Cards (and Dawn had done a surprisingly nice job on those, very artistic) check.
Riley and the missus and their freelance former-government monster-squadders, and Angel and his crew (including a bunch of obvious criminal types, and Spike of all people, and didn't she just wish that she didn't wonder like hell how that had happened), and Mulder and Stonetree and Mr. Kent and Pete, and all the Metropolis Police that Lt. Maggie Sawyer trusted with her life and her reputation, stationed nonchalantly at the seriously paranoid Secret Service roadblocks all through Metropolis, check.
Giles and Willow and their Coven in England, meditating and casting spells of divination and true-smiting and protection from poison, check.
Clark disappearing into the distance, check.
Patience enough to wait peacefully for four hours until Dawn was ready to cast the joining spell? Not gonna happen.
Buffy rolled her shoulders and stretched. "I'm going on patrol," she told her sister. "I'll meet you back here in three hours."
"What? You're going to patrol Metropolis?"
"Why not? Blue Boy's busy, and somebody prolly oughta do it. Besides, I'm gonna lose it here, just waiting."
"Okay, but be careful. I don't think the spell will work at all if you're not in the mix."
"Dawnie, like I was trying to tell Clark, that spell --"
"For the millionth time, I have the range! I have the strength for this one! It's all binding energy; I could do it a light-year away, and hold it for a week! Just trust me!"
Know what? Buffy thought, the time for caution is past. She switched gears and smiled. "I do," Buffy said sunnily. "You trust me to come back in three hours, okay? And maybe you should slay something. You seem tense."
Dawn growled at her. Buffy laughed and went down to check out the city.
Sometimes she worried that the potential end of the world didn't worry her more, these days.
Buffy and Dawn had tried to tell Lex what to expect from this spell they were going to attempt. He wasn't completely clear on what they were planning, or what they were hoping to gain by the process, and he had to admit he was somewhat unnerved by his memories of that horrible time when Lana had been possessed by some witch ancestress, and bound him bleeding to Lionel's piano.
He couldn't let his fears dissuade him. Clark might need him. The world might need him.
In order to make the approaching big space battle seem less horrific by contrast, Lex decided to go visit his father. After all, this might very well be their last night on Earth.
The gods smiled upon him. Lionel was asleep. The nurse let him in to the ugly purple room, warning him to be quiet. Lex nodded. He didn't want to talk. He took an uncomfortable seat and looked around.
Lionel had been in the hospital for a week now. His doctors (the finest in Metropolis) said he could have been brought home, with a hired nurse, the day before, but Lex had requested he stay a little longer. With the campaign against the alien invaders nearly underway, he thought it would be best all around. The hospital representatives didn't object very strenuously, and Lionel didn't object at all.
That was when Lex knew that the old man was really hurt this time. Lionel hadn't sniped at Lex about any of the treatment decisions he'd made; he hadn't squabbled with the hospital staff or threatened any lawsuits; he didn't even complain about the food. It didn't seem like scheming, or biding his time. It seemed like the unthinkable had happened, like Lionel Luthor was actually broken this time.
He certainly looked broken.
After the tornadoes in Smallville, Lionel had been well enough to blame Lex for, basically, ruining his life, within two days after the catastrophe. This time, after being attacked by vampires in his office, Lionel had still been raving with fever at that stage. The day after that, the surgeons had gone back into his arm and shoulder, ferreting out and repairing a stubbornly bleeding infected vessel -- he'd been within a hair's breadth of losing the arm entirely.
Lionel's breathing changed a little, two great gasps ruffling his mustache and wrinkling his forehead with -- something. Probably pain. Was he waking up? Lex tensed, and chided himself for it. The world was almost certainly coming to an end (he didn't fool himself about their chances) but what scared him was having to talk with his father? Shameful.
Lionel didn't completely wake, just strained a little as if trying and failing to roll over in his sleep, and then relaxed again. The lines on his forehead, even as close to completely relaxed as he was, medicated to within an inch of his life, remained far more deeply etched than Lex remembered them.
It was unprecedented to watch his father this way -- not fighting, not striving, not hiding anything from one another. Ultimately, even Lionel Luthor was just an old man. He was Lex's dad, his only living relative, barring a bastard half-brother he'd never seen until he was twenty-two, and hadn't heard from in almost a year. Without the continual father-son drama, Lex could even feel sorry for him.
Sitting there, watching Lionel sleep, was strangely peaceful. The nurses seemed to have forgotten Lex. Two hours passed, in complete harmony -- a world record, he thought wryly. It was time to go. Lex stood, stretched, cricked his neck. He felt utterly calm, at peace in a way he couldn't remember having felt before.
He leaned over his father, brushed the knotted hair away from his warm, damp forehead. "Good-bye, Dad."
Lionel stirred. "Lex?" he croaked.
Lex smiled. He knew there was probably a ninety percent chance that Dad would say something hurtful, but he didn't even care. He felt unaccountably happy that he'd have a real chance to say good-bye. "I'm here, Dad."
"What are you -- what time is it?"
Lex stifled an actual laugh when his father changed the question in the middle, to one that wouldn't sound so needy. He didn't know why, but he suddenly found it almost cute.
"Nearly nine. I have to go."
Lionel cleared his throat. "Have you been here long?"
"A couple of hours."
"Surely there are more profitable things you should be doing."
"I needed some time to think. And... And I enjoyed just being here with you." Lex smiled again, bemused to realize how true it was.
Lionel shook his head a little. "So. Where are you off to now?"
Lex, daring anything now that nothing mattered, leaned over and kissed his father on the forehead. "To war."
Holy cow. These things were huge.
Despite the suit and the cape, despite the fact that he was flying faster than any spacecraft the people of Earth had ever launched and traveling completely unprotected in the vacuum of space, it was Clark Kent, not Superman, who approached the alien fleet. He crossed his fingers, hoping they didn't notice him. Or his fridge.
They didn't look anything like his little spaceship in the storm cellar back home. Their towering metallic sides were like literally nothing on Earth, nothing Clark had ever seen. He wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to start trying to break one, trying to kill the people or... or people inside.
One good thing -- he was faster than they were. He guessed he could literally run rings around them, maneuvering his little load of gear around to what he hoped Buffy and Lex would consider "behind" the trailing ship.
It had been a little less than four hours. Soon he should feel the effects of this crazy spell of Dawn's. He was as vulnerable to magic as humans were, and he hated it. Honestly, it had been a shock, a bad one, to find out that Dawn was some sort of witch. She said she'd explain everything later, if the world didn't end. He guessed he really had no choice but to respect that.
He was awfully far away from her, though. The spell, as far as he could tell, was one she was making up and had never tried before. If nothing happened, he was on his own out here, with no way to talk to the people in the ships.
Privately, he had already decided to give it another half an hour, then abandon the fridge and assorted paraphernalia and look for a door or a hatch or something to knock on.
Clark hadn't mentioned this plan to any of the others because knew they'd think it was suicide. He sort of thought that himself.
The lights of the city were just beginning to twinkle as the long summer twilight drew to a close. High atop Metropolis's tallest building, in the extremely restricted-access meditation garden that Lillian Luthor had put into the tower's plans herself, a ceremony began.
Lex lit a candle, and set it next to the rune-marked gourd Superman had brought from England. All three casters solemnly lit candles from the first one, and set them up, equidistant from one another, surrounding the magic gourd.
Dawn took a deep breath and said, "The power of the Slayer and all who wield it, last to Ancient first, we invoke thee. Sharing thy domain, share primal strength. Accept of us the powers we possess. Make us, mind and heart and spirit, join. Let the hand encompass us, to do thy will."
Dawn held up one of the cards she'd painstakingly drawn earlier. It bore the image of a dark-haired woman, dressed in green and surrounded by a nimbus of blue-green light. She laid the card ceremonially on the pavement in front of her. "Spiritus," she said. "Spirit of the Key."
Then she held up another card. The image on this one was a blonde woman wielding a sword, crouched fiercely and protectively over a blue-and-white swirled globe. Buffy took the card from her. "Animus," Buffy said. "Heart of the Slayer."
Dawn drew another card and handed it to Lex. Its drawing was of a bald man peering through a telescope. "Sophus," Lex said unsteadily. "The Mind of Man."
Dawn raised the last card from her little deck and displayed it to them all. The picture was undeniably Clark, dressed only in shadows, dark unruly hair flying in the wind, his fist raised before him as it was when he flew as fast as he could. He looked like some sort of ancient chthonic god. "And Manus," Dawn said. "The Hand of the Last."
"We enjoin that we may inhabit the vessel, the Hand, Last of his Kind, who holds this world dear as do the daughters of the First. We implore thee, admit us, bring us to the vessel, take us now! Wield him, Sineya, as your Hand!"
Clark was sure it had been four hours. In fact, he was sure it had been four hours, nine minutes, and fourteen seconds. He was starting to feel silly, matching velocities here 'behind' the space fleet, balancing his refrigerator in his hands. Of course, he could have climbed inside the fridge and kept watch through the metal sides, but that would have felt even sillier.
Suddenly something happened.
They observed the alien ships with wonder/cool assessment/worry/fear. Considering their weak points, They matter-of-factly slipped into the refrigerator and closed its sturdy insulated steel door behind Them. The shop-light snapped on. They started up the radio-frequency scanner and deftly ran it through its paces for several minutes (twenty-four, and nine seconds.) They were beginning to suspect/fear/be concerned that the alien ships didn't use radio after all, when They picked up a transmission.
It was in English. Of course. They realized how sensible it would be, to be well-versed in English if beginning an invasion by seizing the President of the United States.
They dug powerful fingers delicately into the door, holding it securely in place, and opened the valve on the air tank. As soon as the pressure inside the refrigerator was high enough to enable speech, They closed the valve, fine-tuned the telecom device until it picked up both speech and picture clearly, and set it to Transmit, interrupting what seemed like a routine positioning update.
It would be best to appear strong and confident. "We are Kal-El of Earth. What is your business here?"
They were elated/interested/indifferent to find that there was no communication time-lag at this range, and that the LuthorCorp Telecommunications Scanning Console interfaced very acceptably with whatever technology the aliens were using.
The alien on the screen laughed, a low, scornful sound, and They suddenly thought They recognized him. Two others appeared on-screen, slightly behind the first. All three were identical, and clearly similar to The Judge, and to Luke, the Master's Harvest Vessel. Fox Mulder had said the invaders probably would be manufactured soldiers. Now They knew what these soldiers had been manufactured from -- a powerful demon, or an evil man long-dead, the Master's most faithful servant. They knew and speculated about cloning, about magickal duplicates, about demon budding-twins... They strained to listen to the alien's answer over the clamor of Their own tumultuous thoughts.
"This planet is not yours, Kal-El. It is ours, bought and paid for. We owe you nothing, not even an explanation. It has all been paid."
"That's unacceptable, incorrect. The People of Earth..."
"Will die or be enslaved," the alien cut Them off. "Your quarrel is not with us, Kal-El, but with your former masters, who have sold you all and your world, as is their right." The Luke-Judge clone laughed again.
The focused through the walls and began cataloging weak points. They felt a cold/hot anger, and knew the aliens would all perish, for justice/vengeance/duty's sake.
They tried one more time. "Please. Don't do this. You know it isn't the right thing. People should treat each other with respect, and work together peacefully."
The alien's laugh was uglier than ever. "Be cheerful and industrious. Oblige us and you may survive. It is better to be a slave than a corpse."
They thought NO.
They decided the manufactured soldiers were not people after all.
They turned off the radio and the light, and opened the door. The best target on the surface of the hindmost ship was already all picked out. They considered that velocity is squared in the kinetic energy equation, and that a small mass at sufficient speed can destroy anything. They knew that They were physically almost invulnerable, but that the ships probably were not.
They took joy/no joy in the testing of that supposition.
Their first impulse was to circle around the fleet a few times, to build up speed, but They knew that They had almost unimaginable acceleration.
They flashed forward from a relative dead stop, put Their arm over Their eyes, and hurled Themselves right through the trailing ship's most vulnerable spot, through hull-metal and machinery and atmosphere and hull-metal again, and back out into the vacuum of space. The gaping hole They left spewed air and sparks and organics and explosions of flame, but They didn't pause to look.
This was no time to consider what They'd done. Oh, They were fast -- faster than anything They knew! (Though some of Them had Their theories.) The distances in space, however, are huge. Brooding in the middle of combat would just gets Them dead, and Their enemies would triumph! The attackers' ship couldn't exactly pivot at warp two, They were amused/confused/curious/speculative to observe, but it didn't have to shift very far or very (relatively speaking) fast to force Them to alter Their plan of attack. They did so seamlessly.
The next ship along was turning already, noticing something wrong. Their first choice of target was shielded now. They altered trajectory smoothly and kicked it up a notch, hitting this second ship even harder than the first. The hull was thicker here, but still They penetrated it, marveling at/completely ignoring the fascinating glimpses of an alien propulsion system before smashing it straight to hell and surfing the shock wave of the resulting explosion out towards the remaining three ships.
They were not surprised to find that They were being fired upon as they outstripped the expanding debris of what had been a spellbinding miracle of advanced technology/big spaceship -- dead now. Evasive maneuvers were an absolute pleasure to perform like this; it was almost like poetry, though not the kind that anyone would ever write.
Two ships fell into place to cover for the retreat of the third. They instinctively understood the space guys' plan; it was as plain as a pikestaff/the nose on your face/day. These aliens had clearly practiced their battle tactics, and briefly They wondered against whom.
The aliens' coordination meant this was a bad time for wondering; their powerful energy weapons didn't seem to do that much damage (less than a car crash, or a Fyarl Demon, or kryptonite) but the knock-back effect was considerable. They needed to stop as many ships as possible from reaching the Earth, and They couldn't do that if They couldn't catch up with them!
It took a combination of tricky dancing/dodging and some sustained laser eye-beam attacks on alien gun-turrets to finally get close enough to damage the next ship. Then it was just grunt-work, holding hard to the outer hull and battling to keep the third ship's bulk between Them and the fourth ship's still-functioning guns, tearing off strips and chunks of whatever They could reach, wherever They could. The other ship, covering for the lead ship's dash to Earth but still confidently trying to salvage Their current prey -- why should the aliens believe something as small as They were could do so much damage? -- tried diligently to shoot Them off its companion's hull. Twice, a glancing shot knocked Them loose, but not far enough away to stop Them, and They looped around and began Their attack again from a fresh spot.
Third time's the charm. They finally punched through and hit air. Earth-type atmosphere rushed out past Them, but it was not wind enough to dislodge Them. As soon as it was done, They widened the hole and slipped inside.
They found Themselves in a blank-looking broken corridor, with two closed hatchways along the inboard side and a sealed blast door at each end. X-ray vision revealed the other ship still firing at the place They'd gone in; the toughness of the alien hull-metal was working in Their favor now, but it couldn't last long. Their freak/special/remarkable/handy-dandy vision also showed which door had the ambush set up behind it. That was obviously the way to go.
They sped up and crashed through the door as if it were nothing -- these interior emergency seals weren't as strong as the actual hull. The demons/clones/aliens/constructs were set up in standard ambush formation on the other side, with guns already aimed and blasting. They shrugged off the attack, far weaker than the ships' weapons had been outside, went quickly through Their opponents like Glorificus through an Order of Knights/Darth Vader through a rag-tag band of freedom fighters, and scanned around Themselves for Their next target.
The battered aliens' blood was an evil green, like kryptonite/the energy that could destroy worlds. If Fox Mulder was to be believed (and so far, every crazy thing he'd said had turned out to be true) that same blood was an acidic poison that would quickly kill any human person who got it on them or breathed its vapors. They had plenty on Themselves; it had sprayed quite a distance during the fight. Though weltering in dead aliens' gore, They were physically undamaged. Apparently it didn't work the same on Kryptonian flesh.
Taking a moment to contemplate mortality turned out to be a good thing this time. The killed aliens started getting up!
They were only a little surprised/shocked/horrified/fascinated by this revolting development, and killed them all again before they got off more than just a couple of shots. Then They remembered what Fox Mulder had said about the special ice-pick-like weapons carried by the people and assassins who had been covering up this impending invasion for the last half-century.
Experimentally, They tried stabbing the next undead foe through the back of the neck with one super-strong finger. The clone whipped around and tried to strangle Them. It was a lot stronger than a human being, but no match for what it faced now.
They held the alien zombie at arm's length, realizing with great interest/slight alarm that it regenerated and continued to fight even in hard vacuum. They cast a whispered spell of dissolution, using as little of Their hoarded air as possible to form the words. There was a flash of green light, a puff of disrupted material from the target at the back of the thing's neck, and then it slumped, lifeless, and did not rise again.
They looked around Themselves carefully, in and out and through all the chambers and corridors of this engine of destruction, of enslavement. They counted the enemies in ambushes, marching towards Them, frantically repairing this killer vessel headed straight towards home. They summoned the power, widened the field, and cast the spell again.
Every creature aboard, excepting only Themselves, fell dead.
They fled that charnel ship, arrowing out straight through the engines and leaving it to explode in cleansing flame behind Them, and sought out Their last two targets.
The battle had been going on for quite some time, and the lead spaceship was getting very close to Earth. They could now tell, with an eye-brain coordination that They didn't pretend to understand, that it really was headed for Metropolis, Kansas. That was a relief. If anywhere on Earth was ready for an alien invasion right now, it was Metropolis.
The other ship that had been trying to hold Them off, to cover the first ship's dash to Earth, tried another tactic. Blasters firing wildly, they skittered off noisily in another direction, then suddenly quit all the racket and dived as fast as They'd yet seen the aliens go, towards Earth on a parallel course. They sped after them in hot pursuit, firing the eye-lasers as They went.
Two-thirds of the way to catching up, an explosion wracked the pursued vessel. They circled it, dead in space, and watched its busy ant-like crew of identical clones scurrying to repair Their handiwork.
Let them limp painstakingly home, They thought. Let their tattered and wretched state serve as a message to whatever home-world spawned them -- Don't Mess With Earth.
Besides, speaking of Earth, the battle there was starting. There was a lot yet to do.
The bond dissolved. Alone, Clark fell down, down, down towards the ground.