Chapter Twenty Six: Curse of Tut Part Two.

Metropolis hit a state of panic, when the floods filled the streets, and there was a city wide evacuation. Everyone lost their minds, which was not good, because thousands could drown if they did not get to safety.

'And Tut went to the throat for that one,' Karen added. She flew over the city, and used her X-Ray vision to see where the flooding was the most prominent. There she would find the bombs that he planted, she was sure of that.

Kara followed her and searched as well. She sighed and dive bombed and plucked a civilian who dangled from one of the buildings.

She whimpered in fear and Kara managed to bring her halfway across the city.

"You're in safe hands, trust me," Kara said and she smiled and flew off.

'A lot of people think that they're invincible, and they could ride the worst of it out…..kind of hard to stop a flood if we don't know where it's starting,' Kara thought. She had another thought. 'You know for a magical plague, this isn't really…..'

'It isn't really what?' Karen asked her curiously.

'I mean, he planted bombs…'

'Despite his delusions, he doesn't have magical powers, not that the real King Tut ever did,' Harry replied.

Helena piped in. 'Of course the real King Tut died when he was eighteen years old or so.'

'Yeah, the guy's nuttier than a fruit loop, therefore historical accuracy isn't really something that we should expect him to strive for,' Donna thought, and she placed her hand on the side of her face. 'So, what's the deal with you and Diana…..I mean are you getting close to closing in….'

That question would have to wait to be answered, for right now Kara dove down to the street level and saw the bubbling underneath the ground.

She smiled when she realized what it was. 'Jackpot.'

Kara held her breath and dove underneath the water. Karen followed her; perhaps it was not the best idea to go into cold water while wearing a tight costume that clung to her body.

Karen shrugged at the thought of it. 'Oh well too late now, guess we're going to…..'

Kara stopped her thought process cold and dodged her. The younger blonde crooked one finger and a copper manhole cover waited for them.

The blonde dove down to the manhole cover and placed her hands on it. She squinted her eyes and carefully caused the water not to boil them both when she sliced it open. Then she pulled up the manhole cover.

Kara did the job and could see where the water pumped inwards. It was some kind of crude pump like device that sent the water into the city. It rapidly pumped the water in and out and threatened to flood anyone in the city. She analyzed in an attempt to find some kind of defect in the city.

'Looks like something that someone build in their basement on a slow afternoon,' Kara said, but she was not one to argue with the results and the results was that it worked. The blonde looked things over, while Karen sealed the opening so no more water could pump out into the city, at least from this vantage point.

Barbara jumped onto the call. 'Be that as it may, do you think that you can shut it down?'

'Please, I built something like this before I walked,' Kara said, and she pried open the piece of technology. It was time for her to get to work and see what she could do with this.

The blonde worked things and the pumping stopped and just in time too. She thought for one wild second that she and Karen could relax now.

"So, can I breathe now?"

Kara laughed at her older counterparts annoyed expression, but she nodded eagerly. She gave Karen a critical look over and liked what she saw. Mostly because of the white costume clinging to every curve her body and adding to transparency.

"Hey, Supergirl, my eyes are up here,' Karen said. She tried to look all serious, but she was failing at that in the most miserable way possible, which caused Kara's mad giggles to explode. She looked rather mad to be honest.

"I know they are….oh the look on your face, that's priceless."

'Okay ladies, save it for later, you still got two more pumps to disable.'

So far, so good for both of them, or at least so far no Tutlings down there, but then again, there was the mysterious third plague that Tut wanted to deliver.

'You've bought Metropolis some relief, but there are two more points at every point during the city, and you may have to vaporize some of it,' Helena informed them.

Karen nodded, and she and Kara made their way up so they could go back into the city. 'We'll keep that in mind when we get out there.'

Never one to be ignored, Donna asked the question that the chaos cut her off by earlier. 'So how are you and Diana….'

'Following another lead,' Harry said sharply. Not that he minded talking to his wives, but they needed to find Tut. He was of the highest priority in the here and now. 'I do have a piece of bad news that I'd like to share with you.'

Karen groaned and she was far from the only one. 'What?'

'Tut took a staff that may have mystical properties.'

Donna jumped in with the obvious statement and cut off Harry before he could finish speaking. 'I thought you said that he didn't have a single drop of magic in his body, didn't you?'

Karen and Kara closed in on the second pump, but they knew that they would have to listen to that and exactly why Tut having this staff was extremely dangerous.

'Magical artifacts are a funny and kind of annoying thing,' Harry explained to all of the girls and they leaned in closely. 'They can empower people really easily that shouldn't be empowered. And it never ends well, period, no matter how much you slice it.'

Karen found the pump and disabled it while Kara plugged up the leak. 'So you're pretty much saying that the safest person to have a magical artifact, is a magical person.'

'That's exactly what I'm saying,' Harry said, now that he had a good idea what Tut had in his hands, he could hopefully calibrate a working energy signature with his suit and track the man. 'Power is an interesting thing and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That being said, I wouldn't really trust a magical artifact in the hands of a magical either. But yes they're more adept to holding and controlling the power.'

Kara could not help, but do a triumphant dance. 'Two down, and one to go.'

Barbara jumped in to amend her with a correct. 'Two down and one to go, as far as you know.'

Kara crossed her arms and scowled deeply in response. 'Must you try and bring down everything that I do…..I was just…..'

'Easy Kara,' Harry warned the blonde and she blinked and nodded. 'Just focus on the three that we know about, and we'll try and worry about anything else that might come up. The water levels went down, you two girls are doing an excellent job. Keep up the good work.'

"And there's a fourth bomb, but it didn't get detonated," Harry said with the report coming in and Diana stood at his shoulder. Not that he complained at all about one of the bombs not getting detonated, but he really wanted to know why that didn't happen.

Diana looked a bit satisfied by that fact, and Harry turned towards her. She threw her hands up into the air.

"I don't suppose you have anything to do with that, do you?"

Diana smiled in response, she figured that since she got caught red handed, she might as well come unclean. "Well…..since we're in Metropolis, I managed to get in touch with a friend of mine to see if we can get some help….."

Almost as on cue, Harry looked up in the sky. He didn't see a bird, he didn't see a plane, rather he saw something streak across the sky at the speed of light. Or perhaps faster than a speeding bullet, Harry wasn't too sure. Regardless Harry was happy to have some help no matter who it was.

"So that's….."

Diana confirmed what he asked with a wide smile and nodded, placing her hand onto his shoulder. "Yes, that's…"

"I figured as much," Harry replied, but a scream reached his ears. The Blur sighting would have to wait, and the cascading waters went down, but they surrounded on particular area of Metropolis.

The girls didn't take care of the last pump just yet, so Harry saw that a few unfortunate people got caught in the middle. Most of them likely with no thought for their own personal safety.

One of them was Lois Lane herself, who dangled from a flagpole, and several people stood around her, and backed off with the water rising from all sides on a low rooftop.

One of the girls screamed and Lois almost let go. Actually scratch that she did let go. The reporter nearly fell down to her doom. Someone caught her before she did.

Lois prepared to face her usual blur like savor, but found that this was something different. There was a young man dressed in a sleek black bodysuit with a hood pulled over his face, obscuring all of his features.

She hated being in a position, especially when she can do something about it, and really she did a lot to discreetly make sure some of these people did not drown themselves because they obviously had no thought for their own well-being.

'Then again, I don't have any room to talk at all,' Lois thought and she turned around to take a look at her savor.

Only said savor was gone and she was on dry land. In fact, upon closer look, all of Metropolis was on dry land. It was amazing, almost as if the flood stopped almost as soon as it started.

Lois shook her head, this was one of those nights she had a feeling, and the King of Insanity still had one more plague to unleash.

Lois, are you there?'

Lois realized that she had been in the middle of texting information back and forth, as her cousin helped her uncover where Tut was holed up, and she had got swept away, helping these people.

Here, yes, I nearly drowned, but sometimes that can't be helped.

Actually, you can help that, you know.

Didn't want let that particular cat out of the bag.

Or you were just hoping for another Blur sighting today…..well she is in the area.

Actually not the Blur, someone else.

Harry and Diana walked away from the scene, glad to be on mostly dry land. Sure there was some wet spots and a lot of water damage that they couldn't undo, but they were glad.

A storm cloud brewed high above their heads that could be a potentially bad open for things to come today.

Diana turned towards Harry once she caught her breath and smiled. "So, you had your first Lois Lane rescue, didn't you?"

"I guess one could say that, although I might have stopped a train that she was on one time from crashing, or maybe that is a plane," Harry said and he smiled. "This one might have been considered more personal. She does have that unfortunate knack of finding trouble, but…..call me crazy….."

"You know there's nothing in this world that I would really call crazy," Diana said, and she saw enough to realize that there was a fair deal of insanity in the world. Things that made a person's skin crawl if they lived a normal life.

Thankfully Diana didn't live anything remotely approaching a normal life. So she would gladly accept what Harry had to say at face value.

"I think that she could save herself at least half of the time, she just chooses not to, because it's the rush that she gets getting in danger," Harry said and he stopped to make sure that his tracker was properly calibrated. When it was, he continued. "Of course, I think that if she was in any real danger….."

"She would save herself," Diana muttered.

Kara chimed in with her two cents. 'You know, that really does make a lot of sense, her getting off on the danger factor.'

Harry smiled and decided to praise his two lovely wives. 'You did a good job with disabling the bombs….the city is now safe…..at least until Tut decides to strike again.'

'Hopefully you can get close to him before he strikes again,' Barbara said, and she looked through the records. She had a few probable hideouts for Tut, but all of them came up dead ends so far. Helena searched some of them on her own time, while Harry and Diana tracked in their own way. If they met in the middle, the more the merrier because a number of eyes tracking down Tut would lead them to him. 'You don't…..you don't have any idea where he might be holed up, do you? Because I don't have the slightest idea at all, and that worries me.'

Harry smiled, he didn't have a direct idea where Tut might be holed up. He popped over to try his old office at Yale, but no luck, and a couple of other places that Tut resided in previously. His house that he lived in with his wife was sold about three years back and McElroy lived in a modest apartment in Metropolis.

That apartment was abandoned, with nothing out of place. It looked as if the person who lived there just left for an extremely long trip.

'You know, we're just going to have to track him, if he uses the staff again, it may create a tracking beacon that leads us right to him.'

Tut hoisted a chair over his head and angrily hurled it against the wall. The chair shattered into hundreds of tiny little toothpick like pieces and he breathed in and out, in an attempt to keep himself calm.

Oh he was calm, he was so calm…..calm as could be.

Tut smashed the table that his scrolls sat on and his henchmen backed up against the wall.

"How is it….how is it…HOW IS IT?" he asked and he started breathing in and out and hyperventilating

Tut slumped down on the table and started to sob which really terrified them. He sobbed and started to smash up the table more and more. His sobs got more pronounced the more he smashed up the table. "I try….I try do what's right for this city. I could protect them all, all they could serve me. All I ask for is a little compensation for my time and efforts…."

Tut stood up to his feet and was straight up. His voice sounded raw when he glared at his men.

"But, no that's too much to ask, that's way too much to ask," Tut whispered harshly and he started to pace back and forth in a circle. "Oh, you think that it wouldn't be, but you know that it's way too much to ask…..from all of them…and now they're interfering with my plans. They coddled them from punishment."

Tut's low and normal voice unsettled the criminals, but jarringly and abruptly, it snapped into the crazed tone that they all knew and loved.

"BUT NO!" Tut shouted and they backed off and freaked out something fierce. The king stood up straight and his eyes glared at them piercingly. "You see, they think of me as nothing but the boy king. They think that I died for the sake of tourism!"

Tut stepped over, and picked up the staff. It hummed in his hand and he started to stab his henchmen in the chest.

"Well they're wrong, wrong, wrong, DEAD WRONG!" Tut yelled. The crazed villain emphasized each word with a sharp jab of the staff and suddenly, the men popped again. He paused, and took a look at them, or what was once his men. "Well, that's an interesting little side effect now isn't it?"

Their skin turned sallow and yellow, their teeth looked jagged and their nails looked black.

"Master, master…."

Tut's eyes glared at the staff and he lifted it to his lips and prepared to kiss it.

At the last instant he pulled back and thought better of it. "No, no, I don't think that you all want me to put my lips around a large wooden staff, now do you?"

Tut's eyes followed them greedily, and the possibilities proved to be endless. Zombies, he should have thought about that earlier. Zombies didn't talk back to him, no they respected the authority.

The second plague was a bust, even though it should have worked. But each generation had its own do-gooders, and Tut ran into his.

He pulled over the view screen, dangle fangled piece of technology or not, it had its uses. His beady little eyes fixed on Arcane and his face looked foul. "Oh you think that you're so clever, I bet that he thinks that he's so clever, doesn't he?"

Tut spun to face the zombies. They all nodded slowly.

"Brains?" one of the zombies asked.

"Don't know, we'll see," Tut said and he got down onto his knees and clutched the staff firmly in his hand. His hand stroked it up and down. "You see here, this is power. It's just like my grandfather told me, the man who commands the largest staff…rules the kingdom."

Tut looked up into the sky and praised the gods. The gods should enjoy the taste of the godhood that they had while things last.

"I thought that I had it all figured out a long time ago but wait…there's something that I'm missing," King Tut said and he sprung up to his feet. He moved with surprisingly agility for an overstuffed Pharaoh and he paced back and forth. "Oh, in the name of Osirius, I should have made a list."

Tut paced back and forth, while his recently zombified subjects stared back at him in confusion.

"Oh let's see, let's see….got to think of something, I had it a minute ago," Tut muttered underneath his breath and he continued his pacing back and forth. He shook his head, he was sure that it would come to him. He raised one beady finger and prepared to tick off his list.. "A kingdom to rule…..soon enough, soon enough."

Tut coughed and lifted up another finger when he checked it off in his head.

"A host of loyal subjects…well it took a little tinkering, but I think we can check that one off of the list."

"BRAINS!"

Tut shrugged, more to himself than anyone else "Okay, they're a little flawed, but no one's perfect, are they?

With a wheezy cough Tut stopped and continued to shift through various ideas in his head.

"Let me see, let me see, let me see…um…power source, I got that one….revenge on all of the people that have ever wronged me…"

Tut's eyes averted to the image of one called Arcane and he added in a grumbling voice. "A work in progress."

The crazed king placed his fingers to the top of his head and started to stroke the top of his head, as if that would stimulate the thought process.

He slammed his hand down and hit one of his followers. He knocked his head off, due to the fact that he was a walking body of rotting flesh.

"Oh, well that's unfortunate, guess I better worry about making them zombie of mind and not zombie of body," Tut whispered, but then he snapped up. Inspiration dawned upon the mighty Pharaoh. "Oh, that's it, that's it, oh, that's it, I'VE GOT IT!"

King Tut held the staff in his hand and dropped down to his knees once again. His smile widened again.

"What was a King….without a Queen?' Tut asked and he rocked back and forth, crazed intentions bubbled in his eyes. "I'll answer that question, nothing, less than nothing; he's really and completely….NOTHING!"

Tut laughed like a crazed lunatic that many people would say that they were.

"Oh mighty staff, tell me what you can see, and tell me where the Queen is, that will make you all that I could be," Tut whispered and the staff rattled in his hand and it imparted wisdom upon him.

If Tut already hadn't been a bit out to lunch already, he would have realized that the staff he held slowly cooked his brain cells. The power of this staff brought him into a new level of insanity that was beyond anything that he knew before.

"Well, well, well, I guess that the stars aligned, and brought us together before my subconscious was unlocked in McElroy's brain," Tut said and he turned the staff over in his head. "You have been kind to me, the only thing that I ever loved you know."

Tut cleared his throat, and he looked to the mirror, his eyes looked blood shot and his skin looked a bit dry. In addition to that lanky hair, he looked like a train wreck, but he put it off to the fact that that Arcane and Wonder Woman stopped two of his three well prepared Plagues.

"You know, if you could be my queen, I would marry you, and it would be such a joyous union," Tut whispered and he caressed the staff. He looked at the staff with adoring eyes and cooed when he stroked the large staff in his hand up and down."But unfortunately, I require someone that can present me with future heirs to the throne, and…."

Tut smiled and looked at the staff.

"It isn't you, it's me, I'm a man of certain tastes, but don't worry, we can remain friends and even retain certain benefits,' Tut whispered lovingly to the staff. "And, I'm sure that our relationship will be stronger than ever before."

Tut snapped himself back to reality, or at least as close back to reality as someone like him reached in this day and age.

"Yes, we need to direct the attention of the two do-gooders, whatshisname and whatshername, it doesn't matter, they are mere peasants," Tut whispered and he smiled at his precious magical staff. "But first, mighty staff…lead the way…"

The staff twisted in Tut's hand and caused the zombies to glow. They returned back to perfect health except for the fact that they were under his control.

The last thing Tut wanted to do was clean up rotted skin and worm flesh.

"Now for a little bit of misdirection to really have some fun."

"Subjects, lend an ear for a message from King Tut…."

'And here we go again, the royal pain is going to get another proclamation,' Diana thought, and she approached the Sphinx and ran her hand over it carefully. She was pretty sure that she missed something glaring.

It drove her completely nuts. Diana swore that she missed something vital on this object, in fact she was pretty damn sure of it. The fact that she couldn't figure out exactly what she missed bugged the ever living shit out of her however.

Harry stood by her, and he waited to see what the third plague would be . The locusts were tame, and the floods were a pain. Both of them were something that he could deal with. There was not a shadow of a doubt in his mind that he drove Tut into a fit.

"So, this is it, the end, the final Plague, and yet not all of you will pay," Tut said and he seemed remorseful. "I thought, I hoped, that you would grow to worship me as your king. I mean, you would stand in line, and give your tribute to me. Lie it down on the ground, pay your tribute. Some have, but not all, and I'm disappointed, extremely disappointed."

His voice flattened, and he sounded more like McElroy then Tut.

"BUTTT…..you're not going to get off the hook that easily, you have ten minutes, and counting before I bring down something that not even any of your heroes can stop!" Tut yelled and he was bombastic again. He ran from hot to cold and back to hot at the drop of a hat.

Harry thought it was curious that none of Tut's guard supervised the ground, and some got incensed with what happened.

Harry and Diana moved to a safer location and rocks bounced off the Sphinx when they threw it at them.

"You see….you see…..I don't do this out of hatred, I do this, because I hoped to impart a lesson on you all," Tut whispered again and he sighed. "But I guess that none of you really don't seem to think that you're worthy of learning a lesson…"

'Getting closer,' Barbara thought to him and Harry smiled.

'I am as well, keep me posted,' Harry thought and he felt a throbbing headache coming on. He could feel the magic in the air and it sickened him. It was way too much for him to absorb power.

Whatever that staff's intended purpose was, it did not seem to be a very friendly one as far as Harry was concerned.

'Don't worry, I'll keep you posted,' Barbara thought, and she smiled. 'Let me know if you learn anything.'

"…..In ten minutes, the skies will open up, and they will not bring down rain, nor snow, but they will bring down meteors…..you see…only the righteous, those who paid tribute to their god will be spared from this horror, and the wicked…..the wicked will be obliterated. There's still time to pay up, and pay up handsomely, but you see…..I don't know how much more I can do, time's running out."

King Tut laughed at this and people felt revolted by how sick this individual was.

Kara pulled a nasty face in particular. After what Harry told her about the staff, she wasn't too certain what to believe anymore. 'Can he do that?'

'He believes that he can do that,' Harry answered her and the blonde's fist curled up.

Karen whistled. 'Pretty big stretch from being a king to a god.'

'That's the magic talking,' Harry thought, wrinkling his nose. He expected a sanity slip. He didn't expect that one this fast.

"And me and my friend will know if you're trying to cheat us out of one cent and…..this goes out to Arcane and Wonder Woman, because I know that you're watching," Tut continued and he laughed. "YOU EVER TRY AND INTERFERE WITH MY PLANS AGAIN, AND I'LL…."

Tut's anger turned into a full blown level of mindless and completely insane swearing. The sound of smashing furniture echoed and everyone listened. The full blown temper tantrum he gave was one for the ages.

He calmed down and started to breath in and out heavily.

"Sorry, my precious, I didn't want you to see that," Tut said lovingly.

'Is he talking to the fucking staff?' Karen asked incredulously.

Harry gave a long and prominent sigh to respond to his wife's question. 'Yeah, I'm afraid that he's talking to the fucking staff.'

'The guy's went out to lunch, you know that?' Kara asked, and there was no response to that that was needed.

Other than the one Donna gave and she snickered. 'Wow, Kara, what was your first clue? The mindless swearing, or the fact that he started to treat the magical staff like a beloved sweetheart….yeah I know this is kind of creepy.'

Harry heard stories of people killing their entire families and then themselves because the magical artifact told them to so. Or so they thought that it did. Even the more mundane ones were asking for trouble, and wands degraded the ability for magical users to think rationally.

Not that all of them were bad, but most of them were. If anything else, all should be used sparingly and with the greatest discretion.

"I guess, what they say is true…you can….you can go home again, and you'd be reunited with the one that you love the most."

'Is he talking about the bloody staff again?' Kara asked, and she wondered if Tut should just fuck and get it over with.

The blonde paused at that disturbing thought that entered her head off of that, and she pulled a face in response.

Diana suddenly thought of something, and she turned towards Harry.

"We heard of McElroy…..the day before the accident happened, didn't we?" Diana asked, and things slowly clicked together in her mind.

Harry remembered it right now, and it all went together. He picked up the phone and tried to dial Helena Sandsmark, but the phone was busy.

"We got to get there now, Doctor Sandsmark might be in horrible danger," Harry said and Diana's eyebrow raised an eyebrow and nodded.

'I'll see if I can beat you there first, or cut them off if they try something,' Helena said, but she wondered even with her new and improved grapnel, she wondered if she could make it in time.

"Mom, did you hear what happened?"

Doctor Helena Sandsmark sighed, when her young daughter, Cassie, spoke over the phone to her. Helena was trying to keep her sanity intact.

"Kind of hard not to," Sandsmark said, she graded some papers from the class that she taught. It was only two times a week, and she frowned at the quality of some of the papers that she had in front of her.

Some of them needed a great deal of revision before they could be considered passable.

She thought about Professor McElroy, he wasn't' really a bad guy. He had a lot of misfortunes in his life, and she thought that he deserved a quiet life. The stress of teaching cause what was a third mental break.

The first one was rather minor all things considered. Granted, it wasn't something that she would wish on anyone, but he recovered.

His wife had been his rock and she died. He went on that rampage and kidnapped several young college students and tried to cut them open to take their organs to revive his wife. Thankfully he was stopped before anything fatal could happen to those students.

He got a job at Met-U, and Helena knew that decision was a lot of controversy. Another fluke accident jarred his alternate personality out, and this was the worst of all.

She half looked on the Internet in between grading papers, and he mentioned that one of his colleagues unearthed a staff that was said to have mystical properties. Doctor Sandsmark slowly put two and two together, and found out what she needed to know.

Actually, the staff was said to have driven every holder of it completely mad. You factored that in with a person with questionable sanity to begin with, there were problems.

"So, Mom, when are you coming home?" Cassie asked and she bounced around impatiently.

"In about twenty minutes, honey, I just got to keep grading a few more papers," Helena said and she frowned and marked another paper.

The idea was sound, but the explanation was poorly sounded. She saw that she had a call on the other line. She was so caught up in her work that she allowed herself to wait a moment.

Cassie jabbered on about her day at school and Helena was glad that she had some background noise, because she needed it to distract herself from what happened.

"Don't worry, I'm sure…"

What Helena was sure of was never said, someone thumped angrily on her doors, and she got to her feet, and she peered over the top of her glasses.

"Mom?" Cassie asked and Helena prepared to let her daughter go so she could call the police.

Then she remembered that because of the flood, they might not be able to get over her any time soon. That proved to be a really kick and unfortunate for her.

She never would have had a chance, because one hulking bruiser kicked open the door and two more followed promptly afterwards.

Doctor Sandmark picked up a vase off of her desk and smashed it into the face of one of her would be abductors, but the other two grabbed her and held her down.

"Hold her tight, our king wants her in one piece," one of the grunted, and he showed something that vaguely resembled human thought and emotion.

Doctor Sandsmark tried to struggle her way out of their grip. They held her down tight and one of them applied a firm grip on her neck and caused her slump down to the ground.

Without another word, the large henchmen dragged her from the office and the frantic screams on the other end of the phone echoed from Cassie.

"MOM, MOM, MOM!"

To Be Continued On October 17th 2014.

King Tut/Magical Staff equals the OTP.

Although I figure that a lot of this chapter should be sponsored by Freud.

Wondergirl II gets a bit of a cameo in this chapter.

And Tut's madness has been a delight to write.