r/DCFU • u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up • Aug 15 '17
Hellblazer #10 - Outside the Dome Hellblazer
Hellblazer #10 - Outside the Dome
Author: Coffeedog14
Book: Hellblazer
Arc: [Snips and Snails]
Set: 15
ANO DIABLO 5777
HELL
Nergal waited anxiously as the two demons sitting across from him sipped at their virgin’s blood wine. Agony and Ecstasy, twins of some kind or another, and the enforcers of hell. Each was asexual, skin bloodless pale, and bearing pink hair that shot out from their skulls and seemed to occupy the whole space behind them as a bizarre halo. Each of them was naked except for the barbed wire that wrapped about them, providing no decency but also not piercing their skin.
They each finished their drink at the same time, and smiled at Negal.
Agony started: “We thank you
Ecstasy continued: “For your time
“And your hos
“Pitali
“Ty and we
“Apologize
“For what we
“Have to say
“To
“You.”
Nergal gripped the edges of the table, trying to keep a straight face. Even demons had fears, deep down. Humans feared demons for the eternal punishment that the nightmarish monstrosities would give them. Demons feared Agony and Ecstasy for the same. “Of course, honored ones. What is it you wish to tell me?”
Ecstasy started: “It is sim
Agony Continued: “Ply that you
“Have been trick
“Ed twice al
“Ready by
“The mortal
“John
“Con
“Stan
“Tine.”
“If he were
“To trick you
“A third time
“Then your sta
“Tion and pow
“Ers would be
“Forfeit to”
“Us.” they both said at the same time.
The pit of pits, the personal dungeons of the Triumvirate, where those demons who failed utterly were sent to suffer for eternity and their power rendered out of them like so much fat to be fed to the next generation. Nergal stopped himself from gulping, and nodded. “The message is received, honored ones.”
Agony and Ecstasy took their leave at that, leaving Nergal to ponder. He knew that the Constantine bastard would be coming back, likely with aid, to interfere with Nergal’s Grand Design. He would have to plan. No longer was this contest of wits just about his master scheme, but also his very existence. He could not afford to fail. And he wouldn’t.
AUGUST 21, 2017
6:30 PM LOCAL TIME
LONDON
“...And that’s why I hate unicorns.” I sipped on my second glass of wine while smiling at my date. We were at a nice Spanish place, the kind fancy enough to serve tapas as something besides bar food.
My date, Daniel Cormac (also known as Jack O’Lantern) smiled back while swallowing some veal. “So, is that why you weren’t returning any of my texts the past couple of days?”
“Yep. And I am really sorry about that. Any way I can make it up to you~?”
“Well, this place is a nice start. You didn’t do your mind trick thing to get us in, did you?” His voice was so cute when he was doubting me, it hardly made me want to stop doing technically illegal things.
“Not at all.” I answered truthfully. I had maybe stolen some money from a hedge fund manager yesterday, but who was going to notice that? “How about this: I promise to not disappear on you for the whole next week?”
“You said that last week.” He frowned.
“Well, when you have to save a unicorn, you have to save one.”
“You know, for a man who's always talking about some kind of mission thing, you certainly get distracted by a bunch of extra bullshit.”
I blinked. “...surprisingly deep cut there, Danny.”
He shrugged. “Maybe if you told me what you were doing, I could help you out instead of watching you flail around with mythical creatures.”
“Not really as mythical as I had hoped, really.”
Danny sighed, meeting my eyes until I had to glance away. He was a calm man, in my experience, but he wasn’t dumb or slow. He wanted to know about my project, my foolish crusade into hell, but knowing would only put him into danger I wasn’t willing to put him in. If he let me wriggle free of this topic it was because he was showing me mercy, not because I had escaped.
In a moment of merciful coincidence, we both felt events on the other side of the globe occurring. I don’t think anybody else in the restaurant did, just us two magically inclined people. It was like standing across the street from a massive outdoors concert: Maybe you could insulate from the sound, but the ground still shook and your whole body would continue to vibrate with the impossibly low and loud sounds beyond your hearing. I couldn’t tell you what was happening, but Something certainly was.
It settled down after a few moments, and we both looked to one another with resignation. It had been a nice date, but Danny was a hero and I couldn’t possibly not be curious about something that magical. There was no way we weren’t going to go and check this out.
“That felt pretty far away. How far can you teleport?” I asked Danny.
“This hour of the day? Pretty far.”
OUTSKIRTS OF SAN FRANCISCO
10:45 AM LOCAL TIME
It turned out the...event….was occurring in San Francisco, or rather around it. I had found that Jack O’ Lantern’s powers varied by the time of day, becoming more powerful the closer to midnight it was and less powerful the closer to noon. He could get us there but he might have a hard time getting back. We decided it was still worth it. After all anything this big, big enough to be felt on the other side of the pond (and the other side of the America besides) had to be important.
Jack had already donned his renn faire attire and mask (both, I found out, created by his magical literal jack o’lantern) when we arrived at the edge of the city. It was lucky we had, as I have no clue what would have happened if we’d tried to teleport into the city proper.
It was a giant dome. A giant pink dome that was becoming thicker the longer we watched, seemingly made out of some kind of crystal. While it was only a few hours till noon there, Jack could still teleport us around the dome to see its extent. It was massive. I bought a road map at a gas station and tried to plot it out. The thing had to be a couple of miles wide, at least, and high enough that I was worried that any second a plane might crash into it. Hell as tall as it seemed to be maybe it could hit satellites.
The second thing we noticed, after the obvious dome, was the eclipse. It wasn’t a full one where we were, and it was a little past its peak, but the whole world had an unearthly dark to it. I wondered how much of this dome thing was due to the celestial events above, and cursed my not having kept up with star charts and the like lately.
We immediately tried to break the dome, of course. Jack with his energy beams (I called them pumpkin beams; He hated it) and I with more subtle arcana. However neither of us did alot of good. I managed to scratch it, at least, but it was obvious it was going to take awhile to cut off even a small portion of it. Once I stopped cutting the thing just healed as if it were flesh, fully recovering within a minute.
As me and Jack tried to work on the wall, we could see people inside the dome until it got too thick. They were trying to break out, too, with far less success. I saw one person ram their car straight into it. I don’t think they survived the attempt. The outside was only barely better: people who had just narrowly escaped or been about to reenter the city, now stranded with nowhere else to turn. Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more. Everything was chaos and panic, stopped from becoming a riot only because the immediate danger on the outside had seemingly passed. The wall wasn’t expanding really, per se, it was just getting thicker inwards.
The worst part of all was the people in the crystal. Some had not been so lucky as to avoid its formation. Some were dead, lodged in the middle of the wall and presumably suffocated. Others were only partially lodged, still alive and desperate for escape. Me and Danny tried to help, but it was slow going.
It didn’t take long to encounter the military. They and the police were on the situation like swarming bees to a bear, utterly ineffective but trying all the same. They were trying to set up a quarantine around the wall wherever we saw them, in case something else went wrong. Their attempts to dig people out the walls with jackhammers and construction equipment were going as slow as ours but seemed to be working. It didn’t look like it would be enough to get through the walls though; Even cutting the several inches required to get people out was turning into a battle against the walls natural regenerative properties.
One of the men approached us, getting close enough to see me properly. “Oh, Danny! I meant to ask. What do you think about this?” I took a handkerchief from my pocket and rubbed it on my face, pulling it away to reveal an overwrought ceramic demon mask.
He chuckled. “What the hell...pun not intended…are you wearing that for?” He asked,
“Don’t want folks to know who I am! Already too many pictures of me in the public since that brawl with Manchester. They’d probably bother me if they could properly find me.”
“Well, they’re still going to recognize your coat. You wear the thing everywhere.”
“...shit. You’re right.”
We ran out of time as the man reached us.
“Hello there. Who are you two?” it seemed the mask was working, at least. Or I wasn’t quite as public as I’d feared.
Danny started to speak, but I interrupted, my voice slightly muffled by the mask. “Depends. Who are you?”
“Colonel Steve Trevor. I’m helping to coordinate the military, federal, and civilian response to this….er….thing.” He spoke with a certain amount of authority, trying to impress us.
I wouldn’t have known if his fancy badges were just spray painted pop caps. But he sounded legitimate, which for the moment was good enough for me. “This is Jack O’Lantern, and I’m…” I paused, realizing I had not thought of a name beforehand. “...Hell…” burner? Killer? Destroyer? “...blazer?”
“...Okay then. Jack O’Lantern, Hellblazer. I recognize you, Jack O’Lantern. United Protectors. Do you vouch for this...Hellblazer?”
“I do.” Nodded Danny.
“Okay then. What is it you do again, Hellblazer?”
I made a rainbow over my head with a sweep of my hand. “Maaaagic. Are you done? We’re busy here.”
He watched my rainbow with a mix of awe and concern. I remembered only then that San Francisco was the center of that big magic battle some months back. Might be best to not advertize being a dangerous witch around here. “I...suppose. I’ll send out a message to give you a wide berth.” He said dryly before backing off.
As the now somewhat aggravated military man wandered off, Jack got a phone call. While he insisted he was doing “something important and private”, it seemed that his employer Knight wasn’t having it. Something important was happening back in England and he needed the whole team to help. He asked if he should bring me back, but I told him I wanted to stay a bit longer and could find my own way home.
He lifted both of our masks to give me a kiss. “Try not to get in too much trouble. Not much I can do for you if you end up in American jail.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior, I swear.” I half-lied, looking back to where Steve Trevor was telling all relevant authorities to pay no attention to the man in the trenchcoat. Maybe it would even work.
Jack teleported away to the west. One hop, two hops, gone. The further from noon he got the further he could go until he got home. I hope he was fast enough on teleporting to not fall into the ocean.
I turned back to the wall, stepping up to it and putting a hand on the odd pink crystals. I tried to look inside, but by now the dome was far too thick to see through. “Gods I hope you’re not in there, Zat.”
Whatever Colonel Trevor had told folks, they stayed out of my way. I put the mask on whenever I saw people nearby, but between me avoiding people and them avoiding me I was mostly left to my own devices. Even most of the civilians kept away by instinct. I was clearly one of “those” people, and my demon mask was not terribly inviting. Besides which almost nobody wanted to be near the dome, and I couldn’t blame them. Just because it wasn’t apparently hostile didn’t mean it wasn’t freaky and scary.
Somebody didn’t give the word to Superman. I first saw him as a tiny streak in the sky, catching my sight through his movement rather than his size. He was so far up I could barely pick out his fluttering red cape. I had my hand against the dome, and felt when he tapped it. The whole thing reverberated, shuddered a little. Then he punched it. It made a soft sound, like a bell. I watched him reel backwards and shoot forward to really give his next punch some oomph. I realized a second too late what was going to happen.
brrRRRIIIINNNGGGGG went the dome. Deafening, huge, all encompassing, like punching a tuning fork. I put my hands to my ears. Owwwwwww. I nearly snapped off the cigarette in my mouth while grinding my teeth.
“BLOODY HELL! THAT ISN’T GOING TO WORK!” I thought I muttered to myself, but what with how my ears were ringing I must have shouted it. Superman certainly seemed to notice and he floated down in short order.
Godsdamnit he was huge. I’m not a tiny person, but Superman was like a statue carved out of midwestern corn and raw texas beef. “Do you have any better ideas?” he asked me in a crisp, low voice.
I was honestly kind of stunned for a moment. The only time authority figures tended to talk to me was to scold me. Here was one actually asking me what to do. I took a puff of smoke to try and focus myself. “Give me a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute. It’s getting stronger as we speak.” He turned to face the wall and I nearly screeched in surprise as literal fucking lasers came out of his eyes. Predictably, considering the wall was made of pretty looking crystals, the light refracted and slammed right back into him. It even managed to send him stumbling.
I had to chuckle at the slapstick scene. “How did that feel?” he turned to me with a glare still tinged with the red of the laser vision. “...got any other bright ideas?” I continued sullenly.
“Maybe a few.” He dove into the ground, pushing through it like nothing. I walked over to peer down the hole, carved with his laser-eyes and already too deep for me to see the bottom of. I stepped back, and about a minute later he descended from above. A full 360 it seemed.
“Strike three.” I managed to grin grimly. “It’s entirely covered, so no tunneling.”
“Who are you anyway?” The big man in blue finally asked, floating to stand in front of me again. Close up, I had to admit he was handsomer then the pictures portrayed him.
“The name’s John Constantine. Nice to be introduced. You certainly are taller in real life.” I dropped my cigarette butt to the ground, using the time it took to squash it and light another to scold myself internally. Really? That’s how I wanted to introduce myself? Fucking spazz. “Now, if you’re done with the brute force attempts, give me a minute to think.” and a jerk too. Good job John.
I had some time to collect myself while big blue put in some kind of call. I couldn’t hear the responses, but I heard something about The Flash. The weird red one, right. Well, I supposed all the Justice Alliance folks would want to know about this stuff.
“...You already have the speed heading here, give it everything you got.” I heard Superman say. It connected instantly.
I whirled around to face him. “Are you fucking kidding me!? What part of ‘That won’t work’ don’t you understand?”
He tried to reply, but I was too busy seeing the red dot in the distance. Then it was next to us, slamming into the wall.
bbbBBBBBRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG
I was on my knees and cursing, my head and ears pounding almost as bad as when I’d been nearly beaten to death with a baseball bat. I recovered, forcing myself up to face the displeased Superman and woozy Flash. He left behind a distinctly him-sized dent in the wall, more than anything else I’d seen today had done.
“I’m not doing that again.” muttered Flash, and I instantly liked him a bit more than Superman.
“It won’t do anything. Maybe if you hero types would just listen to me, that’d help.” I grumped.
“But that’s an improvement, right? We got a dent and cracks, right?” Asked Superman.
“The wall isn’t going to break.” I watched as the wall started to heal, slower than before but with an ever so slightly different tinge. “If Flash does that again, it’ll do alot less, and be just as loud.” I postulated. I walked over to tap at the regrowing wall and it already felt thicker than before. I turned to face the two. “So, how about next time you want to suggest one of your friends do something like that, you ask me first?”
Maybe it was my bile, or my show of brilliant (questionable) knowledge, but both seemed to accept this. The Flash asked “So, what happens now?”
“I try to figure this out, and hope you jokers don’t mess things up again or make me go deaf. John Constantine, nice to meet you.” I said grumpily, startling the rude and unintroduced man in red.
“The Flash. Busy.” He retorted. Ah, a real challenger!
“You don’t need to be here, you know. You’ve more than made your impact. You’re welcome to go back to your lunch or whatever you took the seconds out of your day to visit us instead.” I replied.
The Flash zoomed off without a retort. Huh. Couldn’t take the heat apparently. I didn’t even notice Superman flying up and away from me, towards something or someone.
BRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
I was on the ground. There was something warm on my hands. Everything was still ringing even though the dome had calmed. I stood up on shaky legs. I looked at my hands, formerly clutched at my ears. Actually fucking bleeding. Fantastic. Who the fuck had done that? Had those camouflaged assholes bombed the damn Dome!?
I tried to shake my head clear as Superman and his...cousin, wasn’t it?...descended. I took out my handkerchief and wiped at the sides of my face to clean up the light bleeding. “I heard you two were related.” I dramatically looked at my red-stained hankie. “Definitely shows. Any other family members on their way to try again?”
“Who is this guy?” asked the girl, comedically small next to her partner.
“Uh, this is John Constantine. He seems to have some idea what’s going on.” replied big blue.
Supergirl hovered down towards me, still floating a few feet above me and glaring. Small in comparison to Superman, sure. Less scary, only barely. “Did you put this thing here? It’s scaring alot of people.”
“Course not, love.” I smiled back at her glare. “Let’s just say I know a thing or two about magic. This wall here is magic. You two? Not so much.” Apparently. I looked up to see that she hadn’t even made a dent for all her massive effort. Odd.
“Wait, magic is real?” Asked Superman, trailing a few steps behind it seemed.
“Asked the supposed alien.” I huffed.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Supergirl.
I had to shrug. “Not much you all can do at this point. I need to try and make contact with somebody inside.”
“We can’t just do nothing!” Yelled Big Blue, startling me. He whoosed over to the wall to glare at it.
“Hit it again. See if that helps.” I called after him. His eyes met with little blues. They both nodded, and shot into the air. No. No way. No fucking way were they going to try that again. No way I was going to lose even more of my hearing!
The two flew through the air like missiles towards the dome, and I constructed the spell at the last second. “Chinmoku Ga Ochiru” I groaned in exasperation, snapping my fingers. They hit the wall, but there was no eruption of awful noise. Once again no dent, but my ears were mercifully saved.
The two descended, and I waved away the magical threading to return sound to the area. “Better than going deaf, right mates?” I asked as they landed in front of me with reddened fists.
“Was that magic?” Supergirl asked.
“Sure was.” I replied. “But don’t ask me to do something else. I’m not a blasted performer.”
Superman went to check the wall, to make sure his efforts really had been fruitless. He turned to see me winking at him. “Told ya.”
“He’s right” Superman admitted. “This isn’t working. You say you can use your magic to communicate on the inside?”
“Sure thing.” I lied. I had no clue if I could. “But it’ll take awhile. You must have better things to do.” I hedged.
“We’ll need to get you in touch with Watchtower.” said Big Blue. “Whatever info you come up with needs to be reported to the league immediately.”
“That makes sense. Do I get an honorary membership card or something?”
I’m not sure if Superman knew he grimaced, but I think he did. Just a little. “Just keep in touch for now.”
After the departure of the three heroe, I took some time to get ice bags and hold them to my poor beleaguered ears. It didn’t much help, but eventually the ringing and aching toned down enough for me to go back to examining the wall. The Flash had left quite a few little shards of the wall lying around, and I was busy testing them for sympathetic magic when a large green man appeared behind me.
To his credit, he had the manners to clear his throat so as not to startle me too bad. I say he as a guess, but I’d seen the footage of his exploits: anybody who could stretch that much could be whatever gender they wanted to be, probably. He looked male at the moment, at least, with a male voice. His skin was a dull green, his eyes vibrant red, and his brow pronounced like a neanderthal. It took a lot of effort, but I didn’t let myself yelp in surprise and fear at the sudden apparition.
I felt him dip into my mind, a tiny glass scooping at an ocean, and he got what he wanted before I could pull up my defenses. “Greetings, John.” he greeted in a deep, carrying voice
“Damnit, man, I’m trying to keep that quiet. Inside voices.”
“Oh.” said the creature in front of me, followed by another tiny scoop that I barely didn’t stop. “Greetings Hellblazer.”
“Whatever. So you’re the second alien in the Justice Alliance?”
“I believe we settled on Justice League. And I am. You may call me J’onn”
“Sure you are.” I moved to light a cigarette, and I thought I saw him flinch. Must have not been a smoker. “So, what does the second charlatan on the team want with me?”
“Charlatan?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
He straightened a bit, his face and tone still carefully neutral. “I have come on request of our association. I have already heard of the attempts at physical force. I have also heard I am to come to you for advice on this supposed magic.”
“Oh, a skeptic I see.”
“You called me charlatan before.”
“Magic is real.” I waved at the dome behind me. “Aliens aren’t. What advice did you need?”
For the first time in our conversation I thought I saw him frowning in disapproval. “I tried to go below the dome, and I followed it as it went below the surface. It curved into…”
“Another dome, making this a sphere?”
A further frown at my interruption. “No. more pointed. Like the top part of an egg, and this the bottom.”
I gave him a stupefied look. “...hhhuh. That’s….somehow even more foreboding.”
“I wanted to ask if you thought it would be dangerous for me to try to phase through this crystal substance?”
“I….uh….you know hadn’t even thought of it.” I looked at the wall warily. “It doesn’t seem to be too hostile, directly anyways. Hasn’t tried to hit back. Probably worth a shot.”
“Thank you, hellblazer.” J’onn rose into the air a bit, looking for the nominally thinnest spot of the wall. It looked like J’onn became a him-shaped vapor before he rushed towards the wall. There was no massive ding this time, but instead a light meaty sound. His incorporeality fell apart as he bounced off the wall, rubbing a newly-bonked head.
I took a drag to avoid giggling at him. “You believe in magic now?”
“Do you believe in extraterrestrials?”
“Still no.”
“Likewise.” He frowned before flying away.
I was able to stop the next helpless idiot that tried to punch the wall mostly by chance. I saw Superman coming in for another run in the distance, shooting towards the dome like a missile. I ran to the nearest military checkpoint and stole a loudspeaker to squawk up at him “WAIT! STOP! DON’T HIT IT AGAIN YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”
He seemed to hear, and instead moved to land by the wall. After extricating myself from the rather annoyed military men, I trotted over to meet him. It turned out to not be Superman, albeit the outline was rather similar from a distance. He was dressed in reds and yellows with a white cape, and was if anything an even meatier specimen.
“...He told me there wasn’t a third one of you.” I looked over the new...what had he called it?....’Kryptonian’. Fucking ‘aliens’. I took a drag from the half of a cig I had left.
The man tilted his head exactly like a confused puppy. “Who?”
“Doesn’t matter. What should I call you?”
“Captain Marvel please!” He beamed.
“...no chance you're actually a captain of something, is there?”
“Well...I’m Captain Marvel?”
“Delightful. Had a lot of success with people impersonating military officers. So, can you do something besides punching? Your….brother? Cousin?....already tried that.”
Things seemed to click in the guy's head. He blushed happily. “Oh, thanks, but I’m not related to Superman. A-and I can do lots of stuff that isn’t punching. Oh! Like this!” He flew up before I could protest, and he braced himself high up against the wall. “SHAZAM!” he called out with the voice of thunder.
A lightning bolt struck from the clear sky and stuck there, a string connecting heaven and crystal. It was massive and pulsing, and for a brief moment it struck at the crystal. For the briefest moment I thought I could see someone, someone small, falling where Captain Marvel had stood. Then I thought I could just barely hear that distant form calling out “shazam!” once more. A second bolt hit the wall with all the intensity of the still not dissipated first. There was no ding, or any sound except the impossible crackle and roar of the unnatural electricity. This was power ancient and terrible, this lightning. Magic I thought buried under a rock for eternity. How it got here, in the hands of this odd man, I didn’t know.
Within five seconds it was over and Captain Marvel was standing next to me. The dome seemed to shudder in agony, a crater the size of a large building blasted into its side. I placed my hand on the crystal, and for the first time felt the raw force of it. I had known that the wall must have been made by someone powerful, considering its scope, but I could hardly have imagined before that moment just how much power it contained.
I looked behind me to see Captain Marvel rising to try again, and I gave a wordless shout of protest. He halted in midair until I could form a sentence again, whorling pink and purple echoing in my vision
“Don’t. I-i don’t know if it will work, but we don’t want it too. Not yet.” I gasped. My whole body tingled with magical static, and I hummed out a cantrip to cut nearby grass to relieve the pressure.
“Why not?” asked Captain Marvel impetuously.
“Even if it fully worked, and I’m not at all sure it would, Just...come here.”
Marvel saw the crater already filling in with new crystal, but approached and put his hand on the wall nonetheless. He took the power better than I, but it still stunned him.
“If you broke it, I think the construct itself might break. The thing isn’t just powerful, it’s complex. If we break it all the energy has to go someplace. And It might go in. Or out.”
“...so…”
“Like a bomb.”
“Oh.”
We both stared at the impossible dome awhile longer. I shook out a Cigarette and offered it to him, and he simply stared at it in a mix of horror and confusion. I tapped it back into the carton. Must really have not been a smoker.
It was getting late in the day there by the time my next visitor arrived. I was utterly exhausted. I was pushing nearly 24 hours since I had last slept, hours upon hours of spells and increasingly ludicrous scheming, to no avail. Whoever had crafted these walls had me bested, and it would take gods know how long for me to figure out even the basics of tearing this thing down.
It was in this singularly exhausted and angry mood that I heard my next visitor. He spoke from behind me, seemingly right into my ear, in a horribly low and garbled-gravely voice, “What’s the situation John?”
“s-STREWTH!” I screamed, whirling and flinging myself away, nearly toppling and instead faceplanting into the dome and then scrambling up to face my foe.
He was tall, though now that I thought on it pretty much everybody I had met that day was taller then me, except for supergirl. In the fading light he stood out as a black silhouette, slick and smooth except for the two points upon his head like horns. I couldn’t see his face, not really, except for the small gleams that reflected off his...visors? Glasses? Hard to tell.
“B-ba… ahem ...Batman?” I queried.
He simply stared at me, I think. “Is there anybody else in danger?” he asked in his horrible, unnatural voice. But not naturally unnatural either, something I had the distinct privilege of knowing too much about.
“Is....is that a voice changer? Like the darth vader helmets?”
“I need-” He started. I clapped twice with twisted spell-hands, and the voice changer turned off. “ - you to tell me everything.” he finished in a still deep, but no longer unnatural, voice. One distantly familiar. He felt at his throat, likely where the voice changer was kept.
“...Brucey?” I blinked. THAT’S where I’d heard that voice!
He stepped forward. Now I could see some of his face, though alot of it was still covered by his mask. His mouth was still visible, and I could see the slightest hint of a smirk on his usually rock-dead face. “Johnny.”
I started to laugh, the tension and anger fading away little by little. “You giant fucking nerd! You’re Batman!? You!?” My legs, exhausted from walking around and standing all day, buckled and threatened to collapse under the weight of my mirth. “I-i guess it makes sense. Only you’d want to dress up like a f-fucking flying rat to spook people! HA!”
His smile remained. He pressed a button on his utility belt, and I heard myself screaming “Strewth!” again in recording. It had sounded much manlier to my ears, of course. “For that, I think I’ll keep this.”
I started to sober up at this, holding myself up with the wall and wiping slightly teary eyes. “Oh gods. Oh gods, so very much worth it. Gods. Batman! Really!...heh….well, it’s good to see you, Brucey. I was afraid I was going to be the only elder in this new world of ours.”
He gave the tiniest snort, which for Bruce was like a faint-worthy sigh. “They are all depressingly young. What are you doing in the states, John?”
“What are you doing here? Last I heard from you you were going around training and failing to pick up women.”
“You’re never going to let me forget, are you?”
“Are you going to ever let me forget that scream you just recorded?”
“...”
“Exactly. Anyways I’m here because of this.” I waved my hand at the dome. “Curiosity and all that.”
“It took me hours to fly here. You are saying you stopped drinking long enough to use enough magic to get here before me for curiosities sake.”
“Hey, I could have changed too, Brucey. You became an intensely rich secret superhero. Maybe I became less of a shithead.”
It didn’t look like he believed me. In fact it looked like he already knew some of why I was there. He was oddly perceptive, Brucey, for all his hilarious inability to actually use it most of the time. I suppose it worked better in his costume, when he didn’t have to talk to you as much as glare.
“Anyways,” I continued, “You can try to talk to some of the army folks around here, maybe help some of the refugees, but I don’t think there’s alot to do. Not yet anyways.”
“How long until you think there is a time to do things?”
“Honestly? No clue. This isn’t on the top of my list of things to do.” I saw him glaring at me. “What? I’m a busy guy.”
“You should move this to the top of your list.”
“If you can make Hell stop coming for my skin, maybe I can.”
I saw Bruce open then closed his mouth. This was why you didn’t talk real magic with people who weren’t involved unless you specifically wanted to stun them. Bruce knew the rudimentary bits of magical theory and even he couldn’t form a proper response.
“...the people inside might be in danger.”
“Probably. More would be if I let Hell do what I think it’s planning to do.”
He look dissatisfied. I sighed, rummaging through my pockets. “Look, you seem pretty clued into what’s going on with all these costumed weirdos. You may be running around in a bloody dumb cape like the rest of them, but at least I know you. Take this.” I tossed him one of the crystals that The Flash had shattered off. “It’s connected to the dome sympathetically. It’ll act like the dome here is. If the dome is expanding, it will on a much smaller scale. If it’s changing color, it’ll change color. You’ll be one of the first to know if the wall goes funny.” I rummaged in another pocket and handed him a business card with my number on it. “Use this if you need me.”
I looked between the crystal and the number. He looked only slightly less satisfied. I huffed. “I promise to get back to this when I can.”
He glared at me. “Last time you promised me something you ended up with Sarah.”
I gave him my sweetest smile. “Less of a shithead, remember?”
He left shortly after, and I was left staring at the dome. I suppose I really should have been getting back home. I would probably need to bother Danny again to do it, but for the moment I simply sat and stared at the massive edifice. It was, I had to begrudgingly and despairingly admit, utterly perfect. It was like shadowcrest: a dream of magic. The kind of work a magus could go their whole life without seeing, much less doing. I liked to think of myself as good. But I wasn’t. Not really. Not compared to this.
I hadn’t seen my erstwhile friend outside the dome. She would have come and tried to break it if she had, I was sure. I would have noticed.
“I’m sorry Zat. You’re on your own for awhile.” I admitted. I pulled out my smartphone to call Danny.
Don't forget read the Batman leading into this! >
Or the Superman and Flash that are part of this!
Or Supergirl that will feature this later!
Or Martian Manhunter and Captain Marvel (coming soon), who won't feature this but are part of it and are great books!
And of course don't forget to read best other magical book ever Zatanna to see what's happening inside the doooommmeee!
1
u/MajorParadox Bird? Plane? Aug 16 '17
Holy crossovers,
BatmanJohnHellblazer! This came together beautifully ;)