Chapter Sixteen: Time Lord Part Two.
"So this situation begs the question, where did our wannabe time lord run off to?" Chloe stated and Harry thought that was a good question. He'd put a tracking charm on the wannabe time lord, but those were faulty.
"That's not the only problem," Karen said with a concerned look in her eyes seeing as how every second he was here, he presented a looming danger to the timeline. "I don't see Luthor anywhere."
"Sooo, just like we figured, Clark wasn't the target, Luthor was," Kara said with a shake of her head. Kal-El didn't exist in her world, so she pretty much had no context in regards to what happened to him. "Why?"
"A hero is nothing without his villain," Chloe reminded them all. "Let's face it, Clark, for all of his numerous faults and he had a lot of faults, believe me, was someone who needed Lex Luthor to grow as a hero. Best of friends, even better enemies, that sort of thing."
Harry knew all about someone you thought was a friend becoming extremely twisted, but that was beside the point. Closing his eyes, he focused for a moment and when he opened them again, they were glowing faintly, allowing him to make out the ambient energy patterns in the area around them. He analyzed them carefully in hopes it would give him a clue what to do next.
"Okay, to be blunt, what happened in the future, isn't important when compared to what's happening right now," Harry told the group and Chloe nodded briskly having already picked up on his train of thought.
"Understood! Believe me, that's completely understood! I've been trying to trace the methods he used to time travel, bu, if you go off his demented ramblings, he's had time to fine tune the process, so it's not going to be easy," Chloe said, causing Harry to raise an eyebrow at her. The blonde shifted guiltily and amended her statement. "I know! I know! Few things in life are easy….mostly...because we don't make them that way, but…."
"...You know," Harry whispered to Chloe and she wasn't going to lie, she shivered at those word. His green eyes locked onto her own and she felt like her back was pressed up against the wall, in more ways than one. "We also have to keep an eye on our wayward Kryptonian, I know it must be hard not telling him…."
"...It's just business," Chloe finished for him as she waved her hand in a 'What are you going to do manner.' Given the break between herself and Clark, she was trying to treat him like any other civilian that she would encounter in this type of situation.
"Fair enough," Harry said, he was about to ask what the hell happened between the two of them, but for once in his life, he decided not to pry.
Karen on the other hand wasn't someone who had the necessary tact yet to keep her nose out of people's business. "Why…."
"Long story short, he was the one that said Clark Kent was dead, and given that….despite the fact that he claimed that Brainiac was purged, I still felt traces of him in my system. So I had no choice but to go to the future, and…..then there...then there was the incident with Lois," Chloe explained to them. "You know? Lois Lane…."
"I remember her, nice girl, nosy as fucking hell though and she stuck her nose where it didn't belong way too often," Karen said with a shake of her head. "What happened?"
"Lois vanished without a trace, we still don't know what happened to her," Chloe explained. "The Legion doesn't even know, we think that she might have gotten her hand on a ring that was left behind in the past and went God only knows where. I guess with me gone, any chance he ever had with Lana being sunk and Lois vanishing, Clark finally decided to step forward as Superman. Don't know what happened after that."
"So, this Lois disappeared into the time stream, and she…."
"...She could be anywhere and she could be at any point in time," Chloe said, cupping her chin in thought. "I didn't have many reasons to stay in the past, you understand that right?"
"Perfectly," Harry said.
"And he was the one that said Clark Kent was dead," Chloe argued with him.
"Clark….well, after I came back after the looking into the Kandor thing, which was a bust….he was…..he was immersed in his father's training. I'm not sure if that was necessarily a good thing, although I guess it worked out in the end," Karen said with a shrug, she'd never been the biggest supporter of Jor-El. "I helped him for a little bit, but he seemed….different. distant, like he was….less than human, I know, it didn't make sense. I guess he snapped out of it eventually or something snapped him out of it, I don't know what, but I'm glad for that fact. It must have happened after I left."
"Guess times change people," Harry told her and Karen nodding in agreement.
"Jor-El suggested that I should leave, so at to not get in the way of Kal-El's supposed destiny," Karen said. "Even managed to help me….he told me where there was a Legion ring was and that's how I arrived there just before the situation where we found the two of you."
"We do seem to leave them laying around in the past with an alarming regularity," Chloe admitted and there were nods all around. "But, that's in the past!…And so are we!…So...yeah...I'll shut up now."
"Kal-El's waking up I think," Kara said after she noticed the young man stirring. "He…."
"Privacy spells are an amazing invention, don't you think? He wouldn't have been able to hear a word that we said, although you should disguise yourself," Harry told Chloe, who nodded, one of the powers she picked up after her transformation was the ability to shape shift. Her hair lengthened, darkened, and her eyes turned a dark black. Her face grew, maybe not uglier, but a bit harsher.
"...Nice," Kara stated to her after checking her out in her new form.
Clark Kent stirred awake, this was before all of the drama where their lives were full of drama, with a different meteor mutant attacking every week, Chloe reminded herself. That was in the past.
Clark Kent couldn't help but wonder what the hell happened, he had to be having a really bad dream, because this was just too surreal for his liking. Some nutcase in a super powered suit attacked him and then he ended up here, where the hell was here anyways? He would have to find out.
"Wha...what...happened?" Clark asked groggily as he tried to stand up, but was unable to due to a dull ringing he felt in his head.
"You have a concussion, that's what happened, so I wouldn't try and move around too much," the only male of the group dead panned. "You might be blessed with extraordinary abilities, but he knocked you around pretty badly when you were weakened by the Kryptonite."
"Extraordinary abilities!?…I don't know!...I don't know what you're talking about," Clark said with a note of panic in his voice. His voice jumping up in pitch in a way that only a panicked fifteen year old with super powers could do.
Chloe shook her head in disbelief, she'd forgotten how bad of a liar he was.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Clark Kent. Oh, on a side note, you're a horrible liar," Harry said to him bluntly, he couldn't help but wonder how this child ended up becoming the supposed 'greatest hero the world ever seen.' Then again, they all had to start somewhere and for Clark, it was this, Harry of all people, didn't really have much room to talk. "You are blessed with abilities never before seen on Earth."
"I'm not that person!…I don't have any abilities! I'm normal!" Clark persisted. The fact that this guy seemed to know so much about him, well, it freaked him out.
"Yes, and I'm the tooth fairy," Harry said in a voice that dripped with biting sarcasm. "This was supposed to be a pivotal day of your life, the first major step towards your destiny."
"I don't believe in destiny," Clark protested to him in a whiny high pitched voice that could be compared quite easily to a cat being strangled.
"I don't either, the fact is, I know what's going to happen, because it already happened," Harry replied to him with a smug smirk.
"...Right….I, how do you know?" Clark asked deciding to spit out his next words in a sarcastic tone of disbelief. "I suppose you come from the future?"
"...Actually, I am," Harry replied, causing Clark to open and shut his mouth in disbelief. He looked completely utterly confused and Harry couldn't help but wonder about him, and not for the first time either. "But that's beside the point, my name is….well, my name isn't important and you wouldn't believe me if I told you."
As far as the Mundane world knew, Harry Potter was a children's literature character. That Chloe may or may not have gotten into a flame war regarding fandom pairings about, but she refused to admit to such crimes. Also any rumors that she wrote a self-insertion fan fiction involving herself and Harry when she was younger, and didn't know any better was a lie.
"You'd be surprised what I'd believe," Clark said after staring at him for a moment.
"You end up becoming one the most celebrated heroes the world ever saw," Chloe said, disguising her voice in a British accent so Clark didn't pick up on the fact that it was her.
"...I don't believe you," Clark responded, causing Harry, Kara, Karen, and Chloe to shake their heads. "What…."
"Never mind, the fact is you're not normal and the fact that you tried to act like you were for so long, lead you to developing some really disturbing quirks," Harry said to Clark and there was a few seconds where they stared each other down. "After all, your star gazing habits speak for themselves. Although the telescope is supposed to be pointed up at the stars, not towards a bedroom window next door, but I'm sure that's was a directional misfire."
"...I need to get out of here!" Clark yelled, quickly becoming panicked after discovering that this people knew he was a creepy voyeur. "My parents….."
"Right now you're trapped between two ticks of the clock, Kal-El," Karen said to him. "We need to figure out where Tempus took Lex Luthor."
"...Lionel Luthor's son?" Clark asked in confusion. "What does he have to do with anything…."
"Everything, you were supposed to save him from drowning today. As a result you ended up becoming good friends, better enemies, he's responsible for you becoming Superman," Chloe explained without taking a breath. "Which will take about ten years, seriously, longest journey ever! It was almost like someone was trying to drag things out over ten seasons."
"...I don't even know what your point is," Clark protested and Chloe shook her head, before face palming.
"Never mind. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of really bad people out there that want to see you dead, because you're….well...you," Chloe managed, she turned to face Harry. "Any luck in finding him?"
"He's bouncing around, but it's just a smoke screen. He's here, in the now and he's got Luthor. We might have hours to find him, we might have minutes, we might have seconds," Harry said and Karen chimed in with a few words of her own.
"At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that we have to find him," She stated rather bluntly.
"Yes, we do," Harry agreed as he prepared for their next move. It was a game of chess with the pieces scattered and the board overturned. "You need a disguise, don't worry I'll put your attire back when we're done."
The stupid looking red and black jacket was changed into a black trench coat with a silver "S" on it.
"Wait, he needs….he needs a bit more of a kick if he going to wear a disguise," Chloe said as she pulled out a pair of glasses. She couldn't really resist. "There no one could recognize you in these."
"...A pair of glasses?" Clark questioned Chloe, who shrugged. He obviously changed his tune about how effective they were later.
"You can't beat the classics," she answered, barely hiding the grin on her face.
The Time Lord paced back and forth like a caged animal, as easy as it would be to finish off this man right here and now, he was going to leave nothing to chance. Harry Fucking Potter and The Legion of Super Heroes had meddled in his plans one time too many. As a result, the time traveling apparatus wasn't working as well as it had been before.
"Stupid cheap parts! With my genius I should have been able to create something longer lasting," he muttered as he saw the battered body of Lex Luthor strung up against a pillar, he also noticed the bald man flickering his eyes open. "You're a survivor, Mr. Luthor, I'll give you that. You keep coming back time and time again, even when most men would just stay in the morgue."
"Who are you?" Lex asked, the car crash should have killed him.
"I've decided that I should personally see to your execution rather than leave it to random chance," the time lord said to Lex.
"That doesn't answer my question," Lex managed as blood trickled from his mouth. "Also, wouldn't it be more prudent to kill me while I'm unconscious?"
"Yes….yes, it would be, perhaps the concept of irony has been lost on you, or it might not, if you knew what I know about you," the Time Lord said as his eyes glowed with malice. Which only started to happen after he put on the power suit and proved he'd become one with it.
"But, you see, after all of the trouble that you have caused, I should be hailed as a hero and not a villain for killing you. After all I'll be the man who brought down Lex Luthor," He paused at this point in his monolog to snap his fingers. "Just like that."
"You really think a lot of yourself, or maybe you think a lot of me, don't you?"
"My scheme is brilliant! I will kill you! And then you will suffer!" Tempus paused for a few seconds to think about what he just said, only to hear something moving around outdoors. It was the wind no doubt, there was no way the Legion could have followed him. He managed to send them through a wild goose chase through time and space.
"I'm just the bait and we both know it," Lex said as he glared right his enemy's eye. "Are you a jilted LuthorCorp employee? Because if you're angry with my father, trust me, I feel your pain."
"Lionel Luthor is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, that he's since become a mere foot note in history, although I'm sure he played no small role in shaping the monster that you become. World domination, was your name, it was your game," the man stated as he stared him down. "But, Lex, you have to understand, there is power in knowledge and given that I know how your story begins and ends, I have more knowledge then you."
"Yet, you have done nothing with it….with all your supposed knowledge, you could have been greater than you are, but you're a nothing, but then again, I shouldn't be surprised considering your type," Lex commented as he looked at him. "You're the type of person that can't even stand up to his own wife aren't you? You're a completely pathetic waste of space."
"I!…AM!…NOT!…PATHETIC!" Tempus raged as his eyes glowed even brighter and the clocks in the room began to spin at super speed.
"Nice party trick you have there," Lex said to him without missing a beat. The young man knew that if he didn't think of a way out of this soon, he was screwed.
"Well...you see...you've pushed me! JUST LIKE THEY ALL PUSHED ME! But it's fine!...It's fine!...It's fine!" the man babbled as he tried to figure out his next course of action. "You know, all of them are pathetic failures compared to me….after all, I've traveled through time."
His body was spasming and he was struggling to hold things together.
"Are you sure you really have it together?" Lex asked him, corking an eyebrow.
The time traveler paced around like a caged animal and it was hard for him to keep his head up, especially with the alarm bells ringing in his head.
"I think there might be a glitch in your system," Lex said in amusement, much less amusing was the fact he couldn't get himself free. At all.
"SILENCE!" Tempus raged which caused Lex to look at the man like he was nuts.
"I'll say no more," Lex said, before he clammed up. The man was getting pretty close to losing it, all he would need now was one final nudge and he'd fall over the edge.
"DAVID! YOU BUM! HOW DARE YOU GO ALL THE WAY TO THE PAST BEFORE YOU TOOK OUT THE TRASH!"
Tempus's eyes widened in shock and he muttered one thing. "...There's no way…."
"...Your old lady tracked you down?" Lex whispered in amusement.
"...My wife….seems to have forgotten her place….."
"DAVID! GET YOUR ASS BACK THE FUTURE RIGHT NOW! OR YOU WON'T BE GETTING ANY FOR A YEAR!"
"...I haven't...I haven't gotten any since our honeymoon," David grumbled and Lex's amusement grew even further. Tempus wasn't about to be made a fool of in front of one of history's greatest monsters. "I mean! YOU CAN'T BOSS ME AROUND…."
"I SHOULD HAVE MARRIED SOMEONE WHO HAD SOME AMBITION IN HIS LIFE!" she cried out and David clutched his fists as he muttered one thing over and over again.
"I'll show you...you'll see...I'll show you...you'll see," Tempus said as he slipped out to face the old ball and chain, leaving Lex hanging there. Literally.
HE WAS A MAN, DAMN IT!
"I have to admit, I think my little plan worked out fairly well," Chloe remarked to herself, unable to keep the smug smile off of her face. Harry turned towards her with a look of warning.
"Don't get a big head, whatever you do," Harry warned her and the blonde offered a brief nod in response. Still, you had to love voice modulation technology and after getting an earful of the old bat back in the future. Chloe was able to create a perfect replication of her voice.
"Don't worry, my head will remain completely normal size," Chloe said as they waited, they were pretty sure that they were in the right general area. All they had to do was wait for him to take the bait.
"Why am I here?" Clark wondered out loud for a second.
"You're the one he wants," Kara informed her sort-of cousin and Clark raised an eyebrow at her, before he muttered two words.
"...Lucky me"
"Not really," Kara said, but she shook her head and became serious once again. "Of course….you've got to just go with the flow of life sometimes and not let it bog you down. You do have it within you, I know that much."
Clark seemed like he was completely skeptical about that, but he wasn't about to argue right now. They had a time lord coming in at twelve o'clock and Harry looked ready to meet him head on.
'Get ready,' Harry said as Chloe, Karen, and Kara, who quickly prepared for a fight.
'I can't believe we're about to save Lex Freaking Luthor,' Karen thought with a shake of her head.
'Ensuring the timeline remains intact is a bitch sometimes,' Chloe thought back to her.
"...Well, well, well you tricked me."
"It's not our fault you're so afraid of your wife you believed it," Harry said and that caused him to see red, literally, seeing as how his eyes started to glow that exact color.
"Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't look healthy," Karen said, barely able to keep the grin off of her face.
"Because it isn't, the suit and the defective Legion ring are slowly driving him mad," Chloe responded to her. She knew now, that when she got back, she would have to drive forward an initiative to ensure that all of the lost rings were rounded up. Something like this should never ever happen again, ever.
"I have you all now, including you Harry Potter! And I must say the movies about you were quite awful! Especially the casting! It was like they were trying to give every single British actor a job in them!" Tempus said as he tried to blast the young wizard, who quickly dodged out of the way, by using the tried and true method of not being there in the first place. "I'll have you! I'LL HAVE YOU ALL! You'll see!"
"Do you now" Harry stated with frustration swimming in his eyes. If his calculations were correct, the man was this close to going down in a heap. "You know, I don't think you have it as together as you think that you do."
"What do you mean by that!?" the time lord demanded as he tried to nail Harry hard, but the wizard dodged his attacks once more.
"Time's starting to unravel around you, so I'll give you one word of advice," Harry said as he blocked another shot and sure enough, he didn't have to fight back that hard. The man had already beating himself, he just didn't know it yet.
Kara, Karen, and Chloe slipped out to help save Lex, with Clark tagging along behind them.
"No!... You won't stop me!... You can't stop me! I won't allow you to stop me!" he said as he began to rant up a storm and Harry smiled as he blocked another attempted attack leveled towards him.
"I'd like a little less talk and a little more action from you, please, if you don't mind," Harry said after throwing his enemy hard into the closet wall.
The legion ring was hissing up a storm by and Harry had to remove it from his hand, before it was too late. A time bubble popped up around them and the time lord's eyes widened in panic.
"No, what's happening to me?" he managed to whimper out, while looking towards Harry in fear. He was completely confused with no real idea what was happening. He was practically foaming at the mouth by this point, and Harry decided to spell it out for him.
"You're losing control," Harry said to him and he shook his head in remorse. "You should have never tampered with time."
"No.…I can fix this! I swear that I can fix this! I'm the master and the ruler of all time! Trust me! I can fix this!" he managed to babble out, before he started to coughed loudly for a brief moment.
"You think that you can, but you won't be able to, because you've lost control," Harry whispered to him, before he slipped away as everything slowly faded to black.
"No, out of control, I don't have….no I can fix this! I can fix this! I can fix this!" he repeated and he tried to access the Legion Ring, but the energy warped wildly around him. The hissing burned him as he slipped off into the distance, spiraling out of control.
Now, was the time to scream and scream he did. He faded off into nothingness, disappearing into a burning light. Time wasn't on his side any longer. There was no way out.
"So what happened to our erstwhile time lord anyway?" Chloe asked, curiosity getting the better of her and Harry turned his full attention to the blonde. He carefully pondered that question for a moment, before coming to the conclusion he had only one statement to offer.
"If I would have to hazard a guess, and keep in mind, this is only a guess…..he faded into the time stream, never to return. He'll always be a half of a second out of phase with the rest of reality," Harry said, but he didn't want to think about it too much. Time travel never failed to make his brain hurt and it wasn't like he was a physicist.
"Well, the temporal energy flux seems to be winding down so every things back to normal," Chloe suggested as she watched the two of them. "Turns out Clark didn't do much of anything...at all."
"He was just kind of here...like in a bad crossover," Kara said, but then again she thought whoever it was they just fought, she wasn't really paying attention, didn't have the most well thought out plan in the first place. Then again, he allowed his emotions to get the better of him.
"So, will the Luthor-Kent friendship still be the thing of legends, until they become enemies?" Chloe pondered and Harry didn't answer her straight way.
"We'll see," Harry responded as he really had nothing else to say. "I….modified their memories, they remembered what happened before, but they don't remember us being here. I managed to do it without cooking their brain cells as well."
"Well, that's always a good thing," Chloe commented in relief and Karen smiled before she offered one statement to the group.
"Yeah, no kidding," She agreed, stretching she placed her hands on the back of her head, turned it from one side to the next and sighed deeply. "So are we…."
"I guess we better make sure there's nothing that could tamper with the fabric of space and time and after that, it's time to head on home," Chloe said as she looked around. "At some point we're going to have to find all of the Legion rings left lying around in the past."
"You've been searching for her for a long time, haven't you?" Harry asked Chloe, who blinked at the sudden and very off topic question.
"I beg your pardon," Chloe responded to his question with one of her, and Harry decided to clarify what he meant.
"Lois Lane. She's got to be somewhere, some place, some time, that's just the nature of time and space, so we'll just have to figure out how to track her down," Harry said as the quartet checked over Lex, who was still shaken up from the events of the day so far.
"I should have died," he whispered with a shake of his head as he looked over the wreckage of the car. He remembered it clearly, how Clark Kent managed to save his life, a life that could have ended, before it really began at twenty one. The bald man continued to look at the wreckage and he was pretty sure that he came this close to hitting him, or did he run over a roll of barb wire that popped his tires causing him to swerve off the bridge?
'So begins a life long obsession,' Chloe thought, as much as she hated the fact that she had to restore this, they did. 'Oh well such is life and such, and well….it had to be done, because the future of the Legion needed to be secured.'
'It works out for the best,' Harry offered her as he looked over his shoulder. 'Then again, there are times where I've been tempted to change the past. But the problem with that is, it won't exactly affect me and if it did, it might end up being worse.'
'That's a charming thought to leave the past with,' Chloe thought and Harry smiled back at her.
'I thought it might be, Chlo,' Harry thought to the blonde as he took a couple of steps into the light, but they wanted to check up on Clark first, to see if everything was fine with him. The quartet appeared near his current location.
'There he is, that poor boy, he has no idea what drama he's in for in the future,' Karen thought to the rest of them. The bell of Smallville High rang and Clark was none the wiser with what happened. Karen watched him leave, it was such a long and winding road to the future. She folded her hands over her lap and threw her head back with a prominent sigh. 'He really has no idea.'
'No, he really doesn't,' Chloe agreed and she saw her younger self walking down the hallway. The vibrant smile on her face almost broke Chloe's heart, because of how much she went through. She almost wanted to kidnap herself to spare herself the pain, but it had to happen and after all, it would work out for the best later on. 'And speaking of someone who doesn't know half of the shit that they're in for….I was so young and innocent, it almost breaks my heart.'
'We all were, until shit happened,' Harry thought, but he decided not to bring up the point that shit happened to him pretty quickly, and as a result he was never really that innocent in the first place. But that would make him more of a pessimistic asshole then he already was.
"I swear I put that folder somewhere!" younger Chloe complained as she started to tear apart the Torch's office in her search for it.
Older Chloe spotted it hiding underneath a pile of clutter on the desk. She reached forward and pulled it out so her younger self could see it.
"Well, duh! Right in front of your face," the younger model said as she shook her head.
'I remember how stupid that I felt when I realized that it was right underneath my nose….I guess I did help myself after all,' older Chloe said realizing that this was proof that the time loop was stable.
'So ready to go home?' Karen asked and Chloe smiled.
'Yes, we're done, past's safe, onwards to a drink and sex with my husband!' Chloe answered as they flashed off, leaving the past intact, to build the future they had to return to.
To Be Continued.