The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

Somewhat later...

I breached the edge of the continuum along her trail, the Find the Trail veering off sharply along a path of magic and Fate confluences. I followed immediately as the trail flared in front of me, and abruptly I was out into normal space, much faster than I had expected.

I half-stumbled before catching myself as space fractured and I was hurled forth... right into the middle of something violent going on in a rather large room decorated in that grandiose overdone magical ritual style of things Casters with too much time and ego like to make up.

I couldn’t blink, but made the mental effort as a number of people in colorful and familiar outfits were clashing with demons and other people in colorful outfits.

One of those fellows, with a fairly potent magical aura, seized on my appearance to point and gloat, “YES! The dark gods favor us! DESTROY THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, my servant!”

Uh...

Crap. The lilitu tail was out, I had hooves for feet... heck, I was in full Fell form, forcibly yanked forward on display by the Portal I’d just passed through. I even had horns!

A bunch of heroic heads turned my way, assessing the threat I represented, and probably did not like what they saw.

“I have her!” The words came after the speaker arrived, moving faster than I could follow with my extremely enhanced reflexes... except as he came within ten feet of me, my Contingency registered dimensionally-accelerated movement and manipulation, and my Interdiction went off automatically.

He didn’t realize what was happening, as his connection to the Speed Force was severed, and the red blur became a man moving at normal speed ten feet away.

Mortus reached out kindly with a flick of my wrist, and he was still registering what was happening as he ran into the tip and promptly clotheslined himself.

He was unconscious as he slid past me limply feet-first, knocked cold and out of the fight.

“Flash!” A beam of green light lashed over at me, no, two of them, aiming to both blast me and lock me up.

I reached out a hand to stop the beam of Will cold, lightly shattered the other one trying to contain me, and flicked an eye at the Rings worn by the two men in Green Lantern uniforms.

“What?” they both blurted out in the same time, as boxing gloves from the Rings of the other smashed into their jaws, and dropped them both.

An arrow came streaking in, tipped with something nasty, and I ignored it as the lovely Amazon in not quite enough colorful armor heaved the spot-costumed Cheetah into the wall with a bone-crunching impact before hurtling my way.

Was that-?

Well, time for some active spellcasting.

She had her fist cocked to brain me good, when she swung her fist and instead found herself smashing into the side of the demon Abnegazar, giving him a really nice clout on the side of the head as the minor illusion did its job.

The arrow meant to do something to me looped around and headed back where it had come from faster than it had arrived, as did the bat-motif boomerang behind it coming my way. Green Arrow took the impact poorly, the shock of it blasting him across the room. The Batman read the effect and was dodging early as his explosive batarang returned to sender at speed, getting his cloak up and riding out the explosion with much less harm than Oliver Queen had suffered.

That idiot who’d shouted out... was Felix Faust, currently exchanging spells with Zatanna, both of them babbling at rapid rates and trying to get past the other’s defenses. Superman and Martian Manhunter were mixing it up with (Assay, Assay...) Rath and Ghast; the Maestro and Black Canary seemed to be having a screaming contest of sorts at one another; Elongated Man, the Hawks, Aquaman, and Red Tornado seemed to be tussling with the Royal Flush Gang over there, and now here I was to add to the mayhem.

Well, huh.

I flicked up a spell, just as two beams as hot as a star drove into my chest.

My skin went bright red instantly as the heat vision from Superman did its thing. I acknowledged it was hot, and ignored it. Heat and Radiant damage were not threats to me.

Magnus grabbed the Bell, Wheel, and Jar sitting on the ground over there, and zipped them over in front of me. There were instant calls of alarm from all the Leaguers, wondering what I was going to do with them, and calls of triumph from the other side.

Incense still in the Jar, and I was just given the heat to light it, so I passed some over. Spin the Wheel, ring the Bell. Despite themselves, the elder demons had no choice but to look over from their combats my way, their burning eyes expectant at what was about to happen.

“Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast.

Demons out of eons past.

Here before me, YOU WILL BOW,

OR BY HEAVEN, YOU DIE NOW.”

The ground shook, the air trembled, silver Light flared as I lifted Mortus Dius, and the eyes of the Demons Three and Felix Faust nearly popped as they felt the power rising, Rising, RISING!, and lines of argent fire began to form over the Symbols of the Demons Three.

There was just a flicker, and all three Elder Demons were abruptly kneeling on the ground, heads down, in front of me.

A Silver bolt of magic lanced out, shattering Felix Faust’s magical defenses in their layers like slicing through an onion. He screamed in disbelief as the floor rose up under Zatanna’s control to swallow him in stone.

I glared down at the three demon brothers prostrated before me.

“Banished back to Hell, you now go.

And if you return... I, Will Know...”

The hiss of my words was accompanied by a rising sheet of Heavenly fire, silver and gold and rainbow, and the Demons Three screamed as the floor opened up and they were sucked and hurled at the same time, shooting Down with both hate and relief at getting away, completely out of this fight.

Which left a certain Wonder Woman, Superman, and Martian Manhunter with not much to do at that point.

The Royal Flush Gang fighting over there swallowed.

I reached into my vest, pulled out a Deck of Cards, and five of them popped up from the deck.

“A Flush, a rush, your Fate’s been dealt,

Well played a Spade, it’s time you Knelt!”

The five Cards raced out, enlarging and smacking into the faces of the members of the Gang. Robotically, they froze in the midst of whatever they were doing, knelt down, and even the flying cards they were riding lowered them to the ground, waiting to be taken into custody as the Cards glowed over their faces.

“Cat, if you run, I Will Hunt and Play with you.”

The Cheetah froze near the doorway she was attempting to sneak out, looked back once as all the eyes turned on her... and decided that stepping off to the side and sitting down nicely against the wall was probably a very smart thing to do.

The Maestro was waving around his M-shaped sonic gun when suddenly he found himself with the Big Three on three sides of him. He stiffened, and slowly raised his hands in surrender. A second later he was all wound up in steel rebar and stripped of his weapons.

I waved my hand once, and firefrost Shards plunged into the Flash, Green Arrow, the Green Lanterns, and Batman, instantly jolting the first four to full wakefulness, and completely clearing any lingering injuries from the other.

“Who are you?” Superman demanded, floating down closer as the crimson jolt from his heat vision finally faded, and the dark brown of my skin flowed back to replace it.

“A moment, Kal-El of Krypton.” I lifted up my hand, squinted at it, and my twice-normal-size clawed fingers burned Silver, under which distraction I withdrew the lilitu influence and reduced them to normal.

Well, normal with a lilitu-driven bodymorph. Ah, well. No need to make them more uncomfortable with gender-flipping, I’d just stay like this.

I repeated the same events one by one with the hooves, my boots returning to normal; the tail, which I’d not used, burning away; and I broke off the horns and watched them turn to motes in my hands.

I dusted off my hands, flexed my fingers and looked at them carefully. “I hate hostile morphing effects,” I muttered, then realized I had an audience again. “Ah, yes. I am called Fell, of the Balobedu Munroes,” Well, might as well go with the flow, right? I was definitely part of that particular family! “and I’m looking for one of my sisters.” More technically daughter, but I didn’t think of them that way, so there.

“You’re related to Divine?” Green Arrow blurted out immediately. Everyone turned to look at him. “Oh, come on! She doesn’t have a dealy-bop over her shoulder, but they look enough alike to be twins!”

It was Wonder Woman who was most hesitant, stepping forward. “That guise on you when you came out of the Portal may have been an accident, but then again, it may not. Demons can wear many disguises, and they have their rivalries...”

“Diana,” Zatanna spoke up calmly, “that was the power of Heaven. It is not something a demon can wield,” she assured everyone with authority.

Diana still held up her golden Lasso in her hand. “Nevertheless, I...”

The Lasso leapt from her startled hand to mine. I lifted it calmly, staring at the Amazon, and said, “TRUTH.”

“Ahg!” “Christ!” “Jesus!” “Rao!” “God!” “Hera!”

The flaring of golden Light as the Lasso reverberated with the Word was definitely not something easy to withstand, even for superheroes like them.

Their hands came down from their eyes, and they sighed. I looked just like I had. The fact that what looked like a Mask on my face was actually my face at the moment was just a minor diversion.

“My powerful detective abilities say she’s related to Divine,” the Elongated Man sniffed in amusement, his nose wiggling as if alive.

Diana looked chagrinned, Superman looked amused, and the Batman just looked grim. “Divine IS the only other person we’ve seen do that to the Lasso, Diana,” the latter reminded her calmly.

“Yes, yes, I was just being careful,” the Amazon said, accepting the Lasso back and tying it to her belt. “We can certainly alert Divine of your coming, and send you to her. My apologies for doubting you, and thank you for your aid. The Demons Three are not easy to deal with.”

I turned my attention to the Bell, the Wheel, and the Jar. “I will take these with me to her. I’m sure she will find an interesting use for them if the Demons Three come back to the mortal realm...”