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xXx The Black Sapphires xXx
xXx Ch. 01: Darkness Beyond Twilight xXx
It had been a year since Bella's initial encounter with Clypta, though it certainly wasn't her only encounter with an Orange Lantern Corpsman over the past few months. In the time since she first battled Clypta, she began realizing that the Orange Lantern Corps was either the most unified military force she had ever heard of, or that each individual Orange Lantern Corpsman was merely a Force Construct.
If they were each individual Force Construct's, that meant she might not have even met the authentic Orange Lantern, this so-called "Agent Orange." What had become clear, was that Agent Orange had become obsessed with the Violet Lantern Corps in general, but more specifically, he wanted to possess Bella, as though she were an object to be owned.
He did however, follow the rules of whatever treaty it was that confined him to a single Space Sector, which was why Bella had all but refused to travel to that Space Sector these days. On a more local basis, she had begun noticing strange happenings in the news filtering through the muggle newspapers. It seemed that the Obliviators either weren't paying attention to the muggle news, or else that somehow purely mundane events were beginning to gain an aura of the supernatural.
That was why Bella had taken Harry on a trip to the neighboring city of Gotham. At his age, he could now seemingly cause a force bubble to envelop him and keep him safe while she performed any heroics that might need to be performed, even while floating along behind her. Somehow he knew to wear a sort of mask to conceal his identity while she was performing her heroics. It would be on this day however, that Bellatrix encountered something that gave her a reason to kill.
Bellatrix had been so completely focused on apprehending the young girl dressed as though she were a court jester, that she failed to notice the equally badly dressed man pointing a handgun in Harry's direction and pulling the trigger until after she heard the explosive bang of a high caliber handgun.
Even as she dropped the harlequin, and turned to stare at where Harry had been floating behind her, Bellatrix heard the cackling laughter of the man calling himself the "Joker" and that was the last thing she'd stand for, "Rag-"
"Oh look she's calling for a raggedy doll," the clown exclaimed.
"-na…" Bella continued as she held a hand out and away from her body, even as violet energy began coalescing in the air surrounding it. This energy began taking form, the form of an absolutely massive energy saber. "BLADE!"
This battle was taking place about a week prior to the Batman, otherwise known as Bruce Wayne, returning to Gotham City and making it clear to the underworld of Gotham that it was his turf. Thus there were few who would even attempt to stop Bellatrix from attempting to kill possibly the most insane criminal there has ever been. There was however one who would.
Bellatrix found her legs being pulled out from under her as a bullwhip of all things grabbed her and tossed her through the air. It took not even a fraction of her attention to use her gem to course correct and pull her assailant off their own feet, which caused the woman to use the most unusual exclamation of shock Bella had ever heard, "NYA!"
Rolling her eyes, Bellatrix unleashed a Macross Missile Massacre on the Clown Prince of Crime in the form of energy bolts. Said clown had no chance of evading that many bolts of energy, as that was the entire point of such a tactic. The fact that she could feel the distress from his sidekick didn't even bother her, because he had threatened her Harry.
"Fuck!" the catgirl exclaimed, "Would you calm down?"
"I'm in righteous feminine fury mode, so no." Bella countered, even as she unleashed an attack that looked quite a lot like a Wave Motion Cannon on the Clown Prince of Crime, all while roaring out "DRAGON SLAVE!"
She'd have normally taken the time to say the incantation, but right now she was furious enough not to care, and it's not like she needed the incants for attacks she was using her Star Sapphire Gem to replicate.
Selina Kyle had this wide eyed expression on her face, and she said, "If… if he survives that, I'll be very impressed. Now let's see…" She then went off to look for the woman's kid, which she had witnessed getting shot, and wanted to make sure wasn't actually dead so she could try and calm the woman down.
Meanwhile, Harley Quinn had tears in her eyes as the man she thought she was in love with went and pissed off a humanoid nuclear arsenal. No matter how good Puddin might be, he wasn't THAT good.
About two minutes later, the voice of Selina Kyle exclaimed, "He's alive! I don't know how, but your kid isn't even scratched!"
Bellatrix pulled up short even as she fired one last anti-material blast at the clown. She then flew over to were Selina was and said, "Give me my son…"
"Sure," Selina agreed as she handed the boy over, "Though I'd advise finding a babysitter the next time you want to go out to fight crime."
"I'll consider that," Bella retorted. With that, she took one last look at the criminals, and sighed, "I screwed up today."
"Yeah, well I'm not normally on the side of angels, but at least I try not to intentionally kill innocent children. Normally Harley over there avoids such senseless killing as well, but the clown asshole is another matter," Selina admitted.
"Right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies." Bella remarked in fond remembrance.
"Oh? Then what is it," Selina wondered as the two women, neither of whom were bound or unconscious, began walking away from the battlezone.
"It's our different standpoints, our perspectives that separate us. Both sides blame one another. There is no good or bad side. Just two sides holding different views." Bella concluded, "Then there are the people who just don't care about either side and attack both senselessly. I've encountered quite a number of that latter group lately."
Selina snorted, "You just quoted something to me, didn't you?"
"A video game. I'm sort of a major otaku these days." Bella admitted. "Anyways, thank you for checking on my son. I'll hopefully never visit this city again, too gloomy for my liking. Reminds me too much of back home."
"Eh, you get used to it," Selina admitted. "Anyways, see you around, or not." With that, the two parted ways.
Gotham wasn't the only city to be host to a criminal element, Metropolis had its own fair share. Most of these criminals however, tended towards the more conventional variety and therefore were strictly beneath Bella's interest. That was… until Bella heard someone exclaim "Look, up in the sky!"
"Is it a bird?" someone else continued the line, just as Bella turned her own gaze skyward.
One of the many benefits of having a Star Sapphire Gem, as opposed to the rings that she had begun encountering the wearers of while dodging Agent Orange, was that it allowed her to actually see a considerably greater distance, provided she queued that ability up. Which was why she found herself staring at a man flying through the sky at a speed that was just below the sound barrier, wearing what looked like a Onesie… only…
Bella snorted as she couldn't believe the gal that would be required to allow this man to fly around in an outfit that looked like he had his underpants outside of a onesie, complete with a flowing cape tied about his neck. It was frankly embarrassing to see such things on her two year old son, much less on a fully grown man.
Rolling her eyes, and thanking her foresight to finally enroll Harry in a nursery school so she could have some time to actually do the 'job' she had sort of been conscripted into performing, she walked into an alley and seconds later a violet streak of light flew off into the sky. She was going to completely ignore the 'oohs' and 'awws' from the gawkers on the streets below.
Catching the flyboy proved to be a bit more problematic than she had anticipated though, as he seemingly noticed her approach and began accelerating to an absurd degree. Knowing what would inevitably happen if she didn't stop it, Bella tagged him with a Muffliato. She was going to be in so much pain after this idiot did what he was about to do, it wasn't funny.
Sure enough, one sonic boom contained inside a magically sealed conduit that made it so only Bella experienced the effects later, and the woman was in freefall due to being rendered unconscious. Meanwhile, the blue-clad moron swiveled in mid flight as he began hearing exclamations of shock. It took him but a second to guess what might have transpired and make all due haste in rescuing the woman from an undeserved date with the sidewalk.
He managed to succeed in catching her, and then began blushing rather severely due to exactly how she was dressed, and also due to just how attractive she was. "I think… um… yeah… um…"
Eventually he decided to take her to the Fortress, as the Fortress might have some idea who this woman was and how she had done what she had clearly done.
Bellatrix opened her eyes, and then promptly closed them again, "Am I dead?"
There was a snickering sound from what seemed to be a woman, before said woman remarked, "No, this is not what you presume it to be. My name is Lara Lor-Van, and you have already met my son, though whether or not he informs you of his name is for him to decide."
Bella sat up, and noticed that she was thankfully still dressed in her Star Sapphire garments, though she was honestly now beginning to think of herself as a Black Sapphire due to the fact that each time she had encountered her fellow Star Sapphires they had attacked her, often without provocation.
"Where am I?" Bella wondered.
"The northern arctic pole of your planet," Lara admitted, "Now answer me this. Why do you seem to radiate a similar, though opposed, energy as the members of the Green Lantern Corps?"
"You're familiar with the Interstellar Boy Scout Troop?" Bella inquired.
"Should I take that to mean that you claim to be from a different Lantern Corps?" Lara wondered.
"Yes and no. I'm apparently using an obsolete version of the rings that have entered circulation among a group of individuals calling themselves the Star Sapphire Corps. They don't particularly like the fact that I keep kicking their arses each time they try to decommission me, which has happened about three or four times thus far."
"My son has just asked me to inquire if you are a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy'" Lara admitted.
Bella threw her head back and began laughing as hard as she could, which caused Lara to frown while waiting for her to calm down, at which point Bella said, "Tell your son that I'm neither of those things. What I am however, is one very wicked Witch."
"Excuse me, I need to go pick my son's mouth up off the floor," Lara drawled as she disappeared into a multitude of shimmering lights.
Bella's interactions with "Superman" as he insisted she call him, were at least for now, thankfully rather brief, as he was determined to get her out of his hearing range due to all the lewd and semi-lewd things she was saying. She was doing that mostly cause she had realized that in order for him to get her half-way across the globe, he'd have needed to hold her in a rather more intimate manner than she was comfortable with, so she had made it her mission to embarrass him just as much.
"MUM!" Harry cried out when she appeared to pick him up from the nursery school he was attending, thankfully she hadn't been delayed too long, so the teacher merely gave her a sniff of annoyance even as Bella picked him up and said, "And what did you do today?"
The boy got a curious look on his face, as he asked, "What cooties?"
Bella gave the teacher a questioning look, "What is it he is asking me, exactly?"
"He seems to be more comfortable around the girls of his age group than he is his fellow boys, and this has caused the other boys to tease him," the woman remarked blandly.
"Right, I'll explain when we get home, Harry. Now let's get your things so we can head home."
"YAY! HOME!"
Meanwhile on Zamaron, Ghia'ta once again had the displeasure of hearing her Aunt and Queen ranting and raving about one or another things. Today it was about the fact that they still had yet to secure the last of the gemstones they had initially been using to empower the Star Sapphire Corps.
The reality of the matter was that the Lantern Rings simply couldn't match up to the Gems in terms of how long they could last in an active battle, so all the rogue Star Sapphire had to do was stall for time until her opponent ran out of juice and run for the hills.
Unfortunately, the only surefire way of equalizing the stalemate would be to cause someone else to come into contact with another of the original gemstones, and that would likely put them right back at square one. There was however one thing Ghia'ta had noticed that most of her sisters had yet to see, "Your majesty, how is it that the rogue Sapphire has managed to last for as long as she has without finding a mate?"
Everyone in the grand audience hall developed an odd expression as they realized they each should have noticed that. Aga'po immediately opened a tear in the fabric of reality that allowed her to see into the hearts of anyone anywhere in the universe. She set it to show both her and her audience the 'Heart's True Love' of the rogue Star Sapphire… so why then was it showing her a toddler?
Long ago, there might have been a concept of maternal love that could be said to exist among the Maltusian people, but that stopped being necessary when the Maltusian species split into two distinct subspecies, the Oans and the Zamarons. Both species developed a way to transcend mortality and be able to exist for all time without changing. However, the Zamarons were still capable of sexual reproduction with other species, even if they rarely ever used that capacity unless it served the goals that they were striving towards.
That was why they had long assumed that the only form of love was romantic and sexual in nature. They had no way of rationalizing a situation where someone could consider their child to be their true love, as concepts such as maternal love were foreign to them.
Ghia'ta was possibly the only Zamaron present in that room who made the leap of logic that their understanding of love was in some way flawed. Most of the other Zamaron present assumed that the rogue Star Sapphire was some form of deviant. Only time would tell.
One major happening during Harry's childhood that had annoyed Bella quite significantly, and Harry too, as he was now old enough to start training as a hero, was when at the age of eight a large mountain of a man started wreaking havoc in the middle of downtown Metropolis.
This wasn't normally something which would have been a problem as Bella and Harry weren't even in the same part of town, however when they felt their 'Cosmic S.O.S.' otherwise known as the warning that someone's loved ones are in jeopardy, they knew they had to get involved.
Harry's initial attempts at a Star Sapphire uniform had been vetoed by every single one of Bella's female friends, or in other words, Selina Kyle told him 'No way in hell, kid.' That his 'Aunt Kitty' had told him to try something else, and then offered to help him design an outfit had endeared her to him in ways that nothing ever could.
That resulted in Harry having a sleek jet black bodysuit with violet trim, along with a long coat that was cut for someone of his height and build, also black with violet trim, as his default uniform. Bella for her part still war the standard issue Star Sapphire uniform as it was both recognizable and she just knew she'd not find anything half so stylish in any of the other Lantern Corps.
The parent and child duo traveled to the location that the battle was occurring at, and Bella had to blink as she saw that it was a troll or something trollish at any rate, fighting the poster boy for bright flashy superheroes, and wouldn't you know, he's too distracted to kick the troll's arse. "Right, so Harry do you think that phenomenal cosmic power of yours can be employed here?"
Harry nodded as he walked over to the troll and pulled back a leg, before kicking the much larger approximation of a man in the side of the leg. The howl of pain that erupted from Kalibak was something truly impressive, especially when he looked down and saw that it was an eight year old kid that had kicked him. The kid smiled at him and said, "Release the boy scout before I get inventive."
Superman couldn't actually see Harry, but he recognized the kid's voice, and understood the implicit threat. This kid watched way too much television, and had the powers necessary to replicate many of the things he witnessed on said television. Kalibak didn't though, which was why he said "Scram runt, I've got a hero to pound."
Rolling his eyes, Harry used his powers to fly back several paces, before yelling "Clear the area!" and then chanting…
"Darkness beyond twilight
Crimson beyond blood that flows
Buried in the stream of time is where your power flows
I pledge myself to conquer all the foes who stand
Before the mighty gift bestowed in my unworthy hand
Let the fool who stands before me be destroyed
By the power you and I possess…"
The incantation that the child had begun chanting was sufficient cause for concern, even within Kalibak's dimwitted mind, that it caused the monstrous man to release Superman so that he could instead try and reach the child before he completed doing whatever it was that he was doing. Clark, being the sensible sort of hero that he is, immediately vacated the blast radius, much like everyone else who had been within the area. Bella for her part had rolled her eyes at Harry and thrown up a barrier to protect the building that was in danger of falling in on itself.
"DRAGON SLAVE!"
Whereas Bella had tried to limit the blast yield when she had used this same spell earlier, Harry saw no reason for doing such a thing, and went even further by overpowering the effect as much as he possibly could. This resulted in Kalibak being caught in the dead center of a 500 foot radius explosive blast, a blast that to Kalibak, would feel like being hit in the face by just over 1 kilogram of TNT.
The fact that Kalibak only seemed slightly singed, told Harry it wouldn't be enough, so he opened up his own Macross Missile Massacre on the New God. The deer caught in the headlights look that appeared on Kalibak's face as soon as he saw millions upon millions of bright lights hurtling towards him from multiple approach vectors was something that Harry would have enjoyed seeing in a different time or place. When the dust settled from that attack, Kalibak was revealed to actually appear to be hurt.
Meanwhile on Bella's end of things, she had been using her Force Manipulation abilities to ensure the building didn't collapse on top of Superman while he began rescuing the civilians trapped inside, which as fate would have it, included his own adoptive father. The slow clapping sound coming from behind them told her though that she was now going to need to join Harry in the fight, or else risk losing her son.
"Never in all my days have I witnessed a youngling hand defeat to one of the best trained warriors of Apokolips so easily as this," a cold but highly impressed sounding voice spoke up.
Harry's attention turned to the new arrival, and found himself suddenly out of his league. But he knew just what to do when he was out of his league like this…
"For hearts long lost in blackest pitch
Deeper than the deepest knight
Fallen from love as vast as the largest ocean
Made colder than the coldest ice
I call upon the King of Hearts who stands wreathed violet flames upon the sea of chaos
I call upon thee, and swear myself to thee
I stand ready to bear the strength you give me
Let this fool who stands before me be destroyed
By the power you and I possess
Burn in our power — Black Sapphire's Light!"
A blinding flash of violet light engulfed the battlefield as Harry's form shifted. He seemed to age up to his physical ideal, and there was a crystalline winglike structure tracing off of his back. The god, Darkseid, seemed stumped at what he was seeing, "Well now, this is something I've never encountered before."
"GIGA SLAVE!" a sort of double voice exclaimed, even as Bellatrix added her own simultaneously cast Dragon Slave to the mix.
Darkseid merely swatted the two attacks away from him, causing them to fly up and out of the atmosphere. "Be advised, I did not come to pick a fight, at least at this time. I merely came to collect my wayward son. It seems he is in need of re-education." As if to emphasize that point, a bright red bolt of energy flew out of one of Darkseid's eyes and hit Kalibak in the chest, before he seemingly disintegrated.
"One last thing, my fight is with the Kryptonian, not with either of you. See that you do not become a nuisance to me, you'll live longer that way."
"We aren't letting you hurt the boy scout!" Harry roared.
"Harry we should let him leave," Bella spoke up in a soothing voice, "Even with Predator helping us, we won't win this fight, he's too powerful for us."
Superman was busy shepherding the bystanders away from the fight, and it was really just Bella and Harry preparing to battle the Highfather of Apokolips. When Bella saw Harry scowl and look away, she said, "Good boy."
Darkseid rolled his eyes before using his Mother Box to create a Boom Tube and travel back to his world. Once he was gone, Harry whined out the question, "Why'd you stop me?"
"Because he'd have killed you, Harry and I'd never be able to forgive myself if I allowed that to happen," Bella admitted as she pulled him into a hug. "Lest you forget, you are my Heart's True Love."
xXx Chapter Concluded xXx
Author's Note: This chapter was mostly to give an idea of where Bella and Harry sit on the DC Timeline. Please note, I am using a combination of DC Animated Universe settings, but my primary sources of reference are the Justice League universe and the Green Lantern: Animated Series.
Also, regarding the copycat attacks… when you really stop and consider what should theoretically be possible with any of the Lantern Rings, you begin realizing that they can conceivably duplicate anything they see on television that takes the form of an attack. Harry and Bella will abuse that, but their favorite tactics will be Macross Missile Massacres, and also large unavoidable explosions, and just as absurdly large melee weapons.
It's worth noting, while Bella prefers her Ragna Blade, Harry is going to take one look at Yagami Vita's Gigantschlag and begin contemplating just what his enemies will do when faced with such an impossibility as that.
Also, aside from the aesthetic changes that the Giga Slave incantation caused, it doesn't really increase Harry's strength by a large enough margin to give him an advantage against Darkseid, and isn't something he can use on a regular basis for a similar enough reason to the one from Slayers.
Also, regarding the abortive fight… element of surprise was in play.
Also, this story won't be continuing. I botched the relationship with Brygid, so I won't be able to continue it.