terrorist and she might be the princess of Orando, but he was Cosmic Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes. He was feeling his authority. "Apologies that we have to leave you, Princess."
And with that he was gone down the ladder that Saturn Girl had already located and thrown over the side.
The crowd parted around them like water, unconsciously stepping back and creating a space where there had been none. He knew that was Imra, exerting a gentle and delicate suggestion over all of them. They were off at a sprint toward the tent, their passage swallowed up behind them as they went. She was already getting ready to push a safety space open around the tent, and she would need all the ambient space that could be cleared. They circled themselves around the tent and Cosmic Boy looked over to see Imra staring curiously at one of the advertisements. Then he saw her suddenly rear back and throw all the weight of her slender body behind her fist as she plowed into the tent.
Green tea, warm and in cups. Five fifty nine.
She had crossed her t. It was not a tent.
It was a circle laid in something red and viscous or vicious, arcanely figured and utterly unwholesome looking. In the center of the circle sat a man in in deep plum monastic robes with a hood drawn up to conceal his face, hunching forward to protect something precious in his lap.
"Holy shit," howled Lightning Lad meaningfully. "Is that the Time Trapper?"
The seated figure rose before anyone could answer and threw back his hood, revealing a dapper gentleman with a canary-eating smile.
"Jumping at shadows or to conclusions?" he asked, as if he were at least mildly curious.
Then he raised one hand idly and let out an explosion of ozone splitting energy that slammed Garth Ranzz so hard against the natural pink flagstone of the gorge wall that he left a spiderweb imprint of fissures before slowly slipping down the wall in limp defeat.
He didn't have time to hear Imra scream inside his head or maybe she didn't have time to scream in the first place before Amethyst was there with them, hanging in the air as if she belonged there and throwing up her own violet energy as cocoons around both of them.
"You've got to stand back," she insisted, "And help get everyone to safety. He's entirely out of your league -- "
"Who is he?" Cosmic Boy demanded because he was the security and it was his man down.
The robed man smiled briefly, superior and very comfortably in control.
"Vandal Savage. It's a shame our acquaintance will be such a short one."
And then he raised his hand again and the atmosphere splitting magic cut the air open again and slammed like a fist into Amethyst, ruling princess of Gemworld, the last bastion of old earth magic. She had crossed her arms in self-defense and raised a shield in front of herself, but she was still thrown out of the air and her heels were ploughed back into the earth. She slumped after taking the blow, panting. As she did, her eyes finally caught the contents of the bell jar he held safely under one of his arms and she swore.
"By the twelve houses, he's got the Amulet of Anubis."
They scattered, but they did not have much room to scatter, being in the center of a now panicking concert crowd.
"Imra, you've got to calm them down," he shouted at her and knew he didn't have to shout for her to hear him.
I'm trying. I will. It's just hard to do two things -- wait, wait, I've got it now. Amethyst says he's Vandal Savage, an immortal native to earth born before recorded history. He's carrying the Amulet of Anubis, an artifact of Doctor Fate --
"I was really hoping it was going to be some other Amulet of Anubis," he shouted as he ended up in a defensive position in front of Imra who was standing with her arms wrapped around herself and her eyes closed tightly, hunched over. The crowd was milling quietly around them, listlessly going up the stairs in an orderly fashion, to the relative safety of the fields beyond.
At the moment, Savage did not seem particularly interested in attacking either of the two of them. He was pouring spellfire wrath down on Amethyst who was dripping sweat and burning her forearms raw from the force of holding up her shield.
He pressed her. He had no other choice.
What Imra. What does he want? What is he doing here? he shouted, hoping she was still self-aware enough to listen to him when her consciousness was so spread, moving the civilians into the clear.
Rock. Rock of Eternity. Amethyst says she knew someone was looking for a fragment of the Rock of Eternity that had come to rest on Orando so she decided to organize this concert to create a lot of ambient positive energy to locate the shard before whoever was looking for it found it.
"Vandal Savage."
"Yes?" asked the named, turning to the two of them with some curiosity and leaving Amethyst for the moment to cough and sputter, breathing hard and rubbing her wrists. He raised his hand.
He doesn't have any innate magical or metahuman powers except for his immortality and his mind. It's all the amulet. It was a frantic burst from Imra, but it was too late for him to grab her and throw them both out of the way. Savage was upon them.
"It is completely not fair," growled Lightning Lad as he staggered to his feet. "To hit a girl."
The Amulet of Anubis could not make Vandal Savage faster than lightning, and he turned his attention in the direction of the voice even as the lightning arced and crackled from Garth's fists. It was all over in a fraction of a second, the dazzle of the lightning splitting the air open and the explosion of the close range thunder that accompanied it. But the charged strike of lightning did not hit its intended target but instead Judas kissed and snaked away into the ground, leaving only the air hot from the strike and the rocks groaning and popping around them. The earth had eaten Garth Ranzz's judgement strike.
Curpum Gorge, Garth. Copper Gorge. We're in a giant conductor.
"The problem with having junior high aged super-heroes is that they always seem to be flunking out in all subjects," observed Savage, who was clearly having a fine time at what he felt was amateur hour. "Particularly science."
But Savage's gloating about Garth's poor marks at school were enough to give Rokk the moment he needed to focus on the magnetic fields of Savage's pneudraulic cannister.
The cannister itself was all hard plastics and diamagnetic polymers. Perhaps Vandal Savage had sought to control that pesky element of chance which might deliver one of the most publicized heroes of the current century into his lap.
He could control the elements of the holding cannister, but Cosmic Boy knew that Vandal Savage had no way of altering the fundamental structure of the amulet itself, and he strained against the primal magic that held it together, pulling so hard he felt the muscles cord in his neck and he stumbled to one knee. At last in that one moment, that one second that Savage's head had been turned the amulet burst free of the cannister, the paramagnetic gold and platinum casing for the blood red stone held free of it, orbiting in a wide and lacerating arc, there only for a moment before it winked out. He could feel a line of warm, wet liquid slip out of his ear and down the collar of his suit. He thought that he had possibly burst his eardrums.
"It's gone back to Doctor Fate," panted Amethyst. "Savage has given nothing of his for it, so he had no hold over it."
Unflappable, Savage pulled a heavy phase pistol out of his robes and shot Amethyst in the face, then calmly dabbed at the blood that was seeping from the line the departing Amulet of Anubis had left. She shielded herself, but the flash of the plasma splitting itself over her shield blinded her and she reeled backward.
I can't push at his mind. He won't let me. Garth. Garth you've got to make a contact strike on him. Rokk's down. Unless you discharge into Savage's body the ground is just going to eat up your lightning again.
Contact. Contact.
Perhaps Vandal Savage did not expect the next attack to be such a physical one -- a flying tackle from Garth Ranzz who put his hands on the closest bit of bare flesh he could find on Savage: the back of his neck. Savage crumpled underneath the shock and Lightning Lad went down on top of him like it was a game of dogpile. Stunned that it was suddenly over, it took a minute for Garth to roll off of him, but Savage stayed down, prone and unconscious due to static shock.
He's alive, Imra reassured them both as Garth managed his feet again and moved to help Rokk to his. He's just incapacitated. He should stay that way for several hours, more than long enough to turn him over to the proper authorities.
All along the railings surrounding the canyon a wild and ragged cheer went up as the youth found their heroes a little battered and a little bloody, but still standing and the uncontested heavy-weight champions. The hum and gentle hiss of the royal box landing behind them heralded the arrival of Projectera and her two loyal bodyguards who took Savage into custody and escorted Amethyst, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl to what Projectera called a "royal clinic," but might have been just a regular old-fashioned one.
Two hours and a helpful "We should get a Healing Lass or a First-Aid Girl" later, they were all released and along with Projectera made their way back to Cuprum Gorge to inspect the scene. They found each and every Goodstocker loyally if not so quietly back in their seats and on their blankets. They had even covered the formerly bare spot where the over-priced green tea tent had stood.
"Well," said Rokk Krinn as he stood on stage with two princesses, one of which was a battle scarred pop-star, and his two closest friends, "What exactly is it that we do now?"
Amethyst turned to him like he'd asked a question that really didn't need to be answered in words.
Garth's grin was all teeth as he suddenly threw his arms into the air and shouted, "Orando, are you still ready to rock?"
The response was deafening and not to be measured or contested and even as the background music swelled and spilled out into a recognizable harmony, from somewhere Amethyst produced her mic and put one hand in Lightning Lad's who put one hand in Cosmic Boy's quite without permission. He found his other hand the property of Imra Ardeen's physical one and that she had taken Projectera's. When Amethyst began to sing it was a rock anthem that no one could deny and which prompted a sea of swaying lights and glow sticks from the battered-but-ultimately-better-for-it audience.
"God gave rock and roll to you --
Gave rock and roll to you.
Put it in the soul
Of everyone -- "
Again he felt the warm presence of Imra Ardeen at the corner of his mind as she squeezed his hand.
I find that I can always put my faith in you and Garth. There was a pause as if she was considering and then she made her addendum. And a loud guitar.
-
In one week: What is Amethyst going to do with the fragment of the Rock of Eternity when she finds it anyway? And who is responsible for all of the roses that she finds in her dressing room? Could they be from Topaz? Maybe she'll uncover some clue as she travels back to Gemworld in Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #32.
In two weeks: Vandal Savage is none too happy when he wakes up in a prison colony. Will he ever get those meddling kids? Find out what the everlasting man plans to do about life, the universe, and incarceration in the exciting new maxi series that debuts with Vandal Savage: Escape from New New York #1.
In four weeks: How will Lightning Lad feel about singing "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" to an audience of thousands of screaming fans the morning after? Meanwhile, has Cosmic Boy's honest and heartfelt performance of "Lean on Me" earned him a Legion of Super-Fangirls? How will Saturn Girl sort all their super fanmail? Does she want to be president of his super fanclub? And what does Universo have to do with all of this? For the answers to this and more you'll have to pick up Legion of Super-Heroes #44