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".
Echoes of Callisto's Death
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Year 1940 Taken from "History of the Avalon Senshi"
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 stockpile 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 Merlin's great 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 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 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."
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Howard melton