The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Rose had delivered to Var-Sen an innocuous sentence indeed, but his response was utterly cryptic... and the fact that he appeared neither pleased nor relieved suggested to Rose's own sharp senses that this Something was not, in fact, Var-Sen's awaited Chosen One. And on top of this... Rose herself had uttered that selfsame proclamation, if only to herself, just the previous day? And it had turned out to be portentous indeed.

Extremely portentous.

Goosebumps crawled her skin, and her blue blue eyes gazed warily at the Kryptonian's face.

"Coming? What's coming?"

What could worry a being of his power?

Sure, he wasn't without his weaknesses...

But still. What could scare an extraterrestrial god?

Pete's racing heart slowed at the sudden shift in gears, the shift in mood.

"Did I come in at the middle again?" he wondered softly. "Who's on first?"

She shook her head, and held Kyle all the tighter.

Rose couldn't help but whisper a tiny, tiny whisper: "Something's coming."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ceri and Jamie

Jamie pressed the "end" key and closed off the call.

Things were maybe finally turning around.

They'd interviewed him briefly over the phone, and though he'd still need a second interview on the next day's morning, they were already calling to check his scholastic references-- he'd taught for a year or two before leaving Great Britain, and his guest lectures at Keystone-Central University's physics workshops had included in their audiences such up-and-coming luminary prodigies as Michael Holt and John Henry Irons and Serling Roquette --and Sheriff Ethan Miller had promised to give Jamie's background check "wings."

Things were maybe finally turning around.

He stared at Ceri in wonder as he handed her the phone.

She smiled at him in curiosity, but before either of them had the chance to speak, Ceri's phone vibrated in her hand.

She blinked, and she glanced down at it as she hunted out her text-message inbox...

She read what was there, and she felt danger crawl into her bloodstream and cause her jaw to practically pop with tension.

She read what was there, and she knew that things were Coming To An End.

"'He is awake.'"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil (and Meyer & Boyajian)

Emil had heard a helicopter.

Now, Emil heard a voice calling for The Lord of The Manour.

He supposed, that if Lex came looking for the source of this calling, that he himself should be present also. He had yet to confer with the mogul-in-training thus far today, and he supposed that sooner rather than later he should go out and see with his own bespectacled eyes the spectacle that was The Kawatche Cave.

And following up on such suppositions was as simple a matter as strolling out into the hall.

As he passed through an archway, he found Meyer and Boyajian striding the corridor towards him. Apparently, one of the back door sentries had noted his ingress minutes ago and reported him to the appropriate authorities...

"Doctor Hamilton," Meyer nodded to him. "Trust you're well?"

"Quite," he nodded briskly, smoothly, in reply, but kept walking in the direction of that calling voice. "Well rested, in any case. Have either of you spoken with our mutual employer recently?"

"Not right yet," Boyajian confessed, more than a little sheepishly, as the two men walked with the scientist. "We was looking at the greenhouses. This place has always had the bestest greenhouses."

Then they rounded the corner together, and found Lionel Luthor coming the other way, and the two black-suited men stiffened to attention as if having been unexpectedly confronted with a four-star general.

Emil put his hands in his pockets and smiled a smile with the corner of his mouth.

"Lionel," he greeted the billionaire, casual as could be, as if having been unexpectedly confronted with a next-door neighbour.

Meyer frowned. "You call him 'Mister Luthor.'"

Emil arched an eyebrow at Meyer, and then turned to face Luthor The Elder once more: "Lionel."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

"It's said that improperly-consumed almond mocha caused the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in late August of A.D. 79," Chloe admitted. "So be careful with that, unless you want Smallville's wreckage to go unrediscovered for over 1500 years."

She churned uncomfortably in her seat at his painting her in such a saintly light.

Really, she was a snoop and a hacker and a snitch and-- while certain events had been conspiring to launch her along in Quantum Leaps of maturity --she wasn't all that trustworthy.

Honestly, while she was quick to forgive she was exceedingly slow to forget, and it hadn't entirely slipped her mind that Merick's first act as an acquaintance of Chloe's was to-- however inadvertently --invade her privacy, and then kidnap her, and then rescue her from a threat that may or may not have been of his own subconscious manufacture.

"There are different kinds of courage in this world," Chloe explained. "Physical courage, moral courage... it's not stupid to defend yourself when threatened. That's brave. And I do... strive for lofty goals. At least, I try to tell myself that I do? But for every good thing I do, I see at least eight different ways that I could have done it better or for better reasons. So don't put me up on any pedestal. It's not like I'm healing the sick or raising the dead."

She shook her head.

"If anything," she murmured, "I could be doing the world damage more than patching it. Sometimes, when my friend Pete looks at The Wall, it's like he's looking at people being made to sit at the back of the bus because they're a different colour, and inside I feel ashamed. Like I'm calling attention to these people for something that's not their fault, and somehow persecuting them for it. It's not right, treating people like that, and it's not okay.

"But there's no time like the present," Chloe noted, "to make a better show of it. And maybe I can do that by helping you solve your own mystery. The first step would probably be to check newspaper archives or town paperwork. Smallville Medical Center might have detailed listings of your injuries, especially injuries as extensive as might result in your scarring. They might also have performed childhood psych evals on you? So that's something to look into."

Chloe drank a good portion of what remained in her coffee cup.

"I'm hardly anyone's 'hope,'" she pointed out, "'Son of Skywalker,' 'only' or otherwise. And Destiny's a big word to start throwing around. I'm too busy trying to plan what mysteries I'm solving over the weekend to start thinking about Destiny as a here-and-now sort of concept."

She paused, and tilted her head to gaze out through the front windows of The Talon at the sky over Main Street, absentmindedly, distractedly, gazing up into the wild blue yonder.

"Speaking of which," she murmured, "what are you doing 'round seven thirty tonight? Think you can find your way to Bruce Wayne's house? He's having a shindig."

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce's head started to spin. He was frustrated with his thoughts of Chloe, and the lack of required information he was searching for.

He decided to turn on the radio. Something had to calm his nerves and help him focus. Unfortunatly, he couldn't find one station that worked. Nothing but static.

And, through all of it, he felt something. His hair stood on the back of his neck. Something gripped him that he could not explain. But he knew something was about to happen.

But what was it...

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick

Merick took another sip of his beverage of choice. He smiled warmly. "A very wise man once told me something, he told me that if you look back, at any event, any choice, you will see a million possibilities. And any one of those, may have been a "better" choice. However, the choice you have made is the one that you live by. Life is like a broken mirror, if you look to close all you see is a mess. But, under the right light, and looking at it just slightly different, you may see a thing of Beauty. Merick produced a Fruit Rollup from one of his pockets. "Chloe, if you were the type of person to claim saint-hood, we wouldn't be talking. And Destiny does not require you to consider it in the here and now. It just is. Eventually when we are ready, we will be given the chance to mold our Destiny to whatever form we like. Besides, Chloe, while you may feel like you are putting people in the back of the bus, you are caring enough to see it, and to know, even in a small way, that it is wrong. Besides, even Dumbledore had his dark times, hell he wanted to kill all us Muggles, but he saw the light. If he can, you can. Remember Grasshopper, before we get to bathe in the warmth of the light, we have to find our way through the Darkness of our own souls." Merick contemplated his Fruit Rollup then decided he wasn't hungry and squirreled it back away. Then he was on his feet. He walked the step or two over to Chloe, bent down and gave her a hug. He didn't linger long. Just a second or two. He didn't want to be the creepy guy after all."Chloe when you are ready, you will do far more good for this world than anyone else I know. The pen is mightier than the sword after all.

Merick grinned. Time to lighten the mood. "A shindig you say? Well I can't very well go a miss a thing like that can I? I am sure I can pop in. I mean, seriously, how many mansions does our little town have? I mean, we do have the one castle, but that doesn't count. I will be there with bells on. In the mean time, I want to give you my cell number... Merick produced a pen and napkin and started scribbling. "Call me anytime. So, I think I am going to try swinging by the Library and looking at the old news stories. Wanna join me?

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

Fruit Roll-up, Chloe reflected, eyes wide, as Merick hugged her. Holy God, he's as random as a Barenaked Ladies song.

It may not be Ritalin, but The Boy in The Hat is definitely appropriating some sort of psychotherapeutic medication. If he isn't? Well, then maybe he should be.

Like BNL, however, Chloe had to admit that within the randomness there was quite often a sort of insightfulness that went beyond Merick's years. He had a bit of wisdom about him, this one. And he wasn't even blind Master Po.

Maybe Ping Hai? 'Bloody marvellous.'

As for his Harry Potter analogies, however, she didn't think he was quite on the Galleons: "I don't think you still get to call yourself a Muggle if you can serve as your own Portkey. I peg you for a Hufflepuff or maybe a Gryffindor, but I'm hardly the best Sorter in the world. If either of us here is a Muggle? It's me. (You could stretch it and claim that I'm a Ravenclaw Squib, but aside from a rapacious omnivorous appetite for knowledge there's nothing magical about me.)

"About me, or about my Destiny."

She laughed faintly, glancing down at the napkin in her hand, the one upon which Merick had written his phone number.

J.K. Rowling, according to legend, had composed much of her masterwork on napkins not unlike this one, while slaving in coffee shops not unlike this one. And presently she was one of the most powerful business interests in the world...

The pen truly was mightier than the sword. (Chloe would have to be more careful where she pointed that thing.)

"'I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:,'" she recited, quoting Pete's much-loved Hippocratic Oath, and, like Pete, adapting The Oath to her current situation: "I solemnly swear to use my powers only for good."

Chloe mulled over Merick's invite to the library for a moment, and then she shook her head. "I really need to call my dad to pick me up, spend some time at home to get my head on straight and 'gussy up' for the aforementioned 'shindig.'"

She stood, and shouldered her two Very Important laptop bags, and grinned softly, lopsidedly at him.

"But I'll see you there, right? 7:30."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick

Merick's jaw dropped when Chloe mentioned her father. He was supposed to be at his father's office to catch a ride home. Oh boy.

"Chloe, I just wanted to thank you. I mean, you didn't have to drag me into The Torch, you didn't have to be cool about all this. And for those two things I am certainly in your debt. Also, yeah you are definatley a Ravenclaw. Chloe, I was wondering..." Merick started. Then he froze. He didn't want to screw this up. Better just bail. "Umm... nevermind. See you at 7:30." Merick walked into the Men's Room and checked to make sure he was alone before walking into a stall.

Swoosh

Merick stepped out of one of the private study rooms at the Library. This particular room was one Merick often spent hours on end sitting in reading everything from Harry Potter to The Art of War. Merick was a voracious reader. As he stepped into the main room Merick realized he had no idea where to start. He headed over to the check out desk hoping the librarian would be able to help him.

"Hi, I was wondering if you might be able to help me. I need to look up some old newspapers, and any documents you might have relating to the Meteor Shower." Merick gave the elderly lady behind the counter a winning grin. "School assignment ya know?"

"Sure sweetheart. Let me bring you over the micro film. And we will see what we can find." The little old lady walked Merick over to a terminal and got him set up.

Once the librarian left, Merick pulled out his phone and dialed his father. "Hey Dad! I need a favor."

"Okay son, what is it that you want me to do that your Mom will kill me for?"

"I kinda told her I was meeting you at your office to hang out and help, and that I would get a ride home with you. But I ran into a new friend and we had coffee and now I am stuck at the library trying to get caught up on make up work. Any way you can cover me on this one?"

"What's her name?"

"Chloe." Merick grinned sheepishly, sometimes it was like he didnt have to talk to his Dad for him to understand. "Also, I was wondering. Um... I kinda have something that I need to talk to you about. Privately, just the two of us. Oh, and I have a study group tonight, so I wont be home til late. Cool?"

"Is that the story you want to feed your Mom? I mean, if you got a date son, I will cover you."

"You rule Dad. Should be home around say 10. Gotta go dad, cells in the library, not really kosher ya know. Love you Dad. Merick flipped his phone shut. He started focusing on the information in front of him.

He scrolled through the information is fast as he could. Then he found something. A picture of him. And the caption read "Family Sundered by Meteor Shower." Merick quickly began reading the story. It mention the leveling of the home in which he lived in. It also mentioned that he and his twin brother each spent several hours in surgery, where Thomas Tennylson died of complications. Merick's head began to spin. He had a brother. He HAD a brother. So did that make Tommy some sort of ghost? Merick printed out a copy of the story. He then did a quick Google on his grandfather. He found absolutely nothing useful. Same stuff he had heard a thousand times before. Merick then looked down at his phone. He had time. Merick looked back at the screen. He quickly brought up a phone directory. He scanned until he found a number for Bruce Wayne. He looked at the address, he knew that area. How close could he get though? He looked back at his phone. Wanting desperately to talk to his Father. He grabbed his print outs and headed for the Men's Room.

Swoosh

 

[AmenRa]

Imagine a landscape so barren and black that it seemed alive with animosity and hatred for anyone who dared walk upon it. For as far as the eye can see, there is nothing but black cragged rock faces and sharp boulders that rest upon shifting grains of black and rusted sand. In places, jagged peaks jut skyward into an equally dark sky, bringing a sinister color of murky and gray crystal to glimmer for an instant in the occasional flash of static discharge from clouds that do not rain.

This is the Phantom Zone.

And within this place of reflection and exile, one criminal Kryptonian sits upon a rock and waits.

He has done such for nearly a thousand years. In the Zone, time is meaningless. Here, he can literally afford to wait forever.

And as he sits there upon the rock, his black and blue military uniform tattered by sinister winds and sandstorms, his dark hair unkept and unruly, his mustache and goatee untrimmed there is hatred in his eyes.

Yet still, he waits.

Like all great military leaders, he had constructed a contingency plan for this very outcome. He had programmed the BRAIN InterActive Construct to act if he were captured and imprisoned within the Zone. And once this happened, the Construct uploaded itself into a stellar vessel and made for the last refuge on a small moon of a distant world. And on that moon the Construct located two of the General's soldiers who had been hiding.

These two soldiers would join the Construct in a quest for the Third Planet of the Sol System. Once they had arrived there, they would secure a base of operations and open a portal that would free him from the Phantom Zone.

Which is why now he waits on this rock. He waits here because there is a gate nearby, one that can only be operated from the Other Side. He doesn't know if his loyal ones will complete the plan, or if they have even begun to initiate it.

All he knows is he must wait.

And plan.

And dream evil dreams of vengeance and wrath.

 

[AmenRa]

Lionel Luthor smiled his million-dollar (literally) smile and stuck his hand out to grab Emil Hamilton's.

"Emil," he beamed, "it's been too long."

Lionel glanced at the two...cronies that his son liked to keep around.

"That will be all for today, gentlemen," he said. He turned his back to them and took Hamilton by the shoulder. "I think we can talk over brunch?" he asked as he ushered him towards a terrace dining area.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Meyer & Boyajian

Meyer looked, at first, like he'd been shot in the kneecap.

To be dismissed like that by Lionel Luthor... it was a frightening thing.

You never knew with that guy. You never knew which side of the coin you were going to see. Benevolent dictator, or vicious sociopath...

No-one on God's green Earth knew which Lionel was real.

Maybe both of them were. Maybe neither of them were.

There was a big thick black prehistoric reptile coiled up inside Lionel Luthor, with a rattlesnake's tail and neurotoxic fangs, and no-one on God's green Earth knew what would prompt him to strike, and what wouldn't.

But the man had genius, and the man had power, and the man had money. He was the very definition of ruthless, and you had to have respect for a man like that. Heads or tails, live or die, Lionel Luthor was like unto a force of nature, and you hadda respect a man like that.

You hadda respect a man what would raise another such force of nature for a son.

Boyajian touched Meyer gently on the shoulder, causing Meyer to flinch a little.

"It's almost time for my injection anyway," the huge bald fellow suggested. "And we promised the front gate guy we'd bring him some smokes."

Meyer nodded. "Yeah," he agreed. "Yeah."

Boyajian walked off, and Meyer lingered for a moment, watching the billionaire and the scientist head for the terrace.

Meyer wondered what colour of big thick prehistoric reptile lived coiled up inside Emil Hamilton.

Then he turned, and he followed his counterpart.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil

Emil shook Lionel's hand firmly. Like his brother, he'd learned much of the ways of Americans...

The handshake wasn't unlike a mystic invocation as far as Americans were concerned, demanding that even the gods themselves respect that which ensued from a proper handshake. And woe betide the mortal who broke an agreement set by the shaking of hands.

"It's been positively ages," he agreed, returning his hands to his pockets as Lionel showed him out towards the terrace. "That little get-together at Senator Burke's place in Topeka? He kept prattling on about how he wanted to duplicate my bionic limb work for land-mine victims worldwide, but all the while, there in his eyes... spare parts for his toy soldiers. Tsk. I cannot abide men with one-track minds."

He smiled faintly, his eyes glittering behind his spectacles as he nudged those frames up his nose with the thumb of his metallic hand.

"I suppose that's why I've always liked you, Lionel," he noted, as he eyed the scones on the table and the genuine Cornish clotted cream, "your mind runs on a formidable number of tracks at once. I like you because you are the very epitome of inscrutable."

He picked up a pear from a fruit basket with that steely hand, and rolled it back and forth over those fingertips.

"Tell me, Lionel," he mused, polishing the pear on his shirt, "whither do your trains run today?"

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

"Something's coming."

It was not a curious whisper, but one with the tinge of fear etched into it.

I hugged Rose a little tighter as she hugged me.

"Maybe I should get back into my work clothes." I whispered into her ear.

I then moved out of her arm and over a step, and let the power flow through me.

Shadows swirled and moaned, and once again I took up the mantle of Wraith.

"Professor, what has you so spooked all of a sudden?"I asked the alien.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

Despite the overwhelming aura of unease, despite the chill that had insistently muckled onto her spine, Rose couldn't help but smile proudly as Kyle drew away and took on his more powerful form.

"I've always known," she murmured ever-so-faintly to Pete, "ever since I first saw old tapes of Bionic Six as a little girl, that I would only ever love a man if he had a good transformation sequence."

Pete grinned faintly, conceptually aware of the benefits of telling jokes in the face of utmost dread, and replied: "Most gals want nice eyes, sense of humour, maybe the whole sport-tastic bod? 'Good transformation sequence?' You don't ask for much, McCrimmon."

Rose put on an air of being mock-offended. "Girl's got to have her standards."

 

[AmenRa]

"Something terrible," came the answer to Wraith's question.

But the answer didn't come from Var-Sen, it came from behind them, from a dark silhouette of a man, tall, broad-shouldered, and with faintly glowing red eyes.

Var-Sen didn't even hear him enter. He looked up from the faces of the youths gathered around him to see the Martian Manhunter standing before them.

"I heard the sounds of them entering the atmosphere," he admitted to J'onn.

The Martian Manhunter stepped into the circle of them in his unaltered, un-morphed form. He was a pure Green Martian, with a flowing cape and a uniform of his station of duty from a world that no longer claimed him. He regarded the teens with a nod.

"It is more, Var-Sen of Krypton," he told them, "I sensed two presences cloaked within the field of meteors." J'onn's eyes flashed red. "I have encountered them before, not long before the destruction of Krypton, when I worked for Zor-El and the Council," he stated. He then gave a sigh. "I believe Nam-Ek and Athyr are coming, concealed within those rocks that are even now breeching Earth's atmosphere."

Var-Sen gripped the stone he sat upon so tight that it began to crumble.

"Zod's foot soldiers," Var-Sen explained. "They survived by hiding."

J'onn J'onzz nodded. "I was searching for them before the end," he explained. He then looked to each face in the room. "These caves will shelter you," he told them. He turned to leave, and with a last look at Var-Sen. "The task now falls to you, Var-Sen. These you have gathered here are your comrades-in-arms, a League of Justice in the coming battle. Train them well. You must bring the daughter of Zor-El here. She must not face the minions of Zod by herself. I know their intentions, Var-Sen. Zod must stay a prisoner within the Phantom Zone. Remember, one must be given to the Zone for one to be taken from it."

Var-Sen nodded. He knew these things all too well himself. "And what of you, my friend?" he asked the Martian Manhunter.

"I will be watching," came the reply.

 

[AmenRa]

"Tell me, Lionel," he mused, polishing the pear on his shirt, "whither do your trains run today?"

Lionel sat down his cup and leaned into the table. "Do you remember Wayne, Xavier, Teague, me.....a club, if you will, that we had? Veritos?"

Lionel's voice got really soft. "I know Lex has you all up to your elbows in the meteor rock, Emil. But what if I told you I knew where the rock came from?"

And then Lionel was startled by the distant sound of an air raid siren.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ceri and Jamie

The siren started sounding, and it was like horror to Ceri's ears.

Her gran had described to her what it had been like in Cardiff during The Blitz, when sirens like that had been the soundtrack, and when Cardiffians had been forced to live in darkness so as to not make their domiciles into targets.

Ancestral memory rolled over her fingertips, forced her to flex her hands into fists so tightly that she had to put her phone away for fear of cracking it.

Her eyes searched the sky. She couldn't see any buzzbombs or any German planes but she knew they weren't safe. She had a finely-honed survival instinct and it was telling her that they weren't safe.

Her mother sense was tingling.

"James?" she murmured, without taking her eyes off of the sky.

He didn't answer.

She glanced over at him, and she saw him standing in the middle of the road, staring up at the skies just as she had been. But the look on Jamie's face was not fearful worry but curiosity. Intense, intense curiosity.

"James?" Ceri prompted.

He didn't answer. He raised a hand to the sky, and wiggled his fingers, like he was probing the breeze.

"Jamie!" Ceri demanded.

Jamie didn't glance at her, just kept his big dark eyes on the sky, kept his hand stretched skyward.

"D'you hear that?" he murmured.

Ceri scowled. "The noisy fuck-off air-raid siren?" she wondered, shaking her head. "Oh, aye, hear it loud and clear."

"No," Jamie murmured, sounding more than a little entranced, more than a little hypnotised, more than a little lost to the world, "not the siren. It's very. It's very far away. But... but I can hear it oscillating. Ancillary flux differential of tachyon-derived shielding is... is plus-or-minus .00023. But graviton-derived?"

Jamie shook his head in wonder. "Somebody's using gravity control," he declared, mystified. "Up there. I haven't heard gravity control. Since. Cor blimey. Not since..."

Ceri grabbed Jamie by the back of the collar of his blue suit coat and dragged him towards the Saab, more than a little panic-stricken, with the weight of the world in her stomach.

"We have to find our daughter," she declared, in no uncertain terms, "and get the bloody blue blazes out of here."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil (and Meyer & Boyajian)

"I remember your little club, yes," Emil mused. "I remember wondering what on Earth could be so shattering as to drag dear old Virgil Swann away from his radio telescope. I half-decided that you'd banded together like characters from an Enid Blyton story. Famous Five, Secret Seven, Five Find-Outers and Dog, one of those. Solve little mysteries, find little treasures, get cats out of trees."

He took a bite of the pear.

Lionel's voice got really soft. "I know Lex has you all up to your elbows in the meteor rock, Emil. But what if I told you I knew where the rock came from?"

Emil stopped chewing. His blue blue eyes gazed at the darksome titan of industry with scrutiny and wonder. "Space," he murmured. "They're from another planet. Or do you mean... specific--"

And then they both were startled by the distant sound of an air raid siren.

Emil slowly rose from his chair, letting the remainder of the pear fall back to the tabletop. He stared up at the sky, his mechanical hand twitching.

"'My kingdom for a horse,'" he whispered.

********

Boyajian depressed the plunger on the hypodermic needle, and the glowing green fluid rushed into his bloodstream.

He sank to his knees, there in the little secret room in the wine cellar, and he twitched and shook and frothed.

Meyer watched in great discomfort. His partner was strong enough without the refined meteorite fluid, but with the fluid? Well, he was capable of crushing bionic limbs in one hand, wasn't he?

But that didn't make this any more fun to watch.

"Hrrh," Boyajian groaned, "hrrrrrh. Just. Just need. Just need a minute. Makes my. Brain hurt."

"It's okay," Meyer smiled worriedly. "Take your time."

But then a monitor on the opposite wall started bleating, and Meyer's studious eyes flickered to its readouts in an instant.

"Holy shit," he whispered. "Defcon Five."

"I just need a minute," Boyajian pleaded, gazing up at Meyer with eyes glowing green.

Meyer tossed Boyajian his sunglasses and his black suit jacket. "Defcon Five. Find Lex."

Meyer sprinted for the stairs up to the house.

Groaning helplessly, Boyajian staggered to his feet and, donning shades and coat, followed as best as he could.

********

Meyer burst out onto the terrace, his own shades in place, the acme of efficiency.

"Mister Luthor," he demanded, utterly peremptory, utterly clipped and business-like. "I'll need you to get back on that helicopter now. Doctor Hamilton, at Mister Luthor's pleasure, you may be able to join him. This situation has suddenly become distinctly untenable."

'You don't have to go home,' Meyer reflected, with no small irony, 'but you can't stay here.'

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Pete

And. Just like that.

Rose had met her second extraterrestrial.

(Well, of course, it was really her third, at least, but she wasn't to know that, was she?)

She stumbled back a step, and her eyes were too wide for words.

"This is one of those others," she whispered, "one of those others that aren't Kryptonian."

"Always talkin'," Pete shushed her. "Tryin' to listen."

And the two old wise aliens had quite a bit to say.

Apparently Krypton wasn't nearly as dead as they'd been led to believe.

Rose had been right, not everyone had been home the day that, like Atlantis of old, Krypton had been consumed by forces natural and unnatural and had left only echoes and relics in the cosmos. The Lost Empire. The sunken continent.

Gone, but for a Professor, a Chosen One, and two thugs that liked to throw stones.

'Nam-Ek.' I wonder if he's green. Like this guy with the glowy red eyes?

And on top of this, apparently The Phantom Zone has an Equivalent Exchange policy? Who knew?

But Pete had talking of his own to do, and he was tired of standing around and talking it.

"Can these caves shelter other people?" he demanded to know. "Because I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it, but if these 'foot soldiers' are a little more rugged than the Eastman and Laird variety, like, Professor John Smith rugged? I ain't going to twiddle my thumbs in shelter while my parents and my brothers and my--" he choked on the chewy bit but he spat it out in seconds "--my Chloe suffer their extrasolar belligerence. No goddamned way, pardon my Terran.

"I'ma kick some ass," Pete growled. "Other people can hide in the goddamned Cuban Missile shelter."

Rose cringed, and she looked fearfully, first to The Wraith and then to Var-Sen and then to this new, ever-watchful Big Green Man.

"Tell me it's not as bad as he's making it sound," she demanded, tears finding the corners of her eyes once more. "Just tell me it's not as bad as he's making it sound. My mum and my dad -- please."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe and Gabe

Chloe Sullivan called her father.

Gabe Sullivan hadn't been far away. He'd actually showed up at the school already, had parked patiently out front waiting for her.

He'd decided to grab some personal hours from work, a rare occasion, and spend the time with his daughter. Something had told him, somewhere in the back of his brain, that he should spend some time with his daughter.

Sanguine regarding the locative misunderstanding, Gabe had headed out to meet Chloe at The Talon.

Meanwhile, Chloe strolled out onto the sidewalk, contemplating Merick.

His unspoken sentence, that little trailing-off, had been one of the most ominous unspoken things Chloe had ever heard. She'd wondered what had been on his mind, and wondered why he'd kept it under his hat.

She had her suspicions. Mostly she quashed them before even allowing them to surface, because it was plain the boy thought highly of her and creepy stalker statistics aside he seemed like a good enough guy himself and she couldn't think about that now because Bruce was brilliant and broken and beautiful and he was leaving and she couldn't let him leave.

'Two Princes,' Chloe lamented, eyes scrunched shut.

She had a far heavier weight on her shoulders now than just those two laptop bags full of artefacts. The buzz and the excitement of Merick's little "tank-shell" had long ago started to wear off, and the almond mocha hadn't done nearly enough to restore her energy level.

Chloe was tiring out again.

She wanted to go home and ready herself for the talk she would evidently soon be having with Bruce. It would be a very important talk, she hoped, and one way or the other she hoped it would clear up plenty of ambiguity.

She hoped their talk would solve one mystery, at least, before she collapsed under the weight of all these others.

Gabe Sullivan trundled up to the kerb, and, smiling wearily, Chloe jogged over to him. She draped her satchels gently in the backseat before clambering in beside her dad in the front passenger's seat.

"You look beat, Chloe Anne," Gabe opined, not unkindly. "Maybe you should give this 'shindig' a miss, stay home, get some sleep?"

Chloe smiled faintly, sardonically, not ungratefully. "No, Dad," she sighed. "I'll just sleep when I'm dead."

Gabe frowned at her, all paternal and adorable, and opened his mouth as if to suggest to Chloe that she shouldn't be so morbid--

But then the sirens began to sound, and his grip tightened and his knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

Chloe's eyes went too wide for words. "Dad?"

"Oh Lord no," Gabe Sullivan rasped, sitting stock-still behind the wheel, "oh Lord no... not again."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Phantoms...

Blue suns are cold suns, even when they shine.

Lar leaned heavily on his crutch, breathing hard, his joints stiff and his muscles protesting at every last movement.

He limped towards her tent. Their tent.

His dark hair whipped in a terrible gale, his sky blue eyes narrowed.

One more step. Another. Another.

The tent provided a modicum of shelter, and his body craved shelter the way that some men's bodies crave chemicals, crave drink.

Lar was dying. He'd been dying for quite some time.

The Phantom Zone was timeless. It was impossible, here, to die a slow death.

Instead of dying slowly until one died, one would die slowly forever.

Lead poisioning. Lar was dying slowly of lead poisoning, his species' fatal flaw. And here in The Phantom Zone he would live for many hundreds of years yet before he ever ever died, at least of that agonising malady.

This, he had long ago decided, was the very definition of a Living Hell. How he had gotten here, he still hadn't any idea, but he had long ago convinced himself that it hadn't been the doing of the kind Earthling doctor who had been holding his hand and soothing him in his pain. This was a Living Hell, all right, but Jamie Hamilton hadn't condemned him to it.

Lar had also long ago decided that wouldn't be made useless. He wouldn't be idle with despair.

And thus he had been watching. He had been watching The General as he sat on his rock. Waiting.

Lar had been watching, and Zod had been waiting.

He staggered into the tent, and he collapsed on their makeshift bedding, and he clutched at the stitch in his side as his crutch skittered away.

"Raya?" he murmured, his voice a dry and barren croak.

Lar lay there, holding his side, and time passed without passing at all, and shortly thereafter Raya burst into the tent looking worried, looking furious.

Looking beautiful.

"Bad enough I have to keep us both alive," Raya shook her head, tearing away the facial covering that had protected her from the endless storms of dust, "in the face of prisoners both spectral and corporeal, without you always wandering off!"

Lar smiled faintly, weakly, and he coughed noisily with a sound like crumpled sandpaper.

"You could let one of them kill me, you know," he murmured. "As a... personal favour? I'm awfully fond of the large, monosyllabic one who feeds on entrails and spinal fluid... I would happily give him indigestion."

Raya made a face at him. "I am going to pretend," she decided, glowering, "that that is delirium induced by the poisoning, rather than your reasoned, logical response. Or possibly some bizarre variety of humour that your species developed after diverging from mine."

Lar grimaced and grinned all at the same time. "I keep telling you and telling you," he chuckled, agonised. "Your species diverged from mine."

Raya sank to one knee beside him, looking somehow stern and caring all at once. It was a very Kryptonian expression.

"M'onel," she murmured, using the Martian word for "wanderer," taught to her many ages ago by an emerald-green friend of her mentor Zor-El.

(This was her affectionate nickname for Lar Gand, and it was made all the more affectionate by the similarity this alias had to the structure of a Kryptonian name. His body, after all, had similarities to the structure of a Kryptonian body.)

"Tell me at least you didn't go to spy on him again," she sighed.

Lar grunted. "Not that it makes any difference," he harrumphed. "The General never moves. Never bats an eyelid. I'll say this for him... his patience borders on the infinite. He sits. He sits and he waits. It's as if he knows something we don't. What can he accomplish by waiting?"

"Zor-El once told me," Raya whispered, as she rose to her feet and gazed off in the direction of the gate, of Zod and his sitting-stone, "that the Earthlings, the humans, have a saying: 'all things come to he who waits.'"

Lar Gand, called "M'onel" by this beautiful daughter of Krypton, rolled over on their makeshift bedding and followed her gaze.

"So," he licked his lips, "Zod is he who waits."

"Precisely," Raya nodded, her gaze hardening, "and something is coming."

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen reached out and touched Rose's nose with his finger. "Don't cry, little one," he said to her. He then looked to the Martian Manhunter. "I can travel as fast as a human thought, J'onn, but I need your help."

J'onn J'onzz nodded his head. "You have but to ask," he replied. "Whom shall I collect?"

Var-Sen nodded to Pete Ross. The Martian Manhunter walked over to him and bent at the waist so he was eye-level with the boy. And then, with psychic powers beyond any human comprehension, he scooped up a thought picture of Chloe Sullivan from Pete Ross's mind. Then, J'onn J'onzz spoke:

"You must not leave this place, my young friend," he said, "and you must trust that I will protect the one you care for." And with that, J'onn's eyes flashed with red, and he was gone.

"You can trust him, Pete Ross," Var-Sen stated. "Green Martians don't lie."

"Now," he spoke to Rose, "tell me, to save time, where I might find your parents?"

 

[AmenRa]

"What's all this about?" Lionel asked. "I'm doubtful there is any place in the world that is safer than this house," he said matter-of-factly.

He then looked to Emil. "What is it that is so dangerous that Dr. Hamilton should leave as well?"

"Those sirens, what do they mean?"

 

[AmenRa]

As the meteors began to enter the atmosphere of the Third Planet, the BRAIN InterActive Construct chose the primary langing site for the ship. This site would be near a center of Kryptonian technology, a conduit pathway to a temporal holding zone that had been created (and then left) inside an ancient cave.

Some of the meteors began to burn up upon atmospheric interface.

Some of them did not.

And the black ship settled into a fiery descent of its own as it targeted a touchdown site just off Miller's Bend outside Smallville.

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce walked to the window of his library. Blue skies, a nice breeze, nothing out of the ordinary.

Then the sirens hit his ears. Bruce ran into the cellar behind the kitchen. Underneath a table was a medical kit and survival kit. He grabbed them both and took off upstairs.

He called for Alfred, but he remembered that the butler had left for the store.

Bruce carried the bags to the garage. There he found six different cars. He threw the bags into the closest car to the door. Hopped in, and took off down road, seeing hell rain from the sky.

The sound of the Viper's engine screamed down the road. He drove next to Millers Bend when something hit close to him.

Something big.

Bruce put the car to a stop. He quickly got outside, leaving everything in the car. Running over to a really large crater, Bruce stopped on the top of the impact hill.

The stress of the day must have brought him to loose some senses, because he saw a meteor that did not look like a rough rock at all.