Yue

 5th February

20:43 GMT -5

I frown in mild confusion as Lamprey and Sea Witch promenade through the great hall, exchanging polite greetings with several Made Men.

"I never heard how Lamprey ended up… Like that."

Jonathan Kent watches me impassively for a moment. "Not like your version, y'mean."

I nod. "I recognise Nanauvian blood magic, though he seems far more advanced than anyone I've heard of at his age. It's his.. attitude that I can't place."

Mister Kent makes a small shrugging gesture. "Kidnapped when he was a kid. Some crazy shark wizard wanted t' see if surface worlders could learn blood magic. Lamprey was the only one who survived, an' he ate his teacher 'bout the same time as Barracuda's army broke through the city's walls."

"Sure, I was there when he told our Kaldur that. And that would explain the brutality, not…"

Jonathan's eyes follow his team mate for a moment. "Guess after what he went through, he learned not t' wear his feelin's on his sleeve. An' since his power comes from eatin' people, he usually goes 'zero' t' 'three hundred' in no time flat."

"Our Tula's dating our Garth, but he said that he ate your Garth."

"Oh, that ain't the creepy thing." Jonathan takes a sip of his beer, his eyes moving around the Great Hall. "You hear how that happened?"

"No." I smile at him. "Go on, horrify me."

"Our Garth was a junior officer in the Shayeris army. Him an' Tula were engaged, an' they were gonna get married once the Nanauvian campaign was over. He was doin' such a good job Barracuda invited him t' eat with the senior officers." Jonathan smiles unpleasantly. "Only he runs his mouth about Barracuda bein' an 'inferior surface dweller'. Barracuda takes it, then sics his assassin on him. Lamprey kills an' eats him, then decides that that means he gets Tula as well."

"Ah."

"So her family thinks, okay, the king's nephew's dead, and this Nanauvian guy's in tight with the Emperor's half-brother and he's goin' places, so they okay it. Tula weren't so keen, but I guess she figures she can put up with it 'til she can poison him. Only she puts the poison in his food."

"And he detects it with magic, because the entire focus of his magic is eating."

"Which she never bothered learnin', cause she's a stuck up bitch. But he figures, okay." Jonathan shrugs. "It's just poison. No big. They're married, right? And it weren't gonna kill him even if he hadn't spotted it. But he can't let it go completely. So he rips out her right eye, tears off her right ear and bites off one of her fingers, and eats them."

I jerk my head away from him and back towards her. "She appears to have all her parts."

"Atlantean wizards can grow stuff back. Her irises 're a slightly different color now, but other than that you'd never know. Only now, any time he wants, Lamprey can see everything she sees, hear everything she hears and feel everything she touches. Said if she tried it again he'd eat part a' her brain, too."

Ew.

Jonathan smiles. "Yeah, thought you'd like that one. Now what the fuck are you doin' here?"

"Capo Scott felt that my alter ego's absence would weaken the Management position."

Jonathan grimaces. "New Management bein' weak weakens the New Management's position."

"You want to say that to Capo Scott's face?"

That earns me a small glare. "Had Blue chewin' my ear off fer a year about keeping it cool. I get it. But I still think we could win."

"Win..?"

"Us against the Underground, against Luthor. Fuck it, us against the goddamn army."

"Jonathan, even-."

His eyes harden. "Ultraboy. I'll take 'Jonathan' from Blue, not from you."

"Ultraboy… What's the Syndicate for?"

He frowns, puzzled. "What d'ya mean?"

"What is the Syndicate for? I threw a similar question at my parallel's Justice League once, and I'm still not convinced that they know. Your father was Management. One day, you might be too. You should probably have some idea of what the organisation is for."

"'Who profits?'"

"Which means?"

"What, your ring don't do Latin? 'Who profits?' What d'we get out of it? What's the benefit, what's the angle."

"Who profits from unlimited revenge? Is anyone paying you to kill all those people?"

"No-."

"Your father gave up his grudge with Owlman in order to beat President Wilson, because that's what he needed to do to keep the business going. Your father couldn't beat the Justice League-."

His beer bottle shatters as his right hand clenches into a fist. "My Pa got ambushed. Wilson had ta' land a nuke on the moon base."

"Not the point. Luthor still has his planar portal. He has access to thousands of parallel universes. Even in the event that the Syndicate could beat this entire world -and you'd have to, because people know about Owlman's bomb now- then Luthor-"

"I know the bomb was stupid-."

"-could call for aid from as many Justice Leagues as it took. One League stopped your father. One League, and the threat of one tactical nuclear device. If you pick a fight with this whole world, that includes two countries who wouldn't mind all that much if they had to carpet-nuke America to stop you. And even if you could win, there'd be nothing left; scorched earth, depopulated and wrecked cities, radioactive fallout and a nuclear winter. As a wise man named Wilson Fisk once said: 'there is no profit to be made in the destruction of the planet', and there really isn't. Am I getting through?"

He looks down at his right hand, brushing the glass and residual beer off his skin. "Yeah. Sure. I'm gunna.. go circulate."

"Sure. Enjoy yourself."

He walks away, and a quick look inside him shows his conflicting desires battering against each other, with the one where M'gavv ties him up and-. Okay, not strictly relevant.

I shake my head, and take a look at his other new team mates.

Their Raquel survived one of Owlman's experiments involving what I suspect was their Arnus's ship. Arnus himself appears not to have survived into the modern day, though given that his ship gave him a human-seeming face and he could look like anyone I suppose that I shouldn't assume anything. She has flight, super strength and endurance and calls herself 'Skud'. She also seems… Kind of out of it, though whether that's intoxication or a result of Owlman's treatment I don't know. She's talking to Jackie Quick at the moment, or… Rather, being talked at by him, though she seems happy enough with the situation.

Their Tula appears to be a pure caster rather than a battlemage. No Robert, no Donna, no Beryl, Roy or Canis, or Leonid or Amon. I know that in the Earth 2 comic J'onn J'onzz guessed that the Syndicate's villainous nature made it hard for them to make allies, but that doesn't seem to be a problem here. I guess it's the utter battering the Syndicate's been getting recently that makes it a less appealing organisation to sign up to.

I wonder what the best way to get a few more of these people on-side is? I've got a sound argument, and doing what I want gets them what they want; they get to avoid dying to President Wilson's enforcers or executioners, they get to fight and dominate and get paid for it. But anyone without allies or subordinates in a gathering like this is going to have an uphill struggle. Zatanna would probably get more recognition than me, but she's busy pumping the Don for information on the Zatara crime family-.

And then I hear the guitar.