Yue

 22nd October

00:32 GMT -5

Kaldur leads the way into the conference room in the Hall of Justice that is being used as a command post for the attacks on Eliminations, Inc. Mister Goldstein glances up for a moment to see who it is, but otherwise remains focused on his monitors.

"Hey kids." Mr Queen stops fiddling with his fletching and smiles warmly at us. "Or am I not meant to call you that?"

"I'm sure that when someone reaches your advanced age-" Two years older than me. "-everyone starts to look young."

He nods. "Decent comeback. I don't think I'm quite old enough to make it work, but the thought was there." He looks around the group. "Did you come back here for a reason? As far as I'm concerned, if you've handed your site over to the police you can take the rest of the night… Ah, morning, off."

Kaldur focuses on Mr Goldstein. "Mister Goldstein. I am afraid that I must speak with you-."

Mr Goldstein tips his head back, shuts down his monitor and then turns his chair around to face us. "Rip found you, didn't he?"

"He did. And I must speak with you concerning the death of Miss Bonnie Baxter."

"Where is he?" Mr Goldstein tries to peer around behind us. "I thought he'd want to be here to do this face to face." We stop walking towards him, forming a short arc facing him. "Don't tell me he's trying to dick around with the time sphere? I may not be as good a temporal physicist as he is but I do know how to change a set of locks."

Mr Queen stands as well, putting a foam arrow to string but not raising his bow. "Aqualad, what's going on?"

"Green Arrow. This man's real name is Jason Goldstein-."

"Which I didn't use because any other time traveller could use it to go back in time, locate me and kill me." He stands as well, rolling his eyes. "Nice breach of operational security there, Rip."

"His name is Jason Goldstein. Another time traveller, a man by the name Rip Hunter, has alleged that he stole the time sphere and killed one of their mutual colleagues."

Mr Goldstein raises his eyebrows slightly. "I should be hurt that you assumed that he was telling the truth after I've been nothing but helpful. Yet, somehow-."

Mr Queen looks at him. "Was he telling the truth?"

Mr Goldstein shakes his head. "I told Rip I killed her. All I really did was help her cover up an affair she was having. The knock on effect was that she never got fired, she never met Rip and never went time travelling. She's probably still alive now if you want to look her up."

"And the time machine?"

"Of course I stole that. Once Rip made it clear that he wouldn't let me improve history, what choice did I have? I don't know enough about his past to alter it, he's as paranoid as a Texan survivalist in the present… He'd have killed me for interfering with his precious 'real' time line."

His hand hasn't gone even slightly near where Rip said his recall button would be. He spots me looking at it, and manages a half-smile.

"I'm not going to cut and run, Orange Lantern. This is the right thing to do. And you know it."

Mr Queen relaxes slightly, and looks at my squad. "O.. kay. This sounds like something that needs careful consideration. How about we get Diana to-?"

A dull tone rings out from Mr Goldstein's bracer. He nods and makes a vague gesture with his right hand. "And now he's going for the time sphere. Guess he wasn't willing to wait for you."

"Ah, hell." Mr Queen sprints for the doorway. "I remember when this place was secure."

My team bolts after him as I focus on Mr Hunter's desires-

-and step out-

-and back. "Mister Hunter, this wasn't wh-."

Mr Hunter looks mildly puzzled. "Have you arrested him?"

This.. is where we left him. Ohhhh dear.

"Anothertimetravellerisgoingforthesphereexcuseme."

Out!

Back! "It's not Hunt-!"

A phased particle beam blasts through one of the Hall's interior walls as Mr Queen dives out of the way! "Yeah! We know!"

Wallace dashes across the floor and up a wall as another stream of energised particles-. I erect a construct barrier and he dives behind it, nodding appreciatively.

"Hey Oh El. Things went crazy real-" Two more beams join the first and I have to reinforce the barrier. "-fast."

I spot Mr Queen string an EMP arrow. "Really-" He looses and strings another. "-starting-" Another. "-to question-" Another. "-the wisdom-" Another- "-of having-."

I touch Wallace with my right hand and transition us to the viewing area.

The viewing window has been almost completely destroyed, and through the hole where it used to be I can see a golden gynoid hovering over the time sphere, a shimmering red shield surrounding them both as she tries to do something to it. Four guards-. Yes, four, their repeated teleporting makes it a little difficult to track th-.

Kaldur raises his water bearers as shots fly towards him and Beryl. The icy runes form in the water and the beams peter out before they hit. Beryl pulls out her slingshot. "Feeling severely under gunned, here!"

M'gann-. I can't see her, but from the way one of the soldiers is grasping at his head I'm going to assume-.

Wallace dashes in, dodging around a rapidly aimed shot and slamming a sticky mine onto the headaching soldier. It detonates, blast knocking him over and-. No, it hasn't penetrated his armour and he's teleporting-.

Right, pulling weight time. Armour, construct armour, autoguns-.

"Orange Lantern! Pierce her shield!"

I don't acknowledge him but get the ring to work analysing her defences. A neutron shield. Exotic, but hardly unknown to Maltusian science. Obviously I could fire a laser through it. But her highly reflective epidermis would probably deal with that. Instead, I generate a railgun, fabricate a boron carbide round and open fire. It hits home, and the gynoid's head rotates on her neck to look at me as her shield wavers. Yeah, the reason why neutron shields are a specialist item is -ignoring the exorbitant energy requirement- a properly equipped opponent can destabilise them relatively easily. Another shot and it starts to fade. Phased particle shots slam into my construct armour and eat through my railgun construct so I reposition, creating a new one and loading another round as Wallace and Kaldur take advantage of their foes' new focus to assail them anew. Wallace's target gets covered in something I recognise as an alchemical super-acid while Kaldur fires what looks like blue lightning into another, causing him to spasm uncontrollably and collapse to the ground.

Another shot and the neutron shield fails, a bullet from Beryl's slingshot, an arrow and a telekinetically thrown lump of rubble flying at the gynoid a half-second later!

And they pass through her as she phases out.

I catch sight of M'gann with my empathic vision as she tries to bring her telekinetic power to bear on her target directly, but the only person other than me here with anti-phasing equipment is-.

Mr Queen's arrow hits her in the side and fails to penetrate. Yeah, they're not great against unphased targets. I've got my own shot loaded a moment later, centre of mass and fire. It strikes home and she judders a little, but doesn't appear to be significantly damaged. Okay, dial up the power-.

The time sphere's outer surface shimmers blue and she flies for the now opening doorway.

Wallace grins. "Gotcha!"

Truggs' device detonates, the blue light flickering and dying as the gynoid collapses to the ground.