Hal Jordan
It took me nearly one whole week to find the spot the motherbox dumped her. With the help of Batman and my power ring, I was able to follow the readings of the initial teleport, as well as the subsequent one.
Vandal apparently had somebody lying in wait, ready to scoop Artisan up. The readings of the second boom tube led me to a seedy part of deep space I had only read reports about. Sector 3087. Y'Gaal. The throne of Mongul's entertainment empire.
It was a hellhole of debauchery and military supremacy. Gaming Dens and brutal slaving pits. Criminals and captured slaves from all over the galaxy were forced to fight monsters for the pleasure of gamblers. The local lantern got me a ticket in. We were out of our corp uniforms and wore what passed for clothes in this brutal sector of the universe. She took me up to the pit where she pointed Artisan out.
They had her fighting three mountainous beasts from the Jovian sector, and she was barely staying ahead of them.
"Mongul's scientists are endlessly fascinated by her," she said. "They feed her smaller and smaller rations and give her little to no access to sunlight just to see how she'd react and evolve. Whatever exotic gene spliced into her DNA must be really something."
"It couldn't have happened to a better person," I said automatically. But sheesh. I didn't like the look of it. I didn't like it at all. I had more questions for the Lantern: like, why wasn't she trying not to take Y'Gaal down? And how could she enter the planet at all?
Criminals and Lanterns don't exactly get along. Hazard of the occupation. But I knew better than to point fingers. This was not a priority now. I had to give my report, then the Guardians would decide what to do about Lantern Ygrite.
--
POV
Julius
I stood across from Superman with a smile on my face, and my heart pounding.
"Ready whenever you are?"
He was dressed in his costume, but had elected to go without the cape. We were somewhere in Antarctica, hundreds of miles away from any research station. Satellites could still catch us, of course, but Superman had said something about us being protected out here. It likely had something to do with the Watchtower.
"Here I come," I announced, kicking off the ice with a flash of Expanse, Cursed Energy Reinforcement, and Body control, and hurled myself at the man of steel.
The news of Artisan's incarceration came as welcome news, but it also placed us on a firm timeline. We had weeks before she figured out how truly boned she was and tried something drastic to eliminate us, and so Batman pushed us to show our cards. But first, he made everyone in the League show theirs.
And they were remarkable. Wonder Woman and Superman were several hundred times faster than the speed of sound and could lift objects that weighed hundreds of thousands of tons. And they weren't standouts either. Shazam was just as ridiculous, even if he wasn't a member. Dr. Fate had a near-endless grab bag of spells.
Green Arrow had gadgets and weapons and had mastered martial techniques straight out of comic books. Red Tornado was a living storm, and don't even get me started on Captain Atom.
Suffice to say, I was humbled, terrified, and a little insulted that the heroes struggled so much. They could all clean house if they wanted to. But they didn't. They'd rather play heroes and be good guys than win.
Artisan would be extending us no such luxury, and that was why I planned to slam my head into the impenetrable wall that was the Justice League until I evolved or leveled high enough to win.
Seventh Sense sparked behind my eyes as I split the sound barrier twice. And I looked beneath the surface that was Superman and nearly coughed blood because of what I saw. It was like standing in front of a living nuke with Tungsten fibers for muscles.
I kicked off the air several times, propelling myself to truly ridiculous speeds as I hurled my fist forward, wrapping it in a thick gauntlet of bone and spongy material.
My fist ignited and burned a bloody red as I activated Powerstrike, and struck him in the chest with Ratio. It was like a nuke had gone off. Light shone at the point of contact, and the energy ripped through my arm, burning the scattering pieces of my gauntlet, expanding out into a building-shaped hole. The shockwave and the sound came next, but by that time, we were already moving.
Superman sprang into motion, swiping at me, and I bent my spine and dislocated my arm, dodging while I opened a portal above his head and dumped a small ocean's worth of blood directly on him.
I connected the blood to me with tethers and leveraged my body control and blood manipulation, congealing and condensing the blood around the man of steel. It mirrored his movements, tightening to restrict him.
And while Superman adjusted, I created nearly 50 supernovas borrowing from the sea's volume. They were the size of my head and were condensed from a small water tank's reservoir's worth of blood.
And so when Superman finally decided to stop playing and burst out of my hold, several supernovas exploded above him like rapid shotgun shells, spiking him down into the Ice.
He rose quickly, with the slightest frown on his face. He was covered in several bruises that were quickly fading, and his chest had a line of blood dripping from it.
"Not bad for a kid, huh?" I said with a smirk.
"Your magic can injure me just like Zatanna's," he said, touching his chest. "That is good to know."
Superman's eyes shone a bright red. "Maybe it's time I got a little serious."
"Uh oh."
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