Chapter 31: Bonus Interlude 1
ELSEWORLDS: A Pirate's Life For Me
"Arrrr hahaha!" The large man in pirate garb bellowed while waving his archaic-looking pistol about frantically, and, so far as the eye could see, uselessly. Then he pulled one of the other four pistols across his chest, shot a beam, and a wide area around the command deck turned into a blazing inferno.
Hydrogen, a corner of Batman's mind supplied. One of the pistols transmutes elements, one freeze ray, one heat ray, one sonic.
"Oh, the humanity." Buccaneer said. "Or Martianity? Either way, I doubt the Manhunter is coming back soon."
He was dressed in stereotypical garb, a loose puffed shirt, a dark vest, over it a sash and a belt and bandoleer for his sword and guns. A large coat- today's was bright red but he'd seen black, brown and green velvet- and a tricorn hat completing the effect. The face was hidden by a gold skull mask, from which a fake beard hung. A red bandanna peeked from beneath the hat, and several almost certainly fake braids.
He threw a pair of batarangs in hopes of disarming the man. They connected solidly, but his grip was unaffected. Super-strength for sure then. It was in his file.
"Superman." he muttered in his comm-unit.
"There are thousands of people in the path of these floodwaters, I can't possibly make it for at least ten minutes. Hold him there!"
Flash raced circles around the flailing pirate, his arms blurred, fists striking like jackhammers hundreds of times a second, until a chance blow sent him flying.
"Aye, ye've a scrapper's heart, Speedy. But no sense of hospitality. You give such rough treatment to everyone who swings by asking for a cup o' data?"
Accepting there was nothing he could at the moment but pepper the pirate with potentially-lethal explosives, Batman focused on what was really important, the ZIP drive plugged into the Watchtower's main command console. He launched a grapnel into the ceiling and began ascending as ice began forming around the fallen speedster. Without pulling out the freeze ray.
"J'onn, get Flash out of there. Wonder Woman, pin him down for Lantern and Hawkgirl."
A golden rope whipped about and around Buccaneer's arm. He looked down.
"I'm sure you hear this a lot, but the thought of getting tied up by you is amazingly hot." He cocked his head. "Oh, Lasso of Truth. I swear I'm not normally this forward, and I don't usually hit women." He utterly ignored Hawkgirl's swooping mace strike and snapped his arm up, yanking Wonder Woman to him. "But here I must make an exception." He belted her, sending her flying into a wall, then ripped the Lasso off and threw it far away.
"Naughty, naughty, Batman." He felt a rush of cold and his cape froze to the floor. The console was barely two feet out of his reach, the display taunting him.
DOWNLOAD 87% COMPLETE
He turned his head, thanking that he could do that now, and saw a blue glow in the eye sockets of the skull mask. Some kind of cold vision?
Suddenly the pirate-themed villain was caught in green bubble. "I think you've done quite enough." said the Green Lantern.
Batman tried to hit his cape release, but nothing happened. He drew a sharp-edge batarang and began chipping at the ice. Explosives would only harm him so close.
Inside the bubble, Buccaneer tried something no one could see. "Well, I guess this answers a long-running curiosity of mine. Yellow light does nothing to you. Oh well." Then he punched the bubble hard enough to crack half its surface. Cracks that began filling in almost immediately as the Lantern focused his will, then widened with a second hit.
DOWNLOAD 93% COMPLETE
"Hraaagh!" Hawkgirl's energized mace smashed Batman's frozen cape to splinters. Wasting no time on thanks he lunged for the console, his hand shooting out-
Only to impact on a red-coated back.
DOWNLOAD 97% COMPLETE
"Don't get mad, Lantern, it makes your constructs brittle. Much the same as fear. Did Kilowog never teach you that, poozer?" He twisted a little to block Batman's attempt to get around him and at the drive.
"How do you know Kilowog?"
"Oh, man of mystery, me."
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE
The pirate blurred as he seized the drive and appeared before their teleporter.
"Well, I know when I'm not wanted. Welcome the coming and speed the parting guest. Good day to you all."
Hawkgirl swooped down like her namesake, and he neatly sidestepped her, fingers blurring over the control panel.
HAWKGIRL RECOGNIZED
The pirate yanked her out and tossed her aside as the teleporter charged up, stepping into the booth just before the beam engaged.
A less controlled man might have lashed out. But Bruce Wayne had been through a lot, even as a child, and his rage was a terribly cold thing.
"Let's tend to our wounded, and get our intelligence assets online. I want him found."
"Superman here, crisis averted, and I'm on my way."
=======================================================
HYPERADVANCED SUBMERSIBLE WHYDAH: SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA
I pitched over into my chair with a groan, my hand groping for the switch that would bathe me in the hyperstellar radiation that served me as food, drink and occasionally sleep all in one. Ahhh, much better.
I'm still paying Lex back for that generator, something today's job will go a long way towards. I wanted to tell him to get stuffed after the way he tried to hold it over my head, but in this business, a man's word is everything.
I spend a few more minutes soaking in those magnificent, rejuvenating rays before reaching for the intercom.
"Calcs, get in touch with Amanda Waller, please, and tell her I intel on the Justice League I'd be willing to trade for." Information may want to be free, but I have no objection to getting paid three or four times for one slice of it.
"Awesome, gonna need you to sign off on some operations."
I glared at the stack in my in-box, wishing I were like Superman and could literally set it on fire with a look. Turns out, there's tons of paperwork involved in running a huge multinational organization like the Cutthroats, even and perhaps especially an illegal one. And this is only what it's like after I got a staff that could run the day-to-day operations smoothly and leave only the important and unusual things to me.
"And 'tis it 'tis a glorious thing, to be a Pirate King." I mutter sardonically.
Oh well, if Superman can read through and answer a year's worth of fan-mail in one weekend, I really have no excuse, do I?
Three governors, eighteen congressman and a dictator need their programming re-upped. That's fine, we have it down to an art by now. Atlantean guards snooping around Tortuga-Underseas, guess we should expect a visit from Aquaman soon. Seventy-eight petitions by various individuals to be lab rats in one or more superpower-granting trials, with attached work histories and psych profiles. I reject thirty-one, and I'd be pickier but we can always use more metas. And, I remind myself, I need a new burner base in a hurry for when the League inevitably tracks me down for a grudge match, I don't have anything at the moment I'm willing to toss away. What a world, even my victories generate paperwork.
I miss the days of simple supervillainy.
And believe me, I never thought I'd say that. Was pretty miserable at the time, but also kind of fun.
Ah, heroes, villains, there's one way we're all like pirates. We're flashy individualists facing the twilight of our era.
In historical piracy, the golden days ended with the wars of Spanish, Austrian and Dutch Secession, when the various European powers found themselves with ships and men to spare to police the new world. The days of the superhero will likewise be closed by governments turning the weight of civilization against us, a process I've helped whenever possible.
And no, it won't be government sponsored teams like Checkmate, the Suicide Squad or *snicker* the "Force of July." It will be quiet, slow.
In the Golden Age of Superheros, not the comics era, people were unique. Accidents granting powers, one-off alien survivors (though the Martian and Kryptonian species are getting mroe crowded all the time) and such. But our time was ending from the moment someone hit on a safe, repeatable process for granting powers.
The villain who will have ultimately ended the Justice League, believe it or, is Black freaking Manta, who opened the floodgates with his process for making humans amphibious. One I've had applied to all my employees, as it greatly simplifies hiding in the largest unexplored wilderness in the world. And there have been others over time. Velocity 9 was an atrocious failure by the Russians, but while it worked it got results. Shame about the addiction and horrific death, but who knows where the process will go in thirty years?
Slowly, over time, these will spread and the world shall be truly remade. And as the saying goes, when everyone is super...
And I'm honestly okay with that. I mean, it's not going to effect me tremendously, and I may yet reap some, ah, 'Prideful' benefits. But why am I accelerating this process? Because in the age of superheroes, the safety of our homeworld rests on the backs of the same hundred or so people. Alien invasion? Call the Justice League. Asteroid headed for Earth? Better hope Superman or one of the Green Lanterns is in the neighborhood. Disaster relief, war with a parallel earth, etc. etc.
Society cannot exist on the backs of a handful of champions, not since the Bronze Age at least.
Enter me, a pirate ironically fighting for civilization, breaking whatever laws and shaking hands with whatever devils I need to, for the species.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone