So, after managing to convince Grundy to come with us, I opened a portal directly to the Fortress' main hall, which at that moment was currently occupied by two scared yokai, Akane and her boyfriend Tamashiro, having moved there several days after I began fighting Grundy, wondering what was happening and if the Earth-bound heroes were helping me.
Imagine the couple's faces when they saw a portal opening and expecting me and the others to come out tired and winded but otherwise victorious afte dealing with the giant zombie... only to see said giant zombie stomp inside.
"Oh my god!" I heard Akane scream as I came in after Grundy.
Grundy, already used to being screamed at, ignored them and gave a look around, confused, or maybe fascinated, by the fact that there was an actual medieval castle in Mars.
"Castle."
He'd also need to improve on his vocabulary, but that was for later, much, much later.
"The Fortress of Doom is closer to a keep than a fullfledged castle." VEGA said as the others came in from behind us. The suddenness of the AIs 'appearance' startled Grundy, who looked around frantically "The building lacks everything that could make it an actual castle, a moat and separate walls among other things."
"Haunted castle!" Grundy shouted as he pointed up.
Something, I don't know what (maybe stop John from snarking at Grundy) compelled me to correct him. "Artificial intelligence, actually." At the confused stare he gave me, I decided to 'clarify'. "He's a robot butler basically."
"Robot butler..." He muttered before shrugging. "Better robot than ghost."
John grunted as he took off his helmet "You and me both, damn ghosts can't decide if they want to move on or stay and dick around until Judgement Day, or at least those from London." And then turned around to glare at both Flash and Robin, who had somehow opened their mouths at the same time. "And don't think of quipping about the film that stars Billy Murray and starts with G, you gobbies! Hell, don't even think about the film! I'll make your teeth melt and then fuse if you do!"
Dick was naturally disturbed by John's sudden bout of anger. "Man, you're angrier than the last time we met... and that was five hours ago."
"That's because I haven't had a smoke in three days, kid, worried as I was for DS." John replied as he took out a cig. I'd been touched by his concern if not for the fact he nearly ruined my chance with Grundy. "That, and I hate Billy Murray, don't ask me why. And yes, I know it's just Bill."
Dick raised his hands in submission, not wanting to find out of the brit could do that, which he could.
"Greetings Mr. Gold." VEGA continued, non-plused about the situation. "I am VEGA, the AI in charge of this installation."
The mention of his previous' life surname confused Grundy, headscratching and everything. "Gold? Man of gold?"
"He doesn't know his real name?" Kara asked, eyebrow raised in confusion.
"Apparently Grundy doesn't remember his living memories as Cyrus." Bruce replied, watching carefully as Grundy looked around, taking the room in. "As far as he cares, he's always been Solomon Grundy."
Given this was Bruce we're talking about, no one bothered to ask just how exactly did he know that, despite meeting Grundy in person just once.
Akane, after at least a minute of trying to get my attention and failing, stomped towards me and tried to pull at my arm. "Slayer, why the hell did you bring that thing here?!" She screamed, both terrified and angry about having being ignored for however long (barely a minute since I stepped out of the portal, but fear slows times down).
"He's part of a future mission, and besides, neither of you were in any danger."
"'In no danger'?" She parroted as she glared at me before gesturing at Grundy. "A-are you blind or something?"
"The Fortress was designed to resist the assault of hordes of powerful, technologically advanced interdimensional monsters. A giant zombie is practically nothing." I reminded her. "Besides, he promised to behave as long as we don't anger him, and I don't plan on letting John piss him off by being John with."
"I heard that" John grunted. ", and besides I have to be me if you want me to do what you asked me." Basically what he did with Daizo, but with someone both willing of having his mind entered and awake.
As for why did I want to enter his mind, it wasn't like we had other options: Grundy simply wasn't articulate enough to explain what he knew to us, a scan of his hippocampus would be completely useless due to his undead status (his brain was entirely dead tissue, and even my technology has its limits), and I wanted to see his past in person to get every last piece of information, not just of Arella but also Grundy himself.
"Good." I replied, earning a snort from him.
Tamashiro was convinced by my words (that, and because he felt that, because they were for all intents and purposes my guests, they had no say in what I could do as long as it didn't endanger them), but Akane wasn't so sure. "I just don't want a repeat of Daizo. I know, I know, it's not really that similar, but see it from my point of view: you bring a giant zombie here and say he's friendly and, well, connect the dots."
Clark, being himself, didn't waste time in walking upt to her "Relax Akane, Solomon Grundy is friendly as long as we are friendly." He reassured her. "Besides, you have nine people more than capable of handling him."
"Still, he's still fifteen feet tall of rotting, Superman-taking flesh." She morosely pointed out. "I think you can allow me to be wary, especially if he ends up staying here."
I sighed."Akane, you two live outside the Fortress. He won't be bothering you, and the times you come in he'll probably be somewhere else in the fortress."
Wally chose that moment to speak with the geologist couple, both to bring their minds away from Grundy and because he wanted to ask them about their stay in Mars. "Hey, speaking of Mars, you guys found anything interesting around her? I mean, sure, NASA and LexCorp have their rovers, but you're actually here. Might have discovered something they haven't."
Tamashiro grinned. "Well, it turns out that there ARE canals in the planet, though they're are all products of time, no ruins from a previous martian civilzation."
Again. John snorted. "Too bad, I wouldn't have minded a cylinder crashing into Woking and tripods coming out of it to hunt down the survivors."
Understandably, Wally (and everyone else sans me and Grundy, for that matter) was put off by John's response. "Dude, you need some anger management before you turn someone into a rabbit."
"I hate a lot of things, mate, a bloody lot of things."
So, I spoke with the earthbound heroes, thanked them for their assistance, and brought them back to Earth; I'd tell them of what I got from Grundy's mind.
Before they all left, however, Clark decided to, naturally, apologizee to Grundy for attacking him before, his action made more poignant because the others didn't.
"I'm sorry for ripping a hole in your chest a year ago, and nearly doing the same before. I thought you were some mindless super zombie. No hard feelings?" Clark said as he stretched his hand at the behemoth. It was just him being the nice guy he was, even though he also knew that Grundy had in fact killed people, though at the same time he also believed he could be redeemed with my help.
Grundy stared at the man's hand, and then at him, before grabbing it and shaking it. "Okay." Had Clark been any weaker the action would had either crushed his hand, ripped his arm, or much more likely both, and even then I could see him cringe because of the pain (he just wasn't used to be the weaker one, and so this was a new experience to him), but otherwise nothing bad happened.
So, Clark left, the yokai went back to their survey of the area, and me and John prepared to enter Grundy's mind.
"Okay Gogmagog, don't move while we're inside you, understood? Don't want to end up giving you an aneurysm." John said as Grundy laid himself in the Ripatorium's Bridge.
"M.r Grundy is-" VEGA began to say before John stopped him.
"I know, I know, his physical brain's deader than Guy Fawkes, I even said that myself, but still, one's gotta be careful. Daizo was half dead and unconscious, but Grundy ain't." John replied as he began preparing the ritual. "Well, he's dead dead, but you get the gist."
Grundy didn't pay him mind, busy as he was looking around the dungeon without moving his head. "Grundy likes place, dark and damp like swamp."
"It'll be your 'room' from now on, but first we see how can we help the nice lady, alright?"
Grundy nodded and closed his eyes. Then, John finally finished the preparations and casted the spell, bringing us inside Grundy's memories.
And so we saw firsthand the story of how Solomon Grundy began to be, and how did he end up meeting Arella and befriending her.
Cyrus Gold was born in a nameless hamlet in the middle of New Jersey in 1862. The beginning of his life , as in many cases, was simple and without much excitement... compared to most people in the era: he travelled down to Texas to find work in 1887, becoming a cowboy in the process, hunting down outlaws, driving herds of bighorn cattle across planes, and other typical western exploits that made him somewhat famous, if nothing to the level of Jonah Hex, whom he had actually met in person before disappearing off the face of the Earth.
"Uh, the revenant was both John and Clint mixed with Arnie. Who'd have known."
And yes, I ended up meeting Jonah Hex, but that's for later, much, much later.
And then one rainy night of autumn of 1892, as he returned to his native Gotham, a man assaulted him for a reason I won't elaborate upon and got shot for his troubles. It wouldn't have been something unusual if not for the man's identity: Marcus Wayne, Thomas Wayne uncle and Gotham's most famous architect. Even by their standards the killing was self-defense, and the courts acknoweldged it but neither the Wayne family nor the public cared. The only reasons Cyrus managed to get out of there were his shooting skills, and a saddled horse standing nearby. Now he was a wanted man, with the only thing waiting for him being either prison, the gallows, or a furious mob of Wayne supporters.
"Uh, so he killed Batsies' great great uncle. That might explain a lot."
And then, after several hours of spurring his horse to reach the south faster, he was finally caught, not by either the law or a lynch mob, but a small group led by a man with a soulpatch beard, wearing a green cape over his shoulders, and an interested look on his cold, green eyes.
Ra's al Ghul.
And he had just found the perfect test subject for the newlyfound Lazarus Pit his workers had recently dug out, a disposable fugitive in the prime of his life.
It didn't surprise me, Ra's was more than willing to wipe out nearly all of humanity just to lord over the survivors (or 'chosen', as he'd call them), but it sickened me nonetheless, seeing him torture Cyrus to the brink of death death and then dump his catatonic body in a pit full to the brim with green, glowing liquid, over and over again, until the poor man's mind utterly broke. Then, after Cyrus had outlived his usefulness, Ra's impaled him with a scimitar nearly as long as he was, and dumped the corpse in a nearby swamp and left for his home in the East.
What Ra's didn't know, though, was that the repeated experiments and castings into the Pit had turned Cyrus into a living dead, but because the Slaughter Swamp of this continuity lacked any kind of supernatural traits he didn't become stronger, or at least only strong enough to free the upper half of his head, leaving the reanimated cowboy to writhe and struggle to get out of the mud. He was no longer Cyrus Gold, but he had yet to be Solomon Grundy.
And he stayed like that, under the waters of the swamp, for over half a century. He was already insane, but this just made it worse.
"Bloody hell." John said, voicing both our thoughts.
And then the void we were in began to shake, and we heard a roar thundering everywhere. Grundy had to be real pissed if we could feel him moving from inside his memories (later we found out that, despite VEGA's best efforts, he managed to break the Ripatorium's bridge in his rage).
It was then when VEGA called us. "Slayer, Constantine, it seems that Mr. Solomon has entered a berserk state, and has begun to rampage in the Ripatorium."
It was obvious why. I turned to look at John. "I thought Grundy didn't remember his life as Cyrus?"
"Well, maybe our meddling with his brain has changed that." John replied. "And this may make me Captain Obvious, but it seems that the dobber developed hatred the moment he realized why exactly is he like this." We heard another roar, and this time it was louder. "Better keep going before he kicks us out."
And then, on the following memory of Grundy's life, we saw her, and suddenly Grundy calmed down. VEGA didn't even bother to inform us of that as we casted our eyes on the white-robbed woman entering the swamp, not frightened by the sudden growls that the mad zombie made when he saw a living being entering his line of sight.
Arella Roth, carrying on her arms a small bundle as he trudged through the swamp towards the spot the zombie was buried on. Said bundle turned out to be a gray-skinned baby, little more than a newborn given her size and her still blue eyes (her adult self were purple).
It soon became obvious that Arrella's arrival to the marsh was not coincidence, even though she had to know the danger both her and her baby were in (the creature couldn't free itself, but still, one had to be sure).
When Arella finally reached the half-buried head of the undead Cyrus, she crouched in front of him, put her free hand on his head, and began chanting in an unknown, ancient language.
Slowly, the undead's growls faded, and his shaking ceased until he stopped struggling altogether, calmed down by a combination of magic settling his anger and and Arella's soothing voice. Seeing him calm down, Arella began chanting once more, only this time her magic had a more dramatic effect: a strange object appeared on her hand, some kind of metal piece. It may have been a simple bauble if not for the fact it glowed grreen... and that it made every plant arorund them to glow green too
"So, that's why he's so strong AND reeks of power." John said outloud. "She linked him with the Green."
The Green. The elemental force which connects all plant life on Earth, though in the creatures' case his potential had yet to reach its full extent, even nowadays. This spoke volumes of just how powerful Arella's magic was, even compared to John's.
And of the sheer might that Trigon possesed, if she couldn't face him herself.
It also meant that Swamp Thing, just like Martian Manhunter and his people, didn't exist here, the keyword being 'here'. Again, this is for much, much later.
"Any idea of why?"
He shrugged. "No, gotta see more first, at least get an idea."
The normal-sized, previously mindless undead bursted out of his prison as his body began growing, and widening, and becoming morer muscular until he became the giant of modern times, a giant that bellowed at the top of his lungs as he felt the air in his arms, and tasted his freedom for the first time in fifty years.
He promptly stopped roaring when he heard Rachel's cry of fear, and even comically raising his left hand to his mouth. She kept quiet with the growling and the growth, an incredible feat for a baby, but the roar was just too much. Fortunately, Arella knew the perfect nursery rhyme to shush the child.
Naturally in this kind of situation, it was the nursery rhyme that game Solomon Grundy his current name. Again naturally, it was a monday; Arella must have thought it was appropiate that the revenant took his name from the song. Then, afterr Rachel fell asleep once more, Arella began talking to Grundy, to explain whad did he do to him, and why.
Arella had linked him to the Green, as he had done before in other parts of the world with other elemental forces, not to hide Rachel's own magical signature as one might think due to Hephaestus' necklace, but to powerr a group of beings that could protect not just Rachel, but also the entire world in the not-so unlikely case Trigon got tired of sending his slaves and decided to invade Earth.
At the same time, the power of each would be enough to outright bypass Rachel's necklace barrierr and show it and its wearer's location (even an Olympian's might couldn't fully match nature, at least individually), something that she knew... and was the reason she linked the corpse of Cyrus with the Green: she had head of his exploits in life, something made her think he'd fit best with the Green, and the Green itself was the strongest of the Realms. Had Grundy been at his full, untapped potential, Clark would have died for sure.
Arella told this to Grundy, who understood little but enough to realize that he had to help her, and then left to parts unknow, never to be seen again.
And so began the new life of Cyrus Gold, reborn on a monday as Solomon Grundy, waiting until the day he met Arella again, keeping his promise to herr and guarding over his home as he did so, never forgetting her nor her daughter.
And then one chilly day of 1998, a mechanized infantry platoon invaded his home in search of him, from whose's behalf, we didn't know... and they found him and promptly shot at him, pissing him off. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
"Oh, fuck, this is going to be one of those quest thingies, won't it?" John bemoaned, mostly because he knew neither me, his conscience nor his desire to fuck Hell up a bit would let him sit this one out. Didn't mean he didn't complain about it. "I have a life and a job to do, you know!"
"Did you forget about the portals?"
"No, but being able to go from Mars to York in three seconds still doesn't make it anything other than a trog. Okay, a very short trog."
So, after several months, I finally had a true mission: find the other avatars, gather them, and then find Rachel.
So, the plot about Raven's search thickened, and turns out Grundy is even more important than previously thought. That said, is the addition/inclusion of the Elemental Realms well written in the way I did? Forr those who might wonder how can Grundy keep his strrrength outside of Earth, the piece that Arella gave him stores Green energy besides linking Grundy with the force, allowing him to, at the very least, exist.