- Mal Duncan: Nice. Perfect cover for our new digs. On the outside, I mean it's down right nasty.
- [Goes inside]
- Mal Duncan: ... And it's nasty on the inside too.
- L-Ron: Greetings and salutations, Earth champions! I am L-Ron. Majordomo to the great master and you are my prisoners.
- Captain Marvel: This is Plastic Man's April Fool's joke, isn't it? Okay Plas, you got us.
- L-Ron: [Confused] No, I have you.
- L-Ron: Allow me to introduce my master: The warlord Despero, gladiatorial champion of 92 star systems. Working on 93 now. He has come to this backwater planet seeking a challenge to prove his superiority to all life forms. It's quite the complimentism. You really should feel honored.
- Captain Atom: The justice league always supports peaceful diplomacy.
- Reach Ambassador: And should diplomacy fail, you have your vaunted meta powers to enforce peace.
- Captain Atom: Not how we operate, ambassador.
- Virgil Hawkins: I don't know why they chose me, but I know they wanted to break me.
- Dinah Lance: Why do you say that?
- Virgil Hawkins: The tests. They started out small, little static shocks, but they kept upping the juice. Till it felt like I was being eaten by lightning. Still, I was one of the lucky ones. The alien creepazoids didn't seem to like the results they got from some of the other kids. Kids I never saw again.
- Nightwing: You two should go along. Pick up the boxes of your stuff we salvaged from Mount Justice. It might help this warehouse feel more like a ware-home.
- Captain Marvel: [Fighting Despero] Okay, you got stuff, I'll admit it. But I've still got one last trick up my sleeve.
- [Grabs him]
- Captain Marvel: Shazaam!
- [Massive eletric explosion, has no effect]
- Billy Batson: Oh, man, I really thought that would work.
- Blue Beetle: What'd you tell her, ese?
- Impulse: About you betraying mankind and causing the reach apocalypse?
- [Jamie looks nervous]
- Impulse: Heh heh. Nada, amigo. See, I have no idea what actually turns you. For all we know, the league finding out. Could be the very thing that makes it happen, so I say, we say nothing to no one.
- Scarab: This is good. Now, kill the Impulse so he cannot change his mind.
- Blue Beetle: [to Scarab] Keep quiet!
- Impulse: Exactly. Stick with me, Blue. I'll keep you from feeling the mode.
- Mal Duncan: [Dressed as Guardian] Your fight is with me, alien. I am Earth's guardian. Its greatest champion. Its secret champion.
- L-Ron: He is not listed in the Krolotean database, master, but their records may be incomplete.
- Mal Duncan: Miss Martian, take the others and leave. This is my fight alone.
- Miss Martian: [Telepathically] Mal, what are you doing?
- Mal Duncan: Keeping ugly busy, at least until you and Superboy get a better idea.
- G. Gordon Godfrey: Private meeting? Is this an April fools' day prank? Or just another example of the League hiding their true agenda from *you*, the people? Don't know why you're surprised, folks. After all, most of your heroes wear *masks*.
- L-Ron: Do you earthlings truly have no concept of honorable single combat? Do not follow, Earth females. Do not interfere. It is poor sportism!
- Superboy: What happened? Where's Mal?
- Mal Duncan: About to play the most important game of keep away in my life.
- Dinah Lance: Your scarab. We all had assumed. It was an invention of the previous Blue Beetle, but now it seems clear the reach created it.
- Blue Beetle: [Nervous] Uh, yeah, that's clear.
- Scarab: There is no reason to believe the Impulse's predictions. Perpetuating concern would be a strategic error, putting us at risk of persecution or worse.
- Blue Beetle: Yeah. I mean, it's very clear. The reach tried to use my scarab to control me, but it wouldn't work for them. Their scientist said the only way to reboot it... was to kill me.
- Dinah Lance: So the reach created it, but they can't control it. Jaime, that may make you our best weapon against them.
- Black Canary: Beetle?
- Blue Beetle: I'm sorry. I've been hiding something, but I can't... I just can't.
- Impulse: Uh, blue, blue, blue. What happened to keep quiet?
- Scarab: Stop, Jaime Reyes. This is a tactical error.
- Blue Beetle: No, time for the truth. Impulse says that some time in the future I betray earth and bring on a Reach apocalypse. That's not a future I can live with. So whatever it takes, get this Scarab off me.
- Black Canary: The Reach used our own secrets against us, beat us without firing a shot, even offered to take Despero off our hands. And I couldn't come up with a reason to say no. Hope you have some good news.
- Captain Atom: Some answers, at least. With the obvious exception of Blue Beetle, the reach abductees are of two types Those with a known superpower. And those with the potential to develop one.