THE HEADY KNIGHT

Chapter 4

"All right, Perry, can you hear me?" asked an excited, though also a little timorous, Lois Lane via her cellphone connection to Perry White, editor-in-chief of The Daily Planet, still in his office even at this hour. "Good. 'It was like something out of a Michael Bay movie. A green-skinned being, completely mechanically enhanced in a semi-robotic manner granting him super-human strength landed in the middle of Metropolis. Superman swiftly took the fight to him in the middle of a quake-damaged main street, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle.' Got that so far, Perry? What? I don't know where Clark is! He's probably still hiding somewhere inside the restaurant. Okay, ready for more?"

Even as Lois persisted in reporting via her ever-present, always fully charged cellphone, Batman began battling Brainiac the best way he knew how. Utilizing a wide range of devices, all very clever-but-non-lethal, in a vain attempt to slow the super-powerful ex-Coluan revolutionary in order to grant the reprieve Superman needed in order to try to overcome and conquer this extraterrestrial threat to over six billion.

But even the Dark Knight's mightiest 500-pound test grapple-line proved far too little, once the artificially empowered, super-intelligent Brainiac snapped such as easily as one would a loose thread…

…only to return to battering Superman with cybernetic-assisted super-blows both bruising and bloodying the Last Son of Krypton.

Unlike anything short of the Batman's secretly carried-in-lead-lined Bat-belt compartment, just in case!, Green Kryptonite Bat-knuckles used the time the Crown Prince of Crime managed to obtain some seldom locatable Red Kryptonite to gain control of the Man of Steel.

"Perry, when the hell's Jimmy gonna get here?" insolently shouted Lois into her cell, disregarding the irrefutable fact that Perry was her boss. Instead considering him simply someone rapidly pounding the keys of his office's computer in an attempt to get down, word for word, what Lois Lane was witnessing from a scant sixty or seventy feet away.

"Okay, okay, here goes: 'While Superman seems to be fighting a losing battle, the Batman, heroic mystery man from Gotham City, has, somehow, slipped silently into Metropolis and, even now, uses everything carried in his bright yellow Bat-belt…but to no avail. The creature calling itself 'Brainiac' and claiming to be from a planet called 'Colu', which has apparently been annihilated mere hours ago, continues to dominate…'"

"You cannot win, Kryptonian," emotionlessly proclaimed Brainiac as he ruthlessly rained down blow after bombastic blow with artificially infused super-musculature, for the moment, even as he also dealt directly with the Cowl-and-Caped Crimefighter not meant to be a party to Superman's plight.

"And you," Brainiac said vociferously, "whom my constantly connected-to-orbiting-starship Syntho-Mind has identified as the Batman from a sprawling city several hundred miles distant…hold out no hope of defeating the perfect supercomputer/humanoid hybrid. Especially one so synthetically altered to more than match the superhuman strength of this so-called Superman! You are but a buzzing insect whose vexatious existence shall soon be exterminated."

Even as Batman's indomitable Human will collided with equally Human limitations, causing severely distressed muscles, even beneath the bulletproof padding of his blue-gray bat-like costume, to send so many messages of agony to his brain, he could scarcely concentrate. Suddenly…

VrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMM!

It was the unmistakable sound of a super-charged turbo-engine, performing at ground speeds exceeding two hundred-plus miles-per-hour, with satanic tongues of flame leaping out from the cylindrical end of a bat-like rear end.

"At last," sighed the Batman, literally smiling through palpable pain, as his always-impressive Batmobile rapidly self-drove itself in and around road debris brought about by the earlier earthquake clearly created via Brainiac's arrival.

Then, no sooner screeching to a sideways stop, simultaneously attracting the cybernetic attention of Brainiac and allowing the manhandled Man of Steel a moment to recuperate from the pitiless pummeling he'd undergone up to now…

"What the…?" quietly exclaimed Batman, before reaching his singularly obsidian source of swift transportation, as its cockpit opened to reveal a very unanticipated passenger. "Nightwing?"

Out leapt the former Robin, Boy Wonder to Batman's Dark Knight, now dressed in basic black leather, form fitting with no visible Velcro closures, highlighted with very visible indigo-blue racing-stripe type insignia dominating chest as well as running along either arm down onto the back of tightly gloved fists.

After activating his spring-loaded double-ended metallic fighting stave, which seemed to magically appear in one gloved hand, and promptly taking the standard stance for staff-fighting…

"Hello, Batman," the fully grown man in the eye-covering mask said with a self-certain smirk, springing from the twofold fact that, during the day, he was police officer Dick Grayson in Blüdhaven, and during the night, Nightwing. "Heard about the Batmobile's emergency self-drive activation from, uh, a mutual friend from the Batcave. Thought I'd catch a ride. Good thing, too. Looks like you two could use some help."

Superman was still too busy trying to recuperate, but Batman's cowled face formed a smile born of pride in the person who used to be his teenaged sidekick many years earlier, prior to the Cowled One partnering up with the Man of Steel from time to time.

"All the help we can get, old friend," Batman finally said as Lois Lane continued dictating her stop-the-presses report via cellphone connection to The Daily Planet's very own Perry White.

"New paragraph, Chief," Lois said too swiftly for Perry to proffer an objection to being called Chief. "'And now, from Gotham City's adjacent municipality, Blüdhaven, comes a second masked mystery man of heroic propensities: Nightwing!' New paragraph. 'Though Batman and Nightwing have fought so well that it appeared as if they had worked in tandem before, Brainiac's enhancements, combined with and controlled by what was obviously a supercomputer-type intellect, continued to stymie any semblance of impending defeat. Meanwhile, Superman, battered, bruised, and bleeding, did what a superhero was supposed to do: returned to the battle that, so far, seemed to be in Brainiac's robotic favor.' New paragraph."

Superman, one eye swollen shut, dried blood leaving a broken line down one side of a bruised and battered mouth, clearly laboring beneath greater-than-expected odds, still used his own super-strength to try and do what his other super-powers simply could not. And all due to a self-generated anti-heat vision/super-breath force field existing invisibly a single scant inch about the beefed-up form belonging to Brainiac.

Pounding his super-powerful fists into a green being every bit as invulnerable, so it seemed, as the Last Son of Krypton, not to mention twice as fast in regards to reflexes used solely in physical fighting, it was becoming quite clear that Superman was not going to defeat this foe. Not by himself.

Working in concert with one another's acrobatic abilities combined with martial arts skills, not to mention manmade weapons unique to each, Batman and Nightwing narrowly managed to even keep the green-skinned super-villain from space busy enough to delay any destructive actions against the entirety of Earth.

"You are wasting precious time," snarled Brainiac with only a hint of potential emotion, supposedly canceled out by the Syntho-Mind now dominating the former Vril Drox. "You have not the power to defeat the ultimate in computer-controlled physicality. I shall now obliterate all three of you, and then…"

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiipppppppppppppp!

Boommmm!

Suddenly streaking in at multi-Mach speed, creating a quick ground level sonic boom as a result, was a red-and-yellow blur that, suddenly stopping short within striking range of the bald, green-skinned Brainiac…

"Hi, there, Superman, Batman, uh, Night-guy from Blüdhaven," said the super-speeding superhero costumed all in red, including skin-tight cowl, with simulated yellow lightning bolts to either side, on the chest, with yellow friction-resistant boots. "And hello to you, too, Mr. I-Think-I'll-Destroy-The-World. The name's Flash. From Central City, Missouri…you know, the 'Show Me' state. So, big, green, and mean…show me."

"Perry," tensely said an impatient-to-report Lois Lane via her cellphone, "where the hell is…?"

"Sorry, I'm late, Ms. Lane," panted an out of breath red-haired, freckle-faced staff photographer for The Daily Planet, "traffic was backed up for…"

"Never mind that, Jimmy," scolded Lois while gesturing with her phone hand toward the site of a super-fight supreme about to take place less than a hundred yards away, "start snapping pictures!"

Seeing it all, at long last, with Batman, Superman, Nightwing, and the Flash surrounding the seemingly indestructible Brainiac, Jimmy Olsen could only utter a single, seemingly old-fashioned, two-syllable utterance.

"Gol-ly!"

END OF CHAPTER 4