Arcalian

The aliens felt the capture of their kin. “Glonth you fool!” raged Angon. “No!” Venev writhed and seethed. “You bloated idiot!” “It's your fault, Venev!” Lissik, the purple parasite, one of two with wings, accused him. “You were with him last!” “Not I!” Venev protested. “It was Gemir!” Angon wasn't buying it. “Foolish Venev! You know how he is! Now Glonth will make us fail!” “Losing Slodd when we first awoke,” Gemir brooded, “Did damage to our mind. It weakened us. Made our shape-shifting more limited and dangerous. If they kill him....” “He's left us no choice,” Lissik whined. “None,” Angon agreed. -- Amanda Waller was under the mistaken impression that not revealing they had captured Glonth to the public wouldn't alert the aliens. But it was probably just as well. She turned to the heroes. “You know these aliens as well as anyone can. Standard interrogation is useless. Any suggestions?” The Eradicator—originally an ancient alien device

The Rendavon Clan Darro on Nyscal had been part of the Japanese Interstellar Shogunate for some years now. Officially, the rival Clan Velaser had long since come to terms with this arrangement. Unofficially, Clan Velaser had sponsored attacks of terrorism and piracy, attempting to sabotage Human mining operations in Clan Darro territory, and harassing Darro interstellar shipping to their Human government. The Humans were quietly impressed that Velaser had adopted their own tactics. But they also had no intention of tolerating such threats. (It was worth noting that the mostly-Gulbren pirate ship Wagelis, having had several changes in captain and staff in the intervening years, deliberately avoided this particular conflict.) Warships of the Shogunate hunted down and destroyed such pirates, wherever they were found. Clan Velaser officially joined Clan Darro and the Rendavon ruling Council in condemning these acts of piracy. The Shogunate representatives smiled a terrible smile

Prestor Jon was filling Terra in on the parts of the plan she hadn't paid attention to. Now she was angry. They were breaking up the regular teams—hers included—and putting people together on task oriented groups as Waller thought best. This, Terra didn't like at all. If Superman had been the one running the show, or Batman, she would've understood. But this Suicide Squad mismanaging bureaucrat? Hmph. Pantha and Red Star she knew. Pantha was....disagreeable, but capable. Red Star was stoic, and admirable. Arsenal—Roy Harper—she had met twice before, and knew him as one of the classic Titans, back when he was Speedy. Booster Gold was from a different future than her own, and almost nobody took him seriously. Maxima was supposed to be an enemy of Superman, and why she was now on their side, and apparently not just for the alien invasion but in general, she had no idea. This was the team she'd be working with for the duration. Not any of her team, and except for Pantha and

On the planet the Yaekerin called Silver Star Home, and the Humans simply called Silver, the Yaekerin called Skelsi had quietly passed a few short years before. But one of her descendants, a male, was doing as she had done, educating the hatchlings. But this one had somehow acquired a horrendous amount of misinformation! “Explain this to me again,” he said wearily to the frustrating young upstart. “There is no way Human stealth technology could work. There should be no small fighters, and sensors can detect anything coming from millions of light years away!” The teacher let out a long whistling sigh, and blinked very slowly in frustration. “Child--” “Space is not like a planetary sea! Smaller craft have no advantage! There is no stealth in space! Simple primitive nuclear ordinance would--” “Are you done??!” the teacher snarled. The child recoiled, but rallied. “No, but I will listen to your answer, teacher.” The teacher seriously considered the notion of swatting

Terra had known this day was coming. But she didn't want it be here, now. This was too soon. Bad enough to deal with the brother of the original even during a relatively quiet period. But now? In the middle of a crisis? When there was no time! She had tried to prepare for this. But again, not here, not now. Not like this. So what few ideas she'd had about to handle this went right out the window. “I'm not....” she faltered. “I'm not...” “So I have been told,” Geo-Force said grimly. “But you certainly look and sound like her.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and blew out her breath in a sigh. “Okay, long story short, alternate timeline. Possible future, from your perspective. Her DNA. Injected with nanotech into another girl. Said girl is overwritten, replaced, with Terra version 2.0, yours truly. I'd like to think I'm not as crazyballs as her. So far, seems to be the case.” She didn't look up at him, not at first. There was a long relative silence, framed

All Gulbren are mathematicians, but Temfaux-Are-0198 was first among them of his generation. The best statistical analyst currently alive. So the Gulbren First Calculator had summoned him. The First Calculator's name had been Themas-Wic-1783, but nobody had called him that in over thirty years, since he had ascended to the position. “Welcome, young ratocinator,” the First Calculator said, as informal as the situation would allow. “You r chance of being my successor is currently 87.563%.” “If the figures allow,” Temfaux replied, reciting an ancient bit of Gulbren wisdom, neither boastful nor modest. The First Calculator almost chuckled; while he would never openly admit it, he was fond of Temfaux. “Indeed. I have summoned you directly for a matter of great importance; long range communication will not do, no matter how encrypted. You understand.” “Of course,” Temfaux agreed. “I need you to apply your statistical analysis to societal trends among the Humans.”

Interrupting my usual Terra II and HFY story posts for a rant. Haven't been on Twitter for years, and no longer on Instagram. But I still browse Tumblr and Reddit. And people still. Don't. Get. It. About Terra. Or indeed, about superheroes in general. First, to quote a genius from Tumblr: “...I want her sacrificed on the altar of the narrative's stakes and deconstruction of genre expectations, haunting the narrative forever, eternally lurking at the back of her teammates' minds that there will always be people you Cannot Save. I want her as the culmination of the fact that people are eternally incomplete and sometimes these varying degrees of incompleteness and need come together in catastrophic ways.” This is part of the problem. The genre has already been deconstructed enough, even before Tara's story was originally told. Even before that, we had Roy Harper sticking a needle in his arm and Gwen Stacy's neck breaking. And of course, since then, we've had Jason Todd

Terra tried to stay focused on what Waller was saying. “Jon,” she murmured into her communications bracelet, “I hope you're recording this.” No worries, Jon assured her. She nodded absently. “Good.” Waller was talking about how one of the aliens had been dead from the start, and they had found the body, and one of their shapeshifters—Martian Manhunter, apparently, not Mirage—might try to take advantage of that. Too bad, it would've been good for Mirage's image in the eyes of the hero community generally, and the older Titans group specifically. She didn't even know if Mirage was here. Probably. “Hope the enemy doesn't have spies,” she murmured. She wasn't thinking of the 'New Blood' specifically, if anything she empathized with them not being trusted by so many, given whose face she wore. But she was worried about the aliens having other ways of listening in. Jon understood her meaning. I don't think the aliens are big on subtlety. Or taking humans seriously as a

The Zrelvians as a people had long since learned not to hunt Humans. Raids on Human colonies by anyone other than Humans themselves was very rare indeed. Even Olep's pirate ship had not dared, especially not after taking on Human crew members. But the Zrelvian pirate ship that called itself Rising Claw in their language certainly had nothing but disdain for the rules of their own people, never mind others. They knew they could never go back. And they still wanted to hunt Humans; the Greatest Prey. But they had enough low cunning to understand they could not outmatch Humans in stealth technology, and all races had learned not to even try. So, to their credit, they tried to find a way around the problem. They approached a Human refueling station that orbited a gas giant in an otherwise uninhabited system. They claimed to be victims of a pirate attack themselves, and trailing debris from previous conquests to “prove” it. They were given approval to dock, and came in slow.

A news reporter was standing in front of the UN, telling the public what was known; about the aliens, about their parasitic feeding, about how the aliens could shapeshift to look human, but only to one particular form for each of them, about how about one out of every hundred victims survived and developed metahuman powers. There was some discussion, however, about whether or not the “new blood” like Chimera, as they were known, were actually doing the right thing...or working for the aliens. Several world governments were calling for the “new blood” to turn themselves in; other, more authoritarian regimes were calling to kill the “collaborators” outright. And some others were already trying to conscript them into various special forces groups or government controlled metahuman teams. Those “new blood” who had the good fortune to already be working with existing heroes (like Chimera with Terra's team, and Anima with Nightwing's team), chose to stay with them. Others weren't so