The desert sands were barely disrupted, the dunes rearranged to make way for broken, damaged streets. A lone woman in a long black dress walked barefoot across the concrete, the hot wind whipping away her tears.
"It appears to be a street, my lord," the scarlet-clad man said, and rose to his feet as the Pharaoh bid him rise. "Although the architecture is of a kind I have never seen before. I saw no army."
Akhenaten rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Could it be the return of Aten, after so many years, Heru? I would hope he would have sent me a message …. "
"I would suggest caution, my lord," Queen Nofretete said, laying a hand on her husband's shoulder. "Aten had enemies … as do we."
"I shall send my Dune Patrol to investigate," Akhenaten decided. "Heru, summon the elemental, and I shall contact the other."
Heru bowed low. "So shall it be, my lord. 3X2(9YZ)4A!" Quicker than the hawk from which he took his emblem, the man was gone.
Nofretete tightened her grip on his shoulder. "My lord, must you summon the other? I fear for you always."
"The land is mine to protect," Akhenaten replied. "Go now, to act in my stead until I return."
She nodded, her face still to contain her emotions, and departed the chamber. Akhenaten opened a door known to only a handful of his fellow citizens, a door designed by Aten himself, on his visit from the stars. The door was heavy, being lined with lead. He entered the chamber and began to undress. Even fewer knew the secret his garments were designed to conceal: that his physique bore traits of both the masculine and the feminine. In the greenish, alien light which filled the chamber, he began the process of wrapping himself in heavy bandages which protected those around him from the spirit which sometimes chose to inhabit him. He heard the whispering which echoed through the small room, and replied, "I am ready." An apparition of darkness appeared before him and he felt the charge as it entered his body. The joined entity exited the chamber, and took to the skies. "Meta-Mummy!" he heard from the citizens below as they pointed up to him, never suspecting that their eerie guardian was their own Pharaoh.
"Danny?" Crazy Jane walked cautiously down the damaged street, eyes searching for some sort of response. The other inhabitants had been rendered comatose by whatever transition the Man in Mauve had created when he interfered with Danny's attempt to meld with the Earth. Fortunately, sensing the danger, Rain Brain had manifested in the body and had been unaffected. She had made the rest of them … friends and acquaintances and neighbours … as comfortable as possible, but continued to attempt to reach Danny the Street. She was unsurprised when the visitors appeared, although she raised an eyebrow at the form they took.
She had mistaken one for Rebis on arrival, although the bandages appeared to be of a cruder manufacture, and her old friend's casual clothes and color-shifting trenchcoat had been replaced by gold ornaments and headdress. The other was clearly Metamorpho, although wearing a loincloth rather than his usual shorts. The third was the most normal-appearing of the three, clad in slight crimson garments accented with gold, a vaguely familiar insignia of some sort of bird on his chest; he moved with incredible speed.
"Hello," she said.
The man wrapped in bandages pointed a gold staff at her, and spoke in an unknown language. Jane tilted her head curiously, and then her expression shifted, eyes tilting slightly, upper lip pursing and ears coming to a point almost imperceptibly. "Greetings, Dune Patrol," she said in a purring ancient Egyptian dialect, "I bear the name Ioanna. I come in peace."
Elsewhere, Pat Dugan wiped the sweat from his brow. "I had started to think I'd been forgotten about. Ted, you're a sight for sore eyes."
Ted Knight nodded solemnly. "We never knew what had happened to the Seven Soldiers. We only recently learned of the Spider's betrayal. Rescue missions have been dispatched for all of you now. Aquaman, Wildcat, and Green Lantern … um, not the one you know … are retrieving Sylvester Pemberton even as we speak."
Stripesy raised an eyebrow, curious at Starman's clarification. "It'll be good to see Syl again," he said. He looked back at Starman, and at Hourman who was accompanying him. "I've been away for a long time, haven't I? You both look so much older … and you, Sir, we've not met. Are you some sort of heir to the Flying Fox?"
Batman smiled. "No … though I have used that name briefly, in the past. I'm called the Batman. I think we'd best be on our way, however … those guards don't look well-disposed to our stealing a slave from ' the son of the sun,' as they call their Pharoah, and we're not here to do them harm."
Starman nodded, and used his cosmic rod to levitate the four of them skyward, before returning them to the 20th century in a burst of starlight.
The four men's footsteps had left echoes in the sand … echoes of another time more than a century and a half earlier. In that even more distant past, the goddess Isis had created a pair of champions. The first, a strong, vigorous mortal youth named Seth, had been given powers akin to the gods themselves and taken the name Superboy. The second, a creature of darkness and legend, his enigmatic companion, the Bat-Sphinx. Among their adventures they had fought and defeated a pair of sand creatures from the other-dimensional land of Quarm who had taken on appearances similar to their own.
Some resonance in the Batman's steps called to their long-dissipated energies, and an eerie quartet of figures arose from the desert floor.
Meta-Mummy peered at Ionna suspiciously. Aten had assured him the gods had departed, and Akhenaten had torn down and erased their names, replacing them in his nation's esteem with that of the one entity; he had even changed his name from Amenhotep IV in his honor. "You say you come in peace, yet you have brought an invading city to our kingdom. Are you a visitor from Heliopolis, the home of the gods?"
Ioanna shook her head. "I can assure you, I'm not a goddess, only … only a woman who is lost. My home," she gestured to the seemingly comatose street, "has been brought here for some unknown reason." She felt at ease in these hot desert sands, much more so than isolated in the underground of Jane's mind, but wondered whether she was in her own world's past or some alternate universe.
Heru seemed to blur, a trail of afterimages left in her vision as he started off down Danny's sidewalks and alleyways. "It's as I saw it before," he said on his return, "full of pale and strangely garbed people, all sleeping like the shadow of death has come upon them. But none bear weapons, and few have the look of warriors. Many of them are women."
Prince Algon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The land he ruled alongside Queen Jezeba was under part of the domain of the Pharaohs of Egypt, but he was formerly a legionnaire of Rome, and he had no special allegiance to them. "I propose we bring this Ioanna back to your capitol city of Amarna as our guest. I will dispatch a legion from Ma-Phoor to stand guard over these sleepers and ensure they come to no harm." And to take hold of this odd wandering street for whatever advantages it may bring, he thought to himself.
Ioanna looked woefully back at Danny. She needed to learn more about her enigmatic hosts, and whether there were any resources here which could help her. "Flit can … I can flit over to join you at Amarna, easily. I welcome your hospitality."
A foot slipped. A rope snapped. The construction project of the great temple to Aten became imperilled, three massive stones tumbling atop the workers below. Suddenly, a light as bright as a star came out of nowhere, suspending two of the stones in the air; the third was caught in hand by a cloaked entity who seemed to be made from sand, who lowered it gently to the floor. He was soon joined by a pair of similar entities, one clad in red and white horizontal stripes, the other resembled a giant bat, and then by a third who descended from the sky.
As people began to approach nervously to greet their apparent saviors, they soon ran in fear as the quartet began to dismantle the temple, reshaping it into the form of some twisted imitation of an enormous bat-winged sphinx.
"She's quick," Heru whispered to Meta-Mummy, "she may be quicker than I am."
"It is good we are keeping her monitored," Meta-Mummy replied quietly, as the pair of them watched Flit follow them, teleporting to and fro. "Something about her seems to interest the Negative Spirit within me. But it doesn't seem to consider her an enemy."
Flit saw the great city of Amarna before her, and teleported over to it. She saw the sand creatures, recognising at least one of them as a facsimile of Batman. "What the hell?" She paused with indecision. "I better tell … Rebis and the Flash or whoever those people are … what's going on. I don't think this is a good thing."
They were not far behind her when she reappeared before them. Ioanna reasserted herself, being the only one who could communicate with these ancient Egyptians. "You've been … invaded, I think. Strange creatures made of sand. One of them I … I think is familiar … but I'm here to stand with you and help if I can."
"They sound like men from the City of Shifting Sands whom I've encountered before," Heru said. "They are quite dangerous. Ioanna, your help would be welcomed."
Prince Algon caught up with the others. He morphed his body so that it resembled the pale land beneath their feet. "If they are men of earth, they would bear little danger to one who is earth, air, water, and fire."
Meta-Mummy gestured with his staff once again. "So be it. Ioanna, if you will stand aside the Patrol, come with us now to defend our land."
They arrived at Amarna and found their way blocked by a wall of starlight. The Negative Spirit exited from within Meta-Mummy and darkness began its duel with light. Ioanna watched as the faux-Hourman struggled against Prince Algon, and Heru battled against the faux-Batman and the faux-Stripesy. As powerful as they were, the Quarmian simulacrums lacked some of the deeply learned skills of the originals, and it was not long before the Dune Patrol began to fail. The Negative Spirit blasted through the faux-Starman, and Ioanna raised her hands as sparkling sand seemed to fall like snow.
The remaining trio seemed to dissolve back into sand, only to reform again, their numbers halved: one, a teenage boy clad in blue and red, the symbol of the goddess Isis on his chest; the other, a creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion, its features strangely concealed behind an ebony mask and a dark, ribbed cloak which was attached to its shoulders. The boy rose into the air, and beams of heat blazed from his eyes, crystallising Prince Algon into glass, which shattered as the sphinx leaped through it.
"No," Ioanna moaned, "No no no no no … "
Heru and the Negative Spirit attempted to subdue the super boy, and the sphinx approached her, teeth and claws bared.
"Bad dog," Black Annis said, baring her own.
The super boy was not quite as fast as Heru, but his still considerable speed as well as his immense strength and the heat which he generated from his eyes made him a challenging even for the combined force of the speedster and the Negative Spirit. Their blows seemed to only defuse into the hard sand of his body, but the power which animated him began to wear them down.
"They fall apart, they always just fall apart," Black Annis said disdainfully, the sphinx in pieces beneath her claws like a broken sand castle. The misandrist's job done, Ioanna watched in dismay as her new allies seemed unable to defeat their opponent. She began to increase in size, and her head burned like the sun, ejecting fireballs.
The super boy's eyes blazed again, fire met with fire. The alter known as Sun Daddy felt itself weakening against a force which seemed to partake of both the power of a Kryptonian and that of the gods themselves, but had no mouth with which to scream as it collapsed against the desert sands.
The clumped pieces of sand which had resembled the cloaked sphinx began to reform, and Meta-Mummy and Heru felt the weight of despair on their shoulders.
And then the paved avenues of Amarna rearranged themselves to make room for a newcomer.
"Bona to vada, Jane," said a series of ribbons suspended from a streetlight. Crazy Jane rolled to a seated position, pushing tangled hair off her face. "Danny?" she whispered hoarsely.
Friends and foes alike looked around in wild confusion, until the street vanished, taking the Quarmians with it.
Heru appeared before Jane. "What was that? What did you do?"
Ioanna reasserted herself to address her ally. "Danny the Street seems to have woken up," she said, with a calm smile. "It's not just my home. It's my friend."
Danny reappeared moments later. Ioanna leapt towards him like a cat, and the pair vanished once more.
The sands beneath the remaining pair shifted, and Hero groaned as Meta-Mummy raised his staff, only to find their other ally reconstituting himself.
"Prince Algon!" Hero exclaimed, "we'd given you up for lost."
Prince Algon shook his head. "The powers given to me by Ra sustain me eternally," he said, "although I ache for battle. What transpired after those sand-creatures dissipated me?"
Meta-Mummy shook his head. "I'm not entirely sure. Sometimes even Patrollers such as we are as playthings for entities from beyond. I sense we have been pawns in a battle outside out ken."
Elsewhere, Jane walked along the comfortingly familiar alleyways of her friend. "Danny, what happened?"
"I'm a little unsure, dearie," Danny responded. "The Men in Mauve spoiled my plan to merge with the Earth, but sent us where we could do some good. They're a little too attached to the status quo, I'm afraid, but they gave me some compensations: I can resettle in any neighbourhood in time or space now."
Jane's eyes widen. "Where should we go first?" she asked in anticipation.
Meta-Mummy, Bat-Sphinx, and the Dune Patrol were all named in Adventures of Jerry Lewis #94
Prince Algon first appeared in Metamorpho #16, 17
Heru was created by me, although it is canon that Professor Gill gave Johnny Chambers the magic equation after translating it from an Egyptian scroll in More Fun Comics #71
Batman, Starman, and Hourman rescued Stripesy from ancient Egypt during the reign of 'the son of the sun' in Justice League of America #101
Aten was revealed to be an alien in Isis #5-7
The existence of the Superboy of ancient Egypt was revealed in Superboy #123