Kimiyo Hoshi is the luminescent DR. LIGHT, Kara Starr is the nigh-impervious POWER GIRL, Jay Abrams is the high-flying BLUE JAY, Constance d'Aramis is the sensual CRIMSON FOX, Hugh Dawkins is the bestial TASMANIAN DEVIL, Chandi Gupta is the mystical MAYA, the belligerent Canadian snow-elf is only known as FROSTBITE, and the pacifistic strongman is SENECA. They represent REVSON Inc.'s social responsiveness. They were Formerly Known As:

Issue #82

"The Battle For Bialya Part 2: It’s a Holiday in Bialya, Where People Dress in Black"

By Dale Glaser

Anath the Assassin, clad in her signature ebony catsuit, charged toward the group standing near the entrance to the main building complex of Lady Star-Fyre’s floating arena, her long black hair tied in a ponytail that flew out behind her as she ran. The hi-tech goggles and headphones that banded the upper half of her face were an eerily emotionless contrast to the grimace of rage that parted her lips. The olive-skinned woman held a knife in her left hand and a pistol in her right, brandishing both with equal menace as she shouted, “Death to Hashim the tyrant! Long live the revolution!” Power Girl and Dr. Light found themselves standing in her oncoming path, blocking a clear shot at President Stanlos Hashim. Power Girl braced herself – physically, mentally and emotionally – to take the bullet intended to be a swift and lethal coup d’etat aimed at the repugnant despot who currently ruled the Middle Eastern country of Bialya.

Before the attack could be made, however, a luminous hexagon of golden radiance spread out between Anath and Power Girl. The photonic construct was tethered to Dr. Light’s upraised hand, and deflected Anath’s initial knife-strike. Anath vaulted backwards to reappraise the situation and reorient her next salvo.

In the immediate aftermath of the black market teleporters’ sonic distortion which had heralded Anath’s entrance, both the Bialyan rebel leaders and the entourage of President Hashim had been paralyzed with disorienting shock. Their belated reactions commenced with a loud chorus of shouts and the staccato clacking of guns being drawn from holsters, rounds chambering and safeties unlocking. The youngest of the rebellion members, a skinny teenage boy with dark stubble on his scalp and shrapnel scars dominating his left cheek, ran from the back of the rebel delegation brandishing a carbine and screaming in a northern dialect of Bialyan.

In response, two of President Hashim’s personal bodyguards aimed their own rifles at the young man. The rebel’s gun was several years beyond reaching antique status, its marred stock and weathered barrel as distressed as the drab fatigues on the young man’s body. The bodyguards’ rifles were well-oiled semiautomatics, sleek and sinister. Noticing the pair of steel muzzles pointed at him, the teen rebel stopped short but continued to shout angrily, gesticulating with his free hand.

The United Nations mediators called out for calm, even as they backed away from the standoff in self-preservation. Seneca stepped between the bodyguards and the young man, extending one massive hand palm outward in opposite directions, making the same universal gesture to both sides to lower their weapons. The massive Iroquois man looked slowly back and forth with a severe intensity in his dark eyes to ensure that the presidential bodyguards and the rebel complied. The teen brought his rifle down first, followed by one of the bodyguards. The other presidential attendant, however, snarled defiantly and raised the buttstock to his shoulder while lining up the rebel in his sights.

“Not so fast, you trigger-happy hoser,” Frostbite scoffed, lunging for the large marble fountain which dominated the courtyard. The snow-elf slapped at the surface of the water pooled within the fountain’s base and sent a wave toward the presidential bodyguards, then chilled the fluid a hundred degrees below freezing. The wave crystallized just as it splashed over the bodyguards, sheathing their upper bodies in glittering ice before the more aggressive of the two could pull the trigger of his rifle.

Tasmanian Devil leapt at Anath, clawed fingers splayed. Anath turned her pistol on the hulking, furry figure and fired several shots, none of which had any appreciable impact on the Aussie. Tasmanian Devil landed nearly on top of Anath and swiped at her ferociously, but the lithe woman ducked under his limb easily and in an instant executed a flawless sacrifice throw: falling on her back, Anath planted one bootheel against Tasmanian Devil’s abdomen and kicked him over her head and through the air. Tasmanian Devil struck the mesh of the courtyard’s safety barrier with a loud clang.

“Stop her! STOP HER!” President Hashim demanded, unholstering his own sidearm. The revolver was a ceremonial accessory, almost as old as the near-obsolete carbines carried by the rebels, yet Hashim’s weapon looked to have been lavished with care to keep it fully functional.

“Take it easy, Mr. President,” Power Girl suggested, pushing down on his gun hand to aim the weapon at the ground. Hashim’s expression darkened murderously, but he said nothing more.

“The J.L.E. is here to make sure no one comes to harm during these peace talks,” Dr. Light reminded the Bialyan leader. “And that includes even uninvited guests.” With that Dr. Light aimed a hand at Anath and fired a beam of light at the assassin’s eyes, massless and forceless but dazzlingly bright. When the blinding flash had passed, however, Anath was unfazed, her goggles’ oversized lenses polarized in photometric response.

“She’s good, but I’m going to see if I can hit her from behind,” Blue Jay told Power Girl as he shrank to less than half a foot in height. Powerful blue wings emerged from his shoulders as his size decreased, and in a moment he was speeding through the air in a sapphire and pearl blur. He disappeared behind the arena’s building complex, emerged on the far side, and flew at Anath’s back. He struck the base of Anath’s skull like a miniature flying battering ram, a blow that sent the would-be assassin staggering.

Anath’s balance was only momentarily lost. She recovered quickly and tossed her knife at Blue Jay’s receding form. Despite the hero’s velocity and diminutive size as a target, the blade ripped through his right wing, tearing a flurry of bright blue feathers free and sending Blue Jay tumbling wildly.

Tasmanian Devil had pulled himself free of the twisted mesh and was closing on Anath’s right side, while Frostbite warily approached on her left. Dr. Light rose into the air in a bright halo and projected a solid-light pair of oversized handcuffs in front of her. Anath’s head flicked up and down, side to side as she evaluated her opponents. Then she reached into one of the many pouches on her belt, pulled out a small remote control, depressed its single button and began firing her gun past the Justice Leaguers at President Hashim.

Hashim threw himself behind Power Girl to shield himself and bellowed, “She’s getting away!” Power Girl looked back over her shoulder at the cowering despot, as Anath’s bullets sailed by several feet over her head.

The telltale pink, silver and yellow pixels began to swirl around Anath’s body as she continued to unload her clip in the general direction of Bialya’s ruler. “The future belongs to the people of Bialya!” Anath shouted. “The revolution will slay the monster Hashim!”

“No,” Silver Sorceress stated resolutely. She gestured through the air and hazy strands of pale green gossamer began to coalesce out of nothingness. The free-floating undulations chased one another in circles as they solidified, becoming a weird tornado of disembodied tentacles which roved across the courtyard and wrapped itself around Anath. At the cyclone’s ectoplasmic touch, the energy signature of the black market teleporter was utterly disrupted. Anath unsheathed another knife and slashed wildly at the whirling ghostly tentacles, but her weapon had no effect. Instead the maelstrom grew swifter and stronger until Anath screamed in terror and lost consciousness. As the assassin slumped to the flagstones of the courtyard, the Silver Sorceress raised a fist which drew the tentacle-storm back into nothingness.

A trio of women in purple-black bodysuits stepped forward and approached Anath’s prone form. Two of them dragged Anath to her feet, each draping an arm over her shoulders, while the third addressed the various delegations standing around the courtyard. “We have holding facilities in the sub-levels,” the woman explained. Although her uniform was as featureless as all the others except for Lady Star-Fyre’s insignia, she was clearly one of the higher ranking members of the floating arena’s staff, middle-aged with a hawkish nose under limpid green eyes.

“Thank you, yes, please see to it that this woman is secured until we are able to determine the proper way to deal with her,” a U.N. delegate answered, attempting to take over control of the situation and, by extension, the peace talks as a whole; the arena staffer deferred with a gracious half-bow and led her two colleagues as the dragged Anath into the main doors. The U.N. delegate went on, “Perhaps, without further delay, we should all proceed inside to the main meeting hall so that we can begin with the preliminary parameters discussion …”

“Proceed? Now? Outrageous!” Hashim roared, having stepped away from Power Girl’s cape. “An attack has been made on the life of a sovereign head of state, mere moments after my arrival at this so-called secure facility! There will be NO negotiations … NO peace conference! Not until my attacker has been interrogated and the parties responsible have been rooted out! I will retire to my quarters and do not wish to be disturbed until my safety can be completely guaranteed!” President Hashim stalked through the facility doors, followed closely by his entourage.

The rebel leaders, four in all, included a tall man with deep brown hair and beard, an elder man with thin white hair and a longer gray beard, and a woman with midnight black hair, in addition to the teen who had nearly incited the shootout between the two Bialyan contingents. All four representatives of the rebellion were shaking their heads at Hashim’s overly dramatic exit, wearing expressions mixing regret and disgust but no real surprise. The various officials of the U.N. delegation exchanged concerned murmurs as strategies for salvaging the peace conference took shape. And the members of the Justice League Europe glanced at one another skeptically, simultaneously conveying both ‘What now?’ and ‘What have we gotten ourselves into?’

A plasma screen the size of a small billboard hung above the touch-responsive interface of the Information Well, the Justice League Europe’s communications nexus within their headquarters spanning the twenty-third through twenty-fifth floors of Revson International’s Parisian office complex. The head and shoulders of Ice, face framed by a snowy shag of hair, shoulders clad in frosty blue and white, occupied the center of the screen, while Crimson Fox sat in a contoured chair in front of the interface. “Any sign of the Crisis Bureau Team?” Fox asked.

“No, not yet, but Power Girl and Silver Sorceress only just teleported to the floating arena a little while ago,” Ice informed her. “I know Power Girl … the one from my reality at any rate … would be tempted to tear that arena apart for any sign of the abductees, especially since the United Nations’ entire plan for their rescue was ‘send the J.L.E. to the peace talks and see if they stumble upon our missing team’. But Karen seems a lot more patient these days, and I trust her to do everything she can to locate the team without causing an international incident.”

“Oui,” Crimson Fox agreed. “I suppose it would not do to behave more impatiently than Power Girl.”

Ice smiled. “I’ll be right here in London waiting to teleport the Crisis Bureau team to safety as soon as possible. It’s just a matter of when, not if.”

“D’accord,” Crimson Fox nodded. “Au revoir, Tora.” The connection closed and the plasma screen reverted to a phosphorescent magenta field emblazoned with the golden letters JLE.

“This sucks,” Maya complained from the seat on the opposite side of the Information Well where she slouched in defiant yet low-key protest. “Aren’t you bored?”

“Ma cherie Maya,” Crimson Fox answered as she slowly swiveled her chair in her teammate’s direction. “I am French, and we invented ennui. I have been far more bored than this.”

“I just don’t understand why we couldn’t go along with the rest of the team to Bialya,” Maya scowled, crossing her arms. “How is supporting a peaceful revolution at the same time as kowtowing to regressive gender politics even possible?”

Crimson Fox’s lips twisted wryly. “You must have rehearsed your part as politically awakened young madame for some time, non?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Maya asked.

“The status of les femmes in Bialya is beside the point,” Crimson Fox explained. “You were left behind to watch over me. And I was left behind because I am only recently returned from the dead, and more recently reunited with the Vivian from Tora’s world. And no one knows if I am fit for J.L.E. duty. No one knows ma coeur … least of all, moi.”

“I … I don’t …” Maya faltered, sitting up straighter. She shook her head and asked, “You knew all along?”

“Bien sur,” Crimson Fox affirmed. “Do not think I am unaware of how I am seen. Vraiment, I see myself much the same way. I wonder how much longer I can …”

An urgent chiming from the communications system interrupted her as the JLE emblem pulsed in the center of the overhead screen. Crimson Fox spun her chair around and toggled the circuit connection. The handsome face of Revson’s CEO, Robert LeRose, filled the screen.

“Bonjour, Robert,” Crimson Fox greeted him pleasantly, betraying none of the ominous overtones from the prior conversation.

“Constance,” LeRose said gravely. “I … I wanted to be sure I told you, as soon as I could, before everything that’s coming tomorrow …”

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?” Crimson Fox replied, taken aback.

“A major Revson scandal is about to explode,” LeRose admitted bitterly. “It’s going to be on the front page of tomorrow’s Le Monde and the fallout is going to be … catastrophic to say the least.”

“Robert!” Crimson Fox rebuffed him, as Maya rose from her seat and approached the communications console. “Revson has weathered scandals before and will weather them again. Whoever is making accusations or spreading lies, we will find them and stop them, tout de suite.”

LeRose sighed heavily. “Constance, that’s just it,” he said woefully. “This time, the accusations … they’re all true. Every one of them.”

“All right, here’s what we’re going to do while Hashim sulks in his room,” Dr. Light said to her fellow J.L.E. members. “Jay, you and Sorceress are going to do some aerial reconnaissance of the entire floating arena. It’s possible that Anath’s frontal attack was a distraction, and there might be more troublemakers elsewhere. If you spot anything out of the ordinary, let me know.”

“Will do,” Blue Jay agreed, shrinking and taking flight as Silver Sorceress levitated into the air behind him.

“Karen, you take Frostbite and Taz down to the holding facilities that the arena staffer mentioned,” Dr. Light continued. “If anybody’s able to get any information out of Anath, I want to know about it sooner rather than later.”

“If that even is the real Anath,” Power Girl amended. “Which I kind of doubt. I’ve dealt with her before and today something was … off.”

“Whoever she is, whatever she knows, we need to know it, too,” Dr. Light insisted. Power Girl, Frostbite and Tasmanian Devil took their leave from the courtyard and Dr. Light turned to Seneca. “That means it’s up to you and me to search the area here.”

“And what exactly are we searching for?” Seneca inquired.

Dr. Light was already casting a small pinspot of illumination from her fingertips and sweeping it along the flagstones. “A beacon of some sort,” she explained as her eyes scanned the ground.

“I fail to see …” Seneca began.

“Anath teleported onto the floating arena,” Dr. Light expounded. “She was apparently using some kind of black market teleportation technology, but she still would have needed to know the exact location of the arena in order to teleport onto it so accurately. We’re currently floating above the Bialyan desert, far from any population centers, in a no-fly zone. The J.L.E., the rebels and the president were given access codes to lock our teleporters onto the main homing signal of the arena itself, and even those codes were set up to only work from certain points of origin at certain pre-arranged times.”

“So if the rebels had shared the access codes with their assassin to program into the black market teleporter,” Seneca surmised, “the coded request should not have worked coming from an unidentified source at an unauthorized time.”

“Exactly,” Dr. Light confirmed. “So the only possible workaround would be to determine the location of the floating arena at any moment through something other than the main homing signal. A secondary signal without the extra security protocols, smuggled onto the arena by either the rebels or the president’s retinue.”

“Or one of us,” Seneca reminded her.

“It’s not one of us,” Dr. Light snapped immediately. “It … it just can’t be.”

Seneca, crouched near a huge marble bowl containing exotic decorative flowering plants, caressed several low-hanging leaves with a gentleness that belied the sheer brawn of his hands. “Several of these stems are freshly broken,” he observed. He reached through the leaves toward the roots of the plant, and pulled out a small black metal cylinder ringed with pulsing orange diodes.

“That seems a bit out of place,” Dr. Light noted. “And that technology looks fairly new and well-assembled.”

“As opposed to all of the reclaimed and vaguely obsolete equipment the rebellion seems to favor?” Seneca asked.

“Very much,” Dr. Light agreed.

“I mean, basically it’s just a nice, cozy little castle in upstate New York,” the Silver Sorceress said as she soared above the synchronous turbine generators of Lady Star-Fyre’s floating arena. “So if you ever feel like you need to get away from it all …”

“The portcullis is always open?” Blue Jay finished, half-mockingly. Even as he bantered with his former teammate, he peered down into the labyrinth of standing rotors and thick cables below, alert to signs of anything out of the ordinary; the generators would make a tempting target to anyone ruthless enough to attempt to literally sabotage the peace conference.

“Something like that,” Silver Sorceress chuckled. “I find the quiet isolation therapeutic, at any rate. Although you seem to be doing quite well for yourself as a card-carrying member of the Justice League.”

“Justice League Europe,” Blue Jay corrected her, then rushed onward to leave behind the bitterness he felt creeping into his voice. “It’s as good a place for me as any, I suppose. But then again, I haven’t recently been, ahh …”

“Resurrected?” Silver Sorceress took her turn completing her counterpart’s thought. “Plucked from the grave and animated with new breath to revive lifeless flesh?”

“I was definitely looking for a less creepy way of putting it,” Blue Jay acknowledged. “But, yes.”

“I know that my revivification must be unsettling,” Silver Sorceress admitted. “It is for me, as well … but I prefer it to the alternative. And if the price to pay is less active adventuring … except for special worthy causes such as this … and more downtime, I’m willing to abide by those terms.”

“I would be, too,” Blue Jay nodded. “We’re lucky this was a worthy cause, I think.”

“Oh?”

“Did you notice how President Hashim was looking at you while you were neutralizing Anath?” Blue Jay asked. “Afterwards, too. Something about you doesn’t quite sit right with him. And as far as I’m concerned, anything that throws off whatever game that two-faced sleaze is playing at these talks is a good thing. You put Hashim off-balance, and I’m glad.”

“I don’t trust this President Hashim, either,” Silver Sorceress confessed. “But I hope I don’t undo whatever good the peace talks might have accomplished, nonetheless.”

“I don’t think they would have accomplished much, no matter what,” Blue Jay opined. “Looks like these generators are clear. Nothing’s been done to them that I can see, and nobody’s lurking around.”

“That completes our circuit of the floating arena, then,” Silver Sorceress observed.

“Topside, sure, but we haven’t checked underneath,” Blue Jay pointed out. “The diamagnetic levitators are just as vulnerable to disruption as their power supply, and given the moves Anath has already shown, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find a squad of ninjas crawling upside-down along the underbelly of this flying fortress. We’d better go check it out.”

Silver Sorceress smiled. “Yes, you certainly are doing well for yourself, Jay,” she noted. Blue Jay fought not to beam with pride as he led the way over the safety barrier to swoop beneath the floating arena itself.

“So what makes you say Anath’s not Anath?” Frostbite asked. He, Power Girl and Tasmanian Devil walked down a smooth, almost featureless corridor which angled downward slightly into the heart of the floating arena.

“Nothing major,” Power Girl answered. “But lots of little things. Whoever attacked today was well-trained physically, but I’ve fought Anath personally and I’ve seen her fighting style. She holds herself differently, reacts differently.”

“Maybe she’s having an off day,” Tasmanian devil suggested. “It’s not every day you try to assassinate a world leader. Her nerves might have affected her moves.”

“But that’s another thing,” Power Girl responded. “The Anath I’ve faced before is too smart to try something like a clumsy, direct strike all but guaranteed to fail. If she had wanted to kill Hashim at this conference she would have planned it down to the microscopic details and carried through like a single-minded killing machine. And then there’s the fact that Blue Jay cold-cocked her.”

“Hey, give the little guy some credit,” Frostbite objected. “He’s a moderately silly tweety-bird, but he’s our moderately silly tweety-bird. And he’s not entirely useless in a brawl.”

“I never said he was,” Power Girl clarified. “But Blue Jay announced he was going to circle behind Anath, and then he did it. And she had no idea it was coming.”

“Well wasn’t that kind of the point?” Tasmanian Devil asked.

“Anath has metahuman-level sensitive hearing,” Power Girl elaborated. “She should have overheard Blue Jay and been forewarned.”

“Ear infection?” Frostbite suggested.

Power Girl rolled her eyes. “Is that really the simplest explanation? That she’s sick enough to negate the use of one of her metahuman powers, but not so sick she can’t punt Hugh halfway across the arena?”

“Hey!” Tasmanian Devil protested.

“Or is it more likely that we were meant to think Anath was attacking, when really it’s just someone who looks like her, someone who was supposed to ‘port in, wave her knife around and shoot up the place, and ‘port out again?” Power Girl suggested.

Before either of her teammates could answer, the trio reached a T-junction in the corridor and nearly collided with another person coming from the opposite direction, the raven-haired female member of the rebellion’s peace conference delegation. All four came to an abrupt halt and regarded each other warily.

“What are you doing down here?” Power Girl asked.

“I wanted … no, I need to see the prisoner,” the rebel woman asserted. “She has come here only to discredit the noble intentions of my allies. I must make her confess to this!”

“Guys, why don’t you go on ahead?” Power Girl suggested. “Let us talk, woman to woman.” Frostbite and Tasmanian Devil moved down the intersecting corridor which led to the detention facilities. Power Girl met the gaze of the rebel woman and said, “Do I just need to tell you that I refuse to let you go down there, or should I back up and explain to you why it’s a terrible idea to begin with?”

“But if I don’t …!”

Power Girl held up one gloved hand. “OK, fine, I’ll back up. I agree, the woman down there was more interested in making the rebellion look bad than in killing anyone. And if you go to the holding pens and raise a ruckus, which I have no doubt is exactly what she would goad you into doing, then she will have succeeded. She will make the rebellion look unstable and dangerous. So turn around, go back to your quarters, and do not let that woman play you like that. The J.L.E. is here to set things right, that’s all you need to know.”

The rebel woman stared at Power Girl skeptically.

“Go,” Power Girl repeated. “Leave this to us. Go back to your quarters. Go go go!”

With evident reluctance, the rebel turned her back on Power Girl and retraced her steps up the corridor. Power Girl made her way down the perpendicular branch of the hallway until she came to a doorway with two women flanking it and standing guard, one with medium-length auburn hair and one with a pixie-short platinum blonde do, both clad in the purple-black bodysuits of Lady Star-Fyre’s staff, both holding heavy batons at their sides. They parted for Power Girl, who let herself into the interrogation room.

The thwarted assassin had been secured in a specially-constructed chair with built-in wrist and ankle shackles, the only piece of furniture in the otherwise bare, gray room. The hawkish, green-eyed security leader of Lady Star-Fyre’s forces was present, along with another purple-black-clad woman who was both taller and significantly broader than Power Girl. The security leader stood in front of the prisoner, while her outsized compatriot loomed behind the chair restraint. Tasmanian Devil and Frostbite had out of necessity taken up positions on opposite sides of the cramped room.

Power Girl stepped forward and firmly guided the security leader aside. With the assassin coldly staring her down, Power Girl leaned in close and said, “I suggest you cooperate, and tell us who put you up to this.”

“No one,” the assassin hissed defiantly. “My orders come from my heart alone, which cannot suffer the atrocities committed by Hashim any longer! The revolution demands his death!”

“Right,” Power Girl tilted her head. “The Bialyan rebellion, which agreed willingly to these peace talks, wants nothing more than to obliterate any progress towards their goals and unleash nationwide bloodshed by murdering Hashim. And you, of course, must be Anath, defender of the rebellion …” – Power Girl’s eyes flicked up from the assassin’s orbs to her hairline and back again with a smirk – “… despite the fact that your hair is only black today because of a cheap dye job.”

The ersatz Anath opened her mouth in shock, but could say nothing. Power Girl sighed and straightened her back, crossing her arms as she said, “Taz, Frostbite, you guys I can at least understand not knowing much about hair products since neither of you does a thing to your own. But come on, ladies!” Power Girl looked back and forth between the security leader and her enforcer. “You work for a cosmetics creator, for crying out loud.”

Power Girl looked down again at the prisoner, ready to hear a full confession. Instead she saw the expression in the restrained woman’s eyes harden as she clenched her teeth in a bloodless grimace. A moment later a bitter smell reached Power Girl’s nostrils, just as small flecks of pink foam appeared at the corners of the assassin’s lips.

“No!” Power Girl shouted, prying open the woman’s jaw. The assassin’s eyes closed and her head went slack, as her chest ceased moving with the rhythms of breathing.

“A poison pill?” Frostbite demanded. “Are you kidding me?”

“We should have searched her more carefully,” the security leader seethed.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Power Girl countered. “Even if you had, I don’t think we would have gotten any more information out of her.”

“We might have been able to keep her alive,” Tasmanian Devil pointed out.

Power Girl glared at him, but could not argue the point. “What’s done is done,” she answered instead. “There’s nothing else to be done here, but we still have a peace conference to salvage, if possible.”

“I will inform President Hashim of the assassin’s suicide,” the security leader offered. “Perhaps the news will … placate him, at least enough to reschedule an opening session.”

“We can only hope,” Power Girl acknowledged. Without waiting for Frostbite or Tasmanian Devil she left the interrogation chamber and made her way through the floating arenas corridors to the quarters she had been assigned for the duration of the conference.

Power Girl paused outside the entrance to her quarters, looked up and down the corridor to make sure she was alone in the hallway, and rested her forehead against the brushed metal doorframe. In a whisper, she spoke to herself, “I wish there were a way to get my magic defenses to do something proactive for once. Like give me a vision of who’s really pulling the strings around here so I can defend myself from them. Of course if things get that bad it probably means this whole floating arena’s going down in flames.” She shook her head and pressed the button beside the doorframe which triggered the door’s sliding mechanism.

Low lights automatically turned on as Power Girl entered the room, revealing a figure seated on the edge of her bed: the rebel woman she had intercepted earlier. “You do not need magic to know who the puppet master of this farce truly is,” the raven-haired Bialyan declared by way of greeting.

Power Girl’s brow furrowed as she stared at her uninvited guest. “You heard me muttering out there?” she asked. Then her eyes narrowed as she realized exactly who was sitting before her. “Anath.”

“The same,” Anath inclined her head slightly. “And as difficult as it will be for you to hear, I assure you, it is as difficult for me to say these words. But you must listen to me, and trust me, and we must work together to prevent a worsening tragedy.”

“Wonderful,” Power Girl exhaled sarcastically.

TO BE CONTINUED … IN POWER GIRL #21!

EUROPINION

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