Young Justice / Green Lantern Corps: The Gold Corps: Shattered, Chapter 22: The Red Void

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I don't own Young Justice, the Green Lantern Corps, or the Justice League. Be nice if I did. I could get my housework done a lot faster.

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Chapter 22: The Red Void

Rose and Ragnar found themselves in a red-litten void, once again, seemingly weightless. Rose experienced the usual first few moments of adjustment as her body grew accustomed to the weightlessness; Ragnar apparently needed no such interim.

Figures, she thought, sarcastically, and maybe a little enviously. Mr. Superior Life Form over there wouldn't need a moment or two. But truthfully, she was getting used to such things by now. He was still a clueless klutz in regular life, so she supposed it evened out. "So where are we? Any idea?"

He consulted his ring. "I'm not picking up anything that might tell us that. This is, I suppose, still the collective subconscious. My ring can determine no boundaries to it, and only a very few gravitational anomalies. There are several asteroids, or astral bodies that pass as such, over in that direction…." He pointed, then suddenly consulted his ring again. "…and, it seems, there are some life forms over there."

"Finally! We may get some answers. Let's head over that way." He started off, only to have her clear her throat. "A—hem! Forgetting something, are we?"

"Oh, right." He flew back and allowed her to grab onto his belt. She'd long since told him she'd be damned if she went everywhere being carried in his arms like the bride of freakin' Frankenstein. All she needed was just a handhold inside his belt, and, in this weightlessness, she could go wherever he went. He'd shrugged and acquiesced the point.

Besides, although she'd rather die than admit it, this way, she got the chance to check out his tush.

There were a few pebbles floating in this strangely atmosphere-filled vastness, and, judging by the speed by which they were passing them, Rose and Ragnar were traveling at a high rate of speed. There; up there, up against a bit of more solid seeming mass of reddish haze, were some figures floating in the void in front of it. Rose thought it looked as though they were somehow self-propelled, like they were flying through the empty redness.

It really wasn't a bad tush, at all.

As they got closer, they saw that the figures seemed to consist of humans or humanoids wearing heavy red robes with hoods pulled up over their heads, completely obscuring their faces. Although they were still afar off, the faces within the hoods seemed human. Most seemed scared.

All at once, several red figures resembling nothing more than Earthly cartoon devils, humanoid figures with red skin, barbed tails, with horns on their heads, descended upon the group without warning. All but one of the floating, flying figures fled, but the devils caught that one, and dragged it away, back into the void itself. A female's screams reached their ears.

Rose knew Ragnar well enough by now to automatically grab hold of his belt again, as he took off, pursuing the flying devils. They dragged their screaming captive to a large asteroid that had a large opening in one side. There, heedless of her screams, they began to tear away at her robe, revealing that she was wearing nothing beneath it. Quickly and enthusiastically, they stripped her naked…

And Rose and Ragnar fell on them like avenging angels.

Rose herself might've entertained doubts about the reality of what they were seeing—this was, after all, the collective unconscious; things here didn't have to be real (at least, not so far as they understood "real" to be)—but she knew her partner well enough to know that he wouldn't care if the tableau being played out before them was real or not. He was a man, and men simply have a psychological allergy to anything attacking a helpless female. He'd fight, no matter what the odds.

With ring and fist (which, she noticed, had sprouted sharp bony spurs from the knuckles), he beat back the hordes, driving them away from their prize. Rose fell into what had become, for them, their standard battle formation: back to back. "There must be a thousand of these things," she shouted.

He snarled and swung his mace of a fist. "Make that nine hundred ninety nine!" His ring beam lanced out, catching six devils in its beam. "Nine hundred ninety-three!"

Ragnar blasted many of the devils with beams from his ring, while skillfully, ambidextrously smashing small red skulls into bloody tatters with his fist. Rose sliced and stabbed, just as ambidextrously; these creatures might look like cartoon devils with oversized yellow eyes, and outsized heads, grinning vacantly, but they seemed to bleed well enough, red blood, and a severed limb or head stayed that way. Nor was she limited to just her swords. Many a devil caught a foot or an elbow to the throat or the side of the head; Rose saw no point in taking prisoners. Aside from the girl's continued screams, and Rose and Ragnar's occasional grunts, there was no other sound. The devils fought and died—if "died" was the correct term—in absolute silence.

The girl, meanwhile, lay on the ground between them, huddled into a fetal ball, hands behind her head, shivering and crying. The two above her were very careful to keep her in the "safe" zone between them, where she could not be yanked out by an opportunistic devil from the side.

Again and again they fought off one wave of devils after another. The devils (if that's what they were) seemed to have no concept of personal safety or concern; apparently all they wanted was their prey.

Prey that was denied them. After many waves had been destroyed, the remaining devils withdrew into the interior areas of the cave, not bothering with their wounded or dead. Rose understood why when both began to simply dissolve from sight, as did the blood they'd both become spattered with.

"C'mon, grab her and let's get out of here before they regroup and come back." Ragnar picked up the still-fetal girl, just as Rose sheathed her swords and hooked her fingers in his belt, and the trio took off, into the red darkness outside.

They found a somewhat smaller asteroid a short ways off. It, too, had a small cavity, or hollow in one side. To Rose's cautious eye, these hollows were beginning to look far too convenient and well-shaped to be completely and totally coincidental.

A quick checkout revealed no signs of any life forms, or places where such might be hiding. The entrance offered a good, defensible spot. The interior of the hollow was illuminated with a soft red light that seemed to have more of a yellowish tinge to it. There was even a gentle gravity field inside, holding objects onto the "floor."

The girl was kneeling, huddled in an almost-fetal position in spite of Rose's best efforts to reassure her. Rose treated her cuts and bruises with the first-aid kit she kept in her belt. The crying girl had latched onto Ragnar, and seemed afraid of the white-haired human swordswoman, as opposed to the more unusual-looking blue skinned Gold Lantern, to whom she clung. "Come on," urged Rose, "I gotta get these cuts seen about." Although she privately doubted that there was anything of a bacteriological nature here in this strange space to worry about, better safe than sorry. "Careful," she said to Ragnar, "don't go sprouting chest spikes into her. I don't have anything for that." He gave her a look. You just do your job, and I'll do mine.

What few tattered strips of cloth she still had on hung from her neck and shoulders, and she had nothing else on. She kept trying to cover up. "Here," said Ragnar. At first, Rose thought he was going to offer her some part of his uniform, then remembered: any Lantern Corps' uniform is actually a solid-light projection of their rings. Beneath the illusion of his Gold Lantern uniform, Ragnar could have been wearing anything or nothing, though privately, knowing him, she doubted the latter.

Instead, he turned his ring on the ground and walls of their cave, and Rose realized what he was doing: the ring itself couldn't directly create permanent clothes for the girl to wear, but he could use its energies to rearrange the local atoms and molecules into a semblance of the garment she'd been wearing.

The red robe formed around the girl, who seemed to take a certain amount of comfort in once again having something on. Rose could see how that would bolster the kid's confidence. "Th-thank you," she said, in a low voice, not looking up.

"Just doin' our job. Who are you?" Rose finished up on the last of the minor cuts the girl had on her face. As she worked, she carefully examined the girl in question. In this strange space, it was quite possible for anything to be anything. Anything at all.

The girl appeared to be no older than sixteen, if that, with blond hair that fell in gentle curves to her shoulders. Her eyes—when Rose could pry her head up to look at her—were a light powder blue. A straight nose, pointed chin, fine regular features. Rather pretty girl, for a kid. She surely couldn't be out of high school. "I…I don't know."

"You don't know? What's your name?"

"I, I don't know. I mean, I remember having a name, but, but I don't remember what mine is." She looked upon her rescuers as though seeing them for the first time. "I….what….where is this place?" Her eyes took on a terrified look. "Am I dead? Is that what it is? Is this Hell?"

"No, you're not dead, and this isn't Hell," Ragnar responded. She turned to look up at him, standing silently beside her. Her eyes traveled over him, the gold and black uniform, lingering on the insignia on his chest, eyes widening as they finally came to rest on his blue-skinned face. "Who—who are you? A-and where am I?"

"Actually," began Rose, "we were sorta hoping you could tell us. But that would've made things too simple." She blew out a breath, marveling once again how, in this seemingly endless void, there was a breathable atmosphere.

Of course, if she understood Bertran correctly, nothing here was really "real," at least as humans in the waking world understood it. "What's the first thing you remember? I mean, here?"

The girl paused and thought, hard. "I…I'm not sure. I was walking, I think…no, that wasn't here. Something….a phone rang. That wasn't here, either. But, but then I found myself…floating in space, dressed…dressed like this. And, and being very, very afraid."

"Looks like you had good reason to be. Any idea why?"

"No." The girl started crying again, her tears running in rivulets down her face. "Why? What is this place? What am I doing here? Who are you? And, and what were those, those…." She was bordering on hysteria.

Ragnar took her into his arms. "It's okay, miss. Everything's alright now. It's alright. Just calm down. We'll get everything sorted out, okay? It's alright. We won't leave you and we won't let anybody hurt you." And he kept on murmuring to her, holding her to his chest, stroking her hair. She clung to him, sobbing and hiccupping. Rose watched, partly in amazement and partly in disgust.

Both Ragnar and the girl were, in her opinion, seriously afflicted with a bad case of BSM syndrome ("big, strong man"): Ragnar, to be the BSM (because that was just him all over), and the girl, who seemed to need, no, make that crave that, for some reason that seemed to go beyond the usual whys and wherefores. Of course, thought Rose, perhaps she was being a little unfair here. From her looks and apparent age, it looked as though the worst thing that could have happened to the kid so far was the possibility of being late for gym class. Going from that to "sexual assault by demons in a hellish, incomprehensible space" raised the bar quite a bit. She left them to their own devices for a moment and explored the cave, the asteroid, they found themselves in.

The asteroid, or whatever it was, appeared to be extremely rough textured reddish rock, similar to volcanic basalt. The flooring of the hollow they found themselves in seemed far too smooth and level to be totally natural.

But then she remembered what Bertran had told them: this was the collective subconscious of intelligence. It was supposed to be a reflection of the waking world, to one degree or another. Somewhere in this vast space—which she dearly hoped wasn't truly infinite—was the specific "locale" or "code" that reflected M'gann M'orzz's subconscious… and with it the horror meme that Bertron had implanted in her. If there was a way of fighting the thing, of unraveling it, doing something to it, it would be here. But where to look? This place was like outer space…where to start?

Ragnar was sitting over by the opening, his legs actually dangling into the red void around them. The reddish coloration was uneven, and it was his theory (based on what his ring told him) that it was due to a vast cloud of dust or gas they currently found themselves in. This was bad in that, even though it was still very diffuse, it could block his ring's sensors.

The girl was seated right beside him, and something about the way she sat, or perhaps her close proximity to the Gold Lantern set off warning bells in Rose's mind. She eased up for a better view…

Ragnar was sitting on his perch, concentrating on his ring and the information it was feeding directly into his brain, completely unconscious of the little slip of a girl seated next to him. The girl was practically in his lap, her head on his shoulder, her hand on his arm, fingers lightly running up and down, her eyes closed, her expression one of pure and utter bliss…

"Ahem." The girl jumped slightly, looking up at Rose guiltily. Ragnar just looked up, irritated that she should interrupt him. Of course, practically everything she did irritated him, so he guessed he couldn't go by that. "A moment of your valuable time, M'sieu?"

He got up and followed her deeper into the hollowed out space. "Okay, what is it?

"Oh, nothing much. Just that you need to watch it with that kid. You were one very short joyous leap away from being kissed to death, back there."

"Oh, you're out of your mind. Again. Or still. I haven't decided."

"Yeah? If you'd had a shirt pocket, she would've been in it. Or did you really not notice her rubbing up against you like a cat? She was practically jilling off, just sitting there by you."

"Jill—* If I live to be a thousand, I will never understand your crazy Earth idioms. So she's cold. That's no crime. I'll heat some rocks up…"

"She's not cold at all! Are you really that dense-* Wait. Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. Yeah, you are that dense. All I'm saying is watch it. I don't know how things are here, but keep in mind, this is not the waking world. This is more like a dream world, and in dreams, sometimes people do things they normally couldn't be paid to do when awake. Like try to fuck the first Gold Lantern they see."

"Potty mouth. I still say you're crazy."

"Yeah, an' you'll probably keep right on saying it, too, until she swarms all over you. And you know, there could easily be other reasons for her actions." A horrible notion was starting to form in her mind. This place…this place was based on the waking world… "What's your ring telling you about this place?"

He shook his head, bringing up his ring. "Not much. There's an atmosphere—where it's coming from, I don't know—in the extreme distance, I'm picking up some faint gravitational anomalies. They could be planets or stars. Right around here: nothing. Just the occasional rock, like this one. With its own gravity field, but they don't register as gravitational vortices somehow. No life forms. No idea what the red haze is. But I know more what it's not."

"What?"

"Not gas or dust. But as to what it actually-*"

"Excuse me?" The girl had come up behind him. "Mr. Gold Lantern? I, I'm scared. Could I stay here with you?"

Rose just rolled her eyes. Of course, she knew what Ragnar's response would be even before he made it: "Of course you can. Come on. I'll heat some rocks up over here…are you cold?" The two made their way back towards the opening of the ledge in the asteroid. She, herself moved off to get a better view of the distant points of light that she guessed were stars, using the scanner Bertran had supplied them with. She glanced back at the pair, huddled by some glowing hot rocks Ragnar's ring had heated up. I sure hope Megan appreciates all the effort I'm expending to keep Little Miss Jailbait there outta her boyfriend's pants.

Ragnar, meanwhile, went back to his scanning, his ring traversing one corner of the visible universe to the next. She knew he was looking for a specific "event," as it was called: the one the waking world called Miss Martian.

Bertran had given Rose a device that should identify the general region where the Martian girl's personal signature—the area which could be called "her" to the best of anyone's ability, here in this timeless void. It was having a difficult time cutting through the clutter, whatever it was. Still, there was no sign of anything that might indicate the Martian girl's whereabouts. Did Martians dream on the same "frequency" as humans? That was unknown.

Ragnar was seated, cross-legged, by the still-glowing rocks, his attention wholly concentrated on his ring. Its far-ranging beams told him a lot about this strange place, and he needed that to learn to deal with it.

Essentially, this…void seemed to consist of a kind of shared dreamworld for humankind and others. Due to its size, the actual number of humans in it were, of necessity, relatively small.

He became aware of the girl, who'd once again sidled up to him, and was now clutching his arm. "Mr. Ragnar? Sir? C-can I sit in your lap? Please?"

That was a kind of a strange request, but he saw no harm in it, so he motioned for her to do so. "But I am in the midst of some long-range scanning, to see if there's someplace where we might get you to safety. Return you to the waking world, in other words. So try not to distract me, okay?"

"I understand," she said in a dreamy voice, even as she crawled into his lap. He was reminded of a kitten cuddling up with its mother and littermates. Well, okay; if it helped her. He guessed. "Don't know that I wanna go back," she said. Now that was a strange thing to say, he thought. Of course she'd want to go back.

She settled in, her head on his chest, while he scanned and rescanned. "You're a nice man."

"Hm? Oh, uh, thank you."

"You're a hero, too. My hero."

"Thank you. My pleasure."

"In fact, you're the nicest, most heroic man I know."

"Er…."

"You saved me from those devils, those things. You're my hero." Now Ragnar was beginning to become a bit concerned. This girl in his lap, running her hands over him was beginning to set off some alarm bells.

He saw Rose smirking in their direction.

The girl snuggled in even closer, wrapping her legs around his torso, and settling in in a most intimate way. "Would you kiss me, Mr. Ragnar?" And without waiting for an answer, she proceeded to grasp his head in her hands and kiss him passionately, with no indication of stopping. He looked up, as best he could, and saw a still smirking Rose, standing over them. He gestured, towards the girl in his lap.

She came over, languidly, in no great hurry. "Yes? Something the matter, Ray? There's no way it could possibly be that there's a girl latched onto your face, now is there? 'Cos, I mean, you were the one told me I was crazy for thinking something like that might happen, so I know it couldn't possibly be that…" She noticed his expression getting dangerous. The girl still hadn't let up. "Oh, all right. Hold your breath." She drew forth an ampule from her belt, broke it open underneath the girl's nose. The girl immediately lost consciousness, and fell back in Ragnar's arms.

"Okay, I confess: it hurts to admit it, but you were right and I was wrong. But how did you know?"

"I recognized the stereotypes. Especially here in dreamspace. The helpless female. The damsel in distress. The big strong man, the hero type. You. The knight in shining armor." She tapped the glowing insignia on his chest. "In your case, literally shining armor. The rescue. And the aftermath. They're really not that hard to place…once you accept that this is a 'dream'. This is dreamspace, Ragnar. The subconscious. The ancient memes and patterns of thinking that have followed humanity down through thousands of years are real here." She looked down at the sleeping girl. "What happens here is a reflection of what happens in the waking world." She shrugged. "Now, her nightmare was about to become her wet dream." She thought for a minute. Her eyes narrowed. "Wait. Waaaaaaiiite a minute. No. Couldn't possibly be. On second thought…I can't think of any reason why not. In fact, it almost has to be!"

Ragnar had gingerly put the unconscious girl down as gently as he could. "Why do I have the distinct impression that whatever you're about to say is something I'll really regret hearing?"

"Because you've already halfway figured it out for yourself. But you're not gonna like it…..!"

"Then don't tell me. Whatever it is, there's no need for me…."

"But there is. Because you're the only one of us who has a chance of making it happen."

"Making what happen?"

"Think: this is the dream dimension, basically. What happens here is a reflection of events in the real world, okay? With me so far? And remember: subconscious. So the old stereotypes, the old ideas, the old notions have a solid foothold on this place."

"Okay…."

"So according to that theory—which we're basing our own search on—Little Miss Make-Out here really was attacked out there, 'out there' being the real world. Not by devils, or at least, I guess not, but you know. So now, if my notion's correct, she's probably languishing in some hospital somewhere, probably recovering from injuries, the injuries of being gang raped. It must've been a terribly traumatic thing, so traumatic it landed her here. And, here, in dreamspace…she's become 'stuck': she keeps reliving that horrible moment. She probably can't break out. She's probably been in a coma ever since it happened."

"I will find those, those…beings and rip them apart!"

"I'll help you but that's not the point. The point is, here we have the chance to interrupt the cycle she's undergoing. Rather than being a constant victim, over and over and over again—and remember, there's no telling how long this has been going on—we have the chance to set her free. You—we—have already rescued her, so that's one step. And you're the 'knight in shining armor,' the BSM—"

"BSM?"

"Tell you later. Anyway, you're her hero. Okayfine. So the cycle's been interrupted, at least. Her own subconscious mind knows what she needs. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's not what drew us here, to this general area, in the first place: her need for a hero to come save her.

"But what she needs right now is closure."

He rubbed his chin. Surprisingly, it did make a lot of sense to him. He could see it. "But what do you mean by 'closure'? What sort of closure?" She just continued to look at him oddly, a crafty smile on her face.

"Something only you can provide, Ray. Only you….'sweetheart.'"

And the peculiar emphasis she put on that last word caused him to, reflexively, glance around for an escape route.

…

"You can't be serious."

"As a heart attack. Think about it: the damsel in distress. The heroic prince, the knight in shining armor. The rescue. Now the happily ever after part. Ray, what did you think the 'happily ever after' part meant? After Prince Charming woke Sleeping Beauty, and carried her off to his castle, and closed and bolted the doors shut behind them, drawing up the drawbridge…what do you think they did then? Well, this the same thing. This is the closure. Rather than have her memories cycling forever in that horrific closed loop, now you can help her break out of that cycle. She gets to dream about being rescued. All you have to do is…" And here she couldn't help but giggle, just a little. The expression on his face was just so priceless. "Wake her up, and let her have you. Her mind knows what she needs, on a subconscious level; just let her do it."

"But, but I…!"

"I know, I know. You're being called on to basically make love to someone you don't know—and who's probably underage, but I think it's safe to say that's the least of everybody's problems—and, let's face it, do something you aren't all that comfortable with doing. Are you?"

He dropped his gaze. "No. But…I want to help her." His eyes closed in a pain that was not physical. "But, Rose! I'd feel like I was taking advantage of the poor girl! I just couldn't do it!"

"Of course you can." She got right in front of him, a lascivious grin on her face. "As the old commercial used to go, 'You can do it,'" and here she held up his hand, the one that had his power ring on it, "'We can help.'"

Soon, the girl was busily making clumsy but enthusiastic love to Ragnar…or, more accurately, to what she thought was Ragnar, but was actually a solid-light projection from his ring, while he and Rose watched from behind some rocks off to one side. Ragnar's face was flaming red, in spite of his natural blue coloration. Rose just crouched there and seemed to be enjoying the show, her hand on his wrist. "I don't suppose I could persuade you to give the poor girl some privacy, could I?" Not to mention me. I feel like you're watching me have sex!

"Hell, no. This is better than Netflix. Besides, I have to watch." Her hand was on his wrist. She was guiding the movements of the doppelganger, even as he continued to project it. So "Ragnar's" part, at least, was under her direction. "You keep on supplying the juice, and just let my thoughts make the doppelganger move. Couldn't be simpler. And let's face it: you really don't know exactly what to do in this kind of situation, anyway, now do you?" Then, while he hid his face from the totally embarrassing tableau before them, she paused a moment, and turned to him. "Say, Ray. Are you really that, er…I mean, is that really what you look like, under it all?"

A puzzled look. "That solid-light duplicate of me is just that, a duplicate. Except for my uniform, of course. And, uh, clothes in general. Why? What do you mean?"

"I mean….oh, never mind." She caught a glimpse of his face, and almost burst out laughing. "You oughtta see your face! Oh, this is better than Christmas!"

"What's a Christmas?"

"Tell ya later. And you don't have to watch; you just supply the power, and let me drive." Her hand stayed lightly on his wrist, even as he projected the beams of golden light across space, to converge and become the solidogram that the girl was so enthusiastically sexing. "You just keep on supplying the power, I'll give the direction. We'll make this a night to remember for her!"

"Rose, I-*"

"Shuddup. Just let me do the driving. Oh, and here…" He felt a small twinge down in his lower abdomen. "Rose, what'd you just do to me?"

"Can it, ya big crybaby. I just teleported a few of your antibodies into her. God only knows what she could've been exposed to, and a piece of your Doomsday immune system can't hurt." She grinned down at him. "Almost done."

"I swear you're enjoying this."

The girl herself was finishing up, lying rapturously across the solid light hologram of Ragnar, moving into a resting position, a satisfied smile on her face, eyes closing in ecstasy. "I love you, Mr. Ragnar. I'll never leave you. I'll stay with you forever." But even as she said those last whispered words, her form began to fade out, and she became less and less visible, finally fading out altogether.

Rose and Ragnar walked over to the place where she'd been. Ragnar had let the solid-light duplicate of himself dissolve at about the same time as the girl had faded out. Rose looked down at the spot where the girl had been. "Well, if what we understand about this place is accurate, that indicates a 'win,'" Rose said. "At least, I guess it is. Had things not gone well, she would still be here, with those rapey devils coming for her yet again. Can you use your ring to see if she reappeared anywhere else?"

But he was already scanning for her. "Nowhere near by, at least. So…what happened to her?"

Rose shook her head. "Not really sure. But if Bertran's theories about this place are accurate, see, then she either woke up, back on Earth, or at least came to a kind of consciousness, a higher level of subconsciousness, maybe—hopefully-with no memory of the attack, just some dream about being in danger and being saved and, and, you know. The rest." She looked up at him, grinning. "So you're her dream lover, or something. She may not remember you precisely, but she'll always have this, this feeling in the back of her head, a memory she may not be able to quite remember, but also can never quite forget. Her 'knight in shining armor,' who came to her rescue when she needed it the most."

"Fat lot of good I did. I couldn't save her from the attack. That had already happened."

Rose sobered. "But you did, Ray. You saved her from the worst part of it."

He was silent for a moment. Then, "I wonder if we'll ever know."

Rose shook her head, rubbing the back of her neck and sighing. "Probably not. Such…attacks are altogether too commonplace. You'd have to go to practically every hospital in the nation and check on every newly recovered coma victim. And, mind you, that's not counting that she might've been in some other type of facility, like say, a long-term care facility, or at home, or even, God forbid, just lying unconscious in some alleyway somewhere." She saw his distress at the possibility of this last. "Oh, I don't think those are strong possibilities, Ray. Just possible ones. Not even very likely."

More silence. "Say, I'm curious: how much feedback did you incorporate into that doppelganger of yours, anyway? How much did you feel of…what was going on?"

He shifted uncomfortably. "Just….enough to, to maintain some control. I, I didn't want to, to….you know."

Her grin grew broader, even as they moved towards the lip of the cave, preparing to resume their search. "Yeah, but…how much did you feel? What was it like? C'mon; you can tell me…"

"A gentleman doesn't discuss those things."

"So who's a gentleman? I'm asking you. C'mon…"

Across dimensions: Gradually, ever so gradually, Susan Anderson became aware of the subdued lighting in the room she was in. "My knight," she whispered.

Instantly, her brother was there by her side, taking her hand. "Don't try to move, Sue. Just take it easy. Every-everything's okay now, it's all under control…" Of course everything was most definitely not "okay" or "under control," but his sister didn't need to deal with that right then. One thing at a time.

"My knight," she whispered again, through broken lips. She'd taken a severe beating during the attack, and had broken ribs, a cracked ulna, and several loosened teeth, but all that could be repaired. Jonathon wept when he realized the most important part of his sister was still here, still with them. "My knight. I, I've got to find him."

"Who? Who are you talking about, Sue?" He bent closer to hear her whispered words.

"My knight. The one who saved me. He wore golden armor. His name…it starts with an 'R'…"

He patted her hand. Poor thing. Nobody had "saved" her; she hadn't even been found until a routine patrol just happened across her. By then the deed was hours old. "Something….something starts with an 'R'…Robert, maybe? No, not Robert…. I can't remember.

"I….have to find him…."

Behind the two, the comic book Jon had been reading lay forgotten on the couch, open to the last page at which he'd stopped. Jon glanced back, just before pushing the nurse call button. Wish there really were such things as superheroes. We sure could'a used one a month ago.

On the cover of the comic book he'd just been reading there was displayed a full-color illustration of a blue-skinned man, wielding a gold power ring and wearing a gold-and-black uniform, flying through space…

To be continued….