DC Legends: Crisis on Infinite Earths (IC)

DC LEGENDS - Crisis on Infinite Earths
Story Archives

#1: Through the Wormhole (post 1)
#2: Enter the Hive (post 57)
#3: (To be determined...)








Command Bridge
WATCHTOWER SCOUT SHIP
Saturday, April 23rd, 2016 03:15 UTC

The serene tranquility of deep space seemed like a desperately-needed reprieve from the months of ongoing war that had plagued the Earth since the Reach launched an invasion in mid-January. The intrusion had been premature, however, as the majority of their fleet was still on the other side of the galaxy. The first wave struck, but the second wave never came due to unforeseen obstacles in the operation of their prototype wormhole generator. While the Reach scientists labored away trying to iron out the bugs, the soldiers continued their attacks.

In the months that the war dragged on, the Reach had steadily lost footing, and their greatest defeat was only hours away from commencing – a group of hackers had managed to secure data pointing to the location of the science vessel that housed the wormhole generator, and soon a strike team was assembled consisting of members from both the Justice League covert ops unit and Task Force X, AKA the Suicide Squad.

The strike team boarded one of the Watchtower's scout ships and headed for the science vessel, which was nestled between icy asteroids in the outer Oort Cloud at the edge of the Solar System. In just a few hours, they would arrive at their destination and prepare for the assault. The entire team was gathered in the Command Bridge as Nightwing went over the mission specifics with them.

“This could decide the course of this war,” he explained to the others. “if the Reach get their wormhole generator working, the rest of their fleet will crush any resistance we hope to muster. We must destroy it at all costs – no matter what. Even if we die in the process, we cannot allow their plan to succeed. Be ready to put it all on the line for the sake of everyone else back home, for there is no sense in surviving today only to endure a Reach-infested tomorrow.”

As Nightwing continued his speech, he could tell not everyone felt the same dedication to the cause as him, and he had anticipated that – unbeknownst to them, the scout ship was actually equipped with a self-destruct mechanism that he would activate from his wrist computer if all other options had failed. The blast would unleash an explosion so massive it would vaporize both vessels and anyone on board, but would most certainly end any chance of the Reach bringing the rest of their fleet. Dick sincerely hoped he would not have to use that final ace up his sleeve, but he was fully prepared to do just that without hesitation of the need arised.

Harley Quinn raised her hand as Dick spoke, but didn't wait to speak. Um, Mr. Batman junior 'I'm not Robin anymore' sir? I'm not really comfortable putting it all on the line. I'd prefer to keep it away from there." She said interrupting his speech. "I don't really feel the average person is worth risking my life for. Maybe we find a nice new planet to live on? I'm sure there's one around her somewhere." She continued twirling her hair and popping bubble gum loudly, deliberately trying to piss Nightwing off.

"Idiot." Raven thought to herself as Harley tried to provoke the team. Didn't she understand the severity of the situation? They were about to walk into what was essentially a war zone, and she was cracking jokes. "But what was I expecting from a clown." Raven thought. On the outside Raven seemed calm and collected, her only emotion showing was slight annoyance at Harley. On the inside however, she was nervous. Anxious even. She'd been in her share of fights, but this was bigger than stopping a bank robbery. The fate of the entire world was in their hands, and Raven wasn't sure they could win. Not with the team they had. She didn't voice her thoughts though, obviously. She just squeezed Beast Boy's hand a little tighter and waited for their arrival at the generator ship.

Ok, intergalactic aliens threatening to take over the planet and the only hope is a plucky group of heroes and villains thrust together by circumstance? Beastboy was an expert on this stuff, he had dealt with this kind of junk tones of time, the only problem is his contribution is generally sitting on the couch and pressing play so the move would start. As far as doing this kind of thing in reality, where he was the closest thing to a greenscreen in sight? Vastly different story, Beastboy was so far outside of his comfort zone right now, hell, he wasn’t even in orbit around his comfort zone right now, he was at the edge of the solar system only god knows how many millions of miles from his comfort zone.

That all said though, he agreed with Nightwing, this was important, more important than them all and definitely more important than his own comfort, he understood the stakes and more importantly he understood the lengths they may have to go to in order to succeed, something he had no doubt their ex bat junior leader had also come to terms with and prepared for. If it came down to it, Beastboy would buy enough time for the sneaky git to enact whatever backup plan he had, regardless of the cost to himself.

And then he found himself reminded of their less reputable company, the Suicide Squad, a troubling name for people given the same task as you, he would have gone with something a little nicer, like the Thunderbolts or something, way better than the Suicide Squad. The source of this reminder, was a little circus sideshow by the name of Harley who felt now was an appropriate time to test Dicks patience, funny in her own way, and in possession of a very rocking body, Beastboys official stance on said rocking body was that he hadn’t noticed it, she obviously wasn’t his type, you cant prove anything.

When the dark fingers entwined with his own tightened their grip though, Harleys body found itself far from his mind. He gently squeezed back, taking strength from it himself as he threw on his tried and tested jovial mask “Chill out Harlequin, you're riding with the heroes now baby” Beastboy couldn’t give a crap about her or how chill she was, he just wanted to lighten the mood for his own reasons, mainly for the benefit of the beauty holding his hand “We don’t loose, we go, we see, we kick alien butt and go home in style. Just think about all the cool stuff you can do when you're the saviour of Earth, I'll give you a hint, its anything you want.”

"Please Ferret-Kid. The Mad Hatter could take this entire group out without even one of his hats. Plus you look like a reject from The Riddler's camp." Harley said. "Let's face it. The only one with half a chance is moody Supes over there, and his blondie sister can kick his ass without breaking a sweat." She continued. "I dunno about you guys, but I want to find a nice beach somewhere and get wasted. Then maybe shoot a fish. Me and Mistah J..." She paused, her eyes growing distant from a memory. She realized they were still looking at her, and she started talking again. "The point is this won't end well. And even if it does, why should I help? I was doing whatever I wanted before this. Then that fat bitch locked me up made me do her dirty work with Winky and the gang." Harley said, tossing a gum wrapper at Slade when she said Winky. "Even if this goes off and we win, you get metals, I get moldy ham sandwiches. Why bother?" She asked pulling out her revolver and twirling the chamber. She smiled and placed the Barrel to her temple. "I'm in The Suicide Squad Right? Let's take a vote! Who wants me to do it?" She giggled pulling back the hammer on the gun.

Once again, Beastboy was reminded of how outside his own comfort zone he was, he was used to the sane kind of crazy villains, you know the kind that still think putting a gun against their own head is probably a bad plan, not a tactic to pass the time. His first reaction was to yell at her, what kind of idiot doesn’t see the value in saving the planet, and who the hell points a gun at their own head for no reason, but the steady presence of the hand in his calmed him. “Oh please you big faker, we weren’t stupid enough to not outnumber you suicidal rejects, that votes going nowhere” he smirked “and between you and me, you're a long way off having the subtlety to get any laughs off a joke with no punchline.” Now that’s the point where he should have stopped, but Beastboy was never that well known for his restraint “this is why you should have stayed just a sideshow at that hack jokers circus, you don’t have the chops for a solo gig.”

Star listened to Nightwing intent on taking in all the information from the elite hero. This was more than a little outside of his wheelhouse. When Nightwing had approached him Star had been fighting thugs in Sunridge, a North California suburb that nobody outside it's borders had ever heard of. The most dangerous thing he'd faced prior to this was a man who called himself Prank and had apparently fled Gotham for a city without Bats and Clowns. And Star hadn't so much beaten that guy so much as stalled for the cops!

Now he was part of a handful of heroes out to save the world. It was enough to make him puke.

And Harley wasn't helping. Nor was Raven truth be told.

"I think you're supposed to point those at the bad guys." Star said trying his best to sound cool. "Which way to the wormhole generator?" He asked tightening the laces on his black steel toed boots mostly to keep from looking nervous.

Slade angrily pulled a pistol out and shot the revolver out of Harley's hand. "Now then," he said angrily as everybody was startled by the sound of the shot, "as much as I love listening to you idiots banter, I was told there was actually a plan for destroying the wormhole. I would love to hear it because unlike Harley, I don't really like walking straight to my death. Now glorious boy wonder, please tell me your plan for getting us not killed," he said, slightly mockingly as he holstered his pistol and folded his arms over his chest.

He was tired of having to fight for the safety of the common people, if it wasn't for the bomb in his head, he'd have found his own little haven to endure the end of the world.

Nightwing sighed as the others bantered, then narrowed his eyes as Deathstroke fired a gun within a pressurized space ship. At first he ignored the mercenary's question and just glared. "Don't fire that gun in here again -- if you rupture the hull you'll kill us all long before we get anywhere near the wormhole generator."

After a minute, Dick continued on with his speech that Harley had interrupted. "Anyway, as I was saying -- it's up to us to save the world. This ship's cloaking device will keep us concealed as we approach the enemy vessel, after which Raven will teleport herself and Beast Boy over to their hangar -- the Reach utilize teleportation dampeners in their shields, so you won't be able to penetrate very far into the vessel before you are forced to rematerialize, so aim for the hangar -- it's the largest open space near the outer hull."

Dick looked to make sure everyone was spaying attention and then continued. "Once over there, Beast Boy will turn into a fly and utilize the ventilation shafts to make his way for main engineering, where he will then hide and await the signal. Meanwhile, Raven will stick to the shadows and head for the bridge, placing several bugs near their main consoles that will allow me to wirelessly access their main computer and infect their sensors with a virus that will give the illusion of a swarm of incoming enemy ships. Once the engineers begin panicking and the ship goes on alert, that will be Beast Boy's cue to turn into something big and begin trashing their engine room, resulting in a drop in power that will cause the shields to fluctuate. Between that and the virus, I should be able to cause the shields to drop completely for about thirty seconds before the back-up generators kick in, allowing us to pilot the scout ship into the hangar if we're quick."

Dick turned and pointed to one of the main displays on the bridge. "Once we have successfully landed in the hangar and are inside the shields, I can utilize the full power of our ship's computer to download deck layouts of the Reach vessel and pinpoint the location of the wormhole generator. I will then send that location to Raven and Beast Boy, who meet the rest of us there. We will likely have to fight our way to the generator, but most of the ship will be in a panic over the fleet of enemy ships their sensors will be detecting from the virus, so the opposition should not be too overwhelming. We find the generator, copy the program onto my wrist computer, and then destroy it. We then return to our ship, wait for the shields to fluctuate again and speed out of there."

"If we're so sure the generator is there, why not just have Raven teleport a bomb over there and be done with it?" Superboy asked as he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

"Because, we can't be one hundred percent certain this is their only prototype," explained Dick. "We need to know how it works so that we can build better defenses against it in the future. Depending on what frequency it uses, we may be able to design an emitter that blasts out radiowaves specifically aimed at destabilizing any incoming wormholes on the quantum level. There is a lot we can learn from this, but that is our secondary objective -- first and foremost we must destroy it, even if gathering the information becomes impossible."

"Yea Winky! No shooting at people!" Harley said angrily, collecting her revolver from the floor. "Unless of course they're being rude." She said firing a shot on the floor between Beast Boy's feet. She holstered the pistol, before smirking at the green skinned super hero, who'd jumped as she fired. "My solo career is goin just fine thank you. Mine just started and I'm already going toe-to-toe with Bats. Harley Quinn is a household name! Who the Hell has heard of you Ferrit-Kid? Third rate super villains who can't even pick a fight with the fish guy? Face it, you're the loser here." She smirked sinking back into her chair, before returning her attention to Nightwing.

"So how do we kill these things anyways? Does shooting then in the face work, or do we need glowing rocks to make them bleed?" Harley asked, replacing the missing bullet in her revolver.

"Wait, so the plan is for us to sit here while your two teenage friends hopefully are able to disable their shield generator? And then we just fight our way to the wormhole portal thing? You already have Mr. Indestructible over here," Slade said gesturing to Superboy, "why are Harley and I here again? You guys seem like you've got everything under control.

"And Harley's right, as much as I hate to admit it, if we're going in, is there any specific way we need to kill them?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. Not that anybody could see the gesture behind her mask. "Is there really any need to kill them? Seems quicker not bother." Gwen said looking over the members of the so called Suicide Squad. "The mission is to get the portal thingamajib disable and back. Easy peasy."

She had mixed feelings about the Suicide Squad. in her short time here she hadn't really gotten a chance to know any of the people especially not Harley and Slade but she knew enough to know they were both criminals. Not low level street thugs either, these were internationally known mass murderers. Mass murderers with bombs planted in their skulls by the government. Wasn't the government supposed to be the good guys? Sure they did shady things sometimes but bombs in people's heads? Flat out slavery? Nothing could justify that.

Except maybe the potential end of the world.

"I'm sorry, please explain to me how you plan on getting through the ship to the shield generator without killing the Reach that we encounter on our way there?" Slade said incredulously. "Also, who the hell are you? I've never seen you before so I assume you're not one of the Titans here. Why are you even here?"

"Just speaking for myself I was planning on knocking them all out and dodging the rest." Star replied. "I've never killed anybody, didn't really think I was going to start today." Star replied his voice wavering slightly.

It was true in the technical sense. There was at least one man with a broken neck who'd probably never walk again because of him. Star still wasn't sure if it counted as killing someone if you knew exactly what would happen if they went back to their employer empty handed.

"Besides heroes only kill when there is absolutely no choice." Star said. Now he was trying to convince himself as much as anybody else. His father and uncles had served in the Marines, heck someone in his family had served in every conflict in the last century but somehow that was different. Soldiers go to war. Soldiers kill. The Justlice League though? They weren't heroes, they were super heroes. They saved the day.

Dick sighed and then facepalmed as everyone seemed to be jabbing back and forth at each other. He knew this wasn't going to be easy -- heroes and villains working together -- but he hoped they would put their differences aside when the time came to jump into action. After giving a few more moments to let them vent on each other, he cleared his throat loudly and continued.

"Everyone is of value here, and we can all contribute to the success of this mission. While the focal points may be on Raven and Beast Boy, and yes, Superboy may be our powerhouse, this task requires a team. The normal Reach soldiers aren't that difficult to deal with, but they might have an armored warrior like Black Beetle. A larger team is ideal for this mission."

"Don't forget their other question," Superboy interjected with a laugh. "They want to know how to kill the Reach -- I guess they haven't had much experience actually fighting them these last few months. Which brings another question to mind first presented by Deathstroke-- why are they even here? We've been at war with the Reach since January, and yet at least half of our team has no idea how to actually fight them, and they were sent along on a mission that our entire planet depends on?"

"I'll be honest," Dick started with a heavy sigh, turning to look at everyone. "I didn't realize some of you had so little experience fighting the Reach. Amanda Waller led me to believe Task Force X had been on a number of battles during this conflict, so when she assigned you to this team, I just assumed you were informed about our enemy. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to see others fight, as most of the missions I was deployed on consisted of only my fellow Titans. I only know the capabilities of my team prior to this merger -- everything else is based on information given to me by others."

"So let's leave the convicts on the ship," replied Conner. "Lock them up where they belong and it'll be just us heroes -- as it should be."

"Excuse me," came a voice from the back of the bridge. "This mission wouldn't have been possible without me. And I will not sit by while you all get to have all the fun -- I'm going."

"Yes, Doctor Light," replied Nightwing. "It is true the hackers used programs based on your technology to locate the science vessel, but that will be meaningless if this mission fails today."

"That's why I'm going too," asserted Light. "It's not often Waller lets me off my leash long enough to actually use my exosuit, and unlike my comrades here, I really do care about the fate of the Earth. I have no desire to see our planet in ashes."

"So the first step is to make sure everyone is aware of how to fight these bugs," Nightwing began, bringing up an image on the screen. "This is an average Reach soldier. They look remarkably humanoid for being insect-like beings, and their outer skin is tough like a shell, however, it is nearly impossible to actually kill them."

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o178/TheJeffinator/reach1_zpsuoe2n32o.jpg

He had their attention now, they looked back and forth from the image on the screen to Dick. His fellow Titans knew the truth, but the others looked like Nightwing had just signed their death warrant.

"Then what the hell?!" cried Doctor Light. "How are we supposed to survive if we can't even kill them?!?

"We may not be able to kill them," Dick continued, "but that doesn't mean we can't take them out. And we can actually utilize the full force of our capabilities. The Reach's biology makes them nearly impervious to permanent death, being that all their vital organs -- including their brain -- reside within a thick shell in their head. In the event of physical destruction to their body, the organ shell shifts to seal itself off, compacting to about the size of a coconut and entering stasis. In this form, the rest of the body can be completely incinerated, but the shell will remain, able to maintain itself for many weeks before it runs out of stored energy and nutrients."

He stopped to make sure everyone was paying attention, and then continued. "The surface of the shell is able to photosynthesize and absorb solar energy, and when it feels all danger has passed, it can reopen tiny holes and vine-like nerves begin slithering out, gradually regenerating the Reach's body around the shell over a period of several months."

"What he means is that you can let loose on them -- you won't kill them," Superboy added.

"Fucking lightweights! They're not even human! And I've killed so many humans." Harley said, smiling as she relived the memories. "Winky's right. We can't just knock them out. This is kill or be killed. If they don't put a bullet in your back, I will." She said getting up and moving over to Slade, where she proceeded to sit in his lap with her back to him. She wrapped her arm around his neck and looked at him over her shoulder. "Why'd they hook us up with these kids, Winky? You and other Winky could just spray your way through all the aliens, while I stayed here and did my nails." She sighed. "But no! They had to have baby Bats, and his crew of colorful super rejects to come in and do a job they're not ready for." She continued, looking at the young heroes as she spoke. "In another life Winky... You and I, we could've ruled." Harley whispered while poorly imitating a French accent. "But back to these kids!" She shouted standing up quickly. "Show of hands! Whoa killed in here? Hmm? Anyone? Winky and I have! And if you brats want to make it through this you'll have to kill too!" Harley said dramatically, circling the center of the room. "Can any of you do it? Take a life? Because if you can't, just stay on the fucking ship! No faceless alien minion is going to kill me just because you twerps have morals. Winky and I will kill them, you goody-two-shoes can stay here and talk about your feelings!" Harley shouted, growing increasingly more angry, until she ended her speech sitting down in an angry huff. She sat there for a moment, her face blank, before speaking again, all traces of her previous anger gone. "So when's lunch?" She giggled.

After Harley's outburst, Nightwing and some alien Harley had never seen before explained that they couldn't be killed. "Well can't we smash the coconuts? And shoot them into space or something? I wanna kill something dammit!" Harley pouted.

Raven had been silently mediating on the information that was being fed to the team, before finally speaking. "Could the minds of the Stasis Reach soldiers be reached by telepathy?" She asked, her quiet voice sounding from the shadowy corner she and Beast Boy sat in. "Becayse if they can, maybe I could talk to them. Learn information, or even interrogate them. At the very least I could keep the asleep for awhile." She said, standing and coming forward as she spoke.

"Oh look, they are almost impossible to kill." Gwen said. "Well for all the fracken lightweights who can't accomplish anything without murder please remain on the ship and murder each other. The heroes can do this."

Gwen looked down and noticed she was starting to pump her heel up and down like she was riding a motorcylcle. She always got antsy before things got serious and this was worse than normal. She was crammed into a tiny place with no room to dodge, nobody she could genuinely call friend, two crazy genuinely crazy people and oh yeah, they were fighting aliens that don't die for the defense of the whole damn world.

Just your average Saturday Morning. They'd have everything wrapped up in thirty minutes and learn an important lesson about trusting people!

"There is not much more we can learn from them telepathically that Martian Manhunter has not already gathered," explained Nightwing. "And we don't have to worry about them waking back up too soon -- it takes several months to fully regenerate and become a threat again. By the time that happens, we'll be long gone from their ship."

They went over the specifics again, and then Nightwing said to the group, "Some of you think we shouldn't be working together or are unsure why we are, but regardless, here we are. Every single one of you is a vital asset of these team, and this fight isn't just for today -- it's for tomorrow, as well. So that we have a home to go back to. Never forget that. Okay, let's gear up and proceed as planned."

After Raven and Beast Boy successfully pulled off their part of the plan, Nightwing moved the scout ship into the hangar and then the entire team made their way to the location of the wormhole generator shown in the schematics that had been downloaded -- an engineering lab on the lower decks. When they entered the room, they saw the machine was quite large with panels open and signs that scientists had been working on it.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o178/TheJeffinator/warp_core_zpskestyqsp.jpg

Dick ran up to the display panel and lifted his wrist, opened his holographic computer screen, and began typing away. He immediately began downloading the data, after which he took a moment to scroll through it on his screen. His face grew solemn as he turned to the team.

"I have bad news," he said, he voice low. "The wormhole generator is tied directly into the ship's warp drive and shield mainframe. It works by essentially projecting a three-dimensional wormhole around the ship, using the subspace bubble formed from the normal warp drive as a foundation. However, it is fueled directly from the warp core in the main engine room, meaning if we destroy this machine right now, it will cause the core to rupture and obliterate us all. We have to first seal off the core from the wormhole generator, but to do that, the generator has to go through its shutdown process, in which it has to fully cool down before being disconnected from the core. And that's a process that takes much longer than we have..."

"You will not be doing that, I'm afraid," came a strange, clicking voice behind them. They turned and immediately Nightwing's heart dropped when he saw the source of the voice. It had been too easy to get this far.

http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o178/TheJeffinator/young-justice-blue-beetle_zpscjhutrc3.jpg

"Black Beetle," groaned Nightwing. "I thought you were still back on Earth."

"No," he replied simply. A moment later, Reach soldiers swarmed into the room and surrounded the team. "I am impressed with how easily you circumvented our security protocols. You sent the crew into a panic, but one glance told me the sensor readings were caused by a virus, and then I knew someone was after the wormhole generator."

Nightwing looked around, mulling over thoughts in his head. With a push of a button, he could detonate the scout ship and end this right then. Destroy the wormhole generator. But he would also have to kill his entire team in the process. Their outlook was bleak, but he had to at least give them a chance to fight their way out of this. Perhaps they could cause the entire warp core to explode remotely once they were back on their ship. He had to have faith in his team and their ability to overcome this obstacle.

He turned to Superboy, and they both nodded. Then suddenly, Superboy charged at Black Beetle, shoving him into the floor in the hall outside the lab. The clone then began wailing on the Beetle, slamming his fists into the black armor so fast it was almost a blur. Nightwing then dropped down and sent a few marble-sized explosives rolling along the floor under a few of the Reach soldiers, detonating with enough force to knock them down, but no so strong that it threatened to rupture the integrity of the hull.

"Okay team -- attack!" Nightwing cried, then used the opening to roll over to the fallen soldiers, whipped out his extendible staff, and began flipping and jumping around as he smacked it against the heads of the soldiers.

"Well that sounds com-pli-cat-ed." Star said each syllable coming a full breath after the last because he caught sight of Black Beetle before the villain even began to speak.

He'd seen this monster on the news before, it was supposed to make Blue Beetle look like a harmless kitten. That wasn't something he could fight. But he had to try, this was possibly the last chance for the Earth, for his family and loved ones and billions of people he'd never even meet.

Fortunately Superboy took that decision away from him as the two titans collided. "I guess I'll work on these other guys? Good." Star said pretending that either Nightwing or Superboy had acknowledged him. Even if they hadn't another choice was taken away when three Reach Soldiers started to approach him armed with some kind of taser spears.

Star turned toward the nearest settling into his well practiced stance and then to an average human he simply disappeared. When he appeared again a fraction of a second later that Reach soldier's leg was bent at an unnatural angle. The second managed to get off a single attack before Star stepped beneath it driving a flurry of punches into it's abdomen with such speed and ferocity it was lifted off the floor a bit before a final kick sent it skidding away.

The final soldier managed to graze Star and with a tazer spear that's more than enough to leave burns and draw out screams of agony. It wasn't enough to stop Star from grabbing it's wrist and twisting. Once star was behind it he suplexed the humanoid insect, then went from limb to limb snapping bone? Carapace? Whatever they had it popped and snapped and the soldier screamed and screamed.

By the time Star finished the other two were closing back in however and apparently they had friends. "Shit."

"Oh it's time!" Gwen exclaimed excitedly as she narrowly avoided a Reach soldier intent on punching her. She responded with a kick to it's abdomen at full strength and unlike the thug she'd normally get from a human there was a loud KER RACK that sang through the chamber. The Reach solder went to clutch his chest, some fluid oozing out but that dien't stop him from fighting back.

"How long do we need Nightbird?" Gwen asked forgetting his name for what must have been the umpteenth time, or maybe she was teasing. It was hard to tell. She webbed down one soldier, then snagged another by the ankle and whipped him about into another soldier before looking around at the rest of the team. Teams. Allies. People who were not aliens!

"Bang Bang you're dead! Hole in your head!" Harley sang as she sprayed bullets at the Reach soldiers pouring into the room. For every one she killed, two more came into the room. "This isn't working!" She said throwing her empty Uzis at a reach soldier hard enough to crack it's skull. "I'm just going to borrow this, okay honey?" She said grabbing a reach weapon from a downed soldier. She fired the weapon, and a bright green beam of energy exploded from the barrel, erasing a group of reach fighters and blowing a hole in the wall. "Holy shit! Space guns are great!" Harley giggled, firing at another cluster of Reach soldiers.

Raven floated above the fight, providing support to the team. She disassembled reach weapons before they could fire, and teleported enemy soldiers outside of the ship. She saw Star being flanked by a group of Reach soldiers, and slammed them into a wall before they could attack him. "What's the plan Nightwing? We're pretty outnumbered here!" Raven called to her leader, as she teleported a fired energy beam away from Gwen.

Captain Cold

Leonard Snart was typically a bit of a grump. There were the occasional thing that would make a smile cross his face...old fashioned Polish stew like his grandmother would sometimes make, watching his sister, Lisa, dance or skate, pulling a bigger than expected heist off while the Flash was spinning his heels...but they tended to not be the normal day-to-day things that made up his life.

Especially not now.

As much as he'd claimed he was never going to be co-opted into working for Amanda Waller again, here he was. Granted, he was late, but he felt they might need some of his cryogrenades. "They're bugs, right? Bugs tend to hate the cold. Might help, might not. Whatever."

He had just finished finally stowing them and a spare gun in the ship's locker, and entered the room as Nightwing finished speaking and watched as the hero was interrupted by one of the head bugs and verbal squabbling shifted to blows and shots.

"How ever long we need, just got shortened considerably," Cold said in response to the woman in the flowing hooded cloak, a slight smile breaking out at how the costume it covered seemed almost form fitting. He broke out his cold gun and began helping Raven in keeping the Reach troops either from them or by seperating them from their weaponry by blowing the electro spears from the hands and freezing them securely to wall, floor, or ceiling...wherever they happened to land.

"Who else needs a hand?"

"The plan? The plan went to shit!" said Nightwing as he ducked to avoid a green blast and rolled to dodge another. He could not tell them the backup plan -- to blow them all up. He looked over to see Superboy and Black Beetle taking turns slamming each other around out in the hall, and Doctor Light finally seemed to get his suit operational as he began firing repulsor blasts from his hands and chest at the Reach soldiers. He wasn't utilizing his full power due to the risk of a hull breach, but Dick was beginning to think make the risk was worth it. Then he suddenly had an idea.

Bringing up his holocom as he dodged another attack, Nightwing was able to hack into the ship's climate control system and plunge the temperature below freezing. He then quickly applied a multi-layered encryption to prevent the Reach from turning the heat back up for a while.

"Winter is coming!" he yelled as he rolled away from another blaster shot. Doctor Light looked over and then quickly scanned the changes himself.

"Impressive, Boy Wonder!" he yelled out. "You locked them out of climate control!"

In a matter of minutes, the soldier's bodies began to stiffen, their physiology not suitable for such harsh conditions. Most of the team began shivering as the temperature continued to plummet, and Nightwing motioned to head back to their ship.

"If we stay here much longer, we will suffer as well," he explained. "We need to get back to the scout ship and get out of here. The Reach here aren't dead yet, and they will regenerate once they return to warmth. And I'm going to give them a whole lot of that once we're at a safe distance -- I think if I turn the climate in the other direction and crank it up while pumping out pure oxygen from the life support reserves, it will cause systems failure in the engine room, create sparks, and then boom -- the wormhole generator is gone."

"Sounds like a plan," replied Superboy as he looked down at Black Beetle, desperately trying to stand to his feet. His armor had done little to protect him from the cold.

"Let's go then," agreed Light, and they all started to run out of the room when they heard a series of beeps from behind them. They looked over and saw one of the Reach soldiers had managed to drag himself along the floor to the wormhole generator an input the code to activate it.

"Shit!" cried Nightwing as the generator lit up and started to make a loud raging wind sound, similar to a tornado or a freight train. "Get to the ship! Now!"

"Soon you will see our homeworld, invaders," the soldier hissed after them. "I have faith the generator will work this time..."

The team ran frantically through the halls towards the hangar as the vessel shook and rattled around them. As they approached the scout ship, the walls of the Reach vessel began to crack, as if it was pulling itself apart. Luckily this caused larger fluctuations in the shield, so once they started up the scout ship they were able to dart out of the hangar.

"Holy shit!" Superboy gasped as they all looked out the window to see the Reach vessel implode in on itself, releasing a blast as the engine exploded. The wreckage was then pulled into a swirling vortex of debris and violent wind, appearing like a tornado contained within a perfect sphere. Then, suddenly, the computer on the scout ship began beeping.

"Damn it!" yelled Nightwing. "We're caught in the gravity well! It's pulling us in! Quick, we need to push thrusters to max!"

"Can't we use the backup Warp Drive?" cried Superboy. Before Dick could answer, Light did.

"No, you idiot!" the doctor barked. "If we jump to Warp this close to a gravity well, we'll rip apart our own ship as well!"

Nightwing tried to focus on the thrusters as the rest of the team seemed to be arguing with each other, but it was futile -- the engines overheated, shorted out, and suddenly they were all slammed against the wall as the ship went rocketing towards the unstable wormhole. They were engulfed by dark clouds and felt themselves spinning rapidly, the image outside the windows looking like the center of a massive thunderstorm that was spinning like a hurricane. Soon the sound of raging wind and distant claps of thunder was all they could hear. As they spinned faster and faster, the team started to lose consciousness from the extreme g-forces, and soon darkness swallowed them all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Damn..." Nightwing groaned as he stood to his feet, dizzy. The rest of the team was sprawled out along the floor, everyone finally starting to regain consciousness. A look out the window revealed all was quiet, and a quick scan showed that they were still in their solar system.

"That was close," said Light as he removed his helmet and rubbed his skull. "The wormhole must have destabilized before it could transport us anywhere."

"Well, at least the immediate threat is gone now," Superboy added. "We should probably get back to Earth and report to the Watchtower."

"Yes, but," Dick started. "This is strange -- the Watchtower is not responding to any subspace hails. I sincerely hope it has not fallen."

With the engines back online after a brief period of rest, they plotted a course for Earth, each getting a few hours to relax on the journey. As they approached their home planet, something seemed very off. The Watchtower was nowhere to be found and they couldn't contact the Hall of Justice either. They kept the ship cloaked as they crept into Earth's atmosphere, surprised to see no signs of the war that had plagued them for months.

"None of this is right..." Nightwing said in a worried tone. As they lowered altitude to take a closer look and hacked into various networks, they discovered the HIVE logo on government buildings and militaristic propaganda all over media. Then, to their utter bewilderment, they saw Damien Darhk was the President of the Global Alliance and commanded a government that spanned the entire planet.

"Well, that explains why there are no signs of war in recent history," explained Dick as he looked over computer files. "There were none. We must have ended up on some alternate Earth, and in this version of history, Darhk has been in control of the world for decades. Apparently he released some sort of airborne neurotoxin that renders the populace extremely susceptible to his commands. That's why he was able to take over with minimal warfare -- he basically enslaved the entire planet."

"Which means traces of the toxin could still be in the air and effect us," added Light.

"Exactly," confirmed Dick. "So, until we analyze the chemical components and produce a vaccine, none of us can leave this ship. I'm setting us down in the jungle on a deserted island -- we need to uncloak to allow the system to recharge, and the tree cover here will keep us hidden."

"And what then?" asked Superboy. "Let's say we do come up with a vaccine and then go outside. What then? If we show ourselves in any civilized area, they're going to know we're not enthralled and then they'll try to arrest us."

"Honestly? I have no idea," admitted Nightwing. "The wormhole clearly threw us into and alternate reality within the same space, and there are a lot of theories about vibrational frequencies and parallel worlds. Our best hope would be to use the data I swiped from the wormhole generator to try and build our own, but this is an unfamiliar technology and we don't have the tools or the materials here to build it. If we can procure a vaccine and make a few supply runs without getting caught, Light and I might be able to come up with a working prototype, but the Reach have been trying for years and their latest attempt ended in catastrophe. Not to mention ours will have to be on a much smaller scale -- this tiny ship cannot support a generator like the one on the Reach vessel. And even if we did succeed, there's no way of knowing if we'll make it home. What if there are dozens of alternate Earths? Hundreds? Thousands even? We'd be jumping blind. Granted, we don't want to stay in a world controlled by HIVE longer than we have to, and there is a chance the next world could be better, but it could also be worse."

"It's a risk we'll have to take," added Light. "I'll start working on the vaccine -- my primary skillset is technical, but I did also study chemical and molecular biology."

"Okay," agreed Nightwing. "I'll start checking digital sources for possible supply run locations to collect the materials we need to build the generator. In the mean time, the rest of you should go and collect whatever food you can find in the area -- this ship can purify the air in the immediate vicinity, but if you go too far, it will become less and less effective. Just a few minutes south of here is a beach, and you can go a slight bit deeper into the jungle from here -- keep your earpieces in, as the computer will warn you if you are leaving the protected area."

"The beach, huh?" Superboy smirked. "I bet Harley will love that -- no doubt she'll want to slack off and lounge around."

"That's actually a good idea," advised Dick. "It could take us days to be ready to go, so take this chance to relax while you have it. Go enjoy the beach, just make sure you come back in a few hours with fish and fruit."

Star was in the middle of a batch of Reach warriors when Nightwing. . .well he didn't quite lose his cool but it was obvious to Star that things had gotten well out of hand at this point and Nightwing was starting to feel the pressure of the situation. "I can't do this all day? Plan?" He repeated hoping that Nightwing would focus. "Okay. I lied, I could do this all day." The truth was that the average Reach Soldiers were tough, but tough like seasoned warriors, not tough like a super sonic martial artist who was told he could cut loose for the first time in his life.

Then Nightwing started talking some technobabble that apparently Dr.Light understood. There was only one important command. Run. That was something he got compeltely and after taking a chance to look around for anybody who might need a hand he followed to the ship.

****

After the explosion.

Star could barely hear the words that were being spoken. He didn't understand any of this dimensional gravitational vibrational digestible gobbledegook that was being spouted. He didn't really know if they had won or lost. Whether Jerome, Kayla, Peter and everybody else had been saved or if he should have spent the literal end of the world with his loved ones instead of on a doomed mission. Or maybe they were all okay and he was on Reach where the Humans had first met with the Covenant. . .no that Halo and suddenly not funny at all.

The conversation shifted to something about slaves or a zombie virus and world domination. It felt like there was a literal swarm of bees in the form o fquestions swarming his mind and the one that was most important for no reason at all was simple.

"Who is Damien Darhk?"

Harley was starting to feel the pressure. The reach weapon she was using was pretty powerful, but the reach were beating the team through sheer numbers. She noticed a new person had appeared among the group, firing a freeze beam at the reach soldiers. "Hey Freeze! When'd you get here? And where's your space suit?" Harley called. She didn't hear his response, or even if he made one because of the sound of her gun, but after a few moments the chamber was freezing and she was being told to run.

Harley tossed her reach gun age ran with the others as the ship began to pull itself apart. The team scrambled into their ship, and Nightwing was piloting them away from the imploding reach ship. She thought they had made it out in time, but when she and the rest of the crew were slammed into the wall of the ship, she knew they hadn't. "Great..." Harley thought as she began to slip into unconsciousness. "I'm going to die with the goth girl's ass in my face."

<+><=><+><=><+>
As the fourth wall breaks...
Meanwhile in Gotham city... Wait, what? I'm not in this? Well why not!? Harley's here! Well fine then. Leave the best villain out of the story. Back to the spaceship... *sigh*
<+><=><+><=><+>

Harley woke up with a groan. She pushed Raven off of herself, before sitting up. She listened to Nightwing and Dr. Light talk about geek stuff, that Harley barely understood. Her head hurt too much to say anything when Nightwing ordered them to find food, but she couldn't not respond to superboy.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I left my bikini in my other spaceship. Besides, I'm not into virgins." She said with a smirk before leaving the spaceship.

Raven had been silently mulling over the new developments, but spoke up as Harley opened the ship's doors and walked out. "Wait. Do we really know what's out there? There could be different animals, or dinosaurs, or H.I.V.E. robots running around. It seems pretty stupid running out there blind." She said. "That's why I brought my guns! There aren't any dinosaurs out here. Just seagulls. Now somebody get out here and find me something to eat!" Harley called from outside.

Captain Cold

The sudden shift in temperature on the vessel put Snart into paradise. He activated some new prototype weapons that rapidly decreased the ambient temperature within a few feet of the device when it was set off. Tossing them among what remained of the Reach forces, he laughed aloud at the way their exoskeletons almost crystallized and then shattered when shot by Harley or one of the others.

The command to fall back was given, and Snart proceeded to back up. Slowly. Deep freezing stray Reach personnel the whole way. He started to say something in response to Harley, but her attention span was worse than Trickster's...almost as bad as Impulse's. Plus, all the noise of the combat, he figured he'd talk with her once things quieted down and they were mostly settled and secure.

Two things that they quickly were not even close to being as everyone was thrown back, slamming into walls and work stations. Snart cursed at just missing one of the few actual seats in that section; but when the girly in the skintight white outfit landed nearby, he figured he could deal with things.


Snart brushed off his uniform and did a quick survey of his gear. Most of the protective equipment built or hidden away in his suit were still there and undamaged, but he had used all but three of his cold grenades and had no spare battery pack for the cold gun.

He sighed and shook his head, then pushed back the hood of his parka and ran a hand through his hair. "Oh well, could have been worse, and has been before but we muddled through."

The interchange between Superboy and Harley made him chuckle and he muttered--sort of instinctively without really realizing it was aloud--, "Good, a woman who appreciates experience." [OOC: If Harley turns back to react, Snart will flash her a smile, otherwise...] He picked up his cold gun and headed out to follow Harley out of the ship. Maybe we'll run across some larger sea birds...gulls are kind of stringy.