Faux DC! - Titles - Justice League Europe #83

(Continued from Power Girl #21)

Kimiyo Hoshi, her formal gold-and-white caped Doctor Light uniform indicating her status as both the leader of Justice League Europe and a member of the United Nations force overseeing the Bialyan peace conference, braced her hands against the surface of the banquet hall table where she and the rest of her team were seated. Moments ago Lady Star-Fyre, owner of the floating arena where the peace conference was being hosted, had been giving a speech to the attendees. The sudden arrival of five women, materializing through a teleporting hole in space, had unceremoniously interrupted the cosmetics magnate’s keynote address.

Each of the five females was striking in appearance, yet every interloper was distinctively unique. A woman with plastic skin that was uniformly white except for vivid red lipstick and pitch black eyeliner stood to the far left side of the group, her body language almost bored as her large blue eyes swept the room as if trying to determine who would be the most interesting conference attendee to torture. By contrast, on the far right of the group a woman was poised in readiness to strike, her pale green catsuited body held in a disciplined stance with sword brandished upright before her. Beside the swordswoman waited another member of the invading pentad, this one all but bouncing with nervous energy, empty-handed yet literally sparking electricity from her fingertips. While both women were Japanese their resemblance to one another was minimal. The woman with the sword had long black hair and almond-colored eyes; her counterpart’s coiffure was short and white, with a streak of blue through her bangs, and white contact lenses hid her true eye color. The woman with the sword was tall and lithe; the electricity-wielder was shorter and more curvaceous, clad in a white sleeveless bodysuit with iridescent blue-green scales across the upper chest. Standing closer to the pale plasticine woman was a towering specimen, her height augmented by the stiff shocking pink Mohawk cresting her otherwise shaved scalp. She wore a battered black leather jacket and ripped leather pants over a hot pink leotard, with matching studded collar and bracelets and wraparound sunglasses. Her arms were crossed over her chest, positioning one hand within inches of the whips hanging on her left hip.

The central figure of the uninvited group was a voluptuous redhead in a green snakeskin bodysuit which revealed more cleavage than it concealed. A single gold cobra-head earring dangled from her right ear, and golden viper bracelets encircled both of her forearms. She surveyed the banquet hall with come-hither eyes, then made a proclamation to the room. “This conference is an intolerable outrage! President Hashim has no need for the meddling of the unenlightened provincials who laughably call themselves a United Nations! And the patriotic citizenry, the true sons and daughters of Bialya, know that his rightful reign is absolute and unquestionable! Hashim is president for life! And this conference is now over! Outside interference will not be tolerated! Internal dissent will not be tolerated! Hashim forever!”

The speech sounded overwrought and rehearsed, but Kimiyo nonetheless took it as her cue to respond. She was the voice of authority representing a Justice League – perhaps not THE Justice League which appended America to its name and was first to mind when the average man or woman on the street thought of the Justice League, but a Justice League nonetheless with the same legacy and equal responsibility. Dr. Light rose to her full height, intuited that her average stature was not as imposing as the circumstances demanded, and rose two feet above the floor, borne aloft in a halo of radiance.

“If you mean to end this conference by threat of force,” Dr. Light admonished, “you may want to reconsider once I point out to you that you are outnumbered. Not just by the attendees who intend to see the process through to the end, but by six rather powerful heroes” – here she gestured to indicate herself as well as the other members of the Justice League Europe seated at her table: Power Girl, Tasmanian Devil, Frostbite, Seneca and Blue Jay – “to your five. You cannot possibly overcome those odds. But you can see the wisdom in a quick surrender. It’s not too late, and perhaps even your views can be taken into consideration in the negotiations here.”

Serpentina, the copper-haired and snake-spangled leader of the Hate League, smiled wickedly at Dr. Light just before a series of massive explosions reverberated through the entire floating arena. The ballroom lurched and pitched at a crazy angle, throwing Hashim and his entourage, Bialyan rebels, UN workers and most of the Justice League from their chairs amid shouts and screams and the brittle sounds of plates and glasses shattering.

The Hate League wasted no time in taking advantage of the ensuing chaos and beginning their assault.

Morgan Tracy stood before the monitor screen, tapping his foot impatiently. It had been nearly thirty minutes since he’d gotten his message to that knock-out Nordic princess Ice at Justice League Europe’s headquarters in London and still no sign of a rescue team.

“What’s taking so long?” Stacy Macklin asked, her eyes trained pensively on the entrance to the communications room.

“I don’t know. I’m sure they will be here as soon as they possibly can.” Morgan replied, “I’m just curious as to how the contact information for the JLE was the first listed.”

Tod Dunham sat at the control panel next to Morgan Tracy, typing in information and accessing systems.

“Even more curious,” Tod began, “Is that these systems are wide open. And it all traces back quickly and without a doubt to President Hashim’s systems in the royal palace… and his private laptop.”

“It’s all too easy … too pat.” Morgan said, scratching his chin.

“It all looks authentic…” Tod’s voice trailed off. “If this is a frame job, it’s the best one I’ve ever seen or has been in the works for years, because what I’m looking at in this system shows that this computer system has been part of the president’s systems for years. I have sent everything pertinent I can get out back to my computers in our New York headquarters. There is enough with what I’ve sent to officially get Hashim condemned by the U.N.”

“Wonderful.” Morgan sighed, “I’m sure all the evidence you have found in his systems is one hundred percent legit. I’m just not sure that our kidnapping was Hashim’s handy work.”

“Someone has gone to a lot of effort to reveal Hashim’s genocide and evil,” Stacy said. “I agree that this is all too pat, but at the end of the day we could save a lot of people with this information, even if our kidnapping was a frame job.”

Morgan shook his head, “I hate the moral ambiguity of this…”

“But, if we can’t prove he didn’t take us, and all we have is our gut feeling that it’s a frame…” Stacy stopped herself. “We can debate this later.”

Morgan Tracy opened his mouth to respond, but an arc of shimmering green and gold light appeared several feet away. Through the forming portal, the Silver Sorceress stepped.

“Our ride is here.” Morgan Tracy said, taking note of the Silver Sorceress’s exquisite beauty beneath her ridiculous headdress.

“Morgan Tracy?” The Silver Sorceress asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” He flashed her his debonair smile, “These are the remaining members of my team, Stacy Macklin and Tod Dunham.”

“Are you all well?”

“We are as healthy as can be. There are a few bruises and scrapes from some pretty half-hearted torture attempts, but nothing that a little R&R in Monaco won’t fix. Tell me,” Morgan said, coming up beside the Silver Sorceress and taking her arm in his, “Do you like Monaco?”

“I am afraid to admit I have never been to Monaco,” the Silver Sorceress said, a faint blush staining her cheeks.

“Oh, my dear lovely, we will have to fix that.” Morgan flashed that smile again, and the Silver Sorceress felt a slight pang as her blush deepened. The enchanting moment was undone, however, by thunderous peals emanating from somewhere overhead, loud enough to echo through the entire facility.

“We can discuss that later,” Silver Sorceress insisted, eyeing the ceiling warily. “First, let’s get you all to safety.”

“But of course,” Morgan Tracy agreed.

The portal through which the Silver Sorceress had arrived had already dissipated into nothingness, but the spellcaster quickly summoned another and led the U.N. Crisis Bureau Team through it. The foursome emerged in the London headquarters of the Justice League Europe, joining Ice in the monitor room.

“You made it!” Tora Olafsdotta cheered, as if exhaling a breath she had been holding for too long. “When I lost all electronic communications contact with the floating arena I started to fear for the worst.”

“The worst may be yet to come,” Silver Sorceress predicted darkly. “But if you’ll see to our Crisis Bureau guests here, I’ll return to the floating arena myself and make sure that does not …” The lone surviving mage of Angor left her promise incomplete as the portal spell manifesting before her failed the stabilize. Gold and green jagged lines flailed erratically in mid-air rather than combining in an arc to outline the gateway.

“Is there some sort of problem?” Morgan Tracy inquired, with genuine concern.

“My mystic portal to the floating arena,” Silver Sorceress near-whispered. “It can’t fully open.”

“Perhaps you’re too tired?” Tod Dunham suggested, although his tone of voice implied that his technological savvy instilled him with great skepticism of magic under any circumstances.

“No,” Silver Sorceress contradicted him. “Someone is actively blocking my spells.” She sought out Ice’s crystalline blue eyes. “What is happening to the peace conference?”

As Morbid Doll, Leatherette, Shock Dragon and Jade Tiger threw themselves into the fray, Serpentina held back for just a moment. She was as eager as any of her teammates, perhaps moreso, to contribute to the mayhem by inflicting pain and suffering, yet she took her role as leader of the Hate League seriously and felt it was her duty to ascertain exactly how closely the entire operation unfolded to its original conception.

Fortunately, the advanced planning seemed to be paying extremely rewarding dividends, with the intelligence-based behavioral prediction models holding up well. Serpentina observed the United Nations diplomats, translators and other mediators, all of whom were terrified for their very lives and pursuing one of two courses of action: attempting to crawl along the canted floor of the ballroom toward a doorway or at least away from the heart of the erupting battle, or cowering in place behind overturned tables or chairs. Serpentina was unsurprised that the same idealistic fools who believed in the U.N.’s stated goals for the peace conference would scatter and squawk like livestock in a slaughterhouse once a proper amount of righteous force was applied.

The Justice League Europe was even more predictable, for if anyone could be even more delusionally optimistic and unprepared for the harsh sting of reality than a United Nations ministrator, it was a so-called superhero. Serpentina watched as Power Girl flew with fists outstretched toward Leatherette and Morbid Doll, scowling intensely as if she intended to pummel the entire Hate League into submission all by herself. Serpentina would kill Power Girl long before that could ever come to pass, not that her fellow femme fatales would fail to show Power Girl a fight to remember themselves, either. Seneca moved toward the podium where Lady Star-Fyre had been addressing the room, presumably to determine if she was alright and guard her from further attack, and it was all Serpentina could do to stop herself from giggling hysterically at the muscular Iroquois, who clearly had no idea that Lady Star-Fyre commanded the unfailing loyalty of the Hate League and was in absolutely no danger. Frostbite advanced on Jade Tiger, coating the floor in a widening radius with ice; Jade Tiger had prepared for such contingency, however, wearing a custom pair of jika-tabi with spiked soles which granted her the necessary balance. Tasmanian Devil gave chase to Shock Dragon, who confounded the hairy brute by dodging and tumbling out of reach through the room; unbeknownst to the Australian, his quarry was slowly building up a lethal charge of electricity which would only be fired at the hero when he had exhausted himself in pursuit.

“Blue Jay, the arena is dropping like a stone!” Dr. Light called to her winged teammate. “You have to get to the levitators and see if anything can get us out of freefall!” Blue Jay’s only response was to fly toward one of the air vents near the ceiling of the ballroom, reducing its grating to twisted ribbons with two powerful claw swipes before darting into the ducts beyond. Serpentina noted this and was pleased; the estimate had been that at least one and possibly as many as three of the Justice League Europe representatives would attempt to leave the ballroom to investigate the explosive sabotage of the diamagnetic levitators.

The rebel faction had recovered from the wild tilting of the ballroom and found themselves on the upper end of a slope which led directly downward to the entourage of President Hashim. Both the rebels and the bodyguards had been forbidden from carrying weapons into the banquet hall, but the Hate League’s arrival heralded the beginning of a savage free-for-all. Two of the rebels fell on the President’s table with wordless battlecries of rage ripped from their throats, attacking with bare-knuckled fists and fueled by their sense of betrayal, while their compatriots took precious seconds to locate objects which might serve as improvised weapons, a broken chair leg or shard of a crystal water pitcher, before sliding down into the fracas as well.

Serpentina felt even more disdain for the rebels than for the peacekeepers or the superheroes. The representatives from the U.N. or the J.L.E. each dedicated themselves to maintaining some kind of status quo, which was undesirable to Serpentina but at least understandable. The rebellion, on the other hand, strove to be agents of change but all of their effort was directed toward incomprehensible goals. Did they really want Bialya’s future to be determined by the people, ALL of the people, in their mindless, spineless abject ineptitude? Did they yearn to become that much more like all the other miserable failed experiments in representative government of the struggling western nations? President Hashim had many failings, his greed and personal perversions chief among them, but at least the man knew that a singular visionary leadership was crucial to BIalya’s greatness. Lady Star-Fyre would provide such a singular vision, but with none of Hashim’s flaws. Lady Star-Fyre was brilliant while Hashim was merely arrogant, she was finessed while he was a thug, she was wise while he was short-sighted. And perhaps most importantly, Lady Star-Fyre would utterly destroy anyone in her way, with neither hesitation nor remorse, whereas Hashim would content himself with a sloppy kind of bullying.

Satisfied with her assessments of both the unfolding scenario at hand and the reasons why she had pledged her unwavering servitude to Lady Star-Fyre’s glorious ambitions, Serpentina at last allowed herself to give in to the bloodlust pounding in her veins. She quickly interposed herself between a follower of the rebellion and one of Hashim’s personal guards, both of whom had been trading brutal punches, and with stunning speed caught both men in headlocks, one in each arm. A moment later she released them, and they fell to the sloped floor as corpses, slain by fast-acting venom that had been injected by tiny needles housed in the golden bracelets Serpentina had pressed into their necks.

Blue Jay sped through the ventilation system of the floating arena, following oily smoke back to its source until finally he emerged through an intake port on the underbelly of the airborne fortress. Immediately after the attack by an Anath-lookalike on President Hashim, Blue Jay had investigated the antigravity and propulsion systems integrated into the lower hull of the floating arena and found only smooth metal curvature studded with glowing domed diamagnets arranged around the central cylinders of the power supply. Now the surface was in utter ruins, levitators nothing more than shattered cavities in the deformed hull spewing sparks and flames, the power columns blackened and shredded like spent firecrackers. Nothing capable of keeping the arena in the sky remained functioning.

A new geyser of fire shot earthward from the mangled stumps of the power cylinders, burning white hot with ignited battery chemicals and threatening to spread along the floating arena’s underbelly and into the corridors of the complex above. Blue Jay whizzed toward the conflagration, desperately trying to think of a strategic approach. He could fly and he could shrink, but what good were those powers when dealing with a plummeting mass of tens of thousands of tons carrying nearly a hundred human beings to their doom? Frustrated beyond the limits of his self-control, Blue Jay shook a tiny fist at the incandescent fountain of the chemical fire and then watched in amazement as it shrank in response. A moment later a miniscule charred shape fell from the power supply moorings, and Blue Jay flew to intercept it.

The falling item was the cracked casing of a power battery which had once been a cube a meter and a half on each side, now the size of a matchbox. It had been shrunk, and Blue Jay could draw no other conclusion than that he had been the one to shrink it. The sudden development of a new application of his powers was welcome news, somewhat overshadowed by the colossal floating arena still hurtling earthward just above his head.

A cruel twist of fate involving Anath’s seat position at the rebellion’s banquet table and the angle at which the floor inclined in the wake of the saboteur’s explosions resulted in the assassin being located far from the melee between the Hate League and the Justice League Europe. Between Anath and the clash of killers-for-hire against costumed heroes was the brawling free-for-all between President Hashim’s security forces and the rebels, a zone of mad violence which Anath would have to navigate carefully in order to reach her preferred targets in the Hate League.

On the other hand, rather than fighting and weaving her way through the tangled aggression on display before her, Anath could bypass it entirely by taking advantage of the new geography of the vertiginously canted ballroom. The ostentatious chandeliers which had been high overhead when the banquet began were now within reach by jumping across the space of the room rather than straight up. Such a feat might still be impossible for a normal person, but Anath’s advanced physical training and metahuman strength made for a much surer proposition. She threw herself at one of the crystal-draped light fixtures and grabbed two of its arms. The chandelier broke free from its mounting on the ceiling and dangled crazily from its wiring; Anath gripped it more tightly and waited to see if it would support her weight.

From her new perspective above the chaos, Anath made two notable observations. She could see President Hashim, completely apoplectic with rage. Part of that was surely due to the fact that he had just taken a furious right cross on the bridge of his nose courtesy of one of Anath’s young rebellion cohorts, but something in the despot’s bearing spoke to more than simple pain and indignation at the trickle of blood seeping into his moustache. Hashim resembled a man who had lost control of a situation and with it, lost all sense of assurance in his own knowledge of how the world worked. He did not exude the confidence of a man who had just seen his personal enforcers in the Hate League proclaim his superiority and attack his enemies. If anything, Hashim seemed as baffled by the turn of events ushered in by the Hate League as anyone else in the room.

Anath also caught the movement of a dark shape in the corner of her eye, and saw Lady Star-Fyre unceremoniously leaving the banquet hall via an unmarked doorway near the podium where she had been speaking. In fact, the door was nothing but a hinged panel in the wall, yet Lady Star-Fyre found and opened it unerringly, as Seneca kept his back to her and scanned the room for any possible attack on the conference’s host. If President Hashim seemed rattled at the Hate League’s sudden appearance, Lady Star-Fyre seemed anything but.

Before Anath could consider the matter further, a strangled cry demanded her attention. She turned her head in time to see Serpentina pushing aside a dead United Nations mediator whose neck was swollen and purple, the same toxic discoloration spreading to the man’s face. Srepentina did not even spare her victim a glance as she continued toward her true goals: Power Girl and Doctor Light. Power Girl had grabbed the barbed tip of one of Leatherette’s whips and was stubbornly attempting to disarm her opponent, but the mohawked woman continuously cracked the thong and prevented Power Girl from exerting any leverage on the whip. Doctor Light had encased Morbid Doll in glowing golden bands of light, but the dour-faced goth felt no pain no matter how tightly the photonic constructs squeezed her, and her slippery polyvinyl skin allowed her to wriggle free. Both Justice Leaguers were so focused on their respective duels they did not see Serpentina preparing to stab them in the backs with poisoned daggers shaped like snake fangs.

Anath shifted her weight and swung the chandelier outward, letting go of its arms just as she was positioned above Serpentina’s head. Her super-speed was momentarily useless in mid-air, could not make her fall any faster as gravity brought her down on the leader of the Hate League. In the time it took to close the distance between them, Serpentina had raised the left dagger over her head and jabbed it down at Power Girl’s spine. The tip of the lethal blade scratched Power Girl’s shoulder as Anath managed to get a hand on Serpentina’s belt and spin the mistress of venoms around. In a metahuman blur of motion Anath clasped Serpentina’s wrist and wrenched her arm inward, driving the dagger into the belly of her snakeskin bodice, then repeated the same motion with Serpentina’s opposite hand, this time plunging the dagger’s blade directly into Serpentina’s heart. Rivulets of bright blood oozed from the corners of Serpentina’s mouth as she crumpled lifelessly to the floor.

Power Girl whirled in the direction of her attacker, momentarily forgetting Leatherette. She quickly assessed the situation as she spied the raven-tressed assassin standing over Serpentina’s body, but nevertheless could only exhale, “What have you done?”

Lady Star-Fyre confidently navigated the narrow and dark passageway, barely wider than her shoulders, which traversed the floating arena along paths which appeared as nothing more than blank spaces running parallel to main corridors in official blueprints of the facility. Her self-assurance arose from two sources: first, that the Hate League had teleported into the banquet hall with precision timing, and second, that she had memorized the lengths and turns of the secret infrastructure of the floating arena specifically for the purpose of slipping away unmolested as her manipulations of Hashim and the Bialyan rebellion came to a head.

If she had any misgivings in departing the peace conference she had deliberately set up to fail, it was that the endgame had proceeded too quickly, too spectacularly. For all of Glider’s gullibility in blithely accepting a secretive suicide mission, the young woman had done an impeccable job in sabotaging the levitators and crippling the floating arena. The Hate League, too, had effected a dramatic entrance to instill maximum confusion and fear in the peace conference attendees, with Hashim’s thugs and the rebellion mongrels throwing themselves at one another in a frenzied panic almost immediately. As a result, Lady Star-Fyre had never managed to convey to Serpentina or the other female mercenaries that Anath was among the rebel faction’s number. But that was a minor gap, and since Anath had done almost nothing to conceal her identity, the Hate League was surely aware of her presence by now.

Lady Star-Fyre reached an opening in the passage’s wall which led to a tiny chamber scarcely big enough for the padded, inclined seat it contained. She lowered herself into the seat and spoke aloud a single word: “Thriae”. The codeword activated a small control panel which lowered before Lady Star-Fyre’s eyes as the chamber sealed itself. A moment after tapping further commands into the control panel, the pod fired itself from an aperture in the exterior of the floating arena and flew on autopilot toward Bilaya’s capital city. Soon the drone pod would land on the roof of the skyscraper which housed the offices of Star-Fyre Industries, by which time the floating arena would have ceased to exist as anything other than a gnarled hulk in the middle of a smoking crater in the desert.

Blue Jay could feel his momentary elation curdling into despair once again as he struggled to think of an application of his newfound power that could prevent the tragedy that was about to occur. He had no way of knowing if he could shrink the entire floating arena, in order to rob it of its lethal momentum, before it smashed into the desert floor below; neither could he predict whether a mental command to shrink the damaged fortress would also shrink its contents: would the people inside the floating arena be crushed as it contracted, or would they too become miniaturized, and with what other lasting effects? His mind raced, convinced that there must be a way to stop or slow the plummeting complex. He almost longed for some kind of deathtrap or ultimate weapon he could miniaturize into irrelevance to turn the tide, but his major foe in the moment was the implacable force of gravity, something that would only diminish if he could somehow shrink the entire Earth …

Abruptly, Blue Jay looked to the ground. Of course it was insane to contemplate shrinking a planet, but what about a portion of the planet’s surface? He flew straight down, outpacing the falling arena, and thrust his hands toward the dunes below, willing them to shrink. Imperceptibly at first, then with increasing velocity, the sands swirled as if draining away, each silicate particle collapsing to microscopic size. A widening hollow formed in the face of the desert, under the shadow of the plunging arena.

Blue Jay shrank as much of the sands as he could for as long as he dared to wait. Then he mentally commanded every mote of mineral to expand again to its original size, all at once, instantaneously. The sinkhole not only filled but overflowed as enlarging particles of sand buffeted one another and agitated the desert air that had filled the evacuated space. A gigantic cloud of sand and rushing wind billowed beneath the falling arena, forming a natural cushion. The opposing force of the localized sandstorm could not halt the complex’s nosedive altogether, but did slow its descent significantly; the collision with the earth was still violent, but not catastrophic.

As the arena and the inflated sand met in mid-air, Blue Jay soared through the blinding hail of grit to avoid being flattened between the hull and the ground. His vision was dangerously obscured, yet he swore for a moment he saw the sheen of manufactured metal at the bottom of the sinkhole, as if the shrinking of the sands had revealed some kind of buried structure beneath.

“I’ve done what needed to be done!” Anath seethed, staring down Power Girl. “Do you think these zealots deserve your compassion? Do you think they even understand compassion? Do you think they understand anything other than the violence and pain and fear they traffic in? I hurt her before she could hurt you! If that’s not reason enough to act, what is?”

Shock Dragon, drawn by Anath’s voice steadily rising from strident to screaming, saw Serpentina lying awkwardly on the floor, the veins in her chest beginning to darken with poison. “Ser … Serpentina?” she asked in disbelief. Then her white eyes narrowed murderously as she fired a coruscating lance of lightning at Anath with a blood-curdling shriek of “NOW YOU DIE!!!”

Tasmanian Devil had finally caught up with Shock Dragon as she unleashed her electrical attack, and without hesitation the hirsute Justice Leaguer vaulted over Shock Dragon’s head and tackled Anath to the ground. The unfettered voltage struck Tasmanian Devil in the back as he absorbed the brunt of it, his body stiffening in agony and the stench of burning flesh and fur filling the air.

Anath pushed herself from flat on her back to a seated position and stared, horrified, at the twitching Tasmanian Devil. The assassin was unaware of Power Girl moving to her side until Power Girl yanked her to her feet, locked her in a steely gaze, and said, “It’s not about who we can hurt. It’s about who we can save.”

Turbulence rattled throughout the floating arena and the skewed angle of the banquet hall floor changed once again, as the falling fortress slowed and veered in response to forces manifesting beneath its underbelly. Once again those gathered in the ballroom chaotically changed positions, some stumbling, others falling and rolling, until the entire floating arena lurched to a wobbly halt. The auxiliary power systems which had been spared in the initial levitator explosions gave out now in the aftermath of impact, leaving the banquet hall filled with shadows as only feeble emergency lights shone in the corners of the ceiling.

Leatherette, Shock Dragon, Morbid Doll and Jade Tiger gathered together in a tight knot and eyed the rest of the room warily. Jade Tiger drew a green-enameled chain-and-sickle weapon from her belt and threw it toward Serpentina, snagging the dead woman’s belt buckle on the curved blade and reeling the golden snake’s head back to Jade Tiger’s outstretched hand. The ornament contained an activation beacon for a teleporter, and in a heartbeat the surviving members of the Hate League had vanished through a portal in the air.

Several of Lady Star-Fyre’s personal guards were moving through the debris littering the banquet hall now, helping United Nations peacekeepers to their feet, and brandishing energy batons warningly at rebels and Hashim’s entourage alike, silently persuading them to cease their hostilities. The tension in the air of the room remained like an oppressive force, but no further violence erupted.

The final crash had jostled Power Girl and Anath away from most of the others in the banquet hall, but they could still see both Tasmanian Devil and Serpentina lying on the carpet, not far from one another. But while Anath stared, her eyes flicking back and forth between the gravely wounded form of the hulking, furry shapeshifter and the blood-streaked, lifeless killer-for-hire, Power Girl’s attention was on the young Bialyan woman beside her. Tasmanian Devil was Power Girl’s teammate, and Serpentina was her enemy – where on that continuum did Anath fall? Like Serpentina, Anath was a trained assassin with a high body count in her past. But she had also saved Power Girl’s life, arguably, and almost certainly saved Doctor Light’s life in the process. Did the measure of morality from villain to hero even apply to a woman like Anath, born in a hell on earth like Bialya, raised in a harem and sent away when she no longer matched a tyrant’s proclivities, manipulated by every person more powerful than her that she had ever encountered? As Power Girl studied Anath, she imagined she could see the same kinds of thoughts in Anath’s eyes, as well, as she tried to process Tasmanian Devil’s selflessness and found herself unprepared to do so by any of her own life experiences.

“Get out of here,” Power Girl whispered huskily.

“What?” Anath blinked and turned toward her.

“There’s a saying where I come from,” Power Girl said softly. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s the reason why vengeance killings aren’t part of our culture. But you and I come from different places. I don’t know what the right thing to do with you is right now. I just get the feeling that hauling you in front of a court for killing Serpentina would just be piling wrong on top of wrong.”

“I don’t deserve … your mercy,” Anath said, her eyes straying once again toward Tasmanian Devil. Power Girl intuited that what the young woman was really thinking was that she didn’t deserve the sacrifice Tasmanian Devil had made for her. Perhaps even, on some level, she questioned how much she deserved to live her own life at all, when everyone she had ever known had told her she was worth less than nothing. Power Girl’s heart ached for her.

“It’s not mercy,” Power Girl insisted. “It’s humility. If I don’t know what to do with you I’d best not do anything. So do something with yourself, like getting out of here and maybe re-thinking your strategy with the rebellion. Help your homeland. Teach people something about rising up above the kill-or-be-killed status quo.”

“Can … can I do that?” Anath wondered aloud.

“Only one way to find out, and that’s take the chance and don’t waste it. And don’t set foot in the United States, because I’m not exactly officially authorized to grant you amnesty there. Now go.”

Anath melted into the shadows without saying goodbye.

The members of the Justice League Europe met one another in the center of the room, where Tasmanian Devil remained sprawled on the carpet. Seneca knelt over the huge shapeshifter and examined him carefully. “He’ll live,” the Iroquois predicted. “But without swift medical attention I fear much of the damage might be permanent.”

“Teleporters are all offline, no doubt,” Frostbite noted with irritation.

“We are calling in helicopters from every embassy in the surrounding area,” a U.N. negotiator interjected. “We can make sure one is medically equipped for your teammate’s sake, and the rest of us will be flown to Cairo as soon as possible.”

“You might want to spare a little time to check out where we landed,” Blue Jay announced as he entered the room on foot, having resumed his full height. “There’s a giant underground bunker directly beneath the crash site, with some pretty damning connections to the President.”

“Lies!” President Hashim roared, spitting blood.

“We’ll investigate,” the U.N. negotiator gave assurance to both sides. “And the truth will come out.”

President Hashim, still glowering at Blue Jay, was led away by two of his bodyguards. Blue Jay moved closer to the other Justice Leaguers and said in a low voice, “The truth is going to make it very difficult for Hashim to hold onto any kind of power here in Bialya or any support abroad. If nothing else, we may be witnesses to the fall of a tyrant.”

“Strangely, I don’t feel as though that redeems anything that’s happened here,” Doctor Light admitted. “We may as well wait for the helicopters, there’s nothing more to be done here.”

“I’ll meet you all back in Paris,” Power Girl offered. “There’s something else I still want to do.”

EPILOGUE ONE

Lady Star-Fyre sat at her desk in her private office, reviewing a cost-benefit analysis for a proposed acquisition of a small aerospace lab. She glanced at a clock on the corner of the desk, saw it was nearly one a.m., and resolved to give the figures another half an hour of attention before finally calling it a night. Her eyes returned to the columns of numbers when the ringing sound of knocking on glass drew her eyes to the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows opposite her. Floating outside the seventieth-floor office was Power Girl.

Lady Star-Fyre approached the windows and gave Power Girl a quizzical look. Power Girl pantomimed opening the windows. Lady Star-Fyre in return made negating gestures; the windows were not designed to open. Power Girl cocked a fist back over her shoulder and raised her eyebrows in challenge. Lady Star-Fyre shook her head more vehemently and pointed up towards the roof. Power Girl lowered her fist with apparent reluctance and rose upwards along the face of the skyscraper, as Lady Star-Fyre headed for her office door.

A minute later, Lady Star-Fyre emerged from an access door on the rooftop to find Power Girl waiting for her. “This is an unexpected surprise,” Lady Star-Fyre began. “I’m not sure …”

“Cut the crap,” Power Girl snapped. “I came here to set a few things straight. Your job right now is not to spin your image, it’s to listen to what I have to say, and believe me when I say it.”

Lady Star-Fyre fought to keep the shock from her voice. “Go on,” she invited.

“I don’t know how, and I’m not even a hundred percent clear on why, but I know you were the one pulling the strings on everything that went wrong with the peace conference,” Power Girl declaimed. “The Hate League gave you away, really. The floating arena was staffed with a full complement of your own personal special forces, not one of whom raised a finger to defend you when the Hate League showed up. They didn’t try to shield you or get you to safety, or counterattack the Hate League. They didn’t lift a finger until the Hate League took off. To me, that says you were all in it together from the start. Just like you were the one behind the fake Anath who playacted a dubious assassination attempt.”

“That is a wildly implausible theory,” Lady Star-Fyre retorted.

“Maybe,” Power Girl nodded. “Maybe I can’t prove my suspicions, maybe suspicions is all they are. But I am suspicious, lady. Deeply. Suspicious. And I am going to be watching you. Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve next to try to destabilize the homeland you claim to love so much, I will be watching when you try it, and I will not let you get away with it.”

“I’m not going to lose any sleep over that,” Lady Star-Fyre promised.

“Sleep all you want,” Power Girl shrugged. “I’ll still be watching when you wake up.” With that, she hovered off the roof, turned, and rocketed away as a streak of red and white in the night.

EPILOGUE TWO

A pair of Parisian taxicabs came to an awkward halt along the Rue de Lutetia, as the lead vehicle attempted to turn off the boulevard and onto the cobblestone front drive of the Revson headquarters building, only to find its progress blocked by a police cruiser flanked by blue wooden barricades. Seneca and Tasmanian Devil stepped out of the foremost idling taxi, as Doctor Light, Blue jay and Frostbite emerged from its trailing counterpart. At the same time, two gendarmes emerged from the police cruiser.

“And here I thought showing up at our own HQ in taxis like a herd of tourists was going to be the lowest part of our homecoming,” Frostbite scowled. “What’s all this about?”

“Bon soir, madame et messieurs,” the older of the two gendarmes greeted the five superheroes as they approached.

“Is there some sort of problem in the Revson building, officers?” Doctor Light asked, her gaze scanning the building but detecting no obvious signs of danger.

“The building is empty, and no one is allowed inside,” the younger gendarme informed the Justice Leaguers brusquely.

“Why not?” Blue Jay pressed.

“Because all Revson assets, including this property, have been frozen and seized by the authorities,” snapped the gendarme.

“Frozen? Seized?” Seneca furrowed his brow, uncomprehending.

“Pending formal investigation, mais oui,” the older gendarme interceded. “The servants’ scandal, it grows darker every hour, non?”

“What scandal?” Doctor Light demanded.

“You must have heard on the news?” the gendarme asked.

“The U.N. helicopters we hitched back in didn’t have GNN in-flight programming,” Tasmanian Devil noted.

The older gendarme sighed, shaking his head. “Dommage. You will find out soon enough how much Revson has to answer for … as well as anyone closely linked to them.” The last was accompanied by an ominous drop in the gendarme’s voice.

“Can we at least …” Blue Jay began to ask, looking to the front doors under the massive marble carving of the Revson crest.

“Désolé,” the gendarme refused. “It cannot be permitted, our orders are quite clear.” As if on cue, the cabbie in the foremost taxi leaned on his horn, reminded the Justice Leaguers that the meter was running.

“So now what?” Frostbite asked his teammates.

“I … have no idea,” Doctor Light admitted.

TO BE CONTINUED …

EUROPINION

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Justice League Europe
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