Red Light Special
A DCU Fanfiction by Andrew Joshua Talon and The Ero Sennin
DISCLAIMER: This is a non-profit fan based parody. The Detective Comic Universe is owned by Detective Comics and Warner Brothers. Please support the official release.
Doctor Larry Clarke had expected Lex Luthor to run away at the first sign of trouble. He'd seen the Glassdoor reviews of LexCorp, after all: The review by a certain M. Graves haunted him still.
He didn't think he had to just seal an armored door in front of Clarke and leave him behind.
"SIR! THIS IS REALLY NOT FAIR!" Clarke shouted through the heavily reinforced graphene and Gundanium steel doors. "I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THIS!"
His phone rang. He answered it immediately, and his employer's voice came through loud and clear.
"Once again, you didn't read all the way through the employee handbook," Lex stated. "In the event of a catastrophic breach of contract, LexCorp employees will be used as targets to keep the CEO from being harmed or imprisoned by hostile alien lifeforms."
"WHAT JUDGE SIGNED OFF ON THAT?!" Clarke shouted in disbelief.
"Do you recall Girl Scouts of America v. LexCorp?"
"NO!" Clarke shouted. He pounded on the armored doors uselessly as the sounds of chaos and destruction got closer. "COME ON! JUST LET ME THROUGH!"
"No," Lex said. "I refer to Weyland Yutani v. Lexcorp: Lexcorp employees who have severely annoyed the CEO may be used in impromptu scientific experiments involving hostile alien lifeforms." He snorted. "It'll be a hundred years before they get that reversed."
Heavy caliber gunfire beyond the relatively flimsy security door between Dr. Clarke and Supergirl came to an abrupt and violent halt. Childish giggling followed.
"Oh God," Clarke groaned. "Why did I agree to work for you? What in the hell possessed me to work for you?! Why does anyone work for you?!"
"It's a shame most people seem to ask those questions of themselves before working for me," Lex admitted. "Thank god for all my robots. No complaints, no labor negotiations, no lawsuits…"
"I could use more time off, Lex," a female voice called on the other side of the line.
"Not NOW, Robo-Lois," Lex grumbled. "Anyway, if you survive I will forward the documents needed for you to extend your health insurance to your address-"
"OPEN THE GOD DAMNED DOORS!" Clarke yelled, whacking the armored doors repeatedly. "OW!"
"Well, look at it this way Clarke," Lex said. "If I open those doors, we'll be unleashing a giggling, rampaging Supergirl onto Metropolis. You really want that on your conscience?"
"Do you even know what that is?!"
"... Doors or conscience?" Asked Lex.
"Nevermind," Clarke muttered, slowly turning to face the doors. He scanned them, the airvent hatch above it, the flashing emergency lights-
Wait. Back up. Air vent!
"Yes!" He said, quickly pulling the hatch open and crawling through. And not a second sooner, as Supergirl opened the security doors by kicking them across the room.
"Lexy~... Come out and play~...!" She flew up to the heavily reinforced doors and kicked them at full strength. The facility shook and the lights above shorted out… But the doors held. Supergirl pouted.
"Huh! That's pretty sturdy… hmmm…" She brightened when she saw the phone off its hook and picked it up. "Hey there, Lex."
"Hello Supergirl," Lex replied stiffly.
"How much money did LexCorp make in the last fiscal year?"
"Several billion dollars," Lex said.
"I bet that I can do so much damage to your assets you will need a solid decade to make up for it."
"You know, this was entirely Larry Clarke's idea," said Lex quickly. "I mean, he devised the trap and everything else."
"Oh Lex, it may have been his idea, but you wanted to profit off it."
"Damn. That always works on the Supreme Court," Lex muttered. "Anyway… Surely there's some shred of heroic decency in you to not tear through my lab? Which is in a heavily populated area of Metropolis?"
Supergirl hummed and gave that a lot of thought. "When you put it like that, doing that much damage to your lab while it's in a heavily populated part of Metropolis would be pretty awful."
She snapped her fingers.
"Oh, I've got the perfect idea!"
Supergirl smiled and looked towards the open vent.
"But before I entertain the idea… mmm… Don't you go anywhere, Lex, okay?" she said before she dropped the receiver. "Oh Doctor Clarke~!"
On the other side of several hundred tons of reinforced steel, concrete, and armor plating, Doctor Clarke dropped from an air vent into another corridor of the research facility. He took deep breaths and rubbed his temples.
"Oh man… Oh man... " He shut the air vent hatch behind him. "Haa…"
Okay. He didn't think she would immediately follow him. I mean, there were plenty of robots for her to kill right? Lots of the same kind of boring, uninteresting robot for her to trash.
"I can't imagine how anyone can find Destiny fun," Supergirl said after tossing aside the remains of another robot.
She then noticed one of the robots had been carrying (and attempting to use) a very large energy weapon on her. She immediately went to pick it up. "Oh! What does this thing do?"
And he had enough concrete and armor to keep him safe for a bit. After all, she was severely reduced in power. It's not as if Lex Luthor had equipped particle buster weapons on his robots in this area. That would just be ridiculously overkill and-
KABOOM!
Clarke yelped and held on for dear life as the facility shook. He saw a round crater developing in the nearby wall. He did the calculations in his head to assess what kind of weapon could leave such a pattern in said thousands of tons of armor and concrete… And paled.
"Oh son of a-HOW DOES THIS MORON KEEP SURVIVING FIGHTING SUPERMAN?!" Clarke yelled, turning and running for his life. Another shot from the particle buster weapon opened up a tunnel into the armored corridor. Supergirl pranced through, carrying the extremely large and heavy buster weapon over her shoulder.
"I now see the appeal of Destiny!" she said happily before she saw Clarke. "Oh, hello Doctor Clarke!"
She pointed the weapon haphazardly at him. "You wouldn't happen to know if there are any living, breathing people besides you and Lex in the building, would you? I had an awesome idea for sticking it to him and it kind of helps if there isn't any collateral damage."
And all Doctor Clarke could do was squeak as he tried very hard not to wet his pants.
"Well, hang on," he said. "Wouldn't you like to do anything other than stick it to him… or point that at me? We could um… play a game or something to get your mind off the rampant destruction?"
And maybe give him enough time to get the red kryptonite from around her neck somehow, he hoped.
Supergirl looked at her new weapon (which she has since dubbed "Sir Blaster, Master of Blasting", and then lowered it.
"Oh, I have no time for that! I'm a very busy very vengeful girl and I'm going to have a great and terrible revenge against Lex," she said before giving him a less manic smile. "But if you want to go out on a date after I'm done with Lex, we can totally hang out and do stuff then!"
"... Sure…?" Clarke managed.
"Great! You're really hot and I would've hated to have scared you so much that you wouldn't be interested. So, about all the other people in the building…?"
Meanwhile, in a cafe near a convention center…
Batman and Superman sitting in a cafe at a booth was not particularly interesting to the patrons of the diner. There was a comic book convention going on, after all-Such costumes were expected. Admittedly, they were very good cosplayers but the idea of the actual superheroes being in this cafe was laughable.
Hence, it was the actual Batman and Superman sitting in the booth, sipping coffee, as Superman went through his swag. He looked up at Batman, who was flipping through a comic book detailing them fighting. The Man of Steel sighed.
"That any good?" Clark asked.
"No," Batman stated. He put the comic face down on the table. Clark sighed and looked up at one of his oldest friends.
"So... Why does everybody obsess over us fighting anyway?" Superman asked. Batman grunted.
"I think it's a big power fantasy. I'm a normal human being, they want to imagine they're me and so they can take down a god."
"But... I'm super powerful. Shouldn't people want to fantasize about being me?" Superman asked.
"Yeah, but I'm rich," Batman said, sipping some coffee. "People can imagine themselves becoming rich, not being a superpowered alien."
Superman sighed, feeling a little down. He stirred his coffee cup. Batman was silent and thoughtful for a moment, before he spoke again.
"Yeah, but you know what?" Batman asked.
"What?"
"They seem to forget that I'm smart. And I'm smart enough to know that beating a superpowered alien is not as smart as becoming his best friend."
"Oh? So... Friendship is like my true weakness?" Superman asked after a moment's though. Batman nodded, lifting his coffee mug.
"Uh huh."
"Like kryptonite, or magic?"
Batman sipped his coffee. "Yes."
"So… Friendship…"
"Is magic-" Batman glared at Superman, whose shoulders were now shaking in repressed laughter. "Oh goddamnit."
"HA!" Superman said with a grin. Batman sighed.
"Go jump over a tall building or something."
Superman's Justice League communicator beeped, prompting him to pick it up and answer. "Superman, here."
He was rather chagrined to hear Luthor's voice on the other end. "Superman, I need your assistance immediately."
Superman immediately put his communicator down. He scowled over at Batman. "Okay. Nice trick."
"What trick?" Batman asked.
"Ya know. Have Lex Luthor call me in the middle of the convention? On my JLA communicator?" He asked sarcastically. "While I'm on vacation? To somewhere I dragged you to?"
Batman stared at him.
"I'm right here. How could I do that?"
"Oh, like you couldn't have a perfect voice replica android of Lex Luthor call me in the middle of our vacation to ask for help," said Superman. Batman nodded.
"I could do that. I may have already done that. But the question is… Why?"
Superman glared at Batman. Batman shrugged. Superman sighed. He picked the JLA communicator up again and unmuted it.
"What do you want, Lex? And how did you even get this number?"
"The Martian connected me to you after he managed to stop laughing long enough. I'm in a humiliating spectacle of a situation, so you should be glad that I care enough about the people of Metropolis to call you for help with it."
"If you actually cared about the people of Metropolis, why don't you put your crazy dangerous science projects somewhere far, far away from them?" Superman asked.
"Well, it's so you don't just bust in and wreck my 'science projects''," Lex snapped.
"You do realize how terrible that makes you sound, right?" Superman said.
"Can we stick to the matter at hand?!" Lex quickly snapped. "One of my scientists, inspired by our… rivalry… thought to test a newly discovered variant of Kryptonite on Supergirl."
"So, translated from Crazy Lex Talk, you decided to test a new variant of Kryptonite-something that kills us- on a teenaged girl after kidnapping her and you're blaming it on one of your subordinates," Superman replied.
"Don't see why you have to spell it out, that's what he always does," Batman muttered.
"Yes! Fine! I was hoping for a trump card to kill you. Instead, I have a superpowered teenaged girl going on a rampage through my facility giggling like a madwoman and holding very little regard for life or very, very expensive property!"
Superman sighed. "Seriously Lex. You have like, a billion dollars. Why can't you do something productive?"
"He kind of already does, seeing how he owns a multi-billion dollar company," Batman pointed out.
"Stop helping Lex!" Superman said. Batman nodded.
"That's what I meant. He has all that to do but he still keeps trying to kill you."
"ARE YOU IDIOTS GOING TO HELP ME OR NOT?!" Lex shouted over the phone.
Superman sighed as he looked over at Batman. Batman nodded.
"It's what we do… Superheroes," Batman said. Superman sighed.
"We'll be right there… For Supergirl! And Metropolis! Not you Lex. I'm just making that clear!"
"Well you'd better hurry, I've lost sight of her and Doctor Clarke and-" there was a rumbling in the background that did not sound good at all. "Oh good Lord. Superman! Get here right n-!"
The call abruptly ended. Superman sighed.
"Great…"
"Why do you always call him Lex?" Asked Batman. Superman blinked.
"What?"
"You call him Lex. Like, you don't call him by his last name. It's kind of like implying you're on closer terms with him than other villains," Batman pointed out. Superman's eyes narrowed.
"Well don't you call the Joker 'The Joker'?"
"Yes, because he doesn't have any other name," Batman pointed out. "And he calls you the Alien…"
"What are you implying?" Superman asked. Batman shrugged.
"Just saying, pet names with your villains is usually not a good sign. Especially when your wife is on vacation."
"Let's just go already," Superman grumbled.
Batman smirked.
To be continued...