Author's note: So begins the third part of the Princess and Cowboy!
We left the action in the otherworldly realm of Olympus, where our heroes received a magic power up from the gods of Olympus, so they might defeat the Machine god, and prevent this Undead giant from taking all the power of the gods for himself. This necromantic-cyborg who claims to be the ancient god Cronus, intends together with his allies the Android Man Hunters to kill every living thing in the Universe!
Superman is on a mysterious quest within the Machine god's body, while Wonder Woman has received a powerful weapon, Zeus' Sickle of the Ages, which has taken on the combined power of the Emotional Spectrum. We re-join the action as the world is turned upside down…
0
Before the sky turned, and before black earth rained down from muddy heavens, and every one of them fell into the void, the Undead giant acted.
The realm of Olympus tilted and so the Machine god stepped forward - metal claws churned the muddy dirt. The Undead giant leapt and smashed into the marble mount of Olympus.
Diana cried out. "Tis now or never."
Wonder Woman called the League across their communication network, to make their last stand as Olympus' Champions.
A space-animal called Cairo, now a giant Pearlescent Knight was buried inside the enemy's monstrous body of dead flesh fused with machines.
Diana could only trust the fight inside the Machine god continued. She called out. "Kal. Answer me. Please?" But there was no response. The tiny Superman and smaller still Krypto were lost inside the Undead giant. Even Martian Telepathy could not reach them. Whatever magic the Machine god possessed hid his true nature, concealed the secret workings of his innards.
Diana sighed. Grim determination set in her features. She ignored her feelings.
As the sky and ground continued to turn Wonder Woman dove toward her goal.
On the marble mountain, hands and feet scraped against marble, as Olympian Champions scrabbled together to attack the Undead giant, as the vast citadel rotated over towards the horizontal plane.
Beyond on the Elysium fields the feet of the other giant warriors; transformed living ships, and the Machine god's creations now dug to find grip in the mud, they fought on, even as the ground moved.
The self-styled Cronus dragged himself across the tipping mountain, as if he were riding a stone bronco, and reached the palace atop the peak. He was opposed every step of the way, suffered countless cuts and blows at the hands of the Olympian Champions. Black blood boiled, oil flamed; both oozing from the Machine god's many wounds.
The Undead giant fought on. He thrust his fingers into the Olympian Palatial Citadel itself.
"Our enemy seeks the Ichor Well." Zeus's words echoed in Diana's mind, as he told her what she must do to stop the Machine god reaching this prize.
Wonder Woman flew forward. She dragged down her glowing white Falcata, this weapon cleaved the enemies hand clean from the wrist.
From the wound a swarm of his necromantic cyborg creations spilled. More burst forth from his gigantic broken body. A swarm that smashed into her. She struck out again with her brilliant blade. Light among their darkness. The terrible machines were broken and scattered. Metal separated from the flesh of the once living space vessels, and fragments tumbled toward the great void below, the below that was once the above; the Olympian sky.
The self-styled Cronus was overcome. Nineteen Champions, and many more Knights. Each hacked and blasted at the towering construct of dead biology and inert technology.
Mount Olympus had turned upside down. Up was now down.
The Machine god, teetered, his grip compromised. The marble mountain had become a huge stalagmite hanging from a muddy black heaven.
The Machine god fell, headfirst and then backwards; downwards into the blue void, and the enemy laughed as he did so.
Diana had time to wonder why?
Her accelerated mental processes saw the Machine god's rapid fall as slow motion. He would return, he would climb the mountain once more.
"Diana now!" Zeus telephathed his command into the mind of his First Champion.
Diana struck the Marble Mountain, she buried her glowing Falcata deep into Olympus marble. At once the very fabric of god's dwelling place was cracked open by her brilliant Falcata; this godly weapon imbued with the energies of seven mystical beings, each a personification of the emotional spectrum.
Wonder Woman broke the marble mountain open. Her blade breached the Ichor well, and with its wall burst, there followed a great spew of raw magic. The life blood of the gods, burst through the crack, and with this blow Diana slew the Olympian Realm.
O
Superman heard nothing. He was isolated inside the enemy. Kal-El fought on through the Undead Giant toward the tiny crystal shard. His dog snapping at the necromantic cyborgs defensive structures as they attacked; together as a team, he and Krypto reached their prize.
Superman's hand finally grasped the glasslike shard at the heart of the Undead giant.
At once the strange magical camouflage put in place by the enemy fell away, and terrible secret of the Machine-god was laid bare.
This thin shard of glass like matter was conscious – a crystal entity, and it was in agony, tortured by its condition, by enslavement.
"Release me." She begged. It was voice Superman heard in his soul, even has his hand tightened around the thin sliver of diamond. The entity continued to communicate. "A moment of time, the first moment came hot and fast. The universe grew.
"The first second of time was like an aeon, and afterwards everything was so very much bigger.
"There was light, but there was also darkness.
"A true aeon past before star light was seen, burning fires clustered and galaxies populated the darkness, three generations, and time and consciousness had a different meaning."
Kal believed he understood. This Crystal entity was older than the Martian Race, even older than the Guardians, it was a shard of Cosmic Consciousness from the Big Bang itself.
"These three used me to energise their necromantic magic." The crystal told Superman. "My power is being corrupted to hold together dead flesh, and inanimate metal."
Superman's senses adjusted. He determined he was experiencing another pocket universe, but one very different to Olympus or Diana's Themyscira. This space was in relative terms tiny, but a large room – and bound spacially to the crystal shard he held. The Crystal Entity now vibrated in such a way that Superman was pulled into this hidden place.
Kal also understood that they were not alone.
The Crystal had spoken of the three, and as his senses adjusted to this new environment he began to see their form. Three figures, shrouded in mist and shadow, invisible to detection without. The truth behind the Undead god.
"Remarkable." The First voice noted.
"Indeed." The second distinct voice agreed. "See how he bonds with the shard?"
"But not as you predicted." Said the Third Voice. The tone cold and inhuman.
"How is that possible?" The Second asked, a deep roar, old and coarse in tone. "Why was this possibility ignored?"
"It is a consequence of his biology." The First Voice replied in a matter of fact tone. "Biology is unpredictable."
"Pah biology." The Third Voice sneered.
"Life always finds a way." Said the First.
The Second Voice was angry. "The oracle I made did not anticipate this congruence; blood magic is powerful."
"Neither did my simulations." The First Voice noted. "But I had limited data. The Kryptonians continued to evolve in isolation, and this is Krypton's Last Son."
"His highly evolved form also matured on Earth - with the years of exposure to the Kryptonite radiation." The Third Voice declared.
To Superman's surprise he saw something red had dripped down the diamond like surface of the Crystal shard, running from between his fingers. Kal now understood the Second Voice's words "Blood Magic."
O
Diana was the last of them to fall into the void. The churned soil of the Elysium fields rained down around her. The Olympian realm folded in upon itself, and Wonder Woman with it.
Diana had struck the killing blow; and with it the mystical realm of the gods collapsed. She had watched as the marble mountain and the gods had fallen, and now she followed them.
There was only darkness, and then there were lights.
Space ablaze with countless twinkling stars. Diana shook her head confused. Reaching out Diana used the Amazon Mental Radio she called out to her mother and her sisters, but there was only chaos and static.
Then she searched for the League, but even Jo didn't answer. She had seen Jo fall, before her, among the last to disappear.
Wonder Woman was quick witted. She sought points of reference in the starry blackness as an ancient mariner might. Identifying patterns of light; Wonder Woman recognised familiar constellations. Diana understood where she was.
Wonder Woman concentrated, she summoned her invisible chariot, which clothed her like armour; Hermes gift, a transporting force that both propelled and protected her. Even here in the cold vacuum of space. Diana flew back over the distant blue green marble of Earth.
Olympus had fallen, but it's magic still rose to her demands.
Where she wondered was the Undead giant? Would the Machine god return back to reality too?
Diana fretted. She had no idea where Superman was, his tiny human form had plunged inside the vast necromantic-cyborg. These intense feelings troubled her. Stern with herself Wonder Woman concentrated on the present moment. Identifying the debris of the otherworldly battlefield amongst the mud of the Elysian Fields. This made a powerful argument. Logic dictated that the Machine god was bound to follow.
This debris and black soil tumbled into the thrall of gravity, and with the battlefield came the last of the warriors, propelled into weightlessness. They emerged from the Elysium mire blinking into the vacuum of space from the lost Olympian Realm. Great Knights in pearlescent armour still locked in combat with the undead Warriors of the self-styled Cronus; all into free-fall through the cosmological void above the Earth.
Wonder Woman was struck by the contrast between the living and the dead; between the transformed space vessels, and the enemy, the synthesis of necrotic tissue and metal; the abominable creations of the undead god.
As these monsters emerged into normal space time they began to fall apart.
The Martian Manhunter then made welcome contact. "I cannot pity these monsters." Jo said to Diana, her telephathic messaging connecting their minds. "And so Olympus' strategy is revealed."
"In part." Diana agreed. "Each lifeless necromantic cyborg was animated by the muddying of the Elysian Fields." She said. "Where are you?"
Jo responded. "I just arrived, I heard your mind calling, at least an echo of that. I'm several thousand miles from your position, although I am making my way back to you, as I speak."
"Good." Diana replied.
"The Machine god corrupted Olympus' creative magical plane; co-opted it for his own purposes." Jo stated. "You had to stop that, before it was too late, before it was permanent."
"I understand." Diana said. "Olympus had to deprive the zombie cyborgs of this life-giving magic energy – but it was still a hard thing to do."
"It was the only thing to do." Jo told her.
Diana watched as the lifeless metal parted from cadaverous flesh, and vampiric constructs fell apart high above the blue green gem of Sol's third planet. Their lifeless screams unheard in the cold of space.
"I see that." Diana replied.
Jo signalled back "I have sighted Olympus." She broadcast her own perspective back to Wonder Woman. This allowed Diana to identify the relevant area of space, and focus her own incredible senses in the right place. The Amazing Amazon saw the broken home of the gods had settled into an orbit. The sun's greater gravity snatching hold of the marble city as it might any satellite.
Wonder Woman altered her course, speeding closer her enhanced senses perceived the gods themselves at rest. Titans huddled below their ruined Palace, their energy all but spent.
"The Olympians have thrown their all into this game, they had bet the house on what they hoped was a winning hand." Diana heard the voice of Zatanna across her Mental Radio, confirmation another ally had made it across the boundary between worlds. Zatana like Jo had emerged far above the Earth, reinforcing that even local cosmological distances were vast by human standards.
"I wonder if all of the magic of Olympus had been wagered." Zatanna asked.
"The gods poured their power into us - their vessels, their Champions." Diana stated.
"But not just Justice League." Jo noted. "The gods, being the gods chose unlikely allies."
"Yes. Terra First." Zatanna said. "It is surprising, and don't I know it." She paused as if something was best unsaid, before adding. "Perhaps the gods have cards that are as yet unplayed?"
0
Below situation on the third planet of the Sol system was dire.
Due to the peculiar nature of the Olympian Realm, time passed differently in this pocket universe, thus from Earth's perspective only a few scant seconds had passed between the exodus of ships into the portal to Olympus over the hidden realm of Themyscira, and the collapse of that dimension.
The Green Lantern Salaak had watched the Living Space-ships disappear, the rebels and those loyal to the Manhunters, into the interdimensional portal above Themyscira. From his perspective it was only moments later that the debris of an unimaginable battle from this alternative dimension began to blink into normal space time high above the Earth.
Salaak ignored what he could not control. Logic dictated that he could not afford to be diverted from his task. He repeated Hal Jordan's orders to the other Lanterns in Earth Space. "Expedite rescue. Contain and repair collateral damage. re-establish power and services; maintain order."
It was a huge task, even for the Corps.
The earlier conflict above the planet saw nuclear exchanges in the upper atmosphere between rebel and loyal Manhunter vessels; the living space-ships atomic volleys exploded with incredible destructive energy, and invisible Electro Magnetic Pulses. Depending on altitude the effects of an EMP varied from disastrous to commerce; knocking out of orbiting satellites, to hazardous to life; as essential electrical systems were taken out.
All that was before the Manhunter's allies began to arrive.
Many alien despotic cultures had reason to hate the Guardians and the Lantern corps. The Manhunters had made them friends. Their vessels emerged into normal space time from hyperspace, vast war ships, constructions of alien alloys, and bristling with weapons. They took up polar stationary orbit. Names such as the "Dominators, Khunds, the Psions," and a host of others appeared through Lantern's rings. At once Salaak was forced to reassess Lantern Jordan's orders. It was a terrible choice to make, but one the alien possessed with logic above emotion was able to make.
"Lanterns, defer to priority one, defend against external threat to planetary security. Protect Bio-sphere from extinction level weaponry."
The insectoid Lantern knew that logic dictated that the planet came first, even if this meant the seven billion humans below would be forced to fend for themselves.
0
Flying at cruising altitude a commercial plane had been caught minutes before in an EMP wave, the atmospheric backwash from the energy miles higher seen as a bright light, and followed by vicious turbulence. The powerless Boeing 777 was out of control, its fly by wire electronics fried, its engines dead. With the Justice League dragged into another dimension of space time, and with the Lantern Corps spread thin taking on the Man Hunter's and their allies, there was no hope for the passengers and crew, or so it seemed. Just a terminal and accelerating glide path.
Chaos of another kind reigned below.
The animals ran scared, their dreams filled with terror, the rocks were unmoved, and the plants stood still and watched. Alec Holland saw what they saw, and he became angry.
A human consciousness trapped in plant, or plant that thought it was Alec Holland, distinguished botanist, professor, and scholar. In any event he was at least trying to be Alec Holland, even though his form was monstrous and green, humanoid but not human, he wished to be humane. He remembered what it was like to love, to live and to suffer and die. How he had died in a ball of chemically fuelled fire, a human torch running and diving into the dark wet muddy swamp, to be reborn as this Thing, a product of primordial ooze, a creature of the swamp, of simplicity, and great complexity, an avatar of the Green.
Holland walked in the darkness. Light sporadic and fierce, as fires took hold. This was a world that was no longer scared of this Thing from the Swamp. There were bigger monsters in plain view now – and many of them looked entirely human.
It had begun with fear. The unexpected appearance of the Living Star-ships and the Manhunter's announcement of their invasion. Holland had heard the Androids. The antithesis of his existence in the Green, they were metal and circuitry, lightning in a box.
Human fear had been followed by mass relief. Holland camouflaged by the plants whom obeyed him as god, watched as the vast living vessels to whom he was related had rocketed away – an even more sudden disappearance; a vacuum.
Holland had looked up at the nuclear lights and the atomic rainbows, and watched human beings doing the same.
Above them rebel space vessels clashed with craft loyal to their Manhunter masters. Below the lights started to go out, and the frightened humans got angry.
Across the planet, Earths great cities had flickered and gone dark. EM Pulses blew out substations, fried command and control circuits, and even killed electronic ignition and engine management systems in cars and trucks. This mayhem had a terrible psychological cost on an already troubled population.
So the Swamp Thing walked out of the shadows in the light of man's red fire. He was not alone in rising to the challenge. In the middle of all this chaos, new names to be remembered emerged from anonymity, finding fame.
Slighted, ridiculed, and even hated. Monitored, locked up, and even experimented on. Holland was not surprised that some of these Metahumans chose to use their strength to punish, and even exploit regular homo-sapiens.
In Metropolis the centre of Metahuman activity in North America, arguably the world, came the typical urban mob, angry people out of their powerless houses and into the streets. Out to riot, to steel, to destroy; but among these ordinary frightened people, were Meta's who fast made this an atypical anarchy. They brought with them powers that could bring down buildings, level entire city blocks.
Then the weeds in the Metropolis pavement stood up tall and some Thing took back the dark streets. Others like Alec Holland or the plant who believed he was Alec Holland, also chose a heroic path. Holland with his connection to the Green, the web of life that connected all things botanical to the Swamp Thing, was able to see this happening across the world.
In Gotham there were few Metahuman reports. It didn't make Gotham a safe place to be however. It was a city with a long history, notorious for cruelty and crime, a place where human beings did their worst, but paradoxically it was also a place where people were at their best. Holland witnessed, a flock of Robins - young men with industry and riches backing them, emerged from their hiding place. Along with them from the shadows came the Batgirls, who brought martial skills with a feminine attitude. Each answered the peculiar madness that dogged this gothic city with courage and justice.
Above the Earth the Corps used their rings, each an example of most powerful weapon in the universe to stop an alien armada, while the Champions of Olympus continued to emerge back into normal space time.
0
Diana's first thoughts had been with her family. She searched for her mother and her sisters, across cosmological distances. Several thousand miles through space, weaving between the returning debris, she heard them, and at once powered towards the origin of the signal.
"Look what Hera has done!" Hippolyta cried out to Diana. Her voice strong and clear across the static via their Mental Radio. Wonder Woman sped forward. "What is it mother?"
"The Queen of the gods had chosen her Champions from among the Allies." Hippolyta explained. "Hera has poured out her authority into two of Paradise Island's immortal warriors; can you guess daughter?"
"Mother, how could I miss this thing?" Diana asked.
"Child you were busy in the heat of battle – wrangling the personifications of the emotional spectrum."
Philappus' voice agreed across the Amazon Mental Radio. "True, Majesty. Many things go unnoticed when armies clash. We are but one surprise, be sure there will be more."
"Can you see Diana, how far Hera's magic has reached?" Hippolyta asked.
"What do you mean mother." Diana asked, guessing at least who Hera's Champions had to be.
"The Queen of the gods' regal power flowed through our Amazon sisters and into the living spacecraft they occupied, the animals we freed from the Manhunter's yoke."
Diana followed her Mother's signal. Soon she understood Hippolyta's words.
"Great Hera!" Diana gasped, as she closed fast on the Amazon's location, and now only several hundred miles distant Wonder Woman saw first-hand how Hera's magic had worked an amazing transformation on the Manhunter's animal space-ships.
"See how Hera rewrote the DNA of these living space-vessels" " Hippolyta told Diana.
Wonder Woman remembered how the Olympian magic from the Elysium fields had first changed these living spacecraft into Giant Knights. Now kissed by the cold of space these same craft had being transformed yet again.
"Immortal waters flows through each and every Amazon." General Philippus told her Princess. "Great Hera's magic grants these beasts a more evolved form; a gift of Paradise Island."
"It's incredible!" Diana said. "These creatures have taken the form of Themyscira's heraldic animal!" Her joy filled the mental radio transmission with laughter, much of it coming from her sisters, from the General and the Queen.
"Yes daughter, they are likened to the marsupial Kanga!" Hippolyta said.
Diana flew close, up, over and around these space going Kangaroo-esque vessels, flying in a formation, albeit miles apart. She had yet to sight her mother and the general. Wonder Woman could engage with her sister Amazons within the living space-Kanga vessels.
Each craft was sleek and vital, aft wards a long tail-like hull extended, pointed to the rear. Forwards the prow was shaped into a long neck with a sleek head. Front facing limb like protrusions amidships at the left and right were armed with fist shaped heavy duty mass drivers, rearward like massive hind limbs were the long tapered nacelles that provided thrust.
Then at front of the fleet Diana saw her mother the Queen and her General. They each stood upon the one of these Space Kanga, first Hippolyta, in the giant god-form of an Olympus' Champion, and riding on the broad back of a second vessel rode the exalted General Philappus.
Diana swept closer on her invisible wings. She alighted onto the back of a third vessel, joining the Amazon formation.
As huge as they were by human standards in the vastness of space for all their great size, each of them was still insignificant. They were all dust motes compared to the Earth, which in turn was dwarfed by her distant neighbours the gas giants of Saturn and Jupiter, in turn these worlds were diminutive by the standards of the sun, which was as a baby is too mount Everest when compared to the some of the far-flung distant stars.
Such was space, and such was the challenge they faced in reuniting the Allied forces, for at any moment the Machine god could appear.
Diana understood they had won the battle – at great cost, but not yet the war.
0
The Martian Manhunter Jo J,onzz was by nature a polymorph. The heights of space was no more an unusual environment for her race, than the depths of an ocean, or the desert of Mars. She saw Diana reunited with Amazons. For her the priority was reuniting the rest of the League and their allies from Terra First. Jo readjusted her position relative to the Earth, sweeping space telepathically, for friend and foe.
"Just because the Machine gods soldiers fell apart in normal space does not mean the Undead giant will fall apart too." She told Zatanna. "The Machine god like us originated here in normal space time."
Zatanna used magic to teleport herself to Jo's position, but unlike the Martian Manhunter, she was not at home in the vacuum of space, and now relied on Jo for support, and controlled motion.
"Don't worry." Zatanna told her. "Athena has a plan. It will be revealed soon enough."
Jo did not doubt it, the wise goddess of Strategy was the Amazon's fiercest champion, but she also was adept at secrecy and clandestine action, it felt to the telepath that Zatanna was holding something back.
Jo also had her own patron, and reaching into her new found power, a gift of the goddess of harvest Demeter, the Martian Manhunter felt new depths of affinity to her adopted world. Gaining a deeper telepathic understanding. Power surged from her back to the living world. The Olympians strategy was still unfolding. She sensed another consciousness had been chosen by Demeter, one whose power was already associated closely with growing things.
The next few minutes would no doubt test the Olympians plan, and prove their Champions. The longer it took the Machine god to appear, the more worried Jo became. She remembered how the Undead giant had fallen from the Marble Mountain, laughing as he tumbled into the void.
"It could be reversed." Zatanna suggested. "The last to fall through was Diana – right? Then you before me?"
"And yet she was the first to reappear." Jo said. "I see what you are saying, and it is a good point."
"I am linking the Space Kanga's sensors into the Mental Radio net." General Philappus voice reached to them across space.
Jo made contact.
"Diana, I am closing in on your position. Zatanna is with me too. I'll tie the sensor data into the League's telepathic communications net."
"Okay – got it." Diana responded. "Have you seen what has happened to the living spaceships?"
"By the Twin Moons of Ma'aleca'andra!" Jo agreed. "It is incredible!"
"Have you heard from Superman?"
"Negative." Jo replied. "I lost contact when he entered the Machine god's body."
"Any sign of the enemy?" Diana asked.
"The first to leave Olympus maybe the last to arrive." Jo responded, summarising Zatanna's theory.
"I think that maybe so, it's then just a matter of time." Hippolyta agreed. "The enemy will come again, be sure of it."
Jo began processing the data stream from the Amazon held Spaceships sensors.
"I have sighted another herd!" General Philappus called out.
Jo switched channels and saw how apt her words were.
The Martian Manhunter reached out with her mind, and at once felt another connection to her network – an enlarged and conjoined through a hive mind.
Jo understood, each consciousness had been a Manhunter's slave animal and a space-ship, then freed they had become sentient, transformed by Olympus' magic into Giant Knights on the Elysian Fields.
Each of these beings followed their adopted Queen, who had once thought of herself a Lana Lang.
Having arrived back into normal space. Having seen the enemy zombie cyborgs fall apart, these Giant pearlescent armoured Knights were changing too, just as the Amazon's ship had been changed.
They took on a new space going shape. It was one now more evolved, yet at the same time archaic, and animal like
"Again I see the fingerprint of Olympian power." Queen Hippolyta told her. "And one that belongs to a simpler and nobler age."
Jo sensed another power was at work, all part of Athena's plan, but it was something as yet unrevealed.
Jo saw the form these sentient giants took was not Themysicra's Kanga but an equine one.
The living space-ships transformed, limbs folding and snapping into place, as their bodies stretched into a shape like that of a leaping horse, but one with wings like the Pegasus, that here in space functioned as propulsion nacelles.
"These Knights had become horses." Zatanna said.
"I'm getting another signal." Diana announced.
The Martian Manhunter heard it too. She brought her senses, and their allies sensors to bear on the relevant region of space.
There they witnessed an incredible sight, emerging like a newborn from the belly of the Metropolis spacecraft. Even as the Giant Knight was transformed into a great Space Steed, the beast gave birth, as if it were a mythological titan in a Greek epic. Metropolis birthed a giant figure, a man clothed in shining steel, sliding out from the vessel and into weightlessness. This giant stood on balled flames like fire kindled in the Volcanic forge of the Blacksmith god.
Armoured from head to toe, the muscular man carried a huge hammer, the form of his natural impressive frame magnified in stature to that of a Champion of Olympus.
He was brute mechanical power personified, the great locomotive, the huge power shovel, the battleship. Steel made from Iron.
"This has to be the Champion of Hepheastus." Queen Hippolyta stated.
"Then there are other cards to play." Zatanna noted.
"And there must be a good reason to play them." Diana added.
"Aye a new battle to be fought." Philappus agreed.
Jo J'onzz would not have recognised the giant reborn warrior, however his face was known to the Agent of DOMA, Diana Prince.
Wonder Woman transmitted across space. "Professor John Henry Irons - the Star Lab scientist?"
Jo recalled an earlier conversation, details about this living vessel. People been brought aboard the Metropolis Space-ship, kidnapped from that city's Star Lab's institute by the Manhunters, and Irons had been one of them; but John Henry was not alone.
Before Metropolis Space-ship completed its transformation from Robot Knight to Space-going Horse, Metropolis gave birth to twins.
"Hepheastus' second Champion emerges" Diana said. "Equally vast, and equally an embodiment of the volcanic smiths power."
"Two champions." Jo noted, feeling again the sense something was changing below on her adopted planet, something belonging to her Patron goddess. She also recognised this second giant, but not by her appearance, which was metallic but also organic, complex and precise as Steel's was brutal, but rather by her mind.
"It is Victoria Stone." Jo said. "I remember talking with her."
"When?" Diana asked.
"During the battle in former Olympian Realm." Jo replied. "An ancient Mother box bonded with Vic, in order to save her life; she was badly hurt by the Man Hunters. The Mother box united her biology and advanced technology, it created a new cybernetic life form."
Jo saw how Victoria Stone joined Irons, her body changing its appearance, its design and function optimised for the vacuum of space.
Having already joined the League's telepathic Intranet Vic "pinged" her. She was also able to bring Irons into contact with the Martian Man-hunter.
Jo processed the data. More information streamed in, this time from the newly formed Space-Steeds. The rate of debris entering from the former Realm of Olympus had increased and with it she was certain would come other members of the League and their allies. Jo reached out, sensing time was short; that the Machine god would soon return.