Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Postlo3w stories *LATEST UPDATE 13 AUGUST*

I literally have WEEKS to catch up on your stuff here raz, so a rather lengthy commentary is likely inbound in the next day or so.

Raz,

So sincere apologies for not keeping up. I was in a funk in Jan/Feb in general, let alone writing my own stuff, so I felt like reading other people's stuff would be cheating somehow. Then I got focused to close the loop on my own stuff, so concentrated on that. So now I get to play catch-up on all this and binge it at once. Here comes the stream of consciousness for the back half of Merciless!

Merciless pt 3

I love how these guys are sprocking cussing all the time
Great line about HQ always getting invaded
You have a great bead on Hadru's jerk personality, and his knack for getting himself (and others) into trouble

Wow! This is a deep level of evil for Mordru and Black Osiris. Sadistic as hell.

These shadow demons are creepy as hell. You're doing an amazing job at casting a *really* eerie mood here.
And classic Glorith is back! Love how you did this!
And playing with time - you know I love all that!

Part 4
Neat opening scene where the mood shifts palpably.
Whoo, torture scenes are hard to get through for me! (which means you're doing a great job here). As much as I'm kinda on possessed Garth's side here.
And possessed Brek is NASTY.
GREAT Legion rescue appearance!! TWICE
Part 5 is gonna be a fun read. Looking to see how you resolve a lot of these threads.

Part 5
Ooooh the title has me wondering all kinds of things...
Back to Drake! Oh, what a heartbreaking scene!
I'm really liking, and amazed actually, that you are getting mileage out of every Legionnaire in this epic. Well done.
WOW - That scene with Ral! Looks like ol' Glorith's been doing some indoctrination while she aged up Ivy into Verdant.
Nightstone and Otaki getting real!
The Sun Boy portrayal here (and earlier) very much recalls his imprisonment by Earth Man.
Vi to the rescue!
GREAT moment of Mon being suddenly vulnerable due to Dirk going Red-Sun. LOL on Light Lad's comment.
Excellent scene with Black Adam. Sure is a good thing Tellus is around!
Final showdown - poor Otaki! But Mysa Marvel! How cool is that!?
Very cool the concept of two Zoe's from different universes. I'm at least glad you have Zoe-247 talking like a normal person from the jump AND that you made her back to normal. I really hope she gets to go home.

This was SO SO GOOD, raz. Epic, I daresay! If we could post animated GIFs here, it would be of a standing ovation! Wonderful stuff!

On to the next adventure!

Next issue...

I'm glad you're dealing with the aftermath here. I makes a lot of sense that most of the Legion needs downtime with the evil that Mordru did.
Glad to see Kinetix go to find her friends.
And Mysa Marvel - such a cool concept. This is one powerful Legion, even understaffed.

The support staff gets an official name! Cool! Nice additions to the team!

----

Sad scene with Dawny & Drake. Glad you're doing a Shanghalla sequence; its almost required anytime someone falls.

This confrontation between Jaz and Mysa is very interesting!

Another creepily-written scene on the Dominator ship. It also goes into a totally different direction than I was expecting with Revenant (I'm imagining an egg with eyes and antennae for his head, btw).

Dominator Nutrient dispenser... eeeewww....

It makes sense for Revenant, if he's basically a BION variant, to be Duplicate Boy. Nice bit of folding in concepts there. I like how he was taken down.

-------

Glorith - I've been waiting for this one!

Cool, and slightly unexpected for me, scene with UBoy & Nightstone. I'm a fan of Gia's, I think.

Wow - Jaz is PISSED. I love it.

And the scene with Ral and Grava. Loved it, but I was a bit surprised with Ral's ability to bounce back a bit. He's more resilient than I.

I really liked these last couple of chapters to let the characters breathe a little after all the Mordru events. I really enjoyed reading this today all at once!

Hi all!

Sorry, I haven't had much time to write up a proper reply till tonight!

Grava and Ral are gonna be getting some more focus in the next few instalments as they search for Ivy - this will be the first real stress their relationship has had to face, I am thinking it's gonna be challenging writing Grava respond to real trauma but I am looking forward to it!

As far as Nightstone goes, her life is gonna take an interesting turn in the next instalment, I think y'all will like it

Jo talking to Gia was honestly something I decided on the spur of the moment right before I began writing that instalment, I was gonna have it be Tinya up till that point but it just occurred to me it makes so much more sense for him to be there instead. I base a lot of my Jo on the 5YL version I think, that's the version of him I like most.

Mysa as the Black Witch influencing the weather is probably a product of Chris Claremont X-Men comics, I always liked when Storm did that

I wanted to make Mordru's sadism on a different level than most other Legion villains - I think again the 5YL version of him is the one I love the most, and the one that most captured what sets him apart from other big bad guys. I still remember that issue where he had everyone reliving the worst parts of their lives being super creepy and well done!

That was very much what I was going for, glad you picked it up GL!

and also good pickup on Revenant's head being an egg with eyes and antennae, I like him looking weirdly inhuman

Next up:

* Mysa Marvel gets to flex some muscle!

* the search for Ivy begins!

* Nightstone's decision!

* all this plus a bar fight!

I'm definitely here for the bar fight.

ditto looking forward!!

JUPITER
Deep within the stratosphere
On a heavily modified shuttlecraft, a Terran tour guide tried to keep the fear out of his voice as he called for help on the vessel's comms console again. Howie Bindeer had made quite a lot of credits over the past few years running thrilling but highly illegal tours into the bizarre skies of Jupiter, but Howie was beginning to feel like maybe that was all over.

The tour had started off well enough; picking up eight men and women from their resort on the moon Europa, Howie had avoided Science Police patrols expertly as he flew his guests down through Jupiter's roiling clouds. There was always turbulence entering the enormous gas giant's atmosphere, with winds buffeting the tiny craft at hundreds of miles per hour. Today though, even though Howie had initially been able to convince his guests that it was just part of the extreme fun, the ship had shuddered more than usual.

Still, his very wealthy guests had oohed and ahhed at the diamond rains, the beautifully eerie lightning sprites, and most of all Jupiter's famous pulsating auroras for a good 45 minutes before things took a downhill turn. Howie could no longer pretend everything was fine when the ship's power dramatically shut down and the emergency backups kicked in. Howie had lost power to the engines first of all, and now it looked like comms was dead. With the shuttle's giant viewscreen and the dim red lights in the cabin flickering, everyone on board now knew that they were in very serious trouble.

"This is all your fault!" One of the tourists unbuckled his seatbelt and stood up. A Tritonian man, he was typically tall and lanky, and he had to crouch slightly so his head didn't brush the ceiling.

The man's wife was already crying, and as soon as he stood up she became even more upset. "Liell, please! You'll just make things worse!"

"Worse?!" He turned on his wife. "How can things possibly be worse, Iayta? We're all going to die on this hellish planet!"

"Sir, your partner is right." This came not from the tour guide or any of the guests, but rather a woman passing straight through the hull of the ship as though she were a ghost. One of the older tourists screamed and covered their face in panic.

"It's okay!" a teenage girl toward the back of the shuttle hollered excitedly. "Don't you recognise her? That's Phantom Girl from the Legion of Superheroes! We're saved!"

"That's right, I am Phantom Girl." Tinya's tone was reassuring as she passed fully into the cabin and hovered protectively in front of the flustered tour guide. "And I'm not alone, some of my very powerful friends are right outside this ship and we're gonna get you folks out of here in no time." Phantom Girl turned her attention back to the man who'd risen from his seat and though her voice retained the same warmth, her eyes locked on his with an intensity that said it would be a very bad idea to challenge her. "Sir, I really do think it'd be best to sit back down and buckle your seatbelt. We are going to save you, but it's likely to be a choppy ride."

The Tritonian man took the hint and returned to his seat.

Phantom Girl turned slightly toward the tour guide so she could address him directly, but she made sure to keep the others in her peripheral vision. "You're very very lucky the Science Police picked up your first distress call and alerted us, Mr Bindeer. There's a reason that visits to Jupiter are highly restricted. Everything about this planet is incredibly lethal, from the physical environment itself to the wildlife. I suggest you buckle yourself in as well, you can continue your education with the Science Police when we get out of here." Cowed, the tour guide obeyed without comment.

Speaking again to the cabin as a whole, Tinya kept her voice soft and warm. "Now I promise I'm not going anywhere, but I need to pop my head out for just a nano. The same radiation that disabled your ship's systems has messed with the comms in our flight rings and I need to let my friends know that everything's okay in here. Just hold tight, folks!" She ascended once more, and once she had passed through the shuttle Tinya gave a thumbs up to Mon-El, Blok and Mysa Marvel keeping pace outside. Mysa and Mon had both removed their capes knowing they'd only get in the way with these blustering winds, and the thought occurred to Tinya how rarely she'd actually seen her Daxamite friend without a blue cape billowing about him.

The Jovian environment was too harsh for even Legion-issue transuits to withstand for more than a minute or two, so the trio of heroes outside the ship were reduced to using telepathic earplugs to communicate; even then, the earplugs' range had been reduced to just a couple of metres. <I'm glad Tinya assigned herself this mission,> Mon-El projected. <That ship's lead lining might help protect anyone inside from radiation poisoning, but it protects them just as much from my x-ray vision.>

<Still, it was that same lead lining that allowed you to find them in the first place,> Mysa responded. <Jupiter is a very large planet to have to find a very small ship without something to help it stand out.>

<My friends?> Blok joined in. <I believe I understand why Phantom Girl saw fit to bring the three of us with her to retrieve one vessel.> He pointed out the shadowy forms of two enormous tentacled creatures swimming up through the murky cloud cover toward them. Each of the creatures was the size of a small house, appearing almost like dark gods approaching from some netherworld.

<Mysa, why don't you get these people to safety while Blok and I take care of our new friends?> Mon-El suggested.

<Actually,> Mysa suggested boldly, <Would you mind if you and I trade tasks, Mon-El? I know the situation is quite serious but I must confess I found it quite exhilarating using the speed of Mercury to fly here from Mars as swiftly as we did...I would like to see what the strength of Hercules can do, and one of those Jovian Attack Squids seems as good a test as any.>

<Be my guest, Ms Marvel!> Mon-El gave a casual salute, then he zipped off toward the shuttle without a second thought. The Marvel Family had been some of the Earth's greatest heroes in the past, and they'd all been mere children. Mysa Marvel may not have possessed her current powers very long, but she was already an experienced heroine; she didn't need to be coddled.

The beasts no doubt had been drawn here by the noisy passage of the shuttlecraft, but now that they were in visual range it was the mystical glow of Blok's lightning bolt insignia which attracted them. Their size would have been intimidating to almost anyone else, but to Blok and Mysa they were far more absurd than frightening. Each of the squids was a pale green color with darker green raised spots all over their bodies. Their six long-reaching tentacles were lined with suckers, and they had an equally long prehensile tail which whipped the thick air behind them. Their major difference visually to Terran squids was their golden heads which were shaped somewhat like an ancient pterodactyl, and the rows of razor sharp teeth which filled their elongated beaks. One of the screeching creatures prodded at Blok with its man-sized beak, though the stone man was easily able to evade its thrust.

Watching Blok and the squid manouvre around one another, Mysa could guess why her friend had acted as he had; the creature would surely injure itself were it to have actually succeeded in its stabbing motion. Instead, Blok allowed the squid to wrap one snake-like tentacle around him, then once it had a solid grip Blok simply took off into the atmosphere dragging the squid behind him.

The second squid overcame its shock at its mate's rapid departure quickly enough and turned on Mysa. While she knew the creature couldn't hurt her, she wasn't really all that keen on feeling its suckers all over her either. Lightning fast, she grabbed one of its tentacles and wrapped it around the squid. While it struggled to free itself from its own entangled limbs, Mysa gave a silent apology for the indignity and grabbed it by its tail before swinging it around once and flinging it hundreds of miles deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere where she knew it would feel more at home.

Very soon after, the four Legionnaires reconvened at the Science Police base on Europa. Once they'd safely delivered Howie Bindeer and his cargo to the waiting SPs, Phantom Girl gave Mon-El a teasing wink. "Hey, big boy...give a girl a lift back to Mars? We wrapped that up in no time, we should be back in plenty of time for the unveiling!"

"Careful," Mon-El cautioned as Tinya leaped into his waiting arms. "We don't want to get your boyfriend jealous!"

The quartet of heroes' laughter rang out behind them as they zoomed off past Jupiter's many moons.

**********

In a small windowless room painted a soothing pale blue, a Naltorian floral arrangement added a hint of perfume to the air and Durlan Impressionist art added a splash of color to the walls.

Laurel Kent, the teenager who'd appointed herself the bearer of Supergirl's legacy, sat in a large armchair with her feet tucked beneath her. With her arms folded and hidden beneath her voluminous poncho, she appeared more like a vulnerable young girl right now than an indestructible superhero.

A transparent tabletop bearing a jug of water and a pile of glasses hovered between Laurel and a matching chair opposite. Sitting in that chair with one leg across the other, Dirk Morgna sipped at his beverage. "Do you think I wanted to hurt you, Laurel?" he asked softly.

"No!" she almost snapped. "No, that's not it at all," she explained more calmly. "I know that what Mordru did to you, that it would have torn you up. I guess that makes me feel worse; I feel so weird around you now, and I know it's not your fault but at the same time..." Her voice trailed off and she found herself unable to meet his gaze.

"Take your time," Sun Boy encouraged her gently.

"I mean...I've been hurt before, you know?" She looked almost imploringly into Sun Boy's blue eyes. "I've been shot. There was Satan Girl and Cythonna...there have been times when someone got past my invulnerability. But they were always over so quickly, and...and none of those things were done to me by someone I cared about. Like...you know how we used to date, right? It was a bit strange when I came back, but I think we really have become pretty decent friends, and now...now I guess, I don't think of Dirk Morgna as my friend. I think of Dirk Morgna as someone who could just torture me to death anytime he wanted to. I just think about how it just kept getting hotter and hotter in Mordru's castle, and...and I can still feel the...the blisters, you know?" She wiped tears from her eyes and sniffed back a sob. "I'm sorry, grife. Some Legionnaire..."

"What you're feeling is normal, Laurel." The man sitting opposite her gave her a gentle smile which was very much unlike any expression Laurel had seen before from Sun Boy. "All of us are aware of our mortality and we're aware that we can be hurt by those we care about, and that's something that your power has protected you from for the most part...so it's okay that you're not accustomed to that feeling." His voice changed timbre and Laurel watched as Sun Boy's athletic form shifted into that of a leaner bald orange-skinned man. Short stubby antennae sprouted from his forehead and slight points extended from the top of his ears. "If you think today was valuable though, I would like to try and help you feel better about that. Would you like that?"

"It was easier being able to say stuff to you that...you know, that I'm not ready to say to him yet." Laurel forced a half-smile. "I think I would like to come back...thanks, Jrey."

"That's why I'm here," the Legion of Superheroes' new team counsellor replied gladly. "Now...there's something I'd like to bring up again knowing what's happening later today. I take my clients' confidentiality very seriously; we're bound to bump into each other outside of this room given that I'm part of the Legion's Support Crew, but I'll take your lead in how you'd like to interact. I won't feel slighted if you don't feel comfortable engaging with me in a public setting. By the same token I won't actively engage with you unless you initiate it, and that's purely because it's very important to me that you feel comfortable being able to be open with me when you feel the need. Does that sound reasonable to you, Laurel? Please let me know if you have any concerns."

"No, no, that makes sense." She used her poncho to wipe the remaining tears from her face and released an exhausted sigh. "I'm glad Berta nagged me into coming to see you but I'm a little wiped out...do you mind if I touch base with you over the next couple of days to make our next appointment?"

"No, I don't mind at all." The Durlan man named Jrey Lefen waited for Laurel to gather herself, then escorted her to the door. "Take care now."

As the door whooshed shut behind Supergirl, Jrey consulted his omnicom for his day's schedule....plenty of time for meditation, lunch, and then he'd have to find something suitable to wear for Phantom Girl's big event!

**********

TAKRON-GALTOS
Skepticism Isle
Surrounded by an ocean tinged purple with toxic chemicals, a small island emerged which looked something like a pi symbol inside a perfect circle. Descending toward the island on a disc-shaped hovering platform were two members of the prison planet's native superhero team, the Workforce's Magno and Gear. Chameleon Boy and Chlorophyll Kid stood beside them, and Comet Queen leaned over the platform's safety rail far enough that if she hadn't possessed the power of flight herself the boys might have been concerned for her safety.

"Mathematic!" Comet Queen exclaimed, tickled by the strangely shaped island despite their somber reason for being here.

"Literally," Magno spoke while Gear brought them in for a landing. "It's some sigil our consultants from the Sorceror's World came up with to suppress magic on the island...apparently it's supposed to represent rational thought overriding occult forces or something like that? It's all a bit over my head to be honest," the Workforce's young Braalian leader admitted.

The island's surface area was only a couple of miles at most, and as the heroes came closer they saw that it was made of a dark craggy rock with practically no vegetation. There were only three buildings on Skepticism Isle.

There was the Subwarden's modest quarters on the north coast where the planet's terraformers had provided him with a private beach, a small swimming area sectioned away from the poison sea and the island's only plant life; tropical plants which were not only more aesthetically pleasing than the rest of the barren island but also acted as a visual barrier between his residential space and the rest of the island. There was a heavily protected power station on the island's east coast, and then taking up roughly half of the remaining space on the island was the ugly windowless prison facility they'd come here today to visit.

As Magno led the group toward the imposing grey prison building, Comet Queen stared at her husband with open concern. Grava couldn't see Ral Benem's face inside his wooden helmet but she knew that he couldn't possibly be feeling good about being here. "Don't worry, Chlory," she grabbed his arm and uttered privately, "We'll get in and out of here quicker than neutrino rain and we'll get our little sprout back and everything will be hypernova gleaming again in no time!"

Chlorophyll Kid gave her a supportive squeeze and met her gaze. "Thanks, Grava." He was trying to be optimistic but she could hear the flat tone of depression in his voice and when he looked at her directly she could see the pain in his eyes through the slits of his helmet. Comet Queen gave him as encouraging a smile as she could manage under the circumstances.

Magno tactfully cleared his throat to call their attention to a tall man walking out of the prison to meet them all. "Chameleon Boy, Chlorophyll Kid, Comet Queen; Let me introduce you to Subwarden Thadorjee Thirteen." A thin pale-skinned man dressed in conservative grey businesswear approached, his angular face weathered. His deep-set eyes were almost as black as his unruly mop of hair, and he had a thick and slightly uneven moustache which didn't connect to the sparse hair growing from his chin.

"Thank you for your time, Subwarden." As the senior Legionnaire present, Chameleon Boy approached the taller man and gave him a firm handshake. "We appreciate you indulging us on such short notice."

"I'm happy to help," Subwarden Thirteen replied. "Your colleague Tellus saved my parents' lives during that Magic Wars business a while ago, I'll always have time for the Legion of Superheroes."

"Speaking of magic," Cham continued as Subwarden Thirteen led the group inside, "I'm curious about the measures that you've taken here? It's a bold undertaking, creating a prison specifically for occult supercriminals."

"And long overdue," the Subwarden agreed. "The island itself is composed of meteoric iron, and the structures are composed of a unique iron/Nth metal alloy to inhibit certain schools of sorcery. Everything on this island has been engineered to either suppress or baffle occult energies, and I myself am fortunate enough to possess a family trait which pops up every few generations where magic just...doesn't work on me. Which is ironic, given that some of my ancestors have also been quite notable sorcerors as well."

As the group continued their discussion, Subwarden Thirteen took them into the bowels of the prison where the most dangerous criminals were jailed. Chameleon Boy couldn't help but notice that many of the cells were empty, but the ones that were populated were populated mainly by villains the Legion themselves had battled. While the cells were fully enclosed, flat video screens mounted outside the door displayed the cell's interior from every possible angle.

Khem Fawecki was here, the man the Legion knew better as Black Osiris. Mordru the Merciless lay dormant in his technological sarcophagus, a score of devices feeding constant biometrics to the warden droids who comprised Subwarden Thirteen's staff. The vampire lord Vrykos seethed in a cell lined with religious icons from seven different worlds, and finally the Legion came across the cell of the man they'd travelled all this way to see. Unlike the other villains the heroes had passed, this cell was filled with small flowering plants with long green stems and petite white snowdrop blooms. "The herb is called moly," Subwarden Thirteen explained. "The Themyscerians of Earth made use of it to imprison sorcerors because of its antimagical properties."

"Starshine, he can't...he can't scan us in there, can he? The way he's looking right at that camera, I feel like he's pulsing x-rays right through us, brrr!" Comet Queen shuddered and held on to Chlorophyll Kid a little tighter.

"This is just what he does," Gear tried to assuage Grava's fears. "He doesn't have anyone in there to victimise so he does this creepy intense stare at the cameras all day as the next best thing."

It was clear to everyone present that both Chlorophyll Kid and Comet Queen were deeply uncomfortable now that they'd come to the purpose of their visit. "Chlor, CQ...are you two sure you want to go through with this?" Chameleon Boy asked gently. "I know you want to find Ivy, but the Legion's resourceful...we can find another way."

"The Legion's also still recovering from what Mordru and Black Osiris did to them," Chlorophyll Kid answered, his voice a little ragged. "Grava was right when she told me I'm not going to be okay again until we find my daughter. I don't want to wait any longer, Chameleon Boy."

"Fair enough." Cham turned back to the Subwarden. "Well then...let's see what Alek Arcane has to say for himself, shall we?"

**********

MARS
Husband Hill, former site of the Legion of Superheroes' Headquarters
Phantom Girl looked out over the crowd of onlookers before her. There were easily a few thousand people here; not only several of her teammates in the Legion and some of the Academy students who'd stayed on Mars while they were on leave from school, but journalists, law enforcement, the media, and of course the Legion's own legion of fans. As she panned over the crowd she saw the young man who'd been one of the Legion's greatest supporters since their early days, Flynt Brojj. She gave the bespectacled youth a quick wink of recognition and couldn't help but smile at his exuberant reaction. For all the trauma the Legion had gone through recently, it was nice to have a visible reminder of more optimistic times. She chose to interpret it as a good omen.

"Excuse me, folks - could I have your attention please?" Tinya asked into the mic at her podium. Hovering holotransmitter drones carried her image and voice out over the enormous crowd so everyone could see and hear her. Tinya gave a moment for the crowd to get their applause out of the way and then continued. "First of all, I'd like to say a big thank you to the Martian people who welcomed the Legion of Superheroes with open arms when we needed to relocate our headquarters. Several of us had lived on Earth ever since leaving our homeworlds to join the Legion, and your hospitable nature made a move that could have been quite daunting much less so.

Recent events however have meant that the Legion of Superheroes have had to pack up and move again; there will be more on that in a week or so, but today isn't the Legion's time to shine. In fact, and it's not easy to admit this, but today is for the people the Legion of Superheroes have failed." Phantom Girl's gaze flicked down to Nightstone sitting in the front row only a couple of metres away. Nightstone had been intimidated by the idea of appearing on a stage in front of so many people, but Tinya had insisted that the younger girl at least sit where Tinya could see her while she made this speech; it was important to Tinya that Gia see for herself how genuine Phantom Girl was in this new undertaking. Next to Nightstone, the Legion's new Counsellor did his best to make Gia feel as comfortable as possible.

Phantom Girl took a breath and continued. "You're all familiar with the Legion of Superheroes tryouts, I take it...in fact, I'll bet some of you here have been to one of two tryouts yourselves. The tryouts are a remnant of the days when the Legion of Superheroes were more like a club of kids than a group dedicated to the defence of innocent sentients everywhere, and they've given us some of our best and brightest members but they've also historically been a time for the Legion of Superheroes to show the more imperfect sides of ourselves. It's an easy temptation to rationalise some of the snobbery, rudeness or just plain lack of care that the Legion have exercised in the past when it comes to the way we've treated hopeful would-be Legionnaires who didn't make the team; after all, we were just kids ourselves when we started this superhero club.

We're not kids anymore though, and we need to do better." Tinya caught the gaze of the Legion founders now sitting together with the Ranzz children, Lightning Lass, Night Girl and Ultra Boy. All of them radiated pride for what Phantom Girl was doing, and she felt encouraged to keep going. She pressed a hidden button on the podium, and the enormous privacy field which had been her backdrop till now faded from view. A murmur passed through the crowd as everyone took in exactly what it was that Phantom Girl had revealed.

Two smaller boxy buildings occupied the space behind Tinya where once the Legion of Superheroes' much larger headquarters had stood. The buildings weren't particularly impressive on their own, each of them a typical example of contemporary architecture. The main walkway split off to opposite sides, each path leading to one or the other building before circling back again to meet between them. This formed a kind of roundabout with a lush garden in its centre, and it was the two golden statues in the centre of that garden which caught the crowd's attention.

To the left, a twenty foot high representation of Otaki beckoned visitors toward one of the buildings. "Only a very few people here will recognise this young woman," Phantom Girl spoke. "Her name was Bina Nawoti, and she wanted to join the Legion of Superheroes using the codename Otaki. She came to our last tryout and events transpired which led to her being horribly abused by not one but two powerful Legion foes. The Legion failed Bina Nawoti...and Bina paid for that failure with her life.

Bina's story is perhaps the most extreme example of how we should have done better by our applicants, but she's far from the only one. Another young woman named Delya Castil once tried to prove herself to us as a heroine named Mentalla, and she too was tragically murdered by one of our foes. The Legion's rogue gallery is littered with sentients who turned against us after we shunned their attempts to be a Legionnaire, and maybe we could have helped some of them avoid a life of crime or maybe we couldn't have but to our shame...we never even tried.

...So today I'm unveiling the Bina Nawoti Foundation. We have a hand-picked support staff including our esteemed team counsellor Jrey Lefen and a young lady who's not quite ready to become an instant celebrity but who knows first hand what it's like to be forgotten by the Legion of Superheroes, and in the coming days they'll be recruiting and training a full team of outreach workers to help them. The Bina Nawoti Foundation's goal is to make sure that everyone who wants to be a Legionnaire but maybe isn't quite ready to be a Legionnaire gets all the support they need to find the best way to channel their talents outside of the Legion. Not everybody can be a Legionnaire, but everybody deserves the chance to be the best sentient they can be and it's high time the Legion started helping people along their way to that goal instead of leaving them out in the cold."

Tinya could tell that the journalists and entertainment media present were about to erupt, and she sequed to the next part of her speech before they had a chance. "Of course, one of the pathways that Legion applicants might be suited to follow is the Legion Academy." She turned toward the second building, a statue of Fire Lass mirroring Otaki's posture beside her.

"Let me present the Arqiia Memorial Campus of the Legion Academy," Phantom Girl announced. "Arqiia, who also called herself Fire Lass, was one of our students until very recently. Her unique origins made it difficult for her to adjust to life with us, but she gave her very best and in the end she sacrificed herself to save the lives of those who couldn't save themselves." In the crowd, Tinya briefly caught a glimpse of Color Kid patting a teary-eyed Firecrest on the shoulder. "Arqiia's heroism was inspiring, but her sacrifice was unnecessary. The Legion of Superheroes thought that it would be expedient to move the Legion Academy into the same building as us, but in our hubris it never even occurred to us the danger we'd be subjecting these kids to. More than once we've failed to protect our students as we should have, and I rest easy now knowing that our kids are not going to have to worry about getting caught in the crossfire of our enemies until they're well and truly ready to be part of the Legion themselves."

Again, Phantom Girl paused to allow the crowd to digest what she'd just told them. Dragonwing was among the students who'd remained on Mars for this unveiling and Tinya could see that Marya wasn't happy about what Tinya had just said. Still, Marya was always unhappy about something someone had said, she would just need to get used to this new status quo.

"We'll be taking tours through both buildings all afternoon and information packs should be available for streaming as I speak, but for now I can see some of our friends from the media are about to burst so....let's take questions."

**********

DISPUTED TERRITORIES
Kraken of the Void Tavern
The Kraken of the Void was a not particularly reputable tavern on one of the many asteroids that formed part of an uneasy border between the United Planets and the Khund Empire. The Kraken of the Void's main clientele was asteroid miners or criminals, and very often criminal asteroid miners. So it was more than a little unusual to see a stunningly attractive pink-skinned woman draped in revealing vinyl and strategically placed translucent veils sliding up to a drunken Talokkian patron at the bar. Sex workers were not an entirely unusual sight here, but none of them had the jaw-dropping allure of this young woman who looked more like she belonged in a classy Venturan establishment than some dirty backwater bar.

"Sorry sweet skirt, wha'd you say your name was again?" the pudgy Talokkian slurred, grabbing the shapely young woman clumsily around her waist.

"Her name is Veilmist," a gruff voice growled from behind her, and the woman's eyes widened in shock as she felt something clamp onto the back of her neck. Her head was filled with a maddening high-pitched squeal and she instinctively threw her hands over her ears.

"Wha'd you do t'my lady?" the Talokkian rose to defend this woman he'd just met, pulling a blade from where it was sheathed at his belt. For the first time he saw the immense size of the muscular cyborg Khund who'd disabled Veilmist, and his courage faltered.

"I stopped her from fleecin' you the same way she fleeced me a couple weeks back," the Khund glowered. "You got sloppy, little girl...comin' back to the same huntin' ground so soon, gotta know that's a bad move."

"My...head..." Veilmist managed to gasp through bared teeth, her eyes welling with tears.

"Hurts, don't it?" the imposing Khund man sneered. "It better, damn sonic inducer cost me enough creds...it'll take care of your devil-spawned power long enough for me to get the bounty on you though, that's all I care ab--" The Khund's taunt was cut short by a sickly gurgling sound as a metal talon some twelve inches long pierced straight through his throat from behind. Blood spurted all over Veilmist, the Talokkian man who was very close to being robbed blind by her and everyone else within several metres. The talon silently withdrew, and still gushing blood from the hole in his throat the Khund collapsed to the floor.

Seconds ago the bar had been full of raucous conversation but now you could hear a pin drop. Everybody here was accustomed to violence, but that level of unprompted savagery was enough to make even these hardened lawbreakers stop what they were doing and pay attention. The Khund's murderer stood revealed as an unexpectedly slight bald albino woman in a pale blue bodysuit, one imposing talon jutting out of each forearm. She simply stood in simmering silence over her victim while two other women took their places at her side.

"Thank you, White Bat," one of the women spoke. "Nobody will be collecting that bounty today." This woman seemed slightly older than the other two, and she wore a high-collared dark brown leotard. Her unruly hair was a lighter shade of brown, and it framed her handsome face like a mane. A small metallic device was attached to her forehead, an open ring at its centre crackling with hot pink energy. "Sentients - and I use that term very generously - my name is Vista, and--"

"Vharras!!" a yellow-skinned Khund bellowed as he finally realised it was his friend who had been downed. This Khund made the other man look like a weakling; he was at least 7 feet tall and he easily bowled sentients out of his way as he charged toward the women.

Vista turned to the third in their group, the youngest of all of them. "Nimbus", she gave a bored sigh, "This one's all yours."

"Fun!" the young woman named Nimbus replied cheerily. She looked to be in her late teens and she wore a leotard similar in design to Vista, but one which was a deep blue color with gloves and boots to match. A bright blue field projected out evenly about an inch from her body, and as she threw her hand up with her palm facing outwards the field expanded in that direction. Quite dramatically, it shoved the gigantic Khund and eight other people across the room. They toppled more people, smashed furniture and drink vessels, and one of them even flew straight out the window into the freezing night air outside.

"Bar fight!!"

Nobody knew who'd called it, but it was a mistake. The three women made effortless work of the bar patrons; Nimbus's forcefield protected her from injury even as it enabled her to smash out with the force of an oncoming vehicle at entire groups of people, White Bat mutely slashed and impaled anyone stupid enough to get close to her, and Vista...Vista simply gazed upon her victims, and with one flash of energy from the device in her head those victims vanished without a trace.

It took the trio less than two minutes to reduce the busy bar to a room half filled with the groaning wounded and the silent dead. Vista gently swept Veilmist's lush magenta hair away from the device that had been attached to her neck and spoke softly but firmly. "Hold still."

Veilmist had little choice in the matter; she couldn't focus enough through the pain in her skull to even think of running, she could barely even support herself leaning against the bar. Vista gave White Bat a quick nod, and the bald woman dispassionately thrust one talon out to shatter the sonic inducer without so much as brushing Veilmist's skin. As Veilmist began to recover, she stepped back defensively from the three women. "I will not go back to my husband, I do not care how deadly his mercenaries are!"

"We have no intention of returning you to Firefist," Vista assured her. "We're here to help you, Veilmist."

"I need no help," Veilmist's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "My power protects me--"

"Your power that bastich just suppressed?" Nimbus spoke up. "He found you easily enough...it took us a little longer, but we found you too. You can't run forever and there's safety in numbers, Veilmist. You just saw how we took out a whole room of people without even raising a sweat."

"Let's not smother her," Vista held up a hand. "We should continue this somewhere a little more private though, fems. Veilmist, why don't you use your power to get us all out of here, and we can tell you more about our Sisterhood of Sin?"

The Khund beauty looked around the room and weighed her options. If these women had really wanted to hurt her, they'd just had a prime opportunity to do so.

Veilmist made her decision and all four women disappeared, leaving only wisps of lavender-scented smoke in their wake.

**********

EDITOR'S NOTES:
* no Jovian Attack Squids were hurt during the making of this episode! They are from Legion canon though, as I'm sure Phantom Girl remembers all the way back from Legion of Super Heroes #260 in 1980!

* Alek Arcane of course is Ivy's evil necromancer grandfather, which goes to show sometimes your family literally has skeletons in the closet...

* Vista, White Bat and Nimbus are three homemade characters who were part of Earth-Man's Judgement League many moons ago...they didn't really get much spotlight back then so don't worry if y'all don't remember them because they're gonna get much more spotlight soon enough

* nearly forgot! The Kraken of the Void is a seedy little dive that has appeared one time previously, when the Legion beat up the last other living Trommite! http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=819694#Post819694

NEXT: THE NEW HQ! (and now that the dust has settled a bit, an updated roster!)

yay! a new installment!

Love your Tinya and her polite, warm but firm leadership. She's really a great face for the Legion too. also heh re continuing education with the SP... oh Howie.

heh at the capes being removed!

I like the limitation re transuits also cannot last forever in the toughest environments

Jovian Attack Squids! so cool! also like Mysa flexing her new powers.

nice convo between Laurel and not-Dirk (that was a nice surprise! Legion counselor in action!). great that Laurel was mature and self-aware enough to articulate her conflicting emotions. it's always tough to feel one thing, while rationally knowing it is not right.

haha, Skepticism Isle is a pi symbol inside a circle, nice! and also nice that it is related to a magical ward or somesuch. ah, makes sense that magical consultants would be enlisted for a prison for magical criminals! also cool, magical immunity!

Flynt Brojj!

aw, Nightstone. kudos to Tinya for publicly acknowledging that the Legion could have done better. and also acknowledging that tryouts had their bad points too! also, nice nods to both Otaki and Mentalla, but also to the failed applicants who turned bad (well, arguably some of them were bad eggs to begin with, but indeed more could have been done)

hey nice! an outreach arm of the Legion! and totally agree - not everyone is meant to be a Legionnaire, but everyone should have the support they need to find their place

and also smart moving the Academy campus away - indeed, not getting caught in the crossfire. they have their teachers and security systems anyway, so it should be safer... right?


Veilmist! good to see her again!

oy. I already figured it would be some kind of all-female group. remind me: wasn't White Bat at least part of the Judgment League? they are shaping up to be quite scary. What does Vista do exactly, it would not also be teleportation would it (as then redundant vs Veilmist)? so where did her victims go? ah yes, you confirmed, all three are Judgment League ex-members nice! and I found your team entry on them ;-) https://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=844876#Post844876

looking forward to more more more!

Lots of goodness here raz.

I totally dig gas giant scenarios; I'm trying to figure out one myself eventually. Its a great scene and told mainly from the passenger's perspective.

Like I told Harbi, I really like having psychologists as part of the Legion's extended team. With all the crap this team sees, I think it'd be a very important job.

The barfight is great - chilling and a fun intro to this new sisterhood.

But the single best thing in this entry is Tinya effectively apologizing for how some Legionnaires behave during auditions. Yeah, its a great laugh in all the incarnations we've seen it, but sometimes they act like real jerks. I love that you've addressed this.

hi Raz, thanks for the PM, appreciated.

Totally love the first little story - the idea of thrill seeker tours into Jupiter makes perfct sense - hell, I'd want to be on one, though not the one you have described.

Blok, Mon El and Mysa Marvel - that's all your heavy hitters in one place, though given the nature of the enviroment and potential threat you described it makes sense.

Jovian Attack Squids! Yay! fabulous silver age silliness that you make appear as a credible threat. Mon El knowing that Mysa wouldn't need coddling was nice. Blok not wanting to hurt the squid was sweet too.

Laurel's scene with Jrey was intriguing - having a Durlan assume the appearance of the person you want to speak to is inspired. Poor Laurel dealing with that fear of Dirk, and well done for thinking of it as it really helps smooth a bit of the rough from her character which can be a bit brash.

Takron-Galtos next and the idea of a place to hold mystical criminals is another great idea - you are on fire here Raz! All of your ideas make perfect sense but I would never had thought of them.

Is Subwarden Thirteen a descendent of Dr Thirteen?

Alek Arcane? Ouch! That's going to get nasty, I feel bad for Ral and Grava already.

Nice of you to bring back Flynt Brojj, that's a real treat!

The Bina Namoti Foundation and the Arqiia Memorial Campus are both really good ideas Raz, bet you must have cheered when you thought of them. I am of course thoroughly jealous that I didn't come up with them You are really adding to the mythos with these and it's really inspirational how you mix the smaller moment, like Laurel's counselling session, with these large events that will have big consequences further down the line.

So, where are the Legion going to be based? They can't stay in hotels forever, can they?

Yay, a bar fight! Veilmist is always trouble so I'm really happy to see her again, Khunds are fun! I was thinking that I knew the names White Bat and vista from somewhere and though they must have been reboot characters, but it's good to see you bringing back some of your Judgement League thugs. I'm intrigued by what yor plans are for them. The Sisterhood of Sin are going to be great!

This has been an enjoyable hour Raz catching up on your work, it's so much fun to see what's going on with your team and how you are moving storylines on. You have a gift of keeping things going without either getting too complicated or confusing.

Can't wait to see where you take us next!

More, more, more!

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't had time to respond to anyone yet but thanks for commenting as usual!

Ridiculous alien animals are one of the things I really like about the old-school Legion, I'm glad I got a chance to do something with the Jovian Attack Squids at last!

Jrey as the team's counsellor came about because I specifically wanted to avoid using a telepath...and as a bit more comes out about his background, we will see that it ties in with some of the older stuff I have written as well. It honestly didn't even occur to me until I sat down to write Laurel's scene that he could use his powers as part of his treatment methodology so that was just a lucky accident really!

Subwarden Thirteen is indeed a descendant of Dr Thirteen! Good pick, Harbi! And I thought (especially after the Magic Wars) that it's probably time for the UP to have a response to mystical villains other than "exile them somewhere and hope for the best".

The Bina Nawoti Foundation will probably be one of those things that just sits in the background 99% of the time, but I had the same thought as GL - the Legion really do tend to be jerks around tryout time and those scenarios are fun to read and write, but it's the kind of thing they should have really grown out of by now. I assume for every Radiation Roy or Spider-Girl there's probably a lot more applicants who didn't necessarily become supervillains but could probably have used some help moving forward instead of just being shown the door...

The Sisterhood of Sin will be popping up a lot more to annoy people, and I promise Vista's powers will get a decent explanation sooner rather than later I was gonna provide links to where they've showed up before, but I decided it'd be better to just have all the details come out in-story

And as for this:


I think the next instalment should answer that one nicely!

Marella Tao watched with mild curiosity from inside the comfort of her small passenger shuttle as the Legion of Superheroes' newest headquarters loomed larger with her approach.

Its design called back to the Legion's original clubhouse, a primitive yellow rocket-shaped structure with four red fins emerging from its tail end. Unlike the Earth-based original building however, the Legion's headquarters today floated in silent orbit high above the red planet Mars and both its moons.

As Marella's craft neared the base's hangar doors, the instantly recognisable encircled L which was the Legion of Superheroes' logo promised a warm welcome. A door irised opened on the surface near one of the enormous red fins, and Marella's vessel was captured by a tractor beam and comfortably drawn inside. The holojournalist was impressed, as she knew she would be. State of the art forcefield technology made the trip flawlessly smooth, and before she knew it Marella and her accompanying holocorder drone were disembarking from her vehicle in a large open space and being led toward a turbolift by intuitively glowing strips in the floor.

As a doorway opened before her, she walked headfirst into a very familiar wolf head emblem spread taut across a hard chest. Marella bounced back, maintaining her composure despite the awkward meeting. "Hello, Brin."

"Marella! Grife, I'm sorry!" Timber Wolf reached out gently to steady her. "You wouldn't guess my power is super-agility, huh?"

"All is well," Marella smiled graciously. "How have you been anyway? It's been a long time."

"Uh yeah..." Brin Londo rubbed the back of his neck, inadvertantly drawing attention to his powerful triceps. "About that...I guess I owe you another apology, I suppose I didn't want things to be weird after we...you know..."

"We may not have worked out romantically," the red-haired holojournalist laughed lightly, "But we always had fun, didn't we? You don't need to be a lone wolf all the time, you know."

"Oh Marella, I'm so sorry I'm late!" Marella Tao heard her second apology for the day as Phantom Girl emerged through the floor a few meters away. "I really wanted to be here to meet you straight off the shuttle!"

"It's no problem," Marella stood on her toes to give Timber Wolf a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Timber Wolf here was nice enough to entertain me while I waited...don't be a stranger, Brin Londo!" Quickly adjusting her hair, Marella turned her attention to Phantom Girl. "I'm just grateful that you chose me for this opportunity, Phantom Girl!"

Tinya had fully entered the large space now, and she approached Marella to shake her hand while Timber Wolf made a hasty exit. "You're very welcome," Tinya gave the reporter a welcoming smile. "Logistically we're not really set up to allow a large gathering of the press on board just yet, but we do understand that there's going to naturally be a lot of public interest in the Legion of Superheroes' new base and I think the rest of the team would agree with me that you deserve the scoop. If nothing else, we owe you one for having ever had to date Timber Wolf." The two women giggled mischievously as Phantom Girl led them to a turbolift.

"So obviously some of the areas here are highly secure and won't be included on the tour," Phantom Girl explained as they moved silently through the 450 foot long spacecraft, "But we should still be able to show off a little." The door whooshed open, and Phantom Girl walked Marella and her hovering holocorder down a corridor which led into an advanced medical facility. In his normal Shwarian form, Staq Mavlen was sitting up on a table which contained an internal light. Flitting about him like some wingless dragonfly was a blue microship with white trim and a white cross on its trail.

"You may not recognise him when he's not a fire-breathing dragon, but this is Firecrest," Phantom Girl introduced, "And this is the Legion's newest recruit, Dr Skorski. I hope you two are ready for Marella to make you famous," Tinya teased.

"You're from Teall, isn't that right?" Marella asked the airborne doctor. "I'm fascinated to know, what led you to become a physician for organic lifeforms?"

"Dr Skorski is equally fascinated by the workings of your kind," an unexpectedly pleasant voice emerged from the small craft. "So different you are to every form of life Dr Skorski has known before!"

"Would you like to tell us how Dr Skorski's helped you today, Staq?" Tinya asked, making it seem like an off the cuff question though they'd already agreed beforehand to all of this.

"Sure," the young blond man consented. "It's just a routine diagnostic; when I got my powers, they altered my genetic structure. Just as a formality, I need to check in every 6 standard months to make sure my body's not coming up with anything too weird or new. After Brainiac 5 left the team I've had to rely on Dream Girl or Mon-El being free to examine me so it's great having Dr Skorski on staff so I can get this out of the way without any real inconvenience to anyone!"

"And Dr Skorski is happy to report that Firecrest is in fine shape!" the microship chimed in.

"Thanks, we'll leave you two to it!" Phantom Girl concluded before taking Marella through the rest of the medlab. Tinya pointed out various devices, including a special vacuum chamber designed in the event that Wildfire might need whatever constituted medical treatment for him, before leading them both back out into the corridor past another turbolift and into a different type of lab altogether.

"This is our multilab," Phantom Girl explained as Marella's holocorder took stock of the many and varied exotic technologies here. "Historically, Brainiac 5 was always the poster child for intellect in the Legion so it's easy to forget that a lot of other Legionnaires are actually very intelligent and well-versed in various sciences. Elastic Lad spends a lot of time here, as does Saturn Girl even though she's technically a reserve member these days. Sun Boy likes to pretend he's just a big womaniser at heart but I can tell you he's logged a fair few hours in here too," Phantom Girl winked.

"Please," a new voice entered the conversation. "Sun Boy's last experiment in here was an attempt to create the most alluring cologne in existence, let's not pretend he loves science for science's sake." The women turned to see Dream Girl approaching from behind some kind of elaborate scanning device.

"Sorry to interrupt," Nura Nal continued breezily, "But I thought I should let you know it's time, Phantom Girl. Would you like me to continue the tour with Marella here?"

"Time? Time for what?" Marella asked, perplexed.

"Time for a little surprise we had planned," Phantom Girl answered cheekily. "Dreamy, you're a blessing! Marella, I'm sorry to run so soon but trust me - it'll be worth it!" The Bgltzr woman passed down through the floor before Marella could ask another question, leaving the reporter alone with Dream Girl.

After answering a few questions about the multilab and allowing Marella to get some good shots, Dream Girl led the reporter down further through the vessel to a spacious worship and meditation room with a polarised window showing a multitude of stars beyond. After that they passed through a series of conference and meeting rooms which took up the rest of the same level, followed by the residential suites which took up the next four levels. "There are 25 suites on each level," Dream Girl described as they walked along well lit minimally decorated corridors circling the ship. "And of course, each module is highly adjustable. Someone like Tellus for example has very different needs to myself - I need much more room for hair care products for one thing."

Marella indulged Dream Girl's comment with a smirk before posing a question to her. "By my count, there are currently 43 active Legionnaires. Does this mean you're planning on expanding the team's roster?"

"Our roster has only been limited previously because of boring tax implications and legalities associated with whatever world we were based on," Nura explained. "Having a base which isn't confined to one world means we don't have to abide by that kind of silliness anymore...so to answer your question, yes we do intend to expand our ranks once we're a little more settled here. Of course, we also use these rooms as guest quarters....would you like to see one of the empty ones?"

"Of course!" Marella beamed. Dream Girl took her through one of the apartment suites, and Marella was impressed at the size of the space as well as the view. Like the worship and meditation room, one whole wall of these quarters was a window looking out onto the stars beyond.

Next stop on the tour was the fitness level. Marella saw Crystal Kid testing his reaction times by erecting crystal defences against randomised pulses of light coming at him from different directions, while in a separate area Strut sparred simultaneously with Shrinking Violet and a quite visible Invisible Kid. Though they were the only Legionnaires here, the space looked easily large enough to contain the full team if need be and there was even a levitating full-length swimming pool.

Their next stop was the administration level, some of which was still in the process of being completed. Though their tenants weren't here currently, Marella was surprised to find out that Marla Latham and all of the Legion's Support Crew had their own individual offices. There were also grander suites available in the event that any of the Legion's various dignitaries might need a temporary work space in their official capacity as planetary protectors or monarchs. The trophy room and the Hall of Heroes were next on Dream Girl's itinerary, and finally she brought Marella out into an enormous open area which contained a sectioned off gaming and recreation area along one side of the room and a selection of eating establishments with various spaces for eating and even a small green park. Matter-Eater Lad and Gas Girl sat at one of the tables eating, and Tenzil mugged for the holocorder briefly before returning to a bowl of lumpy metal which would be inedible for anyone not from Bismoll.

Marella finally glanced up, and the normally unflappable holojournalist uttered a startled gasp. She realised that they'd come all the way to the opposite end of the vessel, and what seemed like the nose of the Legion's rocket was transparent above her. "I thought some of those rooms you showed me earlier had impressive views, but this...this is really breathtaking, isn't it?" Mars dominated one full quarter of the raised dome and everything else was an impressive sea of stars. Those stars seemed to suddenly blur into tiny streaks of light, and Marella felt the slightest sense of motion. "Dream Girl, what's happening?" Marella turned to the Naltorian beauty. "Is this...is this meant to be occurring right now?"

"This is the surprise Phantom Girl mentioned," Nura grinned. "I think your viewers are going to enjoy this, Ms Tao. Shall we take a seat with Tenzil and Tal and watch the action?"

**********

SLIGHTLY EARLIER...
There was one area of the Legion of Superheroes' new headquarters which Marella hadn't seen, and Phantom Girl passed through its surrounding coccoon of foot-thick inertron to enter the cylindrical space now. Holographic and physical screens of various sizes overseeing a ring of consoles filled the room that the Legion had come to call the Brainstem. There was a raised dais in the centre of the room with three chairs, and Tinya solidified as she took the centre seat. She donned a tiara-like headband dotted in various pulsing lights and circuitry patterns, and as technology advanced even by 31st century standards came to life the particular screens which were attuned to Phantom Girl's brainwave patterns remained in vivid color while all the others faded to black and white.

The entire dais revolved smoothly as Tinya consciously considered addressing her Communications Officer. All three of Trava Coruu's Carggite bodies were working at different monitor stations below Tinya, dressed in identical outfits differing only in their main color; coral, green and purple. "Is everybody ready to go, Trava?" Phantom Girl asked as the platform stopped to ensure she was facing them all.

"Hello, Phantom Girl...Chameleon Boy and Comet Queen are still on Takron-Galtos with Chlorophyll Kid," the green-garbed woman rattled off with visible nervousness. "Gravity Kid, Infectious Lass and Stone Boy are at the Bina Nawoti Foundation, Mon-El, Ultra Boy, Polar Boy and King Canary just arrived on Circadia, Timber Wolf and Supergirl are off-base on personal business--"

"She means is everybody ready for the Yggardis mission, you dope!" the Trava in purple interrupted with a mocking chuckle. She turned toward Phantom Girl with a slightly smug expression. "Everybody who needs to be is in the hangar now and ready to move on your word, boss lady."

"Thank you, ladies." Phantom Girl scanned the base's internal monitors with a creased brow. "Where's Evolvo Lad?" she muttered without really expecting a response. "I thought he'd have been here by now--"

Right on cue, one of the room's doors whooshed open and the Lalloran hero walked through in his hyperevolved form. "Apologies for my impunctuality," he pre-empted Tinya's query. "I fear that some of us possess the disadvantage of needing to negotiate corridors and turbolifts rather than taking the direct route through walls and floors."

"You're here now and that's the main thing," Phantom Girl let him off the hook. "Dream Girl told me it's time for us to make our move; would you like to show me what this baby can do, Sev?"

"I would be most pleased to do precisely that," the tall thin man replied softly. He took the seat to Phantom Girl's left and using his telekinesis he shifted another of the complex tiaras on to his oversized cranium.

Evolvo Lad had engineered the construction of a majority of this base, and one of his proudest contributions was the psibernetic controlwear that he and Phantom Girl now wore. It was something that he'd incorporated into much of the Heroes of Lallor's equipment, and he'd figured that the Legion needing a new base was a perfect excuse to bring that innovation to his current superhero team. While the headpieces were no equal to Kid Computo's versatility, they were still quite a boon; Evolvo Lad's for example gave him the ability to bring the vessel's hyperdrive to life with nothing more than a thought command and send them hurtling through subspace until the entire spacecraft emerged once more light years away just beyond the orbit of Uart, the 12th and outermost planet in the Rannian solar system.

Similarly, Phantom Girl's controlwear allowed her not only to be subconsciously attuned to every alarm system in the base so that she'd know in a nanosecond if anything required a leader's attention, but she could also view 22 Legionnaires protected by their transuits flying out to their assigned positions before these strange new constellations. Phantom Girl had asked Dream Girl days ago to find the team a mission which would serve to display their unity, diversity and the mobile capabilities of their new headquarters, and Nura Nal's precognitive power had not disappointed.

As the Legionnaires outside separated into smaller groups, the version of Trava Coruu dressed in coral proactively turned toward Phantom Girl. "Yggardis is coming into view now, Phantom Girl. Would you like an open channel to your field team?"

"That would be great, Trava." It was something Tinya could easily do for herself thanks to Evolvo Lad's workmanship, but having Trava take care of these details left Phantom Girl free to focus on more important things. Tinya watched as a hologram of an approaching planet took up a huge portion of the empty space in the Brainstem above her. "Legionnaires, this is Phantom Girl. Good luck, and feel free to put on a show; we're making this footage available to Marella Tao later for her holocast."

**********

Colossal Boy was first to respond on behalf of his squad. "I'm glad Yera's on a work trip to Durla...I think this particular mission might hit a bit too close to home for her even if she was just sitting it out in our quarters."

In the void of space, Gim's growth wasn't constrained by the restrictions of operating planetside and it was an advantage for which he was thankful...because right now, a planet slightly larger than Earth's moon was barely a hundred thousand miles away and advancing quickly. The planet was a sickly greenish color, utterly devoid of inhabitants, and it surreally had four distinct tendrils sprouting up from its surface to broach the astronomical distance between itself and the heroes. All in all it reminded Gim Allon entirely too much of the horrific Leviathan that Yera Allon had described meeting on a trip to the future, and that memory spurred him to a righteous anger. Over 1200 feet tall, Colossal Boy tackled one of the enormous tentacles and pushed himself to tear it in two.

Diamond Damsel's strength and hardened fingernails made short work of the tendril where it thinned out toward its tip; closer to the rogue planet, this system's sun was no brighter than any other star in the sky and Night Girl pummelled the tentacle at its base until it was floating free in space.

With the three of them reducing the rocky appendage to so much debris, Cosmic Boy used his magnetism on the iron-heavy rocks to bring them to prearranged coordinates.

**********

Even with only a portion of the speed of Mercury, Blok could race to one of the planet's furthest tentacles easily enough. While he hammered and tore the massive appendage into floating fragments, his transuit allowed him to speak. "This planet truly is alive," he reported over his flight ring to his own mission partner. "Though its size vastly dwarfs my own, I can sense its silicon awareness and its maddening sorrow. I wish there were another way for us to accomplish this victory, Neon."

"Don't be too glum, big guy." The former Green Lantern had once again changed her costume, knowing this mission would see her in the media's spotlight. Zoe wore a stylish bodysuit of black, white and green with chrome trim and a translucent green waist length cape. A 100 foot tall emerald construct shaped like a primitive vacuum cleaner floated by Zoe Saugin's side and sucked up all of the rubble that Blok was providing her. "When Dream Girl told us something called Yggardis the Living Planet was coming to menace Rann, I accessed my ring's archive. This thing's been around forever just wreaking havoc on every inhabited world it comes across. The ring doesn't even think it's entirely natural and it's killed countless lifeforms, believe me when I say we're doing the right thing."

With her first construct bloated with rocks, Neon created an identical second one to suck up more rocks and flew the both of them away to meet up with Cosmic Boy.

**********

"This is actually super fascinating! Don't you think, Light Lad?" Elastic Lad had extended himself out to his maximum practical limits in preparation to do his part and it was only his head that floated alongside Darvan Locke out here in the middle of nowhere while his neck stretched out to meet the rest of his body a long long way away. "I mean a whole living planet! Wowee! Just imagine the things he's seen - or they've seen, I guess! I mean planets probably don't have a gender; do you think planets would consider themselves to be gendered, Light Lad? Teallians don't have a gender, but Quislet still uses he/him pronouns anyway! Hey, do you think Quislet could possess a whole planet if he wanted? I guess I don't know if it would be practical even if he could, after all it's so big it would probably disperse into atoms lickety split, and then of course you have to remember Yggardis is sentient too so I don't even know if Quislet even could possess it...or him. Or them! What do you think, Light Lad? Gosh, I miss having Quislet around! He's always so much fun! Don't you think he's fun, Light Lad?"

For once, Light Lad was grateful for Elastic Lad's never-ending enthusiasm for literally everything. It was the only thing that prevented Darvan Locke from thinking about the enormity of what they were doing out here today, because he knew if he really thought about it he'd be completely overwhelmed. They were confronting a planet! A living planet!

Finally Element Lad, Lightning Lass and Sun Boy had torn enough of a tentacle apart that Light Lad had something else to distract him from the existential enormity of their mission. Elastic Lad lassoed all of the stray rocks that had resulted from Jan, Ayla and Dirk's more destructive powers and wrapped himself around the bundle again and again until it almost resembled an enormous rubber ball. "Are you ready, Light Lad?" the excitable redhead asked. "I've got as much as I can carry right now, we'll have to come back for more. Gee whiz, I'm glad I've got you along with me! Even though we're in space, this is an awful lot of mass! I don't know if I could transport all of this without you giving me an anti-gravity assist! You know, this reminds me of one time on Cadmu when some scientists accidentally gave our planet an artificial consciousness and Jams-Ols 3 had to talk it out of eating us all! Boy, that was sure an adventure! Did I ever tell you about that story, Light Lad?"

Darvan forced himself to focus on Elastic Lad's incessant chatter so he could ignore the fact that three of his teammates had just demolished a significant portion of a planetary body without even really raising a sweat.

"No...no, you didn't!" Light Lad snapped back a little too quickly. "Tell me about it, pal....tell me all about it!"

**********

Far from her other teammates, Life Lass watched impressed as Mysa Marvel tore the fourth and final tentacle to pieces without a struggle.

Mysa paused her destructive work long enough to consider the quiet Lalloran woman she'd been paired up with. "I don't want to give you too much matter to have to manipulate," Mysa noted kindly. "Do you want me to give it a rest for a while? There must be hundreds of tons of rocks floating around here."

"It's nice of you to ask but I'm fine," Life Lass replied. "I actually had an idea that might help me carry more of this mess, let's see how this works out." The unassuming young woman concentrated, and the field of debris that Mysa had just made for her started drifting together and compacting tightly until it formed a roughly humanoid shape a couple of hundred feet high. "I don't think I'd have the power to do this if we weren't all effectively weightless right now," Somi explained, "But now my new friend here can carry what my power can't control."
True to her claim, the enormous patchwork golem collected two armfuls of what had once been a part of its own form. Life Lass perched herself on her giant servant's head, and it bizarrely walked off slowly through space to meet Cosmic Boy and the others.

"I'll be back for more soon!" Life Lass waved to a bemused Mysa behind her.

**********

On the surface of the living world Yggardis, Color Kid followed Dawnstar as she walked about the barren landscape with a tight expression on her face. "It's so creepy actually being down here on the planet," Color Kid remarked, peering up through the pea soup atmosphere to avoid having to notice the occasional ancient skeleton or crashed starcraft. "I swear I can feel it in my mind, does that sound crazy?"

"Not at all," Dawnstar affirmed. "I feel it too...we have heard tales of Yggardis on Starhaven. Our storytellers say that once upon a time it could speak telepathically to its prey but I suppose age weakens even an ancient entity like this eventually." She abruptly stopped walking and went down on one knee. With her right palm flattened out against the lifeless crust, Dawnstar looked up at Color Kid. "Here. This is where I feel its presence most strongly. Can you please mark the spot so we can leave this world of horrors, Color Kid? I am grateful that my transuit protects me from this deathly environment, but I am not accustomed to wearing it. It is almost as uncomfortable as this world itself."

"I don't think transuits are that bad," Color Kid remarked, "But I'm 100% with you on getting out of here." With two sweeps of his arm, Color Kid created a bright pink cross upon the ground with Dawnstar at its centre.

"Thank you," Dawnstar said simply. She stood up again, and in one fluid motion spread her wings to take to the sky while she simultaneously hooked her arms underneath Color Kid's arms from behind. Seconds later they were clearing the planet's atmosphere at dizzying speed, and Color Kid saw an orange and red blur streak past them down to the world they were leaving behind.

Although they'd been moving too fast for Color Kid to see him, Ulu knew that it was Wildfire who'd just passed them. Homing in on the giant pink cross, Drake Burroughs flipped the visor on his containment suit and let loose the full explosive power of his anti-energy form. Color Kid and Dawnstar were almost out of the atmosphere altogether by the time this happened so they couldn't hear the tremendous display of power, but they saw the flash of his power even through the murky skies of Yggardis.

Wildfire hadn't gone down to Yggardis alone. His teammates had kept a safe distance while Wildfire did his part but now Nightwind, Shadow Lass, Tellus and Kid Computo descended to the massive crater Drake Burroughs had carved out. Careful not to accidentally collect Wildfire's containment suit which was still filling up with his essence on the lip of the crater, Nightwind collected all of the remains of the explosion which hadn't been instantly atomized in a whirling rockstorm. Like a drill powered by hurricane force winds, she directed the rubble at the centre of the crater and smashed a hole straight through the final barrier of Yggardis's mantle to incandescent magma below.

Immediately the four Legionnaires felt a spike of pain in their minds, and some of them cried out.

Of all of them, Tellus was the best equipped to resist the psychic outburst from the wounded planet, but it was not an easy resistance. "The living world's tendrils are nothing more than appendages," Tellus explained to the others. "Destroying them did not truly harm Yggardis, but this has hurt Yggardis deeply. The world lashes out in defence."

"Surgery is never painless," Shadow Lass countered. "But that is why you and I are here, Tellus."

Her cape bundled under one arm, Tasmia Mallor touched down at the base of the crater and let the pure black of her power bleed out across the ground. "Let the darkness soothe you," she spoke in almost a reverent whisper to the world. "For where there is darkness, there is peace and there is stillness."

At the same time, Tellus shored up his mental defences and reached out to Yggardis. He couldn't possibly hope to control the mind of a world, but the Hykraian did his best to convince the planet that their intentions were good and that they ultimately wanted to give Yggardis the only thing it had ever wanted.

"Turns out Neon's ring was...kind of right?" Kid Computo spoke up, sounding a little confused. "Now that I'm here, with the insides of the planet exposed, Yggardis is....I mean it's a planet, but I think it's also some kind of...ancient cosmic technology as well? I can't really interface with it properly but I think I can help Tellus and Shadow Lass keep it calm. I think this crazy idea is gonna actually work!"

A dragon's roar filled the sky, and the Legionnaires looked up into the thick atmosphere to see a long serpentine beast writhing through the air. It was the same unpleasant muddy green color as Yggardis itself and upon its scaled body sat its master, Dragonmage. Xao Jin's eyes were rolled partially back in his head, his lips were parted in a constant quiet murmur and his face was slightly contorted by the strain of controlling this spirit beast he'd summoned from the living world.

Having announced itself to anyone with ears, the dragon zeroed in on the planet's great wound and dived straight into the inky pond of Shadow Lass's darkness. Its body was so long that its head had already emerged while its body was still passing through, and soon enough the mystical creature's tail was flicking trails of shadow in its wake as it flew back up with a sizeable chunk of Yggardis within its clamped maw.

The other Legionnaires watched while Dragonmage's steed disappeared high above them, and soon Dragonmage was flying up past the thin sheath of the planet's toxic atmosphere into space. The young sorceror was conscious while this was happening, but so focused was he on controlling the spirit he'd wrested forth from the angry planet that everything passed by him in a dreamlike state. Once they were clear of Yggardis, Dragonmage had to augment the dragon's speed with his own flight ring. The dragonform's power faded the further they travelled from its home planet, and while it could draw strength from the portion of Yggardis that they'd taken with them it wasn't wise to draw too heavily from it. That small part of the living planet would soon be called on for something far more important.

Before too long they'd travelled to their agreed coordinates where Cosmic Boy, Neon, Elastic Lad, Light Lad and Life Lass had joined their teammates Star Boy and Mwindaji on the surface of a slightly misshaped sphere they'd formed from the rocky material that had once been the tentacles of Yggardis. Star Boy had imparted enough mass into the small satellite so that it would hold itself together with its own gravity field, at least temporarily...and Dragonmage now brought with him the thing that would hold this new moon together permanently.

The dragon upon which Dragonmage was riding announced its approach again with a roar, one which somehow everyone present heard even in the vacuum of space. It exhaled a hot streaming blast of magma at the moon, injecting some of the life force of Yggardis into this barren collection of rocks as the dragon dissipated beneath Dragonmage. Neon created a plush hardlight seat for Xao to collapse into, and the dragon's energies finished bonding with the moon they'd just created. "I thought I would be able to help Mwindaji once I got here," Dragonmage muttered wearily, "But that took far more out of me than I'd suspected, I'm sorry Legionnaires..."

"You have done the unbelievable already," Mwindaji commended the exhausted teen. "Transporting part of a planet's soul to this pile of rocks hundreds of thousands of miles distant is nothing short of miraculous...the power of the White Lantern can complete our task from here, my friend." Spreading his arms wide, Mwindaji emanated a steady white glow which built in intensity until the young healer's features were subsumed by the aura surrounding him. While Mwindaji's power had no physical effect on the moon, Yggardis was alive enough in the conventional sense that he could strengthen its spirit. Soon, the spark of life inside the moon was powerful enough to exert its own influence over the moon, and Mwindaji felt that it would thrive without him.

Neon turned Xao's chair into a two-seater couch so Mwindaji too could take his rest, and after a minute or so Cosmic Boy brought his flight ring to his lips and called Tellus. "What do you think, Tellus?" Rokk Krinn asked. "Can you sense any change yet?"

"Very much so," the monotone of the Hykraian's voice modulator replied. "We have performed a wonderful deed today, Cosmic Boy. For millions of years, perhaps more, this world has lived a frighteningly lonely existence trying to find companions everywhere it goes only to bring a tide of death to anyone it touches. Today...Yggardis has brought life. The living planet is for the first time in its long memory no longer alone."

"Now that we just helped a planet give birth," Neon piped up, "What do you guys say we see head back to our new HQ for a birthday party?"

The comms channel filled with laughter as the Legion headed back toward their bright yellow and red home.

**********

TAKRON-GALTOS
Skepticism Isle
Alek Arcane's prison cell didn't seem like a cell so much as a piece of nature out of place on a world that was mostly security parahernalia and technologically advanced defences.

White moly flowers bloomed everywhere and the floor was a foot of soil covered in synthetic grass. Holographic forest scenes and blue skies hid the reality of the cold iron walls, with depictions of butterflies and birds flitting across the artificial landscape occasionally.

Alek Arcane despised it.

He despised more the Legion of Superheroes who'd put him in this place and the superpowered Workforce who kept him trapped here. Right now, he was face to face with five of them. Magno and Gear stood back towards the door of the cell while Comet Queen, Chlorophyll Kid and Chameleon Boy sat on chairs composed fully of synthetic materials. A similarly constructed table was before them, and Alek Arcane sat on the other side. Everything in this room except the heroes themselves was composed of wholly artificial materials or was specifically chosen for its ability to resist magic; they weren't taking any chances with the necromancer.

"Why do you want to know about my family's background now?" Arcane asked. "I'd have thought this would be of more interest to you when you first took my granddaughter away from me."

"Just humor us," Chameleon Boy said flatly.

"The Arcane bloodline is an old and powerful one," the sorceror explained as though he were talking to children. "For the past millenium we have been inextricably linked to the forces which bind this universe. The Green, the Grey, the Rot...but why am I telling you this, it can't mean anything to you foolish youths?"

"Fine, we'll get to the point," Chlorophyll Kid snapped. "You've got some creepy connection with Ivy, don't you? You used it to track her to Mars when you attacked us."

"I have shared a bond with my granddaughter in the past," the middle-aged man replied warily. "Why this line of questioning, Legionnaires?"

"Tell us where she is!" Comet Queen burst out.

"Grava--" Chameleon Boy began to caution her.

"No!" The golden heroine stood from her seat and pounded a three-fingered fist on the table. "Tell us where our little sprout is, you...you creepy zombie asteroid!"

Alek Arcane's scowl turned into a smile as he now understood the reason for the Legion's visit, and that smile turned into a hoarse mocking laughter. "You've lost her, haven't you?" he taunted. "You fools had the Avatar of the Green and you've let her escape from right under your noses!"

"Just tell us where she is, damn you!" Chlorophyll Kid too lost his composure. "Tell me where my daughter is!"

Arcane's expression turned grim immediately. "First of all," he snarled in a low tone, "She is not your anything, Ral Benem. She is my granddaughter, a child I spent long and tedious years ensuring would be born under the perfect conditions to become the most powerful Avatar the Green have known in centuries. Secondly, I am stripped of my ability to wield the forces of the occult in this cursed place, I couldn't tell you where she is if I wanted to."

"And why should we believe that?" Chameleon Boy's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "After all, you maintained your link with Ivy for months without Saturn Girl being any the wiser, and she's perhaps the most powerful psionic talent in the United Planets."

"Magic is not telepathy, Durlan," Alek Arcane answered dismissively.

"For what it's worth," Gear piped up from behind the Legionnaires, "We really do try everything we can to stifle mystical energies on this island...and I'm currently monitoring his heart rate, I think he's telling the truth."

"No!" Comet Queen leaned across the table, hot tears welling in her eyes. "No, he's lying! I know he is!"

Magno moved to intercept her, but her husband gently gripped Grava and pulled her back first. "He's not lying," Chlorophyll Kid admitted. "I shouldn't have built up my hopes so easy, I should have known this was pointless. Come on guys, let's get out of here." Comet Queen started sniffling helplessly, and Chlorophyll Kid walked her back toward the door.

Chameleon Boy took a step to follow them before he turned back towards Alek Arcane and said as casually as he could, "It's a shame. As much as I suspect you hate us, you must know the Legion only has that girl's best interests at heart. I'd have thought you'd be more at ease with her being under our roof than that of a sorceress who's only going to use her up and throw her away when she's done."

"Wait." Now Alek Arcane stood. "Explain yourself, Durlan."

"Her name's Glorith." Cham turned back around and came back to face Arcane across the table. "I doubt you'll have heard of her, but trust me when I tell you she faced Mordru the Merciless on her own for longer than just about any individual Legionnaire could manage...and you're an evil sorceror yourself so this next part shouldn't be too much trouble for you to grasp; think about the way she's likely to treat that girl compared to how the Legion of Superheroes have. By the time you're outside of this place and in any position to do anything about it Ivy Arcane won't be of any use to you at all, old man." Cham paused just long enough to let that sink in, then shrugged his shoulders and walked away. "...So it's a shame you can't help us is all."

Alek Arcane dwelled on Reep Daggle's words sourly while Comet Queen cried subdued tears against Chlorophyll Kid's armoured chest. The three Legionnaires had just reached the door when the necromancer spoke up finally. "...Mardru. Go to Mardru."

"My homeworld?" Chlor asked. "I thought you said your bond with her didn't work in here, Arcane? How do you know she's on Mardru?"

"I have no idea where she is," the villain answered darkly. "But Mardru is where the Green have the strongest presence in known space. It is the reason I chose that world for my granddaughter's birth place to begin with. There you will find what remains of the Parliament of Trees, and they will know their Avatar's whereabouts as surely as you know your own. Find my granddaughter and protect her, Legion...and in thanks I may slay you all quickly some day."

The Legionnaires left the room, and though Chlorophyll Kid knew that he should feel happy that they had another lead he couldn't help but wonder...how would the Green respond when they found out how badly the Protector of the Avatar of the Green had failed in his duty to keep Ivy Arcane safe..?

**********

EDITOR'S NOTE:
* The Leviathan of which Gim speaks is a homemade creation; Colossal Boy and Chameleon Girl's future kid ends up being bonded with a malevolent Durlan god and turning into a Lovecraftian shapeshifter world, it was a whole thing - y'all can refresh your memories here

* Yggardis is amazingly NOT a homemade creation, but an honest to god crazy thing from DC's wacky past that came across Adam Strange at least once that I know of

yay! more stuff, always a treat to read another entry


so cool that the new HQ mirrors the original one!

heh, I love it when you describe how fit and attractive the Legionnaires are. Hard chest, powerful triceps... lol

also, seeing Marella was a treat, as was Brin being all awkward. And nice that there was no drama with Marella. lol at the girls joking harmlessly re dating Brin


liking the nice choreographed BUT seemingly casual tour, and also a great idea to also showcase the support staff! And also highlighting some of the Legionnaires' other talents (i.e., the list of big users of the lab)

Hah, take that to the old tax thing which limited the team to 25!

Again, great to see the Legion valuing their support staff so much! and also the offices for the monarchs / planetary champs on the team (Shadow Lass and King Canary are the two current ones right? Did I miss any?)

Loving Trava's color scheme! and also her multiple personalities!

the headpieces are so cool!

nice callback to the Leviathan. Whew, what a planet... great concept.

hah at Zoe changing her costume, that is so her! nice costume too - reminds me of when she added a cape in LSH 100!

A living planet, now I am curious how this will be resolved vs. the no-kill rule

also love seeing such a big part of the team taking on the planet!

nice reminder that some of the Legionnaires, like Darvan, are relatively new and will occasionally feel out of their depth

and wow! helping a living planet create a satellite so it would no longer be alone... excellent solution! I am super impressed, it was a great plan and a great power display of so many Legionnaires!

Clever Cham! That was an excellent display of his people smarts!

another great installment, raz! can't wait for the next bit!

Thanks IB!

I just realised as I read this that Timber Wolf would absolutely be the kind of idiot I would have a ridiculous crush on in real life hahaha

I was planning on introducing some new recruits a bit later down the track anyway, but now that I have gone and given myself some extra room I might see if I can move up the schedule a bit...

re: monarchs/planetary champions, pretty much just King Canary and Shady right now but you never know when Xanthu is gonna make Atmos go sit in the corner and draft Thom again lol

It was fun writing a huge team in action as it doesn't happen all that often - and on the flipside, Cham is kind of a quiet achiever in that he's not very flashy with his smarts so it's nice getting to show them off occasionally

There will be an updated roster coming soon as well - I actually meant to do it after this last post, but now that I am thinking about throwing in some new recruits I might figure out if that'll work first!

yay, new recruits!!! well I hate Atmos as a character, so would not mind if he were shunted off somewhere far... but I don't wanna lose Thom again lol


your crush was feeding your writing

Raz, hi,

Apologies but I don't have much time today so this will be a bit rushed:

Great to see Marela again, and acknowledge her fling with Brin - perfectly understandable crush by the way, though probably not the best of boyfriend material, who could put up with all that drama?

The new HQ mirroring the design of their original was an inspired idea and totally fits your team, v nice! And nice to see other Legionnaires than Brainy use the multi-lab, and Dirk making cologne gave me a laugh.

The Psibernetic controls - firstly, great word, but more importantly while it is a really cool idea with a multitude of appplications I can see issues arising like, what if it's overloaded or bugged or hacked?

Yggrdis - haha the Ego of the DC universe? What a fantastic and ridiculous concept, it's something I wish I'd known about it an age ago as I found myself wondering if my team could use it as a base... Still, great to see the majority of your team in action, and Elastic Lad yet again stole the show for me. As much as he'd annoy the bejeezus out of my irl, I always smile when he appears. And great to see Mwindaji and Xao have such central roles too.

Alek Arcane - oh, he is a dodgy old goat isn't he? Nice of Cham to realise how to motvate him to talk, he's a smart one that Reep fella, isn't he?

So, they're going onto Mardru and probably meeting the Parliament of Trees next - looking forward to it.

This was great fun, excellent charactisation and you've added some brilliant new ideas to your mythos. Brava!

Looking forward to more, more and much more!

Hi Harbi! Thanks for commenting!

Superhero partners would be way too much work in the real world, like I'm sorry but I'm not gonna threaten to blow myself up if you wanna go get addicted to lotus fruit Brin - you're on your own

re the psibernetic tech....I think you're being too cynical, I definitely can't see Saturn Queen or some other telepathic bad guy coming in and turning the Legion's HQ against them at some stage

Elastic Lad is fun to write and it occurred to me he hasn't had much to do aside from being tortured by Mordru recently so I thought I'd give him a break

The Mardru trip will be next and there should be one or two interesting tidbits to come out of it! Also we are gonna find out what mischief Veilmist and her new pals are up to!

KHUNDISH BORDER
Calish-Aetia
Until recently, the small world of Calish-Aetia had one sad claim to fame; situated on the borders of Khund and Dominion space, it boasted a violent history of occupation from one or the other of those star-spanning empires which stretched back as long as any of its inhabitants could remember. War had been all that any native of Calish-Aetia had known for generations.

With the destruction of the Dominator homeworld Elia, the Khunds had quickly moved in and solidified their grip on Calish-Aetia. For the first time in over a century, the people of Calish-Aetia had lived perhaps not in comfort but at least in stability. At first, the world was more or less ignored by the Khunds. As long as nobody openly rebelled, the Khund Empire had many more important things to focus on than one unremarkable planet far from the heart of its society.

That all changed when the Fatal Five led Robotica against the Khunds. Every natural resource of Calish-Aetia was dedicated to the war effort and much of the planet was stripped bare. Its people toiled and died for their Khund overlords, and when the Khunds won the Robotican war Calish-Aetia was abandoned in all but title. Calish-Aetia had never been a particularly pleasant place, but these days the elders of that world almost pined for the days when all they had to worry about was the change in dictators every decade or so. Now their world was in economic, material and societal depression. It was a dying world, and it hosted a dying people.

With this in mind, Veilmist couldn't understand why the Sisterhood of Sin had insisted that she bring them here.

They had been holed up in a gutted cybernetics laboratory for the past few days eating grey protein sludge and warming themselves with power stolen from an unreliable city grid. Veilmist very rarely found herself in the lap of luxury that she'd have desired and she'd suffered many a degradation in the name of survival, but this was too much even for her. She flinched as she caught one of this planet's disgusting knot-haired vermin scurrying beneath a stairwell and decided she'd had enough.

"Vista!" Veilmist teleported upstairs to the room that Vista had claimed for her own. "Vista, we must...talk..?" The pink-skinned Khund beauty stood dumbfounded as the object of her search lay motionless on her back on the floor with her hands upon her forehead. Vista's thumbs and forefingers connected in a kind of ring, encircling the small chrome implant in her head. Her eyes darted left and right behind closed eyelids, and her breathing was slow and relaxed.

Nimbus rushed into the room out of breath and gripped Veilmist's shoulders. "You can't disturb her when she's like this!" the Sisterhood of Sin's youngest member hissed.

"Is she meditating?" Veilmist turned on Nimbus. "I brought us to this horrid little planet for her to meditate??"

"Shhh!" Nimbus marched Veilmist out of the room and down a rusting catwalk. "She's not meditating," she explained in a more normal tone of voice once they were far enough from Vista's room. "She's exercising her power."

"Upon whom?" Annoyed, Veilmist swiped Nimbus's gloved hands away. "I thought her power was to transport her foes to some kind of astral plane? There are no foes here, Nimbus!"

"Ugh, give me strength." Nimbus rolled her eyes dramatically. "Look, Vista creates a whole environment in her mind...it's kind of a pocket astral plane. And yes, her Third Eye implant allows her to transport people there. If she just left it at that, her victims would be stuck wandering around her mindscape for as long as she lives. But who wants a bunch of sheckin' losers in their brain forever? So when she gets some downtime, she takes advantage of that to screw with the mindscape, kill them properly. She told me it takes a lot of focus, she needs some peace and quiet to do it."

"Then...the men at the tavern where you found me, the ones she used her power on..." Veilmist's almond-shaped eyes grew wide with understanding. "They have been alive these last days??"

"Why not?" Nimbus shrugged. "It's a mindscape bebe, it's not like they need to eat or drink. They just wander around going crazy from the isolation till Vista decides to put 'em out of their misery."

Veilmist silently processed the cruelty of it all, so different to the brutal but swift violence she was accustomed to as a Khund. If Nimbus noticed her unease she didn't make it obvious, and a moment later the young blonde laid hands on her Khund teammate once again.

"White Bat just called in," Nimbus announced.

"She found our prey!"

**********

On the other side of this vast city, the woman known only as White Bat soared high on ferociously cold winds. Though her pale blue bodysuit was skintight, it was woven from insulating fibres that hadn't even been invented yet; the cold meant nothing to her. Only her face was exposed to the wind's bite, and the chill made her already pale skin seem even more bloodless. Vista's sharp mind and Nimbus's prowess with technology had tracked their quarry to this world, but now that they were actually here it was time for White Bat to lend her expertise. She'd been out here in this drab industrial landscape for hours, but she was as confident of her success now as she had been when she first spread her hardlight wings. Years of invasive surgeries and training had made White Bat almost as good a tracker as she was a killer...and as immense as this grotesque city was, spreading out toward the horizon until it disappeared in a smudge of pollution and cloud cover, very few people ventured outdoors here on Calish-Aetia. Very few people had anything worth venturing outdoors for.

Ocular implants in White Bat's eerie pink eyes singled out the woman she'd been looking for, trudging away in snowdrifts below her. With a thought, White Bat increased the visual magnification and made certain that it was her. The blood red cloak with runes embroidered along its edge, the locks of dark auburn hair which flicked out from beneath her hood infrequently, the commanding way she stomped through the snow without a thought for anyone in her way...it was definitely the one she was looking for.

When she was 11 years old, White Bat's vocal cords had been removed to make room for the radiotelepathy apparatus which stretched beneath the skin of her throat to connect to her brainstem. She used that now to contact the only person in this era with equipment to be able to receive her signal. As soon as White Bat had shared coordinates with Nimbus, she continued to trail her prey until she saw the lavender smoke of Veilmist's power on the wind a block ahead of the cloaked woman. White Bat immediately made her descent, easily dominating the treacherous air currents until she swooped down above her quarry to join Nimbus and Veilmist at the agreed location.

The cloaked woman had seen White Bat soar ahead, and soon she saw who White Bat had soared down to meet. By the time the mystery woman caught up with Nimbus, Veilmist and White Bat, she had drawn an ornate golden dagger with a ruby embedded in its hilt. "Veilmist, I do not know with whom you have allied yourself," the woman brought down her hood to reveal a full head of auburn hair and the reddish skin of her face, "But if it is violence you desire, I have no problem at all leaving three corpses in the snow today."

"You got us all wrong," Nimbus kept her protective blue aura in place an inch from her body, but she raised both hands in a gesture of peace. "We're not here for violence...well, not against you anyway. We're here to recruit you, Scorn.

...Welcome to the Sisterhood of Sin."

**********

IN ORBIT AROUND MARS
Legion of Superheroes Headquarters
Sun Boy flinched as he heard Star Boy whoop in victory. "That's another win for Sir Thom of the Starstream, Morgna! In your face!"

In the Legion's gaming and recreation area, the two men had been sitting at a circular console playing their favourite roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. The armour-clad fighter that was Star Boy's hardlight avatar stood proudly on the table between them with one foot mounted on the Orandan Orc he'd just slain. By contrast, Sun Boy's paladin stood awkwardly to one side as though it weren't sure what it was even doing there.

"Hey, Dirk!" Star Boy leaned around the side of the console so he could make eye contact with his friend without their holographic characters blocking his view. "You okay? Your head's not really in the game, buddy."

"No..." Dirk Morgna answered absently. "No it's not...Thom, I've gotta run. We'll pick this up tomorrow, okay?"

Sun Boy stood up and walked away without even logging off, and Star Boy had just opened his mouth in protest when he saw the reason for Dirk's distraction and thought better of it. Figuring the game was over, Star Boy moved to leave as well.

"Looking for a brave soul to join your noble quest, Star Boy?" The Lalloran hero Evolvo Boy approached in his very average looking default form and sat at one of the free consoles.

"You play Dungeons and Dragons, Evolvo Lad?" Thom's eyes widened in surprise.

"One gains some interesting hobbies when one is raised in physical isolation from nearly everyone else on his planet," the young blond answered, his lips curled in a slight smile as he logged in to his character profile.

"But please...call me Barbarus of the Winter Plains."

**********

On the other side of the floor, Nightwind and Supergirl had just sat down in the open dining area with a tray of food each. Nightwind pulled her hood down around her shoulders, exposing her pale yellow scalp as she leaned over her pho and inhaled the steam coming off of the clear broth. "This is gonna be so good," Berta said. "Where's that coriander?"

"All yours, girl." Laurel pushed the small bowl of chopped green leaves across the table with one finger and an expression of obvious distaste. "That stuff tastes like soap, gross."

"You know," Berta teased lightly, "There's gene therapy available now for sad people like you, why are you depriving yourself of this amazing taste?"

"I'd still know how bad it really is," Laurel shot back, tapping her head. "Up here."

The two girls chuckled at themselves for a moment before digging in to their respective meals. A few bites later, they heard a voice that broke the mood entirely. "Oh, hey Laurel...Nightwind...how are you girls going?"

Berta glanced from Laurel to Sun Boy and back again. She didn't see this going well at all, but she tried to play it as casually as she could. "Hi Sun Boy, we're good thanks. Just having a late lunch."

Laurel turned bright red as she glanced up at Sun Boy, and found herself unable to meet his gaze for more than an instant. "I...I...I just remembered, I promised Gravity Kid I'd spar with him this afternoon. I'd better go, um...sorry, Berta. Bye, Dirk." She walked away from them at a clipped pace, and Sun Boy's shoulders sunk in defeat.

"Sorry, Sun Boy." Nightwind gave the hero a sympathetic glance. "I'd better go make sure she's okay." Berta jogged after her friend, leaving Sun Boy standing alone with two barely touched meals.

"Everything will work out, Dirk." Sun Boy felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a reassuring voice in his ear. "She just needs time to heal."

He turned to face Mysa Marvel, though he was still not quite used to her appearance these days. "Thanks Mysa...I know, I guess you're right." Dirk cleared his throat and straightened his posture. "Thanks," he repeated stiffly before walking off to be somewhere alone.

As much as Mysa would have liked to go after him, the wisdom of Solomon told her that Dirk Morgna might not be ready just yet for a heart to heart with someone he'd barely ever interacted with on a personal level. Besides, she'd come to the recreation level looking for an entirely different Legionnaire and she'd just spotted him.

Mysa headed over to a nearby grassed area to find Dragonmage and Neon sitting on a picnic blanket beneath the entwined branches of twin Winathian oaks. They were both in civilian clothes, Xao Jin wearing a smart pair of slacks and a conservative sweater with a toggle-buttoned shirt beneath; while Zoe Saugin had her vibrant red hair held back by a glittering green headband and she wore a fashionable short-sleeved skirt with arm-length gloves and platform boots.

"Hello, Xao, Zoe; I hope I'm not interrupting you two?" Mysa introduced herself.

"Not if you can help me convince Xao that pickles belong in rose honey salad!" Zoe patted a square of space on their picnic blanket. "Fem power, let's go Mysa!"

Mysa laughed as she took a seat next to the two teens and folded her legs beneath her. "Zoe, in all honesty I think you may be part Bismollian...that combination does not sound at all appealing to me, I'm afraid. I've actually been looking for your friend Xao though; I wanted to let Dragonmage know that our new Manager of Diplomacy Marte Allon has found a way for me to fulfill dear Harlack's last wishes and perform final rites for him on his homeworld in Khund space."

"Oh!" Xao exclaimed. "That's wonderful! But...forgive me, I'm not sure why you wanted to tell me specifically..?"

"Why?" Mysa repeated, surprised. "Xao, Harlack had all the time in the galaxy for you...I'm telling you because I'd like you to make this journey with me!

...What do you say?"

**********

MARDRU
Moorte Island, former site of the Quarantine Medical Research Facility and Hospital

ROLL CALL
Chameleon Boy aka Reep Daggle: Durlan shapeshifter
Chlorophyll Kid aka Ral Benem: chlorokinesis
Comet Queen aka Grava: flight, gas generation
Tellus aka Ganglios: telepathy and telekinesis
As four Legionnaires descended through cloudless skies, they zeroed in on the only manmade structures nestled amid the lush greenery of Moorte Island.

"This is the island where you first encountered Ivy?" Chameleon Boy asked. "I thought there was some kind of medical complex here?"

"There was," Chlorophyll Kid replied sadly. "The best hospital on my homeworld...nearly everyone on this island died the last time we were here; Mardrugov knocked down the hospital buildings and the residences and turned the whole island into a memorial site." His flight ring brought him down gently outside a small unremarkable building and Ral Benem's power retracted the wooden plates covering his face into his helmet so that he could submit to a quick scan by a floating armless droid.

"Welcome, Chlorophyll Kid," the droid greeted Ral politely. "Moorte Island has been advised of your visit, please be sure to inform this unit of anything that can be done to improve the quality of your time here."

"Stay shiny, shiny!" Comet Queen patted the droid affectionately. "Chlory, are you sure this is where you wanna try beam a signal to your tree pals? It can't be easy orbiting back this way again."

"They're not my pals, Grava." Chlorophyll Kid gave his wife a pained look. "And I'm not particularly sure they'll be happy to speak to me, but this is where I met the Green and became their Avatar's Protector...it makes sense that we should come back here to try and make contact with them again."

"I am not certain how much assistance I may offer," Tellus joined the conversation, "I have never attempted telepathic contact with sentient plant life before, but I pledge to give my best efforts to your cause."

"We know you will!" Comet Queen flashed a greatful smile to her Hykraian teammate. "Thanks for coming along, starshine!"

"No offence to your talents of course, Tellus," Chameleon Boy said, "But I wish Dragonmage hadn't been off duty today. I really feel as though we may need sorcery more than telepathy for this."

"Yeah well...let's just do the best we can, huh?" Chlorophyll Kid's faceplate slid back into place to hide his expression from his wife and their friends as he walked past a large sculpture that had been erected in memory of Moorte Island's fallen population, and towards a copse of trees beyond. He gazed into the thick greenery, the canopy of the trees effectively exiling any sunlight. "I don't know how, but...I think this might be the best place to try and reach the Green. Tellus..?"

"As I said, I shall try my best." The Hykraian shuffled forward until he was hunched down on his hindquarters before the other three Legionnaires. He too gazed silently into the cool dark vegetation, the pods on his back shifting through a subtle graduation of pastel colors.

Comet Queen managed to restrain herself for nearly a whole minute before she drew breath to ask a question. Having anticipated exactly that, Chameleon Boy tapped her gently on the shoulder. "Let's try not to distract Tellus if we can avoid it, what do you say Grava?"

In response, Comet Queen smiled self-consciously at the Durlan.

Tellus probed the vegetation for five solid minutes, both passively and actively. Eventually, he had to acknowledge that the task was perhaps beyond him. "Chlorophyll Kid, Comet Queen, I apologise," he turned to face them. "I am afraid that Chameleon Boy may have been correct earlier."

Chlorophyll Kid held one finger up to encourage silence from everybody and he cocked his head slightly. A slight breeze had been blowing through the gathering of trees the whole time they'd been here, creating a placid soundscape of rustling leaves and shrubbery. Now that rustling seemed to have become more deliberate, and Ral Benem walked deeper into the greenery to investigate. Comet Queen, Chameleon Boy and Tellus followed, and soon all four of them were watching as a glut of leafy vines and branches knitted themselves together to form an approximation of a humanoid face some seven feet high.

"We sense great psychic potential in your icthyoid ally," the green face's voice was that of creaking wood and shaking leaves. "But you did not need to bring a psychic to draw our attention, Protector. Why have you come here?"

"I-I need to explain something to you," Chlorophyll Kid faltered. Comet Queen squeezed his hand for support and Ral gripped it almost uncomfortably hard. "About Ivy."

"What news do you have of the Avatar of the Green, Protector?"

"I..." Ral steeled himself and decided to just commit to it. "Listen, this is on me. You made me her protector, okay? You leave the rest of the Legion out of this."

"We await your news," the Green intoned dispassionately.

Chlorophyll Kid flashed a glance from one to the other of his allies. Only Grava had been here the last time they faced the Green, and only Grava knew how swiftly things could turn dangerous here if the Green so desired. Still, she tried her best to keep the fear from her face for her husband's sake. "You're hypernova gleaming, Chlory," Grava spoke barely above a whisper. "I know you're gonna hit the corona and keep blazing."

Ral straightened his posture and consciously relaxed his grip on his wife's hand slightly. "It's a long story but...I've lost Ivy and I need your help to find her. I don't think she's in any immediate danger, but that doesn't matter. I still need to find her."

"Is that all?" the giant face asked with an almost mocking tone. "The Green will be happy to reunite you with our Avatar, Protector. After all, you cannot protect her if you are not within her presence."

"D-didn't you hear me?" Chlorophyll Kid asked. "I lost her! I thought...I thought you'd be mad!"

"For all that we empowered you, you are still but an animal," the Green explained. "It is perhaps our failing that we didn't strengthen your bond with the Avatar when we had the opportunity. She is powerful though and she serves us well, Protector. You have performed your duties as successfully as we could have expected given your biology."

"Chlorophyll Kid, wait." Chameleon Boy raised his hand and stared up into the face of the Green. "What do you mean, she serves you well? Do you know where she is and what she's doing right now?"

"Of course we know, shapeshifter. We have always known." The face turned its attention from Chameleon Boy to Chlorophyll Kid. "Protector, let us share this gift with you so that you may better perform your duties."

Ral released Grava's hand and approached the large face even closer. "Do it."

"Maybe we should think this through," Chameleon Boy cautioned.

"Chlorophyll Kid, I cannot help but sense your apprehension," Tellus joined in. "Chameleon Boy is wise, perhaps we should heed his words."

"..Chlory?" Grava's voice cracked. She had a bad feeling about this, the same bad feeling she'd had when the Green had first enhanced her husband's powers here on Mardru.

Ral retracted his wooden faceplate once more and gave the three Legionnaires a grim look. "None of you understand. None of you. I'm the Protector of the Avatar of the Green. Ivy is my responsibility and I've been shirking that responsibility because I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself. I need to do this." He turned back toward the impassive green face once more. "I'm ready. Do it."

With shocking speed, four wire thin vines whipped out of the looming mouth of the Green and penetrated Ral Benem's face. Grava screeched, covering her face with her hands as her scream turned to sobs. The pods on Tellus's back turned a stark white; a reaction to the pain, fear and self-loathing that was emanating from Ral so fiercely it was almost a physical sensation. Cham stared in a mixture of confusion, disgust and concern. The Durlan hero almost made a move to free his comrade but then told himself that this was Chlorophyll Kid's choice to make.

For his part, Ral Benem tried to be stoic for the first moments. The vines were initially like tiny hot pins, painful but not excruciatingly so...until they were excruciating. Ral felt like they were wending their way through his bloodstream, finding a home in his brain and setting it alight. Despite his best efforts, he was whimpering in agony before too long.

And then it was over.

The vines whipped back out of his cranium with the same speed they'd entered, and Ral Benem collapsed to his hands and knees breathing heavily. Grava immediately crouched down next to him, still crying as she cradled his face in her hands and raised it to meet her gaze. "Please Chlory, please tell me you're quasar bright! You're my gravity well, I'll go spinning off all on my own if I lose you too!"

When Chlorophyll Kid looked her in the eye, Grava gasped; his pupils had turned a dark green and they were so dilated they almost completely hid his lighter green irises. His eyes were severely bloodshot, and more blood trickled down his face from the four wounds the Green had made upon him. He wasn't at all mentally present at first, but his wife's concern focused him and Chlorophyll Kid's face lost its faraway look. "She's...oh Creator," he breathed hoarsely. "...I have to stop her!"

Without another word, Chlorophyll Kid stood and his flight ring propelled him at high speed up and away from the island. Comet Queen reacted before either of the others, calling out desperately after her husband as she left a twinkling trail of gases behind her.

Chameleon Boy turned to interrogate the giant face, but without the presence of the Protector of the Avatar of the Green there was no reason for the Green itself to manifest here. The plant life had already begun to unravel into its individual components once more. "Come on, Tellus." Cham took to the sky as well. "Let's get after them and find out what that was all about."

"Now that I am no longer distracted by the Green or by the intensity of Chlorophyll Kid's emotions," Tellus explained as they too shot away from the island, "My sensory range is expanded once more...and Chameleon Boy? I think it would be best if we summon the rest of the Legion of Superheroes..."

**********

Comet Queen had caught up with Chlorophyll Kid in seconds, but the only words of explanation he could offer her were stumbling and cryptic. Grava could tell that he was crying beneath his armour, and she told herself that he was still reeling from whatever the Green had done to him. She told herself that if this won them Ivy back, it was worth it.

...and then they came across the first land they'd seen since leaving Moorte Island behind.

Ukaima was not the largest continent on Mardru, but it was the most densely populated. More than a quarter of the planet's population lived here, and from coast to coast it was a sprawling pair of megalopoles that met somewhere in the middle. There was precious little plant life here, a result of urban progress combined with the Anthratic Blight which had once decimated the vegetation of this world. Plant life thrived elsewhere on Mardru thanks to the kind of research that had given Ral Benem his powers in the first place, but here on Ukaima it was famously absent. Until now.

Everywhere Chlorophyll Kid and Comet Queen looked, trees spouted, vines crept over and crushed buildings in their path and the air was filled with a thousand different perfumes. This was unmistakably the work of Ivy Arcane, but on a scale that beggared the imagination. "Chlory," Grava pleaded, "Those poor people...we have to help them!" Even as she said it, she realised the task was impossible. This wilding plant life wasn't focused on one small region, it consumed the entire landmass for as far as they could see.

"Grava..." Ral Benem met his wife's horrified gaze and had to look away before it broke him. "W-we can't. But we can find Ivy. I know how to find Ivy."

Comet Queen wanted to break down and lose herself in the emotion of the situation, and she knew nobody would blame her for doing so. What they were facing here...she couldn't even conceive of the scale of death and destruction they were flying headlong into. Grava felt things strongly, and she knew she was fortunate to be surrounded by people who allowed her the luxury of indulging that. But she was a Legionnaire now, and this kind of overwhelming tragedy was regrettably a part of being a Legionnaire. Grava took a deep breath and called Chameleon Boy on her flight ring. "...Starshine?" she spoke with a trembling voice. "I'm activating my homing signal so you can find us. It's bad, Chameleon Boy...it's...it's extinction event bad. I don't...I don't know what to do, how do we help them all?"

"It's okay, Comet Queen; I know." Chameleon Boy's voice was assertive, but not without compassion. "Tellus picked up on the psychic distress, we've already called Phantom Girl and she's bringing the rest of the Legion as soon as she can. I know it's hard, but you can't get distracted rescuing individual people. We need to find Ivy, we need to stop this at its source."

Comet Queen looked down at the living jungle nearly a mile below them. She was high enough that she couldn't hear the screams of a dying people, but she wasn't blind. Grava knew there must be people in that building that just tore itself apart from the strain of a sequoia growing up straight through its infrastructure. She could see the filthy black peals of smoke rising from the mile-wide cavity where a powersphere had once stood. With all her golden heart she wanted to dive down into the thick of it and help these people, but she knew that Cham was right. "I..I gleam you, starshine," she sniffled into her flight ring. "I gleam you nova bright."

Chameleon Boy and Tellus caught up with Chlorophyll Kid and Comet Queen a few minutes later, and some time after that the quartet of heroes had come to Mardru's capital city Agaropolis. They knew that the Legion's new mobile headquarters would be here in less than 40 minutes, but none of them wanted to guess how many Mardrui people would be dead by then. Chlorophyll Kid abruptly changed direction and shot straight down toward the ruins of his homeworld's Global Peace Unity Headquarters, where the many nations of his world for nearly two centuries had met to form a centralised world government.

"Chlorophyll Kid, stop!" Chameleon Boy turned into a giant octopus and snagged each of Ral's limbs with a separate tentacle. "Let's be smart about this...is Ivy down there?"

"Yes!" Ral tried fruitlessly to shake himself free. "Let me go, Chameleon Boy! Let me go or I'll make you!"

"Chlor, think for a nano." Cham regained his normal form and hovered before the armoured hero. "Ivy's power even when she was an infant outstripped yours. We can see how much more powerful she is now, and we know she almost killed you the last time you faced one another. I'm not saying don't go down there, I'm saying do it smartly!"

Chlorophyll Kid dwelled on it for a moment. "...Go on."

"Grava, go down there and douse the entire area in as potent a herbicidal gas as you can muster." Cham turned next to Tellus. "Tellus, there's bound to be some kind of plant somewhere that Comet Queen can't affect, and if if exists then Ivy can recreate it. I want you to tear apart anything that comes close enough to Grava to be a threat. We take the advantage and then you confront your wayward daughter, Chlorophyll Kid."

"...Okay, yeah..that makes sense," Chlorophyll Kid admitted. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to do what I do best," Cham replied as he changed into a mosquito and took refuge inside the overlapping plates of Chlorophyll Kid's wooden armour. "I'm going to be sneaky."

Comet Queen and Tellus rushed off to do their part, while Chlorophyll Kid watched impatiently. Without her usual exuberance, Grava flew low enough that the winds wouldn't dilute the effect of her power, and she flew in circles around what remained of the Global Peace Unity Headquarters. With her arms stretched out before her and her hands making tight fists, Grava's circling became smaller and smaller as she descended, and she and Tellus watched as the vines beneath them began to wither and leaves turned brown.

As expected, some of the more exotic plants began mounting their own defence against the golden heroine. Spear-like shafts of wood flew forth and leathery thorned tendrils reached out for her, but Tellus dutifully shredded each one in mid-air. After a few more rounds, they could see that Chameleon Boy's plan was working. They'd weakened enough of the rampaging vegetation that those Mardrui citizens below who still lived could begin freeing themselves from their own entrapments. They would all likely need medical treatment afterwards to recover from Grava's toxins, but at least they'd be alive.

Suddenly, Grava heard Tellus's voice in her mind. <Comet Queen, beware!>

The Hykraian hardened the air molecules around Grava to shield her from the assault he'd just sensed was coming, but it was no defence at all against a violet eldritch bolt coming from the front steps of the building below them. The mystic bolt slammed into Comet Queen, and Tellus reeled as he felt her agony. They both cartwheeled violently through the air, but Tellus at least recovered soon enough to arrest their flight telekinetically.

<Comet Queen lives>, Tellus reached out to Chameleon Boy and Chlorophyll Kid. <And our foes have given themselves away.> Gathering the unconscious Grava close to him so he could protect her with his own body if it came to it, Tellus implanted the position of her assailant into the others' minds.

"Ivy Arcane wasn't shooting magic bolts like that on the Sorceror's World," Cham reasoned. "She must be with--"

"--Glorith," Chlorophyll Kid came to the same conclusion. "I know. She's the witch who turned my daughter against us in the first place." Chlorophyll Kid's voice was dark with fury, and as he dived down to meet the two women his armour grew thicker and covered itself in ugly sharp thorns. Before he was crushed or impaled by the creaking wood, Chameleon Boy made an unseen exit.

Until today, the front entrance to the Global Peace Unity Headquarters had boasted a grand set of stairs which made the building seem even more impressive. Right now though, those stairs were covered in rubble, shattered vehicles and people, and a carpet of fresh vegetation which was already creeping its way out to replace the plants Grava had killed...and at the head of the stairs, Glorith stood proudly awaiting the Legionnaires. Ivy kneeled at Glorith's side, visibly tired.

"Get away from my daughter!!" Chlorophyll Kid roared, commanding the vine nearest to Glorith to wrap itself around her like a pulpy constrictor and squeeze.

The witch aged it into dust with minimal effort, and chuckled at Ral as he hovered above them. "I don't know how you Legionnaires found out we were here," Glorith bragged, "Between my own power and that of darling Verdant here, I thought we'd quite effectively stifled all communications coming out of this dreary little world."

Chlorophyll Kid didn't waste energy responding, he just commanded every plant which was within his power to control against the two women. As angry as he was, Ral knew that he stood no chance against either of them on his own but if he could keep them off-balance long enough, Cham or Tellus could make their own moves.

"You're some kind of masochist, Benem." Ivy stood up and reasserted her own control over the plants that had turned against her and Glorith. "I thought I killed you on Xerox, and here you are back for more."

"Don't strain yourself, dear." Glorith placed a hand on Ivy's arm. "We've both exerted ourselves quite enough today with the regreening of your homeworld, and we have more worlds to attend still."

Chlorophyll Kid's newly green eyes widened inside his armour. "You've done this to the whole planet?!"

Glorith's smug smile and the coldness on Ivy's face told him all he needed to know. Crying out in rage, he flew straight down toward Glorith and swiped at her with a newly molded forearm blade. The sorceress simply chuckled once more, and as she and Ivy vanished in a flash of light Ral heard the echoes of some whispered incantation fading on the breeze. "No!" He dropped to his knees and pounded at the floor. "No!!!"

Chlorophyll Kid heard some buzzing repetitive drone but it didn't penetrate his anger while he smashed away at the ground beneath him. It was only when Tellus telepathically shouted to him that he realised his Hykraian comrade had been calling him verbally. Panting and soaked in sweat, Chlorophyll Kid looked up at Tellus in a daze. When he saw Comet Queen floating insensate by his side, Ral finally snapped back to reality. "Grava!" He retracted his armour until it was once more smooth and bark-like, and rushed to examine his wife.

"Comet Queen requires medical attention but she is alive," Tellus explained. "But Chlorophyll Kid, I am concerned for you...your psyche is in torment, I cannot help but feel it."

"Of course my sprocking psyche is in torment!" Ral snapped. He spread his arms out over the devastation all around them. "This...this is worldwide, Tellus! My daughter doesn't just hate me, she hates me enough to do this to my homeworld, and Grava could have been killed today! The Creator only knows how many sentients have been killed!" He took his helmet off and threw it down the stairs. "Oh Creator, I can't breathe...I can't...I c-can't b-breathe."

<Be calm, my friend> Tellus reached out to Chlorophyll Kid's mind. <I cannot remove your pain, but I can help you accept it.> Like a cool incoming tide, Tellus's power trickled over the chaos raging inside Ral's head over and over, and each time he restored a little more peace.

After a couple of minutes, Ral Benem stood before Tellus with tears streaming down his face but he felt in control once more. "Thank you, Tellus. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have fallen apart like that, I...this is all just a lot, you know?"

"No apology is necessary," Tellus soothed. "You have every right to your emotions, Chlorophyll Kid. However, right now there are sentients who need us and the rest of the Legion are still some minutes away. Would you like to remain here with Comet Queen while Chameleon Boy and myself help the trapped and wounded?"

"No, no..." Ral took a deep breath. "...I'm good now. I'll deal with all this later, but you're right. People need us. Let's find Cham and we'll get underway." Ral looked around, waiting for the Durlan to reveal himself.

The pods on Tellus's back lightened dramatically. "Chlorophyll Kid...there is no sign of Chameleon Boy's mind anywhere within my range!"

As the same realisation dawned on them both, Tellus and Chlorophyll Kid turned toward the empty space where Glorith and Ivy had been standing moments ago...

TO BE CONTINUED!

EDITOR'S NOTES:
* Scorn has only appeared once before as part of the Demon's Claw, a Khund group of baddies/heroes depending on your perspective - all you really need to know is she is a sorceress with a magic dagger that cut Mon-El one time, and the Demon's Claw hunted Veilmist down for a hot minute - the storyline where she last appeared is here: http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=969264#Post969264

* and Moorte Island similarly only has one prior appearance, though it's a big one as it was our introduction to both Ivy Arcane, as well as Chlor's powers getting expanded from just making plants grow fast to proper chlorokinesis - that one can be found here: http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=942132#Post942132

*Calish-Aetia is of course obscure Legion villain Echo's homeworld, but that's not really significant - I just thought it would be a cute easter egg

yay. what a treat!

Sisterhood of Sin... at least they aren't harboring false illusions of being good guys!


Whooo boy, Vista's mindscape is scarier than I thought. how does she kill the victims stuck in her mind... wandering alone, going crazy. eek! good to see Veilmist isn't evil evil... hope for her yet. I do think she deserves a happy ending...

White Bat didn't have a very good childhood eh! nice work making me care a bit for a villain

Scorn! I remember her, a bit. not super clear when though

D&D!! ah what fun, and nice throwback to the Levitz days

nice that Evolvo Lad also plays D&D... definitely not something I would expect from Brainy, for example. and a nice way to differentiate them

lol at the coriander convo, which is something I have heard in real life. and gene therapy, cool!

Xao's and Zoe's outfits just really match their personalities


great psychic potential, glad Tellus' telepathy was acknowledged

Grava' s support of Ral is touching

and lol at the Green's dispassionate "oh is that all" reaction


whoa. what a first cliffhanger. best to summon the rest of the team...

oh heavens. I don't think I could deal with what Grava and the others had to do, ignoring the individual dying people for the source...

good of Cham talking sense into Ral

ooh, Tellus hardening air molecules is a nice trick

poor Ral...

oh gosh, and Cham's endgame...!

looking forward to the next bit, whew!

We love a villain group that just comes out and says what they are

I think Veilmist is more selfish and amoral than really evil but I could see a different world happening where she's a proper good guy (not sure if it'll be this one though lol)

Oh! My bad on Scorn, I meant to do one of my editor's notes thingies....I will edit the post after this, but last time we saw her she was a member of that Khund group that came after Veilmist and got the Legion involved with the Fatal Five/Robotica thing!

I am definitely on Berta's side with the coriander thing, Laurel needs to get a grip

Cham kinda wrote his own bit there, I hadn't originally planned on him doing much other than being in the background! But it is one of those things that will help the next couple of chapters flow better I think...

NEXT UP! I am finally getting around to giving y'all an updated team roster! (plus some stuff happens)

yeah, sometimes villains are just villains, period

agree re Veilmist, and there is for sure a big difference between selfish and amoral, and truly immoral.

lol yeah, I'm also on your and Berta's side re coriander -- when used properly it does not overpower!

and yay, new recruits coming I think eh?

I think I got a bit too excited about the new recruits, it might be a bit before I can squeeze em in lol....for the Legion anyway....

oooohh a hint! a clue!

Raz, hi there,

Great to see more up already!

Also glad for the update on Veilmist and the Sisterhood, they're an intriquing bunch, though I wonder if Veilmist really fits with them.

Love the history of Calish-Aetia, sounds like a thoroughly depressing and despndent place and I don't get the feeling it'll get any better soon.

Vista torturing her captives on the astral plane - haha great minds think alike Raz - have you been reading my notes for LW8 - you'll understand when you get to it. Anyway, Vista is thoroughly dislikable, though for the sake f a story she makes a great villain.

"...spreading out toward the horizon until it disappeared in a smudge of pollution and cloud cover" what a great description, reminds me of London, sadly.

And, yay! Scorn is back, we do love her! She will add another layer of sheer nastiness to the team/ and I really looking forward to where you're taking this storyline.

Nice to see Thom and Dirk playing D+D, though I wonder what Dirk's running too? And introducing Evolvo into their game is fun, nice to see the newer teammates interact socially with the old guard.

Love the convo about corriander - I love the stuff and have two pots of it on my kitchen window sill that I regularly pull leaves from. My partner says it tastes like how nappies smell. Oh well, more for me! Poor Laurel - and Dirk actually, there's a lot of work that needs doing to repairing that friendship. And how nice of Mysa to offer advice, and clever to leave him to ruminate.

And more food conversations, haha, were you hungry when yu wrote this? Nice to see Xao and Zoe relaxing. Wonder what Harlack's last rites will entail?

I love how you are revisiting Moorte Island and letting us know the consequences of the last visit there. Why do I think that the Green won't mind a more feral Ivy? Hopefully the team aren't walking into a trap here.

Icthyoid ally - fab phrase!

The Green are such a great character (should that be singular?) as they have a totally outlook of what is right and wrong. Ral was brave, and nice how the rest of the team tried to talk him out of taking that course of action. Needs must, I guess... Tellus saying summon the rest of the Legion - this is going to be immense! We now what baby Ivy can do, what can adult Ivy do? It's a scary thought.

Wow, you don't disappoint. A small continent covered by sprawling plant life. It's a awesome image! Reep being pragmatic with Grava was right on point. Think strategically and deal wth it at the source. And doing what he does best - being sneaky. Haha, that's about right.

Oh, evil Glorith too! That surprised me, but just added to the threat so it's good

Ral's little meltdown was understandable and tellus is as compassinate and understanding as ever. Though I do wonder if he's really that nice or thinking to himself "bloody humans getting all uptight and annoying again!" and just dealing with it, haha.

And Reep is gone too now! Okay, great cliffhanger there Raz, I'm hooked (again) and looking forward to more, more and much more!

Hi Harbi! The Sisterhood of Sin are gonna be making their first proper move as a team next instalment, although I will be very surprised if anyone saw it coming....but we will see how well Veilmist fits in then I guess!

I do like inserting food into everyone's downtime hahaha.....and Zoe has somehow become the one with the weird palette on my team so I like coming up with new gross things for her to eat

re: the Green - we might be on the same page there, and I think Ral and maybe even Ivy are soon gonna find out their relationships with the Green aren't necessarily what they thought they were....

I do think he's just an incredible well of tolerance and empathy most of the time, but also one has to wonder how many of these little incidents are gonna happen before he says screw it and embraces the Dark Circle like he did in the comics after the five year gap

It is probably not a spoiler to say that Cham may have bitten off more than he can chew this time around, but we'll see how that all turns out next instalment as well!