Booster Gold #18 - Many Happy Returns (★Society, Part XI)

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Author: ScarecrowSid

Book: Booster Gold

Arc: ★Society

Set: 20

★ Now

    Booster Gold was in the throws of battle. It was truly an inspiring sight, something to rally the masses. Or, rather, it would have been if he was winning.

    Instead, Booster found himself in a near stalemate with his axe-wielding foe. The man’s armor, though archaic in its appearance, had the flexible rigor future technology. He had shrugged off no less than five strikes from Booster’s beam gauntlets, smiling all the while. And then there was that axe.

    Whatever energies coursed through the blade, they were scoring deep on Booster’s force field. A general defense was useless against such a weapon, and Skeets had been forced to run predictions on the man’s every swing. A concentrated field left him open to debris and sneak attacks, but it held the weapon at bay.

    “Above,” Skeets chirped, his tone all too casual for such an intense moment. Booster’s display flashed a warning as he jumped back, his shield parrying the axe’s edge. It dug into the earth, leaving a dark, deep scar. “Good dodge, Michael!”

    “Michael?” Booster asked, narrowly avoiding another strike, then kicking the axe-man away with a lucky heel. “What happened to ‘Sir?’”

    “I’m coaching you, sir,” Skeets replied. You require-- on your left.”

    A split second was all Booster had to react, the excited chirping and blinking warning served as sufficient warning for all but the slightest graze across his arm. It didn’t hurt, not in the way you would expect an axe through the arm to hurt. There wasn’t a searing pain, it just stung. As if his arm had gone limp and numb. Booster frowned down at it, and the fingers spasmed of their own accord.

    That was new. Skidding back from second and third strikes, both blocked successfully despite his handicap, Booster glared at the hapless arm. It really was starting to be damned inconvenient when his shields failed to protect him. He might as well wander into a fight naked, if they kept failing like this.

    At least that would draw the eye, he thought. Nothing quite like a naked man flying through the sky to distract the enemy. I would certainly be famous…

    He couldn’t help smirking at the thought as he hopped back, then soared to a safe distance. The crater around them was beginning to develop small valleys of its own, scarred and charred from the clashes of the day. The brute with the axe chose not to follow, and Booster sighed.

    More’s the pity when you face someone with a modicum of sense. This fight was taking far too long, and the men fighting above would only fare so well when night fell and the wolves woke. In truth, it felt as if this fight had dragged on for months, not moments. Long, shallow periods where they exchanged strikes while some cosmic hand idled over moving things along. It was a silly notion, of course, but he was feeling a certain sense of drama.

    A hero from the future, clad in gold, facing down a brute from the past, dressed in whatever anachronistic shards of armor they cobbled together on Alan Scott’s Earth.

    “What are the chances you would be willing to surrender?” Booster asked, waiting for some feeling to return to his fingers.

    “There is no chance,” the axe-man replied. He had a heavy accent to match his heavy frame, completely complementary. It was a shame, really. It made his foe too generic. He could have at least had the decency to develop a stutter or some high, nasal voice. You know, the sort of thing that adds character. “I will take you to the Doctor. He will decide what is to be done with you.”

    “Doctor, eh?” Booster remarked, still fiddling with his arm. The damn thing was really letting him down. “I think I’ll take a pass, friend. I’m something of a perfect specimen.”

    That’s right, Michael. Keep running your mouth until your arm wakes up, Booster thought.

    “Go on, take a look at me!” Booster said, grinning in the axe-man’s direction. He flexed his good arm, striking what he hoped was more a heroic pose than a seductive one. “I am…”

    “Perfection,” the axe-man cut in. “Superhuman. Gifted. You fulfill the ideal of…”

    “Whoa. Whoa,” Booster waved his hand at the man. It seemed he had struck a seductive pose after all, such was the folly of being so damned amazing all the time. “I’m flattered, but we’re in the middle of a thing here.”

    “The Fuhrer would-”

    Booster sighed audibly. Skeets, picking up on his queue, played the exasperated noise back at a higher decibel. A snap of his fingers drew the axe-man’s attention back to Booster. “Look, I’m not interested in hearing you spout of propaganda. We may have glossed over your silly little movement in my day, but that doesn’t mean I’m in the mood to be educated. You people lose, you know that, right?”

    The axe-man didn’t reply, choosing what he must have thought was a piercing glare instead.

    “Your silly little revolution and designs on a master race fail in the end, friend. The German people don’t rule the world and, apart from some radical fringe groups, your movement dies with your petulant dictator. Hitler doesn’t-”

    A barking laugh cut across Booster’s point. The axe-man doubled over, free-hand resting on his chest. “That preening fool? That little man? You think we serve him?” Another laugh carved the air between them. “I care nothing for this conflict, for this nation. This Third Reich is a farce, built on one man’s vanity.“

    The axe-man stepped forward, glancing up at the ridge, then back at Booster Gold. He spoke, both hands resting upon the head of his axe, shaft planted in the ground. “I am here to make war, and make way for my people. Not Germans, not Nazis, but Gods.”

    Well, that explains everything. Booster wasn’t quite sure how much of this to believe, given the man’s obvious fixation on fighting with the Germans. Hell, he looked like a Nazi, that had to count for something.

    “You know,” Booster began. “You’re making far less sense than you did before, as if you’ve somehow become twice as insane in the span of ten sentences. It’s commendable that you’re so invested in your delusion, really… but I’ve met the Green Lantern, he told me-”

    The axe-man barked again. “Scott? He is alive?” He nearly sneered the last word, smiling wildly. “The old fool yet lives… And spreads his lies.” Cold eyes caught Booster’s own, glinting like a wolf eyeing wounded prey. “Your so-called hero is no better than…”

    “That’s quite enough of that.” The voice was loud, clear, and utterly commanding. The axe-man spun around, seeking out the owner. “I can understand the impulse to say more than you should, traveler, but I think it would be best to let events play out on their own.”

    “Who speaks?” the axe-man called out.

    “A cautious observer, nothing more,” the stranger replied. “Though I wouldn’t want you to flip to the end of the book. That wouldn’t do at all.” A man stepped out from behind the axe-man, appearing as if from thin air, light shattering around him. He wore a long coat, dark blue with gold accents. It had the faded quality that came only from time and constant wear, and showed the patched scars of a long life.

    “Liri,” the stranger said, his hand moving up in a swift motion and placing the barrel of a strange firearm just below the axe-man’s chin. “Go on up and help the men on the ridge, I’ll handle this.”

    “Skeets,” Booster hissed. “Can you see if there’s anyone else hiding out there?”

    “I have already checked, sir, there are three unknown heat signatures nearby.”

    “Were you going to tell me about them?”

    “I was waiting for the right moment,” Skeets replied. “In a tense situation, with a strange new player on the field, it is best to wait to reveal critical information.”

    “What idiot came up with that idea…”

    “You did, sir, several hundred years from now. It was during one of our nightly patrols in the museum, when you were critiquing-”

    The stranger cleared his throat loudly, then glanced in their direction. “As charming as your little routine is, you can clearly see I’m in the middle of something here.”

    He had a booming voice with a rich vibrato, the sort of voice you would expect some magnificent King to wield in a summer play. It really was excellent, and drew you into the scene in front of you. Booster was jealous, and he didn’t feel the need to hide it.

    The stranger was visible now, and appeared to be a man in his mid to late forties. He had hair that sat somewhere between blonde and ginger, with greying temples and a thick beard sharing the same color palette. Two silver streaks colored his beard, appearing like tusks in the mane. Beneath the coat, he wore a battle suit not unlike Booster Gold’s own, save for the deep maroon and dark green color scheme.

    “So…” Booster began, opting for ridicule as his opening move. “Who are you, Mystery Christmas Man.”

    “I am… what?” the stranger narrowed his brows. “You don’t know who I am?”

    Booster frowned, somewhat annoyed his jab had been so easily ignored. It was at this moment the axe-man struck out and caught the stranger in the gut with a heavy right hand. It connected, and the sound of flesh slapping plate rang out as the stranger was sent flying.

    The stranger struck the sheer face of the crater, buried some feet deep in the rubble. His legs stuck out of the mess, but did little else. Whoever the man had been, it appeared that he was quite dead now.

★ ★ Now

    Booster sighed, flexing his fingers and elbow. It seemed that his arm had been given sufficient time to wake up. He looked over at the dead stranger, wondering who he was and how best to thank him. The thought quickly subsided as the more vain part of his mind, which, if he was being honest, was the vast majority, filled with an irrational hatred for the man.

    You don’t make an entrance like that, then immediately get taken out by one shot, it’s pathetic. The stranger would need to answer for that farce, if nothing else. Booster needed to hurry up and have it out with this brute so he could talk to the enigmatic man buried in the rubble. If you were going to make an entrance like that, you should damn well be prepared to do the job, and do it right.

    The axe-man, it seemed, shared his sentiment. There was no more time for games. Booster dodged a series of strikes from the energy axe, returning each with a punch or charged blast of his own. In time, the two danced around one another, exchanging blows that should have rendered the other incapacitated, but broke off at the last moment. There was no end in sight, as both seemed to find their second wind.

    At this rate, the fight would take minutes, not hours. Booster, harried but focused, caught the axe-man by the wrist and used his own momentum to flip him overhead. The axe-man’s helmet gave a hollow thud as it slammed into the ground, and a wet pop as his head followed.

    Something broke, Booster thought. That was good, as he doubted a physical altercation with the axe-man would ever come to a fair end. It wasn’t as if this was his first time cheating to survive, and it would certainly not be his last.

    Booster stood over the axe-man, who twitched prone on the ground, and began to prod him with his boot. “You still in there, man?”

    The reply came in the form of a thick hand wrapping around Booster’s ankle and twisting, impotently, in an attempt to bring him down. It was sad to see, and the man’s obvious head trauma wouldn’t allow any meaningful attack.

    A sickening crunch of gravel beneath boots was followed by the hollow pop of a firearm as the stranger, having dug himself free, approached, stood over, and shot the axe-man in the jaw before holstering his strange pistol. He raised one eyebrow in Booster’s direction, then nudged the man with his feet before nodding.

    Booster stared down at the lifeless man. “You didn’t need to kill him.”

    “Yes, I did,” the stranger replied. He met Booster’s eyes, and Booster felt the need to look away. You can tell a lot about a person from their eyes, and this man’s were resolute. The stranger brushed some of the gravel from his coat, patting down his pockets all the while.

    “Hunter.” This voice was new, but strangely familiar. “Everything up here is done, how are things below?”

    “They’re handled, Travis. I’ll leave the body here for now, Matthew can retrieve it later.”

    “The body? Look who grew a pair, good for you, Rip.”

    The stranger named Hunter tapped something on his wrist and the voice vanished. He looked at Booster, then gave a lazy smile. “You know, Michael, you really do know how to make a proper f*cking mess of things when you want to.”

    He smiled in Skeets’ direction as the censor’s beep cut into his comment, and waved at the drone. “I suppose you’ll have some questions.”

★ ★ ★ Now

    The scene above was more gruesome than anything Booster had expected. Of the men who had joined him in this assault, less than a third were standing. He caught sight of Miller tending to the wounded, hiding his own mangled face behind a bandage soaked through with blood. Richards was sprawled out by the axe-man’s personal pavilion, nursing what appeared to be the chewed remains of his left leg. It seemed he had spent some time fighting the wolves, and he gave a lazy salute as Booster and Hunter strode through the camp.

    It was the sight of the wolves that caught Booster by surprise. Their bodies were piled high in a funeral pyre, and the acrid smoke that rose from their burning corpses seared the insides of Booster’s nose. Everything about them was unnatural, from their bones, which were black as pitch, to their teeth, which melted from yellow-white to small slivers of silver.

    Two figures sat by the pyre, each atop a stump with a lazy expression. The first was a woman, perhaps in her thirties, with long blonde hair and a figure he couldn’t quite keep from studying. She was playing with something, the severed head of a wolf that smoked to her touch. Booster realized as he approached that she was giving off a faint glow from her hands, a bright pink that danced like flames across her fingers.

    “Rip,” she said in a voice that seemed too soft for someone playing with a severed head. “Are we done here?”

    “We are,” Hunter replied. “We have him,” Hunter gestured to Booster with his thumb, “and we have bodies to dispose of. I would call this a successful trip, Liri.”

    Liri nodded, then the head in her hand burst into bright, pink flames and melted away. “I’ll go ahead then, to signal Matt.”

    She tapped something on wrist of her armor, which seemed to have been modeled off Hunter’s, and vanished in a flash of white light. Booster looked at Hunter, then over to the other figure.

    “Well, well, well…” said the remaining figure. He stood and approached Booster, drawing the cigar away from his lips with a metal, prosthetic hand.

    The Linear Man approached, pistol raised, and grinned as he pressed the tip of the barrel against Booster’s forehead. “If it isn’t the hero…”

★ ★ ★ ★ Another place, another time

    Ted Kord didn’t really wake up these days. Waking up would require he sleep at some point, and that wasn’t something he could do in a place like this, with people like this.

    He ran his fingers along the shackles that kept his wrists bound and his arms heavy. It was pointless to try and escape, not without weapons and willing people. Ted himself wasn’t willing, he was just tired.

    The cell door creaked open, and another man was deposited into the room. He was old, far too old to be a soldier, but he had that bearing. Ted had spent enough time with commanders to know one when he saw it.

    The man ignored the others, then submitted to his shackles and stared at the ground. Ted’s momentary interest faded as he became one more member of their chain gang. Another dead man, and they all knew it. Ted knew, and didn’t care.

    All he wanted was sleep…