Nothing more could hurt them now.
The extra-large helicopter they were in hurtled up and out of the city, far beyond the range of arrows and bullets.
Flying ever upwards and onwards, the helicopter flew over cracked streets, abandoned suburbs, the long-overgrown industrial district, and miles of artificial wilderness, before reaching the outer bounds of Chernobog's landship.
It was some time since Wally pushed himself, and now the crystal in his arm was throbbing again. The pain was nowhere near as bad as when he used his powers, but it still felt terrible.
He really needed to get his arm looked at. Rhodes Island was supposed to be a pharmaceutical company, right?
He looked around him. Most of the rest of the passengers were half-dead, so it's not like he had any right to complain about a little ache.
On the other side of the fuselage, the two Operators who covered their escape were chatting amongst themselves.
"So how was it, Ms. Exusiai? I've heard you kept pestering HR and The Doctor to let you use it for some time now." said one of them, a short brunette girl with the curved horns of a goat.
"Well, yeah. I mean, they didn't even know what the hell to do with it!" said the redhead, who was waving her hands in the air. It was only just now that Wally noticed a halo floating above her head.
"After a client gave it to Rhodes as a gift, the upper management just threw it in the armoury, saying stuff like: We don't have any use for ordinance this heavy, to which I said: Bitch, please! It took a lot of jumping and shouting for them to even fit it into one of the helis for this rescue mission. Luckily, they realised they had nobody around who could use Gun Arts as well as I could, so they made me man it."
"You sound like you enjoyed it."
"Enjoyed it? Enjoyed it!? Effy, do you know just how rare and exclusive those things are? Back home, these were only mounted on the Holy Pope's vehicles, and only the elite of the elite casters got the chance to hold them, let alone fire them!" the redhead said. "And now I just fired one of them! In live combat!" she squealed, shaking in her seat so hard that the Caprinae was worried the Sankta might be having a seizure or something.
'Effy' smiled at her enthusiasm, but also poked the angel girl in the shoulders, getting her attention from whatever wild daydreams she was having.
Poke, poke.
"... huh?"
"Ms. Exusiai, I think you should quiet down a bit." 'Effy' said, gesturing to the students, who were shooting annoyed looks at the Sankta woman.
"Eh heh heh heh, sorry…" she said, awkwardly scratching the back of her head like she had found a particularly bad bug there.
For want of a better thing to do, Exusiai walked to the other side of the fuselage and looked out the porthole. She smiled. She knocked on the glass three times to get Nadja's attention.
"Hey kid, it might be a good idea to take a gander outside!" she said.
After a brief bout of hesitation (that Wally's nudging helped to fix), Nadja walked over and looked out the window.
Her eyes widened in awe. Her mouth gaped.
"... What're you lookin' at?" asked Wally, before he peered out the same, small window as her. His jaw dropped to the floor of the cabin
"What the hell!?" he yelled, loud enough for everyone in the helicopter to hear.
"Jeez Wally, ever heard of an indoor voice?" said Artemis, rubbing her ears as she did so.
"It certainly feels different when you're looking at the whole thing with your own two eyes, isn't it?" asked Eyja. "It's the same way with me, too, when I started flying out of my city for field work..."
Wally looked at her strangely for a split-second, before looking back through the window.
The four of them continued looking through that small porthole of a window, a look of genuine amazement on Wally and Nadja.
"Hey Wally, what are you lookin' at?" asked Robin.
Within minutes, most of the students had noticed their twin expressions of amazement, and were now clamouring to see whatever it was for themselves. The students surged to one side of the aircraft in a chattering cacophony, jostling each other for a view of the outside.
"Let me see! Let me see!"
"Hey! If you all rush over to one side like that you'll imbalance it! Do you want us all to crash, you damn kids!?" shouted the pilot.
"Chill out, Frank! They're just kids being kids." said Exusiai. "Hey kiddos, try not to overdo things, alright?"
Nobody seemed to hear her, for all of them were now fixated on looking out the tiny windows.
The entirety of Chernobog's mobile city was laid out before them.
They could see everything: How the city centre was packed with almost nothing but skyscrapers, with shorter apartment blocks arranged around that centre, and the streets sprawling outwards like an elaborate spider web between the urban centre, residential districts, and suburbs out on the outskirts.
Sitting on the other side of the city from the suburbs was what was left of the city's industrial district, a row of factories arranged like the terraces of a wheat field, or perhaps like tiles on a kitchen floor, neat and orderly, it's order punctuated by growths of nature reclaiming what civilization had left to rot. Surrounding all the myriad of buildings, were large tracts of what appeared to be (to the untrained eye) a completely natural landscape.
But obviously, it wasn't. Because just below the skyscrapers, the dull grey apartment blocks, the two-storey bungalows for the better-off and the overgrown natural park of an industrial district on its outskirts, the whole thing was mounted on top of a single giant platform.
Below that platform were tracks like those you would find on a tank. Except these tracks looked like they could crush whole villages under them.
"That is… I have a whole lot of questions about how they got built or how they even function, but if I started now I probably couldn't stop!" yelled an incredulous Wally.
"What's there to understand? Isn't it just like a car? But, y'know, bigger?" said Artemis.
The look Wally gave her contained such absolute disbelief and pity that it made her want to kick his shins in.
"The Square Cube Law, Ma'am. It exists, and is important in science. Apparently, it's not a law this world seems interested in following."
"..."
But for the students of Chernobog, they had tears in their eyes.
From this height, it almost seemed like there was no disaster at all.
Though most of them had lived on that vessel for their entire lives, this was the first time they had ever seen the whole of their home city from above, with their own two eyes.
Some of them broke down on the spot. For most of them, this would also be the last time they would ever see their city.
Wally continued to hold Nadja.
The helicopter continued to circle the city for a few more minutes, before breaking off to head for Rhodes Island.
The crystal was still throbbing and sending pins and needles down his arm, but it was nowhere near as bad as when he ran like hell to rescue Nadja.
It was annoying. But he ignored it.
The blades of the helicopter weaved a soothing rhythm above them, lulling several of the younger students to sleep.
M'gann hasn't yet relaxed.
Even though they were kilometres from the ground and away from any sort of further attack, M'gann still held herself as if something bad were to happen at any time.
They started this trek with over two-dozen people, students and Operators alike.
At the end, there were less than half that number.
The psychic sensation of someone's death was not as extreme as non-psychics believed it to be. In fact, it didn't feel like anything at all. It was a sudden silence that made you realise the presence of a sound before it.
Feeling people die was nothing new at all, to any Martian. Whether it was on their homeworld, on any other world, people died all the time.
It's not that they're cold or callous, this was just the plain truth. Even in the most peaceful and orderly of cities, people got hit by cars, overdosed on drugs, or fell from great heights (accidentally and not). And even legendary heroes like the Justice League couldn't possibly save them all, not even if they gave up the entire concept of rest.
There were just way too many people for a handful heroes to ever save.
Whenever she passed by a hospital, M'gann would always stop, and stay there for a while, before moving on.
Deaths didn't feel like anything, but that doesn't mean the moments leading up to it weren't painful.
She couldn't just turn it off. It had nothing to do with whether you wanted to or not. Being psychic meant being exposed to the full brunt of emotions raging around you. Loved ones, enemies, and complete strangers alike.
The strongest among those emotions were hatred, complaint, and anger. It was the reason why primarily psychic races like the Martians were taught from young to control their emotions and impulses. To not do so would be to risk the entire society falling apart due to in-fighting.
But amongst all the relentless poison and mud of people's thoughts, there were also real treasures.
When she turned her powers to the student survivors of Peterheim, she found a warmth there. A harsh, selective warmth, more akin to a Bunsen burner than a roaring fire, but warmth all the same.
She found a very similar kind of warmth between the various Operators of Rhodes Island, from the operators under Ms. Blaze's command, to the two women who covered their escape into the helicopter.
It was not precisely the same as the warmth that existed between her and uncle, or the one that existed between Superman and Lois Lane, but it was warmth nonetheless.
And any warmth was valuable, in a universe so cold and pitiless.
Even the tiniest flame of warmth was worth fighting for. Perhaps even to the end.
Until I can no longer do so… she thought to herself. I will fight to protect that warmth.
They didn't hear the helicopter land on the helipad, but they felt it. The entire craft shuddered as it made contact with the tarmac surface.
The brief shockwave caused the pain in Wally's arm to flare up, and he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from yelling inside the cabin.
"Ah, umm… Mr. Wally, are you okay?" asked Nadja.
The redhead just smiled and stroked her head. "Nah, kid, it's nothing special."
She didn't look convinced, but said nothing.
The exit opened up, and the rescued passengers rushed out after having been cooped up in therelike humanoid sardines in a flying can.
Afterwards, they milled about the landing pad for a while.
"Whoah, look at that!" said one of the students, and both The Team and the students crowded up to one of the railings, looking out at the landscape.
There were grey, sloping hills as far as the eye can see, with cracks and unidentifiable debris littering the desolate land.
At the base of one hill, grew a crystal the size and width of a skyscraper. It was a similar shade of gray to the one embedded in Wally's arm, and rose into the air at an angle, like the mineral equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At the great crystal's base were several smaller outgrowths of that exact same type of crystal.
Slowly, very slowly, this grey landscape was slowly moving past them. Once you saw this, you grasped the fact that this was no mere stationary building they were standing on.
The sky was now darkening, descending into a vivid shade of navy, not quite dark enough to be pitch-black. Still, it was dark enough for the first stars to be seen.
It was a desolate, lifeless place. However, from this vantage point, it was almost beautiful.
Artemis stood a few paces away from the back of the crowd. She looked downwards, not in the mood for sightseeing at the moment.
She turned around before she even heard his footsteps approach her.
"Kal, what do you want?" she asked, throwing him a pointed look.
"Artemis… After we have fully settled into… this place, I would like to speak to you. Alone, if at all possible."
The blonde Archer knew what he was likely to talk about. And while it was within his rights as Team Leader, somehow, it still pissed her the hell off.
As Wally West, also known as Kid Flash, stumbled out of the back of the helicopter, he blinked as he turned and saw the sights that had his teammates and fellow survivors transfixed.
"..."
Once again, he wondered about the reliability of the Square-Cube law, and other scientific principles.
Like, how durable was the molecular structure of that crystal, anyway, if it was able to keep it's sharp edges and straight lines without the smoothing and weathering that countless eons of wind and rain would do to bigger structures than this. Then again, he was more of a physics guy than a geology one. Maybe it's different for crystals?
His arm hurt.
Then again, it was another world. A world in which magic was more of a… thing.
Honestly, even when he knew for a fact that it existed, he still didn't want to use the word "magic". It reminded him of conmen and other types of chicanery. For now, he preferred to think of it as an exotic energy source that he had seen surprisingly little actual research into, for some reason.
Like, could you imagine the breakthroughs that could be had, once those folks at Star Labs or Wayne Tech pulled off their "magic is for fairy tales" blinders and actually tried to do some experimental testing on the stuff? Hell, even Lex Luthor? Why do they never seem to notice that sort of stuff? Even when Zatara was a part of the Justice League!
His arm hurt.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw Aqualad, who left the scenery-gazing crowd to approach Artemis, who was on the other side of the helipad. Aqualad said something. Artemis spoke something back. They were too far away to overhear, but Artemis was clearly annoyed with their team leader.
Huh. Wonder what they're talking abo-
u-
-t
All of a sudden, he felt an unbearable burst of pain. It was the strongest in the area around the crystal, but it seemed like every part of his body was burning.
He saw the ground rapidly ascend to meet his face, and then all went black.
The Team (minus Wally) was at The Doctor's office.
The Doctor (yes, that was the only name he went by) was a mysterious-looking man, wearing an all-black mask and hood, even while indoors and in private. To a normal person, they would be justified in finding him a suspicious character, at best.
The Team didn't really have any right to complain, though. After all, most of their mentors and associates wore masks.
By his side was… a little girl? Two bunny ears stuck out of her heads, and both her ears and hair were an earthy brunette.
Normally, one of them would wonder out loud whether it was "Take your daughter to work" day.
However, nobody felt like jesting at that moment.
The Doctor spoke first.
"Truth be hold, I had hoped to call you into my office tomorrow morning, after you had fully rested from your… ordeals. But now your friend is in critical condition, so I must come to the only people he knows."
Aqualad raised his head. His face was unfazed and confident like a leader should, though inside he was as worried about Wally as everyone else.
"What do you wish to know, Doctor?"
"Well, it's not so much a matter of knowing… Alright then, let me make this very frank…" he said, clasping his hands into a ball on top of his desk.
"Truth be told, by the laws of both Yen, whose soil we are currently riding upon, and Colombia, where this company is registered with, all of you are minors. That means we can make him undergo whatever medical procedure is deemed necessary to preserve his life or his quality of life, even without his consent."
The Team's breaths hitched.
"And honestly, many in the medical department have told me that approaching you is silly and unnecessary. After all, he's already in such a severe situation. But I believe I should at least give you the courtesy of earning your blessings first."
His gaze turned to Aqualad.
"You are the team leader of this group, are you not?" he asked the Atlantean.
"I am." he replied, and everyone else nodded.
"Then I would like to ask for your blessings in carrying out surgery on one of your own. If you accept, we will begin procedures to extract the Originium shard from his shoulder. Analysis from our Medics theorise that it has most likely hit a major nerve, causing him immense pain and potentially causing his black out. While we do, we will also make sure to remove as much Originium from his body as can be able without permanently damaging him."
One of Robin's eyebrows went up. The Doctor looked each of them in the eyes, then continued:
"Make no mistake, he will still be Infected. Significant quantities of Originium are almost certainly circulating around his system right now. However, this surgery will relieve the worst of the symptoms."
"What if we don't?" asked Artemis, crossing her arms. "If we refuse, what'll happen to Wally? Is he gonna die?"
The rest of The Team flinched, but The Doctor continued on.
"He'd still live, though he'd be in immense pain, requiring painkillers to even function normally. And he would never be allowed into combat. Obviously."
The Team looked at each other, in wordless debate.
Because this wasn't just about Wally they're talking about here.
This agreement wasn't just about giving Wally the treatment he desperately needed. This was also a statement.
It was a sign of trust, a relinquishing of self-sufficiency in return for help. If they agree to let Wally get operated on, and he survives, then The Team would now owe Rhodes Island.
Robin didn't like the idea.
He didn't like the idea of him and his Team being beholden to an organisation that was not the Justice League.
He saw how they operated. While their goals and intentions were noble, he noticed various little things, things that showed that Rhodes Island and the Justice League were on fundamentally different wavelengths.
For the most obvious difference, they killed their enemies without hesitation.
Looking at it from their point-of-view, he guessed it made sense. There didn't seem to be any established norms or culture of non-lethal takedowns that organisations like the Justice League established and popularised in their world. It would only make sense that Rhodes Island would instead defend themselves in exactly the same way a military would, with overwhelming and lethal force.
… Still, for a pharmaceutical company, it looked incredibly strange to Robin that they would shoot to kill. It made him incredibly unsure whether The Team should even associate themselves with this organisation.
However, he wasn't an idiot. Nobody chosen and trained by The Bat himself would be. He wouldn't just throw away this opportunity just because of a difference in fighting philosophy.
First of all, Rhodes Island clearly had the resources to support the sort of hero work that he and his Team were doing before their unexpected transport. They could provide them with lodging, feed them, give them medical attention, as well as backup in the form of other Operators. The only catch would be the low, low cost of their independence and (most importantly of all) the choice of missions they could or would have to take.
Using the resources of Rhodes Island put them under the sway of Rhodes Island. They would be in the same situation as with the Justice League. However, with the latter, at least they knew where they stood and what they fought for. Despite butting heads many times, they shared values. Hell, he was sure a few of his teammates were eyeing League membership eventually.
It was a whole different ball game with Rhodes Island. They didn't even know of this "pharmaceutical company" until a few days after they were unceremoniously dropped into this world. Even then, it was only as a slight mention inside a catalog of "Non-Governmental Organisations of Note". They never really thought much of the company until after their fortuitous rescue.
In fact, they're still not entirely sure what Rhodes Island's deal is, or why they're so well-armed and security-minded even though they claim to merely be a civilian pharmaceutical company.
They could very well be signing up for a mercenary group in disguise.
But despite all of his misgivings regarding this mysterious organisation, there were more benefits to associating with these people than just a source of food and board.
For one thing, they've already built up a sort of reputation with Rhodes Island. Even if only minor, Rhodes Island already had an idea (roughly) of who they were and what they were capable of. There was a level of trust now, that The Team were capable of doing far more than what their ages suggested at first.
That means they'd actually trust them with carrying out missions that would benefit other people without hesitation or oversight. They weren't sure 100% how this world worked yet, at least not first-hand, but he was pretty sure if they were to approach any other entity in this world without any credentials or connections, they would get laughed at, then kicked out before even having the chance to make their case.
As for going it alone…
Robin could do it. He was pretty sure Aqualad and Artemis could do it as well.
But the rest of The Team? Wally, Conner, and M'gann? They didn't know anything about surviving completely on their own. Hell, Wally was basically a normal American high-schooler before all this!
God-damnit!
If they go too far for his liking, he could always leave. But what about those three?
"..."
And then, there was the most pertinent question factor: Wally.
He was in a terrible condition. He was poisoned by a material that was, as far as they knew, not found in their home world. Thus none of them knew how to deal with it.
He could very well die from it, though nobody liked to think of that word.
And while The Team has had no shortage of experience with near-death situations, fighting bad guys being the hazard that it was, this was completely different. There wasn't any bad guy to punch in the face this time. Just a friend's body slowly deteriorating, and none of them could do anything about it.
Complete helplessness. Nobody liked to feel that way. Heroes least of all.
Given the circumstances they were now in, there was only one reasonable choice they could have possibly made.
"Please do it. Only your people can help him. We will make sure to repay you for this kindness!" Aqualad said, standing up and bowing deeply to The Doctor.
"... Very well then. I'll give the go ahead for the operation to commence. After this, I will meet you all again when Mr. West has sufficiently recovered, to discuss your future status with us. For now, please rest and recover from your recent excursions. Texas here will guide you to your designated rooms-"
Artemis stood up quickly.
"Wait."
Everyone in the room paused.
"There's something we still don't know. Something big."
"What is it, Artemis?" asked M'gann.
"Doctor, we need to know… what's wrong with Wally?" she asked.
Robin stood up too.
He proceeded to detail all that The Team knew about Originium at that point. That it was used as an incredibly potent power source, used by the modern, technologically-advanced societies of Terra. They also knew it was dangerous to some extent, given that areas where they sprouted were considered "contaminated" and required dedicated biohazard crews to handle, and that rapid mutations of the surrounding vegetation and wildlife were known to occur. They also knew that natural disasters, Catastrophes, tended to bring Originium growths with them.
"But after that point, both the books and the people we asked about it, went silent." said Artemis, her face hardening. "I know that silence. It's not that there's no more to talk about. It's that whatever it is, it's scary and shameful and not something people want to talk about in polite company. Hell, even in impolite company."
"... You people don't know what Oripathy is?" The Doctor asked, surprise lacing his voice. As if the condition was so obvious that stating it out loud seemed foolish. That in itself spoke volumes.
"... No? Is that what's causing Wally so much pain!?" Artemis said, raising her voice.
"Artemis, stand down!" Aqualad shouted. After a few moments, the green archer slumped back down to her seat.
Shaking his head, The Doctor lifted his head to cooly regard them one-by-one.
"If you children truly do not know… Then it's a good thing I'm the one to explain to you, rather than anyone else.
… Alright then, Oripathy is…"