Chapter 97: Servant of Darkness (Great Darkness Saga, Part 3)
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman, Legion of Superheroes, and New Gods belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
Edge of United Planets Space, 1,000 years in the future
Kara had been on edge since the moment the battle had begun, her senses dialed up to super speed, every fiber of her body ready for combat. She knew that her speed was probably her only advantage when it came to facing the massively powerful entity that was Darkseid. But when her son, her beloved son, turned towards her with murder in his crimson eyes and became a blur of terrible power and speed, her body simply removed to move.
It cost her dearly.
The pain of a super strong fist crashing into her body at several times the speed of sound only registered after she had already crashed right through the outer hull of Darkseid's flagship, shortly followed by yet another impact as she crashed into a different ship, denting the hull. She only had a microsecond to register that it was another of Darkseid's ships before a hand powerful enough to crush coal into diamond grabbed her by the front of her suit and pulled her out of the mangled hull.
"Clark…," she had time to say, though in the vacuum of space no one would hear her. Then her son hit her again, the impact powerful enough to cause her to black out for a few seconds. The pain only hit her conscious mind once she was aware again, tumbling end over end towards the inferno that was the front line of the ongoing space battle. A United Planets cruiser broke apart beside her, torn to shreds by Apokoliptian firepower, and she went tumbling on, unable to help the doomed crew.
Rightening herself, Kara's senses screamed a warning and she just managed to catch Clark's fist before it could hit her a third time. He immediately tried to hit her with his other fist, but she caught that one, too. For a few seconds the two Kryptonians hung in empty space, straining against each other with power that defied gravity, neither one giving an inch.
"Clark, please," Kara pleaded, hoping that her son would recognize the words as they formed on her lips, even if he could not hear them. He knew her face, he knew her voice. He just had to listen. "This is not you! Whatever he has done to you, we can reverse it! Just..."
Clark's eyes lit up like miniature suns and Kara screamed in pain as her world drowned in red fire. Clark wrenched his fists out of her slackening grip and hit her again. Once, twice, three times. Rao, when had he gotten so terribly strong?
Kara blinked, finding herself embedded in the hull of yet another Apokaliptian battleship. Every single inch of her body was screaming out in pain, she was sure that at least one of her ribs was broken, but that was nothing against the ache in her soul. Her son, whom she had searched for across space, dimensions, and time, was now standing above her, nothing in his eyes but rage and emptiness. He reached down and tore her free from the metal, her bruised body limp like a ragdoll as her muscles refused to respond to her panicked thoughts.
Another punch sent her sprawling, the micro-gravity created by the vast Apokaliptian ship beneath them the only thing keeping her from drifting off into space. Kara tried to get back to her feet, to do something, only for Clark to wrench her up onto her knees with a violent motion. Hands that she knew almost as well as her own cupped her head, obviously preparing to snap her neck like a twig.
"Clark," she muttered, not believing what was happening. Maybe she was hallucinating all this. Her son could not possibly be killing her. Not her sweet, little Clark.
"Hold!" a voice suddenly thundered.
The hands around her head stilled, the terrible pressure on her skull and neck still present, but not doing any further damage for the moment. A dark shape appeared in front of her eyes, even as she had trouble focusing on anything.
"I must commend you, Kara-El," the agonizing voice of Darkseid uttered, somehow having no trouble being heard in the vacuum of space. "You have raised a truly magnificent warrior. All it took to perfect him was to remove that pesky free will from him. Now, he lives and dies for his god, for Darkseid!"
"No," Kara muttered, refusing to believe it.
Darkseid leaned forward, his terrible visage showing the barest hint of a smile. Kara tried to fry him with a burst of heat vision, but the beams fizzled out before they even reached him, snuffed by the terrible cold surrounding this dark, nightmarish creature. "It was going to be you, Kara-El. When you defeated my Steppenwolf for the second time, I was going to take you as my new general. After all, you had earned that honor. Yet your son chose to take your place and he has turned out to be magnificent!"
"He is not yours," Kara said, trying in vain to dislodge her son's hands. She might as well have tried to move a planet. Clark did not even utter a sound, which somehow made everything that much worse.
"Oh, he is, and he always will be until I decide to release him into the cold embrace of death," Darkseid assured her.
He looked up, his gaze travelling to the ongoing space battle above them. Kara watched helplessly as the United Planets' fleet was torn apart. Even with the aid of the Legion, they were no match for these monstrous murder machines that still emerged from the glowing end of the Boom Tube in sheer endless numbers.
"Why are you doing this?" Kara asked, trying to find some rhyme or reason for what was going on. None of this made any sense to her.
Darkseid looked at her once again. "A single step would take me to your adopted world, and it would be mine," he said, chuckling. "But where is the fun in that? For thousands upon thousands of years I was deadlocked against the forces of High Father and New Genesis. The greatest army in the universe, yet all I could do was to quickly conquer an insignificant world here and a backwater planet there before I once again found myself blocked, reduced to yet another waiting game. But no longer, Kara-El. Highfather and his ilk are gone, swept away like dust before my mighty hand!"
He raised his head and crimson beams shot forth from his eyes, angling towards the front lines and utterly annihilating a dozen space ships at once. One of them was from his own fleet and he cared not in the least, simply basking in the light of the explosions and enjoying the lives lost.
"I will finally have my due, Kara-El! I will conquer this helpless universe and I will start with the world that so kindly delivered my new general to me. And I will enjoy every single minute of it! I will march towards your world step by step, I will annihilate everything in my path, and though you will see me coming from light years away, there will be nothing you can do to stop me. But please, do try!"
Kara bared her teeth. "I will stop you!" She knew full well how hollow these words sounded right now, with death but a gesture away.
Darkseid simply laughed, the sound like razorblades to her already flayed soul.
"Superman," Darkseid commanded. "I think we shall not kill your mother today. I see that her friends are in full retreat. Deliver her to them and let them lick their wounds! There will be more battles to enjoy soon! I want them to be at their best when I destroy them all."
There was no time for any retort as Kara found herself unceremoniously picked up by her son and thrown towards the retreating ships of the UP Navy. The last thing she noticed was the impact into the hull of a Legion cruiser, then she blacked out.
Legion Headquarters, Metropolis, Earth, 1,000 years in the future
Imra Ardeen aka Saturn Girl had been the leader of the Legion of Superheroes on several occasions, being one of the founding members. During her tenures she had led the team against the likes of Mordru, Stargrave, the Time Trapper, the Khunds, Computo, the Fatal Five, and many others. The Legion had beaten them all, inspired by the example of the woman whose teenage self had become her best friend.
Now, though, Saturn Girl was not sure that even the inspiration and actual physical presence of Superwoman would be enough to win the day.
"Darkseid's forces are advancing slowly, system by system," she told the gathered team. "He is in no hurry, simply marching on, heading directly towards Earth. The UP Navy is doing its best to slow him down by using stinging attacks, but with little success so far. As things stand, his armada will enter the Sol system in four days."
An almost tangible air of despair settled over the room and Saturn Girl did not know how to dispel it. She could hear her comrades' thoughts, all of them thinking the exact same thing. How could they possibly stop this onslaught if their mightiest members had been beaten down so very easily?
"And that's not even the worst of it, I fear," Brainiac 5 said, stepping up beside her. Dark circles were under his eyes, showing that he – like most of them – had not gotten any sleep these last few days. "The Time Institute is registering more and more time disturbances. Superwoman's presence in our time is probably making it worse. When she fought the possessed Superman yesterday, the entire Superwoman museum briefly vanished from the face of the Earth and some people remember Dominion flags waving all over the city instead of UP banners."
"I cannot leave yet," Superwoman said from where she sat at the table. It was a startling sight to see this invulnerable woman, the greatest hero in their entire recorded history, still covered in fading bruises from the beating she had taken at the hands of her own son. "Not without Clark!"
Saturn Girl sighed deeply. "Kara, I... I had the chance to scan Superman's mind during the battle yesterday. He... I am not sure there is anything of Clark left inside him. There is just... darkness."
"You are wrong," Kara screamed, her hand hitting the table with enough force to crack it. "He is still in there! I will get him back!"
"Be that as it may," Brainiac 5 interrupted. "Our problems are in all probability connected. It is Darkseid's presence in our time, together with Superman's, that is causing the time disturbances. Even if Kara were to leave immediately, that would not change."
"Meaning we must defeat Darkseid and return him to his proper time if we want to save the universe, right?" Ultra Boy asked, the hero of Rimbor still carrying some bruises from his own earlier encounter with the possessed Superman. "Sure, no problem at all!"
"I still don't understand how Darkseid's presence in our time can cause so many problems?" Phantom Girl asked, her hand slapping the table. It was a clear sign of the girl's nervousness that her hand went right through the table instead of hitting it. "I mean, we did check the history logs, right? It's not like there was some sort of big historical event this Darkseid is missing out on by coming to our future, right? He is not part of our history."
"We still know far too little about these New Gods and what exactly happened to them, or what was supposed to happen to them, rather," Brainiac 5 said. "We need more information, or we are fighting blind."
"I might be able to help with that," a new voice said.
The Legionnaires and Kara all turned around, seeing their friend Rond Vidar walking into the conference room. The chronal scientist looked just as tired as all of them.
"Rond?" Saturn Girl asked, picking up his troubled thoughts. "What is the matter? Did you discover something new at the Time Institute?"
"You might say that," he merely said. "You should come with me. Superwoman especially. We have a visitor."
Time Institute, Metropolis, Earth, 1,000 years in the future
Right in the middle of the large main laboratory of the Time Institute, hovering in front of the large Time Beacon that the scientists here used to measure and observe the timestream, was a large flying high-tech chair. And sitting in that chair, looking utterly aloof and calm, was a person (using the term loosely) that Kara had met just one time before. It had not exactly been a friendly meeting.
"Metron," she hissed, flying closer to the blue-clad entity.
"Greetings, Kara-El of Krypton," the New God greeted her. "It is good that we meet here and now, we have much to talk about."
Kara wanted nothing more than to immediately wrench him out of his chair and smash him against the nearest wall. This was the self-proclaimed god who had prevented her from saving her home planet of Krypton. He had simply dropped her off here in the future, showing her the utopian society that would be lost if Krypton were to survive. However justified his actions might have been in hindsight, she was not happy to see him again.
"What are you doing here?" Kara asked, seething. "Are you an advance scout for your master, Darkseid?"
The New God shook his head, his hands never moving from where they rested on the arms of his chair. Kara's senses easily detected the force field surrounding him. The last time she had been unable to crack it, but that had been under a red sun. Maybe this time...
"I hold no allegiance to Darkseid, Kara-El," he calmly replied. "Neither do I consider myself to be of New Genesis. My allegiance is my own."
"Why are you here then?" Saturn Girl asked, touching down beside Kara. Kara had briefly shared her experiences with the godling via telepathy, so Saturn Girl knew everything about him that Kara did. Which, admittedly, was not much. The telepath from Titan suddenly winced, stumbling a step back.
"I would not advise trying to read my thoughts again, Imra Ardeen," Metron remarked calmly. "I fear you would not find the experience quite beyond your mind's ability to maintain its sanity."
"She asked you a question, Metron," Kara said, steadying her friend. "Why are you here?"
"The universe is out of balance," Metron said. "Things that should have happened, have not. And even now things are happening that should never have been. I am here to find the reason." His eyes focused on her, and Kara could all but feel his sight dissecting her, looking deeper than skin, deeper than flesh, right down to her very soul.
"There is a paradox at work," Metron continued a moment later, nodding as if having seen something that confirmed his suspicions. "One that must be resolved."
"Care to explain it to us mere mortals then?" Kara scoffed.
"The universe constantly strives for balance, Kara-El," Metron told her. "History moves through cycles, events repeat, endings become beginnings, and as one world dies, another is born. New Genesis and Apokolips were the Fourth World of Gods. And just as the three before them, it was their destiny to die in a fiery embrace, thereby giving birth to the Fifth World. I observed as this day happened."
"So, what went wrong?" Kara asked, impatient. "Why is Darkseid and his planet now in the 30th century instead of being space dust back in my time? If you were there, surely you know!"
"There was an imbalance, Kara-El," Metron explained. "Someone was present on Apokolips, who should not have been there for that final day of the Fourth World. Someone whose very presence caused a disturbance in time and destiny. That someone was your son, who stands with Darkseid even now. It was his presence at a time and place where incalculable cosmic forces were unleashed that caused the massive time disturbance that propelled Apokolips forward into the future."
Kara shook her head. "No, that does not make sense. My son was on Apokolips, yes, but why should that have such an effect? Clark has travelled through time before, but he was not on Apokolips because of time travel."
"Really?" Metron asked, raising on eyebrow. "Why was your son on Apokolips then?"
"Because Darkseid kidnapped him," Kara growled, clenching her fists.
"And why did Darkseid come to Earth in the first place?"
"Because of Steppenwolf, and...," Kara's voice trailed off as realization dawned on her face. "And Steppenwolf was there to seek revenge on me because during my travel through time I stopped him from conquering Earth."
Metron nodded. "Exactly. You are the starting point of the paradox, Kara-El. Your travel through time was the pebble, so to speak. And when it broke through the surface of history's fabric, the ripples spread outward."
Kara rubbed her forehead. "But... no, my journey through time was predestined, I thought. I saved Hippolyta in the past, a woman I already knew to be alive in the present."
"Cause and effect can be funny things when time travel is involved, Kara-El," Metron merely said. "Time loops, events form a circle. A causes B, B causes C, C causes A. Tell me, Kara-El! How did you end up travelling through time?"
"The Flash took me to the past," she said. "Or, he will. He has not done it yet, at least from his perspective."
"And why do you think he will do such a thing?"
Kara closed her eyes, her head beginning to ache terribly. "I am not sure, but at this point my best guess is that I will send him to do it, in order to ensure that events play out as they should."
Metron nodded again, his eyes glowing. "A new symmetry emerges from chaos. We are in the middle of an incomplete time loop, Kara-El. The universe is trying to find its balance again. Time travel always causes minor disturbances, but they usually balance out rather quickly. In this case, though, your son's anomalous presence during the final day of the God War tilted the balance to the left and the universe overcompensated by shifting everything sharply to the right, causing things to happen out of sequence. Now it seeks a new balance and the time disturbances surrounding this event become effect and cause all at once."
"So what now?" Kara asked, her mind barely able to grasp what Metron was telling her. "How do we… resolve this?"
Metron closed his eyes. "I fear that is beyond even my sight. Causality needs to be restored. The time loop needs to be closed; no loose ends must remain. The alternative is chaos."
Kara looked at him. "That is why you stopped me back on Krypton, correct? Because me saving my planet back then would have thrown the universe even further out of balance."
Metron raised an eyebrow again. "I did? Well, it appears that is one more trip I must undertake then before my time is through. When exactly are we to meet on Krypton, Kara-El?"
Kara groaned. "I hate time travel," she muttered.
"Okay, I barely understood any of that," Lightning Lad said, having listened to Kara, Imra, and Brainiac 5 brief the rest of the team on what Metron had told them a few hours earlier. The entire Legion had gathered at the Time Institute to plan their next move. "But if closing this... time loop is all it takes, then shouldn't this be solved simply by Kara sending the Flash back in time to meet her younger self?"
Kara shook her head. "Rond and some other scientists ran a simulation on that. Me sending the Flash through time will resolve some of the minor time tremors, but the situation has grown too far out of balance to even it out with so small an action."
Brainiac 5 nodded. "While this is something not easily simulated, all our calculations, including those Metron helped us set up, agree on one thing: Darkseid and Apokolips need to be removed from this time in order to resolve the paradox. Nothing less than that will do."
"So we are back at square one," Ultra Boy said, throwing himself back in his chair. "We need to defeat Darkseid. So, anyone got any brilliant ideas on how to do that yet? Do we simply walk up to him and ask him nicely to please take his planet and go back to the day he was supposed to die?"
"Metron is trying to find any survivors of New Genesis," Kara told them. "He believes it unlikely that Apokolips would survive while its opposite perishes. Something about balance again. Anyway, there is no telling where or when they might have ended up, if they survived at all, never mind them being in any condition to help us. We cannot rely on that slim possibility."
"So what then?" Lightning Lad asked, sparks of frustration coming off his hair. "Even with the UP Navy at our side, Darkseid's forces sent us running with ease. Never mind that he has got Superman under his thrall and that the big man himself barely raised a finger during the battle. We're outmatched, pure and simple!"
"Are there not more superbeings you can call on for aid?" Kara asked. "There are dozens of superbeings in my time. With so many planets in the UP..."
"There are thousands, yes," Imra told her. "And quite a few of them will be coming to our aid if we ask, but we are still vastly outnumbered and outpowered. Only a handful of our allies even come close to the power levels of Ultra Boy and Wildfire, never mind yours and Superman's."
Kara rested her aching head on her crossed arms. The physical wounds she still carried from the battle yesterday paled in comparison to the despair and hopelessness that threatened to engulf her. Never mind the herculean task before them, she kept seeing those cold, hateful eyes of her son as he did his merry best to kill her. Could he really be brought back? Could she undo what a god had done to him?
"There has to be something we can do," she muttered, trying to convince herself. "There is always a way!"
"Got an army of fully-powered Kryptonians stashed somewhere, Superwoman?" Wildfire scoffed, eddies of deadly energy surging behind his visor. "That's just about the only thing I can think of right now."
Kara's eyes flew open wide. An army of Kryptonians. Loose ends from time travel. Rao, how could she possibly have forgotten?
"What is it, Kara?" Imra asked, no doubt having picked up the sudden spike in her thoughts. "What did you just think of?"
"I need to check something with Rond and the Chronarch," Kara said, jumping out of her chair. A moment later she was gone in a blur of super speed.
"Great, what now?" Lightning Lad asked.
"Brainy, come with me," Saturn Girl said. "We'll follow Kara."
A few minutes later they found her in the main laboratory of the Time Institute. Rond and Chronarch Sinius were busy making some adjustments to the Time Beacon.
"You were k-k-k-correct, Superwoman," the Chronarch said. "The time disturbance is exac-k-k-k-tly where you said it would be."
"What time disturbance?" Imra asked. "What are we looking at here?"
The monitor of the Time Beacon displayed a graphical presentation of the time stream, the markings showing that they were looking at a time period roughly 30 years before Kara's native time.
"There is a corresponding disturbance roughly twenty-six years later, though that one seems to be more of an echo."
"Kara, care to clue us in?" Imra asked.
Kara turned towards her friends, her gaze firm. "Twenty-nine years ago, from my perspective, the Kryptonian city called Kandor vanished from the surface of the planet. Three years ago it reappeared, briefly, in orbit above Mars. The city had travelled through time and no more than a few hours had passed for the people in it. Half a million people, Imra. Half a million Kryptonians."
"That's insane, Kara," Saturn Girl told her. "Moving an entire city through time? That's impossible!"
"It's not impossible," Kara refuted. "We are in this mess because an entire planet was moved through time. Besides, you Legionnaires are travelling through time all the time."
"No, we are not," Imra shook her head. "We have done it, yes, but very, very sparingly. And not only because it's horrendously dangerous to mess with history, but also because it is simply that hard!"
She looked over at Brainiac 5.
"She is right, Kara," Brainy explained. "There is a reason the time spheres are as small as they are. They are powered by Imskian-designed fusion spheres, each time jump requiring more power than the entire city of Metropolis uses up in a year. The spheres themselves are constructed from pure Inertron, a synthetic alloy created from the mass of collapsed stars in a process so difficult that only the Alchemists of Trom can do it. They are practically indestructible and we still have to scrap them after half a dozen time jumps. The stress of moving through the time stream is comparable to diving head-first into a star."
Kara blinked, not having known this. The Legionnaires made it look so easy with their gleaming time spheres. Still, it did not change anything.
"You are wrong, it can be done," she told them "Look into my mind, Imra! And show Brainy, too!"
Imra looked skeptical but put her hands on both Kara and Brainiac's heads. Kara called upon the memories of Kandor, of encountering the time-lost city in the orbit of Mars. She showed them the vast engines attached to Kandor's underside, the flickering energy bottle around the city. Both Legionnaires seemed utterly stunned.
"Amazing," Imra finally whispered.
"I recognize some elements of the technology," Brainiac said after musing things over for a minute. "The designs seem to be a wild mixture from at least four different worlds and different time periods as well."
Imra just stared at Kara. "You think we did that. That we moved Kandor through time."
"No, I think we WILL do it," Kara corrected her. "I have suspected that for quite some time. And I think it's our only hope to defeat Darkseid and rescue my son."
Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 exchanged a quick glance, then Brainy turned towards her, smirked, and cracked his knuckles.
"Okay, then. Time to bend the laws of time and space to our will."
End Chapter 97
Author's Note: Okay, a lot of serious exposition here, hope I did not overdo it. I had not originally intended for Metron to make another appearance in this story, but there are few characters in DC continuity better suited to delivering cosmic-level exposition than him.
For the continuity freaks: Kara was sent to the past by the Flash way back in chapter 28 and first fought Steppenwolf in chapter 29. She met Metron on Krypton in chapter 31 and encountered the time-lost city of Kandor in chapter 50. And I believe you all know where (and when) we're heading next.
Up Next: Ripples of Infinity