A/N: Hey, y'all! Thanks to all you guys for reading, commenting, favoriting, and following. It really inspires me to write a bit faster. I'm sorry I've been out of it for a while. I've had a busy past couple of days, but hopefully this chapter will make up for it. This will answer some questions on some things our favorite heroes are facing. So, let's get to it!
Chapter 5
Two twin beams shot from Kara's eyes, burning brighter and stronger than they ever had. She shook from the exertion but kept a steady stream of light emitting from her eyes. She could remember the last time she had put all of her emotions into a fight. It was liberating to not hold back at all but to allow all of her power, all the solar radiation in her cells, burst out in an amazing display of power. Kara enjoyed the adrenaline rush as she pushed more and more into the lasers that burned into the skin of the villains.
Barry narrowed his eyes and zipped away to deal with the third man in a dark suit and navy tie. He sped towards Scudder and extended his arm to his side, locking his elbow. He ran into Mirror Master, the man flipping over Barry's arm and landing on his back. He moaned and sat up, his eyes seeing the vibrating hand in front of him. He raised his hands in surrender. Barry shook his head at the man and knocked him out, Scudder falling to the ground.
Mardon screamed as the heat burned into his skin, nearly melting his arm off. He grabbed his injured limb and bent over holding it to his chest. He fell to the ground as his flesh sizzled, most likely leaving him with third-degree burns. Simmons attempted to meet Kara's eyes with his own plasma beams, the two circling each other. Kara pressed more of her energy into the attack, driving her own beams of light into his face but holding back from pushing them into his skull. He flew back landing a few feet away, grasping and clawing at his eyes. The two superheroes felt someone land behind them and prepared for another attack.
Kara let out a suppressed breath, running to meet Kal and Alex. Her cousin pulled her into a hug with Alex wrapping her arms around her as well. They let go as Barry walked up to the others and waved awkwardly.
He saw the same symbol that Kara wore on her suit on the man in front of him and assumed this was her cousin she had talked about. He sized up the brunette beside her and the affectionate way she had hugged Kara. The woman had barely taken her eyes off Barry, her face hard and unreadable except for the fact that she obviously did not trust the red-suited masked man in front of her. Barry pulled his mask from over his face, letting his brown hair flow slightly in the breeze. Smiling softly, he offered his hand to Kara's cousin who shook it with a little more power than necessary, nearly crushing the bones beneath.
"Hey, my name's Barry Allen." He pointed the mess of bodies that were either unconscious or writhing on the ground. "I may have caused some destruction in this city," he said, apologetically.
The man smiled and clapped Barry on the back. "It's alright. You protected my cousin and that's really all that matters to me. I'm Clark Kent."
Barry winced slightly at his words, remembering Scudder throwing the green rock that he had tried so hard to protect Kara from to Livewire. They had played to his emotions and taken advantage of the fact that he didn't think straight when it came to protecting the people he loved. Now because of his reckless behavior, Kara might actually die.
Alex recognized the guilt on Barry's face, knowing the look all too well. She couldn't help but think back to when she had killed Astra and the torn look on her sister's face. A little piece of her had died that day. She had killed before. People who she could distance herself from. Aliens who were terrorizing the city, people who were psycho maniacs, and billionaires who were threatening her sister, but she had never killed someone that took as much as an emotional pull on her than with Astra. She knew her sister's unfailing and naïve perspective on people would not allow her to kill someone, let alone someone she had once loved. It just wasn't who Kara was. Her little sister always looked for the best in people, even going out of her way to do so. She couldn't allow anyone to die who she felt had a fighting chance to live, and that attitude had even been what had saved Lena Luthor and Mon-El's life. There was no way Kara would willingly kill her aunt, and Alex had realized that as she raised the sword over her head.
She would take that burden.
It was difficult. Alex could have easily slammed the hilt of the sword into her head to knock her out or stabbed a different part of Astra's body, but she knew that Astra's radical viewpoint on how to save the world would have never allowed her to hold back. Alex knew countless more could die if she hesitated, and she couldn't take that chance. So she killed her.
Regret had immediately flooded her when Kara flew onto the scene and took in the sight of her dying aunt. The guilt was eating her alive, and she was shocked but relieved when J'onn claimed Astra's death. The disappointed and betrayed look that Kara gave J'onn would have been aimed at her, and Alex couldn't even risk a life without Kara. However, her sister's forgiving spirit and understanding personality showed Alex a different perspective on how people should be when Kara had hugged her sister. Alex's heart wrenched and struggled to believe that she could really be forgiven. She had been responsible, but she realized something just as Kara had.
Finding out that J'onn had taken the blame for Alex had immediately rendered any feelings she had previously had towards him as love for the two girls that the man had come to think of as his own daughters. It had changed Kara's viewpoint once more, and Kara realized that she didn't want to lose Alex as well. Their relationship was most important to her and anything that had happened in their life couldn't get in the way of it. She wouldn't allow it to.
Now seeing all of those same emotions in Barry's eyes, Alex prepared herself to share her hard earned wisdom with the shaken man in front of them. The amount of love Alex had seen in Mon-El's had to have been doubled in Barry. She stared at her sister and saw the same feelings in hers as well. Alex had to talk to the handsome young man and get him to share his burden with her, if only to give the two superheroes a fighting chance at a love they both deserved.
She offered her hand to Barry. "I'm Alex. Kara's sister."
He smiled at her and shook her hand. "We should get these three to a jail or something before they wake up. They've caused a lot of trouble on my earth. Then we should probably talk. I have a feeling we're going to have a lot to discuss."
A couple hours and a few coffees later, the four plus J'onn and Bruce, sat around a circular table in what Bruce called the Batcave. They had changed into civilian clothes with Kara giving Barry the clothes she had bought for him the last time he had visited their earth. The group was tired but each of them realized the importance of getting ahead of the ever-growing problem.
Kara cleared her throat and began. "So, for those of you who aren't familiar with what's been going on, there's been a sudden increase in criminal activity. Some of our worst foes have somehow broken out of prison and teamed up." She pointed at Bruce. "Bruce believes that they have a leader uniting them under one cause." She sighed. "However, we don't know who the leader is, what the cause is, or who else is involved."
"Yeah, that's more or less what's been happening on my earth too. They teamed up and we had a hell of time trying to beat them all. Frankly, they caught us at a bad time with our team fractured." His eyes lit up. "Also, they seem to have some sort of a mind reader on their side. They knew what I was thinking."
J'onn grinned. "If you have a telepath on your earth it's quite possible I might be able to cast some sort of psychic net and locate them." J'onn had been holding back on his powers, afraid of what might become of him and afraid of what people might think, but with the world ending becoming a yearly occurrence, he vowed to do what was necessary. The time to hold back had ended.
"Yes, that would help us find out more about who is running this operation," Bruce said. It bothered him that he couldn't place who the mastermind was. He had run everyone he could think of to have the necessary argument to be able to unite these individuals under one common goal and had come up empty handed. It was infuriating.
Clark sat at his side of his table deep in thought. He knew someone who might be able to pull off something this horrific, but it was impossible. Still, he couldn't take the chance that he might wrong. More innocent lives could be lost. He took a deep breath and locked eyes with Bruce. "If we have people breaking out of prisons, is it possible Lex Luthor might have escaped from his jail cell?"
Bruce shook his head, calming Clark's fears. "No. I checked and Lex Luthor is still in prison."
The table let out a sigh of relief at the news. Lex Luthor was dangerous. Perhaps the most dangerous person anyone could ever face. If anyone could bring these separate minded individuals together, it would be Lex.
Barry turned to look at Kara, the worry in his eyes coupling with his guilt. "We also have some more bad news. I think the people who have teamed up on each of our earths are working together."
Bruce leaned forward in his chair until his forearms rested on the table. "Why do you say that?"
"One of the men my team and I captured was Tony Woodward. He knew about your weaknesses. A green rock that can take away your powers and kill you. He had said that Kara was in trouble, and they were using this rock against her. I panicked and tried to save her, but Scudder and Mardon followed me through the breach my friend made. Scudder had the rock and threw it to Livewire. It's my fault. I thought you were in trouble," he said, turning to look at Kara, "and I brought the only thing that could hurt you to your earth."
Kara, Alex, Clark, and J'onn exchanged worried looks. Kryptonite had been the cause of a fallout between J'onn and Clark. The fights with Metallo had led J'onn to a mole in their facility that had been leaking information to Cadmus. After the issue had been resolved, J'onn had given the Kryptonite to Clark to do as he felt with it. Now the three looked towards the solid man beside them for answers.
"What did you do with the Kryptonite, Kal?" Kara questioned, already knowing the answer.
"I destroyed it. I didn't want anything that could hurt you...hurt me, anywhere near us. I felt it was the right thing to do."
J'onn turned towards the others. "I guess that answers our question. Clark destroyed the Kryptonite, so the only way to defeat our earth's Kryptonians was to travel to a different one."
Barry smacked his forehead. "Of course. They must not have a breacher in their stash of superpowered allies, so they had to trick my team into opening a breach to your earth. I brought the Kryptonite right to you," Barry said quietly.
Kara reached over and grabbed his hand. "It's not your fault. They tricked you," she told the man, knowing what was already racing through his mind.
He squeezed her hand and let go, pushing the chair back and standing up. "I've caused you too much trouble, it's probably best I leave."
J'onn scrunched his face and stood up. He pointed his finger at the man. "No. Sit back down, Barry. You aren't going to be helping anyone by rushing off with another half-baked plan. Let's talk this through. For all you know, this could be another part of their plan. They might want you to go back to your earth."
The guilt ridden man sat back down and nodded, realizing the wisdom in the Martian's words. "You're right. Who would want Kryptonite that bad that they would be willing to travel earths to get it?"
Alex twisted around in her chair and stared at her little sister. They both knew who would. "Lillian Luthor. Head of Cadmus."
"Of course. She's been trying to rid the earth of aliens ever since they started showing up. Her last attempt at Synthetic K almost went as bad as Maxwell Lord's. Of course she'd want some," J'onn responded.
"But how could she do anything dramatic? Scudder only brought a small rock of it," Barry added.
"Max Lord and Lillian Luthor both tried to create their own Kryptonite without the real mineral. However, if they wanted to, they could analyze the genetic composition of the actual rock and recreate a more accurate version to harm Clark and Kara," J'onn answered, distraught at the news. He had already seen what had happened when they had fought Metallo and did not want to see a repeat of it.
"And what of Maxwell Lord?" Bruce asked. "Is there any way that he could be in on this as well?"
Alex scoffed. "Is there any way he's not? Max is a scum. He'll jump at any opportunity to get back at Kara. I think we should assume that he's working with Cadmus on this one."
Clark's eyes widened as he thought of something. "Kara, is there any way that they could reconfigure the device we used to spread lead to do its original purpose of emitting Kryptonite?"
Kara gasped. "You're right. Lex's device was originally used to kill Kryptonians. I'm sure Lillian will find a way to synthesize her own copycat Kryptonite and kill us once and for all."
Alex's stomach churned at the change of events. She knew Kara was still suffering from having to banish Mon-El and knew she would experience that feeling times a hundred if something ever happened to Kara. A life without her little sister was one not worth living. She had been a terrible sister when the little alien had first arrived. Alex had been jealous and petty, wanting to be the only special one in the family. She felt as if she had to compete with the girl who had lost her entire world. It sickened her now as she thought about it.
If only she could have acted differently back, then.
But the years told the girls' story as they were triumphant through all life tried to throw at them. They couldn't stay the way they were and became closer than they could have ever dreamed. Alex realized that she could have the perfect person but no relationship would ever be as important as the one she shared with Kara. She would die before she would let anyone create a device that would banish her forever.
Barry mentally smacked himself. It was his fault. He had practically dropped the Kryptonite at Cadmus's doorstep and now both Kara and her cousin might die because of it. It killed him inside. He had almost lost Iris and now Kara might die as well. Her death seemed to cry out more to him, and he knew that if they failed, he would run back in time to change it. The timeline could go to hell for all he cared. He would not allow Kara to die. Savitar thought that Iris's death would tip him over the edge, but he had no idea. Kara's would turn him into the person he feared right then and there. She was too important to him.
His demeanor hardened as he prepared himself to do whatever was necessary to regain the Kryptonite and destroy it once and for all.
"Hold on," Bruce said. "How does your earth even have Kryptonite? Do you have doppelgangers of Clark and Kara? Of Krypton?"
Barry furrowed his eyebrows, thinking on it. "I don't know how we have Kryptonite. I'm pretty sure there's no Kara or Clark on our earth and as for Krypton, it might not have exploded."
The two Kryptonians smiled at the thought of their planet still intact. Kara remembered everything about it from the feeling of red sun on her skin to the sound of music. She thought on these memories often, pulling them from her mind when she needed them the most. She fought for Krypton. For the life her planet never got to have. Never again would another planet she loved suffer the same fate. It would not happen. She would defend it until she dropped dead and if this device was the thing to finally kill her, she would gladly rest with the souls of her people in Rao's light.
Clark couldn't imagine Krypton. He knew everything about it from his databases and Kara's intricate explanations, but he had no cognizant memories of his home planet. He admitted he was jealous of Kara's memories of their family, but his envy soon faded when he remembered what she had gone through on the day Krypton was destroyed. No child should eve had to endure that, and it warmed his heart that even on some earth, his cousin was free of that burden. He couldn't say it bothered him as much as it did Kara. He was more from Kansas than he was from Krypton. As much as he liked to claim the distant planet as his own, he would never be able to experience what Kara had.
Though the pain still lingered in his eyes, he saw the evidence of the survivor guilt written all over Kara's face. It still emerged in her hardest battles, and he was worried for his cousin. He was worried that with each heartbreak, each hardship, each planet's looming threat of destruction, she would become more and more reckless with the intrinsic hope of returning to her home with her deceased people. He was afraid that once she saved the earth she would give up on her own life. It was why he stayed close after Mon-El was forced to leave. Alex had told him of the events of Myriad and the fact that Kara was at peace with dying once she had saved Earth. She was fine with leaving everyone that cared about her as long as the Earth was safe.
Looking at Barry, and the way she stared at him gave Clark hope for her. He was optimistic, and wondered if Barry would be the one to restore her depleting will to live. He hoped that they would find themselves in each other and through the other, they would find clarity and a will to live that would sustain them. It was painful to see the survivor's guilt so prominent and etched in every feature of her face. Through every smile and laugh it was obvious, and the fact that he couldn't do anything about it was maddening.
"Is it possible you have a metahuman on your earth that possibly make Kryptonite?" Alex asked.
Barry shrugged. "It's possible, but it's also possible someone on my earth got the chemical makeup correct. They could have accidently stumbled upon how to make Kryptonite without even knowing it, and the people from your earth found out."
Bruce winced, hating what he had to say. "It is also possible that your planet could have just exploded. That would explain the presence of Kryptonite.
Kara's heart stopped for a second. The hope she had just been feeling faded away as she thought of the fact that another little girl would journey to a new unknown place with nothing to guide her. Her life's mission would no longer need her, and the little girl would always wonder what life would be like if she hadn't been thrusted into that pod.
It was a terrifying feeling and one that Kara had hoped would never plague another girl. She couldn't stomach it, and she felt herself become nauseous at the thought of it. If her planet had exploded on Barry's Earth, she would have to make sure the Danvers were there for her Earth-1 counterpart.
Alex slipped her hand over Kara's to calm the billions of thoughts that she knew were running through her little sister's mind. She knew the pain Kara felt, and she knew that her sister was always reluctant to share her pain.
"Kr-Krypton exploded? That means that Kal-El's pod would be landing in approximately 2 years. I would be landing 24 years after that," Kara told the group, her voice shaking.
"Couldn't their earth have kept Krypton's explosion under wraps? The planet could have exploded a long time ago, but instead of Clark landing in Kansas and being raised by the Kents, he was taken by the government? That would explain why Barry has never seen a member of the House of El flying around." J'onn raised his eyebrow in question.
Bruce nodded slightly. "That's also a possibility, but I think we don't have enough information to assume anything. So far, each of our ideas are logical and could have happened, but we just don't know if it did. We need to gather more information first."
"Then we have a new problem to discuss. Our friends who seem to have the uncanny ability to escape prisons. What do we do with them?" Alex asked.
"One of the villains my friends and I caught back on my earth wasn't able to escape our own metahuman prison underneath S.T.A.R. labs. Do you guys have something similar?"
Kara let out a sharp breath. She was getting tired of the conversation and wanted to find whoever was doing this and punch them already. "Besides the jail you made, which they escaped from, we have the DEO. We could try that."
J'onn nodded and pulled out his phone. "I'll arrange an immediate prisoner transfer with NCPD." He walked down a hall in the Batcave, already barking orders into the phone.
Several beeps turned the remaining heroes' vision to the monitors on the wall, and they stared in awe at what was before them. On one, a news anchor from Metropolis was reporting news of a man in a metal suit terrorizing the city by shooting blasts of nuclear energy. The second one showed a man with an etched on clown face throwing what looked like bombs in Gotham City. The psycho even carried a knife around with him. The third monitor displayed National City and the pale face of Livewire shooting blasts of electricity at the CatCo building.
Everyone in the room froze, looking at the screens relaying the destruction that was happening in all three cities. There was no good way to go about defeating all three villains at once. They had planned this perfectly with no room for improvisation without more loss of life. Bruce turned around and stared at everyone in the room.
"We h—" he started before Clark cut him off.
"They're attacking exactly where Lois is! I have to go help her!" Clark yelled, fear already settling in.
"I know that Clark! They clearly want us to go to our designated cities, but we can't play into their hands! This is obviously what they want us to do!"
Clark stood up, his chair flying back and into the wall. "I couldn't care less what they want us to do!" He stomped over to where Bruce was and pressed his finger into the man's chest. "They could kill my wife. I'm going."
Without another word, Clark took to the air and exited the Batcave, leaving the others in silence. They understood the logic behind what Bruce was saying, but they knew they couldn't leave their own cities in the hands of someone else. Everyone stood up from their chairs and looked towards the furious man in front of them.
"I'm sorry, Bruce, but Kal's right. I have to go help Miss Grant." Kara said, ready to speed towards National City.
Another monitor popped up with a new report. Alex and Kara's faces fell immediately as they looked towards the screen. Hank Henshaw, or Cyborg Superman as he was called, beamed lasers from his eyes, setting everything on fire. He stood in a place that both Alex and Kara loved. He was burning the place that they called home. Cadmus had crossed a line. Henshaw was in Midvale.