by TheTimeTrust and I'm Not Mister Mxypltk
Lance Lorenzo opened his eyes and shook the sand out of his hair. He felt like he had a massive hangover, but he couldn't figure out why. All he knew was that he was sitting in an open sandpit in the middle of a desert, underneath a blazing sun.
"Ohhh... feel like I had some of that old chip dip again. Should've thrown it out long ago."
He looked over behind him to see two thick, grayish-silver poles rising next to each other out of the ground. They seemed to be emanating a soft, purplish color. "What the hell--?" Looking up, he noticed that the poles had somehow turned into legs, and then into a tall, silvery gray, artificial body. It seemed to tower over him by twenty or thirty feet.
Tempus of the Time Trust spoke in a soft voice, which sounded like it came from right in front of Larry's face: "I trust you are awake, Lance Lorenzo?"
"Y-yeah. Who're you?"
"I am called Tempus of the Time Trust. Lance, you must get up and gather your fellows. The Castle will no longer be able to return you to your rightful timeline should you remain here for too much longer. You will all be lost beyond hope of recovery if you do not flee immediately. This is a recording."
"What was all this about?" Lance said. "What the hell were we doing here? Why were all those guys after us, anyways? We just got attacked from out of the blue by a bunch of stuff, and I don't even know why. I don't understand any of th--" But as Lance Lorenzo blinked his eyes for a split second and reopened them, Tempus had vanished.
Tobias Christopher walked through a landscape of silent statues in the middle of a gleaming city. Men, women, children of all kinds stood in perfect silence. Smoke from a man's cigarette hung still in the air like a delicate flower. A teenage boy stood on a skateboard that was suspended three feet above the air. A flock of birds hung in the sky above like a painting.
"Helloooo...?" T.C. called out. No sounds could be heard in return, not even an echo. He called out again, and again, but there was nothing, just an endless array of still life everywhere he looked.
T.C. walked down the quiet street looking up for some sign of life somewhere, anywhere. He stopped in front of a mirror, and his heart leapt for a second as he thought he saw movement. He turned his head quickly and saw nothing. He turned back to the mirror and could see nothing moving except himself.
"Too fucking strange," he mumbled as he took a good, long look down one end of the street to the other, still seeing nothing. Then he turned back to the mirror. "AH!"
"Hello, Tobias," said a silvery-gray man who appeared, from the reflection in the mirror, to be directly behind him.
T.C. turned around in a flash and saw absolutely nobody in sight. When he turned back to the mirror, the man was still there, standing behind his own reflection. "Hey, how'd you do that?" he asked, moving his hand back to where the man was but feeling nothing, looking in the mirror as he did so.
"You must find your fellows, Tobias. And quickly. The Castle of Crossed Destinies will be closing in fifteen minutes. This has been Tempus of the Time Trust. See you yesterday." The silvery man was gone the second Tobias looked away.
"Weird mofo."
Tobias turned and bumped into Lance. "Hey!" and "Whoa!" they said to each other.
"Where did you come from?!" T.C. asked.
"Where did YOU come from?" Lance asked in response.
"You weren't here a moment ago, I..." Tobias began, stopping as if suddenly noticing something. "Wait a second, where is here? I thought I was on a street, and now..."
"You're right," Lance said, looking around. "I was just on a beach. What is this? A castle?"
"I think we're back where the 'Injustice League' took us. How long ago was that?" T.C. asked, confused.
"I'm not sure," Lance replied.
They stayed there scratching their heads and without saying a word for a moment.
"Maybe we should look for the rest," they both said at once.
Somewhere else:
M'xy sat on the floor. The light in his eyes was weak and white. He looked sad.
A green winged fish started flying around his head, singing, "Within You, Without You," a George Harrison song.
"I'm not in the mood," M'xy said, waving his hand and making the fish disappear.
M'xy looked at a pile of rocks. He moved a finger, and they started moving. At that moment, Tobias arrived at superspeed.
"HeygoodtoseeyoumanIthinkitsoverweregatheringtheteam," T.C. said. He noticed the moving rocks and deducted they were M'xy's doing. "Whatcha doin' there?" he asked, slowing his pace.
"I figured he should have a tombstone," M'xy said, still sad.
"A tombstone? Who?" T.C. asked.
"Nae."
"Nae? What do you...?"
"The person who was behind all this became a big, bad ball of dark light," M'xy said, lifting his shirt and letting T.C. see a television screen in his belly that showed the events he was talking about, edited as if they were for a ten-second movie trailer. "Then Nae came and jumped inside him. He was talking, but I couldn't hear what he said. Then they both disappeared."
"Naecken... died?"
"He sacrificed himself for the rest."
"Fuck..." T.C. said, saddened. "I mean... shit..."
"I thought there should be a tombstone in the place he died," M'xy said as the rocks he was controlling started forming a statue.
M'xy and Tobias left to go find the rest of the team, leaving a statue of Naecken behind them.
Later, the statue fell into a portal that took it to the Mandelovia of centuries ago. The natives found the statue and made it an idol.
The figure of Naecken remained in the underground world below Mandelovia, merely an idol until just a few months ago.