More Fun With Time Travellers

The First Nome, Giza, Al Omraneyah, Egypt

July 5, 2010, 14:40 EDT (20:40 local time)

Kid Flash came running into the room just as the voice inside my head said, 'Hello.'

"No," I said. "Gods no. Get out of my head right now."

'Hmmm...I don't think so,' Khonsu said. 'I've been stuck in that statue for...What year is it?'

His tone was even less welcome than he was.

"Oh, shut up," I muttered. He was giving me a headache, or maybe that was from hitting my head and getting knocked out. Whatever.

I turned my attention back to what was going on around me. Kid Flash was talking so fast that none of us could understand him. Iskandar was raising his flail and I didn't really want to see if the fastest kid alive could outrun magic.

I motioned for Iskandar to stop. "Iskandar, he's a friend."

Iskandar lowered his weapon but continued to watch Kid Flash warily. "Why is he so fast?"

"It's his thing," Sean said. "Kid Flash, calm down."

Kid Flash didn't seem to notice Sean speaking.

"This is strange magic," Iskandar said.

"This is strange science," I corrected. "Kid Flash, shut up!"

Kid Flash immediately froze.

Sean motioned for him to come closer. "You know everything you just said? Say it again, only slower. And make sure you're under the hieroglyphics."

Kid Flash seemed to instantaneously move into our circle, causing Iskandar to jump in surprise. He told us about how he had run around the room and tried to catch us during the explosion but, as it turned out, he couldn't outrun magic. Then he'd run back through the tunnel to get help but found that the other end of the tunnel had closed.

I turned to Iskandar. "Are we stuck in here?"

Iskandar shook his head slowly. "I do not believe so, though my entry into this room is not something I remember clearly."

"What do you remember?" Sean asked.

Iskandar frowned. "We were under attack. My master and I barricaded the Hall of Ages with many other magicians and were going to take a secret passage to evacuate the city but the doors were broken down...My master defended me. He...he can't be..."

"Great job," Kid Flash muttered as Iskandar shook his head helplessly.

Sean looked like he'd just been punched in the gut. "Sorry!"

'Way to greet a guy who's been in a magical sleep for two thousand and forty years,' Khonsu commented.

'Now you know what year it is?' I complained. 'If you can't say anything useful keep your big mouth shut.'

Khonsu shut up, but if he'd had a physical form he would have been sticking his tongue out at me.

"Sean, go and try to open the tunnel again," I said. "Get the rest of the team in here if you can, if not come back and we'll take a portal to them."

Sean nodded. "On it."

"And try to find Toto," I called after him as he ran out of the room. Even though Superboy would probably have been happy to leave our flying monkey behind, it was as much a part of the team as he was. Leaving Toto in Egypt would not have been nice.

While we waited, Kid Flash took some granola bars out of a storage compartment in his suit and ate them slowly, for a speedster, probably just to have something to do. I debating sitting down because my head was spinning but decided against it because that would probably be when a monster decided to come crashing through the wall. Instead I started babbling so that I (and Iskandar) would have something else to think about.

I must have mentioned coming from a different Earth once or twice, because Iskandar eventually asked, "Does the House of Life work with gods on your Earth?"

"Er...sort of," I admitted. "It was banned for a long time, I think our Earth's version of you banned it actually, and then a few years after the Path of the Gods started being studied again the gods had to leave Earth to keep the balance after the Serpent of Chaos was killed."

Iskandar's eyes widened. "The Serpent escaped from his prison? How was your Earth not destroyed?"

"We have powerful and stubborn magicians," I said. "Plus, world-ending apocalypses tend to happen practically every year so we've collectively gotten better at stopping them."

That was my theory anyway. Considering that the Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods existed it wouldn't be far-fetched for the Norse and Celtic pantheons to have had their own apocalypse experiences to add to the collective heroes' unconscious. It would be nice if they didn't though. Our Earth is already crazy enough.

"Every year?" Iskandar asked.

I nodded. "Pretty much, though it hasn't been that bad recently."

"That is good," Iskandar said. "Is this Earth very much like yours?"

"No, no. Not at all," I said. "So, do you know what god Sean is stuck with?"

Iskandar didn't balk at the change in subject. "I believe that it is Mut."

"Mut?"

'My mom,' Khonsu said helpfully.

I grimaced. "Sean has Khonsu's mom stuck in his head?"

Iskandar nodded.

"This is way more like Carter and Sadie than I am comfortable with," I said.

"What was that?" Sean asked.

He stepped all the way out of the tunnel with Superboy, Aqualad, Robin and Toto behind him. Toto was perched on top of Superboy's head and had a death grip on his ears. As would be expected, Superboy did not look happy.

"The god in your head is the mom of the god in my head," I said after Sean had stepped under the translation spell. "I was saying that that's a lot like what happened with Carter and Sadie."

Sean shrugged, seemingly unperturbed. "They do fight a lot. Anyway, we're ready to go."

I nodded and turned to Iskandar, who was looking at the rest of the team with wide eyes. It may have had something to do with their costumes. I doubt spandex was popular in Ptolemaic Egypt.

"This is Robin, Aqualad, Superboy and Toto," I said, pointing at each team member as I named them. "They're heroes-in-training, well, Robin, Aqualad and Superboy are, and they work with the Justice League. The Justice League is like...this Earth's magicians. They stop the world from being destroyed, but not all of them use magic."

"Do they use Kid Flash's science?" Iskandar asked.

"One of them does, he's the Flash, but the others not so much. It's hard to explain."

"Don't worry," Sean said before Iskandar could ask for clarification, "we'll introduce you. Come on, portal."

While Kid Flash babbled to the rest of the team, probably explaining everything that had happened after we went into the tunnel at a speed that Aqualad and Robin were used to even if the rest of us weren't, Sean opened a portal using the remaining statue. If things in the U.S. hadn't turned into complete chaos in the time we'd been gone, the other end of the portal should have been attached to a brand new metal pyramid by the Hall of Justice that an "anonymous donor" had given to the Justice League as an outdoor art installation. If the Justice League was busy stopping a world-ending event, like Wotan trying to block out the sun again, then we would probably end up in a museum, probably one in the process of being robbed, again.

Kid Flash handled traveling by portal better the second time. We couldn't hear him screaming all the way through, just at the very beginning.

Luck was on our side for once: the portal did not spit us out in a random museum. The pyramid statue was exactly where it was supposed to be, around the back of the Hall of Justice away from the tourists, and was just tall enough that we could all jump to the ground without breaking anything. Batman, the Flash and Aquaman were waiting for us.

"How was Egypt?" the Flash asked.

Batman had different priorities. He zeroed in on Iskandar and growled, "Who are you?"

Iskandar did the normal thing to do when faced with Batman for the first time and backed up a few steps, his hand hovering over the crook and flail that he had tucked into his waistband. Something that sounded like a question came out of his mouth.

I looked at the three superheroes, at least one of whom was raising his eyebrows (it was a little hard to see past Batman and the Flash's masks). "Do any of you speak Alexandrian Greek?"