The Despero Intersection

"Aw, you two look so sweet together," Fire said with a smile. "Don't stop."

"WHAT?" Beetle asked, lifting his head.

"Uh-What?" Booster coughed. "Damn, what the hell died in my mouth?"

"We've always said that you two are such a cute couple," Fire continued, her smile threatening to outgrow her face.

"Don't joke like that!"

"You even complete each other's sentences all the time."

"Oh, shit, you did it! I thought I was a goner, thanks, man!" Booster said, raising to embrace Beetle. "I knew I could count on-"

"Careful there!" Beetle said, getting up. "And just what did you mean by that EVERYONE thing a while ago?"

"Uh?"

"Booster," J'onn said. "As soon as you feel better, you should enclose Despero's remains in a force field for safe transfer to the Embassy."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"You beat Despero?" Fire asked Wonder Woman, eyes wide open in grudging admiration.

"I just kept him occupied," Wonder Woman replied. "J'onn found the way to defeat him."

"Really? But wasn't he invulnerable to your telepathy?" Fire asked, puzzled.

"Oh," J'onn began, looking uneasily at Wonder Woman, as he tried to stand on his own. "It was, ah, a special mental power we Martians have."

"J'onn?" Wonder Woman began. "You don't need to-"

>>Please allow me,<< J'onn replied for her mind only. >>We must all do our part.<<

"It could be used only once in a lifetime, actually," he continued. "Despero is no longer a threat, that is all that matters."

Fire frowned, but there were more urgent things to consider. "We must search for Scott, he may be still be alive. And where did you take Tora, Booster?"

"I took her to a paramedic station some blocks that way, I'll go check on her."

"What did you mean by EVERYONE?" Beetle insisted.

"Oh, grow up."

**************************************

"Rest now, J'onn," Diana said as he carefully lowered the Martian onto the waiting stretcher. "I must help with the clean-up work."

>>It may be wise to retrieve some replacement clothing first, Diana.<<

Diana smiled. Aside from boots, belt and bracelets, very little remained of her clothing, and she knew by experience that nudity often distressed the people around her. "You are doing something about it."

"A minor telepathic suggestion not to take notice, yes. There are cultural considerations to be taken, for courtesy's sake."

A few paces away, Blue Beetle turned, for the twelfth time in a row, to look with a puzzled frown at Amazon and Martian. There was something strange that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but he could swear that he was somehow missing something. He scratched his head and shrugged. Surely it was nothing important.

"Thank you, J'onn. Again," Diana said warmly, leaning down to kiss the Martian softly on the cheek. "But we really must stop meeting this way," she added with a dazzling smile before turning around and taking to the air.

"Why J'onn, you are turning a deeper shade of green," Beetle said, grinning widely.

**************************************

Scott Free sighed. He had been giving autographs for over an hour. Did everyone in Vega really need to get an holo taken with Mister Miracle?

"How did you do it? Not even a Durlan could have gotten out of the last trap!" a gushing teenage Gordanian asked, his oversized reptilian belly stretching the fabric of a food-stained Mister Miracle Tour official t-shirt.

"Trade secrets," Scott Free answered in fluent Standard Vegan, smiling. "But all traps can be escaped. If you really want to be free, you can never be held prisoner. Not by cages, or chains, or fears. There is always a way out. You just need to find..."

"Let me record your odor, please," a small grayish thing begged.

"Who does your nose hair?"

"You live on Earth, right? Are you dating Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran?"

"Were you really the first person to escape from Granny Goddess's Orphanage?"

Normally Scott always felt irritated by the whole Escape From Apokolips propaganda angle that Khan had used, but now he was no longer listening. Lost in thought for an instant, he suddenly smiled.

"Find the right tools," he mused.

**************************************

Guy Gardner sat up, shaking his head. He had to be alive. Otherwise his head would not be hurting so much. He wrinkled his nose, and wondered whose bright idea had been to drop him into a dumpster.

"Goddamn. Did I miss anything?"

**************************************

EPILOGUE ONE: ESO LE PASA AL QUE LLEVA AMIGO A SU CASA

"We had a mayor level threat here! We have a Leaguer missing and presumed dead! A dozen civilian casualties and millions of dollars in damage! We needed fucking reinforcements! And you all were out looking for a cat?" Oberon asked, shaking his head in disbelief. Surely not even the League could be so screwed up.

"It had been kidnapped," Captain Atom, leader of the League's European branch explained, his face filling the video screen of the monitor room. "Power Girl was very worried, and you know how she gets when she's worried..."

"Oberon! There you are," Blue Beetle said, walking into the monitor room, a small cloth bag in hand. "You have to see this."

"Look, I know you had to get me worked up enough and all," Fire asked, walking in after Beetle. "But do you really think that my butt's too big?"

"We'll continue this later, Captain," Oberon said, cutting the link. He felt tired, and very, very old. "A fucking cat..." he whispered.

"I supervised as Guy went through the wreck with his ring, looking for something," Beetle said, sitting next to Oberon. "And found nothing. There was nothing organic in there."

"What does that mean?" Oberon said, frowning. Was there a point in getting their hopes up?

"Whoever or whatever was in the jet, it wasn't Scott."

"What?" Fire asked, startled. "Who was it then?"

"You tell me," Beetle said, opening the bag and placing its content in the console before them.

Oberon's eyes bulged and Fire's caramel complexion paled to almost resemble Ice's.

"I doubt this belonged to Scott," Beetle said smugly.

"Is it-?"

"Fake? Yep. Artificial. Very lifelike, though."

"Oh, my God-!" Fire began.

"I'm not up to date in ahem, the field of penile substitutes-"

"-I fucked a robot?"

"-but this doesn't look like Earth tech to me."

"I fucked an ALIEN robot?"

**************************************

In a small cabin deep in the least fashionable areas of the Conglomerate's huge space-faring complex, things began to get weird.

Space itself suddenly shifted, folded and was reshaped into cylindrical shape, as a tubular discontinuity grew from the fabric of the space-time continuum, and a booming noise rose, filling the small enclosed space. While the ethereal tube was apparently contained inside the cabin's minimal dimensions, the perspective inside its core seemed to stretch for infinity and a foot.

From this immeasurable depth something came, to settle in the cabin's center.

For the unenlightened witness the arrival may have seemed a thin human dressed in blue tights and sitting nonchalantly on an oversized metal armchair. Those few with an understanding of the higher levels of reality in the cosmos, may have recognized the cold visage of Metron, master of all sciences and most inscrutable of the powerful race known as the New Gods of New Genesis, he who roams the depths of reality in his Mobius Chair, unraveling the very secrets of existence.

"Yo, Metron, how's it hanging?" Mister Miracle asked with a smile.

Metron blinked. Once.

"Scott Free, even Highfather's son should not summon one such as Metron for trivialities," he said coldly in the speech of New Genesis, ignoring Mister Miracle's use of Earth's English. "Particularly when slumming amongst these pathetic mortal creatures. Do you have a suitably worthy cause to interrupt my meditations?"

"Rank doth hath its privileges, eh?" Mister Miracle asked, smiling. Much as Metron boasted of being bound to no authority, morality or mundanity, his many experiments were rather on the expensive side, and like brains everywhere, the guy with the purse, Scott's father, had him by the metaphorical short hairs.

"It does not involve the same childishness as last time, I expect. Batting averages and such?"

"Nope. I think I have something that you may find challenging."

"Challenging?" Metron asked disdainfully, but curiosity was peeking from beneath the deep layers of ennui, and even those sectors of his mind usually listing prime numbers indefinitely were now taking notice. "How could you fathom what Metron would find challenging?"

"Just thought you'd want to take a crack at this," Scott said, handing Metron the massive printout of his Conglomerate contract. "Psion law."

"Oh, well," Metron said, his skin creaking as he raised a long-unused eyebrow. "There's nothing good on cable tonight anyway."

**************************************

"YEAH! He's alive! Scott's alive!" Oberon cheered, jumping off his chair to first hug Fire and then kiss Beetle. He may have gotten the order wrong, but he was still too happy to care. "Where can Scott be, then?"

"I think Manga Khan may be again involved. Kilowog said this looks like Conglomerate tech."

"He said anything else?"

"That it was ridiculous to make this at such a small scale," Beetle said with a smile, taking the thing in hand with some reluctance, before standing up. "We'll keep you up on it."

"A robot," Fire muttered while Beetle left, as she ran her hands through her hair, slumped in her chair. She had, as a teenager, done things during carnavales in Rio which she didn't even want to remember, but still this was an all-new low for her. "My God... I'm such a slut."

"Ah, com'on, Bea," Oberon started. "Don't blow it out of proportion."

"For God's sake, I blew it! Literally! I had sex with a damned alien machine! Shit! I fucked a THING! How can anyone respect me after that?"

Oberon breathed deeply and stepped forward to look at Fire eye to eye.

"Beatriz, any man who wouldn't respect a woman like you must be a certified idiot."

"Really?" she asked, her eyes lighting up.

"And your butt's not too big, for sure."

**************************************

"So what did you mean by 'everyone'?" Beetle asked for the umpteenth time.

Booster sighed. "Man, you are my friend, and I love you..."

"Oh, shit."

"But chill out. You're just too fucking ugly, dude. No one with any semblance of taste would ever be interested in you at all, no matter what their orientation."

"Hey! that's great!"

"You have a nice butt, though."

**************************************

"Wow! Is that for real?" Fire asked, genuinely surprised.

"Ah, it ain't that big," Oberon said, blushing from his toes to his balding head. "Since I'm so short, it just looks larger in contrast."

"Contrast, my ass. Let's take hand measurements."

**************************************

"HOLY SHIT! THAT'S SICK!"

"Wait, it gets worse," Booster said.

"Want some nachos?" offered Beetle.

Kilowog nodded, stuffing a large handful into his wide mouth, as he leaned forward, the couch groaning beneath his weight. Earthlings never ceased to amaze him.

"Hey, what's on?" Fire asked, as she walked into the lounge, beaming with relaxed happiness. "Is that cable?"

"Ah, no, wait, just..." Beetle stammered, fumbling with the remote.

"Hey! Is that Gardner? HOLY SHIT! THAT'S SICK!" she said, opening her eyes wide and sitting down. She stared speechlessly for a while before speaking again. "Pass the nachos, will you?"

"Oh, boy," Kilowog said. "I never thought the power ring could be used like THAT..."

**************************************

"That creep! That asshole! I... FUCK! How could he do this to me?"

"Barda, calm down," Oberon begged. "I-I'm sorry, I shouldva told ya hours ago, but -well, something came up."

"When I get through with him, he'll wish he'd been dead for real!" Barda cried. "I thought he was gone... Shit! I cried like a stupid weakling... And all for what? For a damned decoy?"

"We don't know yet what really happened."

"I tell him to stay home, to be a real family! But no! He has to go and play hero! Leaving me here all alone! So horny I could fuck the dog next door!"

"Barda!"

"I'm here mourning, and he's out in another fucking tour, I bet! Fuck this!" she yelled, tearing at her all-black dress.

"He may've been kidnapped again-"

"It's the groupies! IT'S THE DAMN GROUPIES!" she screamed, punching a hole through the wall. "That's why he wants to go on tour all the time, I know! To fuck all those soft, spineless bimbos!"

"Barda, I swear Scott has never-"

"I'll show him! Who the hell needs him or his useless duplicates? I'LL SHOW HIM!" she spat as she tore off the remains of her clothing in a frenzy.

"Barda, please! Getta hold of yourself," said Oberon, truly worried. He had seen Barda mad before, but never like this. Not even that time they had burned the house down. Yet he could not look away from her exposed figure. He had known Barda for years, and had often wondered how such a spectacular woman looked naked, but the reality of it was actually overwhelming. "I-I know it's a, uh, shock, but..."

"YOU!" she said, her eyes burning wildly. "YOU'LL DO!"

"What-?"

"GET OVER HERE!"

"Barda! You can't! I can't! Not to Scott!"

"You won't do anything to Scott! You'll do it to me! NOW GET OVER HERE!"

Oberon swallowed hard. He was really getting too old for this shit.

**************************************

EPILOGUE TWO: WON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME?

J'onn sighed. He had been trying to achieve deep meditation for hours, but the state of no-mind was eluding him. Days later, he was still too shaken.

Relieved as he was by the news about Scott, he still felt troubled. After all, he would had never done something like that under normal circumstances. Yet it had happened, and he still felt uncomfortable thinking about her.

He hadn't known whether to feel loss or relief when she had been called away the next day.

He wondered how much she already knew.

Only a telepath like him could fully experience the whole extent of a mindlink, after all. He had felt it all, every instant, every nuance, as if it had been his own flesh. In Mars, only lifemates could ever share that much.

He wondered if he should ever tell her.

**************************************

"But if everybody's watching it..." Ice complained, puzzled.

"We have better things to do," Fire said, pushing Ice along the corridor, away from the lounge. "Like shopping. It was payday yesterday and we still have money. That's completely unacceptable. I'll have Obey take us to the Mall."

"I don't understand. Just what is on that video?"

"Believe me, dear, there are things you're better off not knowing."

**************************************

The transport beam was accurate to the millimeter and he materialized right on his front lawn.

Scott Free smiled, walking towards the door. He could still remember Khan's outrage and L-Ron's beeps of disbelief as he had pointed out the loopholes in the Conglomerate's contract, too intricate for most AIs, even. Manga was still shouting when he left, but Mister Miracle was supposed to get out of anything, after all. If he wanted to be free, there was nothing that could truly keep a man trapped.

"Honey, I'm back," he called out.

"YOU DAMN BASTARD! DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? WHAT DATE?" Barda's voice thundered. "WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN? THERE'S A TON OF LAUNDRY TO DO! AND THE DIRTY DISHES HAVE BEEN PILING IN THE SINK!"

Mister Miracle smiled. It was good to be home.

THE END