Vertigo, Part 7
Please Read and Review. I'd like to know what I'm doing right (to keep doing it), and what I am doing wrong (to correct it)
Notes, the parenthesis indicates languages other than Japanese, in this case, English.
Day Five
Wild Lands
Somewhere Between Continental USA and the Remains of Hawaii
(Former site of Project Mureau, currently abandoned by the USA Government)
Nosferata's Palace (formerly King Tuftan's palace)
Dr. Dabney Donovan's Laboratory (formerly, the cellar)
"A-ha!" The deranged scientists wheezed, "(I got you, you little devil.)" He straightened over the stone table, and tapped the bottom of the glass bottle he held in his hands.
He adjusted his goggles, turning the small gears that worked like a microscope and spectral scanner. He examined the small sample carefully. It looked exactly as it should, according to Dr. Grant's notes.
He rubbed the stubble on his bony chin, thinking. "(Maybe I should give our chyropteric overlady the good news?)" He thought for a moment, "(Nah… I better think a way to betray her first, I'll have more fun. But how?)"
Batrok stirred, hanging by the feet from a thick wooden beam. The giant enhanced bat yawned and mumbled, "(Stinky human is noisy. Keeps Batrok late. Batrok wanna sleep until midnite!)" After his short tirade, Batrok wrapped himself in his leathery wings, and began to snore.
Donovan was about to shout some insult that would go unnoticed by the dim-witted guard, when he stopped himself. '(That's it! Elegant like an elephant!)' He thought. Now that he had (he was sure) successfully distilled Cortexin. "(All I need is to tweak the formula, just a leeeedle bit to really ruin Nosferata's day.)" He paused, tapping his right temple, "(Or should I say, night? She is quite a night bat person, after all. And one should respect her beauty sleep! I'm no barbarian! I'm a crazy scientist with some standards!)" He shrugged, "(Very few and not very exacting, but I have them! Somewhere…)" He chuckled to himself, patting the pockets of his dirty labcoat.
Tokyo-3, Japan
Tokyo-3 First Municipal Junior High School
Classroom 2-A
"I have a very bad feeling about this." Shinji wrote on the class chat, it looked like he was taking notes, but as always, the old teacher was almost lost in his memories of life before Second Impact. He kept half an ear on the lecture, in case there was another bit of metahuman data in Sensei's remembrances.
Kensuke answered immediately. "So do I. It's just like with Toji."
Rei added, "It is possible this is an unrelated matter."
"I doubt it." Shinji scoffed as he wrote, "I don't think it's a coincidence that four Evangelion pilots are in the same class." He stopped, and erased the message without sending it.
He settled on "I don't think so. There is a new car in the parking lot. It has NERV plates."
"Must be official, then." Kensuke sent. "Must be the glasses."
"Explain." Rei asked, her brow furrowing slightly.
"I mean that I'm not a good candidate because of my glasses."
"Oh. I think it is possible then. I'm not familiar with the selection protocols."
'You didn't have to go through them, I guess.' Shinji thought. A moment later, he wrote, "It's been over an hour."
"An hour and twenty three minutes." Rei answered.
At that moment, the classroom door slid open. Hikari looked stunned as she asked permission to enter. The old teacher waved her in, and Hikari sat heavily.
"Are you okay, Hikari?" Shinji sent her in a private window.
She answered in the group chat. "I'm… I think I'm okay." The class rep closed her eyes for a moment. "I'd like to talk during lunch. I'm supposed to be the Fifth Child, and cover for Asuka while they" she stopped typing for a moment, "try to recover her from Unit-02."
Kensuke wrote, "You don't seem to be very glad."
"I'm afraid." She admitted.
"Understandable." Rei commented. "There is a high risk in piloting an Evangelion Unit."
"I need to talk with my family. I don't know how they will take it."
"Would you like some support?" Shinji offered, "I could go with you to explain things to your parents."
"Same." Rei added, but didn't elaborate.
Hikari nodded, "Please come. Father tends to react before thinking, I hope Grampa will help him control his temper. Lt. Ibuki is on her way now to talk to them."
"Not Dr. Akagi?" Shinji raised an eyebrow. "She was the one to talk to Toji."
"She's working on the recovery efforts." She glanced momentarily at the pilots, while Kensuke thought what he could say.
Shinji leaned back on his seat, 'Interesting." He thought.
Smallville, Kansas, USA
Kent Farm
Dining Room
"(You know something, Mrs. Kent? I have travelled all over the world, stayed in luxury hotels, and eaten in five-star restaurants or at the table of billionaires, presidents and kings, and I can say, with no fear to be mistaken, that this is the best dessert I've ever tasted.)" The new guest at the Kent farm put his fork down, and smiled.
Next to him, his companion shook her head. "(You are a shameless flatterer, Max.)"
"(My dear Catherine! You wound me!)"
Jonathan and Martha Kent exchanged a glance. He leaned forward and tapped the table with his fingers. "(You have a certain reputation, Mr. Lord.)"
"Oh, yes. I know, I know. Please, call me Max. Mr. Lord is for legal matters.)" Maxwell Lord shook his head and raised his hands concilliatorily. "(I like to think I've mended my ways. Being the man behind the courtains of the JLI did me a world of good. Got friends, met my wonderful wife, and well… I'd just wish all those friends were still around. aárt from Catherine, myself, and the surviving embassies staff, Ralph and Sue are the only members of the JLI left.)" He folded his napkin and pushed his plate away. "(And Oberon of course, he is still on tour with Scott's protege.)"
Ralph Dibny raised a glass, "(To absent friends.)" He said solemnly. And the whole table echoed the toast. Once the table was cleared, the group's mood went from talkative to serious.
Captain Arsala leaned on the table, his eye-watering Hawaiian shirt clashed terribly with Maxwell Lord's tailor-made suit. "(Ralph said you had access to some interesting stuff.)"
"(Certainly I have!)" The former JLI manager smiled conspiratorially. "(Before the JLI was defunded by the UN, Batman, the Martian Manhunter and I collected a lot of the surviving trophies from the JLA satellite. And put the lot in a warehouse somewhere in…)" he snapped his fingers several times. "(What was the place?)"
"(Upstate New York.)" Catherine noted, with a barely detectable Parisian accent, "(Though it really doesn't matter anymore, remember?)"
"(Ah, yes. Right.)" He shrugged, "(Anyway, when Booster and Beetle finally got serious about business and asked me for guidance, we moved the lot and made copies of the items for the Planet Krypton decor. Exact replicas, down to the color, weight, and everything. We stored the originals in a safe place.)"
Dick Grayson rolled his eyes, "(And you wonder why Batman sent me to check the stuff…)"
"(The point is, we had access to the JLA and JLI items, trophies and equipment. I can get you the whole lot. Plus a few others we got when the JLA became the JLU, from the independent heroes or groups who joined after Second Impact.)"
"(How much is that gonna cost us?" Barbara Greyson asked.
"Not a single cent.)"
Catherine gasped at her husband words. "(Max? Are you feeling well?)"
"(Quite well, dear.)" He took her hand. "(Never better. I have several reasons, One, I can't just stay idle before the imminent apocalipsis. Two, for the memory of our friends and to help their children and successors. Three, no one in their right mind says "No" when the Phantom Stranger asks you nicely. And gives you a blood-chilling Cliff's Notes about the stare of matters.)"
"(You too, eh?)" Ishiro Maad smiled sardonically, raising his mug of coffe in a mocking gesture.
"(Oh, yes. You see these gray hairs? Scared ten years off my life.)" Max pointed at his temples. "(Now, let's get down to it. We have a lot of stuff that used to belong to non-powered heroes; you know, Green Arrow, Arsenal, a few Bat-gadgets; heck, I have a complete Odd-Man under suit with the full assortment of tricks. Merry left us a bag of tricks in her testament. Seems your Young Justice pals left a good impression on her.)" He took a sip of coffee, and pulled out a small tablet from his pocket. "(If any of you guys want to use these gizmos, you better start practicing right now, and that goes double for the kids. A couple of my people can make more of the relatively normal stuff, like the trick arrows; but some things are beyond our means, like the gravity router Odd-Man used to play human fly. Unless we get some super-genius who could reverse engineer it, we couldn't do anything more than basic repairs.)"
Tokyo-3, Japan
Horaki Residence
After School
Despite his curiosity, Kensuke excused himself from the gathering; not being a pilot himself, he thought he would be of no help, and maybe cause some problem.
Shinji helped Hikari to prepare a simple meal, while her Father and Grandfather waited in stony silence; accompanied by Rei, equally as silent. Occasionally, the two Horakis exchanged a look. Rei studied their minuscule changes in facial and body postures. The men seemed to be having a conversation with gestures alone.
Hikari and Shinji served the meal, a very simple but tasty three meal course. They ate in silence, but Shinji noticed the Horaki patriarchs relaxed a bit.
Finally, over tea, conversation started.
Tokyo-3, Japan
A Possible XXVIth Century
0100 hours
"(It's bigger than I had thought.)" Captain Atom said through clenched teeth. He hovered at an altitude of 2,500 ft. (762 m), a small speck against the dark sky. To prevent detection from the ground, he wore dark blue clothes (1) that covered him completely, hiding his chrome-like skin; with a similarly tinted messenger bag. He had a notebook and pencils to take notes, all secured with string so they would not fall down and alert the city inhabitants.
He and Sacker had prepared the scouting mission over the last couple of weeks. Deprived of any form of electronic navigational aids, he was forced to use the old techniques developed by ancient explorers. He had memorized the main features in the landscape; mountains, lakes, rivers, everything. He had studied the night sky to navigate by the stars. The Tanuki had prepared some beacons along the way. Leading very far from Amaterasu's city, and visible from the air once lit, piles of stones set around the beacons ensured they wouldn't be seen from the ground. And also prevented a possible forest fire.
It was a simple and cautious plan. The beacons were set in advance by teams of young Tanuki, as directed by Captain Atom. The former leader of the JLE scouted the city from the air, drawing maps as best as posible. About an hour before sunrise, a Tanuki would lit the closest beacon and leave the place. During the return trip, Captain Atom would douse the beacon as a signal for the closest team to lit their own beacon and leave too. They would repeat the process until he was safely back in a prearranged place to wait to see if he had been followed before returning to the actual Tanuki village. The Tanuki involved would travel to other locations before returning to town.
The enhanced Raccons were, rightfully, scared to death by Amaterasu and her machines; and would do their best to not leave tracks to town.
Now, Captain Atom flew around the former Tokyo-3 city, watching the lights move in complicated sequences, studying their routes and trying to guess their purpose.
The dark areas were solar panels. And there were defined routes, all over the metallic city.
All the lights converged in a big crater in the very center of the former Tokyo-3. Captain Atom had quantum jumped to this era long before the founding of numbered cities had been a thing, so he had absolutely no idea of how that crater had been formed, but his soldier instinct led him to a very simple conclusion. It had had to be an apocalyptic bomb strike, not nuclear; he would feel the residual radiation if that had been the case, so it had to be either conventional or experimental explosives at a total war scale. He had heard rumors about something called Non-Nuclear Mines being in development. Supposedly they would yield enough megatons of explosive force to rival small nukes. Though he could not discard metahuman powers, or even aliens. Both Apokolips and New Genesis did have the technology.
The crater had to be created after the founding of the city, no one built skyscrapers right next to such a hole in the ground.
Captain Atom prepared himself for a long watch. He needed to study the place very carefully. Determine possible ingress and egress points, dangerous spots, places to sabotage, locate killing zones to avoid. He wasn't sure he could find where Amaterasu's actual hardware was located. That was the reason he was doing nighttime reconnaissance. The lights would give away the main operational hubs in the darkness.
The flow of the lights was almost hypnotic…
He shook his head to clear it.
His eyes wandered around, and he looked at the Tokyo-3 Bay, almost listening to the sound of waves crashing against the beach.
Under the moonlight, the sea looked like blood. Just like the dark red splash on the Moon. Ocassionally, a gust of wind carried the smell of the sea water to him. It smelled like blood, oil, and metal.
He shuddered at seeing the ancient and eroded shapes of nine gigantic statues, their features almost erased by time and salt water. "(Looks like they committed Harakiri…)" (2)
But the most unusual sight in the bay was a titanic skull, vertically split in two halves, right in the middle. One of the halves almost completely under the waters, looking like a island made of off-white stone.
When Sacker had told him the tale of Amaterasu's city, he had privately dismissed the idea of such a giant creature. Even bigger than the Millennium Giants (3)!
If the stories were to be believed, the nine giants and the skull had been in the bay for close to six centuries!
Nathaniel Adam wondered what had happened during Third Impact; something that would have been the basis of the myths.
He went back to work.
Hoping Amaterasu didn't have some Land-to-Air missiles stored somewhere; and that he was high enough to not be detected.
The Dreaming
Asuka closed the main door of the House of Secrets. The hinges creaked so ominously she had the feeling the House was being so over the top with the horror cliches it had to be a joke. She turned around and winked.
The light of one of the two old oil lamps on top of the door dimmed for a moment. Yep, that was a wink. She patted the railing, peeling paint notwithstanding, in appreciation, and went down the creaking steps.
"Keep it on, House." She whispered.
Her steps echoed softly in the dark night, as a cloud passed in front of a full Moon, tinted red. She kept on walking, and opened the gate of the cemetery. The rusted hinges required some strength to open, and the noise they made was not a teasing joke.
Apparently, the cemetery was not part of the House of Secrets, and most probably, neither it was a part of the House of Mistery.
She kept on walking, the dead grass breaking under her feet. She felt a shiver run down her back. The ground was somewhat uneven, and she had to watch her steps, as a low-lying mist covered the whole place, swirling around the crooked, chalky grey trees that extended dry branches to the sky.
Idly curious, she began to read the names in the tombstones. With a chill, she realized the dates of death were all between the years 2000 and 2002. But there seemed to be no order to them.
"Helena Rosa Bertinelli? The Huntress?" She touched the cold stone cross. And went to the next one, "Bruce Wayne?" The tombstone held an oval sigil, with a stylized bat inside. The next had a simple R letter ppartly inside a diagonal oval, and with a roman numeral for "3", "Timothy Jackson Drake"; the next had a pair of six-shooters crossed, "Gregory Saunders? Who was this guy?"
All the tombs were covered with grown, pale, dead grass. Forgotten.
"Theodore Grant? Wildcat." The was a statue of a cat on top of the tombstone, chiseled in black stone. She knelt over this one, and cleared the weeds and dry leaves.
Each grave had a different engraved symbol. "Heroes' graves. But why here? I doubt there are all buried in the same place back on Earth." She said to herself.
She looked all around, and saw just how big the cemetery really was when a gust of wind cleared the low mist. Rows and rows of graves, silent under the moon light.
Right at the center of the cemetery, she found an open pit under a twisted dead tree right out of a horror story. The grave either waiting for its occupant, or recently emptied of it. The date of death had not been inscribed. There was an stylized lightning bolt in the stone. She read the name, "William Joseph Batson". (4)
"Who's there?" A deep and hoarse voice asked from the other side of the tree, Asuka jumped back in fright, grabbing a stone as an improvised weapon.
Author Notes.
With all the Vertigo stuff happening, I decided to accept things, and change the chapter name. Last time, I swear!
(1) Against most Ninja stereotypes, dark blue (or even dark green) is a better choice than black if you want to remain unseen during the night.
(2) Captain Atom is quite wrong about the Mass Production Evangelions. They aimed at their heart/core. Hara-kiri refers to the act of self-disembowelment, and is frequently confused with Seppuku, ritual suicide as a form of honorable death, or as punishment for serious offenses, or to restore honor after a great shame.
(3) The Millenium Giants appeared at the end of the 20th Century, and their purpose was to restore balance to the Earth. The story was published as a nine part story-arc, mostly in the Superman titles. The nine covers formed a big image, BTW. The story ran in Superman: The Man of Steel issue 78 (Apr, 1998), Aquaman (Volume 5) issue 43 (Apr, 1998), Challengers of the Unknown issue 15 (Apr, 1998), Superman issue 134 (Apr, 1998); Teen Titans issue 19 (Apr, 1998); Supergirl issue 20 (Apr, 1998); Adventures of Superman issue 557 (May, 1998), Steel issue 50 (May, 1998), Action Comics issue 744 (May, 1998). Also, this story happened during the energy Superman Red/Superman Blue era. Captain Atom didn't participate directly in the story.
(4) Yep, that William Joseph Batson. He had to be somewhere!