Guys and gals, I gotta apologize. This month has kicked my ass so hard, it isn't even funny. Computer dying, car dying, helping the family, dealing with home issues. One after another after another. No FILFy this month. I will post a chapter by next Saturday, but it's going to be a week's worth of work, and no more. But i do want to push on with finishing that work, so smaller segments is what you're going to get. Will explain more tomorrow when I post May's month's polls. Tired now.
I ain’t Japanese, nor am I affiliated with DC. I like to think my Superman movie would be better and more Superman-coded than the recent one. Also, I started this well before news of the Supergirl movie came out. Just sayin’.
This has been Grammarlied and seen by Hiryo. WOO!!
Chapter 7: Reconstruction and Observation
With Warworld no longer pumping out invaders or darkening the sky above Star City, quartet of young superpowered friends swiftly became a terror to the invaders left behind. With most of the other heroes out of action for the moment, or, like Aquaman, working still to expand a safe zone, it fell to the incoming infantry units, the police, and the quartet to take the fight to the several thousand Chain Brethren, Sky Raiders, and Big Bangers scattered throughout the city.
Well, them, and the attack helicopters and A-10 warthogs that quickly went to work on air superiority after the last of the starfighters, of which only six had been left behind, were taken out. Kori, who informed the other three of the names of the guilds as they fought them, rather enjoyed the ‘brrrrrtt’ sound from the strangely named Warthogs, a name that felt like it should be that of a land beast. On the other hand, she was somewhat confused as to why all three of her friends felt embarrassment at the name the vehicle-based Big Banger guild used.
Meanwhile, Aquaman and his troopers had already created a safe zone around the dockyard area, where they were busy trying to establish a communication network with the police, hospitals and first responders scattered around the city. With all the damage done, phones were down, and the power for the city had been taken out a few minutes into Warworld’s bombardment. It might well have been the only truly strategic target the planetoid hit, and even then, it hadn’t actually leveled the whole building, just shot through it in places.
By the time Ranma and his three friends were done clearing out the city, the first of the marines from the naval vessels that had been sending in long-range missiles and so forth at Warworld arrived at the docks. Unlike the Atlanteans, who were busy trying to create a safe zone and shifting civilians into it, the Marines pushed out hard from the wharves quickly in squad-based groups. They cleared out buildings as they went, while large helicopters landed all around the dockyard area, depositing still more marines who rushed to join them in alien hunting.
While Ranma was generally approving of that, and the murderous rage he saw in the faces of nearby marines, as the four of them landed by one such group, Kori shook her head. “I understand why these warriors are doing this, this clearing of buildings, yet it isn’t necessary. Outside of the Technocrat Union, Warworlders are stupid. Stupidly aggressive, stupidly arrogant, stupidly violent.”
“Wow, tell us what you really think of ‘em, Star-girl.” Cassie snickered. While the group had found a bit too many dead bodies in their patrols around the city, she refused to let herself dwell on it too much. Cassie’s training as a warrior helped a lot with that, with the knowledge that death was a natural thing in war, and that she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on things she couldn’t control.
“I thought I was, friend Nyctimene.” Kori blinked, peering at Cassie in confusion even as she remembered to use her assumed name. “But if you want me to be even more forthright, I can be. Also, Star-girl?”
“That’s not what Nyctimene was saying,” Kara said, patting the orange-skinned girl on the shoulder. “She was making a joke, sort of. And remember, we’re going by assumed names right now.” When Kori made an ‘ahh’ noise of understanding, the kryptonian girl went on. “But I take it you mean that Warworld raiders won’t hide out or take refuge in buildings?”
“While the Chain Brethren and the rest understand the use of cover, with Warworld gone, they will have lost any desire to do more than die fighting. All the clans or guilds have one thing in common, from what I have seen: they do not care about their lives. Every Warworld denizen is expendable. Most come out of the vats thinking thus, while those who join them are mainly nihilistic in nature, at least from what I have been able to observe. Only one in every hundred comes from natural birth, and thus, life is nearly worthless. Only deeds and returning with slaves or booty will make you matter,” Kori responded, her tone matter-of-fact.
“No offense,” Aquaman interjected from one side. “But from the reports I got from Zatanna and the Flash on you, you were a prisoner. How exactly do you know anything about Warworld beyond the limits of whatever cage you were kept in? And while I hate to ask right after saying that last, but can you tell me if there’s any chance that thing returns? I’d ask Hawkman, but he’s badly injured and was forced to retreat along with what was left of the Red Tornado.”
As Aquaman spoke, Ranma, who had been quiet since they had landed, took in the man speaking. He was middle-aged, with long, blonde hair and blue eyes, almost like Ranma’s own. Come to think of it, I can’t remember if my eye color changes in this form? I’ve never actually looked at my face when I was trying to change the outfit.
The man had an impressive physique, was at least two inches taller than Ranma’s Shazam form, and was dressed in a bright yellow and green outfit, with the yellow part being a shirt or maybe body armor that looked like fish scales. The leggings were where the green came from and looked like a strange amalgamation of silk and rubber, like a pair of long swim pants divers used. His hands were contained in slightly built-up gloves, the backs of them, the portion nearest the elbow, looking like the fins of a fish.
Kori turned to him, taking in more than the man’s outward appearance; her Tamarian heritage let her sense his concern, pride, determination and mild suspicion, even as her conscious mind decided that the colors of his outfit left much to be desired. Although, much of that has to do with green and yellow being very much not my, or any Tamarian’s, colors. Hmm… come to think of it, perhaps I should ask to stop and get some more clothing now that the fighting is over? This shirt of Ranma’s is getting rather frayed.
It was actually more than frayed. Indeed, beyond Ranma’s clothing, which was part of his Shazam transformation and thus partook of his durability, all the girls looked a little ragged. Kara’s outfit was somewhat shredded along one side, showing the hint of her bra underneath her right breast, and a flash of panty on the same side. Cassie’s exercise pants and shirt were also torn in various places, but not nearly as much as Kara’s. The worst, though, was Kori’s. While Ranma had imbued even his backup clothing with a smidge of his ki subconsciously over the years, the shirt he’d given Kori was hanging on by a thread at this point. Almost literally if you looked at her from the back, and a chunk had been burned off over her stomach too.
Ranma was the only one in the immediate area not glancing at the girls at present, regardless of what they were doing. A few marines actually had to be whisper-bellowed into moving on by their corporal, and several men setting up a series of portable desks nearly dropped them on their own feet as they stared at the trio.
While she enjoyed the attention to a certain degree, Kori felt it was somewhat inappropriate at the moment to comment or lean into it as her tamaranean heritage told her to. Instead, she concentrated on the older man’s question. “I will take your questions in quarter pieces if that is alright, um…”
“I’m Aquaman. I’m the hero here with the most pull at present, given my organizational skills and my position as king to an allied nation,” the blonde man announced. “Now, my question please.” He’d been recently informed that the president had authorized the use of nukes if Warworld came back into the planet’s atmosphere, and anything he could tell the Americans to stop that from happening was a good thing in his mind.
“It is nice to meet you!” Kori said, feeling the man’s worry as well as his desire to be polite and answering it. “First, I know much about Warworld because I was given information on the world while I was being conditioned to know its language. I was given the information in a basic visual learning primer, and I was a prisoner for more than a decade aboard the planetoid. Further, what little exercise I was allowed was in the Great Pits, the gladiatorial combat arenas against various members of Warworld’s various guilds.”
“Huh, so no high-tech education via downloading into your brain or something?” Ranma tsked. “That’s a bit of a let down.
It was Kara who replied for the two alien girls. “No, that isn’t a thing for most species. Most species, like my own kryptonians or, I assume, Starfire’s, can be hypno-conditioned to learn new languages or rote skills, but not anything that requires real analysis. And that is as adults. I remember asking my parents about using something like that to get out of chemistry class once, and they told me my mind would become damaged in some way if they used such a learning technique on me.”
Kori nodded in agreement to that, adding, “And before you inquire, using such a thing would have harmed my worth in the eyes of Warworld, like a jewel with a crack in it. And needing such or mind-altering technology or chemicals to force me to submit would have made Mongul seem weak. He was, as I have said, waiting until I was of age, of sufficient strength to put up a fight, before taking his prize in any way he wished.”
Those words turned a lot of the faces of the men who had been looking her way green with disgust, and most hurried along even as Kori calmly returned to the previous topic. “Mongul is the leader of Warworld, whom the four of us fought. We badly battered him, and it will take him time to be healed. Coupled with the damage we did to Warworld itself; I think that they will retreat for a good while.”
She paused, humming for a moment before going on. “Further, although this is but a cloud on the wind, Mongul himself will probably have to return on his own to deal with us, my friends and I.” She smiled happily over at Kara, Ranma and Cassie. “If he simply returns and attacks Earth from long-range, saturating the planet with energy beams or missiles enough to blot out the stars, he will lose face among his followers. Rumors and whispers in the dark will harm his throne more than any battle lost.”
Kori then winced a bit at the shock and fear her words had evoked in many of the people around them, regardless of their current uniforms. “Sorry, but um, you humans really need some kind of early warning system and defenses. The faster, the better. Until you do, you are a very fragile glass bead on which all hopes and dreams of your race reside.
While most people just frowned, somewhat thrown off by her flowery language, one of the men, who was carrying a large radio system on his back, spoke into a microphone. “You, er, get all that, sir?”
The soldier, a marine, Ranma guessed, waited a moment, probably hearing something on a radio built into his helmet, then looked over at Aquaman and Ranma, trying hard not to look at any of the girls, in fact. “Sir, are we certain that we have cleared out the city of all invaders?”
When Aquaman hesitated, Ranma shrugged. “There ain’t any out in the open, and like Star-girl—”
“UGH!” Kori hastily interrupted. “If I am going to be shackled with a false name for the public, I would go with Starfire, not girl. As friend Shielder said, having the term girl in my false name seems limiting,” Kori stated, sticking her tongue out in disgust.
If that was an expression from her own people or something she had gleaned when she learned how to speak English, Ranma had no idea. Honestly, given how formal-friendly she speaks and some of the phrases she uses, I gotta wonder if something got messed up in whatever mind-melding or what-have-you she used.
“I’ll take it,” the marine announced, speaking again into the pickup. “Good enough, sir?” After a moment, he flicked a button, and a speaker set into his backpack squealed before a new voice came from it.
An older voice emanated from the speaker, one used to command from the tenor of it. “Alright. As the Major General out of Fort Canby, that being the nearest military base of any appreciable size, I declare Star City an official disaster zone. As the mayor is known to be dead along with the three most senior police officers within the city, and the majority of his cabinet can’t be found, I place it under limited martial law and under my command until the disaster is sorted.”
Ranma frowned a little bit at that, wondering what exactly that meant for his friends and the other heroes, but seeing Aquaman just nodding along, he remained quiet. Probably it’s just a mix of official rigmarole, red-tape-cutting, and making sure everyone knows who’s in charge.
“First thing we need to do is set up landing zones for more troops. Clear a larger area in the docks for incoming transports and get Star City’s airport back up and running. Sending in relief from two directions is the best idea. According to the records I’ve seen, the airport should have its own emergency generator to take over with power out throughout the city, but the airfields all need to be cleared and a temporary tower rebuilt to coordinate everything.”
“We don’t have anyone out there yet,” Aquaman answered. “My men and I have been concentrating on slowly spreading out from the docks, and the Flash has resumed the evacuation of children, their families and minders.”
“We can get over there easy enough,” Ranma volunteered. “But I don’t know where it is exactly, I don’t remember seeing it from the sky. Also, if the airport was still in use when Warworld attacked, wouldn’t there also be a lot of civilians and maybe wounded there?”
Kara stepped forward as well. “I did, it’s to the northern edge of the city along a highway heading sort of along the coast,” It was hit pretty hard, I think. Lots of those starfighter ships strafed the place, and at least one of Warworld’s troop transports landed there. I didn’t see any more fighting in that area when we cleared the city out, though.”
“That’d be it, girl,” the man on the other side of the speaker replied, sounding gruff, but approving. “If you four can head there and get it running again, I’ll be able to bring in some Galaxies and Globemasters planes with heavy equipment and way more troops than even our biggest helicopters can handle.”
“Depending on what’s there, yeah, we can do that. But first, I want a radio of my own,” Ranma stated. “Me, Shielder and Starfire should all have one, and Nyctimene should get another one. I assume you’re gonna want us to start moving separately at some point. Oh, and maybe we should air lift over some supplies to this airport right away.”
“Good thinking. See to it, Lieutenant. I’ll start the army loading up their Galaxies now if they haven’t already from the nearest army base and redirect two of our own copters there with medical personnel and enough trained troops to create a DASC there if necessary.”
All four of the teens looked confused at that, but the officer signed off then, leaving the lieutenant to explain, even as he gestured for one of his nearby troopers to round up four radios for the teens. “DASC’s the abbreviation for a Direct Air Support Center. They’ll either put up their own radar and coms tower, or work with the existing one if you find it in one piece.”
“Or can repair it,” Ranma shrugged. “I can repair the building, no problem. Any electronics equipment, though, that’ll be a different story. I can repair radios and maybe figure out simple things like that if the damage is light enough, but a computer is beyond me unless you’re talkin’ about just replacing broken parts with new ones.”
“Do what you can,” the marine officer replied, looking a little dubious. “Just getting some of our radios out there will be a good start.”
“Where is one supposed to keep this radio thing? I would think that keeping both hands free is a good-- ahh!” Starfire exclaimed as she finally found the buckle at the back of the radio. “This is supposed to click to a belt, yes?”
The officer just stared at her for a moment, shaking his head, although he certainly wasn’t the only one. All three girls were still target of glances from every person that moved around them, but Starfire’s exotic orange skin, her height, five foot eleven, being quite tall for a woman, and curves were drawing the lion’s share of the looks from the marines and even Atlanteans setting up a command-and-control center around them.
It took a while to get up a pallet to take out to the hospital. As the workers worked on that, Ranma and the others helped haul some of the dead aliens and debris into designated areas. The aliens were mostly dumped into the ocean here on the docks, while the human bodies in the area, mostly dock workers, security and seamen, were gathered and organized as much as possible. Considering many of those dead weren’t exactly whole, that was a hard and grim business none of the four enjoyed and they were glad to be called off it.
With Ranma carrying the pallet via a few of its exterior grooves, the quartet was quickly off once more, with Kori taking a turn carrying Cassie. As they went, Ranma grimaced, staring down and around them at the ruined city.
Night had fully fallen by this point, thus the difference between Star City as it was now and a normal, bustling city was even more apparent. There was a lot of noise, to be sure, but a severe lack of background humming and lights, and very few cars were moving down there. Those who were quickly found their way blocked. There was so much rubble and destroyed cars that the whole city seemed unable to move, save by walking, which a lot of people were doing, something Ranma was surprised to realize he could see from where they were flying. Damn, did my transformation give me better eyes along with the ability to see better in the light?
Aloud, he muttered, “Damn, I hadn’t realized how much damage had been done to the city as a whole before. I can only see a few buildings down there that still have lights on, bar what looks like a police precinct and a hospital in the distance.”
“Yeah, Zatanna did her best, but Warworld’s bombardment still did a lot of damage before she got here, and the troop transports weren’t exactly gentle when they smashed down,” Kara agreed.
“Zatanna? Who’s that?” Ranma questioned, not having heard the name before, as they smashed one group of would-be invaders after another.
“Friend Zatanna was the one who helped rid me of those Chain Brethren-created cuffs, friend Ranma,” Kori interjected enthusiastically, grinning at the spike of pleasure that Ranma got when she called him a friend as she flew to one side of him with Cassie on her back. Kori could tell it wasn’t a term he’d had directed his way all that often, which, in her opinion, was a pity and something she was going to get to the bottom of at some point. “She uses something called magic. What that is, I do not know.”
Ranma blinked at that, looking over at Kori and then Kara and Cassie in surprise. “Wait, there’s a magic-using hero? A hero who can actually trust magic and use it like a wizard or something, not just one who has magical items or a curse that gives them a fighting form or something?”
“I’m not sure if you would call her a wizard or a witch, but Zatanna definitely does use magic. Why, interested to see if she could help you with your curse?” Kara teased from Ranma’s other side.
“Curse? You’re cursed, Ranma? What kind of curse, and how bad is it?” Cassie demanded. Such things were no joke among the Amazons.
Chuckling, Ranma shook his head. “I’ll tell you about it later, it’s not that big of a deal really, but I gotta say people’s reactions to it got old really quickly. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but it doesn’t seem necessary anymore. If this Zatanna woman can help, I’m all for that.”
Even with this form, I still don’t trust magic all that much, and the curse least of all. Plus, with Cassie here in Man’s World, I don’t need it anymore.
Elsewhere, in China, the cursed springs bubbled, hot or cold, it didn’t matter, the water roiled as if an unseen presence moved within. It was a very odd occurrence, and the guide had retreated to his house, staring in fear. The magic of Jusenkyo had lost contact with one of its toys. It sensed this particular victim was still alive, but it had been watching this one closely for a while, sensing that Jusenkyo had been manipulated and that the curse had somehow been bypassed. And with every hour that passed without that connection being restored, its ire grew.
Back above Star City, seeing her old friend wasn’t going to give her any more information, so Cassie turned her attention back to what they were seeing below them as they followed Kara towards where she had seen the city’s airport. “Well, whatever. But yeah, I can only see a few of the skyscrapers that weren’t damaged in some way before Zatanna began to protect the city, and you can see whole areas that look almost like they were cut out of the ground. I want to say it’d look better if the city still had power, but I don’t know if that’s just wishful thinking or not.”
“Yeah, you gotta imagine that starting up the powers is going to be that officer guy’s first objective. Did anyone pick up his name by the way? Um, both the guy on hand and the officer on the other end. I don’t think I heard either of their actual names while we were clearing out bodies and debris,” Ranma admitted sheepishly.
The others indicated that they hadn’t heard anything of that nature either, falling silent for a few seconds as the grimness of the task they’d been doing a bit ago came back to them. Even Ranma, with his experience dealing with cannibals and zombies on Yamatai and Cassie with the Amazonian warrior culture, could not find it in them to push past the sight of those bodies. Kara had none of that and was having a lot of trouble with what they had seen, while Kori was handling it better than even Cassie. Life on Warworld and her time training to maintain her figure had shown her death almost weekly.
Thankfully, the dour mood didn’t last long, as a second later Kara pointed ahead of them, redirecting their attention once more. “There’s the airport.”
True to what she had told the others back at the docks, the airport had been badly damaged from aerial assault. The tower had lost the upper half of its length, several hangers had been simply flattened, and the main buildings had been badly battered and damaged, with one wing being simply gone. Even the airfields had been battered, leaving long rivulets, deep gouges, and shattered and broken planes, many of which were still burning, behind.
However, there was also a good deal of movement. At least nine floodlights had been set up, and several signal lights were aimed along the ground to provide enough light to see most of the area around the airport buildings, as well as out onto the airfields in places.
In those lights, all four of the flyers could see a good deal of movement, although Kori complained that she didn’t have the best night vision. “Night is actually only around four hours a day on my homeworld, and since we became the dominant species, my people have never really been all that nocturnal in nature. I will admit that the stars are amazing at night, but that was honestly the only reason anyone would want to be out at night if they didn’t have to be.”
Thanks to her heritage from He-Who-Is-a-Bastard, Cassie had actually quite good eyesight at night, and Ranma had already realized he had better night vision now than he would have in his normal body. That stung his pride just as much as using the form at all, but Ranma’s pride on that front had been getting a lot of severe whacks lately and this one barely registered.
What registered to all of them was the sudden gunfire from below as they came in for a landing. Several bullets bounced off Ranma, with Kara flying through them. Starfire didn’t, mindful that Cassie had shown she wasn’t as durable as the other three in the fight against Mongul. She instead twisted around, presenting her back to their shooters below.
“Friends, friends coming in!” Kara shouted.
One of the lights flicked upwards, and Kara and the others all had to close their eyes for a second to avoid being blinded, then the spotlight flicked away as a cheer arose below. “Supergirl, Supergirl, Supergirl!” came the shouts.
Kara groaned. “Crap! I really hope that’s not about me…” From the corner of her eye, she could easily make out the expressions on two of the three of her companions, and rolled her eyes as Kori giggled a little, not following the full joke but amused by the emotions of the trio nonetheless. “Fine, yes, I know it’s about me, I just don’t want to even think about how hard that is going to make it to change my public persona.”
“You’ve got a point there. Still, let’s get down.” Cassie nearly ordered, smacking Kori lightly on the shoulder and directing her down with her other hand. “Mush, horse!”
“While my people’s Linguistic Assimilation allows us to understand and speak your language, idioms often pass us by. I’m getting an impression of some four-legged creature, and you’re riding it for some reason. Does this mean you want to make me a pet?” Kori asked, a little hurt, confused by the words and the semi-amused emotions she was getting from Cassie.
Seeing that, Cassie shook her head, and the arm that she had smacked her friend's shoulder with wound around those shoulders, hugging her even as Kori followed Kara and Ranma down to the ground near one of the larger airport buildings. “Sorry, that was a joke, more about the fact that I have to be carried around by you three than anything else. I was comparing you to a horse because of that, but it wasn’t personal or anything.”
“Oh, that is all right then. Still, you should not take the fact that you can’t fly personally, friend Cassie,” Kori said, hugging her for a moment. “I am certain that there are many things that you can do that we cannot, and besides, you don’t weigh very much at all, and you are quite snuggly to hold.”
Cassie blushed rosily at that, grateful for the darkness just then, as she was set down with a giggle. Kori could tell that Cassie was embarrassed by her statement, but also enjoyed the hug, so determined to give her more of them whenever she flew the other girl around from now on.
As the group made their way over to the locals, having landed well away from them for a second, a voice shouted out, “Are you Superman’s daughter, Supergirl!?”
As Kara stumbled at that and Ranma guffawed, another, younger voice spoke up timidly, “Are, are the bad men gone? Di, did you scare that big bad moon thing away?”
Everyone else paused at that, turning to a young girl who by all rights should have been in bed hours ago. In her arms was an even younger boy, while an older woman, perhaps their grandmother, sat on the ground nearby, watching over several people, all of whom looked injured. If they were all one family or a group of injured brought together here, none of the four could know, and it wasn't relevant right now.
As Kara, very much out of her depth, stumbled once more, Ranma moved forward, followed instantly by Cassie. As he did, he knelt down in front of her, winking. “Yep. We made the bad men go away. I’m sorry we couldn’t do it faster or before they could hurt so many. But sometimes, bad people come from places you can’t see, like a monster under your bed. Sometimes, they’re just as easy to deal with, too, but other times, they aren’t.”
The young girl gazed at him, then nodded solemnly, as everyone around them seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Having it put into words seemed to have been enough, even if they hadn’t seen any sign of violence in the skies or in the city around the airport for a while now. “That’s good.”
“Did you punch ‘em in the nose?!” another young voice exclaimed, this one a boy's voice.
“Many times!” Kori stated cheerfully, noticing and enjoying the looks she received as she waved happily to the crowd. “We hit many of them in their noses, and then kicked many others between the eyes. It was most pleasing.”
“Er, we, um, we all did,” Kara spoke up, her introverted nature buoyed along by the presence of her friends. Then her face firmed. “And I’m not Superman’s daughter. I’m his cousin. Honestly, how old do you all think Superman is to have a daughter my age? Call me Shielder. It’s a temp name for now, but I certainly don’t want to be known as a ‘girl’ all my life.”
For a moment, the group fell silent, then giggles began, segueing into slightly manic laughter from the truly relieved. At that point, a group of police officers who had been in the airport and had basically taken over during the emergency moved through the crowd towards them. They pulled the four heroes away for a second, while directing dozens of volunteers over to start opening the giant cargo container and start handing out supplies.
“We got hit almost right off the bat, kind of like the city’s power grid, got no idea what they hit to cause that. We saw the lights go out just as we arrived to take custody of a pickpocket, of all things. Then the attacks from on high hit. After the first salvos, though, we weren’t actually targeted by anything but the fighters, and we started to just take over,” one of the officers nearly rambled.
“No one honestly objected to it, because most of the offices were in the segment of the terminal over there that was damaged by one of the first attacks from on high. Thankfully, most of the security officers were still out in the terminals themselves, along with the few medical personnel on hand and dozens of volunteers from airport goers, we've been able to help most of the wounded… Those that didn’t die out right during or within a minute of the attack, anyway.”
Ranma grimaced at that, only to find Cassie gripping his wrist and shaking her head from side to side. She knew what that grimace meant and why Ranma was castigating himself more than the others for what happened here. Yet, while there was a bit of truth to it, even a Shazam-ified Ranma couldn’t have been everywhere. It would do him no good to take responsibility for all of the deaths in this battle on his shoulders, she reflected.
After a second, Ranma nodded, turning his attention back to the others, as Kara explained why they were there and what they could do. Already, a large number of injured who had only been kept alive up to this point were being prepared to be moved into the container Ranma had carried in, as well as others by hand.
The locals had been working, trying to get some of the roads leading into the airport cleared, using equipment at the airport, but hadn’t been making much progress because, as usual, there had been something of a traffic jam going on leading into and out of the airport. A lot of those cars had been badly damaged or even outright destroyed by the same fire that had so damaged the airport, the survivors having joined the large crowd at the airport or racing away on foot into the city around them.
Thankfully, the airport’s emergency fire brigade had been largely untouched and was able to deal with the fires from the destroyed planes and the cars closest to the airport, stopping them from spreading. This left them a few wings to use as further transportation for the severely wounded, once Ranma and the others towed them towards the area where the policeman had begun to set up the locals.
It was quickly decided that Kori and Kara would see to the wounded, once they were safely secure. Ranma shared a few ideas with a group of mechanics and welders about that, then headed over to look at the damage to the actual airport tower with Cassie.
However, before anything else, Kori had a request, one that both other girls agreed with after a brief second. “However, before we get with the important doings, might we request time to find some clothing? Our own outfits have not held up as well as the bodies beneath them to these day’s events.”
That drew attention to Kori’s body naturally, and she preened a little as even Ranma couldn’t stop himself from looking. The amount of shock, desire and lust the crowd felt suddenly towards all three girls was nice, but the frank appreciation, the understanding, respect and desire from Ranma was much nicer. He could tell how much effort it took to look as good as Kori did, and appreciated the view all the more.
Reminded of their state of dress, Kara suddenly hid behind the taller Kori. She’d not really noticed before, busy with so much else, but now, her shyer nature raised its head with a vengeance. Cassie also scowled, shifting her hands from the large rent in her exercise pants to the missing sleeve that showed so much of her side boob.
After a moment, there were a series of growls, and men and women alike hastily looked away as a somewhat matronly woman pushed herself upright from where she had been lying down on the hard earth, taking in everything while trying to ignore the injuries to her legs. “And you standing there pretty as a picture boy! Can’t even offer one of your lady friends your shirt?”
“Hey!” Ranma’s pride got his back up at the accusation and he replied before he could stop himself. Luckily, his response didn’t make the moment any worse. “It isn’t my fault that I’m the only one with clothing durable enough to survive a fight. None of the three of us were looking for a fight, it found us. We were just here to meet our friend.”
“Whereas I would have cheerfully gone naked if that was the price of my freedom,” Kori announced chirpily. “However, the bouncing is getting a bit annoying.”
There were a lot of reactions to that, and Cassie finally huffed and moved over, grabbing Kori and Kara’s wrists. “Come on, I see a clothing store up on the second floor of the seared away segment of the terminal there. Why the heck clothing is sold in airports is beyond me but I’m thankful for it now.”
As the three walked, then flew off, with Cassie leaping up to the second floor of the terminal, Ranma gazed around at the crowd, looking a little sheepish. “Er, so, I’ll just start unloading the crate, shall I?”
There were some chuckles at that, and more than a few feh noises sent Ranma’s way as well as he beat a hasty retreat. Thankfully, Ranma wasn’t alone for long, as the girls weren’t exactly looking for fashion, but durable clothing that covered everything it needed to. Kori was the only one who looked as if she had taken fashion into account, but in her case, it was simply a preference for formfitting clothing rather than anything else.
She’d found a pair of grey sweatpants that hugged her curves so well, Ranma was suddenly wondering if he was an ass man rather than a boob man, and a T-shirt that hung on her like it was made for someone far larger. That she had in common with the two girls, who had chosen similar shirts, but also jeans to go underneath, big and baggy in Kara’s case, and a bit formfitting for Cassie. However, they’d also gone for sensible underwear, while it was clear that Kori hadn’t. Her exercise togs, lycra or whatever, rode so low on her hips that Ranma could see a pair of underwear Lara would have been proud to call her own. But in Kori’s case, it was easy to see that she’d chosen it for the sheer novelty.
Regardless, it made Ranma feel better that Kara and Cassie were also having trouble looking away from the alien girls as she skipped her way over to Ranma, disdaining flying for a moment. “All better!” she chirped, beaming happily. “I am going to love living on Earth, I think. I have not seen so many different and comfortable types of clothing since I was sold to Mongul,
Ignoring the looks and the mutters, the orange-haired girl’s words had begun, Ranma shook his head, trying hard to not look at either Kori, Kara or Cassie. Who, despite their baggy clothing, still pulled off the innocent and athletically cute looks all too well. “Er, right, well, let’s get to work.”
Landing in the ruins of the tower a second later, Ranma began to look around, grateful for his Shazam-ified eyes that he could see so well, otherwise this would be a lot more irritating. Cassie, who had followed and leaped up after him, wasn’t nearly as happy about what she was looking at. “I know you said we might be able to repair this place, but seeing all this, I think putting up a temporary one might be a better idea.”
Considering they were now standing at what would have been perhaps the third story of the tower, which should have been at least ten stories tall, Cassie felt that her concerns were warranted. But Ranma shook his head. “No, I can repair most of everything here. I can’t repair the equipment, but I’m sure they’ve got spare stuff like that around the place, right?”
Most airports did indeed have some spare equipment around, whose inventory was an important part of the airport authority’s area of influence. This included parts to help repair the various control systems, but not nearly enough actual wiring to set up an alternate control center. That was why they would need to rely either on the Marines bringing in their own command-and-control or replace the ones in the tower once it was repaired. That, and the fact that the on-duty control air officers had mostly died in the beam of power that had seared the upper portions of the tower into smoke.
“So, you’re a martial artist and a construction expert?” Cassie chuckled. “How does that work?”
“Pretty darn well, actually. I’m better with wood, and dealing with the various electrical runs is going to slow me down a bit, but I can hope that this form makes me fast enough to make up for that.” So saying, Ranma began to move around the area, shifting debris this way and that, until he could get to one of the walls, whereupon he started to lift segments of the broken wall back into place, seeing where they could go like a jigsaw puzzle.
As he went, Ranma began to give Cassie a list of parts and supplies he’d need, and Cassie, shrugging, hopped off the tower down to the ground below, heading back to where Kori and Kara were helping to load up the two damaged wings and the cargo container with wounded and their family members. “Shazam says that he can pretty much repair the tower, but he needs supplies. Right now, the most important is the concrete mix. I’m honestly not sure I believe him, but he seems to think he can.”
“I’ve seen Shazam repair a lot of stuff,” Kara said, shrugging her shoulders. “If he says all he needs is supplies, I’d get it up to him quickly.”
While some of the people in the crowd who had stepped up to help in the emergency looked at one another askance, others shrugged. They were obviously willing to give the superheroes the benefit of the doubt. Soon, a group of volunteers directed Cassie to the supply silo.
Soon, she was back with Ranma and was astonished to see that he had already cleared out most of the debris from the currently topmost floor. He had even set up downed tree trunks to press in like reinforcements on the outside. He’d also created what looked like some kind of small thin metal hook of some kind, and was pulling up thin wires from where they had been embedded in the still existing wall, letting it lay out onto the outside of the tower.
“I’ve got the materials you wanted,” she reported. “Do you think I can learn to do whatever you’re doing? And no offense, but I kind of thought you were martial arts mad; did that change? I honestly didn’t ever think you’d be the typed to pick up a trade.”
“In this case, this is kind of Martial Arts Construction. Even if I wasn’t in this form, I’d be able to use my arms and hands to help prepare this building,” Ranma said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Oh yeah, that’s your magical form,” Cassie said, having forgotten about that, only to find herself blushing just a little bit at the memory of seeing Ranma again for the first time. That was the only explanation as to why the next words came out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I prefer to look into your eyes directly rather than have to crane my neck to look up at you all the time, though.”
In his Shazam body, Ranma stood at six feet, four inches. Cassie was around five feet nine, putting her pretty near or equal to Ranma’s height in his normal male boy.
Ranma blushed a little, as did Cassie at how that could be taken, before she shook her head rapidly, raising a fist. “But what do you mean about this being martial arts, too? And what the heck else have you been doing? You were making a serious nuisance of yourself with Mongul, and he was tossing all of us around with impunity.”
Ranma explained the construction of martial arts, how it was used a lot in Nerima, and what it could do for the body, while Cassie listened avidly, watching him work, creating concrete quickly and building one of the beds she had brought along. As his explanation continued, he began putting up the wall as quickly and efficiently as he could, making any normal construction team look slow in comparison with what he could do with just his hands. Soon, that explanation turned to instruction, and Cassie began to help, grinning cheerfully to herself as she started hammering nails into various wooden planks to help keep the concrete in place as it hardened, then repaired the stairwell leading up through the tower while Ranma continued to work on the exterior walls.
The wiring wasn’t exactly going to be anything to write home about, but enough of it had survived to allow Ranma to add more in, and soon, the two of them were building a floor above where they had begun. This was followed by another, then another.
As they worked, the two of them talked. They talked about everything and anything, the conversation meandering from their time together on the Isle of Women and their training there, to Ranma naming a few of his teachers, to which Cassie responded with by talking about Donna and a lot of her rivals there, ending with how Kara had arrived. Ranma talked about some of his own rivals, Nerima and his father. Cassie shifted the focus to movies, the ‘anime’ that Japan was famous for and then to music, where the two of them stayed for a while, since Ranma’s taste in music went well beyond stuff from Japan.
Within an hour, as Kara and Kori ferried wounded from the airport area to the hospital, and then from the hospital out of the city to nearby towns that had facilities that could handle them, Cassie and Ranma had pretty much finished the repairs to the tower. It wasn’t pretty, and the window sills, something Ranma had added to the final floor, didn’t have any glass in them, but it was still standing tall enough to give anyone within view of the airport area in daylight.
With the hardest part of the project done, Ranma and Cassie relayed what they’d done to the local airport authorities. One of them, an air control officer who had been out by the employee parking lot having a smoke, volunteered to help set up the various control systems necessary. Ranma and Cassie left him to it, figuring he couldn’t really help with the electronics portion.
However, that still left the airfields themselves to be cleared of debris and the potholes refilled. This time Kara and Kori joined in, and between the four of them, by the time the air traffic controllers were finished setting up space radar screens and consoles, the last of the ruined airplanes had been tugged off into the crass between the airfields and the airport had six airfields ready to receive, with dozens of floodlights spread out, with all of them linked up to various emergency generators. The airport generator had also been repaired and started up by the other volunteers by this point.
The air traffic controller was noticeably jubilant as his voice came over the radios. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, planes, helicopters, and whatever that thing about to land somewhere on the horizon with two rotors is, Star City airport is back in business.”
“Not the most military address, but it’ll do. I’m rerouting two Galaxies to you now. Get them down, get them sorted. They’ve got army on them, so hell if I know who’s in charge. Two more helicopters will follow that, including a command-and-control officer from my Marine Corps to take over. Don’t let the army pukes try to push you out. You’re the man on hand right now. Good work,” the voice of the same officer who had spoken through the speaker on the lieutenant’s backpack on the docks observed.
“Wish I could take all the credit, sir. We just got the electronics working. The tower and the wiring and everything else were done by one of the heroes, the one called Shazam,” the air traffic control worker said, shrugging, looking over to the radar screen for a moment, and with his controls until the radio was keyed into the frequency the incoming plane was radiating. “Attention Galaxy 0177, this is ATC Star City. I have you on my radar. Take a heading…”
At that point, Ranma keyed off his radio, looking up as Kara and Kori looked around the airport with pride at what the four had accomplished. “It was… it will be honestly nice to use my hands to help clean up Star City like this; though, I doubt I’d ever have thought of it without your example. Has anyone told you you’re very good with your hands, Ranma?” Kara teased.
“A certain blonde girl has mentioned that a few times,” Ranma answered glibly, chuckling. “I think we’ve done all that the four of us specifically can do here, and judging by those two helicopters that are flying almost close enough to brush the various buildings out there, more help’s going to be arriving at the airport sooner than those Galaxies. Do you think we should return to the docks, or just stay here and start clearing out some of those burnt-out cars?”
“I think that won’t take very long at all, not with the four of us working on it all at once, so perhaps we should do that and then head back down for further orders. I also want to watch you in your construction rather than destruction, friend Ranma.”
To Kori’s words, Cassie snorted. “It was actually kind of fascinating to learn, and I’m looking forward to learning more, even if I don’t think I’ll be able to get much out of it given my training to this point with Wonder Woman and the other Amazons.”
“Probably not,” Ranma admitted. “Maybe some of the speed techniques will help you, but I don’t think any of the toughness training that is involved with Martial Arts Construction will help you at all. However, some of the more esoteric stuff, like controlling your body’s temperature to cool concrete or melt metal, could. They certainly helped me a lot over the years.”
Kara snickered at that, knowing precisely why the heat-based techniques mattered so much to Ranma, but before Cassie could ask what was so funny, the kryptonian girl lifted into the air and shifted around towards the road leading into the airport. A second later, Ranma’s arms wound around Cassie, picking her up in a sudden princess carry, causing her to flush in embarrassment. “Come on, Kori’s right. We can clear out a lot of this, make at least a lane leading in and out of the airport before heading back to the docks.”
While Cassie wasn’t nearly as strong as the other three, she could still pull or push the cars out of the way, and pairing her with Ranma to deal with some of the larger SUVs and buses was simply good sense. Kori and Kara finished a little bit ahead of the two, causing both of them, extremely competitive individuals that they were, to scowl a little.
Rolling her eyes at her friend’s antics while Kori simply blinked in confusion, Kara gestured up into the nighttime air. Already, more lights could be seen throughout the city thanks to the efforts of the arriving soldiers and the city’s own population of construction workers shifting portable generators around. Some of those lights were spotlights like those that had welcomed their arrival at the airport, but Kara figured any light was better than none.
Back at the docks, even more signs of the building momentum behind the relief efforts could be seen. There were now dozens of floodlights, blazing throughout the area, with still more of the local lights brought online by various generators. Those looked far more high-tech to Kara’s eyes than others she had seen before. “I have to think those are Atlantean,” she murmured, looking at a pair of them with interest. “They certainly look more streamlined and waterproof than the rest. I wonder if they run on the same gas-or other substance-based principle, or something more advanced.”
“Ask ‘em later, Shielder,” Ranma suggested. “I know ya wanna lean into the whole tech thing, but now’s the time for sweat and toil… though, I notice ya ain’t sweating.”
“I know, isn’t being an alien great?” Kara mock-drawled before reaching over and smacking Ranma’s shoulder, not holding back at all. The blow would have been enough to shatter even Ranma’s shoulder if he’d been in his normal body. As it was, it just hurt a bit. “I also know I’ve told you several times, don’t talk like a hick. It’s not fooling anyone.”
“Eh, I suppose you will have to keep reminding me then.” Ranma chuckled, his accent disappearing again.
For some reason, that simple line caused Kara to flush, though she wasn’t certain why. Regardless, she fell silent, following the others as they made their way over to where Aquaman and a few new officers stood under a tent. Why it was there, Ranma had no idea, as it didn’t seem as if it would start raining anytime soon, but Ranma put it down to protocol.
They waited for a few seconds before the oldest-looking officer and the Flash noticed their presence, at which point the Flash grinned at them all, looking at Ranma speculatively. “Heard you fought that yellow-skinned guy to a standstill once Mr. Lightning here showed up. Thanks for that. I don’t think I was doing anything to him, honestly.”
That battle had been a severe wake-up call for Wally. He wasn’t used to fighting many people whose reaction time could keep up with him, let alone people who could actually injure him in such a way that he had to consciously use his speed ability on his own metabolism to speed up his healing. It was almost like fighting someone like Superman.
Only, Superman inherently held back. He and Wally had actually talked about that at one point. To Superman, holding back was simply a necessity. He was so much stronger, so much faster and more durable than anything else on the planet that he had grown up knowing he had to hold back and had a lifetime’s worth of practice doing so. That, plus his upbringing as a whole, had infused him with a respect for the law, for life and humanity.
Mongul hadn’t held back, not a bit, and his simple durability had meant that Wally’s punches, for all the millions he’d landed at near light speed, hadn’t mattered at all. Worse, Wally knew that if he had been on his own, the few minutes of inattention that the damage to his eardrums had evoked would’ve been enough for Mongul to kill him. Facing someone who had simply overwhelmed him like that was not pleasant, to say the least.
“I only wish we could’ve taken Mongul out sooner. Maybe we’d have stopped some of the deaths in the city,” Ranma said, shaking his head, his face darkening until Cassie worked her hand into his, squeezing.
Wally nodded, looking at him speculatively, but deciding not to mention that he had seen the transformation. The youngster was already very obviously beating himself up about not using it earlier. Any conversation on that point would need to happen more politely after Star City had been, if not completely rebuilt and repaired, at least its citizens seemed to be.
“I’ve already got more troopers coming in via the airport. Good work on clearing the roadways, too. That means we'll be able to set up a secondary base at the airport and spread out from there as well as from here, though obviously you didn’t clear out the whole city. We can start on that. We’ve linked up to at least one of the hospitals, and we’ve made several field hospitals down here by the dockyards already, so the Army can help moving out from the airport,” the older officer said. His hair was pure white, but his back was ramrod straight as he spoke, staring down at the map on the large table.
“The Army will use the airport, but your Marines, right? I thought my un--that is…” Kara hesitated before shaking her head. “That is someone I know told me that Marines and the Army don’t get along. There’s some kind of rivalry between the two branches or something.”
“Well, I could say that we are all engineers first, but I’d be lyin’,” the man drawled, looking up at the quartet. His eyes widened for a moment, then softened, shaking his head. “And I see that at least three of you were not exactly dressed for this. Maybe you hero types need to look into some kind of transforming clothing or something? Isn’t that a thing from comics? We do have a job to do, though, and that concentrates the mind even better than trying to one-up one another.”
“In other words, the various branches of the military don’t get along right up until they have an enemy to be pointed at,” Ranma snorted at the older man’s words, while the three girls all looked at one another speculatively at the idea of their clothing changing on demand.
“Got it in one, youngster. We’ll even make contests out of it. Which group rebuilds this or that sector of the city faster wins a prize, and so forth. Hah, but judging by the reports we’ve got about your abilities in that area, we’d probably be competing for second place. You practically repaired the whole air tower. I didn’t expect that,” the older man congratulated them.
Ranma shrugged. “I like to think I can do some pretty handy things with my hands. Where do you need us now?”
“I’d like a full survey of the city, but that’ll have to wait until morning,” the older man mused, still not making any move to actually introduce himself. Which, frankly, Ranma was fine with. Indeed, if this had been a Japanese command, the older officer wouldn’t be speaking to him, an outsider, at all. Instead, he would have simply been passing on demands if he was feeling polite, or using an intermediary, a younger, lower-ranking person, to speak with him, while the old man watched on.
“At the moment, what worries me most is people trying to take advantage of the chaos, but with the Flash and other heroes patrolling the area, I hope that isn’t going to be that big of an issue. I’d like to just summarily shoot looters, but orders from on high say that I can’t do that, even if my command of the city does have some leeway for allowing us to arrest people.”
“Not even in the leg?” Cassie joked, beating Ranma to it, judging by his open mouth. He closed it after a second, before he winked at her. Kara shook her head at that, while Kori frowned pensively.
“Ha, no, if only because all of the hospitals and aid workers we’ve brought in are still being overwhelmed by wounded. And don’t get me started about how many bodies we’ve been removing…” The old man shook his head for a second before visibly shifting away from that topic. “Beyond looters, though, the main problem is gas pockets. I don’t suppose any of you have a powerful sense of smell or some other means to figure out there’s gas around? A lot of the city relies on gas for cooking, heating and so forth, and we’ve already had a few reports of small-scale explosions, but dangerous enough. That, and there are far too many congested roads.”
He glanced to the side, and Ranma only now realized that the Flash and Aquaman weren’t the only two heroes there. Lounging in a nearby seat was a woman, perhaps a few years older than Ranma and the girls with him. She was dressed, well, the last time Ranma had seen that kind of outfit, he had been wearing it in a contest against Tsubasa and Ukyo to see which of them had the most feminine appeal. Not one of my best moments. There was definitely a time when my ego got the better of my brain. But it isn’t exactly the only one now is it, Ranma reflected now, before shaking that thought off and looking at the woman speculatively as the old man addressed her.
“Miss, could your magic do anything about that?”
“I think the best use of me right now would be to light up the sky if you want me to, or to deal with pockets of gas using my own magic. I wish I could say that I could use my magic to heal people, but I’d only be able to heal one injury at a time, and that would take it out of me. I haven’t studied much healing magic. Each spell would be low-cost but would build up over time, and I’m already exhausted. Light at least as easy,” the woman said, before looking over and introducing herself to Ranma, looking him up and down in a way that had Cassie and Kara narrow their eyes for a moment unconsciously.
“I am Zatanna, tall, dark and mysterious,” the woman nearly purred. “I’m technically part of the Justice League, but more because my mentor is a long-standing member than because I’m an experienced hero. Don’t get me wrong, in magical combat I’d hold my own, but with something like this city is?”
“What about repairing buildings?” the older man inquired with a frown. “Couldn’t you use your magic and a single spell that would repair the building? Or repair the hospitals? Several of them were hit in the invasion.”
“I mean, if you want me to rest a day between uses, sure. What part of my being exhausted was vague? Keeping those shields up took it out of me,” Zatanna shook her head tiredly. “I’d still be willing to try, so long as you can promise the area doesn’t have anything electronic, and especially not any computers.”
Everyone looked over at her in confusion, but it fell to Kara to ask the obvious question. Though, given her discussions with Ranma, she already had a vague idea of the answer. “Why?”
Noting idly that the tall, powerfully built man with a lightning mark on his outfit was the only one who wasn’t looking at her in confusion, Zatanna explained as simply as possible. “Let’s just say magic is weird. And things that think for themselves, even in a series of zeros and ones can be…impacted by it in uncontrollable ways. The greater the area I use a spell on, the less control I have too.”
“Are we talking about a Terminator kind of deal here, where the computers will decide to wipe out all humanity, or simply the computer suddenly becoming alive and asking questions like ‘I think therefore I am’ because those are two very different things,” the Flash murmured, smirking just a little bit.
“More like they might turn into pastel colors, shift into glowing goop, or perhaps come alive in some form ranging from a cyborg to a plant-like horror that means to eat the souls of those nearby. Magic is weird. Its effects can be equally weird and out there,” Zatanna said, looking even more embarrassed and uncomfortable. “Sorry. If Dr. Fate were here, he’d be able to help a lot more, but I don’t have his reserves or vast spell knowledge.
Hearing that name, Ranma had to forcefully stop himself from shaking his head. Again, with a hero name like that. Ugh, I can’t see actual fate, Lady Luck, or whatever ya call it that screws me over all the time liking that all that much.
“I still do not understand what this magic substance is, but returning to the previous topic, I also have no idea how my sense of smell equates to you humans,” Kori said, trying to stare at her own nose in a somewhat childish fashion. “I fear that I would be useless in finding gas.”
The older man looked at her, his eyes seeing yet not seeing her for a moment as if lost in memory, then he reached up and ruffled her hair, causing her to smile happily and lean up into it for a second.
It took a moment for the old man to pull his hand away, muttering something about his daughter under his breath before asking, “Exactly how old are you for your race, miss?” Please don’t tell me she’s a pre-teen or something, not with that body! That would be wrong on so many levels.
“I would say I am seventeen in the local language, yes,” Kori shrugged. “Considering how long I spent as a prisoner, my educational level isn’t exactly close to that.”
The older man scowled. “And the person who took you prisoner, they were punched in the face multiple times, correct?”
“We endeavored to make our displeasure plain on that front and this whole invasion,” Kara said, smirking just a bit. “I don’t have any enhanced sense of smell either. It’s one of the few senses I have actually that isn’t enhanced. I wonder if that’s the case with my cousin.” The thought of Clark had her remembering the question about whether she was his daughter at the airport, and she hid a snicker, making a mental note to mention it to him.
“I don’t have any enhanced smell either,” Ranma said, shaking his head. “I’d say, though, that even if I did, my place would probably be using my construction skills. You said something about the hospitals, right? Why don’t I head there and start repairing those?”
“Good thinking. Lieutenant, make up a large pallet of medical equipment, supplies, and so forth. You’ll take that with you when you go,” the old man said, with Aquaman interjecting that they could also give Ranma a few of their generators to take along just in case.
That made simple good sense for everyone there, while Cassie held up her hand hesitantly. “I can’t fly like these three, but I can run pretty darn fast, and make my way via rooftops if I need to. But I do have an enhanced sense of smell.” It wasn’t something she made a point of, and she’d grown up with it, so knew full well when not to react or to keep it under control, but once more, like most of her abilities, it probably came from her never-so-sufficiently damned sperm donor.
“In that case, one of your friends can start flying you around the city, and clear out local roads as you put down markers around the gas and oil leaks you find. We’ll give you a few hundred glowsticks to set around any area where you smell gas, and you can report back to us about the various districts as you go through them, plus siphon off any gasoline in any damaged cars. The gasolines a resource and a minor threat. The Flash is going to do the same and will also do his best to remove as much rubble as possible, which I’d also like you to do with your partner,” the officer said, nodding firmly. “Anything that will keep my people from accidentally setting off an explosion or even a simple one is a good idea in my mind. I’ve lost twenty men already, and the death toll among the civvies is harsh enough without that.”
“I would like to start learning construction, please,” Kori said, holding up her hand from where she was still standing at the same place where the officer had been rubbing her head. “If Shazam can teach me as we go, I promise to be a good student.”
Ranma grinned at her, holding up a high five, which Kori looked at before hesitantly accepting. “I’ve got no problem with that. I've already started teaching some to Cahhnn…Nyctimene. Teaching someone else isn’t an issue for me. That means you’ll be paired with Nyctimene, Shielder.”
There came a cough from one of the coms officers that sounded suspiciously like ‘super blondes’ but a glare in that direction from the two blondes in question had all of the men there flinching. Soon after, the group began to break up, with the officers racing away once more, and Zatanna left the tent area. She stood out in the open for a second, then began to speak in Latin.
Or at least, that was what Cassie thought it sounded like at first. Yet that was the common language of the Isle of Man. She should have understood it even if it was a strange offshoot thanks to the gift of tongues from Mnemosyne’s priestess, and after a few seconds Cassie realized she didn’t. Other than the vague sound of it, it sounded like complete gibberish to her.
A moment later thought, Zatanna’s arm started to glow, and then she flung it upwards. The light exploded outward from her arm high into the sky, and watching, Ranma could only shake his head, reaching absentmindedly over to click Kori’s dropped jaw back into place. “I hope someone thought about warning the various troopers out there about the magic girl’s light show, or else I predict a lot of people just fired randomly into the air or otherwise hurt themselves in their confusion.”
While Kara bit back a giggle of laughter at that bit of dark humor, Kori watched as the energy coalesced into a silvery orb high above them. “Wh, what is that? Some kind of energy manipulation? But that is unlike anything that ally Zatanna was doing during the battle.”
“It’s magic. Think of… some kind of random energy that only a few people can control, and which creates some seriously weird stuff if abused, or even when not,” Ranma answered.
“That does not explain nearly enough!” Kori protested.
“Hey, I might know about magic, but explaining it is beyond me,” Ranma retorted.
“Among my folk, we believe magic is a gift from a goddess named Hecate. Only those with the wisdom of Athena could possibly discover more,” Cassie said, and this time, Kori could tell, she was joking as her eyes were twinkling and her emotions were more clear-cut.
“That makes even less sense than friend Shazam’s explanation, even if I put weight on the quasi-religious aspect.”
Kori pouted, and Kara patted her shoulder companionably. “I know, it’s weird to me too, Starfire.”
Swiftly, Kara and Cassie were given a map of the city, and two large backpacks, more duffle bags really, loaded with glowsticks. Looking at them, Ranma cursed a bit, missing access to his ki space. Being able to carry the equivalent of a small house’s worth of supplies was always useful, and his Shazam form barely had a single pocket to its name, a small patch located above the small of his back. Soon, the two were ready, while work continued to put together a pair of cargo pallets for Ranma and Kori.
With the light gleaming above the city, Zatanna felt her work was done for a moment, and needed a long rest before any more taxing magic. With that in mind, she headed towards a nearby area where several cots had been laid out, but Zatanna stopped when Ranma called her name. Smirking, she turned towards him, standing with her hands behind her back near her lower back, leaning forward just a little bit to give him a better view of her chest.
Ranma didn’t react to that, while Kara and Cassie paused from where they had been about to push off the ground, with Cassie already in Kara’s arms. Both of the blonde’s eyes narrowed for a second, while Kori cocked her head thoughtfully to one side, wondering about the strange swirl of emotions that her friends and this new woman were putting out.
“What can I do for you, handsome?” Zatanna smiled coquettishly.
Ranma got right to the point. “Can you remove magic? Remove curses and such?”
That took Zatanna back a moment, and she shrugged, her flirtations abating for a moment. “Well, it would depend on the curse, I suppose. I’ve never had to remove a curse from someone, but I’ve done it a time or two to objects with curses on them. You’d be astonished at some of the things that come out of Egypt, for example or worse, portions of Africa. Do not get me started on what some witches did to this one blood ruby mine down there, that was disgusting.”
“But you could do it from a person?” Ranma asked.
“I don’t know. I’d probably need to examine it, figure out where it came from, what was powering it, that kind of thing. Why? Are you cursed? You sure as hell don’t seem to be from where I’m standing,” Zatanna said, letting her eyes roam up and down Ranma’s body.
Unknown to her, the way she was acting was pretty much guaranteed to get Ranma to ignore her. He’d dealt with several women over the years who liked to act all sexy towards him like this, Shampoo, Ukyo for a time, and of course Nabiki and Lara. The overtly sexy, aggressive look never did anything for Ranma. They could certainly make him blush if they pushed it beyond a certain point or invaded his personal space, but it wouldn’t make him react positively.
This time, Ranma just decided to ignore it. Besides, she’s not nearly as attractive as Kori, Kara or Cassie. Kori might be pretty up front with how much she likes to show off and stuff, but that isn’t like directing that sexiness to me.
“No, this form’s something else entirely. I’ve got a curse, one that… changes me into a girl with cold water and back with hot. It’s from a place called Jusenkyo, in China,” Ranma explained. “You ever hear of it?”
Zatanna blinked, staring at him, trying to decide if the guy was joking or not, but when it became clear he wasn’t, she laughed. “The heck? I’ve never heard of a curse like that, but I’ve never traveled in Asia. As for the curse itself, cold water changes you into a girl. I know all too many guys who would probably get a kick out of that.”
“Well, this guy doesn’t. Not really. It was a means to an end at the time, and since I’ve recently found out I don’t need it anymore, I figure, why not try to get rid of it? Do you think you could help?”
“You know what, let me talk to my teacher, and between the two of us, I bet we could do something about that,” Zatanna said. “I won’t promise anything now, but between the two of us, we can probably come up with something.”
Nearby, Cassie cocked her head to one side, staring at where Zatanna had just walked away from Ranma, laughing at whatever he’d said. “What do you think that was about?”
“You won’t believe me unless you see it for yourself. Trust me, you’ll get a kick out of it. It’s kind of sweet and kind of hilarious same time,” Kara smiled, shaking her head as she looked down at Cassie. “It’ll be very interesting to see what you think. You and Wonder Woman, anyway. Now come on, Nyctimene. Let’s get a move on.”
The two of them rocketed up into the air, where the two girls took a moment to just exchange a hug and further words of thanks for seeing one another after so long, once they were out of sight. Then, Kara began to zoom through the cityscape itself, stopping periodically at every intersection or building to let Cassie sniff the air. Moving in the opposite direction, the Flash was doing the same thing with a gas scanner.
Within minutes, both of them found pockets of gas leaking out from destroyed buildings. Similarly, at gas stations and other places that had been ravaged, the gas bunkers were quickly marked out.
Within minutes of his two other friends leaving, Kori and Ranma were loaded down with a pair of cargo crates and in the air, heading towards where a specific building had been mapped out, the most damaged hospital in the city.
Aquaman watched them go for a few moments, feeling both humbled, thankful and yet also somewhat concerned. Humbled, because he knew for a fact all four of them, with possibly the exception of Wonder Woman’s niece, Cassie, who he recognized, could beat him in any kind of fight he cared to name, and that was humbling to any man. More, he knew that without Kara, who he also recognized from Clark’s description, and the one called Shazam, had been instrumental in saving Star City. Without them fighting the alien leader, Mongul would have smashed through every other hero in the city.
Aquaman was a king, and part of being a leader of any kind was to understand reality, and that was the most certain thing Aquaman knew at the moment. Hawkman had lost a wing and a hand. It would be a wonder if he ever took up his mace again. Plastic Man had been dealt with easily by Mongul, but he’d be back on his feet in a few hours. Similarly, Red Tornado could maybe recover, since he was an android, which meant they could rebuild his lower body. Flash had been only marginally effective, and knocked out of the fight against Mongul early on. Without the four teens there, he and Green Arrow would’ve died too.
The only other hero to tangle with Mongul directly was simply dead. Firestorm’s ability to change his body on a molecular level hadn’t meant much when Mongul had punched through his chest and torn out his heart before Firestorm, or Martin Stein as he was known in his civilian persona, could react. A head stomped into paste and Firestorm’s regeneration hadn’t been enough. The most powerful of the non-magic users left on Earth, and Mongul had dealt with him by simply being too fast and too powerful for Firestorm to react to. With the element of surprise, that had been enough.
Thus, Aquaman knew he wouldn’t have made much of a difference against Mongul, not even if he had brought Aqualad and Aquagirl in to help with their various abilities (smidge of magic, super strength, extreme durability like Aquaman’s), which he hadn’t. Both of them were young, as young as the four who had just left, but both were also innocent, and would not have done well faced with a crisis like this.
I might call them in now to help with the aftermath, it’ll be a good experience for them, make them question if they really want to be heroes. But when it comes to Mongul, the only ones who might’ve made a difference would be Zatanna and Dr. Fate. And that’s if Mongul didn’t have some kind of resistance to magic, which he might’ve, since he was an energy manipulator himself. Or, you know, could just move faster and strike harder than either of them could deal with.
While Aquaman hadn’t seen Zatanna in action before this, since she had made no move to join the fight against Mongul, he felt his assessment of her was pretty accurate. Dr. Fate had also mentioned several times that the Martial Manhunter had some natural magical resistance to him, as did Firestorm. Thus, it was more likely that those who could direct energy in various ways from their bodies would have some measure of resistance to direct application of magic.
Speaking of direct application, where the hell is that Green Lantern rep!? Clark and the others left on that peacekeeping mission partially because the Green Lanterns said that they’d have a member come around and check on things here! Sure as fuck didn’t seem that way. Still, given Hal’s weakness to yellow, maybe he couldn’t have done anything to that big bruiser?
Regardless of the missing GL member, Aquaman was happy that the foursome or rather, the threesome and the former prisoner girl, had been able to defeat Mongul. Yet at the same time, Oliver had seen the young man named Ranma transform into this lightning-wearing alter form. Setting aside why the youth hadn’t used that form before Mongul nearly killed him, which Aquaman put down to an honor code of some kind, Aquaman had heard about Ranma before this and knew that the young man’s particular code wasn’t exactly in keeping with what the Justice League held its heroes to. He worried about how strong the youngster seemed to be and what his overall plans were.
I’m also wondering what Bats will think about all this. I can already tell he’s going to have a bee in his bat-bonnet about it, Aquaman thought, shaking his head. For now, though, that doesn’t matter. This city does, and we’ve got a lot of work to do still before it’s safe enough for us heroes to leave the scene.
OOOOOOO
Laying down his large burden on the street right next to the front entrance of the hospital, as Kori landed at the back of the hospital near the loading bay, one of which had been destroyed sometime in the fighting, Ranma could only shake his head as he looked all around. This area of the city was probably one of the lower-income areas. Not a slum, as Ranma had traveled in places way worse than anything he was seeing now. But still worse than most of the rest of the city had looked. Before the invasion, anyway. Worse though, it looks like a majority of the locals were still here. I don’t see any kids or families, but I do see a lot of teens, college-age guys, and older guys and gals around.
Most of those locals were busy under the direction of police and first responders, moving the wounded toward the hospital, cleaning out areas of the city, or turning from where they had been stringing up lights to other matters, thanks to the light Zatanna had sent up into the sky. It glowed above the city like someone had plucked a moon, brightened it a bit, and then stuck it to the sky a mile or so directly above the city.
Beyond the work to repair buildings, an effort that looked more enthusiastic than organized, most of the work the locals were being made to help with was clearing the streets of smashed cars and other debris. There was a lot of grumbling about it from what Ranma could overhear, but there were also at least three squads of marines within sight as Ranma looked around from near the entrance to the hospital.
The corporal of one such was shouting, “And if I see anyone trying to palm anything or break into a house that we aren’t repairing, we are allowed to shoot to wound! Looking at you, guy with the red afro. That’s the fourth time you’ve been by that house at the end of the street with no reason to be there. Get back to work on siphoning out the gas from that car you were told to work on.”
Heh, now that’s a lie, going by what that old guy said, but I sure as hell am not going to point it out. Guy sounds harried, and I’d wager anything there’ve been a few warning shots given before this to keep things under control.
Closer to where Ranma had landed, several medical tents had been set up along the road, but unfortunately, Ranma didn’t see all that many lights on in the hospital. It looked as if something had happened to the hospital’s emergency generator, as there was a tent right by the door covering what looked like twelve or so of the distinctive Atlantean portable generators. All of them had been hooked together, with a massive power cable leading into the hospital itself.
People were coming and going all around him, several hundred at least along the street, and more up on the roofs or on ladders scattered around. Only a few of the civilians stopped to stare at where Ranma had set down the pallet, while dozens more kept on moving, working on things along the street or running off into the city in every direction. Most were accompanied by a marine fire team or more, with the locals carrying medical supplies. Other groups were coming back with wounded on stretchers, and Ranma saw at least two men carrying wounded on their backs as well.
Shaking his observations off, Ranma opened the pallet and gestured to it to a nearby marine who had turned away from where a map of the local area had been set up. “Yo. Here’s some supplies from down at the docks. Mostly more generators, but there’s lots of cots and medical supplies like disinfectants and tools in there, too. I’m gonna take a quick flight around the building, then get to work on repairing what you think needs fixing. The old guy organizing everything should’ve called ahead before me and Starfire arrived.”
As the man twitched but very visibly decided to ignore Ranma’s insouciance, Ranma looked into the hospital itself. In the waiting area, he could see at least three dozen people laid out. Men, women and even a few children who the flash's evacuation efforts had missed were there. A second later, as some locals and marines moved forward to look into the pallet, he flew upward. Moving over the lower wing of the hospital, he peered into a few of the rooms. When he did, he saw that the other floors were almost as crowded. There were dozens of doctors running around and working on patients, but not enough lighting for how many people were there, most of it from red emergency lights.
There were patients everywhere, even in rooms that had been directly damaged by the invasion. In one such room, where a large chunk of the room was open to the sky, its outer wall having been carved away by some kind of attack, two doctors were hard at work on a young woman, using the better lighting coming from Zatanna’s light above. Her skin looked as if it had been burned off half of her body, and she had been knocked unconscious at some point, either from the trauma or by the doctors, and she wasn’t reacting to any of their work as they went about doing whatever it was they were doing.
All around the hospital, Ranma noticed even more people moving. There looked to be at least a few thousand all around them moving in every direction and working on numerous things throughout the streets and houses as best they could. Zatanna’s magical light in the sky had certainly helped, but it wasn’t enough inside the buildings themselves, and there was just as much work going on inside the buildings as along the streets.
An example of this was several people working at a restaurant connecting an emergency generator, creating a meeting place and hoping to save the food within if the shouts of a few men were anything to go by. Landing next to Kori, he saw her looking around as well. Most of the medical tents here, in what had been the loading center and the employee parking zone, were actually being used by marine doctors. Men and women were moving rapidly in every direction, with doctors shouting orders, dozens of wounded and all in all, it reminded Ranma of a scene from old movies he had watched about World War 2 or the Korean War.
Ranma made to speak, but the power chose that moment to flicker, causing much cursing. The work he could see happening outside didn’t stop; the doctors barely paused as they performed emergency surgeries and other medical procedures. “Damn, it looks as if this place just kept on working throughout the fight,” he finally said. “And they call people like me and the other spandex wearers the heroes…”
Kori could only nod in agreement, her solid green eyes wide. Ranma idly noticed that she didn’t seem to have separate parts to her eyes, no iris, pupil or whatever, just a rather exotic, gleaming green. He blushed a bit as she turned those eyes on him, but even as she enjoyed his feelings of interest and appreciation, she kept her mind on the matter at hand.
“Looking at this, I can only conclude that Heroism comes in many forms. The type of valor you, Nyctimene, and Shielder are facing down Mongul is one. This one is a slightly less discernible type of bravery, I think, in normal times. But no less viable for that. That is something to remember, isn’t it?”
Her last sentence came out as a question, an almost querulous one, as if Kori wasn’t certain she was getting her point across. This reminded Ranma that Kori had spent more than half her life as a prisoner on Warworld, just waiting to become eighteen and then become Mongul’s personal property instead of simply a prisoner of Mongul. “Yeah,” he replied, his tone soft. “And your kind of courage is no less heroic than anything we’re seeing here.”
Kori blinked, then smiled widely. She had first been somewhat thrown off by Ranma’s sudden spurt of pity for her, and had been all set to get angry, but then, on top of that pity, had come pride in her. Pride not for himself, her empathic powers were up to discerning where such emotions were directed. That emotion was directed at her personally, along with a bit of awe and respect. She wasn’t certain what had caused that sudden spike of emotions, but she wasn’t going to question it just now.
“Nice to hear some appreciation, but what I’d really like to know is what you both brought us,” a new voice intoned. “Gunny Jenkins told us you mentioned something about more generators and medical supplies in the crate you dropped in front of the hospital. What all is in this one? General Price’s signalman told me you’d also be up to repairing the hospital faster than we can?”
Both youngsters turned to look at one of the Marines who had just come out of the hospital. He didn’t seem to be wearing any rank Ranma could see, but then again, he was also wearing what looked like a repurposed apron of some kind covering his front, which was spattered with quite a bit of blood that wasn’t his, and he had the eyes of someone who had seen too much in far too little a time.
Catching Ranma’s look, he shrugged. “It’s all hands here, kid. I might’ve just been the most senior doc sent ashore with the first group of Marines to arrive, but no one’s come to relieve me yet.”
“I’d guess that’s gonna be happening soon. The airport’s up and running now, and they’ve gotten the dockyards organized, complete with four medical tents set up around the perimeter,” Ranma replied, holding out a manifest of his and Kori’s crates. Say what you will about ‘em, but the US military’s damn organized about things like this.
“Here’s the list. As for what I’m here for, I’m pretty darn handy at fixing stuff, and I don’t mean small stuff. I can rebuild some of the walls here, complete with wiring and so forth. Just don’t ask me to repair any of the medical equipment. Most of that’s too finicky, and even what I could repair, it’d take me just as long as it would a normal repairman.”
The man blinked at that, then shrugged. “How are you at generators and clearing away debris? The portable ones we’ve got from the Atlanteans are okay, but they were never intended to run a building this size, let alone a hospital, with all of its thousands of demands on its central power. But the emergency generator hasn’t worked for some reason, and the stairwell down collapsed for some reason when the building was hit.”
“I’ll take a look. Starfire, let’s get the streets around here a bit more organized,” Ranma said, looking over at Kori. “Start by removing all the wrecked cars around here. There’s a ton of them.”
Especially in this area of the city where most of the cars were parked in the open, and there were so many cars still moving around during the attack. Shrapnel and stuff did for a lot of them from what I could see, but there was at least one fight near here we passed over on our way from the docks. Let that be a lesson, Ranma. Splash damage and shit like that are major issues in a city.
Kori nearly snapped to it, Ranma’s words, nodding agreeably. “Should I be doing the same thing we did at the airport? Pull off the license plates if they are there, set them aside, drain the gas, and then junk the rest?”
When Kori said junk like that, she meant crushing the cars as much as possible, then setting the resultant junk somewhere. Without another person to help, squashing a car would be a slower and messier project, but still doable.
“Yeah. I’d make a joke about insurance and alien attacks not mixing, but right now, I don’t think it’s the time for it,” Ranma joked lightly.
The marine doc barked a laugh, while Kori just looked confused. “What is insurance?”
“An investment you lay down in terms of money to protect something of your property, be it your life, your house, or your car in case of emergency.” The marine snickered, shaking his head. “I take it your people don’t have that?”
“I wouldn’t know. I had only had an allowance for a few years before my older sister sold me off to Mongul in return for his help to help conquer our planet and supplant our parents,” Kori was matter-of-fact even as she spoke about what amounted to almost medieval levels of brutality. Her calm presentation of it made it only worse for the other man, whose eyes widened as she went on. “I would assume, though, that heroes might have insurance as you put it, and perhaps some of it would be set up to deal with battles like the one we faced?”
“Huh, you know, maybe there is something like that, some fund the JL has to pay for stuff after disasters? Or maybe the American government, does, wouldn’t put it past ‘em,” Ranma mused. “But you’ll still need the license plates so that the owners of the car can collect afterward. Start from the roads leading into the landing bay, clear out, say…” There, Ranma paused, looking over at the Marine officer.
“Four blocks in every direction would be nice, and maybe helping us get some wounded we can’t move ourselves here, if you can move them any more gently than we can. Too few of the city streets are clear enough for us to get ambulances in and out, but if you could start on that project now, it’d be a major help. I think the Flash is also doings something out like that, but he’s coming in from the outskirts and is dealing with gas outbreaks, draining cars and so forth, as you know.”
Inside the hospital, Ranma found the doc had been telling the truth. The stairwell leading down into the basement had been struck by something entering at an upward angle from the side of the building, filling it with rubble and creating a makeshift entryway into the hospital. Removing it, he quickly found that what had hit the hospital like that had been one of the aliens, a Chain Brethren, who had been killed with a blow to the chest, but had then been sent into the building hard enough to smash its wall like a wrecking ball.
Hah, five will get you ten that guy’s one of Kara’s victims. I sure am not gonna bring it up to her, though. On the other hand, shouldn’t the emergency generator have come on automatically once the hospital lost power? There’s still gonna be something wrong with the actual generator.
Removing the debris and the body took a bit, but soon Ranma was in the basement, thankful again for his night vision, as there were no lights on, not even the emergency lighting. When he examined the generator with the help of a few flashlights, Ranma found that he couldn’t really figure out if there was anything specifically wrong with it. Rather, it just looked as if maintenance on it had been badly neglected. A lot of the parts looked as if they had rusted; some of the wiring leading up into the rest of the hospital was bad, as if rats or something else had nibbled on them, and the generator’s tank, which should’ve been full of diesel, very much wasn’t.
Why that last one was, Ranma didn’t know, but the giant tank was completely empty. I gotta wonder if maybe that was some kind of cost-cutting thing. Or are there cars that run on diesel? Could just have been theft, he mused, before shaking his head. Not my problem, though whatever it is, it’s come back to bite the hospital in the ass.
Regardless, Ranma figured out most of the issues quickly and went to work fixing them. As there wasn’t a clock or anything in the generator room in the basement, he didn’t know how long it took, but he figured it only took him about twenty minutes or so to do what would probably have taken at least four or five other people to do in a few hours.
He checked in with the Marines as he left the hospital, finding they had been reinforced by a company of army types, distinguishable by their different camouflage gear, and the fact that most of the army types weren’t actually armed, being logistics and medical personnel instead of riflemen, as all marines apparently were. When he asked about diesel, he was pointed towards the airport, where supplies were incoming, including large Jerry cans of diesel and other types of fuel.
While Kori and others had funneled oil from destroyed or ruined cars, it was unleaded, not diesel.
With that, Ranma raced off through the sky, noting absently that Kori had done a magnificent job. She was almost done clearing out the two main roads around the hospital, and even as he watched, a large, utterly ruined car was hefted into the air, then crushed in her arms with a shriek of metal, bits popping off as she crushed it from side-to-side. Length’ll probably be trickier, he chuckled, flying off.
By the time he got back, she was done with that and waved at him as he landed, holding two large crates full of Jerry cans that were themselves full of regular fuel. That didn’t mean the fuel within would go to waste, though. “Nice. I’m almost done with the generator, and after that, we’ll head to the next job, unless ya want me to start repairing the building?” he asked, directing his words to the nearest marine.
“It’s not necessary. Most of the buildings around us are empty, and we brought in enough medical equipment that we can start spreading out better and faster than waiting for you to repair the hospital,” the marine answered. “Check in with the doc just in case.”
Ranma did so, kicking himself for forgetting they now had radios, and was instantly relieved. The hospital was obviously larger than the Air Traffic Control tower he’d had to rebuild, and it had lost at least the top five stories during the battle, sending rubble and debris everywhere and leaving very little behind. Repairing it would have taken him the better part of the rest of the night, even in his Shazam form with its enhanced speed.
Not so much power when it came to using Martial Arts Construction, and Ranma had noticed quickly that his reaction time wasn’t all that much better in this form either. Or at least he didn’t think it was, though he acknowledged that might be his ego talking. Ranma’s speed, on the other hand, was way higher, which certainly pricked that selfsame ego a good deal when he thought of it. Yet this whole adventure had been a bit of a wake-up call in that area already, so it wasn’t much of one.
After going over the generator again, Ranma poured in the diesel into the generator’s tank. Thank God this thing’s like that one hospital in Fujian I helped build. Unlinking it from the hospital, he did another jumpstart, watching for anything that might go wrong, before reconnecting it. Seconds passed, and then the generator took over, running the hospital from the city’s defunct, out-of-order power grid, as it should have.
All the lights in the rest of the hospital’s basement came on then, and with a grin, Ranma headed upstairs, hearing cheering above him.
“Good timing. A few of the Atlantean generators had gone out while you’re heading out first diesel,” the same doc as before came up to him as he came up into the loading area at the back of the hospital. “Any chance you could fix the elevator? Only one of the four is working; the others smashed themselves when the hospital lost power.”
That Ranma had to think about for a minute. “I could remove the debris from the elevators, sure, like I did in the stairwell. Repairing them, that would depend on parts, sorry, I can’t exactly just make metal panels, controls and so forth out of nothing.”
“Eh, it was worth a shot. We’ve got a few emergency workarounds if you can clear out the elevator shafts, though. It’ll be a while before we can get in any of the heavy equipment, we need to do that, and if I can, I’d like to prioritize getting in the workarounds.”
Nodding, Ranma looked over to Kori, who had just landed nearby, smiling happily at seeing the light coming from the hospital. “Do you want her to work on clearing a place where helicopters can put down, or is the street wide enough?”
The doctor thought about it for a moment, then gestured to a nearby parking lot at the far end of the street leading into the employee parking lot and loading area. “What’s the top of that look like? I haven’t been up there.” He should’ve been, the marine knew, as that was a good question Ranma had just spoken to. Getting supplies dropped directly to them would’ve been way faster than shifting them through the city from the dockyard area.
Honestly, he hadn’t been expecting to be in a position to ask for more supplies, and had, in fact, been worried they’d need to evacuate the hospital to one of the others, which had a working generator in the next hour or so. However, Kori had done more in less time than teams of Marines with heavy bulldozers would’ve been able to, and he hadn’t been able to get into the hospital’s basement at all before Ranma had shown up.
Frankly, the doctor had only pointed Ranma at the emergency generator in hopes that he could at least clear out the stairwell, rather than believing he could actually fix the problem. But he had, and having full power back throughout the hospital, not just emergency power, but full power, for now anyway, they needed to bring in more diesel fuel before the night was out, which was a godsend.
“If you are talking about the wide area on top of that building where your mobile conveyances are stored when not in use, it is relatively clear. How big are the helicopters coming in?” When told, Kori made a moue of annoyance. “The top is not that clear, no. Nor did I look inside.”
That took a bit of work, and Kori quickly set to removing some of the debris and shattered cars from within the parking garage. It still stood, but its sides and dozens of cars within it had been hit by such stray shrapnel and rounds from the fighting. One floor in particular looked as if it had been hit by a stray missile, which had somehow come in from the side and landed near the center, exploding one of the ramps leading from an upper floor down to the lower floor.
But with Kori and Ranma working on it, with Ranma explaining the principles of Martial Arts Construction, and the concrete already on hand, they were able to repair it relatively quickly. With that done, they got to work clearing debris from the elevator shafts. This was not a pleasant undertaking, considering that those elevators had indeed been in use, with people inside them.
By this point, that wasn’t anything the twosome had not seen before. Indeed, Ranma had seen more death and blood since the battle for the city ended than he had ever wanted to see, and came away horrified and shaken the first two times he’d had to remove a car with a family in it, or go through debris only to find the broken remains of a few men crushed by its collapse.
Kori took it far more stoically than Ranma. Her upbringing on Warworld meant she was inured to death to a certain degree, and indeed, she dealt with the dead far more easily than the wounded. Their emotions of pain, loss, fear and anger were all too familiar to her. Cassie had Amazon training to fall back on, but as the night went on, she started to have problems, as Kara had from the first. It was only each other’s presence that kept them going, and both separate pairs began to joke and talk more often than they had before.
For Kara and Cassie, this meant talking about their time on the Isle of Women, music, dancing, and other things. For Kori and Ranma, it was a bit harder. They started easy with a back-and-forth of twenty questions, then moved up from there, with Ranma explaining things like sports, learning about the Tamarian equivalent from Kori and more.
They were also interrupted occasionally as various animals made themselves known. There were a lot of cats, dogs and other, more unusual pets that had escaped their owners in the turmoil of the invasion, and there were at least a dozen men around the area searching for them and corralling them for later identification under one of the police officers. Whenever they came close to Kori though, cat or dog, they would run up to her and demand to be petted, making happy little yips or purring up a storm for some reason at Kori’s smell. And Kori, enthusiastic cuddler that she was, would never be able to ignore them. This caused Ranma some amusement as he knew that Kara had mentioned that animals seemed to distrust her scent at first, but he put it down to Kori and Kara not coming from the same race.
Despite these interruptions, in less than two hours of their initial arrival at the hospitals, whose name Ranma hadn’t gotten, the job was done, and he and Kori headed back up to the rooftops. They both needed a minute after that and refrained from checking in for just a minute. Their mood wasn’t helped by the sight of several rows of dead bodies, which had been removed from many of the cars in the area and laid out on the sidewalk, thankfully, prior to Kori removing the cars themselves.
The area around this particular hospital hadn’t been part of any of the direct fighting the foursome had been involved in, but as Ranma had supposed, Green Arrow and more than a dozen police officers had fought a battle near here against some of the Warworld raiders. The bodies of the invaders had been left where they lay, except for in the roads where they would obstruct traffic, obviously, but the dead civilians and police had been seen as best they could.
Below, Ranma could see someone working among the covered bodies, pulling out IDs and clipping them in place, while a few marines stood watch on both sides of the street. The dead policemen had been laid to one side in a large group, while the civilians had been laid out in a row along the sidewalk of the street where they had died.
Overall, it was a brutal reminder of the human cost of what happened here, and Ranma couldn’t tear his eyes away for a moment.
Even Kori was moved by the sight, sighing faintly, staring down at the ruined area around the hospital. With the hospital generator working, the few remaining Atlantean portable generators had been turned to the various houses, and with that and Zatanna’s light above them, the area looked a lot more organized and in control than it had when they had first arrived. Yet even so, it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
“I… I am sorry that my escape brought this to your planet, friend Ranma,” she expressed slowly. The blood and guts she were seeing didn’t bother her all that much, but the sight of the bodies being cared for in such a fashion made her remember that not all planets were like Warworld, with its inherent disdain for life. I wonder how many here are leaving behind young people like those we saw at that airport?
“Don’t. If it isn’t my fault for not using my Shazam form sooner, then it sure as hell isn’t your fault for wanting to escape what was going to happen to you. I can’t blame you for that, Kori. I can’t even blame you for Warworld being here at all. I… I just wish the fighting could’ve been cleaner, but I suppose that’s, well, a normal lament, you know? I’ve never had to deal with anything on this scale before. I don’t think I ever want to again. It’s horrific and I really, really would like to go back to a time when I was the one only one in danger of being hurt,” Ranma tried to joke.
“Truly?” Kori was surprised. “You never had to deal with anything this large or a battle this massive before? You were doing quite well even back with your normal body.”
“That I put down to my martial arts style. It’s called Anything Goes, and adaptability is one of our main tenets. Well, that, and I just love to fight. But that doesn’t mean it’s any nicer to deal with the aftermath.” Ranma then shook his head, slapping his face several times as Kori looked on, perplexed.
“Why are you slapping your face like that? Is this some kind of way of honoring the dead? It seems most silly,” she observed.
“Ah, no. That’s something our race does when we wanna forcefully wake up or shift where our thoughts are going.”
“The pain helps with that? How very strange. Would something more pleasant work instead?” she asked, her eyes flicking down to Ranma’s lips for a moment. I can certainly think of far more pleasant ways to distract myself.
“Sure, but a slap to the face is always available, you know? From other people, or yourself,” he added to himself, waving off Kori’s continued confusion. “Come on, let’s make a once-around the area, then I’ll call that General guy back at the docks. See what else he wants us to start doing.”
Kori nodded agreeably, and the two of them took to the air a moment later, flying high enough they could survey the entire city, if from a distance. From up here, they could see the flash, well, flashing through the city outskirts. He left behind several small chemical luminescent sticks, marking out where he had detected open gas lines and gasoline. In particular, several gas stations have been marked out like that, which made sense to Ranma, along with one apartment complex and a restaurant. He was also doing something around the cars he zoomed up and over, and Ranma supposed he was helping to remove injured or dead, but for the most part, that job seemed to have fallen on the shoulders of the locals.
He was covering more area than Kara and Cassie were. They were visible as well as they dove down into the city on the other side from where Flash was working. Elsewhere, Ranma could see a convoy from the airport heading up and into the city, led by two large military-looking vessels. Ranma thought they were Humvees going by what he’d seen in movies, along with what looked like a few trucks pulling large equipment behind them, and infantry marching alongside them.
To his side, Kori pointed. “Look down there, friend Ranma.”
Ranma looked to where she was pointing, seeing where several of the troopers from that convoy had broken off, heading into the city away from the main roads. “Ranma, does that mean they spotted trouble, or someone in need of help. We could go over there and help quickly before checking in with Mister General Price, could we not?”
“It could be both, but let’s stay up here for a second. Those guys are in the army and are more than likely able to handle themselves. I want to…” he paused, then looked to the southern edge of the city, where a few lights had just gone on. It was barely visible from up here, thanks to Zatanna’s magical light in the sky overriding most at a distance, but Ranma could still see it, and, moreover, could see that it was an area of the city the relief efforts hadn’t yet reached. Indeed, there didn’t seem to be that much movement at all there.
Yet as he watched, Ranma could see more movement, and unlike the other areas where the marines and soldiers had been working, it was almost surreptitious, which drew Ranma’s attention all the more. He glanced around, then decided quickly. “Let’s get down there,” he nearly ordered, pointing in that direction. “We’ll get down low in flight right over the rooftops. There’s something going on there that someone wants to hide, and I want to see what it is. Keep quiet and let’s see if we can get close to whatever is going on without someone spottin’ us.”
“This one asks what friend Ranma saw,” Kori inquired, even as she moved to fly beside them. They flew down, following the shadows cast by Zatanna’s light, although Kori pondered that it probably didn’t make them any less visible to anyone looking up. Just not quite as obvious as if we ourselves were creating shadows on the ground below, she mused.
She misjudged a turn as they came down into the skyline of the city, and bumped into her companion slightly, causing Ranma to blush as her breasts skimmed over his shoulder and back for a second. “Oh, my apologies,” Kori whispered, not really meaning it, because she could tell that Ranma had enjoyed that, and she had enjoyed the attraction that the move had sparked in Ranma.
It wasn’t as nice as the background feeling of attraction and simple enjoyment in her presence that Ranma had begun to radiate even as they fought one another before Warworld followed Kori, but it was like adding that nice sugary substance on top of the small cake she and Cassie had indulged in while shopping for clothing at the airport. Very nice, very sweet, and I would like more, please!
“Um, it’s okay, and, er, I think I saw some and it's way away from where the refugees and so forth shouldn’t be,” Ranma explained, trying to keep his eyes on Kori’s own stark green orbs rather than glance at her chest. “It’s an area of the city we went through when we were hunting down raiders, but there’s no grocery store, no hospital, and not a lot of movement, which meant the little movement I saw stood out even more. I think it's looters, or some of the criminals doing something else.”
Kori nodded at that, and the two of them came around the side of a skyrise, pausing in midair before flying down into the shadows of an alleyway, where Kori alighted on top of a badly battered emergency staircase, while Ranma grabbed onto the side, hanging there almost like a monkey for a moment. Kori got the impression that he would’ve been doing that even if he were still in the body he'd had when they first started fighting, as Ranma made the move look almost as normal as walking.
Ahead of them, coming out of an alleyway set to one side of where they were hiding, were several people. They were loading what looked like a large truck, one with the words U-Haul in orange on both sides. They were loading large crates into the back of the truck while others stood around, wielding heavy guns. These were what Kori knew now to be rifles and machine guns, and they were watching all around, even upward, making it clear why Ranma had stopped them here, hidden in the shadows of an alleyway.
Looking at these men, they reminded Kori greatly of the group of locals that she and Ranma had found fighting it out in some kind of place where they fixed the conveyance vehicles, the cars, as the Americans called them. This group, however, did not have the black or somewhat whitish skin of that group. Rather, their skin was somewhere in between. They also looked somewhat swarthier, their features thicker across the face, and more uniform looks to boot, unlike that previous group.
The possible criminals were also speaking a language other than the normal one that the locals used. That one was called English and had some confusing words in it, though Kori found it somewhat pleasant to the ear. This one sounded like it could also be pleasant to listen to, yet the tone of the voices she was listening to at the moment wasn’t.
Kori was somewhat surprised to realize she could somehow understand it. Did I glean this from Cassie as well? She did say something about having used magic, again whatever that is, I really do hope I get an explanation at some point, to learn English and all other languages. That is a most fascinating concept.
Setting her delight at that aside, Kori leaned over. As she did, her large shirt had fallen almost to reveal her taut stomach and some underboob, but still clung to their under curve with an almost desperate energy. If Ranma even glanced up at her, he would have gotten a most enticing view, in Kori’s opinion, but he wasn’t looking away from the criminals ahead of them, much to her mild disappointment. Tamarians were sexual creatures, and although she had not been steeped much in her own people’s culture before she had been given to Mongul as a prize, Kori found herself interested in exploring such things in the future with someone she could call a friend rather than be forced into such things.
“Friend Ranma, would you like me to translate?”
Now Ranma did glance up at her, and Kori watched, a faint smile appearing on her face as his eyes flicked away rapidly, and a blush suffused Ranma’s features. At the same time, a spike of greater attraction and desire than she had felt earlier came over him. YES! He is very much attracted to me, just as so many of the men around us have been; Ranma just controls it far better. Good!
He stammered, one hand coming up to make certain that no loud noise left his mouth, but the squeak that did escape was enough of an answer for Kori.
“The one without guns who is directing all of the people moving in and out, the one with the white shirt and pants rather than jeans, has mentioned being on a timetable several. He just said something about patrols coming their way. I did not see any watchers as we came close, but I presume that they have some out there and are worried about the groups you called soldiers and Marines. Although beyond the camouflage in their uniforms, I’m still uncertain as to the difference there.”
That roused Ranma enough to snort lightly into his hand. After a second, he pulled it away and leaned sideways, no longer looking up at her, but not exactly shying away. “Never let a marine hear you say that, they’re very, very different. I’ve heard it described as one being a profession, the other a cult. And that’s a joke you have to get one of the Marines to explain to you. I wasn’t altogether certain I understood it when I was told it. Still, for now, if they’re on a timetable and moving something they’re worried about being found, I’m thinking drugs.”
“Medicine? If they have stolen medicine from the hospitals or something of that nature, it would be most horrific!” Kori growled, suddenly becoming serious enough to set aside her thoughts on what she hoped to do with Ranma once they were done here. “Would this be some kind of long-term series of theft or—"
“Ah, not those kinds of drugs. More the easily-addicted to type,” Ranma said, shaking his head. “In a port like this, I bet anything this gang’s part of some kind of major drug cartel further south. That language, it’s Spanish, right?”
The last was a wild guest as he’d never actually heard any Spanish in his life before coming to America, and even then, only a few words here and there as he crossed the Northeast and into the middle of America, given how rarely he had stayed in one place for long. After meeting Kara, he hadn’t heard any bar a few times when they had passed by cars with Spanish music blaring obnoxiously from them.
“I do not know the name of it, but I can understand and presumably speak it because friend Cassie can speak it. I was told her ability was given to her by some kind of magic, so why it carried over to me I do not know. Regardless, they are getting ready to leave, or at least, the U-Haul is. What should we do?”
Cocking his head thoughtfully, Ranma twisted around in place, then flung himself into the air, where he flew back around the corner of the building they had been hiding behind, gesturing Kori to follow him. They skirted around the area, racing first straight upwards once they had put a skyscraper between them and the group of criminals, then down behind another one on the opposite side, nearer the front of the truck. There, Ranma made a motion with one hand to her to his face, which Kori understood as meaning to be quiet for a second, then he moved forward.
Ranma’s objective was to get in close and then disable the truck, either with a well-placed punch through its grill that would demolish the engine, or by getting underneath the truck and cutting bits of its undercarriage into pieces such that the wheels wouldn’t move. He didn’t want to engage these guys, worried about collateral damage and frankly, knowing that a fight with them would take more time than he wanted.
Frankly, if it wasn’t drugs… or well, forced prostitution or something worse, I wouldn’t have been getting involved at all, even if curiosity got me here in the first place. Normally, Ranma wouldn’t go out of his way to get involved with criminals unless the crime was happening right in front of him, involved the Art or targeted people he cared about. I ain’t a hero, and this wasn’t exactly happening right in front of me, but drugs, I got a major problem with that shit. I don’t wanna fight them myself, but stopping them from getting their goods out, hell yes.
However, before he was able to move out of cover towards the front of the truck, an arrow flashed down from the second story of a building on the other side of the street where Ranma had been moving from. It smashed into and through the top of the truck’s bonnet, embedding itself in the engine before exploding with the force of a small grenade, a load crump reaching Ranma’s ears a second later and a gout of flame erupting out of the hole that the arrow had made, incinerating the rest of the arrow, but the damage was done.
Instantly, shouts in Spanish abounded, as many of the guards on duty fired up at nothing all around them, until shouted down by their superior. “//Fucking hell, you idiots, shut the fuck up! This area might’ve been mostly evacuated, but noise will travel and bring downNNNGHH!!//”
He fell, an arrow embedded in his shoulder, a shock of electricity going through his whole body, lighting him up like a Christmas tree before he slumped to the ground, senseless.
That did it, and the men went back to firing up into every shadowy window around them. This didn’t help them much as a second later, hit by an arrow from another vantage point, and Ranma shrugged, then bellowed over his shoulder, drawing many of the shooters’ attention his way. “Well, I wanted to do this quiet like, but whatever.”
Grinning, Kori charged forward, a blast of her light purple energy crashing into one gunman, incinerating his head even as he and his fellows fired at Ranma. An instant later, she was in front of two of the others, her fists flashing out.
Ranma flew forward as well, but didn’t move to attack the eight remaining gunmen. Rather, he cut off one man who had taken over, shouting orders. He had just turned to run inside the building, but a quick chop to the back of the neck laid him out. With that, Ranma left him there, turning back and attacking several of the other gunners, who had shifted their fire onto Kori. They barely got a few shots off in her direction before Ranma’s fists sent the last of them into Lala land.
He didn’t kill them as Kori had her own targets. These guys might well be as bad as any of the Chain Brethren or other invaders in their own way, but Ranma felt he’d had enough of killing that day, and it wasn’t nearly as automatic as it seemed to be for Kori. Ranma reflected that it was probably more due to how long she’d been in captivity than anything inherent in her personality, or her race’s general concept of right and wrong, though he hoped she’d learn when and when it wasn’t necessary.
The two of them charged into the warehouse where the large truck had come from, and immediately, other gangsters opened fire on the two heroes, although only with pistols this time. Ranma was almost tempted to taunt them about how he’d have been bulletproof to those kinds of guns even back in his normal body, but decided against it, just zooming forward.
Kori returned fire, and as they saw that their fire only bounces off the two, a few of the gangsters quickly began to toss down their rifles and machine guns. This didn’t save them, though, as Ranma darted forward. Hard chops to the side of the head or neck area, laying out all of the gunmen he reached, bar two who died to Kori’s fire as they kept on trying to fire at him.
“We’re going to need to talk about appropriate use of force in the future, aren’t we?” he mused, looking over at her and shaking his head as smoke wafted up from the chests and heads of the gangsters Kori had just killed.
Kori cocked her head to one side, blinking guilelessly at him in confusion, feeling some measure of disapproval tainting the normal feeling she got from Ranma that he enjoyed her presence. “Did this one do something wrong?”
“Not so much wrong as could’ve been better.” Ranma shook his head. “I ain’t about to tell you to follow an honor code as I do, it’s just, well, these guys weren’t really any threat to either of us, were they?”
Kori frowned at that, as Ranma tore open the door leading into the rest of the warehouse. Ranma used it as a projectile to slam into several gunmen who had been setting up a large machine gun of some kind at the far end. “Interesting toys these guys have. I’d seen on the news reports occasionally about how powerful Mexican drug cartels could be, but I didn’t really believe it. Now I’m forced to admit it, and I’m kinda stunned. Although, that might just be the Japanese in me.”
Kori made another questioning no noise at that, as they continued, idly reaching out and smacking one man who came at her with a machete of all things in the face with an idle hand. The smack smashed his nose into pieces but also sent him into blessed unconsciousness. “I understood most of what you said, but not the context.”
“I’m from another part of this planet, a place called Japan, and there, no one has guns except criminals or the police. Even then, they don’t use them openly. They certainly don’t go around as heavily armed as this lot does,” Ranma explained, kicking up a piece of the door and flicking it up into the air before sending it with another kick towards a gunman who had just come out of the door at the far end of the hall, the doorway probably leading up into a staircase. The blunt edge of the piece of door crashed into the man’s chest, hurling him backward into two others, taking them all down.
Before they could rise, Ranma had crossed the intervening distance even faster than his normal body would have carried him. His hand chopped down, sending all three into unconsciousness in an eyeblink. “The country we’re in currently is called America, by the way. Not sure if you got that along with the language lesson from Cassie. How did that work, by the way? Was it some kind of mind meld thing?”
Kori decided not to answer that question, remembering how Cassie had seemed embarrassed after the act when Ranma had questioned them about it once Mongul had been forced to retreat. She wasn’t certain why, but she didn’t want to alienate one of her three friends by bringing it up now.
Instead, she said, “My own people are more like yours than these Americans or the Mexicans that we are currently fighting. Certainly, there were some areas of our planet where dangerous predators lived, and locals had to go armed, but those were exceptions, not the rule, and from what I remember of what my tutors told me, I do not believe we had much of a criminal element at all. We had a very good planetary defense force, but that was against external threats. Our police force didn’t go around very heavily armed at all, whereas this group seems almost as heavily armed as the Sky Raiders or other guilds on Warworld. That’s a rather disturbing comparison.”
“Yeah, guns and stuff do take some getting used to,” Ranma snorted, kicking the head of a man who had just opened a door. “I bet it’ll be easier for you, though, considering you’re always bulletproof. Whereas back in my normal body, I’m only bulletproof to a certain degree; at the moment, anyway. If running into you and that Mongul character has taught me anything else, it’s taught me I need to up my training.”
Laughing, Kori nodded a little. The two of them split up then, heading through several side doors and knocking out a few people within who had been hiding out rather than attacking. The pair made sure there was no other way out before heading up again. Ranma was determined to find the rest of this gang and shut them down.
Along the way, they met Green Arrow, dueling it out with several machinegun-armed criminals, perhaps higher up in the local gang? Ranma didn’t know. What he did know was that they had fallen back into a single set of rooms and were holding off Green Arrow relatively well, to the point where he had backed away and was moving towards a window again to try and flank them when Ranma and Kori arrived on the scene.
He stopped and watched as they simply raced forward, ignoring the gunfire, to close with the enemy, shaking his head. “I’m beginning to get really annoyed at how everyone but me seems to be bulletproof. I remember how durable you were even before your change, Ranma.”
“Git gud, scrub,” Ranma taunted over his shoulder, as he crashed into and through the final barricade by the doorway. Even as his fists lashed out to either side, a foot came up, sending portions of that barricade up and into the air over a bookcase that had been set upended onto its side. The bits of the former barricade caught the head of a man who had been about to escape out the window.
With no one firing at him now, Ranma hopped over to the man, checking for a pulse, and finding he was alive, before looking at the window. “Huh, the guy was either trying to commit suicide, though, frankly I don’t think he’d died from simply falling three stories, would he? Well, whatever, there was no other way out for him from here.”
Looking down, he spotted bits of what might have been the building’s emergency staircase. It had been torn off from some stray attack during the earlier battle. Instead of being able to escape, the man would have found himself stuck on the sill of the window or falling to what indeed might have been his death, judging by the jagged bits of metal and pipe below.
Turning, he directed Kori to go and guard the truck, to make sure that no one tried to remove any of the drugs that had been loaded up on it or anything similar. Meanwhile, Ranma moved over to the walls, tapping them thoughtfully as Green Arrow began to place cuffs on the unconscious criminals, muttering under his breath about how he has to find the nearest police precinct and hit them up for more handcuffs after this. “I thought the worst I’d see were looters. I kind of expected most of the criminals of Star City to have already fought the invaders, thinking they were just another rival gang. This group seemed to have been a little smarter.”
“That or less patriotic,” Ranma called back, causing Green Arrow to twitch as he realized his mutters had been overheard. “Starfire and I ran into a group of chop shop type criminals, they do call it chop shop in the states too, right? They fought some of the invaders when we arrived and finished the aliens off before heading out. They were locals, though. This group isn’t.”
“Got a point there, I suppose. Although I probably have taken them in myself as well.”
“I’m not a hero, I don’t go around trying to put criminals behind bars, not unless I see the crime happening in front of me. Well, that, and drugs and shipped like that, I kind of hate.” Ranma flashed a grin as he spoke, albeit not a very nice one. “I don’t go around looking for trouble like that, and honestly, after I beat them up and tie them up, I kinda forget about any criminal element I run into. If they escape, that’s more an issue for the locals than me.”
Green Arrow shook his head at that, then looked over his shoulder and made his way towards where Ranma was when he heard the screeching sound of tortured metal. Looking into the office of the local crime boss, he discovered the sound was the removal of a safe door, which Ranma had just torn off its hinges after discovering it had been hidden in the wall, low by one of the corners.
Not, as Ranma had expected, behind a series of paintings that had still been on the wall, or the sole remaining bookshelf. Honestly, it’s as if these guys have no understanding of style.
Moreover, the emergency safe wasn’t really a safe at all, as most would understand the term. Rather, it was a drop zone, a hidden place in the area between floors where you had to twist your arm at an uncomfortable angle to get anything out from within. Ranma had to kneel down and twist his arm to touch what lay within. This is probably why the drug lord or whatever he was tried to get away right now rather than try to get to his money or whatever else is in here… Aha!
A second later, Ranma pulled out several large wads of cash wrapped up in enough layers to be waterproof. They were also all in hundreds, which Ranma thought odd, but didn’t care much about. He set them aside, then pulled out some files, setting that on the ground as well, a faint scowl appearing on his face as he reached in again, bending his arm in a way it really shouldn’t be.
“I figured those and the criminal himself would be a nice feather in the local police’s cap, so long as they’re not on the take,” he grunted in success as he pulled out what felt like a series of CD cases held together by twine, setting them to one side along with the folders, separate from the cash. “That proved to be the case a little too often when I was turning in this criminal that the Japanese government wanted me to take out. I think that’s it, but ya might wanna get a demolition team up here to see if there’s anything I can’t get out.”
“And what are you going to do with the cash?” the Green Arrow demanded, one hand reflexively reaching up to his quiver. He’d stopped back into his mansion not once, but twice since the invasion began. Once right after the fighting started to die down, then again later on, with having joined in when the Flash or Aquaman attacked a few clumps of Warworld, others that had been left behind. Since then, he’d had to deal with hundreds of small-time looters. Assholes, most of them might be, but they knew to hide when someone was flying above the city, which is why Ranma and the girls hadn’t seen any yet.
Right now, though, that didn’t matter, as he was rapidly wondering what he would do if Shazam wanted to just take the cash and leave. Fuck, I don’t even have any explosive arrows left, only a few glue and six regular arrows!
“Eh, if these guys were small-time perverts or rapists I found in the act, I probably just shake ‘em down for whatever they were worth, then neuter them. But as it is, I don’t need all that cash. I was figuring I’d probably donate most of it to the local soup kitchen or maybe the police widows fund or something?” Ranma asked, both confirming and denying Green Arrow’s concerns. “I’d keep like, a hundred per asshole for myself, but that’s it.”
Oliver sighed, placing his bow over his shoulder as he moved to both take pictures of the paperwork and put it into a small special case by his side, something else he added to his loadout the last time he was at his mansion for just such occasions. Unlike Ranma and Kori, who had stumbled across this group, Oliver had known about them beforehand and had gone hunting for them barely forty minutes before Ranma had spotted movement. “Even that isn’t all that good, kid. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“You have your code, and your laws. I have my Code. People who prey on those weaker than themselves, or peddle drug shit, they lose a lot of rights in my eyes. Besides, I ain’t exactly used to dealing with the law at all,” Even with the last year or so, he added mentally. “And I figure the police widows and orphans in particular need this money a lot more than it needs to be locked away as evidence or whatever. Especially considering all the other evidence we found.”
“Normally, I’d say every little bit helps, because the scum would probably have oodles of lawyers on hand to try and bail them out. But considering that Star City’s been locked under martial law. They’ll answer to military justice later on, unless of course they decide to spill the beans about anything else,” Green Arrow muttered, before shaking his head, looking at the cash that Ranma had pulled out and kept by his side. “As for the rest of that money, give it to me. I’ll make sure it goes to the widows and orphans fund in a way that isn’t traceable. That way, if any of the gangsters get away and know that we took their money, they won’t even be able to figure out where it went.”
Ranma nodded but still took a few thousand dollars for himself, calling it a “Fist tax. After all, Kori and I could be doing a lot more for the rest of the city than dealing with these idiots.”
Oliver wasn’t sanguine about that, but he did agree with the sentiment at least, and soon, Kori had sealed the back of the car. She melted it in place before pushing it against one of the walls nearby so that no one could get at the back of it, tied up all of the gunmen outside, and removed the wheels just in case. There was no chance anyone was going to be able to get into the truck now, not without a lot of effort, and Green Arrow called in the find to the Flash, who promised to come this way every ten minutes or so. With his speed, adding that bit to his ongoing duties elsewhere in the city was no issue.
Similarly, Ranma called in their find to Price, who promised to get a group of Marines out to watch the prisoners before directing Kori and Ranma toward another hospital where some construction work was desperately needed. Apparently, a few engineers had arrived by this point and felt the whole building was in danger of collapsing. But there were still too many patients inside to move, as more were coming in from that area of the city, and nothing but foot traffic could get there so far.
All three headed in that direction, with Ranma and Kori flying above Oliver as he made his way over the rooftops. Just as they were about to leave the Green Arrow behind, all three paused as a sound of breaking glass hit them, muffled, but audible to the trio despite that. “This one wonders how there is actually intact glass anywhere in the city, given how many sonic booms and back blasts the site Star City has endured,” Kori mumbled even as she took off in that direction.
As he came up over a rooftop, Ranma saw a group of four teenagers who had, judging by the direction they were running away, broken into what looked like an adult store. He stared at them from on high, as they looked back up at him and Kori hovering in the air above them, while nearby, more serious looters were trying to race away from a store across from the adult toy store, carrying what looked like TVs and laptops.
They hadn’t frozen, but they didn't have any chance to get away either. Grumbling, Ranma zoomed down and chopped them into oblivion, grabbing at the items they had been carrying before they could crash to the ground and be damaged. He moved to put it back into the store, while the four teenagers took the opportunity to bolt. They didn’t get far, as a single arrow slammed into the ground at their feet, exploding with some kind of fast-hardening glue that covered their lower bodies.
Kori had watched all this in some confusion, wondering why Ranma had been staring. He had felt somewhat nonplussed, almost embarrassed for the four younger-looking humans, before taking out the older-looking humans rather than deal with them. “Friend Ranma, what was it about these four and their doings that so annoyed and baffled you rather than angered you?”
“Yeah, kid, explain that one to the alien princess.” Green Arrow sniggered.
“I could try and make you do it, old man,” Ranma grumbled, setting down the last laptop before looking up at Kori. “Those guys are younger than us, Kori and were breaking into a store that sells age-restricted stuff. Er… It’s kind of about the same type of stuff Mongul had to wait until you were a certain age to do to you, you know?” He grimaced at that last bit, but that was basically the only way he could think of offhand to get the point across.
Kori’s eyes narrowed, though, and she stared from the teens to the store they’d broken into, ignoring their ongoing curses and shouts of, ‘We didn’t do anything,’ and words to that effect. “I don’t think I understand completely, but they were doing something socially unacceptable as well as criminal, and something that made you just want to be embarrassed in their stead?”
“They were acting like horny young idiots taking advantage of Star City’s current chaos. Honestly, I’m surprised that this group hadn’t been evacuated with most of the rest of the city kid population by flash,” Green Arrow observed.
“Maybe they hid from him purposefully. Besides, it’s not like Flash finished the evacuation, or even got mostly through it, before too many aliens were dropping for him to concentrate on it.” Ranma shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the two adult looters, and hopped up onto a nearby streetlight, where he quickly began to tie them in place with a rope. When he was finished, they were dangling from the two lampposts, like a pair of piñatas.
With that, Ranma began to draw on them with a felt marker he had found at the electronic store they had been stealing from. Phrases like ‘I’m an idiot’ and ‘I’m an asshole who takes advantage of my city being invaded to steal from my neighbors,’ ‘moron,’ ‘buffoon’ and so forth quickly found their way up onto the skin of the two would-be thieves, whereupon Ranma hopped back down, staring from the adult toy store to the teens, and the purloined goods still in their hands, glued there along with the rest of their bodies.
“You know, even I won’t do much to the four of you. The way you are right now, I think that’s about as much mental trauma as anyone could take. Have fun explaining it to the police when they eventually free you, though,” Ranma said, shaking his head.
With that, Ranma made to jump into the air to join Kori and head towards the hospital as they’d been directed to, but Green Arrow shouted up at him. “You’re just leaving them there? And I notice you didn’t take any of their cash, kid.”
“No, I didn’t.” Ranma twirled around in midair, crossing his arms to glare down at Green Arrow, somewhat annoyed by his questions now. “Grabbing that money from the drug dealers was one thing. Taking money from looters, where I know they’ve gotten it from, you know, looting would be an entirely another.”
Green Arrow smirked at that answer, nodding. It ain’t perfect, but that’ll do. “Get going, you two, do what you can for the wounded at that hospital and everything else I can’t. Leave the small-time looters and shit like that to me to deal with.”
With a final nod in the older man’s direction, Ranma and Kori flew high into the sky, then from there followed the directions they’d been given towards the second hospital.
OOOOOOO
As Oliver had already noticed, there was, alas, a good deal of looting going on, which began even before the actual fighting had died down. Someone didn’t need to be a professional or lifetime criminal to think of perhaps taking advantage of the chaos to act out in ways you wouldn’t be able to. And unfortunately, the Flash hadn’t removed more than a third or so of the city’s population into the surrounding area, with most of those being children, their parents, and teachers.
It was in no way everyone, or even a majority. The real majority of Star City’s population was helping the marines, police, soldiers and first responders in any way they could. Star City was their city; it was their houses and their streets, which needed to be repaired or cleared. It was their injured family member, neighbor or friend who needed to be seen to.
If the majority of the city’s population, nearly ninety-seven thousand at the last census, were not pitching in all across Star City in ways large and small, even Ranma and his friends’ efforts would have been a drop in the bucket. There were literally millions of small jobs being done all around the city by the civilian population. Every Home Depot had become a center for the rebuilding project. Every grocery store’s a meeting place. Old, young, teen and adult, all of them were pitching in.
Yet, there were always going to be at least a dozen bad eggs for every four hundred men and women who were doing what they had to repair the city from the disaster that had befallen it. There were always going to be a dozen thrill seekers, and at least two dozen young idiots who thought they could get away with looting without thinking about the consequences, and a handful of people sporting long-time grudges who wanted to strike out at the object of their hatred.
Cassie and Kara dealt with several such as they traversed through the city in a spiral pattern, opposite the Flash. He was doing the same from the center of the city out, but the Flash was doing far more work in terms of dealing with looters than anyone else, thanks to his speed. Indeed, he had spiraled through the city several times, dealing with such criminals as he found them, then doubled back to deal with wrecked cars filled with very explosive fuel, put out fires and mark down areas with gas leaks.
In that last area alone, Cassie was proving better than the Flash’s simple sensor. With everything else that had happened in Star City and, well, how fast the Flash was moving, he had to double back several times over the same area to find a gas leak with the scanner he had. In contrast, Cassie’s nose was better than any bloodhound, able to steer them right where the gas was coming from. At which point, they would either try to turn off the gas or simply mark out the area. Or rather, Cassie would, while Kara helped to clear the streets of rubble, deal with searching for locals still buried under rubble, or capture particularly idiotic looters who hadn’t run for cover.
Kara looked on as Cassie put down several of the glow sticks they had been given. Such an interesting idea those were, using simple chemical reactions to create a light. It was a very elegant little idea, and one Kara rather enjoyed, even if she knew it was far too simple for her own culture to have used. Nor was it as fascinating as watching Cassie’s nose at work. “You know, looking back on it, I can’t remember any time when you showed you had a better sense of smell than any of the other Amazons.”
She had to nearly shout to speak up, as there was a lot of noise all around them, people shouting orders, people nailing things, or otherwise doing whatever they could to start the repair efforts as best they could.
“It’s not exactly a thing that comes in handy on the battlefield, and it’s more like I can enhance my nose if I think about it, sort of like you can twitch a muscle if you think in a certain way. I didn’t have to think about it for a while, then I trained myself to turn it off,” Cassie replied, her own volume matching Kara’s.
Giggling, Kara swiftly grabbed out two glowsticks and shook them, then handed them over as a young man rushed over to try and pull the dog away from Cassie. “Well, it seems to work; your nose is better than any bloodhound.”
When Cassie looked at her questioningly, Kara shrugged her shoulders, looking away with some embarrassment of her own towards where a large, yellow dog was running around with a few pre-teens carrying planks of wood and other items this way and that. “Dogs are cute, and there were several hunting and working dogs on the fAGHmmm…” Kara cut herself off as she looked around at the people around them. The closest were standing a dozen yards away, working on a house, clearing it of broken glass and repairing a portion of the wall facing the demolished house where Cassie was working. “They seemed to like the way I smell for some reason.”
Cassie snorted, and she bit back the words, I like the way you smell too as they came to her mind for a second. She wondered where the hell that came from as Kara went on. “Still, I am kind of surprised I didn’t see any sign of it.”
“You did, though ya might not have realized it. Remember how rarely I was ever sent down to the fish market? And only as a punishment?” Cassie joked.
“Huh… come to think of it, I do. You always looked as if you were turning green whenever you were sent, but I never wondered about it. Fish isn’t exactly my favorite food either,” Kara admitted.
There was a loud, cracking noise nearby, and Kara quickly turned around, zooming over to where a portion of the roof that had seemingly been hit by something bouncing off it at an angle suddenly gave up the ghost. Two men had been up on the roof, examining the damage. They both yelped, the roof under their feet giving way, and then both of them were in her arms in the air above the house.
“Thanks, Supergirl, that was close. Didn’t expect the roof to go that bad, it didn’t look like it was all that damaged,” the older of the two spoke up, staring back over his shoulder at the roof. “My cousin’s going to have an apoplexy about that.”
“I think he’d be more horrified if the two of you were wounded. And it’s Shielder, not Supergirl. Now I’m wondering if you all are somehow in cahoots and doing it on purpose,” Kara grumbled. “I might be eventually willing to go along with Superwoman, but that’s ten years down the line, and only if I don’t figure out something better.”
“Oof, but Shielder? That sounds like something out of a bad anime or comic book,” the younger man teased, trying and failing to notice how the baggy clothing Kara was currently wearing was hiding her real shape, something he was now very aware of, as his side was pressed horizontally into hers.
“It’s a work in progress,” Kara protested. “I’ll figure something out eventually. It isn’t like we were looking to be involved in an invasion when we showed up here.”
Both men fell silent at that in surprise, realizing it had been luck more than design that had brought at least the two Super Blondes, as they were quietly being called, to their city. Kara set them on their feet, and with a nod, moved back over to Cassie, who was already on the radio calling in their position.
The area they were currently in seemed like a middle-income kind of area, if Kara was any judge. There were a few damaged houses, but none were outright destroyed. Indeed, most were intact, along with a few small businesses. There was one large supermarket, which had quickly become the center of local recovery efforts. There were only a few dozen wounded, and Kara had already evacuated four seriously wounded when they hit this segment of the city.
Cassie had mentioned that it seemed this segment of the city, six or seven blocks away, had been protected by a vicious fight a little ways out of that zone, where a police precinct had been. The invaders had put down near there in some numbers and ran into what Cassie had been able to tell was a local SWAT force backed up by the regular police and maybe some of the civilians or criminals in the city.
That fight had brought in still more of the invaders into that one area, a tendency that Kara and Cassie had both noticed before. Such flashpoints protected several other segments of the city. Kara thought they were called districts, but wasn’t certain. In this case, by the time the Flash arrived, the area there had been largely demolished in the fighting, including the police precinct itself, but the aliens within the two small troop transports had also died almost to a man and the Flash had finished them off quickly.
Shaking her head at the thoughts of the bodies they’d discovered in that area, Cassie moved over towards a nearby restaurant, her nose wrinkling.
To the watching Kara, it was quite cute, reminding her of Cassie’s face when they started training with the bow and arrow and she kept missing the target. “You good, Nyctimene?”
“Yep. Just gonna see if I can get into that restaurant. I don’t need you here for that, Shielder,” Cassie said, turning her neck to grin over at Kara. “Go do your thing.”
Smiling briefly at that smile and the simple joy of being around her friend again, Kara nodded. “I’ll be back soon.”
With that, Kara flew back over a few of the buildings to land by the grocery store again. There was only one policeman left there at the moment, as other policemen and women had moved off with bits of the crowd that had gathered there when Kara and Cassie had first flown overhead. The man had a nasty-looking gash down his leg when they had first arrived in the area, but it had been seen to since, wrapped in gauze and treated with disinfectant. “Officer Lucas, do you need anything else while we're here?”
“We could use some help clearing roads, Miss, and some supplies wouldn’t go amiss.” The policeman nodded back respectfully. “We just got in contact with the army, and we’ve already got groups of our folk out moving some of the debris in the street so that they can get through and get to Charter Heights, but we’ve also got most of our folk helping those of less lucky districts heading our way. We’ll set them up either here in the grocery store or elsewhere.”
Lucas chuckled, wincing as he looked down at his leg, but still somewhat upbeat despite the pain he was in. “We’re pretty good here, and we know it, stands to reason we’d want to help elsewhere. In terms of supplies, medical supplies certainly, even if you already took the worst wounded off our hands. Beds, blankets. What we really need is power, but I understand there aren’t that many spare generators to go around.”
Kara shrugged apologetically. “I’ll call it in and see what I can do, but you’re right, those need to go to the areas most affected. From what I’ve seen, your area isn’t even in the top twenty worst hit.”
With that, Kara raced off and, surprisingly, came back with a pallet of emergency solar-powered or gasoline-based outdoor generators from the back of a hunting store a few districts over. There weren’t many of those, and this store had gone overlooked by the locals up to that point. With that, and a few jerry cans of siphoned off gasoline, Charter Heights would be better off than they were.
Come to think about it, I have to wonder if the solar-powered ones will be able to work off Zatanna’s spell light. Can magic create light that can then be registered as normal sunlight enough to constitute a power source? Ooh, that could be an interesting experiment, she mused, as she handed over one such to a group of locals.
Soon after she had handed out the last ones, Cassie arrived, jumping down from one of the local rooftops and making her way over to her friend. “I’m done. There isn’t any other gas leak I can detect in the area,” she said, more for the policeman’s benefit than Kara. By this point, the two of them had this somewhat down to a science and would zigzag over a few blocks at a time as they moved around the city in a broad spiral pattern.
Kara nodded, pulling out the map of the city they had been given down at the docks, and she and the policeman marked out the area, reporting back to the control center down by the docks. Thankfully, the organizational efforts had really begun to pick up over the past few hours, and she was told that there were indeed medical supplies, as well as several medics and a team of engineers, ready to go if Charter Heights was trying to help other districts. They had even brought in thousands of radios, which they began distributing along with the other necessary supplies.
Along with the power, the phones were mostly all down. There were still landlines, of course, but most of those were to the wire centers, and those had been badly hit during the attack, and with no power to speak of, those were down to. The police precincts, those that remained, were were able to talk to one another and the hospitals, but not to Price or any of the incoming troops.
“Our records say we’ve got a pallet all marked out and good to go. If you can head to the airport and see to that before continuing your survey, you can bring it in and even the troopers. I’ll rustle up a logistics officer to head the team,” the officer on the other end of the radio said. It was a new voice, but Kara figured that the radio operators had probably been heavily reinforced by this point.
Answering in the affirmative, Kara clicked off the radio, then looked over at Cassie and the policeman. “I’ll need my hands free to carry things, not to mention people, so unless you want to go piggyback…”
“I’ve done that a time or two already, so as nice as flying with you is, I’ll stay here, thanks.” Cassie shook her head in denial, before smiling and cracking her knuckles eagerly as Kara found herself grinning widely at her friend’s offhand compliment for some reason. “Besides, I think I’ll be more use here. You mentioned something about needing to clear a few roads?”
“Yeah. There are a few burnt-out cars that need to be shifted, and a few buildings have collapsed onto the roads leading into the area,” Lucas responded. “We’ve got groups of people working on it, but we don’t have any heavy equipment here in Chester Heights. We did, but the aliens rampaged through the only construction company our area can boast of. If we can break out to Alikay, we’ll solve that problem, but judging by what people from there have been saying as they streamed into our district, it was hit way worse than us.”
“I probably won’t be done by the time you get back, Shielder, but I can start on that project at least.”
Kara nodded at her friend’s words and, with a final wave, lifted up into the air.
Taking possession of and being told where the various segments of the pallet were supposed to be distributed took longer than actually getting to the airport for Kara but she did end up getting held up there for a bit. Thousands of refugees had been brought into the airport by this point, mostly wounded or families with wounded, and there were a lot of questions piling up about what the hell had happened and why.
A low-key introvert, Kara tried to deal with those questions as best she could, simply saying that it had been an alien invasion and that she wasn’t the one to ask, hoping that would be enough to ward off further questions. When the questions persisted, Kara admitted she’d only been coming into the city by chance once more, making no mention of the fact that Cassie had lived here previously.
While her appearance and powers had won her a lot of reflected respect thanks to Clark, there was still anger, annoyance and grief among the wounded. The human toll was grievous from this assault, if super sporadic, with the death toll in the thousands by this point, but thanks to Kara, her friends and Zatanna, it wasn’t likely to go above nine thousand people or so. So, there was a lot of understandable shock and anger growing along with a good deal of fury. The work going on kept the majority of the able-bodied busy enough to not care so much, but the wounded who could push past their pain, the parents or teachers watching the kids, those were growing furious.
By the time that Kara returned to charter heights, Cassie had already cleared out several of the smaller roads leading into the area, and one portion of the two major roads leading into and out of it. While Cassie wasn’t nearly as strong as Kara, Ranma’s Shazam body, or even Kori although Cassie wasn’t certain on that last score, she could still lift anything larger than a small SUV, and could push even those relatively easily, even if they didn’t have wheels. Busses and large trucks, though, were a little beyond her, unless they still had their wheels and the cargo truck she was currently pushing did not. It barely moved a few inches as Cassie grunted and strained at it, as Kara arrived on the scene.
However, something else caught Kara’s eye just as she was about to fly below the height of the surrounding houses, heading towards the grocery store. Slinking out of an alleyway nearby, a pair of men dressed in army fatigues was carrying several large bags. Her eyes narrowing, Kara paused, then set the pallet down before slowly rising back up over the rooftops.
Moving into the pair’s blind spot, she followed the pair of men from above and behind as they raced on, keeping to the shadows, even going up and over a few dividing fences. That was almost enough for Kara to grab them, but she waited a moment, knowing they were going to need to come closer to where Cassie was, if on the other side of the wrecked bus she was trying to move.
Just as they were about to break out onto the street and make a breakaway from where most of the activity was occurring, Kara saw what looked like some kind of jewelry sticking out of one of the bags. She hadn’t taken the time to look at what kind of building they’d exited, but that and the way they were trying to avoid being seen was enough for her.
The two thieves paused for a moment as a group of seven civilians came around a corner, four of them carrying large slabs of cut wood, while the others carried various tools and empty bags. For a moment, it seemed as if they had hidden fast enough, but then Kara grabbed them from behind, hefting the pair into the air. Flying out into the open, she shook them enough to cause the pair to drop the bags they were carrying. In the light from Zatanna’s magical light, the gleam of silver, gold and various jewels was visible on the jewelry that cascaded out of the bags.
“Fucking really!?” a woman yelled, and several other men turned in Kara’s direction as the two men began to shout, squirming in her grip as the woman went on, waggling a heavy, stone-breaking hammer in one meaty hand. “Why am I god damn not surprised people are lootin’?!”
One of her companions mumbled, “Because this is California?” This drew laughter from many of the civilians around them who heard it, though Kara didn’t really get the joke.
Instead of asking about that, she flew up into the air as the two men in her grip continued to shout, with one of the men actually pulling out a gun, pressing it into her side. He bellowed some kind of threat that Kara didn’t even bother to hear. Instead, she raised her voice over his, shouting, “You fire that, and your gun’s going to explode in your hand, ruining your hand, and maybe hurting both you and your companion with the shrapnel and I am going to laugh. Because it will tickle!”
While not exactly the most diplomatic way of putting that, it certainly got the man’s attention, and his companion grabbed the gun out of his hand and tossed it to the side. It clattered onto a nearby roof, and a round went off, the bullet slamming into the roof’s chimney, showing it had a bullet in the chamber and had not been on safety.
“At least one of you is intelligent enough to come in out of the rain as my… never mind.” Bother, are there classes we heroes can take to, like, not let hints like that out in public? UGH. Glaring at the two so neither could realize her thoughts had wandered, Kara shook them again. “Now, gentlemen, can either of you fly?”
The wide-eyed stare the two would-be criminals gave her was enough answer, and Kara grinned evilly before tossing them up into the air. They yelled, screamed, and might well have soiled themselves just a little bit before she grabbed them by their legs this time, holding them out to either side of her, dangling them there in the air. “So, can we agree that it was not a good idea to try to shoplift?”
The rapid nodding of heads was somewhat amusing at this angle, Kara reflected, before flying down towards where Cassie was still working, pressing her shoulder into the back of a wrecked Metro bus so hard the metal around her began to warp rather than letting her shift the bus itself out of the hole it had been in. Still, her eyes tracked Kara as she landed, and Kara could see the warm smile on her friend’s face even as she settled down on her feet and held out to the two would-be looters. “If anyone has rope or anything else similar, I will hand these two over to your cognizance.”
A few locals who had been working to pull debris off the other side of the road where the bus had smashed into a building nodded at that, racing back towards the grocery store. They were quickly back, along with one of the policemen. He quickly took custody of the two, using zip ties to rather expertly tie their wrists together behind their backs, grumbling under his breath. “This’ll be the ninth and tenth looters we’ve seen. I will be taking custody of the jewelry, too.”
Leaving that to the men, Kara moved over to help her friend, and between the two of them, easily pushed the bus out of the way, shifting it to the side of the street, which freed up at least one lane, leaning in and out of the area from that angle. Once that was done, Kara zoomed up into the air and back to the hospital a few times, carrying three people back in each time. The medical specialists, engineers and the one promised logistics officer to organize things. That was followed by a second pallet of walkie-talkies.
When she set that down, Kara found Cassie waiting for her. The young Amazon reported she’d done what she could to clear out several blocks into the surrounding district by this point, as Kara had to wait for the last two men and the pallet of walkie-talkies to be signed out of requisitions. Kara agreed, and with a few waves of farewell to the large group of workers that had gathered to be given walkie-talkies, she lifted Cassie into her arms and then headed up into the sky once more.
“Thanks, Super Blondes!” a ‘wit’ yelled as they went to much laughter.
Kara nearly stumbled, somehow, in midair, and she twirled around, allowing both her and Cassie to glare at the crowd below, but no one spoke up again, simply laughing at the joke. After a moment, Kara sighed and twirled around, flying upwards again.
As they went, Cassie’s scowl receded, and she began to laugh quietly, leaning her head on Kara’s chest like it was a pillow. “So, that was a very Amazonian response to the pair of looters a bit ago, Kara. You weren’t so harsh on the groups of idiots we saw before this.”
“Well, I was on the Isle of Women for a while. There was bound to be some cultural inculcation,” Kara stated pompously, the last word making Cassie to snort.
Kara fell silent, and Cassie could tell that something was bothering her friend, so she looped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her gently. “What’s wrong?”
The other blonde stayed silent for a few moments, then her arms pulled Cassie into her chest further. “I missed you.”
Cassie’s hug tightened, and Kara went on thoughtfully, speaking now mostly into Cassie’s hair, but she could still make out the words easily enough. “I don’t think, I don’t think my cousin knew how much good it did me to be around you Amazons. Not just because I didn’t need to watch my growing strength so much with all of you, but because it was so, so uncluttered, and not… Not peaceful, but I, I don’t know how to put it. I didn’t realize how much good it really had done me until I was, well, back among the clutter. I know I’m using that term to cover a lot of ground, but…”
She paused again, but Cassie stayed silent, simply nuzzling into Kara’s chest, letting her arm around the other girl’s shoulder as Kara's hug eased off a bit, going back to simply holding Cassie in the air as she continued. “I’m not my cousin,” Kara began again. “I, I was a teenager when our world died. I should have hated it, hated this world, and I did at first. I was horrified by what had happened, horrified that I had lost the world I knew, the society I knew, my family.”
Kara sighed before smiling. “But Clark, Clark and his family, they healed that part of me, and then you and the rest of the Amazons, you finished that job, showed me something I could come to like and even appreciate, something real, something I could hold onto. And then I came back here, to Man’s World and was told to just try and fit in, to create an alter ego for myself. To go along and try to become a normal teenager.”
“It’s not going well, I take it?” Cassie stated gently. I was also told to learn and become a normal girl, but Diana set me up with online classes instead of demanding I go to an actual high school. And she hasn’t really pushed me to create an alter ego or anything similar, except for paperwork and credit card stuff.
“No. Have you spent any time around other teenagers?” When Cassie indicated she hadn’t, Kara went on quite dryly, “I wouldn’t recommend it. We were at the local school, and while it was a nice facility, I suppose, for what it is, the teenagers I met there, they were so uninteresting.”
Cassie burst out in laughter, and Kara joined her for a second before continuing. “Then, then Ranma comes along, I nearly bean him with a tractor because I sneezed at the wrong time, and all he asks is if I meant to do it on purpose. He takes me flying in, my strength all in stride, even if he was a little jealous of it all… Which he had no reason to be, drat it. Sneaky pigtailed idiot and his other form,” Kara grumbled, before her voice returned to normal as Cassie hummed agreement.
“But… I just don’t think that being that kind of normal is for me, you know? I love my cousin’s family, the smiles and hugs and food and downhome nature of it all. My own family had love, sure, but not so much open affection. I think you hugged me more in the months in Themyscira than my mother or father did since I was no longer a pre-teen. Yet even so, I don’t think I can be normal, can fit into normal society like my cousin did for so many years before becoming Superman.”
Despite floating over a city that, this time, should really have been as quiet as it could possibly be, but was in fact bustling with activity, Kara was careful not to use Clark’s real name, or anything that could connect him to the Kents. While she wasn’t all that certain about this whole alter ego thing, she knew that Clark took it seriously.
Even so, unfortunately, Kara also knew that she and Cassie had done some damage to what little work had gone into their off-duty identities. Neither of them had any magic or scientific means to ensure that their faces and voices couldn’t be linked back to Linda Kent, the alter ego that Clark had been preparing for Kara with Bruce’s help. Cassie’s own alter ego as Cassandra Prince would be even more easy to link to her activity during this battle unless the Justice League really went to work on trying to unlink them in the future.
Thankfully, both those alter egos hadn’t yet been finalized. Bruce had already removed what little existed on the internet and on various computers nationwide. Someone who had met them personally, like the kids in Smallville, or a few surviving employees at various music stores, might be able to still make the connection, but the odds of that weren’t good in Kara’s case as she looked entirely different from the somewhat mousey, bespectacled, if cute girl that had stopped in at Smallville High. Cassie was another matter, but thankfully, she hadn’t actually gone around Star City with Diana at any point after she first arrived.
“Instead, I think, I think being on this trip with Ranma has kind of solidified what I want to do. I want to be my own person, and I want to use what I know from my world to make this one better. I was pretty much following a pure engineering line back on Krypton, and I think I could do a lot of good here. Energy tech, programming, medical tech, there’s a lot I could introduce at Earth’s tech level that would be a big step up.” Kara smirked. “Those were my bag, baby.”
Cassie blinked, then began to giggle, even as she pointed down into the side. “Clarkson Powers, really? And I just detected something smelly that way.”
“Eh, I watched it with Jay once on a rainy day when May was out at a friend’s house,” Kara explained obliquely. “I didn’t get many of the jokes; they were well beyond my understanding of local society, but it was still funny.”
True to form, as they drew closer, Kara began to zip from side to side a few blocks either way from the area where Cassie was pointing, noticing that they were heading into a more populated area, with several thousand people out on the streets helping to remove debris, cars, cleaning up glass and so forth. Glass was, strangely, a large issue across the city due to how many windows had been shattered due to the various sonic booms and explosions. Regardless, the noise in this area of the city was tremendous, worse than it had been back in Charter Heights, despite that area still being visible in the distance.
As they landed, a lot of those locals began to cheer, shouting, “Supergirl, Supergirl!” Causing Kara to groan a bit.
Sitting Cassie down, she waved, then cupped her hands as Cassie went to work laying out yet another glowing circle around what looked like a random pipe sticking up out of a giant divot in the road.
“Thank you for the warm welcome, folks, but honestly, it… is… Shielder, people! It might be a temporary name but it’s still better than Supergirl!” she shouted back, “Being connected to Superman is fine, we’re related, but while I might be a teenage girl right now, I age just like you all. Name one teenage girl who wanted to be called a girl into her twenties.”
From there it went, the crowd fell silent at her shout, then one wit stated, “Er, well, a lot of young girls like to act younger than they are to attract sugar daddies, so…”
“Someone smack that man!” Kara requested and smiled faintly at hearing a loud smack from somewhere in the crowd, womanfully ignoring the snickers from her friend. “Now that that is out of the way, does anyone need any superstrength type help, or x-ray vision to find anyone still buried?”
As Cassie worked hastily on marking out the circle, Kara worked to remove some debris from a few houses where there were still people buried, with Cassie joining her quickly. They helped out there for a few moments, but then, as Plastic Man arrived along with a group of soldiers and a Humvee full of supplies, they moved off, returning to their original task.
“We’re nearly done canvassing the city for gas and oil leaks,” Kara mused, as she rose into the air again.
“Going by our map, yep. Certainly, we’re close to the center of the city from my own memory of it. Hmm…I would have thought we’d have run into the Flash by now. I have to assume he’s been continuously sidelined by other jobs.”
She grimaced then, pointing to the side where a building was missing at least a few stories off its top. “And that building I recognize quite well. It’s the apartment complex where I was living. My aunt is not going to be happy.”
Kara nodded, although she reflected that Diana probably kept a lot of important stuff, personal stuff anyway, up in the Justice League’s space station, so it probably wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It would fit Diana to only have a few things around her at her home as Diana Prince that could be linked back to Princess Diana… Honestly, that name… tell me your civilian ego is unimportant without telling me it’s not important.
They flew on slowly, and after a few seconds, Cassie returned to the original topic of conversation. “I don’t think I want to become a normal teenager in Man’s World, either. Going to school, trying to fit in like that, that doesn’t really interest me all that much. If I decide to become a hero, and okay, I probably will, it’ll be a profession to me, like a soldier. I’ll be called to duty to deal with specific issues, or go on patrol like a soldier, and when I’m off duty, I’ll train or have some downtime, but I’ll be mostly devoted to my life as a hero. I don’t want a second life to lead just because I think I need to do it to fit in.”
She reached out, gently poking Kara’s nose with a finger. “Our mentors might have our best interests at heart, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right about some of the decisions they want to make for us. We’re not them, and I don’t think we have to fit ourselves into the same molds. Besides, after this event, whatever we do, I think we should do it together. This hero thing or this normal thing, we should be able to support one another and I think we need to think about both aspects deeply.” She then smirked, deciding to leave the serious topic behind for a second. “Just like hero names, Supergirl, Shielder or whatever you decide to call yourself.”
“Oh, just because you hit on a name you actually like right off the bat, you’re going to make fun of me?” Kara pouted, mock-biting at Cassie’s finger before she withdrew it quickly.
“Well, you could always go with the other name you’ve been called, Super Blonde.”
“They were saying that about both of us, and you know it!” Kara laughed, and the two of them continued joking and laughing as they finished their current mission.
OOOOOOO
Near dawn, Kori found herself following a map and a compass out to one of the medical schools at the outskirts of Star City. They had been working for hours, but Kori had also been learning both about Martial Arts Construction and about her friend Ranma (or Shazam), and felt that, at this point, she had become somewhat good at the former. Between friends there is always more to learn, though! she thought with delight, giggling at the memory of one of the adventures Ranma had told her about.
Over the past few hours, two of them had done pretty much what the pair had done at the first hospital, only this time, Kori had worked alongside Ranma in the construction side of things rather than simply removing debris from the roads around it, while also taking numerous breaks to help whenever someone was trapped in the rubble of the hospital or elsewhere throughout the area. They’d also worked with teams of volunteers, hundreds of construction workers rerouted to this area of the city, local electricians, and simply a lot of willing hands. Now, Kori was carefully flying a large pallet of wounded out to the medical school to free up more space at the hospital, while Ranma helped finish repairs on a large office building near the hospital, which would serve as temporary housing.
At one point, she slowed down, peering down as Plastic Man helped excavate someone out from under bits of rubble. It was somewhat intriguing to watch as he shifted his form almost to be as thin as paper. He then slid underneath bits and pieces of rock, moving them out of the way as he blew up those bits of his body like a balloon. A second later, he disappeared underneath the rubble, which then erupted around him as he reformed, protecting the individual who had been buried at the same time.
Such a fascinating power, Kara mused as she continued on her way. I honestly wasn’t certain if I believed Aquaman when he told us that Plastic Man would be back on his feet, but I have been proven wrong. Since then, he’s done almost as much rescue work as the Flash, Cassie or Cory. In fact, I wonder who has helped the city itself more, the Flash, Plastic Man, Zatanna or Ranma with his Martial Arts Construction.
Having spent several hours resting, Zatanna was elsewhere in the city, doing what she could with her own powers. Her magic allowed her to find people buried in rubble, and her telekinesis magic allowed her to pull them out of the rubble easily. The first spell, alas, didn’t cover much area, and she was only moving slowly, but her, the Flash and Plastic Man were making that their priority, above and beyond Flash’s other assigned jobs, to say nothing of her work in removing garbage and the piles of dead aliens.
Where those were going, Kori had no idea and didn’t really care to inquire, having been dangerously close to getting depressed at needing to remove and help organize the human element of the battle. She knew that the areas where trash was gathered in the city were already full of demolished, destroyed cars and other things of that nature, and that Aquaman had been quietly furious about something to do with the ocean the last time she had gone down to the docks and had put a stop to whatever it was.
Beyond that, Kori simply concentrated on what was in front of her and continued on her way towards the med school, needing to pause occasionally to use the compass until she started to see signs below for it on a highway to one side of where she had been flying. Well, that and dealing with a few scattered people who appeared to be breaking into buildings. Still, that hardly slowed her down.
Soon, Kori touched down in the center of the campus’s main open area, looking around her in approval at the buildings and trees. It was quite a nice-looking place, and she greatly enjoyed the amount of greenery here in comparison to the rest of the city. When we are finished doing what we must to help the locals, I think I will ask my friends if we could go on a hike, like the ones I used to go on with my parents. It has been literally more than a decade since I last saw trees before coming to Earth, and hiking through a whole forest sounds quite pleasant right now. Luckily, I think Ranma would agree with me pretty easily on that, but Kara and Cassie might take some negotiation.
Having set the large pallet down, she moved to open it, nodding as medical personnel and troopers moved toward her, eager to help unload the wounded. “Hello. We made certain that none of their beds could move before we loaded them up; most of these are what I have heard termed the ‘almost walking’ wounded.”
“Highly descriptive, ma’am,” one of the troopers shook his head before saluting her for some reason. “Thanks. We’ve got a group of volunteers to go back with you when you go, but it’s taking a few of them a bit longer than we expect—”
He was interrupted as Kori's stomach began to growl, and she sheepishly hunched her shoulders, her arms going around her stomach. The man had been trying very hard to keep his eyes on Kori’s rather than down at her chest, which was at head-height for him, but now, seeing her sudden shift in body language, his emotions shifted too, and he smirked at her, pointing over to one side where several dozen volunteers and troopers were working on creating what almost looks like an assembly line to Karo, but one for food. “If you need something to eat, ma’am, were almost done setting up the commissary. The kids get first dibs, but I doubt any of them or their parents will object to you digging into.”
“What does digging have to do with food?” Kori blinked, then shrugged, which caused the man’s gaze to flick down, his emotions ratcheting back into the lustful zone once again. But Kori ignored it, as she had ignored it from many a man so far today, and several women to boot, heading in the direction so indicated. Attraction and appreciation I enjoy, lust on its own, not so much.
As she went, Kori saw that numerous other people were rousing themselves from tents, sleeping bags, or even bed mattresses that had somehow ended up outside for one reason or another. Family groups were moving through the makeshift camp together, making Kori smile as she waved at this or that group, reminded almost painfully of her own family, her father and mother, the king and queen, even the few happy times she’d had with her older sister before she had revealed her corrupt personality.
Not wanting to dwell on Komand'r, Kori simply waved, her smile widening just a little as several teens of both genders, the term humans used for young adults, blushed as they noticed her presence. She had yet to stop enjoying getting that reaction from people. The cruder emotions of lust and a desire to dominate that rapidly joined it, those she could certainly do without.
Children, though, were much more interesting to her. There were so many uncontrolled emotions in them. Even the children who were just now waking up, having somehow been able to get to sleep when their parents put them to bed in their tents, were full of interest and intrigue, treating all this like an adventure. That was a far cry from what she’d felt from other children who the Flash hadn’t been able to evacuate from the city, those who had lost family members or parents and she was happy to feel it.
Coming near some of the workers who were putting out large tables of food and so forth, Kori sent a smile the way of the two workers near the start of the line. “Hello, I am Starfire. I was told I could get some food.”
“We’ve got food indeed, Miss. Some of it is already ready if you just want bagels, cream cheese, fruit or bread, but the sausages, bacon and other warm food will take a little longer. I hope you’re not on a diet or anything,” the man said, unable to keep his eyes from tracing down her body for a second.
He flinched when his companion stepped on his foot out of sight under the table, but Kori didn’t care, shrugging her shoulders, which did interesting things to her chest, as she had learned, causing both man and woman to look at her. “Is not a diet simply the food you eat and require to be at your best?”
“Er, no, when we use the term diet, we mean someone who is trying to watch their weight. Which I rather doubt you need to do,” one of the young women nearby observed as she stared at Kori and not with desire or appreciation, but with a good smattering of jealousy as well as a bit of suspicion.
“Ah. Well, I am not certain what human foods I will like, or indeed, if there is anything specific I need in my diet. Since I was a slave for so long, I simply ate what was given to me. But I have had what you all call protein bars. Shazam had them on him, and they were most tasty,” Kori answered, shrugging again. Although at the time, Ranma had to transform back into his normal body to get it. I wonder why?
The girl’s jealousy spiked at that before segueing into confusion as the rest of Kori’s words registered, while all around her, there were mutters, with one father holding up his hand as he restrained his two young children from rushing over to gape at the alien girl. “There’s a rumor going about, miss, that your arrival was what sparked this invasion. Would you mind clarifying that?” he nearly demanded, his thoughts a jagged, jumbled-up mountain of grief and anger.
“Warworld’s leader, the yellow Titan named Mongul, wished for me to be a sex slave when I came of age, which would happen in the all-too near future. It was only the laws and expectations of Warworld that had stopped him from taking advantage of me from the start, and that time period would have collapsed within a few months.”
Kor’s blunt words took the man aback, while many of the women nearby winced and most of the men scowled angrily at what she was saying.
“I will apologize that my escape pod’s emergency hyperjump took me into your planet’s atmosphere. I had no chance to load the troop transport I had stolen with any kind of coordinates. It was completely random, I am afraid. I am further sorry that my escape was found and Warworld came after me.” Kori let her face harden, a fierce snarl on her face for a moment. “But I will not apologize for taking the chance for freedom.”
“… Well, good on you than I suppose. No one should live in slavery,” an oriental woman said, shaking her head, while several others, most particularly an older black woman, nodded her head firmly.
“Besides, you’re helping us all now, making up for it. Suppose that’s all we can ask when an immigrant comes to our shores and brings trouble,” that worthy said, chuckling a little.
“Thank you. We’ve been trying. And I will report that the organizers, the marine officer in charge, and others say that power to the city should be restored by midmorning. Everything will look better then, as with the light of day above rather than the magical light we have now, I think,” Kori said, smiling again.
At that point, the various watching children, who had been silent, more because of the angry tones of some of the mutters, could no longer contain themselves. “Can you fly?”
“Why is your hair so orange?”
“Why is your skin so orange?”
“Can you shoot eye-beams out of your eyes?”
“You’re so tall, do you know if eating anything can help you grow that big?”
“Your eyes are so green, and you’re so pretty! Are you a princess?”
Kori laughed, waving her hands to either side of her, then knelt down in front of the girl who had pushed through the crowd to stare up at her and had been the one to say that last line. “Thank you! You are pretty too and will be prettier when you grow up. I was indeed a princess. Even so, I wish my hair was your color, because orange is so much more difficult to find something to match with.”
The girl beamed at her, as Kori stared at the other children, answering their questions in turn. “My skin and hair are orange because I am from a planet where the sun makes us like that. All my folk are orange-skinned. Sometimes, we have hair that is more purple or white.”
The idea of someone being born with white hair seemed to set off many of the kids, who began to laugh as she continued. “I can fly, and is not an I-beam a part of large construction projects? How would something like that be shot out of one’s eyes?”
“No, silly,” another girl said, shaking her head. “The boys who shouted that meant do you have my lasers like Superman?”
“I do not, but my friend Shielder does. I can shoot beams of power from my hands, though I would prefer not to show that off at the moment. The energy buildup can be kind of ‘too hot to handle,’ I think is the phrase, and I’d rather not do it in a crowd.”
This was quickly followed by still more questions, which Kori fielded, ignoring those she felt were a little too personal or those that she didn’t quite understand. The question about the drapes and carpets went straight over her head, for example, even as it won the questioner, a young teen with a cap on his head twisted backward for some odd reason, a smack upside the head by a middle-aged woman who looked alike enough to be his mother.
Soon, the food was ready, and Kori found her hands grabbed by several of the children, who pulled her along to try their favorite breakfast foods. She willingly went with them, trying everything, until she was, for the first time in more than a decade, actually full when she finished eating. When a few of the children happily chattered at her about asking for rides in the air, she obliged, as the volunteers heading back towards the hospital hadn’t quite finished loading up into the pallet she would carry back.
It wouldn’t exactly be pleasant for them, but the beds had been removed, and bungee cords and other handles had been placed and secured in place. In this manner, Kori would be able to carry at least sixty people there, allowing the helicopters from the Army and Marines to keep ferrying in troops from elsewhere.
As she flew through the air, with four children in her arms, just a little higher than the main campus building, Kori noticed several other helicopters in the distance, with colors that she had seen before, perhaps private property, or public property rather than military. She didn’t know, but they looked too small to be of use for more than simple observation.
Eventually, Kori set the children down, then slowly extricated herself from the crowd, buzzing happily with the emotions it stirred, all of which were now far more upbeat than when she first arrived. With the parents and other adults getting the kids under control again, she made her way over to the pallet, nodding into it at the people there, all of whom were looking a little concerned now that it came time for takeoff.
“Do not worry, I will not drop the crate. Simply hold on with both or at the very least one hand, and try not to move too much. I will even keep the doors open, so you can watch as we go.”
Many of those faces looked as if their owners were not certain that it was a good idea, but Kori hopped up onto the top of the crate, grabbing the runnels there, making sure that they were still holding strong, before energy gathered in her feet, and she flew up and off the ground. She tried to go slowly, but one person inside evidently hadn’t listened to her, and she could hear cursing and one voice rising in a voice of outrage.
“Dumbass, your elbow nearly caught my balls!” Before the movement within settled down, and she was at what she had begun to call cruising height. This allowed her to skim over most of the buildings and move around those she didn’t, heading toward the hospital.
When she arrived, she found an area had already been cleared out for her arrival, as well as Kara and Cassie there, reassigned from their work finding gas and oil outbreaks. She settled the container down, then flung herself towards the pair of them as they turned away from speaking to one of the local organizers. “Friend Nyctimene, friend Shielder!”
Cassie was nearly bowled over by Kori’s exuberance, as the far taller, and, not to put too fine a point on it, fuller girl pulled the pair of them into hugs.
Cassie wasn’t as used to it as Kara had become in her time on the Kent farm, but accepted it, knowing instinctively that both Kori was probably a hugger just like Cassie was, and just as probably touch-starved. Kara didn’t react as well but didn’t fight the hug either.
“Hey, girl. We were reassigned here to help with some construction work. Since the other two hospitals are nearer to police precincts or the dockyard area than this one, it was decided that this area would probably need our help more. Shielder is going to start clearing out the roads as best as possible, while I’m going to join you and Shazam on construction.
“Yeah, that’s gonna be a treat to watch, I gotta say,” the officer they’d been talking to said, shaking his head, while Kori sensed through the emotions of the man that he had meant that in multiple ways. Not that she pointed that out; looking, cost her nothing. “You and that Shazam guy did so much work reconstructing the majority of the hospital to the point where we’re now actually bringing in more wounded here rather than sending them elsewhere. We might have another rotation ready to get sent to the med school soon, though.”
“Interrupt us whenever you wish us to do so; we will be fine with it,” Kori said, pulling away from Cassie and Kara.
Free from her new friend’s hug, Kara shook her head, blushing slightly at where her head had been a moment ago. She was used to Cassie being a little taller than her, but Kori was something else altogether. Heh, but I’m now looking forward to Ranma getting some of the same treatment. I wonder how he’ll handle it, she thought with some amusement.
Looking around, Kori wondered where their last friend was, only to spot him jumping down from a nearby building, two young men under each arm, who he set down gently. “Alright, we’re done with the roof of that building, and the two lower levels to boot. Marcus here says that the electrical wiring is also finished.”
The young, black-skinned man, trying hard not to looking Kori’s direction, nodded, a faint blush on his features. “Yeah, following up Shazam with his work on the walls was exhausting, but it sure as hell made the whole job move a lot faster.”
“Yeah, it’s made everything work a lot faster,” another one of the young men with Ranma announced as he came out from the building's front door, smirking just a bit. “It’s a little weird to have heroes stay after the disasters already happened, or in this case, the violence, though. Are you after our jobs?” he joked, thumping Ranma on the shoulder.
That was not something anyone would have done with Superman, Wonder Woman, or even Aquaman. But Shazam and the others came off as far more personable, and Ranma had gone out of his way to seem more so from the start.
Snorting at that, Ranma laughed. “Please, I might earn some money occasionally doing Martial Arts Construction, but it isn’t exactly a job for me. But I figured that the least the four of us can do is help until the power is restored, Star City’s got enough food and so forth to get through the next few days as construction efforts continue.”
“Ugh, yeah… power. All of the city’s freezers and what have you will have failed. This is California after all and it’s summer,” one of the men muttered, wiping at sweat on his forehead.
Indeed, most of the people that Kori had seen for the past few hours had been very, very sweat-streaked. Considering she was still dressed in some clothing that she had grabbed from a shop, and knew to be very mismatched, Kori hadn’t thought it polite to point that out. Nor will I mention the fact that none of us are sweating, not even Cassie.
A new voice interjected at that point as a young woman carrying some strange device in her hand moved towards the quartet. “Since everything seems to be moving along pretty well, I don’t suppose the four of you would mind answering some questions before you get back to work? Tricia McIntyre, Star City CBS.”
Internally hiding a groan, Ranma turned to gaze at the person who had just spoken as his three friends also looked over at her. The speaker was a twenty-something woman, taller than Cassie but shorter than Kori, with a thin body and a thinner smile. Her body looked like she took care of it, but a little too much to Ranma’s eyes, more like she had gone beyond watching what she ate and gone into anorexia just a bit. Her face also looked friendly and outgoing, but to Ranma, it felt somehow fake. Kinda like when Nabiki wanted to be my friend, or Kodachi when she was acting the part of a noble lady.
Similarly, Kori frowned, feeling very thrown off. The woman in front of them was smiling, but the emotions she felt were avarice, a certain predatory anticipation, anger, and jealousy. I can understand jealousy and have gotten used to feeling from certain people but the rest?
Patricia (Tricia) McIntyre was a young woman with opinions and plans for the future. Her plan for the future was to become the next big reporter, rivaling Lois Lane at the Daily Planet. Not for her was staying in Star City, no sirree. This attack was a godsend to her, and Tricia was going to milk it for all it was worth.
She’d spent most of the night racing from place to place throughout the city with a team of cameramen, replacing a few as she went when they got injured or lost in the tumult, and her microphone. She conducted interviews, had actual combat footage and had witnessed the Firestorm’s death at the hands of the invasion’s leader. That wasn’t enough, though. Tricia knew that every other reporter in the city had been doing the same thing.
Once the battle had died down, as the other reporters had surged towards Aquaman and the control center being set up on the docks, Tricia had waited, listening to everything via a police scanner, and had hunted down these four. The four oddly young heroes who had been so instrumental in the battle, the main reasons why the city hadn’t been entirely destroyed in the assault, as well as rumors stated, the reason behind the invasion in the first place in the case of the orange-skinned girl whose figure was making Patricia think very, very unkind thoughts.
Tricia knew the public wouldn’t care about the nuts and bolts of rebuilding the city. Puff pieces there would be aplenty, and Tricia had a few of those ready to go, carefully choreographed interviews with family members who had lost loved ones, a few of some injured children whose parents wouldn’t be able to afford their ongoing medical bills. But a personal, exclusive candid interview with the Powerful Foursome, that would skyrocket Tricia into rarefied heights.
On top of those logical, self-serving reasons for approaching these three, Tricia’s personal opinions were very much anti-hero, something else that could set her up as Lane’s natural opponent. Yet, that wasn’t why Tricia felt that way. She hated the very idea of people who had such powers, who could be so different and strange than the normal as the heroes of the Justice League or the villains they fought. Regardless of what they did with it, hero or villain, she hated the very idea of someone being so powerful and was terrified at the idea of aliens being real, even before the invasion.
Now, that terror had crystallized, and her eyes gleamed dangerously as she stared at Kori.
Ranma’s eyes narrowed, and he shrugged, turning away. “Shielder, grab one of those cement mixers and get back here. Starfire, Nyctimene, we’ve got two badly damaged buildings to start repairing. If Mrs…”
Tricia bristled. “It’s Miss, actually!”
“I stand corrected,” Ranma drawled, using his school's Make ‘em Mad, Make ‘em Stupid technique. “If Miss Tricia wants to interview us instead of actually doing something worthwhile like pitching in, she and her cameraman are welcome to follow along and ask whatever they want to my mind. Girls?”
Kara shrank back, looking for all the world like she wanted to be anywhere else than there, which was the case. She’d gotten used to public speaking by this point, but that was altogether different than being interviewed, and she was utterly terrified she’d accidentally say something that could connect her to not just Superman, but the Kents. Cassie and Kori just nodded and Ranma waved Kara off. “Go on, Shielder. We really need that cement mixer here.”
Without another word, the suddenly shy (read: worried) Kara leaped into the air and away. Ranma turned and led Kori and Cassie to where they would start work on one building, a large, two-story store. “Remove the exterior as much as possible to start with, and then work with the other volunteers to help with the interior, just make certain the outer wall is strong, because there’s no way the second-story floor isn’t wrecked. I’ll start with the restaurant next door. You four, you’ve worked with me, so follow us up with the wiring.”
“Right!” Kori and Cassie replied as one. The two of them went to work, as did Ranma, clearing out the broken bits of debris, then beginning to use the supplies on hand, wooden and metal beams, to start repairing it. The four men with them also split, muttering under their breath.”
All around them, others who had paused in their work to watch the interview also turned back to the reconstruction and cleaning efforts. A few glanced at the reporter out of the corner of their eyes, but didn’t say anything, and Tricia didn’t notice, staring at Ranma’s back for a few fulminating moments.
She watched in silence for a few moments, then, as the trio began to move faster than she could track, she started to question them. She started with softball-type questions, their hero names, what they thought about the fighting, what they were doing now, if they were associated with the Justice League and so forth.
By that point Kara had arrived back and she answered the last one, saying they were, but second-hand. “You might’ve noticed we’re a bit young, and we aren’t really full-time heroes yet. If we were, we ladies, well, at least Nyctimene and I, would have suits like Shazam’s.”
“I see… so the rumor about you’re not actually being here to fend off the attack but instead just being here randomly is correct then,” Tricia said, her tone making it both a question and very clear she didn’t believe it.
Kara didn’t notice, busy watching Ranma start putting down bricks and mortar, stepping forward to use her breath to cool the mortar down quickly. “Yep. A bit of good luck, bad luck, I guess.”
“But you have a suit, Shazam. Does that mean you’re a hero of long standing but only recently joined the Justice League?” Tricia was just fishing for information there, and already knew she was going to move on to a softer target regardless of Ranma’s answer. “Were you assigned here because the Justice League had reason to worry about invasion while Superman, the Green Lantern and others were gone?”
“Nope on both. Aquaman told us the JL didn’t have any idea this was going to happen, and heroes aren’t really a thing for most of the world, so that wouldn’t make sense. You Americans seem to have an almost monopoly on spandex wearers. And trust me, I wouldn’t be caught dead in this if I couldn’t change it. The suit’s magic, like Zatanna’s light show last night. If I could change this to something less skintight, I would,” Ranma replied, turning back to his work. If I had better control over my face when I lie, I might be willing to face her, but as it is, working like this gives me some protection.
“Which’d be a right damn shame!” a young woman nearby called as she carried two trash bags over to a nearly full trash compactor. “And one of you super types could take this out for us, we’re nearly full over here.”
Smiling at the opportunity to Kara broke off from her work. Kara moved in that direction while Ranma kept working, even though he had flushed just a bit at the woman’s shout.
Behind her, Tricia frowned as she watched Supergirl, Shielder was a ridiculous name, and Tricia could tell the shorter blonde was the most nervous and the most worried about being questioned. She tried a simple scoffing query first, “Magic? You expect us to believe magic is real?”
“Yep. Magic clothing, magic light from last night, magic shields to defend the city from even more damage,” Ranma listed off, slowing down to add a brick a word to the wall he was putting up for a second. “Seems to me ya should start believin’ the proof of your own eyes, yeah?”
Fighting back a growl at Ranma’s hick-like accent, Tricia decided he was too dumb to get anything juicy out of. She switched tactics, going for specific questions instead of soft generalities. “Starfire, is it true that you brought those aliens to our shores? Why should we humans trust you after such an event?”
While Ranma’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that question, Kori took it at face value despite the predatory emotions Tricia was putting off. Oftentimes, the truth is the best weapon. My mother once told me that about politics and I believe it will work with public speaking too.
With that in mind, she repeated the same story she had told the crowd back at the med school, adding a bit more detail about Warworld, and ending with the same non-apology. “I will not apologize for taking my chance at freedom, as all sentients have the right to freedom. But I will apologize for the trouble it has brought your city, and I will do what I can to atone.”
To Tricia’s annoyance, a lot of the crowd murmured in agreement, and she scowled internally. That had come out of nowhere, and Tricia knew that any attempt to turn public opinion against the alien sex slave would fail. Several in the surrounding crowd went so far as to shout that they’d probably have taken the chance to. Worse, the fact that Kori had been so blunt about what fate awaited her once she reached the age of majority had won her a lot of goodwill among the womenfolk of the crowd still hard at work all around them.
Changing tactics, Tricia attacked the Justice League as a whole. “Still, for all your abilities, surely it would have been better for Someone like Superman, a more experience hero, or Green Lantern, with his adaptability, to be here rather than one foreign unknown, an escaped slave who led Warworld here in the first place, and two self-professed apprentices. It’s well known that the Lantern Corps requested our heroes help them to enforce a neutral zone between two nearby alien empires, but surely some of them should have stayed behind.”
Cassie frowned. “Is that a question?”. “I mean, none of us were involved in that decision.”
“Um, as I understand it, the UN Security Council agreed with the idea. Um… I could be wrong, though,” Kara added.
“I rather doubt they would have, if they had any idea we were so vulnerable or Warworld’s arrival was possible. Was this all really random?” Tricia pressed, hoping for something there.
She was disappointed. Kori shook her head firmly. “If you are asking me if I chose to come to Earth, I already said I did not. The escape pod I grabbed, a remnant of a ship Warworld had captured recently, made a random jump the moment we were out of the hatch.”
“And if you’re asking about detecting Warworld coming, I could maybe come up with something,” Kara mused as she helped set down another row of bricks, her tone almost absent-minded. “I think building a gravity anomaly detecting system is within the realm of Earth’s technology, but offhand I have no idea how big the installation would be. Or um, how expensive? Sorry.”
As the rest of the crowd muttered at that, with one college professor nearly panting at the idea of the tech Kara had just idly mentioned, Tricia pounced. “Is there a reason why you or, I presume, your relative, Superman, hasn’t provided Earth with such technology?”
Ranma winced a bit, but before he could stop her, Kara opened her mouth and began to explain. “Well, I doubt Superman could provide it at all. He was a baby when he arrived on Earth. He grew up here, and that’s why he is the way he is. I came here in my evacuation pod barely a year ago. I was a teenager following a major in engineering and a hard science line in school.”
“Wait, what? Superman was a kid when he arrived here?!” someone shouted from the crowd before Tricia could try and follow up.
“Er, yes? I thought I read an interview with him where he told everyone about that?” Kara practically stammered, now looking a little panicked.
“Yes, I believe Ms. Lane penned that when Superman first arrived on the scene. But could you tell us more about your planet?”
“UM… we were a meritocratic-based society, where the most intelligent and learned supposedly ruled. I was a teenager, so heh, you can guess what I thought about that,” Kara said, her panic receding but now wanting very much to move on quickly and get out of the limelight.
Luckily, her joke won her still more laughter from the watching crowd, which further calmed her, and when Tricia questioned how she had come to Earth so much later, Kara had an answer ready. “Our home planet was destroyed in a natural disaster, our sun going nova, I think that same article mentioned that. We were both launched at the same time, but my pod was a normal one, whereas K, um, Superman’s was a special model. My pod was badly damaged and sent into hyperspace, where the onboard computer had to spend more than a few decades repairing itself. Eventually, it did, and locked onto the signal of the only other pod it could find, bringing me here.”
“What’re the differences between Krypton and here!?” another voice yelled out from the crowd.
Tricia scowled and might have tried to override it, but Kara latched onto the question, the better to avoid answering anything personal. “Um, romance and stuff like that are way more important here. Like, um, it’s used to sell stuff, and you humans have a whole romance genre of TV shows and movies. We didn’t. Our educational level was obviously way higher, and I don’t think we really had high schools as you would term them. Oh, and we all were home-schooled to a certain degree thanks to the planetary computer network. I would say I like Earth’s nature way more, um, your reporters are better, I think.”
“Oh, from what I can remember of Tamaran, that was much the same for me!” Kori interjected enthusiastically. “Although I was but ten when I was sold into slavery.”
“What’s your favorite TV Show? What kind of guys are you attracted to?” another pundit bellowed.
Actually, it was the Flash, who had appeared at the back of the crowd, and then sped on, hoping to throw some gum in the works of this impromptu interview. It worked too. While Kori seemed to think about it, Kara answered with a comedy show and, “No Comment. Next question.”
Before Tricia could once more try to get the conversation back on track, someone else built on the previous questions. “How about the best way to unwind? Did your people have, like, 3-D games, movies, or some kind of advanced drug or something?”
Both Kori and Kara shook their heads at that. “My people did have a large pharmacological industry, but we did not partake in recreational drugs, healing drugs and medicine to improve life in various ways,” Kori explained. “I would much prefer hiking or stargazing, simple things.”
“Er, as for me, I quite liked watching movies with my parents when they weren’t too busy. That’s one thing I’ve seriously loved about Earth. How much more entertainment there is and how varied.”
“Ooh, Friend Shazam has mentioned movies. I would be very happy to try some of them. Perhaps when we are done doing what we can for Star City, we should take time to view several good examples of such?”
“Ooh, instead of a good movie night, a bad movie night,” Cassie spoke up for the first time in a bit. “The kind that you can watch and make fun of the special effects or acting.”
“Or a good old movie maybe, like History of the World, Part 1?” Ranma interjected, keeping a smirk off his face with difficulty even as he continued to work, along with the others. Oh, I can just bet how red that reporter gal is getting. Hehehe. And best of all, it's just Kori and Kara being who they are and the crowd acting like, you know, a crowd! HAH!
“Ehh, I don’t know, I don’t think Kori or even Cassie would be able to get most of the actual jokes in that. But maybe the overall acting would carry it if its like other movies I’ve seen,” Kara mused. Ranma had mentioned that movie before, and Uncle John had introduced her to the joy of Spaceballs before.
As Ranma had guessed, Tricia was feeling very beleaguered and at this she finally snapped. Even so, she knew the general tenor of the locals meant she had to be subtle about attacking the quartet. “I have to wonder how you four can be so upbeat. Star City has lost thousands. As heroes, I would have thought you would be more affected by what you had seen.”
The fact that Tricia had very pointedly not looked at the rows of dead gathered in various parks around the city did not need to be brought up. Nor was her first reaction to bodies that had yet to be recovered, the bloody detritus of war.
All four of the teens sobered at that, and Ranma turned his head away from the work he was doing for the first time. By this point, he’d nearly finished the wall up to his eyebrows anyway. “It’s not that we haven’t been affected by it. We have. And all of us will always think we could have done better than we did. But it’s equally better to laugh than cry, better to move forward than dwell in the past.”
“My people are warriors, and I know in battle, people die, no matter which side wins. I look on the dead, and I feel grief, but I also honor those who died in the defense of their city,” Cassie added.
“What they said,” Kara mumbled, with Kori nodding agreement. “I won’t say I didn’t throw up a time or two when moving bodies, but, um, I, I’d rather try to power through with good humor and forward momentum than get bogged down in grief. I’m certain I’ll have nightmares enough when I go to sleep.”
Frustrated at that answer and how much approval for it she could feel in the crowd, Tricia tried to paint the foursome’s reaction to the invasion in a negative light. This also didn’t really work so well for her, as Ranma was equally blunt to Kori in terms of his making mistakes, even if he didn’t own up to what particular mistake that was. Ranma had no desire for anyone to connect his Ranma body with this one.
Similarly, Cassie and the returning Kara conceded they had little training applicable to a battle like this one. “We already said we weren’t full-time heroes yet. Did we screw up? Sure, but would it have been better for us not to be here in the first place? Not at all.”
“But you have all these powers, all this strength and skill. What is it worth, though, if you can’t protect everyone?” Tricia growled, becoming a little fed up at how none of her questions were landing.
In doing so, Tricia again showed her lack of experience and skill. Tricia might have thought she was ready for the big leagues, but the watching Lois Lane, in Metropolis, could only scoff as she exchanged an eyeroll with her cameraman as they watched the interview in the Daily Planet’s personal plane, waiting for clearance to take off and head to Star City.
“Fool, made the mistake of coming at those four from an antagonistic perspective from the start. After all the good work they’ve done and did in the battle, that’s not going to work, no matter how she tries. And she’s sending all this out raw dog, too! Moron.”
Back in Star City, Ranma burst out laughing, turning from his work to glare at Tricia. “Really? Do you want someone so powerful they can protect everyone? That sounds as if you don’t think normal people can protect themselves or are denigrating the sacrifices made by the police, Air Force and Marines who fought here. We four might have strength and abilities beyond the norm, but none of those abilities make us infallible.”
“Indeed. Besides, would you truly like us to simply wave our hands and defend you against any threat? Would you like us to be gods in truth? Let me tell you from the perspective of one who knows the old gods are still out there, no one should ever want that,” Cassie said dryly. And that’s a Hera worshipper saying it. “First, it takes away your right of self-determination, and being all that powerful wouldn’t mean we wouldn’t have our own issues and foibles.”
“I’ll be the first to admit I’m horrified by what happened here. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more,” Kara said, her earnestness coming through even more than Ranma and Cassie’s in her body language. “But even someone like Superman wouldn’t have been able to stop this invasion in its tracks unless they were able to intercept Warworld before it entered the planet’s atmosphere. As we had no way of knowing it was coming, we did all we could. judge us by our deeds as you would anyone else, please, not your concerns about how different we are or how beyond the norm our abilities make us.”
That won a cheer from the crowd, Kara’s girl-next-door looks and words on top of everything else bringing the locals fully alongside the four heroes. The moment was quickly broken, though as someone further down the street screamed, “Hey, if you lot are done with the reporter bitch, we could use more superpowered help over here!”
Kori instantly moved in that direction, with Cassie and Kara doing the same. Seeing that, Ranma remained where he was, looking at Tricia with a small smirk. Damn, but this gal is as easy to rile up as Ryoga or those cannibals on Yamatai.
“Now, I think we've said enough, so why don’t you get that camera and your microphone out of our faces, and we can get back to concentrating on what actually matters and help people?” Ranma said, flipping the cameraman the bird before turning back to the work at hand.
Tricia scowled, but the cameraman, for his own reasons maybe, had raced after Kori. Several blocks to the left, the shout's origin came into view. One of the larger troop transports had barreled through several buildings, and a large group of around two hundred workers, mixed troopers and locals, were working to remove the debris from the road and the buildings themselves.
“We think there are some people trapped in the basement of that building,” one of them said, pointing in that direction. “We’ve also got a convoy coming our way, and we need to get the roads clear.”
“Starfire, start clearing out the debris further down the street. These guys will direct you to where the convoy’s coming in from. Make sure there’s nothing else in its way. Shielder, if you could get rid of the actual troop transport, then help me?” Cassie asked, taking charge almost absentmindedly, as she stared at the debris in some frustration. “Before that, though, use your x-rays to see if they’re right about---”
“They are. Four small bodies, two adults, I’d assume. Why they took refuge underneath the restaurant I don’t know, but they are all still alive down there” Kara interjected, staring hard at the debris, her eyes glowing lightly as she used her x-ray vision. “I think I should stay here and help. There’s a lot of debris that fell into the basement with them, and we can’t let it cascade further downward when we shift it.”
“Do not worry, friend Nyctimene, I can remove the troop transport before clearing out the road. Are we still taking them down to the dockyard area?”
When Kori received an affirmative, she moved over to the large troop transport, grabbing its side and digging her fingers into the metal to create a grip. When she received the all clear from Kara and the locals that moving it wouldn’t shift the debris too badly, she lifted it up and over her head, to whoops of delight from the watchers. “I will be back quickly.”
Cassie nodded and was about to begin moving the debris with Kara when there was a loud hum that seemed to come from all around them. Several small fires instantly broke out as electricity traveled through various wires to places that no longer technically existed. Yet even as many of the workers hastened in various directions to put out those fires, there was a loud cheer from everywhere all at once as power was restored to the city.
Somewhere in a shattered house nearby, a radio turned on, causing Cassie to smile at the sound of rock’n’roll. “Nice.”
Moments later, the cheers redoubled as the six trapped people were released, with Kara lifting them out of the hole one after another to waiting hands.
At that point, a furious Tricia caught up with her cameraman just in time to see the last of the family members being lifted out of the hole by Shielder. When that was done, Kara and Cassie started helping Kori clear the streets. They were nearly done when, after a few moments of commercials, a country song began to play, and a happily smiling Kara began to bop to the beat. “Now that is what I am talking about! Now we’ve even got music to work to.”
Tricia tried to shout questions at Kara, but the workers were not having it, getting between them, crowding her back to let the trio work. The cameraman, though, did catch Kara’s response to the music, as well as Cassie’s a second later. “Proof positive, ladies and gentlemen, that no one can be perfect. Still, liking country music is honestly a very small personality defect in the scheme of things.”
“Hey!” Kara pouted.
The crowd around them laughed, even as they got to work, jubilation and relief rising throughout the crowd and the city as a whole. They’d been battered and hammered, but Star City was already on the mend, not even twenty-four hours after the invasion, and everyone there knew they had the quartet and the heroes in general to thank for a lot of that progress.
OOOOOOO
Needless to say, Lois Lane was not the only person watching Tricia’s attempt to interview the quartet of new heroes. Indeed, her interview had become one of the most-watched pieces of news in the past few years, as men and women in the country and indeed the world over had been tuning in to the events in Star City.
One of the watchers was Batman. Once the conflict against Warworld had actually ended, he had stopped his attempt to arrive in Star City, thinking that he could trust the Flash and Aquaman to handle the aftermath. Now, he wasn’t so certain, as it was very clear that neither, more senior hero, had given these four any kind of heads up on what to and to not answer when confronted by reporters.
“They did a better job than I feared when you called me down here, Alfred,” he murmured to his loyal Butler. “Though I think half of that is Kara leaving so often, and Starfire’s bluntness. Kara’s response to the personal questions is worrisome, but thankfully, nothing that can be used to link her to Clark Kent or the Kents.”
“I rather think they all did well, sir. That Shazam character certainly seems to have opinions and is most disdainful of the fifth estate, which will undoubtedly bite him in the rear quickly. They do not like being it when people point out how useless they can be. But his attitude and that of young Ms. Sandsmark proved quite popular. As did Ms. Zor-El’s overall attitude and Starfire’s… bubbliness, I suppose you could say,” Alfred said, his tone almost as dry as the Sahara.
“Then Saotome will have to sleep in that particular bed,” Bruce retorted, frowning for a moment as the use of Ranma’s last name reminded him that he had yet to find anything about the youth’s father or what he was doing for the Japanese government. That was worrisome. As for connecting Ranma to Shazam, the Flash had called that in to the JL as a whole.
“It also seems as if Supergirl’s connection to Superman won her a lot of support from the crowd from the start, which is good, and, yes, her overall attitude helped a lot. I’d rather she be seen as another Boy Scout-type hero than have people continue to question her use of her powers. Cassie is a bit of a lower priority given her lack of flight capability and overall disparity in strength, but Starfire concerns me for many reasons. I can see trouble on the horizon there, irrespective of whether or not she wants to integrate into our society.”
“Now, now, tell the truth, Master Bruce. You’re still letting your bias against the young Ranma fellow get to you. You don’t like the fact that the Joker died when fighting him, and you dislike how blasé he seemed about life in general then, and how they are all handling this event now.” Alfred shook his head. “They are handling it just as well as any young soldier would his first brush with combat.”
Batman grumbled, but after a few seconds, nodded against his will. “You’re right, I dislike him for his attitude, and I don’t like how there seems to have been an entirely different level of martial arts that I was never privy to, despite O-sensei and my other instructors. I will admit to some jealousy there. Yet, he is very obviously also still a loose cannon, and his Shazam form is worryingly powerful. A hero of his strength and abilities not tied to the Justice League, to our morals, that could be a problem in the future.”
“Perhaps, and I realize this is whistling in the dark, but perhaps you shouldn’t try to purchase trouble ahead of time so much? Young Ranma seems extremely friendly with both young Kara and young Cassie, who themselves have their own mentors. You could start preparing a report for Clark and Diana when they get back, along with Aquaman and the Flash? Influencing this young fellow through his friendships rather than through brute force or your own persona as Batman might be a better idea,” Alfred suggested. “You get more bees with honey, after all.”
Batman grudgingly nodded for a second time at that, then stood up. “Well, Wayne Enterprises is going to be footing a large portion of the bill to repair Star City, and I need to get ready to make a public statement to that effect. And I think… I think I might want to talk to Diana when she gets back about her idea for a Young Justice League. If we can set something like that up, with Robin as its leader, then we can further influence all four of these youngsters. Wake me up in an hour to try and contact Clark and the others again. We haven’t gotten through yet, but it’s our only way to get in contact with them, with the Green Lantern who was supposed to come through Sol a no-show. That’s going to need to change in the future if Superman or any of the others take off-planet mission in the future.”
He shook his head once, a rueful snort escaping his mouth for a moment. “Damn it, Clark, when I mentioned us leaning on Kara and Diana’s little apprentice, I didn’t mean for the universe to take it as a challenge.”
Alfred bid his master farewell, saying nothing for a moment, but when his employer, semi-son figure and friend, had exited the room, he shook his head. “Somehow, I don’t think that idea is going to go as smoothly as you expect, Master Bruce. And appointing a leader to a group of youngsters is perhaps not exactly the best idea, especially when the youngster in question isn’t proven in the role. Still, we will see.”
OOOOOOO
In Washington DC, a very specific group of people, that being the president, his cabinet and a few extra advisors, were watching the so-called interview, as they had been doing with any news coming out of Star City. In front of them, along a long table, were numerous reports, some from the Major General Price, others from Army officers, and a few missives from Aquaman, who had been kind enough to report on what the Atlanteans were doing in their operation.
While some of the cabinet had grumbled about that, not liking the idea that Atlantis had come to America’s aid and not the reverse. The president and the vice president though, had simply been happy to get some help on site so quickly. Payment, in the form of trade agreements for more wheat-based products, since Atlanteans were mad for them, could come later.
Now, as Patricia Macintyre finally gave up the ghost, the president of the United States turned to his cabinet, a wry quirk coming to his lips even as he fought back a yawn, while a hand waved idly at the TV, signaling someone should mute it. It had been a long twenty hours since he had first been warned of something gigantic entering Earth’s atmosphere, and he wasn’t going to get to sleep anytime soon.
Before he could say anything, though, his PR specialist spoke up, shaking his head. “Young Macintyre badly underestimated how much goodwill those four had won from the audience. Supergirl, I’m not calling her Shielder, that’s ridiculous. She might have built on Superman’s reputation, but the others didn’t have it and even Starfire has won an amazing amount of positive feeling.”
“A slave running away to America does have quite a bit of precedent and could almost be made to pull at the heartstrings. If not for Ockham’s Razor, I might be suspicious about it,” one of the military advisors said, before snorting. “Right up until that homemade video of her eating breakfast with that horde of children came my way. That was so wholesome it made my teeth ache.”
“They’re certainly very down-to-earth,” the president agreed. “First, though, will we face any fallout from our ambassador to the UN agreeing to Green Lantern’s appeal to take Superman and the rest?”
“I doubt it, sir. It was an almost unanimous decision. GL’s presentation was pretty in-depth. The Corps’ hopes to create a peace treaty that will last between the thanagarians and their neighbors, a good one,” the vice president sighed. “We shouldn’t get any push back on that, but it was definitely a wakeup call, as was how blindsided we were. The fact that Warworld could just come out of hyperspace like that right in orbit and enter our atmosphere so quickly was horrifying. We can actually use that, though, in squeezing the Green Lanterns for renumeration. We still haven’t seen hide nor hair of the Lantern member who was supposed to come through to check on us.”
One of the extra advisors brought in on the Star City invasion coughed delicately. “As to that, Mr. President—”
The president waved him to silence. “We’ll come back to that, General Eiling. Let’s take this in order. Good. So, no backlash for that decision. Shifting back to the quartet of new superheroes on the block, what has this interview, and I use the term loosely, told us about them?”
“Friendly, young, for certain. I think that Shazam was the only one who really had it out for Macintyre the moment she showed up. Supergirl didn’t want to ask any questions, but I think that’s a personal preference. Nyctimene was willing to, but her answers were more direct, and I almost want to say militant? Starfire was hesitant, but almost an open book. It helped a lot, but a more subtle questioner might have been able to get some answers out of her she didn’t want to actually give,” another one of the president’s aides murmured, his tone analytical. “If you’re asking about anything about their origins, though, I have a few clues.”
“Yeah, Nyctimene certainly sounds Greek, and she mentioned being an apprentice to Wonder Woman? Does anyone think she’s Wonder Woman’s sister or daughter? We know Wonder Woman doesn’t age like normal men. She looked the same she does now back in World War 2, for God's sake,” the president said. I have an old pinup from my dad’s collection of her, and she hasn’t aged a fucking day.
“I don’t think so. There aren’t any visual cues pointing to a familial connection, not like Supergirl, whose cheekbones and eyes are the same color as Superman’s. No, I think she’s telling the truth about being Wonder Woman’s apprentice, which undoubtedly means she comes from the same mysterious Isle of Women,” one of his advisors grunted. “Ugh, to think we have seen so much proof that magic exists. What a world we live in.”
“I have to admit knowing Supergirl is related to him is making me feel better about a teenager having such powers, given Superman’s actions and his morals. Having her so absentmindedly admit that Superman came to Earth as a baby is interesting, and the fact that she was a teenager when she came here is also interesting. Then there’s the alien princess sold into slavery by her sister. Trust but verify there. We will judge her from her actions going forward. Even if I’d really like to know more about all three of them in terms of right, wrong, and following the law, they earned that much helping to fight off this invasion.”
The president had counted each of the young women off on his fingers as he spoke, only to pause, then wave a fourth finger in the air from side to side. “That leaves Shazam as the most mysterious, yet possibly the most powerful of the quartet. Do we have any idea where he came from? He mentioned that he's not a hero and that his suit is magical. Anyone else get anything, or have our Intelligence assets run into him previously?”
Thanks to the magic of the transformation, no one could connect Ranma with his Shazam appearance, even though his eyes remained the same, and his voice changed just a bit. And while the Justice League would share that information among their members, they wouldn’t hand it over to the US government or even the UN. Civilian identities were sacrosanct like that.
The directors for the CIA, NSA and FBI all shook their heads, with the most senior of them, the FBI director speaking up for the trio. “Sorry, Mr. President. We don’t have any prior information about Shazam. None of our contacts in China, India, or anywhere else have ever seen anything of Shazam.”
“He mentioned how he was the one to start the rebuilding, and we have a phone-made video of him instructing Starfire in how to repair buildings his way. Those buildings he has repaired are all up to code, too, and he’s rebuilt and repaired more buildings in a night than a whole company of our engineers would be able to. He’s faster than the quakers for God’s sake!” the Army rep, a Colonel, stated.
“Judging by Price’s reports, they’re almost to the point where everyone’s going to have a roof over their heads again, even with all the damage still to be repaired throughout the city,” the Marine General reported.
“Well, that’s nice, but it doesn’t tell me much about his abilities or origins,” the president said dryly.
“Some of the eyewitness reports we get from our fighter pilots say he appeared in a flash of light coming up from the city to hit Warworld, somehow bypassing its shields entirely. I’d dearly like to know how, but he did it regardless, and then he took the fight to the alien leader, or we who Starfire said was the leader anyway. Are we sure we believe her words?” the Air Force rep, a Lieutenant General, questioned, going on a tangent for a second.
The POTUS chuckled quietly. “Judging by how she responded to questions from anyone who asked, I rather think that that young lady wouldn’t be able to lie without it being rather obvious. We’ll put Starfire’s words down as truth for now until we run into something that disproves it, like I said, trust, but verify. However, that still leaves us with a few questions.”
He looked over at the three Intelligence folks, but none of them looked to have anything more to share, and he sighed. “I see. So, three not very mysterious young ladies, but one very mysterious young man. Age, nationality, training, where his powers come from, we have nothing?”
The Air Force Lieutenant General “No. We recorded some of his fight against Mongul, and our analysts estimate he is as fast and strong as Superman. We had to slow down the video as much with that fight as with Superman’s fights against that General Zod alien who showed up a year ago. Mongul seems to be as strong as Zod was, too. Some kind of energy beam, maybe? It was really confusing. Nyctimene also showed up with a spear that somehow hurt him.”
“Yay, more magic,” the same advisor who had complained about that before grunted.
When no one else spoke up with anything else to mention about Shazam, the president shook his head. “I don’t like how little we know about him. The relief effort seems to be organized as well as possible right now, and we’re pouring more resources into it with every hour. But what do we do about these four? Welcome them provisionally, certainly, but we need to know more about them and watch them as we do the regular members of the Justice League. In a perfect world, we’d even have their civilian identities, but that’s probably impossible.”
He said that, but he knew that the FBI, at least, would be following up in some way to discover Nyctimene and Supergirl’s identities. Though, the president wouldn’t hold his breath on that. They still had no idea who Superman was, nor any of the other JL members. We might get lucky, but that’s it.
“We could try to bring them under our control before the more powerful members of the Justice League return. After all, these four represent a lot of firepower, Mr. President.”
“Yes, and as I’ve told you numerous times, and even my predecessor did, we already don’t have that many allies on the world stage and would lose what we do have if we try to control the Justice League. No, that’s not the way to go forward. I’m not against some… clandestine activities done by superpowered individuals; however, using these four like that, or even attempting to use these four, would probably backfire, Waller,” the president shot down that whole concept quickly.
Near the back of the room, Director Waller, head of a sub-group of CIA that handled superpowered matters, scowled a little, having hoped to try and broach the subject of the Suicide Squad program with the president, but knowing now that his stance on the project wouldn’t change. The four had done too good a job of seeming approachable and nice.
Waller disdained that concept. Not just because she didn’t trust such acts from heroes, but also because it meant that these four would become too visible to disappear. That was annoying, just like it was annoying that she wouldn’t have official sanction if she tired. Not that it’s going to stop me. These four are working too hard to appear good and likable. There must be some skeletons in their closets.
“They are obviously quite dangerous, Mr. President,” another voice said, and Waller pricked up her ears adhering the voice of Director Westfield, her counterpart in the Cadmus program. It was supposedly an FBI offshoot, but Waller had thoughts there. “Yet, they also represent an opportunity If not in themselves, then what their genetics might represent.”
While the Cadmus Program had been started by a madman who had illegally transferred funds to his own project, it had, since his death, been taken over by the government, and repurposed to serve its purposes, that being creating supersoldiers via genetic manipulation, as the Suicide Squad was made to manipulate people via indoctrination, chemical manipulation, or overt controls like injecting explosives into their bodies. Of course, the differences didn’t end there. The Suicide Squad was just that, a program designed to take criminals or heroes that wouldn’t be missed and turn them into literal suicide soldiers, expendable. The Cadmus Program was built to literally create heroes who would answer only to the American government and could be used to fight superheroes like the Justice League if they proved a threat to humanity.
The president hummed thoughtfully, then slowly shook his head. “If you can get some genetic samples one way or another, and start creating your clones, I’d have to see a lot of data on how such could be controlled or indoctrinated before giving my final approval. Much like Waller’s concept, I am worried about the look of the thing once it comes out.”
Both Westfield and Waller made to speak, but a sharp hand slash through the air stopped them as the president glared at the entire intelligence community. “And don’t give me any hogwash about keeping it secret. In today’s day and age, when with every Tom fool and Harry having a cell phone, and the Internet exploding as it is, keeping things a secret is more difficult than it’s ever been, and public perception far more difficult to control.”
“No, when it comes to these four, I think we’ll need to go for a soft touch for now. We’ll think about ways to do it in the future. Although at that age, maybe something to do with food, like a cookout or something, could work to at least start the ball rolling, make contact with them and go from there? More than anything else, that peace of tech that Supergirl mentioned is something I am desperately interested in.”
The mood of the meeting changed at that point, with a few of the men even joking about how they had been bottomless pits at that age. General Eiling, who was in charge of a think tank devoted to finding ways to combat alien threats as well as supervillains without the help of heroes, volunteered to do just that.
“My wife and I live in Montana, and we could have the four up at the ranch. Making contact might be difficult, but I’m sure we could sweet-talk Supergirl into sharing that gravity detector thing at least. Beyond that, a social event like that’ll be a good way to get to know them better and learn about their plans going forward. I think these four are also a set, Mr. President. We need to approach them all together to get anywhere.”
“Hmm… we’ll think about it, but it’s a good start. Maybe offer the trio of Earthers a reward of some kind for their help in Star City? Come on, people, let’s hear some more ideas. And none of them should involve public events or anything with reporters. I think these four are gonna be quite camera shy for a while.”
The shift in the tone of the meeting and the president’s sudden good humor caused both Westfield and Waller to hide snarls of anger. Not just at the idea of using a soft touch like that on teens who should have been far more malleable than the adults of the JL, but at the very fact that these four were teenagers. Superpowered teenagers, with all of the emotional immaturity and lack of control that implied, were a recipe for disaster in their minds. As the discussion on how to approach the foursome continued, both of them and several others began to shift backward through the crowd towards the door.
Westfield was somewhat happy about what he had been told, having gotten the go-ahead to try and acquire the four’s DNA. I just have to be subtle about it. Fine. I can do subtle. So long as it works, anyway. What the president isn’t told won’t hurt him.
On the other hand, Waller was simply furious. Four more superpowered heroes, teenagers, no less, with no connection to any democratically appointed government, just what the world fucking needs. I need to step up our plans to get hold of the Shaggy Man and that so-called demigod from Venezuela. If the Suicide Squad can’t fight someone like those four, then what’s the fucking point?
OOOOOOO
Waller wasn’t the only one furious at the idea of four new superpowered heroes appearing like this. Indeed, while it might have horrified Waller to realize it, a large amount of the funding for the Suicide Squad came from a single source, and it was not the American government. Rather, much of that money came from anonymous donors and various bank accounts. All of which connected back to one Lex Luthor, one of the richest and most influential men in the world.
Well, the world knew him as Lex Luthor the Second, an illegitimate son of the original man who had made Lexcorp, who had died a year and a half ago. Lex Luthro the second had the red hair and even a beard of the original, and every DNA test he’d taken since coming to America from Australia said the same thing. In reality, the man known as Lex now was but the body of a clone with the mind of the original implanted within it.
Currently, none of his normal debonair, calm and concerned public persona was visible. Instead, he stood in front of a punching bag, his breath heaving as he leaned against it, having worked out his fury on it for what had occurred in Star City and the sudden appearance of four new heroes.
Nearby, his personal secretary and trainer Mercy, stood, watching him carefully. “I think we might need to up the weight of your punching bag, boss. That one’s looking a little ratty now.”
“It has served its purpose,” Lex growled, before pushing himself away from the bag. He grabbed a water Mercy held out then stalked over to his desk, slumping into it.
For several minutes there was only the sound of his gulping down water, then he spoke again. “Take a memo. Lexcorp is going to be going into near-space detection systems in a big way going forward. Warworld appeared directly out of what is derogatorily called hyperspace, but even so, we should have been able to detect it before it lowered into the atmosphere. I know America hit it with non-nuclear ICBMs, but they obviously did not do anything. See if the Pentagon is willing to go half on a new anti-space weapons design team.”
“Got it, boss.” Mercy nodded at that. “And um, the er, the two elephants in the room?”
While not privy to all of her employer’s thoughts or secrets, Mercy knew that, like his father before him, Lex Junior didn’t like the idea of powerful aliens. It wasn’t personal for Junior as it was for Lex Senior, in fact, he got along relatively well with Superman, but it was there. Seeing two new aliens show up on Earth with such amazing powers was doubtless adding to Lex’s anger at what had happened in Star City.
“… Given that this Starfire girl was a slave, I cannot say that her escaping to Earth, and America, means she is a threat. Heh,” Lex made himself laugh, regaining control of his public persona with some difficulty. “Indeed, a slave escaping to America has historical precedent, and we are the land of the free, after all.”
As Mercy laughed, Luthor finished calming down, and he began to make further plans. “We will trust Shielder for now as well, given her connection to a known hero. However, I would still prefer to know more about her and the others, including the obvious young Amazon among the four. Despite my paranoia, I cannot fault them or their actions, unlike the lack of response from the Green Lantern Corps. Make a note of that as well Mercy, then set up a meeting with--”
For the next fifteen minutes, Luthor calmly set up a plan for Lexcorp to foot any monetary needs the reconstruction project in Star City needed. He then made plans to personally show up in Star City, and a million dollars to the various local charities.
When that was done and Mercy left, he breathed out slowly, his teeth gritting again for a moment. Damn it all! he screamed internally. Another Kryptonian and another alien, from a race we haven’t ever heard of. A new hero, who seems to rely on magic for his various abilities from what little he let slip in that one clip at the airport. And another Amazonian. Bah, at least she is human, however technically. The Shazam character… I lack information about magic enough to know his limitations or a means of fighting him. On the other hand… the other two… and they are both young women to boot… hmm..
As the thought percolated, he pulled out a phone, one that he had personally designed to be impossible to track. With it, he sent out a text message. You will have all the funds you require. You have six months to provide me what you suggested you could create. Two examples of your mind control serum will be in my hands by the end of that time, or else you will be looking for a priest to sanctify your corpse…
OOOOOOO
By midafternoon, with power restored to the city, trash heading out, and food coming in, the largest goals of the reconstruction project had been met. Along with that, all of the dead bodies, both alien and human, had been organized, as well as all of the buried people found. As they had been doing throughout the night, Kara and Ranma had broken off what they were doing to help whenever someone buried was discovered. Zatanna, though, was the real MVP when it came to finding people, a project she had begun after lighting up the city the night before.
During a rest break, she had gotten in touch with Dr. Fate, who had walked her through how to power up her people-finding spell without draining herself too much, and she had been able to cover whole square blocks at a time. Working with Plastic Man, she had been able to save nearly everyone who had been buried alive since the battle.
Of course, it was only nearly. No one, not even a magic user, could save everyone.
Such bodies were still being pulled out of the wreckage, but Aquaman had decided it was time for the heroes to pull back for a bit. Green Arrow would still continue to patrol the city, of course, as he lived here. The Flash would likely stop in a few hours a day from his own city. Aquaman needed to get back to Atlantis and deal with the political ramifications of enacting the alliance between the US and Atlantis as he had, both domestically and with the US government. Zatanna was also no longer needed, and already, religious groups were starting to come out of the woodwork and make trouble due to her being an avowed magic user. Plastic Man, on the other hand, would remain and help out Green Arrow. Right now, both men had headed off for a rest as evening fell on the day after Mongul had been forced to retreat.
“Which means you four, it’s time for you to disappear from the public eye for a bit. You could still keep helping here and speed the reconstruction efforts up a lot, of course, but it’s no longer really necessary, and frankly, two out of the four of you look like you’re dead on your feet,” he observed, chuckling a little. “And if you did, well, you’d probably be forced to deal with more public speaking and way more in the way of government folk coming by to question you. We heroes tend to not stay in the area after things like this precisely because of that.”
Kara looked appalled at the very idea of more interviews, and Ranma scowled. He had yet to transform back into his normal body, and frankly, his Shazam body was beginning to itch a bit, for some reason. “Yeah, fuck that. I’ve been forced to work with government types once; that was more than enough. Let’s get out of here.”
With Kara rapidly nodding her head and Kori humming thoughtfully, Cassie was the only one who looked to have issues with that idea, despite being more than a bit tired. “I’d really have liked some time to search through the rubble of Wonder Woman’s apartment complex to see if I could salvage anything, but from the looks of it, I think that’s an impossibility. Yeah, I suppose leaving is as good an idea as any. But where should we go?”
“Before you four think of that, and note I’m not trying to influence you one way or another, not yet, here.” With that, Aquaman held out a small device to Kori, attached to what looked like a belt. “This is a device made by the Martian Manhunter and Batman, one of their older toys. It’s to hide your skin color. Wear it around your waist under your clothing, so that the back has contact with your skin. Then choose a skin color from the small screen there, and it will start to color your body in an illusion to match.”
“OO… That sounds most fun,” Kori said, smiling tiredly. She was one of the two who looked dead on her feet. It had been a long few weeks building up to her escape and she hadn’t exactly been fresh even before that.
Personally, Kara would probably keep on working, but given the number of cameras that had begun to follow them around in the past half day, and the number of times they’d had to refuse to give interviews since lunch, well, the fifth estate was getting in the way of a lot of actual work being done, so she knew it was indeed time for them to go. That, and no way am I going to speak again in front of a camera for a few months. Gahhh, that wasn’t fun at all. “What should we do then?”
“That wasn’t the only item I have for you four.” Aquaman pulled several small spheres off his belt. “Here. Newest version of the JL’s own coms gear. One for each of you, but I suppose that’s somewhat redundant if you four are going to stay together.”
He made that a question rather than a statement, but the four young people took a single look around themselves before answering in the affirmative. Kori was the most adamant, not wanting to part from her new friends, particularly Ranma, with his exceedingly pleasant, upbeat emotions. The other two were almost as nice.
“Thanks, Aquaman. I think both Shielder and I are going to have some explaining to do, and the sooner we bite the bullet, the better,” Cassie said, careful even now to use their hero names. “Any idea when she and the others will be back?”
Aquaman shook his head. “Nope, but it can’t come soon enough in my mind.”
“Well, in that case, let’s get up into the air and away from Star City for a start,” Ranma agreed. “Go nap-of-the-earth, so we’re off people’s radar. Then we can set down somewhere, get into our ‘civilian’ guises, and figure out where to go from here.”
“We’re going to need to get a shower and a change of clothing too… and now I’m realizing all my clothing, my headphones and phone, drat it, are gone too. I am now very glad Wonder Woman gave me a credit card. I’m sure she would agree this is an emergency,” Cassie mumbled, scowling just a bit as she tried to work her fingers through her hair and failed due to how sweaty it was.
“I’d offer some of my clothing, but I doubt any of it would fit,” Kara joked lightly, poking her taller friend in the side. It might be in Ranma’s ki space, but judging from what we’ve seen, that space still exists, somehow, even when he’s transformed into his Shazam body and can’t access it. Magic and ki are so weird!
“For many reasons,” Cassie said drolly, looking between Kara and Kori’s chests. Damn, what do they feed alien girls… on second thought, I don’t want to know what Warworld fed Kori. Nope, that thought is going in a deep, dark cave never to be shown the light of day again. “Let’s just get going. Shower, like I said, change of clothing, and then a nap, in that order.”
This won a cheer from the others, and, with Cassie in Ranma’s arms this time, the quartet left Star City, flying to the south and inland away from the various convoys and planes in the air around the city. Aquaman watched them go, smirking just a bit. I know that Batman would have wanted me to keep them under my eyes, but honestly, how would that have worked? Any two of them could probably wipe out my whole nation. No, better to let them free… and put trackers on them, and let Diana and Superman deal with the quartet when they return. So long as another major disaster doesn’t drag them into the limelight again, anyway.
“So, while clothing and a place to change are our initial priority, what all do you think we should be doing in the long term?” Ranma asked, shouting to be heard over the wind of their passage. “I’m personally all for continuing to explore America, but I know ya want to head home sometime soon.”
Kara blinked, then nodded a bit reluctantly. I, I don’t know if I’d call Uncle John and Aunt Martha’s farm home. It’s, I love it there, but I don’t know if it’s home. Not certain how to put it, though.
“Ooh, I wish to see this Grand Canyon place. Many people mentioned it in my vicinity for some reason, but always seemed embarrassed when I called them out on it and would not explain why. I wish to see what is so grand about it,” Kori exclaimed from where she flew nearby.
Kara glanced over, catching Cassie’s eyes, while the meaning of the term, and Kori’s hearing it so often, passed right over Ranma’s head for the moment. “Well, we can head in that direction, sure. Heck, isn’t that a white-water river? That was a heck of a lot of fun when you and I did it, Ranma,” Kara said, instead of what she really wanted to say to that. “Beyond that, I think we should head back to Uncle Jon and Aunt Martha’s farm. It’ll do as a place for the four of us to hang out until the JL figures out what to do with Kori, and my cousin and Diana return.”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s do it this way, then. Stop somewhere soon to get transformed, then a place further away to rest for the rest of the day and night, while you call home. Then we’ll head to the Grand Canyon—”
“Bypassing Las Vegas. That place sounds about as interesting as a molar,” Cassie interjected. The Amazons had games of chance, of course, but the idea of a whole city devoted to such was just bizarre in her opinion, and none of the so-called games of chance among Men interested her.
“Bypassing Las Vegas, yeah. Then we move further south before heading back up north to the Kents, using rivers and hiking cross-country. I think I’m done with cities for a while, and this’ll give us time to get reacquainted and train on the way, Cassie. And get to know you better, too, Kori.”
Both girls responded in the affirmative to that, and the quartet continued, talking quietly amongst themselves as night started to fall around them.
End Chapter
Just to reiterate my own version of Kori’s origin story. Komand'r, her older sister, cruelly sold her into slavery due to having been passed over for Kori in the line of succession because of how cruel she had proven herself to be when given power and authority. Yes, Komand'r sold her to be a pleasure slave. No, she hasn’t been raped multiple times yet by various people set up to do so by Komand'r. I was something I read on the DC comic page recently. No, there will be no reconciliation between the sisters. Even if I’m not going that dark, some things you don’t just forgive and forget. Being made into a sex slave is way up there on that list. Always turning the other cheek doesn’t make you a it just means you’re a willing victim. Kori was in her preteens when she was sold into slavery, and right now, she is close to eighteen. The reasoning for why she hasn’t been abused by Mongul up to this point has already been given prior in this work, so I will summarize it again here: taking advantage of her weakness and youth would have been seen as weak in and of itself, and be against the code of Warworld, thus losing a Mongul a lot of his support, just as much as being defeated in battle would have and has.
Oh, and one more thing about Kori. In the original, she referred to Tamarian customs and society a lot. So much, it impacted her overall speech pattern. I think, given the age she was sold to Mongul, that doesn’t make sense. She knows some things and is very much aware of how tamaraneans view affection, love and so forth, but anything else is a vague memory at best.}
On the Batman segment: Batman, and indeed most of the DC heroes, aren’t the type to stick around and help rebuild. Superman might do it more than the others and would certainly stay to search for anyone caught up in a fight, but Batman wouldn’t. Thus, when the fighting ended, he lost any reason to be there in terms of the aliens. After, he would trust Aquaman and the Flash to, in their own ways, vet the quartet to a certain degree. In the long term, he’s going to be making plans to deal with all four of them, as he does with all heroes besides himself, and I think I showed that, as well as his own going concerns about Ranma. He wouldn’t want to appear before the four until he could separate them, as he said, and interview/interrogate each of them. Confronting them would be foolish, and what would he confront them about, anyway? At the moment, Ranma’s the only one who isn’t coming out of this smelling of roses, even if Batman hates the fact that they had to step in.
Beyond that, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. The story's overall name will change now that this chapter has been completed. I am debating between calling it A Chaotic Foursome, Young Heroes, or a Butterfly’s Wings = Wild Horse’s Hoofs, a suggestion that builds off one that a hero once gave me. Tell me what you think of that and the chapter overall, and I hope you all enjoyed it!