Young Justice: Yellowstone
October 11th, 2010
Over the next few minutes, Kent proceeded to give me a full rundown of the situation. Some of the specifics flew over my head, but I was pretty sure that I’d understood the gist of it all.
Primarily, it seemed that Red Volcano had made a severe miscalculation with his choice of target. Yellowstone had once been exactly as dangerous as Zatanna had explained, but that had been hundreds-of-thousands, or even millions, of years ago. Some of the words he used were unfamiliar to me, but it sufficed to say that there was simply a lot less molten rock hidden beneath the surface than in ages past. Thus, the eruption that the geokinetic robot had triggered was a pale shadow of what it could have been.
Furthermore, he’d set the volcano off at the center of a colossal, only sparsely populated area. Some muggles had lost their lives in the initial eruption, and more still in the following minutes, but there simply weren’t any large population centers close by. Thus, while the damage caused to the park was catastrophic and would rapidly get worse as wildfires raged and the lava expanded outward, the number of muggles confirmed dead didn’t even exceed three digits. Sure there was some damage further out––the eruption had caused a minor earthquake––but it was almost entirely contained for the moment.
For wizards, such a thing would be a terrible disaster. Rare was the tragedy that cost more than a small handful of wizarding lives, and so many deaths would cause a notable, if recoverable, dip in our population, but the muggles bred like rabbits. There were billions of them! They’d probably more than replaced their losses in just the handful of hours since the eruption.
Thus, the real issues were three-fold. Firstly, there were still many muggles within the park, many of them well within the path of forest fires or the lava flows themselves. They were also widely scattered and many likely didn’t even know about the severity of the threat, nor where they could go to reach safety.
Secondly, the lava and fires it was causing. If not dealt with, vast swaths of forest would be destroyed and the fires would likely spread rapidly outside the bounds of the park and in the direction of muggle cities and towns. There was also still some infrastructure that ideally would be saved from the lava flows, and it was theoretically possible that the lava would continue to expand outward until it did reach somewhere too populated to easily evacuate.
And then there was the biggest danger of all. The ash cloud which blanketed the sky in all directions and apparently extended high into the atmosphere. Besides the ash itself, the cloud was filled with all sorts of deadly volcanic gasses that would wreak havoc on the surroundings and exacerbate ‘climate issues’ caused by the muggle's own action.
I nodded slowly, assessing what Kent had told me. It seemed as though the immediate danger at the very least had already passed. There were no supervillains against whom I needed to stay on guard, and there were plenty of heroes around in case something did happen. As much as I would prefer to keep mana in reserve in case of an emergency, there was a better, more immediate use for my last two motes.
Before anything else, I drew upon my lands. The faster I used them, the faster they’d refresh, and I had a feeling I’d be doing a lot of summoning in the coming hours and days. One mote of White and another of Colorless mana drew together and a moment later a statuesque, purple-skinned night elf stood beside us, her pale white gown fluttering in the breeze.
Kent jolted in surprise, but quickly recovered. “Huh, another new friend?” he asked.
I nodded. “A healer.” I turned towards the woman, noticing Zatanna staring at her intently out of the corner of my eye. This wasn’t quite how I’d intended to introduce her to my new elven summons, and Zatanna was too professional to say or do anything out in public, but there was a sort of predatory hunger in her eyes.
“Priestess,” I greeted neutrally. This was my first time summoning a generic blueprint of something other than an animal, and I wasn’t quite sure how she would behave. The geists had been veritable golems, but in theory this priestess should be at least somewhat more intelligent than that. They were both magical creatures, but to say they were the same was like comparing a veela to a thestral.
It took several long moments for the elven priestess to respond. She, like all of my summons, had been briefly disoriented and unbalanced by her summoning, and it took a moment for her to steady herself.
When she finally did, she curtsied and bowed her head. “Elune’s blessing upon you, Hydrys Black. How can I be of service.” Her words were slightly stiff and emotionless, and there was something off about her expression, but that wasn’t necessarily a problem.
“There’s been a volcanic eruption. You’ll be helping provide aid and healing to some of the victims.”
“Understood. Elune protects.”
Okay, good enough. I’d test her and other summons more in the future, but she seemed cognizant enough to be useful. “Right. Glynda, Zatanna, I think you guys should go help fight the forest fires. Your hydromancy and Glynda’s semblance will be best suited for that. Raven, take the priestess and head towards one of the evacuation points. If the others run into any survivors, you can evacuate them quickly with your portals.” And she’d be well positioned to evacuate Zatanna and I as well, though that went without saying. “I’ll go see what I can do about that,” I finished, jerking my head towards the plume of ash blanketing the sky.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Glynda, Raven, and the priestess all nodded, but Zatanna just stared at me nervously, her teeth gnawing on her lower lip. “But I want to stay with you,” she said after a moment.
I couldn’t agree more, and I didn’t like arguing with her about something like this, but I was pretty sure this was the best plan. I took a step towards her and cupped her cheek gently. “I’d rather you stay with me too,” I told her, smiling softly, “but how much can your magic really do against something like that?”
I let the silence hang. The answer wasn’t much and she knew it. “This way, we’ll both be able to do as much good as we can.” And, if I was lucky, the work would plant a seed of doubt in her mind about how much she really wanted to focus on this heroism thing.
Zatanna looked down at the ground. “You’re right,” she agreed. She swallowed heavily. “Be careful.”
I kissed her forehead and pulled away. “I will. Focus on your own safety, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll have Glynda with me, but you’re going to be all alone.”
Kent, who’d stayed silent until now, stepped forward and lay a hand on Zatanna’s shoulder. “He won’t be alone, don’t you fear. We can’t see them from down here, but Superman and two Green Lanterns are up there right now. Hydrys will have plenty of backup if something happens.”
“See? I’ll be fine,” I repeated.
Zatanna smiled and stepped forward to hug me, burying her face in my chest. I took the opportunity to give both Raven and Glynda severe looks. As usual, Zatanna’s safety was their first priority.
I patted Zatanna on the back and she finally let go of me and stepped back. Kent handed over some communicator devices––little muggle tools that would allow them to coordinate with other heroes and aid workers, as well as keep track of the fires’ spread––and then they hurried away.
I watched them go, carried through the air by Glynda’s semblance while Raven winged into the distance in the form of a Raven. The priestess would stick with Glynda and Zatanna until Raven reached her destination, at which point my healer summon would be able to get to work.
Finally alone with Kent, I turned towards my mentor. “I…don’t want to get your hopes up,” I began, “but I might be able to do something to uh, help Red Tornado.” The instant look of hope that appeared on his face was exactly what I had been hoping to avoid. I wasn’t sure if I could do anything, and saying something needlessly would just hurt more if things went poorly.
I quickly continued. “My kind of magic is pretty good at fixing damaged objects, and at least so far I haven’t had any trouble using it on technology. If we can find some piece of scrap or something, then maybe I’ll be able to put him back together?”
Reparo didn’t really work as a healing spell, nor could it fix magic items, but as far as I was aware, Red Tornado was, somehow, a purely mechanical creation. How a machine could speak, think, and harness the winds the way he could I did not know, but perhaps it would work out in his favor in this instance. The spell on its own might not be powerful enough to do the trick, but with one or two motes of mana to empower it? I really couldn’t say. It might be possible.
“I don’t need much, just enough that it counts as being a specific part of his body. Like, I can fix a broken teacup if I have a piece of the base and a bit of the wall, but not from just a small shard of broken pottery. I remember what he looked like, so I should be able to fill in a lot of gaps in the magic.”
Kent exhaled heavily, eying me wordlessly. After a moment of silence, he looked away, his eyes squeezed shut.“Even if it is not possible, I appreciate your offer, Hydrys. I will see what I can find. Perhaps it is greedy of me; we all must find our end one day. But at my age, hope is a precious commodity. We shall see.”
He turned, staring out at the devastation that Red Volcano had caused. “I fear that perhaps Tornado’s body was too heavily damaged for even your own body, but I will hope it has not been. We will exhaust all avenues before considering him fully gone. Red Tornado deserves no less than our best efforts to save him.”
Kent wordlessly reached into a pocket and passed me a small black nub that apparently went into my ear. I slipped it into place and quickly recognized the sound of Lantern Stewart, the dark-skinned hero whom I’d worked with during the Injustice League’s attack.
“Good luck, Hydrys,” Kent told me softly.
“Thank you sir.” I inclined my head towards the man, then turned and walked away, temporarily putting the idea of repairing Red Tornado out of my mind. My wand sang beneath my fingers as I watched the ash plume with considering eyes, weighing my options.
For all that I’d told Zatanna that her magic was poorly suited to this sort of thing, mine was not much better. But, with the help of the other heroes, I was confident I could make do.
I pressed a finger of my left hand against the earpiece, listening to Superman and the two Lanterns talk back and forth. It sounded like the plan was to slowly compress the ash plume from all directions and bring it down towards the ground where it could be more easily dealt with. The danger of the ash and gasses came from them spreading out throughout the atmosphere and the way they were already scattered across a vast distance. If we could stop it from blowing away, that was already more than half the battle.
Yeah. Yeah, I could help with that. A light breeze blew around my feet, grass and branches rustling softly. The ventus spell wasn’t really designed with such a purpose in mind, but I was a powerful enough wizard to make some adjustments to my spells. Between that, and the weather-related magics of Remnant, I would be able to more than pull my weight here.
“Hydrys Black here,” I spoke into the muggle device. “I’m going to be stuck near the ground, but I’m here to help. Tell me where I should focus my efforts and let's get this ash plume dealt with.”