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[Emissary] Chapter 19 - Deathtrap (II)
🕑 Added 2024-04-17 02:17:40 +0000 UTCAN: If you're interested in joining my Discord server, you can do it at /nzxJcxsyrd
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Chapter 19 - Deathtrap (II)
“So what do you say, Hal? Can you give us a hand?” John Stewart asked before taking a gulp from his pint of beer. “Hal!”
“Sorry, what were you saying?” Hall said and wrenched his eyes away from a big-breasted barmaid who had just passed by.
The two Green Lanterns, John Stewart and Hal Jordan, were wearing civilian clothing and drinking together in a pub.
“This is a waste of time,” John said and he drank the rest of his pint before putting it down and standing up to leave.
“Hold on, man, jeez, why so impatient?” Hal grabbed him by the forearm to make him stay.
“You would know if you paid any attention to what I just told you!” John said, having reached the end of his patience.
“I get it, I get it, stop yelling. I heard you the first time, I was just messing with you. Look, I’m not against giving you all a hand, but, I don’t know, two Green Lanterns in the Justice League? I’d much rather join the Justice League of Europe instead.”
“We both know Captain Atom will never accept you there. You hate following the rules, and Cap, well, that’s what he’s all about: law and order.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll come around,” Hal said uncaringly.
“If you want to go there for the sake of Power Girl, like the last time you tried, just give up. She retired from crime fighting. More importantly, she’s been in a relationship with Emissary for weeks now,” John said knowingly.
“What?? Why am I only finding out about this now?!”
“You haven’t exactly been around lately, have you? I haven’t seen any hair or hide of you ever since New York City was fixed. You must've just drunk and slept your days away, like always.”
“Hey that’s so not-!” Hal began to shout in protest but gave up midway. “Actually, you’re right. But why does it piss me off so much to hear it from you?”
Hal downed his pint of beer and ordered another one from the bartender.
“But seriously? You’re telling me she’s with Emissary now? With a British guy?”
John rolled his eyes.
“She’s an alien. And she didn’t grow up on Earth. I doubt she cares about your meaningless rivalry with the British.”
“Meaningless rivalry? What kind of American are you?” Hal shouted in outrage.
“There’s no rivalry between us and the British,” John said with a shrug of his shoulders. “There can’t be any rivalry when we’re so much better than them in everything.”
Hal Jordan stared at him for a few moments before bursting into laughter.
“My man!” he said, and the two men clasped their hands in a strong hand shake as they laughed together.
“Why are you so fixated on her anyway?” John asked.
“Dude! Did you not see the rack on her?” Hal said incredulously, making John choke on his beer and cough as he laughed.
But when he stopped coughing and laughing, John wiped his mouth and said seriously:
“Don’t do anything stupid, Hal. Something is off about Emissary.”
Hal stopped joking around and said seriously: “You think he might’ve killed Batman on purpose?”
John shook his head. “I don’t think so. But he’s dangerous. I thought I had a good eye for people, but Emissary is something else when it comes to hiding his emotions and pretending to be something else. I thought he was just a simple guy who happens to know some useful magic... I didn’t suspect a thing until I watched him force Superwoman into making a magical vow. I’ve seen my fair share of killers when I was a marine, and he is definitely one too.”
“Pah! I’m a Green Lantern! I’m not afraid of anyone!” Hal said boisterously and took another big gulp from his pint.
But then he put the pint down and brought a hand to his forehead.
“I must’ve had one drink too many… I feel kind of dizzy…” Hal spoke slowly.
Turning his head to look at his drinking partner, he saw John fall with his head on the bar counter. He passed out.
It was sheer instinct that made Hal conjure a green sphere of light around himself, deflecting a blast of magenta light that was about to hit him.
The music in the pub stopped, and people started screaming and running away in panic.
Under his blurry eyes, the bartender who had been serving him drinks the entire time transformed into a purple-haired woman with pale, silvery eyes and sharp facial features.
“Took you long enough. I was beginning to suspect the drugs wouldn’t affect you.”
Hal felt some clarity return to his mind when the green light of his power ring enveloped him, but he could still not shake off all the cobwebs from his eyes because the drugs were already in his system.
“I suggest you don’t make another move,” the purple-haired woman said, and one of the people who were too drunk to run away was levitated between the two of them. “Take off your ring, Green Lantern, or this man dies.”
Hal hesitated, unable to quickly make a decision in his current state of mind. Taking his inaction as a sign of refusal to comply, the purple-haired woman rotated her wrist, and the man’s head was suddenly snapped to his back, killing him on the spot.
Hal watched in horror as the man died.
“This man’s blood is on your hands. And these two-” the woman said as she levitated another two people in front of her, “-are about to die in a few seconds because of you too. It’s all your fault.”
Hal’s vision started darkening. The sorceress didn’t even do anything this time, but, in his eyes, the other two men’s heads were snapped to their backs too.
“Stop! STOP! I’ll put down the ring!”
“STOP IT!” Hal shouted, but, to his shock, the purple-haired sorceress didn’t stop her actions. Even after he put down his ring, she continued killing all the remaining people in the pub, one at a time.
In his rage, he grabbed his power ring from the floor again, intent on destroying her. However, when he tried firing a blast of light at the sorceress, nothing came out of his ring. He felt no connection to it either. The power ring seemed to be dead.
The last thing Hal Jordan saw was a ray of magenta light hitting him in the face. Everything went dark.
⁂
A red costumed man wearing a one-eyed head mask was lying on his belly on the rooftop of a building as he watched his target through the telescope of his sniper rifle.
He pressed a finger to his ear and said:
“Deadshot in position.”
“Roger that. Karen Starr is supposed to get off work in 5 to 10 minutes. Our man on the inside will give us the signal,” came a woman’s voice from his earpiece.
Deadshot was a renowned assassin and a hardened killer. It was unlike him to get the jitters before a job, but at that moment, he found himself sweating from anxiety.
He brought a finger to his earpiece again and said:
“I have a question. Are we really sure her powers aren’t working today?”
“Even if her kryptonian powers are working, she won’t be able to do a thing once you shoot her.”
Deadshot wasn’t happy with the answer he received, but he didn’t press on. He just muttered a curse under his breath.
All of a sudden, he rolled away from his position and pointed his arm at his left, shooting five silent bullets from the weapon mounted on his forearm.
“Quite jumpy, aren’t you?” came the voice of an old man, and Deadshot was surprised to see his bullets stopping in mid-air as if they had hit an invisible wall.
“Fucking magician, do that again and I'll blast a hole through that ugly mug of yours!”
“I’m sure you will,” said the magician sarcastically before conjuring a chair out of thin air and taking a seat right next to the place where Deadshot had mounted his sniper rifle. “You better get back in your position. Power Girl could come out of the building at any moment now.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job. Fuck, what are you here for anyway? You’re distracting me.”
“Stop complaining, will you? Your job will be done in seconds. I’m the one who has to do the heavy lifting,” the old man said in a condescending voice.
“You are doing the heavy lifting? Are you crazy? I’m the one who has to shoot at a Kryptonian. And not just any Kryptonian, but the crazy and violent Kryptonian. Unlike Superman, this bitch doesn’t hold back. You know Big Sir attacked her in London a few months ago? Guess what? That poor bastard is still in the hospital! He may never even walk again! That’s worse than dying!” Deadshot shouted at him.
“Hey, Amanda. Do we really need this crybaby on our team?” the old man said as he pressed a finger to his ear.
“I suggest you watch your tone when talking to me, Faust. Your disrespect won’t be tolerated. And you, Deadshot, focus on your job. Enough chit-chatting!”
The old magician didn’t acknowledge his boss’s warning and started talking to Deadshot again.
“Kryptonians are nothing as long as you have Kryptonite. And you have a whole pack of Kryptonite bullets with you, don’t you? Power Girl is just the bait to make Emissary come out of his hiding hole. That’s when the real fight starts.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” said Deadshot, exasperated, “I’d be toasted without you. Now keep quiet. I need to concentrate.”
⁂
It was evening. Power Girl winced as she walked to her car. She was exhausted. She had a headache. Her back was killing her due to the weight of her breasts, and her feet were aching from having worn high heels for 10 hours straight.
All those feelings and experiences used to be foreign and unfamiliar to her. She was a Kryptonian. She hadn’t known what back pain was, so she had never viewed her well-endowed body as a hassle. Wearing high heels had never been an issue for her either (even the boots of her crime-fighting suit had high heels). She hadn’t known what exhaustion felt like. The feeling of pain itself was a rare and rather novel experience.
But that was a thing of the past. Ever since the ‘real’ Supergirl landed on Earth, Power Girl started questioning her identity, and that led to her current situation: experiencing days when she lost her godlike powers and became no different from a regular human.
‘It’s going to take me at least 30 minutes to get home in this traffic… Ugh, I’m definitely asking Harry to make me some teleporting devices tomorrow,’ Kara thought as she took out her car keys from her purse.
When she grabbed the car door’s handle to open it, a strong impact shook her body and pushed her into the car.
Quickly turning around, Kara’s was shocked at the sight of the brightly glowing green bullet that was less than 3 inches away from her body, floating in the air as if it had been stuck into an invisible wall.
Before she could make sense of the situation, a mild burning feeling from her wristwatch and a rather familiar sensation washed over her. Something seemed to tug on her navel and she was whisked away from the sidewalk, disappearing into thin air.
In the next moment, Power Girl found herself landing like a sack of potatoes on a hard surface.
“Kara?! What happened to you? Were you attacked?”
She looked confused in the direction of the voice, seeing Harry standing up from his desk and rushing to her.
“Wha-, How did you know? And how did you bring me here?”
“I enchanted your wristwatch with my Rune Magic to protect you from harm and Portkey you away straight after.”
Looking at her expensive Cartier wristwatch, Kara noticed that it stopped ticking and that a subtle smoke was coming out of it. It had been fried.
“You never mentioned it,” she said as Harry levitated her and placed her on the only armchair in his study.
“I couldn’t let you go about your business unprotected,” he said apologetically as he cast a Diagnosis Charm on her to make sure she was uninjured. “I didn’t say anything because I thought you’d think I was paranoid.”
She was about to protest, but when she thought about it, she realised that he was right. She was certainly the type to make fun of him for it.
“Well, I can’t complain about it. Your spell just saved my life,” Kara said.
“Did you get a good look at your attacker?”
“No, they shot me in the back as I got off from work, just as I was about to get into my car. But whoever tried to kill me knew exactly who I was. It was a Kryptonite bullet. They knew that I am Power Girl.”
⁂
“No fucking way!” Deadshot cursed when he saw that his perfectly aimed bullet stopped mere inches before it could hit its target, blocked by an invisible wall. A split second later, the blonde woman disappeared, vanishing from his eyes.
“Deadshot? What happened? Did you get her?” Amanda Waller’s loud voice rang in his ear.
“I had her! It was a perfect shot! I don’t understand why-” Deadshot began to shout.
“It was a magic spell,” Faust cut off his words. “Emissary must’ve given her a magic artefact to protect her from harm and teleport her away.”
“A wizard of your calibre should be more than capable of tracing the location of his teleportation spell, Mr Faust,” came the voice of another woman in their earpiece.
“Tala! Did you get the Green Lanterns?” Amanda Waller asked.
“It was a success. I’ve pumped them full of Fear Toxin and tranquillizing drugs, and I’ve taken their rings too. I’m waiting for the rest of the Cadmus operatives to come and collect them,” the newly named woman, Tala, said.
“Excellent. Well then, Faust, can you trace the teleportation spell that took Power Girl away?” Waller asked.
“I am already on it,” Felix Faust said as he teleported to the place where Karen Starr had disappeared and started muttering an incantation in Ancient Greek.
A moment later, he cast his teleportation spell, but instead of disappearing, his body twirled in one place, and he collapsed rather funnily on the street.
Typical of New York City’s inhabitants, other than two or three people giving him a glance while passing by, nobody cared enough to come to check up on him.
Felix Faust stood up with a groan. He pressed a finger on his earpiece before saying:
“I have found her location, but Emissary is more careful than I thought. He had set up a warding spell that forbids intruders. Nevertheless, I know exactly where they are. They are in Europe, in France.”
⁂ Around that time, in Europe ⁂
It was well past midnight, but Captain Atom was still awake. As a being of radiation and energy, he did not need sleep, rest, food, and so on and so forth. He had no biological needs. He was virtually immortal. Due to the state of his body, he had nothing else going for him outside of his life as a hero either. Fighting crime and leading the Justice League of Europe were the only things in his life.
Therefore, despite the late hour, he was still in the monitoring room of the headquarters in Paris, keeping an eye on things. Thanks to Maxwell Lord IV, the main sponsor of the Justice League of Europe, the Justice League’s monitoring system was connected to all police stations in the large cities in the European Union.
That being said, due to their limited number of members, the Justice League of Europe couldn’t solve all the crimes by themselves, so they focused on doing what the ordinary police could not: defeating and arresting the metahuman criminals. It was only when there were no incidents involving metahumans that they could afford to get involved in regular crimes.
That night was one of those slow nights, too. There had been no metahuman criminals acting up so far, so he decided to take a look at the regular help requests forwarded to the JLE by the police.
‘Hmm, an SOS from a fishing boat stranded in the Atlantic? How come it hasn’t been solved even after 10 hours?’
Common sense dictated that the moment the authorities got wind of it, several helicopters should’ve been sent that way to check up on the situation and rescue the survivors.
‘I better check that out.’
Thinking that he might get into a battle, he decided not to take a the javelin ship but to fly there by himself instead, taking on a stealthier approach.
With his great flying speed, it didn’t take Captain Atom long to leave the continent behind him. Flying above the ocean at night through a storm would have been an unpleasant experience even for someone like Superman, but Captain Atom didn’t feel a thing.
Eyes pinned on the GPS in his hand, he flew towards the stranded ship at his fastest speed.
He was less than 3 miles away from the location of the SOS signal when he decided to slow down his speed and advance with more caution.
However, just as that thought crossed his mind, a hail of massive objects appeared on the horizon.
They were 12-inch/50-calibre armour-piercing shells, each one of them over 800 kg heavy and flying at two times the speed of sound.
Captain Atom never saw it coming. By instinct, he dodged one of them, but there were nine other shells coming at him.
One of them smashed into his left shoulder, and another one into his right ankle. Those projectiles would have made a huge hole into a 24-inch-thick face plate for turret armour… and Captain Atom was not left unscathed either.
Although his body wasn’t obliterated, and despite that the following explosions did little to harm him, the initial contact opened two holes into his containment suit.
They were just two small fissures, but those little cracks destabilised the mass of radiation contained inside the suit. A few seconds later, a massive fireball illuminated the darkness of the night, and an enormous mushroom and fire rose into the air, just like after the detonation of a nuke. Captain Atom had exploded.
⁂
“So that’s the hideout you’ve told me about?” Kara said in wonder as she walked around, inspecting his place. “Why are there no windows?”
“We are 2 kilometres underground. Even if they were to drop nukes or another meteorite of the same size as the one that levelled Manhattan, we’d be fine here,” Harry said proudly.
"What are you working on?" she asked as she walked to his desk. There was a large, round, and deep stone bowl, a small hammer, and a tiny chisel.
"It's a pensieve. It's a type of magical artefact that can let people watch and store their memories. But it's not ready. It will take me a while to finish it. Come, let me show you my place."
She grinned softly as she followed him around. He showed her the ceiling of the living room, charmed to show the appearance of the sky outside; he showed her the music room with his grand piano; and so on and so forth.
“...and this is a boiler enchanted to auto-refill and heat water at will,” Harry finished presenting to her all the equipment in the bathroom.
“Where is all the water and sewage draining to when we’re that deep underground?” she asked curiously.
“There’s a sewage chamber underneath that’s enchanted to Vanish all the waste. Most of my spells can be turned into Ancient Rune formulae and inscribed on an object. That’s also how I turned your wristwatch into a magical artefact that would protect you from all harm and teleport you away.”
“Thanks for ruining my $10,000 Cartier, by the way,” she teased him.
He gave her the stink eye.
“That’s what I get for saving your life? A reproach? Not even a thank you?”
She giggled and threw her arms around his neck loosely before pressing her lips against his.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely, and then kissed him again, this time longer.
“Would love to continue this, but it looks like we have company,” Harry said, breaking free from her embrace.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“The Caterwauling Charms I’ve set up were tipped off. Whoever tried to kill you must’ve traced the Portkey spell that teleported you away. That means that they are magicians,” Harry deduced.
“What do I do?” Power Girl asked. “How can I help you?”
“Your powers aren’t working today, are they? Just stay here. You’ll be safe. It’s impossible for them to find this place.”
“But-” she didn’t continue what she was about to say because she understood that, with her powers gone, she would just get in the way.
Harry summoned his battle robes, cast his four protective spells on himself, donned his white skull mask, and then Disapparated.
⁂
He Apparated above the ground, only a few dozen metres away from a suspicious-looking person. Although it was a dark, cloudy night and despite that they were in the middle of nowhere, Harry could still distinguish that it was an old man dressed in long, dark-coloured robes.
His hands were glowing with a purple light as he was casting a tracking spell.
“Why did you attack Power Girl? Who sent you to kill her?” asked Harry.
“No hello? Not even trying to introduce yourself? Young people have no manners these days,” Faust said snidely, and a Grimoire appeared out of thin air in front of him.
The Elder Wand slid into Harry's hand too. Despite not taking his eyes off Felix Faust, Harry swished his wand to his right side, firing an Expulso Curse.
A woman’s cry was heard as her invisibility spell came undone and she was blasted backwards.
“I told you that your flimsy invisibility spell would not fool him even with the advantage of night's darkness at your side,” Faust laughed mockingly at the woman who picked herself up from the ground with difficulty.
The pages of the grimoire floating in front of him started flipping by themselves before they stopped at a particular spell.
Five red magic circles were formed on the ground, and five demonic-looking creatures were summoned into the world of the living.
At the same time, Tala raised her hands, and her eyes glowed with a magenta colour as a pink orb of magic power appeared above her head.
Through it all, Harry watched and waited, interested in what kind of magic they were going to show him. After all, he had been in this world for several months, but this was going to be his first interaction with other magicals. He was curious.
The five demons charged at Harry, letting out savage roars, and Tala also launched her giant orb of magic at him.
The demons’ charge was faster than Tala’s orb of magic, so they were the first to smash their claws against the Shielding Charm surrounding him.
“Low-class demons, huh?” Harry muttered, unimpressed, and cast a wide area Banishing Charm, blowing all the demons away.
In the next moment, Tala’s orb of magic arrived, but he just backhanded the spell, making it bounce back at the woman, who started screaming in pain from her own attack.
Faust launched a giant fireball at him, but all it took was a mental ‘Partis Temporum’ and a swish of Harry's wand for the gigantic fire attack to be split in two and dissipate into thin air.
“Don’t underestimate me!” Tala shouted infuriated at how Emissary was treating her as if she were a non-entity and yelled an incantation in Hebrew.
Lightning started crackling around her hands, and the air around her was filled with yellow magic circles from which lightning spears started coming out, illuminating the darkness of the night.
Simultaneously, Felix Faust’s Grimoire flipped to another page, and an enormous serpentine dragon of rock and mud burst from the ground and lunged at Emissary with its maws wide open.
On one side, it was a large area of effect lightning spell; on the other side, it was a heavy-hitting, single-target earth spell. Lastly, the five demons that had been blasted away a moment ago started rushing at Emissary too, disregarding the fact that they were about to get caught in those magical attacks too.
Just as the storm of lightning spears was launched at Harry, a strong Water-Making Spell came from the Elder Wand, instantly flooding the entire area in the shape of a gigantic sphere and making all the lightning spears lose their shape as they smashed into the water, electrifying it.
The mindless demons screamed in agony when they tried charging through the sphere of electrified water, losing control over their movements as they were electrocuted to near death.
Felix Faust let out a grunt of anger and made a gesture with both hands, instantly freezing the sphere of water completely, seemingly trapping Harry within. Then, his rock serpentine dragon buried itself underground and tunnelled beneath the spherical prison of ice to attack Harry from underneath.
But just as the earth dragon’s jaws popped up from underneath his feet, Harry turned into a shadowy wraith, making it pass right through his body as if he were a ghost. Stepping out of the dragon’s way, Harry aimed his right hand at it and Transfigured it into sand, cancelling Faust’s spell over it.
At the same time, Harry made a triangular wand movement with his Elder Wand, and the spherical prison of ice was shattered into countless evenly-cut icy shards. A Banishing Charm blasted the deadly hail of ice projectiles at Faust and Tala, who were quick to cast their own spells too.
A wall of rocks rose to protect Faust, and Tala cast a teleportation spell to transport herself out of the ice projectiles’ way and reappear behind Emissary’s back.
However, when she opened her mouth to chant her spell, no sound could be heard. Harry had anticipated her move and cast a Silencing Charm on her the very moment she reappeared, faster than she was able to react.
A red bolt of light slammed into her, and then Tala knew no more. She was knocked out cold.
In truth, Harry could have just Disapparated from the prison of ice and started spamming Unforgivables left and right like Voldemort used to do. It would have certainly gotten the job done right away, but where was the fun in that?
‘Besides, I need one of them alive. I need to know who sent them after Kara,’ he thought.
Harry sensed a significant accumulation of magic power behind the rock wall where the old magician was hiding. Faust seemed to be preparing to cast a very powerful spell.
‘Should I just let him do it?’ Harry thought in mild amusement.
But then he shook his head. He was not going to make the mistake of falling prey to his own arrogance and overconfidence. Magic was highly unpredictable and dangerous. It would be unwise to underestimate Faust.
He brought the Elder Wand down to his waist and took on a stance as if he were about to draw a sword from its sheath.
A feeling of urgency washed over Faust, who was hiding behind the rock wall, and he started reciting his Ancient Greek incantation even faster than before as he instinctively felt the shadow of death looming over him.
For the first time since their little magic duel started, Harry opened his mouth to say an incantation out loud and slashed with his wand in front of him:
“Dao!”
For a second, it was as if the whole world was cut in half. Trees, rocks, animals, the earth wall erected by Faust, and the magician himself too—a slanted horizontal blade of magic had sliced them all in two.
Felix Faust’s eyes were wide in shock and horror as he watched his own upper body slide off his lower body from the waist before falling to the ground with a wet thud. He died before he even knew it.
Comments
Grumpy Wolf
Maybe i made y'all hate superman too much. It wasn't my intention 😆
Aaron Orr
Can't wait for Harry to track down Amanda Waller and to mind fuck her to oblivion. Batman got what he deserved and with any luck Supes ends up paralyzed (heh, Christopher Reeves treatment for Superman, that would be some Irony).
Grumpy Wolf
You can look up "felix faust moments" or "tala justice league moments" on youtube and you will get some few minutes long compilations with scenes of them and their powers
Supporter
Okay, I'm not going to lie. You had me there for the first half of the Kara scene. I thought it was Harry who conjured the chair. I was like, "Oh, this is one hell of a surprise." I didn't know who the magicians were but I am SO glad that you're utilizing DC to its fullest extent.
Supporter
GRRRR. I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER.
