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AN-1: Exactly 31 days this time—and a notice to those who also follow my other fics, updates are going to slightly, very slightly slow down since I am gonna start college on 14.
AN-2: I have a P*T*R*N, where you can read the NEXT FIVE CHAPTERS right now, use the link on my profile!
AN-3: A very big thanks to LordLexx for the edits.
AN-4: A shoutout to my Celestial Level Patrons Gerald, Known ART, Russel M, Potterfan, Roy Wood, Michael Witkowski, Alex, Juan Hernandez, Joshua and Chris Vance and, Aiden Jones, Pardeep, Alex, Dapo Alibi, I am Lord Dems, Lord Benzy, Sam Guardado Escalante, Matty, Brayden Sheen, lexi and Voks17
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Covering himself in a storm of fire, Harry calmly walked towards the bloated, grotesque form of the Imperium leader. With a flick of his hand, a sphere of light burst into existence right above him, the imitation of the sun working perfectly as dozens of the pale-yellow lifeforms around him screeched in pain and tried to dive for cover. Ignoring them and their mental attacks against his mind, he came upon the now upright form of the Imperium leader, his pale white body starting to smoke and burn from the artificial sunlight.
"You will pay human," it groaned, its voice warbling and screeching throughout the compound as several tentacles as thick as a bus sprouted from the Imperium's back, arcing down to slam on him. "After I kill and devour you, your sister will be next, and with a star-eater's powers, we will be unstoppable, for we would never have to fear the radiation again!"
Harry didn't even twitch from his place, and he looked on as a titanic bolt of lightning fell from the sky, slamming into the Imperium leader with a devastating blast of heat and light. The next second, Diana blurred past him, her sword wreathed in pale blue electricity as she cut off the whips that were coming for him. Barely an eyeblink later, a roar of rage came from his right, and Harry watched as J'onn shot past him, and punched the Imperium with enough force to rock the land beneath them.
The large being, however, tanked the blow without any problems, and within an eyeblink, J'onn was sent flying away courtesy of the large fist that had formed out of its flank. Morphable protoplasm had many advantages, it seemed, as suddenly, dozens of fists and tentacles were headed in every direction. They tore the landscape apart, gouging out chunks of earth and rending the already torn wreckage of the battleship into more scrap metal as the Imperium seemed to increase in size.
"FOOLISH HUMANS! YOU THINK YOU CAN MATCH THE MIGH-"
A low growl pierced through the Imperium's shouts into his ear, and it was only the instincts developed from Voldemort's memories and his own fights that Harry managed to erect the shields around his teammates in time. Kal-El shot forwards, his eyes burning with hateful crimson and his speed such that even Harry had a little trouble keeping him in clear sight, the world shaking from the sheer speed of the Kryptonian.
With a punch that had the power to level entire cities, he punched the Imperium right on its head, and the ground beneath them simply shattered. Grunting a little as he increased the energy in the shields—and created a new one around the whole factory itself—Harry watched with wide eyes as the Imperium folded upon Kal-El's fist, before it simply burst apart into a splatter of white and yellow sludge.
Evidently, Kal-El didn't appreciate his mind being fucked with…and that wasn't even his full power. Harry was sure of it. But, as the class 7 earthquake created by that single attack abated, Harry waved away the dust that had blown into the air, and looked at the sight before him. Kal-El was floating in the air, twin streams of heat energy launching from his eyes at every scrap and blob of the Imperium he could find. In the cloud of dust that had blown up from the force of his movement and track both, the Kryptonian looked like a vengeful god burning his wrath on the Imperium's torn apart body.
"Huh?" The floating boy spoke, staring down at his fists and legs suddenly as the optic beams cut off, "No wonder everyone was so afraid of star-eaters all the time. I haven't felt this much power in my body ever since Mars."
"Oh, Hera!" Diana gasped as she skidded to a stop beside him, her eyes wide and unblinking as they both stared at Kal-El. Or rather, the malicious grin that lit up his face as he turned around, his eyes glowing like twin suns of destruction.
"…fuck."
It was the shouts of Diana that first pierced through the haze her brain had fallen into. Then, she heard someone's mad cackles echoing painfully in her already-pounding skull. However, with the slowly retracting clouds overhead and usage of focusing exercises one was taught for Torquasm-Vo, she quickly regained the full use of her mind and body.
She instinctively apparated away from her spot as her ears screamed at her to move, and when she crashed in her location…it left her stunned. For a second, she could do nothing but watch with wide eyes as Kal-El, her cousin who had been hoping to finally talk to today…choked the Martian with one hand while raining punches on him with the other.
She watched as green-blue blood flew from the cuts on J'onn's face, the blood drops moving in slow motion compared to the speed of Kal's fists as he brutalized the Martian's face.
What. The. Fuck?!
Diana rushed in at that moment, her fist pulled back with a healthy layer of electricity coating it. Her eyes glowing a neon blue, she let out a fearsome roar as the earth shattered beneath her feet, and her fist crashed against Kal's face. Her Kryptonian eyes captured every nanosecond of the punch, the ripples sent out in Kal's skin by her punch, the way his cheek instantly crumbled underneath the demigoddess' power…and the way he was sent flying away with a sonic boom as the world resumed its pace.
He crashed into the factory behind them, tearing through the metalworks like a bullet through paper—while Diana pulled up the battered, bruised, and rapidly healing J'onn to his feet. Harry appeared beside them a moment later, and Kara shivered as she felt his magic bubble and pulse, begging to be let loose and wreak havoc.
"We need to overwhelm his mind," the martian said as he pushed his jaw back into place with a snap, his crimson eyes closed as he floated off the ground. "The Imperium leader has already begun the process of assimilating himself deeply into his brain. In a few minutes, Superman will be gone entirely, while the Imperium will devour his body, and their only weakness…will become their greatest strength."
"And how do you propose we do that?" Diana asked as she raised her palm, and her shield came soaring back into her grip, "Beat him up?"
"We need to cause a powerful stimulus for his brain to go into momentary shock," J'onn answered, his face pulling into a grimace as he rolled his neck. "Pain is usually the best option, but how we are supposed to cause pain to a Kryptonian…that I don't know."
"Harry…" Diana said in a warning tone, her eyes shifting towards him, "Don't do what I think you are about to do."
"You have any better options?" He asked in a flat tone, all of them watching the rubble of the destroyed factory as Kal's heat vision blasted up into the slowly brightening sky. Diana shook her head at him, and Kal floated out of the debris at the same moment…except, he didn't look like her cousin anymore.
His usually kind but stern face was twisted into a maddening, wicked grin and Kara could see his blue eyes beginning to turn purple as his skin gained a yellow hue. It took one glance at the bits of the large Imperium leader strewn all over for her to realize what had happened.
Kal had punched the Imperium in his anger, and when it burst apart into chunks…it got inside her cousin and was now controlling him. Eating him. Changing him...Killing him.
"The Sun-eate-Kryptonians were once feared across countless stars for their extraordinary biology…" The thing inside her cousin grinned as he looked down at his bodysuit and ran a finger across his sculpted muscles, "While we are not used to living in solid forms…we must admit that changing the humans on this planet to match this one would be a great boon for us!"
"Merlin's balls," Harry sighed. "I have had enough of egoistical, would-be-conquerors who want to use another's body."
"Are you sure you can cause a disruption in the Imperium's hold over your friend's mind?" J'onn asked, glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes as the mind-controlled Kryptpnian slowly flew towards them, the intensity behind his aglow eyes increasing. "While we Martians never had the misfortune of meeting the Kryptonians or the Daxamites…we do know that under the yellow sun, they a-"
"Crucio!"
There was no flash of light, no sign of the spell that had left Harry's lips…and yet Kal-El began to scream the very next moment. Her brain froze for a moment at the sheer, raw agony and the searing pain in his voice as it washed over her ears. She almost screamed too, when she saw the face of her cousin contort into unimaginable pain… but she somehow managed to clap her hands over her ears to stop her eardrums from bursting.
Metal debris around him was sent flying in all directions, and Kara felt the ground crack underneath the force of his scream as he clutched at his ears. However, before his voice reached even more destructive levels, J'onn blurred forwards and grabbed Kal-El's head, his fingers digging into her cousin's skull as he snarled hatefully.
And then Superman crashed to the ground.
A strong hand clamped down on her face, and Kara almost sent an elbow back into her assailant's gut before she recognized it was Harry. Struggling against his grip in a bid to get to her cousin's side, Kara felt tears flow down her face as she saw her baby-but-grown-up cousin twitch and spasm on the ground.
"I didn't stop that one's scream so that you can complete his work and demolish the city," Harry whispered in her ear, and Kara felt her hysteria and worry decrease as his magic calmed her down. "I am going to remove my hand, and you will stay here and help the others with the remaining Imperium while J'onn deals with the parasite inside your cousin."
Nodding her assent, Kara took one last glance at her twisting and turning cousin, her eyes glaring at the whitish-yellow sludge that was being expelled out of his skin. As Harry flew up in the air to launch fireballs at the Imperium now running away from the factory, Kara growled and joined him. Ahead of them, they could see Shayera and John both destroy the Imperium with a grim countenance, her mace and his ring flashing in the brightening sky as they laid waste to the genocidal parasites.
With the increase in the sunlight and their spaceship absolutely destroyed…The Imperium were left without any place to hide. Also, unlike before, now their bodies were regenerating at a much slower pace—Kara could even see the molecules that made up the disgusting lifeforms break away bit by bit, the minuscule amount of UV radiation that made past the Ozone layer burning them away into fine grey dust.
"N-NO!" A gnarled voice croaked, and Kara turned around with a fireball ready in her palms…only to be met with a sight that was equally disgusting, and equally satisfying.
J'onn stood with his palms raised towards a shifting ball of white protoplasm, the purple eyes swimming on the surface glaring out in all directions as the Imperium launched itself against the barrier holding him in place.
"No," it weakly said once again, its struggles growing more and more frantic as it bucked against the hold J'onn had on it, "You ca-can't fo this! We are the Imperium! We destroyed you plane-NOOO!"
"This telepathy you are so fond of," the Martian grunted, floating off the ground and raising the telekinetic bubble with him, his hand clenching even more upon the wildly screeching Imperium. "You don't know the full power of it, parasite! You killed my wife, killed my child, and killed my planet! For that…you are going to suffer a fate that should have befallen your progenitors."
And then…J'onn shot up into the sky like a rocket, blurring into speeds much greater than sound, and dragging the bound Imperium behind him. The clouds parted in a circle from the force of his movement as he flew past them, and now that dark clouds had mostly disappeared, the Imperium below were also burning away rapidly, their dying screams echoing in the air and against their minds—but now that she was prepared for it, their pitiful, random telepathic pulses were barely registered by her mind.
'Where is he taking him?!" The Green Lantern asked as he came down to the ground, the emerald glow in his eyes disappearing, "I must take the Imperium back to Oa, the Guardians need to know about them."
"You are a fool if you think the Guardians don't know about these parasitic, genocidal things," Shayera remarked as she too landed, giving the sputtering Green Lantern a humorless look. "The Guardians are older than entire galaxies several times over…and besides, J'onn is not going to let the Imperium go."
"He is going to give him a painful death," Harry agreed, before he shrugged and walked over to Ka-Oh Rao, Kal!, "Which I can't disagree with. I would also do the same in his shoes."
Ignoring the murmurs of assent given by Diana and Shayera both, Kara ran over to her cousin and knelt down beside his head. Now that half of her brain wasn't focused on warding off the Imperium's mental probes, she was able to properly see the damage Harry and the parasite both had done to him. His skin was unhealthily pale, and the blood vessels on his neck and hands were bulging out, his loud and fast heartbeat thudding in her ears. His eyes were rolled back into his head, and his face was covered in the blood, something pin—Fucking Hell! He bit off his tongue?!
"What the fuck did you do?!" She screamed at Harry, her eyes snapping up towards him as she next saw the broken nails and the blood on his hands, "Was it necessary to use that on him you fucking psycho?!"
"Psycho am I?" He snorted at her and laid his palms upon Kal's chest, a warm yellow pulse traveling out from them throughout her cousin's body, "That was the best choice I had. It is the most painful spell I know of, and I just wanted to pull this man—the super-powerful Kryptonian out from the Imperium's hold before there was nothing of him left. So don't thank me, dear sister."
"You could have stunned him!" She accused, laying a hand upon Kal's forehead. She almost recoiled at the unnatural heat radiating off his skin, but ignoring the burning heat, she started to cool him down. The blistering warmth of his body went down with torturous slowness, but Kara persevered through the pain of her hand getting burnt while watching and feeling Harry's magic do its work, Why is he burning so much? Do we need to take him to Alura?"
"I don't think so," he shook his head at her. "Cruciatus works differently on muggles than it does on magicals, but the basic aspects of it remain the same. It overloads the sensory nerves, and the panic and the pain force the autonomic and motor nerves into a mindless frenzy. The heart speeds up, the eyes blink rapidly, shaking limbs, and so on until eventually, the rising blood pressure kills one due to ruptured blood vessels and a burst heart."
He raised one hand off Kal's chest and grabbed her hand, turning it around to look at the blisters and raw skin on it. "I think the same happened to him, but his enhanced sensory system allowed him to feel much more than what a normal man would. Also, Cruciatus is a spell that was created to prevent healing for a long time in magicals, to say nothing of the fact of what it would do to a muggle who would have survived the spell. His body is trying to heal right now, but with the magic settling down in his brain and nerves to prolong the agony…he is radiating out all of that solar energy instead of actually utilizing it—because like the middle finger to physics and biology everywhere, magic somehow bypasses that super-durability of Kryptonians entirely."
"We are taking him with us," she declared, her tone daring Harry to refuse her as she glared at him from beneath her hood. She could understand why he used the Cruciatus, but it didn't mean she had to like seeing her cousin like this. "And you are going to heal him completely. Today."
"Yes Mistress," he bobbed his head, picking Clark off the ground and turning around to look at the Sun. "We will take him to the place he is from…no need to remove our own roof to let sunlight in."
"You are going?" Diana asked, walking over to them, her eyes flicking between Kara and Kal before she settled her gaze on Harry, "At least wait until J'onn comes back."
"He can find me easily if he wants to," he shook his head. "Besides, I need to devote my time to this fool if we don't want him to suffer any potentially permanent damage."
"Before you go away…can we meet tomorrow? On Themiscyra?" She asked softly, turning her eyes to the side as she sheathed her sword, "I…want to talk to you Harry, in solitude."
"Okay," he nodded after a few moments, and then turned towards the Green Lantern and the Thanagarian..who were both looking at the bloodied face of Kal curiously. "Well, I guess I will see you guys around sometime."
"You think we will come together another time to repel an invasion?" Shayera asked, tilting her head, waving her hand at the rubble and torn-up ground around them. "As far as I know, the Imperium came here only because this was the closest planet to their previous target. Your world is frankly speaking…just not important or recognized enough for someone to conquer it."
"The Galaxy said the same about Reach, yet it is one of the most powerful empires," he countered, remembering the words of Faora…and judging by the surprised expressions of Shayera and John, it was true in this Universe too. "Besides…word will spread about the Imperium's defeat once the news gets back to the Guardians. Hell, someone already probably knows about it…and when that happens, they will come looking here for the Kryptonian, for the Demigod and the two mages who did the deed along with a Green Lantern and a Thanagarian."
"Strength invites conflict," Diana murmured, looking around at the destruction the invasion had caused, "Kal-El is the last of his species, and that alone makes the Earth a target for those who want to prove their strength against him or collect him like an endangered animal. Besides, more and more humans with powers are emerging each month…and sooner or later, someone will come to enslave them for their own purposes."
"Well aren't you all a cheery lot," John snorted, his ring flashing brightly as he was encased in a blazing aura of emerald, "Anyways, I am off to Oa…though I think I need to pay more visits to my home planet. Earth clearly needs some hands on the deck if the reports my ring is sending to my brain mean something."
"Thanagar also needs to know about the happenings on this planet," Shayera nodded, her wings flaring out behind her as she placed her mace on her back. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Diana, Apollina, and Phantom—and Batman too I guess…even though he has disappeared ever since he went back into the factory. Is he all right?"
"He has fought things much tougher and meaner than Imperium," Kara shook her head. "Besides, I saw him run away from the factory right as the smoke started to roll back."
"Smart of him to do so," Shayera nodded and flapped her wings once, rising up into the air rapidly. "I will probably be back on Earth after my report. No doubt Thanagar will want to continue to build the relationship between our planets."
"The Guardians will also be interested in Earth after the news," John said, nodding his head at Kal and the siblings, "Kryptonians have been presumed extinct for years at this point—barring those in their prison dimension of course. For one to resurface after so many years on an unknown planet like Earth...you can probably expect my regular presence too from now on."
The green Lantern left after those words, leaving a giant waving hand in the sky as he disappeared in a trail of green. They looked after the disappearing green dot for a few moments before Harry sighed and looked at the Kryptonian man in his arms.
"Merlin's balls, why couldn't you have just learned some Torquasm-Vo and protected your mind you stupid fuck."
"Harry," Kara snapped, smacking him over the shoulder. "Be nice you asshole! Especially after you nearly tortured him into a vegetable without even knowing what damage it would cause to him!"
"Come to Kansas," he said in response, and Kara could just imagine the way he must have rolled his eyes at her. "The sooner we heal him, the sooner you can have your meeting and then sooner we will get back to our apartment. Besides, we are going to Themiscyra tomorrow, so you don't have much time."
With that, he disappeared without a sound, leaving Kara and Diana both glaring at the spot he had apparated from.
"Asshole."