Disclaimer: I do not own Legion

10:00

Kell woke up screaming.

"AAHHH!!"

"Whoa, whoa! Calm down!"

Kell was breathing hard and a cold sweat worked it's way across his brow.

"Bad dream?"

"Y-yeah!" Kell gasped.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Well, I had just saved the universe for about the 50th time, and then Brainy comes in all dressed in leather, and he's got this whip, and…"

Kell trailed off when he saw who he was talking to.

"Yeah?" The boy asked.

"S-Superman?" Kell stuttered. No, it couldn't be Superman. This boy, he was much too young. Probably about thirteen. But he looked almost exactly like him. Same black hair, same clean cut smile, same symbol of Krypton on his chest.

"Superman?" The boy asked. "No, I'm too young to call myself Superman. I'm Superboy!" He proudly stated. Superboy? Okay, there was a Supergirl, but Kell didn't remember any Superboy.

"Or, you can just call me the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Ghost of-oh sprock." Kell muttered. "This again." He groaned and went back under the covers.

"Come on, get up." The Ghost, or better yet, Superboy of Christmas Past said. "We've got a long trip to make."

"No, you can go sprock yourself. I am going to shake off whatever delusions I've been suffering thanks to inadequate French cuisine made by a werewolf with father issues, and an allergy to Christ-sprocking-mas." Kell said under the covers. Superboy shook his head.

"Now now." He said, and burned the covers off the bed with his heat vision.

"Time to get up!" He pulled Kell by his ankles and held him up to his face as he floated in the air. He squeezed.

"Ow!" Kell yelped. That hurt. Waitaminute, that hurt!

"Now we're off through the window so I can show you the error of your ways based on the Christmases of your past." Superboy explained.

"I don't have a window!" Kell exclaimed.

"Well we're gonna have to make due then. Up, up-"

"Wait! I'm not-"

"AND AWAY!!!"

ZOOM! It happened so fast Kell didn't know what happened. One second he was in his room being held by his feet by a prepubescent powerhouse, the next he was staring straight down at New Metropolis, still be helding by the Superboy of Christmas Past.

"Are you crazy?!" Kell screamed. Superboy didn't notice. He was too busy scanning the night skyline with his x-ray vision, looking for something until…

"A-ha! There it is!"

"There what is you lunatiiiiiiii-"

Kell screamed again as Superboy flew at the speed of light to his destination. Finally, they reached an underground laboratory.

"-c!!"

"You can stop screaming." Superboy said. "We're here."

Kell fell on his butt.

"Ow!" Kell rubbed the bruise forming on his heinie. "How the hell could you hurt me?!"

"We needed you one-hundred percent human for this. We figured it would've just gotten boring if you kept trying to punch your way out of this." Superboy explained.

"We?! Who's 'we'?!"

"Shh! You're being very rude. Can't you see there are other people in the room?" Superboy told him. Kell turned his head. He couldn't believe where he was, or who was there.

"K3NT!"

Yes, it was his creators. The robot being called K3NT. Half-male, half-female personalities inhabiting a robotic body which, Cham described, looked like a lava lamp.

"It's me! Superm-" He tried to run up to them, but K3NT just walked right past him. No, that wasn't right. They walked THROUGH him.

"They can't see or hear us, Kell." Superboy explained. "This time, this place, K3NT, these are just the leftovers of when this all really happened. Shadows if you will."

Kell looked horrified, before he slowly walked up to K3NT, and felt his hand go through them.

"They can't sense me at all?" Kell asked.

"Nope. Sorry. Even if this wasn't the past, my powers make it impossible for you to do anything to get their attention." Superboy apologized. Kell backed up next to him and watched what K3NT was doing.

"This is the lab where I was created." Kell said.

"You mean born." Superboy corrected.

"People are born. I was created." Kell replied. Superboy rolled his eyes.

"Just watch."

"He must be strong." The Male Half said.

"Fearless." The Female Half replied.

"Powerful." Male Half.

"Indestrucible." Female Half.

"Unstoppable." Male Half.

"He must be a symbol." Female Half.

"A symbol?!" The Male Half yelled. "The people don't need a symbol! They need a weapon of mass destruction!"

"The people need a symbol now more then ever." The Female Half explained. "Ever since this Imperiex rose out of the masses of Lowlies on Apokolips, he has done nothing but wipe out almost every symbol of hope and freedom in the known free galaxy."

"Hmph. The man should've been in the Sinestro Corps." The Male Half joked. "But we have no need for a symbol. Symbols are meant to inspire and create. What we are creating is only meant to destroy and fight. What kind of symbol would that be?"

"Thanks, dad." Kell muttered.

"Shh!" Superboy shushed him.

"Either way, he is meant to rise up and inspire the people whom Imperiex has been attempting to destroy, to encourage them to fight back." The Female Half rationalized. "Even if he is to destroy, it is so we can have a chance to create again. Especially on this day of all days." She turned to the computer, where the date was shown. December 25th. There was hiss! And they saw something open. A tube. A large tub. And inside was a baby boy.

"From Superman born, shall Superman once be again." The Female Half concluded.

"With a few modifications." The Male Half added.

"He may be a weapon, but he is still a living thing." The Female Half explained. "He is still a boy."

"We need a man." The Male Half said.

"He will be a man. And he will make the world a better place." The Female Half said.

"Even if the ends justify the means?" The Male Half asked.

"Imperiex has no soul. Killing him would be like a stepping on a bug." The Female Half rationalized.

"Fine then. He will be a symbol." The Male Half decided.

"He will be our boy." They said together.

Kell felt something tug at his heart strings.

"You see? Even your parents wanted to feel something at this time."

"Whatever." Kell muttered. Superboy sighed.

"Come on." Superboy tugged at Kell's tank top and tossed him through the wall. Kell rolled on his back, looked up, and saw they were in the bunker.

"Hey. This is-" Kell started.

"The Christmas you had when you were three." Superboy walked in through the hole. There were children running around, huddled with their parents, sleeping, crying, as the sound of quiet went on.

"Is that you?" Superboy asked while pointing to a little boy with green eyes and black hair.

"No, that's me." Kell pointed to himself, standing with K3NT. He was fully grown.

"Pretty big three year old." Superboy muttered

"Shut up."

The two got up closer to his past self and K3NT. This was really creepy. You ever had an out-of-body experience, where you saw someone talking and realized this all happened, and that the person talking was you?

"I just don't understand what the big deal is." Kell said to his parents.

"This is a very important to most of the people of Earth." The Female Half said.

"A great man was born on this day." The Male Half explained. "A man whom everyone looked up to as a symbol. Like you."

"A symbol like you." The Female Half explained.

"Yeah, yeah, I read all about it. Nice little fairy tale. Hate to spoil the ending but everyone dies." Kell waved it off as they walked through the bunker.

"You forgot to download his religion matrix, didn't you?" The Male Half accused his other half.

"I thought you did." The Female Half conjectured.

"I should be out fighting Imperiex, not wallowing around in this pathetic-"

"Superman?"

Past Kell stopped. Something was tugging at his leg. He looked down. It was little boy. A Xennian, with blue skin and big, big eyes.

"Uh, yes? What can I… do, for you?" Past Kell asked hesitantly. He had about as much experience with kids back then as he did now.

"Here. Merry Christmas." The little boy said. He handed Kell a picture, hand drawn. It was of him, the boy's parents, and Kell in front of a Christmas tree.

"Uh, thanks." Past Kell said, surprised and somewhat moved by the gesture.

"You see Kell?" Superboy asked.

"Keep watching." Kell muttered.

All of a sudden, the bunker shook violently. Past Kell used his x-ray vision and said-

"Oh no."

BOOM!

Imperiex's soldiers burst in, firing their weapons and attempting to take prisoners. Past Kell got into battle mode, and Kell tried to go in before being stopped by Superboy.

"This already happened Kell. You can't change it."

And he was forced to watch it over again. Past Kell did his best, stopping some of the robot soldiers, when he heard a cry for help signaled out while trying to help a group of soldiers. He used his x-ray vision again. The boy's mother, trapped under rubble, and-

"NO!" Past Kell screamed charged out. He removed the rubble and tried to help her, when of the stronger soldiers charged at Past Kell and fired at him. The projectiles bounced off and back at him. From behind, a soldier tried to kill the woman. She cowered.

KZZT!

She looked up, he had been encased in faux Kryptonite.

"Get out of here! Hurry!" Past Kell ordered. The woman ran off with the others, her family waiting for her, as Past Kell went on to take out the rest of Imperiex's forces. Until he saw the bloody mess in the other room. He stopped. The twenty he left to help the woman. They were butchered. Eviscerated. Incinerated. Past Kell felt his heart drop. Twenty soldiers dead. For one woman. And he burned the picture with his heat vision and watched the flames dance as the drawing died.

And the scene began to fade.

"Kell, you were torn. Those were soldiers. That was an unarmed woman." Superboy

"I actually saved two people." Kell sadly said.

"She was pregnant." Superboy knew.

"She had a little girl." Kell said, sadly.

"That's why you went after her." Superboy said.

Then sadness turned to anger. "And then I swore I wouldn't get attached like that again! I stopped letting my emotions get a hold of me and I focused on getting the job done."

"Kell you can't let one bad experience ruin-

"Bad experience? BAD EXPERIENCE?! Do you have any idea how many people died because I was preoccupied with one woman?! Do you?!" Kell screamed.

"You did the right thing. If you hadn't tried to save her you would've aborted that little girl." Superboy explained.

"One little girl to make up for twenty others. One for twenty. Some bargain! Some Christmas!"

Superboy sighed.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help, Kell. Maybe the next guy will have better luck. Up, up, and away!" And he disappeared.

"Whoa, wait! Who's the-"

Kell stopped as soon as the ground gave way. He kept falling, and falling, until he hit the water so violently it shocked him into unconsciousness. And then he sunk, and sunk, and sunk…