Chapter Four – Destruction
Clark sat still on his chair, unable to move, no matter how much he tried, as the three black-clad freaks ran towards him and his friends.
"Hey, Zee. Maybe Clark could help," suggested Pete, but Zatanna just smiled. After all, unbeknownst to Pete and the rest of the world, during her short time as a magic-wielder she'd already saved the world five times (although, admittedly, she'd almost destroyed it twice).
The three freaks stopped in front of Zee and her newly acquired friends.
"So, Zee. Say something backwards," demanded the girl who called herself Mari. "I dare you."
Zee opened her mouth to speak, but just as she did so her reality shattered into a multitude of fragments. Suddenly she didn't know what was up and what was down and what was real and what was imaginary and then she became dizzy, although she wasn't sure if it was her, and she saw the ground rushing up to her.
Zatanna lay squirming on the floor, speaking in anagrams as she vainly attempted to conjure herself back to normality.
"What have you done to her?" asked Chloe, kneeling down beside her friend.
"My psychic attack's left her confused," explained Mari. "All the barriers of perception have been removed from her mind. She's seeing all realities. To be honest, I'm quite impressed. Whenever I've done this before they're usually throwing up at this point."
"What do you want?" asked Pete, moving next to Clark.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Were we too vague?" asked the red-haired boy, who now had electricity crackling around him. "You're all going to die."
"So what can you do? Toss around lightning bolts?" asked Pete, placing his hand on Clark's shoulder.
The red-haired boy nodded as electricity lit up his eyes behind his sunglasses.
"Well, whatever you do, don't use your powers on my friend Clark here. Look at him. He's frozen with fear." Of course Pete Ross was using reverse psychology, hoping that a lightning bolt might shake Clark out of whatever state Zee had left him in or, failing that, transfer Clark's powers to him. Ironically, as Pete said these words, Clark did become frozen with fear, as he remembered a Physics lesson from years ago involving a Van Der Graaf generator. He remembered his classmates laughing at his precious hair as it stood on end due to the static electricity. Some scars never heal.
"Okay, I won't use them on him" replied the red-haired boy, and then electricity leapt from his hands to Pete Ross, knocking Pete unconscious.
Chloe turned towards the black-haired member of the evil trio. "So we've met Psiduck and Pikachu. What do you do, Spoon Boy?"
"Silence," he shouted, and a spoon leapt off a nearby table, flattened into a thin rectangular shape, and wrapped itself round Chloe's mouth.
While Zee squirmed, Pete did even less than usual, and Chloe tried to ungag herself of the spoon, the girl calling herself Mari walked over to the sitting Clark Kent. "So, Clark, this is where we kill all of your friends. Surely you're not just going to sit and watch."
But Clark could just look on helplessly. No matter how much he tried, all he could do was watch and listen.
Meanwhile, in England, a demon was getting bored.
"So, what are we waiting for?" asked the green demon named KannNn as he used his trident to scratch an itch on his tail.
"It takes time to get to America, you know. I'll have to apply for a passport," began John, standing there in his leather jacket, holding a half-empty whiskey bottle.
KannNn grabbed him by the hand. "I'll teleport us there."
"Blimey, didn't know you could teleport . Never said anything about that in the books."
"I can when I'm working in a vengeance demon capacity," explained KannNn. "For the love of Beelzebub, doesn't anybody read the invisible small print these days?"
And so it was that seconds later they found themselves in America collecting a mass of destructive weapons ready for their assault on The Talon.
Zatanna lay on the ground trying to sort out which reality was real. Over there she saw a boy called Pete Ross, but this one had blond hair and freckles. And over there was Clark but he was wearing a ridiculous blue and red outfit with a cape, and the freaks had colorful outfits too. But then there was that freak called Mari, dressed in black again, standing over her.
"This one will be the first to die I think," exclaimed Mari, looking towards Clark.
And then Zatanna saw JC appear from nowhere behind Mari. He must have come to save her.
"Hello, love. Excuse me I've got work to do," said the newly-arrived John to Mari as he pushed her aside.
"Wait," Mari said, seeing the image in John's mind. "That girl in the ZZ top, you're going to ..."
"Eliminate 'er . That's right," replied John, as his fist rushed towards Mari's face. Stopping just before impact, the fist opened and the fingers gestured. " peels ," he said and Mari fell to the ground (all those months with Zed had taught him something).
"Good work," whispered KannNn who'd made himself invisible mid-teleport in order to remain unnoticed. Truth to tell, KannNn was only an inch tall and would probably have gone unnoticed anyway.
"Thanks," said John, taking a swig from the whiskey bottle he'd brought with him and then sticking it back into the pocket of his bulky leather jacket. Suddenly he noticed the other two black-clad freaks raising their arms. Just as bolts of electricity and a barrage of spoons were about to hit him, he (and KannNn) teleported away, reappearing behind the two of them. He was tempted to re-use his sleep spell but instead went for the far more satisfying approach of smashing the two freaks' heads together.
As they fell to the ground, John started to walk back to Zed, taking out a gun that he'd picked up on his way to The Talon. "Dear Diary, my teenage angst now has a body count," he misquoted as he raised the gun to point directly at Zed's head, but then he heard someone entering The Talon. He turned around to see an old familiar face.
"Well, if it isn't Mandrake," he started, and then, seeing Zatara's companion, added "And it looks like you've brought Lothar, too."
"It's pronounced Luthor," Lex said, as Zatara positioned himself across from the blond-haired Englishman. "So, Zatara, who's the Spike wannabe?"
"Young Master Constantine," said Zatara, tipping his hat towards the young man. "You look a bit the worse for wear."
"Yeah, but I'll feel a lot better after I've killed your daughter and her boyfriend," John explained matter-of- factly .
"Tsk, this calls for magic," responded Zatara, gesturing with his gloved hand towards the young man.
"Look! Up in the sky!" exclaimed John suddenly, pointing, with his gun, just above Zatara's head.
"Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" Zatara asked, still looking steadfastly at John, ignoring his pitifully obvious attempt at a distraction. Of course, Zatara didn't realize that exactly one hour ago his daughter had performed a spell upon the spot where he was standing.
"No, it's a frog!" yelled Lex, as an incredibly good-looking frog completed it's materialization into the realm of existence.
And then Zatanna's other spell wore off and the frog transformed into Insect Queen who came crashing down on Zatara.
"Not plane, not bird, not even frog. It's just little old me, Insect Queen," she explained as she lay on top of the unconscious Zatara, and then, just as she saw John's gun pointing towards her, she shrank out of sight.
While this was all going on, Clark had been doing one of the few things he still could do: look. His X-ray vision showed that John was wearing a ridiculous amount of dynamite beneath his leather jacket. Suddenly he saw the red-haired freak, left for unconscious by the John guy, starting to get up just in front of him. He then proceeded to raise his hands towards John and fire a bolt of electricity at him.
Clark had to do something before the electricity bolt hit the dynamite. He had to overcome whatever Zee had done to him. He had to try. He strained with a superhuman might, but nothing happened, so he tried again, and again, as the nanoseconds flew by. He had to overcome whatever irresistible force had turned him into an immovable object.
Of course, heroes don't always succeed and sometimes it's the best that they can do just to try, and such was the case here. And so it was that Clark, with his eyes and brain capable of processing events at super-speed, saw the inevitable destruction unfolding in all of its gory, horrific details. He saw his friends flung around like rag dolls by the dynamite blast, bones splintering, flesh twisting, and then he felt the red-haired boy's fragile body smashing against him. Whatever Zee had done to Clark meant that he couldn't close his eyes, so instead, as a self defense mechanism, he used his X-ray vision more than he'd ever used it before, effectively making the carnage, and everything else around him, as far as the normal eye could see, invisible.
Finally it was all over, and Clark found himself, at last, able to move. Struggling with his X-ray vision to make the carnage around him visible again, he stumbled around The Talon. His friends were all dead. Shouldn't he be crying? He wandered around in guilt and shock wondering when he'd wake up from the nightmare. Then he heard a voice:
"Clark, I'm still alive."
Suddenly his surroundings became visible as he frantically started searching through the rubble, afraid to use his X-ray vision in case he'd never be able to turn it off again. The voice became louder:
"It's me, Chloe."
He dug deeper into the rubble and finally found her, her face pale. He held her in his arms and looked into her open empty eyes.
"I'm still alive, Clark," she said, but her lips didn't move ... and her heart didn't beat. Clark laid her down softly, tears finally reaching his eyes, as he realized his mind was playing tricks on him. Other calls for help suddenly came from elsewhere but he knew that it was all in his head, either that or the macabre onset of some bizarre super-ventriloquism power.
He looked around him one last time but he couldn't see anybody living or hear any hearts (outside of his own and those of nearby insects). And then he looked down on the ground and there, next to a broken pocket watch (belonging to Zee - who now seemed to be the last person on his mind), there was his foot that was unbelievably resting on a hole (although it was actually more unbelievably resting on the invisible remains of a demon). Startled he lifted his foot up, overbalanced and fell to the ground. As he started to push himself up he looked in front of him, and then he found himself looking closer and closer. Somehow a newly discovered microscopic vision was kicking in, and with that vision he saw a microscopic Lana, wearing a ripped mask, a torn costume and some broken wings.
He lifted her up as gently as he could and placed her on the palm of his hand. He looked at her and she looked at him. "Clark ... Listen to me ... there's something I've got to tell you ... something important ... I ..."
And then she, like the others, was dead.
Clark had to get out of The Talon fast (very fast) so he walked straight forward and exited via the nearest wall. He looked at himself covered in rubble, not to mention the blood of the red-haired boy. He didn't even want to think about how his hair must look.
As he stumbled along he suddenly saw a large transparent bubble appear in front of him. He must still be hallucinating. And then the side of the bubble slid open and he walked into it. And then he heard a voice:
Destination?
Great, he was back to hearing voices again.
"Back in The Talon just before the explosion," he muttered, mainly to himself.
Compliance.