Chapter 5: The Intergang
Earth: Today
"Stupid young punks!" Lieutenant Inspector Dan Turpin swore as he took cover behind a postal delivery truck. Breathing heavily, he took the moment to catch his breath. How did things get this bad? With Lex Luthor dead, things should have improved in Metropolis. Who would dare commit crime in Metropolis, now that Superman was here?
However, the criminal underworld took on a new form with this gang of hostile young men and women known as the Intergang. On the outside, they looked like your typical, head-banging kids, but they operated very efficiently like an organized criminal ring. There had to be one or more crime lords lurking in the shadows of this gang. The kinds of weapons that these kids were packing were beyond anything he had ever seen. These weapons proved difficult to handle, even for Superman. They looked like weapons that came out of a comic book.
This gang had no fear of the authorities, and ran around as if they owned the city. Inspector Henderson of the Metropolis Police Department found himself overwhelmed by the gang, and that was when Turpin's organization, Metropolis' Special Crimes Unit, joined the fray.
"Dan, are you okay?" Captain Maggie Sawyer asked, hiding behind a four-door sedan. He and Sawyer were good friends, having served together ever since she graduated from the academy. When they first met, he had a crush on her, but he soon made the awkward discovery that she was not into men. More recently, she started a relationship with Toby Rains, the lovely, young female reporter for the Metropolis Star. He was good friends with both ladies; but since then, he had not really been interested in another woman. That was okay with him, though; he was married to his job, and hardly had the time to go on dates these days.
"I think someone forgot to spank these kids while they were growing up. Now, they're spanking us!" Turpin growled.
"Those weapons are killing us!" Sawyer replied. "Where are they coming from?"
"Beats me," He replied. "Whenever we get lucky and confiscate one, they seem to magically disappear in the evidence warehouse."
Sawyer peeked over the hood of the car before kneeling back down. "I feel bad about shooting at them; they are, after all, just kids."
"Mags, if you don't shoot them, they're gonna' shoot you." Turpin peered around the postal van to see a young man with long black hair and a tattoo that covered the whole right side of his face aiming a bazooka-like weapon in their direction. "Aw, crap! Clear out!"
The two of them ran in separate directions from their hiding places as the young man fired his weapon. A blue beam came from the weapon, hitting the delivery van and causing a giant explosion which engulfed the sedan in front of it. The windows of the nearby storefronts shattered from the shockwave, causing the alarm to go off in one of the stores.
"Damn it, where's my back-up!" Turpin shouted as he found another hiding space behind a postal box.
The young hooligan found the Lieutenant Inspector and pointed his weapon at the postal box. "One roasted pig, comin' up!"
A red beam came out of nowhere to hit the barrel of the weapon in his hands. Within seconds, the weapon became scalding hot to the point where he could no longer hold it any longer, and he dropped it.
Looking slightly upward, he saw Superman floating downward with his arms folded. Superman's silky black hair waved with the wind as he stared at the boy with his piercing dark blue eyes. The frown on his face made it clear that he was not going to make any smart remarks this time around. He was quickly tiring of having to deal with this gang time and time again. "Okay son, you have had enough fun for one day."
The young boy laughed, which almost sounded like a squealing pig being beaten to a pulp. "Yo, the Sups is here!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. A young man with oily black hair and a pierced lower lip, and a young girl with a pink mohawk and a nose ring came hovering ten feet off the ground, and around the corner riding on some strange looking hoverboards.
"What is this, Back to the Future?" Turpin muttered under his breath. Now he was certain that this gang had technology beyond anything they had here on earth. How were they getting it would have to be priority number one in his investigation.
The two new gang members hovered in circles around the Man of Steel. They both had a strange looking weapon on their right arms. Their hands were inside some kind of barrel, which made it appear as if they were androids with blaster cannons for arms. The girl was the first to fire her weapon, which let out a continuous, jagged, white, electric beam. The beam hit him square in the chest, and the agony shocked him.
He let out a pained cry as the beam brought him down to his knees. Again, these punk kids had found weapons that could hurt him. How was this possible? He could not concentrate on that puzzle at that moment; the other hovering hooligan fired his weapon, adding to the agony.
The pain was so great that he was paralyzed from being able to defend himself. The two punk kids continued to hover in circles around him. It took everything he had to fight against these beams that sent electricity coursing through his body. He fought against the pain to notice a fire hydrant nearby. The two kids passed right over it as they circled around him. He focused his pupils and, fighting through the pain, he fired two heat beams from his eyes at the hydrant.
A few seconds and the hydrant erupted, releasing water upwards in a great high-pressured geyser. The young man was hovering right over it as it erupted, and the water threw him off the hover device and into the young woman, which knocked her off her hover as well.
Relief washed over Superman as their weapons short circuited on their arms. Standing up, he turned to confront the tattooed kid. The boy stood there in utter contempt for him or any authority. "Get de fool!"
Dozens of kids started to come out of hiding to come to the aid of their three friends. Several of the kids had different forms of weapons, and Superman had to assume that they would present him with trouble as well.
"Oh, hell!" Turpin swore. It felt like an eternity since he had made the call for back-up. Now would be the perfect time for it to arrive.
The group of kids surrounded Superman, and none were afraid of him. They laughed mockingly at him, as if he was nothing more than a school boy. One of the kids had some strange whip, but instead of leather, it was made up of electricity. He snapped the whip for Superman's chest, but his target stepped aside to avoid its sting.
Superman was not going to allow them another free shot. He stomped his right foot onto the ground with such force that the ground shook and his foot was embedded into the asphalt. The ground shaking caused all the kids to lose their balance.
He continued to disarm them as, with a giant clap of the hands, he sent out a shockwave which knocked a quarter of the kids off their feet. Spinning around, he greeted the rest of the kids with a big gush of wind emanating from his lungs and out of his lips. The kids found themselves blowing away as if they were debris. Some were lucky to find shelter by hiding behind automobiles, but others were blown away until the wind had no more strength to carry them any farther.
Superman was about to continue his clean-up the streets of Metropolis when the whole city evaporated before his eyes. He soon found himself surrounded by nothing but the color red. The familiar dark voice repeated the same warning as all the other times he found himself swept up in these strange visions. "Kal-El, Last Son of Krypton, you are going to die!"
This time, his vision differed greatly. Instead of a large, monstrous beast, he saw an emotionless android standing before him. It was created to look almost human, with glowing eye sockets, a nose and a molded mouth piece. On his forehead, there were three yellow circles that formed a triangle. It looked very similar to the android that attacked him back in Smallville when he had turned eighteen. That battle had proved to be a hallucination induced by Jor-El to test him to see if he was ready to be trained. Were these strange visions also coming from Jor-El? Was this all some sort of test to prepare him for something?
He could only watch as the vision played out in front of him. This android was on Earth and all the U.S. Armed Forces were battling it. Tanks were exploding and jet fighters were crashing all around; nothing they threw at it had any effect. He watched the vision play out and witnessed the White House exploding. The Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Roman Coliseum– they were all up in flames as every nation of the world collapsed.
"Your doom is certain, Man of Steel. The planet Earth shall be purged."
The flames from all of these landmarks bent towards him, reaching out for him until he was engulfed.
"Hey, Big Guy, you alright?" Turpin asked, cautiously approaching him.
It was like awakening from a dream. Superman snapped out of his trance, and found himself back in Metropolis. Turpin and Sawyer were standing in front of him with curious looks. "Uh, yeah, sorry about that." He looked around to see all the members of the Intergang gone. All of their advanced weapons and hover crafts disappeared as well. "Where did the kids go?"
"They vanished once again. I was too busy getting the dust out of my eyes from your wind storm to see how they escaped."
"Something is not right about this," Superman said, the images from his vision still fresh on his mind. Somehow, these strange weapons had to be tied into what he had just seen. "If you will pardon me, I have to make some inquiries." Superman leaped in the air, and took to the skies. There was only one place where he may be able to get some answers.