Warning this has the Sailor Moon and Zatanna tags, but it's a very
alternate universe and is set well before their appearance.
This is a Fanfic set in the Superman Unbound Shared Universe.
http://www.geocities.com/supermanunbound/index.html
Other works can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/supermanunbound/Newthings.html
Copyrights no infringement or profit is intended
---------------------------------------------------------
Lois & Clark the new adventures of Superman is copyright to Warner
Bros. and DC Comics.
Sailor Moon is copyright to DiC, Toei, Kodansha, and Naoko Takeuchi.
Zatanna is copyright to DC comics.
Robur is the creation of Jules Verne and depending on where you live
will or will not be in the public domain.
King Arthur is taken from the public domain legend.
Indiana Jones is copyright Lucasfilm Ltd
which inspired my Sir Jones "The last Knight of the round table" an
adventuring American archeologist who does not own a whip and rather
likes snakes.
------------------------------
NOTES
I couldn't find any reference to Zatanna's grandmother's name, just
her grand father "Luigi Zatara".
I picked Milessa as the name of Luigi's french wife in 1940.
The Catalyst for this Fanfic was Arthur's Hansens suggestion "that
maybe the Zatara clan speaking spells backwards was due to a damaged
Silver Millennium artifact".
ECHOS OF CALLISTO'S DEATH
---------------------------------------------------------------------
*Year 1940 Taken from "History of the Avalon Senshi" the compressed
*abridged 2001 edition requested by princess Serenity
*
*An adventuring American archaeologist looking into legends of the
*King Arthur's round table and a pair of English Historians
*investigating rumours about the round table in Germany come
*together. Reluctantly the archaeologist and the English Historians
*agree to work together and eventually discover the Round Table being
*used as a teleportation device by the Lancelot League. They also
*discover the factories and stockpiles of super weapons that were to
*be used in the invasion of England.
*
*The two Historian are forced to reveal themselves as representatives
*of Avalon named Arthur and Althea, the returned King Arthur and his
*grand daughter the current lady of the lake and Princess Titan.
*Princess Titan manages to destroy the underground factories and most
*of the stockpiled advanced German equipment, but is killed when the
*League's own Princess Callisto uses Merlin's Round Table to teleport
*in and surprise her, minutes later Princess Callisto unaware she is
*facing the legendary King Arthur makes a careless mistake and is be-
*headed with Excalibur.
*
*King Arthur and the archaeologist manage to recover both Henshin
*rods and escape, but they lose the Callisto Henshin rod when King
*Arthur cannot disarm the fail-safe and it returns to the oldest
*Child of the last princess Callisto. They are also unable to
*destroy the King's round table or remove the black kryptonite
*devices embedded deep within and are forced to leave it in the
*hands of the Germans and Lancelot League operatives.
*
*The American archaeologist now the Last Knight of the Round Table
*and the despondent King Arthur make there way back to England and
*then Avalon.
*
*King Arthur and Avalon are unaware that the Callisto Henshin rod is
*now effectively lost to the Lancelot League. Lady Callisto's oldest
*son, Luigi was exiled to a minor post in France for disagreeing with
*his mother and the League council, when the Henshin rod appeared in
*to him he spent a few minutes mourning his mother's death and then
*gathered his five year old son John and wife, escaping the Lancelot
*League in the confusion of the fall of France.
*
*Luigi eventually makes his way to America where he changes his last
*name to Zatara and goes into hiding with his wife and son.
+++++++++++++++ECHOES+++++++++++++++++
Callisto screamed as the sword sheared effortless through the
titanium bracer on her right arm and continued down cutting the same
arm off an inch from her shoulder, jumping instinctively she landed
over a hundred feet away immediately losing her balance and rolling
several times, moaning each time her stump encountered the muddy
ground.
Staggering to her feet Callisto fought to stay conscious her vision
going gray as her power worked to stop the blood loss and numb the
pain. Blinking several times her sight finally cleared causing her
to snarl, the bulky swords man was already halfway to her making ten
foot leaps.
Lady Callisto still grinding her teeth in pain had hoped the rubble
created during her fight with Lady Titan would be a hindrance,
pushing the pain out of her mind and cursing her own arrogance,
Callisto raised her remaining arm even as a thought circled in her
mind Who was this man? No sword wielded by a man should have been
able to hurt her, even the swords of power still used by the older
high level Avalon operatives had never done more than scratch her.
Allowing her enemy to approach closer she exaggerated her sway
pretending to have trouble keeping her balance as she waited several
seconds finally launching an attack just as the man started to leap a
small crater, caught in mid air and unable to dodge, her attack hit
the bulky british professor mid chest and carried him back thirty
feet pinning him in the rubble, of a collapsed wall.
Callisto only had an instant to see him struggle to rise and start to
ponder how the man survived, it didn't make sense, even in her
weakened state, a five hundred mile an hour blast of super cooled ice
crystals should have cut him in two.
A moment later machine gun fire from a shattered tank broke her
concentration and knocked her to the ground. The gun fire wasn't
really a direct threat, her senshi aura easily deflected the large
caliber bullets, but it was keeping her from targeting the man with
the sword. Ignoring the geysers of dirt as well as the impacts of
bullets on her head, shoulders and back she focused and silenced that
damnable American's machine gun. It was to much to hope her attack
had harmed the American, but it did slice off the barrel of the
machine gun and dig a couple of inches into the armour swivel plate
effectively jamming the mechanism.
Cursing Robur's failure in 1905, she rolled over, her eyes widened as
she saw that the portly British professor wasn't, her attack had
blasted away an over sized suit revealing ancient Avalon plate
armour. Jogged by the emblem emblazoned across the armour's chest
plate ancient memories rose from her two rings, rings given her
mother by Sir Lancelot himself, allowing her to finally put a name to
the man's face.
"Arthur" saying the name even as she mentally deleted the preceding
king, now she understood reaching out with her senses, Lady Callisto
cursed as her suspicions proved true she could feel Lady Triton's
power linked to Arthur's armour and through that Excalibur.
Scrambling to her feet Lady Callisto, was frightened, normally even
the legendary Excalibur could barely scratch a Senshi, but boosted by
the power of another Senshi the blade's cutting aura had overcome her
protection and that single attack allowed in a moment of victorious
arrogance had hurt her badly.
Focusing as much power as she could Lady Callisto launched an attack
at Arthur, her heart skipping a beat when his armour's avoidance
protocols turned a direct hit into a glancing blow gaining her only a
few seconds respite.
Snarling at the skill he displayed, she watched as he carefully used
a shuffling walk that kept both feet on the ground, it had slowed his
approach considerably, but it gave his avoidance protocols a better
than even chance at dodging any attack.
Lady Callisto hesitated unsure what to do, here was one of her
people's legendary enemies alive, believed dead for over a thousand
years, she wanted to kill him badly, but his armour's link to a
henshin rod and her weakened condition made him more than a match.
Coming to a decision Lady Callisto started to turn, planning to jump
away and use the converted round table to teleport home, she never
got the chance, not seeing the American pop up from a rubble pile and
toss two grenades.
Her son would later discover that her last memories were of being
tossed into the air by an explosion followed by skidding across the
ground and the glimpse of a shadow connected with the flash of a
descending sword.
Chief Councilman Ralph Nilgerson slammed his fist on the desk and
glared at the man in the monitor and said "I don't care how much
rubble is sealing the Teleportation center's entrances get those
reinforcements out of the mountain, Lady Callisto is facing a Avalon
Senshi and an undetermined number of Avalon operatives!" Switching
video feeds abruptly Ralph's features changed from anger to worry as
he gazed through another camera this one focused on the councils
interrogation chamber. Currently it held Doctors working on the girl
that was a fourteen year old version of his Lady Callisto.
Standing up Ralph started pacing the length of the Council's
executive command center his eyes never quite leaving the display
showing Princess Callisto. He was worried Princess Callisto's sudden
collapse had him thinking something might have happened to Lady
Callisto. Lady Callisto ruthless use of her Henshin rod's memory
function had resulted in a younger twin that had a closer connection
than any natural twin ever had and it had given the two an uncanny
ability to sense the other.
Princess Callisto's collapse a few minutes before had happened
without warning and had the entire council scared it hadn't taken
long to determine that she wasn't breathing and lacked a heart beat.
It was almost an Ironic, but the closeness of the councils
interrogation chambers and the associated life support systems had
probably saved her life, even so the young girl had been dead for at
least 45 seconds before they had gotten her into life support.
Pausing directly in front of the display as one of the doctors moved
and gave the camera an un-obstructed view of the young woman, Ralph
frowned the lesions that had spontaneously appeared on Princess
Callisto's neck bothered him and only the absence of the Callisto
henshin rod reassured him that his Lady Callisto was not dead.
He watched as one of the large medics assisting the doctors made hand
signs, the discrete signs were geared for telling the condition of a
person undergoing heavy interrogation and designed to give the
council members overseeing the subject an idea of how hard they could
push. In this case they indicated that the patient was off life
support and still unconscious, but appeared to be recovering, brain
activity was increasing from a coma like state.
His worry slightly mollified Ralph allowed contingency plans to
settle back into his subconscious for the moment his power base
appeared to be secure, all he required was at least one of the
Callisto's to survived the younger or the older, it didn't really
matter.
Milessa stood frozen trying to blink or look away as she fearfully
watched an object hover before Luigi, she was terrified, an unearthly
gray white flare had washed out the headlines of her Paris paper
sending her to her feet, only to be caught by the light of a cold
gray fire floating at eye level to her seated husband.
Milessa's surprise had changed to fear when two gentle pops heralded
the appearance of a pair of rings, coming from nowhere and going into
orbit around the hovering crystal rod. The rod's inner fire reached
out to envelop the circling rings even as she suddenly realized it
was also holding her frozen in it's cold grip.
Milessa would always be unsure, but minutes or seconds later a heart
tearing sob from her husband and a single whispered word broke her
trance allowing her to blink and turn eyes toward him, his paper
forgotten a hand slowly reaching into the gray flames covering the
flaring rod.
Focusing on Luigi's face only added confusion to Milessa's frozen
fear, in the ten years of their marriage she had always been able to
read her husband like an open book and now all she could see was a
determination laced with a deep grief as his hand rose into the cold
gray fire pouring from the rod. She couldn't understand, couldn't he
feel the deathly cold bite of those unearthly flames?
"No", Milessa desperately whispered straining trying to move against
an unseen force that encased her like sand, he was going to touch the
fire, why wasn't he scared? Why was he so sad? Milessa watched
helplessly as the rings broke orbit and floated to her husband's hand
each settling on a finger leaving his wedding band to separate them,
moments later his hand closed on the fiery rod.
Milessa staggered forward toward her husband as the unseen sand
seemed to erode away in an unfelt wind, reaching she tried to grab
his arm only to gasp and scramble backwards away from the burning
cold flames now washing over Luigi's form and spilling across the
floor driving her into a corner and trapping her there whimpering
behind a overturned table.
Luigi had been surprised and very suspicious, at the sight of his
mother's henshin rod, he had hoped to never to hold that rod and when
Lady Callisto and the League council had exiled him to the German
embassy in France twenty years ago he had thought that legacy had
been denied any future daughter or grand daughter.
Slowly raising a hand toward the rod Luigi let out an involuntary sob
followed by "mother" as he felt a resonance form with the henshin
rod, he knew it and it knew him, there was no question it was Lady
Callisto's rod of power, through it he again felt an echo from that
distant moon and no power on Earth could counterfeit that.
Luigi allowed the link to form and with a single thought he guided
the orbiting rings to his fingers, never really feeling or noticing
them settle as he focused on the Callisto henshin rod now firmly held
in the same hand.
Putting his grief aside Luigi frowned, this shouldn't be, fourteen
years ago one of the few friends he still had in the League had
visited and informed him that the council had finally developed a
cloning method. His friend had also mentioned that his mother had
just given birth to a new heir an "aunt" to him and a younger twin
sister to herself.
He had even met his younger "aunt", his mother had shown up for his
wedding and she had been in tow, his heart had went out to the four
year old even as he felt a chill enter his soul, what had happened to
the League, how had they sunk so low?
Everyone had thought the little girl had been so cute the way she
dressed just like her mother, but it went much deeper and only Luigi
had the insight to recognized the signs of a child far to young
forced into using a Silver Millennium artifact's memories. The
little girls mannerisms and movement weren't the normal actions of a
child trying to act like her mother.
Luigi bit his lower lip his "aunt's" link to the Callisto Henshin rod
had been nearly as strong as his mothers, if she was still alive the
Henshin rod should have found her. His worry and fear deepening for
his family especially his son John, Luigi came to his feet as he
realized what it meant for his son, they needed to start running now
as soon as the Lancelot League realized he had the Henshin Rod they
would come for it and his son.
After a couple of fear blinded steps first in one direction and then
in another he stopped and frowned, he needed to know where to run, he
was going to have to hide from both the League and Avalon, but he
needed to know what had happened how could both have died? Had
Avalon finally discovered Mystery and launched a surprise Senshi led
invasion of his hidden homeland?
Taking a deep breath and seating himself on the floor in a meditation
stance he started concentrating, he was about to try something that
would have been an automatic execution during the Silver Millennium.
Men even a Senshi's first born son could only form a low level link
with a henshin rod, the Silver Millennium had been quite
chauvinistic, they weren't allowed to access the memories and only
the worst situations imaginable would allow a man to even hold a
Henshin rod and form a meager link to it's power.
Luigi focused choosing his thoughts carefully as he used his
masculine limited access to the Henshin rod to order it to cross link
with his badly damaged Judge's teaching bracelet. Both were
artifacts given only to women and as such both should have contained
the same protective circuits to prevent full access by a man's mind
or aura.
The protective circuits were supposed to be a fail-safe design,
removing or damaging the security circuits should also destroy the
esper link circuit and the associated memories stored in the
synthetic diamond and ruby. But somehow nearly seventy years ago an
ignorant Jeweler unaware of the bracelets true origin or power had
reshaped it into a center piece for an ornate necklace and
unknowingly succeeded in doing what experts for twenty thousand years
had said was impossible.
Focusing not on the Henshin rod in his hand, but on the bracelet
hanging as a amulet around his neck Luigi gathered his thoughts to
use the damaged artifact. Making the bracelet work required very
high levels of concentration, in the nearly two hundred years of
experience before his exile he had never seen an artifact that had
required more effort to use.
Settling deeper into a trance Luigi isolated out his link to the
bracelet normally he no longer needed this much preparation to reach
the required concentration levels, but now there was no room for
error, illegally tapping the power and memories of a Henshin rod,
wasn't something to try with a divided attention.
Putting his grief for his mother completely from his mind and pushing
his worry for his family deep into his subconscious Luigi carefully
crafted the mental image/pattern he wanted to send. Like most League
teenagers Luigi had been taught the trick of voicing a rough
approximation of his mental command, the words held no actual meaning
for a Silver Millennium artifact, but they did serve to increase an
inexperienced person's esper threshold. Like most, Luigi had out
grown words within six months of being given his first artifact.
He had tried using the voicing technique with the Judges bracelet,
but it hadn't been quite enough to get reliable results, eventually
he had hit on speaking backwards and that had worked after a fashion,
it had been nearly twelve years and he still had to vocalize his
commands backwards to use the bracelet.
Taking a deep breath he spoke slowly saying
".SRUOH XIS TSAP EHT YROMEM S'OTSILLAC YDAL WOHS"
Slumping slightly in exhaustion and relief, as a three dimensional
image formed before him, it had worked and better yet the security
hadn't fried him or in this case explosively crystallize the water in
his body. Settling into a more relaxed position Luigi almost smiled
at the Irony, the League council had stripped him of his personal
Silver Millennium artifacts and then had thought to torture him with
an incredible waste of a precious splinter by giving him an artifact
they thought doubly useless to him.
Luigi cringed as he heard a gasp and a whimper from behind him,
turning and looking over his shoulder he saw Milessa's fearful eyes
peeking over an up ended table.
Silently berating himself for forgetting that his wife had also been
in the room, he raised a hand and motioned to her as he forced a sad
smile and then saying "Honey I can explain, this is a family legacy
my mother has." Pausing for a couple of heart beats Luigi regained
control and continued "Has died and beyond expectation that legacy
has come to me."
Luigi continued to speak softly as his wife hesitantly made her way
to his side saying "I've activated the Callisto henshin rod."
Hesitating yet again he frowned trying to find a way to explain just
what a henshin rod was and what it was showing. After a moment he
continued "Think of the rod as my mothers magic wand and I've asked
it to show me the past." Cringing at having to use the word magic he
took a breath and blurted out "It's going to show mother's last six
hours. I need to know what could kill a Senshi."
After Milessa had settled clumsily at his side, he hugged her and
whispered "I'm sorry Milessa for not telling you of my true back
ground. This isn't really magic." Stopping at the look of complete
disbelief on his wife's face, he finally said after several seconds
of thought "It isn't magic at least not your def..."
"Is that a unicorn!" turning from his wife he looked at the
holographic display generated by his bracelet and saw his mother's
hands in her private stable giving sugar cubes to the horses and mice
to the pair of Griffins and a unicorn also stabled there. Idly he
thought "This isn't going to be easy."
Milessa listened to a distant clock strike one AM as she carefully
positioned her husband's head on a cushion taken from a chair, about
an hour ago Luigi had broken down crying and a few minutes after that
he had drifted into an exhausted sleep tucking a rug around her
husband she left the room. Now he needed to sleep, seeing his mother
be-headed from her own point of view didn't need to be fresh in his
mind, getting out of the German embassy to France during war was
going to take skill and a lot of it.
Trembling slightly Milessa left the study and made her way toward
their son's room. She felt sick, reality had taken on the feathery
feel of a nightmare. A nightmare she suspected the world would not
soon wake from, her confidence in France's defenses had been shaken
by what she had seen and she was never going to forget the sad laugh
her husband had given and the retort of "One wall does not a fortress
make." when she had mentioned the Maginot line.
Pausing at her son's room she quickly checked on him, thinking on
what she had learned and seen in the past seven hours, Unicorns,
Griffins, an under water city, a battle between two Sorceress one who
used wind and water and her own mother in law that fought with ice
and a freezing fire and then there was her executioner a man Luigi
swore was King Arthur a man not seen by the League in well over a
thousand years.
Arthur Pendragon groaned softly as he put the young American down
quickly placing a hand on the man's back steadying him as he
staggered, in the soft glow generated by Arthur's armour.
As sore as he was inside the armour he didn't envy the young man that
had rode in his arms in their desperate escape. Arthur had been
forced to drive his armour to it's limit only the heavily shielded
trickle of energy from Lady Triton allowing it to sustain a bone
jarring cross country speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour for the
last six hours. Settling on a small boulder he watched as the young
American staggered around the cave slowly working the life back into
his limbs. Turning his attention inward Arthur frowned as he worked
on sending information, reassurance and questions over the power link
to Lady Triton. The link wasn't suited for that especially in
stealth mode, it was relatively easy to hide a low level power
transmission as wide band white noise, but adding in a coherent
signal, even a scrambled one ran the risk of creating a pattern
noticeable to many Silver Millennium artifacts.
Arthur had started to use a wider bandwidth link, but Lady Triton had
quickly overrode that, he hadn't had much time to describe what they
had found under and around Neuschwanstien Castle and sending thought
images were out of the question, but the terse verbal description
mostly stolen from his American companion or the lost Lady Titan had
only added to the turmoil in the Avalon council.
Lady Titan's death hadn't just been a shock to her oldest daughter,
the woman's grand son was in a stage production and hundreds of
Avalon's citizens had been present when the Titan Henshin rod had
appeared and upstaged it. One thing you could say about the Silver
Millennium rulers was that they liked to give a good show.
"It's going to be worse than I thought isn't it." broke from his
internal thoughts and the slow dialogue with Lady Triton, Arthur
looked up at his American companion and after several seconds of
confusion realized what the most recent and probably last Knight of
the round table was speaking of and said "Yes. Sir Jones what we
discovered and those that died mean that this war is going to be far
worse than anyone thought."
-----------------------------------------
Howard melton
God bless
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