Issue #7

Up the Rushing Mountain

By Jess Nevins

"When the Delaware state police finally reconstructed, days later, the route that the Fatal Five had taken to get from Metropolis to Bludhaven, they did so by following a path of destruction.

The first was about 20 miles north of Metropolis. On the northbound side of I-95 was a ten-foot wide crater that was still smoking three days later. Interviews with witnesses (who were plenty, and horrified at what they’d seen) described how a van with the KordCo logo had been cut off while trying to change lanes. The car that cut them off was a Mustang with South Carolina plates, a Confederate flag flying from the aerial and a “The South Will Rise Again” bumper sticker; the driver, a man with greasy long hair sticking out from under a Citadel baseball cap, and leaned his arm out the window and flipped off the van; he’d then laughed with his three friends and tossed beer bottles from the Mustang’s windows. The van had accelerated to match speeds with the Mustang, and then an arm emerged from the passenger’s side and shot a ray at the Mustang. The resulting explosion had been seen 60 miles away, and left little beyond teeth for the police to find.

The second incident took place at a rest stop 22 miles north of Metropolis. The survivors described how the clerk at the Dunkin’ Donuts, when asked to “Hurry up and give me some coffee, alright?” muttered a swear and turned his back on the customer, a short bearded man in a Matrix-style overcoat. The customer had previously been annoyed with the clerk due to the five minute wait to get his coffee. He responded to the swear by pulling what looked like a hair dryer from an inside pocket and beginning to shoot everyone in the restaurant with it. He and his companions continued firing, killing 22 of the 25 people in the rest stop.

The third and last major incident (cars only damaged up on the way to Bludhaven were not counted as “major”) took place on I-95 just outside of Bludhaven. A Cadillac filled with two couples, all retirees, was seen to be driving 45 mph in the passing lane. The KordCo van was stuck behind the Cadillac for some miles, as the traffic in the travel lane was heavy and fast enough to prevent the van from passing on the right. Eventually the van pulled into the breakdown lane on the left of the travel lane, drew even with the Cadillac, and destroyed it by an unknown weapon which turned the Cadillac’s tires to oxygen while leaving the rest of the car intact and traveling at 45 mph.

They were more easily to reconstruct what the Fatal Five had in mind when they went to Bludhaven....

The van coasted to a stop, and the faces of the Five pressed against its windows. Their expressions quickly turned from hopeful to puzzled and disgusted.

“Mikron, I thought you said–“

“Hey, the sensor reads what the sensor reads. I’m not making it up.”

The Five were looking at the very definition of the word “tenement.” It was a stained and dirty four story building. None of the windows facing the street were intact, and most of the brick of the building’s facade was pitted and worn by decades of pollution. As the group watched a bloated white rat scuttled from an alley on one side of the building and disappeared into a sewer grating.

“Gizmo, I must say that this is about the most unprepossessing location for a laboratory facility. Especially one operated by Lex Luthor, of all people. Are you certain–“

Gizmo’s voice cracked with irritation. “I don’t care what it looks like, Art. My sensor’s reading the presence of uranium, plutonium, and lexorium. He’s here.”

Jinx said, “Enough. We all have enough reason to trust Mikron. Let’s go and be done with this. I for one am eager to leave this place. I have a date in Madras, and I haven’t seen my cats in several days.”

The others reluctantly, and not without some grumbling, did as they were told. Mikron noted with some internal amusement that in Psimon’s absence Jinx automatically took charge of the Five, despite her being a relatively newcomer to the group. He thought he’d have to watch that. He liked Jinx, but you never knew...

As the group walked towards the front of the building, wrinkling their noses and trying not to breath in the stench of sewage and pollution, the doors to the building flew open and an armed squad of LexCorp security men emerged and assumed firing positions. Jinx raised her hands into an “I surrender” position and muttered, “They never get smarter, do they?”

The heroes were ten miles out from Bludhaven, Green Lantern towing the ones who couldn’t themselves fly, when Superman’s x-ray vision picked up the smoke and flames coming from the LexCorp complex.

Batman, concentrating on altering one of his Batarangs, said, “Don’t do it. We need to work together.”

Superman, who’d been tensing to fly ahead, relaxed and did not alter his speed. Aquaman cocked his head and said, “How did you know–“

“He always inhales just before he accelerates.”

Superman, hearing this, made a mental note to not be so predictable, but then wondered if Bruce would be disappointed if he weren’t.

Flash, bored at the lengthy (to him) flight, began drumming his fingers on the edge of Green Lantern’s emerald platform, but stopped when the others moved to cover their ears; he’d forgotten that drumming fingers at superspeed quickly becomes a thundering, unbearable sound.

The Martian Manhunter, mentally scanning the LexCorp labs, found that although he could easily pick up the thoughts of the LexCorp workers and security guards who were unfortunate enough to come between the Five and their quarry–their wounded and dying minds left a blazing orange and red trail across the psychescape–he could not find the minds of the Five themselves. Batman’s response, when informed of this, was a curt That would be Psimon’s doing. He probably shielded them. The Manhunter wondered how a human could be brusque even telepathically, but gave up wondering–this was The Batman, after all, and brusqueness was all, for him–and sent his mind into the LexCorp labs, trying to provide mental succour to the dying.

When the JLA arrived they hovered over the complex, as agreed, and then began a slow descent through the smoking hole in the roof of the front building.

They were fifteen feet above the floor when the Gizmo hit them with the vertigo gun. Their concentration disrupted, they tumbled to the ground, the Lantern’s platform dissolving into melting green shards. Gizmo kept his vertigo gun, hidden inside a Barbie doll, trained on them, and as the JLA members writhed and vomited the other Fatal Five members emerged from hiding and stood over the agonized heroes, sneering and laughing.

“Duh, they’re not so tough now, are they, Selinda?” Mammoth began kicking the heroes, making sure not to hit them so hard that they flew out of range of Gizmo’s gun.

Selinda began changing the soles of the heroes’ shoes to phosphorous, enjoying the way they burned the heroes’ feet. Her smirk turned feral, and, not noticing, she began growling with savage pleasure.

Jinx, hands on hips, looked down at Wonder Woman and licked her lips. “She’s...attractive. I imagine she’d be fun if she were made...amenable.” She began flexing her fingers, readying herself for the spell that had worked so well on Selinda.

Dr. Light looked at the other heroes nervously and then incredulously. “What are you doing? Kill them!”

Mikron said, “Nah. C’mon, Arthur, they’re helpless. Let’s have a little fun with them first. A little payback wouldn’t be so out of order, would it?”

Dr. Light almost shrieked, “What, are you high? THIS IS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE! THEY ALWAYS GET OUT OF THESE THINGS!”

Jinx snorted. “Arthur, you’re being a coward again. You know we hate when that happens. Show some courage, man. We’re about to kill the Justice League. Enjoy yourself!”

Dr. Light looked at the other four, saw they were intent on continuing the torture, and made a quick decision. He muttered, “Screw this,” and activated his boot jets. In a few seconds he was gone.

As the now Fatal Four shook their heads at Light’s decision, the Martian Manhunter managed to gather his mind enough to begin changing shape, losing coherence as it became an amorphous blob. Mikron played the vertigo gun across the Manhunter’s body, but the Manhunter was transforming himself into a Martian amoeba that lacked a central nervous system and so was immune to vertigo. Within seconds the Manhunter had fully recovered his will, and he then shifted into immateriality and dropped through the floor.

Mikron had time to swear once before J’onzz’s fists took him from behind. With the awful dizziness no longer assailing them, the JLA began recovering. By the time they were standing, the Manhunter had knocked out the other three members of the Fatal Five.

As Dr. Fate magically healed the phosphorous burns on the feet of the JLA, Barry Allen said, “What was the point of all of this? Why kill Luthor? He’s one of them, even if the rest of the world doesn’t know it. What’s the point?”

The Manhunter, concentrating, broke through the psychic shields of the unconscious criminals and did a quick scan of their minds, trying hard to ignore the other information it brought him–this sort of violation being contemptible to his kind–and find the name and identity of the man or woman who’d hired them. After several seconds of searching he found it.

“They don’t know. It was an obvious intermediary, who they’d never seen before and didn’t care to question. They simply took the money and did as asked.”

The Batman scowled. Aquaman, gingerly rubbing a bruise on his ribs where Mammoth’s boot had struck, said, “This all seems...pointless to me.”

The Flash shrugged and grimaced and wished Dr. Fate would hurry up and finish his healing spell.

In a small but well-appointed apartment in downtown Gotham Lex Luthor looked at the reports from Metropolis General Hospital and sighed to himself, greatly disappointed. It had all seemed so simple and easy when he’d first thought of it. Any significant action by criminal metahumans in Metropolis would inevitably attract Superman’s attention. Therefore it stood to reason that they could be used as a trap; since Superman’s presence was assured, all that remained was to choose the right metahumans, and to make sure that they were capable of killing Superman. There were many who might do that, but the Fatal Five were the most likely to actually do so, based on the gap between their potential and their past  performance. All it took was some sound advice to Shimmer and Gizmo, delivered via a hireling several steps removed from Luthor.

And yet even that hadn’t worked. Somehow...somehow Superman had been healed, and would be more-or-less back to normal the following day. Luthor shook his head and reminded himself that other metahumans were, finally, just not reliable. Luthor decided to stick, in the future, with those tools he knew, and began drawing up plans for an earthquake machine...