"TECHNOPHOBIA - PART TWO"

Issue #279

Lorraine Reilly was kidnapped when she was a high school student, really more a girl than a woman. Her father was a United States senator, but the kidnapping was only partially motivated by politics. A super-powered thug called Multiplex abducted her under orders from a businessman named Martin Hewitt. Hewitt sought political favors from Senator Walter Reilly, but also required a human guinea pig upon which to duplicate the powers of Firestorm in order to create an unstoppable metahuman enforcer of his own. The culmination of Hewitt's experiments transformed Lorraine Reilly into Firehawk. The traumas of abduction, incarceration, and experimentation, on the other hand, left far more sinister marks upon the psyche of the girl who would become a woman counted among the world's greatest superheroes in the ranks of the Justice League.

When the Technicality's cyborgs had invaded the Watchtower and Firehawk had become trapped in the chemical deluge produced by the biomechanical Aquaman prototype*, old phobias began an assault on Firehawk's mind every bit as savage as the chemical attack upon her body. In the cloud of flame-resistant goop, she was blinded, trapped in darkness as complete as the blackness of her holding cell in Hewitt's nuclear laboratory. She was smothered and unable to escape, recalling the terrifying helplessness of struggling against Multiplex's superhumanly strong grip. She was seized by panic, unable to breathe, fearing for her life in a way she had not since the day she had been strapped to a cold steel gurney and bombarded with nuclear energies fully capable of killing her.
(* Last issue - DWG)

Yet the Justice Leaguer Firehawk was not the same girl Lorraine Reilly had been. Firehawk was able to control her emotions and master her fear, while focusing her mental energies on purposeful action. She clawed at the gelatinous morass, not wildly but methodically, determined to pull herself to its edge if she were unable to burn through it. She had no idea if the Aquaman-model cyborg had filled the entire Watchtower with the semi-solid chemical, but Firehawk refused to allow herself to dwell on such thoughts. She thrust one hand up, then pulled her arm back to drag herself forward, and repeated with her opposite hand, over and over and over, fighting against her nightmarish captivity.

She had long since lost track of time when her left hand finally encountered the negligible resistance of air. Feeling a gratifying burst of adrenaline to accompany her relief at reaching the edge of her slime-like imprisonment, Firehawk swung her arm in a downward stroke that propelled the upper half of her torso out of the goop. She drew in what felt like the deepest breath of her life, and let the air out again in a ragged, exhausted cry as she tried to regain her bearings.

Firehawk had not known in what direction she was swimming through the chemical bubble. Now, adding to her confusion, she found the Watchtower in total darkness. At first she feared that the gelatinous material had somehow damaged her eyesight, but after a few moments blinking her eyes she realized she had emerged near the wall of the room. As she slid completely out of the flame-resistant glob, she rolled onto her back, and could see stars through a window near the ceiling. Her red hair was plastered to her cheeks and neck with sticky residue, and her breathing still came in gulping gasps as she lay on the floor. As her oxygen-deprived lungs readjusted to an air supply again, however, Firehawk realized that, in addition to laying in complete darkness, the Watchtower was unnaturally quiet. The subliminal hum of the environmental control machinery was noticeably absent. What happened while I was stuck in that jelly? Firehawk wondered. And how long was I stuck in there?

Momentarily, a sound did catch Firehawk's attention. An erratic combination of soft metallic taps was coming from nearby. Firehawk's legs shook slightly as she climbed to her feet, but she steeled herself and became steadier. She walked around the shapeless mound of aqua-colored chemical and approached the staccato noises, guided by her ears as only the barest trace of starlight reached her eyes.

Soon her ears told her that she was standing directly above the tapping. Concentrating intently, Firehawk focused on re-igniting her flaming aura. She had wiped much of the inhibitive goo from her body as she walked, but a few patches still clung to her tenaciously. Firehawk poured all of her energy into summoning forth her namesake, and was finally rewarded with a few flickering tongues of palest blue, radiating from the crown of her skull.

In the illumination provided by those small flames, Firehawk could see a figure lying on the floor. It was the Batman-styled cyborg, facedown, its limbs splayed at awkward angles and convulsing weakly. The impact of the blue steel spikes against the floor as the cyborg's arms rose and fell was producing the irregular tapping rhythm. Firehawk could also see the Aquaman cyborg nearby, its entire body alternately stiffening and relaxing as if having some form of seizure.

They're … suffering, Firehawk thought, certain despite having little technical knowledge of cyborg physiologies. Wonder Woman said they had been transformed involuntarily, and now it seems like …

From somewhere else in the Watchtower, muted by distance and intervening walls, came the sounds of energy weapons firing, and Firehawk was suddenly certain of something else: the siege of the Justice League's moonbase was not yet over.

Batman stared at the Technicality, who hovered in a metallic spherical cage a few feet overhead. The Technicality stared back, his intense green eyes never wavering from the Dark Knights own dark, hooded orbs. For several seconds the two men were as unmoving as stone, like two gargoyles in the dim and silent tomb the Watchtower had become.

Batman broke the tense stand-off first. He reached into his utility belt and flung his arm outward in one fluid motion. From his fingertips flew a trio of bat-winged darts, tipped with needles containing powerful sedatives.

The Technicality uttered a short laugh of disdain as the red metal prong on the crown of his apparatus fired. A jagged bolt of energy slashed through the air, arcing from dart to dart and seemingly erasing each one from existence as it made contact. "Antimatter," the Technicality explained in a bored tone of voice. "Simple enough to produce in laser-like form, but undeniably useful in dispatching any primitive materials you might try to wield against me, Batman."

Batman activated a spring-loaded compartment on his utility belt which shot a smoke pellet at the Watchtower floor. The chemical capsule burst against the plating and a dark, dense cloud quickly filled the air. Under its murky cover, Batman turned and ran down the corridor.

"I respect you Batman, and I sympathize with how hard this must be for you," the Technicality called out, as the diadem of his harness rotated and brought its copper prong to the fore. "You are nowhere near my level of intellectual achievement, but I know you are a scientist, and I know you rely on technology. It must pain you to be reduced to low-tech magician's tricks, especially against an opponent who still has access to a neural noise generator." With that the copper prong emitted a conical ray of pale yellow light which cut through the smoke and bathed Batman's dark silhouette as he reached the end of the corridor. Batman fell to the floor as if he had suddenly been turned to stone, one leg stretching behind him and one raised, his arms bent in a way that braced his impact with the floor awkwardly at best.

The Technicality floated in his apparatus, over Steel pinned down in his inert armor, toward the paralyzed Dark Knight. "Bio-electric energy signatures are quite remarkable," the Technicality explained. "Determining the optimal manner in which to interface nerve impulses with electrical equipment, as in my Cyborg League, led quite naturally to experimenting in ways to block those very impulses remotely. I'm sure if any of your muscles could respond to your brain's commands right now you'd agree."

Kyle Rayner rolled the twitching Flash cyborg off his chest with a desperate exertion. The man-machine had fallen on top of him at the same time that the lights in the hangar had gone out. The cyborg was taller and bulkier than Wally West, and the addition of metallic body parts had increased his weight significantly further, possibly doubling it. The Green Lantern had tried summoning a crane of emerald energy from his ring to hoist the cyborg, but the interference the ersatz speedster had generated still lingered within the Oan technology. Rayner had no choice but to strain against the hundreds of pounds of dead weight laying across his rib cage until finally, mercifully, the Flash cyborg fell aside. Green Lantern felt short of breath and dizzy.

"Wally? J'Onn?" Green Lantern called out in the blackness. His voice sounded weak and thin in his ears, which were still ringing. He trundled over onto his knees, closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath. After three pairs of deep inhalations and exhalations, Rayner still felt oxygen deprived. After six, he opened his eyes and looked around.

His eyes were drawn to the hangar bay doors, the only source of faint light from the starry field of space beyond. Rayner realized that the countermeasure forcefield was currently as inactive as the lights and the cyborg invaders. And the artificial atmosphere within the hangar was floating away across the surface of the moon. He was running out of air.

Firehawk moved slowly through the observation room within her field of pale blue firelight. She avoided falling into the hole that had been left behind when a massive force well drove Wonder Woman through the floor. She stepped lightly over fragments of the walls and other pieces of debris knocked loose as collateral damage during the skirmish between Superman and his cyborg counterpart. Finally she came upon the Man of Steel and his man-machine opponent.

Both men seemed close to breathing their last, laying on the floor intertwined in an eerily intimate embrace. At the time the electromagnetic pulse had blasted through the room, the cyborg had wound both arms around Superman's neck and completed the headlock by bonding his circuit-laden forearms together. The fused metal cradled Superman's sweating, haggard face, as the kryptonite that had been grafted beneath the skin of the cyborg's hands cast a sickly green glow.

Firehawk tried to pull Superman free from the arms of the cyborg, but the grip of the heavy, lifeless limbs was still strong. Superman groaned through parted lips that barely moved, struggling to form words. Ultimately he whispered, "Burn through it."

"But ... but you're so weak," she objected. "I could hurt you, too."

Superman opened his eyes with great effort, and looked into Firehawk's. "Don't be nervous," he rasped.

Firehawk nodded and placed her fingertips on the seam where the cyborg's arms had become mechanically interlocked. She unleashed a stream of heat which was absorbed by the metal with seemingly no effect. She held her breath as she increased the intensity of the energies she produced, and Superman gritted his teeth in obvious pain. The temperature of the waves emanating from Firehawk's fingertips rose higher and higher until the complex locks between the cyborg's forearms finally tore apart. The cyborg's arms parted, revealing Superman's blistered neck and chest.

Quickly Firehawk put her arms around Superman's chest and dragged him away from the cyborg and out of the radius of effect of the kryptonite. She prayed fervently that his powers would return and he would heal from the burns, in time to stop whatever was still firing its weapons beneath them in the Watchtower.

If he didn't ... Firehawk realized it would fall on her to defend the Justice League. As she thought it, she knew that she could not hide behind Superman, or any of her fellow heroes. She could not even wait for the Last Son of Krypton to fully recover. The Watchtower was under attack now, and Firehawk would meet the attack head on. She laid Superman down gently, then floated on wings of atomic fire down through the ragged hole in the floor.

"I'm going to narrow the magnitude of the neural noise, ever so slightly," the Technicality announced. The cone of pale yellow light beaming from the tip of the copper prong showed no signs of change, but Batman's head gave a sudden jerk. He had fallen to the floor face down when overcome by paralysis; now his head was twisted to the side to stare balefully at his enemy.

"That's better," the Technicality leered. "It is impossible to download human memories while simultaneously inhibiting the neural activity in the head. Additionally, it is significantly less satisfying to do so to you, Batman, without making you fully aware of it."

The prongs that encircled the Technicality's head rotated once again. The copper beacon, still radiating neural noise, was shifted to the left, and the dark green prong angled forward from right of center. A needle of blue light shot from the dark green prong and lanced toward Batman's head. Batman's jawline spasmed as the beam connected him to the Technicality's floating apparatus.

"I knew it would end like this, Batman," the Technicality assured his paralyzed foe. "You, out of all the Justice League, might evade my cyborgs or find a way to render them inoperative. But in the end I would face you myself, and the greatest intellect in the Justice League would be no match for the greatest intellect humanity could ever produce. As soon as I have downloaded your useful memories, your recollections of alien worlds and magic dimensions that I have never had the chance to experience and study myself, I will do you the honor of killing you myself. The rest of the Justice League I will leave to their mortal fates here on the moon, but you will die by my hand before I take my leave."

"In your sick, deluded dreams," Firehawk retorted as she rounded the corner of the corridor. Calescent flames leapt from her fists and snaked towards the Technicality.

With the speed of thought, the Technicality's diadem rotated and brought its platinum prong to the fore. A tiny bubble of white light floated from the tip of the prong, drawing all of the flames into itself before vanishing into itself.

"Witless girl!" the Technicality sneered. "All of the powers of the entire Justice League cannot touch a man who commands anti-matter and creates defensive wormholes!" His apparatus began to float towards Firehawk, who slowly and disbelievingly tried to back away.

"Don't try to run, girl," the Technicality continued. "Your death will be quick and painless. I simply need to decide whether to inundate you with antimatter, or collapse you into a wormhole."

"Please ... no ...," Firehawk begged in a trembling voice. "Don't!"

"I had planned to render Batman to nothingness using my antimatter laser," the Technicality continued to explain, impervious to Firehawk's pleading, "but I am admittedly curious as to how your body's fiery energies would react to the process. Perhaps the wormhole will be sufficient for Batman. Both methods of execution require a final test after HUUURRRK --"

The Technicality's eyes squeezed shut as his face contorted in agony. He slumped in the curved cage of his floating harness, which clattered to the corridor floor as it was devoid of a conscious mind to animate it.

Behind the Technicality stood John Henry Irons, clad only in a pair of black boxer briefs. Irons held the handle of his steel mallet in his right hand, and pulled the head of the hammer from between the legs of the Technicality. "I thought that guy would never shut up," Irons sighed.

"Are you all right?" Firehawk asked.

"Yeah," Irons assured her. "Took me a little longer than I expected to work the manual release for my armor, but I got out in one piece. You good?"

"I am," Firehawk nodded.

"You played along with this loser pretty good, kid," Irons told her. "Kept him focused on you while I came up behind him, made sure he never saw it coming."

"Thanks," Firehawk replied.

"You're a good team player. The League's lucky to have you," Irons continued.

"You're damn right you are," Firehawk agreed.

"So fortunately, Kyle found Wally and even though Wally's leg was too badly injured for him to run, he could still use his arms to create enough superspeed pressure to draw the artificial atmosphere into the Watchtower instead of letting it float out the hangar," Firehawk said. "That bought us enough time for Superman to recover from the kryptonite poisoning and make some emergency repairs."

"And the cyborgs?" Wonder Woman asked. She was lying in a bed in the Watchtower infirmary, with Firehawk seated beside her. Wonder Woman's face and shoulders were bruised and one arm was immobilized in bandages against her stomach, but she still held herself with the poised bearing of an Amazon princess.

"Teleported directly to Metropolis General," Firehawk answered. "Some techs from S.T.A.R. labs met up with the doctors there. They were all in critical condition, and needed marathon surgery to detach them from the cybernetics, but as far as I know they're all hanging in there."

"What of the Technicality?" Wonder Woman inquired.

"Once his ring started working again, Kyle bubbled him up. The Technicality was still unconscious. Kyle flew him to Belle Reve prison and they put him in a very, very low tech cell," Firehawk explained.

"Then all that is left is the healing," Wonder Woman declared. Firehawk nodded, then looked across the room, where J'Onn J'Onzz lay within an oxygen tent, his Martian physiognomy slowly recovering from the hideous burns his cyborg counterpart had inflicted.

"The League needs you more than ever, Lorraine," Wonder Woman said, bringing Firehawk's attention back. "With myself and J'Onn temporarily incapacitated, our enemies may see this as an opportune time to strike. You must be ready."

"Don't worry," Firehawk assured her. "I will be."

Two letters for this letters column folks! (And since it's been literally years since my last issue, that shouldn't be too surprising!)

After finishing your issues of the Justice League (and your pleas for letters), I thought I would let you know that I have enjoyed them and look forward to them continuing.

You see, folks? It's just that easy! Every writer here at FDC loves to get e-mail from YOU the reader - even if your e-mail is only ONE SENTENCE LONG! Granted, that's a damn fine sentence Lew constructed, complete with a stable, non-dangling participle, but the fact remains, if he can do it, you can do it! So sharpen those cyberpencils and send some feedback thisaway!

Secondly, here's a slightly longer missive from Bren Crow:

To JOYFUL LETTERS of ACCOLADES:

Thanks, Lew and Bren. Glad you guys have been enjoying my take on the League. Hope this issue lived up to your standards as well. Unfortunately, that leads me to some slightly sad news …

NEXT ISSUE: Honestly, folks, the next issue of Justice League of America here at FauxDC will NOT be written by yours truly. I took a long hiatus from fanfic and am only now coming back to it full-force, and I can't really keep up with all the titles I had signed on to before my break. JLA has always been a challenge, given its large and powerful cast - a rewarding challenge, which I always had fun with, but a challenge nonetheless, so when I had to decide which titles to keep and which titles to let go, JLA made the "let it go" list.

Have I told all the JLA stories that I wanted to tell? Not even close. Nor did I want to end my run with a crotch-shot joke. Originally Steel-taking-down-the-Technicality was going to be one of many moments in a long, epic run, but here is where it ends up ending. I just acknowledge that telling really good JLA stories takes time, time which I simply don't have. Perhaps in the future I'll write some more JLA, which may appear on the FDC site as issues of Showcase, or as mini-series … or, who knows, maybe I'll even take another turn as writer on the regular series somewhere down the road. Stay tuned.

But in any case, clearly this is not the end of Justice League of America at FauxDC. Someone else will be taking over the reins of chronicling the adventures of the world's greatest super-heroes. Maybe even … you!!! If you're interested in applying for the job, check out the How to Join section of the website and drop a note to the editors.

Thanks for reading - it's been a blast.

DWG - 1/4/07