trans_9 | It's The Final Countdown

"Kal, don't you dare! Don't you dare!"

Words failed her at that moment. Instead, Kara put her head over the hands which were still applying pressure to Kal, body-wracking sobs at war with her superhumanly strong body.

"Kon. Kara. Lois..."

"...I'll be there..."

With that, the last of Kal's strength gave way, his body growing limp in their touches. There wouldn't be an Eradicator to save him or a Healing Matrix to heal him.

To save a universe, to give the crew a fighting chance.

Superman died to save them all.

"No!" Kon cried out as if mortally wounded himself. "No!"

Then all Kon could do was sob, bowed over his body.

Kara felt Kal's final breath, felt his body go limp as life left him. She cried an anguished, strangled cry.

Breathe. Compartmentalize. Mourn later. That's what Artemis would tell her to do. That's what Phillipus would tell her to do. Perhaps not Diana, but Diana was nothing if not compassionate.

She raised her head and stared at Kal's still body. With a shaky breath, she reached over and gently closed his eyes.

"Rao be with you," she whispered.

There was the sound of something collapsing in on itself, of air sucking into an empty space, and suddenly, there was a massive man (http://i56.tinypic.com/2wgerk8.png) standing near them, where no one had been a moment before. He was wearing some sort of high-tech armor, yet despite its bulkiness, he seemed to be able to move quickly and with a great deal of agility, as if it didn't bother him at all to have to carry the weight of it around.

He waved briefly with an armored hand.

"Hi!" he said brightly, in a voice that echoed strangely because of the armor, but otherwise sounded perfectly amicable. He sounded like a cheerful neighbor asking for a cup of sugar, or someone's best friend asking about their day. "The name's Nemo. I know you've had a bad day already, but I'm here to %#&% up your $&@%."

With that, he kicked Superboy in the face so hard they could hear his nose crack, sending him skidding off into the dirt, gushing blood everywhere.

This of all times, was not the time to mess with Kara Zor-El's family. "Yeah?" She sneered, her eyes flaring red, her breath coming out icy, and the ground under her feet cracking as her heels dug into them. "Your day's about to get a lot worse too, you Rao-damned babootch!" She was a blur of plantsuit, red, and gold then as she moved to strike the massive man, letting loose both her heat vision and arctic breath.

There was the sound of air sucking into an empty space again, and then Nemo was out of the way of her ice breath and heatvision and behind her, grabbing her by a handful of blonde hair and throwing her at Superboy, who was just climbing to his feet and was knocked off them again by his cousin slamming into him.

"'Babootch'? Really? This is the best insult your tiny brain can come up with? That's a few letters away from calling me your sweet baboo."

He looked thoughtful. "Then again, you are a blonde. Not much going on upstairs is there."

He conked himself on the armored helmet a few times.

"If you were really smart enough--or strong enough--you could have saved your cousin, after all."

"Hrrungh!" Kara granted as she slammed into her cousin. She scrambled to her feet again and held her hand out to Kon, to help him up. She then whipped back to face...whatever his name was. "The blonde thing? An Earth stereotype. Not a Kryptonian one." She started flying towards Nemo again. "Let me show you what a blonde Kryptonian can do!"

Kon couldn't talk. Too much blood was pooling into his mouth and dripping out of his nose. Spitting it off to the side, he flew side by side with Kara, ready to slam the bastard with a double-whammy.

In the midst of being interrupted during their time of mourning, only vaguely did he register the fact that they even with the radiation levels having died down with the weapon's destruction, they didn't have much time left before they fried beyond what their bodies could heal.

"It's a stereotype in a lot of places! That's the great thing about being me--I know about so many wonderful things, about so many secrets people would would die to know--literally. I know the unknowable."

He suddenly blipped closer, holding out his arms and clotheslining them both.

"The other great thing about being me is I can do crazy stuff that!"

Grabbing the two of them, he slammed their heads together. Hard. Enough to leave them both dazed for a moment.

"Weak. Strongest of the strong, and you're weak. They say things on so many worlds, in so many tongues about the meek inheriting the Earth, but that's bunk, let me tell you. The weak are weak--but the strong are weak, too. I know. I know about the weakness inside all of us."

He lifted them both up by the hair.

"Just look at you both. Covered in your cousin's blood, not strong enough or fast enough or good enough to save him, the clone that thinks it's a person and crazy Kara Zor-El, one retcon too early to be sane and tame and sweet. How did that little ditty go, anyway? Oh, yeah! 'Little Kara, House of El~ It's the family born of Hell. If she looks you in the eye, in three days you'll surely die~'"

He lifted them both up higher, almost level with his helmeted face.

"You do both know the reason your cousin told you not to disappoint him is because he expected you to, right?"

Her head throbbed. Her body shook with a mixture of anger and sadness. She held back a reply, but she did look Kon, and gave him a knowing look. The message was clear.

Two pairs of heat visioning eyes were better than one.

Ignoring the taunt that Kara's schoolmates - the very schoolmates who she had brutally murdered - had once thrown at her, she instead willed as much power as she could into her eyes, and fired out the most intense beams of heat vision that she could.

Superboy did the same, blasting with everything he had.

Nemo immediately dropped them both, and turned away, clutching at his face, which was smoking.

"My face! My beautiful face!"

"Yeah," Kara sneered. "About as beautiful as a Darkseid's ass," she added. "I suggest you check yourself, Nemo, before you wreck yourself."

Superboy visibly winced, but it wasn't because he was hurt, it was because there were times he forgot that Kara had no idea what was considered lame and dated in Earth culture.

"Who the hell are you? Beyond the name? Why are you here?"

"I'll never be in pictures now! Never!" Nemo sobbed into his hands and then broke into mirthful laughter at his own humor, turning slowly to face them. The armor barely had a scratch.

He held out his arms with a strange and otherworldly grace.

"I give what is due. I'm no one. 'No one'--Nemo--geddit? The Latin--"

Seeing the lack of recognition of the Latin connotations on their faces, he gave an impression of an eyeroll with tilted shoulders.

"Don't you two read anything other than Teen Beat and Amazing Amazons? (I know, I know, Kon, it's just for the articles). Anyway, my Catastrophists crashed your little end-of-the-world party back there with a bang!" He clapped his hands together with a loud crack of metal on metal. "Loveable little scamps. They made daddy so proud today."

He gestured with his finger in the shape of a little half-circle in front of his face, as if drawing a smile in the air. "Happy face!"

Tilting his helmed head, he said, "But in the end, I'm really here for two reasons. The first is to make you glad Superman is dead because he'll never get to see what I do with his blood, and the second--"

He blipped closer to the both of them, punching one in the face and then the other.

"The second is to beat the dickens out of the both of you, just because I can."

"Too bad Nemo doesn't mean 'nothing'. You're still damned annoying," Kara said. "And really? The dickens? Even I know that's outdated." She was talking, yes, but she was also sizing up this huge, hulking tin thing, trying to figure out the best way to put him down.

Diana had taught her, once, that sometimes, when the monster was really bad, you had no choice but to kill it. Kal would never have approved of that. Kon likely wouldn't approve either, but in her short time on Earth, Kara had become much more than Supergirl.

She'd also become an honorary Amazon.

"I'd say that if you touched my cousin, you'd die but-" she sprung into action, running at him full speed. She was planning on getting close enough to launch into a flip, handspring off of his shoulders, and use that momentum to throw the Nemo far, far away. And then pummel him good. "-I'mgoingtokillyouanyway!"

A blast of tactile telekinesis surged along the ground from where Kon punched into the dirt and slammed into Nemo as well.

"Kara, we have to end this fast! We're running out of time!"

His skin was already feeling strangely prickly.

Edited 2011-08-27 07:09 (UTC)

Nemo was slammed into some tank rubble.

"Feisty! Still got some fight left, huh? I'll take care of that in a jiff."

And then the fight was pretty much over before it had even started. He kept teleporting or whatever it was, and then there was a fist in one of their faces, a knee to one of their kidneys, a foot stamped on, a metal elbow to the side of the head.

He was relentless, too fast to catch, and stronger than they were.

And merciless.

"This-- In between his words, he disappeared and reappeared, sending a new blow their way. "--by the way--is the part--of the story--where the villain--shows up--and beats--the living crap--out of some--of the strongest--members--of the party--to show how--strong he is."

He blipped away long enough to jeer at them.

"That's the only reason you're here. So the crew--and the viewers at home--know just how powerful I am. Can't introduce one of the main villains in the fourth act without doing something like showing off how he doesn't need any silly green rocks to take care of the supers."

It's a fight that Kara's losing, despite the fact that she's been trying her hardest to fight this man who, somehow, knows a lot about her. Too much about her. Like the rhyme that her classmates used to say.

Still, as she falls to her knees, ready to black out, her body does one more thing...though at this point, it will be of no help to her.

She lets out a cry of pain and despair as her skin, usually stronger than steel, starts to tear and rip. Tears course down her face as the pain rends the last shred of consciousness she has apart.

Before she hits the ground, dozens of shining, deadly crystal spikes (http://i53.tinypic.com/2nqdsab.jpg) tear out of Kara's body, too late to do her any good.

Superboy lay feebly on the ground, bleeding, coughing up the blood that kept dripping down his throat.

"Don't--don't touch him, don't--"

But there was nothing he could do as Nemo walked over, stuck some sort of reverse hypospray on Superman's arm, and sucked his blood up into a vial.

Tears were in his eyes. "Don't--"

"You two--I swear, you're like Worf or Wolverine or something--you're pathetic. That easy to take down? To throw aside? And listen to you: 'Don't--don't touch the daddy that didn't want me, don't steal his blood for nefarious purposes, a bloo bloo bloo,'" Nemo imitated in a whiny voice, and he knelt near Kon-El, tilting his head as he looked down at him.

"I could kill you, you know. Says I should right in the Evil Overlord handbook. But you don't matter enough to even make it necessary. You're not...thematically important to it all. Not as you are now."

He shook his helmeted head.

"No, I'm going to give you a choice instead."

He dangled the vial of Kal's blood in front of Kon's bloody face.

"You can fight for this, and die, irradiated to death, both your cousins dead beside you--but still brave, still...super. Or you can run, drag their limp bodies back with you with your telekinesis and show up blubbering and crying like a child, clinging to the idiot man-child that adopted you because of what you couldn't fight and what you couldn't save. At least that way Blondie lives--but I get the satisfaction of reducing the boy-who-would-be-Superman to something that low and pathetic before he ever got the chance to tack on the cape. That's like--that's like getting to be the hunter that killed Bambi's mom. And the crew will see it, and they'll know what I did to you, and they'll know exactly what to expect next."

He twiddled the vial between his fingers.

"What's it going to be, Superboy? Tick-tock. The geiger counter's ticking away."

Superboy looked up at the vial, weakly lifting his head, and then looked over at Kara, laying there in the dust.

Then he cringed a cringe that was almost a full-body one, squeezing his eyes tight to keep the tears from spilling, wondering if surviving counted as cowardice, and hoping against all hope that the choice he was making was something Kal could forgive him for.

I'm sorry, Kal, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--

He knew that the blood was going to be used for something horrible. He didn't know what, but he knew it.

But he also knew that if he fought, he'd just be knocked down one last time in the desert dust, and he and Kara would just fry. Scrabbling away in the dirt, he reached for Kara and tugged her closer.

"Good choice, m'boy. Nice touch with the crawling on your belly in the dust. It's the little things that make degradation of the good guys like this so great."

He patted Kon gently on the head and stood up out of his crouch to walk away.

"Good luck with writing Superman's eulogy. And give Kennedy my regards." He turned briefly and blew a kiss. "Toodles!"

With that, and a sucking sound of air, he blipped away.

It's The Final Countdown

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