Kara materialized inside the transport tube. She waited for the nausea to pass, and then got out. She was met by an unusually tense Diana, J'onn...and the one the TV called 'The Flash'. She reached out and shook his hand.
"I'm Kara."
"I'm Wally. They call me the Flash."
"I know. Nice to meet you." She turned to Wonder Woman.
"Kal has been having visions of himself doing things he never did for the past two weeks, and is beginning to have his personality seemingly eroded by this."
Diana put a gentle hand across her shoulders and steered her toward the nearest doorway and into the main meeting room.
She stared at the form in black curled fetally on the meeting table. She sighed heavily. "He's not the only one."
Kara stared at the scene in shock. "When did this happen?"
A mechanized female voice spoke. "The collapse? An hour ago. It appears to have started about two weeks ago."
Kara looked at the glowing green holographic mask hovering in the air.
"Oracle, I assume? I'm Kara..."
"Kara Zor-El...I...know. It's nice to meet you. Hopefully, I'll meet you personally someday soon. Niceties aside, his closest associates noted a sizable change in his demeanor about a week after he first mentioned having powerful headaches and dizzy spells interspersed with 'fantasies', as he called them."
Kara cranked up her hearing and focused her X-Ray vision. "His heartrate and respiration seem awfully high. Fluctuating, too." She shifted to Infrared. Looked at Batman, and then Wally for reference, and back again. "His body temperature also seems abnormally high. It looks very much like what I read off of Kal after he collapsed five minutes ago."
J'onn spoke quietly, his baritone filling the air. "It appears that Batman may have caught whatever Kal has."
"Maybe your medical facilities could help?"
Wally shook his head. "Nope. We have no baseline stats for him. Batman would never submit to an exam. Besides, what we have here is for basic bone setting and first aid. We haven't really had the need for extensive scanning machines yet."
Kara paused and thought for a minute. "I have an idea. I don't know what Kal would think of this, but... Please ready Batman for a trip..."
The Invisible Jet landed on the snowy outcropping. Kara was standing there with Kal in her arms. J'onn landed right next to her with Lois, who was bundled to the nines. Diana reached in to the Jet and gently retrieved the Dark Knight.
Kara indicated the black sphere just in sight. "Let's go." They entered the sphere.
"Stay here for a moment. The security droids have to scan you."
They waited briefly as the puck shaped droids scanned J'onn, Lois, and Batman's limp form.
Kelex floated up. "Mistress Kara, what brings you here? What is wrong with Kal-El?"
"I...We don't know, Kelex. Ready the infirmary and the biological scanners. Two beds. TOP PRIORITY!"
"Acknowledged." The gold robot nodded and hurried off.
They landed and looked around briefly, waiting for the droids to finish. Five minutes later, Kelex returned and asked them to follow. They entered the infirmary and laid the two sweating forms on the beds.
The robots restrained the men with force fields, and went to work scanning. Outside of erratic body functions, the most disturbing thing found was the mental pathways of the two were breaking down and reforming. J'onn asked the others to leave, and he mind-scanned each of them...
"Kara?"
"Lois? You okay?" She sniffled slightly and nodded. "Just...thinking, we should get Emil Hamilton and John Henry Irons. If anyone in Metropolis understands Clark's physiology, it's them."
Diana rested a comforting hand on each of their shoulders. "I think we should get Ray Palmer as well. His additional wisdom can only help."
Kara hesitated, nervous then nodded. "If you can communicate with them, let's get them here, please."
By the evening, John, Emil and Dr. Palmer arrived and were scanned in.
Three hours later, it was getting worse. Clark and Bruce had gone into a form of delerium.
John, Emil and the Atom were running scans, when they realized something horrifying...an abnormal energy buildup in the brains of the two, accompanying the mental pathway breakdown. Kelex and the robots made a device to siphon off the energies, and applied it. Then applied a stasis field to each of them to slow the breakdown.
It worked...then the energies started to build again.
"It doesn't make any damn sense!" John Henry fumed and paced like a tiger around the room. "This energy can't come from NOWHERE! And where are their minds getting the pattern for the reformatting?!"
"Reformatting?! I thought you said they were breaking down!" Lois focused and blinked the tears out of her eyes. Kara quietly hugged her.
Emil spoke up. "Both are true, Mrs. Kent. Each of our brains look the same physically, but are 'wired', or 'formatted' differently, due to the neural connections formed throughout our lives. This is what gives each of us our unique personality. It's something like a computer disk...The little bits are set in a unique way, and that allows it to be read as a specific disk with specific data on your computer. If you were to hold a magnet to it and repattern the bits in a different way, the computer will read it differently...or not at all."
Dr. Palmer spoke. "This repatterning is most likely the reason for the change in personality of both of them...but, like John Henry put it, we don't know WHERE their brains are getting the template for this somewhat organized reformatting."
"If there WAS no pattern," John interjected, "They would just become vegetables."
Kara looked puzzled. "But why the sweating? They're acting as if they've got a flu or something similar..."
Emil pushed his glasses back up on his nose, and thought for a minute. "I don't really know...but if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say this is their bodies' best reflexive way of trying to stave off the mental changes...like their immune systems going after a virus. But...unless we can find what is the CAUSE of their brain change, and soon, we run the risk of their bodies exhausting themselves and shutting down..."
John Henry thought quietly for a minute, and then asked Kelex for a phone line connection.
Kara and Lois took turns trying to cool Kal and Bruce down with damp towels. It was even more painful than they originally thought as both of the legends were mumbling as they passed into and out of the delerium.
Kal:"...father...Jor-El...he passed through me..." "Him and mother...in Kr..ton Bureau of...stigation..." "Supergirl...created by Jimmy...Too much wind...roof blew off." "UNNGHH...Daddy, no! Krypto stay!" "Monkey? It can FLY?" "Pa, what's wrong with me? Why...these powers?" "...can help as SUPERBOY!" "Legion..."
Bruce: "...like...friend Superman on earth...can fly...bent metal like putty." "...mother told you no...Helena." "...get me a shoe for the souvenir case." "...leg can't heal in a couple days, Kal!" "Mother...Father...No. NO! No. Alone..."
Kara looked up, sadly, at Lois. "Why did this happen? To them of all people? All they do is to try to help others...and they get more pain in return..." Lois brushed back her tears, and just shook her head.
"...p-please stay. Stay with us, Kara!" Kara froze, chills running up her spine as she listened. "...stopped the machines...don't die!"
Suddenly Superman pushed hard against the restraints, the veins in his neck standing out in full relief, white hot rage written indelibly across his face. He let out with a roar that nearly burst eardrums. "THE ANTI-MONITOR! WHERE IS HE? I-I WANT TO KILL HIM FOR THIS!!!" Just as abruptly, he sagged, and the sorrow was painful for all to see. "No...No...Kara...gone..." He whimpered, face etched with sadness, tears running down from his face.
Kara walked over to try to comfort him, brushed the hair from his eyes, and rested her hand on his cheek, fighting tears. "Kal...I'm here...I'm not going anywhere..."
"...Shouldn't have died...saved me...Kara...I'm sorry...wasn't strong enough...shouldn't have brought her here." His expression went blank.
Kara looked down at Batman, her thoughts running wild. Her recall snapped back to her first dream. He died in my arms...Blonde hair...'please stay.' Dear Rao! Could this be MORE than just dreams?
"Kal, SHHH...I'm HERE. I'm fine. Relax and we'll..." Then the bed alerts went off over The Man of Tomorrow.
Kara panicked slightly, as John Henry ran over. "What is it?! What's happening?"
The alarms over Batman's bed went off too. Dr. Palmer scurried to read them.
John Henry took the readings and his shoulders sagged. Went over to Batman's bed, studied the readouts, and then turned to Kara and the rest. With a grim expression on his face, he took a deep breath.
"Good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"
Kara gulped, tears in her eyes. "Good news first..."
"Okay...The good news is: They've stabilized for now."
"What's the bad news, John?" Diana looked at Kal with fear on her face.
"The bad news: They've both gone into comas. This may be their bodies' last ditch effort to stop the...virus...or whatever the heck this THING is."
"If we care about them, ALL ideas are on the table NOW...
Or they may not HAVE a later!"
"What are we looking at here?" John Henry asked, leaning against a nearby computer console with his big arms folded across his chest.. "First one gets erratic, and then the other...there has to be a connection or two."
"He was complaining of dizzy spells and migraines, that started light and increased in intensity..." Kara said.
"...And Oracle said that Batman's friends noticed that he complained about the same thing." Diana continued. "So this...'virus'...would seem to leave the dizziness and migraines as...'calling cards'.
"He said...he dreamed of being Superboy." Lois quietly wiped tears from her eyes. "He also told me about dreaming about situations that he was never in, but it…'felt real'...Out racing a train with a crook in his hands, smashing through a wall to stop an execution..." She took a deep breath and steadied herself. "What about Batman?"
"Good question." Kara replied. "Did Batman confide in anyone here?" She looked around. They all shook their heads. John thought for a moment, and then went to work on the main computer's keyboard. Seconds later, a familiar cyber face popped up on screen. Oracle.
"Oracle, you've worked with Batman in the past...Did he confide in you as to any visions he was having?"
"Sorry, Steel...You know Br...Batman. He's not a person to talk about that. He'll just keep shouldering it in silence until he breaks, and even THEN...How are they, by the way?"
"Bad...They WERE delerious...They're NOW in comas."
Oracle's voice rose slightly in nervousness. "How long is it likely to last, Steel?"
"As of right now, Oracle, not a clue...not a damn clue! This whole thing has been an exercise in lunacy from the start...!"
Kara studied the forms from a distance. "John, excuse me...they were talking before...BOTH of them. What if they were both still having dreams? Batman said something about 'They're dead' and 'I'm all alone'. He might have been reliving the deaths of his parents..."
He nodded. "Let's assume that's it...Are there any other ideas? They both had dizzy spells, headaches, and visions..."
Kara had an intuitive flash. "I had dizzy periods...Two of them. One when my heat vision kicked on for the first time...and the second time when I met Mr. Mxy and he charged me up three weeks ago." She paused, and then paled. "Oh, Great Rao...It was ME. It was my fault. I must have done something...it went to Kal...then he probably passed it on to Batman."
Diana walked up to her and put a arm around her shoulder. "Even if it came from you, Kara, you are blameless. If you knew something was wrong, you would have warned Kal."
There was a hubub outside, of the fortresses security systems kicking in.
Kara blew out of the room and came face to mask with a man in a gold mask and cape.
"How did you get here?! Who are you?!" Kara braced for attack, eyes glowing red.
"Kara, NO! He's with us! I asked him here! It's Doctor Fate!" John Henry gestured them both down.
Kara hesitated, and then relaxed and looked at Kelex. "Stand the Fortress down. He's...not a hostile." Kelex nodded...and the alarms abruptly shut off. The puck-shaped droid got his scan and left.
"John, who is this? I've never heard of Doctor Fate."
"Kara, he's a mage, a protector of order. I called him here because I think that magic is the source of the problems. Superman, and presumably, you too, are vulnerable to three things: Kryptonite, mind control...and MAGIC."
Kara walked with Dr. Fate toward the room... Wait a minute, she thought frantically. She suddenly blurred into motion and came to rest by the bed with the re-cowled Batman in it.
They deactivated the restraints and moved back. Whispering chants under his helm, Fate hovered into the air, lifting the prone bodies of the heroes in a magical field.
For two minutes they remained motionless and silent, and then all three lowered back to the ground.
Fate walked over and removed his helmet. Smiling sadly beneath his white beard, he said, "It IS a magical energy, of a sort...but it's so distorted I can't really get a lock on what it's origin IS.
I CAN put them in a strong suspension field to further preserve their bio-energies, but I don't DARE to try to remove the magic without a firm identification...Even with Nabu's assistance, I could do even MORE damage than what has already occurred. Mindwork that is needed, as in this case, is delicate and is the province of god-level beings. What is happening here is also likely affecting their spirits as well. The two are tied strongly together."
Kara flew back over to the group, looking at J'onn first. "J'onn, when you scanned them, did you feel as if any other outside source were generating the changes in their minds? I read that that Dominus that Kal was talking about had mind powers, as well as other unexplained ones, and that he did something like this before...?"
He shook his head. "That was what I was looking for, Kara. I did NOT find it. The new thoughts..." He paused, gathering his own. "...WERE theirs. To someone who is not a telepath, it is a bit hard to describe, but the thoughts' 'fingerprints', though different from their usual thoughts, were a clear match to each of their personalities. If it was Dominus, now I know what to look for, it would stand out prominently, aside from the fact that he would NOT do something like this. Aside from turning them both into vegetables, he would have nothing to gain..."
Kara thought quietly, and then looked at Fate.
"Scan me." was all she said.
Dr. Fate looked puzzled, "But you're not sick..."
"I may be the one that started this problem. Hopefully you'll get something more out of me." Fate nodded, and put his helm back on. He began the chant again. Kara felt a weird but pleasant warmth encapsulate her as they lifted off the ground, which abruptly ceased a minute later. They both landed and he looked at Kara.
"It's definitely other-dimensional energy. Your cells are showing it more clearly, and in less distorted of a fashion. It still is not really compatible with your body type and should be removed, though."
"If it's not as dangerous as what Kal and Batman have, I can wait." She paused for a moment. "Could it be fifth dimensional-based magic?" Kara enquired.
Fate closed his eyes and muttered quietly, seemingly to himself. He opened his eyes and nodded. "That would be about right. The vibrations would match with that plane of reality."
Diana walked over. "So that would seem to confirm your theory, Kara. But if Mr. Mxyztlptk did not mean your power up in a malicious way, something else happened to trigger the change when it jumped to Kal. But what?"
Alarms went off.
"Damn!" John Henry exclaimed. "Kal."
He pulled back just as a dark blue blur screamed past him.
They all heard her panicked scream a second later.
"JOHN! DR. PALMER! NO HEARTBEAT! HE'S NOT BREATHING!"
John had never seen Diana use the full speed of Mercury until that moment. She suddenly just was...gone...A gust of wind in her place.
He entered the room at a top run, and saw Diana doing CPR... Or trying to.
"Great Hera! I can't get a rise out of his chest...It's like trying to blow up steel balloons! Kara, get over here! You'll have the lung power! You breathe for him. I'll do chest compressions..."
Kara started emulating what Diana was just doing, but with greater success.
Diana slammed her interlaced fists down on Superman's chest...hard.
Again.
Again.
John whirled to Kelex. "Get us a defibrillator that will work on Kal-EL, NOW!" Kelex nodded, paused...and summoned four of the puck-shaped droids. Diana moved out of the way, and they settled two on either side of the bed, and extended cup-shaped arms at the end of cables to Kal's chest and applied the shock.
His body jumped, and then was still.
The droids shocked him again. The jump. No reaction.
Kara wanted to die on the spot, but kept breathing. Lois sagged to the floor. Emil came over to comfort her. "Nonononono...not again...please, God, not again!"
"Wise Athena, Mighty Aescalapeous, please hear me..." Diana whispered through the blur of her tears. "Not him. If Lord Hades wants someone...take me..."
Kara forced herself back to the breathing.
"Great All Father Rao, pufff if you can hear me, pufff please help us. pufff Don't take him. Please. If you must...puff Take me instead!"
She felt the warm tears spilling down her cheeks and onto his.
The robots jolted him again. Again.
"DAMN IT! Why isn't he responding?!" John Henry's fingers flew frantically over the keyboards.
He barely caught Emil's whisper in the madness.
"He's likely turned his back to the wall..." John turned around to him as Emil elaborated. "Kara. He's convinced Kara's dead...and that he failed his only surviving relative. It broke his heart."
Lois, shattered, got to her feet, and ran into the room to the bedside of her husband.
"Don't you DARE do this, Cl...Kal! Don't leave me alone! P-please stay!"
"I'm still not getting a heartbeat! Brain functions are nil."
Kara stopped long enough to scream hysterically: "DAMN IT, KAL! I'M HERE! DON'T YOU DARE DO THIS!!"
The Atom, crushed, turned from his monitor.
"We've lost him."
The only sound everyone could hear was the steady drone of the flatlined monitor... And the heart-wrenching sobs of the last survivor of Krypton...
As the world faded to white.
Barbara Gordon stared at the screen, in shock, listening.
NO.
It can't be.
He beat it before.
Damn it, God! She thought with tears in her eyes. Why did you let ME live and kill HIM?!
She slammed her keyboard, breaking the connection to the Fortress, and very nearly the keyboard, in the process.
I...had to go through this with Kara, after she died to save him...and now SHE'S going through the same thing!
She pulled off her glasses and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
It has to be him, doesn't it?! She thought bitterly to the ceiling. Him and Bruce. They spend their lives helping, only to get taken out by a damn virus...The one man the world looks up to... And the one I look up to...
Nightwing and Robin are probably going frantic with worry.
Dick was none too comfortable with the mantle of the Bat, but had accepted it with Bruce's reluctant urging after the mental test.
The new Dynamic Duo might have to work together longer than they thought, she thought bitterly. She wiped her eyes free of tears again and put her glasses back on. Might as well let them know...be the first to give condolences to Lois and Kara AGAIN!
She reached for the hotkey to patch her through to the Batmobile, when she heard the male voice behind her.
"There is more to this than there seems to be, Oracle."
She spun her chair around to face the Spectre, an Oriental woman in a white costume and a blonde woman in red and blue armor.
"H-Hal?!"
"Barbara, you are going to be needed. Come."
He waved his green-clad hand...
And they were gone.
The Fortress group all looked around in shock as the white faded. They were in a well-lit, white room with no definable corners. Kal and Bruce were stretched out on two human-length diases. There was a flight of steps in front of them, leading up to another level...
Where two beings of light were standing.
"Have no fear. This will work out. We are here to fix that."
Kara wiped her tears and responded with surprising venom. "Damn the Kraayn! How CAN this work out?! He's DEAD! AGAIN! And I signed his death warrant! Batman is a mental scramble and is only a matter of time before HE goes, too!"
They both decended the steps, and came to a stop in front of Kara. "Well, as Fate here said, they needed a higher power's assistance." the male said. "Besides..." He continued with a touch of amusement in his voice, "...You DID ask for help."
"How did you know that? And who ARE you both?! How did you get us here?! Talk or I'll..."
The male held up his hand. The both seemed to pause, concentrating. Gradually, their glowing forms took on a more human likeness.
Lois gasped.
The black haired man that materialized was dressed in white and well-muscled with low level armor on his shoulders, waist and shins...And he was a dead ringer, face-wise, for The Man of Tomorrow. Now the Man of Yesterday, she corrected herself sadly, and looked over at Clark's body.
She heard a quiet female voice. "He's resting. Don't fear." She looked to see the former light woman, with dusty blonde hair coiffed in an elaborately braided headcone, now dressed in a simple white dress, standing next to her. "His being, his soul is still present. It has not taken its final journey yet...the only problem now is getting his body to function properly again, so it can safely house it again."
"Can you do that?" Lois asked.
"We can. But we will likely need your help to do so."
Kara was quietly studying the visages of the two, who both radiated calm. They DID look familiar, but who...
"Who are we, my dear Kara? How quickly you forget. My name is Nara." The female smiled and walked back, stopping next to her compatriot. Nara...Kara thought... Where did I hear that name before? Lara's grandmother was named that...after...
She felt all the blood in her body drain into her toes.
No. Oh...no...Kara thought, horrified...But that means...
The man spoke with a gentle smile on his face. "And no doubt Kal used my name once or twice..."
"Great...Rao..." Kara whispered, trembling, wide eyed in shock and staring intently at the floor.
Oh, Kraayn take me! I threatened and all but cursed out the Allfather!!