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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 21:49:02 GMT -5
 Deus Ex Machina # 3 Issue 3: On the Frontlines Story and Art by Chaltab
Edited by Jay McIntyre |
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 21:52:31 GMT -5
Oa
The Center of the Universe
“Lethal force is authorized,” intoned the stern, level voice of one of the female Guardians of the Universe “I repeat, lethal force is authorized.”
The voice echoed throughout the corridors of the Green Lantern concourse on Oa, speakers arranged so that every Lantern still on the planet heard it. The message also came through the rings of Lanterns already in the field. Miles above the surface, a red-skinned figure clad in green and black looked at the new Lanterns in her charge
“Great gods! You hear that?” shouted Katma Tui. She was a fierce Korugan, who had vehemently imposed Sinestro's totalitarian ideology as a young woman. Once again she found herself on the opposite side of a war against the would-be despot. “They've altered the rules. What’s the universe coming to?”
One of the Lantern recruits spoke up with an old adage about times and measures being desperate. Katma slowly nodded, green fire flaring around the ring on her right hand. She turned to the thinning atmosphere above and flew upwards, telepathically urging her men to follow.
“For Oa!” one of them shouted.
“For Oa!” the others echoed. Katma Tui could not help but smirk, proud of her hand in training the young Lanterns. Proud of the courage that made the Green Lanterns what they were.
The atmosphere ended and the Lanterns exploded into empty space, and into the middle of a chaotic brawl, Sinestro Corps members and other Lanterns blasting each other. Yellow and Green light streaked back and forth across Katma's field of vision, and she swallowed her innate sense of self-preservation and lashed out at the nearest Sinestro Corp member. The others behind her attacked as well, making good use of the fact that most of Sinestro's corps had little training.
The creature in front of her, a green scaly monster with sharp teeth and three eyes, roared something unintelligible and lashed out with yellow power. Katma blocked it with her own ring-shield, bending her elbow to parry the attack. The alien was either unintelligent or incredibly unskilled in the use of his ring, because he let the inertia of the parry carry him forward slightly instead of using the ring's power to steady himself.
Katma bent her elbow and stabbed with a blade that formed from its point, piercing deep into the alien's gut. She grimaced, a strange sense of revulsion combined with satisfaction welling up in her stomach. The alien's three eyes went dull, even as green blood leaked from the wound and froze in the vacuum of space.
Katma's head seemed to spin slightly, and she suddenly knew what it felt like to use the power of the ring to kill someone. She turned her attention to a fierce battle between John Stewart and Sinestro, several hundred meters away. She was not the first Korugan to possess such knowledge, she thought grimly.
But she would do her best to make sure she was the last.
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 21:55:18 GMT -5
Wonder Woman's ax came down onto an OMAC, the god-forged metals slicing through the magic shielding around the machines and severing the wires that made up their innards. Hyperion had stopped spewing OMACs into the air and now loomed above Boston as if waiting for something.
Diana hovered above the battle field, waiting for more OMACs to come to her before deftly delivering a series of death blows. Great Hera, she thought. What has possessed the Titans to unleash these automatons across Earth?
The Justice League Watchtower satellite was now coordinating a global effort to repel the attack, but so far the nature and meaning had gone unexplained. Diana and others had identified the attackers as the Titans of Greek lore, but the question on everyone's mind, if not on their lips, remained why?
Something deep and primal within Diana feared that she would not like the answer. Her experience had taught her to never like the answer.
Her Justice League communicator buzzed, but when she answered it, it was not a fellow member of the League whose voice rang out of the other end.
“Wonder Woman, it's Wonder Girl.”
“Cassie!” Diana nearly spat the name as her ax severed another OMAC's head. Her shield blocked a flurry of Laser blasts from two more. “This is a secure frequency! How did you contact me on this channel?”
“Gear can work wonders given enough time,” said Wonder Girl. “Listen, I've got several members of the Titans and JLU up here. We're going to try and break inside Hyperion and shut him down from the inside out.”
Diana grimaced. She could scarcely admit to herself that the being—who she instinctively knew to be the Titan Hyperion—was a machine. “Be careful,” Diana said. “Who do you have?”
“Stargirl, Static, Beast Boy, and the new Teen Titan, Ragnarök.” Wonder Girl paused a minute, and Diana started to form her objections on her throat. She never got to voice them.
“Look,” said Cassie. “I know it's not a power house team, but it's the best I have available at the moment. Robin and I know what we're doing, even if we don't see eye to eye.”
Diana finished off the nearest OMACs. “Very well,” Diana said. “May Athena protect you.”
“You too,” Cassie said softly. “Wonder Girl out.”
Diana turned, lowering her ax and buckler. The sun and the heat that radiated off Hyperion beat down on her, and though her skin would not burn like a mortal’s, she was drenched with perspiration. She wiped her forehead dry, but as her ax and silver bracelet flashed across her vision, she saw in them the reflection of a figure behind her.
Diana spun around to see a man behind her, twelve feet tall and clad in armor. His helmet and the mighty hammer in his hand gave his identity away.
“Thor,” Diana whispered. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Yggdrasil must be purged,” Thor said. “The branches that bear toxic fruit must be pruned.”
The Norse god raised the mighty Mjolnir and Diana found herself once again battling a god.
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 21:59:16 GMT -5
High on the command deck of the Watchtower, Mr. Terrific watched as reports poured in from across the globe—superheroic agents on every continent were reporting the same thing—Zeus in New York City, Shiva in Bangladesh, Anubis in Cairo, Marduk in Baghdad.
The irony did not escape Mr. Terrific, an atheist, when he opened a channel to all agents and spoke. “Ladies and Gentlemen, be on your guard. The gods are attacking. I repeat, the gods are attacking.”
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:08:52 GMT -5
Wonder Girl was sick of fighting OMACs by the time she and her party reached the shields of Hyperion, and the blinding light didn’t help matters any. She pulled her goggles down over her eyes, the phototropic lenses darkening. Behind her, Static hovered on his metal disk and a little green humming bird hovered by his head. Stargirl and her cosmic staff carried Ragnarök.
“What’s the frequency of the shield?” asked Wonder Girl, hoping the force field operated on the same principles that both Robin and Static’s partner Gear had assumed it would.
Ragnarök reached up and tapped twice on the side of his black-and-green visor. “335 Megahertz.”
Wonder Girl nodded. “Stargirl, Static, think you can punch a hole?”
Static and Stargirl chirped affirmatives and then unleashed energy blasts, Static his electricity and Stargirl an attack from the cosmic staff. The blasts tore into the shield, punching a hole in it the size of a minivan. Cassie and Stargirl immediately flew through the breach, and the green humming bird morphed into a gnat and zipped through the hole as it collapsed.
Immediately as the hole in the force field closed, the electric glow around Static’s disk vanished, and he flipped it up with his feet, catching it even as the gnat transformed into a Pterodactyl and caught him.
“Guess Richie was right about the force field blocking the planet's electromagnetic field,” Static said.
All the teens shielded their eyes as they drew closer to the glowing Titan of Myth, following close behind the demi-goddess Wonder Girl. She slammed into the side of Hyperion, punching a hole in his metallic exterior, a hole which the others quickly slipped through; the pterodactyl shifted into the humanoid form of Beast Boy as it entered the innards of the Titan. They found themselves inside some sort of metal corridor that reminded Cassie of the inside of a starship, like the kind you would see in a low-budget sci-fi production. Amber metal tubes lined the halls and bulkheads separated the corridor into segments every five yards.
“I’m surprised there aren’t any other defenses,” Ragnarök said, standing up. Wonder Girl glared at him. He was a member of the Teen Titans from Jump City, a new guy. Apparently he was from a parallel universe where all the Titans had been killed except for himself and Beast Boy; he had no natural or magical powers, but instead proved Arthur C. Clarke correct in his assertion that sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic. The green and blue alien armor Ragnarök wore was powered by an artifact that gave the teen geokinetic powers. Though those abilities were relatively limited compared to more powerful geokinetics like Terra. His pretentious sounding name came from a video game attack he’d ripped off, and had nothing to do with his actual power level.
Ragnarök's real tactical worth, according to Robin, was the armor itself—and the threat-assessment visor that came strapped to his head.
“Dude, never say you expected more defenses!” Beast Boy said. “You’re going to make this thing conjure up more defenses!”
Wonder Girl started to dismiss Beast Boy’s worry as the stuff of horror movie fantasy, when a laser blast slammed into the side of her head. Pain shot through her skull, even as the rest of the team jumped between her and the attacker. As soon as she could see clearly, Cassie looked up to see Stargirl and Static dismantle an OMAC.
“Come on,” she said, cupping the burn on the side of her head with her hand. “We’re invaders here and these OMACs are the antibodies. Let’s see if we can’t find the heart or the brain of this thing and shut it down.”
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:11:01 GMT -5
El Paso, Texas
Jaime's fingers tapped nervously on the outside of his cell phone as he paced back and forth in his back yard.
“She didn't say where,” he said into the receiver.
“How are we supposed to find this mystery woman if we don't know where to look?”
“I don't know.” Jaime grimaced, his chest and gut tight with anxiety. “I was hoping you'd help. This sort of magical thingy is your field.”
“Magical thingies can come in many shapes and sizes. There are magical systems as small as an atom and magical systems that encompass the entire universe. I'm just one girl, Jaime. This sounds like Dr. Fate's territory.”
Jaime shrugged, aware of the fact that the person with whom he was speaking could not actually see the shrug. “Well she must have chosen me for a reason, right?”
An exasperated sigh came from the speaker.“Lemme see what I can find out.”
Jaime nodded and heard the phone on the other end go dead. He closed his own and turned around to take a seat—and found himself staring directly into the eyes of a beautiful young woman.
“AUGH!” Jaime's heart raced. “Don't do that, Traci!”
The gorgeous Asian sorceress Traci 13 stood in a long white jersey with a black 13 emblazoned on the chest; she held a magic staff in her left hand, and a small iguana sat on her left shoulder. Also, she had not been there a second earlier.
“Do what?” she chirped.
“No teleporting into my personal space, please.”
She just gave him a wry smile and did not apologize. She had Jaime wrapped tightly enough around her finger that she didn't have to. “You're going to help me look through my magic books to figure out who these so-called personifications of Delirium and Death are.”
Traci waved a hand and multiple volumes of arcane tomes appeared in the air and hovered over to the wooden picnic table in the Reyes' back yard. Jaime groaned inwardly and sat down, flipping open one of the ancient grimoires and helping his magically-inclined novia work.
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:11:49 GMT -5
Lasers lanced down the rust-colored corridor and the teen heroes hit the wall. Hyperion's winding innards were full of the glowing blue OMACs, and this time it was Stargirl and Beast Boy who reacted first; the former blasted away two OMACs with her cosmic staff while Beast Boy darted down the corridor as a rat, then transformed into a kangaroo, leaping up and leaning back on his tail before delivering a powerful kick with both legs. The OMAC slammed into the wall, and before it could recover, it was speared through the red eye on its chest with the horn of a green rhinoceros.
At the end of the present corridor, the path branched off to the left and right, the left winding further through the innards of the Titan and the right corridor ending abruptly at a glowing amber door, hexagonal in shape. Wonder Girl used her godlike strength to smash into the door until it bent and broke open, then tossed the twisted remains of the warm magic-forged metal into the room beyond.
The team climbed through the hole into a large room, circular and ringed around a large construct in the middle that hanged down from the ceiling. Some sort of machine generated a force field in which glowing blue globules hovered, the apparatus extending from the height of the tall room all the way down to a few feet above the floor. On the far end of the room, a computer terminal sat, the screen blank.
“I think this is important,” Ragnarök said, looking around. “Whatever those blue-things are, they're loaded with magic energy.”
Beast Boy held his green hand up to the force field around the globes. “And heat,” he said.
“This isn't the heart, though,” Ragnarök said.
“What is it?”
“I don't know, but it isn't generating enough power to keep this thing airborne. It's being piped in from somewhere else, through the machine on the ceiling.”
Wonder Girl looked up at the apparatus, noticing how the walls of the room went from amber to gold the higher they got. “See if you can get anything out of that terminal,” she ordered.
Ragnarök and Static went to work at the terminal. The control keys were labeled, but not in English. Ragnarök tapped his visor. “Huh, that's weird,” he said. “This is written in Interlac, but the dialect is different than what I'm used to. It must be some primitive form of the language.”
“That would make sense,” Cassie said. “The Titans are ancient. But you can read it, right.”
“Hrm...” Ragnarok tapped the controls some more. “Well that's disturbing. We basically seem to be in a giant mechanical reproductive organ.”
“Someone designed these things a bit too literally,” Static said. “I'm surprised we haven't encountered any literal stomach or intestines.”
Cassie winced. She was the daughter of Zeus—sister to Wonder Woman. The lore of ancient Greece had changed, definite, initiated her life. And now it seemed that the very Titans, the progenitors of her gods, were themselves constructs of mortal hands. And she had spent her first fourteen years oblivious to the impact of the Greek gods on her life.
How would Diana react?
She was snapped out of her pondering by Stargirl, who tapped on her shoulder. “Guys, I think I know who built this thing,” she said, pointing with her cosmic staff.
The team looked up to the top of the machine; from this side, one of the panels had a logo emblazoned on it in red and black and white; two parallelograms arranged, one above the other with their corner's touching, on a white circle in a field of red.
The emblem of Vandal Savage.
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:15:22 GMT -5
The second day of the Titans' attack began with millions of refugees fleeing the cities under assault, out in to the country. OMACs followed faster than the heroes could keep up, disabling cars and forcing pedestrians to flee on foot. Meanwhile, Wayne Tower collapsed when the Titan Menoetius sent a massive energy bolt from its spear, devastating a huge portion of downtown Gotham. All across America, similar devastation wracked the cities.
All across the world, the Titans continued to attack.
Batman himself, exhausted from fighting, left Gotham in charge of the Outsiders while he paid a visit to a prison in Prague. The dark halls had been abandoned by most of the guards, expecting the OMACs, the gods, or the Titans themselves to set their sights on their city.
“Vandal Savage,” the Dark Knight growled from the shadows.
The immortal approached the bars of his cell, his narrow eyes seeming to glow in the darkness of his cell.
“Batman,” said the immortal. “What is the occasion for this visit?”
“Cut the crap,” Batman hissed. “Wonder Girl broke into Hyperion yesterday; they found your emblem inside the Titans of Myth. This is your handiwork.”
“But of course.” Savage smiled wickedly. “The Titans. My most magnificent achievement.”
“How,” demanded Batman. “Why? What do you gain from destroying the world you've been trying to rule for eons? Why only now?”
“You seem to have made some erroneous assumptions,” Savage said. “This attack is not my doing. To be truthful, I have no idea who is responsible for the current assault.”
“But your mark—”
“My mark has been on the Titans for ten thousand years, Dark Knight. Allow me to tell you a story. The beginning of this story is not in the present, or even the past, but the future. The 853rd century, to be exact.”
Batman's eyes narrowed.
Savage continued. “My future self manipulated and murdered his way to the leadership of a planet, and led the people of that planet on an incredible construction project. The Titans of Myth, combining the height of technology with the most powerful sorcery money could by. The ultimate machines—at least that was the plan.”
“You never finished them,” Batman realized aloud.
“My future self finished twenty-one before the Justice Legion descended on the planet. The Titans were sent back in time to ancient Earth to protect them, but we made it look as though they were destroyed so that the Justice Legion wouldn't pursue them.”
“There's more to the story.” Batman narrowed his eyes. “You must have lost control of them some time in the past. Otherwise why take over Germany, or try to take over Kasnia?”
“Indeed. It's a great tale that ended in a gotterdammerung worthy of an epic poem, though only hints of it ever made it into popular lore.” Savage stroked his beard. “The Titans gave birth to a race of gods, and through those gods I ruled the world. But they slowly developed something I did not intend—a will of their own. Gods and Titans took sides, and in the end, my side lost. The gods began accepting worship for their own sakes, and the Titans were put to rest.”
Batman leaned forward and raised his voice. “How do I stop them?” he demanded.
“What makes you think I'd be willing to tell you?”
“If you don't, there's a good chance you'll be destroyed along with the rest of this world. Your immortality has kept you alive a long time, Savage. But would it hold up to the destruction of your body?”
“Very well,” Savage said. “You need the Gorgon's head.”
“Medusa?” Batman didn't think it sounded right. According to Wonder Woman, Medusa was a living demon, imprisoned for thousands of years in Tartarus. It didn't sound like a weapon.
“No, not her. The legends eventually conflated them, but the Gorgon's Head that put down the Titan Atlas and eventually all the others was a weapon forged by the greatest craftsmen from among the gods, designed to control the Titans” Savage turned and looked at the wall of his cell. “But it was designed for a god to use, and the fact that the world still persists reveals a small blessing. Whoever has the Gorgon's Head is very much human, and is unable to fully utilize its power. The strain on their mind to do what they've managed to do so far must be incredible.”
Expecting a reaction from the Dark Knight, Savage turned back in his direction—
To find that he was already gone.
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:17:04 GMT -5
“We need your help,” said Blue Beetle.
Before him stood the teen superhero Kid Devil, former sidekick to Blue Devil. Behind him stood Traci 13 as well as two others that Jaime had recruited—Anita Fite, the Jamaican powerhouse also known as Empress, and a patchwork of human parts calling himself Young Frankenstein.
“Whoa, dude, I fight crime,” said Kid Devil. “But this saving the world stuff is way out of my league. I mean I'm the ex-sidekick to Blue Devil. That's not a great track record.”
“Don't be a chicken!” Traci said, tapping the demon-boy on the head with her staff. “We need you. Anyone with the ability to capture one of the Endless is crazy powerful, and we'll need someone who can take a beating like you.”
“Yeah, so I'm just cannon fodder? And what's an Endless?”
Traci summoned one of her magic books and hovered it over in front of Kid Devil's face. “From what we've been able to find out, the Endless are seven constants of the universe, powers that have existed for billions of years and will continue to exist until the end of time—personifications of universal truths: Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Destruction.”
“And we're rescuing—Death?” Kid Devil blinked. “As in the Grim Reaper himself?”
“Herself,” Blue Beetle corrected. “At least all the old texts referred to her as 'Grandmother Death'.”
“She doesn't sound so grim, mon,” Empress interjected. “Though a reaper she is.”
Kid Devil grimaced, staring at his bare, clawed feet and flicking his pointed tail around. Every instinct in his head was telling him to run away, not to get involved. He'd get himself killed.
But something deeper, something in his gut, told him to go with them. That the fate of the universe depended on it.
And Eddie Bloomberg wasn't about to argue with the fate of the universe.
“Fine. I'll go. Do we know where it.. she... is being held?”
Blue Beetle nodded. “We have a way to find her. Something as big as one of the Endless being captured doesn't happen in a vacuum. The fact that people are still dying means she must have been replaced, and Traci said she can track the point where the replacement started taking souls from the world.”
Traci held up her magic rod. “Stand back, everyone.”
She closed her eyes. “REPERIO LETUM!”
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:18:23 GMT -5
“No luck,” Superman's voice crackled over the Batcomputer speakers. “The tactic that Wonder Girl's team used to punch through Hyperion's shields in Boston is no longer working. The Titans have started fluctuating the frequencies of their shields so fast we can't lock on and get a match. We even tried doing a spectrum-shifting shot from the Watchtower canon; we punched a hole in Rhea, but now they're using multiple layers of energy shielding.”
“Understood,” Batman said. He had already related everything he had learned from Vandal Savage to Superman, though they both agreed that it was best not to tell Diana yet. She was on edge enough, having had to evacuate the city she had adopted so recently. More than half of Boston was in ruins, and other cities where the Titans had attacked weren't fairing any better.
Batman switched the computer off and prepared to head out in the Batwing and do what he could to protect refugees from the OMACs.
Then he sensed someone, an imperceptible-to-most shift in the lighting of the room. He glanced over, expecting to see Alfred, but instead found himself staring into a beautiful and familiar face.
“Talia!” Batman walked towards her, the daughter of his most powerful enemy. “What are—”
“I've come to help,” she said; the gravity of her voice gave Bruce pause. “I've come to tell you who is behind all this.”
And suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle clicked in Bruce's mind. The focus on cars and industry—the tendency of the OMACs to kill only those who attacked them and leave innocents unharmed. This wasn't a crusade against the people of Earth, but a crusade for the Earth itself.
“Ra's,” Batman growled.
“Indeed, my Beloved.”
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Post by arcalian on Mar 24, 2009 22:18:58 GMT -5
Chains of yellow energy wrapped around the arms and necks of the Guardians of the universe as they were slowly marched into a row of Science Cells. There they would await their tribunal—and their executions for crimes against the universe.
Sinestro smiled grimly, lifting the prone form of John Stewart with the power of his ring.
“Oa has fallen. The Lanterns are defeated, and the Guardians imprisoned. What have you to say, John Stewart?”
“Kiss my—”
Sinestro's fist lashed out and struck John in the face, rattling the Lantern and breaking his train of thought.
“Defiant to the last,” Sinestro said. “Perhaps I'll break you yet. You see, I've seen secrets of the universe that most beings can barely begin to comprehend, and I've seen one that puzzles me. The Earth—your home planet. It's at the center of the Multiverse. And I want to know why.”
“You're crazy,” John said. “Earth is too well defended even for your corps. Half of your men died fighting the Lanterns.”
“And half of your Lanterns died fighting my men,” Sinestro spat. “But rest assured Earth will fall. And I will find out its secrets. Why that insignificant speck of a planet is at the center of creation. Even if I have to lose a thousand more to find out.”
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