The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe, Pete, and Jamie

Death.

Death waded through that Village of The Damned.

Rioting, of a sort, had begun immediately once The Wraith had woven his darkness and vanished with their prisoner off into the night. Searchlights had stabbed the steamy jungle, gunfire had chattered at random intervals.

One might have been reminded of the story of Gideon, and the way the Philistines had panicked at the sudden appearance of torchbearers and hornblowers and battlecriers in the night, panicked so thoroughly that more Philistines died on the swords of other Philistines than died on the swords of Gideon's men. Except these men, the men of The Ten Rings, were not panicked in their movements.

They were brutal. They were unafraid. They were methodical.

Even without their leader, buried as he was beneath a collapsed structure, they did not lose their cool.

They began to comb the night for the missing person and his saviour, as they could not have gotten far. They were about to embark for the nearby mountain, to ascertain whether or not this Edgar Cole and his reinforcement had sought sanctuary in a cave there.

Until BRAINIAC arrived.

Their bullets were useless, their cool was finite, their blood was everywhere.

Raza's valet, a calm old man, tried his best to be helpful, to perhaps stem the tide of genocide.

But his words were not enough.

His death was as excruciating as it was sudden.

In Bruce Wayne's kitchen, they watched it all in nightvision green.

"Okay," Chloe murmured, trying to breathe. "Well. That's not the guy from the stuff in New York. Is that the physical manifestation of our A.I.?"

Jamie stood just behind them who were gathered behind the laptop, gazing over their shoulders with his glasses on his nose and a dark dark look on his face.

"Oh, yeah," he muttered, cracking open the bottle of Excedrin and downing the pills within without even a hint of liquid, "that's him. I mean, I don't know the face? But that attitude, that's all him. I saw his silhouette as he brushed past me mind, and it was darker, oh so very much darker even than our friend Erebos' little pet patches of lightlessness."

Chloe hesitated, and takked the key that rewound the footage and played it again.

"He's killing methodically," she murmured, "but there's no real direction to it. Don't you think that if he knew where The Crystal was, he'd be killing towards it?"

Pete looked like he was really regretting that chalupa. His stomach had turned.

("I dunno 'bout trashy romance novels, Ray," he murmured to Kyle, "but your digital bud just gotta drive-full of the evilest Dean Koontz I've ever read.")

Out loud, though: "D'you think there's still time then? D'you think we can maybe sneak in there, grab the thing 'fore he cottons to our presence?"

("At least the book wasn't a paranormal bodice-ripper," Chloe muttered. "The finer points of wining and dining get a little bit lost when your date consists of being overwhelmed with fiery kisses beneath the moonlit boughs of a forest glade. And then the gorgeous Spaniard guy turns into a wolf, which, what the Hell?")

Out loud, though: "I'm half-tempted to let him have this thing," she growled. "So long as we beat him to the next one, then neither of us will have all the components and the status quo will be maintained. Because-- no offence, Kyle --I don't want us going anywhere near the fertiliser-storm that monster's kicked up, not without a serious influx of firepower like now."

Chloe steepled her fingers, though, and thought hard.

She eyed the machines that Merick had brought with a dark kind of hunger.

She'd modded her laptop as best as she could, kept it tip-top-of-the-line, but she knew... she knew just by glancing at these new devices that they were more along the order of that mysterious four-terabyte jumpdrive that now sat locked in her desk drawer at home.

They were past the top of the line. They were over the top, over the line.

(And that one Alienware. Bonus. Christmas was four months early.)

"Unless," she murmured, and she bit her lip.

Jamie arched an eyebrow. "What's on your brainpan, Sullivan?"

Chloe wondered: "How quickly can we get these laptops networked together?"

"'Jack Robinson,'" Jamie grinned softly, darkly, kicking off his shoes and trying on those new green fellas Merick had brought along. (Size wasn't bad.)

Chloe gestured to the air, and by the context she seemed to be indicating The Internet: "If he's monitoring web-traffic at all?" she pondered. "Maybe we can programme like Hell and set up a big rush of forum hits indicating that The Crystal's been found off the coast of Honduras in a sunken outpost of a forgotten civilisation. Maybe we can draw him off long enough that we can get in and get out."

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Odin & Kyle

"Nu-uh. That bastard KILLED!!! He's going down! By the time me & Spooky Dookey get through with him he won't be able to read a tolltag on the expressway! Doctor, if you would be so kind as to link up the laptops and connect Kyle's watch to the most advanced one, I'll download a shell into it. I'll take up pretty much all available space, but I should be able to help Miss Sullivan to set up her distraction, and Kyle can go into his cub scout scaring costume, and go retrieve the nice spaceman's thingamajig he lost."


I recovered from the shock of what I Had watched on the screen (Spooky Dookey??) and looked over at Pete.

"I can get there. If you can distract that abomination I'll get there. I'll just pop in underwater and swim to the cave."


Shadows swirled around me and once again I stood in my armored form.

"As for power, against this, I hold NOTHING back! Chloe, your one of the smartest people I know, but if we let this get a fraction more power, we unleash Hell on earth. And I'm pretty certain that I'm here on earth to stop things like that. Talk to the toaster & get your whammy going."


Shadows crawled thought the mansion. I tried to control my emotions, but I was scared. This thing could kill me, but I was the only one that could take him, maybe.

"Come on Rose, we need Professor Smiths Chosen One. You can do it. You can do anything if your head and heart want it." I whispered to myself.

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick was back to fishing through the box of goodies. "Chloe, I am so glad I have you and the Doc here cause I have never even heard of half of this stuff. From the hardware being brought in to my pad I would say this is some spooky gear. I mean who the hell heli-drops laptops at midnight. I wish I knew what the other crates were."

Merick set down the box. "Do you think we can really get this thing going on a wild goose chase? I mean no offense to our AI, but this this is ridiculous. What if he sees right through the hacks? What if he follows the stream back to us here. I count 3 laptops. You, the Doc, and the AI. What if we hop around? What if I bring one of you, say to Granville, another to Hawaii, and a third to Texas? I mean, it would look like we were hitting with multiple teams. Lend credibility to the story right? Besides, I don't want to lead this son of a bitch back here. He knows we have forces in Smallville, but it might confuse him if he sees us really hitting from the flanks."

Merick was no computer genius. Far from it. He could manage a decent Paladin on Diablo 2, he was even okay at WoW, but updating his antivirus software still kicked his ass. But he had seen enough movies. And sitting still never helped the good guys in the movies. Always better to make a full on charge. Never run up the stairs, never jump in the car with out looking. Never let the freaky alien track you to your home.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

The look on Diana's face was exactly what Kara had expected her to show: awe. The dark haired girl was speechless for a moment, as if any words she could have possibly said prior to the revelation had just up and vanished. Yet her reaction after that took the words right out of Kara's mouth.

Diana knelt down on one knee with her head bowed, as if out of reverence to the young Kryptonian.

Kara was confused for a moment, but she quickly knelt down in front of Diana and placed her hands on both her shoulders, trying to bring their bodies to an equal footing. There was no need for Diana to bow...

No one should have to subject themselves to another. It wasn't right.

"Hey, you don't have to kneel down, it's okay," Kara tried to say, offering whatever comforting words she could to make Diana realize that Kara wasn't a 'high and mighty' deity.

She was, for lack of a better term, just a simple farm girl from Kansas.

"I don't know about being a daughter of Persephone... actually I don't know who my real parents are. There are a lot of things I don't know," Kara added. Suddenly, however, words began to fill Kara's mind, and they spoke to her about answers. It was a voice she was unfamiliar with, but it wasn't threatening.

Kara lifted up her head and she looked around. She couldn't see anyone... but she could hear them. Her acute hearing had started to improve the more she focused, and she tried her best to figure out what was going on.

She found her parents...

"Hold on..." Kara mumbled.

They were in her barn... she could hear people moving around in the loft.

"We need to go," Kara said before she stood to her feet. She waited for Diana before making her way to the loft where Rose and J'onn were waiting for her.

 

[AmenRa]

The Last Daughter of Krypton

J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, bowed his head in a nod of greeting to the blonde-haired Kryptonian female that had made her way to the loft.

"It is not by chance that we stand here now, Kara," he said to her in his deep voice of sand against sand. J'onn looked to Rose, then back to Kara. He knew the young Kryptonian would not understand the reason why a strange human would be standing in her loft with someone she knew. He knew he must explain quickly, and to do so, he must change.

"I am J'onn J'onzz," he began, "and centuries ago I served your father, your birth father, on your homeworld of Krypton." And he morphed and changed from the dusty hat-wearing professor to his true form, his green, tall, broad-shouldered, Martian self.

"Fear not," he told her and Diana, "I come in peace."

He nodded to Diana in greeting, recognizing strength in her, and continued speaking to the awe-struck Kryptonian. "I am sure you have discovered things about yourself over the years that have seperated you from the normalcy of humankind. Perhaps your adopted parents, the Kents, have explained some to you. But, even they do not know the truth behind your coming here.

"You are the last child of a world that is no more, Kara. Your father, Zor-El, a great scientist and counselor, placed you in a spacecraft to travel here so you would be spared Krypton's impending doom.

"You were your father's last hope for survival. You were the last hope of a doomed race. And you are the last hope for this place, your adopted planet: Earth. It was my promise to him that I would watch over you, and when the time was right, I would guide you to your destiny. Rose here holds the key to that destiny and the symbol that will start you on your journey.

"You are Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton, and it is your destiny to be the Hope of all Mankind."

And then J'onn was silent, and his Martian eyes flickered red with the intensity of what he had revealed to the simple farm girl from Kansas.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Rose's feelings were instantaneous and mixed.

She was disappointed that, after all of this, she wasn't the one to speak the words.

But at the same time, she was relieved. Because as ready as she'd felt after seeing Krypton's stunning vistas projected into her mind, as ready as she'd felt... she wasn't positive that she had been ready.

She smiled softly, apologetically, at Kara's beautiful-- oh, so very beautiful --friend, knowing full well what it must be like to be chucked into the pool at its very deepest end.

But.

She couldn't just stand there like a lump.

She had to say something.

So she walked forward, her eyes gleaming and glinting with soft blue-white light, and held up The Crystal of Hope, presenting it unto Kara with the appropriate reverence.

And she said something. She said, really, under the circumstances, the only thing she could possibly have said:

"'I cannot live, I can't breathe,'" she murmured, an aching smile on her lips and gentle pleading in her eyes, "'unless you do this with me.'"

 

[AmenRa]

Lionel Luthor got up, wearily, groggily, and made his way back to the waiting limo. He ignored the driver's inquiries, and he ordered the man to drive him back to the mansion.

Lionel walked inside, looking all like someone that had spent the last three days on a drinking binge. He ignored the house staff, he ignored his son, and went straight to Emil.

"The meteor rock," he whispered to the scientist, "how much do you have of it? We'll need it. Only his homeworld can stop him."

Lionel was about to explain when an intercom speaker erupted with shouting and the unmistakable sounds of gunfire.

 

[AmenRa]

Wearing all black that matched the souless depths of his eyes, General Zod strolled purposely up the night-lighted driveway of the Luthor mansion.

Several gaurds, after issuing orders to stop, opened fire.

The bullets struck him and flattened, some dropping to the ground, others ricocheting off his Kryptonian body.

"Stop! That's an order!" one guard, ex-military, screamed at him.

"Zod does not take orders," the General replied, "he gives them." And with a burst of heat vision, the guard who had challenged him was reduced to a pile of ash.

The reinforced wooden door that had held its place within the Luthor home could not hold against the Kryptonian's power. However, though, Zod had no wish to destroy the structure. He merely wanted to engage in a mutually beneficial business arrangement with its owner (all arrangements would be mutually beneficial; Zod gets what he wants, and people were allowed to live).

Zod rang the Luthor mansion's door bell.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex, Emil, Meyer, and Boyajian

Emil had been sitting in Lex's office, staring solemnly at the piano, wondering if he should play some of Beethoven's Fifth to dispel his sullen demeanour.

Lex was sitting behind his desk, looking... contemplative.

And then Lionel strode up, looking...

Again Emil recognised the look on Lionel's face. Once, not so very long ago, in the wastes of Antarctica, Emil had had that very same look on his face, in his eyes, and seen that look reflected in the mirrored surfaces of something very very old.

"The meteor rock," the tycoon whispered to the scientist, "how much do you have of it? We'll need it. Only his homeworld can stop him."

Then the gunfire erupted from the intercom, and Lex was on his feet in an instant.

An instant later, the doors to Lex's office burst open and Meyer and Boyajian strode in, looking... determined.

"I regret to inform you, Lionel," Emil apologised, his voice weary, "that the vast majority of my samples of meteor rock are secreted away at Lex's facility, the lab in which I worked to restore Mr. Graves."

"The vast majority," Lex confirmed, drawing a four-barreled handgun from a drawer in his desk, and checking the clip before retrieving the katana from the daisho on the windowsill behind his chair, "but not all of it."

Emil arched an eyebrow.

Lex's gaze darted for an instant, just for an instant, to the scientist's mechanical arm.

Emil arched both eyebrows, and clutched his prosthesis' upper arm in the fingers of his human hand.

Lex whirled to face Meyer and Boyajian, who stood by the office door, guns drawn, ready to repel intruders.

"In any case," Lex continued, "our friend David Boyajian has a stash in the wine cellar that we can use against our incoming."

"This is true," Boyajian nodded. "You want I should go fetch a dose?"

"No," Lex shook his head. "Meyer should. Peter?"

Peter Meyer nodded firmly, and darted off towards the wine-cellar door. "On it."

The doorbell rang, and it sounded like a cloister bell tolling of danger.

"Boyajian," Lex murmured coolly, holding his gun in his left hand and his katana in his right, "could I trouble you to answer the door?"

Boyajian nodded. Fear might have flickered in his eyes for an instant, but his sunglasses hid that fear from prying eyes. And in his defence, the fear really was only there for an instant.

He put his gun away.

He turned and he ran for the front door. Ran hard, ran fast...

And he ploughed through the reinforced wood, shattering it to splinters, and straight on through towards the ancient extraterrestrial evil, fists raised above his head and ready to come crashing down on The General's skull...

Boyajian was not capable of subtlety.

But he was capable of bravery. And violence. Violence fueled by the meteor rock in his blood.

"HRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Pete, Jamie, and Chloe

Jamie plucked a high-speed network hub from Merick's hands, fired off a quick wink of thanks-- 'Cheers, mate.' --and kept right on working.

Pete, hurriedly, was clearing the Mexican food (yeah, yeah, it was really Mexican, he really had been busting Tennylson's stones) out of the doctor's way, because a) he didn't want to see such a spectacular spread go to waste, and b) if they all made it through this alive, they would want a victory party, and victory parties needed food.

But Pete really had to hurry. Because Jamie was working damned fast.

One might even accuse the man of being part machine himself.

There were four laptops in total if you counted Chloe's original, and while it wasn't nearly on the level of the three Merick had brought, it still wasn't too shabby and Chloe was comfortable with it.

Before the third Alienware had even finished powering up, Jamie had everything assembled, linked at that hub in the middle of the table with a laptop each facing one of the four directions, and was already checking to see which one had the largest hard drive. (It was the black one, oddly enough. There was a red one, a green one and a black one, and the black one had the hardest-core hard drive.)

A tangle of Ethernet cords in his teeth, a wi-fi signal booster in one hand, Jamie proceeded to detach Odin from Chloe's Gateway and jack him into the black Alienware.

"Have at it, Ragnarok," he mumbled, extracting the cables from his mouth and grinning his most puckish grin.

He hadn't worked with tech this amazing since he'd been drummed out of S.T.A.R.Labs, and he felt... he felt awake elated excited alive. (Bothersome headache or not.)

Oh, and speaking of S.T.A.R.?

Jamie fished around in his pockets-- in their way, as seemingly deep as Merick's --and extracted his own 4TB jump-drive, hooking that into a USB port on the opposite side of the laptop from Odin's uplink.

"There you go, mate," he suggested helpfully. "Might give you a little bit more breathing room if you shuffle some files onto that. Plenty of room on there, I only ever used it once or twice for spreadsheets and the like. Powerpoint presentations for meetings. Most of me notes I kept in me head."

"Right now, Merick, I'm not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe later, when the meteoric dust settles?"

Chloe, having e-mailed some crucial files to herself, rose from behind her own laptop and sat behind the green Alienware.

"Falsifying IP addresses is easy enough," she murmured to Merick. "That's part of the plan. Falsify enough of them, and he'll take forever to find us. But I don't think we want to spread our pieces too far across the Risk board, if you follow me? If we're too thin on the ground, he'll just pick us off one by one."

She looked at him more directly as she waited for her e-mail site to load.

"If he does sniff us out," she murmured, "can you get us all out of here, all at once?"

Pete sat the last plate down, risking an enchilada despite the noises his stomach was making, and noshed it thoughtfully while eying Kyle.

"I dunno how distractin' I can be," he murmured, quietly, so Chloe didn't pick up on the fact that Pete was still considering going into this "fertiliser-storm," "with just two nightsticks. Guess m'boy Bruce gave me those when he thought we were only gonna be facin' human people down there. God knows I didn't distract him much in The Cave when I pitched a rock at his cabesa. But when I was watching the screen just now, watching th' Cyberpunk burn down the terrorist camp, I saw one thing among the Jeeps and the all-wheel-drives that might come in handy: a Romanaclef 5200, one of the sweetest sleekest rides ever to grace God's paved Earth. Put me down next to that, and I'll see what I can do."

 

[AmenRa]

How rude.

Who are these sub-creatures that they think they do not owe welcome?

Zod calmly, purposefully raised his right hand, palm facing the oncoming hulk. He reached, his fingers closing around Boyajian's skull, pressing into his temples, raking against the bones of his face.

Zod's hand stung a bit from the impact with Meyer's skull. That was a bit odd, but it had a reason. A brief, microsecond burst of x-ray revealed the glowing green traces of Kryptonite in the human's blood.

Ah. Refined fragments of Power Crystal. How small your minds are.

If they had bothered to heed warnings that had surely been passed onto them, then they would know to not tamper with something such as this. The power that fueled the planet Krypton could indeed fuel the human physiology.

But it couldn't sustain those that chose to use it to alter themselves so radically.

Some humans were indeed special; their bodies adapted to subtle changes and amplified thoughts, abilities, or even their lifeforce (and the ability to pass it to others).

The other thing they did not realize, and perhaps because they did not have a BRAINIAC to provide them with this research, was that by altering the chemical matrix of Kryptonite they made it weaker.

Less powerful.

Less effective when inside the body of a human host.

Like now.

The general reached his other hand up to grasp the side of Boyajian's neck and he now held him with both hands.

He held Boyajian aloft, cradling his human face in inhuman hands.

Zod looked him in the eyes.

Zod's eyes were lifeless, black eyes, like a doll's eyes.

And then Zod made a twisting motion with his hands, snapping the man's neck.

And when Boyajian was dead, Zod discarded him like a toy that no longer amused him.

He stepped through the now-splintered doorway, through the foyer and into the room where the rest had gathered.

He noted a bald human holding a sword (really?) and a handgun of some type.

Zod rolled his eyes, then settled his gaze on Lionel Luthor.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex and Emil

The snapping of Boyajian's neck resounded throughout the front hall and down to Lex's ears as Lex stood poised by the double doors of his office, and Lex clenched his eyes shut to hear the sound. It was unmistakable, that sound, like the pop of a champagne cork or the crack of certain kinds of suppressed firearm.

He had sent Boyajian up there as a delaying tactic, to be sure, a sacrificial lamb. But he had still held out hope that the man wouldn't perish.

So much for that.

Damn it all to Hell.

The beast in black strode effortlessly through the hallowed halls of The Luthor Mansion, and Lex backpedaled to stand protectively beside his father.

"Doctor," he hissed to Emil, "a little assistance, please. If Meyer doesn't return post-haste--"

Emil nodded, and tore at the sleeve of the button-down shirt he had earlier extracted from his provided wardrobe in the Luthor guest-cottage.

The skin of his metal arm gleamed in the incandescent lighting of the room, illumined in myriad colours by the stained-glass windows that reflected that light somewhat back into the room.

He touched an index fingertip to the upper arm, and the seamless silvery surface rippled and shifted and revealed a small hatch. Emil tapped this hatch with the same fingertip, and it popped open.

Emil was nervous. If he removed his bionic arm's power source, he'd be all but helpless. But its energies couldn't escape the lead-lined containment chamber, so leaving it in the arm made him more than useless.

He trembled a little bit, overcome with jitters, and accidentally dropped the tiny shard of crystal as he plucked it from within the hollows of his arm.

He dropped it, and clumsily kicked it skidding across the floor, underneath the pool table.

Emil swore softly, furiously, and chased it, ducked under the table to try and retrieve it.

Out of reach.

Bugger and blast!

He strained to reach it, strained and stretched, but his mechanical arm was as heavy now as a sack of bricks and it hung limply, obstructing him.

And then the monster himself walked in, and Lex held the four-barrelled nine-millimetre pistol level with the fellow's head.

His grip was white-knuckled on the hilt of the katana as he held it underhand, like Zatōichi The Blind Swordsman.

"Stay behind me, Dad," he growled aside to his father, and spoke louder to the intruding General. "Normally we don't see company without engraved invitations, you understand. This is all very irregular. But since you're here already? Maybe there's something we can do for you."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick was all bother and worry. He thought for a second.

"If the bastard does make it here, I am pretty sure I can get us all out. I mean, I ported out a couple of families during the shower. I am just cocerned with hitting the target. I can try to get Dad and you can get the Jolly Green Giant..." Merick grinned. "Or, Hey, maybe Tall Dark and Spooky can zip me in real quick. If I can get a good look around, I can probably nail it."

Merick was starting to really get a second wind now. He scoffed up burrito and started eatting.

 

[AmenRa]

Lionel

"Zod!"

It was one word, but one word was all that was needed.

Lionel recognized him.

Lionel knew him.

He reached up and gripped his son's arm. He summoned willpower, not for himself, but for his son. He willed Lex to listen, to move, to not make the mistake.

Protect me, Son, yes. Die for me? No.

"Lex," he whispered calmly as he pulled his son's gun wielding arm down, "don't. You can't hurt him. Don't, Son. Please."

 

[AmenRa]

"Stay behind me, Dad," he growled aside to his father, and spoke louder to the intruding General. "Normally we don't see company without engraved invitations, you understand. This is all very irregular. But since you're here already? Maybe there's something we can do for you."

All Zod would have to do would be reach up and take the weapon from Lex Luthor's hands. They would never even see him move.

And, now that he knew the bald one was indeed Lionel Luthor's offspring, Zod smiled, even as he stared into the quad-barrelled nine millimeter pistol.

He wanted the younger Luthor's submission. Totally and uniquely. Zod recognized something in the young one's eyes, and Zod would be able to grant what Lex Luthor sought.

Zod's voice was quiet, and menacing, and carried weight with it. His tone didn't need to be harsh, for when he spoke, his speech was that of someone was used to giving orders.

And having them obeyed.

"Of course there is something you can do for me," he told Lex Luthor. His gaze shifted to Lionel. Lionel had recognized him. Lionel knew him.

"As there is something I can do for you," back to Lex he spoke. "An arrangement that will no doubt prove to be mutually beneficial for all involved." He shot a warning glance to the metal limbed human that scurried around near the billiard table.

"But first," he said, his eyes boring into Lex's, "you must prove yourself worthy of the gift I shall bestow upon you."

"Kneel," he whispered.

"Kneel before Zod."

 

[ChasNicollette]

(Boyajian)

David Boyajian hurtled a long way when Zod threw him.

His sunglasses shattered when he hit the ground, shattered and bounced away.

His plain black suit tore quite a bit, shredded as Boyajian slid to a halt, scraping on the ground.

Boyajian didn't move.

The security team was in shambles, frozen in dread and fear and unwilling or unable to approach the house. Some of them were insensate with shock, some were injured, and at least one was ash.

But two of them, huddled behind a small knot of trees there on the front lawn, were coherent enough to stare in horror at Boyajian's crumpled, bloodied form.

And one of them, trembling, staggered to his feet and started to hurry towards the fallen Boyajian.

The other clutched the brave one's arm, stopping him short. "You fucktard," he hissed. "Stay down! You're going to get the rest of us killed."

"Dave was a good guy," the brave one insisted to the coward. "Always brought the front gate guy smokes. One time, this kid at school was bullying my kid, said his dad could beat me up, but Dave went in to school saying he was me to scare the shit out of the kid and shut him up, get him to leave my kid alone. I offered him a c-note for his trouble, but he refused it. Dave was a good guy. I gotta see him off."

The coward shook his head, but the brave one brushed his hand away and jogged, half-hunched, to Boyajian's side.

The coward swore softly, viciously, but followed, gun out and held low.

The brave one, whose name was Lofting, knelt by Boyajian's side. Put one hand on the man's chest.

His head was at such a bad angle, so very ugly, the poor guy must've died instantly.

But then a soft thump quivered beneath Lofting's palm, and Lofting flinched, staring at that hand.

The coward, whose name was DesJardins, flinched when Lofting flinched. "What? What is it?"

Lofting shook his head. "I think--" he licked his lips, attempted to regain his breath, "--I think he's still alive."

"No way," DesJardins snarled, shaking his head, "no fucking way, he couldn't possibly--"

His head had been twisted atop his neck like a bottlecap. No mere human could survive something like that.

But then again... through the grace of God and under-the-radar LuthorCorp experiments, Boyajian was no longer entirely merely human.

Boyajian shuddered. Boyajian lurched.

Both men screamed and scrambled away, coward and courageous becoming equal in the face of something impossible.

Boyajian slowly, slowly, lifted his hands, his big broad hands... moving them in fits and starts, counts of three, trembling like leaves all the while... eyes staring to nowhere...

...he lifted his hands to his head.

Took firm hold.

And with an echoing dull crunch, straightened his head atop his neck.

"Holy shit," DesJardins gasped, croaked, his gun in both hands and trembling as he pointed it at Boyajian. "Holy shit holy shit holy shit."

"Dave," Lofting breathed. "How can you be-- how can you be--"

Boyajian's strength had been but a fraction of Zod's. But it had been enough, just barely enough, to keep his windpipe and spinal cord intact under the force of that vicious snapping.

And he had straightened himself back into place, broken his neck in reverse, just like setting a broken arm or relocating a dislocated shoulder. And he had survived this, too.

He reached up with one shaky, shaky, meaty hand, and clutched Lofting by his tie.

"Thuh-" he wheezed, "thuh-thuh-thirsty."

And then he collapsed again.

He wasn't dead.

But he was close enough.

"Holy shit," Lofting breathed.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex and Emil

Lex's father dragged his gun-hand down, but Lex had never been the most obedient of sons. He had obeyed his mother, certainly.

But his mother was gone.

He again raised the hand that held the gun and he pointed it at those supermassive black holes, pointed at those eyes.

Emil scrabbled under the table. Just one more inch! Just one more bloody inch!

"You know this guy, Dad?" Lex quipped ever-so-softly. "And here I thought you didn't have any friends."

"Kneel," whispered the embodiment of war and death. "Kneel before Zod."

Lex thumbed back the hammer on his gun and smiled a tight little deadly smile.

"Get," he intoned slowly, mockingly, unwaveringly, intensity building with every syllable. "The Hell. Off. MY PLANET!"

 

[Lunaramblings]

Dale Tennylson arrived at the rundown tenement that was the designated meeting place. As soon as he had hung up with Merick he had called and set up the added supplies. He walked into the building, down a long hall and into a back room.

"Dale, how are you, pleasure doing business again after so many years. How is the prodigal son?"

"I am fine, Morgan. From what I read busiess has been god for you. I take it Dad helped out more than once. Is this the stuff?" Dale nodded to two good sized suitcases. "Any chance of getting a car? Mine just made a near record run and I don't expect it to get me where I am going."

"Thought you might need some wheels. Wheels not so easily traced back to you. There is a car out the back. I don't know much about it, but my driver says it is a perfect getaway car. I trust his judgement in the matter. Your Father isn't going to kill me for this is he?" Morgan threw a set of keys, Dale caught them easily.

"No. Take what I owe you from the account. Goodnight Morgan." Dale started to walk out of the room toward the fire exit at the end of the hall.

Dale openned the door and saw a small sports car. He forced the two bags into the car. Dale gunned the engine and took off. In only a few minutes he was back on the highway, and he put the car threw it's paces. In no time he was doing well over 130 MPH. Dale flipped out his phone and dialed.

In the Wayne kitchen, Merick's phone began to ring.

Merick stopped eating long enough to mumble at the phone as he accepted the call.
"Merick, Dad, I am headed back. I have some things."

"Where are you?"

"Driving. Be there in 45 minutes. Less if I can. Gotta go. Be safe." Dale hung up the phone and pressed the gas to the floor. The Bugati Veyron took off like a shot. It soon topped off at almost 240 miles an hour. Dale blew by a cop who didn't even have time to look up from his nap. He continued on. Amazed at the power of the tiny car.


Merick hangs up the phone and looks around. "Dad's on his way. Said he would be here in 45 minutes top. How long til we go live?"

 

[AmenRa]

Zod

He smiled.

It was evil, it was sinister, but it was a smile nonetheless.

Your planet? No longer.

He moved with the speed only a Kryptonian could. One minute it was in Lex's hand, and the next Zod had taken it from him and flung it across the room. It struck the floor, the cocked hammer falling onto live rounds, and discharging into the floor and wall. The gun itself skidded across the hardwood floor until it very heavily crashed into the form of someone beneath the billiard table.

And then Zod's hand was around Lex's neck. He pushed Lionel's son to the floor.

To his knees.

Lionel, he saw, had already gotten on one knee, holding his son and pleading.

Zod ignored the katana Lex held. Once the younger Luthor was sufficiently pentitent, Zod moved his hold to the back of Lex's neck and dragged him across the floor to a table where sat a globe.

Zod held Lex and reached with one hand and spun the globe. Zod then picked Lex higher from the floor and moved his face within inches of the spinning replica of Earth.

"What part of this planet is truly yours?" Zod hissed. "Your race is not a product of this world, but an infestation. If not for others, others like me from other worlds, your Humanity would have never even begun.

"Your planet?" Zod questioned. He then reached out and stopped the globe from spinning. The Southern Hemisphere was in view; Oceana, Australia, New Zealand. "Relinquish to me the cartography to the Crystal of Air and I will grant you a rule all your own.

He gripped Lex's neck tighter, harder. "Refuse me and your father will watch you die."

Zod turned to look at Lionel Luthor.

Lionel looked back.

Only Zod didn't see Lionel.

He saw someone else, and sensed a presence.

A presence he had not felt since....

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex, Emil, and Meyer

The gun hurtled away, fired resoundingly but harmlessly, and bounced to strike Emil Hamilton in the side.

Emil had just gotten his human fingers around the shard of crystal, had managed to hold onto it despite the startling report of the gunfire, but then the gun hit him in the ribs and the shard skittered out of his grasp once more.

STONE THE CROWS! Emil snarled inwardly.

"Ghk!" Lex croaked, struggling for air, a vein throbbing on his bald scalp as he clawed helplessly, uselessly at the hand that held his throat shut.

His eyes bulged as he grunted, darting across to the globe, to Australia, and then back up to Zod's fathomless darksome eyes.

He struggled to rise. Luthors should never kneel. Not to anyone. Luthors should never show weakness, Luthors should never falter, Luthors should never be afraid.

His daddy taught him that.

"I don't know," he wheezed, his voice like wind soughing through shreds of sandpaper, "where your Crystal is. Been trying to find it. Trail's cold. Big disappointment."

He smiled bitterly, his own eyes considerably dark, especially in the face of one so terrible.

"If you're going to kill me, 'Zod,'" he hissed, his face starting to turn blue, "hurry up and do it. I'm sure my father would rather see me dead than humiliated by the likes of you."

But that's when Meyer came in, spurred to greater speed and greater ferocity by the sound of gunfire, by the security camera footage in the secret room in the wine cellar that had shown his friend and partner murdered dead for all he knew...

Meyer came in with a fully-automatic Glock pistol in one hand and a hypodermic needle full of liquid refined meteor rock in the other, baying like a bitter wolf, his eyes blazing over the frames of his own sunglasses.

"YOU!" he growled. "SON OF A BITCH!"

He took in the room in a split second, but really, all he saw was his target. Whatever else was happening, all he saw was the warlord with the neutronium eyes.

With a snarl, he opened fire on Zod, emptying the clip in a heartbeat as he ran towards the devil, his marksmanship profoundly accurate-- not one of the bullets missed the Tyrant of Steel, not one of the bullets even ricocheted near Lex --counting on the barrage of gunfire to stagger Zod while he came in with the needle full of poison.

His thumb poised on the plunger, Meyer ran in and tried to stab Zod in the heart.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe and Jamie

"We can go live momentarily, I think," Jamie said, his face scrunched up almost comically as he tried to figure out how to attach the wi-fi booster to Ceri's cellphone, provide an alternate false signal as a last-ditch red herring. "All depends on the brains of the outfit."

It took Chloe a moment to realise that Doctor Hamilton meant her, and she went a little red around the edges.

"I, um," Chloe blushed, and tried again, "I just need to link this existing network to the backup servers I use for school, that way we can crash-dump any data we've picked up if things go wrong. Always prep for a crash-dump, that's a hacker prerequisite."

She bit her lip, and winced.

"I don't know if we can wait for your dad," Chloe murmured. "BRAINIAC's right on top of The Crystal; if we're going to bait him off of it, it's gotta be muy muy pronto. I was hoping J'onzz could do a remote link, tap your dad's remote viewing and allow you to 'port us out of here at will using that, but that would be sort of dangerous for him to do while driving, wouldn't it?"

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick nodded.

"Give me a second. I will call him back, let him know we need him now. He will just have to stop. You call up our friendly nieghborhood Martian, I will take care of my father. Mom, come here." Merick reached out as his mother stepped over. He laid a hand on her shoulder and in a swoosh they were gone, then he was back. "One down. Left her somewhere safe."

Merick flipped through the numbers in his phone, finding his Father's he connects. a second later he has Dale.

"Everything ok Son?" Dale instinctively slowed the car. Preparing for bad news.

Hey old man. We need your funky psychic viewing thing. We need to be ready to jump out of here to someplace safe."

"Now? Ok. Let me pull off. Where am I going?"

"Hold on, I am going to put you on speaker." Merick pressed a button and Dale was on speaker for the crowd. "Chloe, where do you want Dad to send us?"

"Coordinates will be fine. I can take it from there. Any information you have would be useful though. The more I know the easier it is for me to be exact, especially when I don't have a live host." Dale expertly slowed the rocketing car, then pulled over to the side of the road. He started to go into his routine. Breathing deeply he awaited orders.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Jamie and Chloe

Chloe paused what she was doing, her fingers having flown over the keyboard, constructing a backstory for Odin to build upon: this dive perpetrated by friends of Clive Cussler that had stumbled upon this ancient flooded pre-Toltec city and discovered, to their amazement, something that sounded like The Crystal of Water.

She used the webcam to take a picture of Jones' drawing of the Kryptonian symbol for Water, so that Odin might incorporate that image into faked digital photography. She also called up a list of her favourite conspiracy mill sites and their corresponding forums, particularly the one upon which she had stumbled with all the stuff in backwards Latin. Odin, Doctor Hamilton and herself would use these forums to flood The Web with input on this fantastically serendipitous discovery.

If there had been time, Chloe would have made a fake conspiracy mill forum from scratch and used that, but there wasn't time.

She withdrew from the keyboard and turned away slightly, closing her eyes and... and trying to reach out with her mind. It wasn't easy, given her natural scepticism, but she remembered what it felt like, that whispery sandy voice in her mind, and she attempted to broadcast that feeling.

'J'onn J'onzz?' she sent as hard as she could. 'If you're not too busy? Would you mind linking Merick and Dale Tennylson in that manner I suggested? If you're not too busy.'

Jamie set down Ceri's mobile, glancing at Chloe and finding her too busy to answer Merick's question.

"I dunno if she had that in mind, exactly," he mused, glancing at Merick. "But I've an idea, if you're open. There's a very nice bunker underground in Nevada. Got computers, radiation shielding, and a somewhat skeletal staff at the moment given government cutbacks. Went there once on holiday, and I'll tell you, wouldn't mind going again."

He rattled off the longitude and latitude, even giving the minutes and seconds, and divvying the seconds up with decimals.

With a grin, he shoved his hands in his pockets. "That should be serviceable, I shouldn't wonder."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Dale started to see maps in his mind. He found the numbers that Jamie had rattled off. He started to draw closer. Zooming and tightening the matrix. In moment he was there. "I'm in..." Dale nearly whispered. In this state conversing was hard. Nearly impossible to be honest, barely a sentence was like running a marthon. But Dale stayed focused, waitng.

Merick shuddered at the raspy, ghost-like quality of his Father's voice. "Here we go." Merick steeled himself against the fear and anxiety he was feeling. He invited the force to swarm out of whatever source it came from. His arms became sheathed in force, his eyes sheening with emerald fire. Merick was ready.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Kara Zor-El was only fourteen years old... not yet an adult in the eyes of Humans. But yet she was taking on responsibilities that even the wisest could not fathom. In the barn loft of the Kent farm she was standing before J'onn J'onnz and her good friend Rose, and she was left in awe and confusion at what they had told her.

J'onn had transformed before her very eyes, and it was then that she knew what he said had to be true...

But it still wasn't easy to swallow.

She glanced over at Rose as J'onn told her that she held the key to her destiny. Somehow Kara knew that saying 'I don't know what you're talking about' would quite cover herself up. Was she really ready to save the world? And what exactly was she saving it from? She was still just a young girl, more suited for going out on a movie date than defeating the villains.

Without words of reply Kara saw Rose move forward, and she held up what looked like a small crystal. On it was the symbol of her house, a symbol that matched the one on her bracelets.

"'I cannot live, I can't breathe... unless you do this with me.'"

"Life's waiting to begin," Kara said softly as she took the Crystal of Hope.

"I've got all these questions... and I guess I can't keep them locked up in the storm cellar anymore," Kara said as she looked at the Crystal.

"But I don't know where to start," she added.