The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

Rose and Pete

Pete looked uncomfortable. He felt like a coward, staying here.

His hands bunched into fists at his sides.

His eyes clenched shut.

'How many colours do Martians come in?' he wondered to himself, he wanted to ask. 'Should I collect the whole set, or just the ones whose pigmentation makes them trustworthy?'

He said a little prayer, and he tried not to choke on the words.

Rose shook her head, looked fearful, like she wanted to bolt from The Cave, wanted to bolt for the outside world and hunt for her parents with wild eyes and boosted senses.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't know where they are. My mum works on Main Street. Owns the hair salon. She might be there. I don't know where they are."

Ceri, Jamie, and Bill

As it turned out, one of the people for whom Pete feared and the two people for whom Rose feared were not far apart.

Ceri's Saab screeched to a halt in front of the feed store. The traffic was insane, a snarl. Fender-benders left and right. People had already begun to panic.

The memory of the events of nine years and eleven months ago was still indelibly fresh in the minds of the people of Smallville. Over the decade since The Meteor Shower, the population had increased by twenty thousand people, but it could have been much larger still. Had not so many people died.

People were frightened.

People wanted to run. People were gathering supplies and they were running.

And if there was an obstruction to fearful flight, then, then people would fight.

And fight they did.

Poor old Ben Hubbard staggered out of the feed store holding his jaw, fell to the dusty ground outside the front door. Danny Guy stood over him, glowering, furious.

"You tryin' to snatch things rightly mine, Benji?" Danny growled.

"It's fine, it's fine," Hubbard waved him off, looking utterly perplexed. "You can take it."

Danny strode down the steps, raising his fist. "Dunno for sure you won't stab me in the back and take it, soon's I try to leave... best warn you off good and proper!"

Bill Ross lunged out from inside the store, tackling Danny and hurling him best as he could away from Ben Hubbard.

Pete's father.

"This whole town gone nuts?" he demanded. "Danny, you gone nuts?"

Danny growled, shot to his feet, hauled off... his fist cracked into Bill's jaw and sent the much larger man sprawling.

This wasn't the only fight.

More scuffles and shouting continued inside the store.

...if it hadn't become a riot already, it would become one soon.

A pitchfork shattered a window, hurtled a good distance, lodged in the tyre of a pick-up truck.

The shouting grew louder.

Ceri swore softly, unbuckled in a hurry, leaped out of the Saab.

"Stay in the car," she hissed peremptorily at Jamie. "Stay in the blessed car."

(Jamie nodded, eyes wide. But there was a part of his mind that was obviously still thinking. Thinking about gravity.)

Dan Guy had returned his attention to Ben Hubbard, a look of animalistic fury on his face.

Ceri sprinted towards him, and her eyes grew cool and hard as she ran.

Old memories. Old habits.

Not neglected so much as... sidelined. Backburnered.

Spring in her step. Fire in her blood. Ice in her eyes.

Heavy boots adorned her feet, and as she ran those boots pounded the dust.

She was a mother and a wife and a hairdresser. But she had been none of those things for her entire life.

...there were no people in Smallville without secrets.

Ceri McCrimmon sprinted up to Dan Guy like he was the source of all evil... she turned, half-crouched, pivoted...

...her boot windmilled up and around and cracked mercilessly into Dan's jaw.

Dan went down hard and didn't get up again right away.

Ceri snatched up the pitchfork.

"'Good weapon in a pinch,'" Jamie murmured, distractedly. "'One prong or another.'"

Ceri whirled, raised the pitchfork up high, and brought it down hard on the hood of the pick-up, snapping the iron fork clean off the wooden handle, easy as blinking. She took the thing in both hands, twirling it like some kind of baton laced with lightning, ferocity in her every muscle.

"Of course," Jamie acknowledged with a little nod and a shrug, "nonlethal, infinitely preferable to lethal. That's self-evident, ennit?"

"This is why I only had one daughter," Ceri muttered to herself, shaking her head, as she powered into the store itself. "I cannot stand it when children squabble."

Ceri blew into the building, registering its contents in an instant. Seed floated every where, splinters and shouting, fists and teeth and boots.

She waded into the middle of it, the pitchfork-handle a quarterstaff flashing this way, that, up, down, left...

Everywhere she moved, lyrics and carnage, squabbling grown-up children crashed to the deck.

She dropped and swept a man's legs out, shot up to kneel over him and punch his head down hard into the floorboards.

A snorting angry Bull of a man charged at her wielding a hunting rifle.

She rocketed to her feet.

The staff blurred in, broke his hand, twirled over her fingers and came back to bash him 'cross the jaw. He staggered, stayed standing.

She kicked him in the man-parts and plucked the gun out of his hand as he toppled.

A scrawny toothless drunk tried to grab her from behind, but she slammed the butt of the rifle into his chin and he crumpled like tin foil. One-handed, Ceri cracked open the rifle, dumped the bullets onto the floor, and tossed away the gun.

Ceri didn't like guns. Claire liked guns.

Fred Hornbach came at her with an undamaged pitchfork, but she shoved her staff in between the tines, yanked the sharp points of the weapon aside, and propelled the momentum of the deflection into a continued spin...

...a spin which continued until her heavy boot came up and 'round and belted Fred Hornbach insensate to the floorboards.

Ceri came to a halt.

Last one standing.

She wasn't breathing hard.

"Just like Dunoon, ennit?" Jamie remarked, distractedly, from where he watched in the doorway. "Just like old times."

Ceri snorted at him as she tossed away the improvised bo. "I told yeh to wait in the car," she reminded him as she pushed past him back into the parking lot.

Jamie followed, eyes flickering to the sky every so often, followed after her as they jogged past Bill Ross helping Ben Hubbard to his feet.

Bill reached out and grabbed Jamie's arm as the scientist passed him.

"Hey," he murmured, more than a little bit awestruck. "you married to her?"

"Once," Jamie nodded.

Bill shook his head, very much lost in wonder. "Can I be?"

Jamie pondered this for a moment, pursed his lips. "Mm, yeah, 'course!" he decided, being utterly facetious -- though there was no call for it, "You can 'ave her, mate. Wasn't my cuppa anyway. Shame about the teeth."

And then he kept running.

Bill Ross blinked for a moment, then glanced at Ben Hubbard. "He's lookin' at her teeth?"

Ben, similarly awed, similarly oblivious to Jamie's facetiousness, shrugged his shoulders. "That boy dunno how good he got it."

...as Ceri and Jamie reached the Saab, the first of the stones began to fall.

A rock the size of a Buick screamed out of the sky and carved a trough in the cornfield across the street, blowing a scarecrow sky high and lighting the entire field on fire.

A much smaller meteor blazed down straight through the bed of another pick-up, igniting the gas tank and sending it end over end through the air.

"Oh, Lord," Ceri whispered, her face going slack. "I don't... I don't know how to fight that."

Jamie dove and tackled her and a meteor the size of a baseball ripped through the spot where she'd just been standing, successfully punching a hole the size of a cannonball into solid earth.

'I tell you naught for your comfort,' Chesterton reminded Jamie as they sprawled across the lot.
'Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.'

Emil (and Meyer)

"The sirens mean it's time to leave, sir," Meyer demanded, not brooking any guff from the leonine billionaire. Maybe this would get him killed? "Eliminated?"

But Meyer was willing to take that risk.

A mildly-brainy thug he might be, but he was no coward.

"The sirens mean the sky is falling," Meyer growled. "Sir, we have exactly no time for debate!"

Emil's eyes darted from the sky to Lionel's face and back again.

"They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place," Emil breathed. "It would seem that 'never' is a very strong word, and that probability is just full of surprises. Meteors, Lionel. It's happening again. The chances... the chances are beyond astronomical. It's happening again."

"Get in the helicopter, Mister Luthor," Meyer suggested. "Or I swear to God I will knock you out and drag you there myself."

Nothing you can do to me out of umbrage at the indignity, Meyer didn't add aloud, would be worse than what your son would do to me had I not done everything inhumanly possible to save you.

Merick

Swoosh

Merick didn't care about where he entered this time. He was angry. He was furious. For the first time in his life, you could say he might have been dangerous. He appeared smack in the middle of his Father's office. His Father looked up shocked at the sudden arrival that sent some of his papers scattering. Merick focused on his Father, that dangerous green flame starting to lick at his irises once more.

"Why didn't you tell me?! I had a brother and you and Mom never even told me. You bastard! Merick slammed his hands down on his Father's desk. Inches from Dale Tennylson's face now he almost snarling with rage. Then he heard it. Sirens. But not like those he had heard every year in the Memorial Day Parade. These were different. And they snapped him out of his rage. At least a little.

"Merick, what... how... oh my God. We have to go. Now. That's the air raid siren. Either we are under military attack, or it's another meteor shower. Or a prank. No time to risk. We need to get home... get your Mother. Dale looked out his large office window and saw the sky starting to rain fire. "Oh boy,"Dale made to get out of his chair, shock whitened and visibly shaken. He started to rise. Then his son grabbed him. The last thing he thought before the world went out from under him was how much he wished he had told Merick, and now he may never get the chance.

Swoosh

Merick was off again. This time he had company. Quickly the world folded back around them, his Father falling to the ground as if someone hadjust pulled a chair out from under him. Which is effectively what Merick had done. They were standing in the parking lot of an ice cream parlor called Ziggy's somewhere in Oklahoma. This was the place Dale had brought his son to cheer him up on the drive home from El Paso.

"Stay Here. I'll get Mom. And anyone else I can help. Merick spun around. Leaving his father on the ground. He was so focused he tripped over the young boy that was standing slack-jawwed behind him. The young boy had been playing cowboys apparently. As Merick ran into him the boy dropped the cap gun he was holding. Merick looked down at him and grinned. "Lone Ranger huh? Mind if I borrow that mask? Merick reached out and gently took the mask from the boys face, and put it on his own just as he folded his way Home.

Swoosh

Merick appeared in the kitchen of his home. Looking like some pulp era comic with his jacket, fedora and Lone Ranger mask. All his anger on hold. His mother was hurrying about, grabbing trinkets, money, a first aid kit. Merick didn't stop to explain. He simply wrapped his arms around her. And then...

Swoosh

Merick folded in beside his father, who was just getting to his feet. He let go of his Mother, and with out a word was gone again.

"Dale?! Where... how... what's going on!?!

"I think our son just made a quantum leap in evolution. Or something a bit like it. It's ok. He be fine. He's stronger than you give him credit for. Dale Tennylson wrapped himself around his wife. Holding her. Soothing her. He had faith in his son. Even if he also feared what was going on. "He knows. We need to tell him the truth when this is over. Want some sherbert?"

Swoosh

Merick was back in Smallville. He was on Main Street as the rocks started hitting. And man, were they hitting hard. Merick was making magnificent use of his Metaphysic Origami though. He was grabbing people left and right. Jumping them to the closest safe place he could think of. He deposited several people outside Smallville medical center. Merick then returned to Main Street. He was tired. He was sore. His head hurt. He had to help. He saw a small boy standing in the middle of the street, a couple lay unconcious on the ground and bleeding only a few feet away. He grabbed hold of the couple and ordered the boy to grab on. In less that a second they were outside the hospital.

"These people are hurt! Get help. I gotta go." Merick was ceaseless. He started spreading his search. It had only been about a minute since the rocks started falling. But already there was a lot of damage. Merick was back on Main Street. "All the squishies over here. Last train leaving the station!"

Lex (and Boyajian)

The front gate barely opened in time for Lex to roar through behind the wheel of his gleaming silver Porsche.

"There and Back Again" pounded out of the car's cutting-edge stereo, Chris Daughtry's voice belting righteous indignation so furiously that it made the car's windows tremble.

He brought the vehicle to a halt just in front of the house, and sat there for a moment, peeling his black leather driving gloves off of his hands.

Lex was dressed in darkness from suit to shoes and frankly, the black outfit matched his mood.

He had gone to Smallville High to enquire after their progress solving the events of the previous day; he had taken his father's notion of getting charitably involved in this backwoods crap factory town a little bit further, and had seriously considered investing in the school. But if the school couldn't find its hind end with both hands, as the saying went, then he might decide it wasn't worth the investiture.

This certainly seemed to be the case.

The receptionist had turned him away. Turned him away, of all people. She had claimed that Interim Principal Kwan was with city officials investigating a new problem and could not be interrupted.

And Lex... had been civil. The very epitome of polite behaviour.

But inside he was seething.

Seething so furiously he didn't even notice at first the air-raid sirens. He didn't notice the bleating of his Blackberry.

All he noticed, at first, was that no-one had come out to meet him. None of his staff had come out to drive his car around to the garages.

He scowled. "Some days," he lamented, gritting his teeth, "putting up a good P.R. front just doesn't seem worth it."

And then a gigantic shape loomed beside him, and Lex arched an eyebrow...

...and then recoiled as the driver's-side door of his Porsche rent and twisted and tore off its hinges.

Boyajian chucked the door aside like it was made of Lego bricks and hauled Lex out of the car in a hurry.

"Boyajian?" Lex stared in utter disbelief, sardonic in his incredulity. "David, tell me this is something you got from reading Dante's Divine Comedy."

Boyajian grunted, momentarily given pause even as the smaller, equally bald fellow scowled at him.

"To put it less obliquely," Lex uttered slowly, carefully, patronisingly, seethingly, "what the Hell do you think you're doing?"

"Defcon Five," David Boyajian replied, and this time it was Lex who was given pause.

And as Boyajian dragged Lex towards the house, Lex glanced around at the sky and the trees and he heard the sirens.

He yanked his Blackberry out of his pocket, shot a glance down at the screen, saw a map of northern Kansas lighting up red and blinking furiously at him.

"Defcon Five," he breathed, awestruck and horrified all at once. "'There and Back Again.'"

"Huey 'round back," Boyajian explained as he half led, half pulled Lex towards the house, through the front door, down the hall towards the terrace. "The Old Man's here."

Lex's lip quirked, and he laughed a tiny little laugh. "Of course he is. It's the end of the world. Where else would he be but right in the middle of it?"

They stormed out onto the terrace.

Lionel Luthor was there, as previously stated. Emil Hamilton. And Peter Meyer.

"Hello, Dad," Lex smiled without smiling, sleeting the fatherly honorific with a modicum of derisiveness, a modicum of challenge, same as he ever did. "Perfect day for a garden party, wouldn't you agree?"

------
OOC: extremely very special thanks to Ravenloft for letting me borrow his character for this. Domo arigato, Raven. Xie-xie.

Rose

Outside, meteors battered the microcosm that was Smallville. Sonic booms and falling fire.

And Rose McCrimmon felt something snap inside her.

She didn't want to wait anymore.

She didn't want to hide.

She didn't want to be left behind.

The world was burning down and Rose was the best person in the world at fighting Fire with Fire.

Snarling, wordless, she ran. She took three strides and stepped into the light of the skylight and blasted straight upwards with a cry.

Rose wanted Pete to stay safe. She wanted Kyle to stay safe; she didn't know what his limits were.

But there was no way Rose was staying put when the world was burning down.

Kara was still out there. Kara's mom and dad.

And everyone else's mom and dad.

She soared up into the sky and fire swirled around her like a cocoon, fire sheathed her and wreathed her and she screamed into the sky.

Rocks fell around her, rocks fell like hail, and fire blossomed blazed blasted from her hands...

She was a Human Torch and she was blowing the meteors to dust before they could hit the ground.

But she was already exhausted... she'd reduced an object to Absolute Zero only minutes before and this was supposed to be impossible outside of a lab.

The meteors were falling but there were so very very many of them...

She wept and she screamed and she poured out fire and she poured out ice but she couldn't catch even the tiniest percentage of all of them...

Fire danced from her fingers.

Ice crackled from her eyes.

She fought this unnatural disaster with every last erg of her meteor-freakish energies...

...completely unaware that, not far below her, Bruce Wayne had made a terrible discovery indeed.

Bruce stood before this large, black smooth artifact. Just before he could examine the object closer, he heard something that didn't make sense. The noise brought his attention to the sky.

Meteor rocks were not only dissintegrating, but they were actually blowing up in mid air.

'What the hell?' Bruce asked himself. He stepped back a moment, putting his hand in front of the sun to try and get a better view.

Then, he began to feel the ground shake a little. Something that he didn't believe was caused by the meteors falling to the ground.

Going to a knee, Bruce set his hands on the ground to try and keep his balance. The pulsing seemed to be coming from the ship.

Suddenly, a light so bright that Bruce's eyes had to shut began to glow from the object. The light was so bright that it put the sun to shame.

Bruce's hairs stood up on the back of his neck again. He lost his balance and rolled down the side of the crater mound. He arose to his feet, and stepped back from the ship. The light was still bright, even though the hill blocked the light.

Suddenly, the light vanished.

Chloe and Gabe

Gabe Sullivan did not have an off-road vehicle. He did not drive a Jeep or an F-150 or even a Subaru, nothing with four-wheel or all-wheel drive.

He drove a little sedan. A little red four-door sedan.

And thus it was with no small consternation on her face that Chloe clung to the edges of the passenger seat as Gabe drove the riding trails around Crater Lake.

"There's a little cabin," he muttered, sounding a little bit like a madman as his white-knuckled hands gripped the wheel, "guys from work are always inviting me up here, hunting trips, told me there's a storage cellar. Lots of canned goods, Sterno, bottled water that sort of thing, in case a big storm hits and one of them gets stuck here over the winter, snowed in. Perfect place. Perfect place to hide. Storage cellar. Hide from the meteors."

Chloe just hung on for dear life, eyes wide and teeth clenched as the sedan thudded and shook through ruts and grass and branches.

She'd never seen her dad like this. He was scaring her a little. More than a little.

"Get you safe," Gabe muttered. "Get you safe."

A projectile seared the air as it howled down from the clouds, destroying the lower half of a massive tree-trunk and dropping the the upper half of the trunk directly in their path.

Chloe flinched and threw her hands up in front of her face.

Gabe growled and jerked the wheel hard, dodging the sudden burning obstacle.

The sedan shattered through underbrush as it left the trail behind, and they crashed down a hilly embankment, thundering all the way.

Turbulent, rattling, the car skidded out of the woods and onto Crater Lake's small but scenic beach before plunging hood-deep into the water.

Gabe whimpered, and shook his head. "No, no," he muttered, muttered, dizzy, concussed, ditching the car. "Rest of the way on foot. Got to get my little girl safe."

Chloe was bleeding from a cut on her forehead.

"Dad," she stammered, sitting motionless in the passenger side for a moment. "Dad?"

She slithered out, staggered out into the foot-deep lake-water.

She followed her father as, resolute, he kept on going towards where he was sure the cabin would be.

"Dad?" Chloe croaked, limping a little bit, her ankle feeling sprained.

He couldn't hear her, either because of distance or fearful madness or both.

Chloe paused. She stared at the backseat of the car.

She was forgetting something.

High, high above, a meteor's blazing heat ignited air pockets in the atmosphere, blowing the meteor itself into smaller shards. Wind shear cast the myriad shards apart, scattering them at innumerable angles, tiny chunks of rock spinning to infinity.

One such shard was smooth and glassy and it came in at an acute angle to Crater Lake, and in an obscene parody of the mindless entertainment of centuries of lake-going stone-throwers this particular shard skipped when it hit the surface.

It skipped once.

Twice.

Water is a non-compressible medium and as such every impact of the meteor-shard on the surface of the lake caused the shard to lose momentum.

But it still had enough momentum behind it on its third skip that it powered in through Chloe's stomach and out through her spine without even slowing down.

Chloe gurgled, and she felt herself sinking. "...dad?"

Everything went red.

Everything went black.

Chloe Sullivan was dead before she hit the water.

"Lex!" Lionel exclaimed, "thank God."

He then looked around. "I think we all need to get in the safe room, wouldn't you agree son?"

Then he turned to Meyer, "there are meteors falling from the sky? Common sense would dictate that a helicopter is the last place one would want to be."

Var-Sen flew past Rose as she herself had taken flight. A ring of condensation formed from the vortices left in his wake as he accelerated past the Mach barrier. He flew over Smallville and discovered pandemonium.

But he spotted Jamie and Ceri from high above. He watched as they narrowly missed being struck by a fragment of rock that plummetted into the street.

There was another, though, larger, as big as two people, that had taken a diverging trajectory and followed in the wake of the first. This one would strike true, with deadly accuracy, as the two huddled upon the ground.

Var-Sen arrived first, and there was a loud thchunk! as he caught the fiery rock just above their heads. He held it aloft, and then with a loud sigh he hurled it back into space from which it came.

He then reached with both hands, taking one in each arm, and lifted them aloft into the sky.

"Your daughter requests your company," he said to Jamie with a smile.

All this would have taken place so quickly that no one else present, especially in the chaos, would have seen the Kryptonian display of super-powers.

At least that is what was hoped.

With light that pierced forth from the darkness, the black ship opened and the foot soldiers of Zod emerged.

They were dressed in military uniforms, one male and one female.

They walked a few feet away from the ship and scanned the area with vision from another world.

"We must find a suitable location from where we can upload the BRAIN InterActive Construct into the planet's defense network," said Nam-Ek.

"There is a large urban center North of here," replied Athyr, "that should provide the resources we need."

The black ship began to drip an oily substance from underneath. The oily substance pooled onto the ground, and then animated itself, snaking its way to Nam-Ek's foot. There it re-pooled, and congealed, and turned into a solid, square box shape. Nam-Ek reached down and picked it up, and he put the palm sized box into a pouch on his belt where it rested next to an odd-looking ring shaped object.

"What of any humans that stand in our way?" Athyr asked.

"They shall perish in the name of Zod."

After practice Kara had headed home, and she found her mother getting ready to start cooking dinner. Kara set her bags down on the floor by one of the chairs before looking around. Either her father was in the barn or he was upstairs.

"Hey," Kara said.

"Hey sweetie. I heard you and your father talking earlier."

"It wasn't much of a talk," Kara said as she sat down. Martha wiped her hands with a towel and gently rubbed her young daughters head, her fingers brushing aside her golden locks.

"I just... it felt so good to just have fun. And no one got hurt. So why is he so against me trying to fit in?" Kara asked.

"He's not against you wanting to fit in. He's just concerned that something might happen. You can never really be sure what can go wrong..." Martha said, trying to smooth things over. She hated having to choose between siding with her daughter or with her loving husband.

"Your father is very proud of you. Even if he doesn't seem like it at times. But I don't think you running off helped much," Martha added. Kara nodded her head and finally smiled. She could have been a bit nicer to her dad.

And then she heard the sirens. They were faint, but growing louder.

"What's that?" Kara asked. Martha looked horrified.

"Air sirens. Something must be wrong..."

"Where's dad?" Kara asked quickly.

"He's in the barn working," Martha said. Kara quickly ran outside to warn her father, but he was already getting ready to move them all into their shelter. Martha and Kara quickly followed him down, but before Kara walked down the steps her ears started ringing again. She clutched her hands to her ears and through all the noise she could someone crying.

"Kara!" Jonathan shouted, wanting to get them all inside. High above the sky was riddled with meteor rocks, and they would soon start pounding down into the Smallville landscape.

"Dad... I have to go..." Kara said.

She wasn't sure why. But she had to help.

Kara summoned as much speed as she could to race off to the where she heard the sound coming from. Down a long road she saw a car burning up, and a bit further down was a young boy. Kara ran up to him just as a meteor rock came rocketing down towards the ground.

Instinctively she grabbed his body and shielded him with her own, clutching him tight as the powerful meteor crashed against the Kryptonians back. It shattered into hundreds of pieces, quickly lining the road with the tiny bits and chunks.

What in the world was going on?

She picked up the young boy and she held him in her arms as she looked around her. Smallville Medical Center was closer to her than her house, and she ran as fast as she could to get inside. The hospital was already buzzing with excitement, patients coming in faster than their small staff could handle.

"I need some help," Kara called out as she clutched the young boy in her arms. He was still sobbing, but otherwise alright.

"What's the matter? Are you his sister?"

"No, and I don't know where his parents are. But he's hurt," Kara said as a nurse rushed up to her. She gave the young boy away and dusted the tiny bits of meteor dust that covered her clothes. She looked around her, staring at all the frantic faces that filled up the hospital wing.

Merick

Merick looked at the shock and awe surrounding him. He wanted to badly to save them all. But he wasn't sure he could. He gathered the few that were near by. "Hang on people. This on might get bumpy. HOLD ON!!!" There were two more swooshes as Merick left and returned quicker than most would even notice.

"Your friends are dying Mehrick. Tommy was there. The toddler from Hell. "Get out. You can't save them all.

"Ok Tommy, listen up. Either you are my brother, or a part of me. I don't care which. Bt I have to tr to save these people. Either help me or get lost. Merick just finished his sentence when a large rock smashed the Earth with reverberating force, sending Merick hard to the ground.

"You don't understand. So many are dying. And you will too. Run. Go. The rocks are not the only problem here. There are things. Bad People. Just Run. Please.

"Not this time. Be my eyes. Together we can save them. Tommy I need you."

"Okay. I'll be back.

Merick surveilled the area. He had gotten several families out. More seemed to be coming out of the woodworks. Merick grabbed several people as they pushed by him. In milliseconds they were standing in the hospital. Merick stopped for a second. He was exhausted. He wasn't sure how long he could keep this up.

Lex and Emil (and Meyer & Boyajian)

Meyer opened his mouth to retort, to rejoinder, but then he snapped his mouth shut.

'Actually, sir,' he wanted to say, 'right now? Smallville is the last place one would want to be. A helicopter is a mere distant second.'

When he tried again, he had a much more civil tongue in his head. "Exactly right sir," he replied. "Not sure what I was thinking. Must be the stress of the situation."

"Far be it from any of us to argue, Dad," Lex drawled, and he gestured to the doorway back into the house. "If we're staying put-- and I suppose we must be, if that's the word from On High --there's no safer foxhole in the entire state."

He turned to Meyer, a glimmer of molten obsidian in his eyes, and he leaned in with a harsh whisper.

"There's not room for everyone down in The Safe Room," he suggested through gritted teeth. "You make sure the maids and their children get on that chopper in the next five minutes. I'll not have the blood of gentle women and their progeny under my fingernails. Then you come meet us at The Room."

Meyer nodded sharply, grateful that someone around here considered him half-competent, and took off at a run.

Lex whirled to face Boyajian. "Everyone else needs to be in the wine cellar. Stat. I've never known you to be subtle, Boyajian. Best not start now.

"You're in The Room too," Lex declared. "If this place comes down around our ears we'll need you to dig us out."

Boyajian nodded sharply, and he, too, ran off. The floor thundered beneath him with each step.

Emil was still staring wistfully at the sky, his hands in his pockets.

His tongue roved over his teeth, looking for flecks of pear-peel.

Will it be more of the same? he wondered. More of the same impossible alchemical rock? Is it my turn, do you think?

Is now the time in which I am awakened, and made ready for The Future?

Will it be now? I would like to stay and watch, I think.

I would like to see The Future.

The voice from his dreams, however, did not reply.

Halfway through the door, leading the way, Lex glanced back over his shoulder and saw Doctor Hamilton staring at the clouds.

"Doctor?" he prompted, his patience hanging on by a thread. "God willing, the view'll still be there tomorrow."

Emil Hamilton nodded, slowly. "Yes, yes, of course," he murmured. "Quite right, quite right."

He followed without looking again at the sky as the chopper, children aboard, began to lift off and power away.

Ceri and Jamie

They sprawled on the parking lot, just barely dodging that tiny, vicious meteorite.

But a shadow loomed over them, big and fast and so very very right there...

Ceri gazed into Jamie's eyes, face full of fear and her hand clutching his-- "F'annwyl."

Jamie squeezed her hand hard, panicking but trying to seem resolute. "In saecula saeculorum."

Simultaneously, their eyes scrunched shut.

Thchunk!

Jamie opened one eye. "Eh? You what?"

And then Professor John Smith gathered them both aloft, mighty as could be.

"Your daughter requests your company," John Smith smiled at Jamie.

Jamie beamed down at the world below them. "Oh, I'll just bet she does!" He slapped John Smith's shoulder hard, gratefully. "Thanks, mate. Timing couldn't be lovelier."

Ceri was a little bit in shock, staring at the man whose arm was invincibly around her waist. "Watch your hands, there, luvvie," she muttered, then glanced over at her ex-husband. "Jamie? He's flying. He's flying like Rosy."

Jamie grinned back at her, utterly elated, thrilled to be alive. "John, this is Ceri, Rose's mum," he introduced, that puckish grin in full force. "Ceri, this is John. And don't you dare look at me like that. You're always telling me I need to make more friends."

Ceri tucked a forelock of hair behind her ear and smiled cheerfully enough. "Pleased to meet you, John," she nodded. "Thank you for not letting that massive tupping space-rock turn us into Bubble and Squeak."

Bill Ross and Ben Hubbard

Bill Ross was helping Ben Hubbard across the parking lot, away from the feed store...

Ben howled and clutched Bill's arm as he saw that great chunk of fiery stone tumble directly for the mystery couple...

The two men reeled, looked away, couldn't bear to watch.

Thchunk!

They held their collective breath.

Bill looked first.

And was astonished to discover that there was no crater. And no mystery couple.

"S'weird," he muttered, shaking his head. "Whole town's gone nuts."

Ben Hubbard, however, was a practical man. "Dunno where they gone, but their engine's still runnin'."

Bill nodded, and started to hurry Ben towards the Saab. "'What did one shepherd say to the other shepherd?'" he asked.

"Got me swingin'," Ben blinked.

Bill clambered in behind the Saab's wheel and adjusted the seat even as the burning cornfield across the street blew smoke in billows around them.

"'Let's get the flock outta here,'" he declared.

Ben grinned, and hobbled in, and Bill put the pedal to the metal.

Pete wasn't the only Ross who could drive.

Rose

Fire stormed from Rose's palm, and she hurled this at a meteor, shattering the thing to pieces...

...much too close to her face.

It exploded and blew her coruscating corona apart and sent her tumbling towards the ground.

She managed-- just barely --to exert her ability to fly at just the last second and she landed in a heap, mostly unhurt.

Rose struggled for a moment, struggled to stand. Her eyes were full of ash, and her ears were still ringing from the explosion. Her heightened senses were almost useless; she could barely see normally.

But she could see well enough to see Bruce in front of her. She could see well enough to see the light pour up out of the crater, and then vanish.

She stumbled over to Bruce, her black t-shirt singed around the edges, her hair a mess and her blue blue eyes shot through with blood.

Rose McCrimmon was a mess, and she was exhausted.

But she was aware enough of things to know that light did not pierce the sky of its own accord, that there must be a source for such brightness. There was something in there...

She put her hand on Bruce's shoulder. "What's the sitch?" she whispered, trying to keep her voice low. "Was that some sort of signal?"

The dark dark thing before them felt cold to Rose. Far colder than should have anything that had just undergone atmospheric re-insertion.

"'Tales From Space,'" she breathed, terrified and mesmerised, that chill digging firmly into the back of her neck. "Issue Eight: 'Space Zombies From Pluto.'"

Whether it was by sheer luck or some other Force, the Martian Manhunter kept his promise to Var-Sen. He kept his promise to Pete Ross.

He found Chloe Sullivan.

And even as the Green Martian pulled her lifeless body from the once-still waters of Crater Lake, he knew he was too late.

He had failed.

J'onn J'onzz cradled her in his arms and smoothed back a strand of her hair that had plastered itself to her face in a gesture that was all too human.

And although he did not know this blonde haired human female, he knew she had some special attachment to his Kryptonian friend. He knew she held some special meaning to the boy Pete Ross.

And so J'onn Jonzz, the Martian Manhunter, held Chloe Sullivan's body in his arms as he sank down onto the sandy beach of Crater Lake and wept.

"Are you hurt?"

Kara didn't respond right away. Everyone seemed so hurt...

"Are you hurt?"

"What?" Kara suddenly asked, torn from her momentary daze.

"Let's take a look at you," someone said standing next to her. Kara shrugged the nurse off.

"I'm fine," Kara said. She was just covered in some rock dust from when the meteor smacked against her body. She wasn't injured in any sense of the word. Kara could still hear the doctors talking, and one of them wanted to examine Kara for any wounds she might have sustained. But the young Kryptonian had decided there was little more she could. The worst of the meteor shower seemed over, but there were still a few more patients coming into the medical center.

"I said I'm fine," Kara said when one of the nurses tried directing her to an examining room. Even if Kara wasn't 'fine' there was little they could do for her. None of their operating tools would penetrate her skin anyways. When the nurse turned around Kara sped out of the hospital and ran back towards her house.

Kara stopped running for just a moment to look up at the sky. The meteors seemed to be coming down in fewer numbers than before, so she was certain the worst of it was over.

She had no idea how wrong her assessment was.

Turning back around Kara headed to the farm, and she found Martha and Jonathan finally coming out of the storm cellar. They both appeared to be ok, and none of the meteors had struck anywhere near their house.

"Mom! Dad!" Kara shouted as she ran up to them. Kara embraced both her parents.

"Are you hurt?" Martha asked, noting how roughed up Kara looked. Her clothes were somewhat ripped here and there from the impact, but Kara smiled anyways.

"I'm fine. I got hit by one of the meteors as I was saving someone," Kara said.

"Did anyone see you?" Jonathan asked. Kara shook her head.

"He was just a little boy, dad. I doubt he'll remember. I dropped him off at the medical center," Kara said. Martha nodded her head and Jonathan placed a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it gently. He was proud of what she had done, even if it was a bit reckless just running out like that.

"Well we're just glad you're alright," Martha said, her heart beating a bit more normally now that she knew her daughter was okay. Jonathan looked over at the house and saw that nothing was damaged.

Ceri tucked a forelock of hair behind her ear and smiled cheerfully enough. "Pleased to meet you, John," she nodded. "Thank you for not letting that massive tupping space-rock turn us into Bubble and Squeak."

Click to expand...

"The pleasure is all mine," Var-Sen said to her, "as I would never allow Rose's mother and father to become anything near the resemblance of Bubble and Squeak."

He flew fast, but not too fast, for he was sure they could not withstand the air pressure and forceful winds at high speed. It was only a moment or two and they were outside Smallville, flying over the fields. Miller's Bend could be seen from where they were, and there was a black spot in the ground near the caves. A furrow the size of Smith's BMW suv had been plowed, and there was dark smoke rising from it.

Something had landed.

Var-Sen took them on a suddenly circuitous route, coming up on the other side of the caverns, where he saw Rose and Bruce looking towards the ship.

Yes, it was a ship. A Kryptonian ship.

Var-Sen set Jamie and Ceri down lightly, then seemingly hopped across the ground to land near where they now stood.

"Leave this place and do no harm," he said.

Nam-Ek and Athyr both swiveled their head simultaneously to look at him. It was Athyr that spoke first.

"Stand aside, human," she said.

"He is not human," Nam-Ek informed her, "look at him. He is a scientist. He worked for Zor-El." He considered for a moment. "If he has been here for some time, then he may know the location of the Crystal of Knowledge."

She cocked her head to the side, and then answered, "It does not matter." Then, to Var-Sen she said, "you are either with us or against us."

Var-Sen's voice was firm and hard. His hands clenched into fists. "I will not allow you to bring any harm to this world or its people. Your mission will fail. This world will never bend to the will of Zod."

Silence ensued. Var-Sen knew a battle for Earth was about to occur. He also knew that he and the two new arrivals were equally matched. Only with the help of Kara Zor-El and the others could Earth be possibly saved.

And there was also something he was sure Nam-Ek and Athyr didn't know. There was a secret weapon available, but one that was as equally formidable against him as it was against them.

Var-Sen closed his eyes and concetrated on Rose. His limited telepathic powers connected, and he sent her an urgent message.

Find the green rock, Rose. The poison from my home world can destroy them. Find the green rock, Rose. Find it and bring it here, and use it.

And then Var-Sen of Krypton readied himself to go to war.

The rumbling continued throughout the Luthor mansion. The house, a castle really, had been imported from Scotland brick by brick. The roof and foundations, however, were simple, ordinary things.

The manor withstood a pelting by small fragments.

But something had happened to Lionel Luthor. Something that would have coincided with the opening of the black ship, even though Lionel nor Lex nor any of them were there to see it.

Something was calling to Lionel Luthor. A consciousness, calling from across time and space. It was something he felt, something he heard, something he knew.

Lionel stared, unblinking, off into the dimly lighted room. He knew there was danger, and he knew it was at the Kawatche Cave.

But he didn't know why.

Ceri, Jamie, and Rose

Ceri and Jamie stayed where he put them.

They stayed put: Ceri for one reason, Jamie for another.

Ceri stayed put because she saw her daughter standing with her hair blowing in the winds. Ceri saw Rose with her red hair blowing in the wind, covered in soot and stonedust, her eyes softened by tears and hardened by combat, and Ceri felt such pride. She knew that her daughter was stalwart.

The Women McCrimmon had always been stalwart, first and foremost. And it was now, when she needed to most, that Rose had taken her first steps as a stalwart McCrimmon woman.

She saw Rose standing her ground with these others against two ice-cold hard-arse monsters, and Ceri was proud.

Jamie stayed put because there was a big black sleek extrasolar spacecraft on the ground in front of him, and he was sure beyond a doubt that this had been the source of the antigravity he had heard earlier on the very fringes of his off-beat perceptions.

Fascinated, Jamie smiled a tiny smile like a kid in a candy store. "Look at you," he murmured to the ship. "You're beautiful."

Fire crept around the edges of Rose's aura once more, and ice flecked in her eyes.

She didn't know what these monsters were that Bruce had found, she knew only that she liked them not at all. Jadis of Charn, she murmured inwardly, as her hands curled into fists so firmly that her knuckles popped, and Maugrim, Captain of her Secret Police.

But then she felt a prickling at the edges of her cerebrum and she found herself thinking thoughts she knew were not her own: 'Find the green rock, Rose. The poison from my home world can destroy them. Find the green rock, Rose. Find it and bring it here, and use it.'

She opened her mouth to ask further questions, but then she realised, with a sudden start, that debating battle tactics in front of The Enemy was probably a bad move. Hence, radio silence and a little bit of psionic sleight-of-hand.

Rose's mind whirled. She did the math.

There had been a green rock in The Cave. But Kyle had taken that away, just like she'd told him. He'd shadowed it somewhere, buried it.

Where could she find another one?

Uncle Emil had had dozens of rocks in the garage, in his little makeshift lab, but he was gone now long gone and no-one knew where and he'd taken his rock samples with him.

Where could--

Sullivan.

The Geology Club once stole a meteor rock sample from Chloe Sullivan. They had to write a big public apology for The Ledger and The Torch!

Which means that--

In a rush of fiery, afterburner fury, Rose knifed up into the sky.

More meteors fell around her, fewer now. And on she flew.

I don't know where you're going, Rosy, Ceri mused, a little smile on her face, but I do know you're not running scared.

Jamie gazed on at that ship. He knew it was wrong. On an instinctive level, just looking at it, he knew that it was as alien to this place as dark was to light, as cold was to heat, he knew that it shouldn't be here.

How could something, how could anything, he wondered, be so terrible and wonderful at the same time?

Rose powered down out of the sky, not unlike a meteor herself, and with a burst of fire shattered one of the windows of Smallville High's Torch the instant before she would have crashed into it.

She landed in a crouch, and her eyes glinted as they saw the world in hues of heat and heat's absence.

She saw nothing at first. Nothing that remotely smacked of the weird energies those rocks were supposed to give off--

There.

A thermal blank spot. There in a desk.

She strode over to it, yanked the drawer open, and with normal vision saw there a lead box. Lead has cooling properties, right? she shook her head, trying to remember. But most of all, it blocks radiation...

Rose grabbed up the box and popped it open.

Green gleamed.

Two halves of a geode, both with green crystal at the core.

Two halves, she decided, two bad guys.

She soared high, fast as she could... but she flew at a snail's pace compared to The Professor...

Would she even be in time?

"Something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody."

Everything went red.

Everything went black.

And then. Inexplicably. Everything went white.

Chloe sat up. She blinked.

She blinked several times.

She was sitting on a rundown old settee, having sat up from a lying-down position, and her back kind of hurt.

She looked around. She was in a small apartment, it looked like. Little bit unkempt, little bit quirky.

Wallpaper was peeling a little bit.

There was an end table at the end of the couch, and atop the end table sat a goldfish bowl with two goldfish in it. One was small and chubby, the other was enormous and skinny as a rail.

Chloe blinked again, just to be on the safe side.

She could hear singing from the kitchen.

Mary Poppins, it sounded like. "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

A very pretty voice.

Chloe lurched to her feet. She felt tired all over. Her back hurt.

Curiously, though, she limped to the kitchen.

She was even prettier than her voice, the woman in the kitchen. Slender, with just a touch of curvy.

She had smooth skin as pale as Moonlight's ghost, and long hair as dark as Midnight in mourning.

She wore black, but this did not seem to match her mood. She dressed like a Goth, with a silvery-studded belt and big clunky boots and black from head to toe.

The woman was pouring coffee into matching mugs, and she didn't even bat an eye when she turned around and saw Chloe. In fact, she smiled even wider than she'd already been smiling, and let her song trail off.

She wore a necklace, and this necklace was a pendant shaped like an ankh.

Her face was unmarked by makeup, save for her black lipstick and the Eye of Ra, the udjat, that quirked the corner of one eye.

She offered Chloe one of those cups of coffee. "Almond mocha?"

Chloe blinked, and took the cup; it was steaming. Too hot to drink.

"Whipped cream's in the fridge," the woman nodded in the direction of the clunky old Kenmore that occupied one corner of the small kitchen.

Chloe stood there for a second. The cup felt warm and real in her hands, the beverage smelled delicious and utterly comforting.

"How did you know that I--" she began, bewildered.

"--liked almond mocha?" the woman finished, winking as she cupped her own mug with both hands and sipped gingerly. "Oh, it was kind of obvious, really."

Chloe nodded as if that made sense. The way that the woman said this, this pale creature, she said it so sensibly that it almost did make sense.

But something else was bugging Chloe.

"I'm sorry," she attempted, "silly question. Where--?"

"I wouldn't worry about it overmuch," the beautiful pale woman suggested. "You won't be here long. You can chill on the couch summore if you want."

Chloe turned, and walked back through to the living room, and sat down on the couch.

The pale woman sat down beside her, having retrieved the aforementioned whipped cream from the fridge.

She sprayed a good massive dollop onto Chloe's coffee.

Chloe nodded gratefully.

"Thanks," she murmured, and blinked once more. "I hope you'll forgive me. I'm a little. I'm a little lost."

"Believe you me," the pale woman chuckled, "I know just how you feel. It's not every day someone like you comes along."

"Someone like me?" Chloe frowned.

"'Someone like you,'" the woman repeated, with a warm and gentle smile.

Chloe stared at the pale woman like she'd just claimed hats were ants. "What's going on here? What is this place?"

The pale creature grunted softly, set her coffee down, and proceeded to feed the goldfish that sat on the the end table in their big round bowl.

"You were plenty inquisitive the last time you were here, too," she clucked, "a real handful. Never accepting anything at face value, even at, what, three? Four?"

"I would be more accepting," Chloe suggested, starting to get a little creeped-out by this rundown place and its enigmatic occupant, "if I knew what it was I was supposed to be accepting."

The woman seemed to read Chloe's face and, as if it were obvious, got an apology on her own face.

"Yeah," she sighed. "It's kind of a sty in here. I keep meaning to dust, maybe repaint, but honestly, I don't use this particular room that often. (Only once since the last time you were here, come to think of it.) I only use this room for the ones who are getting off with a warning."

She rose to her feet and crossed over to a stereo with stacks of CDs and cassettes and black record albums around it, and she began shuffling through the CDs.

"Maybe some music," she wondered, "pass the time? Improve the atmosphere? D'you like Panic at The Disco? I've heard their newer stuff and frankly, I just don't think they're the same without the exclamation point."

Chloe opened her mouth to explain that she really preferred Jimmy Eat World, but then she closed her mouth again deftly.

"You act like you know me," she murmured. "You keep saying that you've met me."

"I meet everyone at least twice," the pale woman replied, sounding a little weary now, a little wounded. "Once at the beginning. And once at the end."

Chloe stared at her through the steam from her coffee, and her mind worked and her jaw tightened.

The Pale Woman turned and regarded Chloe with deep dark eyes. Endlessly deep.

"I saw you once at the beginning," The Pale Woman smiled faintly. "And again, ten years ago this October 16th. Several times. You were in and out for awhile."

"I had a house collapse on me that day," Chloe admitted with a pang of distantly-remembered agony, as her mind began to grasp at straws and find, to its surprise, that the straws weren't quite so nonsensical after all, "because all of a sudden it turned out Chicken Little had been on the money."

The Pale Woman bit her black-painted lip as she returned to the settee, picking up her own coffee once more.

"My brother Destruction was busy that day," she reminisced, her face unreadable. "He and I both were."

Chloe's hands were trembling, and she had to set her coffee down in a hurry.

She pressed those hands into her lap and she forced herself to breathe. She forced herself to steady.

She licked her lips and she cleared her throat.

"In his memoir," Chloe attempted, "Giovanni 'John' Zatara claimed that all of human existence could be divided up into seven distinct modes of reference. One of these was Destruction."

Chloe scrutinised The Pale Woman with tightly narrowed eyes.

"Which one are you?" Chloe asked, point-blank.

The Pale Woman smiled at Chloe, smiled gently and warmly and encouragingly.

She nodded easily.

"You know my name," Death replied.

Lex and Emil

"Dad," Lex called out, snapping his fingers in front of Lionel's face. "Dad! Men as rich as us are entitled to be a little eccentric, but your timing could use a little work!"

He almost caught himself letting a little genuine worry into his voice.

Almost.

Emil stood there waiting, once more utterly composed, his gaze never leaving Lionel's distant eyes. "Ignore him, Lionel," he murmured. "What do you see?"

"Something terrible," was all Lionel Luthor could reply.

But in reality, he saw a symbol, an alien symbol, one he recognized as coming from the same language as that which was written in the cave.

A symbol of which he did not know the meaning, but he would later write it down when he could. When he was not under the watchful eyes of Lex.

Someone else would decipher this glyph. Someone else would see it as Kryptonian and know that it was the spelling out of a name.

And that name was Zod.