Fire Opal

THE SHADE: Who is piloting the unidentified flying vehicle? Shade wanted to take the Invisible Jet, but that only has one seat.

MONKEY KING: Monkey is flying the Martian saucer. it is amassing that a ancient chines monkey born from a rock knows how to fly a super advanced star ship.

Monkey King groans, his father instilled in him a great fear of fire when he was little.
"So what's the plan, boys? Because I don't want to go into that fire."

GREEN ARROW: GA thinks we should do all three.

He asks Monkey King, "Rush in to follow Starman! Aid him. Avoid striking balconies or bridges.

He asks Shade to get a good overall look at the area before rushing in. "Does this ship have some sort of scanner, or x-ray, or telescope to give us a good view of what is going on before we rush in?

"If not, I will shoot a camera arrow out through the air lock to give us a drone's eye view. Is there a place I can plug in the very long electrical cable trailing after the camera arrow, so we can see the pictures?"

He stares at the two glowing orbs forming the armrests of the pilot's seat of the invisible Martian bio-ship in puzzlement.

"Meanwhile, fly over the spot where the fires are starting. They should be small if they just started. I will rush in to fight the fire. I will keep in touch using a shortwave radio arrow, or I may shoot a flare arrow."

Green Arrow shoots a wirepoon-and-grapnel arrow out of the airlock of a moving spaceship to a convenient balcony or roof ornament of the burning building below, and slides down the wire using his bowstaff as an impromptu pulley.

He will have his parachute arrow ready just in case. And his inflatable trampoline arrow.

Once on the ground, he will shoot at the fires using his four extinguishing foam arrows, four liquid nitrogen arrows, four ice arrows and the one oxygen-destroyer arrow he was saving for a Godzilla attack.

He will use a bullhorn arrow to firmly and calmly order civilians to exit the burning building in an orderly fashion, use his neon emergency exit arrow to point to the emergency exit, and use his fire-ax arrow to break open any locked doors, and his rather large and awkward hook-and-ladder arrow to save anyone trapped in an upper story.

Of course, he cannot be carrying enough ice arrows to put out a really out-of-control house fire. He looks around for a convenient water tower or fire hydrant. Or a wet blanket.

He will call the local fire department on his police-scanner arrow.

After shooting a dozen or a score of arrows in one extended panel of the comic, GA will look at his rattling, half-empty quiver, and wonder why he does not have something like wings, superspeed, or a mutant power. He sighs.

But without any of those things, the fire is well and truly defeated! Enough, at least, that Opal's fire brigade can get a handle on it.

The area of the fire has many exposed wires, cut out of walls and lampposts. Some of the cuts were done clumsily, creating short circuits.

But others were done deftly, by finger-sized brass windup men with one eye and many tendrils, who have connected Opal City's power grid to their own electrical cables, which stretch through wall and crevice back to the section where Starman was calling for help.

Dollars worth of stolen electricity is now coursing into some robot's unknown devices!

One of the robots stops suddenly. Another one runs to him, winds the key in the back of his head, and he comes back awake. They hurry along the wire toward their lair, and don't notice Green Arrow standing right there next to the wire.

THE SHADE observes, through a gap in the rooftops, a whole toy city of brass and aluminum and punctured-metal tinkertoys being worked on by numberless robots. It seems to be pushing the human structures out of the way.

MONKEY KING, if indeed he follows Starman, sees toy robot craft shooting at Starman in pursuit. He's able to deflect most of the shots with his Gravity Rod, but his black leather jacket's astrological designs are burned in several places already.

Starman stops, shouting in an alien language. Is he, perhaps, some alien duplicate Starman?

Then he switches to English.

"J'onn! I didn't even think to expect YOU'D be around, but I'm far from complaining about it! Here, let me put out all the flames ..."

He twists the Gravity Rod, repelling all burning materials. The small sparks go out, and this also makes the toy brass ships' heat-beams useless.

"Whoa! Should have thought of THAT before," he says. "Well, how about it, small fry? You still want to mix it up with not just the latest in a long line of Starmen, but the Martian Freaking Manhunter as well?"

They don't. The spaceships withdraw to their fantastic, elaborate city.