The Last Daughter of Krypton - IC

[ChasNicollette]

OOC: No worries, sweets. You do what you can, when you can. I don't like the way that Real Life tends to walk all over Fiction like such a bully, but that seems to be the way the world works. S'okay, sweets. S'okay.

 

[AmenRa]

Var-Sen found a website linked from the home page of Smallville High's "The Torch" newspaper.

Now this, indeed, was interesting.

A photo of a wall-sized montage of various pictures and photos depicting instances of meteor rock exposure. It was referred to as "The Wall of Weird".

Var-Sen made up his mind immediately. Come morning, the library at CKU would have to do without him for a day. He would go, instead, to Smallville High and attempt a meeting with this intrepid reporter/editor of "The Torch".

 

[Ithica]

Selena looked out the window of her Aunt Julie’s truck and saw nothing. Nothing but miles and miles of fields rather than the skyscrapers and millions of people she was longing to see. Selena sighed loudly and her Aunt looked over and laughed “It’s not that bad. There’s room to breathe out here... and plenty keep you out of trouble.” Selena rolled her eyes at the last comment and muttered “Not unless I get the urge to go on some mad cow tipping spree, yee-haw.”

Selena ignored her Aunt’s laughter and pulled her backpack closer. She thought back to the craziness of the last month, starting with her mom catching her sneaking in late at night. Selena believed that her mom over reacted. Yes, she was sneaking in and out of her window at night and it was from a twenty first floor apartment window, that and she was caught with some pilfered goods. But it was all in good fun and no reason to pack her off to the middle of nowhere. It wasn't like she had been in any danger having already survived being pushed out a window. Selena reached up and felt for the scar on the side of her head and decided that she probably had more lives than a cat.

It had taken a month for everyone to get a room ready, enroll in a new school, completely plan out a new unwanted life, and then cart her off to Smallville. The only thing that made this place even a little sufferable was that there was a gymnastics team that she could join. Aunt Julie had approved of that and even loosened up the schedule she had made for Selena. If Selena wasn’t at practice then she would be at home, school, or working at some coffee shop her Aunt’s friend owned and any freedom was contingent upon her good behaviour. So basically she decided that the order was to shut up, play nice, and don’t get caught.

School was pretty much uneventful. She had been trying to be as least conspicuous as possible and sat at the back of the class. She had found playing dodge ball in gym class entertaining and easily dodged anything that came her way. What she found entertaining was one of the girls knocking one of the guys off his feet and then later on smashing an air duct.

Selena got home and when she was finally alone in her room she got on the floor and reached under her dresser. She felt for the envelope taped to the bottom and pulled it off. She sat up and let the necklace fall into her hands. It had a delicate looking chain and on it hung a small pendent with a strange red stone in the center. After her mother had caught her, she gave everything up except for the necklace. The rest hadn’t taken much effort and meant little to her but this was a prized possession. It had taken months to plan out this caper. She had actually found a mentor, or rather he found her and she had taken up kick boxing, just in case. She managed to break into a museum and take the necklace and get out with none the wiser. The next day the only sign of what had happened was in the newspaper which said that the museum had been hit by a cat burglar. That had made her chuckle. She hadn’t really read much about the necklace and could vaguely remember that years ago some prominent family had donated it...

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"I"ll keep it in mind, Bruce." Mr. Kent said after taking the card. Chances are he'd just put it inside his dusty wallet and forget all about it. He preferred not having anyone around... too many things could go wrong, especially with Kara. Bruce walked away and headed for the house, so Jonathan turned his attention to the newcomer. Shaking his hand Jonathan smiled politely.

"It's Jonathan." he said, a bit confused as to what was going on and why this man was on his farm.

"Jamie Hamilton. Doctor. I'm living nearby at the old McCrimmon place. You know them, eh? Ceri and Little Rose? Anyway. Pleased as Punch to meet you, though I'm frightfully sorry for adding to the chaos of the day. Certainly seems you've enough on your plate without me to deal with."

"No no, it's fine. Well it's uh, a pleasure to meet you. Anyways how can I help you?" he asked, setting the pitchfork aside.

===

"There's no need to apologize, Bruce. And you have to excuse my father. He's just very stubborn when it comes to family matters." she said, trying to reassure him. He walked back outside but she remained by the door, seeing him go. His driver had finally arrived and had parked the car outside. She turned to head back inside where Misty and Lex were preparing to leave.

 

[Tymeless]

"Well Kara me and Lex are heading out. Can you please bring me my homework and I need to talk to you tomorrow if thats okay. I've got to be around home in case they find Daddy. I want to see my Daddy so bad." Misty waves goodbye and heads towards the door.

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce got into the car as Alfred drove off. His mind racing with thoughts.

The "scarecrow" boys...

Kyle from History and gym...

Lex Luthor and Misty's father...

The Kents' messed up farm...

Kara Kent.

Something about Kara seemed different. He couldn't figure it out, but he knew something was strange. 'But she's a nice girl, and there isn't anything wrong with her.' Bruce told himself. 'Just a small town girl, going to school for the first time. Not much different then yourself.'

Alfred pulled up into the mansion driveway. Bruce got out of the car, and headed to his library. He sat in the large red chair, and thought about the kids who attacked him ealier.

After a while, Bruce got up, went to his study, where a large bag hung from the ceiling. He beat it up, thinking, clearing up his mind. He knew he couldn't really hurt the boys, but they had to be stopped.

But how could he do it, without getting in trouble? He couldn't just walk up to them and beat them up, there's no way he could take them all on like that.

Then he remembered something from Mr. Smith's lecture. "Psychological Warfare". Mr. Smith only mentioned it once, talking about the Cold War. But it gave Bruce an idea.

Fear is the best tool to take down an opponent.

He had an idea...

 

[ChasNicollette]

A short ways away from The Kent Farm was a home with a raggedy dirt driveway that forked in the middle.

The driveway led to a dingy white house, and it led to a run-down old garage.

Rose McCrimmon trod carefully from the house to the garage. She knocked gingerly on the side door.

No-one answered. But then, she hadn't really expected the garage's sole occupant to converse with a human. Not with more than grunts of assent or grunts of dismissal.

She hesitated for a moment, and braced herself... she popped open the door, and peered inside.

Within, green glowed everywhere. Beakers bubbled white froth over flickering Bunsen burners. Thermometers, microscopes, insects in jars...

Emil Hamilton's workspace looked like something out of Mary Shelley's nightmares, at least so far as the lighting went. Rose McCrimmon felt dismayed to even be in there, let alone hunting around the relative darkness (despite the ubiquitous verdant aura), for a man whose sheer dedication to study put even her father to shame, and whose personality could make even her blood run cold.

Then, and only then, she saw him. Hunkered down between two makeshift desks, networking a pair of old desktop towers, he rose to his feet and fixed her with his bespectacled blue eyes. His hair had long since greyed, and his cheeks and chin were salted and peppered with a three-day beard. His once-white lab coat was overmuch tattered, and the metallic sheen of his prosthetic hand added to the eerie of the glowing green. He didn't say a word, at first.

Then, and only then, he nodded to her. "Rose."

"Uncle Em," Rose swallowed hard, and held up the copy of The Torch her mother had gotten with the small grocery shop she'd done much earlier in the day. The one with the article on the meteor rocks.

"Mum thought," she began, "you might want to have a look at this. Just in, you know, your free time or whatever. There's a website you might want to look at, too. She circled the URL, down here at the bottom?"

Emil stared at it for a moment. He blinked, as if the idea of newsprint was a xenological conundrum. "Right. Well. Thank you. Was there anything else?"

Rose blinked back at him. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard Uncle Emil string that many words together at once. Usually he only ever talked shop, and that only with her father, his brother.

"Well," she licked her lips, tucked a good bit of her long red hair back behind her ears nervously, "Dad's gone for a walk, and Mum and I are going to go pick him up in the car. We just wanted you to know that we were stepping out, and to maybe listen for the UPS guy? Mum ordered some hair extensions for a client and she's thinking they'll be here this evening or so."

Another pause. "Did you want anything while we were out?"

Emil shook his head, and went to check the read-outs on a monitor in another corner. "No," he decided. "But thank you."

And that was it. But it was more than she was used to. Maybe she had caught him in a rare benevolent mood.

Rose set down The Torch, then turned and left that place. She hurried back across the yard to the part of the driveway where her mother waited in the car...

===

"Right, of course," Jamie slapped himself in the forehead with the hand freed from the handshake. "Jonathan. Silly me."

"No no, it's fine. Well it's uh, a pleasure to meet you. Anyways how can I help you?" he asked, setting the pitchfork aside.

Jamie blinked, and he looked curiously like his brother for a moment.

"Help me?" he looked around for a second, wondering if something was amiss, but it seemed like Alfred and Bruce had gone their own way and all was otherwise well here. "What? Oh! Right. No. I just... I've been here a few months now, and I've yet to familiarise myself with the tos and the fros. Got myself a bit turned about. But it's all right now. Ceri's on her way to come find me. I just wanted to thank you for not chucking me out on my bottom while I wait for her to show up."

He chuckled faintly, distractedly to himself, eyes momentarily gazing nowhere. "And then it's back to being a filthy layabout."

Jamie glanced back up at Jonathan, his eyes once more in the present. "You'd be surprised how difficult it is for an out-of-work not-quite-mad scientist to pull in a paycheque around here. Or maybe you wouldn't be. No, no, I s'pose you wouldn't be.

"You seem the type that's surprised by very little," Jamie suggested, "unless I greatly miss my guess."

 

[Ravenloft]

Lex drove Misty home, his head still throbbed, but he didn't let it show. "Looks like your mothers back home, you two should talk..." Lex said, giving Misty a concerned look. "I'm sure she's hurting too."

He got out of the car and opened the door for Misty, walking her to her front door. "If I find out anything about your father, I will call you immediately." He assured the young lady as they parted company.

On the drive home, he made several phone calls only to find that his people had failed to find any evidence of Randal Graves. A slight smiled played across his lips as he realized that the experiment had been more of a success than he had hoped. Randal Graves was for all intents and purposes, a ghost...

When lex returned to his mansion, he set about preparing a drink, it was late, and this would be his night cap.

Behind him, the air turned, a green mist coalecing, into the shape of a man.

 

[Tymeless]

Randal Graves appeared behind Lex. "What the hell did you do to me, you ruined my family. They are completely tore up because of this. Poor Misty could even hear me you asshole. You better freaking make me better somehow or at least make it up to my family." Randal was furious and just hoped lex could hear him.
*****



Misty walked into house and broke down again. Staying strong in front of everyone is hard work. She also realized that Lex was hiding something but he was to guarded all the time for her to pry deep enough to find out. There is no other reason he would be so nice to her all day other then he was guilty of something.

She walked up and wrapped her arms around her mother who she could tell was crying. she didn't even bother to read her mother's mind it didn't seem like the right thing to do at the time. She smiled at her mother kissed her on the cheek and told her that everything would be alright.

"Mother do you need anything from me if not, i'll head to bed or we can sleep in the same bed together like we used to when i was little and Daddy would go out of town. Won't that be fun."

Misty's mother just nodded her head and tried to force a smile at her daughter who was also faking it to try and deal with the pain that randal was gone.

 

[Superman1496]

Bruce walked into the kitchen where Alfred was preparing himself some late night hot chocolate. Master Wayne, I do hope that you go to bed early tonight. You have had hell of a day. I do hope that your nerves will settle this time. Alfred said as Bruce walked to the door.

Sorry Alfred, Bruce said. Something needs to be taken care of first. He finished.

In the basement? Alfred asked, puzzeled. No one had ever really used the basement.

Yes Alfred. For some reason, it makes me think clearer. Bruce said as he headed downstairs.

Good night, young Master. He heard Alfred call from the top of the stairs.

Bruce began to work...

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

OK, Kara didn't see me. One good thing about my armored form. If I'm still, it's hard to make me out in the shadows. I shifted back and made my way to the Talon. A mocha later and I was relaxed and reading the paper when in walked a group of jocks laughing about some scarecrow. I paid it no mind until one said "Yeah, thats the most expensive thing on the Kents property right now. Wayne may have money, but he is still a nobody in Smallville."
Crap! I remember now what the "scarecrow" thing is. Another asinine jock ritual where they string up some poor kid on a freaking Cross out in someone's Fields. And now Bruce was up on one!
I stood up and left. A few doors down I stepped back into the alley and shifted again. I knew where the Kent farm was, but not well enough to shadowstep into the Fields. I do remember the barn tho, having helped MR. Kent and Gramps with a mare over there about a year ago. I stepped back into the shadows and out into the Kent barn. Unfortunately, it was NOT empty. Mr. Kent and some other man turned and gasped when they saw my black armored form with glowing lavender eyes step out of nothingness.
Crap!!!

"Ummm, I mean you no harm?"

ok, first impressions are NOT my best thing!

 

[ChasNicollette]

Well, then. Speaking, as we were, of surprises?

Jamie had been looking Jonathan Kent dead in the eye and it had been then that movement had caught the corner of his own eye. And there he found a beast carved out of darkness, whose eyes peered out with light the murkiest colour of sunset.

Naturally, this was a little upsetting to him.

Why do these things always happen after the farmer puts down the pitchfork?

"Ummm, I mean you no harm?"

The words bounced off of his tympanic membranes and for some reason they didn't reach his auditory ossicles, much less his brain.

In a fit of valour, Jamie interposed himself squarely between Kent and the interloper, one hand flung out, fingers spread. (How unusual a reaction was this? For him? He must have spent too much time thinking about courage.)

"Get behind me, Kent!" he bellowed, face knotted with righteous indignation. "You listen here, First of The Fallen, you can't have our mortal souls, eh? First of all, I'm a scientist so I don't have one, and second of all, this man's very much getting the full mileage out of his! Understand? Eh, Etrigan? Understand?"

Then Doctor Jamie Hamilton blinked.

And it sank in that that this gentleman had emerged quite apparently literally from nowhere. This suggested either invisibility (which, in turn, would suggest curvature of light rays), or, given that The Lord of Darkness seemed just a bit surprised to see them, more likely it suggested teletransportation! (This? Suggested curvature of spacetime, which was even more interesting!)

The flung-out hand became a pointing finger. Jamie's eyebrow arched.

"'Ang on, mate," he blinked again, and wagged that finger as he summoned his thoughts. "Where. Exactly. Did you come from? Do you... d'you have a mechanism for trans-spacial molecular transit? Only that's a rather Fortean phenomenon."

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Jonathan was not exactly suspicious of Jamie, but he did seem a bit out of place. A little eccentric, now that he thought about it. But at least he was polite.

"You'd be surprised how difficult it is for an out-of-work not-quite-mad scientist to pull in a paycheque around here. Or maybe you wouldn't be. No, no, I s'pose you wouldn't be."You seem the type that's surprised by very little," Jamie suggested, "unless I greatly miss my guess."

Jonathan raised an eyebrow, his mind instantly thinking about Kara. But he pushed that aside and was hoping that Jamie wasn't here for her. Before he could ask anymore questions, a strange voiced spoke out from the shadows.

"Ummm, I mean you no harm?" the demonic looking stranger said. Jonathan was, obviously, caught by surprise and couldn't react right away. As much as he wanted Kara outside to deal with... whatever it was, he didn't want to risk exposing her in front of this 'absent-minded' professor.

"Look, I don't know what you are but get off my farm." Jonathan finally said, finding his own courage to address the stranger.

 

[Ravenloft]

"Me? I did nothing to you Randal, if I remember correctly, it was you who went into a restricted laboratory... Listen, I can help you, you just have to trust me." Lex said as he turned to face the billowing form of Randal Graves. His calm in the face of this strange even belied his knowledge of the experiment that Mr. Graves had unwittingly become the subject of. After all, Lexcorp didn't move to Smallville for the scenery, no, it was all for the meteor rock that scattered the outlying area, and the... Peculiar properties that Lexcorp scientists found it to posess. Randal was just the first example of it... Or so Lex thought.

Taking a sip of his night cap, Lex pondered Randal, circling him. "Today has been a stressful day for everyone, Randal, you most of all. If you just go to the lab, I will make sure that the top scientists in the world work on returning you to normal."

 

[Tymeless]

Randal seeing no choice in the matter agreed with Lex. "Lex please take care of my family until i'm back to normal. Please Misty means the world to me." Randal waited around to hear an answer from Lex.

 

[Ravenloft]

"Don't worry, old friend, I will see that both your wife and your daughter are well taken care of, I promise." Lex said, giving Randal a sympathetic nod.

Once he had left for the lab, Lex made a call, telling his people to be expecting Randal.
He knew that at best, they would only be able to contain Mr. Graves, that they didn't have the knowledge to return him to his former self. If anyone knew, it would be Dr. Emil.

Lex made a second call.

"Yes, bring Dr. Emil Hamilton to the lab ASAP, no matter the price."

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

"Look, I don't know what you are but get off my farm."


I held my hands up in what i hoped was a placating gesture.
"Mr. Kent, I did not come here to harm anyone. I am here because in one of your fields is a young man in trouble and I came to help him. I may look evil, but I am not."
I looked over at the stranger next.
" And quite frankly I have no idea what the hell you are talking about."

 

[Tymeless]

Randal quickly disappeared and was off to Lex's Lab that he was told to head to. He didn't really trust anything Lex was doing at this point but he had to risk it for a chance to be with his loving wife and daughter again.
**********

Misty's mother fell asleep in Misty's arms as they laid together in her mother's bed like they used to when Randal was away on business when Misty was younger. Misty missed her dad but was glad to spend some time and get close to her mother again because their relationship had started to strain when Misty started hanging out with her new friends back in 7th grade. Misty's mom didn't trust them and was certain that they only made friends with her because Randal was quite important. As Misty's mom was sleeping Misty realized she could see her mother's dreams and finally forced herself to sleep so she wouldn't invade her mothers privacy.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Mr. Kent, I did not come here to harm anyone. I am here because in one of your fields is a young man in trouble and I came to help him. I may look evil, but I am not."

'It is all as of old, the empty clangour,' Jamie recited to himself, in his head, from his beloved Chesterton, shaking that selfsame head and looking away:
'The NOTHING scrawled on a five-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.'

He hesitated though, inwardly.

It is hardest to be scientific about that which one cannot observe, he reminded himself. One cannot observe a man's heart. And his face is insufficient outward indication, insufficient evidence of the machinations of his heart.

Give him a chance, Jamie. Don't be so bloody rude.

Seems pretty convinced, after all, about this supposed lad amongst the crops.

" And quite frankly I have no idea what the hell you are talking about."

Having realised that he was the one now being addressed, Jamie turned and squinted into those lavender eyes.

"No, I suppose you don't," he smiled blandly, heavy on the irony. "Forteana is a bit of an obscure concept these days, and the rest of the words I sort of assembled for the purpose. 'Technobabble,' I think is the term? And not very good technobabble, not by a long chalk; 'trans-spacial' and 'transit' came off a little repetitive. But if you break it down, sound it out like a difficult sentence in a schoolbook? Forget the explanations of quantum entanglement and Einstein-Rosen Bridges, leave them out for a tick, and boil it down to this:

"You either have a way to move about without being seen, or? You have a way to move about without having to move about at all."

Someone has given you a toy to play with, Jamie pondered. And either you didn't bother to read the instructions, in your hubris and your self-sufficiency? Or you weren't left any instructions in the first place.

Makes a bloke nervous, dunnit? Who gets in a lorry and shifts it if they don't have a manual?

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

"Mr. Kent, I did not come here to harm anyone. I am here because in one of your fields is a young man in trouble and I came to help him. I may look evil, but I am not."

Jonathan wasn't sure what to think or do. How often is a man faced with a demonic stranger that claims to want nothing but peace? Though he might go so far as to give this... creature the benefit of the doubt he would not give up his guard, or invite him inside for some lemonade either.

"That young man is no longer in any danger." Jonathan said honestly. Bruce had been tended to inside the house and was on his way home by now, if not there already. While Jonathan would have loved nothing better than to be left alone so that he could work on his equipment, Jamie, on the other hand, seemed to be more open-minded and interested in discussing... whatever it was he was talking about with Wraith.

---

After everyone had left the house, Kara sat down on the couch. It had been... well it had been quite a day for her. She ran her hands over her face and down through her hair before letting them fall onto her lap. School seemed to be a lot tougher than she could have thought. She had managed to make quite a mess in gym today... and was hoping that it would come back to haunt her.

"Everything alright?" Martha asked as she stepped into the living room. Kara nodded her head and smiled.

"Yeah. Just... tired I guess." she said somewhat dishonestly. Kara was actually full of energy... she was always full of energy. But sometimes you just need to take a step back and relax. She could certainly use a break after today.

 

[Abraxas Winterlight]

Wraith

"Little of both actually. And that, my friend is as fas as I am going to speak about myself."

I turned to face Mr> Kent next.
"If the young man is taken care of, then my coming here and startling you was for no reason, and for that I aplogize. Goodbye sir. Thank you for the hospitality."

With that I stepped back and dropped a Darkness field, plunging the barn and probably part of the house in a bubble of inpenetrable darkness. Well, inpenetrable to anyone but me. I stepped back in the confusion that the darkness created, and released the field.
Shifting to shadowform, I phased through the barn and phased back in a few paces away from the structure. It was a interesting night. I think i'll make my way overland back home.

 

[ChasNicollette]

"Little of both actually. And that, my friend is as fas as I am going to speak about myself."

Jamie's eyebrows arched, and he grinned softly.

Textbook enigmatic, you are. Textbook!

The Lord of Darkness turned to face Mr. Kent next.

"If the young man is taken care of, then my coming here and startling you was for no reason, and for that I aplogize. Goodbye sir. Thank you for the hospitality."

...and the local universe went black as pitch for a moment, and Jamie Hamilton had to force himself not to move, not to stumble, not to panic.

The house lights came back up then, so to speak, and Jamie steadied himself, and harrumphed loudly. He straightened his tie and his suit coat and he laughed softly.

The shadows really had caught him off-guard. Had that been it? Had that been... it?

Had he been completely oblivious to the shot that killed him and been thereafter chucked headlong into Oblivion?

Gave one a start, that did. Perfectly natural to be nervous when one thinks oneself deceased.

But no, but no, still ticking, still kicking. Empirical verification for the proverbial win!

He gazed up at the beams of the barn's upper reaches and he laughed softly to himself.

Cold is more than just the absence of heat, he silently mused. And darkness certainly seems to be more than just the absence of light. 'What if we're wrong?'

He grinned, a beamingly bright grin from ear to ear, the perfect puckish expression, thoughts of having been angstroms from Oblivion completely banished because Science was just brimming over with surprises!

Jamie turned his grin to Kent, and winked an eye.

"Well," he chortled, "he wasn't much cop, was he? Ratio of bark to bite just a little poorly calculated? Not much cop at all. I bet you twenty dollars my fourteen-year-old daughter could kick his arse, eh?"

He shook his head, still chuckling to himself. 'Hospitality.' Enigmatic and ironic. Maybe I hadn't given Lamont Cranston enough credit?

Jamie considered this for a beat.

Naaaah.

===

Rose McCrimmon gazed out of the passenger window as the little car trundled up to the mouth of the Kents' driveway.

She thought she'd seen movement by the barn in the gathering gloom, but she blinked and she wasn't sure if she hadn't imagined it.

Just a shadow, nothing more.

"Always thought it was a shame you didn't spend more time with Kara growing up," Ceri opined, following Rose's gaze. "They're such nice people, this lot. Martha would come in to the shop from time to time, get her hair done for some special occasion or another, though she always managed to look splendid well above my poor power to add or detract.

"Daughter's something else, though. Never did her hair. Martha always seemed to get nervous whenever I neared those precious goldilocks with a pair of shears. (I don't know who does her hair. I don't know who does it, but they...)"

Ceri shook her head slowly. "She wears her hair so long, but I have never ever in my life seen Kara Kent with even a single split end."

Rose arched a crimson eyebrow and regarded her mother with pale blue eyes.

"And that's why I should spend more time with our neighbours?" she murmured, subtly jesting. "To learn the secret of defeating split ends?"

Ceri narrowed her eyes at her daughter's teasing, a grin finding her mouth.

"Oh, you know what I mean, girl," she retorted. "They're stalwart. You don't find many people anywhere these days with that sort of quality. Thick-and-thin, isn't it? Stalwart."

Huh, Rose thought, and returned her gaze to the barn. Maybe I can learn something from these folk, after all?

"Get on with you," Ceri prompted. "Go find your embarrassment of a dad."

Rose nodded, and slipped out of the car, and followed the driveway down towards the farm.

 

[Superman1496]

After several hours of working in the basement. Alfred walked downstairs to join his young master. Master Bruce, Alfred said. I do hope that everything is ok. You've been down here for hours, and it's already three o'clock. Is there anything I can do to assist you, so that you may retire for the night?

Bruce sat in front of a large black cape, so lost in thought, the fact that Alfred had come downstairs barely even hit him.

Oh, Alfred. Uh, yeah. Bruce said, blinking several times, and trying to figure out what Alfred could do. You know how to sew Alfred, would you mind sewing this on to that. Bruce said as he handed Alfred the cape, and pointed to the black suit that he had been working on all night.

It was a Kevlar chest plate, painted black and covered with black cloth, forming a shirt. Elbow pads and forearm pads had been added in the sleeves. The cape would be sewn onto the back shoulders, running along the arms as well, making him look bigger then he already was.

And he had a mask. It was only a black ski mask, but he couldn't allow someone to see who he was, or else it wouldn't work.

The pants had knee pads, shin pads, and a cup already placed inside. They were black pants. The BDU type of pants that some police officers wore.

He had a bag as well. Thanks to the former owners of the house, he filled the bag with a flash-bang grenade, metal caltrops, rope, handcuffs, and a smoke grenade. Whoever had owned this house before Alfred had taken it, seemed to be in the military or police business, with a son in football or soccer.

It seemed almost like the perfect place to work, finding all this stuff, in the basement.

 

[ChasNicollette]

Emil Hamilton had lost his left hand and arm when he had been seven years old.

He had been alone when it had happened, and he alone knew the details of the occurrence. He had never gone out of his way to explain it to people. Frankly, he didn't think it was any of their business. (Also? Even at that young of an age, it was difficult for Emil to admit that he was capable of error.)

Instead, he had greatly emphasised the fact that in the process of this he had discovered a synthetic polymer with a far lower coefficient of friction than even polytetrafluoroethylene.

(This would later become brand-named Lubrilon, and would be used in certain high-end military projects. It would never become as much of a household name as Teflon, because it would turn out to be far more expensive to make.)

In any case, seven-year-old Emil had decided that being with only one arm was not an acceptable state of affairs. And, since his own silliness and shortsightedness had reduced his limb count in the first place, it would be, he had decided, his own ingenuity that would solve the problem.

By the time he was ten years old, he had had a three-fingered claw that could perform rudimentary functions triggered by muscle movements. By the time he was twelve years old, the digits had numbered four and had become far more sculpted and articulate, though they had still been far thicker than normal fingers and the muscle response had still been clumsier than he preferred.

At thirteen, he had begun a series of growth spurts that left him having to keep up with the size of his arm, rather than upgrading the tech involved.

But when his sixteenth birthday had rolled around, there had been significant advances in computer processing technology. He had extrapolated on these, automating and refining the functions of his new limb. He had even succeeded in direct neural feed rather than simple muscle-response.

He had gotten to the point where he could move the five fingers of his cyborg hand with naught but the impulses of his brain. He had been not even seventeen years old.

Now that Emil was far far older and greyed around the edges, Emil's left hand was just as much a work of art as it was of science. It looked every bit like a human hand, right down to simulated imperfections in the skin. It was the colour of steel, still, but otherwise it was miraculously made.

Those five miraculous fingers rattattatted on a metallic tabletop, impatient as he waited for programs to install on those two computers.

He sighed dismally, and shook his head, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his organic hand.

"Pointless," he muttered to himself. "There are far better ways to use one's time."

He got up, and he picked up a battered mug with the NASA logo on it, and he walked across to the house to see if he could borrow a cup of instant coffee.

When he got to the front steps, he found a note wedged in the screen door from UPS saying they'd been by to drop off a package but had found no-one home, and that Ceri could pick up the package the following day at a local distribution centre.

Emil grunted, and let himself in, making sure to magnet the note onto the fridge where Ceri would be able to find it.

A few minutes later, when he walked back across to his makeshift laboratory, he found that there was a sleek black car parked in the driveway. Not Ceri's.

The door to the lab was open.

Just inside the door were two men in black suits, and one of them was bent over staring at a cooling beaker of meteor-rock solution.

"Have you figured out what's in it?" the studious one asked.

The other one simply stood, staring at Emil from behind impenetrable sunglasses. Implacable.

"I miss the days when people would make appointments to come and see a doctor," Emil snarked bitterly. "Don't you miss those days?"

The studious one straightened, and pursed his lips as he turned his gaze to Emil's face. He arched an eyebrow.

Emil did not bat an eyelid. "'Sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide with fluorine,'" he recited.

Studious arched both his eyebrows, and glanced at Implacable. Implacable shrugged.

Studious grunted. "You're not serious."

"I am, assuredly, not serious in the slightest," Emil explained slowly, methodically, coldly, "except about wanting to know where you gentlemen have come from, and what you want."

"Luthorcorp," Implacable declared, simply.

Studious smiled tightly. "Doctor Hamilton," he murmured, "we've come to offer you a job. A job with a very... generous... rate of pay. Unlimited resources at your disposal? A chance to work under clean bright lights instead of this unsanitary pile of rubble?"

Emil scowled unreservedly, and his prosthetic hand closed tightly enough into a fist that his metal knuckles popped.

"You want me to set aside my very important work," he growled, "to come and work in a backwards bureaucracy helmed by amateurish buffoons? Honestly, to be perfectly metaphorical about it? I have accomplished in the last eighteen months with a pocket calculator more than Luthorcorp could in twice the time with a dozen cutting-edge Crays!"

Implacable made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a truck downshifting.

Studious' tight smile never wavered. "A life is at stake, Doctor," he pointed out. "A colleague. A father whose family misses him very much. And saving him?"-- Studious paused to indicate the lab around him --"Would be very much up your alley."

Emil digested this bit of knowledge. Tumblers whirred in his skull.

"You've bitten off more than you can chew," he contemplated, "haven't you?"

Studious' smile became a little tighter, but he said not a word.

Emil shook his head, and trailed steel fingers through greying hair.

"I'm afraid you have me confused, gentlemen," he eventually resumed, "with someone else. Perhaps even another Doctor Hamilton? My concern for human life is not what once it was. Sacrifices must be made for Science, eh? Beloved Marie Curie, poor poor under-recognised Rosalind Franklin, Raymond Palmer vanishing from his lab while experimenting with white dwarf matter... on and on and on... even my own arm, my own left arm, was sacrificed for Science! If your poor fellow has turned himself into an experiment, that's hardly any skin off of my nose. I have work to be done.

"Do not confuse genius with philanthropy."

"What about self-preservation?" Studious wondered, his smile becoming a smirk as Implacable took a big step forward, and glommed a massive hand onto Emil's left wrist.

"What about the preservation of loved ones?" Studious wondered, his smirk becoming a grin as Implacable squeezed and impossibly, impossibly, slowlyslowlybitbybit the metal of Emil's wrist began to creak and groan and deform.

When Implacable removed his hand, there was a handprint left in the gleaming surface of the prosthetic's skin.

Emil stared at the damage with no small fury, but no small wonder. He could feel it. There was neural feedback from the cybernetic interlinks and it was rather not unlike pain.

"Your left arm is easily repaired," Studious chuckled, "but your right arm? That could be broken and never heal back right and then what would you do with yourself? And what of others? Your brother's family? Your niece? How would they fare if we were to disassemble them?

"You put up this front about being anti-establishment and beyond moral convention," Studious continued, dropping every syllable like one of Oppenheimer's bombs, "but it's a very different hypothesis when your own pain is the control group and your family's pain the variable, isn't it Doctor Hamilton?"

Emil ignored him. He ignored both of them. Because to say that he feared very little for his niece given her capabilities would have been counterproductive. Because at that point he was very distracted by possibilities. Both negative possibilities... and positive ones.

He slowly, slowly flexed his mechanical fingers and there was a ravenous light in his eyes.

He glanced up at Studious so sharply it nearly made Studious jump.

"How generous?" Emil demanded.

"Wait," Studious frowned. "What?"

"You said this job would have a 'generous rate of pay,'" Emil pressed, not hesitating in the slightest. "How generous?"

Studious and Implacable looked at each other. Implacable shrugged.

Studious blew air through his lips. "Very generous. Mr. Luthor has made promises that he intends to keep, and to blazes with the toll."

Emil paused to consider this for a moment or two.

"Can I have a minute to gather some things?"

 

[TearsoftheWorld]

Jonathan, most assuredly, did not expect their new 'friend' to disappear in such a strange manner. Everything went black... as if he could no longer see with his eyes. There was no light... there wasn't anything for those few brief moments. When it all came back he was looking at Jamie, whom seemed just as caught off guard as he was.

"Yeah." Mr. Kent said, almost aimlessly. He shook his head and picked up a wrench that was resting on a nearby bench, lightly playing with it in his hands before setting it back down.

"I'm gonna... head inside." he added, glancing at Jamie.

"If you'd like you can come inside and I'll fix you some coffee while you wait." Mr. Kent offered, unaware of the car pulling up towards their farmhouse.

---

Sitting on the couch inside the house Kara had suddenly become engulfed in a dark field, her vision obscured beyond belief. Never in her life had she experienced such a thing... it wasn't normal. She quickly raced out of the house and ran to the barn to check in on her dad. When she had arrived she saw her father speaking to another person.

"Dad?"

"Hey sweetheart." Jonathan said, looking at his adopted daughter.

"Is everything alright? I was just inside and then... well everything went black." Kara said, recalling what happened just moments ago.

"Everything is fine. Where's your mother?" he asked, concerned about his wife.

"She's inside." the blond Kryptonian said. Martha had been upstairs in her bedroom and was not subjected to the same treatment as the others.