Issue 5: "Martian Manhunter"

Last night I dreamt again of the red planet, my lost homeworld…

The people of my adopted world long ago named it Mars, the Bringer of War, and perhaps they were not far from the truth; much of the history of my planet is strife and conflict. Green Martians and Pale Martians and Red Martians… for millennia we fought to direct the destiny of our evolution, until at last we had decided that if we were to survive at all we had to make peace and live together.

And what we achieved together…! Our cities were monuments to our gods, and every bit as much expressions of grace and fluidity as the shapes we assumed to explore the truth and beauty of our souls… Before history was reckoned as a thing that could be recorded on Earth, our civilization teetered on the pinnacle of transcendence. It was a time of tranquility and lasting peace, and never again would the universe see such a flowering of science and art and beauty.

Then came H’ronmeer’s Curse.

It has been many long years since I dreamed of the Burning.

I was a Manhunter, one of those chosen to guard and protect my people from the renegade few who still rebelled against society. For even in utopia, there are the wicked. And I brought the wicked to justice. Among the most wicked was a man named Ma’alefa’ak, and he was the son of my mother--- I shall never call him brother. He was my twin, but as different from me as night is to day, or as white is to green. Where I was content to explore the subtle and multi-faceted shades of perfect intimacy with my mate M’yri’ah and my daughter K’hym and to protect the peace and serenity of my people, Malefic, as he shall ever be known afterwards, plumbed the darkest arcane secrets of a bloody past best left forgotten.

The greatest foe and fear to a Martian is fire. It strikes terror into the hearts of my people, and robs us of the natural gifts we are born with. In ancient times, the most terrible god was H’ronmeer, a dark and pitiless deity whom we all thought abandoned. Death and chaos were in his hands as he was a god of fire, and no true Martian worshipped fire… But in the end, H’ronmeer found one last disciple.

It was a telepathic plague that Malefic unleashed upon our people. It spread from person to person and city to city, striking at us through our most profound and elementary function: the sharing of our minds. As a Manhunter, I had learned to shield my mind from the thoughts and feelings of the wicked, as had some few others, but I could not save my wife and child. As our city smoldered around us, and our little girl caught flame in the sanctity of our own home, I begged M’yri’ah not to open her mind to the suffering of our little one, but she could not bear it. She ignited before my eyes, the flames driving me back.

This is the image I see most often in my dreams. The horror of the death of my family has been forever burnt upon my mind’s eye.

As H’ronmeer’s Curse raged across the surface of my world, snuffing out the brightest civilization in the universe, I had but one thought: destroy Malefic.

I found him atop the peak Earthlings call Olympus Mons, and our battle was titanic. Our world died all around us as we raged in combat. For days, weeks. I do not know. I was mad with grief. In the end, I proved the stronger. I threw him down from the mountain, but even in my grief and rage I remembered my oath never to take a life. I would not betray myself and all that my people had stood for by killing Malefic, for that, too, would be his victory. Instead, I imprisoned him within the mountain for all time, and left him, wailing and alone.

For weeks , months, years after, I wandered the burnt and ashen landscape of my homeworld, searching for survivors. But it was the same everywhere I went. Those the Burning had not taken had ended their existence out of grief. Our civilization had been wiped out.

Mars was dead.

I don’t know how long I roamed the wastes, the air filled with ashes, the red sands creeping over to cover the cities. My people are long-lived if they but have the will to live… Only my madness kept me from self-immolation.

That’s when Dr. Erdel’s machine took me.

It felt like my every atom was yanked and ripped away separately. I screamed in pain--- and when next I could think coherently, the damage had already been done. I had been teleported across space and time, to a laboratory on Earth. I can only imagine the horror Dr. Saul Erdel must have felt looking upon me for the first and last time, writhing there on the transport platform. It is not easy for a Martian to maintain their shape in extremis, so I cannot be certain what form I took before the man who had brought me to Earth, nor why he had done it in the first place. For the old man’s heart could not take the strain of what he had just witnessed. He was dead before I regained my senses.

Sometimes, he is in my dreams, too. I have always blamed myself for his death.

I closed the office door behind me, ignoring Audrey’s look of distaste, and turned back to Justine. She was perched on the edge of my desk, one long leg crossed over the other, and staring at me as if I were a morsel to be devoured.

“How can I help you, then?” I asked, immune to her obvious wiles. I did my best to appear distant in all my dealings with humans, lest the unchecked emotions that raged in their minds overwhelm me. I opened myself a little to this Justine--- and found myself staggering backward into the closed door! Her thoughts were all of flames and ashes and brimstone…

“I want you to help me find a missing person, Mr. J’onzz.”

Again the subtle but significant inflection in the way she pronounced my name. My Martian name…

I took a moment to regain my composure, and face her with a stony expression. I had chosen a plain, non-descript form as a human, of indeterminate age with a slightly dispassionate, careworn face. I have been told that my visage closely resembles the movie actor Humphrey Bogart, and I have wondered if this was not perhaps, an accident. In my years on earth, I had become enthralled with motion pictures, and among my favorites were Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

“I’m afraid I am working on another case at the moment, and can’t spare the time---.”

“Oh, but this shouldn’t take too long.” Justine interjected, sliding off her perch. She strolled around the desk, trailing her fingers on the surface, the sound of her heels clacking loudly on the floor. “In fact, I’m relatively certain we can conclude our business tonight.” Her smile was girlish and impudent.

“Who is this person you’re looking for?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.

Justine halted her perambulation, pausing to pick up a paperweight in the shape of a globe. She examined it, as if testing it for something.

“A very unusual person, indeed.” She remarked, absorbed in her study of the wooden paperweight. “He wasn’t from around here. A bit green around the edges, if you catch my meaning. Disappeared about thirty years ago.”

That was enough for me. Whoever she was, she was a threat.

*Audrey, get out of here! Go now and leave the office.* For the first time, I sent a telepathic message to my secretary, hoping she would heed my warning.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” I demanded, letting my human disguise fall away. I stood revealed before her in the form I had taken as the Martian Manhunter, over seven feet tall, red eyes glowing and my cape billowing out around me dramatically.

She was decidedly unperturbed. Indeed, she seemed delighted.

“Why, I thought it was obvious, Mr. J’onzz,” She chuckled huskily, and in her hands, the paperweight burst into flame, instantly becoming a fireball. “I want you!”

She hurled the burning object at me, laughing. I was taken by surprise by the sudden instance of flames, frozen in place as it streaked towards me. It was at this moment that Audrey burst into my office, knocking me aside with the door, and out of harm’s way.

“Mr. Jones, what in the---.”

The fireball slammed into the doorframe ineffectually, but my secretary could not help but be taken aback by the sight before her. I was a stranger to her in this new form, but she would no doubt recognize the image of the long-ago superhero, the Martian Manhunter.

Before either of us could react, Justine snapped her fingers and her clothes went up in flames, burnt off a body now too hot to cover. Indeed, she seemed to become a creature of molten fire, a living human torch!

“You can call me Scorch, Mr. J’onzz.” She smirked. “I just wanted you to know who it is that kills you!”

She raised her arms and summoned a fireball into each hand.

I was seized by a momentary horror, by a vision of my beloved wife writhing in flames, of flames consuming my world, my history, my life. I was frozen to the spot, enthralled and terrified.

Then Audrey screamed. And I remembered I was a superhero.

Scorch’s fireballs sailed toward me--- and through me! I became intangible, allowing them to pass harmlessly through me. But they hit the wooden wall behind me, igniting it. The fear of fire is primal in my people, and psychically debilitating; I would not have use of my powers long in its presence, so if I did not act fast, I was doomed.

Unable to sustain the effort, I regained my physical form and rushed to my loyal secretary, who was still screaming in sheer panic.

*Do not fear, Ms. Carroll. I have you.* I spoke again to her mind, though this seemed to have the opposite effect of calming her. I wrapped her up in my arms and crashed through the wall of my office into the waiting room, stumbling like a drunken man in the wake of the fiery assault. I had to put enough distance between myself and the fire, or I would become easy prey. Already it was all I could do to maintain coherent thought.

“Come, back, Mr. J’onzz!” Scorch stepped through the hole in the wall I had just made, the heat of her body causing the wall to catch fire. “We’ve hardly had time to play!”

*Hang on!* I sent to Audrey, clutching her more tightly to me. Summoning all the reserves of mental fortitude I still possessed, and without looking back, I leapt through the open window and into the night!

The offices of John Jones Investigations were on the ninth floor of the building, so it was a long way down. Luckily. Halfway to the ground, and with Audrey’s renewed screams ringing in my ears, I found myself far enough away from the fire to regain my ability to fly. I pulled us out of the fall and climbed back into the sky, sailing gracefully over the roof-tops of sleepy downtown Middleton.

I spent the rest of the night delivering Scorch to the proper authorities (a local branch of S.T.A.R. Labs), and making sure that all the damage she had caused was under control. I returned to the block where my offices had been, in the form of John Jones, and joined the small crowd gathered to watch the firemen dig through the extinguished wreck.

Audrey Carroll was there, sitting on the back of an ambulance. She all but flinched as I approached her.

“We lost everything.” She announced. “It all went up in the fire.”

“We have good insurance.” I attempted to console her, smiling gently. “We’ll reopen.”

Audrey nodded, but still regarded me as if seeing me in an entirely new light. Which, I suppose, she was.

“Yes, Mr. Jones. Of course.” She chewed on her lower lip, and said after a moment: “What did she want? That awful woman…?”

“She wanted me.” I replied. But that was the wrong question. The question was why. Why did she come after me? And how did she know about my life and family on Mars…?

Not even Scorch herself knew. Her conscious mind seemed to have conveniently forgotten those vital details…

Dr. Erdel’s machine had reached through not only space, but time as well, to bring me to Earth. To the best of my calculations, Martian civilization died when the Mesopotamians built their first ziggurat to the sky god Marduk. All that I find on my homeworld is sand and rock. The proud accomplishments of my people turned to dust long ago…

The exploration of Mars by the people of Earth has hardly scratched the surface. They see what the want to see, convinced that they are the only bastion of sentience in the solar system. One day, when they come here, they may unearth the wonders that brightened the cosmos so long ago…

I stand on the blasted waste, my cape snapping in the howling wind. Everything is tinged a pale red, though this was not always so. The ashes of my civilization lay all around me, for those with the eyes to see it.

Until now, I had never returned to Mars. I knew there was nothing left for me here.

But I was wrong. There was one thing. At long last we shall have a reckoning! Malefic had crowed jubilantly. Unfinished business.

I stood at the foot of Ma’hav’alek, what the people of earth called Olympus Mons, the most sacred and the most dreaded place in Martian history. This vast, sprawling mountain is three times the height of the tallest mountain on Earth and hundreds of miles wide at its base. In ancient times, my people thought it to be the home of our gods, as it had once spewed fire and magma from its cone. We had reverently explored its caverns, erecting a temple to H’ronmeer in its depths, offering sweet smelling sacrifices to propitiate the capricious diety. But even in my day, the temple had long been abandon, as had the worship of H’ronmeer, god of fire and death, and the volcano had long been cold and inactive.

It was here that I had pursued Malefic. It was in the Temple of H’ronmeer that I had imprisoned him.

It was here, I was sure, that he waited for me.

I became intangible and delved into the mountainside, making my way towards the lost temple.

*Yes, J’onn! I sense your coming… Welcome home!*

*This ends today, Malefic.*

*About that, at least, you are right, my brother!*

I found the enormous, natural cavern out of which was carved the colossal Temple of H’ronmeer, and gently floated into its precincts. I ignored the hideous images engraved in the stone, and the stained altars. I lamented that in their past, my people were as ignorant and superstitious as any culture on Earth…

At last I found the heavy inerton chains I had bound Malefic in. The special radioactive properties of the metal make it impossible for a Martian to shapeshift or become intangible. Indeed, inerton was the strongest metal in the universe, and sapped the strength and will of any organic being. The chains were empty and abandoned on the ground. It must have taken a fearsome effort for Malefic to throw them off.

“A thousand years, in fact.” Came a voice as dry as tinder.

I scanned my surroundings and followed the sound of the voice. He was there, by the mammoth statue of the dark god he worshipped, stepping out of the shadows.

“A thousand years of mind-numbing effort. Of solitude. Of pain.”

He came towards me, and his form was misshapen and twisted. It had been so long since he had seen another living being that he no longer had a frame of reference with which to mold his shape. He was all shambling spikes, claws and jaws, dragging long talons on the ground.

I recoiled in disgust.

*You chose your fate, Malefic. You were the instrument of annihilation for our race. How did you think this would end?*

The creature who had once been my brother loped closer to me, snarling and dripping hot, sizzling drool from his jagged mouth.

*I merely worked the will of H’ronmeer.* He hissed. *He whispered to me his plan for the universe. He whispers it to me still. What began in flame, shall end in flame!*

He was mad, that much was clear. But Malefic was a powerful telepath; perhaps the most powerful that had ever lived on Mars. He had fashioned the Burning out of pure malice and madness. The last time, in my grief, I had matched him madness for madness, but I am not the same person now; I mourn my loss, but I can cherish the memories--- allow them to give me strength. I only stood a chance against him if I closed off my mind to him, refused him access.

*You speak of the V’ora’vash, the Martian Apocalypse.*

*The Endless Burning!* He crowed. *All the universe aflame! It comes, J’onn! And I am the harbinger of that doom!*

And with that, he launched himself through the air at me.

I rose to meet him, shifting shape.