Faux DC! - Titles - Euroguard #11

Nearly healed of her shoulder and cranial injuries, Doctor Light bolted upright in her hospital bed. She stared resolutely at her laptop computer, which displayed the digital-video feed coming from the camera in Crimson Fox's cowl. The Fox rode EuroGuard's sonic sled towards Asprey & Garrard, a jewelry shop, where the Injustice League was thieving with no regard for the police officers surrounding the location.

Standing by Dr. Light's bed was Power Girl, who was asking Tasmanian Devil for directions over her communicard, but insisted on screaming at the computer screen: "I don't know where that intersection is, Hugh! How did you get there from the castle?"

Kimiyo involuntarily blurted, "wait," when she saw Maya jump from the slowly moving sonic sled, which Taz couldn't land near the shop, because of shoppers running away from, and emergency services running towards, Asprey & Garrard. Without a communicard on hand, Kimi yelled into Kara's, "Tell Fox to follow Maya!"

Tasmanian Devil relayed the order, and then the images on the screen blurred as Fox leaped after Maya. The image regained clarity as Maya sprinted towards a costumed woman standing in front of Asprey & Garrard, but then a red-haired fair-skinned man stepped between Crimson Fox and Maya on his route away from the danger. Light had been about to order the Fox to push the man out of the way, towards safety, but she couldn't find the air to speak or to even continue breathing when she saw something akin to when Yasu had tripped down the stairs last spring: Maya was struck by an unfamiliar energy, and collapsed.

Power Girl had still been deliberating with Tasmanian Devil when Maya was hit. A moment later, Doctor Light had flown right through her hospital room's window and, in a ball of saffron light, jet towards Maya. Plugging her communicard back into place on the side of her belt, Power Girl soared though where the window once was, and followed Doctor Light.

Carrying their quickly-packed suitcases and recently-purchased tickets to Pearson International Airport, Michael and Alanna Randall waited for their flight in a busy terminal of Heathrow Airport. Although Mike had his arm around his wife comfortingly, they both looked directly ahead awkwardly.

"Can you explain it all to me now?" Alanna asked softly.

"I'm not entirely sure of what happened," Michael lied. "I was put into a coma by a Queen of Lies, and she was using me, perhaps for my... my... mental energy. Erewhon found me. He knew I would continue to be told that I was loved, while I continued to be used, and that I had no hope of ever finding peace and happiness as I was. He saved me."

The word 'saved' almost caught in his throat. Deep inside Michael, Erewhon realised for certain that this was not his body. What he had perceived of as his own memories,* had just been Michael's dreams, which Erewhon could read just as easily as he could perceive the dreams of nearly anyone on Earth.

*(for the past two issues - Brendan)

Alanna loved Michael, no matter what; Erewhon was certain of that. She would never lie to him, even if it would prevent him pain. Not the same could be said for everyone in Erewhon's old life. Everything was clear now. Michael Randall's mind was a blank; his soul was dying. Perhaps Michael wasn't Erewhon's past, but he was his new future.

"I'm shafted! That wasn't a freakin' Injustice Leaguer," Terri Gorvett, the Beefeater, cursed to herself. Beefeater was aware that she was an unremarkable hero. Her bright blue costume with red stripes was dull and done-before. Her brown hair (with the gorgeous new red highlights) just wasn't very sexy the way it was tied back in a ponytail, but it kept it out of her eyes. She was pretty sure the man who gave her the Beefeater battlestaff and the Deconstructo wand had stolen them. But it was her first week. Superman probably chuffed it up plenty, when he first started. Whenever she made a mistake, or wasn't fast enough, or said something stupid, she would apologise and offer, "It's my first week." So far, people had understood.

Somehow she suspected EuroGuard wouldn't understand about her shooting Maya.

Beefeater scrambled to assist Maya, but a golden hand materialized around Terri's throat, lifted her off the ground, and thrust her against a tinted plate glass window of Asprey & Garrard. Beefeater squawked out at the hard-light hologram of Dr. Light, which firmly held her 'round the neck and moved its lips without making a sound. Four large spider-like legs grew out of the hologram's back, and each leg's pinchers grabbed hold of one of Beefeater's wrists or ankles to fully immobilize her. When Beefeater dropped her weapons, she could start to hear Dr. Light's voice, but from a distance.

"--do to Maya? What did you do to Maya?!?" The hologram released Beefeater's throat, once Dr. Light was close enough to see the brunette trying to speak.

"Unconscious." Beefeater gasped for air. "I KO'ed her." She gasped again. "It was accidental." Gasp. "Did a little energy drain." Gasp. "Nothing permanently damaging." Gasp. "I don't think..."

"I'll be fine," Chandi groaned, kneeling up from the ground. She put her hands on her thighs to steady herself, but her balance fumbled and her eyes rolled back in her head. Kimiyo arrived, in person, quickly enough to catch Chandi from dropping back down to the asphalt.

Several paces away, the freckled Jimmy Riley lay sprawled out on the ground, where he landed after his collision with Maya. Blue Jay crouched down by his side to check his pulse, and called out, "Are there any doctors here?"

"I'm a doctor," Jimmy croaked.

Sceptically, Blue Jay asked, "What's your diagnosis?"

"Don't leave home without my girlfriend," Jimmy muttered, as his eyes fluttered open. Using his elbows, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. "I've never actually had a woman throw herself at me. Really never thought it would be so literal."

"She didn't throw herself," Blue Jay replied with a smirk that quickly faded as he eyed the Beefeater being released by Dr. Light. "She was thrown."

"Is she alright?" Riley queried, wincing from an ache.

"She will be," Jay nodded, watching Dr. Light rise into the air with Maya in her arms. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Yeah. I'll stop by the hospital in any case," Jimmy assured him. Struggling on to get to his feet, Blue Jay gave Riley a hand up, a brisk "take care", and then Jay shrunk his body's size to fluttered off into the fray.

A curious, "Hunh," was all that Jimmy muttered. By the time he was well away from the gaggle of Guardians being repelled from the Injustice League, Jimmy raised a hand to grab the attention of a paramedic. It was only then that he noticed an onyx tattoo actively crawling across his forearm. "Holy god."

"--need to minimize civilian casualties and property damage," Power Girl ordered Tasmanian Devil, as he ran towards her, after parking the sled.

OwlWoman smash-landed on her back, between them, in a hail of glass.

Cascade's active search for water was, understandably, halted when Multi-Man had kicked her teammate through the last unbroken plate glass window in Asprey & Garrard. She had been about to ask OwlWoman if she was okay, when Cascade spotted a paramedic uncapping a bottle of water. She had yet to learn how to manipulate moisture in the air, and thusly, she had to make do with what water she could locate. At her mental command, the water in the bottle was drawn to Casade's palms. Flicking her wrist, she squeezed the water together into a tight ball, and sent it hurtling, as fast as possible, towards Multi-Man's oversized head.

Confident that Maya was safe with Dr. Light, Crimson Fox bounded towards Multi-Man with his claws bared, and was hit by a water ball in the middle of his back. He clamoured all the way to the ground on his hands and knees, but remained agile enough to roll himself entirely out of the line of fire. Lying on his back, Fox heard the clacking of Cascade's heels as she ran to him, while desperately pleading, "Be all right. I'm so sorry. Be all right. I'm so sorry."

Cascade dropped down to her knees, placing a hand on the Fox's chest, and pushed his cowl back to get a look at his unharmed face. "Are you--" she started to ask, but, in a moment of recognition, switched to, "Robert?"

"Wanda! It is you," Robert remarked, breathing heavily. "It's been ever so long. ...Since you dumped me."

Looking him over in his rust-brown body armour, she said, "You've changed." An understatement.

"I was just the editor of HeroStyle then," Robert recalled quickly.

"I was so new at being a crime fighter." Wanda glanced down at her own full-body emerald bodysuit. "And my costume was..."

"...Less. Heh. Why do you think the editor of an international magazine interviewed you personally?" Robert asked with teasing charm.

Playfully smacking his breastplate, she murmured, "Why did we ever break up?"

"You didn't want the 'burden of a boyfriend'," Robert reminded her, quoting her in the process. "Supervillain kidnappings and all that."

Her voice dropping, Cascade offered a breathy, "Well, it looks like you can take care of yourself now. I mean, it would be impolite for me to not... apologise for hurting you..."

Wanda briefly pressed her lips to Robert's left cheek. Robert returned a kiss to Wanda's cheek, breathing warmly on it.

"Where's the Clock King? I can't see through this gorram fog!" Power Girl hollered at the sudden opaque thickness of the air.

Wanda kissed Robert's chin, drawing her lips across the blond stubble.

"Dammit!" cursed Blue Jay, crashing into Rocket Red's metallic hide.

Wanda gently took Robert's lower lip between her teeth.

"Watch it with those claws!" Owl Woman and Tasmanian Devil shouted at one another.

Wanda kissed Robert full on the mouth; his arms snaked around her shoulders, and pulled her body against his own.

Catherine was on the phone with the regular babysitter for Dr. Light's children, when Kimi flew through the castle's meeting room on her way to the dungeon. Maya was unconscious in her arms. Catherine swiftly followed, on foot, down the spiralling staircase that led to Light's lab, finding Kimiyo connecting Maya to a number of medical scanners -- hybrids of JLA technology and devices of Dr. Light's own design.

Although Kimiyo's extreme concern for Chandi's welfare was hidden behind a well-worn mask of professional determination, she gasped at the readings. "She's in neurogenic shock. She'll need dopamine. I should have brought her to a hospital... Get me oxygen," Dr. Light commanded.

Catherine searched the room with her eyes, knowing Kimi would keep everything clearly labelled.

"She's... she's stabilizing..." Dr. Light said slowly, each syllable revealing her confusion.

Snatching up an oxygen mask, Ms. Cobert congratulated, "Good job, doc."

"...But I didn't do anything." Her face still expressing her confusion, Dr. Light looked up at Catherine, and then at the wand in her hand. "It's been reconfigured. Contact Power Girl. Tell her to bring in the girl who shot Maya."

Blue Jay took another wild swoop towards Asprey & Garrard, which caused OwlWoman to jump back to get out of his flight path, which caused Rocket Red to fly up and away from smashing into OwlWoman, which caused Rising Sun's solar blast to hit Rocket Red and ricochet into an upper window of someone's flat, rather than at Big Sir's face.

A barrage of hurricane force winds crashed into the collected members of EuroGuard and the Global Guardians -- as well as Brother Manindra -- blowing them into the buildings across the street from the jewellery shop. Power Girl hovered to her feet and attempted to fly towards the shop, but it exploded, hurling the Injustice League high into the sky. The Leaguers clung to one another, and vanished in a pop before Power Girl could get near them.

"Catherine to Power Girl. What is the situation?" Cobert's voice rang out of PG's communicard.

Dryly, Kara responded, "Would you like to know the entire situation, or just the parts that won't make you want to kill yourself?"

The Injustice League appeared hundreds of miles away, in mid-air. They landed on Big Sir, who landed on the roof of a residential flat. Multi-Man and Clock King were quick to get to their own feet, while Major Disaster's every move was sluggish.

Big Sir grinned and stood up. "Are Big Sir and Injustice Friends going to tear through another ambient matter fold to be deposited in Bruce's dwelling?"

"What did you say?" Multi-Man sneered. With the signal device in hand, he held it up to the sky and pressed the big blue button. In minutes, hopefully, The Mighty Bruce would be there with The Mighty Helicopter to return them to The Mighty SafeHouse (a.k.a. Bruce's one-room apartment).

Looking confused, Big Sir said, "We gonna go 'poof' again?"

Multi-Man's eyes narrowed, and Major Disaster said, "How many times do I have to tell you? We didn't go anywhere. I momentarily come to rest in relation to the Earth spinning on its axis. We remain in our spot, while the Earth keeps rotating beneath us."

Still sneering suspiciously, Multi-Man insisted, "You still haven't told us where you learned to do that? National Geographic?"

"No. Much more scientific than that," Major Disaster replied. "I read it in a comic book."

Multi-Man scoffed. "You need sleep."

"But I just woke up an hour ago."

"Actually, it was sixty-seven minutes and fourty-two seconds ago," Clock King corrected.

"Shut up. And I'm not tired. Why do you think you can tell--" No one caught Major Disaster when he passed out from exhaustion.

"Do we have enough money yet?" Multi-Man growled.

"I do not believe so," Clock King replied. "In fact, since another twenty four hours will pass in twelve minutes five seconds, we will owe him five million additional dollars."

Multi-Man snarled, "I sweartogod, if Bruce's idiocy gets us all killed..."

"Why hasn't Bruce helpies?" Big Sir wondered aloud, again.

"I will gut him if he goes anywhere other than the helicopter and our safe house," Multi-Man promised. "Whenever he does, he tries to sell his Bible CDs. With his luck, he'll trip into another latent wormhole, landing his ass right into the layer of another wormgod under London town, and he'll spill another chalice of irreplaceable desire dust all over the place. I can rationalise having to steal under the duress of one wormgod, in which the only benefit I reap is not having to feel the pain of being horribly murdered, even though I'm the only one of us who would survive being eviscerated. I just can't rationalise it happening again."

In a sudden bout of unexpected athleticism, Brother Manindra vaulted himself from the sonic sled, and hit the landing pad of the Justice Castle running. The EuroGuardians watched in curiosity at the scurrying of the man who was charged with keeping watch of the development of Chandi's supposed godhead. For as long as they'd known him, he always seemed to be floating with an eerie grace. But Doctor Light's rescue of Maya had foiled a crucial moment in Manindra's duty: to observe how the godchilde responded to injury.

His robes flitting as he ran, Manindra's hood flopped back and revealed his sneer, once he took a step into Chandi's empty bedroom. This is where he had expected her to be, and he could not seem to perceive her the way he normally could.

He would have continued his search for Maya, had a terribly pale Nordic girl not climbed in through the open window. She wore a bodysuit of darkest blue and turquoise clips in her snow-white hair. She spoke no words to Manindra -- simply stared at his shoulder with shy naiveté. The moment he stepped within arm's reach of her, her frosted lips played into a toothy grin; she grabbed the man's bicep, and with uncanny strength, dragged him out through the window.

In allowing Major Disaster a day to recuperate from the massive energy drain of standstill-jaunting, the Injustice League's storming of London's Petra Bank was responded to in record time by the well-rested EuroGuard. London-resident Crimson Fox navigated for Tasmanian Devil's piloting of the sonic sled, while flight-capable Power Girl, Blue Jay and Lionheart remained in the aft of the sled to take part in Doctor Light's conference. Light had begrudgingly allowed the seemingly healthy Maya to join as well -- despite Lionheart having volunteered to fill in for her -- when Maya pointed out that Doctor Light had never been officially discharged from her own hospitalisation. No one spoke of Manindra's conspicuous absence. They suspected that speaking of it would only herald his return.

"We have to find a way to contact this female Beefeater--" Doctor Light planned aloud.

Nodding with complete understanding, Maya evenly surmised, "...To crack her skull with the deconstructo wand."

"No," Light replied lowly, with a touch of incredulity, and a glance towards PG that clearly said, 'Look at how you've influenced her.'

Smiling wanly at the slight, Kara correctly put forth, "Since Beefeater was at the jeweller's before we were, she might have been hit by a clue-by-four telling why the Injustice League has a sudden craving for quick assets."

"For that matter, the Global Guardians could know something that we don't. We haven't... entirely... encouraged an open dialogue with them..." Blue Jay trailed off sheepishly. He would need an extra pair of hands to count the number of times he'd come to blows with fellow crime fighters over misunderstandings, but only among JLE and EuroGuard had it occurred because of petty bickering.

Although Jay had his game face on, and spoke in his traditional professional tone, there was a hint of something wicked in his suggestion, "Don't you, Kimi, have something of a dialogue with Izumi, the Rising Sun?"

Kimiyo's mouth opened and closed unsurely, almost fishlike. She had told Jay about Izumi in a private moment, never expecting it to have come up at a team meeting. Everyone else knew that Kimi had been committed -- in an odd undefined sense -- to Erewhon for several years, and she wasn't entirely eager to admit to dating someone else, someone human, for even as brief a time as it was.

Clearly annoyed at Robert's suave cavaliering when there had still been bad-guy-bones to crack, Power Girl quickly brought up, "And Crimson Fox certainly opened a dialogue with Cascade."

Leering at the inference, Lionheart deadpanned, "But I'd say Cascade's dialogue was more along the lines of 'yes, yes, oh god, yes'."

"Then maybe Izumi--" Maya started.

"I want to give the Injustice League the money they need," Doctor Light declared, stomping on the Rising Sun conversation.

Power Girl laughed. As did Blue Jay.

Lionheart squinted shiftily at Kimi through the slits in his smooth black helmet.

"Oh... god..." Maya gaped. "The deconstructo wand shunted me into an alternate universe."

"You're not in an alternate universe," Kimiyo snapped. Sighing heavily, she struggled to explain, "I'm just tired of all this fighting. Tired of it. Maybe Revson or StarrWare can give them a loan, or we could perform a commercial product placement and then give the money to the Injustice League. There has to be a way to stop them that is better than drop kicking them until they bleed and blackout."

"INJUSTICE LEAGUE. REVEAL YOURSELVES OR WE WILL BE COMPELLED TO APPREHEND YOU WITH EXTREME FORCE," a mechanically amplified voice wafted into the sonic sled.

"That's not a Global Guardian," Tas stated surely, but with puzzlement. He squinted his gaze through the windshield to see if the voice's owner was located outside the quickly approaching Petra Bank.

"I know that voice," Crimson Fox said, but also sounded puzzled.

"LIKE THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, THE GLOBAL GUARDIANS AND EUROGUARDIANS HAVE NEGLECTED TO APPREHEND YOU, BECAUSE THEIR HEADS ARE IN THE CLOUDS, LOOKING DOWN ON THE WORLD AND SEEING ONLY ANTS," the distinctly London-accented voice boomed on.

Power Girl stomped into the cockpit to catch sight of the voice's source through the main viewport. Nearly disgusted, she grumbled, "Did he just try to slammingly tarnish our name through metaphor? Comparing us to the JLA?"

"Actually, it was a simile," Crimson Fox pointedly quipped.

"LONDON'S GUARDIANS WILL PREVENT ANY FURTHER RAPE OF OUR FAIR CITY. WE WILL NOT ALLOW THE CONTINUED DISHONES APPROPRIATION OF PROPERTY BELONGING TO ANOTHER WITH THE INTENTION TO PERMANENTLY DEPRIVING THE OTHER OF IT. I CALL YOU OUT TO FACE THE TRUE GUARDIANS OF THIS LAND: LORD FOGG, BEEFEATER AND LIONHEART."

"Ohhhh hell," the Lionheart aboard the sonic sled shouted, as he shouldered into the cockpit, beside PG. "Am I down there? Is this an out-of-body experience?"

Arcing the sled over Petra Bank, the Devil was pleased to see that the streets had been cleared of civilians. Aside from the local emergency-services workers who were setting up the cordons, the only people standing outside of the bank were the female Beefeater, the grey-caped Lord Fogg, and Lionheart II, whose black armour was identical to Lionheart I's, except its lion emblem was blue instead of red. Taz was quite sure he could land the sled without landing atop any of them.

As the sled descended, the diamond-tips of Crimson Fox's gauntlet claws were tapping together in a sequential pattern as he subconsciously fidgeted in concentration. In inspiration, he clacked all his claws together loudly just before shouting, "That's Whitestone! Lord Fogg with the megaphone in his mask is Lord Elgin Whitestone."

"Whitestone?" Lionheart muttered.

"That's what I said. Twice, even," Fox sassed.

"Whitestone created my armour in the first place," Lionheart explained. "He made me work for the government, but then his department was disbanded; he was fired..."

"I know," Crimson Fox sighed. "I hired him to edit a newsmagazine about superheroes. That's why quality dropped, and the budget rose. I just thought he was all up in the gaff, but he's been funding his own team!"

The sonic sled's roof retracted once it landed several yards away from London's Guardians. At his diminished size, Blue Jay shot out of the sled, and flapped his way towards an upper window of the bank to perform reconnaissance. Power Girl and Doctor Light floated up above the sled in tandem. They watched for overt actions from the bank, but the pair was quickly distracted by the arrival of the airborne OwlWoman, Rising Sun and Rocket Red, who carried Cascade.

"IMMIGRANT GUARDIANS, YOUR PRESENCE IS NOT WELCOME," Lord Fogg announced.

Guardians of all denominations -- Global, Euro, London -- ignored Fogg's declaration, and charged towards the entrance of the bank when both doors blasted off their hinges. The members of the Injustice League were clinging onto Big Sir, who was about to jump them enough altitude to safely allow Major Disaster to jaunt them away, when Blue Jay dive intercepted them. Jay gained momentum at nearly-super-speed as he increased his own mass, and heavy-booted feet-first struck Big Sir in the solar plexus.

Blue Jay botched his shoulder-roll as he ricocheted off Big Sir and hit the ground, crumpling out flat -- much much more injured than Big Sir had been by the strike. Still, Big Sir was rattled enough to drop Multi-Man and Major Disaster. Multi-Man was swift on his feet, though, and retrieved a hostage from the bank's foyer to halt the incoming fists of Power Girl, Rising Sun, Rocket Red and Lionheart II.

With a temporary stand-off, Doctor Light eagerly swooped to Blue Jay's side -- checking on his injuries meant she could clear the battle tactics from her head, if only for scant moments. Once she was certain he was conscious, and could move all of his extremities, Light's communicard trilled.

From all of the EuroGuardians' cards, Catherine Cobert's calm voice reported, "A tidal wave has just struck Algarve, Portugal. Sonar is claiming responsibility. I fear he will strike again once rescue workers have arrived."

"Send the details to the sled's computer. We will be airborne in under three minutes," Kimi assured Catherine with only a moment's hesitation, and then closed the communications circuit. Doctor Light boldly ordered everyone, "Pull back. We must aid the survivors of a tsunami, and prevent a second wave."

"Your aid efforts are no concern of mine," Lord Fogg stated.

"What we must do is apprehend the dangerous criminals standing right here before us," Rising Sun insisted, growing more incredulous at Light's decision with every word. "Portugal can wait the five minutes."

As EuroGuard moved to the sonic sled to follow Light's order, Doctor Light stridently pointed out, "They simply want to take money. I choose to help people."

"You're forgetting that they've assaulted civilians. They have a hostage!" Rising Sun shrilled.

Hovering herself on a wave of hard light towards the sled, Kimiyo forced-calmly supposed, "They only cause harm in defence of the threat of violence we present."

"I'm supposed to just let them go?" Rising Sun asked sarcastically. "Let them wreak whatever havok occurs to them?"

"You're not supposed to do anything. But I choose to leave. And I would ask that Cascade join my team, as she can manipulate water," Light coolly requested.

"You're just trying to tear the Global Guardians apart! So we'll be the failures you are," Rising Sun spat, further incensed by Cascade and Rocket Red moving towards the sonic sled.

Doctor Light offered no response. Action was needed, not words. She slipped into the sonic sled just before the roof rolled overtop the passenger hold, and she flopped into a seat between Cascade and Power Girl.

As the sonic sled screamed into the sky, Kara leaned her shoulder against Doctor Light, and sotto voce remarked, "I'm proud. That was quite the righteous anger out there."

"...I ...suppose so," Kimiyo agreed uncomfortably.

"Your horse was extra high and his vitriol was particularly acidic. That wasn't because of philosophical differences."

"Why would you say that?" Kimi asked, nearly offended.

"Because you two dated and never got over your messy break-up baggage."

Kimi smiled tightly, but mirthfully. "You're not wrong."

Next: Everything changes, but nothing's all that different.

EUROPINION

This issue is late, to put it mildly. My outview on superheroics shifted slightly -- although the shift felt much larger than it was when it actually happened -- and I ended up taking a several year hiatus from EuroGuard. This issue's end wasn't nearly the end I had planned for this story (as you can probably tell from the exposition anvils), but much of this issue has remained in tact from when it was written shortly after issue ten. Would anyone care to guess which scenes were written circa 2001, and which ones were written this week?

Next issue we pick up several months later, and take a trip through EuroGuard's trophy room to find out what has occurred in the midst of the time jump.

All feedback -- positive, neutral and negative -- can be looped to Bren.

EuroGuard
Glory is fleeting. Obscurity is forever