The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[AmenRa]

"Has she not yet arrived?" Var-Sen asked the trio standing in the cavern.

He was not sure how long he had been gone, but he knew it had been a few minutes since he had last been in the cave, talking to Pete Ross.

He did not see Kara.

Var-Sen went over to the same stone he had sat on earlier, sat upon it, crossed his arms and leaned his head against the stone wall.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

OOC; This post happens a little before AmenRa's post. Sneaky man beat me to the punch!


I laughed aloud at Rose's comment. Pete flinched a little at my voice, but he recovered pretty quick.

"Fate definitely has her own plan, and us mere mortals.." I looked over at Rose. "And us not so mere mortals are just along for the ride, like it or not."

"I have some time to wait. My usual customers haven't even begun to get rowdy until well after dark anyway."
I looked over at Pete as I leaned back against the wall.

"And where exactly do you find nitrous way out here in the boondocks??"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose and Pete each had similar levels of goosebumps on the backs of their necks after The Wraith's jolly outburst, though only Pete flinched physically. (Not as much as he could have, however; one had to give the guy credit on how much of this he was taking in stride.)

The previous day, Rose had found Kyle nothing at all but scary. But she was slowly learning... there was a good kind of scary. Even fear had its strong points, few and far between as they were.

"I like to think that Fate is open to suggestions," Rose mused philosophically, her blue eyes gleaming as she moved the curtain of red hair out of her line of sight.

Pete shoved his hands into his pockets and chuckled ruefully. "Wish Fate would listen to my suggestions. Like, how I don't get nitrous out here in 'the boondocks' nearly so often as I'd like. (But when it does come along? Guy from Smallville Med sometimes orders a little extra for me, when he's getting it as an anaesthetic for patients and such. Tacks on a little extra for yours truly. Owes me a favour from way back. Chloe ain't th' only one with a black book full of contacts, yeah?)"

And Var-Sen was back, a ghost in blue and black rematerialising as quickly as he'd vanished in the first place.

He looked tired... and no small part of that weariness was disappointment.

Rose walked up beside him, and gave his shoulders a squeeze, hugging him not exactly like the way he'd hugged her up in the skies the previous night, but not dissimilarly, either.

"It doesn't matter how long she takes to get here, Professor," she murmured softly to him, confident that if he could hear her conversing over the whipping tearing winds of the high-up atmosphere, he could hear her speaking quietly here, "it matters only that she gets here. It's not about the ending. It's about the journey."

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce had walked up to his room. A bag laid open on his bed with the same "R" symbol as his equipment.

Ducard must have been here again. 'Where the hell does that man stay anyways?' Bruce asked himself.

But, before he started to pack, he noticed something. A few minutes had gone by since he had text Chloe, and he hadn't heard anything back.

'I just hope she's busy.' Bruce thought. 'God I hope I didn't hurt her.'

He pulled out his cell phone again. This time, he called the beautiful blonde.

Pulling the phone up to his ear, he waited for Chloe to pick up.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Kara ran her hands over her head and down through her blond hair, trying to collect herself completely. She just wished that life could be much simpler... she wished that she could be normal. Then she wouldn't have to worry about keeping secrets, or about hurting those around her.

Perhaps there was a way...

Perhaps not.

With all the students moving in the hall, Kara found it hard to think. They were piling in front of their lockers, dropping off their books before heading home or to their afterschool activities. Kara remembered that she was supposed to try out for the softball team, but she was also supposed to go home after school.

She decided to let her parents know first, and if she had time she'd run back to school before they even started. Dropping her stuff off, Kara managed to find a spot that no one was looking towards before she sped off towards the farm. It only took a second, and she found her father out in the barn.

"Hey Dad," Kara said as she walked inside.

"Hey Kara. How was school?" he asked while putting away a few pieces of equipment.

"Fine."

"Fine? I thought you'd have more fun than that. Oh, think you can you help me a sec?"

Jonathan nodded towards one of their tractors, and with her hands Kara lifted it up with relative ease to allow Jonathan room underneath.

"Well something kind of came up while I was at school today," Kara said.

"What's that?"

"Well, it was more like four things, actually."

"Ok. Set her down," Jonathan said, not acknowledging her right away. He wiped his hand with a towel before tossing it aside.

"Everything ok?"

"Yeah, I guess. I just... kind of got into a fight in school today," Kara said.

"What do you mean you got into a fight?" Jonathan asked, not sure whether he should be concerned for Kara or more concerned about whom she got into a fight with.

"It wasn't with a student, dad. I think he was a teacher. And he attacked me," Kara said, pleading her case.

Jonathan set his tools down before he walked over to her. He wasn't exactly pleased, but he trusted his daughter.

"What happened?"

"I was in the hallway when I started hearing noises. Dad it was like someone was playing a stereo at full-blast in my ears. I could hear everything, like all at once. And when it stopped I remembered hearing a pounding sound coming from one of the classrooms. When I went to check it out this guy just started throwing rocks at me," Kara said as she sat down. Jonathan moved to sit next to her, and she told him about her fight and about everything else. She did, however, leave out the part about the softball coach and about the 'Wall of Weird'.

"Well I'm not sure what to do about the teacher, but I don't think you should go down there anymore. Especially if that section was built with meteor rocks," Jonathan said, and Kara nodded her head.

She knew that much already. But she had already started her own little investigation when she went to see Chloe. Kara couldn't help but want to know more. If she had done so much harm in her coming her, she thought that the least she could do was make it up by helping others in whatever way she could.

"There's something else," Kara said as Jonathan got up to go inside.

"One of the coaches asked me to join the softball team."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

Chloe knelt on the floor of The Torch and tried to cram herself back together. If someone were to find her here...

She just needed to get a little sleep. Maybe tonight?

She sniffled, and shook her head, and bitterly attempted to wipe the tears from either cheek away with the heel of her hand.

Her heart was the only thing about her more tangled up than her face.

Chloe took a deep breath, and tried her level best to steady herself.

And then her phone rang, and she jumped a bit. She almost dropped that phone the short distance to the floor, startled as she was by its ringing.

Bewildered as she was, it took her a moment to place the ringtone: the theme song from that old Gray Ghost cartoon, with Adam West voicing the titular masked crimefighter and his alter ego, Simon Trent. Which meant? Bruce.

(It spoke volumes about the impression Bruce had made on Chloe that, somehow, she'd found time to assign that ringtone to his number despite how frenetic her schedule had been since yesterday. As for that particular choice?

Maybe it was Bruce's tendency to skulk in shadowy caves and pal around with men in black, but it seemed to Chloe that The Gray Ghost could be counted among his influences.)

Hurriedly, Chloe staggered to her feet and sat behind one of the desks, blowing her nose hard on a tissue from a box of Kleenex before flipping the phone open and lifting it to her ear.

Her tangled heart pounded in her chest.

She literally did not know what to expect.

Had it all been a cruel joke? Some sort of prank that rich boys play on hopelessly romantic lady bookworms? Or had it not even been that involved; had it all been in Chloe's addled head? Chloe wasn't sure if this would be another mortal blow, or a backhanded kind of comfort.

"Hello?" she murmured, doing a lousy job of keeping the sound of tear-soaked freshman out of her voice.

 

[Superman1496]

Chloe's voice came over the line. And Bruce could tell instantly something was wrong.

'Damn it. Not very smooth man, not at all.' He thought to himself.

Chloe, are you ok? You sound a little down. Bruce said, trying to be sympathetic.

A little??? What the hell was that?

'You're not doing so hot here Bruce.'

Uh, well, actually Chloe, I was wondering if we could talk. I'm not busy now, and whenever you would like to, I would like to talk before tonight. Bruce said. He bit his lip after he spoke.

'Please don't say that you never want to speak to me again. Please!'

 

[AmenRa]

The Kryptonian looked down at Rose and gave a small smile. She was entirely correct. He sat up on his rock and opened his arms as if to encompass them all in a great embrace.

"Gather 'round," he said to them, indicating Pete Ross and the creature called Wraith, "and I will tell you of my homeworld while we wait her arrival."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

"It's fine," she smiled softly into the phone, which wasn't quite true? ...but it was truer than it had been a minute ago. "It's really, it's really fine. I just. Everyone's counting on me, it seems like. And with some of this, I hardly know where to start."

She sighed, and covered her eyes with her hand as she continued.

"I don't know everything," she admitted. "I'm not some... supergirl."

Chloe exhaled softly, and with each exhalation, each sigh, she felt a little more of her pent-up raw sadness ebb away. Erg after erg of negative energy seeping out of her on the wind of her shaken breathing.

"Are you really going?" she wondered, and the pain in her voice was still audible. "Like, for an extended period of days, weeks, and months? Tell me why you're going. The real reason. (And if you're going to lie to me about it, that's fine. Just make sure it's a really, really good lie.)"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose levitated slightly, and tucked herself into a sitting position as she floated there, because she didn't quite feel like sitting on raw cold stone.

She grinned softly, and nodded as she bobbed in the air before Var-Sen, the storyteller with his arms spread wide.

"You should tell them the part about the clearest oceans," she suggested. "And about the Arctic expanses without the withering cold. Tell us what it's like to watch a Red Sun rising."

Pete didn't have the advantage of levitating, but he set himself down against one of the walls and gazed curiously at Var-Sen.

'Listen my children and you shall hear,' Longfellow intoned,
'Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.'

Always felt bad for Crispus Attucks, Pete lamented. Got gunned down right as the whole thing was getting going, but him? He never got a poem. Got a statue, though, nothin' to sneeze at.

He scrunched up his face a bit, contemplative.

"Geography an' stuff's all well and good?" he agreed. "But history ain't much without heroes. Old Krypton have any heroes we should know about?"

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Jonathan looked at Kara, wondering if she was being serious or not. Signing up for a sports team, with her abilities, was completely and utterly out of the question. Far too many things could go wrong.

"You'll just have to tell him that it's not possible. I'm sure your coach will understand," Jonathan said, trying to put his firm answer as nicely to Kara as possible.

Kara knew exactly what her father was thinking, but a part of her wanted so desperately to fit in with all the other kids her own age.

She wanted a chance at being normal.

"Dad I think I can really do this, though. I can control my abilities, and no one will get hurt. I promise," Kara said, trying to see if she could press the issue a little. Jonathan turned around and looked at her sternly.

"You don't know that. Something could go wrong, and a kid could end up in the hospital."

"Why don't you trust me?" Kara asked.

"It's not that I don't trust you, Kara. I'm just saying that too many things can go wrong out on that field. You want to help out so you push a little harder than everyone else. Sooner or later someone will start to notice, and then we'll have camera vans parked outside our house. I don't want to see our family torn apart," Jonathan said.

Kara understood his reasoning, but she still felt as if she could prove herself. She hated having to keep herself caged up.

"I won't let that happen, dad. But I just want to do something normal for once. Other than just going to school," Kara added.

"I want you to have a normal life, hun. But you just can't..."

"I can't what? You don't trust me, and you never will, will you?"

Kara decided she had had enough with her fathers lecture and she ran out of the barn, leaving a trail of dust in her wake. She headed back towards Smallville High and she would head out to the softball field for tryouts. Hopefully by the time she got back things would have smoothed over.

Jonathan was thoroughly pissed at her decision to leave and ignore what he said, but he also failed to recognize that Kara was growing up, and the chains that she once wore had finally started to come off.

---

"She's acts just like you do," Martha noted, wiping her hands with a towel. Jonathan poured himself a glass of orange juice and raised an eyebrow, scoffing at his wife lightly.

"I was never that bad."

"Oh? I seem to remember a young man who would sneak out of,"

"Okay. You win," Jonathan said, interupting her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned in to kiss her.

 

[Superman1496]

Come over tonight still. We'll talk about it. I'm not going to lie to you Chloe. Never. You have no worries of that. Bruce said. She sounded a little bit better.

He hoped that she would come over still. He really did not want to scare her off.

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen smiled at Rose's comments about the clearest oceans and Arctic wastes without cold. He was pleased that she remembered their conversation that took place so far above the surface of Earth.

"Indeed," he said, "the Great Ocean, at its deepest part could swallow half of this world, and yet it appears as though you could touch the bottom with your hands." He reached out and ever-so-slightly pushed Rose's shoulder, so that she bobbed a bit as she floated above the dusty stone floor. Still smiling, he continued, "and although sheets of ice and crystal intertwine in places, it is not cold like the cold you would feel here. It is...alive. The air itself is a pure breath. The crystals and ice reflect the colors around them, and in so doing you would see the deepest hues of purple and blue and the purest gold. And, in morning time, the red sun Rao would rise and cast saturate the tundra with the most violent shade of red you can imagine."

He stopped, and was quiet for a moment, his face taking on a sad, contemplative look. All the beauty that was Krypton was no more.

"And yes, Pete Ross, we had heroes," he answered. "One such was Zor-El. He was the most brilliant of scientists, and as such, was the voice of counsel to the Council of Krypton. It was Zor-El who led the team of scientists that designed our source of power, the Power Crystals. It was also Zor-El that fathered the design of the artificial intelligence that kept the Power Crystals in operation.

"Zor-El taught me many things. He was my mentor and advisor here on Earth. But Zor-El's responsibilities kept him on Krypton for the most part. You see, there was a dark time in our past, just as all civilizations must face. You see," and Var-Sen's eyes bored into them, "Krypton had a war."

"The leader of the Defense Force turned against his command. He betrayed the Council, and effectively withdrew the armies under his command from Council authority. His acts of treason and sedition sparked feelings of anger and retribution from most Kryptonians, for our world had been at peace for hundreds of years. Yet when this general attacked outlying worlds, and even turned his soldiers upon our own outposts, it sparked a civil war.

"Whether it was a lust for power or a desire to rule all, the evil that is greed turned this Kryptonian from a respected leader to the most feared being in the twenty-eight known galaxies. Every being knew and was afraid of this general.

"His name was Zod." Var-Sen concluded in almost a whisper.

"But," he began again, "like all things, General Zod's rampage soon came to an end by the combined efforts of Zor-El and an alien bounty hunter from a distant solar system. Zod was captured, tried, and imprisoned in a place created by Zor-El called the Phantom Zone. There Zod exists in a desolate wasteland with other criminals from the known galaxies. There is no time in the Zone, and Zod will live there for all eternity."

Var-Sen stopped. Like any good lecture, he knew to pause for questions. He glanced over to The Wraith, and he remembered. "There was also the Legend of Nightwing and Flarmebird, but these two are entirely another tale."

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

I could almost feel the loss in his voice when he talked about the oceans and the red sun rising over his world.
I knew a thing or two about loss myself.

Then he started talking about the war. A stillness came across him as he spoke of the war, and of the man that started it.

Zod.

Then he continued, speaking of the Kryptonian prison, and one phrase stuck in my head. "There is no time in the Zone, and Zod will live there for all eternity."

I waited until he finished, then spoke, walking up next to Rose.

"So Kryptonians exiled their criminals to a "Phantom Zone"? What can you tell me of this place. Was it a moon, a planet deep out in space, or something else?"

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen fixed Wraith with his gaze and held up his hands in a sphere shape as he answered.

"The Phantom Zone is another dimension, outside of ours. Whether it is a fourth, fifth, or twelfth dimension I cannot say, but it is within, and yet it is without," he gestured his hands larger, as if to encompass the cavern in which they sat. "It is a place of utter desolation, of no night, and of no day. There is no moon, and there is no sun. It is...loneliness. A desolate wasteland roamed by corporeal beings that were snatched from our plane and placed there as punishment for their crimes.

"And also within this place," Var-Sen's voice became low and spooky, "there exists..." he looked for the word, "...wraiths...not unlike the one that stands before me now, yet these are the essences of those criminals whose physical bodies were destroyed before they were confined to the Phantom Zone."

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

If I could, I would be white as a sheet right now. As it is the shadows in the cave were almost crawling, and only Rose's soft glow kept them back.

"I think maybe you should have picked a lifeless ball somewhere out in deep space, or maybe a penal world or something. What you just described is pretty close to what I know of Shadow, and as you can tell, I can come and go from there at will. Your 'inescapable' prison may not be as secure as you thought."
I leaned against the wall next to Rose. Her warm glow bathing my dark form.

"I don't know much about other dimensions and things like that. I am still pretty new to this hero business, but it feels... right. I think there is quite a lot more out there than heaven and earth, and I have it on good authority there IS a Heaven and a Hell, so why not other dimensions in between."

And if I could go to one, maybe I could go to others. I would just need to know where to go, or better yet, how to know to go there.

If I had to.

"So, Professor, when should we expect your supply ship or whatever to arrive and take you guys home? Oh, and what about those other two creatures of your legends? I'd like to hear about it sometime, if you don't mind."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick's long walk home

Merick changed quickly, then darted ut of the locker room. The last thing he wanted was to see anyone. After stopping quickly at his locker he pulled out his cell phone, keyed in a number and waited.

"Hey Ma, no look. I don't need a ride home. I'm gonna swing by Dad's office. Really, its closer than it seems, trust me. I'll catch a ride home with Dad. Alright love you. Bye. Merick flipped his phone shut and headed toward the Torch office. Quickly scrawling a note as he went.

Before he had made it to Chloe's home away from home he had decided he was not going to barge in again. Just drop a note under the door and go. Besides he had plans. He quickly read over his note.

Chloe, sorry to interrupt again, but thought I would give you my phone number, that way if you need anything you can give me a ring. Talk to you later. Merick

Merick barely stopped as he flipped the note into the Torch office and then, checking he was alone, he focused on his father's office. There was a soft swoosh, then he was gone.

Merick was standing in the field just behind his father's office. He started toward the large building before him.

"Merick? What are you doing here? Didn't school only just get out about two seconds ago? Merick was startled by the thin, slightly goofy young man that had stepped out of the stable just as he passed.

"Jeez, Gar, you scared the hell outta me. Dad in his office?

"Yeah, thats why I am out here. Right after Mrs. Batson left he got a call from some guy that works with your grandfather. Then the yelling started. You know how your dad and Edmund can be. Its like oil and fire. Seriously. I would not go in there if I were you.

"Ouch. Ok, well I guess I will skip out on talking to Dad. Merick turned to the right and head back toward the road. He never could quite understand why his father and grandfather got at each other so. Grandpa Edmund had always been a stand up guy so far as Merick was concerned. He always sent the best gifts at Christmas and birthday, and even though it had been nearly 8 years since Merick had seen Grandpa Edmund, he would always remember the last trip.

It was summer, and Merick was out of school. Grandpa Edmund had picked him up in a fancy black sports car, then driven them to Metropolis. Grandpa had brought him on a jet, the only time Merick had ever flown. Grandpa asked him not to tell his parents, they wouldn't be happy about the flight if they had known. They thought the two of them were driving to El Paso, where Grandpa lived. Edmund spent the next 2 months, learning to ride a horse, shoot a rifle, and how to box. Not that he got very good at any of it, but Grandpa Edmund said these were skills every real man needed to learn. Merick loved every second. Then he screwed it up.

He was warned not to tell his mother about any of the stuff Grandpa Edmund was teaching him. That if she asked what they had done he should tell he about all the cool stuff they saw a wild west reenactment, and about the museum they took a weekend trip to in Dallas. But he was having so much fun. He loved Al, the horse he rode every day. Then Al broke his leg and had to be put down. That night when Merick's mother called he couldn't hold it in. He was so sad. He blurt out about how Al had tripped going down an embankment, and thrown him into the river, and that when he fell he broke his leg, and now he was dead.

That was the last time Merick had seen Grandpa Edmund. Two days later when his father showed up he thought that his father would kill Grandpa Edmund. They fought terribly, then his father told Merick it was time to go. Grandpa Edmund gave him his favorite hat, and told him that sometime they would get to do this again. Merick cried all the way to Oklahoma. Then his Dad said something that always bothered him.

Son, you have to understand. Your grandfather, he is not the man you think he is. Someday I will explain it, but not today. You aren't quite old enough. But you do trust your old dad right? Now, if you want, maybe we can have ice cream for lunch. Just please, dont tell your mother. She'd have my head if she knew you weren't eating your vegetables. With that Dale Tennylson ruffled his son's hair, gave that trademark Tennylson Grin, and somehow Merick knew that his Dad knew best. He knew he could always count on his father. And to this day, Merick knew that was true.

Merick was snapped out of his revelry by a sound. Growling. Something was growling at him. He turned slowly and saw that there was a very large, black dog growling angrily, foaming at the mouth. Merick was the son of a Veterinarian. He knew that a dog like this was dangerous. It was sick. Normally this dog would probably licked him to death. But it was sick now. And there was something else. The foam had a strange green tint. Suddenly the dog leapt. Merick focused all his strength and just as the beast was about to hit him full force a shimmer appeared in th air before him. He was encased, almost like a man in a space suit. But the force was terrible. Even behind his bubble, Merick felt the sickening, jarring impact. It sent him sailing a good ten feet. He landed hard, but the field he projected absorbed most of the damage. The dog seemed dazed for a second. Then it was charging again. Out of sheer desperation, Merick threw up his right hand as if to intercept the beast. But the dog didn't get its chance to try sinking that horrid maw into Merick again. There was a blast of the same shimmering force. It hit the dog full on in the chest as it leapt at Merick. Suddenly the dog was moving backwards. It landed roughly. Merick could see it breathing heavily, as it lay motionless. Merick was nearly as dumbfounded. He glanced back toward his father's office. He could here someone yelling his name. It was his father's assistant. He was coming to make sure Merick was okay. He must have yelled when the dog attacked him the first time. He couldn't be found like this. How would anyone believe a runt like him took down this behemoth. Merick didn't conciously plan his next move. He thought only about getting as far from the scene as he could. Just as Merick began to swoosh away he caught a glimpse of someone coming out of the office driveway several hundred feet away. Merick hoped they wouldn't have seen him. Then he was gone.

He was standing outside 2 massive double doors. They were solid mahogany, and he was sure he had seen them before. But that was impossible. He couldn't be here. It was over 1000 miles. Then he heard a voice that made it all very real. He heard Edmund Tennylson. He was on the other side of this door. And he was on the phone. Somehow, Merick was at his grandfather's ranch in El Paso. Merick looked down at his watch. He had only left school maybe ten minutes ago. Not that long. Impossible. Then Merick heard something that made his blood run cold.

"You listen to me doctor, I dont care how many of these test subjects you go through. I need the project finished and the problem solved. These people are expendable. And one more thing, doc. Your expendable too. That was his grandfather. Merick must have miss understood. Must have. It sound almost like he was talking about some type of human test subjects. He knew his grandfather worked owned TennTech, which worked on genetic mapping but he thought that that was all just about breeding big, meatierm healthier cattle. Was this what his father had meant all those years ago?

Before Merick had another second to think the door in front of him began to open. It didn't make it far before Merick was gone again. This time he was back at school. He was standing in the same spot he had left from no more than 15 minutes ago. He had his back to the door of The Torch, and he was breathing hard. His head was starting to ache again. Then, there he was.

Hi Mehrick. You don look so good.

Listen Bob... I have had a really bad day. I dont have time for delusional hallucinations. Just go away alright?

Suddenly the little boy before him changed. He shifted form right before Merick's eyes. Suddenly he was the same age and size as Merick. You cant talk to me like that cried the man-boy-thing with a look of pure rage in it's eyes. Suddenly there was a bursting in Merick's brain. It was like a cherry bomb going off in an aluminum trash can. I can crush your mind and you can't do anything about it.


Merick felt like something was pummeling his brain from the inside out. With nothing left to lose, Merick summoned every once of strength he had left and summoned a forcefield around himself. Suddenly the pain was gone. And the man-boy-thing that was called Tommy, not Bob, was seething. A strange green fire danced in his eyes. Then it screamed. Merick could feel the field surrounding him start to quiver.

God, I hope this works, he thinks as he digs deep into himself. "Sorry, Bob." Merick says with a touch of sadness as he suddenly expands the forcefield he had created, driving it into the man-boy-thing with such force. It was more like a tactile nuclear weapon going off in the worlds largest trash can this time. the lockers in the hallway in a thirty foot area were dented and twisted as a concusive wave of force swept through the hall. The window to the door behid him blew inward and the door, while not ripped down had seen better days. Suddenly there was water in the hall. The sprinkler head had been ripped clean out, and there was a strange smell. The man-boy-thing was gone. The last thought to drift through Merick's head before he hit the ground very hard, was this. I hope Chloe's ok.

Merick lands hard. Completely unconscious as the fire alarm, set off by the switch being torn off, starts to blast its one note song.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Zod.

Even without the historical familiarity of native Kryptonians, Pete and Rose both had to suppress shudders at the mention of that name.

John Smith spoke the name of Zod as he might have spoken the name of Hitler or Pol Pot or that of the countless other despots that had littered the face of The Earth throughout history. Like he might have spoken the name of an immortal murderous legend, the near-mythic Ra's al Ghul, f'rinstance, or the fully-mythic Vandal Savage. John Smith spoke the dreadful name of Zod as if invoking a god of wrath and carnage.

The two Torch reporters shared a look after Var-Sen's gentle shove sent Rose bobbing backwards to float into the same wall against which Pete had sat. Rose descended, keeping up her glow to light the dark place-- the small shaft of light provided by that one skylight seemed woefully insufficient. She tried to keep it to a happy medium, though... she wasn't sure how much light would irritate Kyle.

Nightwing and Flamebird.

These sounded, to Pete, like happier legends. Zod had made his skin crawl to hear about him. But these two...

Again, he figured, it came down to how Professor Smith said their names.

They sounded like forces for the positive, and they certainly sounded powerful with names like those. He pondered the archetypal mental images such names evoked...

...pinioned creatures, soaring through the skies, one dark and leathery and fearsome, like a dragon freed from its captivity in the bowels of a planet, the other elegant and blisteringly warm, capable of healing and fury, not unlike a phoenix...

...Pete's eyes darted from Rose to The Wraith and back again.

Nightwing.

Flamebird.

Well. Huh.

The Phantom Zone.

A dimensional prison? Rose wondered, excited well beyond reason.

The superuniversal structure could, theoretically, contain all manner of timelines and dimensions. One of them, easily, hypothetically, could be one whose temporal progression relative to that of more familiar worlds was infinitesimal, like relativistic time dilation on a cosmic scale, or-or-or maybe the dimensions that bordered The Phantom Zone were supermassive and to be in such proximity to one of these would be like being stuck in a black hole's event horizon, forever tumbling through a little patch of Eternity, or-or-or? Maybe its Big Bang didn't come off quite right, right from the get-go, and its physics kind of stalled and things like thermodynamic decay and spaciotemporal connectivity never quite figured out what to do with themselves.

Rose stopped herself hurriedly, as she felt a nosebleed coming on.

(Yet another thing to ask Dad about, she mused with an inward grin.)

To say the least, this notion fascinated Rose, and she was sort of disappointed that Kyle dismissed it as he did. After all, a planetary gulag was only as good as the security of its spacecraft, or its teleportational countermeasures (speaking of Star Trek? see also: Rura Penthe) but the barrier between dimensions seemed rather more difficult to breach, at least as far as Rose's thinking went.

But then again...

She had to give one thing to Kyle: 'A door, once opened, may be stepped through in either direction.'

If they could open a gate to dump convicts into The Zone in the first place, then it wasn't entirely inconceivable that those selfsame convicts could get out the same way...?

But then Kyle dropped the notion of a supply ship, and Rose's heart came up into her throat.

There would be no supply ship. No help from beyond the stars.

Because John Smith's species was in extremely short supply.

To be Kryptonian was to be alone.

(Rose hoped, desperately, that Var-Sen had found a Chosen One that was at least a nice person. Because to be eternally bound to another that was a complete bitch would be an intolerable hardship, and Var-Sen didn't seem like he deserved that sort of rotten karmic retribution.)

She wanted to smack Kyle for saying such an insensitive thing, wanted to slug him in the arm as she'd done for worrying her overnight with his going incommunicado, but that would hardly be fair. It wasn't like Kyle knew...

But God bless The Wraith, he changed the subject on a dime and hopefully, hopefully-- the Torch reporters exchanged another worried look --this would be enough to spare Var-Sen undue pain.

Pete couldn't help but wonder how many degrees of separation lay between a man like Var-Sen and a man like Zod. It pained him to think of it... but when pushed hard enough, even the saintliest of men were capable of great destruction...

 

[AmenRa]

"So, Professor, when should we expect your supply ship or whatever to arrive and take you guys home? Oh, and what about those other two creatures of your legends? I'd like to hear about it sometime, if you don't mind."

Var-Sen stood from his sitting rock and walked around those that gathered in the semi-circle around them. He stood with his back to them for a moment, and then he turned to face them. His face was devoid of any emotion, and the voice that spoke was without tone or inflection.

"There will be no supply ship," he answered, "the last ship that came from Krypton brought the one for whom we wait to Earth." And then Var-Sen, as certain as he was of what happened, faltered for just a second and the unemotional tone he carried lowered in pitch.

"And then Krypton died," he finished. And he stood, silently, and fixed his gaze upon The Wraith. "Those of us that you would meet are the last of a proud race, my friend. We are all that is left of our world."

But little did Var-Sen know that just at the edge of the Solar System traveled a black ship, also a remnant of Krypton, and the carrier of the beginning of the end of all things.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Kent!"

Kara had arrived just as the team had started out towards the softball field. She ran up to the coach and apologized for being late. She told him that there was a problem at home, and that she needed to take care of it. He shrugged his shoulders in indifference, and told her to get ready.

"Just grab a glove and go out into the field," he instructed her. Kara wondered what position she should be in, as most of the girls had already taken the bases and the entire outfield.

"Um, Coach. Where do I go?" Kara asked.

"You're pitching," he told her.

"Me? But I don't know how..." Kara stammered.

"What?"

"I don't know how..." she said again.

"I'm confused. Were you born on Mars or something?"

"Not exactly," Kara responded.

The coach shook his head and sighed. He brought over another one of Kara's teammates, and she was shown what to do and how to do it. It took Kara a short while to learn the basic techniques, but after a while she had picked up on it pretty well. Once she had a good hold on her speed and accuracy, Kara was ready to take the field.

Practicing with one person was simply.

Playing in an entire field with people up at bat was an entirely different story. What if Kara accidently hit someone? They could be seriously injured! What if she choked?

"Kent!"

"Sorry," she apologized. Once the batter was up to the plate, Kara tossed her first pitch. It zoomed past the plate and straight into the catchers glove. She had held back quite a bit of her strength, but it was still pretty forceful. Strong enough that her experienced catcher almost lost her footing.

Kara would need to hold back just a little bit more.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

"Come over tonight still," Bruce said. "We'll talk about it. I'm not going to lie to you Chloe. Never. You have no worries of that."

"That's," Chloe murmured, smiling despite herself, despite everything, "that's reassuring. Honesty's always preferable. (I have kind of this thing for Truth?) But I wanted to give you the option. Just in case."

That, Mister Wayne, is the right answer.

She cursed how schoolgirlishly she was behaving, how quickly she'd allowed her infatuation with Bruce to preoccupy her emotions...

...but then again? I am a schoolgirl. That should at least count for something.

"Yeah," she agreed. "We'll talk tonight. What time should I come over?"

But then thunder like the hammerblow of a Norse god blossomed percussively in the hall, shattering the window of The Torch's rarely-closed door, and with a startled, strangled yelp Chloe hit the deck behind the desk at which she'd sat.

After a moment, she peered 'round the corner of the desk, and saw, to her horrified chagrin, that water was seeping in under the knocked-askew door.

"Hang on, Bruce," she remarked with a shaky voice of a whole different kind, the giddy adrenaline that came from being right in the thick of it, a real newshound spark of energy, "a serious case of deja vu just dropped a tank shell in my lap. I'm gonna have to call you back."

Without waiting for Bruce's reply-- breaking stories waited for no man, no matter how fathoms-deep his eyes --Chloe snapped her phone shut and darted in a crouch across to the primary workstation.

She was not losing her life's obsession to a little trickle of water, sir-no-sir.

One of the things that Gabriel and Van had helped her engineer was an emergency kill-switch for The Torch's computer systems, a keystroke on the primary workstation that would initiate shutdown on the entire Local Area Network while simultaneously performing a highly-compressed backup of all files to Chloe's off-campus server.

(Gabriel had also suggested a big red button attached to an EMP, just in case The Man ever tried to seize her data and use it for nefarious purposes, but Chloe had thought that dangerous big red buttons were probably not the best thing to leave lying around a school like Smallville High.)

She tagged the kill-switch keystroke now, even as the klaxon wailed in the hall.

The screen flickered, and in a predetermined numerical sequence the monitors of all the different Alienware desktops winked out, followed by the primary.

Chloe breathed a sigh of relief, and then ran for the doorway, stepping over a little folded note that was floating on the rivulets of water. (Later for that.)

I swear to God, she promised, if this is the same thing as yesterday, I am turning in my press pass and I am joining a convent, and that's the end of it.

She grabbed the doorknob.

Well. Maybe not a convent. Maybe I'll just farm soybeans. Soybean farmers are at least allowed to date, right?

She whipped the door open and it nearly fell off its hinges and the hall seriously looked like a bomb had gone off. Lockers were wrecked and the tiled floor was a little bit cratered and one of the sprinklers was pulsing out water...

...and there on the floor, out cold, was Merick Tennylson.

Chloe stared at him, horrified, for just a moment.

"Holy God," she breathed. "Tennylson, what did you do?"

But then doors were starting to open further down the hall and she knew she had to get him out of there. She had to help him. If for no other reason?

Than that being a clumsy oaf didn't mean he deserved to be outed as a Meteor Freak in such an ignominious fashion.

"You know this completely ruins the Launchpad McQuack extended metaphor, right?" she griped, as she crouched beside him, and dragged him hurriedly in through the busted door of The Torch, trying her best to steer him clear of the broken glass. "Say what you will about Launchpad's landings, he never came away from a crash the slightest bit scathed."

(She had some smelling salts in one of the desks. She could use this to revive him, and they could play it up that he'd been knocked groggy in the explosion but that neither of them had seen what happened.)

"Given that your spacial displacement seems to be getting less and less controllable?" she grunted as she dragged him over to a desk and sat him up against it, awkwardly, sure, but doing the best she could. "You're hardly the luckiest duck in the world, either. So that rules out Gladstone Gander. You ever consider joining The Navy? You could be Donald..."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose ached.

What worse turn of events could there be for a young woman who thrived on imagination? How much worse could it get than the elimination of all possibilities?

Krypton was dead. There were no more possibilities.

No more Future, no more Golden Ages no more Black Plagues no more living no more dying no more hoping no more loving. No more second chances.

Rose stifled a sob, and covered her face with her hands.

This was why she had always preferred Fiction to Real Life. This was why.

Because with Fiction, there were always second chances. With Fiction, happy endings were not only possible but likely.

But anything further to do with the goings-on of Krypton would have to be Fictional, because it had ended most unhappily indeed.

She shook her head, refusing to give up all hope. "You guys don't have any long-lost colonies out there, do you? No chance any more of you could have been off-world when the end came? Spacefaring multidimensional people, and you were all only chilling at the old homestead? Is there no-one else?"

Pete scowled at her. A man could respect another man's pain, another man's loss, could respect his having to deal with these in his own way. Dredging up the notion of hope-- very likely false hope --would only be doing the man a disservice.

"Chill, McCrimmon," he suggested softly, firmly. "Prof's already in it pretty deep, you wanna be the one to toss him a shovel? Chill, 'kay?"

Her face twisted up into tearful knots, her glow increasing with her fervor, Rose's reply was quick, succinct, and almost vicious...

...Pete got the impression it was directed not just at him, but at herself, too, like she was teaching herself a lesson:

"'There are always possibilities.'"

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick

Merick was starting to wake up as Chloe was saying something about Duck Tales. He was dazed, and slightly confused, but he knew the basics of what had happened.

"I'm sorry. I had to. Man my head hurts." Merick fumbled for words as he scrambled and stumbled his way to his feet. "He wouldn't stop. Then he did something... it was like my head was in a blender. Without thinking about it Merick slowly ran a hand over the scars on his head again. "Listen, I gotta go. I will give you the whole scoop, if we can just get out of here. Chloe do you believe in ghosts? Because I think I just met one.

Merick was just getting his barrings when he saw a faint green shimmer, then to his absolute horror, the man-boy-thing was there. Not ten feet away.

"He's my friend. You can't have him. The voice coming out of the little boy in front of them didn't quite sound right. It was so full of malice and contempt, no real pre-schooler could ever manage such hatred. "Give him back." at these words Merick again began to see the green flames dancing in the man-boy-things eyes. He knew this was not a good thing.

Merick turned to Chloe, a single tear slowly traveling from his eye down the slope of his cheek, "You can see him right? Do you trust me?"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

A chill ran down Chloe's spine at the same rate as the tear that rolled down Merick's cheek.

She could see him. Shimmering out of the green came a little boy who radiated otherworldly malice, an unhappy spirit, a Green-Ey'd Monster in a far more literal sense than Shakespeare's Iago had ever intended.

"I trust you," Chloe breathed to Merick, eyes wide, as she backed away both from the semi-conscious teen and the younger, spectral lad. "I see him."

Adrenaline had heightened her awareness. She had been exhausted by circumstance to the point where she'd broken down into tears. She'd been unable to research Var-Sen's tablet. She'd been unable to explain Kyle's escape. She'd been unable to soothe poor Kara Kent...

And now this?

It was like hitting the wall during a long-distance run; coming to the very very limit of one's endurance, only to discover, pushing through the pain, that beyond that limit lay more power, more strength, all the hidden reserves one needed to finish the race.

Her eyes locked onto the man-boy-thing's face, and then they flickered over to Merick's, and the resemblance was uncanny. Was Merick facing one of his inner demons? Could a meteor rock possibly possibly possibly have given life and strength to an alternate personality, causing it to manifest thusly?

Or was this... or was this a shared delusion, a microcosm of collective unconsciousness, a mass hallucination built for two?

Was Merick's crazy so very crazy that he was making Chloe crazy, too?

"I trust you," Chloe whispered, shaking her head in awe, "but you've got to tell me: are you having a partial out-of-body experience? Or am I having a total out-of-mind experience?"

In any case, it wouldn't be polite to the... to the manifestation, to talk about him like he wasn't there.

She cleared her throat and she offered the manifestation her most reassuring smile as she spoke more audibly to him: "Merick's my friend, too. (At least I like to think so?) Maybe you can just let me borrow him for awhile?"

 

[Lunaramblings]

3's a crowd

The fire in the man-boy-things eyes dulled for a second. He seemed unsure of what to do next. Then he locked eyes with Chloe and he burned. The green flames began to dance wildly in his eyes.

"He isn't yours. He tried to hurt Tommy. Now I'm gonna hurt both of you. The thing took a step forward.

Merick did'nt know what to do. He just knew that he had to get Chloe out of here. He lunged in front of her. Looked back and quietly said "I don't know what he is. But we gotta go. Fancy a lift? With out waiting for an answer he turned back to Tommy. "Listen little guy, I don't know who, or what you are. But let me tell you something. No one. Hurts. My. Friends." A faint green shimmer passed over Mericks eyes as he stared down Tommy. "You want to hurt me. Fine. My world seems to be crumbling a bit anyway. But no matter what you are, if you so much as upset this pretty lady, I will not rest until you rue the day your sorry ass came into whatever form of existence your in. Now, me and my friend are leaving. You are not going to follow us. And later, we can talk.
Merick's eyes were starting to blaze in a way not unlike Tommy's had been. Tommy faltered. He glared at Merick. Eyes full or rage and hate, pain and torment. Tommy seemed to truly fear Merick now. Not the other way around.

"You can't hurt me."

Chloe, if there is anything you need, grab it, we are leaving. Merick took care to try to contain the emotion in his voice. He didn't want to betray the truth, that he was on the verge of shitting himself. He just continued to lock eyes with Tommy. Then he surprised himself. He took off his jacket, and tossed it on the floor. He took off his hat and let it fall. Finally, he raised his right hand before him, it began to erupt with the same energy he had used earlier on the dog and which he had used to shield himself and cause all the damage in the hall. He took a step towards Tommy, forcing him back into the corner, "You sure you want to bet on that? You sure you want to risk it all on the toss of the dice. See, you might be one creepy little bastard, and you might just be able to take everything I can dish out. But funny thing. All day, every time I have used these abilities, they seem to have gotten stronger. Hell, I just trekked over a thousand miles and back in no time, this morning I couldn't make it to class on time. So, Al, do you Really want to try this? Merick hoped he was strong enough. He hoped he could hold him off. At very least he hoped he could get Chloe the hell out of here. Merick extended his left hand behind him. Reaching. Hoping Chloe would take his hand.