Bleeding Multiverse
Chapter VI: Magic and Mayhem
Bibbo's, Metropolis-August 18-17:30
Alright, I had had enough. Bruce had tried and failed, now it was my turn. But unlike Bruce, I was going to go in with reinforcements. It might be low, but bringing in Lois and Chloe might just be the only way to get Clark to talk about the boy. Besides, Lois at least would nag him day and night once she found out how he'd been treating Superboy, assuming my own wife didn't give him hell first. Both of the cousins agreed to the double date, and we met for lunch at the same diner that Bruce had used, as it was run by a good friend of Superman's. After a half hour of catching up and complaining about General Lang, I decided it was time. "So, Lois, has Clark here told you about the little discovery that Dick and his friends made before they destroyed Cadmus?"
Clark glared at me while Lois just looked intrigued. "No, he hasn't. What kind of discovery?"
Clark wasn't the only one glaring at me, because Chloe was doing the same thing. "David Chaim Stone, have you been keeping secrets from me?"
I grinned at her. "No secrets, it's just that you and I have been so busy, that I haven't had time to tell you. Turns out Cadmus has been living up to it's name and created some new life, of the Kryptonian variety. Clark here has gained a son who is about sixteen years old, physically." I stated with a smirk. Then I moved in with the killing blow. "But he has seen fit to leave his training to Bruce, Dinah and Red Tornado. He will hardly even look at the kid." Let's see him get out of this one. Lex would be so proud of this trap.
The girls immediately started attacking him, demanding to know why he was doing that, and why he hadn't told them. "Quiet!" Clark nearly shouted. It shocked all three of us, Clark never shouted at us! "Listen, I have a good reason for being wary of the boy. A few years ago, Cadmus revealed that they had created a clone of me, a boy that appeared to be 12. I was ready to welcome him with open arms, but when I went to meet him, he was highly unstable. The boy, whom Cadmus called Match, was completely controlled by his rage, he destroyed anything and everything he saw. It got so bad that eventually I knocked him out and Cadmus put him back into a growth pod and cryogenically froze him. I can't take the risk of this boy turning out the same."
None of us could really fault him there, but I had to raise another point. "Clark, it's been a month since they got him out, and he hasn't shown anything close to the madness you describe. A temper, sure, but not madness. You need to reach out to him, or any chance of a relationship with him will be lost. Besides, if you tell him about Match, he might even forgive you for the past month."
Mount Justice-August 19-19:39
We watched as Superboy sparred with Kaldur, and he had already come a long way in his training, both in controlling his strength and learning to fight with his mind as well as his body. As for me, I was preparing for the mission I knew was coming up soon: finding Kent Nelson, the original Dr Fate. I instantly stripped myself of my suit and tossed the cube to the gossiping M'gann and Artemis, who were discussing how good of a couple Artemis and Wally would make. "Hold on to that, would you?" I asked. "Oh, and by the way, back home, you and Wally are one of the most popular couples," I stated, teasing the archer. Despite knowing her not even three weeks, I was starting to wonder if I was actually wrong about her. I really wished the series had come out faster, as I was running out of foreknowledge, fast.
But before I could do any practice, Red Tornado showed up and briefed us on the missing Nelson. "Kent may simply be on one of his ... walkabouts. But he is caretaker to the Helmet of Fate, the source of the Doctor's mystic might. And it is unwise to leave such power unguarded."
"Whatever you say, Red," I jutted in, if only to keep Impulse from embarrassing himself. "Just give me an image of where he keeps the Helmet," I finished as I put on a sling ring from home.
Red did so as he also gave us the key to the Tower of Fate. "I must ask though, how are you going to get there?"
"Via an artifact from back home," I grinned. I then put out my left hand and started drawing a circle in mid-air while pulling at my magic. Wally stared at me, clearly wondering what I was doing, until silver sparks started flying where I drew the circle. They continued flying until they combined and created a silver, sparking doorway to the empty field hiding the Tower. "After you, Wally," I gestured with a smug grin.
"How ... did you do that?"
"Magic," I answered, my grin still in place. Wally just barely covered his scoff before travelling through the gateway.
Salem, Massachussetts-19:50
I grinned as I watched Wally try to find the Tower, knowing he could search for a million years and never find it. "You like watching him fail, don't you?" Superboy asked.
"Are you kidding? I love it," I said. For another minute, we watched as he kept trying to bump into it. "You know, we really should come up with a name for you."
"Superboy's fine with me."
I raised an eyebrow. "And what about when you go to school or find a job? And since it's clear that your dad won't do it anytime soon, what would you say to your counterpart's name?"
He just shrugged and said "Let's hear it first."
"Connor Kent, or Kon-El for a Kryptonian name."
He thought for a moment before deciding "I like it," and gave me his first smile in quite some time. It was then that Wally finally gave up, and Kaldur realized how to enter the Tower. Once inside, the protections began with what appeared to be a hologram. "Greetings. You have entered with a key, but the Tower does not recognize you. State your purposes and intent, especially as your members include one with a strong talent with the mystic arts."
And before I could do anything to stop him, Wally proved once again why I call him Impulse by lying to the Tower. And as in the show, the floor collapsed beneath us. We all managed to stop before hitting the lava below, and I even managed to save Kon's favorite boots. "You slaggin' dreg!" I yelled at Wally. "Magic doesn't conform to the laws you're used to! You failed to answer the question, so the Tower opened this trap!" Then I calmed down and stated "We were sent to ensure the safety of the Helmet of Fate!" And with that, the hole was sealed beneath us, and we all landed on it.
Kaldur was shocked at how cool the platform was, but before any could comment on it, Artemis attacked Wally for nearly getting us killed. I let them argue until Wally said that everything can be explained by science. "Is that so?" I demanded. "Well, I'm willing to bet that by the end of this mission, you will believe in magic."
"Oh really? And what are the stakes?"
"If I win, I get to say 'I told you so.' If you win, well I know you still doubt my story about being from another universe where you're all just fiction."
"So? It's not like you can prove it!" And with that, I quoted a riddle I had found.
Who, like a vampire in the night sees all and knows all,
hides in the shadows and is both man and beast?
What kind of knight rides a black mount not white?
What detective is more mysterious than the mysteries he solves?
What is the only riddle even the Riddler himself cannot solve?
Wally stared at me in shock. "You can't mean ... you'd tell us?
"Tell us what?" M'gann asked in confusion.
"I know the true identity of the Batman," I explained. Seeing their confusion, I broke down the riddle. "A vampire that sees and knows all, hides in the shadows and is both man and animal? A bat man. A knight that rides a black horse would be a Dark Knight. An extremely mysterious detective has only been used to describe the greatest detective. A riddle so confusing that even the Riddler can't solve? Who is the Batman? I'm willing to tell all of you who he really is," I finished with a smirk.
"There's no way you could possibly know that," Wally countered.
"Oh sure, just like I can't possibly know that Barry Allen is the Flash, or that Aquaman was raised in the surface world? Need I go on, or should I mention Haly's Circus and Park Row? Steve Trevor and Themiscyra? Smallville and a rocket?" (Kaldur had stared at me in shock at my statement about Aquaman.)
"Okay, okay! I get it!" he surrendered.
"You know, Wally," I started. "I know someone who was just like you. He didn't believe in magic either, he was a man of science, a neurosurgeon, the best in the world. Someone once described him as 'a man looking at the world through a keyhole, spending his whole life trying to widen it in order to see and do more. Then, when he heard it could be widened in ways he couldn't imagine, he rejected the possibility.' You know what happened to him?" I asked.
"What?" Wally demanded.
I grinned as I delivered the punchline. "He became the Sorcerer Supreme and my teacher in magic: Dr Stephen Strange." Wally just stared at me in shock, unwilling to believe. I wasn't surprised, Dr Strange had confessed that he took quite a lot of convincing himself before he believed.
With that discussion finished, Kaldur decided to open the trapdoor in the platform, despite Wally's warning that we would be roasted. When the door led us to a snowy mountain his response was "Have you ever heard of string theory? We're in a pocket dimension."
"Well, you're not wrong," I said, much to everyone's shock. "According to Dr Strange, those of us who use magic do so by harnessing the energy of other dimensions, and can visit certain dimensions," explaining what I had learned. That's when M'gann spotted Nelson's cane. Wally joked about it being his wand until I stated "Don't you know? Real magic doesn't require a wand, dreg." Together, Wally, Artemis and I grabbed the cane and were then transported to the unusual room with staircases going every possible way, including upside down and sideways. And as I knew from the show, we arrived on a landing to the side of the fake magician Abra Kadabra, the evil Klarion the Witch-Boy and Kent Nelson.
Kent then used his cane to bring himself to us, and free himself before revealing his hidden elevator. He then introduced himself to us, with Artemis doing the same with us. "Well Artemis and Tony, we're up against an opponent with tremendous mystic power." Wally butted in explaining how Abra Kadabra just used futuristic technology. "He's right," Nelson and I stated when Artemis got after him. "Abra is a charlatan," Nelson continued. "But Klarion the Witch-Boy, the kid with the cat, he's an actual Lord of Chaos, the ultimate enemy of a Lord of Order like Dr Fate."
"Unfortunately, due to the nature of the universe, neither of you can truly defeat the other," I added. Nelson nodded, while Wally scoffed at the idea that Nelson was a Lord of Order. "Mr. Nelson was ... shall we say, a host for Dr Fate, who, by the way is actually called Nabu. Beings like Nabu and Klarion need ties to this dimension in order to act, thus the Helmet of Fate being intrinsically tied to Dr Fate. Without the helmet, there is no Fate," I explained.
"You seem to know quite a bit about the mystic arts," Nelson stated, so I quickly explained my history with Dr Strange. Then I turned to Wally and reminded him "I still think you would have liked him." That was when we arrived at the top of the elevator, revealing another landing, this one with a large bell over it. Knowing what was coming, I quickly conjured a mandala to shield us from Abra's blasts. "Artemis, Kon, keep Abra busy!" I called out as the rest of our team arrived from the mountain. Once they started doing that, I quickly cast the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak around Abra to bind him. Then I chanted one of the few spoken spells Strange taught me:
By the power of the Dread Dormammu,
Let the mists of time envelop thee-
Let the centuries reclaim their own!
And with that, a red mandala completely encased Abra and sent him back to his own time. Well, that was unusually effective. I wondered why Dr Strange told me only to use it in most dire need. Anyways, for my next stop, I used the sling ring to send myself to the top of the Tower of Fate, only to find that Wally had put on the Helmet and had already defeated Klarion, though Kent had still died. I smiled, knowing that for Wally, the keyhole had been widened and that Kent had been reunited with his spitfire. "Told you so," I stated with a smirk as I took us home.
Unbeknownst to anyone, a pulse of power raced from the Tower of Fate at many times the speed of light. Yet even at that great speed, it would still take the pulse more than six months to reach it's destination. For it's destination, and master, was beyond the edge of the universe, in the space between spaces.
Mount Justice-August 27-13:00
A week had passed, and in that time we suffered our first loss. Even with my comic knowledge, we couldn't beat the newly-created Clayface so the team decided to go home in order to recover. Everyone else had gone home, so that left Kon, M'gann and myself at the base. M'gann was getting ready to make another attempt at cooking, Kon was sitting in front of a blank TV, while I was pondering what had happened to bring Venom to this world. "Would you like me to turn that on?" M'gann asked out of the blue.
"No,' Kon answered.
"He's using it to focus and block out his super-hearing," I explained. Both of them turned to me in shock, but whatever they were going to say was cut off when one of the holographic monitors activated.
It started with a report from the UN by Cat Grant with National News. "Where the attackers came from or their motive is unclear at this time, but it is clear that their technology is far beyond ours."
When I finally caught a glimpse of the attackers, I froze in shock. I knew those ships! Those green skull ships with tentacle legs that were armed to the teeth, the green and yellow armored goons, and the green robots with beam weapons could only be Hydra, but how did they get here? I had assumed that Dr Strange's portal had taken a little while longer to close then we had assumed, thus allowing Venom to go through, but there was no way that Hydra could have come through and stayed quiet this long! I turned to M'gann and Kon and told them "Call Superman and the Lanterns, I'm going to need their help! And tell your dad to grab the Phantom Zone Projector!"
"Where are you going?" Kon asked.
"New York, where else?" With that, I flew through the zeta-beam teleporter and then off to the UN. Fortunately my drop-off point was in the middle of Hell's Kitchen, so I was just a few miles from the UN and with Stark's repulsor tech built into my basic suit, I made it there before UN security was completely overwhelmed. By then, the Hydra army had been whittled down to only a small army, but there were still two skull ships and a dozen dreadnoughts. Naturally the UN hadn't been able to take any of those out. "Hey, Hydra nuts!" I called out over my loudspeaker. "I think you should know that you're in an alternate universe, and you are all that exists of Hydra here. There is no AIM, no SHIELD, no SWORD, not even an Avengers. You are fighting a war that has never happened in a world you know nothing about."
"You really think we care about that, Richards?" an all too familiar voice called out from the lead skull ship. "If there is no Hydra here, then we will be it's creators. And with no SHIELD or Avengers, there's no one who can stop us," Brock Rumlow, aka Crossbones answered. Then he resumed their attack on the UN.
"Well, that could have gone better," I told myself. Okay, first things first, the skull ships had to be taken out. As dangerous as the dreadnoughts were, they were nothing more than giant robots, the army couldn't do too much damage so long as they stayed outside. The ships on the other hand carried some of Hyrdra's most dangerous weapons, including some powerful enough to take down buildings. Fortunately, with the ships made to resemble Hydra's symbol, they left a clear weakness, one that I now took advantage of: the glass eyes. I quickly charged up my flames and dived into the eye of the nearest skull ship and attacked the Hydra goons inside. Fortunately, Hydra was something that everyone back home had experience fighting, so the goons were out cold fast. With them down, I burned through the power source and destroyed it before moving on to the other. This one I knew was going to be dangerous. Rumlow was one of Hydra's most dangerous soldiers, so much so that he was a regular threat to Captain America and his allies.
Before I could even make a move for it though, Rumlow's ship fired at me, forcing me to put up a force-field, but even that didn't keep me from being blasted into the midst of the dreadnoughts. I threw up a force-field as soon as I recovered, but even then, it was too close and I was nearly blasted by lasers from multiple sources. When the laser fire didn't let up even after five minutes, I knew I had to do something about it, so I opened a small hole and let loose a few concentrated blasts of fire at their heads, taking about half a dozen out. Seeing how effective it was, I decided to try again, but this time my shots were stopped by shields. "Not good," I told myself. Hydra's dreadnoughts had often had shields, and every time they made more, they upgraded the shields. Until now, concentrated flames like I had been using had always worked before, and now I didn't know if there was anything in the entire potential arsenal I had in my suit that could pierce their shields. Instead, I flew up, keeping my shield up and charged at the other skull ship.
As soon as I crashed through the eye, the goons opened fire on me, intent on bringing down my shield, but with a little of the martial arts training that I'd been receiving, they were all taken out. All that is, except for the last: Crossbones himself. I knew better than to try and just charge him, he's too good for that to work, but I also couldn't take him through strategy, he was too good for that. But what did that leave? Before I could come up with an idea, he hit me with his gauntlet and I was thrown out of the ship and into the UN building. The next thing I knew was a familiar voice saying "Don't worry kid, we'll take things from here."
I looked up just in time to see Hal Jordan fly off towards the skull ship. At the same time, a tremendous heat wave passed by me. I turned just in time to watch as the dreadnoughts were melted into piles of slag, clearly by Superman's heat vision. The two of them were quick to clean up, and just as quick to confront me. "So, any explanation about who these people are, Storm? I heard that you confronted them sometime after the initial attack," Superman stated.
"To my shame, I do. These people are part of a terrorist group called Hydra, they're from my Earth, and I think I'm responsible for them being here." Just then, an old SHIELD incident ran through my mind. "GL, could you unmask them, please? I need to make sure these guys are all regular goons." Hal looked at Superman, shrugged, then did so, removing about a dozen at a time until I saw the one I was looking for. "Hello, Mr Williams, I've been expecting you." Then I grabbed his right wrist and started burning it.
"Kid, what did you think you were doing?" Hal demanded once he had wrested my hand away. "Don't you know we don't torture people?"
"Take a closer look, GL. There's not a bit of burnt flesh on him," I countered.
"What's going on, Torch?" Superman demanded when they realized I was telling the truth.
"Eric Williams, aka the Grim Reaper is a cyborg, he's had his right arm replaced in order to contain a metal scythe, thus his code name. He did this once before, in order to infiltrate a prison and free other Hydra goons."
"And kill as many SHIELD agents as possible, don't forget that, Richards," Reaper said with a smile. "My scythe isn't the only reason for my name."
It took all my self-restraint to keep from killing him then and there! Reaper had been responsible for killing my Uncle Johnny only two years earlier, and he had not been the first or last hero that the Reaper had killed. Instead, I came up with a much worse punishment. "Superman, do you have a way to access the Phantom Zone? If so, toss Crossbones and the Grim Reaper inside, the rest of these goons can go to a regular prison."
Superman gave me an odd look, but he grabbed the two supervillains and flew off north, probably to the Fortress. Jordan turned to me and asked me one thing. "So, if these guys are from your reality, how did they show up here? I get the feeling that dimension travel isn't exactly easy."
"Depends on the dimension you want to visit," I answered. "Similar dimensions are easy to reach, but with ones as radically different as ours, it's nearly impossible. It's so difficult that I needed an item of nearly infinite power to get here, and I think that's the source of our … no, my problem. I need to talk to Zatara to be sure though."
Mount Justice-August 29-13:16
I wasn't able to speak to Zatara until the next day due to his work as a magician. He eventually showed up though, and was quick to ask "So, how can I help you, Mr Storm?"
"I need your help finding the magical portal I used to come to this world. I have very strong evidence that it's still open and allowing dangerous beings from my universe into this one. Unfortunately, I have no idea as to how to find it, or close it," I explained.
"I see," he responded, with only a raised eyebrow to reveal his shock. "Well, finding it should be easy enough." He quickly pulled up a hologram of the globe and cast a spell. "Etacol retnecipe fo yrecros!" but nothing happened. "Perhaps it would help if I could get a feel for your magic?" I quickly conjured a basic mandala, and when Zatara had examined it, he cast his spell again, and a red circle appeared on the globe. There was just one problem: it was constantly moving. "What is going on?" Zatara demanded.
"The problem is that the portal is staying put while the Earth moves, it wasn't locked to a single location," Jordan explained. "Sorry, but you were taking a while, John. My ring was able to track down your portal, but I wasn't able to close it."
I groaned at that, but Zatara and I quickly used the Zeta Beam tubes to get ahead of the portal. Once there, we both cast spells that should have closed it, but we failed. "I do not believe we are powerful enough to close the portal," Zatara said. "A powerful magical artifact must have been used in combination with your Doctor Strange in order to open the portal."
I winced at that, as I now knew why the portal had stayed open. "We used an artifact of infinite potential to open it, due to the incompatibility of our two universes. I thought we'd need it to keep the portal stable, I never expected it to keep the portal open!"
A/N: Really, what other reason could there be for the big blue boy scout to be so stand-offish with Kon? And not only have I covered that, but the first step to what will become my first original, multi-chapter arc covering the time between Seasons 1 and 2. Also, I'd like a riddle that leads to a specific place in Gotham, and the answer to the riddle. Finally, the Hydra skull ships and dreadnoughts are all owned by Marvel and Disney and originate in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, a great show cut off too early.