sum of their parts

[overcame_fear]

[After this.]
 
Hal is still partly stunned by what happened out on the streets, but inside the headquarters of the Doom Patrol, things are not getting much easier to digest. Whoever this Niles Caulder is, the tech he uses includes things Hal hasn't even seen on Oa. And considering how twisted a lot of it seems, GL is very glad of that.

And yet... as Hal watches Caulder grafting a bizarre metal arm to his shoulder, he wonders if they really have much choice but to depend on the man if they hope to make things right again. Even Caulder seems to think so:

"Cliff's spare Robotman parts are a poor substitute, but I'm making do."

When told he should be glad his sensory nerves aren't part of the graft, he figures Caulder is probably right. But at least operating the arm depends on willpower. Hal has plenty of experience with that. Provided he can keep the arm's energy blast from killing them all.

Comments

[raptorcanaria]

Missing an arm, he might be, but Dinah can't help feeling that GL drew the longest straw in this. J'Onn's new viosr, wired to his optic nerves gives him sight 'as if through a fog', and Flash is confined to a device like a wheelchair, albeit it one that projects a Negative Man-esque 'lightning creature' in place of his speed. Dinah herself can still walk and see, but she still feels more hard done by than she thi8nks she has a right to be.

Her neck and the lower half of her face are encased in a metal contraption that keeps her trachea open as well as responding to her vocal muscles, so she can speak, after a fashion.

She just sounds like a pirate radio broadcast.

This, as a certain underage bartender would say, sucks.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal would be the last to complain about being the heavy artillery for the group. But it bothers him to have the incredible flexibility of his ring reduced to an energy cannon, even if it's an impressive one.

This has really taken the wind out of all their sails. Hal can see it in everyone, including J'onn, even under that bizarre helmet he's wearing to give him some semblance of vision. (Hal is just as impressed as Caulder is, though, when he overhears J'onn telling him that he still has eight of his senses intact.)

But even so.... As the team steps away from the Doom Patrol for a moment, Hal finds himself saying something he normally never would:

"Guys. I'm sorry. I led us right into this... and now we're...."

"Deformed," the Flash adds. "We're deformed. Say it."

"Some heroes we are."

[raptorcanaria]

It's J'Onn who gives voice to what Dinah is sure everyone is feeling.

"We have responsibilities, nonetheless. Thanks to the Brotherhood, the people of Manchester are equally... disadvantaged. We must reclaim the genecraft device that caused all this, and reverse it."

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal straightens, and though they might not be able to see the determination return to his eyes, his demeanor shows it nearly as well.

"J'onn's right! We can still win this!"

"If the Brotherhood could really have beaten us, they would have killed us rather than run!"

[raptorcanaria]

"Then we give it everything we have to give," says the Flash. He holds his hand out and up from his position in the wheelchair, and Dinah folds hers over the top, feeling Green Lantern lay his own (left) hand on hers, with J'Onn's on top.

"One for all and all for one, right?"

She waits for Aquaman to join them in the oath, but he never does.

[raptorcanaria]

They split into teams for the assault on the Brain, who in the meantime has built himself an impenetrable fortress out of Green Lantern energy. Dinah, J'Onn, and Elasti-girl scout around to the south, and Dinah was just figuring out how to say 'we can attack with something yellow' without betraying Green Lantern's weakness, when the sky erupts into a series of red flashes, and Locus' flying machines appear around the fortress.

"Lookzzz like they feel betrzzayed by the Brain, J'Onn," she observes. "We czzcould hang bzzback, but I fight my own --- bzzzt -- battles."

Every word she says not only sounds wrong, but feels like she's talking through a hive of angry bees.

"God, lizzten to me, I feel like a freak."

"Been there," Rite remarks dryly, and Dinah can't let it go.

"You? Rita, you're beautiful!"

"Thanks, but that didn't count for much in my movie career, not after I got size-changing powers. That's the way Hollywood works/ They love to hang labels; image is everything."

Dinah has plenty to say to that, but J'Onn speask up in that quiet way he has that commands attention.

"Which is what puzzles me most about Earthlings, How they can perceive such differences between themselves. Even with my eyes, I could see that people were distinct, but not truly different. Not enough to drive such wedges between them. Some days I fer I will never understand the artificial divisions you create among yourselves. Other days... I fear I shall.

"I've been meaning to tell you, Miss Farr, how disappointed I am that you're no longer making films."

It surprises Dinah and touches her deeply to hear her favourite Martian explain to a classic Hollywood actress who much her movies meant to him when he first came to the planet and used television and movies as a gateway to language and culture. When she sees the delight it brings to Rita, she could hug J'Onn, even as Elasti-Girl kisses him on the cheek.

So of course such a moment has to be interrupted by Monsieur Mallah, because touching bonding moments just aren't complete without talking apes wielding fully automated pistols.

Dinah, angry at the interruption, doesn't think twice before unleahing her Canary Cry.

"EEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZTTT!!!!"

The feedback from her artificial voicebox makes her usual precision weapon uncontrollable, and she hurtles backwards under her own power, leaving the ape unaffected. J'Onn throws a punch, but even with his extra sense, without his eyes his aim is way off. It's Rite who steps up the the rescue of the Justice League, lifting Mallah up in one huge aim and huruling him into the sky, where he collides with one of the Locus flying machines, officially becoming their problem.

"J'Onn, Canary, let's move!"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"Sure there's a limit on the ring's power," Hal is telling Flash and Negative Man. "But by the hour it runs out, the Brain will have realized its full potential, and we'll never be able to stop him."

Negative Man takes that in. "So you think we can nail him if we act fast enough?"

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

Negative Man stops dead in his tracks and stares at Green Lantern's back. "...Hal?"

GL spins around to look at him, but Negative Man is already talking: "Hal Jordan? You used to beat that corny phrase to death when we flew together in the USAF! I'd know you anywhere, you jet-jockey you! And now you're the famous Green Lantern! How about that!"

It takes a moment for Hal to close his mouth, and then say, "Was Green Lantern, Larry. Now I'm...I'm... What am I?"

Flash roars up beside them (Did Flash hear that?) "What are any of us? Good lord, I wasn't sure I felt human anymore even before this. Now...Now I don't know what I am."

"YOU'RE A PATHETIC WRETCH, FLASH!" a voice roars as an enormous robot bursts up from the ground, throwing the heroes on their backs. Whoever's operating the monstrosity keeps yelling, but even amplified, his voice is drowned out by the din of the machine.

"GL, your lasers!" Flash yells, but Hal is already trying to blast the thing without success. Try as he might, he just can't focus the unfamiliar arm. Hal can't do a thing to keep one of the robot's huge hands from closing around him.

The Flash had his doubts about the lightning creature Niles Caulder created for him, but that's the only option he's got in this fight, so he sends it out in a burst of sparks and crackles. Negative Man is on the move too, working at that hand in an attempt to free Hal, whose nonstop blasts finally manage to crack the the glass dome protecting its operator.

That's all Flash needs to slip inside and haul the man out, and with a mighty crash the robot collapses to the ground.

"Not bad for a trio of misfits, huh?" Hal asks Larry, but Negative Man can't take his eyes off the Emerald Fortress.

"Uh oh! Unless I miss my guess, Morden, you're lucky to be out here."

Flash barely has time to point as the Locus ships close in and batter the fortress until the massive structure suddenly gives way and collapses in tremendous crash.

"The Brain's losing his concentration!" Morden yells in frustration. "He hasn't yet mastered the power ring!"

"Oh, yeah?" Flash asks, as a fusillade of green blasts bursts from the wreckage. "Looks to me like he's getting the hang of it!"

The men barely have time to dive behind the robot before three blasts slam into it.

[raptorcanaria]

The rest of the two teams race to converge around Flash, GL and Neg-Man, as the fortress crumbles, leaving just the Brain and his huge amalgamated body standing tall, firing blasts of green energy at each of the Locus pilots, felling them left and right. They're enemies of the League, for certain, but Dinah neither wants the genecraft ray to remain with the Brain, nor for anyone to be subjected to this kind of violence. Negative Man has it right when he says,

"Locus is being massacred!"

"With our powers, no less," adds Green Lantern.

"Are we going to szzztand for that?" Dinah asks, a rhetorical question if ever there was.

"Not a chance!" Rita answers. "TAKE HIM!"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"Jealous are we?" the Brain sneers. "Feeling neglected?" He roars with laughter as his blasts scatter the heroes and then traps them within the bars of an green cage.

"Frankly, I couldn't wait for you to show. Why settle for Mallah when I can have eight monkeys to tinker with?"

"The ring creates any prison my prodigious mind can envision!" the Brain shrieks. "Blessed with an emerald scalpel, there's no end to the experiments I can conduct!"

The cage morphs into a sticky blob and then shifts to dozens of sharp-edged rods. "They called you freaks before? Wait until I'm done with you!"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah, Flash and Aquaman, the back of the charge of superheros, had been thrown back violently by the first blast of green. Aquaman is soon at Flash's side so they can save their caged friends, but Dinah...

Dinah finds herself by a fallen Locus employee. His chest has been torn open by the fall from his plane and now....

She can see his lungs.

"Try not to move," she tells him. He might be a Locus goon, but he's still a person, who is going to die iof she can't get him to a hospital.

"Must retrieve ray," he managing, his face showing signs of sturggling hiis body just isn't responding to. "Plan must go forward?"

She can't help herself. Maybe later she'll rationalise it as keeping him talking to keep him conscious and alive. "Plan?"

"You can't stop us... using Alien DNA... to build host bodies for...ourselves and... one other."

"'Other'? Who?"

But he's not listening to her anymore. "...so we can survive... the coming... holocaust."

Everything else - her friends in Peril, Flash and Aquaman working out a rescue plot, worries about her mother's past - all of that falls away from Dinah's worldview.

Holocaust.

She has to find that ray.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal sees it happen with his own eyes, and he still can't believe it.

It starts with some kind of back-and-forth between Flash and Aquaman, and then suddenly the Speedster is using that weird yellow lightning projection to propel Aquaman right at the Brain. Several steps away, it stops, and Aquaman flies through the air, landing hard right on the Brain's back.

The monster is startled, and never has a chance to recover. Aquaman gets him into a wrestling hold Hal is glad hasn't got him pinned, and then there's a lot of shouting the Lantern can't make out.

And then... the Ring is glowing bright as the Brain keeps blasting away at them, but when Aquaman squints hard Hal can feel a struggle of wills going on.

Hal's been around enough telepathic aliens long enough to figure out what Aquaman is trying to do. It's a good try, and the guy's got guts, but--.

What the hell?

A brighter flash, and suddenly an emerald cutlass erupts into view, and slices clean through the fleshy head of the monster. The crystal case containing the Brain goes flying until it lands hard on the ground several yards away.

Moments later, Robotman is clapping Aquaman on the back. "Nice work, Blondie! You're gonna be right at home with the Doom Patrol!"

"With the--?" Hal starts. "Forget it, Robotman! He belongs to the JLA--and we're lucky to have him!"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah, sadly, missed the battle of wills between Aquaman and the Brain - she patched up the Locus goon well enough to hope he'll survive into the clean up,m then high-tailed it into the remains of the Brotherhood's strong hold to retrieve the genecraft ray.

Sometimes it feels good to know you're still the best at kicking ninja goons in the head.

She returns to the battle scene to see Green Lantern cheerfully congratulate Aquaman on the rescue, and under her false voice box, she smiles. It's good to be a team.

"I found the genecraft ray intact. We've got to get to the townzzzpeople. Fix them up."

The Doom Patrol volunteer for Locus clear up, and that gives the Justice League permission to get their body parts back.

It'll be good to breathe fresh air again.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Caulder is glad to see everyone restored to 'normal.'

"General Immortus once used something very much like the genegrafter on us. I wonder if Locus hasn't been employing him as well."

It's hard to say, though, because the Locus agents fled at the first chance. Hal keeps up his game face, but it's frustrating to go through all of this and still lose that lead.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah remembers a conversation with X-23, and reflects that it might be an advantage if they had a mind reader on their team. The thought, however, makes her frown. She's definitely not comfortable with that idea, hands down.

She lifts her head to say godoby to the Doom Patrol, and finds J'Onn looking at her steady, his newly reattched red eyes unreadable. When she speaks, he breaks his stare.

"We can't take claims about a holocaust lightly. Locus stole one of the alien creatures that brought the JLA together. Their techonlogy may outstrip our powers, and that's trouble. Find out what you can on your end."

"Yeah, we find anything, we'll buzz ya," Robotman assures her.

As goodbyes are said, Dinah looks around to make sure they're all together, and discovers a member from each team is missing...

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

That would be Hal and Larry, who have taken a moment to look out over the city from the high balcony of the DP headquarters.

"What do you mean you don't know exactly who's financing the JLA?" Larry is exclaiming. "Don't you guys check things like that out? Isn't that super-villain plot number eighty-two?"

"You're right," Hal has to admit. "We're new at this. We'll look into it first thing in the morning."

The Lantern goes quiet for a moment, then sighs, "Larry, how do you handle it, man? The responsibility?"

Negative Man lifts his head in surprise to hear Hal Jordan ask such a thing. "You seem to be doing well enough, flyboy. Hey, you were an iceman as a jet jockey. Why so rattled all of a sudden?"

"I never really thought of the ring as a killing tool before today," Hal answers. "Kind of changes my perspective on what we're capable of."

"Yeah," Larry nods. "I can see that. Look, Hal, take it from someone slightly more experienced: never failing to use our abilities wisely. That's the real power. Don't forget that."

Hal takes a moment, then smiles, but only slightly. "I won't."

"Listen... Any time you want to crack the sky again, look me up. I can put you behind a stick for an afternoon."

"Sounds good," Larry says, taking Hal's hand in a firm shake. "Take care, Hal."

Hal intends to. And he has to admit, it's good to know Larry is part of this new world he's found himself in. Even a Green Lantern needs someone to talk to now and then.