"So, there you have it folks. In less than 24 hours, you will be witnessing the wedding between Nightwing, leader of the Titans West, and Koriand'r, Queen of New Tamaran. Their marriage will signify the first step of a new era in human history, where we will be working together as one with our interstellar neighbors."
Lex Luthor missed the days when he could he could crumple up a newspaper and toss it in the trash. Back when the Atlanteans kept their place under the water. Back when the Amazons had peacefully integrated themselves into human society. Before their children and grandchildren decided to use their cursed magic to cause trouble. Before King Orin rose from the waves to show off his culture's incredible advancements, which could stop earthquakes but not clean up pollution. Before the Big Blue Boy Scout showed up, and the world fawned over his pretty-boy smile and unbreakable body.
He was no hero. Heroes are men who can bleed, sweat, and cry. Men like him, who used the brilliance of their undiluted human minds to make the world a better place. But expecting a profit as a reward for your hard work is now evil these days. You can cure cancer or turn deserts into rainforests, and you're still a criminal for making sure that the right mind is on top.
At the very least, he didn't have to worry about those damn gorillas anymore.
"Mercy, take us home."
"Sir, before we do that, you should read this." Miss Graves handed him a folded piece of paper out of her suit pocket. He opened it and his eyes widened with shock.
"Who gave this to you?"
"A short bald kid at that cancer charity last week. By the way, your performance is really getting better at those."
Mercy drove him to the address listed – a downtown German pub that had once been owned by a mob boss called Bruno Mannheim. He'd been dead for a while, but Luthor still hated him for being the only one to get him to work with Superman. Of course, smuggling in weapons from the worst interplanetary dictator in the galaxy would definitely make him the greater of two evils.
But, logically, Luthor still owed him. After all, it was Mannheim's allegiance to Apokolips that brought Desaad to Earth, who destroyed the Fortress of Solitude and strangled Supergirl. Had it not been for him, Superman never would have led the League off Earth to aid the Green Lanterns in their war.
After asking for "Commander", Luthor was guided to the back, where he knocked on the door once, then twice, then once again. The door opened and he was welcome into the secret private bar in the back.
The door quickly shut and locked behind him. He turned quickly notice to notice a young East Asian woman dressed similarly to Mercy positioning herself as a guard in front of the door. She stared at him through her empty, emerald eyes, like a cat ready to pounce.
Luthor then scanned the secret for its one other patron – a figure dressed in purple fedora and purple sleeves. As he got closer, he saw that this figure was a woman, dressed in tight purple pantsuit that shamelessly exhibited her feminine figure. She slouched her body on her bar stool, positioning her body in a crude diagonal fashion that even more shamelessly exhibited her feminine figure. Her fedora was tilted downward, covering the top half of her face, and she held a cigarette in her moth with her right hand. The only thing really off about her – besides her obsession with purple – was the silver bracelets on each arm that began as fingerless gloves and then extended to her elbows.
"Great, more un-human scum to waste my time," Luthor said to himself.
He sat down two bar stools to the left of her, facing the direction her body was facing. He was about to speak when a pint glass loudly hit the wooden bar surface next to his elbow. Luthor turned to see the bartender – a hulking young man, dressed professionally, but with a goatee and a mullet.
"Just a blue beck, on the rocks."
"Excellent choice, sir." The bartender made and served the drink in five seconds. "And for you, miss?"
The lady in purple took the cigarette out of her mouth. "Bottle of liquid gold."
"Coming right up."
As Luthor sipped from his drink, the bartender reached under the bar and placed a bottle of mustard in front of the lady in purple. After putting out her cigarette in the ashtray, she drank from the bottle's nozzle like a kid sucking through a straw. Then, in a very ladylike fashion, she set the bottle down and wiped her mouth with a napkin.
"Quite the delicacy. Your planet really doesn't give it the respect its due."
"Great, more alien scum," Luthor said to himself as he finished his blue beck.
"So, Mr. Luthor, you said you could turn Earth in Heaven without Superman in your way. He's been gone for quite a while. I don't think you've done that well of a job."
"It's not my fault. I gave the people a grand opportunity to become their leader, and yet they gave the election to Trevor."
"Ah, yes, the man who screws Wonder Woman. That's a much higher accomplishment than a man getting screwed by Superman."
"Please don't remind me of that obnoxious green leprechaun from Jump City. He represents everything wrong with today's youth – more concerned with being hip and cool than actually knowing about the important issues. Trevor showed how much he knew when he cancelled all my government contracts."
"Didn't he cancel all government contracts?"
"Yes, and now I actually have to compete on the free market."
"That's a strange thing for a champion of capitalism to complain about."
"I don't have a problem with capitalism. I have a problem with the people not recognizing the power of pure human ingenuity. Wayne, Queen, Kord, CyberWear – they all betrayed their species when they started working with that bloody League. Even the new CEOs fail to recognize my superiority. Holt and Nygma are by far the worst."
"But I'm sure the black market doesn't have that problem."
"No, but I can't go back on there, thanks to Oracle. I give her an exclusive internship and a chance to walk again. She repays me staying in her chair and blackmailing me to 'go straight'. I swear, of all…"
"I'm sorry, but where are your manners?" asked the lady in purple, now with a fresh cigarette in her left hand.
"What?"
"There is a lady in front of you with a fresh cigarette. Aren't you going to light it?"
"Well, miss, I'm a man who likes to keep my body healthy and my sharp. So … I don't smoke."
"Too bad. You're missing out."
The lady in purple put the cigarette in her mouth and gave a thumbs-up sign. A small purple ball of light appeared around the end of her thumb, which she moved directly under the cigarette, lighting it with a small violet flame.
Luthor's glass slipped out of his hand and shattered on the floor. "You're one of them!"
Her left hand still in lighter-mode, the lady in purple pushed the rim of her fedora upwards with her right pointer finger, exposing her Tamaranean face and sultry purple eyes.
"The name's Blackfire, and I am most definitely not one of them." Her tiny starbolt vanished, and her thumb joined the rest of her left hand to make a fist.
"So, what are you, then? A look-alike-species?"
"I'm their rightful Queen. For a big man, Luthor, you complain an awful lot about never getting the respect you deserve. Imagine never getting any respect from anyone. Imagine being told since you were a toddler that you were evil, a curse, a tragedy - underserving to receive the love of your family, the admiration of your people, or the throne that's rightfully yours – all because you were born with the wrong hair and the wrong eyes and couldn't fly until the right age.
"No, all the respect, all the praise, all the love – it all has to go to your perfect little sister!"
Blackfire could feel hot red liquid fill up her mouth, as her lantern ring on her right hand began giving a faint glow. She quickly calmed herself down.
"So, you're an enemy of your own species."
Blackfire took the cigarette out and looked at him with calm rage. "They wanted me to be their enemy. I was brought up to be their greatest warrior, all while telling what a monster I was. So, I made them happy, and myself happy, by becoming the greatest monster they'd ever seen.
"I tried this first by ruining my sister's life as payback for ruining mine. But no matter what I did, she always turned out happy. So, I gave up on that, let my anger build up, and came back to Tamaran as the monster they had always wished for."
"So, it's your fault that there's a million living-breathing emotionally unstable super-weapons taking up residence on the Moon, posing a clear and obvious threat to my entire species."
"Well, that wasn't my intention. I was just trying to show off for Lord Darkseid."
"So, you are working for him. In that case, are you trying to become the last of your kind to appear more valuable to him?"
"Oh, no. While I am here on official assignment from Darkseid, my fellow troqs have nothing to do with it. However, I do have big plans for them. Plans to ruin my sister's big day in the cruelest way possible and make the rest of my species extinct."
Blackfire took the cigarette out of her mouth and leaned forward with a hellish grin.
"And I'm only doing it … because it's FUN!"
She leaned back and returned the cigarette to her mouth. "So, Luthor, how about we make a deal?"
"Absolutely not. You've gleefully admitted to betraying your own species, working an interstellar warlord who threatens my species, and being motivated by your joyous sadism. I will never make any deal with the likes of you."
Still smiling, Blackfire reached into her pocket and pulled out a black box. She lifted up the side facing Luthor, and his face was bathed in green light.
"Is that…?"
"Yes, it is. Did you really think that your planet is the only one in the universe this stuff ended up? But from what I've heard, this is now the only piece still on this planet. And while you can't use it on Superman, there's a certain someone else who make a good stand-in."
Luthor continued staring in shock. Yes, it was annoying seeing Supergirl every night on the news, flying around with the same joyous smile as her cousin. If he could … well, you know … it would be quite a terrible thing for Superman to learn once he got home. Something that might finally break him, and expose him for the false god he is.
Blackfire closed the box and placed it on the bar. "Now, suppose that tomorrow, you could use that to finally do her in. How could you do that? Well, suppose that horrible thing I have planned for my sister makes all of her subjects very angry. Angry enough to seek revenge. Now, also suppose that my horrible tragedy involves something with your logo on it. So, the angry Tamaraneans take revenge on your big tower. And Supergirl shows up to stop it.
"And that's when you hit her with our green friend. She goes down trying to stop the Tamaranean revenge, and that pisses of your people. So much so that they want revenge. Revenge that your militaries can perform quite easily. So, in the end, we solve each other's alien problems!"
Luthor smiled back. "Alright, let's make a deal."
Blackfire pushed the black box along the bar to his hand. "So, you're OK with letting your own workers be killed?"
"Why should I? I'm a capitalist after all. Now, tell me what you want."
"Well, we just need something to keep someone alive. You know, safe from a starbolt barrage from an angry space princess."
"I have the perfect thing. An experimental force -field generating suit. However, the army decided they liked Kord's version better, so we still just have the prototype."
"That sounds perfect!"
"So, do you want me run back to the office and pick it up?"
"No! You see, check this out."
Blackfire snapped his fingers, and the Asian woman guarding the door walked up to them. She took out a compact mirror and a blue ray gun. After pulling the trigger, she sucked herself into the mirror, and then came back out the moment before it hit the floor, catching it before it did.
"Took us three months in Central City to find a stash of those," Blackfire explained. "So, all you need to do is give us directions from the mirror closest to your field suit, and we'll do the rest."
The bartender presented Luthor with a piece of paper and a pen. Luthor explained the directions as he wrote them and then slid the paper over to Blackfire.
"So, we have a deal, then?" she asked before taking her last smoke.
"Not yet. You see, I don't fully trust you, and I don't like being used as a pawn by an alien of clearly inferior intelligence. Whatever you full plan is, know this – Lex Luthor bows to no-one. Not to Superman, not to Darkseid, and not to you. So, promise me when this is over, Earth will be forever off limits from your warmongering masters. Otherwise, I can promise that whoever you send to pick up my suit won't be able to fulfill your precious plans for revenge."
Blackfire put out her cigarette in the ash tray. "You have my word!"
"Very good. So, how do we finalize this? Do we both sign something?"
"No, I'm afraid that won't do," replied Blackfire, unbuttoning and taking off her jacket, revealing the dark purple blouse she wore underneath. It was clearly too small and left nothing to the imagination despite revealing no skin.
"What we're both dealing with and calculating all the risk and pain and bloodshed involved, we're going to need more than just our names in writing. No, this is a very emotional, very personal, very intimate set of events that we are both sharing with each other."
Blackfire dropped her jacket on the floor and moved to the stool in front of Luthor. As expected, he couldn't take his eyes off her breasts, even when she leaned forward to be at his eye level.
"So, if we want to finalize this, we should do so in a way that is emotionally, personally … physically intimate for the both of us."
Blackfire moved again onto Luthor's lap, straddling her thighs on his hips. She caressed his bald head on both sides from top to bottom, feeling his accelerated heartbeat under his chin. Then she tilted his head upward and looked down on the seemingly helpless xenophobe.
"So … wanna seal our deal?"
She closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and moved in for a kiss. This was stopped when Luthor stuck the nozzle of the mustard bottle in her mouth. She opened her eyes in surprise and noticed Luthor smugly smiling up at her as he squeezed the bottle's contents into her mouth, and she reacted to the taste with an almost orgasmic sensation.
"One thousand of these, every day."
Luthor took the bottle out of her mouth, and Blackfire breathed heavily. She got off his lap, moved back to her bar stool, and took a cigarette out of the ashtray for one more smoke.
"You got yourself a deal!"
