(no subject)

[overcame_fear]

It's been a couple of days since the League's confrontation with Martian Manhunter, and Hal's been trying to accept it and move on. Find the alien, arrest him, see justice done. Should be just that simple.

But it hasn't been like that. Try as he might, Hal can't escape a lingering sadness that things turned out this way. He would never admit that he's almost relieved when his search for J'Onn turns up no leads, and yet....

When he finally gives up and returns to the base, he finds the remaining members of the League huddled around Snapper, who sits at a large display showing a digital map of the world. Flash is the first to look up as Hal flies down to them.

"Lantern--any sign of J'Onn?"

Hal shakes his head. "I've searched high and low. Nothing."

Comments

[raptorcanaria]

"Great. He's probably told Locus everything about us by now," Dinah says, looking up at Lantern, for whom she feels no awkwardness at all right now. "Where we live, who are friends are. I don't know what you guys do in whatever your civilian identities are," well, except Hal, who is a test pilot, she knows that, "but I'm afraid to go to sleep at night."

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"That's what we get for trusting a stranger," Hal replies, and then deep down regrets it, though you couldn't tell from the tone of his voice. But he shoves those misgivings down, and forces himself to focus.

"What's up?" he asks, gesturing toward the screen.

Snapper is too engrossed in the display, so it's the Flash who answers: "Snapper has found three separate global disturbances linked by a common energy signature. The North Polar icecap is melting, and fast. There's a seismic disturbance in the Mariana Trench. And something low-level atmospheric is happening in California's redwood forest."

"Anyone think this smells like the Locus group's promised Armageddon?"

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah shoots Hal a searching glance, looking to find out if he really meant that or not, but comes up with nothing. In the meantime, Flash is definitely talking sense.

"My guess," she agrees with him. "Priorities?"

Flash will know what to do. He's the fastest thinker, after all.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

He really is, which is why Hal should have given him a chance. But Hal is too busy interrupting:

"The redwood situation seems to be the least critical. Flash, you and Canary investigate the Arctic warming. Aquaman and I will explore the ocean floor. We'll rendezvous in California."

And with that, Hal is flying for the exit. "Let's go people. We'll worry about J'Onn later. He could be anywhere."

Hal doesn't seem to notice that he's actually making a good case for putting J'Onn at the top of their priorities.

[raptorcanaria]

This is one of the situations that Dinah really wishes she had speed or flight or evwen swimming-really-fast, but she has a sonic scream and she'll have to deal with that. The other thing she'll have to deal with is being carried by Flash.

She's been thinking about him more and more since that time with Hal.. with Green Lantern - about how she's done with cocky guys and assholes and hwo all she wants is a nice guy. Even that should have been ruined by J'Onn - by a confidante turning on her in that way, but it seems right now as if Flash is one of the only guys she can trust; and she's in his arms right now.

He's running at breakneck speed over the surface of the choppy arctic waters, fast enough to skim the surface. It's a strange sensation for Dinah, not suited by metapowers for running this fast, but she can still help out - screaming to shatter every iceburg she sees ahead of them, so the race doesn't need to slow for navigation.

It's cold. His arms are warm.

"I'm afraid to sleep too, by the way," he says, referring back to her comment in HQ. "I don't know hwo to trust anymore."

"Well, there's me, right?"

Flash is silent.

"What, suddenly I make you uncomfortable?"

"Not... well, we haven't been this close before, physically, and my fiancee is already suspicious about..."

Fiancee? Great! that muttering months ago about having a girlfriend and now he's engaged? And Dinah liked him.

He doesn't deserve her snapping at him the way she does, but he flirted with her, she's sure of it, and now he's telling her how to feel? It's enough to make her swear off men forever.

Until he changes the subject by claiming to 'feel something', slams on the brakes and dumps them both into the Arctic waters.

...the warm Arctic waters.

Irradiated warm Arctic waters.

Flash stopped because he saw a magetron floating among the ice already, cooking the waters with microwave energy fast enough to melt the ice caps. "At this rate," he says, "the north pole will be tropical by tomorrow. Global Flooding will be disasterous. Problem is, we can't get near that magetron without being cooked."

Which, as Dinah has just noticed, is the least of their problems. "MOVE!"

They both dive off the ice they were standing on, just as a giant fist comes hurtling down, smashing the ice behind them. Trading water, Dinah looks back up at the giant clay-formed humanoid, covered in blue fire that keeps the water as warm as the magetron. It looks like a weird amalgam of the fire giant alien and the genegraft bodies theyty fought off with the Doom Patrol.

"Locus agent," she guesses. Which sadly opens the way for him to launch into a monologue.

"We have indeed adapted our bodies to take advantage of a changed Earth, free from your interference."

She screams - but the adapted body doesn't respond except to mock some more. Luckily Flash has his priorities right.

"Sing loud and high," he tells her, scooping her back up into his arms, "and forget about Lavaman. If I add my vibrations to your sonics, we can protect ourselves from the microwaves with a counterfrequency long enough to turn the magnetron into scrap!"

Dinah doesn't understand a word of the science, but she doens't have to. She fixes her voice at a hypersonic range beyond even her hearing and keeps it up, only just aware of the amplification Flash is adding as he carries her towards the machine so fast the world is a blur, and plants a foot right into the metal, shattering it into the water.

She's glad he's in charge.

"Com'on," she urges him. "Up! The cold won't take long to settle back in!" And there might be a large lava giant dispparing the loss of his icecap melting device, but "what are we goign to do? Arrest him? Mission accomplished!"

She hopes they're not too late to stop the disaster in California.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal has to admit it: Aquaman is really something. He moves as easily down here in the Mariana Trench as Hal does flying through space, and the Lantern can't figure out how he does it. The Ring is working overtime, not only maintaining an air bubble around him, despite the enormous pressure, but also translating the weird underwater speech Aquaman is making.

"Lead the way. I'll take point once we hit bottom, then I'll need you to--."

And suddenly Aquaman asks: "Why are you always giving orders?"

Hal is so surprised by the quiet hero interrupting him, it takes him a few seconds to give the obvious answer: "Because I'm the team leader."

And now Aquaman is laughing!? What the hell?

"What? What's so funny?"

"You're not the team leader!" Aquaman scoffs.

"…What?" Hal asks again. Is the water down here squeezing his brain?

"J'Onn, Canary and I talked about this weeks ago!"

"Then why--?" Hal starts.

"Why does Flash let you boss us around? He just figured he was letting you be you." The mirth on Aquaman's face gives way to concern. "Careful. We're at the deepest spot on Earth. Pump up the will power." He grins. "Leader."

Hal blinks and sees cracks in his air bubble. He's been so surprised, he--. Oh, good, it's an alien machine at the bottom of the trench. Right now GL would prefer to think about anything else.

"Here's our seismic disturbance. Judging by the thrum of this thing, it's boring through the Earth's crust. What happens if it strikes magma?"

"Instant underwater volcano," is Aquaman's grim response. "Tidal waves around the entire Pacific Rim. We have to shut it down. But how? Even I can't see down here. Can you put out more light?"

Hal is about to comply when a tremendous blow strikes the air bubble.

"Lantern! Lantern what is it? I can't see! Give us more light!"

"Trying!" Hal calls out, but it's taking everything he has to keep the bubble from popping as gigantic tentacles wrap around it. "Can't--! Focus--!" In the shadows he can see an enormous shape. Some kind of deep-sea creature, and it's huge!

"The light makes me its target! Can't tell…. where it's coming from next!"

Hal moves defensively, but he knows he won't be able to keep that up for long. "Send an octopus after it or something!"

"There are no big fish at this depth! There are only--." Aquaman pauses, then grimaces. "Okay. You're fearless, right? Let's put that to the test."

Suddenly the fish around Hal close in, and within seconds the bubble is surrounded by a seething mass of wriggling fins and scales. "Hey! What are you--?"

"Look," Aquaman replies patiently. "I don't trust you any more than you trust me right now. Put that aside or we won't survive! When I give the signal, follow my command!"

Hal shoves aside his usual (unprintable) response to that sort of thing because right now there's a gigantic maw of glowing teeth looming right ahead.

"NOW!" Aquaman roars.

It's tricky because the move is complicated and at a distance, but at Aquaman's command, Hal sends out a brightly glowing image of himself. The enormous monster rushes after his avatar--and straight into the alien machine.

There's a tremendous blast, and the massive shock waves would probably have slammed Hal flat if he hadn't been surrounded by all the fish. He's very glad a second later when the Ring makes it back to his outstretched finger.

Aquaman is triumphant. "It worked! The bottom feeders are born to withstand the pressure. Their skins protected you long enough to use the Ring as a lure!"

With the alien machine destroyed, Hal is already heading for the surface. Aquaman watches him in amusement.

"What about the beast?"

"Let him be," Hal grumbles. "We've got other fish to fr--.. Other problems to solve. California here we come!"

Aquaman's smirk is a grin by the time they're out of the trench, and it gets bigger when he notices how hard Hal is avoiding his gaze.

It's going to be a very funny swim back.

[raptorcanaria]

There's nothing like a run through Washington at high speed to dry out the freezing water in ones wig. Dinah and Flash didn't talk much in the time it took to make the run, but Dinah's relieved to find it's not an awkward silence. They just... very definitely don't talk about fiancees.

Racing through the forest, they alter their course when Flash spots a green light in the canopy above them, and runs to intercept their teammates. They're alive and in one piece, so Dinah can assume that's a success. A rendezvous and a quick confirmation that it was Locus' handiwork...

"Our opponent said something about changing the Earth," Dinah says. "That's why they've taken on weird forms, to survive their own handiwork."

(The upcoming Apocalypse)

"But speaking of weird forms, I don't see anyone standing watch over this area..."

"Oh no?" Aquaman sounds suddenly much louder than Dinah's used to hearing. "Look again!"

He points through the redwoods to a thrid machine, and the person standing on it, his back to them, presenting a very familiar blue cape.

The Manhunter.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal doesn't even put a foot on the ground. His Ring flashes and he leaps forward into the air.

"Well, great. If we had any lingering doubts about which side our former teammate is playing for, this settles everything. I don't know what that machine does, but they're using J'Onn to guard it!"

And with that, Hal dives straight for the huge bulk of alien metal.

[raptorcanaria]

Hal is a green flash, but Flash is a red blure, putting himself between the Lantern and the Martian.

"Slow down! We can't be sure what we're up against, remember? J'Onn's always been full of secrets. Suppose he neglected to tell us about his 'deathvision' or something?We only know one way to take him down for certain..."

He's been still for no more than a second when he races off against, in a circle around J'Onn, too fast to see, a red blur that begins to smoke when the friction heats up the dry forest floor. "...and that's to take advantage of his one weakness."

"Flash?" J'Onn manages, standing helpless in the smoking circle, "what are you...?"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"You're not the only one who can add friction to a situation, J'Onn," Hal shouts. "Stand down!"

A car-sized green fist slams into the Martian, nearly throwing him into the flames.

J'Onn is desperate. "No! You don't understand! The fire! Extinguish the fire!"

Aquaman knocks J'Onn back to the ground with a furious roundhouse. "Not a chance, traitor!"

[raptorcanaria]

"But the machine..."
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Dinah can only just hear him over the sound of her scream, hitting him hard in the chest and sending him backwards towards the flames that are the only way they have of stopping him. He falls to the ground, and seems to crawl towards the flames. "The fire..."


And then...

FWOOOOSH!!!

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Hal doesn't think. The Ring practically builds the green sphere of protection for him (Weird, how it can do that...).

Which is probably a good thing, because the sphere is protecting not only Canary, Flash, and Aquaman, but also J'Onn, who is gasping for breath:

"I tried... to tell you... to keep the fire away. The machine... I was attempting to shut it down safely. It was pumping.. methane-based gases into the biosphere! Not only are they deadly to human life... they're flammable!"

The conflagration soars and spreads in every direction....

[raptorcanaria]

The sky is on fire.


Dinah does nothing except stare as Lantern takes them to a nearby cliff edge to deposit them safely. There, she doesn't even care about the traitor standing nearby. She can just stand, head in her hands, staring at the column of fire stretching up from the tops of the greta redwood forest, filling the sky with red.


The sky is on fire.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

It's all Hal can do to keep from grabbing the Martian by that big blue collar.

"J'Onn! Good god! What have you done?"

J'Onn looks utterly stricken and terrified. "You-- You cannot think that I--."

[raptorcanaria]

"The evidence is gathered, J'Onn," Flash snaps back, and Aquaman soon joins in.

"What other conclusion are we to draw? Locus is changing the Earth to suit you! You're the eighth Appellaxian you - Arrrgh!"

The beam seems to come from nowhere, hitting Aquaman right in the back. Dinah hadn't been paying attention to notice a side attack.

All she's been seeing is the flaming horror reflected in J'Onn's eyes.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

It's a gate, opening right in the middle of the flames. And there are already Locus agents coming through, bearing wicked-looking energy weapons.

"I told you they'd be here," one alien is saying.

"Where else would they go after taking our other two devices out of play?" says another. "Kill them!"

Strange blasts of searing light erupt from the guns, and the aliens charge.

[raptorcanaria]

They're not the only ones charging. The Justice League throw themselves forward, in four different directions, and each of them is soon surrounded by beings with alien-looking Locus agents.

Dinah holds her ground and fells them in groups with her scream, over which she can just about hear the rest of the team. Aquaman particularly is closest.

She realises he's calling her to repeat the team move they'd previously used against Grodd just a second too late, when an agent hits him in the back of the head and he falls. Then, she turns.

"Sorry."

"Uh huh." Aquaman is not amused. "Do you suppose we could pretend to trust each other at least long enough to live through this?"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

GL and Flash are sweeping ahead. "I'll mow the front flank!" Hal yells. "Flash, watch my back!"

"What?"

"I said, watch my--NNNGH!!" Shot in mid-air, GL tumbles toward the ground, caught at just the last minute by the speedster.

"Some teamwork," Hal grumbles, as the Flash takes him in his arms.

"Love you too," Flash grumbles back. "What am I, the complaint department?"

Flash executes a perfect high-speed turn. "The flames are dropping lower by the second! How about we focus our energy on that, instead of--." He pauses.

"What?" Hal asks.

"Suddenly--," Flash replies, "I can't tell--. The white hats--. From the black--." With each turn, Hal finds himself positioned just right to launch a big green punch to the face of another Locus agent. Wham! Wham! Wham!

"Look at J'Onn!" Flash shouts.

[raptorcanaria]

And there's J'Onn, flying through the fire that could kill him so easily, hurtling towards the machine, which he proceeds to demolish violently by blunt force and heavy hitting.

"If J'Onn's with Locus, why is he destrpying their machine?" Flash asks.

"He..." Dinah barely has time to think in the continuing onslaught of Locus agents. "I thought he was..."

Maybe he did what he did out of lack of trust for them.

"Should we help him?" Aquaman asks. Flash... doesn't know.

And then, with an almighty yell from J'Onn, there's nothing to help with.

FWOOOM!!!

"J'Onn!"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

The Martian flies through the air, landing hard on the ground with a sickening thud. Flash is there by his side first, of course.

"J'Onn! J'Onn, we're sorry! We thought you were with them. J'Onn, can you hear me? Say something?"

But there's not a word, not even a tremor from the fallen hero. He lies limp, and Flash slowly lays him back down on the ground.

Even Hal is silent.

What is there to say?

[raptorcanaria]

The flames have gone. He removed the fuel source and the fire died without it; the Locus agents sent flying by the blast.

But now Dinah's worried that her friend has gone with it.

I'm sorry, J'Onn

But it's too late for that.







It's only when a ray gun blasts into the group that Dinah even remembers they're in the middle of a fight.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Flash explodes. Locus. "I've had enough of them! Lantern, put those two--" he jabs at Aquaman and Canary "--on a transport. Locus thinks it's on the run. I'll show them 'on the run'!"

Grasping the handles of the green cart that just appeared under the two JLAers, Flash throws himself forward, and the team hurtles through the gate just before it snaps shut.

"Looks like home base," Hal calls out. "What now, Flash?"

He really hopes it'll be punching things.

"Easy! This is the last battle," Flash growls back. "Flatten--. Anything--. That moves!"

[raptorcanaria]

That, Dinah is willing to help with. And suddenly, they're a team again. She screams and vaults and kicks, and she knows Green Lantern has her back. Aquaman pounds his way through the agents to the most human looking guy in the room; the presumed leader, who he lifts above his head, threatening to flatten.

"You can't stop us! You suspect some of it. Your League banded together to stop an Appellaxian Invasion - but failed. There's still one Appellaxian unaccounted for. Under his direction, we've been terraforming the world to Appellaxian standards - hosing it clean, if you will - all the while gengineering host bodies for ourselves capable of withstanding the severe geologic changes!"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

The leader looks to one side and sneers. "I see Green Lantern has caught the last of our number in mid-transformation! They won't appreciate the interruption."

They really don't, but the pounding the GL gets isn't much worse than the rest of his teammates are getting barely a moment later.

"All of us versus four of you," the leader gloats. "Look upon it as a privilege. Of everyone on Earth, you'll be the first to go."

Stars explode before Hal's eyes as one of the agents lands a vicious blow. But before he has a chance to wonder if the man might be right, there's a loud crash from above!

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah looks up to a sight that she's more pleased to see than anything in her life so far. J'Onn, alive and healthy, and crashing through the ceiling into the middle of the fight.

"Get away from my friends!"

He's furious, and his eyes glow a dangerous red as he dives down to join them. Instantly, Dinah moves to his rear, ready to defend his back.

"Good to have you back, J'Onn."

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"Whoa!" Hal calls out, delighted to see the Manhunter back in action. "Go, J'Onn!"

And go J'Onn does, blasting one of the agents with heat vision so powerful it nearly hurls the hulking menace to the ground.

But the leader isn't done yet, and before Flash can get to him, he executes a series of commands into a control panel, and a moment later, the ground begins to rumble and shake.

"What have you done?!" Flash shouts as he slams the man against a wall.

[raptorcanaria]

"Isn't it obvious?"

The noise wracks the building, but it's the ground underneath that grabs Dinah's attention, lurching violently so it's only the Locus agent in her fists keeping her upright. "He's started an earthquake!"

"Please!" (Oh god, where did his guy come from with his monologues?) "To call this an earthquake is to call the Atlantic Ocean a pond! The final stroke!"

Again, Dinah only just follows the ensuing speech, but she gets the gist: a massive scale tectonic shift, forcing all the continents back into their supercontinent formation, in the meantime killing every living thing on the planet.

The promised Holocaust.

"What do we do?"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

"You want me to ask Green Lantern?" Flash asks sarcastically.

But GL has been quiet, and now he looks away from the rest of the group. "I'm through giving orders."

"Since when?" Flash asks, now amazed.

"Since the others decided that you're the leader." But before even Flash can interrupt him, Hal goes on to say he's glad of it. "If I've been a jerk, it's only because I thought I was blowing the job. You're the faster thinker. Whaddayagot?"

Flash does have a plan, but when GL hears what his part is supposed to be in it, even he can't believe it. But when Flash simply tells him he knows GL can do it, that familiar smile finally comes back to Hal's face.

"Oh yeah." And as Flash shouts at him to go, GL shoots into the sky and out of sight.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah has never been more impressed than she is right now with Flash, even suddenly inundated again with Locus agents. Suddenly the team seems to be working again and all she needs to do is keep fighting.

"Wow. If we get out of this alive, will you have my baby?"

"Or mine," Aquaman joins in.

"Don't give me too much credit," Flash says, and before a huge fist can send Dinah through a wall, she's scooped up again in a red blur. "We're a team," he says.

He's holding her so close.

"Whatever you say," Dinah says, quietly.

"Are you OK?"

But her answer can wait, because another fist finds them. Right, they're fighting.

"Fight against the tide!" Flash shouts to the rest of them. "We've got to get to the computer! Lantern's doing all he can - but even he can't keep this up for long!"

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

It's a sight Green Lantern never gets tired of: the Earth from orbit. Usually he comes up here to admire the view, but this time he has a job to do, and it's the biggest one he's ever taken on.

No pressure, though: all that depends on him coming through are the lives of his teammates and the future of the planet itself.

Good thing Hal enjoys working under pressure.

The Ring flares bright, and a web of constructs flies down, down, and around, spanning the entire globe, and then incredibly, grappling it. The constructs morph into gigantic metal struts which brace themselves against the seven continents of the world. With more willpower than even Hal knew he had, Green Lantern concentrates....

...And the continents, which had begun to move and break apart according to Locus' master plan, stop, and hold steady.

Hal digs down deep inside himself. There is no way in hell he's going to let his friends down.

But he kinda hopes they won't be taking all day....

[raptorcanaria]

The locus agents keep coming, and never stay down for long. Dinah can keep them from doing her any harm,, but she can't do anything to stop the tide. The others are having similar problems. Flash shouts something to J'Onn, but the Martian is too busy to focus.

Suddenly there's a pair of hand on her arms and shiver running through her - a shiver that doesn't stop. Flash has her and he's vibrating.

And suddenly she's in the corner, by the computer bank, with Aquaman, and then the fallen shape of J'Onn - with Flash.

"Hold the line!" he says. "Give me time to operate."

In the corner, she and Aquaman have the advantage and can at least keep the tide at bay for a little while.

And for a while, all there is is the fight. Fists and feet and concentration and the sound of Flash tapping on the keyboard so fst she can't make out keystrokes.

And then... the beek of a cpmputer has never been so welcome.

PROCESS NULLIFIED.

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Not a moment too soon. Hal can see the effects of Flash's success all the way from orbit, as the tremendous stress on the continents dies away. Hal lets out a sigh of relief.

But as the constructs fade away, he calls on the Ring again, speeding back down to Earth to join his teammates.

They aren't out of this yet.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah doesn't have time to be grateful for long, though. The agents are still attacking. Behind her, she's aware of Flash helping J'Onn to his feet, aksing him to do one more thing.

"Enter these men's minds. Find out if there's a way to shut down their bodies."

J'Onn probes, and Dinah can see the result as the agents back off a little. Something's wrong.


And then J'Onn screams.

They all scream. The room is suddenly filled with the agonising scream of every man inside except the four of them

"Their brains!" J'Onn screams in agony. "Someone's tampered with them! They're taking their secrets to the grave!

"I feel them dying!"

Aquaman yells at J'Onn to get out of their heads, and the screaming gets louder for a hellish second before silence.

And all the Locus bodies fall t their feet.



"I don't get it," Dinah says into the silence. "Did we win?"

"Yeah," Flash replies, surveying the corpses around them.

"Hooray."

[overcame-fear.livejournal.com]

Green Lantern arrives just in time to witness the awfulness of it all: the agents of Locus falling, almost as one, and J'Onn's horror at sharing their final moments.

He hovers in mid-air, not wanting to touch that floor, until he joins the rest of the team as they file silently out of the complex and back to their headquarters.

It feels like a long trip back, but no one says a word on the way.