2015-06-18 - Future Imperfect - Get a Room!

Morning comes, in a brand new day. The sun isn't hot yet, with only false dawn lightening the sky, but sleeping in a car isn't something Kara's used to. It's uncomfortable, and the crunching noise coming from the back end has been getting into her dreams. It finally woke her, along with a chill wind coming through the broken window.

Kara Zor-El opens her eyes. Crap. She's still in the car which means this isnt some bad dream. She hears the crunching sound not only in her dram, but in real life, and sits up. "What the heck?" she says to herself as she looks in the direction of the noise.

Chewing on the back end of the car is the BIGGEST bug Kara has ever seen on Earth! It's at least two feet long and must weight easily forty pounds! It has a section of the trunk chewed right through and is apparently a metal-eater, because it doesn't really react to seeing the fleshy sit up and make noise.

There are sounds of other bugs around, but they seem to be flying and not eating the car. It's vaguely pretty in a horrible sort of way, with rainbow/white eyes and grey stripes fading into an off orange down its abdomen.

Kara Zor-El gahs! Before scrambling into the front of the car. "Okay, driving away driving away driving away, forest was a bad idea, driving away." she says to herself as she quickly hotwires the car again and attemtps to start it off. Becaue if it does start she is so ....

You guessed it. Driving away.

The car starts like a car should, with actual noise and immediate motion. Kara is shortly driving in her trusty Plymouth Reliant, which proves it's worth its name at least once more. The best car in the entire world, bar none. The bug is up into the sky when its dinner gets up and moves, making some kind of noise which sounds surprised to Kara. But she might just be anthromorphising. It's a bug.

The lightening sky shows an odd storm forming. No clouds to speak of, but lightning on the horizon anyway. And the air does feel somehow more heavy. The JLA beacon shouldn't be TOO far to drive, she could reach it in perhaps an hour.

Kara Zor-El keeps driving the car towards the coordinates of the JLA beacon, while looking up at the sky. "Okay so.... the JLA's beacon is here, so I'm on Earth, but what the heck happened to it? Or maybe whatever brought me here also brought the JLA building here? I mean... I'm pretty sure that Earth doesnt have 40 pound metal-eating bugs. No... that's stupid, Kara."

The world takes that moment to prove that it has a sense of irony at that moment, and that 40 pound bugs are the least of her worries, as the bug's daddy comes in to inspect what scared the little one. A long-bodied bug big enough to ride with ease is suddenly hovering in Kara's view, inspecting the car as it drives. Right in front of her, forcing her to either turn sharply or ram it.

Lightning cracks across the sky in a display of electrical power worthy of the name, going fully from horizon to horizon. There is a smell of ozone in the air.

Kara Zor-El chooses to turn sharply, rather than ram the bug. She saw that Starship Troopers movie that Dedrick begged her to watch and she was not going to have any of it! She steps on the gas to try to get to the JLA signal beacon.

The bugs seem to be gathering and getting more prevalent. It's probably the car. But they can't keep up with the mighty speed of a ...normal sedan. Kara leaves them behind soon, with the mighty lightning making her flight seem like a scene from a heavy metal music video. Or a horror movie.

With lightning crashing around, Kara pulls up to the first and only building she's seen in all this time. It looks like the remains of the Hall of Justice. Built with Martian technology, it seems to have been...less destroyed by time, but even it has begun to fall. The lightning striking its tower is absorbed into the beacon's battery, which sends out waves to the world. The message: come here. We will help you.

With a few walls missing, and no roof, the Hall offers less safety than it once did. But it is the best thing Kara has found so far.

Kara Zor-El drives the car into the Hall of Justice, in case there were more metal-eating bugs out there, and gets out of the car, looking around. "Okay..." she says to herself. When she was little, sometimes her dad would take her hiking to places like the crystal mountains or the fire cliffs, because 'it builds character.' She sort of wished she paid more attention to those trips now. "Okay... think... what do you need in a survival situation. Shelter..." She looks around. "Sort of check, I guess?" She looks around. "Water?" She pauses, looking at the car. "The water in the radiator probably will be fine. Sooooo sorta check?" She pulls the first aid kit from the car. "First aid kit..." She thinks. "Weapons and food. Okay... guess I should start looking for those." She first thinks.. the trunk maybe? Then notices most of the trunk is eaten and there's a big hole in the bottom of it. So she starts to look around the remains of the Hall of Justice.

Normally she wouldnt worry about food, but under this red sun, she's actually feeling hungry- something she hadnt felt in the past year plus.

The Hall of Justice has a LOT of space to cover. It was a big place, and luckily the security systems no longer exist. Eaten by bugs or worn down by the wind, the once great building had:

High Technology Clean Lab #2 (H.T.C.L. 2): The most advanced Laboratory of its kind in North America.

The Kitchen: The League's combat training room

Auxiliary Robotics Lab

Main Conference/Meeting Room

The Trophy Room: Features weapons used by villains and heroes (all of which were dismantled and made useless by Batman).

Nuclear Lab

Storage Rooms 1-12

Slideways Control Bay: Teleportation room that connects to the Justice League Satellite.

Gift Shop

The Morgue

The clean lab no longer exists. The Kitchen, gone. The meeting room surprisingly is fairly intact, having been built to handle fits of temper by the world's greatest heroes who were all too human sometimes. The trophy room is...locked, somehow. Even now. The rest are not recognizeable in any way save for memories.

Kara Zor-El heads off exploring the dilapidated Hall, coming across the locked door to the Trophy Room first. "Well.... I guess if I need weapons, probably could find one in there, since I'll probably have to be hunting or fishing if I want to eat. Plus there might be other materials for the car or... maybe I could rig something together?" She pauses. "Annnnd I'm talking to myself." she says as she starts checking out the door. She takes a step back and tries to punch it open, unsure of how much superstrength she still has, if anything.

The door to the Justice League Trophy Room holds against Kara's strength. Designed to slow down or stop people on Bizarro's level, it has held against everything thrown at it for thousands of years. Her lessened strength doesn't even dent it. It does ripple though, giving Kara a hint. In order for it to have lasted this long, advanced science must have been used to warp it outside of proper space somehow. And advanced science is Kara's playground.

Kara Zor-El pauses. "okay. That didnt work." she says, shaking her hand. "Soooo let's try being intelligent instead, Kara." she says, as she cracks her knuckles a bit before removing the side panel and taking out her phone again. "Okay so that ripple effect might be from some sort of phased shift outside of normal space, which would explain why everything else eroded around it while it still looks just.... peachy." She hooks up the phone to the panel, since she did design it to be able to talk to other systems so she wouldnt need a Titans communicator. "So all I need to do now is get my phone to talk to the panel to... phase shift it back in place ... and I'm again talking to myself.... and..."

Kara Zor-El pushes some buttons to program something in the phone to send a signal to the panel.

And oddly having a reasonable facsimile of a League signal with a high designated rank connecting to the systems inside the room actually has an effect. The entire room seems to flex, then the shimmering effect fades away with an odd crunching noise that seems somehow incongruous. Then the door unlatches, waiting for someone to come inside.

Kara Zor-El opens the door and head in. She doesnt know how far in the future she is... assuming this is the future and not some other planet... but if it's the future, it's pretty surprising that there's still power in this room.

The objects inside are completely free of dust. Nearly everything is here; the weapons taken from nearly every villain the Justice League ever beat. And they are all depowered by the wonderous paranoia of the Batman and whomever took over for him in the passage of time. So many things, so very deadly, and none of them are actually functional.

But to someone desperate, and creative...they could be parts of something new. It's too bad none of them are food, though.

And that strange crunching noise happens again, sounding like it's coming from outside. Kara has heard that in her dreams.

http://www.boosterrific.com/pics/comics/panels/jus207_17.jpg

The tropies all have plaques, identifying them for the viewer. The Hammer of Zon-Dar, a megalomaniac whose magical hammer was the equal of Mjolnir, depowered with the help of Ming the Magnificent. Now just a hammer. The remote control of Control Freak, who took over the world for a short time. Left basically as-is because nobody really got it to do anything after his death. Freeze rays a-plenty, from the greats and the lesser ice villains. There were quite a few over the years.

A nuclear powered laser cannon with no battery and the crystal removed. Artificial kryptonite, a supply of amnesium, a crystal ball, a mother box, a dragon statue, a green lantern power battery, a helmet that allows telekinesis with lower animals, and above it all an American flag hanging from a spear. Because for all they were multi-world, the Justice League still had an appreciation for the country they were founded in.

Kara Zor-El looks through the weaponry and trophies. She picks up the hammer. Magical or not, a weapon's a weapon. She looks at Control Freak's remote. "Well..... I guess I could use it for circuitry maybe. Pretty sure there's no longer any internet or entertainment industry. Kara actually takes her cape off to use as a makeshift 'sack' as she also puts a couple of the freeze rays in there - hey maybe she'd be able to cobble something together. Then.... to the real important stuff.

Well... the laser canon was totally unusable without a power source OR focusing crystal. She looked at the amnesium.... but couldnt remember what it was for, so went to check out the crystal ball, tapping it lightly. She really never 'got' magic.

In the far corner of the room are two tropies that are kept separate. They are no more enshrined than any others, but they are obviously, blatantly noteworthy. A monocle and...a small triangular piece of metal with strange markings on it. Below them, their plaques read: Lex Luthor's Monocle, and...Brainiac.

In the far corner of the room are two tropies that are kept separate. They are no more enshrined than any others, but they are obviously, blatantly noteworthy. A monocle and...a small triangular piece of metal with strange markings on it. Below them, their plaques read: Lex Luthor's Monocle, and...Brainiac's Weapon. No further explanation. Just 'his weapon'.

Kara Zor-El takes a step away from the artificial Kryptonite. She never understood why it didnt affect her when Clayface tried to use artificial kryptonite on her, but she wasnt taking any chances. Especially since artificial red kryptonite did seem to work just fine. She then checked out the helmet. "Okay. This could be useful." and puts it on her head before looking at the flag. She removes the flag from the spear, and actually rolls it up and puts it in the 'sack' then takes the spear. "Now this will be usefu-"

She stops talking to herself mid-sentence when she sees the word Brainiac. She walks over. Was Brainiac actually going to come to Earth between when she was there and this future time? She steadies her hand, which began shaking a bit. She remembered the thing called Brainiac, when it took Kandor, along with her friend Thara and Thara's father, Ak-Var. Great.... something else to make her nervous if she EVER got back to her own time. She took the monocle though. Basic survival - if you want to start a fire, don't have heat vision or a lighter.... a good way is by focusing a lens on something flamable. In her dimensional pocket it went.

And she left Brainiac's weapon the hell alone, heading out with her sack of goodies and spear.

And the crunching noise seems a little louder outside the room. Which, being the only real structure Kara knows about, might be her new bedroom and house. Creepy as it may be. But when she gets a view, she finds that her car is being eaten by her little buggy friend, and may not be exactly functional anymore without a hood and some of the engine. And the passenger door. Front bumper..

Kara Zor-El runs out and sees the car being eaten. AGAIN. "HEY! STOP THAT!" Kara yells at the big icky bug, before taking the spear and throwing it..

SPLUT!

30 minutes later...

Kara sits by the remnants of a once-useful vehicle, taking a sip of radiator water before taking a leg from the roast bug on the spit she has over the fire she made with the monocle and a book that she found called 'Booster Gold - The Life, The Legend, The Man' as tinder. Some sort of autobiography that apparently never sold well. There were a bunch of them still in the Trophy room. She takes a bite of her roast bug leg. Then shrugs. "Okay... actually that isnt half bad."