ISSUE #5 (August 2018)
Written by Jake Hawkins Featuring: The Red Hood
Batman
Talia al Ghul
Bronze Tiger
Black Canary
Static
Black Lightning
|
SEVERAL YEARS AGO
THE BATCAVE The Batmobile roared into the cave just as the private elevator connected to his quarters lowered Alfred Pennyworth into Wayne Manor's best kept secret. The roof slid back on the car as the dynamic duo hopped from their seats with Batman making a beeline for his massive supercomputer. Alfred sat the tray of food on a table nearby before taking Bruce's cape and cowl and stowing them back with the rest of his array of suits as Jason helped himself to a couple of burgers and fries. "What's the move?" Jason managed to mumble between chewing. He grabbed a water from the fridge Alfred made sure was consistently well-stocked before he joined Bruce at the Batcomputer. "I know I tend to preach patience, but in a situation such as this Jason, we don't have the time to rest on our laurels and wait for Ra's to show himself. The dirty bombs he forced those kidnapped technicians from Kord Industries to create leave behind a unique radioactive signature that I may be able to isolate." Jason watched his mentor work on the computer, marveling at how a human being could still be this sharp, this focused on a goal even after everything his body had been through. Bruce was going on thirty-fours without a wink of sleep, the current fiasco with Ra's and the League of Shadows had taken full priority. It was in moments like these where Jason found himself wondering how Bruce could continue to push himself mentally and physically far past the levels of human endurance. How did this man who had everything taken away from him continue to make the sacrifices he did? Jason wondered how Dick had ever grown comfortable in this mountain of a man's shadow, however his train of thought was interrupted by what Bruce said next. "There is something you need to understand when facing Ra's and his cult," Bruce began as he turned around in his chair to face Jason, "Men who believe their ideals are more important than the lives of others are the ones who have shaped history, and in almost every case it has been for the worse. He has walked this earth for centuries, and this has allowed him to delude himself into believing he and any idea that comes into his head is an ideal that humanity should be blessed he’s willing to extinguish it for.” "I know what he's capable of Bruce." Jason responded firmly as he finished his meal. "Don't brush aside what I'm saying Jason. Ra's isn't Dent or Cobblepot, or anything like what you've encountered in your tenure here. He is a man obsessed with perfecting a modern utopia in his image, and if Ra's is this obsessed with painting the world with it in his grip, what do you imagine those who follow him would do to make sure his dreams come to life?" Bruce told Jason gravely as the boy wonder allowed the words to hit him like a sack of bricks. PRESENT DAY BELLE REEVE PRISON "You've run an admirable race Jason, but like all injured colts, you must be put down." The voice of Talia boomed from the AMAZO unit that held Jason up by the throat. Jason glanced down and saw Static attempting to wriggle his way from underneath the rubble. He looked to his left and sighed a deep breath of relief as Dinah and Jefferson made their way back into the hallway and towards the fray. He took solace in the fact that the people he was surrounded by had refused to give up, and Jason damn sure wasn't going to set a bad example. Bronze Tiger leaped into action, distracting the AMAZO by nailing it in the face with a kick that did little damage but gave Jason the opportunity to escape its grasp. "Benjamin, to say I am disappointed would be a gross understatement. While I respect the...initiative you are showing with this change of heart, you are far too valuable an asset to allow to live if you no longer wish to serve the demon." Talia said coldly as the artificial lantern ring on the AMAZO unit's right hand began to glow. The ring constructed a Gatling gun of willpower energy that began to fire at Bronze Tiger with rapid speed. Ben sprinted away from the energy construct bullets, ducking into a nearby cell for cover. Jason used the timely distraction to help Static out from underneath the pile of rubble and pull him to safety. "You got another round with this thing in you?" Jason asked as he pulled a Sig P226 from his waistband and loaded it with a strange bullet shaped device that Static could see was nothing like the tranq bullets he was accustomed to Jason using. Static watched as DInah and Black Lightning rejoined the fight before standing up with a renewed vigor pumping through him, inspired he had been chosen to fight alongside this group. "Yeah I got a little something in me. Call it out coach." Static replied as Jason stepped past him and charged towards the android. Jefferson blasted the AMAZO directly in the side of the head with a bolt of lightning just as Bronze Tiger and Dinah knocked it to its knees with a joint attack that clipped its leg. AMAZO turned and faced Dinah before she could deliver a fatal blow and unleashed a flurry at the Black Canary with Superman's ice breath that she only just managed to avoid. Before the AMAZO could fully get back to its feet, Ben began to hammer it across the head and chest with a series of blows that would have dropped a man after the first two. AMAZO merely swatted away the assassin before firing a massive arrow construct from its power ring that pinned Ben to the wall through his shoulder. Prideful warrior that he was, Turner didn't make a sound as the arrow tore through his flesh, gritting his way through the immeasurable pain. Jason tossed a small, circular plate that attached itself to the AMAZO's chest before pressing a key on the small screen attached to his left arm gauntlet. The plate made a small chime before it activated, as the number four flashed in green letters on the plate's range dial. Suddenly the AMAZO could barely move, unable to utilize its ability to mimic the speed of the flash and close in on Jason. Jason turned a nob on the screen of his gauntlet and the number on the plate attached to the android went up to eight. The AMAZO dropped to all fours this time, unable to move much more due to the immense strain it was now under. "Cooked that up with on the way here, it imitates Prince Brion's ability to manipulate an object's gravitational field. I know you believe such, what was the term you used? Oh yeah, parlor tricks are beneath me but hey, I'm not the type to bury old habits." Jason teased as he grabbed a nearby metal rod and prepared to plunge it through the android, however he is caught off guard with a blast of heat vision that sends him flying, scorching the bat symbol off his armor chest plate. Even under the immense gravity field being emitted from the plate on its chest, somehow the AMAZO struggled to its feet. Jason got up as well, looking down at his ruined chest plate and realizing just how lucky he was. "You alright?" Dinah asked as she prepared to leap back into the fray. "Yeah I'm good," Jason replied as he pulled up a view of AMAZO's schematics on his gauntlet's screen, "I got a semi-decent idea, think you can gimme a little time to get behind it?" Dinah nodded as she took off towards the still immobile android, ducking out of the way of each blast of heat vision it tried to cut her down with. Dinah leaped directly at the AMAZO, nailing it across the head with a kick before unleashing another sonic cry at point blank range. The android staggered back a few paces but did not fall. Before it could unleash any sort of counter attack, Jason shot the peculiar bullet he had loaded into his spare piece directly into the small of the android's back, where it landed directly into its spinal cord. "JEFFERSON, STATIC, LET LOOSE ON THAT THING RIGHT WHERE THE ENTRY WOUND IS!" Jason ordered as he leaped away from another blasts of ice breath. The pair of lightning wielders stepped up and combined their efforts into a massive blast that combined with Jason's magnet bullet overloaded the AMAZO unit's central nervous system, paralyzing it completely. The Android stood in place completely immobilized, its eyes glowing bright red however as it's heat vision attack protocol somehow was still functioning. "Well Jason I am impressed. Look at you grow up right before my eyes, no longer the troubled puppy with aggression issues. Maybe Grayson will pass his mantle to you and allow you to ascend to second place in the Batman's-" Suddenly a sword is plunged directly through the back of the AMAZO's head, cutting off Talia's voice mid-sentence and finally shutting down the android completely. The group of warriors looked surprised as they saw who they had to thank for putting the final blow on their opposition, but none more shocked than Dinah, who pushed past Jason and Jefferson to get a better look at the young woman who pulled the sword back out of the android. "Sara...what are you...why are you here?" Dinah asked as she approached her younger sister with whom she hadn't had any contact with in the past half-decade. "I'm sure there are plenty of questions that you've got stockpiled somewhere but unless each and every one of you want to help bolster Amanda's Task Force X roster I suggest we leave, now." Sara advised them as she stepped past the now defunct android and her sister. "I've got every route out of this place memorized, follow me." Rick Flag burst into Amanda Waller's office, where she sat deep in thought before finally giving him her attention. "The vigilantes have escaped the facility, apparently with Jefferson as well." He informed her. Much to his surprise however, she turned around to face him with a broad grin on her face. "Where is the Android?" She asked coyly. Moments later Waller and Flag surveyed the hallway where much of the battle against AMAZO had taken place, the destroyed unit still where the band of vigilantes had left it. Waller approached the unit, studying it carefully several times over before turning back to Flag. "I want our best technicians and engineers we can get from STAR labs looking this thing over as soon as possible, and by that, I mean within the next three hours. As for Task Force X, we need to reassess and reload our roster before their next assigned mission." Waller ordered him as she headed back towards her office without another glance in his direction. At the abandoned airfield where Talia had been controlling the AMAZO from, she noticed her cellphone ringing as Ubu prepared for them to depart. "Have you found it?" She answered, forgoing any sort of pleasantries. "We have. I'm uploading the coordinates directly to the Expediter now." The voice of the White Ghost croaked over the phone. "We're on our way." Talia ended the call immediately before turning around to see the Expediter loading the coordinates from White Ghost into the hijacked motherbox they had been utilizing for quick travel. A boomtube opened a few feet away, and Talia gestured to Ubu and Shiva that it was time to go. Ubu tossed the body bag they had went through great lengths to retrieve over his shoulder as he and Shiva followed Talia through the boomtube. On the state-of-the-art jet crafted personally by Bruce and Lucius, Jason removed his helmet and leaned back in his seat as the auto-pilot took over and guided the aircraft towards their destination. Where that happened to be he wasn't entirely sure of, but as long as they created some distance between themselves and the prison he didn't quite care. A holographic video emanated from the ship's control panel and the face of Barbara Gordon appeared in front of the weary Jason. "I hope you managed to not kill anybody today." Barbara began as Jason rolled his eyes. "Bruce wants a status report, what do you have for me?" Jason leaned forward annoyed Bruce hadn't contacted himself. "Is he truly that busy he couldn't send anyone other than his glorified night secretary for me to relay what I know? And here I was actually starting to feel welcomed back into the fold..." Jason added as sarcastically as he possibly could. "We managed to stop the AMAZO once it was activated but there was no time to recover what was left. Waller's people weren't exactly thrilled we decided to play the hero shtick on her turf." "Meaning Amanda Waller now has control of an AMAZO. Out of one fire and directly into another I see, well done." Barbara chimed back with her own sarcastic remark. "Unless you got something of some type of substance that will help us track down Bruce's favorite ego fueled sociopath, I'd like to cut this conversation short." Jason replied, reaching for a button on the console. "Actually I do, while you were playing tag with AMAZO there was an attack by another militia group that Talia must have pulled under her umbrella." Barbara informed him as her face was replaced with news footage covering the attack on a building in Wales. "Building was owned by a subsidiary of Luthorcorp so they're keeping quiet on what was taken, but anyone crazy enough to continually steal from Lex-" "Has to be the daughter of a megalomaniac and the love interest of a grown man who dresses like his childhood phobia come to life? Yeah, that sounds about right. So where's this thing headed now?" Jason asked as he stood up and removed his chest plate and utility harness after taking off his jacket. "Talia has managed to get a motherbox off the black market, thankfully trans dimensional teleportation is easy enough to track when you're...well me. She just popped into London twenty-five minutes ago.I don't have her exact coordinates but Bruce has a facility in the city-" "Offffffff course he does." Jason interrupted wryly. "That you can utilize to reassess and regroup. I'll be in contact." And with that Barbara cut the video feed and ended the conversation. In the rear of the jet, Sara Lance sat in complete silence, her head wrapped in the thoughts of what may happen to her father now that she had openly turned her back on Waller and her schemes. She looked up to see her sister approaching her tentatively, taking a seat next to her. "You want to tell me what you were doing there?" Dinah began as she faced her sister. She had honestly lost track of all the time they had lost, wondering why it took all of this just for them to be in the same room again. "I'm not particularly in the mood for your brand of judgement, so no, no I do not." Sara replied, staring straight ahead as she refused to make eye contact with her older sister. DInah took a deep breath, trying to hold back the well of resentment she had towards her sister before speaking again. "Dad asked me about you the last time I went to see him. He was hoping you would pop in sometime soon." She added, hoping to find some sort of common ground between the two of them. "Not exactly an option at the moment seeing as I'm too busy trying to figure out a way he won't spend the rest of his life in prison." Sara answered dryly. "One would think with all your connections and circles you run in that you would be doing more to prevent the same thing. But clearly you have your priorities in the same order they always are." "You're not a child anymore yet for some reason you insist on acting like one. Since we're on the topic of priorities, weren't yours at one point tied to the same people that unleashed that thing on us?" Dinah asked fiercely, the biting tone in her voice bursting through. "Every girl's gotta eat. When you've been stranded on an island for months, alone and wondering if you'll ever eat again, you'd be surprised how desperate you can become." Sara answered quietly, finally meeting her sister's eyes. "Don't judge something you can't possibly understand." "I get it Sara. I understand what you went through over there. But you turned your back on us, not the other way around. Your need to consistently go against the grain is how you winded up indebted to all the wrong people in the first place." And without another word, Dinah got up and crossed the ship, leaving her sister alone with her thoughts once again. BELLE REEVE THE CELL OF JOHN CONSTANTINE John Constantine mumbled to himself in Latin, his eyes stark white as he repeated the phrase "There's no order. No balance. No peace. The wicked refuse to rest." Symbols adorned every surface of his padded cell as Constantine writhed on the floor. In the one-way glass, the familiar figure of Zatanna appeared alongside Constantine's reflection. "Noitcelfer ypoc." The image of Zatanna said before seemingly stepping out of the glass itself and into the cell with John. She knelt down and studied John, brushing his hair back as she ran her hands through it. "What the hell have you done to yourself this time?" She wondered aloud before taking her father's hat off and placing it in the middle of the cell. "Emoh su ekat." She whispered as he pulled Constantine from the floor and placed his arm around hers as a shroud of darkness began to pour out of the hat and engulf the entire room. When it finally began to clear out, Zatanna and Constantine were gone. SOMEWHERE BENEATH LONDON Talia, White Ghost, Shiva, and Ubu stood around the bubbling Lazarus pit. Behind them stood a legion of the league's followers, all with the headwear they worse as part of the League of Shadows removed as a sign of respect for the ritual they were privileged to be a part of. Suddenly a body rose from the bubbling green liquid, and a scream of fury echoed throughout the massive cave. Ra's Al Ghul stepped out of the pit as Ubu moved quickly to throw a robe around his master. Ra's surveyed the group gathered in front of him, pleased but not surprised in the slightest his devoted followers had gathered for his awakening. He turned to Talia, who's cheek he brushed affectionately. "My daughter on this day, you have made me prouder than I have ever been in all my years on this earth. Now, let us take the reins of this world and shake it as we please." TO BE CONTINUED IN ISSUE #6 |