Author's Note:
Hello, dear readers!
Well, firstly, my sincere apologies to any loyal reader who still may be with me after such a long hiatus in between chapters! I certainly never intended it to take so very long to update, but with an especially stressful and busy period of time recently, I couldn't seem to get many chances to write or post here, I'm afraid! Sorry about the delay! I also didn't think there were many people even reading this fic here, but recently I looked at my Stats and the number of hits, and there are a surprising number of them. (just awfully quiet ones, except for a few outspoken, commenty sorts.) So, I shall keep updating here on after all. (and to make up for the long absence, I will post several parts all at once today! Really!)
For those more comfortable with Livejournal, I do post links to this story at several DC Fic-related comms (to my own journal) too, and tend to get into more detailed discussions and fun analysis of the characters and story with friends and readers, so please do feel free to check out the story there. The main page and Table of Contents are at paxwolf./23762.html . Pop by and peruse, if you'd like! And of course you're very welcome to leave comments there should you feel so inclined, even if you don't have an LJ account, as I accept Anonymous feedback on my journal as well. grin
So, without further ado, here are Parts 8 and 9, presented in four chapters! I hope you enjoy! :-)
- Paxwolf the Procrastinator blush
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Title: JLA: Necessary Force - Part 8: "In the Teeth of It" (1st Half)
Author: Paxwolf
Fandom: JLA/Justice League
Rating: PG-13 (R in parts)
Disclaimer: The JLA and its characters are owned by DC Comics and Time Warner. The OC's are, I suppose, owned by me!
Warnings: Mature Situations, Language, Violence - (oh, and more Foreign Language Alert!)
Summary: When a powerful terrorist threatens the safety of the planet, the Justice League must go to extremes to stop him, and Superman and Batman may have to make the biggest sacrifice of all.
Summary of This Part: Our heroes start to realize the mammoth scale of Lord Ayestrom's designs, and Superman is less than impressed with his host's hospitality.
JLA : Necessary Force
by Paxwolf
Part VIII:
"In the Teeth of It"
(1st half)
The tread of heavily booted feet grew ever louder in the confined space between the rows of stacked crates as Superman crouched in the darkness, heart beating rather more quickly than normal.
"Sentries?" Oracle asked, voice low.
"It appears so," he answered quietly, peering through the walls.
The tension on the open channel became almost palpable.
"Can you evade them?" Batman asked tersely.
"I'm trying. I've managed countless times so far. It's probably just another routine patrol."
But already he could tell it wasn't. From the sounds of their movements, the approaching patrol seemed intent on much more than a mere casual look around. Superman cast a quick study of the ceiling. It was too low to float up to and still be out of sight. Dammit.
The hushed voices of two men and a woman carried to where he was pressed between the heavy crates, although he was certain anyone else wouldn't have heard a thing.
"Hast Du …?" The one in the lead suddenly asked quietly.
"Ja, stimnt," another asserted, equally sotto voce.
Superman froze. Somehow they had detected something out of the ordinary.
"Fuer wie lange?"
"Ich bin mir nicht sicher," answered the female voice. A faint whirring sound could be briefly heard from the equipment they were carrying.
"Ah! Driezehn Minuten!"
What was thirteen minutes? Superman wondered, his heart in his mouth. He looked frantically around again, but still no clear sign of escape miraculously appeared.
"Gut," the leader grunted. "Ich habe verstanden."
Understood what? What does he understand?
Superman was more certain than ever that the troop was looking for whatever out-of-place thing their mysterious device had picked up on, and with its aid, would more than likely be able to soon track him down. And soon. Forcing himself push aside the slight feeling of panic, he scanned all around the huge basement level again. No exits were in sight, other than the elevator he had slipped in from. He inwardly cursed himself as he swiftly crawled into a farther crate-alley. Why had he allowed himself to be cornered like this?
Okay, options, Clark, he told himself fiercely. Focus. Fight or flee.
If he crept out of the cavernous storage basement at superspeed, he might be able to slip past the patrol and reach the exit, but the meta-power scanners along each side of the room would register his excess movement in an eyeblink.
If he took a stand and fought back, he could certainly take them all out, but it could be only seconds before every soldier and mercenary in the base would be alerted to his presence, including the possibility of Ayestrom himself. And that would do neither the League nor the hostages any good.
That left only one possible move he could make, risky as it was.
Clenching his jaw, backing into a corner, he withdrew the splintery walking stick from his ragged belt, and let himself collapse bonelessly into a loose sprawl on the concrete floor. The voices grew in volume as their owners approached closer to his position. He spotted the gleam of flashlights on the ceiling as the patrol rounded the bend at the end of his section. He was mere seconds from being discovered. He closed his eyes.
If this could work …
"Superman!"
He practically jumped right out of his skin before biting his lip hard to keep from snarling into the tiny communicator.
"Do you mind?" he muttered, eyeing the approaching sentries through the solid - but fortunately lead-free - crate sidings.
"Your status?"
"I'm a bit busy here at the moment, Batman."
"Is your position … untenable?" The strain in Batman's voice was very apparent.
"You might say that," he hissed. "I'll contact you momentarily, if I can. Stand by."
He cut off his transmission, and saw the patrol halt six feet from where he huddled on the floor, directly on the other side of the stack of crates. He steeled himself and smiled a little grimly at the irony.
"Wo ist …?"
"Ich verstehe nicht," the man holding the strange device murmured.
"Eine Panne?" the leader demanded, asking if the equipment had suffered a breakdown. Superman listened closely.
"Nein. Wir sind unterbrochen worden."
Superman suddenly realized that it had to be his communicator's transmission that their scanner was picking up. But it didn't seem able to detect the minute signal when no one was actually speaking on the line.
Damnit, he thought in frustration. John Henry said these things were practically unscannable.
If only they could have stuck with J'onn's telepathic link as usual. Ayestrom's tech was good. Too good.
His furiously fast thoughts around their communication obstacles were abruptly cut short as a blinding flashlight beam fell fully upon him, outlining his stilled form with garish clarity. He lay perfectly motionless except for long, even breaths, his eyes tightly shut.
"Achtung! Hier ist es!"
Three pairs of armored legs immediately surrounded him. He distinctly heard the telling clicks of several automatic weapons being primed, and the whine of building power cells. He fought to keep his eyes closed and his body deliberately relaxed, as if fast asleep, even though every nerve and muscle was screaming with tension and adrenaline.
"Was ist das?" one of the men demanded in a surprised tone.
"Hausgenosse," replied the female sentry with a cold sneer, shifting her weapon in her grip. "Der Gestanki!" Two of them made gagging sounds and laughed.
An inmate? Superman thought, with a frown. That's what they're calling these people? And they were definitely not impressed with his smell. Ha.
"Sie!" Superman felt a booted foot prod him harshly in the side. "Aufstehen!" He was commanded to get up. "Jetzt!" Now.
Superman uttered a groan and moved slightly as if just awakening, rolling partially onto his back and blinking his eyes open before squeezing them shut against the sharp light.
"Was? W-wer?" He blurted out in a tremulous voice, cracked as if with age.
"Steh auf! Aufstehen!" The leader kicked at Superman's feet.
A second kick was immediately aimed at his head and Superman in reflex covered his face with his arms protectively.
"Nein, nein!" He cried out in his heavily accented German, keeping his voice weak. "Ich gehorche!"
"Hinauf!"
Trying to appear obedient to the impatiently barked commands to get moving, Superman scrambled crookedly to his knees, then used his stick to pry himself to shaky feet, allowing laboured breath to issue from his mouth. At the sight of the weapons trained on him, he froze for a second and then backed away fearfully.
"Warum? Wozu dient das?" He asked what was going on in a purposefully rural accent, keeping his tone bewildered.
"Haende hoche!" he was ordered harshly.
With feigned difficulty, Superman slowly obeyed, raising his hands over his head, and after exchanging an obvious look of distaste with his fellows, one of the men stepped forward and slammed Superman brutally against the crate wall while the others covered him with their meta-weapons. The soldier kicked his legs apart and proceeded to do a swift body search. Superman carefully made no struggle or protest, and waited resignedly until the ignoble search was through. He had little fear that his miniscule communicator – or the medic sensor, wherever it was – would be discovered by the likes of these guys.
They of course quickly found the rusty knife he had tucked away in his outer shirt, and extracted it gingerly. Batman and Kyle had argued over the inclusion of the small weapon in his disguise, but Superman himself had decided in the end to keep it, believing no one would ever reside in one of these lairs and be caught completely weapon-less. If he were detained and searched, he would only be more convincing in his lie with such a possession.
"Messer," the searcher said, holding up the blade in disdain.
The lead sentry nodded expectantly as he took the handle of the old knife and looked it over. "Sonst noch etwas?"
The guard shook his head. "Nichts." Nothing.
The patrol all looked disappointed at the lack of any other weapons or items of interest. Superman hid a smile of relief. So far, they did not seem to suspect he was anything other than what he appeared: a helpless, harmless old man, an apparent resident of the plant below. He knew better, however, than to relax his guard, and resolved to keep in character as best he could.
"Was ist los?" he asked indignantly after he was spun back around to face the guards. He was instantly slapped across the face as his reward for the query. He was very careful to roll his head with the blow so that the man did not injure his hand.
"Es tut mir leid," Superman apologized quickly. "Was wuenschen Sie?" He was sure to ask what they wanted in a more submissive voice this time, much as it made him bristle inside.
Instead of answering, they raised their laser rifles again, staring at him with suspicious glares.
Uh oh.
The woman then demanded what he had been doing up there. How could he explain what he was doing so far from the actual inhabited areas of the base? His thoughts raced.
"Ich bin krank," he attempted. "Mir ist schwindlig und uebel." He swayed a little on his feet to prove the sickness and dizziness he had just claimed. "Ich habe Kopfschmerzen." He pressed the heel of his gnarled hand to his head, shaking it as if in pain, and showing physically what he verbally tried to explain in simple German.
The mercenary guards all looked at each other, and one of the men shook his head.
"Verboten!" The woman snarled, shoving him back against the crates. He staggered back as she shouted at him that he was out of bounds, that the place was forbidden.
"Ah, meine Brille ist zerbrochen," Superman answered hastily, mimicking having broken eyeglasses as he spoke, and seeing their surprised looks. "Ich habe mich verirrt." Well, stating that he couldn't see too well and that he was quite lost wasn't actually too far from the truth. He decided to add a plea for help for authenticity's sake. "Koennen Sie mir helfen??"
All three of them let out a great laugh, and the sentry who had performed the body search once more pushed him roughly back against the crates when he tried to step forward.
"Kann ich Ihnen helfen?" The man repeated back in a tone of clear mockery, and then laughed even harder.
"Bitte," Superman pleaded, pretending to cower pitifully.
"Vielleicht," answered the leader with a glint in his eye. Perhaps. "Mehr als ein wenig helfen, ja?"
Superman didn't particularly like the sound of the 'help' he was suddenly being offered. He decided that it was prudent to play up his naiveté.
"Entschuligen Sie bitte, ich verstehe nicht," he said in as pathetic a voice as he could manage, forcibly reminding himself of the role had to play, as he both apologized and expressed his lack of understanding with his meek words.
"Ah, aber Sie verstehen," the sentry replied with a nasty grin.
They weren't buying it. Superman swallowed, and the response this time wasn't an act. But he simply looked back at his captors blankly, keeping his course.
The female guard snapped forward and reminded her partners of their duty, and they cocked their weapons again, their mocking laughter dying.
"Bitte, ich bin krank, und ich habe Schmerzen!" Superman tried again desperately, reiterating his 'illness'. If only they would believe him! "Ich habe mich verirrt!" I'm lost!
"Ruhig!" They commanded him to be silent, this time with a rifle barrel pressed to his neck.
"Bitte …" he feigned a whimper, trying to keep in character, trying harder to resist the immense temptation of simply snatching the gun away and crumpling it into a ball. Please…
They stopped, and looked at each other. Then the women stepped closer, and nudged him in the side with the muzzle of her weapon, looking him over critically.
"Haben Sie einen Ausweis?"
At her demand for identification papers, Superman nodded as if frantically. "Ja, ja!"
The mercenaries exchanged skeptical looks, having already searched him and finding nothing but his knife amongst his rags.
"Wo?"
Superman, with great mustered difficulty, pointed and bent down, tugging at his scuffed and cracked boot, fumbling with the torn and knotted laces. The watching trio predictably grew impatient.
"Papiere, sofort!"
Still bent awkwardly over, Superman pulled the ragged papers free from his boot and slowly held them shakily out to the guards at the demand.
"Beeilen Sie sich!" The nearest guard told him to hurry up and then impatiently stooped to snatch the papers from his hand anyway.
Superman silently straightened, thanking the good fortune of getting such good advice from Black Canary's informant, enabling him to 'prove' he was indeed one of the old plant's maintenance workers with the false identification they acquired, and therefore would seem a bona fide inhabitant among the dregs of what basically amounted to Ayestrom's slave population.
The lead guard looked over his papers, and grunted, frowning at Superman.
"You seem to be out of your defined safe zone, Herr Czerwinski," he said, still in German.
"You really should know better," the woman added, giving him a disdainful look. "You know what happens to non-conformists."
"My apologies, madam," Superman answered meekly, also in German, "but I became quite ill, as I've said, and dizzy, and I couldn't see, and wandered away, becoming most lost. I'm very fortunate you came along when you did! Please, help me find my way back."
She looked at him, obviously irritated, and then at her companions.
"Very well. We'll escort this gutter rat back to the ghetto zone," she said, and the others gave a sharp nod.
"Bring him," she commanded.
The woman turned dismissively away and the male guards each gripped one of Superman's arms and yanked him forward.
"Danke," Superman murmured in forced weakness.
"You won't thank us for long," one of his 'helpers' snorted in a Swedish-accented German. He gave Superman a dark, sidelong look. "You will, no doubt, be severely punished for being out of bounds without permission. Your overmaster will see to that!"
"I just hope I'll be there to watch," grunted the other with a rather disquieting leer. "That would really make my night."
Superman suppressed an involuntary shiver. Little more was said as the patrol 'escorted' him farther into the basement, and then down a stairwell into an even deeper and more cavernous level.
Superman's mind raced furiously even as he stumbled obligingly along in the grip of his guards. This turn of events hadn't been entirely unexpected, but the League had naturally hoped for an avoidance of such an encounter. He had no opportunity to contact Oracle, or to escape the base undetected. At least they had not discovered his miniature comm tucked away against his collarbone, and thus far his disguise and acting performance seemed to be convincing.
And, he couldn't help thinking, there was the remote possibility that this could turn out to be an advantageous event. He was, after all, moving closer to the hostages' supposed position, not further away, and he couldn't help but glean more information about the base, the number of soldiers stationed here, the kind of equipment they employed, and perhaps, most of all, even more about Ayestrom himself.
He shivered again suddenly as he thought about Ayestrom.
His vision swam abruptly, and then filled with disquieting images from his recent slew of dark dreams as the visions swarmed across his mind's eye full force, out of the blue.
Nein! No! Not now!
He gritted his teeth and with an effort, pushed the nightmares back.
He couldn't deal with them right now. And there was no use at all in dwelling on them here and now.
He wrested his attention back to his immediate surroundings, and tried to keep alert.
You're on a fact-finding mission here, Superman, he forcibly reminded himself. The League needs more info. Keep focussed.
They still knew practically nothing about their mysterious enemy, barely anything more than what they had learned when he'd first declared war on the United Nations and on the League. But they did know the man was extraordinarily powerful (though not in precisely what way) and ruthless, charismatic, and quite possibly the most evil man – or creature – that the JLA had faced in a very long time.
Against his will, Superman's memory flashed again to the video footage showing the innocent school children that Ayestrom's men had so callously murdered, having done so simply to catch the League's attention. He clenched his jaw almost painfully. He couldn't – wouldn't – allow such a thing to happen again.
Never again.
He stumbled, but this time it was not a faked fall, as his distracted thoughts and own very real fatigue caused him to misjudge his dragging steps on the uneven floor and falter. He immediately compensated with still-lightning reflexes, allowing the guards to catch his arms and halt his fall, dragging him forwards again with irritated glares. But by exerting precision control over his flight capability, he made his body seem lighter and frailer to the guards than of course it actually was as they caught him.
"Ich habe es eilig," the female guard snapped as they yanked him up.
Why is she in a hurry? He wondered at her words even as he apologized again and expressed his fatigue. "Mir tut Bein weh," he added, saying his leg hurt.
His escorts shrugged, not especially caring about his supposed infirmities, and proceeded to drag him along once again.
Superman determined to concentrate more on his surroundings after that slight lapse. He forcibly reminded himself that he was basically alone and surrounded on all sides by a powerful enemy with a virtual army bearing immensely potent weaponry. Weaponry that could hurt even him. It would not do to get careless at this stage of the game. Not after coming so far, at such great cost. But the cost would prove far greater if he failed in his mission now.
Bruce, I'm not going to let them down.
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To Be Continued (Immediately!)