Post by redsycorax on Sept 19, 2023 0:55:51 GMT
Why is Rai (The Atom) Ramirez leaving the Justice Alliance of America?
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PROLOGUE: JAA SEABASE:
As the Atom looked one last time over the Alliance's Seabase, Hawkgirl knelt alongside him:
"What's going on, Rai? Why are you leaving?"
"It's a long story, Shay. Right after I returned from that mission to Earth-382 when Mysta left the team to return to her resurrected alternate Earth of origin, I received a panicked phone call from my husband, Walt. He demanded that I came home immediately. I'd never heard him panicked like that, he was almost shouting into his receiver. So I rode the fibre pulses back home, where I couldn't find him. Then I found a note- and a DVD. I played it. And then my world rearranged itself around me. It showed two humans dressed in garish ornate outfits, with an unfamiliar sky that didn't resemble any known starmap I'd ever seen before. Then I noticed the tagged intranet site. It turned out to be from the microverse, the sub-atomic universe contingent and intersecting with our own. And what I was seeing was a recorded record from what seemed to be the last days of Morlaidhen, a world within that universe, under bombardment from an adversarial microworld, Erhaven. It looked as their defensive screens were failing when a female scientist of that civilisation, Laethwyn, and her husband Routh, surmised that in minutes, they would face final bombardment from their assailants. With time running out, Laethwyn and Routh loaded their infant son into a scalar capsule and sent him out into the macroverse- our universe.
He was found by the Gabriels, an Ivy Town couple. He grew to manhood there, oblivious to his origin. He became an auto mechanic and I met him at a local gay bar. I fell for the big lug and we got hitched. We had several years of happiness, until Walt found the same DVD that was currently in my hands...which triggered a phase shift and caused him to contract down to microscalar dimensions and re-enter Morlaidhen. With the co-ordinates recorded on the DVD, I quickly traced his matter displacement and energy flow, located Morlaidhen and shrunk down to find my husband..."
MORLAIDHEN:
It was a desolate wasteland that met the Atom's eyes as he became dimensionally contingent with Morlaidhen, consisting of a polymer tube that seemed to be carrying water from an artesian well through the ruins of a city to a makeshift settlement which housed the survivors of what seemed to be a devastating assault on their world. As the Atom contracted in and out to refill his canteen bottle, he was shot at from an automated gunnery emplacement, but avoided the projectiles. Then, overhead, a familiar klaxon sounded. The survivors looked up fearfully and ran for the cover of what appeared to be an air raid shelter. As he joined them, Rai Ramirez came face to face with Walter Gabriel Ramirez. To his bewilderment, though, the Atom's husband pushed him away:
"Rai, get away from here. Please. You don't understand. You shouldn't have come here..."
"What do you mean? Walt? Please, explain this to me."
"Perhaps we can." From a shattered pillar came Walt's parents, Laethwyn and Routh. Rai's telepathic plug activated and deciphered the Morlaidhen language for him, as did Laethwyn and Routh's own instantaneous language translation software.
"It's an honour to meet my husband's birth parents. What does he mean? Why is he reacting like this? I know about the circumstances in which he left here. Is it residual radiation? I'm a physicist, I can..."
"No, Professor Ramirez. I know you love our son and that you took him as your husband, but Morlaidhen lost our war with Erhaven. We were conquered and then occupied by their troops. And I'm afraid there's more than that. The Erhaven Supreme Commander, Laarvan, finds him desirable and wants him for his consort."
"The hell he does! I won't accept this!"
"Rai, if you don't, Laarvan will order an antimatter strike on Morlaidhen, annihilating the last survivors of our civilisation and my parents here. That looks like his flagship now..."
"I won't do this, Walt. I will find a way to deal with this."
As the tall, arrogant Laarvan stepped from his vessel, he caught sight of the Atom and Walt Laethwyn Ramirez's family and his face contorted into a snarl:
"What does this mean?! Are you dallying with this man?! You know the penalties for defiance, Walter Laethwyn. You and your community will perish for this ill-advised act of treason against the Erhaven Occupation Unit-"
"Hey, tyrant. You have to catch me first!" Taking a chance, Rai Ramirez ran from Laarvan's guard unit at normal scale, and without analysing the situation or ascertaining whether the intruder had any preventative safeguards available, they pursued him. The Atom rounded a corner and activated his matter condensation belt, then awaited the arrival of his ill-advised pursuers, increased his mass to normal and punched out his assailants. Before Laarvan could discover the fate of his subordinates, he accelerated back toward the sinister figure, knocking him sprawling onto his back, and then pummelling him. After several minutes of this, Laarvan signalled surrender, but then derisively laughed at his adversary:
"You fool, offworlder. You should have listened to your partner and his natal progenitors. You have prevented me from reporting to my superiors in the Erhaven Fleet orbiting this wretched tributary world. Now it will pay, even if I die with it! How does it feel to precipitate the genocide of an already feeble, fallen civ-" Then Laarvan gasped, as Rai Ramirez rapidly increased in size as he activated a JAA polymer spacesuit and helmet. Within minutes, he was in Morlaidhan's upper atmosphere and then near-orbital space. Around him, the Erhaven attackers were horrified as a behemoth suddenly appeared above them and began to ruthlessly destroy and shatter the attacking vessels before they could activate their weaponry and targeting systems. Within minutes, metallic debris were the only remnants of an alien army of occupation. The Atom regretted the loss of life, but it had had to happen. The Erhavens had done their best to tyrannise and plunder this world and he had had to give no quarter.
However, there was one final surprise awaiting him:
"I can't come back with you, Rai. The trip down here was strictly one way. If I enlarged again, it would kill me. I'm stuck here."
"I am truly sorry, Professor Ramirez."
"If that's the way things are, then... I'll stay down here with you, Walt. You're my husband. Till death do us part, remember?"
"I couldn't ask you to sacrifice..."
"You don't have to ask, Walt. I love you. Where you belong, so do I. And I suspect that Erhaven will try again. So I have to stay to protect the family and homeworld of the man I love. I just need to tell the Alliance I'm quitting. But I am. You're worth it, dummy." The Atom and his husband kissed and then Walter Laethwyn Ramirez...Chronos... stood back as his husband enlarged and then made his way to his erstwhile Alliance colleagues.
EPILOGUE:
"So you're doing this for love? Way to go, buddy." Green Arrow whistled
"I thought the rest of you deserved to know why I'm quitting. But Walt is my husband and my place is with him. And if the Erhavens try to attack Morlaidhen again, they'll need to be repulsed. Even if they don't, my husband cannot leave there. Till death do us part, for richer and poorer... and in our case, now, for larger or smaller. So this is goodbye, folks. After I cycle back down to Morlaidhen, that'll be it. You'll get my white dwarf matter condensation belt back afterward, although I do have a spare available. I'll need it to defend Morlaidhen with."
"We'll miss you, Rai. But I doubt any of us would do otherwise. You and Walt are so lucky he has a world for you to go back to." Lightning Girl said wistfully, memories of her devastated and annihilated Earth-964 surfacing in her mind as Hawkboy put his arm around her shoulders and gently kissed her cheek, mouthing me too, with his own recollections of Thanagar under the tyranny of Hyathis. Then, standing away from the others one final time, Professor Raimundo Ramirez -the Atom- shrunk from the sight of his former Justice Alliance colleagues, but this time, he did not return. Nor would he ever do so, for his heart was elsewhere. And now, so was his life.
THE END [12.55 PM, SEPTEMBER 19, 2023]
++
PROLOGUE: JAA SEABASE:
As the Atom looked one last time over the Alliance's Seabase, Hawkgirl knelt alongside him:
"What's going on, Rai? Why are you leaving?"
"It's a long story, Shay. Right after I returned from that mission to Earth-382 when Mysta left the team to return to her resurrected alternate Earth of origin, I received a panicked phone call from my husband, Walt. He demanded that I came home immediately. I'd never heard him panicked like that, he was almost shouting into his receiver. So I rode the fibre pulses back home, where I couldn't find him. Then I found a note- and a DVD. I played it. And then my world rearranged itself around me. It showed two humans dressed in garish ornate outfits, with an unfamiliar sky that didn't resemble any known starmap I'd ever seen before. Then I noticed the tagged intranet site. It turned out to be from the microverse, the sub-atomic universe contingent and intersecting with our own. And what I was seeing was a recorded record from what seemed to be the last days of Morlaidhen, a world within that universe, under bombardment from an adversarial microworld, Erhaven. It looked as their defensive screens were failing when a female scientist of that civilisation, Laethwyn, and her husband Routh, surmised that in minutes, they would face final bombardment from their assailants. With time running out, Laethwyn and Routh loaded their infant son into a scalar capsule and sent him out into the macroverse- our universe.
He was found by the Gabriels, an Ivy Town couple. He grew to manhood there, oblivious to his origin. He became an auto mechanic and I met him at a local gay bar. I fell for the big lug and we got hitched. We had several years of happiness, until Walt found the same DVD that was currently in my hands...which triggered a phase shift and caused him to contract down to microscalar dimensions and re-enter Morlaidhen. With the co-ordinates recorded on the DVD, I quickly traced his matter displacement and energy flow, located Morlaidhen and shrunk down to find my husband..."
MORLAIDHEN:
It was a desolate wasteland that met the Atom's eyes as he became dimensionally contingent with Morlaidhen, consisting of a polymer tube that seemed to be carrying water from an artesian well through the ruins of a city to a makeshift settlement which housed the survivors of what seemed to be a devastating assault on their world. As the Atom contracted in and out to refill his canteen bottle, he was shot at from an automated gunnery emplacement, but avoided the projectiles. Then, overhead, a familiar klaxon sounded. The survivors looked up fearfully and ran for the cover of what appeared to be an air raid shelter. As he joined them, Rai Ramirez came face to face with Walter Gabriel Ramirez. To his bewilderment, though, the Atom's husband pushed him away:
"Rai, get away from here. Please. You don't understand. You shouldn't have come here..."
"What do you mean? Walt? Please, explain this to me."
"Perhaps we can." From a shattered pillar came Walt's parents, Laethwyn and Routh. Rai's telepathic plug activated and deciphered the Morlaidhen language for him, as did Laethwyn and Routh's own instantaneous language translation software.
"It's an honour to meet my husband's birth parents. What does he mean? Why is he reacting like this? I know about the circumstances in which he left here. Is it residual radiation? I'm a physicist, I can..."
"No, Professor Ramirez. I know you love our son and that you took him as your husband, but Morlaidhen lost our war with Erhaven. We were conquered and then occupied by their troops. And I'm afraid there's more than that. The Erhaven Supreme Commander, Laarvan, finds him desirable and wants him for his consort."
"The hell he does! I won't accept this!"
"Rai, if you don't, Laarvan will order an antimatter strike on Morlaidhen, annihilating the last survivors of our civilisation and my parents here. That looks like his flagship now..."
"I won't do this, Walt. I will find a way to deal with this."
As the tall, arrogant Laarvan stepped from his vessel, he caught sight of the Atom and Walt Laethwyn Ramirez's family and his face contorted into a snarl:
"What does this mean?! Are you dallying with this man?! You know the penalties for defiance, Walter Laethwyn. You and your community will perish for this ill-advised act of treason against the Erhaven Occupation Unit-"
"Hey, tyrant. You have to catch me first!" Taking a chance, Rai Ramirez ran from Laarvan's guard unit at normal scale, and without analysing the situation or ascertaining whether the intruder had any preventative safeguards available, they pursued him. The Atom rounded a corner and activated his matter condensation belt, then awaited the arrival of his ill-advised pursuers, increased his mass to normal and punched out his assailants. Before Laarvan could discover the fate of his subordinates, he accelerated back toward the sinister figure, knocking him sprawling onto his back, and then pummelling him. After several minutes of this, Laarvan signalled surrender, but then derisively laughed at his adversary:
"You fool, offworlder. You should have listened to your partner and his natal progenitors. You have prevented me from reporting to my superiors in the Erhaven Fleet orbiting this wretched tributary world. Now it will pay, even if I die with it! How does it feel to precipitate the genocide of an already feeble, fallen civ-" Then Laarvan gasped, as Rai Ramirez rapidly increased in size as he activated a JAA polymer spacesuit and helmet. Within minutes, he was in Morlaidhan's upper atmosphere and then near-orbital space. Around him, the Erhaven attackers were horrified as a behemoth suddenly appeared above them and began to ruthlessly destroy and shatter the attacking vessels before they could activate their weaponry and targeting systems. Within minutes, metallic debris were the only remnants of an alien army of occupation. The Atom regretted the loss of life, but it had had to happen. The Erhavens had done their best to tyrannise and plunder this world and he had had to give no quarter.
However, there was one final surprise awaiting him:
"I can't come back with you, Rai. The trip down here was strictly one way. If I enlarged again, it would kill me. I'm stuck here."
"I am truly sorry, Professor Ramirez."
"If that's the way things are, then... I'll stay down here with you, Walt. You're my husband. Till death do us part, remember?"
"I couldn't ask you to sacrifice..."
"You don't have to ask, Walt. I love you. Where you belong, so do I. And I suspect that Erhaven will try again. So I have to stay to protect the family and homeworld of the man I love. I just need to tell the Alliance I'm quitting. But I am. You're worth it, dummy." The Atom and his husband kissed and then Walter Laethwyn Ramirez...Chronos... stood back as his husband enlarged and then made his way to his erstwhile Alliance colleagues.
EPILOGUE:
"So you're doing this for love? Way to go, buddy." Green Arrow whistled
"I thought the rest of you deserved to know why I'm quitting. But Walt is my husband and my place is with him. And if the Erhavens try to attack Morlaidhen again, they'll need to be repulsed. Even if they don't, my husband cannot leave there. Till death do us part, for richer and poorer... and in our case, now, for larger or smaller. So this is goodbye, folks. After I cycle back down to Morlaidhen, that'll be it. You'll get my white dwarf matter condensation belt back afterward, although I do have a spare available. I'll need it to defend Morlaidhen with."
"We'll miss you, Rai. But I doubt any of us would do otherwise. You and Walt are so lucky he has a world for you to go back to." Lightning Girl said wistfully, memories of her devastated and annihilated Earth-964 surfacing in her mind as Hawkboy put his arm around her shoulders and gently kissed her cheek, mouthing me too, with his own recollections of Thanagar under the tyranny of Hyathis. Then, standing away from the others one final time, Professor Raimundo Ramirez -the Atom- shrunk from the sight of his former Justice Alliance colleagues, but this time, he did not return. Nor would he ever do so, for his heart was elsewhere. And now, so was his life.
THE END [12.55 PM, SEPTEMBER 19, 2023]