"Is it just me, " Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle asked as he straightened
his goggles, "Or is this war taking forever???" No one answered
him of course. As the leader of Extreme Justice he was coordinating
the defense of the city of Detroit from the communications room
of the Bunker, their headquarters. He hadn't liked the idea
much at first, until Booster had pointed out that all the great
leaders spent their wars hiding out in the bunkers. Then he
had said something about making sure he kept some pills on hand,
at which point Ted had completely tuned him out. As Booster
Gold, he was a close friend and loyal teammate, not to mention
the proud owner of a decent sized black book. (There weren't
very many names in it, but the simple fact that it was a very
large book impressed Ted. It seemed to be daring its owner to
find a way to fill it, which seemed to be a pretty good challenge
to have put in front of you.) That didn't mean that the man
from the future wasn't also more than a bit annoying at times
with his historical references. Who really cared what year Alexander
Cook set up the first bookstore on the moon anyway?
He turned his attention to the matter at the hand. His fingers
seemed to be doing just fine. Then he turned his attention to
the matter on the monitors stretched out in front of him. He
had cobbled some of them together on the fly, others he had
just dragged out of storage. If he were going to have eyes and
ears all over the city and surrounding areas, he needed to be
able to *see* and *hear* everything that was going on. Skeets,
Booster's robotic, um, "buddy" no that didn't sound quite right,
in fact it sounded quite wrong. He made a mental note to remember
to use it the next time he saw Booster... friend? No, that sounded
just as bad. But he really wasn't a side-kick, more like a robot
that flew around and helped him. Servant sounded even worse
than the perverted suggestions... anyway, Skeets the robot that
Booster made, but not in that way (that anyone knew of at least,
Ted smirked to himself) had been able to patch him through (with
the help of the ultra brilliant duo of Ray "The Atom" Palmer
and Solomon "the Grey Dude" Grundy.) to a great many local web-cams
that the team had been able to procure from helpful teenage
boys who couldn't get dates and their twenty-something older
brothers. Ted made a note to remind them to return his once
the battle was over. Quite a few heroes had come out of the
woodwork to join the fight, including a group lead by the former
mascot of the Justice League, Snapper Carr that had landed a
spaceship in the middle of downtown where they would have been
destroyed by the Scarlet Skier if Snapper hadn't had the foresight
to radio ahead on a scrambled signal once he had the chance
to sneak one through. He knew some of them, had heard rumors
of others, and still more of them seemed to be people that he
had no idea who they might be. They handled themselves well
though, even though they were aliens fighting against, well,
aliens. None of his team had tried to blast them at any rate,
which was a miracle in and of itself. Perhaps having Snapper
and the Atom coordinate a signal that went off whenever you
accidently aimed at someone on your own side had been a good
idea. If only he had done it... there just hadn't been the time
to do anything like that. So instead they relied on good old
fashion luck. Luck, having been called old fashion, had at first
looked to be on the verge of causing some trouble. But had instead
went into the back for a quick nap. Which suited Ted just fine.
The main body of the alien invasion fleet had been destroyed
within the first few seconds of the battle. He hadn't been lying
when he had told them to take a good look at the Green Lantern
and Kryptonian already in the air. They might have been G'Nort
and Streaky, but they had been more than enough to cause lots
of damage. Lots of damage. Most of it had been
to the city skyline, but they had managed to somehow take out
the larger portion of the fleet. The problem is that they had
also allowed time for reinforcements to be called in, and ground
troops to be landed outside the city. They fought now, block
by block, for the life of Detroit. If things kept up the way
they were going, there wasn't going to be much of Detroit left.
On the other hand, from the reports that were coming in from
around the globe, it didn't sound like there was going to be
much in the way of anything left. The heroes of the world were
falling back and advancing, not as one, but in pockets. Here
a battle would be won handily, there cities would fall. It didn't
seem fair. But then again, it wasn't. Life so rarely was. War
was even worse about it. People were going to live or they were
going to die, and it didn't matter how right or wrong it was.
The only thing standing between those two choices was if the
heroes of Earth were fast enough, if they were strong enough,
to step between them and anything forcing them to make that
choice.
Ted's lips thinned. He hadn't had the job as leader of Extreme
Justice for very long, but he could already feel the weight
of it on his shoulders. It felt like it was crushing him, as
if it were taking the strength of his entire body just to keep
from falling over. It was... it was the way it should be. His
eyes scanned over the monitors, barking an order here, making
a suggestion there. Everything, everyone was relying on him.
He felt one of the sharp edges of the scarab in his hand, tracing
the patterns on its back by memory. He closed his eyes, for
a moment, feeling the energy course through his body. His eyes
snapped back open, going back to the screen, searching for weaknesses
in the enemy's attack.
It was one thing, the Signal remarked to himself, to plot
the destruction of your enemies from the quiet of your own room.
It was quite another to be staring into the face of a mutual
foe and realizing that the people you wanted to destroy were
also the best chance that humanity had to survive. At least
the humanity that found itself living in and around Detroit,
Michigan. Not that he cared much about humanity for its own
sake. But since he was counted among that number - for the moment
at least he was interested in looking out for their well-being.
He blasted someone with a flash of light, just enough so that
the next person that engaged them ripped their head from their
shoulders. It was at the moment that he realized that the alien
he'd attacked had been one of the "good aliens" he had been
told about. He shrugged and kept going. One less either way
wouldn't really matter.
"It's crispy in the middle!"
G'Nort wasn't sure how they did it, but all the things he'd
heard about inside out chicken were true! Juicy on the outside
and crispy in the middle! It was one of the best things he'd
had since his Uncle Norbert had given him that piece of inflatable
candy back on Titan 4-Others 0. He had nearly choked to death
then, when the candy inflated in his throat. He sighed, "Good
times".
Every once in awhile he glanced out the window to make sure
that the fight was still going on. He had done his part, destroy
the armada. Beetle had told him what to do, over and over in
fact. He had even drawn some pictures. Go up, hang out for awhile,
wait for the signal, then destroy the armada. Once that was
done, G'Nort had gone looking for some food. Green Lanterning
was hungry-inducing work. He had once seen Hal Jordan (before
he went bad, and then pretended that it was really someone else
from a different dimension) eat two dozen pizzas once, after
a particularly taxing fight. Or maybe that had been the Flash.
There were simply too many heroes to keep track of who was who.
The only reason he remembered his own name was that he put it
on the collar around his neck. That way he was sure to be able
to find someone to read it to him. Either that or a mirror.
If the eyes were windows to the soul, and windows were doorways
to a sale, what did that make mirrors? Maybe, he wondered as
he downed another inside out chicken wing, mirrors were just
a reflection of whatever stood in front of them, with no more
or less importance than just that. Or perhaps, he thought while
taking a drink of his Pepsi Blue, that's where all the evil
doppelgangers were coming from - the other side of the mirrors!
He would have to ask Solomon Grundy about it, or the Atom, they
were both so smart they made his head hurt... especially when
Grundy would pat his head vigorously.
He was halfway through another plate when he heard the sounds
of a saxophone under attack. Granted, it could have been a middle
school student practicing for a recital - but considering that
there was an alien attack underway, he thought it far more likely
that it was his one true beloved - Sax Girl. She was out there
somewhere. She was in danger. She was... he looked down at his
plate of inside out chicken and licked his lips. But no, she
was in danger... he had to go help her!!! He got a "doggy" bag
and ran out without paying the check.
"Shape of a hedgehog!"
"Form of a beach ball!!"
Zan and Jayna, the fabulous Wonder Twins, touched their fists
together purposefully. With a brilliant flash of light, they
transformed into what they had proclaimed. Gleek, the Space
Monkey stared at them for a moment, as if trying to figure out
what to do. "You can do it monkey!" he heard the voice of Zan
(or as he called himself in the monkey's mind "Heart-From-Above".
That made no more sense in the mind of the monkey than it did
saying it out loud.) in his head. Slowly he remembered what
he was supposed to do.
The reptile race in the fore of the attack sortie screamed
in dismay as their God Smeg (who happened to be in the same
shape as an Earth beach ball) bounced into view with the demon-king
Kte'pi running alongside it. Their weapons were thrown to the
ground faster than they could even run away back to their ships
and as far away from Detroit as they could possibly get.
The battle was engaged, with both sides attacking and retreating,
leaving only chaos in their wake. Just as suddenly, it was over.
The aliens broke and ran. There were reports of bombs going
off across the planet, to poison the well before they ran. But
not in Detroit. In Detroit, the heroes had stopped the bombs
before they went off. Animal Man had worked with the Atom to
insure that. Somewhere in space there was another battle going
on, one far from prying eyes. "The League is up there," Booster
Gold muttered to himself. "And we're down here," Goldstar repeated
proudly. Since they had encountered each other in the middle
of a firefight, neither of them had said much to each other.
Certainly none of it was about their past association. Booster
nodded, looking past her she noticed to what was left of the
street they had been fighting on. There were bodies of aliens,
the wounded and dead, twisted and in pieces. Someone was going
to have to do something about the debris. If indeed the invasion
was over. The aliens, she reminded herself, could very well
be retreating to shore up for another go at Earth. If that happened,
they would have to be ready. There were parts of the assembled
force, she was sure, that were busy doing clean up. Hopefully
there was another group that was planning on what to do if the
aliens came back. She looked over to where Booster was still
staring wistfully up at the sky, wishing he was part of whatever
force was attacking the aliens in space, wishing that he was
part of something "important". She hoped that the people doing
that planning had other things on their minds.
"You sunk my battleship!"
Fire rolled her eyes and tried to pretend she wasn't listening
to what she was indeed listening to. The Blue Beetle was in
the monitor room, with one eye on the retreating alien fleet
and the other one on someone dressed like the night sky calling
himself Starman, Ralph and Sue had sent "Call me Danny" to help
out with the crisis, and now he was engaging the team's leader
in a game of Battleship. Ted was winning, but only, she suspected,
because Danny was letting him cheat.
The rest of the team, and the people who had ended up hanging
out, had come back to the Bunker afterward, and were now acting
like they were part of the team, which the more Fire thought
about it was a pretty apt description for how quite a few members
had actually joined, were out in the city helping the DEO on
clean-up detail. It was a dreary job, but someone had to supervise
it from afar. And Beatrice DaCosta, the lovely Fire, was just
the girl for the job!
She tried not to listen to the conversation some more when
there was a shift in the conversation. Danny had just asked
what Beetle was going to do now that he had a small army of
heroes on his team.
She tried not to listen, she tried not to stare. But nothing
to stop her from seeing him eye the "L" Flight Ring (just like
the one Booster had she noted) on Danny's finger. "I was thinking,"
Beetle said, his brain working a mile per minute, "that they're
not so much a small army - as they are a LEGION."
Join us NEXT ISSUE for The End of Extreme Justice
