Chapter 6

by Carycomic

THE PHANTOM STRANGER'S POINT OF VIEW

Once more living up to her nickname, Princess Diana of Themiscyra reacted with wondrous speed. Turning the semicircular stirring wheel of her invisible plane, sharply to her left, and making a one hundred eighty-degree turn. All without dropping the shrunken Atom and Catwoman (still only one-eighth of an inch tall)!

"Hang on, you two! I'm flying towards the South Entrance and the Ellipse."

Even as she said this, however, the Bana-Migdahl Amazons (still clad in Rocket Red armor) were flying in pursuit of her at top speed. Thus, even as Wonder Woman left what the mind-controlled American public called 'The Ivory Palace'," she was not ahead of her pursuers by a very wide margin.

"Zatanna must have magically augmented their armor," muttered the Amazing Amazon Princess. "There's no other explanation for how they're able to keep up with us!"

"Well, it's the Larko Lamp that got us into this mess," replied Catwoman. "Why don't we use it to get us out?"

Whereupon she rearranged the way she was holding the ancient oil lamp in her arms and frantically began rubbing it.

"No, wait!" the Atom exclaimed. Unfortunately, he was two seconds too late. Consequently, what he had tried to warn her against happened. The interior of the invisible plane filled up with smoke as the Bat-Genie materialized within the aircraft's interior. Blinding Wonder Woman's view!

"What is thy wish, my master?" came a thunderous (yet still familiar) voice.

"I wish we were back at the Tower of Fate," declared Wonder Woman (again, thinking quickly).

"Only the holder of the lamp may so command me," replied the Bat-Genie, his turban-wearing visage hovering translucently before the Amazing Amazon.

"Well, I'm holding the lamp," retorted Catwoman. "So, I'm wishing we were back at the Tower of Fate!"

"Your wish is my command."

A moment later, Wonder Woman was granted a smoke-free view of what was directly ahead of her invisible plane. And what she saw compelled her to pull it into a vertical climb! Thereby avoiding- -by only a second or two- -a direct collision with the Tower of Fate.

I did not see any of that, however. As I suddenly found myself outdoors next to a stranger in a verdant hooded robe! An unexpected transposition, to say the least. One that left me stammering in astonishment, most uncharacteristically.

"What...? Where...? Who...?"

"Greetings, Phantom Stranger. To answer your last question, first, I am the Green Lama. As to your location? You are at an oasis where the borders of the Moonstone and Emerald Kingdoms conjoin with that of Sardonyx in the pocket dimension you know as... Gemworld."

This was true. Gemworld was created as a refuge for those survivors of Atlantis who had been caretakers of the Twelve Stones of the Zodiac. The mystic gems that had empowered the antediluvian civilization the same way electricity empowers much of the modern-day world. With time, the descendants of those survivors became the founders of twelve aristocratic houses. But, needless to say, this self-proclaimed Green Lama I had never heard of, before.

"Why have you brought here against my will? My own world has greater need of me, right this moment!"

"Because what is happening on your world is merely an elaborate ruse. A massive distraction of attention from the real danger! One that, in threatening Gemworld, threatens the rest of your multiverse by extension."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded, finally losing my patience.

"Have you ever heard of... The Sorceress of Zoom?"

NORTH POLE OF EARTH THREE (1985)

Garth Curry looked up at the red sky above the Fortress of Solitude.

"Could you possibly hurry it up, my dear?"

The red-and-gold blur that had been dashing about the hangar came to a dead stop. Revealing herself as Jessie Quick; daughter and only child of Johnny Quick by the hyper-libidinous Superwoman. Two of the five co-founders of the infamous Crime Syndicate of America!

"You think it's easy, souping up my dad's treadmill with components from Ultraman's old spacecraft? Despite having crash-landed here, over fifty years ago, it's still way more advanced than any modern Earth tech. And that's a fact!"

"It doesn't have to be perfect," retorted her common-law husband. "It just has to get us out of here before that wave of anti-matter hits us!"

"Oh!" she sarcastically exclaimed. "Why didn't you say so?"

At which point the Sultana of Speed resumed dashing here and there; literally tinkering on the run. But, while the labor might have been tedious and painstaking from her point of view, from the viewpoint of the self-styled Dr. Chaos, it was merely moments after their conversation had ended that her work was completed.

"Whew! All done. Now, where's that little imp?"

No sooner had she finished speaking than a miniature waterspout came cyclonically flying in through the hangar entrance. Soon revealing itself to be none other than the water elemental, Qwsp!

"Ta-da! 'Ask and thou shalt receive.' One Ruby of Life, direct from the turban of Yarko the Great."

The gold-and-blue armored wizard looked at his fifth-dimensional minion. "You had no trouble stealing it from him?"

Qwsp chuckled. "It's kind of hard to mutter counter-spells when you're choking on gallons of water being forced down your throat!"

"Good point. You have my eternal gratitude, little one."

"I'm the one who's eternally grateful. Without you, I'd still be trapped on the front of millions of cereal boxes. Paralyzed in the form of a carnation-pink, propeller-headed, idiotically grinning extra-terrestrial caricature!"

"Don't be so hard on yourself," replied Jessie Quick. "Some of my fondest memories are of eating you for breakfast while watching Saturday morning cartoons!"

Whatever the water elemental's retort would have been was cut off... by the Fortress suddenly beginning to violently shudder.

"It's now or never!" exclaimed the purple-eyed Atlantean. "Ruby of Life! Imbue this cosmically-powered treadmill with your magicks and let it take us to the body of water nearest your parent gem."

Whereupon, a crackling stream of orange-colored energy poured forth from the mystic jewel shard. A mixture of its own energy and the bio-cosmic electricity that was part of Garth Curry's Atlantean heritage.

"All right! Qwsp? Surround us with a hard-water bubble. Jessie? Start running for all your worth."

The both of them complied. Qwsp's water bubble turning pink in the red glow from the ruby. With the self-styled Dr. Chaos holding it in his left-hand gauntlet while holding on to Jessie's left hand with his equally gloved right. He tolerated the muscle-numbing vibrations as best he could, using the training he had received from his hermaphroditic predecessor; the late Erica Strauss. Yet, just as he had reached the limit of that supernaturally enhanced tolerance, it happened.

The pink bubble shot out of the hangar of the collapsing artificial glacier like a speeding bullet. Only to disappear a second later.

tbc

GLOSSARY

Sorceress of Zoom: the title character of a comic book series from Golden Age publisher Fox Features. She was the nearly omnipotent ruler of a floating city that could travel through both time and space. The city being appropriately known... as Zoom!

Dr. Chaos: an Earth One antithesis of Dr. Fate first seen in the pre-Crisis "Adventures of Superboy."

Garth Curry: the adopted son of Arthur Curry alias the Sea King (Earth 3 counterpart of Aquaman).

Yarko the Great: brainchild of Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit) whose 1939 look evidently inspired the creation of DC's Sargon the Sorcerer, two years later.

Qwsp: created by DC's Jack Miller and Nick Cardy, in 1962, as Aquaman's version of Mr. Mxyzptlk. Phonetic homonym to the animated cartoon character who served as the logo of a certain pre-sweetened cereal, from Quaker Oats, circa 1965