[cover shows several figures silhouetted by the light of an
intense energy beam that is being fired into darkness.]

.|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED presents ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #124
--X------------------------------------------------------------------------
'|` /|(`| | City of Night Part 5 of 6 - Between the Candle and the Star
/-|.)|-| copyright 2020 by Dave Van Domelen
___________________________________________________________________________

ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL

CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS ASSIGNMENT
-------- --------- ------ ----------
Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control AMERICA
"JakZak" Taylor
Meteor Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed AMERICA
Poniente Esmeralda Colina Wind Mage AMERICA
Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic CANADA
Centurion Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration MEXICO
Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts MEXICO
Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body DIPLOMATIC
Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis DIPLOMATIC
Essay Sara Ana Henderson Gadgeteer VENUS
Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage VENUS
Beacon George Sylvester Living Light VENUS
Geode Unknown Living Crystal VENUS
Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control TRANSIT
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[January 17, 2027 - Eurasian Union Regional Assembly, Prague]

"In any case," Solar Max resumed, his summing up, "we're no closer to
getting into Berlin. Does anyone else have any ideas?"
"I may," replied a voice from the doorway.
Filling the doorway was the enormous frame of a muscular man with a
bull's head, dressed in a very well-tailored dark blue suit that did
absolutely nothing to help him blend in with normal humanity.
"What are you...scratch that," Gerhard Hesse of STRAFE frowned, "HOW are
you here, in this secure location?"
Q'Nos, the original Minotaur against whom all others are pale
imitations, chuckled. It was a guttural sound that ended on a dismissive
snort. "Agent Hesse, I spent millennia after my fall from divinity as an
errand boy for the gods. Just accept that I learned how to go where I need
to during that time, and let us return to the rather more urgent matter that
is on my doorstep."
"Has Sable expanded her reach beyond the Berlin dome?" Arc asked,
untensing very slightly. She and many others would be having some long and
pointed discussions about site security, but LATER.
"Not that I am aware of, I simply consider my doorstep to be rather
larger than you might find comfortable. The perspective of a very long life
spent among the higher powers," Q'Nos shrugged, and the talent of his tailor
was evident in how the suit didn't even strain at the movement of those
massive shoulders. Even without exerting the fragment of semi-divine power
left to him after his loss in the wars of the gods, Q'Nos was one of the
physically strongest people on the planet. "Still, I am aware my presence is
something of a distraction, and only wished to make an appearance to impress
upon you all the seriousness with which I take this matter. I will leave you
my vizier, Simon Smith, to continue the discussions."
The minotaur stepped aside, revealing a slender old man in an equally
well-tailored gray suit. Had he been standing there the entire time, and
Q'Nos's presence distracted all eyes from him? Or had he only appeared at
that moment? None could say for sure, but the mystics in the room suspected
the latter. And then, between blinks of an eye, the minotaur was no longer
present.
"Mr. Smith...or would you prefer Agent Rush?" Gerhard Hesse asked, in an
attempt to cover the awkwardness of Q'Nos coming and going with such ease.
"Please, I've been Simon Smith for a lifetime now, the part of me that
was Bennett Rush is literally another person," Mr. Smith then turned to Solar
Max with a questioning look.
"Have a seat," Solar Max gestured for one of the spare chairs up against
the wall to be brought to the table, between Arc and Meteor, and his wife
obliged in an eyeblink of her own. The planning group had only just gotten
comfortable with the presence of Sadi Pasteur as Khadam's representative, but
Q'Nos was another matter entirely. A fallen god, who quite recently was
freed from a spacetime oubliette by Solar Max, and then went on to escape ASH
and build himself a kingdom in the chaotic turmoil of god-damaged Greece. At
least there were no representatives from the Muslim Confederation present,
they had recently fought a war against Q'Nos.
As for Smith, aka Bennett Rush, he was one of the rare superhuman
survivors of the Third Age, like the original Solar Max had been. He had
been the Lord of Living Light, Doublecross, but somehow he had been split off
from that power and stripped of his memories shortly before the events of
July 6, 1998. The intelligence agencies of all the world's nations were
intensely interested in knowing how any of that had happened, and how he'd
come to work for Q'Nos. Perhaps they'd be happy with the outcome of this
meeting, even if no one else at the table was.
"So, you have something to contribute?" Peregryn's mystically linked
computer image asked.
"Hopefully," Mr. Smith nodded. "Cards on the table: some of you may
already suspect this, but I discovered and studied one of the laboratories of
Iago Montessi, better known as Lord Ebon. The god who humbled me during the
Godmarket had a sense of humor, I think, not only stripping me of my photonic
powers and memories, but also dropping me in the neighborhood of Montessi's
old estate. So I definitely have some insights into what Lady Sable is up
to. I brought my theories to King Q'Nos, and he was able to fill in some of
the gaps based on his experiences both as a god and as another of the god-
humbled."
"Is Nyx involved?" Poniente asked. "She never got into the Godmarket,
but her fingerprints are all over the First Heroic Age if you know where to
look."
Smith frowned slightly. "It would be nice if that were the case, yes?
Nyx is a primal god, she draws her power from the idea of darkness rather
than depending on worship, that's part of why she stayed out of the Third
Age. But she wouldn't want one of her servants to get too uppity and risk
being displaced, so that would put a cap on Sable's ambitions. But no, I'm
actually familiar with Nyx from my old life as a government agent. My
photonic tech was derived from the Light Lance used by Beacon in the First
Age, and many of its aspects were built specifically to counter her power. I
can tell you that while the dome over Berlin is divine in nature, it's not
run by Nyx's power. If it were, I'd have simply thrown together a Light
Lance and mailed it to you with instructions...or just told you to find a
friendly Photonic. You have one of those, I believe...Mr. Sylvester?"
"So, assuming Sable ever was working for Nyx, she's got her own
apotheosis gambit now," Terrastar mused. "Do you have any insights regarding
her power source?"
"Mostly in the negative," Mr. Smith held his hands up apologetically.
"It's nothing Q'Nos or I recognize, which in turn suggests it is a divine
power that has probably not been active in this reality during either of our
lifetimes. A larger span for him than for me, of course. It could be a god
from another reality...perhaps yours, Polla Hectrix?"
Terrastar shook her head. "We killed all our gods long ago."
"How Klingon of you," Daniel Tang smirked. "What? I like old sci fi
flatvids." It had been difficult convincing Hesse that the young diviner
should be at the table, but the STRAFE agent eventually agreed that
divination worked better the more information one had to go on. It had been
almost as difficult convincing Tang to get involved, given his inexperience
and relative fragility.
"So, it narrows our problem down to 'No one we've ever heard of,
possibly from nowhere we've ever heard of,'" Solar Max sighed. "Which, I
suppose, does help some. But if this power is useful prior to having local
worshippers, doesn't that mean it's a primal divinity? And doesn't Nyx have
dibs on darkness?"
"Not really," Poniente interjected before Simon could answer. "The
bigger the concept, the easier it is for more entities to draw power from
it. My own power sources tend to be more primal than traditional...nature
spirits and the like. A wind elemental could be considered a very weak
primal god, a primal demigod perhaps, embodying part of the concept of wind."
"She's right," Pasteur added, in a clear tone of "I am about to one-up
you." "I've been digging into some of the oldest writings I can find about
the nature of gods and spirits, and one thing that keeps coming back to me is
the idea that gods started seeking worshippers because they were splitting
the conceptual energy too many ways. There were a bunch of Sun gods, a bunch
of storm gods, a bunch of death gods...too many primals latching onto a
single concept weakens them all. But a god who didn't want to get involved
in the market for believers might just satisfy themselves with the primal
power source, and lurk in the corners."
"And, while Sable may have found alliance with a primal god of
darkness," Smith nodded like a grandfather quietly approving of how clever
his grandchildren were being, "it's drawing on a sufficiently different
aspect of the overall darkness concept, distinct from Nyx. That, or it's not
a darkness power at all, but Sable is still 'digesting' it and is currently
limited to her old powers. Still, if it were a power from this reality, I
suspect Nyx would have come to blows with it by now, and someone in this room
would have heard about it."
"Yeah, gods are usually a real basket of crabs," Meteor nodded.
Oni looked at her with a confused expression.
"Oh, an old metaphor. You don't need to put a lid on a basket of crabs,
because any that try to climb out get pulled back in. No idea if crabs
really do that, but gods seem to. It's how we ended up stopping Rebus, after
all. Broke his concentration so he lit up like a beacon, the rest of the
godscape noticed the new player and immediately sucked him into the game.
[More or less what happened in Capstone #3 - Ed.] Too bad we can't get Sable
to fall for the same trick."
"There's alguien ya forgettin," Hotspur interjected. "Dark is still
dark, light is still light. Even if the Light Lance is keine Hilfe, who's to
say it doesn't just need tuning? While all the hoodoo-jin work the primal
god angle, maybe Mister Call Me Smith can figure out how to juice up a new
Light Lance with other techies? Ain't Nyx, still sombra."
"Good idea," Solar Max nodded. "We've tried light-based weapons, but
now that we have one of the world's foremost authorities on photonics is
here, maybe there's a nicely direct solution to just cutting through the dome
that no one has picked up on yet but all of you could find together.
Meanwhile, I think there's an angle worth exploring if this really is a
primal god from another reality. Time to put in a call to Rhode Island...."

On 10/11/21 1:33 PM, Dave Van Domelen wrote:
<snip>
> Filling the doorway was the enormous frame of a muscular man with a
> bull's head, dressed in a very well-tailored dark blue suit that did
> absolutely nothing to help him blend in with normal humanity.
> "What are you...scratch that," Gerhard Hesse of STRAFE frowned, "HOW are
> you here, in this secure location?"
> Q'Nos, the original Minotaur against whom all others are pale
> imitations, chuckled.

Holy shit.

> Just accept that I learned how to go where I need
> to during that time, and let us return to the rather more urgent matter that
> is on my doorstep."
> "Has Sable expanded her reach beyond the Berlin dome?" Arc asked,
> untensing very slightly. She and many others would be having some long and
> pointed discussions about site security, but LATER.
> "Not that I am aware of, I simply consider my doorstep to be rather
> larger than you might find comfortable.

Heeheehee

> Q'Nos shrugged, and the talent of his tailor
> was evident in how the suit didn't even strain at the movement of those
> massive shoulders.

X3 Applause!

> But no, I'm
> actually familiar with Nyx from my old life as a government agent. My
> photonic tech was derived from the Light Lance used by Beacon in the First
> Age, and many of its aspects were built specifically to counter her power.

oooooh I see.

> Terrastar shook her head. "We killed all our gods long ago."
> "How Klingon of you," Daniel Tang smirked.

I've been thinking it. X3

> "She's right," Pasteur added, in a clear tone of "I am about to one-up
> you."

heeheehee

"I've been digging into some of the oldest writings I can find about
> the nature of gods and spirits, and one thing that keeps coming back to me is
> the idea that gods started seeking worshippers because they were splitting
> the conceptual energy too many ways.

Hmmmmm, I see.

> It's how we ended up stopping Rebus, after
> all. Broke his concentration so he lit up like a beacon, the rest of the
> godscape noticed the new player and immediately sucked him into the game.
> [More or less what happened in Capstone #3 - Ed.]

I think about that final scene, with the recitation of sinlessness, every so
often. Good and dramatic shit.

> "Good idea," Solar Max nodded. "We've tried light-based weapons, but
> now that we have one of the world's foremost authorities on photonics is
> here, maybe there's a nicely direct solution to just cutting through the dome
> that no one has picked up on yet but all of you could find together.

Hell yeah!

> Meanwhile, I think there's an angle worth exploring if this really is a
> primal god from another reality. Time to put in a call to Rhode Island...."

There we go. :D

> But I wasn't a complete monster
> yet, and I left my old friends' house alone. This is where Dragonfly and
> Ladyhawke lived during the Second Heroic Age, you see. And it's possible
> Dragonfly kept some pieces of useful technology related to Beacon, acquired
> in the service of improving his own weaponry."

Ohhhhhh nice nice nice. :D

> That was true enough, as Smith couldn't even pass all the way across the
> threshold of the portal.

leeeeeeeeean

> As the portal irised shut, Sarah took one last look at the stack of
> journals. Maybe once this was all over, JakZak would be interested in seeing
> what happened to the Dragonfly that he never met....

:> <3

> Then her eyes flicked over to Daniel
> himself, and he suddenly felt even colder. "You are interesting," she
> added.
> "Um, I try?" Daniel demurred.

Relatable

> "The others. Do you remember their names, or the name of your own god?"
> Contact asked. "All of your people have holes in their memories when it
> comes to names, but remember your own names and those of people with whom you
> escaped. Do you recall the name of your god?" Contact pressed.

GASP.

> It had taken hours of intense concentration, but oh yes, M'emba knew the
> name of her god. And she knew that while Terrastar felt her god was in
> danger, M'emba had more faith than Terrastar could ever imagine....

:D

> Daniel shook his head slightly. --Odin's high throne situation,
> Contact. My brain's not safe territory for a telepath, other than the very
> surface stuff like we're doing now. Sorry.-- The truth was more complicated
> than that, of course, but he was pretty sure Contact's lie-detecting skills
> wouldn't set off any alarms. Daniel devoted a lot of his power to hiding his
> true nature, but he had to make his telepathic blocks look like something he
> couldn't control.

Innnnnnnteresting. I totally forget what his deal is. X3

> While laser beams tend to be hard to see except in foggy or dusty
> conditions, the little extras Roger included on his ionized the air and
> created more of a cinematic "raygun" look.

Heeheehee. :3

> The front half was rather similar to Langridge's weapon, function having
> much to do with form. But the back end was a crystalline sphere in which was
> suspended a burnt out lasing element, with rainbow-hued lines of energy
> dancing about its surface. Looking more closely, the sphere was carefully
> engraged with various solar signs, from multiple mystic traditions.

oooooh ahhhhhh

> The silence stretched uncomfortably, before being broken by all three of
> their tablets chiming to notify them of incoming messages.
> "What the...?" Solar Max blinked. "I had mine on do not disturb."
> "I, also," Arc frowned, picking up the device.
> "Please let this not be from a god who has decided to involve himself
> and spare us the decision," Hesse also picked up his tablet, reluctantly.

That'd be hella creepy. X3

> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Whether she intended it or not, Lady Sable made Berlin a deathtrap. All
> deathtraps contain their own solution, it's what separates them from just
> killing someone and being done with it. There's always a reason: a who, a
> what, a why? Ask yourself: WHY BERLIN?

....awwwwww shit :D I know who this is!!

>
> DD

:D :D :D

> "There's a whole lot of other questions there, 'DD,' like how you knew
> to send this to us, HOW you sent it to us, who you are, why do we even bother
> securing these locations..." Hesse's voice slowly raised in alarm.

X3;;; Well!!

> Yeah, so that "finish the arc before August 2019" prediction was wildly
> optimistic.

X3; I know that one

I figured out the basic plot device years ago, but just having
> the heroes stumble across it blindly or having a convenient flash of
> inspiration didn't really grab me. Finally, I realized someone who might get
> them on a more useful track, leading to the final scene

Niiiiiiice :D

> In case you didn't figure it out, "DD" is Doctor Developer. His
> specific status in 2027 is not yet revealed, but I cleared this idea with
> Utilitarian in case it might conflict with any plans he had kicking around
> (e.g. he can't have an open relationship with ASH by early 2027, has to still
> be alive in some fashion or have a successor who would identify themselves as
> DD, etc.).

:3 <3

Drew "looking forward to the climax" Nilium