DC Adventures Log Finale – The Once and Future Manta

by jmgariepy · March 22, 2013

Previously on DC Adventures Log 8 – To Stop Tomorrow, Team Lex prevented Dr. T.O. Morrow from shaping reality to match his whim. When the team returned to their own time, however, they found their former employer, Lex Luthor, had been usurped by Black Manta, who the team left behind in 1975. Team Lex hopped in their timeship to return to 1975 and bring Manta back, but the controls went haywire, spinning the ship through the cracks of time. Hourman worked to keep his ship in one piece, as Per Degaton appeared on the monitors to taunt him. Since Manta was unwittingly pulled from 2013 when Team Lex was dragged into the past, he knew exactly when and where they would appear after the timeline was fixed. Manta passed this information on to Per Degaton, who installed a virus in Hourman’s ship in the new timeline, which became the timeline that Team Lex returned to. Hourman struggled to maintain control, but the ship split into pieces and -Bzooweeoovzip!

-Bzooweeoovzip! Gentleman Ghost and Abra Kadabra hit the pavement with a thud. The chirping of meadow larks filled the air, and Ford Fairlanes crowded the curb. Little pink houses wove their way down the street. In a nearby vacant lot, a large billboard boasted that “Charlie McCarthy says ‘You got to be a Dummy to disagree with Mr. Mind!'”

The Crypt Keeper’s Ring on Gentleman Ghost’s hand cast a gentle green glow, which prompted Kadabra to argue that he should be possessor of the ring. As they continued their altercation, a lone bicyclist who consisted of a shaggy pile of fur pedaled down the sidewalk, tossing newspapers at front doorsteps. When the paper-thing approached Kadabra and Gentleman Ghost, it shouted “Ah! Monsters!”, tossed its papers to the ground and pedaled for its life. Doors swung open, and terrible fanged and horned demons screamed, yelling for their children, and demanding that someone call the police. While Kadabra and Ghost continued to bicker, black and white sedans honed in on their location. Car doors flung open and giant lizards in police uniforms took cover behind their vehicles, as they launched a volley of energy nets.

Sherlock Holmes and Harley Quinn tumbled into a dark back alley. The walls of sleek black buildings reached into a purple night sky. At the alley’s entrance, a gang of teenagers in zoot suits beat an old man while twin girls with copious face paint blasted a motorcycle’s exhaust into his face. When Harley approaches the gang, one of the twins said, “Hey, Dee Dee, looks like someone’s dressed up like Grams.” “You’re right Dee Dee,” the other twin replied, “Grams! You never looked so good!”

Holmes asked a gang member dressed like a pumpkin to give him a computer, and the kid tossed him a visor. Holmes deduced how to use the visor, triangulated the time and place in the future that Hourman will appear, and created a work order for spare time travel parts to be sent there. Meanwhile, the twins insist that Holmes and Harley join them tonight. “Gramps is working on a comeback tour, and he’s gonna slay the competition. Right Dee Dee?” “Not if we slay them first, Dee Dee!”

The vortex of time slid aside, and Hourman found himself flying his timeship between a flurry of crumbling vine coated obelisks. After a few tricky maneuvers (and with no help from Person Man), Hourman slowed his craft to a rest on an obelisk and got his bearings. While he couldn’t determine when he was, he was fairly certain of where he was.

Getting back to the matter at hand, Hourman pulled out the panel from under his timeship’s console and found that his hyperborean rhopalic sensor was busted, his quinunc reverberator had somehow ejected itself, and he wouldn’t get anywhere until he found some analemmatic screws and poppysmic addictive.

While they brainstormed on how they would find these items in such backwards times, Hourman and Person Man were attacked by a pack of humanoid rats. The rats knocked Person Man off the building, but since Person Man’s power is that he’s worse than everyone at everything he does, he failed to die from the fall, and made a miserable pass at drowning. Hourman dispatched the ratmen with ease and discovered that, while there were few humans alive, the tigers owned a child version of one, and that one was slated to fight in the arena. Hourman flew to the arena and broke the boy out of his prison. Kamandi thanks Hourman, but he tells him that that few people would know how to help fix Hourman’s timeship, since Kamandi, himself, is the last boy on Earth, as far as he knows. Kamandi does, however, lead Hourman to the underground bunker that he was raised in. While scavenging in the bunker for parts, Hourman finds a mysterious box filled with every tool he could possibly need.

Elsewhen, Dee Dee and the jokers park their motorcycles behind a comedy club and kick in the service entrance door. With a couple hops, the Dees jump on stage and demand the spotlight away from a flailing comedian. Dee Dee whips out a gun and says “This chump thinks he’s some kind of comedian, Dee Dee.” Dee Dee draws her own gun and says, “Oh yeah, Dee Dee? If he’s such a good comedian, then he knows a lotta jokes. Tell me, funny guy, ‘What did the magician say to the fisherman?'”

Holmes stepped on stage and replied, “Pick a cod. Any cod.”

Dee Dee trained her gun at Holmes. “Oh yeah? Well why’d the cop stink?”

Holmes deduced the answer. “Because he was always on duty.”

“Why can’t you trust atoms?”

“They make up everything.”

Dee Dee grilled Holmes in furious desperation, but Holmes answered joke after joke, leaving the girls in a sobbing pile of tears. Outside the comedy club, Hourman’s timeship appeared.

Tired of these interruptions to their argument, Abra Kadabra and Gentleman Ghost teleported to the other side of the planet. The chirping of meadow larks filled the air and Ford Fairlanes crowded the curb. A billboard told them they had to be dummies to disagree with Mr. Mind. In the distance, a ball of hair pedaling a bike threw newspapers at houses, but screamed when it saw Kadabra and Ghost. Commotion filled the suburb. Sirens could be heard in the distance.

Frustrated with this turn of events, Kadabra and Ghost took to the sky. Then, thinking better on it, the two descended to a nearby graveyard and Gentleman Ghost used The Crypt Keeper’s ring to raise the dead. Kadabra made sure every zombie had his signature wax mustache, and they sent the Kadabra Cadavers out to attack the nearby town. The sense of a job well done by Kadabra and Ghost was interrupted when Hourman’s time ship appeared.

With Team Lex all accounted for, Hourman tried to navigate to 1975, but found his still doctored controls couldn’t send him back in time, only forward. Low on options, he instead aimed the ship toward the final destination Per Degaton programmed, crashing into The Space Museum in the year 2462. As the team exited the craft, they were greeted by a stupefied security guard who was sure this would cost him his job. Team Lex convinced the guard, however, that he should gather a few items and go back in time using the museum’s time bubble. Considering how backwards technology was in the early 21st century, perhaps he could use modern technology to create a new life for himself, masquerading as a super hero. The security guard runs off, knowing a good idea when he hears one.

Before Team Lex could gather their bearings, however, a time platform appeared. Black Manta stepped off the platform, followed by the five people he trusted most to put Team Lex down once and for all: Five other Black Mantas, all from different times:

• Black Manta from 2013, but who was now residing in 1975. Knowing that the supervillains of 1975 had yet to step up their game, this Black Manta walked into the Hall of Injustice, shot Lex Luthor point blank, and declared himself leader of the Injustice League.

• Black Manta from 2013. The second time around. At this point, Black Manta is very old, but his armor is state of the art, employing all manner of weaponry and defenses.

• Devil Ray. Insisting that his lack of experience with Neron led him to be duped by the demon’s deal, Black Manta agreed to a similar contract when confronting Neron a second time, in 1995. Black Manta gained incredible strength, underwater maneuverability and a terrible stinger like in his previous dealing with Neron, and like his previous dealing with Neron, he was duped into a terrible contract, which he worked his way out of, but not before losing a fair amount of power in the exchange.

• Black Manta in Doomsday Crusher armor from 1992. Unlike his predecessor, Lex Luthor, Black Manta never had an overriding desire to see Superman come to his ultimate destruction. After all, Superman is a willing dupe who saves Metropolis over and over again, without needing to be paid for his services. Black Manta knew that Doomsday would come in 1992, and that Doomsday would kill Superman, and that, after a brief chaotic time when heroes would appear to fill in Supes red shoes, Superman would be resurrected more powerful than ever. None of this was acceptable to Manta, who commissioned a suit of armor for himself that could help Superman during his climatic fight with the alien monster. Manta and Superman went on to defeat Doomsday, incidentally boosting flagging public morale in MantaCorp.

• Braniac Manta. Convinced he was more cunning than his predecessor Lex Luthor, Manta takes Braniac up on his offer in 1986 and shares a mental bond with the alien computer. While the two share similar agendas, and work in tandem for some time, Braniac’s willingness to eliminate all life on Earth to achieve his goals is too far a stretch for even Manta’s code of ethics. The fallout between the two leaves both villains weaker than when they joined forces.

• The Grey Mantle. Future Black Manta took over the Injustice League in 1975, an event witnessed by Black Manta from 1975. The Manta from the 70s recognized his future self as wiser and more experienced, and offered to work under him as The Gray Manta. At first, Gray Manta and Black Manta’s relationship was copacetic, but Black Manta, who knew how duplicitous he was, refused to pass on any details of future events, or share 21st century technology with his younger self. Gray Manta grew indignant over time, which lead to jealousy, then outrage. The relationship broke down and resulted in total war. Gray Manta’s engineering, however, was no match for Black Manta’s future tech. After a number of failed attempts, Gray Manta swore off the use of technology as a crutch, sought out and trained with The League of Assassins, and returned as The Grey Mantle, hounding Black Manta and his vast operation from the shadows of Metropolis. While there is bad blood between The Grey Mantle and Black Manta, The Grey Mantle still considers his timeline to be the correct one, and agreed to work with Black Manta to stop anyone from corrupting it.

The fight turned fierce, fast. Braniac Manta pulled back to observe and wait, but Team Lex interpreted his actions as gathering power for a massive attack. They focused their attacks on Braniac Manta and eliminated him. On the balcony, Per Degaton hid, lining up a shot with his time sniper rifle. But Gentleman Ghost spotted him and stripped his gun away. Per Degaton scrambled after his gun through the fight, retrieved it and fired a shot at Hourman, but accidentally hit a Black Manta, whisking him away to the future.

Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes observed that he is far from fit for fighting, and flees further into the museum for reinforcements. He Dodges the security guard collecting exhibits at random, and using his keen power of observation, he spots:

A Legion Flight Ring
Wrist blasters
A Force field belt
Infrared and magnifying goggles
Superman’s cape
A Phantom Zone Projector
A Time Bubble
Skeets
A twenty-first century diamond credit card beloning to one Lex Luthor
A pair of contact lenses that can deflect alien attempts at manipulating brain waves
A pocket watch which prevents magnetic storms
A spaceship called Ike
A stuffed magpie, which, according to its plaque, saved the Earth from an invasion of deadly jewels
An invisible being of pure energy, which Sherlock deduces must exist
And a ‘Dial H for Hero’ Dial

Holmes leaped at the ‘Dial H for Hero’ Dial, pressed the letters H-E-R-O, transformed into Eradicator, and flew back into the fight, smashing into Doomsday Buster Manta. With some extra muscle, Team Lex routes the Mantas and Per Degaton, and sent them back to their appropriate times. When they return to their Lex Corp Tower penthouse in 2013, Team Lex collapsed into their beds, which had just been vacated by their previous time-travelling selves. It was a very busy first day of work.