FAUXDC PRESENTS

MISCHIEF NIGHT
By Dale W. Glaser

"I thought missing Brienna's party was gonna be the worst part of having duty on Halloween," PFC Gutierrez said as the MP jeep rattled across the hardpacked ground.  "I didn't think I'd also end up racing around the perimeter after false alarms all night."

"I don't know what you see in those townie parties, man," his companion SPC Redding drawled back.  "Cheap beer and uptight chicks and yokel meatheads in shoebox apartments?  I'd rather hang out on base.  Hell, I'd rather work on base."

"Nobody's uptight on Halloween, Red," Gutierrez insisted.  "Those same girls who won't relax at a barbecue or a Super Bowl party end up tricked out like sexy cavegirls and naughty nurses on Halloween."

Redding snorted.  "That just makes them uptight teases, man."

"Not Brienna's friend Jacelyn," Gutierrez countered.  "Last time she came to town ... you don't even want to know.  And Brienna told me Jacelyn was coming to her party tonight.  But instead of seeing how long it takes me to talk her out of her costume, I'm out here, with you, running down what ain't even there."

"Sooner or later, we're gonna find something," Redding maintained.  "The nerd-zoids in the command center wouldn't get all riled up over nothing."

"Bet you a case of beer we come up empty all night," Gutierrez rebuffed.

"Oh, it's on," Redding agreed, offering a distracted fist bump to his partner as the jeep scratched to a halt on the dusty earth near the base's perimeter fence.  The two MPs stepped out of their vehicle and looked around.

The base was a secured installation in southwestern Texas, primarily used as a proving ground for top secret projects developed jointly by the U.S. military and institutions such as S.T.A.R. Labs.  The high fences ringing the base were constructed from promethium-titanium alloys and topped with promethium-vanadium razorwire.  Each section of fence was also equipped with motion sensors, enhanced-spectrum scanners, and thermographic relays.  Unauthorized access to the base was not only prohibited but virtually impossible.  Yet alarms had sounded in the command center four times since sunset, and for the fourth time Gutierrez and Redding found themselves at the site where intrusion had been detected, yet unable to determine who had breached the perimeter, or how.  The fence appeared untouched, as did the ground on either side.  The night was quiet except for the ticking engine of the jeep.

"This is bull," Gutierrez shook his head.  "Ain't even worth a case ..."  The words were cut off by a rush of air, a dust-swirled gale that choked Gutierrez mid-sentence and set him and Redding coughing violently to clear the blast of grit from their lungs.

As the airways and the vision of the MPs cleared, they realized a figure was standing in front of their jeep, its form thrown into harsh relief by the glare of the headlights.  The recognizable red and yellow costume of the Flash was worn by a creature who looked nothing like the famous hero.  The Flash standing before Gutierrez and Redding was hunchbacked and pot-bellied, with skinny, elongated limbs.  A long pointed nose jutted from beneath a pair of glassy black eyes, and wide, tapered ears splayed out under the golden wings on the sides of the scarlet cowl.  Its skin was the mottled gray and brown of moth wings.  The creature smiled impishly at the MPs.  "Ding, dong!" it leered.

"Wha ...?" Redding began.  But the speedster was gone, trailing maniacal laughter in its wake, while red lights flashed and sirens wailed in the base command center once again.

"Olsen!" Perry White barked into the phone.  "Where are you?"  Just outside the glass-walled office of the Daily Planet's editor-in-chief, the newsroom was a flurry of activity, despite the late hour.  Cardboard skeletons and cotton spiderwebs fluttered as reporters, photographers, fact-checkers and proofreaders hustled from one desk to another.  A few of the female staffers wore cat-ear headbands or jack-o-lantern hair ties, and one copy editor had dressed himself in full Metropolis Meteors replica uniform, but the mood on the Planet's floor was tense, almost grim.

"I'm at Professor Hamilton's lab," Jimmy Olsen answered his boss. 

"You made it," White acknowledged, the apprehension in the set of his shoulders relaxing almost imperceptibly.  From the Metropolis streets far below, the howls of emergency services sirens could be heard, echoing up the faces of the skyscrapers.  "So what does the professor say about the monster in the Superman costume?  Where did it come from?  What is it?"

"Well, he says ... he says, it's Superman, chief," Olsen answered.

"What?!?" White demanded, momentarily forgetting to correct Olsen.  "How can that be?"

"Don't ask me to explain the science," Olsen said, "but Professor Hamilton has his ways.  Something about Superman's unique energy signature ..."  The phone line went silent for a moment, as if the receiver on the other end had been muffled, and then Olsen returned.  "Sorry, his ambient stellar bio-aura.  Professor Hamilton has studied the big guy's powers more than anyone, and he'd know that aura anywhere.  And it can't be faked."

"But his appearance ... his behavior ..."  White's eyes went to one of the overhead television screens in the newsroom.  GBS was showing the same grainy footage over and over.  A hobgoblin - wearing Superman's blue garb and red cape, a grinning fiend with a wickedly hooked nose and broad, tapered ears - swooped into the frame, cradling three purple ovoids, each one nearly the size of a refrigerator.  The monster hovered above a Metropolis street for a moment and then, with deliberate malice and howls of laughter, hurtled the ovoids down.  As each projectile struck a solid object, it burst, sending voluminous spurts of pinkish goo flying in all directions.  One of the giant eggs struck the windshield of a city bus, coating the entire front end of the vehicle in viscous pink and bringing the bus to a jerking halt, glued to the road.  Another cracked open on the top of a small sidewalk newsstand and buried the kiosk and its attendant in pink slime.  The third glanced off a streetlight and tumbled erratically through the air, leaking a long trail of pastel amnion from a chip in its shell; ropes of pink coagulation snared dozens of pedestrians.  The being Professor Hamilton claimed was Superman giggled and then flew off in a streak of red and blue.  White knew that there had been more and more incidents of Superman attacking the city with giant purple eggs ever since, but as the city panicked itself into chaos, video footage became understandably  scarce.  "And since when does Superman lay purple eggs?"

"He didn't lay them," Olsen corrected.  "The professor did some research and thinks they might be indigenous to the planet Xudar.  Superman either had some as trophies, or he's collecting them as he needs them, in between eggings."

"But ... why?"

"Professor Hamilton think Superman might be under some kind of magic spell," Jimmy Olsen said.  "He's no expert on that kind of stuff, but we all know the big guy is vulnerable to magic.  And it is Halloween ..."

"A Halloween with Superman pelting Metropolis with alien eggs," White sighed heavily.  "Heaven help us all."

The lights of Times Square strobed feverishly.  Every source of illumination shone bright and fell dark in rapid-fire synchronicity.  Traffic lights, buzzing tubes of neon, storefront window track lights, towering LED advertisements, digital news crawls, billboard spotlights, all pulsing in unison and giving Seventh Avenue the disorienting feel of a hellish disco.  The flow of traffic had been hopelessly disrupted and frightened New Yorkers ran huddled and hunched as if trying to escape a raging storm, where the lightning came in the form of dazzling electric light and the thunder had been replaced by a malicious whooping and giggling.  At the center of the chaotic frenzy, Steel presided in mid-air, held aloft by the bootjets of his namesake armor.  His red cape fluttered wildly, framing his twisted, elfin features, as he swung his long-hafted mallet in slashing arcs, broadcasting an override signal in all directions.

At the same time, on the opposite side of the country, the port of Los Angeles gave berth to a massive luxury cruise ship, its passengers trapped on board.  Anyone who tried to disembark down the gangplank found themselves knocked backwards onto the deck by a powerful blast of San Pedro Bay water.  The ocean liner was besieged on all sides by high-pitched, witchlike cackling, the demented exultations of a female figure flying round and round the ship too fast for the eye to follow.  Occasionally another passenger or crew member would dare the gangplank in hopes of descending unnoticed, but every time the result was the same.  The red, yellow and blue blur skimming above the harbor water would come to a sudden stop, resolving as Wonder Woman's costume inhabited by a skeletal crone with untamed long black hair, a hatchet nose and fan-shaped ears.  Wonder Woman would lash out at the water with a punch or a kick and send gallons of San Pedro Bay hurtling from the impact with uncanny speed and accuracy.  The super-strong splash would drench the errant passenger and shove them backwards, while Wonder Woman resumed her looping, cackling flight.

In the deepest heart of a primeval forest, in a sepulchral vault of black sentinel boles shrouded by leaves tattered by time but impenetrable in their density, the gates of a kingdom stood.  Huge gnarled roots formed the arches of the portal, while a profusion of massive toadstools served as colonnade.  The kingdom was not to be found on any of mankind's maps, for it resided deep beneath the surfaces trod by mortals.  Its pitched gates limned a downward entranceway.

Within the subterranean palace that was the center of the underground kingdom resided the vast court of the Erlking.  His goblin subjects cavorted through its dark, dank halls - emaciated and gangly, with mottled complexions reminiscent of earthworms and bark, rotten fruit and moths wings and all things buried and forgotten, and verminous faces dominated by crooked, distended noses and broad, tapered ears.

In the throne room, the Erlking himself stood before a black iron brazier.  The lord and master of the goblin empire was a slender as his subjects, but far taller, and held himself still and erect rather than shambling about in a perpetual near-collapse.  His skin was pale gray as weathered bone, and his large ears and nose were as sharp and smooth as horns or fangs.  The Erlking stared into the banked coals lining the brazier, which gave off a pungent greenish smoke.  In those smoldering swirls, the goblin monarch beheld visions of the Justice League of America wreaking havoc in the night.

A simpering goblin approached the Erlking, nervously but reverently.  "Your Highness," the twitching creature began, "All of the kingdom awaits your command to go forth and spread the sacred mischief ... but ... but ... the night is nearly over ..."

"Be silent, Nudd," the Erlking hissed.  "This ancient diablerie requires my concentration."

"Your Highness," Nudd bowed, scraping the throne room floor with his nose.  Yet he continued to speak, his words skittering across the flagstones: "When the dawn comes, it will be too late to harvest the fear and dismay of All Hallows ... how will we survive the winter ...?"

"The fear harvest proceeds anon," the Erlking insisted.  "I have ensorcelled these garish champions into proxies of the goblin kingdom.  Their powers allow the sacred mischief to be perpetrated on a scale undreamed of!  They will inspire more fear than ten goblin kingdoms!  Now, BEGONE!"

Nudd retreated obsequiously, and the Erlking resumed his black and sorcerous vigil. 

"Why would you program a simulation where the external cameras get greened out?" Francesca Bilson demanded.

"I wouldn't," Graham Littleford answered, shaking his head as he looked up from the handheld data analyzer.  He opened his mouth but fell silent as he took in the video screens mounted on the walls of the Kord Omniversal Research and Development facility control room.  All of the monitors glowed an unearthly emerald color.

Bilson stormed out of the control room, and Littleford quickly followed her.  The two scientists stepped out of the building - a squat concrete structure in a cleared section of the New Jersey pine barrens - and looked to the roof.  There, a towering gantry held a K.O.R.D. rocket that was being prepped for the launch of a communications satellite the next week.  The rocket and gantry were almost entirely obscured from sight, however, draped in luminous sheets of solid viridian light, the same sheets that covered the launch pad's cameras.

"What ...?" Bilson goggled.

A huge glowing green cylinder arose in the distance, almost as large as the concrete building itself, spinning as it flew higher and unspooling an unbroken photonic green sheet in its wake.  The cylinder cleared the top of the rocket and began to plummet down toward Bilson and Littleford, who scrambled and dove to avoid being crushed as it landed.  As the scientists gathered themselves off the ground, they heard shrill, depraved laughter overhead.  Looking up, they saw a scrawny, flop-eared and pointy-nosed silhouette sheathed in emerald light. 

The goblin Green Lantern aimed its power ring at the colossal, fluorescent green roll of toilet paper and willed it to fly over the rocket gantry once again.  As the trailing streamer of solidified willpower settled onto the rocket, the weight became too great and the gantry crumpled, bringing the rocket crashing down off the rooftop launchpad like a felled tree.  The cacophony of rending metal and crumbling concrete was almost deafening, but the goblin's laughter cut through every moment of it.

At a manufacturing plant just outside Hub City, gargantuan holding tanks rose from the ground like rust-flecked warts.  The tanks were unmarked and their exact contents may not have been known to anyone, under the assumption that anyone stupid enough to wander through the industrial property uninvited would get what they deserved if they came in contact with any dangerous substances.  An astute chemist might have been able to identify the contents of certain hulks by the colors of the flames as the tanks exploded and burned: a copper green inferno here, a bloody crimson conflagration there, a magnesium white fireball against the night sky in the distance.  The source of the arson, high overhead, might also be identified by flame-hue.  The pale blue corona surrounding the twisted hag-like creature belonged to Firehawk as surely as did the midnight blue and orange costume now ill-fitting on the goblin's frame. 

Meanwhile, at a baked goods factory in South Carolina, truckers and loading dock workers scattered in a panic as loaded tractor trailers were upended, overturned and knocked about like toys.  Above the din of the worker's screams a singular, alien voice chanted "TREAT!  TREAT!  TREAT!" as a warped but powerful figure, leathery-skinned and wearing little besides a high-collared blue cape, caromed from eighteen-wheeler to eighteen-wheeler, punching holes in trailers at will.  When the figure entered a trailer and failed to emerge, the thunder of rammed metal was replaced by the shattering of crates within.  The trailer was shredded like aluminum foil only as an incidental side effect.  What remained where an eighteen-wheeler had once been was the skeleton of a truck, a pile of Chocos cookies, and a goblin Martian Manhunter atop the mound, gorging its wild and monstrous appetite.

In the center of the goblin kingdom, scores of its denizens had gathered in the throne room around the Erlking.  The green smoke emanating from the arcane brazier was roiled by currents in the palace air as the power flowing toward the regal figurehead increased.  Terror and discord, agony and madness, the very lifestuff of the twisted goblin race, swelled from the hearts of humanity and found its way back to its sovereign source.

"Soon," the Erlking assured himself.  "Soon I shall have power beyond reckoning ... "  Every goblin in the chamber could sense the truth of their ruler's words.

Two statues of hippogriffs flanked the throne of the Erlking.  The whisking sound of a spinning blade cutting through the air preceded each of the marble hippogriff heads exploding violently.  The Erlking flinched, momentarily betraying his goblin heritage in his cowering hunch as his gaze darted around the throne room.  His subjects shrieked and clawed past one another in confusion.  The greenish smoke clouds began to thin and dissipate, and the Erlking cried out, "NO!"  He straightened his posture and returned his attention to the brazier, his black eyes commanding the spell to continue.

Loud bangs cracked all around the Erlking's feet, and the mystic green smoke was crowded out by a bright red vapor rising from the flagstones.  The noxious gas spread quickly, and the Erlking began to gag and choke.  The goblin monarch stumbled into the brazier and knocked it over; with a hollow iron clang, it spilled coals across the flagstones, and the coals quickly crumbled to ash, already cold. 

A dark figure dropped from the shadowy trusses overhead, spreading a cloak like the wings of a bat.  The goblin Batman appeared ready to assume the throne of the kingdom, towering over the Erlking who was still doubled over, retching and bleary-eyed, from the tear gas pellets' effects.

"This ... cannot ... BE!" the Erlking spat defiantly.  "How could you ... defy ... my magicks?"

"I didn't," Batman answered, struggling for control of his own voice.  "The compulsion to give in to the spirit of mischief was irresistible."

"Then how ...?"

"Mischief is rebellion against authority," Batman explained.  As he spoke, his voice became lower and steadier.  His misshapen nose and ears crumbled like dried out clay, and his goblin skin peeled away as the musculature returned to his limbs.  "Instead of gesturing in that direction, I went straight to the source.  As long as I was under your spell, the ultimate authority was you."

"But no longer," the Erlking sneered, drawing up to his full height once again, his gray expression simultaneously aggrieved and murderous.  "Just as allowing you to live no longer serves my purpose!"

The master of goblinkind raised his hands to strike at Batman, but in that instant disappeared in a small scarlet tornado trailing golden lightning in its path.  A heartbeat later the Erlking lay prone on the flagstones, with the Flash standing nearby.  "Heard your beacon signal as soon as I snapped out of it," the Flash nodded to his teammate.  "Got here as fast as I could."

"The others?" Batman asked.

"Steel, Wonder Woman and J'Onn are working rescues and damage control back home," the speedster reported.  "Firehawk, GL and Supes are mopping up goblins topside."

"Good."

"You know," the Flash said, "I didn't see the Batplane up above ... but I did see an obscenely expensive looking LexCorp helicopter that looked like it had a rough landing.  Probably never fly again."

"Goblins are poor pilots," Batman said flatly. 

"Did you actually know that before you made your transportation choice?" the Flash asked. 

"That would be some trick," Batman said obliquely, then turned and strode from the throne room.

END