KombaiHound: Okay so Giovanni is slowly turning into Dr. Strange... for some reason I am perfectly fine with this. Liking what you're doing and hope to see more soon. It would be interesting to see how Rip Hunter interacts with Virgil in later scenes.
NeoNazo356: To be fair, many Sorcerers in the MCU are capable of calling upon the Mirror Dimension; it isn't so much Giovanni turning into a "Sorcerer Supreme", as that role is already taken by Dr. Fate/Nabu in the context of the DC Universe. Dr. Fate and Nabu are both Sorcerer Supreme in their respective universes, but in a shared universe… they'd handle things very differently. Hypothetically. *Wink*
In the context of Earth-16, it's how the Homo Magi have kept their fights and training largely a secret. As for Rip Hunter, you'll just have to wait and see.
Superpierce: oooh so now your putting infamous elements in the story awesome.
NeoNazo356: Yeah, inFamous was loads of fun to play, and since there was going to be a pre-existing theme of Time Travel in the story (during the planning stage), I figured now would be as decent a time as any to link multiple IP together in this story. Cole MacGrath/Kessler going back in time is exactly the sort of thing a Time Master would get involved in; of course, because inFamous and the DC Universe have different "temporal pliabilities", things won't quite play out like in Legends of Tomorrow.
LuckyShadowWolf: You know I feel like it should have been an obvious bit of foreshadowing when in the previous chapter Virgil and Zatanna spoke about wanting to see the Hoover Dam and yet I completely missed it. And now we have martians, mercs, mystics, and metas all running around... :( There's about to be some major property damage to the Hoover Dam in the coming chapters isn't there! Also I have to ask is this chapter drawing upon the Infamous game series and if so ho much of the Infamous lore is going to come into play? Well those are my questions and I cannot wait to see them answered in the chapters to come.
NeoNazo356: Yeah, it's drawing from inFamous, though the lore isn't a 1:1 transfer because in this iteration, or rather, in the context of "Earth-16H", "Conduit" is going to be another term for Meta-Human, albeit one that specifies a type of Meta-Ability where one can A) manipulate a certain type of matter, B) absorb a certain type of matter to recover energy/wounds, and C) transform into a certain type of matter.
Blaze1992: Virgil is gonna murder them right?
Also I was watching some movies and I got a thought, any chance of the story/MC being involved with disaster based movies like San Andreas?
NeoNazo356: He'll really, really, really want to once he starts having Blackwatch flashbacks, yes.
As for movies like San Andreas… I'll probably leave movies like that as "fiction-within-the-fiction" as part of the flavor of the Earth-16H universe. You know, so there's interesting movies for the characters to see in-universe.
Uberch01: NOO! Why you have to kill the Red and Blues!...or did you already place them in freelancer? I think I remember you naming Tucker, but it's been so long since then.
NeoNazo356: No, the guys that made the "you ever wonder why we're here" speech that got killed aren't the Blood Gulch Gang.
If anyone specific from the RvBverse, they'd be the Insurrectionist Soldiers from Season 10: Episode 8 "Fall From Heaven".
1740: all these DAM puns
NeoNazo356: Indeed.
*DAM IT ALL*
Hoover Dam
November 18, 12:05 PT
"Alright… Fuck… Shit… Damn it all, this Augustine woman's activated her trap card," Virgil cursed, a sense of dread he'd long-since forgotten starting to coil itself around his neck in a stranglehold.
"Please, you have to believe me, I didn't do it!"
"Oh, I believe you, and Zatanna believes you, but everyone else…? Yeah, no, I've seen how this plays out. You're now up shit-creek without a paddle in a boat with a screen door bottom."
"Ugh, gross," Zatanna retched.
"I'm talking about being lost in a forest of filth without a compass. Swimmin' in a river of sick with no floaties on. Driving blind, into the tunnel of-"
"Yes, I think we get the picture. The very, very disturbing picture," Zatanna retched. 'Wait a minute… Is he being gross so I'll get over him?' she wondered.
And if such was the case, she wondered whether she should think of the gesture as "sweet" because he was making it easier for her to get over him, or "really condescending" because maybe he thought she wasn't mature-enough to get over him on her own.
Thoughts for another day. She had bad-guy butt to kick.
"And the two of us? We're going to be labeled 'accomplices' the moment we're all seen together," Virgil prattled on. "Great. Just fucking great," he groaned running his fingers through his hair.
"Wait, what if we just contact the Justice League?" Zatanna asked hopefully.
"With what radios? They're probably jamming all comms, so even if we do get topside, our phones aren't going to do jack shit," Virgil said holding up his phone to reveal, surprise surprise, he didn't have any bars. "No. The way I see it, we're all on our own. Which means if these guys get the jump on us we're probably gonna die…"
"I won't let that happen," Jon spoke up as he pulled his hand away from the wall. "You helped me, so I'll help you. Besides, these D.U.P guys have it coming," he said banging a fist into his palm, sparks of electricity racing up his arm.
"You might wanna hold back on that. If they have electricity-sensing radars, too much of that'll basically plaster our location on a billboard with the words 'Over here!' written in bright orange neon," Virgil chided. "And that's if you haven't blown our cover already when you juiced-up just then," he said bringing a hand to his nose, the scent of ozone still in the air from when the Native American drew power from the overhead lines.
"So then what do we do?" Jon asked.
"I doubt these guys came prepared for magic, so let us take the lead on this until we need your help," Zatanna said before raising her wand over her head. "Emit ot yrt tuo eht wen kool!" the descendant of Nicholas Flamelintoned as purple smoke rose up around not only herself, but Virgil as well.
Jon, despite still being dumbstruck by the reality that true magic was actually a thing and not just something the clan elders said to be infuriatingly cryptic, had the decency to blush when Zatannna's silhouette became much more womanly, via the gray stockings she now wore.
Turning to Virgil, his embarrassment was replaced with confusion as the red-eyed brunette began patting himself down, his hands going to the showy white domino mask with white lenses that obscured his crimson orbs from sight.
Virgil, flaring out the black, red-lined cape he now wore, his hands then going to the top hat perched atop his head, blinked slowly before turning his attention back to the magical girl in his midst.
" . . . Sailor Moon . . . ? Really?" he asked incredulously with a sarcastic bob of his head as he gestured to the attire of Tuxedo Mask cladding him.
"Sh-Shut up!" Zatanna yelped back, a blush adorning her features.
"Look, I get that this is part of your theme, but the cape-and-top-hat look… It's not me," Virgil said as he felt around inside his shirt, wondering where his street clothes went. "Could you please use your magic to give me something else? Oh, and if it turns out my old clothes are gone, I'm going to be quite cross with you, because those were my favorite pants you possibly 'poofed' away."
"First off, I can give you back your other clothes later. Once we make it out of this alive. Second… What kind of clothes do you want?" she asked with crossed arms.
"Let's see…" he said fishing his phone out of his pocket. "How about something like… this?" he asked showing pictures of some of Real Fashions' gothic products that had caught his eye.
Just because all his second-hand clothes made him look like he lived under a bridge didn't mean he didn't want to look nice on occasion.
" . . . Alright, fine, I can work with this," she said giving the pictures a once-over. "I'll supply the magical power, but try to meet me in the middle on this one since these are the clothes that you want. Ahem… Brag mih ni sih s'traeh erised!" Zatanna intoned once more, causing another plume of purple smoke to spiral around Virgil, who felt like images and energy were being drawn from his mind as he "met her in the middle".
When the smoke parted, he was thusly clad in a black ankle-length tailcoat, a gray high-necked waistcoat, black creased pants, brown-black Winklepicker shoes, and a pair of dark-gray gloves. Feeling something resting upon his face, his eyes peering through a mask of some sort, gloved hands went up to the contours, discovering a domino mask of a very unusual shape; a butterfly with spread wings and long twin tails, the edges splotchy not unlike a Rorschach card.
"Well at least there's no top hat," Virgil stated as he gave himself a once-over. "No offense, but for delicate work like getting past a military encirclement, you want to make your silhouette as small as possible."
"Yeah, well… I guess you look pretty cool…" she said as-dismissively as she was able, eyeing the figure he cut in his new duds a bit more intensely than her father would've liked. " . . . What's with the butterfly?" she asked pointing at the mask.
"Dunno. Maybe it's one of those subconscious things. My 'heart's desire' even if I don't know it yet."
"Wait, you caught that?" she asked incredulously.
"I had to mull it over in my head a few times, but yeah, I got the gist of the spell," Virgil answered. "You said to meet you in the middle, so I guess all this… is just me," he said looking down at himself once again. "Though if the butterfly has some symbolic meaning, I sure as hell don't know what it is."
"Well… As much fun as it is talking about the new threads, I really think we should get back to the topic at hand. What do we do now that we're geared up?" Zatanna asked getting back to the task at hand.
"Well, first thing's first, we should get the civilians in the Meeting Hall to less of a killbox, because guys like the D.U.P, they will kill all witnesses to cover their tracks. When you give paramilitary the green light to do everything, that's usually their go-to option so no-one learns the shady shit they're up to," Virgil answered. "Do you or your dad have anything in their arsenal that can get the civies out of here? Like, really 'out of here'?"
"Not me, but my father might have something," Zatanna answered. Closing her eyes and bringing her left hand to her temple, with her right she reached out. Eyes snapping open after several moments, a worried look spread across her face as her eyes darted to and fro. "I… I can't feel my father anywhere around here," she said nervously.
"Wait, is he dead-"
"No, not dead, he's just… He's here… but at the same time he's somewhere else…" Zatanna trailed off.
" . . . Yeah, I'm a magical n00b so I have no idea what that means," Virgil said after a moment.
'I'm barely following any of this…' Jon thought. 'No… Wait… No. I'm not following any of it,' he amended, feeling like the third wheel.
"I think I know what my father did. It's called the Rorrim Noisnemid spell. It's how Homo Magi have kept Non-Magi from discovering us for the past few centuries once we went into hiding."
"Rorrim Noisnemid… Rorrim Noisnemid… Rorrim Noisnemid… Mirror Dimension?" Virgil asked aloud after rolling it around on his tongue. "So what, does it create a pocket dimension 'separate' from conventional space-time that overlaps a chosen area, like a private arena where two magic-users can throw their spells around without worrying about collateral?"
"Less of a pocket dimension and more of a parallel dimension," Zatanna clarified. "But… yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head there," she said, sounding surprised.
"Well, with a name like 'Mirror Dimension', there aren't many things it can do," Virgil shrugged. "So… what, there's a magic-user nearby he had to fight, so we're basically on our own?"
"Seems that way. The Rorrim Noisnemid is a very advanced spell, so, being a novice, there's no way for me to contact him or follow after him," Zatanna answered.
"Well… Crap. Fine. I've been in worse binds than this," Virgil admitted, causing Zatanna and Jon to look at him incredulously. "Don't ask," he said right as they were about to voice a question. "Anyway, Jon, I'm assuming you escaped into the Hoover Dam because all the concrete would make it harder for them to track you by your collar."
"Yes. How'd you know?"
"Just a guess," Virgil said gathering up the chunks. "It's only a matter of time until they realize you're loose, so maybe we should do something about this. Make them think they still have you on some kind of a leash. Lull 'em into a false sense of security."
"Okay, but how?"
"Ahem," Zatanna spoke up. "I believe I may have a solution," she stated, a mischievous grin pulling at her features. "Oh! Wait!"
"What?"
"What should I call you? You know. Your hero alias."
"I don't plan on making a career out of this. At the most, I only want this shit to be recreational."
"I know, but…" she trailed off, a look of disappointment ghosting across her features. "I at least want to know what to call you other than your real name. That ship's kinda sailed for me, what with how-famous my dad is as a hero and illusionist, but since you want to do this sort of thing 'recreationally', I figured you'd want to take on a new identity to go with the new threads."
"Well… Seeing as how all this started in Vegas… How about Wildcard?" Virgil groused as he began to fish through his pockets.
"Wildcard… I like it," she said with a smile. "You definitely changed the game with the Royal Flush Gang."
"Loads better than Tuxedo Mask."
"You're never going to let that go, are you?" Zatanna pouted.
"Hey, someday we're all going to laugh about this-Yes! I thought I still had this on me!" he whooped, finding what he was looking for.
"Your Glamour Charm?" Zatanna asked confusedly.
"Yep. Figure I should really sell the whole 'superhero' spiel," Virgil hummed aloud.
His stomach twisted itself into knots when he said that, but he'd play nice for the girl's benefit. No need to tell her about the love lost for those let down by Superheroes.
Slipping the Glamour around his neck and dropping it into his shirt so no-one would know he was using a Glamour, his hair bled to bleached white and his skin paled, creating a stark contrast between it and his clothes.
"So, what was this idea you had?" Jon asked, still getting used to magic as he blinked his eyes at Virgil's snow-white hair and paled skin. "Also, why are your eyes still red?"
"Ugh, don't ask," Virgil groaned with a lidded look.
*DAM IT ALL*
"The tracker says he's down this way," one of the Pawns said looking down at his tracker.
"How the hell d'you know that? Tracker's complete shit in this concrete box. Hell, five minutes ago it went completely dead," another said pointing to the radar-like screen, multiple weaker blips appearing on-screen.
"Look, just because I can't get an exact location on the kid or how far away he is, doesn't mean I still can't find out height or direction," the first bit back. "Just keep your guard up. There's bonus pay if we can bring him back in alive."
"The kid's got an Inhibitor Collar around his neck. What's he going to do? Punch us?" the second asked incredulously.
"For the record, a punch to the right spot can still hurt."
The two whirling around, the sound of rustling cloth filled their ears as a figure dropped down from the ceiling off the overhead pipes. A cry of- "Ekam esoht owt pils!" -sounding from around the corner, the next moment the black-clad white-haired figure grabbed them by their ankles and tossed them ass over elbows as though they weighed nothing.
Though clad in helmets, their heads still cracked against the concrete on their landing, stars exploding before their eyes. Before they could process what was going on, their throats closed up as they received a one-two punch to their unarmored throats, the black-clad figure who'd "flipped the table" on them curb-stomping them in the nards a moment later. The two curling in on themselves with a squeal, a white gloved hand waved before each of their visors, a call of- "Peels!" -acting as their farewell from the waking world.
'They're not the same. They're not the same. They're not the same,' Virgil chanted to himself like a mantra as he stripped them of their weapons and ammo, and smashed their radios.
Focusing on the "roadside yellow" of their armor whenever his eyes drifted their way was the only thing stopping him from murdering them like Blackwatch whenever the opportunity presented itself in the Red Zone.
Well, that and the two impressionable teenagers at his side who weren't quite-ready for a front-row seat to his live-action rendition of "Splatterhouse".
"So… How exactly did you fix the collar?" Jon asked as he looked at the implement dangling from Zatanna's hip, looking like it'd just come off the showroom floor.
"Magic~" the magical girl purred, giving her wand a little wave with a trail of sparkling dust for effect.
"As an, and I say this with all the irony in my being," Virgil felt the need to reiterate, "'magic system'," he said making air quotes, "actual magic seems really… free?" he asked grousing for the right word.
"It might be magic, but Magic still has its own rules and limitations," Zatanna answered, incanting- "Sehtolc emoceb sgnidinb." -before returning to the conversation at hand. "Like I was saying," she said coughing into her hand. "To use a spell, you need to know it inside and out, or have the necessary catalysts already in place. Plus, all Magic requires energy which usually comes from within. Of course, that's only part of the equation. It isn't enough to know the words; Magic, real magic, requires training, practice, and… faith," she said as the two Pawns' clothes turned into binding strips; like a poor man's mummy. "Magic can't be used to make the impossible happen at will. Usually," she amended.
"Well, the last one should be easy since 'seeing is believing'," Virgil shrugged. "And if you just treat magic like its own form of science since there are limitations and most-importantly rules, I don't see how anyone from a magical family can't be good at magic, even if they grow up thinking magic's fake at the start."
"Not everyone is so open-minded about magic and science in the same sentence that they can have your mindset," the girl returned. "Which reminds me, have you been practicing your magic?"
"Well, let me think. The only spell I know is a fire spell no stronger than a lighter, and I didn't want to set off the fire alarm in the hotel, so… No. No I haven't been practicing it," Virgil returned sarcastically.
"Well… Fine. I've got enough magic in me for the two of us," Zatanna sighed.
"Can you at least tell me how to use magic for combat?" Virgil asked, an eye glancing down at the automatic weapons at his feet. "Going full-frontal, full-auto isn't exactly what I'd call subtle."
"Well… If you have to use magic today, just remember to believe in the magic, and have a very strong picture, an impression of what you know will happen," Zatanna explained as-best she could. "Also, remember that Magic drains your mental strength, and too much of it at once can leave you braindead."
"Clear picture, mental stamina, don't un-alive myself, got it," Virgil nodded, wondering whether he really was cut out for magic. *Cha-chock* "Just in case," he responded to the incredulous look he got for cocking back the slide on one of the rifles.
*DAM IT ALL*
As Giovanni Zatara and Rip Hunter stood across from the "time fugitive", the Leaguer took the time to appraise his opponent, and the man was… less… than impressive.
Clad in nothing more than a weathered red wool cap, a gray trench coat caked in dirt and blood, threadbare blue jeans sopped with dried mud at the ankles, and mismatched shoes and socks, the man looked more like a hobo than any sort of dangerous "fugitive".
However, Giovanni rescinded that sentiment the moment their eyes met. Something in the man's eyes… They were both alive and dead.
Alive because tiny arcs of neon blue electricity danced around his irises, and dead because he had the gaze of a man who'd lost everything.
Whatever that "everything" was, he didn't know, but from this man he got the same blood-chilling feeling he got from the likes of John Constantine.
Not quite evil, not quite good, and most-assuredly guaranteed to have seen things that would've broken most other men.
This man… He was a man on a mission, Giovanni knew that much, and seeing the gaze of a man with nothing left to lose…
He wondered if he was up to the challenge of facing such a foe.
"Be on your guard. Kessler is an extremely-powerful Electrokinetic, toeing the line between Alpha and Omega-Level," Rip warned as he drew a futuristic pistol from his side holster. "As people are won't to say in your time period, 'Black Lightning ain't got nothin' on this guy'," he said in a way that sounded incredibly anachronistic from a man in futuristic armor.
"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," Giovanni returned, his eyes snapping to "Kessler" when he saw movement.
However, instead of an opening salvo like he'd expected, the man instead looked down at an old photograph he'd drawn from his pocket, the back of the paper yellowed, the edges lined with tiny cuts and rips, and its contents… though he couldn't see from his vantage point, filled the man with the same X-Factor that made Steve Rogers into one of the greatest heroes of all time.
Hope.
"You two…" the man said in a dry, gravelly voice like one who hadn't had a decent drink of water in years. "Stay. Out. Of my way," he said firmly as he shook his arms loose, arcs of electricity dancing off his fingertips.
A moment later and the air around them lit up like the surface of the sun as countless arcs of electricity were drawn from out of the Dam and into Kessler's body.
Mirror Dimension or no, they were still standing atop the Hoover Dam.
"He's recharging! Stop him!" Rip shouted as he fired at Kessler with his laser pistol.
"Yes! I noticed!" Giovanni said with a roll of his eyes as he raised his wand. "Sraeps fo enots!"
Laser blasts and spears of stone sailing toward the recharging Time Fugitive at breakneck speeds, to Kessler, whose every fiber was filled to the brim with pure energy, they may as well have been standing still. Kessler, who walked languidly away from the projectiles, looked to everyone else like he'd simply teleported.
"Dammit! He's too fast!" Rip cursed. Kessler, dodging several more attacks, prompted Rip to console his wrist-computer. "Giddeon! How long until he's fully charged?" he shouted between laser shots as Kessler continued to suck the Dam's reserves dry.
"Fifty seconds."
"Okay, we still have time-"
"Zero seconds."
"WHAAAT?!" the man shrieked at the sudden retraction.
"Parallel Dimensional Warping interfering with ship-bound sensors."
"Well that's just bloody great," Rip cursed as Kessler stopped juicing, the arcs of electricity practically pouring out of his eyes as the air stunk of ozone. Kessler, raising his hands above his head, made the skies darken with his will alone, moisture condensing into clouds before a massive deluge of lightning bolts rained down across the Dam, causing untold amounts of damage to the national landmark. "You just had to trap us in here, didn't you?" Rip asked angrily as he looked at the utterly ruined concrete landscape around them.
"I refuse to let that thing near my daughter!" Giovanni raged, the monstrous surge of electricity he'd witnessed nearly comparable to Captain Marvel, who drew power from Zeus, the literal god of lightning.
"Believe me…" Kessler said lowly right-behind the now-terrified sorcerer, sweat trickling down his brow. "There are much worse things out there that could harm your child."
The next moment Giovanni smelled ozone…
And then all was darkness.
*DAM IT ALL*
*BOOM!*
*Rumblerumblerumble*
"Well… That can't be good," Virgil muttered as the entire dam shook around them.
"What do you think's happening topside?" Zatanna asked.
"Don't know, but whatever it is, it can't be good," Jon hummed, the trio tiptoeing through the cavernous hallways of the Hoover Dam, dispatching Pawns as-quickly as they could, and as-quietly.
"So… What have we learned?" Virgil asked, a bit of levity in his tone.
"*Sigh* . . . Less is more."
"And why is less 'more'?"
"Because it's better to work smarter, not harder."
"Very good," Virgil hummed, patting her atop the head.
"You two… have a rather strange relationship," Jon noted.
"Well, I kinda got friendzoned recently, so… yeah," Zatanna sighed.
"Trust me, you'll get over it. I'm damaged goods."
"You don't have a very high opinion of yourself, do you?"
"I'm just saying, there are better guys for you out there than me. That and-"
"You're already seeing someone, I know. Don't worry, I'm a big girl, I'll get over you…"
"Trust me, it's for the best. And someday, when you meet that one guy you want to spend the rest of your life with, you'll forget aaaaall about me."
"You really aren't like what dad says boys your age are like, are you?"
"I'll just assume there was no end to the horror stories your father told you about boys."
"You could say that."
"You know, you're being pretty nonchalant about this," Jon hummed.
"Don't worry, I cast a Warning Charm on this bell, so if any of the D.U.P get close too us, it'll-"
*Tingle*Tingle-Tingle-Tingle*
"Damn magic's handy," Virgil hummed as the small silver sleigh bell on a red lanyard chimed. Perking up his ears to the corridor on the right, Virgil counted off with his fingers before saying- "Sounds like another three," he said as he counted the footsteps.
That and the sound of firearms bouncing against armor.
"Remember, just like we planned," Virgil said as he leapt up and climbed onto the overhead pipes, vanishing from sight.
*DAM IT ALL*
Zatanna, having grown up on her father's stories of hero work, as well as stories of the League's exploits, had gotten the idea into her head that in order to be a good hero, she had to use big flashy spells that would make her presence unmistakable. However, Virgil's, or rather, Wildcard's insistence on "less is more", and then that method working out extremely well, caused all previous misconceptions of what kind of hero she wanted to be to be put into question.
If it were just her, she'd use complicated strings of spells like causing water pipes to burst, turning the water into mist, and then freezing it, or turning the concrete floors into liquid and then re-hardening it, or having the pipes and wires rip themselves from the walls and form bindings.
However, Virgil acting as her romanticized idea's foil, insisted she continue to make the guards slip, and then sleep, using simple single-word spells, and only going through the effort of binding them once they were wholly unconscious.
With this kind of pragmatic approach, and how he'd been relatively composed when rescuing her from the Royal Flush Gang, the girl had to wonder…
Just what kind of life had Virgil lived before Magic became a part of it?
"And you're sure you can't just send all of these guys to jail cells?" Jon asked.
"No, Jon, I can't. Magic like that's too-powerful for someone like me," Zatanna answered, having already explained that magic had limitations.
"Shush. We're on the same floor as the meeting center. Keep it down," Virgil shushed as he sidled along the wall of the hallway they were in. Whipping his phone out of his pocket and angling the camera around the corner, Virgil saw two more D.U.P standing in the hall, one clearly a commander. Zooming in with the camera, as he retracted his hand, his finger ghosted over the Record button as the two began to speak.
"Sir, Pawns have been blinking out in the dam like dropping flies, we have super-mercenaries fighting Commander Augustine on the dam, there's a Justice League member unaccounted for, and we still don't have that Indian super-freak in custody yet. What should we do with the civilians?" the Pawn with the tablet asked, Virgil cursing himself for not realizing that the D.U.P would all be wired.
"Same thing we always do; kill the civilians and tell the boys up in Washington it was the bio-terrorist. We get the flamethrowers down here and we can pass it off as 'a new kind of electric burn'; bureaucrats sure as hell won't know the difference," the second-in-command returned, the phone casing creaking as Virgil's grip tightened.
"But… isn't that a little extreme?"
"Oh, don't worry about it. The bulk of them aren't white, so DC won't care about the body count. They never do," the second-in-command chuckled. "Now c'mon. We've let the dead meat stew for long enough. Let's see if we can't get any of them to talk."
"Mother… fucker…!" Virgil swore as he thrust his phone into Zatanna's chest, not trusting himself not to smash it.
"Okay. That sounded… very dark," Zatanna admitted, a little worrisomely as she watched Virgil's face turn bright-red with rage. "Hey, Vir-Wildcard. You okay?"
"I'm gonna kill him. I'm going to completely, kill him."
"Wildcard, no, that isn't what heroes do," the magical girl chided.
"Last time I checked, I'm no hero," Virgil spat. "I… am a mercenary."
"Fine. Them I'm paying you not to kill anyone," she said thrusting a ten dollar bill into his chest, the whitette looking down at the bill before sighing.
"Right… Right. No killing. Got it," Virgil sighed, pocketing the bill if-only to show he was good for his word.
'sides. M'gann was still in there, and he didn't want one of her first sights on Earth to be Humans slaughtering one another. Though that just begged the question…
If M'gann's uncle had ties to the Justice League and was a telepathic martian shapeshifter, what the hell was he doing?
After all, there weren't too many telepathic shape-shifting aliens he could be.
*DAM IT ALL*
'Alright… Clearly, the situation has escalated,' J'onn thought as the dam overhead rumbled once more, civilians cowering as they accredited it to either a tremor, or more-believably, a "bio-terrorist".
Of course, that sentiment had more to do with what he'd "overheard" when the second-in-command and his assistant had stepped out into the hallway, out of conventional earshot.
'M'gann and I have been seen together by multiple security cameras, and I'm being filmed right now, but I can't let these people be hurt just to preserve my secret identity,' J'onn thought to himself as the second-in-command returned to the room.
Martian Manhunter, readying himself to transform into his true form and fight back as the man belted out another round of threats, had his eyes snapped to the door as it was kicked in with a loud *BANG*. A cry of- "Fire in the hole!" -sounding as a trio of cylindrical objects were tossed into the room, the three objects bounced across the ground before coming to a stop at the D.U.P operatives' feet.
*FWASH*
"Ow! What the hell was that!? I can't see anything!" one of the D.U.P cried.
"I think it was a flashbang, I can't see," another cried.
"Pils! Peels!"
"WHAT?"
"Well it's a good name, because it definitely went flash, and bang."
"Pils! Peels!"
"WHAT?"
"Oh my god, are we under attacks? Is it the bio-terrorist?"
"I don't know, I can't see anything either. My mother always said I'd go blind, but for a totally different reasOOON!" the man cried as his feet suddenly slid out from under him.
The civilians, some of which were also hit by the flashbang, saw a blurry figure clad in black shoot into the room and throat-punched the remaining D.U.P that were still standing, knocking them to the floor. Following behind him was a girl dressed like a stage magician, spouting gibberish and firing ropes from her wand which wrapped around the black-armored men like serpents. Last was a Native American boy in a hoodie, delivering electrified palm strikes to the soldiers, eliciting pained cries before they fell over. One managed to tag the boy with a taser, but the Native American boy simply grabbed the line before returning the charge ten-fold.
"Hey! That's him! It's the bio-terrorist!" one guy shouted as he pointed at Jon, the civilians around him entering a panicked state as they recovered from the flashbang.
"Hey, contrary to popular belief, this kid is not the bad guy," the butterfly-masked individual spoke up. "Also, these D.U.Piss-lickers were going to kill you all anyway."
"Oh yeah? What proof do you have of that?"
One playback of the recording later, several faces losing their color, was enough to invert popular opinion.
"It… It could be fake…"
"Yeah, because I totally have that kind of time," the whitette replied with a roll of his eyes.
"But… if he isn't the bad guy… what do we do now?" one woman asked, her entire worldview shattered.
*BOOM!*
*Rumblerumblerumble*
"You want my honest opinion?" the butterfly-masked teen questioned. "Go to the bottom floor of the dam and try your luck in the river. Of course, if these guys have men stationed down there…"
"So we're trapped?" an old man asked worriedly.
"Not quite. If you can wait ten minutes, Wildcard and I should be able to disable their comm jammers. Once we do that, I want all of you to call 911, the state troopers, the national guard. Anyone that would make it difficult for the D.U.P to kill you all at their leisure," Zatanna suggested.
"Wildcard? Never heard of him," one teen stated.
"He's new," Zatanna replied with a shrug.
"Come to think of it, who are you?" another asked.
"Look, do you want to go with this plan, or do you want to try your luck down at the river?" Zatanna asked.
"We'll… wait until our phones work," one man answered.
"Good, because the three of us won't be coming back," Wildcard said as he stripped the downed D.U.P of their weapons and ammo. Proceeding to destroy their radios, Zatanna stopped him as he held the last one in his hands.
"Wait a minute… I think I have an idea," Zatanna spoke up, a gleam in her eye.
*DAM IT ALL*
Vice-Commander Blake, second-in-command only to Brook Augustine, felt like he'd pissed on an electric rail, nerves alight with fire and muscle completely numbed.
Blinking his eyes blearily, the man found himself tied quite bodily to a chair, the rest of the D.U.P alongside him trussed up like deer, nearly the entirety of their weapons and armor stripped away.
Fighting against his bonds, the unmistakable feeling of a gun muzzle to the back of his head sent the hairs on his body standing erect, a cold sweat rolling down his temple.
"Good, you're awake," the man heard a voice say. Moving to look over his shoulder, the pressing of the gun muzzle to his head had him staring straight ahead. "Ah, you can recognize a pattern. That'll make what comes next a lot easier."
"Listen up, dirtball," a familiar Native American teen stated as he walked out in front of him. "You're going to tell your man to turn off the comm jammers, or else," he said as he held out a radio with one hand, fingers sparking on the other.
"Hey, what're you people doing?! Kill this son of a bitch!" Blake roared at the crowd gathered together on the other side of the room, keeping watch over the D.U.P, some with improvised weapons, others with the D.U.P's own guns.
"Yeah, like we'll help you after what you said about us," a Mexican man stated.
"Next time you wanna monologue, don't do it in front of a camera phone," a black teenager added.
"What are you talking about?" Blake demanded. "In case you've all forgotten, I'm the good guy!"
"Sir, Pawns have been blinking out in the dam like dropping flies, we have super-mercenaries fighting Commander Augustine on the dam, there's a Justice League member unaccounted for, and we still don't have that Indian super-freak in custody yet. What should we do with the civilians?" a familiar voice sounded from behind him.
"Same thing we always do; kill the civilians and tell the boys up in Washington it was the bio-terrorist. We get the flamethrowers down here and we can pass it off as 'a new kind of electric burn'; bureaucrats sure as hell won't know the difference," his own voice stated.
"But… isn't that a little extreme?"
"Oh, don't worry about it. The bulk of them aren't white, so DC won't care about the body count. They never do. Now c'mon. We've let the dead meat stew for long enough. Let's see if we can't get any of them to talk."
"Open mouth. Insert foot," the condescending teen holding him at gunpoint chuckled. "Now, about those comm jammers…"
"You'll never make me talk, mutant filth," the second-in-command sneered.
"Look. I'm asking you nicely, and I won't ask you again. Tell your men to turn off the comm jammer, or else."
"Or else what? You'll kill me?" Blake sneered, pressing the back of his head to the gun muzzle. "Come on, do it, mutant bitch. I dare ya!" he said with a malicious grin on his face.
"Fine. You leave me with no choice," the voice from behind him said, the muzzle leaving the back of his head. "Z. He's all yours."
A moment later and a new figure stepped into his line of sight; a girl in her early teens dressed like a stage magician.
"And what're you going to do, sweet cheeks? Pull a rabbit out of your hat?" the man taunted.
"Redro ruoy nem ot nrut ffo eht noitacinummoc sremmaj!" the magical girl ordered at the end of her patience, Jon clicking the radio on a moment later.
"Men, this is vice-commander Blake. Turn off all communications jammers immediately," Blake parroted out as he straightened in his bindings.
"Um… Sir?" the voice on the other end asked confusedly.
"Redro ruoy nem ot nrut ffo eht noitacinummoc sremmaj!" Zatanna repeated, in a firmer tone as she narrowed her gaze.
"That's an order, private. Turn the comms jammer off," Blake repeated, his lips moving on their own. "This order is Priority Alpha, mission-critical. If you don't, I'll just find someone who can."
"Very well… Communication jammers are disabled… now," the voice on the other end of the line said, sounding resigned.
"Llet mih eh did a doog boj dna ot tiawa rehtruf snoitcurtsni," Zatanna ordered.
"Excellent work. Stand by for further instructions," Blake parroted out, Jon taking his finger off the radio a moment later, Blake's eyes blinking as they came back into focus. "What… What'd you do to me, you freak-"
"Hey!" the voice from before said, the owner stepping around from behind, pistol raised before Blake's widening eyes. *CRACK* "That!" *CRACK* "Is not!" *CRACK*"How you talk!" *CRACK* "To!" *CRACK* "A lady!" the teen spat, unironically pistol whipping the man with his own firearm, causing the weaker-willed of the civilians to cringe back in fright.
He was about to crack the guy a sixth time, just to be safe and because Blake was a convenient Blackwatch stand-in, but a body dropping next to him warranted a more-immediate response.
"Z!" he cried as the girl hit the ground, panting and wheezing.
"I'm alright, I'm… alright," the girl panted. "Just… Making someone do something they don't want to… takes a lot out of you…" she said as he helped her into a sitting position. "You… You didn't have to do that…" she said glancing at the rivulets of blood dribbling down Blake's ruined features.
"Don't worry, he'll live," Virgil waved off. "And the next time he looks in a mirror, he'll be reminded that you do not talk that way to a lady."
He might've been about as-educated in the field of medicine as Dr. Zed, but even he could tell when someone would need a bit of reconstructive surgery.
" . . . Well? Are you waiting for a written invitation or what?" Jon asked, everyone's shoulders hitching before they all went for their phones, flooding the lines with as many calls for help as they could. "Zatanna, are you still good to fight?"
"Yeah… I'm fine… Just a little winded…" the magical girl panted. "I've been practicing Magic since I was five, so I still have a few more spells left in the tank."
"Don't worry. We'll take the long way around. Give you plenty of time to catch your breath," Virgil said throwing her arm over his shoulders and grabbing her around the waist.
A dusting of concrete peppering them, the trio looked up to see a crack beginning to run across the ceiling.
"We… should probably double-time it," Jon hummed, Virgil and Zatanna nodding their heads as they shot out of the room as fast as the prior could carry the latter.
*DAM IT ALL*
A D.U.P's head popping like a ripe cumquat, the Pawns' fire concentrated onto a concrete barrier at the far side of the dam as the east advanced on the west.
"Changing cover!" Mordecai shouted as he rolled between cover, that which he'd used previously being breached under a hail of gunfire. "Roland, you have a clean shot?"
"No good. That red-head keeps changing the speed of her orbiting shields, so I can't get the timing down," Roland answered from behind the scope of his rifle.
Out in the center of the dam was the D.U.P's commander, standing atop a floating islet of concrete, multiple thicker slabs of material orbiting around her. Lilith was zipping about with both meta-ability and parkour, but every time she tried to bridge the gap between herself and Augustine, the woman would fire concrete shards at the former Firehawk, forcing her to retreat. It was only the Siren's maintained pressure on her that kept the morally-ambiguous red-head rooted to the center of the dam as she protected herself from close and long range. And if that wasn't enough, the ground had become jagged and uneven, the road pockmarked with spiked pits, making a ground approach under a hail of bullets with no cover suicide.
"Lilith's keeping the pressure on, so you and Brick can take out the small fry. As soon as 'Concrete Woman' runs out of toy soldiers to throw at us, the fight will get a lot easier," Roland continued, waiting for the one moment that'd turn the tide.
"Easier said than done," Brick said as he chucked slabs of concrete at the more heavily-armored of the D.U.P as they approached. "These guys in the armor just keep getting back up."
"They must be on some kind of neo-steroid," Roland said as he shot at a few of them, some forced into cover while others advanced. "This isn't looking good. Think we bit off more than we could chew," he admitted a bit sadly. Sure, he had enough ammo and guns to wipe out a small village, but split between two people against over a dozen with bullet-resistant armor and none of their own, and it was clear the odds were not in their favor.
"Well, hey, at least we had a good run," Mordecai said as he fished around for a bottle of booze, only to find none. "Crap. Who knew I'd be punching my ticket sober," he wilted. "So… You ready to call it in? This might be our Alamo, but that doesn't mean we gotta go out without a fight," he said pulping another three heads.
" . . . I guess we've got no choice. Lilith!" he shouted out to the center of the dam. "We're falling back to the evac point!"
Which in actuality was code for- "You're going to grab Virgil and get the fuck out of here while the rest of us hold them off."
It wasn't the perfect plan, far from it, but if any of them had to survive this, at the very least, Virgil had to be included in that number.
They kinda owed him, what with using him as bait for the Ghost Car, having him be their getaway driver when they crashed a wake, and then putting him in a position where he had to skip town thereafter.
Hell, the kid wasn't even seventeen yet, and he had his whole life ahead of him. It'd just leave a bad taste in their mouths if the kid died like so many child soldiers in third-world countries on their account.
'Damn it, has it really come to that?' Lilith thought as she parkoured over Augustine's orbiting rock shield. Death was nothing new in the super-mercenary business, but she'd honestly been hoping they could all actually retire one day. 'Well… At least that's one thing off the bucket list,' she thought fondly, looking down at the golden band and diamond on her finger.
"I won't let you escape!" Augustine shouted, mustering together all her willpower.
"Etaerc a tuopsretaw ot hsaw yawa ym seimene!" a voice suddenly commanded from the east side of the dam, carrying through the air in a very supernatural way as a massive waterspout shot up from the northern part of the Colorado before sweeping away all the D.U.P opposition on the east side of the bridge.
Augustine's eyes whipping around, the Fortune Hunters doing the same, were witness to three teenagers pouring out of one of the stairwells from the dam's interior, a small boy in a hoodie raising up his hands before bringing them down, alighting the east side of the dam with arcs of lightning that carried into every soaked and saturated body, backs arching and limbs straightening as the current ran through them before they dropped.
"YOU!" Augustine shouted as her eyes narrowed at Jon, her blood boiling the moment she noticed the lack of Inhibitor Collar around his neck.
"Well… Looks like we get to hold onto our tickets a little while longer after all," Mordecai chuckled.
"ENOUGH! I'VE INDULGED YOUR FUTILE RESISTANCE AS LONG AS I'VE BEEN ABLE TO STOMACH!" Augustine roared, throwing up a hand and raising a massive wall that split the top of the Hoover Dam down the middle, before turning the full brunt of her attention on the Fortune Hunters. Taking hold of the concrete slab Lilith was holding onto, the government agent cast it, and its passenger, down to the ground, concrete exploding as Lilith's back hit the ground, the woman stunned from the blow. Raising up both arms, the woman then began to gather together a massive slab of concrete, ripping the forward half of the dam to shreds as she gathered materials overhead before dropping it on Lilith. "DIE!"
"Don't worry! I've GOT you!" Brick shouted as he swooped in, bearing the weight like Atlas holding up the world's sky.
"That's cute, but what're you going to do about the second one?"
"What?" Brick asked dumbly as another shadow loomed overhead, darker and deeper than the one before. Hazarding a look upward, even around the edge of the fused concrete slab he was holding aloft, he was able to see a second, larger slab levitating overhead, moments before the other shoe dropped and his knees began to buckle.
"Oh crap!" Mordecai yelped.
"Shit!" Roland swore as he raised his gun and fired at Augustine, the woman throwing up a slab in front of herself before splitting the west half of the dam with another wall, separating Brick and Lilith from any and all help.
"Rrrrrgh… Don't… worry… Lil'…" Brick grunted as the concrete slabs atop him bore down with the weight of an industrial press. "I've… got… YOUUUU!"
Augustine, pressing down on the two interlopers with all her mental effort, grew shocked as the wall of muscle's skin began to glow a fluorescent red and the mountainous slab of concrete began to rise. Pressing down with even more effort, the inverted mountain of concrete continued to rise, much to her amazement and horrow.
"How…? How are you doing this…?!"
"Pushups… situps… and plenty of juice!" Brick growled as he rose to his full height before chucking the inverted mountain of concrete over the side of the dam, the D.U.P on the south end of the Colorodo losing their collective shit as the meteoric slab descended upon them.
Suffice it to say, Augustine was utterly flabbergasted by the display.
A moment later and the two walls she'd erected were blown out, likely with explosives from the supply vans on each side of the dam, reinforcements pouring in. To make matters even worse, Augustine could see civilians fleeing toward the west, no one left to bar their escape.
"And would you look at that, the cavalry's arrived," Mordecai hummed as he looked through his scope, a cloud of dust in the distance heralded by police and state troopers pouring in not only from the west, but the east as well.
'Damn it…!' Augustine swore as her eyes snapped over to every part of the dam. Between the waterspout capsizing the boat to the north, the miniature mountain of concrete flattening the boat to the south, the D.U.P west being killed and the D.U.P to the east being electrocuted into unconsciousness, the woman now had enemies on all sides with no sign of backup in sight. 'How could this get any worse?!'
"Hey look! It's Superman!" Zatanna cried as she pointed into the distance, everyone's eyes following her finger to see the Man of Steel hovering out away from the dam, his cape fluttering in the wind.
"Well… You're majorly fucked," Virgil chuckled.
Of course, it was less that he was happy to see Superman and more-relieved he didn't have to go up against a woman who could use The Force on concrete; of which he was currently standing on top of! And last he checked, he wasn't as absurdly-strong as Brick, or had the ability to teleport like Lilith.
So yeah… Let the guy who can tank a flaming semi-truck to the face fight the crazy concrete lady.
"Everyone, fall back! Let's leave this to the big guns!" Roland said as he pulled Lilith into a fireman's carry and headed for the west side of the dam, everyone following suit while Superman closed in on Augustine.
"I wish we could play the Superman theme on the loudspeakers, 'cause this is gonna be epic," Brick chuckled as Superman floated across from Augustine.
"What, like from that live-action TV drama with Gregory Reed?" Mordecai asked quizically.
"Yeah, that guy," Brick nodded.
"Less yapping, more running!" Virgil said as he threw Zatanna over his shoulder and bolted as fast as his legs could carry him, Jon bolting right after him.
*It's okay if you decide to cue up the Superman Theme. I won't tell~
"So…" Augustine hummed nervously, having become intimately-familiar with Superman's known as well as speculated powerset over the years. "I don't suppose I could just convince you to turn around and let me do my job, could I?"
"After what I've heard, I'm afraid not."
"And just how much did you hear?"
" . . . Enough," Superman said as he crossed his arms.
"I see…" Augustine answered.
A moment later and she exploded into action.
The dam trembling and threatening to crumble down, Augustine drew a massive amount of concrete around herself like a black hole. Part of the concrete glowing to form two yellow eyes, a reptilian head extended outward from the core, two mantis-like arms forming at the front, and two digitigrade legs forming at the back, the body taking a hunchbacked shape. The giant concrete monstrosity standing a bit awkwardly over what remained of the dam, barely holding itself together, the concrete creature let out a roar like rocks grinding together.
One of the mantis-like arms took a swing at Superman, only for the Man of Steel to float above it. A moment later and, despite not putting its first foreleg back on the ground, Augustine's golem's second leg swung out to strike Kal-El, the Man of Steel catching it with one hand before shattering it with a super-powered punch, chips and chunks of concrete flying in all directions. The first concrete arm whipping up at an impossible speed before coming back down, Superman was caught in the shoulder and buried into the remains of the dam.
Augustine, slamming her sole bladed arm into the spot she'd buried Superman multiple times, was caught unawares when the Man of Steel erupted from the space beneath her golem, the Kryptonian shooting upward and bisecting it at the waist, causing the golem to collapse in on itself. However, when Superman looked down at his defeated foe, the golem suddenly reconstituted itself into a serpentine shape, its glowing eyes bolting straight at him and clipping him as he dodged, the concrete serpent coiling around itself and buffeting Superman from all sides before slamming him once again into the ground.
At improbable speed, Augustine's golem reformed, this time in a more humanoid shape, and began raining blows upon the Man of Steel. Cracks spreading across the dam as it rumbled, large clouds of dust and rebar kicked up, the dam threatening to collapse, Augustine drawing both arms up for an axe handle resulting in a deafening *BOOM*
However… no cloud of dust billowed upward, and the golem's arms rumbled as Superman began to rise, first at the waist, then at the knee, before rising to full height.
His eyes panning downward, the Man of Steel's eyes glowed crimson before twin lances of super-heated fire-like energy shot out, digging into the golem's left knee and superheating it. The composite material heating to a baleful red, bubbling in some places. Following an inhale, a powerful typhoon of wind spilled out of Superman's lips, causing the knee to freeze over, the sudden shift between red-hot to ice-cold causing the material to crumble completely, giving the Man of Steel all the more leverage to chuck the one-legged golem into the air.
Augustine's golem hitting the ground with a deafening thud, a frustrated yell echoed from within the concrete golem, its eyes glowing brightly and the dam trembling, bits and pieces of debris rising into the air as though Gravity decided to take the day off. Before its leg could reform, Superman was on it like Spandex on Superheroes, a devastating uppercut to the chest splitting it open and sending a dust-covered Augustine sailing through the air like she'd been on the business end of a Heart Circumcision.
The red-head tumbling across the ruined dam, the woman bounced thrice-over before coming to a stop, Superman floating over to her and standing above her, the sun at his back.
"So, anything you want to say before I take you to jail?" Superman asked.
"You know…" Augustine coughed, bones creaking and aching. "Normally I'm not into the witty one-liners, but I think I can indulge such a juvenile tendency just this once," the woman chuckled as she drew a fist-sized box from her belt before holding it up. "You're looking a little green around the gills," she said as the box opened, a chunk of radioactive ore dying the surrounding air a bright green.
"Rrgh! Kryptonite…!" Superman cursed as the light washed over him, dropping him to his knees.
"So… This is how the Man of Steel dies…" Augustine mused as she worked herself into a standing position. "You know, I've carried this around for years, waiting for just the right moment to use it, but now that it's here, I almost feel a little… let down," she mused as she stood over Superman, who was now laid out on his back. "Almost," she smirked as the alien writhed at her feet. "Any last requests?"
"Please… I have to know…" Superman gasped. "Did you really never have to resort to lethal force… in order to capture the people you put in Curdun Cay?"
"Well, as much as it makes for a good story, unfortunately, that's all a big lie," Augustine said as she tossed the nugget of Kryptonite between her hands and over her head. "Most of them chose to go down fighting, so who was I to deny them their last wish?"
"And how many… innocent people… have you killed to achieve this?"
"Numbers don't really matter. Washington gave me the green light to do whatever I wanted, same as with Blackwatch in the Infected Zone, so who was I to turn down such a generous offer?" Augustine replied casually. "You'd be surprised how-willing people are to sell out their neighbor, or even just people they've never met, as long as you wave the promise of 'security' in front of their noses."
"So you admit it… Everything we've been told about the D.U.P is a lie…"
"Nothing a good cover-up or two can't fix. Of course, I'll have to silence all those tourists, and if the state police get involved, I can wipe them out and say a Bio-Terrorist got into their heads with a Mind Control ability, that they had to be put down," the red-head chuckled. "Not like I haven't sold that same lie before."
"You know… I should really be thanking you."
"For what?" Augustine asked with a quirked brow.
"For telling me everything I needed to know," Superman said as he began to get to his feet, revealing the recording phone he'd hidden behind his back.
"What…? No!" the woman swore as she rushed over to Superman, shoving the open lead-lined box in his face. "It can't be… The Kryptonite…!" she swore as she looked at the lead-lined box. "Why isn't this working?!" she demanded as she thrust it into Superman's face once again.
"That Kryptonite would've never worked on me in the first place," Superman said, the tone in his voice different than before.
The next moment, to Augustine's shock, the black hair with its iconic spit curl and vivid blue eyes of Superman gave way to a bald scalp and orbs of crimson, Caucasian skin shifting to an extraterrestrial green, the blue tight-fitting bodysuit and iconic S-marked shield giving way to a black bodysuit with a red X, the bright red cape giving way to blue with golden clips.
In other words…
"Martian Manhunter…!" Augustine gawped, her eyes darting between the martian's and the phone before she dove for the latter, only for the recording device to melt into his hand and retreat into his body, out of her reach.
"As your species is wont to say… 'Got it in one'," he said before decking the woman in the face, her lead-lined box of Kryptonite flying out of her hand bouncing across the ground, closing shut along the way.
To Be Continued…
*DAM IT ALL*
AN:
Gregory Reed is the actor who plays the role of Superman within the DC Universe; at one point he was mistaken for the real Superman by the Secret Society of super-Villains and defeated three of them with the aid of Hawkgirl and Captain Comet. Gregory Reed is a parody of George Reeves who starred as Superman/Clark Kent in the 1951 motion picture "superman and the Mole Men".
In the New 52 continuity movies, Batman and Wonder Woman argued about who would help pay for the League's operational funding, hence in a world like the New 52 continuity, there could easily be something like Live-Action TV shows about real-life heroes. I think similar hero-inspired Media was brought up in All Star Superman, but my memory on that's a bit fuzzy.
As for Martian Manhunter impersonating Superman and recording Augustine saying some pretty damning stuff, that was a throwback to Justice League Season 1 Episode 18 "Injustice For All – Part 1".
Also, yes, while in Earth-16 Canon, Martian Manhunter does not possess [Heat Vision] and [Super-Breath], in mainstream continuity he does, and since I'm already going to blend non-contradictory DC Storylines into "Earth-16H", I figured giving quote/unquote "Superman" the [Heat Vision] and [Super-Breath] would really sell you on the idea that it's actually Superman, before I pull an "Injustice For All".
Seriously, I loved that scene as a kid, and I'm super-nostalgic about it now that I can watch those good old moments on DC Universe dot Com whenever I want and with less hassle than through a second-hand streamer.
Anyway, tell me what you think in the Reviews Column. I always appreciated questions, comments, and input.