Chapter 13
Lightning Fervor
Helltanz's notes:
-Chapter begin -
For Sithis the day comprised great amounts of time spent on petty, even ultimately meaningless bureaucratic work. It'd been precisely why he'd smacked Phobos. He knew precisely about the portal, and the city, and the boy didn't need to be bothering in his little experiment.
He had more pressing things. The city was unimportant for the moment. The Thanagarian Invasion had been a wonderful opportunity. True he'd been well aware that Thanagarians had hoped to create the hyperspace bypass to attack the Gordanian homeworld, but it hadn't been anything particularly interesting. The Thanagarians had always been miserable insects on the galactic scale, a single of his ships would have brought them to their knees. Not that he'd ever waste such, it wasn't an option not with the agreement with the Aedra still in place, or a suitable invitation.
"Have we taken full account of it?" Sithis queried. The Dread Father rarely wanted for something, he'd grown boring of quantitative expansion a million years past, and even a desire for quality had since been the dominant focus. Petty squabbling for resources was irrelevant to either Aedra, or Daedra, even souls were a trivial concern.
No what Sithis was asking about was just how bothersome other things had become, such troublesome meddlers. He could track his brother's meddlings, no that wasn't an issue it was the countless other meddlings in play.
Azura nodded, "its nothing that cannot be dealt with." The other Daedric Lord responded, there was a conclave between the Aedra and Daedra rapidly approaching, which occupied the bulk of the attention of all of them, both Aedra, and Daedra. Such gatherings were infrequent and demanded the attention of the Aedra, and Daedra.
"Valar is the designated world?" Sithis confirmed examining the vast expanse of area before him, it was prime choice as far as Sithis was concerned. He flicked his fingers across the input. The crystals glowed presenting the geoscape of the planet, long snow covered mountains crafted some million plus years before the final war in heaven. He remembered the little world, during the third war in heaven Stendarr had mounted sterling defense of the world, ultimately futile of course the world was just impractically placed to truly defend back then given its location. Nowadays the world was recovering nicely all green forests and blue seas, even a thriving animal population. All lower level, Stendarr could have chose to reseed a higher lifeform population, but thus far hadn't.
Sithis occasionally would sit back and reminisce about times long ago, back during the age of dreams. Now things were so much more occupied, there existed a hierarchy far below the Aedra and Daedra. It dealt exclusively about their retainers. The mewling of pathetic wizards was beneath him it was why the Black Hands congregated to discuss and oversee minor things.
Azura turned, "Will it be a problem?" She queried,
"No, Valar is unimportant for the questions that need to be pressed of my brother," Sithis answered.
The other Daedra nodded, "You know they'll try to side track this with discussions about the issue of Kandrakhar." Which was ultimately one of the few issues that Aedra and Daedra could agree to discuss, "Or earth's recent events," Or the opposition could go the opposite direction and start and argument which would break the meeting.
-scene break-
As far as England went, it'd been quiet, well it had been if you stuck to Wizarding Britain, for places like London well people were still picking up after the Thanagarians had left... and that whole sixty giant mecha landing in old town.
"Has there been any word from Sirius?" It was a pointless question, but it always got asked anyway at or around the start of these meetings. At the expected negative response, plus a snide remark from Snape, they moved on to the usual lamentations. "is there any thing to report?"
Bill pressed a newspaper along the table, a muggle newspaper called the Daily Planet, "Raiden showed up recently major event, apparently these people called the Thanagarians invaded Earth," Everyone kind of sat a little straighter, "big battle with flying ships and flying armor was what all those lights were last month," There were some blustering denials from the more traditionals, until a couple of the muggleborns, and half bloods spoke up, that yeah something had happened. "The Thanagarians well we're," by that he meant Gringotts, "we will be going back to look at some things now that we have a translation for the writing on the ruins, but I don't really expect it will help us too much." Basically what Bill was saying was he'd be gone for a couple weeks.
The truth was for wizard curse breaking the last few years had been major for cursebreaking, and archeology in the wizarding world. Deciphering Ra's temple had been a major work, and the Thanagarian translations would be a whole other series of developments. Not that he expected the order to understand it, even if Dumbledore did ask to be kept in the loop for anything that might be useful.
The next topic as usual was the pester Severus for information game. Snape was worse than useless, ever since the Dark Lord's defeat in France he'd done little major. It'd primarily been small Death Eater raids, and prods while the Dark Lord brooded. It wasn't even so much that Voldemort was sulking it was that the man in France was supposed to be dead, supposed to have died back in the 40s during Grindelwald's regime... so there was actually some legitimacy to Voldemort sitting back and scratching his head.
"Now then," Dumbledore called out, "I know we haven't made a whole lot of progress in recent months, but this event Bill has brought up In the muggle world, well it might be just the insight we need,"
For Bill trying to explain this was not easy. Trying to explain it while Hermione Granger butted in every five minutes with some miscellaneous detail did not help. The muggleborn clearly at least was still familiar with the muggle world. The real benefit to her interjecting was explaining about the whole muggle government, and military thing, as well as the Justice League. Dumbledore had been particularly intrigued by the latter item, wizards just didn't particularly care about things like muggle armies. Everyone liked to pretend those things weren't an issues, or that they just didn't exist.
-scene break-
Tokyo hadn't been left unscathed by the Thanagarians either, though the population had been all too quick to rush out to take pictures when the giant robots had show up to fight the aliens, well the Thanagarians. That wasn't actually why Talpa was sulking, his warlords, his warlords had rushed off to attack the aliens. That in itself would not at all have bothered him, it was that they had teamed up with those miserable ronin to fight the invaders. From an objective perspective he understood that in some cases one had to put aside ones differences to accomplish a necessary task, but it did little to mediate his irritation.
The failure to take control in his failed bid recently had also left him in a more vulnerable position, or so he saw it anyway. In truth he was imagining such a situation, Raiden appreciated Talpa far too much for the system lord to replace him, regardless of how stupid the mistake had been on Earth, especially in light of the Thanagarian Assault. That didn't matter to Talpa, what mattered was his increasing concern over the perceived effectiveness of the Foot, and their much more open public relations campaigning.
If Talpa still had the ability to wrench his hair out, or rather the lack of control, he would have. She was teaching mortals who had no existing ties with the empire, you didn't do that, it just wasn't done. It just wasn't something one did even in these situations. Then again Talpa was old fashioned, and this was new strategy implemented by Oroku Saki's designated heir as part of a new line of strategies for the modern era.
Today though, "Report," He rumbled, Raiden had warned that all this was too coincidental something was working, had to be, to organize these repeated consecutive invasions of this world. Earth was changing. "Tell me of the mortals?"
"The Armor bearers have retreated to -"
Talpa snorted, "I do not care about the ronin at the moment," He snapped irritably, "Tell me of the mortal world. What have they done so far?" He already knew about the ronin, and how they'd split up to individual cities in Japan to help with resistance against the Thanagarian invaders. No Talpa's concerns lay with the mortal authorities.
"At present they have mobilized those civil institutions to deal with the aftermath of the damage of the Thanagarians," The warlord paused, "My lord, I must urge you the ties between Hong Kong, and the Government of Japan is being focused around the bearer of the armor of Earth, given his family's personal wealth I should think."
Talpa waved him off, "I merely wish you to observe," The Justice League, the Foot, and every other faction concerned him. As it was changing was very hard, for him at least, and the modern world was busy, "What about the European Wizards." It was true that in North America Oroku Saki had the privilege of addressing wizarding concerns, Talpa had gained the privilege of watching for the meddling and nosy foreigners everywhere else. Raiden had great faith in Talpa's abilities after all.
The warlord paused, and closed his mouth, "Well..."
-scene break-
For the Justice League J'onn, John, Bruce, Clark, and Dianna were the ones in charge, and everyone pretty much knew it. Not that it really mattered, the new Watchtower II facility that was under construction would house an entire league of superheroes as well as support staff, for now though the original Watchtower was where most were staying. It had already been established that both the new Watchtower, and original Watchtower would both operate as a part of the expanded league.
Batman recognized that given all the potential dangers out there that, with advice from John Stewart, that more than one watchtower system might be best. There were countless alien empires out there, and while the Thanagarians had been driven off people just weren't comfortable.
That was why they were expanding the league. "I don't think we should consider the admission of children into the league,"
"Then what about Captain Marvel?" There were a few minutes of discussion that largely revolved around Marvel's wisdom of Solomon trait, before the topic shifted once again to the matter of acceptable age for membership. It was a tricky issue, especially given the acceptance of Supergirl into the league, and then Stargirl. Then came the offer of who else to invite once no clear option could be determined.
"We could extend invitations to other heroes to shore up Europe's defenses, perhaps Lionheart?" Diana, it would be nice to expand the League's female membership as well, there was a minor bit of discussion.
Bruce frowned, "I'm concerned with some of her methods, but she'd still be a valuable method, if we're admitted Black Canary and Huntress, I'll vote to admit Lionheart." It was an easy enough vote, just as Doctor Strange, and Doctor Fate had been both approved to help shore up the League's magic defense.
"What about Asia, if we're going to cover the entire planet-"
"Well there are the heroes who helped during the Thanagarian invasion."
Which brought them back to the age issue, "Half of them are children." Superman protested, "Even with their armors I'm concerned this might be too much for them."
"They're super girls age, and they've been active for more than a year, so they know what they're doing," Green Lantern interjected, "Lets face facts we need the back up, and there are a number of people we could approach, but definitely these guys."
Batman's frown was back, "Again I'm concerned about their willingness to use lethal force, yes they have demonstrated restraint, so I will vote for trial membership, but I am voicing my concern."
"Good, well then we'll have to make contact," Diana concluded, "If the issue of age is going to be an issue, which I don't think it should be, then perhaps we should reconsider the backing of the creation of junior superhero teams." It'd been a discussion that'd come up some weeks previous about moving sidekicks together in order to form teams that could watch each others backs when their mentors just weren't able to be there. The idea being the mentors being caught up in league missions.
-scene break-
For Cronus the last few years had been one immense pain in the gonach after the other, first Yu had gotten the upper hand in their little border skirmish, and then Ra had gotten himself killed, after that things had deteriorated quickly. On the plus side his fleet was growing nicely with his alliance with Heru-ur secured.
Ra's declared heir had even secured the peace with Yu Huang Shang Ti, and Raiden, and with the peace with Sokar established there was at least some balance of powers between the system lords, even with Anubis's return. It was fortunate both monsters, Sokar, and Anubis, loathed each other otherwise their combined might would surely threaten the whole of the Goa'uld. No as it was Anubis, and Sokar were both building up their fleets for an inevitable war between each other. A wat that would admittedly envelope everyone, but not this year.
The months were dragging tediously by, but for the now the Tauri were keeping the motley minor system lords occupied, which meant the great lords of the goa'uld those truly worthy of the title of System Lord, were set to continue their great game. There was at least a semblance of peace in the galaxy. It would not last, that Cronus knew well, war was coming. Sooner or later a true war would come, otherwise Raiden would have probably have rushed ahead to crush Morrigan, and batter Mac Liir into submission. Cronus had readily recognized that the Storm God's obsession had been getting out of hand, not that Cronus minded his distraction as it kept Raiden from poaching on Cronus's domain.
Still there were three remaining lords that were actually on Cronus's mind, Olokun, Kali, and Bastet. Any alliance with Kali and Bastet would be foolish, Heru-ur would never agree to such. Kali had been an enemy of both Heru-ur and Ra in recent centuries, and Heru-ur would hardly forget such, and the Avenger disliked Bastet for personal reasons.
Olokun though, well they both, he and Cronus, bordered Yu's expansive domain, truthfully an alliance in these trying times would be practical.
Heru'ur nodded, "Olokun is good choice, Moloc is a weak fool, as is Ares, whom we shall crush soon."
That was something Cronus was looking forward too. Artemis had fled to Raiden for protection after Zeus's last uprising had been crushed, and with Zeus's most recent escape from custody it was best to crush Ares before he could rush to aid his father, against Cronus. Heru'ur was all too willing to help, so long as he was appropriately compensated for his time. Heru'ur also needed the time to properly test the news weapons they would use and a weaker system lord like Ares was an ideal target.
It mattered little if Svaarog attempted to aid his ally, if so it would present a slightly greater challenge, but given that Svaarog had other concerns... like Sokar, it was unlikely. As it stood Sokar had smashed a half dozen worlds along Svaarog's border, and other system lords sensed weakness, well Bastet and Kali did. Most likely by the end of the year Svaarog, like Ares would be defeated, and the System Lords would be just that much more consolidated. The future was grand, but terrible. The galaxy would tremble.
Cronus, and Heru'ur overlooked their growing joint fleets.
– Chapter Conclusion-
Helltanz's notes: