The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[ChasNicollette]

Jamie, Bruce, and Alfred

"Well," Jamie paused. "Sorry for flying off of the. Erm. Sorry. I was worried you'd created one of those artificial perpendicular universes, same as you'd used to get here. And that sort of cavalier showboating, that's like dumping zebra mussels into a wetlands wildlife preserve. J'onn was going to China because there was a pickle with this General bloke. (This technology isn't traceable, is it? Who else has it?)"

But then it began changing forms, and Jamie arched an eyebrow.

"You've got a chameleon circuit, that's usef--"

...but then it turned into the 1960's-era police call box and his spine went all funny and his mouth went all quiet.

"That's a queer sight," he mumbled softly, absently, distractedly. "They don't use those anymore. I haven't seen one of those since-- not since-- oh it was recently, when was that--"

And then he stared to nowhere, and began fumbling with his father's broken fob watch, running his thumb over it in his pocket. The fob watch on a keyring with a single key: a key to an ordinary Yale lock.

Bruce frowned, helping Alfred to his feet, and reached up a hand in front of Jamie's face. He snapped his fingers sharply: "Stay with us, Doctor."

"Yes, erm," Jamie blinked, shook his head, slipped the watch back into his pocket. "It's a tree now. Mostly harmless."

"Mostly," Alfred agreed with a harrumph. "'Even some of the trees are on her side.'"

"Mm, yeah," Jamie chuckled, still feeling a bit like a ghost, "Lewis. Quite right."

"Come on inside," Bruce indicated to Alfred and to Jamie, "get yourselves a cup of tea or something."

And then he glanced at Damian, and while his smile was the charming billionaire smile, his eyes were the eyes of The Bat: "You should come inside, too. Unless you're not quite finished waking my neighbours and scaring my oldest friend? It seems like there's more work to be done."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ted

Ted Grant had not been able to discern, between his focusing on climbing down the mountain and the great cloud of dust kicked up by the superplane's passengers' run to the temple, whom it was that had entered this place. He'd no idea if they were on the side of good or of evil, or even what that would mean in this particular situation.

He just knew that there weren't many people in this world who he'd stand back and let get tromped all over by the Red Chinese Army.

And when he saw her, running towards him, his mouth dropped open wide and he shook his head and his hands flew to his head, knocking off his baseball cap.

"Little Di?" he mumbled, completely flabbergasted, because of all the people he didn't know to expect here, this girl he expected least of all.

But there was no mistaking her. (No mistaking that accent.) She looked so much like Lyta, looked so much like her mother... There was no mistaking that this was his "niece." (Well, one of them, anyway.)

The last time he'd seen her, she'd been knee-high to a-- well, to something short.

"Little Lady Di?" he mumbled again, shaking his head, reaching for her with bewildered eyes and trembling half-gloved fingers. "(What in the name'a 'Madcap Maxie' Baer are you doin' here?) My old age is finally catchin' up to me. I gone senile, an' I'm seein' things."

He glanced incredulously over his shoulder.

"There was a whole contingent o' heavily-armed jackasses complainin' about their airspace gettin' violated," he mumbled, "but under th' circumstances, I might'a hallucinated them, too. ('Wicked inclination.')"

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose

"Any ideas?"

Rose was a little bit light-headed, too, but she tried for a moment to recover her energies, shaking her head.

And then she glanced at the chest of the outfit, and she squinted, scrutinising it in a way she hadn't been able to while Kara had been incapacitated.

She shoved her hands in her pockets and she stared at it.

There were tiny little symbols like the ones from the journal. Kryptonian symbols in miniature. (She even saw The Symbol in there, again the "eight" version.)

"I dunno," she mumbled. "I just dunno. There was a little swampy wetland out there, with trees and stuff, and there was a tiny stream further up the mountain, but I didn't see any massive river like the one that's here. (Maybe there was a river here centuries ago? I blame global warming.)"

She shook her head and she walked in a little half-circle, staring at the mask and at the chestpiece. "Whomever put this thing here, they really wanted you to earn this Crystal. Tests of intelligence and problem-solving and-and-and character. Everything's a math problem with Kryptonians, I guess, and you gotta have all the factors in place. Geometry."

But then she paused, and she shook her head, and her hand came out of her pocket holding a quarter and a dime.

"Hang on," she mumbled. "Hang on hang on. Hang on."

She held up the quarter in her right hand, and the dime in her left, and she held the coins close together. And then she moved her left hand closer to Kara, holding it so that the dime, with its closeness, would eventually seem larger than the quarter. That the dime would obscure the quarter.

(Her dad had shown her this once, to show her how something could be bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. "House of Leaves" had given Rose a nosebleed and her dad had tried to explain.

His explanation had also given her a nosebleed, but now everything was lining up.

You could see something from a certain angle and it would look bigger than it was really.)

"Perspective," she mumbled. "Not geometry... 'Gee, I'm a tree.'"

She hesitated, and lowered her coins, and bit her lip and shook her head.

"No," she mumbled, "no, that's just stupid."

 

[ChasNicollette]

The Countess

The Countess arched an eyebrow at The BRAINIAC's dispersal, and she hmphed softly to herself.

"Why do I think that that was too easy?" she mused languidly. "Why do I think I have not seen the last of you, Puppet?"

She shook her head, and cast about at her feet, at the ground at which she stood.

"Now then," she wondered, seemingly ignoring the vast array of men poised around her, "where was I?"

Her lip twisted in a delectably sensual smirk. "Ah, yes. How silly of me."

And her fingers hummed and glowed with power as she probed the rocky ground, seeking the energies of the long-buried Crystal.

"Come out come out wherever you are," she sang softly, hungrily.

 

[Wyldfire]

"Little Di?" he mumbled, completely flabbergasted, because of all the people he didn't know to expect here, this girl he expected least of all.

But there was no mistaking her. (No mistaking that accent.) She looked so much like Lyta, looked so much like her mother... There was no mistaking that this was his "niece." (Well, one of them, anyway.)

The last time he'd seen her, she'd been knee-high to a-- well, to something short.

"Little Lady Di?" he mumbled again, shaking his head, reaching for her with bewildered eyes and trembling half-gloved fingers. "(What in the name'a 'Madcap Maxie' Baer are you doin' here?) My old age is finally catchin' up to me. I gone senile, an' I'm seein' things."

He glanced incredulously over his shoulder.

"There was a whole contingent o' heavily-armed jackasses complainin' about their airspace gettin' violated," he mumbled, "but under th' circumstances, I might'a hallucinated them, too. ('Wicked inclination.')"

"How I arrived here will have to wait for another time Uncle Ted," Diana said allowing a quick peck on his cheek, "What is more important is getting what we are here for and getting away before Aries himself arrives, and I have a very strong feeling he will be here."

She heard the lightning and the sounds of the troops moving about. How to get out of here as fast as possible with the least in casualties? That was an easy answer, a distraction at the right time to allow the others time to get away. It would have to be either Rose or herself, Kara couldn't be risked and mother wouldn't be happy if it was Ted.

She stopped mulling that through and again looked at Ted, "How many and how far behind you?" was all she asked as she cracked her knuckles and started unhooking the lariat she had grabbed before she had left.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Lex and John

The cave was small, and it was dank.

Peering out from the entrance, Lex occupied almost all of the tiny entrance, and blocked out most of the available light. Which wasn't much.

"Well," Lex murmured, voice as laconic as ever. "There's the army. So where's The General?"

"Smeg your pardon?" Constantine wondered, eyebrow arched.

"General Zod," Lex murmured, glancing over his shoulder at the warlock. "A villain from another world bent on assembling these Elements before the good people of Earth can unite them against him."

Constantine scrutinised the billionaire. "The Warlord. He wasn't in the original batch of Veritos Prophecies. Only a Duchess' crystal ball suggested his interference. Him and a... Clockwork Man. A 'Construct.'"

"'Veritos,'" Lex muttered. "'Veritas.' Truth. This is an amusing concept to associate with the prognostications of backwards-thinking Dark Agers."

"Glad you're enjoying the wind-up," John chuffed. "But more to the point: The Warlord's on Earth?"

Lex smiled ever-so-faintly. "We had a little sit-down chat earlier. Well. He was standing and he forced me to kneel, but you get the idea."

John's face hardened. "He's not here yet. Which means we still have a chance. We have to get down there and get the stone before either Maggie or The Warlord."

Lex flared his nostrils slightly. "I hate to tell you this, Liverpudlian? I may have read Sun Tzu cover to cover as a child, but even he didn't have a battle-plan for this eventuality."

"Never been much of one for plans," John replied, darkly. "Plans always come back and bite me on the arse. I'm more for making stuff up as one goes. Empty your pockets."

"I hardly see how--"

John smiled thinly. "Me pockets 'ave a ball of twine, a cheap-arse lighter, and a pack of Silk Cut all gone save one. So we're sort of reliant on your carry-on luggage, if you don't mind. Empty your pockets."

Lex patted down his pockets. And he'd found, to his dismay, that most of his things he'd lost in the plane crash.

That Map. His gun. His Blackberry. The file the courier had brought. (He'd read that, though, and oh, it had made interesting reading.)

But in the inside pocket of his coat sat a small lead box given to him by his father, and in that box sat a small fragment of green rock. He'd retrieved both of these from his Contemplation Room at the same time he'd fetched The Map.

And it was these that John gazed upon like they could light up his world.

"Star-Ore," he breathed softly, holding up the gleaming fragment of meteor rock, before glancing again at the lead box. "And where in The Sphincter of Hell did you find this little treasure?"

Lex harrumphed. "My father gave it to me after an abortive birthday event. He claimed it was forged from the armour of Saint George. (It was forged all right, if you can correctly call a fake artefact a 'forgery.')"

John gazed up at Lex, as John held the meteor rock in one hand and the dragonslayer's box in the other. "Don't give dear oul' Dad much credit, do you?"

"Quid pro quo," Lex snarked back. "If he ever gave me any credit--"

John held up the meteor fragment, dismissing Lex's tirade mid-sentence. "This stuff. Has a lot in common with magic. It reverses things and bends things. That which is impregnable becomes pregnable. That which is immutable becomes mutable. People, rules, Laws of Physics. Star-Ore is, in a sense, magical in its own right. And magic is from beyond the stars. Kith and bloody kin. In the oul' days, blokes like Nick Flamel and Carl Jung used Star-Ore to perform alchemy, because the rules got all soggy 'round the fringes."

"Alchemy," Lex snorted, "is just as much a fairy-tale as Saint George was."

"D'you know," John chuckled, eyes half-lidded, "I'll bet that's the closest you've gotten to speaking the truth since you woke up this morning. But here's my bit of truth: the easiest and best kind of alchemy is returning a thing once-glorious to its former glories. Lead, gold, yeah, you can do it, but the proper thing to do with alchemy is to restore."

Lex arched an eyebrow. "This prattling is getting us nowh--"

But again John Constantine shushed Lex Luthor: "Shut your gob," John growled, "and open your eyes, and you will get a big surprise."

The meteor rock in John's hand flared to life, burned so brightly its light filled the cave, and Lex was momentarily struck blind.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ted

"Ares, huh?" Ted ran his tongue over his teeth. "Y'know, there was a time I woulda laughed someone out the door for claimin' a God o' War could walk the Earth. But then I met your momma. And there was that thing in '45."

He glanced at the way out, his own hands curling so tightly into fists that his knuckles cracked themselves.

"There's a literal hunnert of 'em out there," Ted murmured. "Guns and bombs an' vehicles. Thick on the ground like ants at a picnic, and they're right on our damn doorstep."

Ted grinned at Diana, at her hunger for combat, her eagerness to do battle.

"Really are yer mother's daughter," he noted, as he stalked, catlike, back towards the temple's entrance. "She ever teach you her right hook? Sweetest thing in the whole history o' The Sweet Science. (I taught 'er that.)"

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wayne Manor: Smallville

I reached for my glasses and nearly doubled over as a wave of pain hit me.

No, I was not going anywhere. Especiially since Ceri had seen that.

"Chloe, I think I'll just have Odin pass on a message. I think I really should get some help and go...."

krekkaBOOOOM!

I jumped, then nearly passed out as pain swept over me. Ceri was at my side in a instant. A look passed between her and Jamie and he was off in a flash, leaving me with both the women left looking at me in alarm.

"I'm ok. I just sat still and started stiffening up. nothing a week of bedrest can't fix"

Great. Now I was getting a "mom" stare from BOTH of them!!

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Odin

Swirling through skies that existed only in theory, the AI known as Odin ran the silicon pathways, teasing , tricking and bludgeoning the information his friends wanted him to glean for them. The Chinese encryption on their satellites were child's play. In seconds he was in among them, reading their minds and listening on electronic ears as they whispered all their secrets.

Satellite data and codes.

Defense grids, and contingency plans.

And the location of the Breath of the Dragon, the doomsday satellites that had Odin's attention in nanoseconds.

Code flew through his electronic mind. Whispers wrapped themselves around the missiles electronics. If these were launched, they would explode the instant the satellite deployed them. Nobody on the ground would know, as the commands were now hardwired into the electronics of the missiles themselves, not the launchers.

For he was born with one overriding directive, his tablet brought down from the moutain: All human life is sacred.

Odin was getting back to the task of grabbing a spy satellite when he felt a presence.

It was dark, evil. Chuthulu walked a electronic highway and it cared not for followers, for it had souls enough in it's breast.

Odin stopped, and sat still, awaiting the beast.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Ceri, Pete, Chloe, and Gabe

Ceri was at Kyle's side in an instant.

"Pete," she instructed, "check the fridge for ice and the cupboards for tea-towels."

Pete, dutiful First Responder that he was, bounded to the freezer.

"I got Brussels sprouts," he mused, "and I got Lima beans. (Looks like 'Fred forgot to fill the ice-cube trays in all the hustle and the bustle and the hassle.)"

"A freezer in Smallville without a bag of sweet corn?" Chloe blinked, getting up to hand Kyle his glasses straight across rather than make him reach for them, and then helping Pete by fetching tea-towels from the cupboard under the sink. "That's like a travesty."

"Perhaps Mister Wayne can be excused," Gabe smiled, trying to keep up with the quipping, "because he's new in town?"

Darkly, Ceri shook her head, playing along: "Ignorance of the law, Mr. Sullivan, is no excuse."

"Mixed veggies!" Pete called, triumphantly, holding up a bag of the stuff he'd dug out of the back corner of the freezer. "Mixed veggies got corn in 'em, he's off the hook."

Gabe breathed a theatrical sigh of relief. "That's fantastic. Otherwise we would have had to run him out of Lowell County, and it's a royal pain trying to assemble a posse at this hour of the morning."

Pete gathered up the mixed veggies and the Lima beans each in a tea-towel, and brought these to Ceri as improvised ice-packs.

Ceri then held these to Kyle's bruises. They weren't much, but they weren't nothing.

"In lieu of healing magic," she smiled faintly, "these'll have to do."

Chloe returned to her seat at the computer, and she frowned as she noted that Odin had been active while she'd been up, and she couldn't immediately decipher what he'd been up to.

Her fingers hit the keys: 'Hagar the Horrible? Is there a pillaged village I should know about?'

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Odin

Odin was the Ghost in the Machine. He was a spirit riding electronic waves and tides, and he was watching.

He was also watching at Wayne Manor, and listening. so when Chloe sent out her message, it went no farther than her laptop.

He was not the only thing listening.

Then her screen went blank, with a command crawling across the screen: "Put on the watch and glasses and keep everyone close to Merick. If they flash red he evacs everyone to the shelter. No questions, it's not safe right now."

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe, Gabe, Ceri, and Pete

Chloe stiffened, and shook her head.

She glanced at Kyle. "Um. The glasses. I need them back from you, if that's okay. And also? Nobody leave the kitchen. Nobody leave Merick's jump-scar radius. Dad, can you get the others?"

Worry sleeting through his eyes, Gabe nodded and hurried to the hallway.

"Begging your pardon," Chloe continued, "Doctor and Mrs. Tennylson. We may need Merick to teleport us to that bunker after all."

Ceri was instantly alert, but her focus was still on icing-down Kyle. "I take there's been new developments?"

Pete was blowing on his hands to warm them up a little after slinging frozen foods, and his eyes were hard though his voice was shaky: "Yeah, that's Chloe's 'breaking news' face."

Chloe shook her head. "I can't get a more specific sitrep, Odin's demanding radio silence."

And then she noticed something else, something more than a little horrifying.

She ran her tongue over her teeth. "All I can tell you is, happily enough, though we've been lucky about this so far? There's a big bank of low-altitude cloud-cover moving in over Shanghai and its outlying areas. Looks like rain. And it means we're not going to have live video coverage of the big pay-per-view event."

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick locked eyes with Chloe.

"Did you get the satellite photos of where ever Rose and the others went to? I don't care what The Rust Bucket says. If shit goes bad, I will get you guys gone, but I won't abandon Rose. Not for this world or a million others. Get me the photos. Please." Merick knew something was wrong. He could feel it. He locked eyes with Dale. Almost daring him to argue.

Merick had made his choice. No matter what he would protect his friends. No matter the cost to himself. That is what being a hero means.

"Mom, Dad... no matter what... I love you."

Merick's eyes danced with Emerald flames. The energy growing less wild, more controlled as Merick focused.

 

[AmenRa]

Zod

His landing was delayed, as he hovered silently above the clouds, watching from high in the upper atmosphere, using Kryptonian sight to see the events unfold below him.

The BRAINIAC, speaking a through the cybernetic telepathic link it shared with its Master, had told Zod of the arrival of the sorceress, and the resulting uncertain outcome of the events as they now unfolded.

So Zod, in his wisdom, chose to wait, and watch, and see how the Daughter of Zor-El's en tourage dealt with this new threat.

 

[Wyldfire]

"Ares, huh?" Ted ran his tongue over his teeth. "Y'know, there was a time I woulda laughed someone out the door for claimin' a God o' War could walk the Earth. But then I met your momma. And there was that thing in '45."

He glanced at the way out, his own hands curling so tightly into fists that his knuckles cracked themselves.

"There's a literal hunnert of 'em out there," Ted murmured. "Guns and bombs an' vehicles. Thick on the ground like ants at a picnic, and they're right on our damn doorstep."

Ted grinned at Diana, at her hunger for combat, her eagerness to do battle.

"Really are yer mother's daughter," he noted, as he stalked, catlike, back towards the temple's entrance. "She ever teach you her right hook? Sweetest thing in the whole history o' The Sweet Science. (I taught 'er that.)"

Diana smiled back as she began formulating tactics for this coming fight. Two delaying an unconfirmed number of adversaries who had projectile weaponry as well as mechanized armor. As she thought on this an old phrase she'd heard her mother credit Uncle Ted with came to mind. "With the mechanized armor we're just going to have to punt, but I think we can give the ground troups some level of difficulty." she said as she began surveying the temple.

It was a beautiful place. Then a stray bit of hope hit her, she hoped these soldiers cared for the well being of the temple. It would limit them to an extent that Kara and the rest could get out. Diana knew she would have to "convince" Uncle Ted to go with the others, but she would cross that line when she got to it. She knew there was really no way, in the present circumstances, that all of them would make it out. If push came to shove Diana might be able to weasel out of this if she could find the embasy here in this Eastern country.

"Ted, if things get bad there is a young lady that has to get out of here. If it gets very bad, please get her out of here and I will keep the rear safe for us to escape."

She smiled at him again, "Yes, Uncle Ted, she told me about that right hook. Maybe during this fight I can show you how she turned that into the begining of a flurry of blows." Diana said as she tokk a pair of bandanas out of her pockets and began wrapping her knuckles with them.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Chloe

"We don't have access to a printer," Chloe murmured, "unless Bruce has a wifi-capable Lexmark upstairs he hasn't told us about. Still, it seemed like monitor coverage of Honduras worked for you before. (To spectacular effect, really.) Would a stationary shot work just as well?"

She takked a few keys on the black laptop, and up on the silver laptop there came an array of photos she'd surveilled earlier.

"Here we go," she arched her eyebrows, and pointed to her Gateway. "Shots of Shanghai, courtesy of Landsat 7 and the good people at EROS. Will that do?"

Then she eyed him, she eyed her new friend Merick, and reflected not for the first time how far he'd come in a single day.

And his loyalty to Rose was the kind of thing you could have written an epic about, back in the day. (Chloe couldn't help feeling a little bit jealous of that.)

"Promise me you'll be careful, Launchpad," she insisted. "Promise me no-one else dies today."

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Kyle

"Merick can do it. He has the willpower to do anything. And if I know Bekka there is some insurance on that plane."

I smiled as Mrs. McCrimmon and gave pete a grateful nod as they iced down the worst of the swelling.

"Hopefully I get my powers back soon, and once that happens I will be able to help. If not, well I still have the resources of Gen-Tech at my disposal."

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Or maybe the Crystal wasn't mean to be mine at all," Kara said, her heart sinking a little. Why put a meteor rock there? If she was supposed to collect all the Crystals, killing her first didn't exactly seem like the best way to go about doing it.

"I don't know. You're probably right, though. Maybe this place was just a warning," Kara suggested, shrugging her shoulders.

In either case she decided to hold her thoughts for a moment as Rose tried something out. She seemed to have some sort of method to her madness, and the young Kryptonian didn't want to interrupt her at all.

Perspective...

A tree...

What did any of those have to do with the Crystal? There were plenty of trees outside, and far too many to search (as if they time anyways).

"Wait..."

Suddenly the gears and clogs in Kara's mind began working overtime, and she looked at the map on the chestpiece with a new light.

And then she hit herself in the head.

"It's not a map!" Kara exclaimed, a smile lighting up her face.

"It's a drawing. You're a genius, Rose."

Kara quickly moved back towards the secret chamber, looking at the "map" to confirm their suspicions. Now that she had the idea of a drawing in her head, Kara could probably make out which tree the artist was standing by, with the temple placed in the middle.

"We're gonna have to go outside," Kara said.

 

[Lunaramblings]

Merick grinned at Chloe. He knew she was worried. He knew she was stressed.

"Chloe, I will do anything to stop that from happening. no one is going to die here. Not if I can help it. It's like the crazy drunk guy said back on the beach. This is MY story. I get to tell it. The photo's should do. Pete, listen, be handy with the first aide kit. If I have to drop you guys fast it might be bumpy and Kyle is in a bad way. Dad, try to keep it together, yeah?"

Merick was awash in glowing energy. Not as fine and formed as before, but close. His heart was pumping, his mind reeling... he heard the words of the wino once more, "You have been given the tools to help change the course the world shall take. You must help a the last scion complete her destiny."

 

[AmenRa]

The Martian Manhunter had the gift of invisibility, and this he used as he silently and quickly infiltrated his way, unseen even by Kryptonian eyes, into the Temple.

He had seen Zod watching from high above, and he had seen the Countess below. Martian vision had penetrated the Temple, and he saw the Crystal Seekers within.

He assumed the visage of a Chinese monk, a Temple gaurdian, a keeper of the Old Ways as he entered the sacred place.

And when he happened upon Kara, Rose, and Diana, and Ted, he bowed respectfully.

"I trust battle has been forefront on your minds," he told them in the raspy, deep voice of J'onn J'onzz. "Because powerful forces are gathered outside. An ancient evil has been awakened; a sorceress who seeks the power of the Crystal for herself.

"And Zod watches from afar," he finished. His eyes flashed red for just an instant.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Rose and Ted

"A flurry of blows, huh?" Ted chuckled softly, shaking his head. "Must be a sight to see. If you don't mind my sayin' so, your momma's a woman and a half."

He rubbed his mouth with the side of his fist. "This girl's supposed to be more important to me than you are? Well. Just show me the gal, and I'll guard her with my every dying breath."

And then they were joined by a man in robes...

Further back into the temple, The Most Important Girl in The World called Rose a genius. This came just when Rose was contemplating how silly her brain was, and how useless, and it caught her by surprise, and she blushed.

"I'm sort of--" she stammered, she started, and she hesitated. "I think of things kind of sideways and diagonally and upside-down. (But sometimes I think of things.) I don't know if I'm a genius. I'm just sort of. Um. '...bu4tai4 zheng4chang2 de5.'"

"We're gonna have to go outside," Kara said.

Rose nodded sharply, and while worry flitted across her eyes, because outside there was shouting and roaring of engines, she still rolled up the sleeves of her star-bearing long-sleeved black t-shirt, still squared her jaw, and hurried back towards the entrance.

There she would find Diana. And an older man with grey around the temples of his black hair, she wondered who he was. With them was one of the monks, perhaps one of the caretakers of this very temple.

"'Ni3hao3 ma5,'" she began, bowing respectfully to this holy man, "um. Zhu4fu2 ni3, ci2shan4 jing4 Shang4di4--"

But then he spoke in the voice of red sand, with the voice of the man from beyond this sphere who'd her a world since faded.

And she shut up, blinking sharply, and quit trying to improvise mangled butt-kissing Mandarin while she drank in J'onn's sitrep.

"A sorceress?" she blinked, with wonder. "(J'onn, are you being idiomatic?)"

"Dunno our boy here," the older man mused, eying the monk, "but he don't seem like an idiot."

"(That's not what I said,)" Rose mumbled.

"There was a gal causin' a brouhaha out there when I was comin' in," he suggested. "My friend John told me 'bout some evil witch-lady, that's gotta be her. He's dead serious about that stuff. Hopefully he'll be along to give her what-for..."

"Evil witches," Rose mumbled, as she rubbed the back of her head. "'Wo3 de5 ma1 he2 ta1 de5 feng1kuang2 de5 wai4sheng5 dou1.'"

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Kara Zor-El

Seeing as how there was nothing left for the girls inside the Temple, Kara and Rose began making their way towards the entrance. There seemed to be a lot of action going on outside, so much so that Kara seemed to have a hard time focusing her attention on the smaller details.

She just needed time to adjust to her growing powers.

And time, it seemed, was growing short. All their enemies seemed to be surrounding their very location, different sides though for different reasons.

"Zod is here?" Kara muttered, and she felt a little uneasy.

"Great," she mumbled.

---

Outside, The Countess had taken some time to search around for the Crystal, its mystical properties practically acting like a beacon to her own abilities. But finding the Stone wasn't simply a matter of looking for the right signatures. The entire Temple seemed to be one large beacon of power.

It was time.

Closing her eyes, The Countess began searching through her vast powers for the right spell... the one that would reveal to her the exact hiding spot of the Crystal.

It was all too easy.

"Spectaculum Lapis!"

Stretching out her hands, The Countess waited as the Earth below her began to quake, upturning itself as the vessel containing the Crystal of Air surfaced.

"At last," she said to herself, a wicked smile spreading across her face.

Holding the dark horse statue with both her hands, The Countess walked over to a slab of stone that was jutting out of the ground. She raised it high above her head, and then brought it crashing down upon the rock, sending each of the fragments scattering all around.

It was there, amidst the shards of broken pottery, that she finally saw the object of her desires.

So many years of waiting...

---

"We better find the stone before..." Kara began to speak up again but her ears were suddenly assailed by an unmistakable sound. It felt like someone was stabbing her with a thousand knives, and yet she found herself drawn to its source.

Almost upon instinct she ran as fast as she could outside, moving far quicker than any normal human could have seen, and she came across the source of the disturbance.

A woman, whom Kara could only assume to be The Countess, was holding the stone.

Her stone.

Still moving at super human speeds, Kara quickly ran over to The Countess and grabbed the stone out of her hands. Almost immediately the ringing in her ears ceased to be, and Kara took a moment to look at the Crystal of Air.

"This... is mine," Kara said sternly.

 

[camerindrake]

Damian

Damian walked into the manner toward the group. He then studying the movements could tell something was amiss.

He then said one word, "update," not a demand as so much as being a request. However with Damian sometimes the two were hard to tell apart. He then placed the cowl back in place before any words were spoken. The audible click telling him the cowl was seated properly.

He though now wearing the cowl hadn't transformed himself back into Black Hood. Though to be honest, at times it was hard to tell the personalities apart.

 

[AmenRa]

Zod

He floated casually and carelessly among the highest clouds, watching the events unfolding in and around the Temple by the extraordinary power of Kryptonian sight.

And he stayed thusly until a screaming, piercing wail assaulted his ears. Zod reached his palms to cover his hearing, doubling over in pain and dropping a few hundred meters in the process.

But then he focused, and he knew. He knew the Crystal had been uncovered.

And General Zod accelerated in a burst of super speed as he flew towards the Temple.

 

[Wyldfire]

Diana felt Kara move past her. That was about the only way she had even noticed it as fast as the girl was moving. "Ted, Do whatever you need to!" She said before she took off after Kara.

She watched the exchange between Kara and this other woman. She didn't know if Kara would need her help but something about the other woman made Diana uneasy. Diana ran past the other woman, and as she did she threw the lariat snagging her. As she felt the line go taut, Diana heaved on the rope, planning on getting the Older woman away from Kara, into a nearby tree would be perfect in Diana's mind.