Risk It All: All In (ch. 39) (Patreon)

We had to get the helmet off of Zatanna. Whether he intended it or not, Dr. Fate took Zatanna, my girlfriend, hostage. He was using her as a goddamn meat puppet that he was going to make us fight so he couldn’t enslave a child for the rest of his natural life all because he was born powerful. God fucking damn it. I’m so sick of being disappointed in my heroes. Regardless, I could lambast how the man that saved the world was a total prick later. Right now, I only had one goal in mind.

I flash-stepped forward just as Dr. Fate leveled a hand at me, a golden ankh appearing between us. “Foolish child. We do not have the luxury of sentiment,” He said and I heard every word clearly despite the fact I should have arrived before he got the first syllable out. Time rippled around me, his voice ringing in my ears and I quickly realized that it wasn’t time that was slowing. I was. The buildings around me didn’t race by in blurs and the distance between us didn’t shrink. My heart plummeted into my stomach when I saw that I wasn’t even the intended target for the slow-mo spell.

Kid Flash was. His back was turned, breaking in a dead sprint away from Dr. Fate. Timothy, however, seemed completely fine and downright confused about why Kid was moving so slowly. Everything outside of us was moving normally. What was going on? How could we slip out of this? “The child is the key to establishing Order in these times of… chaos. It is distasteful, but it is a sacrifice for the greater good,” Dr. Fate scolded me in Zatanna’s voice and my blood grew hot in my veins.

He flew to Kid Flash, who was looking over his shoulder at Dr. Fate, and I could see the panic in his expression that slowly began to display it. Despite all my talk, I had no doubt in my mind that I was about to fail to follow through. Dr. Fate was about to body snatch Timothy, a kid that hadn’t even hit puberty yet, and he was going to use him as a host until his dying day.

If it wasn’t for Superboy walking forward at normal speed, somehow completely bypassing the slow-mo effect, and throwing a powerful right jab into the heart of the ankh, Dr. Fate would have gotten Timothy. The ankh cracked like glass, disrupting the spell while Superboy talked, “Don’t go fast! The faster you go, the more you get slowed down.”

That… sounded like a very effective counter to speedsters.

I dropped the flash step while Kid Flash turned around and walked backward. My blood was getting hot in my veins as a pot of anger simmered deep in my gut. “You planned for this,” I accused Dr. Fate, settling into an Earthbending stance while breathed deeply.

“I anticipated that you might be so foolish,” Dr. Fate stated without so much as a hint of shame in his voice. In Zatanna’s voice. “You are an idealist of the very worst sort, Ren Song. Completely unable to accept that there are necessary evils in this world for the betterment of all.”

What? “What the fuck are you even talking about?” I asked, feeling like Dr. Fate was mistaking me for someone else completely. “Leave the kid alone. Take the damn helmet off. Look, you want a host for a little bit? I’ll put it on and in the meantime, we can figure you out a permanent situation that doesn’t involve body jacking a child.”

“As I said, completely unable to accept necessary evils,” Dr. Fate intoned, his hand curling into a fist and that was the cue for the battle to resume. Kid turned around and ran away, moving at a snail's pace. I never thought I’d see it, but Kid was pretty slow of a runner when you took superspeed out of the equation. I heard Timothy asking what was going on before Superboy and I moved in.

Dr. Fate threw a blast of golden energy at us as I stomped my foot, a pillar of earth rising from the ground while Superboy released a breath of ice. The asphalt was immediately coated in ice, it wrapped around the pillar, and encroached on Dr. Fate, only for him to fly up to continue blasting. Shifting to Waterbending, I turned the ice into water and flicked it like a whip up at him. Dr. Fate blocked the blow with a golden ankh while Superboy sprinted up on the whip, using his ice breath to turn it back into ice so he could leap towards Dr. Fate.

“I have no time for children's games,” Dr. Fate snarled, lashing out with a hand and Superboy stopped in his tracks before he slammed into the ground like he was smacked down by an invisible hammer. Shards of ice and rubble were sent up, telling me that Dr. Fate hadn’t held back on delivering the blow.

I unclenched my hands before clenching them into a tight fist as if I were grabbing hold of something before I heaved it up and the earth below Dr. Fate surged up. “We have to pin him down,” I told Superboy, knowing that he was still in the fight. Dr. Fate blasted away the rubble that tried to envelop him, but I didn’t give up trying until he took a shot at me and forced me to.

Any damage we did to Dr. Fate would be left on Zatanna. Going for the helmet was the next best thing, but that meant aiming for Zatanna’s head and that could kill her. That left pinning Dr. Fate, an incredibly powerful wizard, down with what we had and ripping the damn thing off of her. Assuming that we could even do that.

We were not in a good position. Not at all.

“I know!” Superboy shouted back at me before I heard a roar emerge from the cloud of dust and dirt echoed out. Superboy threw himself up, trusting me to give him a platform to attack. While Superboy provided the water from his ice breath, I had the ability to shape it. Control that he lacked. Superboy leaped over a golden blast, trusting me to catch him and bring him straight to Dr. Fate. With a lunge, Superboy came in close, his arms out wide to catch Dr. Fate and bring him down, only to grab hold of a golden protective orb that Dr. Fate projected.

My lips thinned as Superboy blew out a blast of ice breath, enveloping the bubble. Seizing the chance, I stomped on the ground, making the ground ripple as a huge pit underneath me bottomed out. The sinkhole formed, taking me below ground by fifteen or twenty feet before I had it surge up like a tidal wave of water.

Sailing high in the air, I saw that the ice was already cracking despite Superboy’s attempts to cover it in a thick layer of several feet. The golden shine of the bubble peaked through the thick ice, and I could swear I saw Dr. Fate turn his head to look up at me. “Dispel,” I intoned, trying to get rid of the bubble. I honestly didn’t expect it to work given that I had absolutely no idea how magic worked and Dr. Fate was the pope of wizards as far as I could tell, but the golden bubble popped.

With the first I brought up with me, I sent it at Dr. Fate, smashing the ice bubble and bringing Fate down to the ground in an avalanche of dirt and stone. Clenching my hands, I coiled it around Zatanna’s body, poking her head up while I tried to restrain Fate. Superboy scrambled forward towards her. All the while. Dr. Fate exuded golden light threw the cracks of my restraints, pouring off a power that I didn’t know how to quantify enmass to escape.

It wasn’t Superboy that reached Dr. Fate first, but Kid Flash. Timothy wasn’t in his arms, but there was no way that he had reached a Haven already. Meaning that Kid Flash stashed Timothy somewhere. Hopefully nowhere nearby. Kid Flash sprinted to Zatanna, his hands going around the golden helmet that controlled her body and began to pull, only to scream out in pain, his entire body going stiff, before he was flung away from Dr. Fate.

“Enough,” Dr. Fate snarled, escaping the restraints of dirt and stone with a blast of golden power. I ran over to Kid Flash while Superboy threw himself at Dr. Fate and caught a magical blast right to the face for his efforts. “You test my patience, children. I have allowed your attempts to foil me out of respect for your mentors and understanding that you are yet unable to make hard choices. That ends now.”

“I couldn’t get the helmet off,” Kid told me, speaking lowly as we glared at Dr. Fate who looked down at us with contempt. “It zapped me hard, Koi. I don’t know how we’re going to get it off,” Kid muttered as Dr. Fate leveled his hands at me.

I didn’t either. My dispel caught him off guard before. It was the most basic version, so I doubted that it would work again. Worse, I didn’t have any points left to invest into the skill.

“We’ll just have to brute force it, Kid,” I answered, seeing a golden light gather in Dr. Fate’s palms before a huge blast of light in our direction. Qi gathered in my palm before I met the blast with a cero -- golden magic slammed into violent red qi tinged with black. The blasts ground against one another, sending arcs of electricity that carved lines in the asphalt, overgrown yards, and houses that were around us. The exchange barely began before I felt myself losing it -- my cero was far too unfocused while Dr. Fate’s was an arrow traveling upstream.

But, I didn’t need to win. The distraction lasted all of two seconds, but it was two seconds that Superboy needed. Kid Flash darted to him, and using his super strength, Superboy launched Kid Flash up at Dr. Fate to deliver a flying tackle. His arms wrapped around Dr. Fate, pinning Zatanna’s arms to her side before I heard him take a breath. Then I heard Dr. Fate cry out in Zatanna’s voice, and that did things to my heart that I wasn’t prepared for. He shocked her, I think. With a powerful blast given how Dr. Fate’s costume seemed singed.

Gritting my teeth, I flash-stepped towards them, anticipating where they would hit the ground heavily. Dr. Fate looked at me as I grabbed hold of the helmet and I got a taste of what Kid Flash got. The moment my fingers touched the gold helmet, it felt like I stuck my hands in a live socket to start and it rapidly became tasting lightning. Every hair stood on end while what felt like millions of volts of electricity was coursing through me, zapping the breath out of my lungs and sending every muscle into spasms.

My fingertips began to smoke, but the electricity that flowed through me was so intense that I couldn’t even feel my fingers blackening as they were charred. It was nothing but pure dumb luck that I didn’t bite off my tongue or something. It wasn’t even resolve or determination that kept my grip strong -- I don’t think I could have let go even if I wanted to. My body shook, my heart pounded, and my vision darkened with millions of volts flowing through me.

Distantly, I heard a grunt next to me before another pair of hands grabbed hold of the helmet with me. Superboy heaved, diverting enough of the electricity that my brain didn’t get fried like brain matter in a skillet. That's when I heard Dr. Fate speak, “No- wait! We aren’t-”

“Shut! Up!” I snarled, pulling back with all of my strength and the helmet began to give. It fought for every millimeter, but once the first one was lost, Dr. Fate started to lose his grip. Then, almost like a line being cut, the golden helmet lost its grip on Zatanna and both me and Superboy jerked back with the helmet in hand. My back hit the ground and I heard Zatanna gasping for breath.

Superboy let go of the helmet, laying flat on his back, letting me throw the damn thing in someone's yard away from us. With an explosive sigh, I laid down, my muscles spasming painfully and my limbs only barely under my control. I heard a scramble next to me and a second later Zatanna was hovering over me, her eyes wide. “Ren! Ren, are you okay?” She asked, her hands going to mine and… The tips of my fingers were charcoal. Which probably explained why I couldn’t feel them.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing that I can’t bounce back from,” I said, thinking that I was probably going to have to cut off my fingertips so I could regrow them. It had taken two weeks to regrow an arm. Ten fingers would probably take a fraction of the time. “Are you?” I looked at her while she helped me ease into a sitting position. She looked fine, back dressed as herself.

Zatanna looked to the golden helmet fearfully. “Nabu, he’s… Kent Nelson isn't gone,” she told me, making me still. “He left his soul in the helmet to try to talk Nabu down, but Nabu… he forced Mr. Nelson to move on. Ren, he’s… I… he wasn’t going to let me go, Ren. He wasn’t going to let that boy go either. And Ren…” Zatanna trailed off, gathering herself while the others drifted forward. She looked at me like she didn’t know how to say the words, or, rather, that she didn’t want to.

“What?” I asked her, placing a hand on hers to help her get through it.

“Nabu was scared of you,” she told me, bringing me up short. Scared of me? I had been the one scared of him. For a number of reasons. It made less than zero sense that Nabu, a Lord of Order, would be remotely afraid of me. It took me, Superboy, and Kid Flash to get that damn helmet off of Zatanna. Sure, we had held back a bit to make sure we didn’t hurt her, but Nabu had tried to tie us down rather than turning us inside out like he probably could have.

Superboy and Kid Flash exchanged a glance while Zatanna continued. “I could feel it. He was so scared… maybe not of you… but of what you’re going to become.”

“And I don’t suppose he said why?” I asked her, the muscle spasms lessing to the point that I didn’t feel like a twitching mass of limbs. Glancing over at the golden helmet, I saw that it hadn’t moved but it landed in a way that the empty eyeholes simply stared at me.

“No, he didn’t. Didn’t really ask,” Zatanna admitted, earning a sigh from me. Throwing an arm over her shoulder, she helped me to my feet. Superboy was up and ready. It must be nice having Kryptonian DNA.

“We can just put a pin in that for later -- Kid, where’s Timothy? Is he okay?” I asked Kid Flash, earning a smirk before Kid vanished and reappeared with Timothy in his arms. Who still clutched the cat. His hair was wind-blasted, but it seemed like he enjoyed the ride. A breath of relief escaped me, “There should be a Zeta tube nearby. Let's get to it and head back,” I decided. I glanced down at Gluttony and gave him the order to consume Mr. Nelson's body.

Dr. Fate was an asshole, but Mr. Nelson was a solid guy and one of the greatest heroes since World War Two. We weren’t going to leave him here to rot.

Kid looked between me, Zatanna, Superboy, then finally the golden helmet. “How are we going to explain this one?” Superboy walked over and picked it up with a little caution, but it seemed inert without a host. Otherwise, I doubt Klarion would have been able to grab hold of it. And, one by one, all of them looked to me. Even Timothy.

I swallowed another sigh. “Just leave that to me.”

…

“I’m not sorry.” That’s probably what I shouldn’t have said, but it was the truth. I stood in the conference room inside of the Watchtower, away from the prying ears of Earth. Inside the conference room was a massive U-shaped table that had a seat for every member of the Justice League. At the moment, the only ones filled were by Wonder Woman and Green Lantern Hal Jordan.

However, there were holograms for three other members of the Justice League -- Hawkwoman, Zatara, and Black Canary.

“Nowhere in your report does it say that Dr. Fate intended to enslave Timothy Hunter,” Hawkwoman noted after I gave my summarization of the mission. After the fight, we just hicked to a Zeta tube, teleported back and I headed up to the Watchtower to explain. Timothy was back at the base, playing video games while the others began a search for his parents.

“He implied it. Rather heavily,” I responded, forcing myself to unclench my hand. The tips were already gone. All that was left was a tingly sensation that I had learned to put up with when I was regrowing an arm.

Wonder Woman shifted in her chair, glancing at Hawkwoman. “Kent warned us that this could be a possibility, but I hadn’t believed it. I knew Dr. Fate as well as I did Kent.”

“Kid, I don’t really disagree with what you did,” Hal Jordan spoke up. “But, the fact remains that we had a chance to undo the disaster. Half the population would be restored and we could go back beyond the walls.” There was a sigh in his voice as practicality and idealism battled it out inside of him.

I shrugged, “I get that. Maybe you all could work something out with Fate. Like Timothy pops the helmet on, unfucks the world, and takes it off, but I don’t see Dr. Fate willing to give up his body. And I’m not going to let a kid be a meat puppet for the rest of his natural-born life in the name of Order. So, I’m not sorry for how this went down.”

Wonder Woman gave me a slight smile while Hal Jordan nodded his head in agreement, casting Zatara a glance. Zatara seemed like he was in the meeting in hologram only -- both his mind and body a million miles away. “Nor should you be, Ren. If any of us had been in your shoes, I hope we would have made the same decision.”

Black Canary nodded, “People may not agree with it. And no one can tell you if you made the right decision or not. The important thing is that you made the choice that you can live with. You didn’t compromise your sense of right and wrong.”

“It’s integrity that makes the Justice League what we are. Not our power or even our view of justice. Its that we won’t compromise our integrity when things would just be a little easier if we did,” Hal added. “Right or wrong call doesn’t matter. You made the call that you and the rest of your team can live with.”

“And that’s what is important here,” Wonder Woman finished. That was… a relief. It wasn’t quite the reassurance that I had been hoping to get. It would have been really nice if they could say yes or no -- yes, I made the right decision or no, I was an idiot. But, there didn’t really seem to be a right decision.

“What's going to happen to Timothy?” I asked, accepting the answer for what it was. I didn’t really know what the Justice League was going to do with him. He was powerful. He shut Klarion down like it was nothing, just taking his familiar because he wanted to pet a kitten. That kind of power was hard to quantify and I couldn’t imagine that Lords of Chaos and Order would be the only ones looking for him.

Not to mention whatever that demon was.

“Concerned that we’ll put the helmet on him anyway?” Hawkwoman questioned, and I think she meant it as a joke, but it was hard to hear it as one.

“Should I be?” I asked, my tone sharp. Months ago, it would have been unthinkable for me to do anything but gape at the fact that I was standing in the same room as the Justice League, much less get short with them. I was… because I got it. I understood. It made sense. Sacrifice one kid to bring back four billion people? Like it or not, that was the lesser evil. All we had to do was cover our eyes for a few seconds, put the helmet on the kid, and let Dr. Fate unfuck earth and accept that there was nothing we could do to get him to take the helmet off because he would be too powerful.

Maybe Dr. Fate was on to something, but I couldn’t swallow that bitter pill. It just wouldn’t go down and there wasn’t an argument or reassurance that could make it go down any easier. So, I spat it out. And I’d keep spitting it out no matter who tried to shove it down my throat.

Wonder Woman gave me a patent look while Hawkwoman seemed like she was swallowing a sigh. “He’ll go back to his parents. Zatara will be establishing wards to protect him. Possibly begin training to use his abilities -- for his own safety.” Everyone's gaze drifted to Zatara to find him completely zoned out. It took him a moment to realize that people were looking at him, waiting for him to speak up.

“That is correct,” he said straightening out. “Timothy has drawn the attention of powerful forces, and while I like to believe myself to be an excellent magician, there are many magical forces that far outmatch my ability. Timothy himself is one of them. He needs to learn -- not just to protect himself, but to ensure that he doesn’t endanger anyone else on accident.”

“For now, he will remain at the Team HQ,” Wonder Woman decided, earning a nod from me. I had no issue with that. It would be the safest place for him.

“What’s going to happen to Dr. Fate?” I asked, mentioning the elephant in the room, much to everyone's discomfort. There were a lot of traded glances, everyone looking to everyone else for an answer. However, it was Wonder Woman that answered.

“Undecided. It’s clear that we cannot trust Dr. Fate to act rationally, but at the moment, we do need him. He’s the only one that can force the Parliaments to the table as a Lord of Order,” she told me with a look that told me to swallow any protest that I had because she knew them and felt the same. I really, really, really didn’t like the idea of Dr. Fate body jacking someone else just because he was ‘needed.’ Especially when I imagined he’d be rather sore about his defeat and there wasn’t much stopping him from taking another shot at Timothy.

But, I swallowed my complaints and offered a small nod.

Wonder Woman seemed vaguely relieved that I wasn’t digging my heels in. “For now, good work. You and the team. I want you to rest up. It’s regrettable, but we’ll need all of you back running missions as soon as possible,” she said and that seemed to be the cue for all but one hologram to cut out. Leaving only Zatara and Wonder Woman with me in the room.

“Ren,” Zatara spoke, looking at me, and he sounded utterly exhausted. “Thank you for rescuing my daughter.”

“Of course,” I dismissed the idea that I needed to be thanked out of hand. “She’s my teammate.”

“Among other things,” Zatara remarked, dragging a hand down his face before he pinned me with a tired gaze. “This demon that you saw… I want you to put it out of mind. Forget everything it said about you… and Zatanna’s mother.”

I glanced at Wonder Woman, whose lips thinned at that. Glancing back at Zatara, I saw that he was dead serious. “I’m not sure I really understand. Look, I get that it's a demon, but-”

“But nothing, Ren,” Zatara interrupted, his tone unusually sharp. “You are a fine young man, but this is something you should not meddle in. There are dark forces that lurk in the shadows of the world and they are beyond us. I lost my wife and Zatanna her mother because we foolishly provoked these forces because we believed that we could win. These things… we must leave them be, as galling as it is. Because if we don’t, they will turn their attention to Earth and we will not survive it. Not now.” He stressed, his gaze cutting right through me.

I knew Zatanna lost her mother. I hadn’t known how. And with what that demon said…

“I don’t think Zatanna will. No matter what anyone says,” I admitted, earning a sigh from Zatara that seemed to deflate him.

“I will worry about my daughter. I’m speaking to you about your sake, Ren. Forget. Don’t think about the demon or what it said. I don’t think you would allow it, but I would recommend letting either myself or J’onn erasing the memory altogether. Even thinking about such things is an invitation,” Zatara said, and he was right. I wouldn’t allow it. His expression fell when he saw that I wouldn’t let him in my head again, but nodded all the same. “When I deliver the wards for Timothy, I shall give you one as well.”

I opened my mouth to ask a question but closed it in favor of nodding. Now wasn’t the time to ask to be included in the magic lessons to figure out how it worked. Diplomacy told me that much. Still, magic was revealed to be a rather large hole in my knowledge and ability, so I wanted to patch it up.

“You’re dismissed, Ren. You’ve done well. Get some rest,” Wonder Woman said with a sigh, waving me off. Taking the dismissal for what it was, I left the conference room and headed back to the Zeta tube. I would have liked a follow-up with Wonder Woman, but we were all busy. She and Superman most of all.

I zeta’d back to the HQ, finding that it was full with everyone. Timothy was on the couch playing video games with Wally. Robin, Kaldur, and Conner were speaking softly before waving me over. Robin glanced down at my missing fingertips and cocked an eyebrow. “How’d it go?”

I shrugged, “About as well as it could have, I guess. No one is in trouble and no one said anything about it, but there was a lot of hope that Dr. Fate could turn back the clock. There's a lot less now that we know he’s a jackoff that likes making hard decisions while-”

“Yeah, that’s what Wally said,” Robin interrupted and I was more than a little mortified that I had the same thought process as Wally. “Zatanna is in her room. Won’t come out. Conner told us what happened.”

“We’re not leaving this alone,” Conner told me and I nodded.

“No way,” I agreed. “I’m not leaving Zatanna’s mom in hell. You guys didn’t see it, but that thing was evil,” I stressed the word. For most of my life, whenever I thought of the word evil, I always thought of the Joker. He always fit the bill for what I imagined pure evil would look like -- the guy set orphanages on fire, put poison in Gotham’s water supply, and more. I never met him face to face, but I heard enough about him to get a clear idea that the Joker was pure, unrestrained, and unfiltered chaotic evil.

That demon, whatever it was?

It scared the hell out of me. That thing was evil in a way that made my skin crawl. It was a little late to complain about things being unnatural, but that thing was unnatural in the most sinister way I could possibly imagine.

“But, if we’re going to do this, then we need to do it right. Zatara was scared. The kind of scared that he knew where his wife was and he didn’t do anything about it,” I told them in a low whisper, earning grim looks around. I saw a little indignation at the thought that a member of the Justice League would just leave their spouse in hell without doing anything about it, but the message sunk in a second later. Zatara did nothing because even with the full might of the Justice League at his disposal, there was nothing that could be done.

I can’t even imagine what it had taken to swallow that bitter pill. It was hard to judge him for it too.

“How are we going to do it right, then? This isn't a normal search and rescue. Not to mention the current state of things,” Kaldur mentioned, glancing at the door. Beyond it was a world in a state of disaster that didn’t have any end in sight. He wasn’t wrong either. I had absolutely no clue how we would even start this mission -- we would be breaking into hell to rescue a woman that had been trapped there for over a decade.

More than that, were we going to ignore everyone else trapped down there? If Zatanna’s mom was there, I had to imagine that there were a lot of other good people that were trapped in hell and suffering. The trope of innocents getting sacrificed to the devil was a trope for a reason. I had to imagine it was common. There could be… hundreds. Thousands. Millions, even.

“We start,” I heard Zatanna begin behind me, her voice thick with emotion as all of us turned to her while she walked down the stairs, “by contacting an expert.”

I rose an eyebrow, “And who would that be?”

“John Constantine.”