A crowd of people waits to cross the street. It's early. Gotham City in the a.m. is like a hungry lion just remembering it has to go out and kill.

On one side of the avenue there is a tall, broadly built Western European type, wearing a black heavy leather jacket with some particularly mean-looking spikes. A biker. On the opposite side of the street, almost directly across from him was a man fully a head shorter than the leather jacket wearing tough guy. He was the man's opposite in almost every way:  he was blond-haired, wiry and muscular, and had the look of a student. The biker moved like a linebacker, the student moved with a grace that was almost feline. It was a lion and a panther crossing into each other's territory, neither willing to back down.

The blond man looked over at the tall biker. The big man had the general look of a roadside tough, but as the smaller man stared at him, somehow, the taller man's features became more indistinct. His body seemed to waver and shimmy before the younger man's eyes, then change. Gone was the leather jacket, replaced by bizarre weatherbeaten armor. The man's features hardened, became older and also battle-scarred.

The light turned green.

The two men crossed the street and passed each other, without saying a word.

The blond man rubbed his eyes and looked over his shoulder at the tall receding shape. Everything seemed normal about him.

Danny Rand turned and walked on into the belly of the beast that was Gotham City. His intent was to take a brief walk on the docks of Gotham City, to try to clear his mind before a meeting he was to tend to shortly. He didn't want to show up all nice and neat in a suit and tie, and murderous vengeance in his eyes. It ruined the effects of the suit.

Danny Rand wasn't going to get a chance to clear his mind, however. Not only was he disturbed at the optical illusion he'd just experienced while crossing the street, but just as he reached the docks, he was unexpectedly attacked!

The first of the attackers seemed to pour himself right out of the water, then congeal right in front of Danny. He was followed by three others (Lead, Iron, Tin), then two more (Gold and Platinum).

Iron assumed the point of the phalanx. Tin and Lead flanked him. The latter two arrivals stood behind and seemed detached, disinterested. All the figures seemed more or less human, with the two in the rear looking nobler than the rest. All of the Metal Men seemed malleable. Danny Rand didn't wait to see what else they could do. He pushed the center Metal Man into the water “Iron!” yelled the Metal Man made of liquid metal.

“Don't worry,” said Iron, “I've got him”

Danny Rand noticed there would be no pressure points that he could exploit, so his approach was to use weight, balance and force. He saw Iron coming back out of the water. Summoning up the power of his chi, Danny Rand concentrated and made his fist as hard as unto a thing of metal itself. Guided by his chi, directed by his mind, and empowered with a force beyond man.

There was an arc of light as Danny Rand swiveled his hip and uncoiled his fist right into the middle of the leaden Metal Man. He punched a hole right through Lead's trunk. Pulling his fist midway back through the hole, Danny Rand drove the glowing force of the Iron Fist right up through the middle of him.

Danny Rand did a back flip, reached where he knew Iron would be, then using his technique and his surprise advantage, he picked up the Metal Man and hurled him straight into a brick wall with such force that Iron shattered into pieces.

Next, Iron Fist attempted to disable Tin the same way he had dispatched his companion Lead, but by this time the surprise advantage was lost.  Tin was changing shape, becoming some sort of machine with rolling blades and vicious lupine teeth and muzzle. The wolf-machine hurled some of its sharp blades at Iron Fist, who avoided them easily and backed away to avoid getting in the way of those vicious jaws.

To his dismay, Iron Fist noticed that the bodies of Iron and Lead were beginning to reform themselves.

The man crossing the street was well over six feet tall and stands a full head taller than anyone else around him. A blond guy stays staring at him, but the two pass each other as they cross without incident.

That's the way of the big city. A million tiny showdowns, imaginary confrontations. Every day drama. Rituals of personality. Street magic.

And I am a street magician.

“You look like a busy man,” I said to the tall gentleman, as I fell into step with him. “In a hurry,” I commented on his pace.

The man said nothing, he merely grunted and kept going. It's the sort of thing you do in the city, say, if a persistent beggar or salesman dogs one's heels. I kept with him, though. “Mind if I ask where you're in a hurry to?”

The tall man stopped dead in his tracks and turned to me, his pursuer. I had run the animal to ground. Would I dare take him on?

“When I was a young man, I lived overseas. Even there we heard of the great hero of Gotham city.” His voice was deep, guttural. He spoke heavily accented English. His accent was almost German, but rougher. It had the lilt of the Slavic tongues. It was the most unusual accent I had ever heard, and that was saying much. He didn't seem like a Batman nut. And where did he think he was off to? To the local chapter of the Veterans of Superheroic Wars to invite Batman to tea?

“The great hero of Gotham City?”

“That is correct.”

“Bat--” I began.

“The Green Lantern,” John Prophet intoned, reverently.

“I can take you to him,” I blurted out. Could I?

I had a feeling I could, even though I had no idea of where to begin. “Sometimes, you can feel the pulling of the strands of Fate,” I said.

“What was that?” John Prophet wanted to know.

“Something I picked up from an old teacher.”

“What is it you want?”  John Prophet asked.

“I want to tell you a story, and walk with you for a little while.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I really don't feel like company.”

“When I was a younger man, I used to sell newspapers on the street corner --”

“Hey, didn't you hear what I said? I'm not interested in company right now --”

“Cease,” said the smaller man. And the world stopped. Activity all around him became suspended. John Prophet could hear everything the smaller man said, but he was completely incapable of motion. What kind of power can suspend time and operate outside of it? “Who are you?” John Prophet asked.

“I have many names. I was known for a while as Dr. Druid. Is this name familiar to you?”

“I regret that it is not, although I have known druids in my time. I was in suspended animation in a German laboratory until only the past few years. My last memories are of the Great War. Even then, in the 1940's, we in Germany had heard of the great American hero as Green Lantern. That is why I came here, to see him. I counted on his being able to help me.”

“For what reason?”

“Ever since my revival, I have been in contact with an orbiting satellite which has been the source of much of my power. But now that line of communication has been cut off. I can't sense DOCC anymore. I need to find some way to reach him. I imagined that he could help me. But you, what do you want from me?”

Dr. Druid looked as if he debated a moment before being candid. “I am dead now. I did great evil before I died. My soul was corrupted. It has been given me the opportunity to return to Earth several more times, to make penance. If I act correctly, I may save my soul from eternal damnation. My first act of contrition is to open your eyes to the world around you. I can do that as we walk.”

Dr. Druid snapped his fingers and the world resumed its steady course. “Voilá,” he stated.

“Danke,” John Prophet replied in his native tongue.

They were walking down the crowded avenue, following the rest of the morning commuters on their way to the train station to make their way to work. Dr. Druid began to speak urgently to John Prophet. “You have a truly unique soul, John. You are about to embark on a long journey. What you need to know is that it is not what people might say or try to convince you about. You will know the facts, because they will be indisputable.”

“Facts about what?” John asked.

They made a left turn when they reached the station. Ignoring Prophet's question, Dr. Druid continued his earlier anecdote. “What I started to say before was that my first exposure to Gotham City was as a poor immigrant child selling newspapers in the city. That was in the day before newspaper kiosks and those plastic little receptacles. I grew familiar to my customers, and they to me. In between hawking papers, I would talk to and watch some of the other local street characters. There was the hot dog vendor. Some of the local merchants. And a man who would sell watches. It was he who interested me the most. He wasn't selling new fake watches. They were old; some of them were real antiques. He claimed that he was an estates salesman, and that what he peddled he got legitimately from the estates of the recently deceased. It didn’t explain why he was selling them on the street. I would strike up a conversation with him, as I would with others. Partly to practice my English, partly a child's curiosity – and partly because I knew there was something special about this peddler. Some street magic clung to him.”

“Street magic?” Prophet wondered, but he might as well have been talking a different language.

“He would let me inspect his wares,” Dr. Druid continued. “As if I were going to buy one. But mostly, I think, because he saw that I appreciated them. Some of the watches were inscribed. I remember reading the inscriptions and feeling the thrill as if I was coming upon some secret information, some hidden moment in some couple's lives. And who knew what significance some of the inscriptions had? I remember one of them to this day. You will always be the sin in my garden, and forever I will be yours (and it was signed) Sweet pear. Who knew when that was inscribed, or the life the owner had lead after being presented with the token?”

Dr. Druid had led Prophet across a dizzying collection of intersections, alleyways and shortcuts, until Prophet was completely lost.

The little man resumed his equally perambulating adventure. “It was then that my love of the hidden began. Or perhaps it was always there. An immigrant will almost always be alive to the wonders, both obvious and taken for granted, and hidden or obscure, of a new city of residence. It is a matter of seeing with fresh eyes.”

“What did you see?” Prophet asked.

With a movement that was quicker than he could follow or anticipate, Dr. Druid covered Prophet's eyes with his gnarled little hands. “What you will now see,” he intoned.

When he took his hands away, Prophet indeed saw.

What he saw was a world alive in entirely new ways, and awake with new possibilities. In the grill of subway air vents Prophet saw the barely luminescent eyes of troll-like creatures which lived underground; in the shadows of an alleyway he saw the ghosts of a suicide and a murder victim; moving along the rooftops of the dockside warehouses (for that is where he now found himself), Prophet saw the dancing figure of a clown-like man who trailed long gossamer strings behind him, like some celestial puppet master.

One thing that Prophet did not see, however, was Dr. Druid. The little man had disappeared.

Prophet kept moving forward, hearing a hullabaloo up ahead. To his surprise, John Prophet saw the same blond-haired young man that had crossed the street before him earlier in the day. The man was evincing some shockingly good fighting skills taking on a number of opponents, who were evidently not human. The beings that attacked the man had metallic skin. The blond man seemed to dispatch two of the group with little difficulty, except that they regrouped remarkably fast. The man looked to be in trouble. Before John Prophet could react to help the young warrior, however, the young man ripped open his shirt, revealing a dragon tattoo. The young man chanted and concentrated, and suddenly a bright red and yellow flame seemed to burst upward from the tattoo, engulfing the man's opponents. John prophet stood rooted to the spot as the flame, in the shape of a dragon, coursed over the Metal Men and fused them together into a ball.

Without another word, Danny Rand departed the alley. “Follow him,” said Dr. Druid's voice from behind John Prophet. Prophet turned, but of course there was no one there.

John Prophet followed Danny Rand to find the legendary Green Lantern, and walked onward to face his destiny.

Author's Notes