The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Kyle, post China

"Don't worry ma'am. I plan to stay here or at home until the end of the week, unless Bekka sent some more serum up here with her medical response team, or my powers come back. I'm going to eat me some fine reheated texmex, then grab a sofa. For once, I'm not scared to sleep."

The last part was said looking directly into Ceri's eyes. Then Merick and his Dad had a quiet screaming row.

Very uncomfortable. Merick furious was as scary as I could be. I'd seen what he could do.

Then Mrs. McCrimmon and her husband (ex husband, that still wasn't clear to me) stepped in and defused everything with some wise words and a definite mom stare!

And then Merick was gone. I don't blame him. He had lots to think about.

"Chloe's right, I need to call Bekka. I'm going to find Bruce. See if he has a shirt I can borrow and to ask to use his phone."

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Yeah. We're here," Rose answered.

"Good," Kara said with a smile, which quickly faded away as she soon heard the sirens blaring in the distance.

"Great," she added, her hopes of a smooth arrival apparently going up in flames. A door towards the front of the plane opened, and a woman with dark hair and deep blue eyes came out to greet them. Rebecca gave the girls their instructions, denoting that their target was at least three miles or so away.

A three-mile run seemed like a piece of cake.

But nothing was ever as easy as it seemed.

The door leading out from the plane opened up, and a rush of cool air filled the plane. Judging by how loud the sirens were, Kara figured that the squad cars were still a little ways away. But if the plane was as well-protected as Rebecca said it was, their four hours would be more than enough time to run in, grab the Crystal, and make it back home in time for dinner.

---

"We are definitely not in Kansas anymore," Kara said as they moved away from the ship and towards the Temple. Their GPS unit had helped them discover the location of the temple, but finding the Crystal itself was an entirely different matter. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have been searching for a needle inside a very large haystack.

Kara began to feel as if their four-hour window seemed to be shrinking. It could takes days to scour over the area, and Kara wasn't even sure what she was looking for. She had no idea as to what it looked like, or even whether it was still in this temple of not.

But she had to look... it had to be here.

The temple itself seemed ancient, as most things in China probably were. The walls were decorated with flowing red banners and curtains, lavish chairs and tables containing dozens of antiques.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and nothing seemed to give any clue as to the location of the Crystal. Kara lifted up one of the pots, examining its surface closely. With a sigh of defeat she set it back down.

"We'll never find it at this rate."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Kyle's sister had been very beautiful, and more than a little bit scary. For a moment, locking eyes with the businesswoman, Rose had wondered if Kyle's shadowyness didn't run in his family after all, if it was less of a random mutation than he thought.

(She'd half-expected Rebecca Greystone to become a female version of Wraith and hand her her pale white omnithermic butt.)

But instead, there had been the benediction of a leader, and the way had opened to the outside world.

They had entered the temple.

(Again, Rose got the sensation of treading upon Holy Ground. Just like in The Kawatche Caves. She wondered if she should take off of her shoes.

Maybe they would be okay with her leaving her shoes on if she would just tread lightly.)

Surrounded by golds and reds, Rose bowed slightly to a great great statue of The Buddha.

She didn't kneel. But she nodded to Him, respectfully.

Her eyes flowed over the Chinese script, the beautiful calligraphy, in scrollwork upon the walls, words that descended like rain and blew like wind.

She wished to God and also to The Buddha that she was able to read that text, she wondered at the message it would convey. Hundreds of years of ancient beauty, and all she could do was tell someone their spaceship was "garbage." She hadn't even scratched the surface, as much as she loved the concept of China, she hadn't even come close to scratching the surface of true knowledge of its workings.

She was disappointed in herself.

True Knowledge was such a hard thing to find, ever-so-elusive, and she had wasted so much of her short, short life on knowledge of frivolous things.

She trailed her fingers over some of the designs, sensitive, wafting fingers, moving deeper into the side chamber in which The Buddha sat, stately and serene and infinitely patient.

She'd seen a few wuxia movies in her day, and her mother, as one of the myriad books Ceri'd used for bedtime stories when Rose was little, had read to Rose from The Tao Te Ching.

But she burned to realise that she probably wouldn't be able to tell Chinese script apart from Japanese or Korean if she were to look at it, and her eyes burned with the thought of this deficiency in her knowledge. She might not be able to tell Taoism apart from Buddhism apart from Confucianism.

Always only scratching the surface. And never had she yearned for more than that, never until now. She had been content to skip from topic to topic and never had she drunk deeply of any particular well.

Rose supposed that if the thing had been in plain sight, it would have been snatched up ages ago. That they could never have strolled into this place and just stumbled upon The Crystal.

But Kara was looking frustrated, and Diana was looking as hard as stone.

Rose could blame neither of them for being not quite as patient as The Buddha.

Kara hadn't said it aloud, but probably all of them were thinking it, or at least thinking of similar metaphors.

Needles. Haystacks.

Rose moved into the centre of that chamber, gazing up at The Buddha, and she wondered what He'd say if she asked Him about finding needles in haystacks.

Of course, wanting to find the needle was a form of desire and didn't Buddhists seek to extract themselves from desire? So Buddha would probably leave the needle in there. (Not that Rose, exactly, was qualified to judge The Buddha's thoughts.)

Lao Tzu, on the other hand, Lao Tzu was real big on everyone doing what came naturally to them. Everyone and everything just behaving as their nature intended.

Everyone, like Kara and Diana and Rose. And everything, like orbiting planets and growing branches and...

Magnets.

You find a needle in a haystack using a magnet.

She paused, and she scowled, and she turned in a slow half-circle, facing out through the archway from which she'd come, facing the archway which had led her into this room with The Buddha.

Essentially, this using the magnet to find the needle meant separating that which was different from that which was engulfing the different thing. Finding a way to get the single little hidden thing to stand out.

She glanced to her right, and ran her blue blue eyes over the reds and the golds. All of it flowed together, all of it perfectly matched, all of it was in synch, this place had perfect...

Rose laughed faintly. This place had perfect feng shui. (Of course it did.)

And then she glanced to her left, at the green and the gold of the stone wall. The circles that flowed across that wall's surface.

And in the centre of one of those circles...

She blinked and she frowned.

"Hey," she mumbled, absent-mindedly, "that's kind of weird."

She wandered closer to it.

The symbol at the centre of this circle on the wall, the centre of this circle in the middle of the wall, this symbol was not Chinese: this symbol was The Symbol. From that Crystal that J'onn had given Rose to give to Kara. The Symbol from the wall of The Cave.

The Symbol from Kara's bracelets. Kryptonian.

But it was different; it looked like it had done on The Key. Not an "S" within the pentagonal frame, but an "8." She wondered if this was a different conjugation, or a different spelling. Maybe this Krypto-glyph was a homophone?

She glanced over her shoulder, and finding neither of the others in plain sight, she spoke into her commlink.

"Hey, guys?" she called to the other two girls. "Do either of you know what a clue looks like? Because I don't think I've ever found a clue before, but I think this is one of them."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Jamie, Ceri, Gabe, Chloe, and Pete

Kyle promised to stay out of trouble.

And then, after a bit, Dale essentially promised the same thing.

Marcy praised them for working together so well as a couple and Jamie's face became inscrutable and Ceri's face became sad.

They'd worked together well, once. They hadn't been a couple, they'd been a well-oiled machine. They'd started with shouting and then they'd found this... balance. Each one making up for the deficiencies of the other. But when they'd lost that balance, when the machine had gone awry...

They'd never found that again. Sometimes these days they were glimpsing it.

For a single soft fleeting moment, they met each other's eyes.

And then Jamie glanced away and Ceri glanced down.

...and then The Martian became The Martian again, no longer that handsome professor with a faint little character-building scar on his lip, but a beautiful terrifying green creature of power. He made a sound of agony, and it was plain that something had scarred him deeply, suddenly.

Chloe's eyes went wide, and Gabe lifted a hand to touch his shoulder, to try and steady him if he was going to pass out.

But J'onn's blazing red eyes locked onto Chloe and his red-sand voice murmured--

"Pain," he said, "it was as if a million voices had cried out and then were suddenly silenced. I feel something terrible has happened."

Chloe stared at him, blinking, Kyle's sunglasses shoved atop her head as she blinked iridescent eyes at him and frowned.

"'Something terrible?'" she wondered. "What sort of something terr--"

...but she was already working. She wasn't wearing the sunglasses but she was looking at the screen and desperation sleeted her features and

"Oh my God," she whimpered.

Fire lit up the laptop screen as satellite photography showed the death of that Korean Air 767. Searing nigh-instant death, a sneak preview of Hell.

Fire from the eyes of a streaking darksome shadow.

"He killed them just because he could," Chloe breathed, her lower lip quivering. "Just because he-- Zod just took out an airliner. Just by staring hard. He's going after them. The Team. He's -- he's -- he's we have to stop him."

Pete gazed frightfully at J'onn J'onzz. "Dude. Tell it to me straight. You seriously good for another go-round with The Mothereffer from Hell? Because it looks like that's what's goin' down."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ted and John

The sleek black aircraft slowed in midair, jets screaming as it descended into a VTOL landing a few miles away from the site. Crops were flattened as the plane bounced down once, then the jets faded down to a whine.

John rose to his feet and dropped the cigarette to the stony ground, quashing the thing with his foot.

"Is that 'her,' then?" Ted wondered, stretching and straightening and frowning as the superplane seemed to flicker and ripple and fade from sight. "Is that 'her' in the... invisible jet?"

John shook his head. "No. That's not her. (I don't know who this is.)"

...and then the sirens started.

"But I can guarantee you," John drawled, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets and squinting his eyes, "that The People's Republic eh'n't going to take kindly to people-- whomever this is --violating their fucking airspace. So if they're on our side, Teddy, they're going to be over-run with military and they're going someplace dark and deep while they get the shite tortured out of 'em."

"That don't sound like fun," Ted frowned, his hands curling into perfect fists at his sides.

John's eyes blazed, cool and hard and burning. "Go. Bring pain. Go... wildcat. (If I can use 'wildcat' as a bluddy verb.)"

Ted was already moving, picking his way through the rocks with the agility of his feline namesake... he was so old, so very old, but he moved like a cat half his age. "An' what about you? I'm supposed ta go 'wildcattin'' while ya, what? Wait fer Mohammed to come t' th' mountain?"

John didn't even bat an eyelid as a LuthorCorp jet powered down out of the sky, crackling with dark orchid light, and crashed at full tilt further up the mountain on which they stood. It exploded in a blossom of fire, though as that fire tore up into the sky it, too, crackled with the pale indigo lightning.

"Something like that," John replied eventually, casually, lighting another cigarette. "Though I tell you? Mohammed was a decent bloke. This bint doesn't have a decent bone in her body."

"Holy Christ," Ted breathed, and began clambering back up the mountain, desperate to help the victims of that crash...

John shook his head sharply, his eyes growing harder still. "Don't even think about it, mate. They might need you down there. I'll handle this lot."

Ted hesitated, but then did as John suggested, hurrying back down the mountainside. "Wildcattin' it is."

And John?

John started to climb.

"All right," he breathed, "you bloody self-reincarnating bitch, you and me oh do let's dance."

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Let The Flames Begin."

Lex had almost managed to regain consciousness when The Countess hurled the jet out of the air. He had almost managed to wake up.

And then there was fire and pain and shadow and when Lex woke up, he woke up on a couch in an apartment in Soho or maybe SoHo.

He sat up with a cry and clutched at his head and someone was sitting next to him on the couch.

She wore an ankh, and she was dressed in black, and she kind of reminded him of a girl he'd seen at a distance once across the dancefloor at Club Zero. Pale and lovely. (Paramore was playing on the CD player.)

"Who the Hell are you?" he demanded. "Where's -- what did?"

"Please don't get me started on Hell," Death mumbled sadly. "They had an upheaval once there, the manager quit unexpectedly and kicked everyone out and I was running around for ages trying to stop everyone he'd loosed from walking The Earth. That's my job, you see, seeing folks to where they belong after Life. (And that week was not a good week for me, don't have fond memories.)"

"Ah," Lex mused.

He let this sink in.

"Well," he harrumphed, "is this it then? I expected something... better."

She smiled at him gently. "You don't have to go back, if you don't want. I mean, it really is in your hands. You don't have to go back. As it stands now, you're not far enough down the road you've trod that you'll be refused The Silver City or whichever Heaven. But if you go back out there-- (I'm not supposed to tell you this stuff. But it's nothing you don't know already.)"

Lex stood and strode towards the apartment door, wanting nothing more to do with this. Wanting not to waste time on the fever-dreams of misfiring cerebral junction-points. He'd never had a near-death experience, and he wasn't looking to try one.

"You don't have to go," Death tried again-- though she had known, she had always known, even before she'd tried the first time, that this would be in vain, still she tried again --as Lex's fingers found the doorknob. "If you go back out there, the man you'll become -- I've given men freedom from death before, I can give you freedom from Life, from that Life. You don't have to become that man. You can let it end now and it won't have to end in Fire."

Lex regarded Death with a stern gaze. "I'm not running from this. I'm not afraid. I don't care what imaginary demons you conjure to evoke my conscience. My path is set."

"You do know," Death murmured. "I thought you would."

Lex was straightforward, plain of speech: "I've always known my Destiny."

"I'll tell him you said that," Death smirked wearily. "That might even make him laugh."

Lex gripped the doorknob and turned it sharply and

dark orchid light searing bright through the darkness and his head was aching and his ears were ringing and he tasted blood and smoke.

He was sitting on a mountainside surrounded by shards and shrapnel of a burning LuthorCorp jet.

The Countess stood above him, her hand atop his head, like she was blessing him, like she was bestowing a knighthood.

"Such a fragile species," she murmured, "and yet so easily repaired. You may prove useful yet."

Lex coughed up smoke and bile and tried to get his bearings.

"The pilots?" he wheezed, glancing around helplessly at the sundered ruined destroyed plane.

The Countess sneered. "I highly doubt they would have proven useful."

Lex shook his head, and bowed his head, and suddenly, inexplicably, he was overcome with regret. He suddenly felt as though he'd made a terrible decision.

(Though he could not for the life of him remember what it was, or why.)

"On your feet," The Countess grunted, grabbing him by the lapel and hauling him to a standing position, "Naughty Boy. The Warlord's Construct may still be nearby. I do not know if he fled before we crashed, but I doubt The Construct is as fragile as you. That crash would not have hurt him overmuch."

Lex nodded listlessly, weakly, coughing more smoke and bile and no small quantity of blood. He didn't know what she was talking about.

"Let's get this over with," he rasped.

But he found his feet, and The Countess smiled a dark dark smile and patted him on the cheek. "So very, very useful."

 

[Wyldfire]

"Hey, guys?" she called to the other two girls. "Do either of you know what a clue looks like? Because I don't think I've ever found a clue before, but I think this is one of them."

That snapped Diana out of her constant vigilance. She had been quiet since before they had departed. Kara had refused the protective suit and ignored Diana's call for the suit. So just prior to their departure Diana had slipped out with the hood of the suit and went back after the rocks and the sling.

She had stayed quiet and distant during the flight, wearing the expression she had seen her mother wear on more than one occasion. It was a look that brooked no questions. It was a look of war.

On their arrival the other two girls began the search for the item and Diana had taken it onto herself to begin a perimeter watch. She knew their would be trouble, and she wanted to be the first line of defense for Kara. Occasionally as she swept around the temple she would reach into the makeshift bag that was the hood of the suit, and she would carress one of the rocks. The jolt that gave her kept her on the high she had experienced earlier. If this was what the mantle felt like she couldn't wait for it.

She finally decided to put in what she felt was helpful information.

"Does a clue look like this?" she said and then described the symbol for Hades/Zod. "If it does then it might be a clue."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Rose frowned, trying to keep up as Diana described a symbol...

She closed her eyes, trying to picture the angles and such in her head, but as she struggled to visualise that image, she stumbled upon an inspiration. She held up her hand and, eyes closed, she summoned evapourated particles of water from the air...

When she opened her eyes, a two-dimensional representation of The Mark of Zod hovered above the cup of her palm, shaped out of ice and crackling with blue-white lightning.

"It's a lot less elegant," she murmured, "but the mathematical fascination remains constant. There's a symmetry to it, but it's along a forty-five degree angle rather than straight down the vertical centerline. (That is, if I'm seeing this right.)"

She shook her head slowly as she enunciated into the comm: "No, The Symbol I'm seeing is more like Kara's. It's more like an 'S' than a 'Z,' there's curves rather than sharp angles. But based on geometric patterning, I'm pretty well convinced it's from the same alphabet. (I don't remember that one from Professor Smith's notebook, though. I just. Maybe? I don't remember.)"

Flexing her fingers, she dispelled The Mark. (Something about gazing at that Mark sent a shiver down her spine, and it wasn't the ice-energy that was doing that.)

Turning away from the wall with The Symbol, Rose let her eyes flicker again around the room, wondering if there were more Kryptonian glyphs that she'd missed in her haste.

"I don't see that particular Mark anywhere around here," she murmured softly. "Though I'm having another look. It seems... scary. Do you know what it means?"

 

[Wyldfire]

"I don't see that particular Mark anywhere around here," she murmured softly. "Though I'm having another look. It seems... scary. Do you know what it means?"

"It is the symbol of Aries," Diana replied, "I will take it as a good omen that you do not see that cursed symbol anywhere." Her voice was cold as ice with a hint of a fury under the cold overcurrent. It was an ancestral hatred, but it was strong none the less. Aries and his fellow gods had made the Amazons into warriors, and then he abandoned them. Left them with no rudder, no star to guide them.

That was why in the long run the Amazons had turned to Athena. They found comfort in her wisdom, even if they had never seen her as they had gazed on Aries.

"I have sense of impending trouble, so if you could, please, try to find what we are after so we may be gone from this beautiful, but dangerous place."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Rose listened quietly to the fury bottled into every syllable of Diana's explanation. To the... hate.

Rose hadn't realised that Hate could be beautiful. But Diana's hate was somehow righteous, somehow golden, she hated a dark dark thing and this became bright like The Sun, antithetical, a mirror-image.

Diana's hate was the opposite of the hate espoused and embodied by Zod's two cronies. By his soldiers who died. Their hate had been twisted and primal and sickening, morbid and creepifying on a whole fallen-angel sort of level.

But Diana's hate...

There was nothing fallen about the angel that hated what Diana hated.

And then, cool and hard and unyielding, Diana shook Rose out of her ADD-induced reverie: "I have sense of impending trouble, so if you could, please, try to find what we are after so we may be gone from this beautiful, but dangerous place."

Rose bit back on her daydream and she chuckled faintly.

"Yeah, um, sorry," she flinched, rolling the comm back and forth in her fingers. "I do kind of tend to. Inopportune timing. Never did get the hang of. I never did fine-tune the spider-sense. I keep getting caught up in the... in the sense of Wonder."

She clipped the comm to her belt, and straightened her spine and flexed her hands into fists.

"Back to business," she murmured.

And for emphasis, she raised one of those fists and thudded it hard into the centre of The Symbol.

The circular bit of wall shuddered and her heightened hearing couldn't miss the sound of dull air reverberating behind it.

Her mouth fell open. And without hesitating, she clicked over to infrared vision.

Unfortunately, the thickness of the stone wall and the lack of thermal variance kept her from being able to perceive any difference between this patch of wall and any of the others. But she'd heard that sound.

She dug her fingers into the wall's surface and she tried shoving it this way and dragging it that way tried yanking it out of its socket.

But she was only as strong as a human could be and still be human, she wasn't superhumanly strong, and while she managed to budge the thing an eighth of an inch-- thereby proving it could be moved --sweat was pouring down her brow and she couldn't move it any further than that.

'Ren2ci2 de5 Fo2zu3...,' she prayed in silent, panting astonishment.

She grabbed the comm back off of her belt.

"Ladies!" she exploded a little. "'Ma3shang4!' I found me a cellar door, but I don't gots the horsepower to Sesame it Open."

 

[AmenRa]

J'onn J'onzz's eyes were ablaze as he looked at, no, into Pete Ross. His jaws clenched as he rolled his hands into massive fists, muscles in his arms and chest undulating and contracting.

"Bring him on," he stated in a voice that was low, raspy, and edged upon darkness. It would be clear that nothing would dare stand against the Martian Manhunter.

He turned to Chloe.

"I go to them now," he said to her, "and this day I shall be the instrument of vengeance. I will stand with Kara Zor-El against Zod. She has the Crystal that Rose gave to her; only this can render Zod powerless and remand him to the Phantom Zone from which he came.

"This day," he said, his voice strong and defiant, "shall mark as the final battle between good and evil upon Earth. We shall be victorious, those of us who stand and fight, or everything we know will perish from this world. Mark me, though, for even should Zod win, the Earth he would possess will not be allowed to survive. Powers beyond even mine watch over this place, and they will strike with a greater fury if need be."

He reached and touched Pete Ross on the shoulder, extended his hand for Gabe Sullivan to shake, and then touched Chloe's cheek.

"I go now to my destiny," he told them, "and for the future of mankind upon this place, my home, my Earth. May peace walk with you upon soft sand the rest of your days."

And with that, J'onn J'onzz was no longer standing in front of them.

He had moved so fast that it was several seconds before his residual visual image dissipated from their sight.

And the Martian Manhunter flew East, towards the Last Daughter of Krypton, and the final battle with General Zod.

 

[AmenRa]

Brainiac

It felt the Crystal.

It heard the resonation of the lost fragment of the Crystal of Knowledge.

It dissolved itself from the crash, reforming into its shape of a man, and it followed what internal sensors told was the path.

The BRAINIAC flew, across fields and stream, to a temple sat near a lake and a mountain.

To the resting place where the Crystal had been hidden by the very scientist that made its program so long ago.

 

[Lunaramblings]

Dale straightened up. He looked around the room and then pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

Dale dialed a single key. Held it for a second and then the phone began to ring.

"What."

"You can hate me later. I think round two just began." Dale closed his phone and looked at Ceri. Then Jamie. And Marcy. He then stood slowly. His back neck and shoulders all cracking loudly.

"Alright... if this is how it all is going to end. So be it. Dale, whatever the hell is wrong with you better get fixed now. If that green guy fails, I figure that it won't be long before this evil bastard comes looking for revenge. These kids, they are going to need you. All of you, even the parts that make me sick. Pull it together."

"I will do everything I can. I love you."

"Sometimes thats not enough. But thats for later. You protect Merick and his friends."

There was a swoosh as Merick entered the room. A wine bottle in hand.

"No rest for the weary eh? Doc, when this is over, we need to talk about this." Merick sets the bottle on the table. "What we doin?"

The worry that Merick had coursing through his blood was better than any drug. It made his synapses fire faster and harder than they ever had before. His heart pounding like a drum. Energy began flowing from his body, rolling in waves.

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Let me try," Kara offered as she walked over towards Rose and Diana. They had apparently discovered Kryptonian symbols carefully decorated into a stone wall, and it was on the other side that Kara hoped the object of their searching lay.

"I don't know much about Greek Gods and stories of legends," Kara began as she walked up to the wall, "but we're here to write our own ones."

With that she pushed the stone portion of the wall in quite a bit further. There was a soft rumbling, and a few pebbles were loosened, falling down into tiny cracks.

"I guess this thing hasn't been touched in years," Kara noted.

But the stone wouldn't go in any further, so Kara figured it had to move either left or right.

"One sec," she mumbled, using her hands to try forcing the stone to the right. When that didn't work, she pushed it to the left. Sure enough, the stone began rolling along its path, slowly at first, but faster as Kara obtained a better grip. Finally their obstacle was pushed far enough to the side that the three girls could walk into the hidden chamber.

But Kara waited.

Inside was what appeared to be a suit of armor... or a very fancy set of Chinese garments, lavishly decorated with jewels and priceless gems. Up a little higher, Kara saw what appeared to be a mask of some sorts.

"I don't see the Crystal," Kara said.

She took a step forward, hoping to get a better view, when suddenly she felt all her strength leaving her. Two gems, embedded in the eye holes on the mask, began glowing a fierce green. Kara fell to the floor, her skin and veins turning a sickly green.

Kryptonite.

 

[ChasNicollette]

John, The Countess, and Lex

John staggered up the mountain, panting hard, with each breath regretting every one of the hundreds of packs of cigarettes he'd smoked since he was a small boy. But if he could beat the woman that waited at the top of this mountain, he might find a modicum of redemption, if he could defeat this villainness that he'd unleashed upon the world.

He staggered up to the crash site, finding Lex Luthor there, finding Lex Luthor in the thrall of a curvaceous brunette dressed as a stewardess.

She was staring down the mountain like she'd just spotted something distasteful, but she wasn't staring at John.

"Oi!" he growled, snapping his fingers, "Maggie! You've got bigger problems!"

Her eyes flashed at him, flashed dark orchid and bright, and she sneered.

"I hardly think you qualify as a problem," The Countess laughed delightedly, darkly. "It was your incompetence that awoke me in the first place. All you managed to do was kill Madelyn and Brianna before they could nest in proper host bodies, and that... that only served to feed me, make me stronger. Anyway, I have little time for reunions--"

John snarled, his face a mask of determination and fury: "Oh, for me, luvvie? You'll jolly well make time."

And he pointed at her with his right hand held out straight and shaped in the hand-sign of the devil's horns and he cried out at the top of his lungs "Azarath Metrion Zinth--"

...but The Countess simply gestured and that light flashed and John's lungs seized and he fell to his knees, coughing up mucous and tar...

"Such a fragile species," she reiterated. "And so much of the time, you spend killing yourselves. This is your doom, you know. You will survive so much, only to destroy yourselves."

She glanced at Lex. "Stay here. Stay out of trouble. I have something I must do."

...and she vanished in a streak of violent violet, propelling herself down the mountain at furious speed.

Lex stumbled to John Constantine's side, touched his shoulder.

John waved him off, hacking and coughing and gasping.

"I'm all right," he wheezed. "I'm all right."

"Did you really think that would work?" Lex shook his head, frowning. "Shouting nonsense words at her? You might as well have cried, hnh, 'Klaatu barada nikto' and expected her to burst into flame."

"Tosser," John harrumphed, shouldering away from Lex and then beginning to struggle down the mountain. "Besides, it's 'Klaatu varata nicto,' everyone bloody knows that."

Across field and stream, The Countess stormed, and she landed in a puff of dust and wind beside an ancient little tree, fists curled at her sides. Power seared through her, as she stared down The BRAINIAC.

"Hello, Little Puppet," she murmured, with a purr and a sneer. "I shall have to ask you to seek the stone no further. It is not meant for your master... it is not meant for you... but if you like, I can offer you small recompense for giving up this prize: if you like, I can turn you into a Real Boy."

And it was then, with roaring engines of vast numbers of four-wheel-drive vehicles, that the military arrived...

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

Not for the first time, Rose reflected on the enormous strength present in the musculature of Kryptonians. She herself could bend metal bars if called upon, maybe kick the door off of a car from the inside if she used both feet, but she was no powerhouse.

Not like that. Not like Kara.

Kara moved the cover-circle-- after a little bit of figuring --as easily as might have an angel rolling away the stone from a certain tomb.

And there it was, more reds and golds, an ornate design...

Vaguely, it resembled the ashigaru armour of feudal Japan, but then again, China had been a huge influence on Japan, from everything to writing styles to warfare to philosophy.

But then the eyes lit up, neither red nor gold, the eyes on the mask lit up a fierce familiar frightening green, and Kara folded like parchment.

"Awh, geeze," she whimpered, devastated, "booty twap."

...but, perhaps to Rose's credit, she did not hesitate...

She launched herself forward and planted her thumbs on both eyes of the mask and pumped them crackling sputtering full of cold...

She dialed them down as far as she could, down as close as she could to Absolute Zero, so no particles of energy could escape. (Just as she'd done to the fragment left for John Smith in The Kawatche Caves, she froze it so solid even its atoms couldn't decay.)

This was... hard. It had been hard the first time and it was even harder the second time because she was trying, in desperation, to keep from damaging the rest of the ornate suit, trying to keep her cold energies from warping or distorting anything but those two deadly emerald green eye-sockets...

She could hear engines outside.

"'O1, zhe4 zhen1 shi4 ge5 kuai4le4 de5 jin4zhan3,'" she lamented, squinching her eyes closed.

 

[AmenRa]

The BRAIN InterActive Construct saw the supernatural human before him.

Fourth-dimensional matrixed algorithyms ran their course, and in less time than it takes a living cell to divide, the computer memory banks within BRAINIAC's construct revealed what and who she was.

It looked at her.

Then it made a motion with its head, deliberately to the side, as it mimicked the human gesture of "cracking its neck".

There was even a small, audible 'pop'.

Then it smiled.

As the BRDMs, BMPs, t72s, and other Russian-made Chinese military troop carriers arrived, BRAINIAC stretched out its arms.

Hypersonic carrier waves bounded from the BRAINIAC, instantaneously seeking the receivers and transceivers held within the military vehicles, their radios, every piece of digital electronics the soldiers carried.

And with another smile, the BRAINIAC Virus was uploaded.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex and John and Ted and The Countess

The military vehicles had surrounded the field in which the cloaked superplane had landed; though they couldn't find it, they knew it had landed here... and they swore at each other in Mandarin and Cantonese and they hunted for the mystery device right under their noses.

Other vehicles surrounded the temple and the tree and the mountain upon which the LuthorCorp jet had crashed.

But they walked right into The BRAINIAC's viral transmission.

And while they were quick enough to block off Lex and John from climbing down the mountain, to cut Lex and John off from reaching The Countess, they were not quick enough to prevent Ted "Wildcat" Grant from stumbling into the temple.

(Lex and John scrambled towards a cave mouth at John's direction, swearing in their own feeble languages, trying to hide from the prying up-turned eyes of the armed forces of The People's Republic of China.)

Holding his side and feeling a little bit closer to his natural age, Ted staggered in through the holy place's corridors.

"Hello?" he called, wishing like Hell for a drink of water, his gravelly voice echoing through the passages. "Is someone here? There's a whole passel of shit hitting the fan out there, I don't know that we-all wanna be around when the wind changes. Hello?"

The Countess gazed at the air around her, a long slow squint-eyed gaze, as if she were both unconcerned with the arrayed military forces and simultaneously capable of decoding what The BRAINIAC had beamed forth.

And perhaps she was so capable, because she ran her tongue around in her mouth and nodded slowly.

"Your touch is contagion," she noted. "I can respect that."

But then she pointed her hands, all ten fingers, outstretched towards The BRAINIAC...

"But Bellerophon respected The Chimera," she growled, "and still he slew that vile beast."

Power crackled upon her fingertips and her voice cried out: "FIAT FULGUR!"

...and a whole electrical storm's worth of lightning vented from her hands, pouring through the air towards The Warlord's Construct.

 

[camerindrake]

Damian

Before Damian could verbally respond to Alfred but not before he hit the call button for the boomtube from his belt, he saw but a red blur.

Damian then looked to Alfred and asked, "Was that J'onn?"

then the boomtube crackled and appeared in the front yard.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ceri, Gabe, Pete, Chloe, Jamie, Bruce, and Alfred

There came a swooosh as Merick returned, inexplicably carrying a wine bottle and touching base, a bit coldly, with his parents.

(Maybe this is hitting him harder than I thought, Ceri winced.)

There came a swoosh as J'onn faded, faster than the human eye could see, bold as brass and sounding not a little bit like he was going to his doom.

(Gabe bowed his head, gathering the hand that J'onn had shaken into a worried fist. Pete punched Gabe in the arm, trying to be encouraging, but his own face was more than a little miserable. Chloe, still shaken from having witnessed the destruction of that 767, was standing and gazing at the spot from which J'onn had vanished, even as she was attempting to hand Kyle his sunglasses.

--he'd wanted to call his sister, after all.)

But then, only seconds after J'onn's disappearance, the house shook--

krekkaBOOOOM!

Out on the front porch, Alfred had been about to comment that he hadn't seen anything, had missed the red blur that had been J'onn and then... and then... Damian did something.

Alfred staggered, almost fell to one knee, he'd have fallen to both knees had he not grabbed the porch railing to steady himself. His eyes were as big as cartwheels, his face as pallid as a certain bust of Pallas, his hands white-knuckled on the railing that had caught his fall.

"What," he breathed, "in bloody blue blazes...?"

...back inside, spines stiffened almost collectively, almost as one.

"Strewth," Ceri breathed.

"What she said," Pete agreed.

Wide-eyed, Chloe glanced at Jamie and at the others. "Um. Sonic boom, I guess? From our Martian friend's superspeedy departure?"

Jamie shook his head, his eyes narrowing, his jaw cricking as it constricted.

"No," he breathed, sounding coldly furious, "there was nothing sonic about that boom. At least not in the way that you'd-- universal harmonic turned to cacophony-- vortex manipulator--"

And then he ran from the room in a blur of blue suit and red tie and green shoes.

As Jamie sprinted down the hallway, Bruce Wayne emerged from a side passage, looking a little bleary-eyed and a whole lot pissed as Hell: "Is someone trying to blow up my house?"

Jamie barely slowed down, and his voice sounded no less furious. "Possibly. Stay indoors."

But Bruce didn't heed Jamie's warning, he sprinted right along with the scientist.

They reached the front door in a heartbeat and Bruce ran to Alfred's side ("I'm all right," Alfred assured Bruce. "My heart isn't. I'm all right.") and Jamie, meanwhile, got all up in Damian's grill.

"Listen," he seethed. "You. I am trying to be welcoming. I am trying to be polite, as I'm told that normally I'm quite rude but STOP BLOWING HOLES IN MY TIME CONTINUUM. You can bloody well jolly well tear up your home Earth's dimensional barriers all you please but WIPE YOUR FEET before coming into SOMEONE ELSE'S ALTERNITY."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick tensed with the faux sonic boom. He watched Bruce and Jamie whip off through the house. He decided that they were fine. Whatever it was, Jamie seemed to have a handle on it.

He looked hard at his father. "I am going to make this very clear. Things you did, the lives you ruined. They are forever going to taint and destroy you. You will never find redemption. Nor will you ever recieve my blessing. However... You are my father. I love you. I will not forget that either. Dad, I love you. I need you. I can't imagine truly losing you. For that much, your past is your past. Let's live for what we got." Merick and Dale embraced tightly. Marcy crying, not tears of sadness. Bit tears of Pride. Tears of Shame. She didn't know if she could forget the things Dale once was, but here her son, has done so.

 

[camerindrake]

Damian

Damian looked at them all. His face a mix of surprise of the sound from a space jump, and and the amusement of their reaction.

Then answering Jamie he says, "It was only a space jump, not a dimensional jump. The space time continuum is safe."

The boom tube itself wasn't much bigger than two people abreast. though about 8 feet in height. however it was cylindrical in shape. Damian hit a button on the outer casing and it went to active stealth. The boom tube went through several possible looks one an American telephone booth, followed by a a British police booth, then finally a great oak.

Damian then finally closed the front compartment on the buckle of the utility harness, looking at Alfred he continued, "We will finish our conversation later, if you would like." Then he looked at the rest and finished, "Whats going on? Why did J'onn fly off to in a rush."

 

[AmenRa]

The lightning struck the BRAINIAC, and the synthetic humanoid's body disrupted, broken apart, nothing but an oozing, oily, inky fluid.

But it did not matter that the physical form was destroyed.

The artificial intelligence was now part of the military's electronic network, and within a few instants, it was part of a super-secret military infrastructure that existed not on Earth, but high above in orbit.

Satellites, placed in space years ago during a Cold War arms race now purred to life, their electromagnetic pulse shielded circuitry clicking and whizzing as relays were closed and servos activated. Long-dormant targeting computers came on-line, and within a few cycles, focused their sights on targets Earthside that had been deemed strategic by General Zod.

One of these targets, of course, was the very coordinates where now stood Lex, the Countess, and the others.

There were other targets, too, but there was a certain house that would soon come to bear interest for a certain blonde-haired Kryptonian female.

This house, now targeted by ballistic nuclear warheads, was a quaint, two-story, yellow house that rested quietly and innocently on a farm in Smallville.

 

[Wyldfire]

"Hello?" he called, wishing like Hell for a drink of water, his gravelly voice echoing through the passages. "Is someone here? There's a whole passel of shit hitting the fan out there, I don't know that we-all wanna be around when the wind changes. Hello?"

That Voice! Diana's face went through a number of different emotions all at one. How could he be here? And it seemed he'd brought a whole new set of problems with him. Or had these all been on the way anyways? No time to ponder it.

"We really need to find what we are after sisters," Diana said, "You two find it and let me deal with outside until you're ready for us to flee this place." She didn't voice that she really wanted to drag a certain old man away from here and question what brought him to this place. She knew Mother would be very displeased if Ted Grant were to be hurt while Diana could have helped prevent it.

Ted Grant was a very dear friend of her mother's from her mother's sabbatical into the world of man. Diana didn't know exactly how close the two were but there had been moments when Diana was young that she suspected they had been very close.

And now, in this confusing time of the Gods and Demigods walking the earth again, he shows up out of no where. She ran towards the voice saying "Uncle Ted, what have you brought with you that makes so very much noise?"

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

As strong as Kara was, it only took a tiny sliver of her home world to make her bend at the knees. It only took two small gems, placed in two separate sockets, to make the Last Daughter of Krypton humble herself before a ceremonial garment.

But Kara was not alone in her quest.

Rose instantly sprang forward, blocking the radiation from the Kryptonite with her hands. Kara still felt her strength leaving her body, and her veins remained a sickly green color, causing her to writhe in pain for a few moments.

"Rose..." Kara mumbled, and she slowly felt the warmth returning to her young body.

The Kryptonite had finally been contained, its presence there no longer a threat, and Kara wearily stood up onto her feet. She felt a little light headed, and she even stumbled once or twice before she was sure on her feet.

"Thank you," she said.

Kara sighed with relief and collected her bearings.

"Why would... why would they put meteor rocks here?" Kara wondered aloud. Diana had rushed off to deal with whatever trouble was brewing outside, urging that Kara and Rose finish their business inside.

"I don't think the stone's in here," Kara said, and she found her eyes drawn to the robes again. There seemed to be a rather ornate pattern on the front, what looked to be a river of sorts.

Or at least it looked like a river.

"I think... I think that it might be a map," Kara added, scrutinizing the image before her.

She noted the central figure on the robes, and it looked to be another temple. Or perhaps it was the temple they were in already.

Kara grumbled.

Searching for these Crystals was a pain in the ass.

"Any ideas?"