Looking Ahead to Look Behind
By Moonraker One
A/N: There are characters from both the comics and the Justice League animated series. Consider this taking place in the animated series with a few of the comic characters thrown in.
Superman didn't like having his morning interrupted.
Clark Kent would get up, clean himself up, put on his suit and his glasses, and go to work. Whenever he needed to be called into battle, he would take his leave and go take care of the bad guys. However, he always at least made it to work before he had to go save someone. This time, he'd found his routine interrupted. Furthermore, it hadn't even been an ordinary interruption. Robberies, thefts, your occasional Luthor project gets out of control, those were things he could handle easily.
Now he found himself on the receiving end of a beat down. It really didn't surprise him, however, seeing as he found himself staring down Superboy Prime. Not only that, it was a Monday.
"J'onn!" Superman shouted, seeing the Martian Manhunter coming in for assistance. "Any time the reinforcements want to arrive!" He saw his young foe turn away for a moment to see who he was talking to. Remembering Batman's advice, he took the initiative and delivered a powerful blow. Windows shattered for blocks around as he sent his enemy sailing out of Metropolis.
"I'm sorry, Superman," the green Martian called back. "We're still waiting on Doctor Fate to respond. He's our best shot at taking down the other universe Superboy." He adapted his musculature to be denser so that he could more adequately assist his fellow Justice Leaguer.
Upon drawing the fight out of a crowded city, Superman used his hearing to locate his foe. The villain in question careened in at an unheard of speed and clocked Superman hard enough to knock his jaw out of place. "Don't you understand? I'm immune to magic!" He punched his older main universe counterpart in the stomach. "I have enough strength to move planets out of their orbit! Why don't you give up?"
"Because here on this Earth," he replied, delivering an axe-handle smash to Superboy Prime and kneeing him in the stomach, "Superman doesn't do that." He's much stronger than me, Superman thought, trying to avoid blows that had such force behind them that they caused air pressure explosions behind him even after he dodged. As he landed a right hook on the boy's face, he found a heat vision burst burn a hole clean through his right arm. His Kryptonian regeneration kicked in, but the pain caused him to reel and it gave an opening. Superboy Prime kicked him straight in the side of the head, almost throwing him completely off balance. He grabbed Superman by the leg and whirl tossed him into the heart of Metropolis.
"Superman's losing pretty badly! We need more firepower!" Wonder Woman signaled with her earpiece, right before flying up and attempting to pound on the virtually omnipotent Superboy Prime. He managed to parry her blows with incredible ease and send her on her way with a straight jab to the sternum. A blast from Hawkgirl's mace startled him a moment, but he effectively ignored her and flew towards his main target.
Superman, his blood drying on his uniform while his regeneration healed him, dislodged himself from one of the interior walls of the LexCorp building. Its inhabitant stood up from underneath his desk and looked at the ruined section of the wall. "Superman! What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. He was simply in his office, taking care of business, when the Boy Scout came flying in and blasted clear through two whole floors. Honestly, he figured, I can't get a moment of peace.
"Lex! Get out of here before you get killed!" Superman beckoned. He had but an instant to say it, though, as his foe approached at ever faster velocities. Green Lantern ensnared Superboy Prime in a clamp formed out of energy, but found himself being dragged instead of slowing the boy down. Even though Superman despised Luthor, he flew out of the building to draw fire away from him. It didn't work that well, however, as he barely made it out before he got a swift punch in the face. The villain effortlessly freed himself from Green Lantern's grasp as he entered the office building and began driving his foe through walls and ceilings.
Superboy Prime was in a mail room hallway as he lifted Superman by the neck and punched him in the face and chest repeatedly. He drove his foe into his knee and tossed him aside upon hearing a woman scream. "You remind me of my old girlfriend," he uttered, sneering. "That pisses me off. Reminding me of what was TAKEN from me!" He flew towards her and she closed her eyes, waiting for her life to end abruptly.
Instead, a metallic fist struck him in the head with such force as to shatter most of the building's windows. The force of the impact launched Superboy Prime clear out of Metropolis. "That was just a momentary distraction. We should come up with a strategy of taking him down." Superman wiped blood from his eyes and looked up at the familiar voice. It was Professor Ivo's android creation.
"Amazo!" Superman yelled, standing up. "That means,"
"Yes, I'm here," Doctor Fate said, closing a portal behind him.
He frowned. "But Fate," he countered, "he's immune to magic."
He didn't have time to continue his speaking, as Superboy Prime flew in and took the android out of the building. The machine did a startlingly effective job of countering and parrying attacks. However, it dismayed him as he received a vicious blow. "I…I can't copy…your powers?"
Superboy Prime nearly took his foe's arm off with a left hook. "I'm too powerful for you," he taunted.
Amazo punched him as hard as he could, but all it did was launch him back towards the LexCorp building. There were no visible signs of wounds of any kind. He flew back in and exchanged a telepathic quote with Fate. "I can't copy his powers, Doctor. And he is too strong even for me."
Doctor Fate was about to reply that he had a strategy, but before he had a chance, the costumed villain emerged from underneath the floor and stopped behind the machine. The android had time to face his attacker…right before Superboy Prime put his fist straight through the machine's head. Amazo collapsed to the floor in a sparking heap.
Angry, Superman responded with an impressive combo. He uppercut his foe viciously, then grabbed his shoulders and drove him downward into a rising knee, and finished with a headbutt. Superboy Prime's blood dripped from his lips for the first time in the entire battle. He angrily retaliated. He drew his fist back for a finishing blow. Superman gasped as he saw his foe's muscles tense. This strike had enough power to bring the entire LexCorp building, if not the entire city, from how much power was behind it. Most of the Justice League couldn't put a dent in him. The android was down. Doctor Fate had a plan, and Superman counted on it. Otherwise, this kid would punch a hole straight through him.
With a wave of his hand, a yellow sunlight force field surrounded Superman and all the electric lights in the building were changed to shine red sunlight. The hero of Metropolis charged forward and delivered a powerful blow; his enemy's attacks were greatly diminished in power. "Fate!" Superman shouted, repeatedly striking his foe in the head. "Red sunlight doesn't drain him fast enough! We need to weaken him more!"
"You're not going to beat me with these red lights, Superman!" Superboy Prime taunted, kicking at his foe's stomach. Superman didn't recoil as much as he had before, as the kick had been drained of a large portion of its previous power.
Fate knew what Superman had in mind. He concentrated, analyzing the extradimensional threat on a cellular level, then a molecular level, then finally, on a subatomic level. Magically scanning the boy on the smallest levels possible, he found the vibrational frequency that all objects from the Prime universe shared in common; the key identifier that Superboy Prime was in fact, not from the main Earth universe. He looked throughout the LexCorp building they were in, and found Lex's safe filled with Kryptonite. He memorized the frequency of the radiation of the lethal ordinance, then recalled the vibrational frequency of the Prime universe.
Superman whirled around, decking the boy in the face and getting a dab of blood on the walls. Superboy Prime saw his blood on the floor and the walls. This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought. No one can harm me. I am beyond Superman in everything! He shouldn't be capable of harming me.
"Now!" Superman shouted.
Fate raised his hand and a green burst of energy shot forth and struck Superboy Prime right in the chest. He screeched in pain, unlike anything he'd ever felt. Superman launched himself forward, plowing a jab into the villain's gut, causing him to spit up more blood on the ground, and Fate, with his other hand, opened a portal to the Phantom Zone. Superman threw his foe forward through the portal and Doctor Fate sealed it tight. Superman sighed, then relaxed for a moment against the wall.
"After we beat Superboy Prime the first time, we put him in the Phantom Zone," he recalled. "I thought that even the most physically powerful being in the universe couldn't escape the Phantom Zone."
"He didn't," Fate answered. "Someone with magic let him out. If I find out, I'll let you know. Right now, I have to see if I can restore the Android. Superboy Prime did a number on him." He vanished into thin air. The Justice League gathered their wounded, and the main heavy hitters returned to the Watchtower to heal. Meanwhile, they sent in various cleanup and worker crews to fix damage and remove rubble from the area. It would be quite a while. LexCorp had its own repair crew and had no desire to get any assistance from the Justice League.
Lex sat in his office, drinking from his mini refrigerator inside one of his dressers. He had a glass of wine halfway down when his door opened and a suited female figure walked in. She approached the desk. "I delivered on my side of the bargain, Lex," the woman said, pushing her brown hair away from her face. She briefly dropped the illusion, revealing her true form for but a moment.
"I think you'll find your bank account full, Morgan Le Fay," he replied. "It's just like we agreed. You get eight million and the artifact," he produced an ancient lead box, "and I get samples of blood." He watched as she set two vials of red blood on his desk, and smiled.
"Am I finished yet? And what do you need Superman's blood for?" She picked up the box and held it tightly. If it hadn't been first discovered by Lex Luthor, she wouldn't have had to go to such lengths to work for him. "I broke Superboy Prime out of the Phantom Zone, and then they fought in the city. Why such trouble?"
Lex drummed his fingers together. "Because Superman disposed of all the samples I had of his DNA when we last fought. And I needed someone strong enough to break through that skin of steel he has. I like the fact that they brought the fight right to my home turf; now that was a bonus."
She waved as she walked out. "Whatever, Lex. I just want my money." She stopped at the door. "But, what're you going to do with Superman's DNA? Make another Superboy like that kid that joined the Teen Titans?"
"No. Something bigger than that," he admitted. "But your work here is done, Le Fay." He circled around and held up the two vials. "The spoils of war," he whispered to himself. He pressed a button on his intercom. "I've got two vials of blood ready for project Superman 2. Are the nanites ready?"
A voice quickly responded. "We've got the nanites that were stolen from Cadmus. All we have to do is reshape the DNA so it can bind successfully with a human's and cause fertilization, and then we're ready."
"So," Lex replied, "these nanites will rewrite a test subject's reproductive tissue to produce that of our sample?"
"In common terms," the scientist shot back, "whoever we choose, his testicles will produce Superman's sperm. It is sperm that will be able to bond to human DNA, producing a human/Kryptonian hybrid."
Lex could imagine his plan taking shape. Every piece had been laid in place. All he had to do now was to make sure his chess pieces played their part. He had on his desk a file folder of the physical and psychological profiles of a young Smallville couple. The husband owned thirty acres outside the main city. He had an appointment to get a flu shot from the LexCorp medical department. Little did he know he would be receiving more than that, and that Lex had a plan to build a super hero, grow them from the ground up, and then corrupt them in the height of their youth. If he couldn't get Superman on his side, he'd do the next best thing.
The husband, Martin Ganworth, went in to get a flu shot, about fourteen days later, and received the injection, just as Lex had planned. Just under a year after that, his wife, Olivia, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with dark hair. Neither one of them was any the wiser to the plan. They went home to Smallville with their daughter, Annabeth, to start their new life. To them, absolutely nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They simply ignored her jet black hair while both of them were redheads, they wrote the conspicuous absence of a birthmark similar to her father off as good genes, and the fact that her eyes were blue while theirs were brown and green, they believed to be a family trait from a past generation. No reason to doubt her genetics popped up until she was ten years old.
It occurred on a Monday.
The young girl leapt off the bus with vigor. Her mother and father waited at the start of the driveway. "Hey, kiddo," the father yelled, "how was school?" He had errands to run, but at least he would see his little girl safely return home before he did. His wife smiled and hugged the girl as she set down her pack and jumped into her mother's arms.
"It was really boring," she replied. "Other than history where they talked about the Civil War, it almost put me to sleep." She was glad to be home. After surviving another school day, she wanted nothing more than to relax. The mother looked over at her husband, ready to jump in his truck and head to main town Smallville and pick up some supplies. She looked at her father with a request on her mind. "I was wondering, since we didn't get to yesterday, can we play baseball?"
"Dear, do you think you've got a minute to spare?" She looked to the baseball bat that sat on the porch. "It won't be light anymore by the time you get back, so why don't you let her hit a few times?" She grabbed her daughter's backpack and set it on the porch.
"Really?" Annabeth cooed. "Can we, dad?" She jumped up and down, briefly, until her father stepped out of the vehicle, and with a smile on his face, agreed.
"I was kinda busy yesterday, but I think I've got time before the store closes," he admitted. "Tomorrow, you get off of school, I'll finish my chores early, and we can get in a better game." He picked up the baseball and handed her the bat. Taking a step backward-so he didn't position the truck behind her-he threw the ball underhandedly, with a moderate amount of force. She gripped the bat and swung; the ball passed underneath without striking it. The mother picked it up and passed it back to her husband.
"Throw it a bit higher, dad!" Annabeth cried. True to her word, he aimed slightly higher and flung the ball. This time, when the girl swung, she hit it. In fact, she slammed the bat against the ball with far greater force than intended. It was gone. She'd knocked it clear out of the state of Kansas.
The parents stood and stared at the afternoon sky in shock as they saw the small round object vanish into the horizon. "How the…what…I don't…" the mother hesitatingly gasped. She looked at her daughter with incredulity. "Annabeth, how…did you do…that?" Her husband and her shared a look that told of their confusion. She's…she's got powers, the mother thought. Like those horrible Kryptonite mutants that used to show up so often in the past. Her husband looked at the baseball bat and saw the handprints dug into the aluminum.
"Kiddo, did…you ever come into contact with a glowing green rock?" he asked.
Annabeth looked left and right, mystified. "No, I've never seen any glowy green rocks." She had a bigger concern. "We're not going to have to move, are we?"
The mother knelt down and hugged her daughter. "Oh, no, honey, we live here. It doesn't matter if you are special. We're not going to uproot you just because you've got an ability." Her words were comforting to her daughter, but her own thoughts deeply concerned her. She felt like her world had been turned off and a new one turned on. Her daughter, possibly a krypto-mutant, severely disturbed her. She still loved her daughter and would support her as best as possible, but the risk couldn't be greater. Now her family would have to proceed with extreme caution.
Unbeknownst to the Ganworth's, a pair of eyes watched them. Far away in a tower in Metropolis, a man sat, his view fixed to a monitor that had a blinking light on it. The remote cameras, nanoscopic in size, had captured what was looped on the monitor. Lex watched as a little girl knocked a baseball into another state. "Pretty soon," he whispered to himself.