Yue

 22nd October

01:27 GMT -5

Mr Queen waves his bandaged right hand at the damage to the library. "You not planning on waving your ring and making all of this disappear?"

I slump slightly in my chair. "No."

He considers the damage for a moment, holds out his right arm to look at his injuries… Then pointedly folds it behind his back. "Everyone else gone home?"

"Yes. Kaldur.. stuck around until King Orin got back, and.. Squire wanted to take a look at the gynoid, but she was dead on her feet, so…"

He scans the floor for a moment, then pulls over a partially intact piece of chair and cautiously sits down on it. "Crazy couple a' days, huh?"

I raise my eyebrows slightly. "Which part are you referring to?"

"Time machines. Not exactly an original concept, and we've had time travellers before, but this is the first time someone's actually set down a machine that can transport someone through time right in our laps."

"If they'd erased it from history, how would you know?"

He looks away for a moment, staring through the hole in the side of the building at the early morning sky. "Yeah, that's what's been giving me a headache. I don't think the law's really built for people playing with causality."

"It's not. I checked. The nearest I could find was 'reckless endangerment', and I think you'd have to intentionally mess things up a lot before a judge or a jury would accept it."

"The League's going to try and work.. something out between the Hunters. At least until Bats can check out their stories. Personally I'd rather impound the time sphere until we have some.. huge disaster that can't be fixed any other way, but otherwise ban all time travel. I mean… If we even can."

I nod. "That's the most sensible thing I've been able to come up with. We should probably come up with some-."

"Come up with some sort of protocol so that we know any time travelling we do do is above board. Because two way time travel is a lot more problematic than one way stuff." He scratches the left side of his cheek with the fingers of his left hand. "Look… I've been.. meaning to talk to you since you got back…"

"Thinking about upgrading your arsenal? Or are you running out of-."

"No, not… Well, maybe, but… I.. wanted to talk to you about Nabu."

I exhale. "You really don't want this place fixed, do you?"

"This place is meant to be a punching bag. Or a crumple zone. Somewhere villains can attack, where they'll feel like they're achieving something without it actually disrupting our operations. Somewhere we can evacuate fast. Sure, we could armour the walls and put in.. automated defense systems, but that's not really what it's for."

"Everyone on the Light's payroll knows about the.. other place. And anyone else they feel like leaking it to."

"Still a little harder getting into space than getting to DC. But that's not what I wanted to talk about."

"I really think I've said all that I can productively say on the subject."

He nods, then pauses for a few moments. "You know why I originally joined the Justice League?"

"Star City was fairly stable and since you'd just lost your job you had a lot of free time?"

"No-. Well… Yeah. But the other thing was that… The League was a group of superheroes with no oversight. Not from government or congress or anyone like that. I thought that I needed to be there to keep an eye on things. Y'know, just in case. And then I actually got to know everyone, realised that they might not be perfect but they weren't anything to worry about…" He shrugs. "I stopped worrying."

"So you voted for Nabu because you assumed-."

"I voted for Nabu because I don't know a thing about magic. With the benefit of hindsight, sure, it was a mistake. But I had no way of knowing that at the time." He sighs. "My mistake was not following up on the Helmet after you kids picked it up from the Tower of Fate. That was something I could understand; what happens if you lock a thinking being away from everything while its greatest enemies run riot."

Huh. Hadn't really thought about it like that.

"There are an awful lot of files on the League's computers I've never read through. I'm not beating myself up over not knowing Nabu was there. But once Arte told me about what happened with Kid Flash… I shoulda thought about that a bit more. I don't know, talked to Zatara about what he was planning on doing… Something."

I shrug. "I decided to leave Nabu in the cupboard after he hesitated to release Kid Flash."

"What, just like that? I thought it took you at least a little longer."

"Kid Flash is mine, Nabu is-. Was not. Just a polished Star Conqueror." I shrug. "It just wasn't a problem because he was contained."

He looks away. "Guess I can see where you're coming from. My point is… I don't think I did what I joined the Justice League to do that time. So when Bats and Atom start getting into temporal mechanics, I'm going to make sure I'm there. Not.. sure if I'm going to have anything useful to say, but…"

"I appreciate that." I stand. "And.. I appreciate you coming to.. say that to me." Hm. "Actually…"

"What?"

"You are.. trained as a business executive, right?"

"I've got a BA in Business Administration and six years' experience running a multinational company. I hated it, but I know how it goes."

"Would you be interested in part time work?"

"Aheh." He smiles faintly. "I think Ted Kord can manage-."

"No, not Ted Kord. There's another company… I've been thinking of buying them for a while to protect them from asset stripping fake cheese merchants, but I don't actually know anything about running a company. I'd need someone to keep an eye on.. my interests. Wouldn't be anything like full time -the management's sound- but I imagine that you'd find it easy enough."

"Ah… I don't know. Write up a job spec and I'll take a look at it, but I'm a professional archer for a reason."

"You get paid to do that? I thought you were an amateur."

"Yeah, funny." He gets up. "You might as well go home. I'm pulling an all-nighter but all that's going to happen in here is a couple of days of rebuilding."

I nod, and drift upwards towards the hole in the ceiling. Yeah, there's no point in hanging around. For once I'm reasonably in agreement with the League 'don't interfere' policy. I don't have anything special to add and every time I try and get my head around time travel I just end up thinking in circles. I pass out through the outer wall of the Hall of Justice and come to a stop. 'Home' is Alan's house, but it's half one in the morning. He wouldn't have waited up, would he? I'd have said 'not', but I thought that about my parents once and they started phoning the hospital and police to find out if my body had been handed in-.

"Orange Lantern!"

Huh? I look down.. at a cluster of four people.

"Orange Lantern!" Dana Dearden waves both arms to try and get my attention. She's.. wearing Orange Lantern themed clothing. That's a little weird when it's someone I know. Haven't spoken to her since I got back to Earth, but she didn't strike me as the type to take that personally. "How long you been back on Earth?!"

The three others… The durlan from Metropolis, and two other people I recognise from the crowd. The youth who asked Kal-El if he was alright and his friend. Superhero groupies? Eh, harmless enough. Not sure what the durlan's angle is, but if he's not hostile… Not really a problem. And if he is, it's better that he's hostile here. I mean, what's he going to do, wreck a wrecked building?

I float downwards towards them. "And what can I do for the four of you?"

The male human holds up.. some sort of crystal with a computer attached. Ring, what exactly-?

"Hold still for about two seconds."

"Are you doing a selfie-?"

Space distends around us, New York vanishing in a heartbeat as we're all inexorably drawn upwards! I try flying sideways but I just seem to be.. moving in a circle! Gravity-? No, this is.. a shrunken universe where there literally isn't room for significant lateral flight.

Who the heck are these people?

A moment later I'm thrown out into some sort of… Small room made of a pale green material with a glowing red energy barrier covering the front. Through it I see the other four appear into the corridor outside, and a.. coluan nods in greeting before turning to look at me.

"This does not appear to be the Persuader."