miss maggie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bossymarmalade) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thejusticelounge2013-02-06 09:02 am
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2013-02-06 09:02 am
the dive
J’onn arrived at the location provided by Oliver a little early. He was in one of his most familiar human forms so as not to draw unwanted attention from the natives. J’onn chose a table in the back. The place was not very crowded but the table he picked was out of way of any traffic flow just in case.
He ordered a shot. When the waitress was walking his way with the whiskey on her tray, she screamed and dropped it, shattering the whiskey glass and spilling the drink on the floor. ”Spiders!” she shrieked as she ran back towards the bar, franticly brushing imaginary arachnids off her arms. ”Spiders!”
J’onn’s smirk was clearly visible in the soft light of the bar as he waited for the Archer to arrive.
The Centrel City Bar (so named to distinguish it from the score of other similarly-named bars in the city) had changed since the last time Ollie’d been there. In addition to the low-light types drowning in beer and the local liquor called Central Strip, there was a smattering of young hipsters filling up on caipirinhas and irony.
Despite his nondescript appearance, J’onn was easy to spot, chilling at the back as the waitress had some sort of wobbly and dashed back to the bar. Sparing her a perplexed glance, Ollie slid into the seat across from his old colleague, his expression deepening as he took in the uncharacteristic smirk.
“Heyyyy,” he said, slinging his bow case over the back of his chair. “Should we get a round of shots? Looks like yours is rolling across the floor.”
“Yesss” J’onn said, looking up at Oliver. ”And I’ll even let you pay.”
The Martian watched his colleague head to the bar and place a new order. A quick scan of the patrons’ minds around the bar told him that his nondescript appearance had garnered no recognition. And no one was currently looking his way. So before Oliver returned from placing his order, J’onn changed his appearance.
His skin lightened, his hair grew and turned blonde. He took on a shapely, yet smaller figure. To anyone who knew her, J’onn looked every bit the part of Dinah Lance in civilian clothes.
“Hello Ollie” J’onn cooed as the Archer returned. ”Thanks for the drink big boy. Have you missed me?”
It was only Ollie’s extraordinarily good reflexes that kept him from dropping the shots and beers that he had his fingers wrapped around; as it was, he plonked them onto the table so ungracefully that they slopped over. “Fucking hell,” Ollie grunted, sitting back down and glancing around the bar before leaning in. “What in god’s name d’you think you’re *doing*?!”
Christ, he even *smelled* like Dinah, jasmine and leather.
Taking a deep breath, Ollie spread his hands out over the table to calm himself, then picked up a shot glass and knocked the booze back. “I … take it whatever happened in the Phantom Zone’s got you rattled. There’s no shame in that, J’onn. We all go a little lulu after big stress.”
“Lulu?” J’onn purred. ”Why Ollie, I have not felt this good in… Oliver?” J’onn’s face took on an expression of concern that quickly dissipated. ”I haven’t felt this good in ages.”
He took a shot glass in his hand, changing his appearance again. Starting with the hand that took the shot glass and rippling up through his body, J’onn now looked like Sandra Hawke - “Moonday”. J’onn downed the liquor and wiped his mouth. ”Thanks babe. I needed that…”
Ollie palmed his JLA alert in his jacket pocket. He’d had his suspicions the first time he’d talked to J’onn, that one solitary, confused “Oliver?” in the middle of the conversation, and here it happened again just before —
“Right,” Ollie said, mouth set in a firm line as he stared at this facsimile of Connor’s mother across the table. “There’s definitely something going on with you, and better out than in. You’re coming up to the Tower with me, J’onn ol’ pal, right now before you start scrolling through my entire dating history.”
He got up and came around to grab hold of J’onn’s arm, not wanting to have to break out his bow in case it occurred to J’onn that he didn’t want to go up to the Tower. One lone non-meta bowman dealing with a shape-shifting laser-eyebeam telepathic Martian who was cuckoo for cocoa puffs at the moment? Wouldn’t be pretty.
J’onn’s eyes flashed red as Oliver approached. He changed again. The form of Veronica Dale looked up at Green Arrow’s eyes. ”Going?” J’onn asked, mockingly. ”No, I do not think I will be going anywhere with you.”
The form of Hyrax stood and shouted to the bar patrons, “Anyone in here after the next ten seconds gets to know what it feels like to burn alive!” J’onn’s eye laser beams shot across the room and shattered a row of mugs behind the bar. ”GO!” he yelled as the regulars and hipsters alike started scrambling for the door.
J’onn grew taller and larger, taking on the familiar form of the Martian Manhunter. He turned to Oliver. ”Now where were we sweetness? You were thinking I was cuckoo for cocoa puffs?” His arm grew long and shot across the bar, grabbing Oliver’s bow case. ”And you thought to take me on with this?” J’onn asked as he pulled it close to him. ”I think you might… NO! Oliver, you must get ou… you might be the one who is cuckoo!” The Martian’s twisted, evil laugh filled the bar as the last of the patrons ran out of the door.
Mere seconds between Watchtower and the little establishment called The Centrel, innocent civilians already pouring out of it in droves, which definitely made Kyle’s job easier. He briefly took the time to note that if patrons had a chance to flee, then whoever - or whatever - J’onn was, had its sights set on Queen, and not anyone else. Interesting to note. But it didn’t shift Kyle’s focus.
Not after what happened to Zauriel.
/No. Not gonna think about that./
“All right all right, you’ve had your fun,” Kyle called out as he flew into the bar, green light bursting out from him in a wide arc, which spread out into a sphere as it reached J’onn and encased him. Kyle figured he’d use something like…something like lucite? No, carbonite. No…fire.
Green fire burst around J’onn and Kyle winced, only slightly, before he glanced down at Queen. “Are you okay?”
“WHAT THE HELL -” Was Ollie’s response, and he dived for his bow case, which Kyle had pried out of J’onn’s hand. Kyle had to give him credit for nocking it pretty darn fast, aiming multiple arrows towards the Martian.
“I hope that’s some anti-demon, anti-Martian arrows you got there, Queen,” Kyle said, trying hard to ignore J’onn’s agonizing screams. “Protect me? Because I need to take a trip.” He remembered how J’onn transported him into Wally’s mind when Wally was suffering that fever-coma and emulated it, easily. Like Aang the Avatar, Kyle’s spirit-mind alighted from his body and he saw himself floating, frozen and still. Below him, Queen was shouting something at someone; loud, rough barks that grated over the archer’s panic.
Kyle turned from the scene outside and went inside, straight into J’onn’s mind.
“I can do this,” he said to himself, surveying the unfamiliar map of the Martian’s mindscape. No not unfamiliar just…changed. ”I will do this. I know you’re still in here J’onn. And I know someone else is in here too. Bring it on, bozo.”
Okay so. So. So godlike powers didn’t really make him /sound/ more badass. Whatever, he was still muy chido.
The fire abated and the sphere opened, dropping J’onn to the floor. Kyle, in all his power and strength had taken the battle for the Martian Manhunter’s soul inside - to the mind scape. That as where one battle would be fought. But it was not the only battle…
J’onn stood up from the floor shaking like a dog throwing water off its coat. “B-b-b-b-braaaaaah! I sure do love a good roasting, am I right Robing Hood?” he asked Green Arrow mockingly as he plucked the four arrows Oliver had hit him with out of his body. “Woooo! It does a Martian body good! Hahahaha…”
He turned his attention to the floating and still body of Ion, the embodiment of Willpower. “Interesting friends we have Oliver, right?” he asked with a sinister smile. “It sure would be nice to taste some of this pow- Aaah!” Even trying to touch the Lantern in stasis was not going to work. The crackling green light sent a powerful shock through the Martian’s system.
“Pity” he said looking up at Kyle’s face but speaking to the Emerald Archer. “I guess that means I have to start with little. old. you…” J’onn turned to face Oliver with murderous intent on his face. Both arms shot out long and wide, like angry tentacles. His mouth opened large revealing three rows deep of razor sharp teeth. J’onn’s eyes sparked red. “Do not worry pops. This will all be over quick. And it will hurt you a great deal more than it will hurt me…
“Entirely likely, but hell, I never do anything easy.”
This was shaping up great. Not only was Ollie dealing with a shapeshifting laser eyebeam telepath, he was dealing with one that had no conscience and whose higher self was busy tripping the mind-lights fantastic with Rayner. If Ollie wanted to stay alive, he’d have to keep moving.
—which was easier said than done in this place, jumbles of overturned chairs everywhere and smashed glasses and scattered belongings. As J’onn’s arms whipped towards him, lashing through the air, Ollie dived to the side, hitting the ground with his shoulder and hip and sliding through spilled beer on the floor to shore up by the bar. He scrambled behind it for cover and grabbed an armful of shot glasses, standing up to fire them one after the other rapidly at J’onn’s head. He had unerring aim and the glasses peppered against his opponent like buckshot; they weren’t exactly incapacitating, but the goal was more to keep J’onn off-balance and dealing with a flurry of small attacks, distract him from anything really big and kill-making.
“Lantern’s got you on the ropes, huh?” Ollie bellowed as he dropped back down behind the bar, rapidly tying a bunch of wooden beer flight racks together with bar rags. “He’s in there getting the real J’onn back in control, and you better believe that ain’t gonna work out candy and roses for you, pal, when he finds out you’ve been squatting in his body.”
Scrambling to his feet again, Ollie whirled his makeshift bola around twice, hard, before sending it clacking through the air to wrap itself around J’onn’s throat and hopefully whallop him upside the head as well. Not that Ollie paused to make sure this happened — he was busy following up the bola with a bottle of Maker’s Mark aimed above J’onn’s head and an incendiary arrow to break it wide flaming open.
On the side of a deserted highway at night, the only light that shone on the lone figure walking there came from the stars and from the waning moon. This night was no different from the countless nights that had come before it. The figure walked alone. He walked alone as he seemingly always had done. He had been traveling this route for two hundred thirty-seven years now - although he had no positive way to be sure of that.
Where he walked, the sun never rose. The moon never set, but it did go through phases. So he had counted the months to the best of his ability and arrived at the amount of time in his head.
He did not remember why he was where he was. That knowledge had been lost long ago. He had no clear recollection of the events that sent him here to the Endless Desert. He called it “endless” because when he first arrived he had flown, looking for familiar landmarks, trying to understand his location and trying to find a way out. He had flown and he had flown far. but the road below him had never curved, the scenery had never changed, the night was forever dark no matter in which direction he flew. For years he struggled with it, feverishly trying to escape. But the years had beat him down. He did not even bother to take to the skies anymore, flight being another of the many things that he had lost to memory. Now, like he had done for almost two centuries, he simply walked.
He walked with no destination in mind. Occasionally he heard the distant cries of a hawk that seemed to be following him. Three times that he could remember he thought he might have glimpsed it in the sky during a full moon. But he could not be sure of even that. He could not be sure of much of anything anymore. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” he muttered.
He did however believe a few things. He believed that he did not belong here. Not the here of here. He knew enough to know that he did not belong on the side of a deserted highway in a desert at night with only maybe or maybe not a distant hawk to keep him company. He meant here, on Earth. He believed that walking this planet was a mistake. He did not belong. He was a visitor, an outsider. This was not his home…
A century had passed before he had begun to forget. He had forgotten his friends, if he ever had any. He had forgotten humanity. After a few years, he had forgotten what Earth’s creatures looked like, what they sounded like. If it were not for the maybe presence of the hawk, he would have forgotten the existence of birds altogether. He had forgotten the sun and what warmth felt like. He had forgotten what joy felt like
How many beings truly use their own name when they think about themselves? With no one around to say it, he had forgotten that too.
___________________
It was around that time when he realized he was walking and forgetting so much that he vowed to himself not to let go of some things. At first he tried remembering faces - faces and names and sounds and scents. But those had all fallen away over the centuries. It seemed that every step he took brought him further away from who he once was, further from what defined him. And yet, he dare not stop moving. He walked. He was compelled to walk for some unknown reason to a destination he did not know.
But he did know that he did want to forget. So as he walked he began reciting names - names of those he knew and held dear, names of places to which he felt connected. But every year his list grew smaller. Every year as he walked he would forget a name, a place, a thing, until now his oft repeated mantra held only four words - four words from a list of thousands.
As this stranger in a strange land walked, he muttered aloud his four words: “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. As the possible hawk possibly followed overhead, he shuffled along repeating his four words over and over. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.” Through the miles and over the years, the outsider walked and said aloud “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. And those words themselves had lost the very meanings behind them. They were only words. But he knew that he must continue to say them. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. He knew that he must continue to think them. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. He did not know why, but he knew that these four words were his last thread of sanity in this insane place. The thread was spider’s web thin, but he knew that to let go of “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” would make him forever lost.
So although he he had no way of remembering why he said them or what they meant to him, “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” was all he had as he walked. It was all that kept him from eternal nothingness.
“M’yri’ah”, he took a step. “K’hym”, he took another. “Redstone”, his pace was steady. “Justice”, he walked on. He walked the Endless Desert highway in the Forever Night alone. Alone and abandoned.
____________________
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” he said to no one as he walked. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The stranger felt a slight tremor beneath his feet. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The tremor became a noticeable shake. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The shake became a rumble. The maybe hawk shrieked out a warning. “M’yri’ah, K’hym…” The highway beside him cracked. “Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice?” A large section of the asphalt shifted and the surrounding sand poured into the gaping hole it created.
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice!” he shouted as he jumped back and surprised even himself when he did not land. He had forgotten how to fly. “M’yri’ah! K’hym!” he yelled as he flew higher, pulling away from the ground. “Redstone! Justice!”
He was up above the destruction when he got his first real look at the hawk in over two centuries of its company. It streaked by and took a step upwards climb in its flight. He was about to give chase when something else caught his eye.
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice?” One of the stars above him - the brightest star, the unmoving star, the guiding star - shone even brighter than usual. It grew in its luminosity until looking directly at it became blinding. He covered his eyes instinctively. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redsto… Redsta.. sta… star?” he said hesitantly. “N-North Star? Justice. Polaris…” Old words began to trickle back into his mind. Saying them out loud proved slightly difficult as the muscles in his mouth had not formed any different sounds for decades. “Polaris” he repeated as the light of the North Star - the star that had guided countless men and women to their destinations, to their destiny, to their salvation - began to change hues. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Star. Redstone, North Star, Justice… Green?” he asked. “GREEN!” he exclaimed. “Green” he remembered. The light of his salvation was green.
And green was good.
As the ground beneath him continued to shake apart, the dark sky above became bathed in the green light. The other stars faded from sight as the green light became the dominant force in the sky. And the green light filled his world so much that even the shadows began to fade. Every shadow, save one: his own.
The rumblings and shakings ceased. He flew down and landed on one of the few undamaged pieces of highway. His shadow followed. “Green…” he said to himself, struggling to remember more.
“Green Light. Green Li… Lan…” His shadow grew long. “Green La… Lantern” His shadow took on a grotesque shape. “Green Lantern’s Light!” he shouted joyfully, remembering as his shadow coalesced into the form of a very large dragon. The Shadow Dragon detached itself from the walking stranger and took silent flight.
Saying the words aloud had opened a flood of memories in the stranger’s mind. And for the first time in over two centuries, he remembered the concept of hope. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice… Hope!” He was hopeful. He had hope.
“J’onn?” a voice called out to him from the green light, from the direction of the North Star. “J’onn, we don’t have much time!”
J’onn? Yes… Yes, he was once called J’onn. He was once part of a team, a League. A… “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” A… Justice League. And he who had walked by himself for nearly two and a half centuries was no longer alone. His teammate was here. His friend was here. A very powerful Green Lantern was with him.
“Kyle!” J’onn instinctively cried out just as the Shadow Dragon let loose a deafening roar that shook J’onn to his core. Kyle was saying something else but the dragon’s evil screams drown out the Lantern’s words. Though its screeching and flapping were distinctly audible to J’onn, Kyle did not to react to them. He seemed not to notice the Shadow Dragon or J’onn for that matter at all.
“Kyle, look out!” J’onn shouted as he took to the sky again, chasing the beast. But the Lantern did not hear him. It was if he was not connected to this desolate world and was therefore not prepared to face its dangers.
And that was when J’onn realized what was happening. It all came back to him in a flash. He was on the trail of rumors and whispers all up and down the West Coast. He was on a beach with Aquaman looking at dead whales. He was in California, being questioned by FBI Agent Sharon Redstone. He was in Texas chasing down her kidnappers. He was at Oliver’s compound, telling him what he knew and suspected of Kate’s involvements. He was in the Watchtower, coordinating League efforts to combat the resurgent Eden Corps. He was in Vancouver, injecting the Flash with a super virus in the last ditch hope for a cure. He was in the Netherlands, fighting the reanimated dead. He was with Mia as he handed her the Phantom Zone projector and with Billy as he said goodbye. He was in the Nowhere, fighting the evil. He was being tormented. He was being psychically abused. He thought he remembered Zauriel. Wait, psychically? Psychically.
Kyle could not yet sense the dangers here because they were not fully connected psychically.
/Kyle!/ J’onn shouted with his mind. /You are here with me! Now, see…/ J’onn opened up his full mind to the Lantern. He had realized that he was holding some of it back in an effort to protect his friend. But now his friend would have to take it - for both their sakes.
As the environment around him filled the Green Lantern’s mind, J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, the last true Manhunter of Ma’aleca’andra, charged at the Shadow Dragon’s head. If there was a fight to be had, this son of the red sands was damn sure not going to be left out of it.
Everything was barren and blank, but Kyle could feel J’onn, he knew he was /there/ like a sliding figure constantly on Kyle’s periphery, always slightly out of focus. Only it wasn’t just a figure, it was an entire mindscape that Kyle couldn’t find. All he relied on were feelings, his own gut reactions that powered his will and convinced him that this would work. It will work. It had to work. There was no other option. (Unless there was…but they’d get to that if they had to).
Fortunately, Kyle’s instinct paid off, and almost like a View Master 3D, the scenery went from blank to - okay not exactly that much better because oh geez desolate wasteland of poor J’onn’s possession-stripped mind and what the hell is that a giant shadowy dragon looking all LOST smoke monster coming straight for him?!
/Kyle!/ J’onn shouted with his mind. /You are here with me! Now, see…/
The words resonated in his mind’s mind and Kyle was calmed, even moreso when he finally, /finally/ saw J’onn, the real J’onn suddenly there, flying determinedly towards the shadowy dragon thing with a singular purpose: destroy.
Well. Kyle could definitely get behind that.
“Glad you could join us!” Kyle said, blasting out warm green light from his ring, spewing the handy dandy net construct, great for tangling all variety of flying beasts. “Whatta welcome to your mind, huh? Can’t wait for the grand tour.” Kyle grinned over at J’onn, but beneath his bravado was a look of utter relief and joy. “Once we take care of that thing. What the hell is it? Or should I save the questions for after we kick its culo??”
J’onn rocketed towards the Shadow Dragon firing his eye lasers ahead of him. But they had no effect. The dragon’s body simply dissipated where the beams hit. But he did get its attention.
The great beast turned to face the approaching Martian, roaring out his anger. J’onn reached forward with his mind and found… the answer.
/Kyle!/ he shouted telepathically. /The Shadow Dragon is evil! It is night incarnate! It IS darkness!/ The savage creature opened his mouth, revealing rows of fangs. /Kyle, it is darkness!/ It bore down on J’onn. /Show! It! The! Light!!!/
The impact from the makeshift weapon was enough to through J’onn off-balance, stumbling backward - right into the path of the incoming arrow. Not being used to controlling this type of body well enough to dodge it, the incendiary arrow found its mark. Flames erupted from the shattered glass as J’onn brought his arms back to their normal and ripped the rags from around his throat. Trying to fight this brawler on his terms was not going to work. He had to go with what he knew.
As the flames burned away, J’onn J’onzz went with them. In his place, Master Jansen stood. “Oliver, there is so much anger in your heart. Have I taught you nothing? Have I failed you?” The sensei collapsed in a heap of robes on the ground.
When he lifted his hooded head, the face of Conner Hawke could be seen. “Failure? No. The failure wasn’t Master Jansen’s. It was yours Ollie. It always was, and it will always be…”
Conner’s eyes shot forth burning red light in a wide arc at knee level. Anything below it would be destroyed or incinerated. He was flushing the Archer out as he changed forms again, finally revealing the true evil spirit controlling the Martian’s body.
“Come out, come out wherever you are…” the voice of Stanley Dover sang in a sick mockery of a child’s lullaby as he continued to sweep the area with his eye beams. The old occultist took on his original form, his crimson robe covering his old body. But the powers he now possessed were still J’onn’s, and still incredibly dangerous. “With your friends’ souls engaged elsewhere on the astral plane, this body seemed like a good one for me to take control.”
Dover’s beams splintered stools and tables. “You just can’t keep a good man down for long Queen!” he shouted as his lasers swept towards the last section of the bar, the only place the Archer could have taken cover that was not already destroyed. “I’ve been to hell, but now I’m back and ready to reclaim what is rightfully mine! Where is she Queen? Where is that little blonde of yours?!”
“Oh, christ almighty.”
Master Jansen was easy to brush aside, Connor easy to disregard. Ollie knew those were illusions, the creature’s wild attempts to get him upset; they didn’t faze him one way or another.
Stanley Dover, now. That sibilant, affected voice was one Ollie’d thought he’d never hear again, not after they’d sent the motherfucker straight to hell via a monster’s crunching jaws. Hearing him mention Mia — when Dover’d come so close to taking possession of Ollie’s body to have him rape the girl — did exactly what Dover most likely intended. Ollie could feel blood pounding in his head, bilious spit burning up his throat, fists clenching on his bow. The sizzle and crackle of wood buckling under the force of those eyebeams was getting closer, too; J’onn’s laser eyes burned hot enough to scorch empty stripes into the wood, more than setting it aflame. And from the smell, this bar he was covering behind was gonna topple at any moment.
Okay.
As the stink of melted wood got stronger, Ollie gauged where Dover was probably positioned and stood, eyes tightly closed, to fire a flashbang arrow at him. Even behind his screwed-shut eyelids he could make out the blinding flash (which was hopefully frazzling that Martian vision) and since he hadn’t had time to pop in earplugs, just clap his hands over his ears, the thunderclap bang knocked the sound from Ollie’s hearing too, leaving nothing but a loud ringing. Nowhere near the loss of balance that would happen to J’onn’s body from being exposed to the full brunt of the bang, with any luck.
Dropping back down as the bar started to creak and slide where it had been neatly blasted through and unmoored, Ollie scooted himself as hard against the back counter as he could, shoving at the bar edge with one foot. “Only thing that’s rightfully yours is an eternity of unthinkable fucking agony,” he muttered, and sprawled his legs out flat so he could get a full draw on his bow.
Putting all hundred-and-three pounds of draw weight behind it, Green Arrow took a moment to calculate, then loosed an exploding concussive arrow at a point in the far corner of the quickly toppling bar. The moment the arrow left his string Ollie pulled in his legs and tucked in as small as he could get, feeling the side of the bar nearest him whip past as the explosion from his arrow spun the heavy wood structure around in an ungainly twirl, sending it careening into the flailing Martian.
It wouldn’t kill him. But god willing, it would at least slow him the fuck down.
The net fell right though the shadow creature, but that was kind of to be expected. Distraction and confusion were key and Kyle could see J’onn was taking the same tactic with it, shooting red hot lasers, drawing its rage and attention.
He could feel J’onn in his mind’s mind and it felt…comforting? He heard J’onn’s words and couldn’t help but flash a grin.
“You got it,” Kyle said, doing his best nu!Kirk impression; and, just like he’d done before, Kyle shut his eyes, clenched his fists, feeling it welling up inside. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before Kyle illuminated the sky of J’onn’s mindspace with his entire body acting like a beacon of blindingly hot brightness. He felt himself like lineart on a white canvas - his hair, skin, uniform - all radiating white light in all directions, as far as Kyle could push it. And in a mindscape like this, the possibilities were incredibly, wonderfully endless.
“Better?” his mind’s mind spoke inside J’onn’s own. Even with all this power, Kyle still enjoyed knowing he was doing right by his Martian friend.
The Shadow Dragon screamed as it drew close to J’onn’s form. But the Martian did not move, he did not blink. He had full faith in his friend.
The light from Kyle began to pull apart the beast. Piece by piece it fell apart, dissipated, melted away, until the only things that touched J’onn was a wisp of shadow and smoke. It broke on the Martian’s chest and disappeared, gone from this place, banished by the Light of Ion.
“Well done” J’onn said to Kyle. “Well done.”
As the Lantern brought down the light level, J’onn flew up to meet him. “Thank you for bringing me out of this wretched place” he said. “I was so lost… so lost in here. But you did not forget about me. I was not abandoned”
The hawk passed them both heading for the ground. When it landed, it turned to look at the pair in the sky and stood tall, taking on its true form: the old Mescalero mystic Holling Longshadow. The Apache raised up his hand in acknowledgement to them and smiled before fading from sight. “And I was apparently never alone here either.”
J’onn smiled at Kyle. “Hermano… Gracias por tu ayu-” a deafening boom shook the world of the Forever Night to its core.
“Oliver!” J’onn exclaimed, remembering. “Kyle, you saved my mind, but Oliver is still alone with my body!” The desert highway fell into open earth and the night sky turned a light red. “I will return you to your body and will fight this being’s hold from within!”
The Earth of J’onn’s fractured mind was gone and all the existed around them was the red sands of the fourth planet from the sun. “But Kyle, listen” he explained, “if I fail you must do the hard job. You must end my life. My body is too strong, my mind too dangerous to be left in the hands of this evil. You are the only one powerful enough to do it. And you know you must…”
The Martian took one last look at his friend with whom he had fought side by side for years, gave him a slight nod, and said, “Now, go!” And with that farewell, J’onn pushed Kyle out of his mind and back into the Lantern’s own.
Once Kyle was gone, J’onn collapsed. He was using all his power to just remain standing. Being trapped in his mind had nearly ended him. J’onn took a deep breath, then stood. He looked around at the vast expanse of his mind’s remembrance of home planet and said four words: “M’yri’ah. K’hym. Redstone. Justice…”.
J’onn then lifted off the ground again and closed his eyes, entering the fight for his life.
“Yaaaaaaa!” Stanley Dover screamed as the blinding light exploded around him. The concussive force had knocked him to his knees. “You bastard! You weak, pathetic bastard! I was the one who nursed you back to health! I was the one who gave you a the means to return to your former life!”
The twisted magician stood and grew and extra set of arms. All four hands reached down and picked up a makeshift club from the splintered wood laying around the bar. “You owe me Queen! You owe m-”
“NO!” shouted a voice from the same body that was distinctly not Stanley Dover’s. “You will not have control over this form! It is mine!” Dover’s visage morphed back into that o the Martian Manhunter. “And I am taking it back now!”
“It’s mine!” Dover’s voice screamed, returning to his physical form. “I will not return to the pit! I will be-”
“You will not succeed!” J’onn’s form took control again. “You will -”
“I will not be denied!” Dover commanded”
J’onn took control of his body. “Kyle! It worked inside! Shine the light of your - Aaargh!” The Martian collapsed to his knees.
“You will not deny me this time Oliver!” Dover’s twisted visage croaked out from the Martian’s form as J’onn took control one last time.
“Kyle, this is our chance!” he shouted. “Banish this evil from my body!”
Thinking that Kyle’s light would separate Stanley Dover from his mind, and knowing he was too weak to end the evil spirit’s existence, J’onn took one last gamble. He used his last ounce of mental strength to pull Oliver’s mind into his own mind scape, his mental battlefield.
Inside, all was red - the sky, the rocky ground beneath. J’onn fell flat on his back, the red dirt and sand rising from the impact around his body. But before Oliver could run to his side, J’onn emitted a blinding light from every pore in his body.
The Martian’s mouth opened wide and the evil, grotesque, and twisted spirit of Stanley Dover rose out like a pillar of pestilence, shrieking. Ion had done his part. Now J’onn’s life lay in Oliver’s quiver.
/Take the shot Green Arrow…/ J’onn said telepathically, but weakly. /He’s yours…/
This was really not Ollie’s usual bag. Demons and telepathy and vacationing in a teammate’s brainscape — none of it was familiar to him. But J’onn’s directions, at least, were free of any vagueness.
“You got it,” Ollie said grimly, and he drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it like the bow was an extension of his arm, his back, his eyes. In J’onn’s mind, there were absolutely no physical limitations to his archery, and that meant that the deepest principles of the way of the bow flowed like water.
Fundamentally, the archer aims at himself.
The tip of the arrow touched the corner of Ollie’s mouth, then he loosed the string—
—and the arrow spat through the air of J’onn’s mindscape, white poisonous smoke trails coming from it, green whipping lightning—
—thwocking so hard into the roiling, rotted form of Stanley Dover that Ollie staggered back a step, almost *feeling* his arrow chunking through corrupted meat and bone.
He didn’t need to raise his bow again. Ollie had perfect, unshakeable confidence in his own skill, and here in J’onn’s mind, there was no possible way he could have failed. No way that J’onn himself and Lantern Rayner could have failed.
They were goddamn Justice League, after all.
The bar, what was left of it anyway, blew apart in an explosion of hellfire. It seemed the only thing left standing were the cracked walls and a few pillars. A few scraps of paper fluttered to the floor like leaves on a very fiery and explodey fall day.
The blast was enough to knock down both J’onn Ollie - who had returned to his own mind just as he sent the spirit of Dover back to the pit. Kyle was unmoved, the green light of power still crackling around him. He gave his teammates a slight smirk.
But it was done. They had won. Evil was vanquished and J’onn was himself again.
“Oliver” the Martian said, rising. ”Kyle. I cannot express to the two of you enough how much I appreciate what you and others were willing to do for me.”
J’onn shook Oliver’s hand while placing his other on Kyle’s shoulder. ”Homer wrote ‘The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.’ I understand what he meant now. Thank you.”
He looked out the window. ”But now, I have someone I have to see. When I was lost inside my mind, there were only a few things that kept me hanging on and she… Well, I… If you will excuse me, I may be gone for a short… I… Call me if you need me.”
The Martian Manhunter flew out the busted window into the open sky, leaving his two teammates behind to speculate.
“Homer Simpson wrote that?” Kyle said to Ollie in wonder, after they watched their Martian friend depart. Kyle suspected J’onn was headed to Redstone…of some sort. He could understand why, if his speculation was indeed correct.
He turned to Queen to see the archer squinting at him like he was an idiot. A very powerful idiot who hadn’t yet come down to earth; but still an idiot. Huffing a small apologetic laugh, Kyle landed next to Ollie and punched his shoulder lightly. “Kidding! I know who Homer is. He was some old dude from some place long ago.” Kyle shuffled his step over some debris, leaving it to Ollie to figure out if he was still being facetious or not. “Man…the League is gonna be caught with some huge bills for this property damage…” Kyle looked up at Queen, looking a bit more sober.
“And I guess I’ll have to make a report on this…um…on what I did here. I don’t know how long J’onn will be, so I can’t ask him to vouch for me, but…you. I mean. Will you…?”
“Vouch for you how?” Ollie groused, brushing plaster dust and debris and splinters from his clothes. “Like assure everybody that it was a dire situation that totally required you to go Mega Green Lantern and slop your Ion powers around like a six year old with his own bottle of ketchup? That kinda vouching?”
The look on Kyle’s face was somewhere between tantrum and confusion, and for once this actually gave Ollie a pang of remorse instead of enraging him further. The times, they were a’changin’.
“Look, I’m just on edge still, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “That Dover fuckhead was bad news and I didn’t like knowing he was still able to emerge from the depths of whatever hell he’s rightly festering in. Of course I’ll vouch for you, Rayner. If you didn’t swoop in here like a one-man cavalry I’d be toast and J’onn would be a grease spot.” Ollie rolled out his shoulders, wincing; this was the point in the fight where the adrenalin started wearing off enough to feel all the hurts say hello.
“Where d’you suppose he’s going?” Ollie asked, glancing up in the direction J’onn had flown off in. “Was he talking about his wife?” He cracked his neck and picked a couple of pieces of glass out of the side of his hand, grimacing at the smaller, un-pullable shards peppering his forearm.
“Where else does a Martian go when he needs to soothe his nerves? He’s probably going home.” Kyle said, looking back up at the sky. He just wanted to get out of here now, before the police arrived. Because then there would be questioning and tedium. But he supposed he owed it to Queen to stick around. For some reason, Kyle wasn’t sure what, but…whatever. He could hear the sirens already, and he’d already used his abilities this far; perhaps he might as well use them further to soothe the local sheriff and his gang. Queen would never know.
He ordered a shot. When the waitress was walking his way with the whiskey on her tray, she screamed and dropped it, shattering the whiskey glass and spilling the drink on the floor. ”Spiders!” she shrieked as she ran back towards the bar, franticly brushing imaginary arachnids off her arms. ”Spiders!”
J’onn’s smirk was clearly visible in the soft light of the bar as he waited for the Archer to arrive.
The Centrel City Bar (so named to distinguish it from the score of other similarly-named bars in the city) had changed since the last time Ollie’d been there. In addition to the low-light types drowning in beer and the local liquor called Central Strip, there was a smattering of young hipsters filling up on caipirinhas and irony.
Despite his nondescript appearance, J’onn was easy to spot, chilling at the back as the waitress had some sort of wobbly and dashed back to the bar. Sparing her a perplexed glance, Ollie slid into the seat across from his old colleague, his expression deepening as he took in the uncharacteristic smirk.
“Heyyyy,” he said, slinging his bow case over the back of his chair. “Should we get a round of shots? Looks like yours is rolling across the floor.”
“Yesss” J’onn said, looking up at Oliver. ”And I’ll even let you pay.”
The Martian watched his colleague head to the bar and place a new order. A quick scan of the patrons’ minds around the bar told him that his nondescript appearance had garnered no recognition. And no one was currently looking his way. So before Oliver returned from placing his order, J’onn changed his appearance.
His skin lightened, his hair grew and turned blonde. He took on a shapely, yet smaller figure. To anyone who knew her, J’onn looked every bit the part of Dinah Lance in civilian clothes.
“Hello Ollie” J’onn cooed as the Archer returned. ”Thanks for the drink big boy. Have you missed me?”
It was only Ollie’s extraordinarily good reflexes that kept him from dropping the shots and beers that he had his fingers wrapped around; as it was, he plonked them onto the table so ungracefully that they slopped over. “Fucking hell,” Ollie grunted, sitting back down and glancing around the bar before leaning in. “What in god’s name d’you think you’re *doing*?!”
Christ, he even *smelled* like Dinah, jasmine and leather.
Taking a deep breath, Ollie spread his hands out over the table to calm himself, then picked up a shot glass and knocked the booze back. “I … take it whatever happened in the Phantom Zone’s got you rattled. There’s no shame in that, J’onn. We all go a little lulu after big stress.”
“Lulu?” J’onn purred. ”Why Ollie, I have not felt this good in… Oliver?” J’onn’s face took on an expression of concern that quickly dissipated. ”I haven’t felt this good in ages.”
He took a shot glass in his hand, changing his appearance again. Starting with the hand that took the shot glass and rippling up through his body, J’onn now looked like Sandra Hawke - “Moonday”. J’onn downed the liquor and wiped his mouth. ”Thanks babe. I needed that…”
Ollie palmed his JLA alert in his jacket pocket. He’d had his suspicions the first time he’d talked to J’onn, that one solitary, confused “Oliver?” in the middle of the conversation, and here it happened again just before —
“Right,” Ollie said, mouth set in a firm line as he stared at this facsimile of Connor’s mother across the table. “There’s definitely something going on with you, and better out than in. You’re coming up to the Tower with me, J’onn ol’ pal, right now before you start scrolling through my entire dating history.”
He got up and came around to grab hold of J’onn’s arm, not wanting to have to break out his bow in case it occurred to J’onn that he didn’t want to go up to the Tower. One lone non-meta bowman dealing with a shape-shifting laser-eyebeam telepathic Martian who was cuckoo for cocoa puffs at the moment? Wouldn’t be pretty.
J’onn’s eyes flashed red as Oliver approached. He changed again. The form of Veronica Dale looked up at Green Arrow’s eyes. ”Going?” J’onn asked, mockingly. ”No, I do not think I will be going anywhere with you.”
The form of Hyrax stood and shouted to the bar patrons, “Anyone in here after the next ten seconds gets to know what it feels like to burn alive!” J’onn’s eye laser beams shot across the room and shattered a row of mugs behind the bar. ”GO!” he yelled as the regulars and hipsters alike started scrambling for the door.
J’onn grew taller and larger, taking on the familiar form of the Martian Manhunter. He turned to Oliver. ”Now where were we sweetness? You were thinking I was cuckoo for cocoa puffs?” His arm grew long and shot across the bar, grabbing Oliver’s bow case. ”And you thought to take me on with this?” J’onn asked as he pulled it close to him. ”I think you might… NO!
Mere seconds between Watchtower and the little establishment called The Centrel, innocent civilians already pouring out of it in droves, which definitely made Kyle’s job easier. He briefly took the time to note that if patrons had a chance to flee, then whoever - or whatever - J’onn was, had its sights set on Queen, and not anyone else. Interesting to note. But it didn’t shift Kyle’s focus.
Not after what happened to Zauriel.
/No. Not gonna think about that./
“All right all right, you’ve had your fun,” Kyle called out as he flew into the bar, green light bursting out from him in a wide arc, which spread out into a sphere as it reached J’onn and encased him. Kyle figured he’d use something like…something like lucite? No, carbonite. No…fire.
Green fire burst around J’onn and Kyle winced, only slightly, before he glanced down at Queen. “Are you okay?”
“WHAT THE HELL -” Was Ollie’s response, and he dived for his bow case, which Kyle had pried out of J’onn’s hand. Kyle had to give him credit for nocking it pretty darn fast, aiming multiple arrows towards the Martian.
“I hope that’s some anti-demon, anti-Martian arrows you got there, Queen,” Kyle said, trying hard to ignore J’onn’s agonizing screams. “Protect me? Because I need to take a trip.” He remembered how J’onn transported him into Wally’s mind when Wally was suffering that fever-coma and emulated it, easily. Like Aang the Avatar, Kyle’s spirit-mind alighted from his body and he saw himself floating, frozen and still. Below him, Queen was shouting something at someone; loud, rough barks that grated over the archer’s panic.
Kyle turned from the scene outside and went inside, straight into J’onn’s mind.
“I can do this,” he said to himself, surveying the unfamiliar map of the Martian’s mindscape. No not unfamiliar just…changed. ”I will do this. I know you’re still in here J’onn. And I know someone else is in here too. Bring it on, bozo.”
Okay so. So. So godlike powers didn’t really make him /sound/ more badass. Whatever, he was still muy chido.
The fire abated and the sphere opened, dropping J’onn to the floor. Kyle, in all his power and strength had taken the battle for the Martian Manhunter’s soul inside - to the mind scape. That as where one battle would be fought. But it was not the only battle…
J’onn stood up from the floor shaking like a dog throwing water off its coat. “B-b-b-b-braaaaaah! I sure do love a good roasting, am I right Robing Hood?” he asked Green Arrow mockingly as he plucked the four arrows Oliver had hit him with out of his body. “Woooo! It does a Martian body good! Hahahaha…”
He turned his attention to the floating and still body of Ion, the embodiment of Willpower. “Interesting friends we have Oliver, right?” he asked with a sinister smile. “It sure would be nice to taste some of this pow- Aaah!” Even trying to touch the Lantern in stasis was not going to work. The crackling green light sent a powerful shock through the Martian’s system.
“Pity” he said looking up at Kyle’s face but speaking to the Emerald Archer. “I guess that means I have to start with little. old. you…” J’onn turned to face Oliver with murderous intent on his face. Both arms shot out long and wide, like angry tentacles. His mouth opened large revealing three rows deep of razor sharp teeth. J’onn’s eyes sparked red. “Do not worry pops. This will all be over quick. And it will hurt you a great deal more than it will hurt me…
“Entirely likely, but hell, I never do anything easy.”
This was shaping up great. Not only was Ollie dealing with a shapeshifting laser eyebeam telepath, he was dealing with one that had no conscience and whose higher self was busy tripping the mind-lights fantastic with Rayner. If Ollie wanted to stay alive, he’d have to keep moving.
—which was easier said than done in this place, jumbles of overturned chairs everywhere and smashed glasses and scattered belongings. As J’onn’s arms whipped towards him, lashing through the air, Ollie dived to the side, hitting the ground with his shoulder and hip and sliding through spilled beer on the floor to shore up by the bar. He scrambled behind it for cover and grabbed an armful of shot glasses, standing up to fire them one after the other rapidly at J’onn’s head. He had unerring aim and the glasses peppered against his opponent like buckshot; they weren’t exactly incapacitating, but the goal was more to keep J’onn off-balance and dealing with a flurry of small attacks, distract him from anything really big and kill-making.
“Lantern’s got you on the ropes, huh?” Ollie bellowed as he dropped back down behind the bar, rapidly tying a bunch of wooden beer flight racks together with bar rags. “He’s in there getting the real J’onn back in control, and you better believe that ain’t gonna work out candy and roses for you, pal, when he finds out you’ve been squatting in his body.”
Scrambling to his feet again, Ollie whirled his makeshift bola around twice, hard, before sending it clacking through the air to wrap itself around J’onn’s throat and hopefully whallop him upside the head as well. Not that Ollie paused to make sure this happened — he was busy following up the bola with a bottle of Maker’s Mark aimed above J’onn’s head and an incendiary arrow to break it wide flaming open.
On the side of a deserted highway at night, the only light that shone on the lone figure walking there came from the stars and from the waning moon. This night was no different from the countless nights that had come before it. The figure walked alone. He walked alone as he seemingly always had done. He had been traveling this route for two hundred thirty-seven years now - although he had no positive way to be sure of that.
Where he walked, the sun never rose. The moon never set, but it did go through phases. So he had counted the months to the best of his ability and arrived at the amount of time in his head.
He did not remember why he was where he was. That knowledge had been lost long ago. He had no clear recollection of the events that sent him here to the Endless Desert. He called it “endless” because when he first arrived he had flown, looking for familiar landmarks, trying to understand his location and trying to find a way out. He had flown and he had flown far. but the road below him had never curved, the scenery had never changed, the night was forever dark no matter in which direction he flew. For years he struggled with it, feverishly trying to escape. But the years had beat him down. He did not even bother to take to the skies anymore, flight being another of the many things that he had lost to memory. Now, like he had done for almost two centuries, he simply walked.
He walked with no destination in mind. Occasionally he heard the distant cries of a hawk that seemed to be following him. Three times that he could remember he thought he might have glimpsed it in the sky during a full moon. But he could not be sure of even that. He could not be sure of much of anything anymore. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” he muttered.
He did however believe a few things. He believed that he did not belong here. Not the here of here. He knew enough to know that he did not belong on the side of a deserted highway in a desert at night with only maybe or maybe not a distant hawk to keep him company. He meant here, on Earth. He believed that walking this planet was a mistake. He did not belong. He was a visitor, an outsider. This was not his home…
A century had passed before he had begun to forget. He had forgotten his friends, if he ever had any. He had forgotten humanity. After a few years, he had forgotten what Earth’s creatures looked like, what they sounded like. If it were not for the maybe presence of the hawk, he would have forgotten the existence of birds altogether. He had forgotten the sun and what warmth felt like. He had forgotten what joy felt like
How many beings truly use their own name when they think about themselves? With no one around to say it, he had forgotten that too.
___________________
It was around that time when he realized he was walking and forgetting so much that he vowed to himself not to let go of some things. At first he tried remembering faces - faces and names and sounds and scents. But those had all fallen away over the centuries. It seemed that every step he took brought him further away from who he once was, further from what defined him. And yet, he dare not stop moving. He walked. He was compelled to walk for some unknown reason to a destination he did not know.
But he did know that he did want to forget. So as he walked he began reciting names - names of those he knew and held dear, names of places to which he felt connected. But every year his list grew smaller. Every year as he walked he would forget a name, a place, a thing, until now his oft repeated mantra held only four words - four words from a list of thousands.
As this stranger in a strange land walked, he muttered aloud his four words: “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. As the possible hawk possibly followed overhead, he shuffled along repeating his four words over and over. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.” Through the miles and over the years, the outsider walked and said aloud “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. And those words themselves had lost the very meanings behind them. They were only words. But he knew that he must continue to say them. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. He knew that he must continue to think them. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice”. He did not know why, but he knew that these four words were his last thread of sanity in this insane place. The thread was spider’s web thin, but he knew that to let go of “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” would make him forever lost.
So although he he had no way of remembering why he said them or what they meant to him, “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” was all he had as he walked. It was all that kept him from eternal nothingness.
“M’yri’ah”, he took a step. “K’hym”, he took another. “Redstone”, his pace was steady. “Justice”, he walked on. He walked the Endless Desert highway in the Forever Night alone. Alone and abandoned.
____________________
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” he said to no one as he walked. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The stranger felt a slight tremor beneath his feet. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The tremor became a noticeable shake. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice.”
The shake became a rumble. The maybe hawk shrieked out a warning. “M’yri’ah, K’hym…” The highway beside him cracked. “Redstone, Justice. M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice?” A large section of the asphalt shifted and the surrounding sand poured into the gaping hole it created.
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice!” he shouted as he jumped back and surprised even himself when he did not land. He had forgotten how to fly. “M’yri’ah! K’hym!” he yelled as he flew higher, pulling away from the ground. “Redstone! Justice!”
He was up above the destruction when he got his first real look at the hawk in over two centuries of its company. It streaked by and took a step upwards climb in its flight. He was about to give chase when something else caught his eye.
“M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice?” One of the stars above him - the brightest star, the unmoving star, the guiding star - shone even brighter than usual. It grew in its luminosity until looking directly at it became blinding. He covered his eyes instinctively. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redsto… Redsta.. sta… star?” he said hesitantly. “N-North Star? Justice. Polaris…” Old words began to trickle back into his mind. Saying them out loud proved slightly difficult as the muscles in his mouth had not formed any different sounds for decades. “Polaris” he repeated as the light of the North Star - the star that had guided countless men and women to their destinations, to their destiny, to their salvation - began to change hues. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Star. Redstone, North Star, Justice… Green?” he asked. “GREEN!” he exclaimed. “Green” he remembered. The light of his salvation was green.
And green was good.
As the ground beneath him continued to shake apart, the dark sky above became bathed in the green light. The other stars faded from sight as the green light became the dominant force in the sky. And the green light filled his world so much that even the shadows began to fade. Every shadow, save one: his own.
The rumblings and shakings ceased. He flew down and landed on one of the few undamaged pieces of highway. His shadow followed. “Green…” he said to himself, struggling to remember more.
“Green Light. Green Li… Lan…” His shadow grew long. “Green La… Lantern” His shadow took on a grotesque shape. “Green Lantern’s Light!” he shouted joyfully, remembering as his shadow coalesced into the form of a very large dragon. The Shadow Dragon detached itself from the walking stranger and took silent flight.
Saying the words aloud had opened a flood of memories in the stranger’s mind. And for the first time in over two centuries, he remembered the concept of hope. “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice… Hope!” He was hopeful. He had hope.
“J’onn?” a voice called out to him from the green light, from the direction of the North Star. “J’onn, we don’t have much time!”
J’onn? Yes… Yes, he was once called J’onn. He was once part of a team, a League. A… “M’yri’ah, K’hym, Redstone, Justice” A… Justice League. And he who had walked by himself for nearly two and a half centuries was no longer alone. His teammate was here. His friend was here. A very powerful Green Lantern was with him.
“Kyle!” J’onn instinctively cried out just as the Shadow Dragon let loose a deafening roar that shook J’onn to his core. Kyle was saying something else but the dragon’s evil screams drown out the Lantern’s words. Though its screeching and flapping were distinctly audible to J’onn, Kyle did not to react to them. He seemed not to notice the Shadow Dragon or J’onn for that matter at all.
“Kyle, look out!” J’onn shouted as he took to the sky again, chasing the beast. But the Lantern did not hear him. It was if he was not connected to this desolate world and was therefore not prepared to face its dangers.
And that was when J’onn realized what was happening. It all came back to him in a flash. He was on the trail of rumors and whispers all up and down the West Coast. He was on a beach with Aquaman looking at dead whales. He was in California, being questioned by FBI Agent Sharon Redstone. He was in Texas chasing down her kidnappers. He was at Oliver’s compound, telling him what he knew and suspected of Kate’s involvements. He was in the Watchtower, coordinating League efforts to combat the resurgent Eden Corps. He was in Vancouver, injecting the Flash with a super virus in the last ditch hope for a cure. He was in the Netherlands, fighting the reanimated dead. He was with Mia as he handed her the Phantom Zone projector and with Billy as he said goodbye. He was in the Nowhere, fighting the evil. He was being tormented. He was being psychically abused. He thought he remembered Zauriel. Wait, psychically? Psychically.
Kyle could not yet sense the dangers here because they were not fully connected psychically.
/Kyle!/ J’onn shouted with his mind. /You are here with me! Now, see…/ J’onn opened up his full mind to the Lantern. He had realized that he was holding some of it back in an effort to protect his friend. But now his friend would have to take it - for both their sakes.
As the environment around him filled the Green Lantern’s mind, J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, the last true Manhunter of Ma’aleca’andra, charged at the Shadow Dragon’s head. If there was a fight to be had, this son of the red sands was damn sure not going to be left out of it.
Everything was barren and blank, but Kyle could feel J’onn, he knew he was /there/ like a sliding figure constantly on Kyle’s periphery, always slightly out of focus. Only it wasn’t just a figure, it was an entire mindscape that Kyle couldn’t find. All he relied on were feelings, his own gut reactions that powered his will and convinced him that this would work. It will work. It had to work. There was no other option. (Unless there was…but they’d get to that if they had to).
Fortunately, Kyle’s instinct paid off, and almost like a View Master 3D, the scenery went from blank to - okay not exactly that much better because oh geez desolate wasteland of poor J’onn’s possession-stripped mind and what the hell is that a giant shadowy dragon looking all LOST smoke monster coming straight for him?!
/Kyle!/ J’onn shouted with his mind. /You are here with me! Now, see…/
The words resonated in his mind’s mind and Kyle was calmed, even moreso when he finally, /finally/ saw J’onn, the real J’onn suddenly there, flying determinedly towards the shadowy dragon thing with a singular purpose: destroy.
Well. Kyle could definitely get behind that.
“Glad you could join us!” Kyle said, blasting out warm green light from his ring, spewing the handy dandy net construct, great for tangling all variety of flying beasts. “Whatta welcome to your mind, huh? Can’t wait for the grand tour.” Kyle grinned over at J’onn, but beneath his bravado was a look of utter relief and joy. “Once we take care of that thing. What the hell is it? Or should I save the questions for after we kick its culo??”
J’onn rocketed towards the Shadow Dragon firing his eye lasers ahead of him. But they had no effect. The dragon’s body simply dissipated where the beams hit. But he did get its attention.
The great beast turned to face the approaching Martian, roaring out his anger. J’onn reached forward with his mind and found… the answer.
/Kyle!/ he shouted telepathically. /The Shadow Dragon is evil! It is night incarnate! It IS darkness!/ The savage creature opened his mouth, revealing rows of fangs. /Kyle, it is darkness!/ It bore down on J’onn. /Show! It! The! Light!!!/
The impact from the makeshift weapon was enough to through J’onn off-balance, stumbling backward - right into the path of the incoming arrow. Not being used to controlling this type of body well enough to dodge it, the incendiary arrow found its mark. Flames erupted from the shattered glass as J’onn brought his arms back to their normal and ripped the rags from around his throat. Trying to fight this brawler on his terms was not going to work. He had to go with what he knew.
As the flames burned away, J’onn J’onzz went with them. In his place, Master Jansen stood. “Oliver, there is so much anger in your heart. Have I taught you nothing? Have I failed you?” The sensei collapsed in a heap of robes on the ground.
When he lifted his hooded head, the face of Conner Hawke could be seen. “Failure? No. The failure wasn’t Master Jansen’s. It was yours Ollie. It always was, and it will always be…”
Conner’s eyes shot forth burning red light in a wide arc at knee level. Anything below it would be destroyed or incinerated. He was flushing the Archer out as he changed forms again, finally revealing the true evil spirit controlling the Martian’s body.
“Come out, come out wherever you are…” the voice of Stanley Dover sang in a sick mockery of a child’s lullaby as he continued to sweep the area with his eye beams. The old occultist took on his original form, his crimson robe covering his old body. But the powers he now possessed were still J’onn’s, and still incredibly dangerous. “With your friends’ souls engaged elsewhere on the astral plane, this body seemed like a good one for me to take control.”
Dover’s beams splintered stools and tables. “You just can’t keep a good man down for long Queen!” he shouted as his lasers swept towards the last section of the bar, the only place the Archer could have taken cover that was not already destroyed. “I’ve been to hell, but now I’m back and ready to reclaim what is rightfully mine! Where is she Queen? Where is that little blonde of yours?!”
“Oh, christ almighty.”
Master Jansen was easy to brush aside, Connor easy to disregard. Ollie knew those were illusions, the creature’s wild attempts to get him upset; they didn’t faze him one way or another.
Stanley Dover, now. That sibilant, affected voice was one Ollie’d thought he’d never hear again, not after they’d sent the motherfucker straight to hell via a monster’s crunching jaws. Hearing him mention Mia — when Dover’d come so close to taking possession of Ollie’s body to have him rape the girl — did exactly what Dover most likely intended. Ollie could feel blood pounding in his head, bilious spit burning up his throat, fists clenching on his bow. The sizzle and crackle of wood buckling under the force of those eyebeams was getting closer, too; J’onn’s laser eyes burned hot enough to scorch empty stripes into the wood, more than setting it aflame. And from the smell, this bar he was covering behind was gonna topple at any moment.
Okay.
As the stink of melted wood got stronger, Ollie gauged where Dover was probably positioned and stood, eyes tightly closed, to fire a flashbang arrow at him. Even behind his screwed-shut eyelids he could make out the blinding flash (which was hopefully frazzling that Martian vision) and since he hadn’t had time to pop in earplugs, just clap his hands over his ears, the thunderclap bang knocked the sound from Ollie’s hearing too, leaving nothing but a loud ringing. Nowhere near the loss of balance that would happen to J’onn’s body from being exposed to the full brunt of the bang, with any luck.
Dropping back down as the bar started to creak and slide where it had been neatly blasted through and unmoored, Ollie scooted himself as hard against the back counter as he could, shoving at the bar edge with one foot. “Only thing that’s rightfully yours is an eternity of unthinkable fucking agony,” he muttered, and sprawled his legs out flat so he could get a full draw on his bow.
Putting all hundred-and-three pounds of draw weight behind it, Green Arrow took a moment to calculate, then loosed an exploding concussive arrow at a point in the far corner of the quickly toppling bar. The moment the arrow left his string Ollie pulled in his legs and tucked in as small as he could get, feeling the side of the bar nearest him whip past as the explosion from his arrow spun the heavy wood structure around in an ungainly twirl, sending it careening into the flailing Martian.
It wouldn’t kill him. But god willing, it would at least slow him the fuck down.
The net fell right though the shadow creature, but that was kind of to be expected. Distraction and confusion were key and Kyle could see J’onn was taking the same tactic with it, shooting red hot lasers, drawing its rage and attention.
He could feel J’onn in his mind’s mind and it felt…comforting? He heard J’onn’s words and couldn’t help but flash a grin.
“You got it,” Kyle said, doing his best nu!Kirk impression; and, just like he’d done before, Kyle shut his eyes, clenched his fists, feeling it welling up inside. It didn’t take more than a few seconds before Kyle illuminated the sky of J’onn’s mindspace with his entire body acting like a beacon of blindingly hot brightness. He felt himself like lineart on a white canvas - his hair, skin, uniform - all radiating white light in all directions, as far as Kyle could push it. And in a mindscape like this, the possibilities were incredibly, wonderfully endless.
“Better?” his mind’s mind spoke inside J’onn’s own. Even with all this power, Kyle still enjoyed knowing he was doing right by his Martian friend.
The Shadow Dragon screamed as it drew close to J’onn’s form. But the Martian did not move, he did not blink. He had full faith in his friend.
The light from Kyle began to pull apart the beast. Piece by piece it fell apart, dissipated, melted away, until the only things that touched J’onn was a wisp of shadow and smoke. It broke on the Martian’s chest and disappeared, gone from this place, banished by the Light of Ion.
“Well done” J’onn said to Kyle. “Well done.”
As the Lantern brought down the light level, J’onn flew up to meet him. “Thank you for bringing me out of this wretched place” he said. “I was so lost… so lost in here. But you did not forget about me. I was not abandoned”
The hawk passed them both heading for the ground. When it landed, it turned to look at the pair in the sky and stood tall, taking on its true form: the old Mescalero mystic Holling Longshadow. The Apache raised up his hand in acknowledgement to them and smiled before fading from sight. “And I was apparently never alone here either.”
J’onn smiled at Kyle. “Hermano… Gracias por tu ayu-” a deafening boom shook the world of the Forever Night to its core.
“Oliver!” J’onn exclaimed, remembering. “Kyle, you saved my mind, but Oliver is still alone with my body!” The desert highway fell into open earth and the night sky turned a light red. “I will return you to your body and will fight this being’s hold from within!”
The Earth of J’onn’s fractured mind was gone and all the existed around them was the red sands of the fourth planet from the sun. “But Kyle, listen” he explained, “if I fail you must do the hard job. You must end my life. My body is too strong, my mind too dangerous to be left in the hands of this evil. You are the only one powerful enough to do it. And you know you must…”
The Martian took one last look at his friend with whom he had fought side by side for years, gave him a slight nod, and said, “Now, go!” And with that farewell, J’onn pushed Kyle out of his mind and back into the Lantern’s own.
Once Kyle was gone, J’onn collapsed. He was using all his power to just remain standing. Being trapped in his mind had nearly ended him. J’onn took a deep breath, then stood. He looked around at the vast expanse of his mind’s remembrance of home planet and said four words: “M’yri’ah. K’hym. Redstone. Justice…”.
J’onn then lifted off the ground again and closed his eyes, entering the fight for his life.
“Yaaaaaaa!” Stanley Dover screamed as the blinding light exploded around him. The concussive force had knocked him to his knees. “You bastard! You weak, pathetic bastard! I was the one who nursed you back to health! I was the one who gave you a the means to return to your former life!”
The twisted magician stood and grew and extra set of arms. All four hands reached down and picked up a makeshift club from the splintered wood laying around the bar. “You owe me Queen! You owe m-”
“NO!” shouted a voice from the same body that was distinctly not Stanley Dover’s. “You will not have control over this form! It is mine!” Dover’s visage morphed back into that o the Martian Manhunter. “And I am taking it back now!”
“It’s mine!” Dover’s voice screamed, returning to his physical form. “I will not return to the pit! I will be-”
“You will not succeed!” J’onn’s form took control again. “You will -”
“I will not be denied!” Dover commanded”
J’onn took control of his body. “Kyle! It worked inside! Shine the light of your - Aaargh!” The Martian collapsed to his knees.
“You will not deny me this time Oliver!” Dover’s twisted visage croaked out from the Martian’s form as J’onn took control one last time.
“Kyle, this is our chance!” he shouted. “Banish this evil from my body!”
Thinking that Kyle’s light would separate Stanley Dover from his mind, and knowing he was too weak to end the evil spirit’s existence, J’onn took one last gamble. He used his last ounce of mental strength to pull Oliver’s mind into his own mind scape, his mental battlefield.
Inside, all was red - the sky, the rocky ground beneath. J’onn fell flat on his back, the red dirt and sand rising from the impact around his body. But before Oliver could run to his side, J’onn emitted a blinding light from every pore in his body.
The Martian’s mouth opened wide and the evil, grotesque, and twisted spirit of Stanley Dover rose out like a pillar of pestilence, shrieking. Ion had done his part. Now J’onn’s life lay in Oliver’s quiver.
/Take the shot Green Arrow…/ J’onn said telepathically, but weakly. /He’s yours…/
This was really not Ollie’s usual bag. Demons and telepathy and vacationing in a teammate’s brainscape — none of it was familiar to him. But J’onn’s directions, at least, were free of any vagueness.
“You got it,” Ollie said grimly, and he drew an arrow from his quiver, nocked it like the bow was an extension of his arm, his back, his eyes. In J’onn’s mind, there were absolutely no physical limitations to his archery, and that meant that the deepest principles of the way of the bow flowed like water.
Fundamentally, the archer aims at himself.
The tip of the arrow touched the corner of Ollie’s mouth, then he loosed the string—
—and the arrow spat through the air of J’onn’s mindscape, white poisonous smoke trails coming from it, green whipping lightning—
—thwocking so hard into the roiling, rotted form of Stanley Dover that Ollie staggered back a step, almost *feeling* his arrow chunking through corrupted meat and bone.
He didn’t need to raise his bow again. Ollie had perfect, unshakeable confidence in his own skill, and here in J’onn’s mind, there was no possible way he could have failed. No way that J’onn himself and Lantern Rayner could have failed.
They were goddamn Justice League, after all.
The bar, what was left of it anyway, blew apart in an explosion of hellfire. It seemed the only thing left standing were the cracked walls and a few pillars. A few scraps of paper fluttered to the floor like leaves on a very fiery and explodey fall day.
The blast was enough to knock down both J’onn Ollie - who had returned to his own mind just as he sent the spirit of Dover back to the pit. Kyle was unmoved, the green light of power still crackling around him. He gave his teammates a slight smirk.
But it was done. They had won. Evil was vanquished and J’onn was himself again.
“Oliver” the Martian said, rising. ”Kyle. I cannot express to the two of you enough how much I appreciate what you and others were willing to do for me.”
J’onn shook Oliver’s hand while placing his other on Kyle’s shoulder. ”Homer wrote ‘The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, as to find a friend worth dying for.’ I understand what he meant now. Thank you.”
He looked out the window. ”But now, I have someone I have to see. When I was lost inside my mind, there were only a few things that kept me hanging on and she… Well, I… If you will excuse me, I may be gone for a short… I… Call me if you need me.”
The Martian Manhunter flew out the busted window into the open sky, leaving his two teammates behind to speculate.
“Homer Simpson wrote that?” Kyle said to Ollie in wonder, after they watched their Martian friend depart. Kyle suspected J’onn was headed to Redstone…of some sort. He could understand why, if his speculation was indeed correct.
He turned to Queen to see the archer squinting at him like he was an idiot. A very powerful idiot who hadn’t yet come down to earth; but still an idiot. Huffing a small apologetic laugh, Kyle landed next to Ollie and punched his shoulder lightly. “Kidding! I know who Homer is. He was some old dude from some place long ago.” Kyle shuffled his step over some debris, leaving it to Ollie to figure out if he was still being facetious or not. “Man…the League is gonna be caught with some huge bills for this property damage…” Kyle looked up at Queen, looking a bit more sober.
“And I guess I’ll have to make a report on this…um…on what I did here. I don’t know how long J’onn will be, so I can’t ask him to vouch for me, but…you. I mean. Will you…?”
“Vouch for you how?” Ollie groused, brushing plaster dust and debris and splinters from his clothes. “Like assure everybody that it was a dire situation that totally required you to go Mega Green Lantern and slop your Ion powers around like a six year old with his own bottle of ketchup? That kinda vouching?”
The look on Kyle’s face was somewhere between tantrum and confusion, and for once this actually gave Ollie a pang of remorse instead of enraging him further. The times, they were a’changin’.
“Look, I’m just on edge still, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “That Dover fuckhead was bad news and I didn’t like knowing he was still able to emerge from the depths of whatever hell he’s rightly festering in. Of course I’ll vouch for you, Rayner. If you didn’t swoop in here like a one-man cavalry I’d be toast and J’onn would be a grease spot.” Ollie rolled out his shoulders, wincing; this was the point in the fight where the adrenalin started wearing off enough to feel all the hurts say hello.
“Where d’you suppose he’s going?” Ollie asked, glancing up in the direction J’onn had flown off in. “Was he talking about his wife?” He cracked his neck and picked a couple of pieces of glass out of the side of his hand, grimacing at the smaller, un-pullable shards peppering his forearm.
“Where else does a Martian go when he needs to soothe his nerves? He’s probably going home.” Kyle said, looking back up at the sky. He just wanted to get out of here now, before the police arrived. Because then there would be questioning and tedium. But he supposed he owed it to Queen to stick around. For some reason, Kyle wasn’t sure what, but…whatever. He could hear the sirens already, and he’d already used his abilities this far; perhaps he might as well use them further to soothe the local sheriff and his gang. Queen would never know.