Chapter Fourteen
Kal held Superman in a choke hold as they whizzed through the air, crashing through wall after wall, sending chunks of debris crumbling down to the floor in their wake. Superman reached back and locked his hands behind Kal's head, then spun around rapidly, sending them both spiraling down to the ground. They crash landed violently in a room filled with gigantic monitor screens, each showing a different part of the world.
"Haven't you ever felt it?" Kal-El asked, hoisting Superman to his feet. "The feeling that you're meant to rule the pathetic, disgusting inhabitants of this world?"
"No," Superman said through clenched teeth. He delivered a solid right hook to Kal's jaw, sending him reeling backward into a bank of monitors. A whole row of them short circuited, their screens blowing out on impact.
"Then you're lying to yourself!" Kal yelled, diving at Superman and tackling him to the ground. "All the people who've exploited you! The ones who learned your secrets and then tried to use them for their own gain! The ones who devoted their lives to destroying you! And still you would protect them? Why! For what!"
"Because that's who I am, and that's what I do!" Superman shot his knee up and buried it in Kal-El's solar plexus, then flipped Kal backwards off of him. "Because that's how Jonathan and Martha Kent raised me!"
Kal rolled with the impact and landed in a crouch. He winced at the sound of their names. "Jonathan and Martha Kent were humans. They are not your true parents. Your father is Jor-El of Krypton. His will is that you rule this planet!"
Superman lifted off the ground in a burst of speed, grabbing Kal-El by the throat and dragging him upward with him. Kal dug his fingers deep into Superman's hand. "Maybe the Jor-El you know willed that!" Superman yelled. "The Jor-El who sent me to Earth did so to save me from the fate of a dying planet, so that I would live!"
"What kind of life do you call this?" Kal shouted back, his eyes glowing red as he built up his heat vision. "You devote yourself to saving a race that poisons their oceans, murders each other, sends their children off to fight meaningless wars!"
Superman's eyes began to glow red as well. "I do what I do because I'm the only one who can do it. And because evil only truly triumphs when good men do nothing."
Both men unleashed devastating blasts of their powerful heat vision at the same time, causing an explosion that blew both of them back like two magnets repelling one another. Superman smashed into another bank of monitors, shattering them and bringing them crashing down around him. Kal hit the ground and skidded across the floor for fifty feet or so before coming to a stop. Both were back on their feet in seconds, running full speed at each other. They slammed into one another, landing punches simultaneously, blood splattering across the ground as it shook with the force of the blows.
"You can't tell me you've never wanted to kill Lex Luthor!" Kal-El shouted, taking a hit to the face. "You can't tell me that you've never wanted to crush his head between your hands! It would be so easy, and you know it!" He retaliated with a strong uppercut to Superman's chin. "All the criminals who've cheated justice, the rapists, the murderers, the child molesters! I know you must have wanted to burn them alive, to rip them apart! You can't tell me you've never wanted to kill them!"
Superman planted his hands on either side of Kal-El's head, his face contorted in anger. "Of course I've felt that! Everyone feels that rage! But you can't give into it! You have to believe in truth and justice!"
"I AM TRUTH AND JUSTICE!" Kal-El screamed. His fists tore into Superman with an unbridled fury, drawing more blood, knocking him almost completely senseless. Superman could barely see as Kal's unrelenting onslaught bore down on him. One last punch sent him to the floor.
Kal stood over him, breathing heavily as he wiped blood from his mouth with his arm. He looked down at a bruised and battered Superman, his costume torn, one of his eyes almost swollen shut. Kal reared back and kicked Superman in the stomach, sending him sliding across the floor and smashing into the pile of busted monitors. Shaking off his dizziness and mustering all his will to focus, Superman dug his fingers into one of the broken monitors, lifted it up, and hurled it with all his might straight at Kal-El. It hit its mark, shattering into a million pieces against Kal-El's skull. He fell to his knees.
Superman wearily rose to his feet once more. He reached back and ripped off his torn and tattered cape, throwing it on the ground.
"Is that the best you got?" Superman muttered, wiping blood from his own mouth with the side of his hand.
Kal howled with anger as he got back to his feet and charged at the Man of Steel once more.
. . . . . . . .
Tempus strolled down the hallway with his arm still around Clark. Tears streamed down Tempus' cheeks as he lost himself in a fit of laughter, slapping Clark on the back.
"And then," Tempus roared, finding it difficult to speak because he was laughing so hard. "Then I made Herb say, 'Let's wrap fish in the Constitution, and chuck all the old laws!'" Tempus had to stop walking and hold his stomach, taking a step back and bracing one hand against the wall. After a moment or two, he was able to compose himself. He stood up and wiped the tears from his eyes. "Oh, God, that was great," he said with a sigh. "But, of course, Superman had to go and ruin everything. I swear, the guy really has no sense of humor."
Clark gave Tempus a blank stare.
"Then again, I can tell you don't really give two hoots about any of this," Tempus said with a shrug. "Oh well."
"So let me see if I have this straight," Clark said condescendingly. "Your whole deal is that you're from the future, which you found boring because it was a perfect Utopian society, and decided to ruin it by going into the past and killing Superman?"
Tempus shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah… so?"
"So why didn't you just go back and kill Superman when he was a baby?"
"I tried that!" Tempus said quickly. "Superman went back in time, too, and stopped me!"
"So why didn't you just try it again?" Clark asked, folding his arms. "You have a time machine. You could go back and do it as many times as you wanted."
Tempus scrunched up his lips and stared at the floor, deep in thought.
"I mean, DUH!" Clark said, waving a hand in the air.
"All right. That's it. Phantom Zone. Let's go," Tempus said, grabbing Clark by the collar and marching him down the hallway. "At first you were just a nuisance, now you're really pissing me off."
Just then, Tempus was taken to the ground as a roundhouse kick connected with the back of his skull. Clark turned to see Wonder Woman standing behind him, her fists clenched. She reached forward quickly and pried the chunk of red kryptonite from Clark's hand, then hurled it down the hallway. The apathetic effects wore off almost instantly.
"Diana…" Clark said, returning to his old self. "You're all right!" He threw his arms around her, hugging her close. She was caught off guard by the sudden display of emotion, but reluctantly returned the gesture and hugged Clark back.
"Clark," she said, gently pushing back from the embrace. Her voice was hoarse and raspy. "You've got to find the Regulator and shut it down."
"Right," he said, nodding. He began to run down the hallway, but stopped short as his super hearing tuned into something from elsewhere in the fortress. He focused in on it. It wasn't hard to pick out. He could hear the sickening sounds of Superman and Kal-El's bloody brawl, raging on clear across the building. With his x-ray vision, he saw that Kal seemed to be winning.
He turned around and started running the other way.
"Clark, where are you going!" Diana barely managed to yell.
"Superman needs my help," he called back over his shoulder.
"You can't hope to beat Kal-El! He's too strong!"
"I know!"
Clark sped down the hallway, and threw open the doors to the room with the holo-spheres. He walked towards the center of the room, looking up and down the long rows of globes. They all looked alike to him. How could he ever figure out which was which? He ran his hands gently over one of the spheres, hoping that somehow he could attune himself to the Kryptonian technology and sense what he was looking for. It didn't seem to be working.
"Can I help you, master?" said a monotone voice that seemed to be coming from all around him.
Clark looked around, startled. "Who said that?"
"I did. Do you not remember your own creation?" the voice replied.
"Of course…" Clark whispered. "Of course, I remember you, Brainiac," he said aloud. "And yes, I do need your help."
