DC Heroes

marsneedschocos:

Whenever possible, private detective John Jones preferred to eat at one of the Dairy Queens of Denver, Colorado.  Certainly, there were places with better food and at times he ate there, but he always returned to the land of frozen treats and for one simple reason: Choco Blizzards.  Earth would never be Mars, he had long ago accepted that, but new delights such as Chocos went a quite a ways toward making up for it.

The Blizzard, the day to day habits of his civilian identity, burying himself in work, went a long way to toward taking his mind off many things which troubled him.  That the League had disbanded was high among them.  The League had been a part of his life ever since he had participated in its formation.  Others had come and gone, but always he had remained.  He could have protested the disbandment, could even have remained and rebuilt anew, but no.  Something vital, something important to the League had been lost, broken.  These wounds would take time to heal.

How much things had changed since the old days.  They had all been quite happy, friends, sure of themselves and their powers,  sure that the path they were on was the right one.  And now?

Barry and Hal were dead.   Arthur and Bruce were barely recognizable as the men he had once known.  Even Diana was different from the new visitor to Man's World she had been when she had first met them all.  Clark remained largely the same, he supposed, if perhaps even more settled into his role as a leader in the super-human community.

But J'onn?  J'onn had been on Earth since the mid 1950's, long before most of the current generation of heroes had even been born.  He had been brought to Earth as an adult, not an infant like Clark.  He had new friends, new connections on this planet, but he was still much the same he had been.

An overwhelming moment of panic set upon his senses, the telepathic nosie of numerous citizens all crying out at once.  A glance up instantly told him what was the cause.  A meteor, hurling toward the city, already too close for him to do anything about it.  It had to be alien in nature, advanced.  This was no natural phenomena.  

What he could do was help people.  Turning invisible and resuming his public Martian form, he pulled people from the path of the meteor at high speed, moments before the meteor hit.

Where have I seen this before...?

The meteor impacted with the street, hard, but not with the speed it should have had.  It was as though it had slowed itself.  It cracked and something inside it began to grow...  and burn.

It was a giant of fire.