Young Justice: Yellowstone

October 11th, 2010

Kent grimaced. “It's probably better to show you. I’m pretty sure you have a spell that filters the air around you. Best to cast that on yourself and your friends.”

I nodded. Zatanna and I were already both covered by bubble-head charms, but I swiftly cast the spell on Raven, Glynda, and Mavria as well. Aura helped with a lot of things, but it didn’t stop you from inhaling things like poison gas and ash, even if it would mitigate the damage they caused.

I gestured questioningly at Kent and he nodded after a moment. “If you have the strength to spare, I’d appreciate it. It's been a long night already.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem.” Roll, swirl, roll. My wand flew through the movements for the fourth time in less than a minute and an invisible bubble of clean, fresh air appeared around Kent’s nose and mouth.

“Thank you, Hydrys. There are a few others that could use your help in this manner as well. I’ll point them towards you if you don’t mind.”

“I’d be happy to help.”

“Excellent. We should be off.” Kent thumped his cane against the ground and a golden ankh rose up behind him, its lower section sized like a doorway. Gesturing for us to follow him, he stepped into the ankh and vanished.

I exchanged looks with my summons. Glynda nodded and took the lead, her crop held loosely in her hand. I followed after her, with Zatanna behind me, then Mavria, and Raven bringing up the rear.

Glynda stepped through the portal and I waited for Raven to confirm that everything looked good on the other side with her semblance before following after her. I trusted Kent, but it was entirely possible the situation had changed since he’d left to get us. It was best to be safe, and I didn’t much like portals that I couldn’t see or sense through.

I stepped out of the portal and my eyes widened as I beheld the scene in front of me. Glynda nudged me to the side, but she too was staring silently at the devastation before us. Even from what must have been quite a distance, it was certainly a concerning sight.

The portal led out onto a bare hilltop from which we had a clear view of the damage. I didn’t know what this place had looked like before, but it had been transformed into a hellscape. A pillar of ash rose high into the sky, blocking out the moon and stars and plunging the world into darkness. The only light came from vast, glowing rivers of lava flowing sluggish from the depths of the earth, burning away everything in their path.

Not knowing how far away exactly from the site of the eruption we were standing, it was hard to judge the scale of things for certain, but this didn’t look good. The lava was covering a vast swath of territory and that was a lot of ash. However, it also didn’t look quite as bad as what Zatanna had suggested previously.

There was a loud curse and I glanced over to find Mavria staring out at the devastation. She knelt down and her hand sunk a few inches into the dirt, tendrils of magic flowing down her fingers and into the depths of the earth until they vanished from my perception. After a moment, she glanced over towards me. “Not as bad as you said it was, but bad. I’ll see what I can do.”

Before I could really say anything, she stood up and hurried away. Once she’d gained enough distance, she leapt into the air and transformed before diving smoothly into the earth like a dolphin vanishing beneath the waves.

Kent and Zatanna both stared blankly at where Mavria had just vanished. Raven was also surprised, but she was too composed to show it.

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Kent blinked slowly. “Hmm.”

“Long story. The dragons on Azeroth are kind of weird.”

“I see.”

I shrugged. “Theoretically she’s an expert on this sort of thing. The black dragons are ‘earthwardens’, and she’s got a rather crazy amount of experience. No idea if she specifically ever dealt with something like this, but I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s doing.”

“I will defer to your judgment, then. You know her capabilities better than I do.”

I really hoped Mavria did know what she was doing. Like I’d told Kent, I was pretty sure she did. But I wasn’t certain. Well, hopefully she didn’t make things worse. That would probably be bad. Both for my reputation, and for this Plane.

Zatanna stepped up beside me and took my left hand in hers. Her grip was uncomfortably tight, and I gently squeezed back, trying to reassure her. “How did this happen?” she asked softly. “Who would do something like this?”

Kent’s frown turned into a grimace. “We’re still piecing things together, but Batman put together a general timeline. It looks like this is the work of Morrow, though perhaps not fully what he was intending to do.” Kent sighed heavily. “To think he’d do something like this after all this time. I thought I’d seen the last of that madman half a century ago.”

I was still trying to place the name when Glynda spoke up. “Do you mean T. O. Morrow, the creator of Red Tornado?”

Kent nodded. “The one and only.”

I was not particularly familiar with the topic at hand, but I did know a bit about Red Tornado. He’d helped me rescue Kent from Klarion and had been a member of the Justice Society alongside Kent.

“I had not realized he was still active.” Glynda said after a moment. “He must be nearly a hundred years old by now, perhaps even older.”

“A bit over, in fact. And not many did. He laid low for quite some time.”

“This is certainly one way to make an explosive return,” Raven added softly.

“Indeed.” Kent shook his head. “But we’re getting off track. Here’s what we think happened. Morrow always loathed heroes, but in the past he tried to destroy us from the inside. Unfortunately for him, he was too good at making human-like machines. His creations never wanted to turn on us. Red Tornado was supposed to destroy the Justice Society, but instead he became a core member of our team.”

Kent closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. “This time, Morrow decided he was sick of such things. He made another robot, this one called Red Volcano. According to the aborted message we got from Red Tornado, it was built with all the memories of its predecessors but none of the personality. This time, Morrow just wanted to destroy us, so he made a machine that hated heroes and hated humanity.”

He smiled grimly. “He succeeded a little too well. Apparently he was his own creation’s first victim. And then Red Volcano decided that the best way to destroy us heroes was to destroy humanity itself. Thus,” Kent gestured at the oozing rivers of lava, “this. The lab where Morrow was hiding was apparently under Old Faithful, and the robot didn’t feel like wasting any time. It’s fortunate that this all happened in the late evening, or else a lot more people would have died.”

The last traces of Kent’s smile vanished, and he once again looked like an impossibly tired old man. “Red Tornado tried to stop him, but Volcano was too strong. Thankfully my old friend managed to get a message off before he was slagged, or we’d be in even more trouble. That, and Yellowstone is a lot less active than most media would suggest. Superman and a Green Lantern got here as quickly as they could manage and took out the villain, but the damage was already done. We’ve been doing what we can to mitigate the effects, but there’s only so much we can manage. Plus, a few other villains tried to take advantage of the chaos, which hasn’t helped things one bit.” Kent sighed again. “It's been a long, long night.”

I nodded slowly. It didn’t sound like Red Tornado had made it out of things in one piece. And I knew that he and Kent had been close. Close enough to entrust the Tower’s spare key into his possession. “My condolences. I only knew Red Tornado briefly, but he seemed like a good man.”

Kent choked up a little. “He was. The very best. It takes a lot of courage to rise beyond the fate life intends for you and embrace heroism the way he did.”

I smiled kindly and, with more enthusiasm than I really felt, told Kent, “I’d love to hear more about him, but that’s going to have to wait. What can I do to help?”