Chapter 13

"Sovereignty"

Saturn Girl sat cross-legged on her bed. If Element Lad or Karate Kid had walked in, they would have said she was meditating. If Triplicate Girl had shown up she would have become alarmed by Imra's shallow breathing and tried to snap her out of it.

Garth would have taken one look and stepped back out. He would have known what she looked like when she was in a trance.

Though in a light trance, Imra wasn't meditating.

She was searching.

She spread her mind out over New Metropolis, feeling the contours and textures of the city's collective conscious and reveling briefly in the abundance of life around her. She spread her awareness and skipped lightly over the suburbs and outlying areas, running into the next major urban centers quickly.

Imra didn't spend any time on reveling in these other cities; stopping only long enough to make sure her targets weren't there. She didn't find them, but she hadn't expected them to.

She reached the opposite side of the planet and started spreading out into the star system. She gave a thorough search of Nullport; the orbiting dock for all incoming space traffic to Earth; then hit the few scientific moon colonies, the Earth settlements on Mars, and the few mining stations on the Kuiper Asteroid belt. Her mind reached Titan and she spent a moment reassuring the people who sent a silent question out to her. She wasn't there to search around like she had on her last visit, but took reassurance from the fact that Reep and Dawnstar had arrived safely.

There were few populations until the ski resorts on Neptune. Mostly the people there were tourists and people on vacation; but she could pick out a few concentrations of permanent residents. Then there was the vast emptiness of space until the next star system, punctuated only by the small points of traveling starships streaming across the cosmos.

Imra wasn't sure how long she kept her search up before she felt her concentration wavering. She sighed and carefully pulled her mind back in from the far reaches of galaxy; letting herself adjust slowly to the much smaller confines of her own body.

She opened her eyes to a knock at her door. It opened and Nura stuck her head in. Saturn Girl saw that her deputy was wearing her formal attire as High Seer Apparent of Naltor; all in blue and silver and white gauze.

Imra groaned. "We're leaving already? I haven't gotten ready."

"We don't have to leave just yet," Nura assured her. "Any luck with the search?"

"Don't you think I would have said something by now?" Imra asked sardonically. She sighed in resignation and continued. "I still can't find any sign of Brin or Terror Firma. I've been looking ever since he got taken, but-"

"Hey, Cham and Dawnstar are on it," Nura reminded her superior. "Now you need to take a break and get all dressed up for our trip to Weber's World."

Dawnstar knelt in the middle of the Titanian street and Cham considered shifting to look more like the natives.

"Got anything?" he asked her quietly.

She looked up at the sky. "The trail has faded a little, but I think I can track the way that the terrorist was seen escaping."

"It's just been a string of lucky breaks since Wolf, well, since Wolf-"

Dawnstar cut him off and saved him from his faltering sentence. "Certainly no one ever expected Terror Firma to miss a member when they left. They're usually very thorough."

"And now we are going to ambush them for once!" Cham brightened up. "Well, what are we standing around here for?"

He lifted up into the sky. Dawnstar stood and spread her wings wide; then rose to follow him.

Violet flopped down onto her bed and pulled her pillow over her face. It was stifling, but soft. She hoped it would help her fall soundly asleep, but knew in her gut it was hopeless. Even when she did manage to fall asleep, she couldn't stay asleep.

If it wasn't restlessness over the way the situation with Terror Firma seemed to be coming to a head it was worry. If it wasn't worry about how everything was going to turn out it was fear. If it wasn't fear of the murderer in the basement it was the nightmares.

She hated the nightmares. They crept up on her just as she had managed to put the worry and restlessness and fear out of her mind and truly fall asleep; often after half a night of what could only be considered short naps.

She groaned in frustration and hauled the pillow off her face. Briefly she considered finding Lyle and apologizing for her hasty, almost neurotic exit from the lab; but then remembered the reason she had left the way she did was because he was trying to cajole her into watch duty on Elysion down in the basement.

Her whole body shuddered and she rolled over. She couldn't do that.

There was a polite knock at her door and Violet considered getting up. There was another knock.

"Lyle," she said loudly, trying to sound more irritated than tired or shaken. "I'm not coming on duty with you."

"Actually," Jan said, stepping into the room. "I'm off right now. May I come in?"

He smiled kindly at her when she didn't respond. "Lately you've seem as if you need someone to talk to."

"I talked to Laurel," she told him, trying to stall for time as she decided what to do.

"Did it help?" he asked.

Violet stayed silent.

Jan came over and sat down next to her. "It didn't help, did it?"

She shook her head slowly. There was silence as she decided to speak.

"Laurel was nice and all and I talked but… but I was talking at her. There wasn't really a lot of- conversation going on. Yeah, she said things, but…"

Jan considered this. "Was she trying to be too polite?"

"No. It was more like she was trying not to say something." She swallowed. "I've been trying to figure out what it might be and I don't like the answers I've come up with."

"What do you think she was trying not to say?"

"That I'm being stupid," she said viciously. "That I can't let go and I need to move on and that I need to stop trying to kid myself with even the slightest hope of the possibility he's still alive."

He looked at her sadly. "Are you sure that's not what you think; Violet?"

Tinya sat curled up in the corner of the couch, fretting. Brin had been gone for too long, stuck in the clutches of terrorists. No one had explicitly said anything; but everyone knew what had happened to Brainy.

That couldn't happen to Brin. It couldn't.

She had been alternating between periods of hopelessness and incoherent rage. Sometimes she couldn't stop thinking of what had to have happened; sometimes ferocious anger welled up and she felt she had to tear the villains apart.

There was very little in her room in this dimension; and most of it was broken or damaged in some way.

Curling up on the couch was the best thing she could do right now.

"Tinya?" Nura called. "You need to get ready to go to Weber's World."

She didn't move. "I really don't want to see my mother right now. I really don't."

Nura grabbed the back of her collar. "Between you and Imra today- oh, the two of you. We have to leave. Very, very soon. At least she was in her room."

"I don't want to come."

"You have too. Come on, get up, get dressed. Jeckie and Tasmia are already down by the door. You can go back to feeling bad after we leave."

Tinya pushed herself up.

"What's with you?" she snapped. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Nura retorted, stalking out.

Lyle leaned back against the wall and tried not to think about Elysion, who was currently locked up in the cell to his right.

He couldn't even figure out why they had cells in the basement. Sure, Legion HQ had been trashed and needed to be rebuilt; but jail cells? In the building? That was far too close to encroaching onto SciPol territory. Maybe someone had foreseen the need for this sort of thing. Certainly the Metropolis Science Police Department didn't want to handle Elysion.

Perhaps it had been Nura who approved it.

Then Lyle remembered the last plans had been drawn up after the Kandor Incident. Great. They had jail cells in the basement courtesy of an obsessive maniac who tried to digitally codify the universe.

He grimaced and continued ignoring Elysion. Lyle supposed he couldn't blame Violet for not wanting to come down and share guard duty, what with the issue about Brainy and all, but staying in the same place with someone who clearly wanted to tear your guts out and was making sure you knew it would be more bearable with company.

Lyle sighed and considered sticking something in his ears.

Cham strained to keep up with Dawnstar. He knew she was trying to control her speed for him, but it must have been horrible to keep up. She had been clocked at speeds faster than any Kryptonian, and essentially every form of transportation known to the galaxy.

"Look," he told her over the rings. "If you want to go ahead, go ahead. I'll catch up."

Dawnstar dropped back. "You would never be able to do it. Flight rings don't have that capability."

"Can you stop for a minute, Dawnstar?"

The two Legionnaires pulled up and hovered in space.

"Do we have a good reason for stopping?"

"Just hold still a second, please."

Dawnstar kept utterly still and wondered what was going on. Suddenly Cham's back twisted. Great white wings formed out of the mass.

"That's good. Thanks."

Dawnstar smiled; something she wasn't seen to do often. "Well then, Chameleon Boy- ready to go at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed?"

"What I think?" Violet asked.

Jan nodded. "I'm not very sure that the others think that of you. More than a few have lost some of the people they have cared about deeply; or have as good as lost them. They are not the people I think they are if they can't empathize."

Violet sulked and said something she knew was unfair. "This is different."

"It's not, much," he disagreed softly. "Nura's mother died. Lyle's father disowned him. Dirk's mother walked out and his father can't seem to be bothered with his son. I don't think Drake even has a family; at least one he cares to talk about. Brin's mother died and then his father experimented on him. Tasmia's mother is dead; and I don't know what happened to her father. Condo's parents abandoned him. Reep's mother is dead. Tinya's father is dead. Luornu was abandoned and the grandmother who raised her is dead. Val has no family. Laurel's mother didn't care about her. Garth- everyone knows about Garth's family. And -though he never really talked about it- I can't imagine that Brainiac 5's home life was particularly pleasant, either."

Unspoken was the obvious fact that Jan's planet was gone.

She couldn't say anything to Jan's list of sorrows. She knew it was all true; but the hurt said something different.

Garth sat in the kitchen, eating lunch. It had been quite awhile since he had seen Imra and the others off on their mission and he was enjoying the quiet. There weren't many people in the building; just him and Lyle downstairs, and Jan and Violet around somewhere. He thought Wildfire might be hanging around; but he wasn't sure.

He had just taken a bite of his lunch when the alarm went off.

The food caught in his throat and he coughed violently. He stood and tried to clear his airway, leaning on the edge of the table.

Running footsteps went past the door as Garth managed to breathe normally. He dashed off after the other people as soon as he caught his breath.

He met Wildfire in the hall just outside the main foyer. Jan and Violet were already there- Violet had her guns out, just in case.

Lyle came up behind them, as unexpectedly as ever.

"Any idea who it is?" he asked them quietly. Violet shook her head.

Garth got up right behind the door. "Well, let's go see."

Jeckie stood in front of the United Planets Senate and listened to the dignitaries kept on talking.

"These terrorists are led by a man who can make everyone forget he exists?" the Starhaven Senator asked skeptically.

"You really expect us to believe that?" the Thanagarian Senator snorted. "Of all the things you've claimed over the years, this is truly the most outlandish."

"We had noticed that, Ambassador," Jeckie said politely. "Yet, however outlandish, our claims have always been true."

"Perhaps," the Tamaranean Senator agreed cautiously. "But there has to be a line between plausible and impossible; does there not?"

"It's farther towards impossible than you think," Tasmia muttered.

Nura shushed her quietly.

The Terran Senator spoke. "There is simply no way that anyone could, in this day and age, evade the numerous security systems in place throughout the galaxy."

Brainy managed it, Jeckie thought crossly. She heard Saturn Girl agree with her in the back of her mind.

Nura stepped forward. "His power is to keep himself unremembered when he is not in view. It would be very easy to sneak back into a building –and he wouldn't even have to sneak, he could just walk right in- and erase the security footage."

"You stretch the bounds of reason," the Xanthuan Senator accused.

Jeckie decided she needed to step in. "But the Orandan Royal Family and the Royal Court can vouch for his power. There, at least, he was not so careful. They still keep written records; and those records survived the destruction of the capital."

"Perhaps you are used to being heard at home, Princess," the Bismollian Senator said stiffly. "But Orando does not belong to the United Planets, just as Talok and Naltor remain independent of this government. Your status elsewhere has no bearing on the possible… influence you may have there."

Imra stepped forward as she felt Jeckie bristle at the suggestion that she would use her position to falsify records.

"It may be that those planets do not belong to this government," she said. "But as ranking members of their respective governments, they still afford respect."

I can take care of my own reputation, thank you very much.

Imra caught Tasmia's thought as she considered what to say next.

The President spoke before she could. "Thank you for coming to hear the Legion's testimony, Senators. I know you're all very busy but it serves the best interests of everyone that as many people as possible get informed. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take this to the Council."

Elysion leaned back against the wall and savored the sound of the Legion's Proximity Alarm. He wondered who would be so foolish as to try and sneak in the building to have set it off.

He hoped it wasn't any of his team. He'd have to kill whoever it was for sheer idiocy and incompetence. It had taken so long to train them right.

He closed his eyes to get the full effect.

A hand grabbed his collar roughly and pulled. Elysion's eyes snapped open.

His face was centimeters away from Duplicate Boy's.

"How dare you!" the deranged hero hissed. "How dare you go after Shrinking Violet! No one touches her, you hear? No one!"

Elysion blinked and gathered his thoughts.

"Oh, it's you," he sneered. "The head fool of a team of failures."

Ord made a wrathful noise. "I. Did. Not. Fail."

"Oh really. Then why would that team- no, it wasn't even a team, was it?- that fallacy of a temporary cooperation not exist anymore, hm?"

"The others were the ones who left! They didn't see how I was taking them from obscurity and impotency to greatness and power! They were the ones who made mistakes! Not me! Not ever me."

Elysion sneered at him. "What were you planning to do, anyway; Mr. Perfection?"

"I know where you're based," Ord said, suddenly calm. "I followed you all there, after Titan. I can get any of you."

The slight nervousness which had been growing in the back of Elysion's mind disappeared. "Oh, so you were going to terrify me with the absolutely paralyzing potential of teleportation?"

"I've been holding you, haven't I?" Ord asked, still too calm. "Just because those cuffs on your arms keep you from using your powers doesn't mean I can't copy them myself."

Elysion could feel his heart start to race.

"There is a reason it's called 'carbon-based life-form'. Everything in your body is natural. It comes out of the ground. You want to see how much of it I can twist around?"

Garth opened the door quickly; Violet and Jan right behind him. Bouncing Boy was already in the foyer, standing over a young blonde girl.

He did a double-take. "Uh- Inferno?"

The girl looked at him. "Yes."

Lyle was hovering off in the corner of his vision. It was going to get annoying very, very soon.

"What are you doing in here?"

"I need someplace to stay."

"What?" Garth had been prepared for a barrage of insults or a melodramatic rant about how they had ruined her chances at life. Not a request for couch space.

"Why should we let you stay here?" Wildfire was ready with a challenge, as always.

Inferno titled her head to the side and considered this. The silence stretched, and Violet seemed to have realized in all of a second that she still had her guns out. She put them away self-consciously.

"I can tell you what Duplicate Boy and Atmos were doing sneaking around in here."

"What?" Bouncing Boy's voice was indignant.

"People have been in here?" Lyle asked, eyes wide. "And we didn't notice?"

Inferno just gave him a look that said 'clearly'. "They were looking to see if there was anything they could use against you."

"Like blackmail?" Garth asked, trying to keep up.

"They just got distracted, though," Inferno told them. It sounded as if she was trying to be reassuring. "I think Atmos had found Dream Girl's room."

"Figures," Wildfire said.

"And Duplicate Boy was in your room," she told Shrinking Violet.

Violet shuddered slightly, thinking of him in her room, going through her things. She wiped her hands nervously on her skirt. She was going to have to scrub down the whole room before she felt comfortable in there again.

And perhaps get a better lock.

Jan, as always, had a thoughtful look on his face. "You were here too, weren't you?"

Inferno slumped a little bit and looked off to one side. She nodded.

"Oh, so you were in on it, too?" Garth asked sarcastically. "Where were you?"

"In the lab. In Phantom Girl's room. In Shadow Lass's room. In-"

Her eyes flicked to Jan. "-Element Lad's room. In yours."

"Mine?"

"I didn't tell them anything," she said defensively. Then she blushed a bit. "You have a cute sister."

Garth blinked. "Uh- thanks?"

"We're getting close, Chameleon Boy," Dawnstar said over the ring communicators. "This is the system."

Cham looked at the system's sun; glowing orange off in the distance.

"Where are we anyway?"

Dawnstar shrugged. "29.20239A'; 192.382L'; 5948.1829344U'."

Cham stared at her. "You know the navigational coordinates right off the top of your head?"

She pointed to the ring. "I would not be able to calculate it that exactly in my mind."

"Still, wow. Which planet?"

Two planets loomed ahead, a red-orange gas giant and a slightly smaller rocky planet of the same color. Dawnstar pointed to the space between them. Cham saw a small moon orbiting there.

"Off we go, then."

Nura finished telling the United Planets Council what the Legion had found and stepped back.

The President looked her Council over. "Thoughts?"

"An invisible person-" one began to say.

Imra interjected herself politely. "Not invisible. More like mind manipulation."

Another councilor winced and Imra backed up against the wall.

"And that's why we've never heard of this man."

Nura nodded.

A man on the other end of the table spoke up. "This sounds even more crazy than time-travel; in its own way."

"That's something you learn, doing what we do," Tasmia said. "The universe is never the way you think it should be. It's always wrong in all the right ways."

The councilman nodded.

Another councilor looked at the Legionnaires. "Can you handle this?"

"We've been handling things for years," Imra reminded everyone tiredly. "We're not going to just stop."

A different councilor held his arms out in a gesture of acquiescence. "Well, then, by all means- keep doing it."

Imra smiled at him.

The President looked around. "Well, I think that wraps our business up."

She stood and the rest of the councilors followed suit. Jeckie bowed politely and the Legionnaires began to leave.

Tinya was hoping she was going to manage to escape her mother's clutches. She was not so fortunate.

"Tinya, dear, come with me."

:We'll wait for you in the ship, Tinya.:

Inferno was curled up on the couch, sleeping.

"Really? You're letting her stay?" Bouncy asked Garth quietly. "Even after she was in your room?"

"Do you want to try arguing with Jan?" he grumbled. "He's got that quietly serious look on. You know what that means."

Bouncy did know. That was Jan's 'I will not back down on this issue' face. He'd used it a lot back when the team had still been in-fighting.

"Fine. But explain that to Wildfire before she wakes up, will you? We don't need our guests getting toasted."

Duplicate Boy paused. There were footsteps overhead.

Elysion thought fast. "How about you don't practice your stolen abilities on me; and I leave your girl alone?"

The former hero stared at him.

"Don't misunderstand me," Elysion said. "I'm going to kill the rest of the Legion. But I'll keep Shrinking Violet for you."

Ord's face twisted as the footsteps came closer.

"Fine," he growled. "You keep your promise, Elysion. Or I'll be back."

He disappeared in a blue light.

Elysion could have kicked himself.

Dawnstar landed on the moon, hiding herself behind a rock outcropping.

"We should call back now," Cham said quietly. "The Legion needs to be here."

He looked over. Dawnstar was gone.

Cham's thoughts stuttered and he stuck his head over the outcropping. Dawnstar was inspecting a large glowing blue triangle hanging in the air.

"That's a portal, isn't it?" he called.

He saw her nod. "This isn't really the base. Where Terror Firma really operates from is through here."

"You're not going in there, are you?"

"Don't we have too?"

Wildfire was minding the computer when a call came through. It was pre-recorded; the person sending the message wasn't even on the line anymore.

He opened it. Cham's face popped up.

"We found the way to Terror Firma's base. It's not actually on the planet, there's some kind of permanent portal thing but we can go through there. I don't like it though; you can't see where you're going-"

Cham had stopped and looked off to his side. "Fine; fine!" he muttered. "The coordinates are 29.20239183A'; 192.38209218L'; 5948.1829344116U'. All available Legionnaires please report to this location."

The recording ended and Wildfire hit the General Alarm button.

All across the galaxy, Legionnaires stopped what they were doing and headed for the skies.

On Weber's World, no one noticed that Nura had slipped off some time before.

The President closed the door to her private quarters behind her. Tinya stood closer to the middle of the room, hunched over uncomfortably.

"Now, Tinya, when I left Bgtzl-"

"Mom, you're bringing this up again?" Tinya asked in exasperation. "I heard all about this when I joined the Legion!"

"-everyone said I was crazy to leave Bgtzl since-"

"-Aunt Enya, whom you named me in memory of, went 'planet-hopping across the galaxy and disappeared into the cold oblivion of space'. I know, I know."

"No one knows what happened to her-"

"I'll be fine, Mom. I've been fine for eight years now."

"You can never be too careful, Tinya," she scolded gently. "Maybe you don't remember what happened to most of the criminals that got sent off when the United Planets starting forming; but I do. No one knows where they actually went. Uncharted regions of space, Tinya. That's what happened to my sister-"

Tinya's ring went off.

"Well, Mom; I'm coming back," Tinya promised, pecking her on the cheek. "Wish me luck!"

She waved goodbye as she phased through the floor.

Winema Wazzo stared worriedly at the space where her daughter had been but moments before.

"They got it," Cham told Dawnstar. "Are we going to wait here, or-"

Dawnstar stepped through the portal into unknown territory.

"Okay," he said under his breath. "I hope they can figure out where we went."

He followed her through.

Jeyra Etinn stopped what she was doing and listened. There were minds here, minds who were not supposed to be anywhere near where she was right now.

"Stay on the watch schedule," she ordered the beings around the control consoles. "Call me if anything happens."

She walked out of the room, thinking over this new development.

There were Legionnaires here, and if there were a few there would be many soon.

And if they were here, then there weren't any there.

Jeyra smiled to herself. It was time to do some real damage to the United Planets. Always attack where the enemy isn't.

She called the strike team.