Darkknight_UK Presents…
Superman: The Fallen"It won't come off!"
The makeshift rusty steel shiv scraped against the resplendent gold armour. The armour that was now fused to the Kandorian warrior's skin by the traitor's onslaught. In the flickering light of the fire he had made he checked the sharpness of his improvised blade. He was confident that if he persevered it would cut through.
"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
He cried out in pain and rage. The symbol embossed in his chest plate represented an ideal, an ideal he had held in his mind and heart since he was a boy. The crest of The Superman. It had been his guidance, his inspiration, his source of hope. It symbolised that men were not created equal. It implied the superiority of a master race and that the duty of that race, his race, was to protect the pure and civilised from the corruption and depravity of the impure.
The non-Ks.
The aliens.
As a child he had only a passing distaste for their perculiar looks, their crass, unpleasant languages and their obscure and primitive cultures. As a corpsman he had seen first hand the moral decay that seemed endemic in the alien population. The gangs, the rioters, the looters. They were sub human animals with no regard for society, for civilisation. To compare them to the true people of Kandor was laughable, to imbue them with the same rights unthinkable.
He had worn the S emblazoned shield as a badge of honour. He had fought for what it represented.
Until he met the traitor.
The corpsman's world shattered the day an aberrant force brought murder to the paradise of Kandor. He had found that the so-called real Superman was a mere parody of the ideals that his emblem represented. The real Superman was no deity, no God-like figure who visited his wrath upon the corrupt and his blessings upon the impure. He was not a creature of infinite wisdom, nor righteous vengeance. He was a snivelling wretch who fraternised with alien gangs and had tried to harbour an illegal species of alien. An empireth, no less, a psychic humanoid creature thought to have been purged years ago by heroes of the C.P.C. The corpsman's righteous quest to terminate the fiendish creature had brought him to the traitor's hellish alien planet where he was now trapped, unable to return to his beloved Kandor.
His beliefs had been shredded.
God was but a man.
A man named Kal-El.
Kal El. To even think the name was poison to his mind. The traitor had beaten him in combat and he had been forced to flee to the sanctuary of the cave where he now stood. The traitor had left him robbed of purpose and vision. Left him with nothing but shame and hate. The symbol on his chest was now a perverted distortion of what it meant to him.
"IT WON'T COME OFF!"
The yellow sun of this perverse planet had lent him great strength. He felt the sharp metal yield in his hands. He stared at the shard of metal and focused all his rage and hate upon it. It began to glow white hot. With a satisfied grunt he thrust it into the gold chest plate, using all his godly might to carve a gash across the symbol he had grown to hate. Blood seeped through the open wound, spitting and sizzling on the still glowing hot armour.
"By my father's blood… I will see you die for this, Kal-El.."
The pain and rage incensed him further and he gouged with renewed vigour at his maimed chest.
"All of the impure will DIE."
He would have revenge on the traitor Kal-El. He would humiliate, degrade and destroy the usurper of the mantle of The Superman. Then he would force Kal El to return him to Kandor where he would pronounce final judgement upon the heathen alien masses. He would carry the traitor's severed head as a trophy and his will would be the whole of the law.
"SO SWEARS SERGEANT PREUS!"