The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose set her backpack on the bleachers and jogged over to the Gym teacher, checking people in on a clipboard, and made ready to plead her case.

He blinked when he saw her, and ran down the list with his pen, and brightened slightly as he found the applicable name. "Rose McCrimmon?"

"Yeah, that's me," she confirmed, nodding stiffly, biting her lip. "I'm sorry that I--"

"Yeah, yeah," he grunted, though not entirely unkindly. "Mikey told me. Last-second switcheroo? S'fine. Just don't mark up my gym floor with your shoes, right? Next week, have stuff to wear. Right now, just keep on what you've got. Not like we don't have established precedent for that."

Rose nodded, surprised and delighted, and took a few steps back. "Yes. Okay. I will. Thank you."

The Gym teacher pondered some of the other students. "Everyone take a few laps to warm up 'fore the others wander in, okay?"

Rose nodded, and turned to move to the edge of the gym, but she saw a pair of deep dark brown eyes staring at her.

Pete Ross stood by one of the bleachers, stretching. His face was utterly inscrutable, but his eyes said only one thing: I'll be watching.

Slowly, he started to run rings around the gym.

With a sinking feeling in all four chambers of her heart, Rose followed suit.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Kyle

Gym.

I hate gym.

I made it to class with plenty of time to spare, and got changed. (I also noticed the chain on the door had been replaced.) Making my way out of the boys locker room I noticed Rose come in and walk up to the coach. They had a brief exchange and then she wandered over to the other side, and in the gaggle of students I don't think she saw me. Actually, she was looking over my head.
I turned around and noticed Pete watching her very intently.

Everyone take a few laps to warm up 'fore the others wander in, okay?"


I started running. It only took me a few seconds to catch up with Rose and I slowed to a steady pace by her.

"Hey Rose. Sorry I didn't get back with you last night, but something strange happened to me. I'll tell you more when we get some privacy."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

She almost jumped out of her skin when he rolled up beside her, and instantly the sinking in her heart was replaced by a mixture of different kinds of pounding.

First: cute boy!

Second: friend isn't dead!

Third: holy God he just snuck up on me and I nearly died!

She shook her head at him. "S'okay," she managed, once she'd managed to get that three-times pounding heart out of her throat and back down into her shuddery chest. "S'okay. Yeah. We can talk later? And we can have a you'll-never-guess-what-happened-to-me contest."

Rose shook her head, and she smiled at him.

Then, out of the blue, she slugged him in the shoulder. Not hard. Just... firmly.

And she narrowed vaguely-playful-verymuch-serious blue blue eyes at him and she explained to him in no uncertain terms: "Don't ever do that to me again. Not in a hurry."

But then she ran just a little bit faster as if daring him to chase her, and her grin was one of teasing because despite all else, all was right in this part of her world.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Kyle

I almost laughed when Rose just about jumped out of her skin.
Almost.

"Don't ever do that to me again. Not in a hurry."

Then she grinned and playfully punched me in the arm.
Hard!

OK, being downright beautiful and having powers over heat and cold were one thing, but the girl could hit too!! Then she picked up the pace.
I picked it up a bit myself and kept pace with her. I wasn't straining yet, but I had a feeling that I had barely scratched this girls surface.

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen returned to the school library as promised. He spent a few minutes sorting a few details, giving the high school's media specialist a week's worth of recataloguing and reclassifying to do. When she miffed about it, he just smiled and mentioned something about always having work to be done.

He then retired to a nice quiet corner of the library and sat on a big chair. He opened a newspaper, and he quielty willed the time to pass.

He was anxious about meeting Kara on her lunch break.

How would he approach her? Hi, Kara. I'm Var-Sen, and I'm from Krypton, too. Would you like to get an ice cream?

Nope, that wouldn't do at all. He was nearly certain that she didn't know who she was, much less who he was. She should have known when he spoke to her and Rose in the hall. She should have seen right into him. He was like she: Kryptonian. Flawless in form and function. Beautiful and graceful and powerful. Perfect.

But she didn't. Which meant she didn't know. Had she been sheltered her whole adolescence? What about when she reached puberty, when the surge in her powers would come the most? What did her Earth family say to her? Was she still developing her gifts?

So many questions. Var-Sen sighed. They would all be answered in time.

 

[Superman1496]

One thing that Bruce noted to himself, was no matter how many boardrooms you are in, or how many office meetings you hold, you can never account for being on time to a school, when you don't know scheduals.

Bruce was late to Gym. As he hurried in, the teacher caught him.

"Mr. Wayne, I know that the rest of us here are not billionare teenagers, but we all have to abide by school rules. Which include being on time to class. You, sir, are a student at Smallville High, not some rich desk-jockey. He said.

Yes sir, I apologize. I didn't know which class I had next. Bruce said. Then he started jogging.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Kara finished changing into her gym clothes with the rest of her classmates, finally coming out of the locker room where they would start their short run. Before they would start their activity for the day, the coaches would have them do a few laps before pulling them together again. Up near the front of the pack Kara saw Rose and Kyle jogging, and they seemed to be moving pretty fast. She smiled to herself, thinking that if she used a little bit of speed she could easily catch up to them.

But Kara didn't want to attract any attention towards herself, so she carried on with a fairly slow jog, staying more towards the middle. She saw Bruce come into class late, and she felt her heart skip a beat, remembering the last time they both had gym together. She had knocked him over with a throw of a dodgeball, and she prayed that an accident like that wouldn't happen this time around.

After a few more minutes Kara heard a whistle blow, and the entire class slowed down their pace, migrating towards the center of the court where the coaches were. Kara saw that they held two large duffle bags, and she could hear some metal clinking around in one of them.

"We're heading outside today to play some softball. We'll divide up the teams, one on the field and the other at bat," one of their coaches said, who began pointing at certain people to make up the squads. There was an equal number of people, and the ratio to men and women was pretty consistent.

After heading outside and into the sun, Kara breathed in the fresh air and she felt her body become reinvigorated. She absolutely loved being outside, and she felt stronger when soaking up the suns rays.

Kara had been placed on the team that was batting first, and she patiently waited for her turn to pick up a bat and take a few swings. As a safety precaution the coaches would be doing all the pitches, and they would softly lob the ball towards home plate, ensuring that everyone had a fair shot at hitting the ball.

 

[Superman1496]

When the coach had mentioned that they were going to be doing Softball today, Bruce was rather reluctant to be placed on Kara's team.

The last time they were against each other, Kara showed Bruce her steel arm. He laughed a little to himself.

Kara, I just want you to know, if you hit out of the park everytime, it's going to make the rest of us look bad. Bruce said smiling. He didn't want to upset her, but he figured she could use a little more humor in school, since she always looked a little nervous.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Kara smiled and blushed a little, holding the bat with a bit of awkwardness.

"I'll try not to," she responded. She would really need to suppress her strength so as not to do exactly as Bruce said. Chances are she'd hit the ball a bit further than just outside the park if she gave it her all.

Thankfully, however, Kara wasn't the first up at bat. She could catch a few techniques from her classmates, to see how the hit the ball, and then try and adjust her own swing to mirror theirs.

"I've never actually played softball before," she admitted to Bruce, once again showing just how sheltered she really was. She had read about the sport in books, magazines, television... but as to participating? Nope.

 

[Superman1496]

Kara smiled at Bruce, and he noticed a little bit of blush. He laughed when she admitted that she had never played softball before.

Don't worry, I've never played either. Actually, I've never really been into physical sports and such. He said, hoping it would make her feel a little bit less akward.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Kyle

Softball. The last time I'd played ball me and Dad had been showing Collin how to play.

Better not dwell on that.

We made our way outside and immediately I felt myself sorta diminish in the suns rays. It's not that the sun harmed me, but my powers are much more effective in darkness. Coach divided us up, and I was on the same team as Bruce and... Kara. (Can't believe I almost forgot the Kent girl's name)

After a few people went up to bat it was my turn. I got then usual glare about my sunglasses, but the Coach and I had this fight last year, and I had won.

I walked up to the plate. With my enhanced physical abilities, hitting it out of the park every time would be child's play.

So I made sure that I was the worst bumbler that ever picked up a softball bat!

I swished high. I swished low. I even dropped the bat once. After about six tries he had enough and pulled me out of there. Mission accomplished.

I flashed Rose a sheepish grin and made my way back over to the bleachers to watch the rest of the class have their turn. While waiting, I brought up my text manager and sent off a e-mail to Bekka about the vultures out in front of the school. Hopefully by tomorrow they would be gone. If not, then once Chloe finished writing her piece (I was not looking forward to the interview, but maybe it would help calm some of my demons to talk about things) then they would have to deal with HER to get their crumbs and morsels of information!

Maybe today wouldn't be such a bad day after all.

 

[AmenRa]

The thing that was the black ship sensed Earth near. It was the thing that was in the black ship, but not exactly in the ship, but that which was the ship itself.

A singular conscience, artificial intelligence, that was designed by the most brilliant scientists in the twenty-eight known galaxies.

It was the BRAIN Inter Active Construct.

And it was as much the black ship as the black ship was it.

There were two passengers in the ship, in stasis, waiting on the command that would awaken them from their slumber. The BRAINIAC had its own designs, however, since it had been re-programmed to serve only Zod. Those passengers it carried were mere foot soldiers in a greater plan to serve Zod's greater glory.

When the time was right, the BRAINIAC would wake Nam-Ek and Aethyr to begin the process of Reclamation. And, ultimately, Zod would be returned from his exile in the Phantom Zone.

And he would rule Earth.

All on Earth would bow.

They would kneel before Zod.

But for now, the BRAINIAC was content to wait and watch as it traveled with its host of meteors towards the third planet of the Sol System.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose watched from the far right of the outfield, grinning softly at Kyle.

She wasn't sure if superathletics had been included in his arsenal, but she definitely got the impression he was putting on a show for her sake.

It could have been a number of different kinds of shows...

...but this? This, she felt certain, was a demonstration of power kept under control. Of discretion. She could dig discretion.

'Look how little I care for established tenets of the social hierarchy,' Kyle seemed to say. 'Look how little I care for the idea that I should be idolised for my physical ability. Look how well, to that end, I can make myself look like an ass. I'm impressing the girl not with the strength of my arms but with the strength of my character.'

Rose felt a surge of pride, though realistically she knew she really had nothing to do with his mindset. She'd only known him, what, a day? Still, she was proud of him.

The most of men, as per the edicts of The Testosterone Elite, would tromp about like barbarians and lord it over the little ones that they were The Most Powerful Of All. But Kyle didn't.

She felt a little bit like Jennifer Parker, grinning to herself as Marty McFly and The Pinheads auditioned for Hill Valley High School's upcoming Battle of The Bands.

Except Marty was screwing up willingly for the betterment of his soul, and he took Huey Lewis' disparaging remarks with a grin on his face. He might not even bat an eyelid if Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers showed up and called him "chicken."

She pounded a fist into her glove, though, there in the outfield, and tried to ignore the glances that shortstop Pete Ross would occasionally fire back over his shoulder at her.

Rose whooped to Kyle, where he sat on the bench, whooped and waved. "Nice effort! Nice effort!"

And there it was again. The little protective half-truth.

Only this one didn't feel so bad.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Kent!" a strong, male voice called out suddenly, snapping Kara from her momentary daze. She sat up on the bleachers, practically dropping the bat she held in her hands as she looked up towards the coach. He was standing on the mound, a softball in hand, and looking at her expectedly.

"Yes?" Kara asked, slightly confused at what was going on. She had tried to pay attention at first, but her thoughts began shifting towards... well other things.

"You're up," her coach said. Kara nodded her head and stood up on her feet, moving over towards the batters box.

The white lines that had once designated the appropriate place to stand had all but disappeared. She guessed at where she should stand, and then awkwardly held the bat up against her shoulders. Kara had never played softball before, but she had watched her classmates play and she had certainly read about it.

'Just... control your strength,' Kara thought to herself. The last thing she wanted was to have someone get hurt. She thought about intentionally missing each of the pitches tossed at her, but she figured that even if she tried swinging... chances are she'd miss anyway. Kyle had already gone up at the plate, and was now sitting back down on the bleachers.

The first pitch had already been thrown towards the plate, and as Kara wasn't really paying attention it went right passed her for a strike.

"Wake up, Kent," her coach said, preparing to toss her a second ball.

Kara shook herself loose again, and she readied herself to hit the next one that came her way. Sure enough, just as the sun rises high above the tree tops each fine morning, that leather ball came bounding her way.

She had no trouble seeing it move. Kara could take as much time in the world, moving faster than the human eye could see just to watch it spin around slowly. She could adjust her swing so that the fat end of the bat could connect squarely with that tiny sphere of rubber, sending if high up into the air.

Her most pressing issue, however, was whether she should or not. Kara tightened her grip around the handle of the bat, lifting up slightly as she brought it forward, her arms extending quickly as she swung at the ball. There was a slightly loud 'ting' sound as she made contact, sending the softball up into the air and fairly deep. Kara held back quite a deal of her strength, but the ball still went pretty far.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

"Go Kara!" Rose bellowed, hands cupped around her mouth, holding her mitt to her side with her elbow. "Knock the stitches off of that thing!"

Now Pete wasn't the only one shooting her dark looks.

Rose went a little pale.

"Hey," the kid from center field growled, "whose team are you on, anyway?"

Rose cowered a little. "I was just. She's my friend. And. Good sportsmanship?"

"Screw good sportsmanship," he grunted. "Good sportsmanship is for people who lose games. I don't lose games."

TING!

The ball rocketed up into the sky.

Pete whistled low, craning his head back as he watched the thing hurtle skyward.

"RIGHT FIELD!" one of the coaches yelled.

Rose blinked rapidly. She was right field.

The ball was coming down... it was in the foul lines. Was it inside the fence?

Well. This can't be good, Rose contemplated.

She had been fully prepared to do as Kyle had done. To slack off, to play off her traditionally geeky disposition as having rendered her sportingly impaired.

But now? Now she'd look like she was blowing the game. Like she was taking the fall, throwing the fight.

The ball sank towards her. Well. Not directly towards her.

Math poured through her neurons like water over Niagara.

It was going to land behind her!

She turned, swiveled, her face a mask of conflict.

Please don't be mad, Kara. I have to try...

Looking over her shoulder at the ball, she began to run. Not like she'd run in the cave, but she was still covering some serious distance...

She shoved the mitt onto her hand and she held that mitt out ahead of her.

Gogogogo!

Pete raised an eyebrow. Interestin'...

Down it came, like a meteor sizzling its way through the atmosphere...

Rose bit her lip and reached.

"EYES FRONT!" that coach yelled, momentarily desparate.

Rose blinked.

What?

She hit the chainlink of the fence and rebounded off with a howl, the chain rattling and catapulting her back into the turf.

"Agh!" she grunted, holding her head with both hands, still with the mitt attached to one of them.

Almost noiselessly, the ball thudded down just outside the fence and bounced a few times.

She sat up a bit, and she stared at the ball, and the colour went out of her face.

"Oh God," she murmured, blinking, shaking her head. "Oh God. I suck."

 

[Superman1496]

And the ball was out of the park. Bruce's shoulders fell. He did not want to go next after Kara hit it out of the field. First, she knocks the wind out of him in dodgeball, now, she's Mark McGuire'd it into the parking lot.

Great. She's Lance Armstrong of the P.E. world, and I'm going to look like an idiot. Bruce said as he waited for Kara to come back to home.

Bruce picked up the bat. Something in the back of his head made him feel ironic for picking up the bat. It was, after all, just a bat, right.

Maybe it was the fact that he was the heir to Wayne Enterprises, and he was now playing softball, being shown up by the freshman girl.

But it seemed much more involved then that, but he just shrugged it off. He took a deep breath, and walked up to the plate.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"KENT!"

"Wuh?" Kara asked blankly, holding the bat in her hands. She had remained at home plate to see whether she had hit the ball in the clear, and thus had forgotten to start running around the bases. She looked over at her coach who told her to start running. Kara made her way around the diamond, and she saw that the softball had cleared the fences.

'I think I hit it too far...' Kara thought to herself, slightly embarrassed as to how much power she had used to whack at the ball.

But... she couldn't help it. It felt good to do something without appearing to be too strange and abnormal. Plenty of people could hit that far, and even further if they wanted to.

There were a few cheers and hollers, and she felt a little color rise to her cheeks as she came around towards home.

"Nice hit, Kent," her coach said once she touched down on home plate. Kara simply smiled and retreated back towards the sidelines. It was Bruce's turn, and she cheered him on like the rest of her teammates.

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce stood up to bat, without a clue on what to do. He had played ball with his father years ago, but there wasn't pressure. And if it was something that Bruce wasn't good at, it was pressure.

'Probably something I should work on.' He thought as he raised the bat to his shoulders.

The ball was lobbed into the air. He saw it coming. And he saw it go right by his bat.

Swing and a miss. Strike one.

Perfect.

The ball was back at the pitcher. Bruce's eye's narrowed. The pitch was given, and he saw it coming. He saw the ball, as if in slow motion. He saw it pass over home plate, and connect with his bat.

The ball flew off towards third base, hitting the ground, and bouncing over the baseman's head. By the time the out fielder would be able to get the ball, Bruce would be at first. Hopefully. He ran, looking only down at the base line.

He might have been mistaken, but he thought that it was Rose in right field. He almost tripped when he thought of it.

He'd never make it with her speed, so he thought, as he passed over first base. He stopped just shortly behind it, and didn't want to turn around to see the ball in the baseman's hand...

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Rose's head was spinning. But she had sat up on her own, and that had apparently been sufficient indication to all onlookers or whomever that she was okay.

She picked herself off and dusted the smashed green blades of grass off of the back of her jeans and the back of her long-sleeved tee. She touched her nose gingerly, checked it for blood.

She seemed clean, she seemed fine. She sighed dismally.

TING!

"Oh, for God's sake," Rose heard a coach trumpet. "RIGHT FIELD!"

...a new ball bounced past her leg as she stood there checking herself for injuries and she yelped helplessly.

She ran after the ball, grabbed it in her bare fingertips, snagged it out of the air on one of its bounces.

She skidded to a halt, slid to drop to one knee and as she dropped she whirled and she threw, straight and true... there was a little bit of a snap to her wrist and a little bit of extra blue in her eyes and she knew the throw had been perfect...

...it thudded easily into the baseman's glove.

Rose closed her eyes and laughed softly sadly unsurprisedly.

It was the third baseman's glove. Not the first baseman's.

The kid from center field swore noisly...

...but Wayne was off-base! He was just standing there!

As furious as the third baseman was, he turned and he threw the ball and sent it spinning off to first.

Rose bit her lip. Would Bruce hear it? Would he turn around in time?

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce turned to see the ball whizzing from third base to first. He made it. Thankfully. He walked back over to the base, and stood there.

He felt a little akward, standing next to the opposing team's player. He didn't know what to say. This was, after all, high school. They should be working on sportsmanship and stuff.

'But to hell with it. Let's just play ball.' Bruce thought as he led off of first, awaiting the pitch.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

The quarter had come up Heads.

The folder sat open before her.

There were photos, grisly ones. Ones from the homestead itself, and ones from the exam tables. Colour and black and white. Chalk outlines, spatters of blood. Some of the spatters of blood looked like they could have contained gallons.

There was a layout of the house, and she arranged the photographs therefrom atop the layout so that she could figure out which went where, matching this up to the chronology that San Antonio's best crime scene guy-- a forensics specialist name of Harold Godwinson --had managed to piece together.

Godwinson's best theory as to the identity of the perp was a killer for hire nom de guerre of Carrion, and there was a detailed file on the beast's methodology and appearance and outstanding warrants. Carrion seemed like he'd been a Carmen Sandiego for murder: he'd been just about everywhere, but no-one could ever find out where he was.

Chloe found a picture of him, too, and she held it aloft between two fingers, gazing at it quietly.

Big sharp teeth, rugged scaly hide, snakelike eyes... claws like a set of Ginsu knives. He looked like his reptilian hindbrain had supplanted his mammalian forebrain, subverting whole epochs of cerebral evolution and cortical reasoning and supposed civilisation with cold cunning, predatory bloodthirst, and an utter lack of conscience.

He looked like Grendel. Certainly not like the version from Crichton's "Eaters of The Dead"/"Thirteenth Warrior," but then again not like the version from the Christopher Lambert steampunk-esque adaptation, and not like the Crispin Glover rotoscoped-CGI version from the recent Robert Zemeckis flick.

Carrion looked like Grendel the way that Chloe had always imagined Grendel to look like back when she'd first read "Beowulf" in fourth grade.

He sent shivers down her spine, just to look at him.

Just to imagine those claws and those teeth inflicting horrific injury upon his victims. Specifically, the Family Greystone.

But there were pieces missing. The last pages of Godwinson's summary were covered with question marks and underlines and, she imagined, more than a few of his hairs torn out at the roots.

Of particular consternation to Godwinson was, quite understandably, the last of those aforementioned "gallons-deep" spatters of blood. Its blood was very obviously not that of the killer, as it possessed none of the genetic markers extrapolated from Carrion's scales at previous crime scenes. It was, in fact, of a compatible blood type with members of the family... matched up with the twin siblings who had been discovered eviscerated in their bedrooms. DNA testing had been inconclusive... but the identity of the blood's owner was of less concern to Godwinson than the location of the body.

A wound like that, a rupture, would have caused all manner of mess if the victim had attempted to flee, or if-- which was more likely, given the evident extent of the injury --someone had attempted to make off with the victim.

But neither was there a trail, nor was there a body.

Where had they gone, whomever they had been? Whether the body had been removed, or the victim had escaped, how had they done so without leaving a footprint a handprint a scattering of droplets along the garden path?

Carrion had exhibited a tendency to gnaw on his victims, to literally eat them as they died, but never did he consume the entirety of the victim, every last fragment of bone and sinew and integument...

Chloe sat back, and she rolled the quarter over her fingers as she fumed and she thought and she pondered and she...

Sibling.

Blood type was that of a sibling.

Injury obviously devastating. If the victim survived, they only did so barely.

Chloe paged through the file. Tucked in there was the press release from GenTech. Two years previous to the present, this had been bestowed upon a select few news outlets local to San Antonio: a declararation, once and for all, that Kyle had also survived the incident and had been sequestered away at an undisclosed location.

A press release? Delivered by Kyle's sister Bekka.

Who was in a wheelchair. Who was in a wheelchair.

Frantically, mind racing, Chloe went back to the crime scene photography.

There.

Across the hall from the bloodspatter was a family picture, knocked askew, and though it was in black and white, Chloe grabbed a magnifier from a desk drawer and she could easily discern faces and positions...

Bekka was standing in the picture, and judging by the timeframe of the photograph on the wall compared to that of the photograph of the photograph, the picture had been fairly recent. Chloe slid the magnifier back over the bloodspatter, and she slumped back into her chair with teeth worrying the inside of her cheek.

Injury obviously devastating. If the victim survived, they only did so barely.

Kyle was in the picture, and he wasn't wearing sunglasses.

(Briefly, tangentially, Chloe remembered that blue contact they'd found on the floor. She wondered briefly, tangentially, if Kyle's eyes were blue beneath the photo's black and white.

But that was a distraction; the matter at hand was not the colour of Kyle's eyes.)

The matter at hand was that both Kyle's apparent condition-- perhaps xeroderma pigmentosum? ...if so, an extremely, blessedly mild variant that allowed him to navigate through lit places without risk of lesions, though his eyes would still be sensitive to light of all kinds --and Bekka's apparent paralysis did not seem to predate the attack. They seemed to coincide with the attack.

Although whether this would stand up to historical verification remained to be seen, Kyle and Bekka's health had each seemed to take a drastic turn for the unfortunate immediately after this attack.

Chloe returned to the report, paging through it at a breakneck pace until she found the questionnaires filled out by neighbours and friends and acquaintances...

Neither Kyle nor Bekka, to anyone's knowledge, had been staying over at friends' houses that night. They were not away as part of a school event, nor were they taking part in seminars for young and future heirs to billion-dollar Sci-Tech empires.

They had been home.

And Bekka had been hurt. Hurt so badly that she'd been relegated to a wheelchair. That injury had been hers... that "gallon-deep" spatter had been her blood.

Something had happened to Kyle. Conceivably, of course, this could just have been psychosomatic, a need to hide his gaze from the world after having seen far too much. But something had happened to him. If he hadn't been wearing sunglasses to the shooting of a family portrait, if he hadn't been wearing sunglasses against the bright lights of the camera's flash...

Something had happened to Kyle.

They had been home.

Chloe bit her lip and rubbed her weary eyes.

Obviously, Godwinson had reached the same conclusion. That they had been home. But like Chloe, Godwinson had not been able to explain away their absence at the end of the day.

They'd both lived. How had they gotten away?

Carrion wasn't exactly compassionate. His reputation and modus operandi dripped with relentlessness and thoroughness. Plus, he had enhanced senses, nightvision and the like.

How had they gotten away?

Godwinson's question marks screamed at Chloe from where they lay in myriad scatters across the final pages.

He'd thought this through as best as he could have, and he had come up empty. Scribbled helplessly in the bottom right hand corner of the very last page were the initials 'L.N.M.,' with a long-necked aquatic dinosaur and a sadface scribbled directly next to it.

This had been, essentially, Godwinson's surrender. He'd declared the whole thing an unexplainable occurrence, a "Loch Ness Monster," and had pretty much given up.

Thinking had gotten him nowhere.

Thinking would get Chloe nowhere.

She realised, with a start, that she would have to see it.

She reeled a bit, and she put her head in her hands, and she laughed brokenly, worriedly. She hadn't tried this since the previous September, that thing with that nice CIA boy, Eric...

...and then she hadn't been exhausted, and then she had had Pete Ross to hold her hand.

Slowly, she rose to her feet. She pulled down the blinds on all the windows.

She locked the door to The Torch, locked herself inside, and this time double-checked to make sure the lock was in place.

Chloe returned to her seat, with the house's floorplan and the photographs and Carrion's dossier and Godwinson's question marks spread across the desk.

She sat, as comfortably as she could. She retrieved her stopwatch from a desk drawer and set it to sound an alarm in half-an-hour's time.

She closed her eyes, and she willed her racing mind to slow. Deep inhalations through the nose, long exhalations out of the mouth.

Bits and pieces gathered on the fringes of her awareness, thoughts seeking to invade, but she bundled them together and pushed them away.

One at a time, she isolated parts of her body that retained tension and she wafted that tension away. (This was... this was difficult. She had a lot of tension, not the least of which was regarding the task she was right now attempting to perform...)

She pictured herself on a swing, the little white and blue and pink swingset from her backyard, before The Meteor Shower. Her father was pushing her on the swing, and they were laughing. She pictured herself in the most serene, untroubled place she could remember.

She felt herself descending, descending a ladder whose steps numbered ten and when she reached the bottom she felt herself murmuring, mumbling, whispering: 'I want to see everything.'

Her vision swirled. She blinked several times, but interestingly, her eyelids came in from the sides, horizontally closing at a vertical midpoint rather than like normal, human eyes, vertically closing at a horizontal midpoint.

Her vision coalesced.

She saw in darks and lights, brackish murksome visuals. There were colours, but they were colours as might have been seen through swampwater. Alligator eyes.

She licked her lips.

She was Grendel, and she was stalking Hrothgar's Keep.

She was Carrion, and she was stalking the home of The Family Greystone.

Carrion slunk on all fours, clawlike finger- and toenails doing surprisingly little damage to the hardwood floors of the hallway. He had left the muted television lights of the media/game room far behind, the pool table and the air-hockey table and the pinball machine and a first-person paintball shooter arcade thingy. He'd sniffed around the wine cellar, but he didn't drink wine and this stuff was less interesting to him than the thought that someone might be hiding down there, or that there might be a secret exit.

(He'd gotten tripped up once, only once, by the discovery that an old-money Southerner had nearly gotten away by utilising an old Underground Railroad passage... the old colonel had not gotten far, but it had still been an inconvenience.)

Carrion sniffed outside the first bedroom he came across. He could hear muffled breathing from within... one of the children was sleeping, the other was only pretending.

He smiled. He leered.

He opened the door and sauntered in.

There were twin beds, set a good distance apart. Large room. And there were curtains that could be dragged across if the two children decided that privacy was a necessity. The curtains were not across at the moment.

He could still, however, discern the line of demarcation that bifurcated the rooms, judging by the posters on the walls. Elizabeth's posters were all My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite and she was probably too old for this stuff but she didn't care. Collin's posters were divided up between giant robot superheroes and legendary sports players. A baseball bat leaned in one corner next to a properly-sized catcher's mitt, recently broken in.

Elizabeth was curled up with a little blue toy with black and red clothes and white paws. She was sleeping contentedly, her pink Cheer Bear peejays slightly rumpled by her tightly hugging the little Bamf plushie.

The other bed's occupant could not be seen, as he had ducked under his covers and was attempting to read something under those covers by way of flashlight. This, evidently, was Collin, hiding the source of his light not to escape parental wrath but to keep from disturbing his sleeping sister.

They were six years old.

Carrion lunged for Collin first, whipping the blankets off over Collin's head and gouging the front of his little throat out with the claw of his thumbnail.

Collin stared up at him with wide wide bewildered eyes. His eyes were blue.

His blood was red, and it was instantly everywhere. Over his bedclothes, over his Optimus Prime peejays, over the baseball cards he'd been examining by way of his flashlight.

Collin burbled, and reached up and smacked Carrion in the chest with the flashlight, but his blow was feeble and Carrion didn't feel a thing. Carrion leaned in and nibbled on Collin's cheek as he died.

Carrion turned, then, to the sleeping Elizabeth. The noise of her brother's death-rattle had not awakened her.

He rolled her onto her back, and her Bamf plushie tumbled onto the floor, and she stirred and had only slightly awoken when he reached into her chest and carved through her ribcage and removed her heart, killing her very nearly instantly.

He ate her heart, and licked his fingers.

He turned, and left the room, returning to all fours as he sniffed down the hall and paused outside the master bedroom. He had considered leaving the parents 'till last, but he could hear muffled noises from within. Muffled interesting noises.

They were making love.

He chortled faintly, and slithered into the room.

He didn't bother with stealth, and they were instantly aware of him, and the looks on their faces in his lowlight vision were absolutely without price.

The husband had been on top, and he abandoned his woman with instincts born of primal furious defence... stark naked, he grabbed a tazer from a bedside table drawer-- evidently, they had prepared themselves for home invasion of a far more conventional variety --and hurled himself at the intruder with a scream.

Carrion had to take an instant to respect the man. It was quite a measure of his intrepidity that he would be willing to enter combat naked.

But he only took an instant for this.

Effortlessly, Carrion deflected the stunrod's strike, and backhanded Alec Greystone, 41, with such force as to take the wind out of the alpha male's sails.

Alec staggered, and Carrion's next strike ripped him from crotch to sternum, right up the front of him, and killed him gurglingly dead.

Alec crumpled.

Samantha Greystone, 37, née Samantha Calendar, screamed at the top of her beautiful lungs as she scrabbled away, trying to cover herself with the bedclothes at the same time as she removed a matching stunrod from her own bedside drawer.

She tripped, tangled herself up in the blankets and she fell, and Carrion wandered over to with a methodical grin on his lips.

Samantha emerged from the blankets with a howl and jabbed the stunrod into the upper half of his chest and volts ploughed through his body with jittering shuddering force...

He growled, and shook his head, and blinked those sideways eyes. Impossibly, impossibly, he reached up, yanked the stunrod out of his flesh, snapped Samantha's wrist and forced her to drop the thing. All in one fluid motion.

His next fluid motion ripped her brachial artery, and she took longer to bleed out than her son had done. As she did so, he chewed thoughtfully through her throat.

With any luck, the remaining two children would think that their mother's screams and howls were related to her activities with their father. If not, he doubted they'd immediately flee the premises. If anything, they would come to see if their mother was okay...

Good, well-behaved children. Carrion grinned. He leered.

He slunk back out to the hallway. And blinked, astonished, to find Bekka Greystone standing there seething at him, clutching the baseball bat from Collin's side of the twins' room.

"Motherfucker," she declared, merciless, unflinching, and swung the bat full force into Carrion's face.

The bat shattered, splintered, and no small number of those splinters managed to stab through Carrion's thick, scaly hide and into his nostrils, into his eyes. None drew blood, but the sensation was startling and it caused his eyes to water and caused him to bellow a hungry, primordial roar.

Bekka stood there, panting, viewing her handiwork, for all of an instant. Still in the posture of a perfect baseball swing, clutching the hilt of the ruined bat, she was half-turned away from Carrion even as she gazed upon him with bitter blue eyes.

Carrion roared again, and he lashed out... but his eyes were watering and she was half turned away and all he managed to do was spill much of her blood and sever her spinal cord at the lumbar vertebrae...

With a bitter scream Bekka tumbled to the floor, gushing that blood and snarling, struggling to rise anew.

Carrion stood over her, stood over her broken form, doubtless mortally wounded, and he took a moment to claw some of the splinters out of his eyes.

He would take his time with this one. Just like he preferred to do. He would dine on her like Thanksgiving dinner.

He reared back and howled at the ceiling of the hall and threw his arms out to his sides, knocking askew a recent family portrait hanging outside the door of the parents' bedroom.

And then he heard another bellow, and this brought him up short:

"NOOOO!" Kyle Greystone bellowed, sprinting down the hall from the twins' room with his younger sister's little toy under his arm. "BASTARRRRD!"

He threw himself at his elder sister, where she'd fallen to the floor against the wall, and as he threw himself, he changed from boy to man to vengeful warrior all in that instant.

He interposed himself over Bekka, shielded her with his body, and he hugged the girl close to him...

His only parting comment to Carrion was a hand with an upraised central finger, a silent expletive that somehow said everything.

And then he was gone. He and his sister both, leaving only the pool of blood behind.

They vanished. They disappeared, the way that people disappear in dreams.

Carrion blinked, startled, and then he brandished clawed fists overhead and screamed.

Carrion did not forgive. Carrion did not forget.

A soft beeping sounded.

Insistent.

Chloe stirred within the form of Carrion, she bubbled to the surface. She climbed the ten-stepped ladder, one step at a time.

She followed the sound of the stopwatch's alarm.

At the top of the ladder, she lingered there in the dark behind her eyelids for a moment. She took a deep shuddery breath, inhaled through the mouth and exhaled through the nose.

She tried to find peace, as before, tried to still her thundering heart, tried to picture the swingset.

But this time, instead of her father pushing her on the swing, she found herself sprawled, ten years old, in the middle of the patch of lawn where once the swingset had stood. Her mother stood over her, her mother with long brown hair and eyes full of bitter tears... older than Chloe had previously remembered.

Her mother smiled sadly, and murmured, "I order you to forget."

Chloe's eyes snapped open and she sat up with a jerk.

With trembling fingers, she silenced the stopwatch's alarm, and she gave herself a few, shuddery moments before she tried to move again.

She had not forgotten what she had seen. She had, in fact, seemingly remembered more than she'd bargained for.

Her mother's eyes haunted her, and she struggled to think of something else.

...and then something sunk in, something sunk firmly in and she narrowed her tearful gaze. Kyle had disappeared the way that people disappear in dreams.

Just like Mikey had described it, strapped to that gurney in the throes of electrolyte imbalance.

Chloe shook her head, and pressed the heels of her hands into her brow.

"Hunh," she murmured. "Son of a bitch."

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen, or John Smith to those who stopped by briefly to say hello, had taken a seat behind an empty PC.

While waiting for the lunch break of Kara Kent, and the inevitable unveiling of his Kryptonian nature, Var-Sen decided to do a bit of research.

He Googled, and he Alta Vista'd, and he Yahoo'd, and he finally found what he was looking for.

It wasn't hard, for every search engine he hit spat back loads of articles about the Smallville Meteor Shower of 1989. But the specifics of what he looked for, the obscure, minute details he found were elusive. But, it took a bit, but he did find it.

It was an article published by Dr. Virgil Swann. "Hidden Meanings: Covert Broadcasts From Space" was the title. And, no one dared even to call Virgil Swann a lunatic. The billionaire had spent, well, billions on research into extraterrestrial intelligence. And, based on the readings of this article, he felt he had found a coded message beamed to Earth during the meteor shower that wreaked so much havoc on Smallville.

After reading further, Var Sen realized Dr. Swann had indeed found a message.

It was basic, and simple. Hidden within the static of space, Dr. Swann had located a simple binary sequence. The article even had it printed, in all the "1's" and "0's" there to see.

Most had considered this to be a fluke. Decoding the binary sequence rendered an unintelligible gibberish. But, Var-Sen realized, that was because they had decoded it into English, a Terran language.

He scanned the binary code, and he did the mathematical equations in his head that would propagate the numbers into letters of the Kryptonian alphabet.

He wrote quickly on a pad beside the PC terminal. When he stopped, and he looked, his breath caught in his throat.

This is our beloved Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton. She comes to you out of good will and with hope for Mankind. Please protect her and deliver her from evil.

The Kryptonian stared at the piece of paper upon which he had just written the symbols of his language. He read the passage again, then discreetly used his heat vision to burn the paper to ash.

Zor-El knew. Even when he last spoke to Var-Sen, Zor-El had known the fate of Krypton, and he had already planned to send Kara here.

She was the Chosen One.

As it had been written on the cave wall so long ago.

And Zor-El had known.

Var-Sen thought of the crystal that Zor-El had given him when he was left behind. The crystal, embossed with the symbol of the House of El. The crystal that took his powers. The crystal he still had, tucked away safely in his apartment in Metropolis.

A crystal that would now belong to the Last Daughter of Krypton. The Last Heir of the House of El.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil (and Meyer & Boyajian)

"We have established a rapport, yes," Emil replied, the mildness of his tone belying the intensity of his blue blue eyes. "We had a bit of a rough start, the three of us. Unfriendliness ensued. Certain threats were made in response to certain underestimations of LuthorCorp's competence."

Meyer grimaced good-naturedly. He'd just been doing his job.

Oblivious, Boyajian sipped gingerly at his own coffee. It was still pretty hot.

(Boyajian was a strong person and resilient to pain. But he still had preferences. He didn't like to drink coffee when it was hot enough to remove tastebuds. Otherwise you couldn't taste the hazelnut flavouring, and he didn't want to waste good hazelnut flavouring.)

"But they have proven quite effective," Emil continued. "They have overseen my every move, and made sure that all was accounted for. They have indulged my every request, up to and including the moving of substantially heavy objects."

He flexed his gloved metal hand, instructively. "I would have moved the object myself, but, you see," he intoned with eyes half-lidded and his seriousness was very much in question, "I am not without my... limitations."

He chuckled faintly.

"Speaking of which," he mused, "I believe saving a man's physical composition entitles me to a good night's sleep? (Sorely needed, I might add.) But then I shall see about your Kawatche Project. Linguistics really isn't my field, but I'm sure if you get me some good textbooks on the subject I'll muddle my way through. Beyond that..."

He smiled wistfully. "Meteor rock. I will certainly know what best to do with that."

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce waited not so patiently as the next batter came up. He stood there, waiting to see what he should do.

Bruce was fast. He wasn't really a runner, but he was naturally fast. Looking down the line to the second base, he thought about taking his chances.

'You only live once, right?' Bruce thought. He looked back at the pitcher who just threw his first pitch.

Strike one.

The ball returned to the pitcher. He looked around, checking on Bruce. Then he looked away, winding up for the pitch.

And Bruce took his chances.

He sprinted towards second base as the ball was thrown to the batter. It was a grounder that went rolling right underneath Bruce's feet. Leaping over it, he kept running towards the base. He looked over his shoulder to see the ball whizzing towards second.

Bruce dove. Sliding a few feet before hitting the base. He looked up to see the baseman standing near him, holding the ball. But, he wasn't touching the base, nor Bruce.

He was safe. He chuckled at himself as he stood up and dusted himself off.

'Wow...what a rush.' He thought to himself.

 

[Ravenloft]

"Certainly, take the night for yourself, Doctor. Meyer, Boyajian, see that the good Doctor is afforded every comfort he desires in the mean time, will you? And in the morning, the Kawatche project will await your capable hands, Dr. Emil." Lex said, smiling slyly as he lifted his coffee to his lips once more.