Anansi Storytelling

The Legion of Doom did not sneak in.

They rolled up on New York like they were shooting a trailer.

Skies went wrong first. Yellow light cut across the horizon, tight and mean. Sinestro wrote a sigil in the air with his ring and the whole city felt smaller. The river tossed like something big had rolled under it. Black Manta’s sub cleared the surface and dumped a squad of drones that fanned out over the water.

On land, Lex Luthor’s latest battlesuit walked out of a mother-of-all-trucks that had just driven itself through a police cordon like it was made of paper. Gorilla Grodd rode on the roof of the thing, calm, eyes glowing ugly. Cheetah paced on the ground, claws tapping asphalt.

People ran. Sirens wailed. News helicopters tried to get angles and stayed just a little too close.

Scipio and Neswt stepped into the intersection in front of all that.

Barefoot.

Concrete was hot under Scipio’s toes, cracked and dirty. Gaia sat under the whole city, under the old bones and subway lines and trash and water, solid and heavy.

Got you.

The black CRAS-9 coin at the nape of his neck warmed. The suit flowed out of it like shadow water, covering his shoulders and ribs and arms in a matte black jacket and pants. It stopped at his ankles, exactly where he told it to, leaving his soles on the ground. Neural link snapped in. Predictive pings hit at the edge of his awareness, little pressure points where danger would be.

Neswt’s coin fired a second later. Her CRAS-9 slid over her in a red-black wraparound coat over hard armor. If you knew what you were looking at, you could see the pattern where Aset’s hair had been sewn in, quiet and old. Her feet stayed bare too. She liked the feel of the street almost as much as he did.

Chaos Iklwa appeared in Scipio’s left hand like it had never left. No glow. No flare. Just there. Weight steady. Metal cold.

The Legion of Doom stopped for a second when they saw them.

Lex’s voice came over external speakers, smooth and condescending.

“New players,” he said. “You are not League. Who do you belong to.”

“Your nightmares,” Neswt said under her breath.

Scipio ignored the line. He flicked his senses open.

Vector lines jumped into focus. Sinestro’s constructs shifting in the air. The truck’s weight on damaged pavement. The way Black Manta’s drones floated above the river. Grodd’s slow breathing. Cheetah’s muscles coiled for a sprint.

He let telepathy fan out thin.

Grodd hit him immediately. A mental spike. Not subtle. Not gentle. Gorilla mind backed by a nasty telepathic engine.

KNEEL.

Scipio felt pressure slam into the front of his skull, tricking his own neurons into seizing. He pushed back on instinct. Telepathic awareness, resist, shield. Their abilities collided for a second, two currents meeting.

Grodd’s eyes widened just a little. He had expected easy prey.

“You are not human,” Grodd said. His voice carried without a mic.

Scipio’s head ached already. He kept his voice level.

“I am very human,” he said. “You are just used to soft targets.”

Sinestro dropped lower in the sky. He looked amused and bored at the same time.

“Luthor,” he said. “Do you know these two.”

“No,” Lex said. “Which means they are either insignificant or about to be a problem.”

His faceplate slid open for a moment so they could see the man inside. Bald, eyes sharp, smile thin.

“This is not your fight,” Lex called. “Walk away. The Justice League has earned what is coming.”

“We just emptied one of your black sites,” Scipio said. “We saw what you and your friends did to those metas. This is absolutely our fight.”

Black Manta’s modulated voice crackled through external speakers.

“You have no idea who you are talking to.”

Neswt’s gaze flicked over the various helmets and weapons. She pinged Scipio’s mind.

That one in the helmet screams electricity, she sent. Watch your suit.

CRAS-9 hummed in his nerves as if it agreed.

Weakness: high level electricity. Enough of a hit and the armor would seize around their nervous systems. They would fry inside their own skin.

“We keep the armor off the worst of it,” he sent back. “Or we bail out if we misjudge.”

And Sinestro, she added. That ring feeds off fear.

“Yeah,” Scipio said out loud. “We are not feeding him.”

Lex lifted an armored hand.

“This is your last warning,” he said. “Step aside.”

“Hard pass,” Scipio said.

Sinestro smiled.

“Then let us test them.”

He drew a shape in the air with his ring. Yellow light flared and solidified into a dozen needle missiles, each the length of a car, all pointed at Scipio and Neswt.

“Fire,” he said.

They shot forward in a tight spread.

CRAS-9 screamed in Scipio’s head in its own calm way. Incoming. Vectors. Angles.

He slid the limiter off his nerves.

Myelin thickened. Time pulled thin. The missiles slowed from streaks to fast-moving shapes. He saw each path clearly. He grabbed them.

Vector manipulation. Velocity, direction, magnitude.

The missile swarm bent.

They curved around him and Neswt like a river around rocks, whipping past close enough that he could feel the energy on his skin. He dumped them sideways into the Legion’s own formation.

Lex’s suit caught three on the chest. They blew up in a wash of yellow and kinetic force. His armor took it, staggering but holding. Grodd leaped clear. Cheetah blurred out of the way. Two of the drones over the river took glancing hits and spun into the water.

Black Manta cursed.

“Sinestro,” he snapped.

“You wanted a test,” Sinestro said. “We have our answer.”

Grodd’s eyes went hard.

In Scipio’s head, a psychic roar hit like a freight train.

DIE.

It was not a word so much as an order. He tasted blood in his mouth as small vessels popped in his nose and sinuses. Telepathic shields flared. His regen started fixing what Grodd was breaking.

Neswt stepped into that mind noise with him. A second mental presence, sharp and familiar, slipped alongside his.

We have fought worse, she said on the inside. Get off the front line with him. I will clog him.

“On it,” he thought back.

He Blinked.

One heartbeat he was in the intersection. The next he was six stories up on the side of a building, standing on vertical glass like it was a sidewalk. Vectors around his feet rewrote gravity. The Legion snapped their heads up.

Grodd’s focus went after him.

Neswt hit Grodd from the side.

Her telekinesis did not just throw weight. She grabbed the air around his head and shoulders, compressing it hard enough to feel like a vice. His concentration broke for an instant. The mental roar dropped to a snarl.

She followed with a physical shot. A chunk of broken curb ripped itself out of the street and slammed into Grodd’s chest, knocking him off the truck.

“Stay out of my man’s head,” she said.

Cheetah used the moment.

She blurred across the street, claws out, going for Neswt’s throat. Her speed was not Flash-level, but it was enough to be a problem.

CRAS-9 fed Neswt the angles. Incoming path. Joint lines. Intent.

She did not block with her forearms. She stepped out of linear space, Blinked half a meter sideways, and twisted in the same motion. Cheetah’s swipe cut empty air. Neswt’s bare foot hooked behind the villain’s ankle. A TK shove added force.

Cheetah went airborne and slammed into the side of a delivery truck hard enough to leave a dent.

On the building glass, Scipio took a breath and let his fear sit where he could see it.

Sinestro hovered in front of him now, ring glowing, eyes pale.

“You see it,” Sinestro said quietly. “How this ends. You are afraid.”

The ring fed on that. Sinestro could taste emotional vectors like Scipio tasted motion.

Scipio stared back at him.

“Not afraid of you,” he said. “Afraid of watching you hurt more people.”

Sinestro smiled.

“Fear is fear.”

He pointed the ring.

Yellow light formed a construct right in front of Scipio. The shape was ugly and familiar: a whole planet cracked in half, screaming faces falling into the void. Sinestro pushed. The image carried emotional weight. If Scipio flinched, the ring would grab that reaction and spike it.

Scipio let it hit.

Pain in his chest, old trauma, flashes of his own people under other empires. His heart did not like it. His hands stayed steady.

He grabbed the construct’s vectors like they were just more light and snapped them sideways. The fake planet shattered into shards of yellow and flew off into the air in a spray.

“Try harder,” he said.

Sinestro’s eyes narrowed.

“Gladly.”

He fired a tight beam. Not at Scipio. At the building under his feet.

The yellow blade cut through glass and support beams with surgical precision. The whole wall bucked.

Scipio bent gravity under his soles and ran straight up as the building façade started to fall away. Debris and shattered glass tumbled past him. He reached the roof and Blinked to the next block as the wall cascaded down in a controlled collapse.

Below, Black Manta joined in.

His helmet lit and twin energy beams lanced out, scything across cars toward Neswt. They sparked off her CRAS-9, no penetration, but the suit howled a warning in her nerves. Voltage high. Getting close to the threshold.

“Electric,” she snapped. “He is hot enough to cook us if we get lazy.”

Scipio landed back near her, Chaos Iklwa in hand.

“Keep him on you,” he said. “I will go for Lex.”

“You like the bald ones,” she said.

Lex heard that, of course.

“I have had enough of this,” Lex said. “Grodd. Manta. Tighten up.”

His suit hummed and glowed. Energy fields came online. Shoulder launchers opened.

Scipio flicked into time dilation again and Blinked forward, straight at the billionaire in the walking tank.

Lex fired everything.

Missiles, beams, some kind of green coated lance that screamed Kryptonite even from here. CRAS-9 pinged every trajectory. Scipio bent half of them away, shaking his hand, redirecting vectors. The rest hit his suit square.

Armor held. No punctures. The impacts rattled his organs and slammed him out of his line, but regen was already pushing bruises and micro fractures back out of his flesh.

He came through the barrage and slammed the Chaos Iklwa straight into Lex’s chest plate.

Lex had planned for kryptonian punches, magical blasts, heavy ordnance. He had not planned for a spear that ignored rules.

The blade went in. Not all the way, but it pierced the first shell and bit into inner armor. Warning lights went off inside Lex’s HUD. He grunted.

“Interesting,” Lex said.

He snapped a hand up, crackling with redirected energy, and grabbed the haft. The suit poured a blast of electricity and kinetic force straight into the weapon.

CRAS-9 screamed loud in Scipio’s nervous system.

Kill current.

He let go of the spear without hesitation and Blinked, abandoning position and weapon in one shot. He reappeared on top of the same truck Grodd had ridden in on, chest heaving.

The Iklwa did not stay with Lex.

It was not loot.

Scipio thought about the weapon for a fraction of a second.

Come back.

The spear vanished from Lex’s armor, leaving a sudden hole. It reappeared in Scipio’s hand without crossing the space between. Lex stumbled as pressure changed.

“You do not get to keep that,” Scipio said.

Grodd chose that moment and hit him again, mentally.

Not an order this time. Images. Memory. Grodd ran the fight Scipio had lost against Darkseid, the times he had failed people, amplified every whisper of doubt, tried to turn it into paralysis.

Neswt dropped into Grodd’s head from the side like a blade.

Her own telepathy was not a neat ladder like Scipio’s. It was sparse, precise, and backed by cold anger. She dug up everything Grodd had done in Gorilla City, every time he had hurt his own just to hear them scream, and showed it to him at once.

He staggered physically, clutching his skull.

“Get out of there,” Scipio sent.

Already moving, she shot back.

Cheetah came for her again, this time smarter. Low angles, nonstop motion, trying to tire her out.

CRAS-9 read Cheetah’s pattern, fed Neswt micro corrections. Neswt fought like an angry god in a small body, using TK and suit prediction together. She did not try to knock Cheetah out in one move. She disrupted her rhythm. A small TK nudge here, a CRAS-9 warning there, until Cheetah overextended just enough and Neswt put her down with a knee to the jaw that cracked pavement.

Up above, Sinestro and Scipio finally went for real.

Sinestro built a yellow cage around the whole block, pure fear energy turned into structure.

“You are boxed in,” he said. “We can do this all day.”

Scipio tightened his grip on the Chaos Iklwa.

Every vector in the cage screamed get out in his head. He ignored the panic tone and looked at the math. The constructs were strong, but they were still force given shape.

He raised the spear and sliced at air.

The Iklwa did not hit the cage. It hit the vectors that made it.

Yellow light split.

A crack opened in the construct like somebody had hit a windshield in just the right spot. Energy spiderwebbed and fell apart along lines he had chosen.

Sinestro frowned.

“This is tiresome,” Sinestro said. “You are resistant. You are not inevitable.”

Scipio smiled without humor.

“I know someone who would argue with you on that,” he said. “But I am enough for today.”

Black Manta finally got clever.

He stopped firing straight at Neswt and Scipio. He fired at the ground near them, dumping high voltage into the wet street. Electricity crawled out in ugly branches, looking for feet.

CRAS-9 screamed in both their skulls at the same time. Line of current. Suit vulnerability.

“Up!” Scipio snapped.

They both Blinked.

One heartbeat they were on the ground. The next they were ten meters up on telekinetic platforms and bent gravity, the street below them turning into a live wire party. All that juice kept crawling with nowhere to go but parked cars and lamp posts.

Hulk would have loved it. They did not.

“We cannot drop back into that,” Neswt said.

“Then we do not,” Scipio said.

He took one long breath and listened.

Gaia was there. Under the street, under Black Manta’s wiring and Lex’s trucks and decades of bad decisions.

He pulled.

Gravity vectors flipped. Not all the way over. Just enough to make a cone centered under the Legion. The ground heaved. Cars slid. Lex’s big rig skidded sideways. Grodd lost his footing. Cheetah scrabbled. The edges of Black Manta’s electrical swamp cracked.

Sinestro tried to compensate, but his ring was already working overtime keeping constructs stable.

“This is not worth the contract,” Sinestro muttered. “Luthor, enjoy your mess.”

His ring drew a portal in the air, bright and sharp. In one clean motion he flew through it and was gone.

Grodd snarled and threw one last mental spear at Scipio.

This is never over.

Scipio caught the thought, twisted it, and handed it back.

Only if you live, he replied.

Grodd bared his teeth. He grabbed Cheetah with a telekinetic tug and leaped, using Lex’s stumbling truck as a platform. One more jump put him on a side street, then he was gone into the chaos.

Black Manta’s drones dipped low to cover his retreat, firing a last volley that Scipio bent away. One of them clipped Lex’s truck instead and that was enough.

“Fall back,” Lex snapped. “This data is sufficient.”

His suit fired thrusters. The big rig dumped smoke and started reversing like a hurt animal. In less than a minute the Legion of Doom was peeling away, damaged and angry but intact.

The yellow cage flickered out completely. The street sagged and then settled. Sirens grew louder again as cops and regular people edged closer.

Scipio and Neswt hung there for another few seconds in the air, bare feet on invisible platforms, hearts hammering.

“Done?” Neswt asked.

“Today,” Scipio said. “They will be back. People like that always are.”

She snorted.

“So are we.”

He grinned at that. Tired. A little bloody. Still on his feet.

CRAS-9 cooled at their necks, waiting for the next hit. The weakness to electricity sat in the back of both their minds like a bruise.

“We need a plan for that,” Neswt said.

“Yeah,” he said. “We do.”

They dropped gently back to cracked asphalt, soles finding the ground, Gaia’s slow heartbeat under it all.

Scipio looked in the direction the Legion had gone, then at the people peeking around corners.

“One enemy at a time,” he said.

“One win at a time,” Neswt answered.

They walked away together, armor shifting back into civilian clothes as they moved, just two barefoot Black people in the middle of a busted-up street that looked like a crime scene and a warning at the same time.