And now, we're back again, and would you believe, this arc is only going to get deeper. We're starting to get into things that I've been really looking forward to revealing, stuff that I have been setting up for many, many years, and believe you me, this is not all of it. Not even close. Well. Closer.
Sunniva had left the by now compacted and evaporated conveyance behind her, something else to infuriate its deeply unpleasant owner. The traces on the bike told her a little more about him, most of it unpleasant – an immortal mercenary with vast physical strength, nigh impossible healing abilities, and a pretty much non-existent conscience. The species… Czarnian. One of the last, apparently. There was something oddly familiar in the DNA traces, though that would have to wait.
In the meantime, she had wiped her presence from the minds of all present, and veiled herself more carefully, setting out to investigate this world more thoroughly.
They needed to work out what they were dealing with here, yes, and her nephew seemed to be accruing his own insights – a strengthening of the link between them showed her the inside of some rather stylish drinking establishment, with a rather elegant entertainer. One who, it seemed, was an important contact for information. Local knowledge, as it were. She had a rather greater respect for that now than she had only a few months earlier. Some things might only be detectable by their own senses, but there was no sense in showing their hand too soon.
Also, if they did show their hand, this reality was both hyper-stable and very much not – it would go up like magnesium, and the resultant fight would, even if they won it, kill countless billions and possibly both themselves and the person they were trying to save. Or worse.
Speaking of that person, they needed to find Galactus' Herald, the one usually called either the Silver Surfer or the Silver Searcher. That task she had chosen for herself.
The Heralds… they were another reason she despised Galactus. He took ordinary mortals, mortals desperate to save their people, and forged them into emotionless executors of his will: the hunters of worlds, hounds set to course at his will.
Truthfully, she had initially been dubious about intervening at all, before quickly overcoming that. Even the fate of being a numbed servant of the Devourer was a kinder one than what awaited them if they remained here. Time might not pass here, but there were other forces of change at work here. What was left, in the end… anything would be kinder than that. Besides, Galactus would owe them for this and he would be well fed. At the very least, she could demand this Herald's release. Though, of course, that might not be too much of a mercy in itself.
In any case, she had picked up his trail. Once you knew what to look for, it was quite distinctive. And it led to a very large stadium, one that positively reeked of excitement and feral bloodlust, of bloodshed and death, anticipation and surcease, and… narrative? That was odd.
She frowned. Definitely worth investigating.
OoOoO
To an untrained eye, and even the fairly well trained one of Hal Jordan, Harry's full attention seemed to be on Lady Maupin as she sang her way through what seemed to be some old favourites, gliding her way across the stage to sometimes mischievously flirt with a customer in the front row by an emphasis on the lyrics here and there.
For any teenage boy interested in girls, this was entirely natural. A bit of sharpness around the eyes could be put down to this particular boy being rather sharper than average, suspecting that there was more than met the eye (which did not go wanting).
This would be entirely true and entirely incomplete.
"We've got trouble incoming," Hal murmured as he set up a sonic bubble, noticing the entrance of a slim figure from a side door on the upper level, dim light reflecting off the blue and black carapace. He'd been half-expecting someone to follow them.
"I know," Harry said, without looking up. "They've been here for at least six minutes." Before Hal could express his surprise, he went on. "I've been scanning this building since I got in. I'd go further, but the place is shielded, it's a Faraday cage. There's a fair few psychic shields in here, all sorts of different sources, but that one stands out. And I've been going negative. They're here, they're here for me, and they're alone."
Hal quirked an eyebrow. Harry didn't turn around. He didn't need to.
"Picking up reactions of others," he elaborated.
"Telepathy," Hal muttered, readying himself. "Sure comes in useful."
"And the right kind of training," Harry replied. "No one else came in. You're right about people thinking twice."
"It's watching us," Hal said, carefully loosening his hand in his gauntlet. "Why the hell is that one here, though? What's it want from you? They're never like this, it doesn't make sense."
"My life very rarely does," Harry murmured. "I've come to prefer it that way." A sly smile slid up his face. "Keeps things interesting."
The song ended.
The Beetle dropped over the balcony, landing behind them.
Hal and Harry spun away from the table like a synchronised team, setting themselves for a fight, gauntlet glowing and eyes burning, as everyone in their immediate vicinity scrambled away in a shadowy scrum, and everybody else craned their necks for a good look.
"You want to pick up where we left off?" Harry asked, eyebrow raised, voice echoing into the cavernous and suddenly deathly quiet surroundings.
The Beetle didn't answer. The flicker as its forearms turned into curved, serrated blades, however, spoke volumes.
"Looks like a yes to me," Hal said.
"You know, I really don't like trouble in my club," a smooth contralto voice intervened.
It was soft as silk, warm as fresh coffee, and rich with promise. This time, the promise was not feigned, and it was of something else entirely.
Both Hal and Harry half turned, then stumbled, as a hum ran through every molecule of the club, setting the floor rotating and shifting in hexagonal patterns, neatly carrying both of them off to opposite sides of the club.
Lady Maupin, meanwhile, strode out into the middle of the floor, apparently careless of how it swirled beneath her feet, gliding forward with the sort of balance and confidence that an Olympic ice skater would have died to achieve. Even the Sidhe would have envied her that demonstration of preternatural grace – all the more so the ability to pull it off in heels.
Her accent was apparently upper-class English, cut-glass and cultured, tinged with something that Harry couldn't define. The note of danger, on the other hand, that he could define quite easily, one accented by a smile that said that she, if no one else, was going to enjoy what followed.
"Not unless I'm starting it, anyway," she continued, microphone head opening to accept the former stand and reshaping as the stand itself did, woven mesh becoming broad quillions and an elegant guard of complex sweeping loops, rounded stand becoming a blade smooth enough to gleam and sharp enough that it was surrounded by the faint blue glow of ionized air as atoms split in its path.
The Beetle's right arm shifted into some kind of energy cannon with liquid speed, but there was another hum from the hilt of the newly formed blade and the energy cannon backfired, hurling it back towards the tables and into an invisible barrier that flared in hexagonal patterns around the point of impact, landing in a crouch
"None of that," she tutted. "Honestly, such appalling bad manners, it really makes one despair. My club, my rules."
That light gleamed on a dress that was now no longer a dress but something else, having changed in the blink of an eye, between the stride of one pale leg and the other. Now, it was close-fitting and flexible dark red armour, merging into slightly raised metallic silver around the gauntlets, the knee-guards, and the torso up to the shoulders, leaving only the head bare.
It was smooth and seemed little thicker than the dress it had been, yet Harry had no doubt that it could stop a reasonably sized bomb. What it was made of, he was not certain (though he had his suspicions), but it was more akin to the Black Panther's habit than clothing or armour as he knew either, a mixture of the two that was woven of more than just cloth.
"And my rules," she finished, as the Beetle rose to their feet with inhuman swiftness. "Are that I choose the dance. I call the tune." She cocked her head and smiled pleasantly. "And if you do not make your apologies for your behaviour, and yourself scarce, then I will take great pleasure in demonstrating how unpleasant a euphemism 'dance' can be."
The Beetle's blank eyes settled on her for a long moment.
What followed was fast enough that even Harry had trouble following it, the Beetle launching itself forward in a blur, both blade-arms striking at separate vital areas; one for the throat, the other in a curving stab up under the ribcage towards the heart, a scissoring motion designed to end the fight immediately.
Just as quickly, Maupin stepped back and away, avoiding the throat-cutter entirely and batting away the thrust with the flat of her blade, before flickering a cut across the upper thigh that went through the Beetle's armour – armour that Harry could personally attest was downright formidable, comparable to the best he had encountered – like melted butter. The flesh beneath, a pale green from the briefest glimpse he got as the armour knitted back together, provided even less resistance as she drew first blood.
The Beetle showed no signs of pain or impediment, but slid back with the smooth scuttling motions of an insect, keeping a safe distance and circling Maupin, who matched each step with one of her own. It was wary. She was wearing a small smile, a gleam in her eyes. She was enjoying this.
The next exchange of blows came without warning, each movement with perfect economy of motion and blinding speed. Harry knew very well that he was a damn good swordsman, and definitely talented. However, he also could see very well that if the Beetle had been fighting like this on the train, he'd have discovered very quickly just how far his Phoenix powers would have been able to heal him in this bizarre place.
Sif had told him that if he kept up his current trajectory, he would be a master by his first century. At first, he hadn't understood that, and, he would admit, still not entirely realised what she had meant even if after she clarified that that was by Asgardian standards rather than human ones – and even by those, he was at least five years from true mastery. After all, there were only so many ways one could swing a sword, only so many moves you could learn, so many tactics you could pull off. Or so he had thought.
Now, he understood what she meant.
Both fighters were constantly assessing and reassessing their respective advantages and disadvantages, the terrain, their enemy levels, their pain thresholds. They were constantly looking to exploit or compensate for each. They were constantly trying to work out what the other might be concealing, to judge the perfect moment to reveal it, or to feign it and exploit the hesitancy over that. It was warfare both physical and psychological, a dance where two performers battled to control the beat.
Only one of them was in control of that.
Even deprived of its other weapons, the Beetle had vastly inhuman strength, speed, and reflexes, all of which it knew how to use exceedingly well. It had two blades which it was using nigh-flawlessly. It had an onboard computer of some doubtless hideously advanced kind to back it up. It was up against someone who, even allowing for her woven armour and technology, was apparently entirely human and not even wearing a helmet.
Someone who, in fact, was relentlessly driving it back in a virtuoso display of swordsmanship. The blue edged blade whirled through the air with a hiss like a knife through silk, carving pieces from the blades of the Beetle with methodical precision and a conductor's flair, as the two participants moved across the floor in a whirling dance, sometimes meeting in a clash of blades, evading in a hiss of displaced air, leaping, diving, and rolling as they contorted themselves around one another with impossible grace to cheers and gasps from an appreciative audience.
To an amateur's eye, they would seem almost evenly matched, with the Beetle lashing out with precise and vicious counters that would have lamed or gutted a god. Yet for all their apparently perfect timing, they failed to break the swordswoman's momentum or stop the movement of her gleaming blade. They were always that split second behind, that one moment too slow or too fast, opportunity dangled just out of their reach. The most they managed was to slice a few locks of her fringe, one cut almost fast enough to catch her as she dropped and thrust, an almost literal hair's breadth from decapitating her, and all that seemed to do was to make her move even faster.
Whenever there was even the slightest opening, her blade leapt in like a bolt of lightning, slicing through ligaments and muscles, even what appeared to be vital organs. That caused more openings, because while the armour seemed to heal green flesh almost instantaneously, 'almost' was quite enough time for Maupin to pick another three holes in the dogged defence.
She had said that she called the tune, and she was most definitely living up to that, both figuratively and – as Harry realised after he surfaced from a solid twenty seconds of awe at the extraordinary display of swordsmanship – literally. She had apparently decided that the Pirates of the Caribbean theme, re-scored entirely for string instruments, apparently. Given how much fun she seemed to be having, he supposed he could see why.
And there was something oddly familiar about what he was watching. Not what was being done, the feeling of a cat playing with a mouse – though that was familiar too. No… he leaned in, frowning. He was very, very sure that he recognised the style.
Finally, after another minute of this game, she caught a right-armed lunge with her right arm, laying one arm along the other, then in the blink of an eye, exploited the retraction of the limb to draw shoulder to shoulder with the Beetle, dropping her blade and catching it with her left as she stepped and spun, neatly impaling the bulky back of the Beetle from beneath. It went rigid as she leisurely rose and laid a hand on its shoulder, before leaning in to whisper in its ear as the music faded away.
"I'm lowering my club's communications barrier for a moment, Khaji-Da," she said, and though her tone was soft, her words had no trouble carrying throughout the club. "So you can give one last message to your master. Tell him this, and this exactly." She smirked, and the words were whispered, even savoured. "The bitch is back."
Then, she twisted her blade, which hummed once again, and neatly popped what had been the bulky back of the Beetle's suit off, leaving nothing more than a fat dark blue bug shaped object the size of a side plate impaled on her sword. The wearer, meanwhile, slumped face first into the floor, the armour disintegrating into dust. At another gesture and a hum from the hilt, an opaque field of energy formed over them, before they vanished. If Harry hadn't been looking for it, he'd have missed the faint surge in power – magical power – from the barman as they did.
"Show's over, gentlebeings," Maupin said, flicking the blue bug shaped object off her sword and catching it in nonchalantly, while sliding the sword into a belt that had not been there a moment ago as it formed its own sheath. "Drinks are on me for the rest of the standard hour. Make your own entertainment." She smirked, and looked over her shoulder. Her armour was now a dress once more, and if not for the sword and the couple of hairs out of place, if you had walked in just then and looked at her alone, you wouldn't have known she'd done anything more than finish her song. "Don't do anything that I wouldn't."
That got rousing, somewhat drunken cheer (some things were apparently universal), and a whoop as she retook the stage, the club retaking its original form, and then, with a final wink, sashayed off stage. And it was absolutely a sashay, the part of Harry that was still thinking critically about events rather than being awed by the duel he had just witness. There was definitely a bit more hip action than there had been before the duel, and, frankly, more than was necessary.
Not, he had to admit to himself, that he minded.
Hal certainly didn't, if the look on his face that neatly mixed being impressed with a certain speculation was anything to go by.
"So," Harry said after a moment, once both had retaken their seats. "Is this… normal?"
"No," Hal replied, after a moment of his own. "No, I'd say that this was pretty unique. In all my time on Sakaar, I've never seen, or heard of Lady Maupin doing anything like this. Or anyone doing anything like that to a Beetle, for that matter."
"Well, a lady has to have some secrets."
Both of them nearly jumped out of their skins, taking defensive positions in a split second. A split second after, they both realised that they were now sitting not in a soft bronze-lit club, but a warm study, before a gleaming oak desk inscribed with swooping patterns. Behind that desk was sitting the amused looking owner of the club, one leg folded over the other. The sword was now in an umbrella stand. It was quite possible, a small part of Harry thought idly, that sometimes it was an umbrella.
"Lady Maupin," Harry said, and executed a bow that a lot of people who knew him wouldn't have thought he was capable of. "To what do we owe this… surprise?"
"Please, call me Julie, the both of you," she said, pronouncing the name in French fashion. "It's not my original name, nor one of my more symbolic ones, but it is one of my favourites and I used it when I was first going by Maupin, so it's as good as any and better than most. As to why you are here, well, you both have questions, don't you? I have answers."
"These are big questions," Hal warned. "I know that this place is the one no one touches – and clearly I've been looking at the wrong person for the main reason why – but these are the sort of questions that can bring down the Grandmaster on our heads."
"Oh, you've already got worse than him to worry about," Julie said idly.
"The master of the Beetles that you were talking about," Hal said. "I was wondering about that. And where –"
"The scarab is safe," Julie replied. "Until it can come in useful. I'm planning a bit of an attitude adjustment." She smiled wryly. "But yes, him." Her eyes flicked to Harry before Hal could enquire further. "You have questions, big questions, the both of you," she said. "Sometimes, though, the smaller ones can lead to the bigger answers. Go ahead, Harry – ask."
Harry, who had been studying her carefully, sat back in his chair. "I recognise something of your swordsmanship," he said. "You're better than anyone I've ever seen, and considering that one of my teachers is the Goddess of fucking War, that's saying something." He nodded. "Yes, you're better than anyone I've ever seen. But not anyone that I've ever heard of. It was a long time ago, but…"
"… but memories have a way of coming back at the slightest stimulus, don't they?" she murmured,. "You would know that better than most."
Harry tilted his head in agreement. "If it was just the same style, I could dismiss it as the same teacher, or learning from someone who had the same teacher," he said. "But no. You're too good. You're too human to be this good, because humans don't usually live long enough to get that good, but you're also, somehow, fast enough and strong enough to meet something like that Beetle on equal terms. You're used to fighting things like that. And this place… this place seems to have a way of picking up people who fall through the cracks. Who, for some reason, vanished from time and space."
He took a deep breath, steadying his nerves, running through the logic one more time, all the factors he had stated, all the ones he had not, all the questions and half-theories that he had been tucked aside. Her eyes gleamed like her sword, the approval of a master towards a talented amateur as they moved steadily through the final moves of a complex set, letting them come to the conclusion on their own.
"You are, in fact, the Lady Knight. Aren't you?"
She smiled.
"I am indeed. And I have been very much looking forward to this."
OoOoO
Most people thronging around the vast colosseum seemed to be treating it as a social hub of some kind.
There were impromptu parties, colourful and enthusiastic with just a tinge of desperation – eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die… though whatever 'tomorrow' meant in a realm like this was up for debate.
All around her there were billboards and holo-monitors festooned with images of this realm's apparent ruler, the so-called Grandmaster. She had suspicions about that one. He seemed to be a relatively innocuous masculine-presenting humanoid, an easily distracted hedonist with the sort of combination of power and cunning to ascend to the top of this bizarre world. And yet, there was something about him… she restrained a shiver, in response to a ghost of a feeling, and an urge to lash out, hard. Whatever this Grandmaster was – and, yes, she definitely had her suspicions about that one – it was more than anything that he 'seemed'. To capture and contain a Herald of Galactus, then use him for little more than pit-fights… yes, that spoke of far more than he seemed.
She looked away, noting the vendors selling everything from themed masks to data packs of memorable fights. That confirmed her suspicion: this arena was meant not for races or athletics, or even music and tricks. It was for the oldest and most primal form of entertainment of all.
Skimming a sense of what currency was valuable from those around her and transmuting it from mid-air, she acquired a set and began to absorb the information. She could have skimmed the lot from the minds of those around her, but she was trying to keep a relatively low profile.
For that very reason, she'd altered her appearance from her native one, which she had been using when teaching the creature known as Lobo some manners, darkening her hair and squaring off her features. She had then modulated her power signature rather than muting it entirely – a void attracted as much attention as a star. As a result, anyone detecting her now would think her a Kryptonian with a middling power signature. That of a full-fledged High-Blood would attract too much notice, and anything less would not dissuade enough.
And she was feeling in a mood to dissuade. Not the encounter earlier, or even the sense of the realm around her, though both were adequate reasons in their own way. There was something else about the minds of these people, something she'd been picking up to varying degrees ever since she had got here. It was stronger here, around the stadium, in the fixed smiles, the hint of strain and stretch, like butter scraped over too much bread…
Oh, she did not like this at all.
She looked up once more at the billboards, noting the cheerful spiel from the Grandmaster about this new round of the Contest of Champions – the games, doubtless – and then considered the information she had absorbed. The good news was that she now knew where the Herald was, and knew it for certain. The bad news was that whatever this realm was, it was not entirely of her reality. She still was not certain about so much of how it would react to the Phoenix. Combine that with her nephew's welfare, the almost certain need to confront an extremely hostile power in its own place of power that might well be directly presiding over this whole festival of lunacy through a gaudy and deceptively harmless seeming avatar, and… and billions upon billions people, plucked from across time and space, falling through the cracks in reality, the kind of cracks that it was a Phoenix's duty to close.
The latter would surprise most, and it would be easy to miss. However, she'd done her looking, extending her senses slowly and steadily, avoiding those that reacted too badly with the realm around her, and just… listened. One of the first things she had noticed was about the realm itself: time was like water here, raining from above with new arrivals, and gathering in pools and rivers, ones that settled or suddenly upwelled, always ready to catch the unwary offguard. Wander into the wrong place, and you could lose or gain decades, even centuries, in a single footstep. Aside from that? There was no time. No day, no night, no seasons. Oh, sometimes there was an almost parody of night, darkness whenever the power that ruled this place remembered it or felt like it, but mostly the beings that lived here coped by setting up rhythms of their own.
There was no time, and therefore there was no change. People could be killed, but if they were not, they did not die. People could be wounded, and they would heal, their bodies slowly restoring them to functional working order. But they did not age. They did not really change. That was one thing she had noticed, too. She'd almost missed it, at first, but she had noticed it: there were no children here.
Or rather, there were. Any child that fell through the cracks and somehow survived Sakaar's welcome would remain, and they would remain a child. There was no mystical or technological prohibition, or anything like that, it was just a simple reality, a peculiar side-effect of the stasis of Sakaar: no children were born. None would really want to be, either. Imagine, a helpless newborn forever. That would be torture for both parents and child. She rather suspected that it had been.
It was odd, she had to admit, because she could see some form of agriculture and there was meat and drink, but it all seemed to be almost constructed, rather than grown. If there was ever a child on Sakaar, they would have to be built and rebuilt, every single day. Or, she supposed, gradually exposed to pools of time. But other than those comparative puddles, there was just an endless stillness in the background, one that all the frantic activity of the foreground seemed to be trying desperately to bury, a fundamental truth that everyone here was trying to outrun.
Nothing lived on Sakaar. Nothing died a natural death. Everything just… existed.
As for those who existed here, they seemed to gather themselves by species. For instance, there seemed to be a rather surprising number of humans, many of whom resided in the rough direction her nephew's presence could be felt. That was interesting. Had he been drawn to his mother's people? She'd certainly noticed more Asgardians than she would expect, though they were relatively few.
Yes, for the most part, while there was considerable admixture and overlap, they tended to order themselves by what – and who – was familiar. Which included both space, and time. That, she had to admit, had surprised her, but even without a deeper scan, a cursory look in this public area showed very different tachyon signatures in both the materials and the people. Also, she'd spotted at least five species that she knew for a fact to be extinct.
And she had a responsibility to all of them.
She frowned. Instinctively, she preferred the direct solution, the confrontation, but even in victory the consequences could be horrific. Perhaps especially in victory. She couldn't leave them to this. If she got this wrong, all of those people, all trying just to exist, to make a life in a place inimical to true life… they would all burn.
That was why, approximately five minutes later, the gladiatorial training yards and impromptu bar beside them (because if you were training for performative violence that might or might not cost you your life, you too would need a gods-damned drink) had a new arrival. One who made an immediate beeline for the gladiators who were quite obviously held in highest esteem. They weren't the one she was looking for, but they were most likely to have seen him.
Most of the group were large and quite distinctive: one was a Kronan, grey and craggy and actually relatively small for an adult of the species which meant he still towered over everyone else; next to him, a comparatively small insectoid in an integrated carapace and armour which should have looked ridiculous if not for the razor-edged cleavers they had for forearms; the third was massively built, a bipedal cyborg with golden yellow skin, an equine head with perpetually bared teeth; the fourth was nearly as large but unaugmented, also humanoid but pinkish red with an almost boar-like head and an massive and heavily muscled square lower jaw, as well as nostrils like jet-intakes, designed to fill massive lungs.
The fifth and last was perhaps most curious – he too was tall, taller than her but still only taller than the insectoid, but he made up for it in breadth. Plated in large orange hexagonal scales, almost like rock, he was smoothed like a stone in a river or a statue under a sculptor's hands, with massive hands and feet, powerful shoulders, and a rounded head distinguished by its sharp brow ridge… and bright blue eyes.
The really curious thing was that they were human eyes, and though he might not look it, like nothing more than a baked child's clay figure, he was indeed a mortal man. Changed, probably the cosmic energy that he was subtly radiating, yes. But only where it showed. He was also from her nephew's time, give or take a few decades, if her judgement of the tachyon decay was correct. That was interesting.
There was kindness in those eyes, too, in all of them, far more than she would have expected from such as these. Hardened warriors, doomed to battle endlessly for the entertainments of others, it would be easy to degenerate into little more than pitiless killers, hollow shells of who they had once been. Perhaps that was part of why these had survived, aside from their palpable power. Unlike so many around them, they were not resigned to death, nor had they lost themselves to bitterness, bloodlust, and rage, she could feel it on them. Virtue in extremis: worthy in itself, and perhaps exactly what she needed.
"So," the mutated human said, voice as gravelly as he appeared, but welcoming. "Youse new 'round here?"
"After a fashion," she said, taking a seat.
"You ain't got a disk," the boar-like being said, in a booming voice, sounding more suspicious. "You a sponsor?"
She raised an eyebrow, before gleaning the meaning. Some of the wealthy liked to sponsor specific gladiators. They provided creature comforts in exchange for their endorsement of certain products, or even for political influence. Popularity was power, after all. Her lips thinned. More chains to add to those who were already enslaved, and these with the expectation that their recipients should bind themselves and be grateful for scraps from the table.
"No," she said firmly. "My intentions are not commercial, nor are they related to serving anyone or anything in this realm," she said. "I have questions, questions that I believe you can best answer, but if you will not, then I will leave you in peace and find my answers elsewhere."
She looked steadily around at them. "I am new to this realm," she said. "I come with no existing grudges, biases, or schemes. I stand apart from them and intend to remain so."
She briefly skimmed for psi-alarms and bafflers (both extant, both laughable), and continued.
"I am Sunniva Vésdottir," she said, before slipping into mental conversation. I am a Princess of Asgard, and I know what kind of realm this is. I was fighting the creature that I believe had a hand in creating it, that either stole you away or made it possible. She looked them each in the eye, impressing upon them her sincerity, conveying to them her nature as a person, as an Asgardian, as a Phoenix. I would bring about the liberation of you all. And if you have any idea of who or what I am, then you will know that – with help – I can make this happen.
All of them started, the human and, interestingly, the cyborg, most of all.
"All I wish are answers to my questions," she continued, without even a hitch in her speech.
"That sounds all right," the Kronan said cheerfully. A sunny soul, that one, improbably so.
"Depends on the questions, poozer," the boar-like being rumbled. There was a dangling connection there, a severed link to some kind of subtle hive mind… no, something more spiritual than that. Perhaps she could sooth it; an open psychic wound like that couldn't be comforting him.
"Asgardians are okay in my book, Kilowog," the human said, before shooting her a somewhat puzzled look. "Though, uh, I ain't hearda you, an' I thought I heard about everyone in, y'know –" He glanced around, as if for surveillance, having realised why she'd kept that part silent. "– your department."
"I am from a different time," she said plainly. "One long before yours. However, a fellow member of my department is… around, also from your time, or near enough to it. He hasn't given me his true name, for obvious reasons, but his description should be familiar enough: black hair with a white streak at the front, pale skin within standard Human or Xandarian ranges, and bright green eyes. He would be an adolescent, though you may know him as an adult."
The human blinked, surprised. "Yeah, sounds kinda familiar," he said. "A lot familiar, actually. 'cept for the white hair. I mean, I don't know the kid, but I know a buncha people who do."
May I? she asked.
That got a hastily muted nod.
She dipped into his mind with a brief smile of thanks, and had a look at the image. Yes, that's him, she remarked.
"He's done a lot of growing," she observed.
That got a chuckle. "Kids are like that," the human said fondly, then grimaced. "Oh, where's my manners, if my Aunt Petunia could see me now, she'd box my ears – what's left of 'em." He stuck out a massive hand. "I'm Ben Grimm, though in the ring, everyone calls me the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, idol o' billions. Pleased ta meetcha."
"An honour to meet you, Ben," Sunniva said, inclining her head and shaking his hand. He was strong, stronger than most on Asgard, though just as obviously holding it in check for fear of crushing her hand. It was a kind gesture and one borne of no doubt painful experience – she would trust an egg to that grip. It was also entirely unnecessary, as even without the Phoenix, the risk would be more the other way around, but the thought was appreciated. "Though your 'ring name' seems an ignoble one for a noble warrior."
Ben rubbed the back of his head with clinking of stone on stone and an embarrassed expression.
"Eh, I kinda started it," he said. "It's, uh, been a bit of an adjustment. Y'know. Being like this." He brightened and turned to his companions. "But my buds in here an' out have been helpin' me through it. This is Korg and Miek –" The Kronan, who responded with a cheerful wave, and the insectoid, who did much the same with a trilling chatter, and accidentally chipped a bit off of his friend. " – that's Bill, though he's Beta Ray in the ring –" The cyborg inclined his head gravely, something she returned, recognising the acknowledgement of one warrior to another. " – and this big fella's our old-timer an' training master, Kilowog, an' there ain't none better."
The massive being, Kilowog, looked at her steadily and snorted like a bull. "I heard that Asgardians are some of the toughest cusses in the universe," he said.
She smiled.
"You heard right," she said, and leaned forward. "Have you heard of a creature called Lobo?"
The darkening expressions told their own story.
"An honourless cur," Bill said. "He sometimes fights in exhibitions and takes great pleasure in demolishing all opposition, killing those who wish to yield, and making a spectacle of it. Of course, we are all by necessity… entertainers –" The bitter gall dripping off that could have soured all the milk in all the realms. "– but he draws it out. He enjoys it. He considers such amusement and the adulation it brings to be his due."
"He seemed like the type," Sunniva said, then, at the open curiosity, explained. A few minutes later, the table exploded with laughter.
"Couldn'ta happen to a nicer guy," Ben said, with evident satisfaction. "So, I gotta ask: what're your questions about?" He shifted his massive feet uncomfortably. "I hate ter say it, but obedience disks –" He touched the one on his neck, and Sunniva barely restrained the urge to tear it off. Unfortunately, that would attract attention. Soon, she told her smouldering anger. Soon. "– they ain't the only hold they got on us."
"Some of us have family, y'know, out there," Korg chipped in. "My mum comes to watch my fights, which is nice. Pity she brings her boyfriend, because I don't like him very much, but that's how it is."
Sunniva nodded slowly. "I have not been noticed," she said. "I have ensured this. What I ask will be kept to me as well, and it is little more than generalities, but I wish specific confirmation from those likely to know." She looked at them all. "What can you tell me of the Champion? What do you know of the Silver Surfer? And what do you know of the one who controls him?"
OoOoO
The room was silent.
One of those present, a boy by some measures, a man by others, stared in wide-eyed astonishment at a living legend, who had learned about from his father, and even more so from his teachers, one who he had privately been sure was dead or – at least – long lost.
That legend, whose room it was, maintained her perfect poise and smiled a smile full of warmth, secrets, and mischief. That smile carried genuine happiness that this long-awaited moment had come to pass. Long lost she might have been, but now, she was found – though who was doing the finding, who had been allowed to do the finding, was a matter up for debate.
The third, naturally, was the one to break the silence.
"Okaaaaay. I think I'm missing something."
Harry blinked at Hal, then looked at Julie, then back again. "You could say that," he said. "You want the very short version?"
"Sure."
"Sif, Asgard's Goddess of War, Fandral of the Warriors Three," Harry said. "They're two of my dad's best friends, and they're the best swordsmen in the Nine Realms. They're gods, literally engineered for war, from a civilisation that has spent literally millions of years becoming very, very good at it. Our host taught them, and after that, they spent the next millennium and a bit training with and fighting against the best the Nine Realms has to offer, and probably a fair bit of the rest of the universe, too. They've been at it for fifteen centuries. One of them is, and I have to underline this, the Goddess of War." He shot Julie a look of faint disbelief. "And, somehow, she's still better."
He paused, eyed Hal to assess how far this was sinking in, then added, "You're a pilot, right?"
"Yeah."
"She's basically the Red Baron."
"Oh. Wow."
"… or possibly Luke Skywalker."
Julie just looked amused, hand covering her mouth to ineffectively hide her smile. "You flatter me," she murmured.
"No," Harry said slowly. "With all due respect, I know enough about swordsmanship to know that if anything, I'm understating it. Watching that was probably what it's like for a musician to watch Doctor Strange. Or at least Mozart. From what I remember of what dad said, you didn't exactly write the book on sword-fighting, but you taught most of the people who did, and a lot of pre-modern heroes, too."
"That's pretty impressive by the sounds of things, and that fight was too, because I have never seen anyone do anything like that to a Beetle," Hal said.
"There's a trick to it," Julie said. "It's the same trick that there is to everything: knowing how." She smiled. "Everything and everyone has a weak spot, darlings, all you need to know his how to find it." A glass of something pleasantly fruity constructed itself out of the desk before their eyes, and without looking away for a moment, she took a sip. "Of course, having a blade constantly honed to sub-atomic keenness by nanobots is quite helpful top."
Harry sat back, scrutinising her. "Nanotechnology," he murmured. "That explains more than it doesn't."
"Including how I never picked up anything other than human off you," Hal remarked. "If it was a nanocloud, someone would notice. They're inside you, aren't they?"
She toasted him, but said nothing.
"The bots are dispersed, most of the time, indistinguishable from the rest of your biology," Hal continued.
"But they can brought together at a moment's notice, they're mentally controlled," Harry picked up. "You can use them to alter your surroundings and your very biology: your clothes become armour, your microphone and stand a mixture of sword and remote control from the entire building, and you become able to match the speed and reflexes of a Beetle."
"Then, soon as you're done, poof, it's all back to normal and no one's the wiser," Hal said. "Except everyone saw what you did. So – why now?"
"Me," Harry said, answering him. "You said that you've been looking forward to this, implying that you knew we were coming. You saw me and you didn't look surprised at all, despite the fact that you vanished centuries before I was born."
"Decades, actually," Julie said idly. "As the centuries rolled by and I got closer to some rather critical hinge-points in history that I shouldn't interfere with, and one that I rather needed to be at, I decided to keep a lower profile. Which, considering my abilities, was not hard." She twirled a finger through her hair, which shifted from straight raven-wing black to wavy coppery red and then onto curly silver-white, before turning back again. "Limited shapeshifting," she said. "This particular look was one I picked up during a wonderfully scandalous life as a private detective in Melbourne in the 1920s. I was going by Phryne back then." She smirked. "The name only seemed appropriate."
As Harry quirked an eyebrow, the smirk deepened.
"You'll understand when you're older, sweetie." She sighed with happy reminiscence. "Ah, the Twenties. Not without their flaws, not even close, but such a wonderful decade for style. There's a reason I replicated a great deal of the aesthetic." She gestured at her surroundings, and by implication, at the club as a whole. "Just one of the many, many possibilities of my technology."
"But you didn't actually use that many, did you?" Harry speculated. "If that were the case it wouldn't just be 'limited' shapeshifting. You said it yourself, you were trying to avoid notice." His eyes narrowed. "You were being hunted."
That earned him a sly smile of appreciation, an acknowledgement from a master to a student. Harry found himself both somewhat pleased and more than a little ambivalent. He wasn't sure where this conversation was going, but he knew very well when he was being led around by the nose, being given exactly as much as he needed to get from point to point. It was masterful. It was also more than a little annoying.
"Oh, you are clever," she said, and to be fair, she did at least sound like she not only meant it but was genuinely pleased that he was living up to her expectations. "Not quite on the money, but close. Very close. There were people whose attention I wanted to avoid, and as a result, my nanobots were almost entirely dormant for most of my history. There were exceptions: a little bash called the Last Great Frost Giant War, for one. Scenarios where there was enough high technology and power being thrown around that I could blend in. Even then, however, I needed to hide my lamp under a bushel."
She knocked back her drink.
"I've been doing so here, too, up to a point," she said. "I'm not hiding from the Grandmaster, because he doesn't really know who I am, much less care. His view is… informed by his experiences, shall we say."
"Not by what he is?" Harry asked, as Hal raised an eyebrow.
"That as well," Julie said. "I will explain in due course."
"That's something else you have planned out, then," Hal said. "You expected to see us, or at least, him. You were waiting, and you haven't exactly elaborated on how you knew that or even about him. I'm guessing it's the time travel angle, which I've gotta say, would definitely explain a few things. You're dancing around this whole thing with whoever's running the Beetles, because I'm pretty sure that's who you're hiding from. You chose to reveal yourself now. To me, that says a plan, a plan for something big."
Julie smiled. This smile… now this one was different. Sharp as nano-forged blade and twice as deadly, like its sisters before it, it carried a promise. A promise of danger.
"I do indeed," she said. "And him upstairs will never see it coming."
Hal's expression tightened, along with his gauntlet. "Plans like that tend to have consequences," he said. "If you're planning something on the scale I think you're planning, if you're playing that kind of game…" He exhaled. "You're going to need to be very sure that you can win." His gaze snapped up, and suddenly those dark eyes flared with green flames as the battery on his back hummed. "And by win, I don't just mean for yourself. I mean for everyone."
Just like that, the smile vanished, replaced by an expression of absolute sobriety as she stood and slipped around the desk, taking a seat on the corner.
"I know, Hal," she said softly. "Believe me, I have spent a very long time planning this. Both literally, and, well, relatively. Not all of that planning has been in the same order, either." At a puzzled look, she added gently, "I'm a time traveller, Hal, and as Harry could tell you, that changes your perspective. My history is not a straight line, or even a loop. It's a thread in an ever changing pattern. You remember the past and you see the present, but my view… my view is of the past that is, the past that was, and the past that could be. I have seen the days of future past, I have lived in the could-bes and the never-weres. The present I live in, this moment, is one I cherish, because in any moment the past that I have built, the history that I have lived, could be wiped away."
She cupped his cheek and smiled a sad smile.
"Oh Hal. Dear, brave, stubborn Hal. In a universe ruled by a mad god, a dystopia that never ends, you keep on fighting for the sake of others, without hope of release or reward. Where the awful and the wonderful are smashed together side by side and nothing makes sense, where madness is the only sane response, you refuse to break. 'Never give up, never give in'. Those are your watch words, aren't they?" She shook her head gently. "You don't even begin to realise how remarkable you are."
She leaned down and tenderly kissed his brow.
"But you will."
Hal looked up at her, and in his eyes, Harry could see for just a moment an inexpressible weariness. He'd caught glimpses of it before, even when trying to pointedly stay out of the other man's mind, but now he could see it. It'd been hidden well, but there it was, clear as day, and for just a moment, he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch.
Then, almost reluctantly, he stood up and away.
"Hell with that," he said roughly. "You're talking about rescuing a universe. If we're even going to think of pulling this off – and I'm thinking it, because maybe I'm just stupid enough to believe it's possible – then we're all going to need to be remarkable." He laughed bitterly. "We're going to need a miracle."
Harry stood up. "You missed the end of the Battle of London."
"Yeah? So what?"
"So I stitched the universe back together with thread made of chaos and a needle made of the fires of creation," Harry said. "Unfortunately, too late to retrieve you. I've come back from the dead, and pulled others back from the brink. I've gone mind to mind with things that make the Grandmaster look like a child and I've come off the better. I do the impossible and the insane, Hal, and I do it for the same reason that you do this: because someone has to." He nodded at Julie, then met the other man's gaze. "You want a miracle? Let her talk, and watch me work."
Hal looked back at him, then smiled slightly. "You make me want to believe," he said.
Harry met his gaze levelly, then nodded at his gauntlet and battery array. "Five rings and a constant feed from the battery," he said. "Did you salvage it?"
"I found one of the rings in a junk shop," Hal said, brow creasing. "No one wanted it, because nothing was doing, it was a curio. A friend tuned it up. He'd run across these before – the Grandmaster liked the way they shone for a while, but he got annoyed because they wouldn't do anything for him. Which they wouldn't, because they're all broken."
"Except you managed to make something of this one," Julie said. "You found a spark, buried deep, and you fanned it into a candleflame."
"I did," Hal said levelly. "My friend figured out how to hook a bunch of them up together, spread the strain across multiple rings and a support gauntlet to amplify and focus the power, and squeeze as much power as possible out of the only battery with anything left."
"I'm impressed," Harry said, and he was.
He'd heard the tales from Project Pegasus – or rather, about Pegasus, from Carol. This sort of thing was not for the faint of heart, or, frankly, the sound of mind. Plus, Pegasus had been hooked up to a magic rich planet, right into a bore down to a ley line nexus. Harry hadn't touched any magic but his own since he'd got here, and frankly, he didn't want to. That meant that this thing, cobbled together by a raving genius, was running off the remaining energy in the rings and the battery, a few embers of magic clustered together into a miniature hearth… and fed, tended, and fuelled only by its wielder's sheer Will. For over a decade.
Even if the power output hadn't been anything more than a light show, he'd have been impressed.
I know what I am, my friend dug it out of the rings' database: I'm a Green Lantern, the Green Lantern, the last member of a whole goddamn Corps, but that's not going to last forever. Every battery runs down eventually. Every candle burns out."
He looked at them.
"I want to believe. I do. Really, I do. You two may be super-badasses who can make plans to take down the Grandmaster, plans that even have an outside chance of working, because heck, anyone who can beat up a Beetle the way you did, with the patience you have, and can make someone who radiates power like nothing I've ever seen go all goggle-eyed is someone I'll take real seriously. You have plans, and I'll go along with them. The alternative… the alternative is standing by and doing nothing. I can't do that. Not for my sector, and not for me. That would be giving up, and that's not who I am."
He shook his head tiredly.
"But I can't believe. Don't ask me to do that, because that's not who I am either. Not anymore. I might have a magic ring, but this isn't a fairy-story. It's not as easy as wishing on a star. I want to believe in miracles. But I can't."
Harry met his gaze, before looking past him, through him, to the rings, the battery. There was fire there, a shimmering emerald flame on the strange spectra of his vision. Not much, dim, persistent, and always fading. But it was there. A flame. He smiled. He was life and he was fire. He could work with that.
He met Hal's gaze once more.
"Let's see what I can do about that."
With that, he raised his hand, and snapped his fingers.
The dim green glow of the battery and gauntlet flared into life like an emerald sun, the surge of power knocking Hal into the wall, spread-eagling him against it with a muffled variant on the signature reverberating hum of something heavy hitting Vibranium, seething power earthing itself into the absorbent metal-impregnated wood like lightning on copper.
Then, slowly, Hal began to emerge from the heart of an emerald inferno, as it faded around him, drawn back into the gauntlet, a blazing torch which he was now staring at in disbelief, a disbelief that he transferred a thousand fold as he looked up at Harry and Julie, the former now in the garb of the Green Phoenix, eyes burning white.
Harry offered him a hand up.
"You never asked, and I probably should have explained," he said, pulling the dazed Torchbearer to his feet, whose eyes were still glowing green from the power surge. "My name is Harry Thorson. I'm a lot of things: a Prince of Asgard, a Host of the Phoenix…" Harry smiled, and the glow faded from his eyes. "… and, on a good day, when the wind stands fair and all goes right… a worker of miracles." He paused, tilting his head, and winced, then flared his power for a second, before powering down entirely. "Sorry about the bruises. Those should be fading."
"I… no problem," Hal said. "Wait, no. What did you do?" He gestured at, then with, his gauntlet. "It's never felt like this, did you supercharge, how –"
"I am life and I am fire," Harry said. "That's the theme of the Phoenix – phenomenally powerful cosmic entity which sort of is or will be my mother. Long story. Anyway, your friend gathered together that little candleflame of magic, you fed it and you've kept feeding it all these years, without any magic or power beyond your own force of Will… that should have burnt you out or worse. But you kept it going. You did the hard part, you kept the fire burning, you worked the real miracle. All I did was what comes naturally." He grinned. "Make little fires much, much bigger."
Hal gaped.
"Are you a believer now, Hal Jordan?" Julie asked with an arch tone and a feline smile.
"I… I think I might just be," Hal said slowly. "God help me – wait, you're Asgardian? You're that kid? Thor's kid?"
Harry bowed. "The one and only," he said. "Well, one and only still living. I do have a half-sister, technically speaking, but she's been dead for the last millennium. Her and dad have kept in touch."
Hal stared at him.
"She's a Valkyrie now. Loving it, apparently."
Hal continued to stare at him.
"Don't worry," Julie stage-whispered. "It's not just you. He has that effect on everyone."
"Well thank who-the-hell-ever for that," Hal managed. "I… thank you. Seriously. Thank you." He looked at his gauntlet, opening it and closing it slowly. "Maybe I really can believe," he said quietly.
"Believe in yourself," Harry said. "We're a convenient bonus." He smiled. "And you're welcome."
"Well, now that your faith is restored, I can change and we can prepare for our next stop," Julie said, vanishing through a door that had suddenly appeared in the wall. "We're going to see, among others, some mutual friends of yours at Kadesh."
"Mutual?" Harry asked.
"Wait, you know the Future Foundation?" Hal said, startled.
"Who?"
"Well, there's Doctor Brashear, he's before your time," Hal said. "Then there's Doctor Storm and Doctor Richards. They came through same time I did, thanks to the Battle of London. You know 'em?"
"I don't – wait. Doctor Storm? Doctor Susan Storm?"
Hal stared at a flabbergasted Harry. "That would be her," he said slowly. "I'm guessing you've met."
"A few times," Harry said, just as slowly, turning over this revelation.
"Some kind of official thing?" Hal guessed.
"That was the first time," Harry agreed. "After that, well… actually, I introduced her to her boyfriend." Speaking of whom, he thought to himself, Lex was going to be delighted. Well. Hopefully. If this all went right. Maybe he really could arrange a happy ending.
Hal digested this as Harry's thoughts wandered happily in the direction of reunions, then nodded slowly.
"Well," he said. "It probably won't if I have my timelines right, or judgement of the lady's character… but I really hope that doesn't come as news to her husband."
"Wait, what?"
Oh, I have been looking forward to this. For nearly ten years.