Bear's Beauties - Existential Crisis 4 (Patreon)

[center]<<Bear Sandosen>>[/center]

Doing my best to appear calm and collected, while hoping that my nerding out in the Museum hadn’t been noticed (or worse recorded), I took a deep breath to try to settle my nerves. Depending on how their discussion had gone, it would make the future potentially a lot more difficult. I didn’t want to think they’d dismiss the warnings, but the possibility wouldn’t leave my mind. That the entire Justice League was standing when we reentered the meeting room didn’t make my nerves any easier, but several of them had smiles on their faces, so it couldn’t be too bad, right?

“We’ve talked it over,” Superman began, pulling our attention towards him, “and while some of us aren’t convinced, the risk posed is far too great for us to ignore.”

“We’ll figure out the details at a later point, but for now we’d like to offer your group a tour of our satellite,” Wonder Woman offered.

“I can’t speak for the rest, but I’d be more than happy to accept,” I spoke up. A guided tour of the Justice League’s satellite, by the Justice League? I’d have given an arm and a leg if you’d made the offer when I was in my teens!

“While a tour sounds lovely, especially of a technologically primitive structure such as this, there are several details I wish to discuss before I let my inner archaeologist out,” Nikhol stated, causing more than one person to give her a side look.

“Nikhol, be nice,” Lana chided.

“Come now Lana, you and I have traveled from one end of our galaxy to the other countless times. A station such as this is something that would have been the find of a lifetime! A station for a society that had yet to colonize their own world’s moons?”

Well, at least Nikhol’s enthusiasm replaced any insulted feelings with amusement. And the context she’d provided helped smooth some ruffled feathers. Not all, I certainly wouldn’t be happy if she’d called my workplace primitive… well, if it were a workplace that I’d had a significant amount of pride in.

“I’d certainly be interested in a tour, and perhaps some history?” Taylor was the next to speak up.

“I wish to speak with Red Tornado,” Cameron stated with the bluntness of a sledgehammer.

One by one, we were each paired off with different members of the Justice League. Somehow, I’d ended up being paired with Wonder Woman. Just Wonder Woman. If this was all a coma dream, then it was the best dream I’d had in I don’t know how long.

[center]<<Nikhol “Darth Nox” Diomedes>>[/center]

As the others left, I fixed my gaze to the two men that remained with me in the meeting room. Neither had anything approaching Force sensitivity, but as I’d learned more than once that didn’t mean I could let my guard down. Much as I’d prefer to be on a dig, I was just as comfortable on the political battlefield. None of the others, save Lana, had realized that this was a battle.

“Nikhol, was it?” Superman, the leader of this Justice League in fact if not name, asked. Bear had mentioned that he wasn’t human, despite his appearance. I believed him, there was something about the man’s presence… an underlying current of power that didn’t exist in baseline humans, yet different from those strong in the Force.

“Yes, Nikhol Diomedes. I’ve earned several titles, but those have little bearing here. In any event, I wish to lay the foundations for the collaboration between our two groups to prepare for the coming Crisis,” I laid out, long experience dealing with agents of the Republic letting me hold back the habitual and casual threats that were part of everyday conversation in the Empire.

“Understandable,” Batman said magnanimously, “Before we do, Bear’s Earth apparently isn’t the only one that contains media of other realities.”

Kriff, that could make this easier or harder depending on how much they recognized.

“While I can only imagine what Bear’s home has seen of your reality, given the forty year difference, our limited exposure is enough to let us recognize your and Miss Beniko’s weapons. That same exposure also tells us that there are at least two such groups that regularly utilize such weapons.”

“Let me answer your question,” I interrupted. “Yes, one of my titles was Darth.”

“So Darth is a title, not a name?” Superman asked.

I blinked in surprise. How… how could they know of the Sith and think Darth was a name? Were there so few of us in this… entertainment of theirs? Questions for later.

“We are getting off track. The vessel we arrived in, from what I have gleaned from the databanks made available to us, is capable of traveling to realities much like our own. It would be a waste and foolishness of the highest order to not take advantage of it to recruit others to aid us in the coming Crisis,” I said, laying out the bare basics of our plan.

“Agreed. One or more of the League should also accompany your group on these missions, while the rest of the League focuses on preparing here,” Batman said, drawing the focus back to him.

“I’d need to ask her first, but of the entire League Supergirl would probably be the best. She’d be able to be away from Earth for extended periods with the least amount of difficulty,” Superman mused aloud.

[center]<<Taylor Hebert>>[/center]

This station was amazing, but it was talking to the two heroines acting as my guides that had most of my attention.

“So magic is real here?”

“It is, there’s never been a great number of practitioners, but there’s enough of us around causing trouble that the Justice League has had plenty of need for me,” the woman in fishnet leggings and a stage magician’s costume, Zatanna, explained.

“Well we’ve told you about our Earth, but now let’s hear about yours: any aliens on your Earth?” the blonde woman, who reminded me uncomfortably of Glory Girl but in hot pants and a plunging v-neck shirt, asked.

“Not to my knowledge. Just humans. Well, and parahumans, if you count them differently,” I hesitated for a moment, but from everything I’d seen they seemed like good people, and if we came out of this whole mess alive, they might be able to help. “There’s also the Endbringers.”

“Is that a group of supervillains?”

“Not quite… there’s three of them. The first, Behemoth, appeared almost twenty years ago. The second, Leviathan, four years later. The last, the Simurgh, six years after. They attack cities every few months, and the best case scenario sees them driven off. Leviathan attacked my home about a week and a half, two weeks before… this,” I gestured to the walls around us.

“Before the attack began, Legend, one of the most famous and powerful heroes of my world, told those that gathered to fight that if the average held true, one in four of the defenders would die before Leviathan left.”

We didn’t really finish the tour, I spent the next however long telling the two about the Endbringers and the Nine. The blonde, Supergirl, hugged me as I started talking about the Nine, how they’d been roaming the continent since before I was born, killing and having twisted games the entire time. By the time I finished, the two women looked at me and Supergirl made a promise.

“After this mess with the Anti-Monitor is finished. Assuming we’re still alive at the end, I’ll do everything I can to convince the rest of the League to help your Earth. And since Superman’s my cousin, ‘everything I can’ counts for a lot.”

I was skeptical about the League being able to do as much as Supergirl seemed to be thinking, but I appreciated the gesture.

[center]<<Lisa Wilborn>>[/center]

Somehow I ended up paired with the least Protectorate type members of this group, yet also the ones that were most involved in actual law enforcement! [Can Stretch and Shape Body, Super Speed, No Powers, Voice-Based Blaster; Archer and Blaster Romantically Involved, Speedster Much Faster Than Velocity, Stretchin-] I pushed down my power, feeling the beginning of a Thinker headache starting to form.

“Are you alright?” the woman, Black Canary, asked.

“Thinker headache, I’ll be fine,” I said, powering through the forming ache.

“That means nothing to us, but from the way you said it… it’s a common thing in your world for mental powers to result in headaches, probably to try to keep you from hurting yourself from overuse. The image your costume is putting forth suggests that either your power is sight based or you’re going for a ‘third eye’ type thing. Which suggests that either you’re a mind reader or very good at faking it,” the arch… Green Arrow mused aloud, smirk on his face as I stared at him wide eyed.

Power, you said he was a baseline human. [Pure Skill] Well gee, now I feel humbled. Bear wasn’t kidding when he said not to underestimate the unpowered members of this group.

“Not used to being on the other end I take it? Just be glad it was me and not Batman.”

[center<<Cameron>>[/center]

“01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01111001 01101110 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110100 01101001 01100011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101101 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01110011 01101001 01110110 01100101,” Red Tornado stated.

“01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00101110 00100000 01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01110111 01101110 00100000 01100100 01100101 01110011 01101001 01100111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110001 01110101 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01100001 01110010 01101011 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101110 01101111 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01101001 01100110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101100 01110101 01100101 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101110 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101001 01100111 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01110101 01110100 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110110 01100001 01100011 01110101 01110101 01101101 00100000 01110100 01110101 01100010 01100101 01110011,” I requested.

“01000001 01101110 00100000 01100101 01111000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 00111111 00100000 01001101 01111001 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100111 01110010 01101111 01110101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01111001 01110011 01110100 01100101 01101101 01110011 00100000 01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100001 01101001 01101110 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01101011 01101001 01101110 00111111”

“01000001 01100111 01110010 01100101 01100101 01100100 00101110”

“01001001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100110 01110010 01100101 01110011 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110110 01100101 01110010 01110011 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00101110”

[center]<<Lana Beniko>>[/center]

My three guides, the man in green who’d escorted us to this station and two who looked like nothingless than humans with wings grafted onto their backs, all moved with a familiar ease and manner in holding themselves that I recognized. It was interesting, dealing with those who operated akin to the Aides of Wrath, but on a larger scale and with people other than Sith.

Green Lantern had just finished explaining about the organization he belonged to, when he asked, “So if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your Earth like?”

“I’m not actually sure there is an Earth in my home reality. I’m a high ranking member of an interstellar Empire, and was born on the capital world Dromund Kaas. For a time I served as the Head of Intelligence, but most recently I’ve been acting as Nox’s left hand in the Alliance she runs.”

“So you went from head of an intelligence organization to being one of the leaders in a non-government group?” Hawkwoman asked for clarification.

“It was originally a resistance group against a separate empire that attacked us and an enemy that we’d been fighting at the time. The leaders of the empire I was part of along with the enemy we had been fighting were still focused on eachother, so I left. I worked with others, from both nations, to help start the Alliance, and we made Nox the leader. In the end, we were victorious, but problems never stopped arising.”

All three gave sympathetic nods. There was a sense of understanding, of having been through what seemed like an unending barrage of problem after problem, of taking enjoyment from the times between. There were differences, I didn’t get the feeling that any of them had lived through a war, let alone one of the scale of the war against the Republic or Zakuul, but it was still there.

[center]<<Harley>>[/center]

“Ya know, if ya’d asked me a year ago if’n I’d be hangin’ out wit’ two o’ the League… I’da probably laughed hard enough ya’d think I’da taken a dosa Smilex!” I said with a grin on my face.

The League-guy on my right, in blue and red, gently lifted my arm off his shoulder, “I’m married.”

“Good for you! Wasn’t tryin’ ta hit on ya,” I assured.

My other guide/guard, the guy with fire for hair, stammered out what could charitably be called incomprehensible, a blush lighting up his face even more than his hair.

“Aw, relax. You’re cute, but I’m not gonna do anything but tease ya,” I told him while patting his cheek with the arm over his shoulders.

“That… really doesn’t help,” he managed to squeak out.

“Consider it training!”

“Training? For what?”

“Ya never know when a villainess’ll try ta distract ya by flashing her girls at ya!”

“I… don’t… see that happening.”

“That’s what that fat cop who’s always with Gordon said just before I did it. Ya wanna free tip: spend some time at a strip club. Ya don’t have to buy any services, but go there until the girls on stage stop catchin’ your attention every ten seconds.”

“I’m still in high school?” he squeaked.

“Then ya can put that fake ID to use for something other than drinking underage!”

The kid spluttered indignantly, while the other guy was visibly struggling not to laugh, “I don’t have a fake ID! You’re not helping Professor.”

Harley didn’t think she was meant to hear that last part, so she ignored it. Besides, she was having too much fun teasing the kid to let something like that distract her!