Titans of Justice Vol. 2 Ch. 17 - “Secret Origins Destroyed Part 3”
Written & edited by: Power Guy

Roll Call: Black Vulcan, Flash, Nucleus, Sargona, Starman, Star Sapphire(Jem), Stellar, Whirlpool, and Wonder Man plus a few surprises!


The Hall of Justice....

“Only the Legion of Doom could come up with a plot that’s this sick and demented!” cried out Nucleus. “They go back into the past and erase several of our members by preventing four murders, knowing that we won’t lift a finger to stop them because if we do, we’ll be partially responsible for the deaths of Abin Sur, Kufu & Chay-Ara, and Thomas & Martha Wayne.





“Even if you guys do have a change of heart and decide to stop them, I’ll need a week in order to charge up enough to do time-travel again,” added the Flash, reluctantly.





“This isn’t good,” sighed Whirlpool, “Let’s hope our friends in Washington D.C. made out better than we did.





***

A few hours earlier in the nation’s capital...

“This is nuts! It’s thirteen against four!” griped the new Captain Marvel Jr.(formerly Stellar). “I just knocked down Bizarbara but now Grundy and Sinister are all over me like a pack of rats!” he said, trying to fend off the marshland monster and the super-intelligent gorilla.

“Stay strong, Jr.!” advised Star Sapphire(formerly Jem), “I’ll be over there as soon as I take care of the Cheetah!” she said, blasting away with her violet jewel. “Stand still, fur-ball, so I can clean your clock!”





A few yards away, Starman was locked in battle with Indigo.

“Alright you walking erector-set, I’ve had enough of your concussion blasts! I’m going to smash you into so many pieces that not even T.O. Morrow could put you back together again!” he said, blasting the descendent of Brainiac with his Cosmic Rod, knocking her out of the sky. He quickly swooped down to finish her off. As he landed on the ground, he noticed her body was inert. “I got her! She’s out!”





“Incorrect, Starman!” came the voice of Indigo but not from her body but from a ways behind Starman.





The space-faring hero quickly turned around and noticed that Indigo’s voice was coming from the speaker-system of an oncoming fire-truck. “What the %$ &#”

“I’ve transferred my intelligence to this vessel while my body repairs itself. Does your body have this function?” she asked as the truck slammed into Starman, knocking him through the window of a large department store behind him.

“Crap! Starman is down!” noticed Black Vulcan as she held Kid Cold at bay with a small electrical storm. “Stellar was right, things really couldn’t get much worse here.” In a twist of irony, Black Vulcan then noticed Giantessa towering above her.





“Oh, I don’t know about that,” teased the daughter of Giganta while she finished up a text message on her phone.





“Dammit! If only Nucleus was here!” Black Vulcan said to herself thinking her size-changing ally would be perfect to take on Giantessa. Then, out of nowhere, some help appeared on the scene.

“Need a hand, Black Vulcan?” asked Gold of the Metal Men.





“The Metal Men? Sure! I’d love some help!” replied the daughter of Black Lightning.

Gold called out to his teammates, “Metal Men - unite! FORM - ALLOY!!!”





WIth that, the robotic creations of Dr. Will Magnus combined into the gargantuan android known as Alloy, ready to take on Gigantessa.

“Aww.......poop on a stick!” grumbled the red-headed behemoth as she quickly put her Iphone away. “And here I was ready to stomp Black Vulcan into a pool of blood! Now I’ve got to deal with this STUPID thing!” she said right before she smacked her gum. “By the way. Are you a Transformer?”

As the red-headed giantess awaited an answer, Alloy surprised her with a swift upper-cut to the chin which knocked her backwards.

“UGHHHHH!!” groaned Giantessa as she rubbed her sore chin and readied to retaliate with her signature left-hook only to be stopped dead in her tracks by Alloy turning both of his fists into hammers and slamming them into both sides of the she-behemoth’s head causing her to pass out instantly.

“Alright! That’s one for the good guys!” exclaimed Starman with a renewed sense of hope. “Only twelve against five now!” he commented as the battle raged on.

***

The Hall of Justice...

“The Legion of Doom has certainly put us between a rock and a hard place,” pointed out Nucleus. “Their plan is ingenious. If we stop them, we’ll become accessories to murder. If we do nothing, several of our teammates will never come to be and the Legion will most likely take over the world.”

“Damn them to Hell!” screamed Sargona, quite loudly as grabbed a nearby vase and threw it into the wall, smashing it.





“Easy, Esmeralda,” Wonder Man said softly, as he wrapped his arms around his teammate, giving her a firm hug in hopes of helping her to relax a bit.





“There has to be some way out of this pickle,” Whirlpool said, quite determined.

“Oh, there is......” responded Nucleus. “We simply have to make a choice.”

“But either way, the outcome sucks,” spat the Flash, “But if we do decide to stop them, how are we going to go about it. My speed won’t recover for almost a week.”

“I know, that’s another issue we have to figure out a solution to.......if we decide to go that route,” pondered Nucleus.

“And if we do, I’ll be responsible for killing one of the if not THE greatest Green Lantern ever,” huffed Sargona.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light appeared in the center of the room. As the light started to dim, a circular shape started to become visible.

“Are we under attack?” the Flash asked, a bit panicked but ready to race into action.

“Hold up one second, Flash,” advised Nucleus, extending his right hand in front of his anxious teammate. “I think I’ve seen something like this before.”

Just then, a man stepped out of the newly arrived bubble. He was taller, had blonde hair, and blue eyes. “Greetings Titans of Justice. I’m Rip Hunter and there’s a serious matter at hand.”





“Hmph........you should be a news reporter,” Sargona said sarcastically.

“Show him some respect, Sar,” chided Nucleus. “This guy is quite is quite knowledgable. I’ve read the Atom’s notes on him.”

“Thank you Jason Hardwick,” Rip said gratefully. “Your adversaries known as the Legion of Doom have caused quite a disturbance in the time-stream and it’s up to you to set things right.”

“Right..........so we can all become cold, blooded murderers!” blasted Sargona. “And even if we do decide that the right thing to do is to stop the Legion, we have no way to getting back into the past so unless you have some miraculous solution to this problem, I suggest you jump back into your little bubble and go back to wherever it is you came from!”

***

Washington D.C....

The scene was quite grim. Black Vulcan lay on the ground, entombed in ice. Solomon Grundy had wrapped Starman’s Cosmic Rod around his neck and hung him from a tree. The interstellar hero was struggling to breathe. Jem had been blasted out of the sky by a combined assault from Indigo and Sultanna. Her inert body laid on the ground with her teammates unsure of if she still had a pulse or not. Captain Marvel Jr. was a bloody mess. Bizarbara had used him as a human baseball bat to smash Alloy into pieces. At this very moment, the Legion of Doom had surrounded the Titans of Justice, preparing for the kill.

“Well, well, well.........it looks like this has turned into a going away party,” gloated Lance Luthor, staring at the Titans. “You’ll all be going straight to hell in a matter of minues.”





“I knew there was no way they’d be able to stand up to us with their ranks reduced! shouted the Sting Ray, quite proud of what her team had accomplished. “I say we disintegrate them!”

“No, let Grundy smash them to pulp!” growled the marshland monster.





“Why bother when I can mentally enslave them and have them do our bidding?” suggested Sir Simian Sinister.





“Not a chance, Sinister,” countered Luthor. “We’re going to get rid of them once and for all! I’m not taking any chances of them foiling our plans.” Luthor then turned to the captive Titans of Justice. “Say goodbye heroes. The party’s over!”

Then, out of nowhere, a familiar voice was heard.

“The only party that’s over Luthor, is YOURS!”

Luthor began looking all around in alarm, being quite familiar with that voice he had heard until he saw “POWER GUY! It can’t be!!!! You no longer exist!” shouted the red-headed super-genius.

“Sounds like you need to get your eyes checked, baldy!” shouted the new Green Lantern aka Jojo Gardner as a giant green fist slammed down on the entire Legion of Doom, scattering them about.

“Oh no! Green Lantern’s back!” hissed Sultana.





“And Blue Lantern too!” revealed the man otherwise known as Daniel Jordan. “I may not be on the team any more but Power Guy was nice enough to ask me to tag along for this mission,” he explained as his blue ring encased Sultana in an energy triangle, capable of refracting any attack she might launch from her mysterious gem.





“So the Titans of Justice have no qualms about being accessories to murder, huh?” Lance Luthor asked, trying to make the Titans feel guilty for the choice they had presumably made.

“Your little plan to send us on a guilt-trip didn’t work! We didn’t have anything to do with the deaths of Batman’s parents, Hawkman & Hawkwoman, or Abin Sur,” countered Whirlpool as he immobilized the Sting Ray with a hard-water cage. “It was you and your Legion of Doom who disrupted the time-stream. Fate had already made it’s choice when it claimed those poor people. We simply allowed the natural order of events to occur by stopping you. Oh, and you can thank Rip Hunter for showing us the way!”

“Rip Hunter? That time-travelling meddler! How dare he throw a wrench into my plans!” growled the son of Lex Luthor. “I’ll destroy him for this!”

“You won’t be destroying anyone, Luthor!” vowed Power Guy as he flew towards the red-headed leader of the Legion of Doom but before he could reach his target, Bizarbara flew in front of her leader, bent on keeping Power Guy away.





“I saw what you did to Stellar, Bizarbara. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because you’re a lady,” threatened the modern-age Man of Steel as he punched Bizarbara in the jaw, sending her flying ten miles away. Then, in less than a second, he grabbed Lance Luthor by his collar and back-handed him across the face. “You sicken me!” he shouted, eyes glowing red from his heat-vision.

Meanwhile, the Bat-Family were in hot pursuit of the new Riddler and Scream Queen.

“Stop now before we break your legs!” ordered Knightvision.





“I’d listen to him Scream Queen, After what you and your cronies tried to do with my grandparents, you painted yourselves as human targets!” the Huntress yelled out, the need for extracting justice had nearly overtaken her mind.





Suddenly, Bat-Girl came swinging out from around the corner of the building that the Riddler and Scream Queen were running past and slammed the heal of her left boot in the two dastardly villains’ right knee-caps, shattering them both.





“AIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!” both villains screamed as they stumbled to the ground.

“You b...b..broke my knee!” howled Scream Queen as the Huntress grabbed her by the throat and spat, “You’re lucky that’s all she broke!” and then the daughter of the Dark Knight punched her arch-nemesis in the face, knocking her out cold while Knightvision drop-kicked the new Riddler in the forehead, also sending his foe into unconsciousness.





“We warned them,” Knightvision said coldly looking down at the Riddler’s inert body.

“That we did!” Argos said in agreement as he slammed Sir Sinister Simian’s head into Solomon Grundy’s. Both of the oversized villains were down for the count upon impact. “I’d feed you two to Sturmer but it’s likely that you would rot his stomach from the inside out!”








“This fight isn’t over yet!” cried out the Toyman, still quite determined although few of his teammates were left standing. He quickly released his toy airplane army which set their sights on the Titans of Justice.





“Oh yes it is!” countered Hawk Warrior as he soon smashed three of the planes with his Nth Metal mace while Hawkgirl did the same with her battle-axe made of the same alien metal.





“Don’t waste your strength,” offered Whirlpool. “I’ll just flood their engines and take the lot of them out!” he announced as he caused the water in a nearby wishing well to rise up and drench the airplane army that was swarming all around he and his friends.

At the same time only a few yards away, Supergirl was locked in battle with Indigo. “You may have come back from the dead but it will be the shortest resurrection ever!” declared the descendant of Brainiac as she wrapped her mechanical tentacles around the various limbs of the modern-age Girl of Steel, trying to crush her.

“No way I’m letting the likes of you do me in, Indigo!” spat the daughter of Clark and Lois Kent as she used her heat-vision to sever one of Indigo’s tentacles only to find two more beginning to wrap around her throat.





“Looks like you could use a hand!” shouted Stellar(who was back in his star-spangled costume) as he overloaded Indigo’s circuits with his signature shooting stars.





“Nice work Stellar!” smiled the young Kryptonian/human hybrid.

“I may not have my father’s powers now that things are back to normal but I can still be pretty resourceful when I want to be!” Stellar said, smiling back.

“You sure can, handsome!” affirmed Sherry Girl of 2000 Gimmicks as slammed an energy draining device on Indigo’s forehead.





“This is going sour and fast!” hissed the Sting Ray as she pressed a few buttons on her Hall of Doom control device. “We’ll see you later, Titans!” Then, right before the assembled Titans of Justice’s very eyes, the Legion of Doom vanished into thin air.

“No %#&*@^$ way!” growled Power Lad. “I didn’t even get to beat on Grundy.......thanks to Argos.”





“Pffft........,if it wasn’t for Argos, you’d be picking your teeth out of Grundy’s fist,” scoffed Wonder Girl, teasing her wannabe suitor.





“Well, it looks like they’ve escaped again,” Power Guy said in disappointment.

“They keep pulling this vanishing act,” grumbled Starman. “We’ve really got to put an end to that.”

“Imako and I are working on it,” reassured Nucleus.

Starman then turned to the team’s newest ally, “Alloy, we certainly are grateful for your assistance today.”

“I....we, couldn’t be happier to help,” replied the combined voices of the Metal Men. “But....we’ve got a problem. Ever since our battle with Indigo earlier, we can’t seem to split apart.”

“Hmm.....” Illumina said as she looked Alloy up and down. “Perhaps you should come back to the Metrotower with us. Nucleus and I would be happy to see if there’s something we can do.”





“I guess it’s time for me to head home,” noted Blue Lantern.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Jordan,” the new Green Lantern said, sarcastically.

Blue Lantern just looked at his replacement with disgust and then took to the air.

The son of Guy Gardner and Ice then walked up to both Sargona and Sonic Boom whom were standing close together and then put his arms around both ladies. “So which of you lovely ladies would like to be the first to go out on a date with me? If you can’t decide, we can always make it a three-way!” suggested the perverted interstellar cop of sector 2814.

“I think you’re a little confused,” began Sargona. “Let me make it crystal-clear for you. I despise Sonic Boom with every fiber in my body and I’d rather spend eternity with HER than one night with YOU!”

“For once, we agree on something,” smirked the new Black Canary as she and Sargona walked away side by side, smiling genuinely at each other for the very first time.





***

Later within the Hall of Doom...

“This latest plan was a HUGE bust!” cried out Sultanna.

“That, and we almost got caught by the Titans of Justice!” squealed the new Toyman.

“But we didn’t,” reminded the Sting Ray. “I made sure of that plus, our teleportation extortion plan is working out great! We took in two million dollars this week!”

“The Sting Ray is right!” Lance Luthor interjected, adding his support. “Soon we’ll have more money than we know what to do with and it’s all thanks to the Titans of Justice!”


THE END!


“The Stranger The Better Part 3”
Written by: The Stranger
Edited by: Power Guy


The Hall of Justice...

Veleera is a princess of two houses of Gemworld,” Stranger began. “Her mother is the daughter of Lord Aquamarine, Lord of Water Magic, and her father is the son of Lady Turquoise, the fierce warrior woman.” Veleera grew to her teenage years in Gemworld. When she was old enough, she decided to travel to the friendly kingdoms of the realm. She was dragged into fighting for the side of Order in the great war between the Lords of Order and Chaos, eventually aiding Queen Amethyst herself.





During the war Veleera discovered that she was very attuned to Spirit Magic. While most other houses of Gemworld could tap into the more basic elements, earth, air , fire, and water, she could tap into the very essence of living beings to draw and also give strength to her allies. After the majority of hostilities on Gemworld quieted down, Veleera began studying the different dimensions. She was a very powerful mystic. She finally travelled to a nexus of elements. A realm where the Elemental Plains converged, she became the defender of the Spirit Realm, the one realm that kept the other four in balance. It was then that I materialized in her garden, drained of my energy, I fell unconscious.”

Sargona piped up, “ You are going to have to tell Jerrica about this…She will be intrigued by the story.”





Argos grunted again. Although you could see the slightest bit of interest on his face.





Stranger continued, “It took me several days to regain my strength, as this time I did not materialize in one of the Earthly Universes, but in a mystical realm. This was a primal reality. Magic was strong here. However, Veleera told me of her past and her connections to Gemworld. I told her of my duty as a Lord of Order and my few dealings with Gemworld through my mentor and Jem. This was my longest stay before jumping realities again. Veleera and I become very close friends. Then one day, she asked me if I would like to accompany her to the Ethereal Faire. I had been there for two years at that time, yet hadn’t heard of it. Apparently, the ‘E Faire’, as the residents of the realm called it, was held in a different realm every 100 years. This year it was in Veleera’s Realm of the Spirit. I happened to be fortunate enough to be there for it. I sampled cuisines and culture from the worlds of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water magic. It was a very enlightening experience. The festival went on for weeks and we really experienced so much together. I had forgotten what it was like to have a friend on that level again, I had been apart from such emotion for far too laong. I learned several new and different forms of magic. These helped my finally control my random dimension jumping. So this is what Veleera meant by us ‘always having the Faire’.”

Then Stranger’s face took a much more serious look, “That’s what brings me to how I returned. I spent a total of 11 years in Veleera’s realm. When I felt a horrible pain. It felt like another random jump, but somehow forced. Like someone was trying to rip me away from where I was. Veleera tried to keep me where I was, but to no avail. I was torn away from the Elemental Nexus.” Stranger’s face looked even more grim. “I materialized into a cavern. My mind was unable to clear…I couldn’t seem to focus. My powers were significantly drained when I heard a voice speak, ‘Well I guess you were right. He has much more power than I do. What to do, what to do…’.
I looked up and saw my own face staring back at me! He was wearing a twisted version of the Phantom Stranger’s clothes and called himself The Familiar. I felt a certain sense of anxiety as I saw who was with him. ‘Excellent, we can proceed with the experiments immediately..I’ll show all of them who the real boss is,’ a female voice said. ‘Now we can contain him and begin studying his energies.’ I felt more stabbing pain in my mind but I did catch a glimpse of someone else before I blacked out. It was Predatress.”

The others seemed shocked when Power Guy spoke up, “ The Syndicate of Terror captured you?!? How long were you imprisoned?”

Stranger replied. “ I am not sure. It was a long time.”

Sargona piped up, “What did they do to you? Is this why you had so much trouble coming back here?”

“Yes,” The Lord of Order responded,”The Familiar is not as powerful as I am. However, they tried to use my power to come here.”


TO BE CONTINUED!