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.
As it turned out, much of the facility was automated since superheroes couldn't be sued but supervillains could. To shed liability, the entire skyscraper and its many laboratories was manned by robots with human scientists and personnel only present when needed. In today's case, Lex and Dr. Clarke were the only humans present.
That suited Supergirl just fine, after Sir Blaster, Master of Blasting did what it did best and blasted her way to freedom from the eighty storey science lab.
Arm protectively around Clarke's waist, she hopped out of the hole she made and regained the vast majority of her powers as the sun's rays bathed her.
"Oh, that feels so much better!" she said as she touched down.
She then looked up at the building. "Say, how much do you suppose this is all worth?"
"I couldn't even begin to calculate, but there are a lot of skyscrapers around here filled with innocent people," he pointed out.
"Yeah, I know. That's why I have an awesome idea." She cracked her knuckles, and began performing stretches, bending her lithe body in pleasant curves as she eased the tension in her superhuman muscles.
"Um… Just to make sure, you are eighteen right?" Asked Clarke. "Given… That date and all…"
"Yeah, almost nineteen in fact. I never would've asked for a date if it would get you in trouble, don't you worry!"
Well, he felt a lot less guilty about ogling her while she stretched.
"Ah yes! That's better!" Supergirl said as she finished limbering up. She handed Sir Blaster, Master of Blasting to Dr. Clarke. "Hold this, please?"
She turned towards the building and rubbed her hands together. "I'm going to do something awesome."
With that she became a blur, racing straight at the skyscraper and circling around its base at an increasing speed. Clarke did the calculations in his head and immediately realized that standing within ground zero of what Supergirl was going to do was probably a bad idea.
He was right to worry, for the building began shaking violently almost right away as Supergirl began doing something to its base in her unbelievably fast movement. The shaking grew, and grew, and it almost looked like the building was about to topple over as it swayed from side to side.
But it didn't fall.
It began to ascend.
"Oh… Shit," Clarke muttered.
The Building, with a red and blue tornado going on under its bottom, ascended like a rocket from the middle of Metropolis, turning heads and gaining gawkers as it hurtled into the afternoon sky above the white cumulus clouds that hung above… and then the far higher cirrus clouds that dusted the sky above them.
"... How is it even staying together without falling apart?" Clarke asked, shaking his head. "The math doesn't work... None of this works…" He sighed and looked down at Sir Blaster, Master of Blasting. "And I'm talking to a particle weapon…"
"Would you prefer better conversation?" Batman suddenly asked.
"GAH!" Clarke gasped, holding his chest as his heart threatened to beat right out of it. "H-How did you-Where-?!"
"Don't make me answer that," Batman stated. "Now, what exactly are we looking at?"
"We?" And that's about when Clarke noticed Clark hovering just to the right of Batman, looking up at the ascending building. "Oh my God…"
"Supergirl is… keeping it stable by moving to every point that seems to be losing stability while pushing it into the sky," Superman said, explaining why it wasn't falling apart in midair. "She's also accelerating towards suborbital flight… and her trajectory…"
Superman grimaced. "Well, she's not aiming for a particularly populated area at least."
Superman's communicator beeped again, and when he answered it. It was Amanda Waller. "Superman, why is NORAD tracking a skyscraper at an altitude of 300,000 feet and ascending hurtling towards LexCorp's largest automated weapons manufacturing facility in the Southwestern United States?"
"Let me answer that with another question? How do you people keep getting this number?"
"The Manhunter."
"Damn it J'onn."
Batman took the communicator. "Lex attempted to harm Supergirl with a new weapon, but it backfired magnificently."
"We're evacuating the area around the factory but since we can't have chunks of LexCorp property raining down across much of New Mexico and Arizona, we're not going to engage it, luckily that is why we have superheroes, isn't it?" Ms. Waller asked.
"Yes, yes it is," said Batman.
"Where's Lex?" Clark asked Clarke.
Clarke looked up at the building, then back at Superman. "I think he's still inside."
"Right. I'll take my Batjet and save him, you talk your cousin down," Batman said.
"Aw… But then you'll get all the gloating with the villain," Superman said. Batman rolled his eyes.
"I'll save some gloating for you, all right?"
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The room Lex was sealed in was well protected against superbeings. It was well protected against most everything really. It was air tight, with its own air and water supply, had food and entertainment for laying low, and even an independent power source so he could keep tabs on what was going on not only outside the room, but outside the building.
So he was understandably upset to see that his entire building was now nearly five hundred thousand feet off the ground.
"That crazy bitch…!" He threw his hands up. "Doesn't she realize she's going to kill everyone?!"
"It's almost as though someone exposed her to a radioactive rock that made her lose all her inhibitions, isn't it?" Asked a voice on his phone.
"You have no appreciation for science, Batman!" Lex snapped back.
"You do realize how bad this makes you look, right? I mean, the only reason you've stayed so rich is because you've replaced most of your workforce with robots or illegal immigrants," Batman continued over the phone, rather conversationally. That just pissed Luthor off even more.
"Come now! We're both men, right?" Lex asked. "We can both appreciate how big a threat Superman and the rest of his alien kin are? Why do we butt heads so much? Why must we fight?" He spread his arms out magnanimously. "We're the same species-Why not work together towards the greater good?"
The building had reached the apex of its ballistic flight, and when Lex looked up he found Supergirl floating in the monitor, waving to him.
She then pulled out pen and pad, and began writing down something on it. She held the note up to the camera.
In five minutes this building is going to smash into your most profitable weapons manufacturing plant, the note read.
"Oh crap," Lex muttered. "All right… My teleporter, teleporter… I know I put a teleporter in here somewhere…" He looked through his pile of gadgets, tossing each non-teleporting one he found. "Where is it…?!"
"You forgot your teleporter didn't you?" Batman asked.
Supergirl flipped a page and resumed writing, before holding it up to the camera.
I'm sure you're trying to find a way out, but you're pretty much boned whether you live or die.
"I… I totally did NOT forget my teleporter!" Lex growled. He quickly began looking through the systems of his bunker. "Let's see… Anti-gravity system… Damnit, I don't have that! Rocket system? No... !"
"Why exactly would you have rockets on your panic room?" Asked Batman.
Well this is another unlikely contingency to prepare for next time. "Like you would have rockets on yours!"
"No. I would have a functioning teleporter though," Batman said smugly.
Lex screamed in frustration, before the building began shaking again. He switched tactics and began to search for a forcefield generator and an oxygen tank. Or anything he could put together into those items to survive.
"Wha-Gotham Knights?! Why do I have a Gotham Knights T-shirt-Nevermind!" Lex grumbled. "It's okay… I'm Lex Luthor, smartest human being on this planet. I can figure something out!"
"Even the greatest genius in the world knows Occam's Razor," Batman replied, "in that the simplest solution is usually the best."
"Do you want to quote the blindingly obvious to me, Batman, or do you want to help me?" Lex snarled angrily. The hatch to his panic room opened, and Lex stood up in fear with a laser gun in his hands. Batman poked a hand in, and waved. Lex snarled.
"Batman?! How did you-?!"
"Spaceship. Polymer seal portable airlock. Hacked your triple encrypted security system and…" Here Batman stepped into the panic room with a smirk. "It's all because-"
"You're Batman?" Lex Luthor asked sarcastically. Batman nodded.
"Yes… And smarter than you."
"I could just shoot you right now," Lex warned. Batman shrugged.
"And then who would fly you down? Supergirl?"
Lex glared death at Batman. Batman stared him down. Lex sighed and lowered his gun.
"That's what I thought."
Supergirl flew high above the Earth, and grinned devilishly as she watched the LexCorp building begin to plummet for the ground. The outer surface of the building started to glow, burning from the friction of re-entry.
"Kara!" Superman shouted. Supergirl looked back at her cousin, and waved with a cheerful smile.
"Hi Kal! I'm throwing ruining Lex financially!"
"I saw," Superman said wryly. "Why don't you hand over the Red Kryptonite and we'll talk about it?"
"Why? It's pretty awesome."
"It's affecting your judgement."
"Not really."
"You launched a skyscraper into suborbit like an ICBM."
Supergirl nodded. "Cool, right?"
"With Lex still inside!"
"… I'm not seeing the problem there."
"We can't kill him, Kara," Superman said patiently. "Or anyone else."
"You killed Doomsday!" Kara accused. Superman grimaced.
"That was different," Superman said. "He was an ancient Kryptonian superweapon! Like… A robot… Or a cyborg… Or an artificial being…" He sighed. "Point is, killing him because you have no other choice is different from just tossing a building from low Earth orbit onto a factory filled with innocent people!"
"Come on, those are all robots!" Kara whined. "Totally all robots!"
"What about the people around the factory?" Asked Superman gently. "Kinetic impacts can't tell the difference between people and robots."
"Fine, I'll slow it down enough so it only rattles nearby windows. Can I go now?!"
"Kara, I think you should let me take the Red-K from you," Superman said slowly.
"Kal, figure I hand you over the Red-K right now, what do you think it'll do to you?"
"It's not the One Ring, Kara," Kal said. "I'm just gonna throw it into the sun real fast-"
"Oh I'm definitely not giving it up then."
Superman locked his eyes on the Red-K necklace and fired a burst of heat vision. Kara however responded with her own heat vision blast, deflecting the energy blasts. Kal moved at superspeed to grab for the red crystal, but he got Supergirl's fist in his chin for his trouble. He blocked her next several strikes, before trapping her arms and flinging her after the falling skyscraper. He shot down after her, and dodged her return heat vision blasts. He growled and reached out to grab the necklace, but Kara responded by flipping herself up and kicking him in the chin.
"Hrrf!" Superman responded with an uppercut and Kara went tumbling away. She flew back, breaking the sound barrier and punching Clark as hard as she could. Clark growled.
"S, getting Lex out," Batman spoke over Superman's earpiece. "How are things on your end?"
"Not so great," Superman subvocalized. "Gimme a second…"
Superman burst forth, blasting past Supergirl to the falling building. The Batjet flew away from the massive skyscraper as it began to tumble and break apart. Superman accelerated, moving well past the speed of sound. He flew in a cylinder, isolating the tumbling pieces into a superheated funnel. As the air got thicker, the heat of his transit increased until every piece of the massive building was burning up. Superman then changed the angle of his flight, as the Southwestern United States desert came into view below him. He accelerated once again, and turned the funnel up. The tons of superheated matter were blown out, slammed into the desert as a molten pile of slag, miles from any inhabited areas. Superman sighed, and wiped his forehead.
"Phew! I almost got cooked there." He smirked… Just before a piece of molten slag smacked into his face. "Mmph?! What the…?!" He rubbed the molten metal and plastic off his face with a grimace. Kara was standing atop the slag with a bright grin.
"SLAG FIGHT!" She shouted, scooping up more of the gunk and throwing it at her cousin. Superman ducked the ball and scowled.
"Kara! Listen to me-MMPH!" Another ball of slag hit him in the face. He sighed as it slid off his face, seeing his smug cousin grinning at him.
"Kara, you really need to-!" He ducked the next throw, and stood up with long suffering sigh. Kara stuck her tongue out at him.
"Nyah!"
Superman sighed… And then smiled. "All right…" He scooped up some of the slag, and threw it at super speed at her. She ducked it-but his follow up slag ball smacked her in the chest and sent her down for the count. Kal smirked, as the engines of Batman's aerospacecraft roared over him. Batman jumped down from the cockpit, landing next to Superman in his heat armored Batsuit.
"Made quite the mess," Batman stated. Clark shrugged.
"Not our first."
"What do you mean 'our'? She's your cousin," Batman said. Clark smiled.
"Well, given how much lead was in Lex's building, it makes sense the remnants would block the radiation of Red Kryptonite."
"Clever," Batman said. Kara slowly stood up, grimacing a bit. She had fallen into a particularly molten part of the slag pile, and was covered head to toe in the stuff.
"Yech… Gross…"
"Feeling better, Kara?" Superman asked. Kara looked up at him… And smiled, eyes red.
"Never better, Clark," she purred. "I have an excuse to go shopping! Aside from my date! You guys handle Lex! I'm off!" She flew off at supersonic speed, leaving a cloud of metallic particles that rained down on the two remaining superheroes. Superman sighed, annoyed, as Batman just deployed a heat resistant umbrella.
Superman looked over at his best friend in some mild disbelief. Batman shrugged.
"... One of Alfred's ideas," he said. Clark smirked.
"I'm sure…"
To be concluded...