Chapter Fourteen: War on Technology
"A hangover is when you open your eyes and wish you hadn't"
Ivy woke up in a bed in the Spero's infirmary with a massive headache. She opened her eyes and found her retinas being seared by bright light.
"Somebody turn that off!" she moaned. She heard the sound of fabric rustling as someone closed the curtains. Ivy sat up. Her head and stomach protested violently at this and she soon found a bucket in front of her face. She was grateful for this gift and immediately made use of it.
After Ivy was done getting reacquainted with whatever she had last ingested, she looked up to see who had provided the bucket. It was Lily. Well that made sense, now that she thought about it. There weren't many others staffing this particular infirmary. Lily was in charge of the medical staff and would only allow the best of the best to work in the infirmary of Spero's most important building.
Nicknamed "The Palace" it was located in the center of Spero's capital city, Haven. "The Palace" was located in the center of the city and was a series of buildings that sat over fourteen basement levels. "The Palace," despite it's name, was not a place where nobles resided. It was the Central headquarters of the military and as such had weapon storage facilities, weapons research and development facilities, sub departments include, transportation, bio- warfare, cyber warfare, and traditional warfare (Ivy had once been the head of this sub-department, but it currently shut down for a number a of reasons), a library, barracks, kitchens, training facilities, and recreational facilities for the staff. There were an untold number of underground warehouses in the basement levels, including the warehouse of stuff that shouldn't exist. Basement levels five through eight were under control of the transportation department and were devoted to the maintaining and operating the Gate. With all that you'd think it would have it's own hospital. It should but it had been blown up during a weapons testing accident, which was one of the reasons that Ivy's department had been shut down, and construction dates kept getting pushed back.
Ivy was currently wondering how she had gotten to where she was and why she felt so awful. She voiced this question to Lily and promptly got hit in the head, which felt worse then it should have due to the hangover.
"What the heck was that for!" Ivy exclaimed while holding her head.
"What is the number one rule for drinking in alien bars?" Lily hissed.
Ivy face scrunched up in confusion. "Um… Never order anything unless you know what's in it. Especially if it has a weird name, but what's that got to do with anything?"
Lily glared. "Do the words "TARDIS joyride" and "alcohol poisoning" mean anything to you?" she asked.
"No… should they?" Ivy responded.
"The Catholic Church tried to burn you at the stake!" Lily exclaimed.
Ivy looked amused. "Really. How'd that go for them?" she inquired.
Lily sighed in exasperation. "Out. Get out." she commanded while pointing at the door. Ivy wisely chose to leave before Lily hit her in the head again.
Ivy was walking down the hall, nursing her headache when a voice called out to her.
"Hey, Ivy!"
Ivy groaned and turned to see a woman with dark brown hair tied back in a high ponytail and dark blue eyes. She was wearing a white corset top, dark pants, and leather boots.
"Hello Kyoko. You look like a pirate." Ivy stated bluntly. Kyoko ignored her and grinned brightly, revealing pointed canine teeth.
"You look like someone with a hangover." she said happily.
"Oh god no." Ivy moaned. Kyoko was Lily's assistant/student. She was know to make hangover cures. They always worked to some degree but they tended to taste so awful that it made the drinker want to claw out their own tongue. No that wasn't a dramatization, someone actually tried to claw out his tongue. He was sent to the psych ward.
Oblivious to Ivy's dread, Kyoko grabbed the red head and led her to the closest rec room and left her on the couch telling her not to go anywhere and that she (Kyoko) would be right back. After a few minutes of waiting Kyoko came back and forced a foul liquid down Ivy's throat. Ivy gagged.
"Ugh, what is in that stuff!" she exclaimed.
"You don't want to know." Kyoko stated before she hopped on the couch to sit next to Ivy.
"How are your symptoms?" she inquired.
"Headaches better, and I don't feel like I'm going to puke." Ivy answered.
"Yay!" Kyoko cheered before zipping out of the room. Ivy flipped on the news.
"… and in the Alder home world the Metropolis power plant was attacked by a ten foot tall humanoid. The humanoid stole one of the fuel cells. Justice League member, Hawkgirl attempted to stop the humanoid, but her efforts proved futile when the humanoid grew and pair of wings and a mace and subdued her."
Ivy watched the footage intently as the humanoid's body fluidly shifted to form wings and a mace.
"Grey goo." she muttered. A grin slid across her face. "Nano-bots." She stood up and turned off the TV.
"Well, how am I going to deal will this? Nano- bots are hard to deal with. They're a colony, like ants. Destroy some and the rest compensate. To get rid of ants you need poison, but nano- bots are machines, so that would take… an EMP… damn, I'm going to have to go to weapons storage."
No one liked dealing trying to get something out of Weapons Storage during peacetime. During wartime getting something out of storage is as easy as walking up and flashing your credentials. "What do you need? Grenades? Have a couple of crate-fulls, and here why don't you take this tank so you don't have to carry them all?" During peacetime however it was more like, "Oh, you want a bullet? Here fill out these five stacks of paperwork and give us the soul of your first child."
So now Ivy was stuck filling out paperwork to an EMP bomb out the storage. It asked questions like:
What is the technology you wish to disable?
Nano- bots.
Why can't you use conventional weapons to deal with the technology you wish to disable?
It's bulletproof.
Is there any other way you can disable the technology without an EMP?
Yes. But I'd have to nuke Metropolis.
Should we repaint the warehouse so it looks more cheery?
JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN EMP!
And so on until Ivy was ready to kill the warehouse personnel.
"Here you are!" the blond woman at the desk said cheerily as she handed Ivy the EMP.
"Feel free to come back any time!" Ivy noticed a glint in the woman's eye and shivered as she walked away.
"Sadists. They're all sadists." she muttered.
Harpy was flying over Metropolis, carrying the EMP bomb in a bag, looking for the humanoid. She spotted it over downtown and flew closer to it.
"My, my. Aren't you beautiful." she said as she looked it over. "Quite the feat of engineering you are. Too bad I'll have to destroy you."
"You're friends haven't been able to beat me. What makes you think you can?" the humanoid asked.
Harpy grinned. "Well you see, I know something you don't know." At the humanoid's puzzled look she continued. "I know what's in the bag. Catch." She tossed the bag and the bomb exploded. The EMP device the Harpy had chosen only had a range of about ten feet, but that was more than enough to fry the nano-bots that the humanoid was composed of. The remnants fell to earth in a puddle of metallic goo.
Hawkgirl, who had also been searching the city for the humanoid, flew over.
"What was that?" she asked.
"Eletro-magnetic pulse created by a specially designed bomb. Disables most technology. Took me awhile to get it out of storage" Harpy explained.
"So what next?" she asked.
"What next" turned out to be apprehending Luthor, who'd shown up in green super- armor expecting to find the League being taken out by the humanoid and he had come expecting to take some of the glory and get some gloating in. He was sorely disappointed and, after a fight, sent to jail.
Next one will be longer.
