DC Adventures Log 7: Forever Immortus
In DC Adventure Log 6, All Hail Riverdale, Team Lex traveled in time to 1953 to escape immediate eradication in 1977 from a ‘peace keeping’ force of U.N. soldiers with access to futuristic power-armor technology. In 1953 Team Lex discovered that General Immortus, the same geriatric immortal soldier who confronted the team in ’77, had, in ’53, conquered The Soviet Union and was pushing into China. Damage to the timeline was visible as Team Lex fought to keep Riverdale of Archie Comics from descending into a genocidal fascist state. After turning Archie, Betty and Veronica from their despicable plot, the team agreed they needed to get at the root of their time paradox problem, and slide to a time before it began. Gentleman Ghost, who hoped to find and kill Hawkman’s predecessor, convinced the team to travel to 1,000 B.C. and –Bzooweeoovzip!
Bzooweeoovzip! Team Lex dumped into a wide muddy river. Skeets hovered over them, and, in an odd change of personality, said that Rip Hunter was keeping them at the dawn of history where Team Lex would cause few problems while Rip and Booster Gold fixed the time stream. Then Skeets blinked into history.
Hourman pulled Sherlock Holmes out of the river and gave him an aerial view. With a vantage of a hundred or so meters, Holmes deduced that, while Skeets had brought the Team to 1,000 B.C., Gentleman Ghost would have been wise to give Skeets a destination as well as a time, since The Gentleman probably wouldn’t have chosen the confluence of The Mississippi and The Ohio rivers. Still, there was a large Mound Builder metropolis nearby complete with a sunflower cash crop indicative of the Adena culture. Deciding to forgo tact, Team Lex flew or were flown to the center of the city, landed atop the giant mound of earth, and were greeted by the city’s High Priestess.
Convincing The High Priestess they were gods was easy. The Adena were expecting gods, both good and evil that day. To prove that Team Lex were good gods, the priestess convinced Team Lex to partake in two sports: Chunkey, a game where the contestant throws a spear through a hole in a rolling wheel, and The Ball Game, a precursor to Lacrosse, which pitted every male in the city against Team Lex. Since Team Lex were gods, The High Priestess knew they would win. It was only when they won with honor that the priestess decided to trust Team Lex.
After the contest was over, The High Priestess explained to Team Lex that two groups of gods were to converge on her city today. One was lead by a far off god’s chosen warrior named Hawkman. Hawkman sought an incredible weapon called The Claw of Horus, which was buried at the bottom of their mound because it was too destructive for human hands. Hawkman came for The Claw of Horus as a way to defeat another god named Immortus who sought to rule the world, who claimed the weapon for himself.
The priestess lead Team Lex to the back of the mound, which was part excavated. Abra Kadabra cast aside the rest of the earth with a wave of his hand, but conceded The Claw of Horus to Hawkman when he appeared with a team consisting of himself, Owlwoman, Super-Chief, Manitou Raven and Dawn. With very little time to prepare, Teams Hawkman and Lex watched as a squadron of Egyptian inspired power-armors, lead by General Immortus cut through the sky, land and attack.
While Team Lex engaged Immortus’ soliders, Hawkman flew at Immortus and slammed The Claw of Horus into his power armor. It cracked, but held long enough for Immortus to launch a missle into Hawkman’s chest. Hawkman was thrown clear from the battle. Amid the chaos, Gentleman Ghost flew to Hawkman, removed The Claw of Horus from him, put it on his own hand, and used it to choke the life out of Hawkman. Having killed the descendant of Carter Hall, and lifting The Ghost’s curse, a light appeared, and Gentleman Ghost walked into the light, taking The Claw of Horus with him.
Meanwhile, General Immortus was crushing Teams Hawkman and Lex, but underestimated Sherlock Holmes, who slipped behind Immortus and hacked the emergency release panel, opening his power armor. Hourman yanked Immortus out. While Immortus was reluctant to talk at first, he was quite chatty when Hourman explained that one of his powers was to unnaturally age genetic material.
Immortus explained that he learned of the armor and its location from a voice in his head, but one that was very different from his own. The voice, which referred to itself as Tio, explained the location of alien weaponry which was sealed deep in the Earth, how to retrieve it, and how to use it. Immortus tried to ask Tio other questions, but Tio did not respond to anything Immortus said, and continued to talk over him, repeating his message over and over.
Hourman called forth his time ship, Team Lex met with Rip Hunter at the center of time, and met up with a Gentleman Ghost who had been lost in time, and was furious to find that another incarnation of him had killed Hawkman, denying the vengeance due to him. Rip was also flabbergasted with Team Lex’s actions, which he saw as an attempt to destroy his timeline. After some explanation of what Team Lex had learned, however, Rip was able to discern a radio frequency that was broadcasting throughout all times, and, when unscrambled, explained the whereabouts of secret alien technology. Hourman recognized the voice as coming from the robotics expert T.O. Morrow, a scientist who had invented a television set that could watch the future and the past, and used it to build futuristic machinery. T.O. had not only discovered a way to receive radio waves from throughout time, but could now transmit them to all the past and future.
With Rip’s blessing, Hourman set his time ship to 2013 and –Bzooweeoovzip!
John-Michael Gariepy 