AndyC

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

@AndyC _{*Grumbles about how ugly a centered sheet looks... *} I suppose I can accept that since we like need a Superman or something.

@Lord Wraith

Better now?

Absolute Comics: A Brave New World

[Rescinded: I'm ditching this concept and coming at it again from a different angle]

Maximum Comics: Reboot

I'd love to say I'm in, but I don't honestly know if I can put my heart into the games the way I used to. Even over on the Hype, where I'm playing three of my favorite characters in all of fiction in a game with a similar concept, I'm struggling with the motivation to stay active. Granted, that's more of a problem with myself than with the games, but I feel like I'm kinda running out of ways to reinvent or mash-up characters and franchises I like.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

More posts incoming-- playing Arkham Knight has been re-igniting my enjoyment of the DCU, even if it's the wrong franchise for me.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

Sorry it's taken so damn long to get my next Supes post up. More is coming, now that I've got an actual plot in mind.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

Metropolis.

It's referred to by many as the "City of Tomorrow," but very few people really grasp the full meaning of that. It's very easy to look at the burgeoning future-tech companies like LexCorp, STAR Labs, SteelWorks, and dozens of smaller companies in the Hypersector district, and see dazzling displays of exotic technology, flying cars, mechanized armor suits, experimental propulsion systems, and all manner of other gizmos that will become commonplace for humanity over the coming decades. What few people appreciate are the immense leaps that have already happened.

First and foremost, Metropolis is far and away the most automated city anywhere in the world. Self-driving cabs, trucks, buses, and trains have revolutionized the transportation industry, allowing for more efficient and reliable ways to get around the city and all but eliminating the infamous urban gridlock. Teams of LexCorp construction robots working 24/7 shifts can build (and, given the action that frequently happens in this city rebuild) in days what would take months for human crews to accomplish. Robotic surgeons perform procedures with a level of precision and accuracy that would be impossible for a human doctor....at least not without expensive cybernetic augmentations. Mass-produced all-purpose 'bots can serve as anything from mail clerks to bartenders, and outrageously expensive human-analogue androids often serve as personal assistants, receptionists, bodyguards, and even sex partners for very rich and powerful of the city's elite.

Automation doesn't stop with physical machines, though-- 'bot intelligence programs have quickly taken hold in the white collar sector as well. Paralegal 'bots can search through massive amounts of legal data and find in seconds, medical 'bot intelligences can diagnose and treat illnesses with fantastic accuracy, counselor programs can guide people into successful and happy lives tailored to their own specific needs--a major necessity, considering how many people had found themselves out of work when their old jobs were automated.

Even at the very top, it's not uncommon to see CEOs and city politicians at the very least have some form of 'bot intelligence in an advisory role. In fact, there are at least fourteen different start-up companies in the last year whose businesses have soared after replacing their executives with high-functioning AI. And LexCorp, of course, has only one actual human being in its administrative staff-- every project head and team leader beneath Luthor himself is an AI he specifically programmed for the task.

It's easy to take a passing glance at Metropolis and assume that it's making massive leaps into the future because of people like, well, myself and Kara being there. Honestly, though, it's the other way around-- I came to Metropolis because if I wanted the nature of being 'Superman' to have any meaning on the world's future, there was really no better place to be.

That's not to say the proliferation of all this new technology and its impact on city living is all ideal; for starters, there's the very real and unavoidable fact that the man who designs and sells an overwhelming majority of the increasingly necessary hardware to keep the City of Tomorrow running is a megalomaniac psychopath who has tried to kill me--as well as several billion of his fellow humans-- on several occasions. There's the issue of countless people in multiple fields who are finding themselves unemployed as their jobs become irrelevant, replaced by 'bots or AI, and who are now starting to crowd areas like Hob's Bay. For every well-adjusted person who's been able to adapt and thrive in the 'post-metahuman' climate, there's another who's come down with a crippling case of 'future shock' and has to be talked down from stepping in front of a train or shooting up their former workplace. And the increasing gray areas of what constitutes 'humanity' as robots and AI grow increasingly sophisticated and lifelike, as cybernetic augmentations can alter a person far beyond their normal capabilities, and as people from other planets like myself, Kara, J'onn, the young heroine Starfire, and others migrate to Earth. Which is another reason I chose to set up shop in the Big Apricot-- 'Tomorrow' isn't always easy or pleasant, but we all should face the challenges of Tomorrow together.

There is, of course, one other very significant reason I came to Metropolis: The Daily Planet. Sometimes referred to as 'the last true free press in America,' the Planet is every bit an institution in Metropolis as watching the Monarchs on Opening Day or midnight screenings of the Giant Turtle-Man films in New Bohemia. While the printed word is dying out, the Planet was the first of the major papers to transition to online journalism, and is still far more reputable and respected than sensationalist papers like the Daily Bugle in New York, or any number of biased bloggers promoting their personal agenda. Despite attempted takeovers by Morgan Edge's massive Galaxy multimedia conglomerate (a subsidiary of LexCorp), Perry White and the rest of us in the bullpen have managed to keep the Planet free of influence from government censorship or corporate interest, thanks to support from a dedicated readership which counts for about one in every five citizens in Metropolis.....as well as renting out most of the old office space in the building to small businesses. We may not have worldwide reach or limitless funding, but we've got enough integrity, respect, and outright talent to keep the paper profitable, if just barely.

"Kent! My office, now!"

I look up with a start from my desk, halfway through the re-write of my piece on the Metropolis Museum of Art's exhibition on 'D-5 Myx,' a new post-postmodern form of expressionism inspired by my annoying tormentor from the Fifth Dimension. Perry's just spent the last half hour sparring with Lois over her article connecting the US Army's experimental "Ghost Soldier" project with banned Phantom Zone technology outlawed by the UN in the aftermath of General Zod's war, so he's probably about to blow off some steam by taking me to the woodshed over something I did.

Sheepishly adjusting my glasses, I get up and make the long Walk of Shame across the newsroom. From the sports desk, Steve Lombard chuckles.

"Dead man walking, folks, we've got a dead man walking!"

"Oh, leave him alone," Cat Grant chides him. "Kent's already got enough to worry about, being bumped back to Human Interest, he hasn't even noticed to do anything about that awful cow-lick in his hair!"

Self-consciously, I try to slick my hair back into shape-- it tends to blow around and get messy any time I go over Mach 5, so it's probably been like that for most of the morning.

"Clark, buddy," Jimmy pats me on the shoulder as he catches up with me, "word around the rumor mill is that you've just popped your proverbial cherry. Lunch is on me to celebrate."

"Ermm, thanks, but....I mean, what's that--"

Perry doesn't raise his voice, but even if I didn't have super-senses, I could feel the man's impatient glare.

"Coming, Mister White!" I say, hurrying the rest of the way to the office before closing the door behind me. "You, erm, you wanted to speak to me?"

Perry doesn't speak, but closes his eyes and gives a condescending nod. "Have a seat, Kent."

I sit down, slouching a bit in my chair so that even seated, Perry towers above me.

"I wanted to take a moment to congratulate you, Clark," he starts. "You've finally managed a milestone in your career here. Normally it takes maybe a month or so for a Planet journalist to make it, but you've managed, what, nine years here? That's a record in and of itself, but you've finally gotten on the board. So again, congratulations, Clark. On your first lawsuit."

"Wait, my...my first what?"

"That piece you filed two months ago about the Excalibur accident."

"........ah."

The Excalibur was an experimental spacecraft built by the Thunder Corporation, an aerospace company founded by former Future Foundation employees. The spacecraft itself boasted experimental propulsion technology that could theoretically warp it across the solar system instantaneously, and had an AI interface nearly identical to that of the Army's "Metal Zero" suit before that program was mercifully canceled.

The official story was that the Excalibur was meant purely as an exploratory vessel for NASA. My own findings, however, showed that most of the hardware aboard the craft was meant for military use, and it was incredibly likely that it was in fact a prototype for SHIELD's staunchly anti-extraterrestrial SWORD division. All this, tragically, was made moot when the Excalibur and her crew pilot Hank Henshaw lost in a hurried test flight.

"I, erm.....I realize that it may have been too soon after the tragedy to report that story," I begin, "but the public deserved to know that the military is still fueling anti-ET paranoia, and that it cost a man his life!"

"You don't think I know that, Kent?!" Perry roars, then takes a deep breath. "I grew up in Hob's Bay in the 70s, when the race riots were still at their worst. This was back before mutants and ETs and robots were the feared minority of the time: all you had to do to be feared and mistrusted was have darker skin than your neighbors. So I took that to heart, and I took it personally. Any time I saw someone from my neighborhood being pushed around or kicked while they were down, whether it was from the landlord or the cops or a shop owner who gave you dirty looks, I'd come down on them like the Wrath of God. I'd rake up any piece of dirt I could on people I thought were oppressors and fear-mongers, and I'd expose them to the world all for anyone who picked up a copy of the Planet to see. And do you know what happened?"

".....what?"

"I got my ass fired, Kent," he says flatly. "I stopped checking my sources. I discarded facts in favor of a narrative. I made the story about drawing conclusions, writing what I was feeling, and not about what I could actually prove. I ruined the reputations of people who didn't deserve it, and because I cried wolf on the wrong people, bad people got away with doing bad things because people wouldn't believe my stories anymore. It cost me my reputation, my respect, and for a while, my job. It took years for George Taylor to give me another chance to prove myself and work my way up the chain. Which brings me to why you're working Human Interest now, and why the Thunder Corporation is slapping us with a suit...."

He pulls up last month's edition with the Excalibur story on it.

"This piece is the kind of fearless, fiery exposé I hadn't seen from you in ages," he says, "the kind of stuff you wrote when you were a freelancer, and why I wanted to hire you on. But it's full of 'seems like,' and 'sounds like,' and 'you can probably guess.' To be honest, I believe the story.....but it's not about what you believe or what you feel, Kent. It's about what you can prove. I can't imagine Big Blue out there is too happy that Uncle Sam is still working on 'anti-alien' hardware...."

He's right-- no matter how many times myself, Kara, J'onn, and others act on mankind's behalf, we're always the subject of suspicion, like we're always just about to sound the horn and call in an invading fleet of bug-eyed monsters. I happen to take that sort of thing personally.

".....but there's something he said way back when Lois first interviewed him that I think you ought to keep in mind. 'I'm here to fight for Truth and Justice,' he said. Justice is great, it's essential......but keep in mind, Kent. 'Truth' has to come before 'Justice,' not after. Understood?"

".....yes, sir. I, erm....I just wanted to--"

**BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!**

The sound of an explosion punches my eardrums, though it's barely a dull thump to everyone else. Sure enough, though, the pillar of black smoke rising from between the gleaming towers of the Hypersector draws everyone else's attention.

"Great Caesar's Ghost...." Perry mutters to himself as he looks out his window. "Kent, if you wanna redeem yourself, grab Olsen before Lane does and get to--.........Kent?"

Before Perry can even glance in my direction, I'm already gone, changing in an elevator shaft before speeding up to the roof of the building and out into the open air, speeding towards the source of the explosion.

Schott Robotics, a small but extremely profitable LexCorp offshoot, focused primarily on high-end personal assistant androids. Its clientele includes some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world, paying millions for Schott's models, which far outclass even the leading models in terms of human-like qualities. Far from the utility of menial labor robots, Schott androids are often seen as 'toys' for the super-rich.

And its main office is in the middle of being bombed.

Clark Kent can worry about the quality of his articles later. Right now, there are still people in danger......



.....and that makes it a job for Superman.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

"Good afternoon, Mister Jefferson," I say at the doorstep, extending a rubber-gloved hand in greeting. "Rachel Roth, of Roth and Anders Paranormal Investigations, at your service. I understand you have a potentially dangerous situation involving your daughter?"

"Oh, thank goodness, yes!" he says, shaking my hand and practically yanking me inside. "I'm amazed you were able to come out here so quickly. But yes, it's Amanda. She's......she's not well. We moved in about a year ago and I think....I think there's something wrong with this place....."

Looking around the living room, I see little out of the ordinary. Ugly green sofa, coral blue carpet, white walls adorned with family photos, a bookcase filled half with 'inspirational' fluff and half with books about World War II. A coffee table covered in magazines. A television with too many remote controls.

Upstairs, I hear a loud thump and a pained howl.

"She keeps saying there's something inside of her, something that's....making her do things," Mister Jefferson says in a worried voice. "Ever since we've moved in, there have been weird sounds, things moving where they weren't before....and it's only gotten worse in the last few months. Melissa and I, we've always been skeptical about religion, but......I don't know.....I think there might be something here. My little girl.....I think she's....possessed....."

"Well, you called the right person for the job," I say, pulling my hair back into a tight ponytail in the back, and then reaching into the pockets of my thick denim coveralls for a pair of safety goggles and a hair net. "If there's any kind of malevolent entity in this house, I'll be able to find it, identify it, and get rid of it."

My heavy work boots make a loud clunking noise as I make my way up the stairs.

"I, er, I can't help but notice.....erm, your outfit...." Mister Jefferson stammers.

"Believe me, I've handled my fair share of demons," I assure him. "If this goes anything like my last job, you're going to wish you'd put on some gloves and some old clothes, too. Demons tend to be very....biological, when it comes to resisting exorcism."

"You don't say....."

We reach Amanda's room, and I open the door. Inside, a girl about the age of fourteen is writhing painfully on her bed. She's shouting and snarling, and screaming as her joints pop and her body contorts. It's all very hard to watch.

Still, I've got a job to do, and the first part of that job is finding out exactly what I'm dealing with.

I spend the next few minutes examining the supposed victim, monitoring her breathing, getting her heart rate, seeing how she reacts to various herbs and holy symbols (one of the reasons I'm wearing rubber gloves, in fact-- I can't touch the things myself), before looking her square in the eye and noticing the movement.

"She's an epileptic," I conclude. "She needs to be taken to the hospital and treated there. I'm sorry that you've wasted your time, but there doesn't seem to be any demon here, Mister Je--"

And then Mister Jefferson bursts into a swarm of spiders. Amanda screams as thousands of menacing little black-and-yellow arachnids scurry across the room. The door slams shut, and the room fills with a sickening stench as hot feces begins to splatter down from the ceiling.

THE CHILD IS OURRSSSSSSSSSSS...... the spiders hiss in unison.

I sigh with annoyance as it splats on my hairnet and stains the thick flannel shirt under my coveralls.

"Never an easy day on the job, is it?" I say, pulling out my cell phone and making the call. "I'm going to need an extraction on the Perez Street job. Little girl, having an epileptic seizure. Second floor, window on the right side."

"I hear and understand," she says on the other end of the line. "I will be there presently."

NO ONE CAN SSSSSSAVE YOU, EXORCIST........ the spiders taunt. WE SSSHHHHALL DEVOUR YOUR SSSSSSOUL.....

"Cute," I say with annoyance, searching through my case of herbs for the right combination of ingredients. "You'll forgive me if I don't start shaking and wetting my pants just yet-- you're hardly the first swarm from the Plateau of Leng that I've dealt with."

WE ARE LEGION, LITTLE GIRL..... They spout out, spraying the room with ropes of dripping, mucous-covered webbing from orifices that look nothing like spinnerets. WHAT CAN ONE LONE WITCH HOPE TO DO AGAINST USSSSS?

"First of all," I say, glancing to the window to see a glowing green light racing towards us, "I'm not alone."

The window crashes inward, and the spiders are sent flying by a spray of neon-green bolts of plasma. Starfire doesn't so much enter the room as she does flow through it, with a natural grace that would put lifelong ballerinas to shame. Every spin to avoid the demonic vermin, every retaliatory star-bolt splattering an attacking spider, every swoop and whirl to dodge falling splatters of fecal matter from the ceiling, is done with such ease and precision that you'd almost believe she was from the other side of the supernatural spectrum. You'd be wrong, though-- Kory's much less annoying than an actual angel.

"I apologize for my lateness, friend Raven," she says, casually blasting another clutch of spiders. "However, it appears together, we may have this battle won!"

"Not quite," I say, looking at the piles of half-charred gore strewn across the room as they begin to quiver and move. "These are Leng spiders, and can't be completely destroyed by normal means. Blowing them up is just going to make them angrier."

Indeed, the bits and chunks of spiders begin to knit themselves back together, even worse than they were before. Some of them are nearly the size of a small dog now. Some have eyes on stalks, or pincers and scorpion-like stingers, some have over a dozen legs. The more they stay out in the open, the more wrong they get.

"Get the girl to safety," I tell my partner. "I've got the swarm."

"I hear and understand," Starfire says, scooping the suffering girl into her arms. "I shall take her to the nearest emergency ward. And then I shall return to the office and await news of your glorious triumph!"

As Star leaves with the girl, several of the spiders try to leap up after her through the window. They slam into an invisible wall in the air, then fall twitching to the floor.

"I made sure to surround the house in a circle of salt before coming in," I explain, taking from my case a pinch of mugwort, mixing it with some vetivert and a healthy amount of agrimony. "Nothing from the other side gets in or out of the house unless I say so. It's just you and me now."

YOU HAVE LOSSST YOUR ADVANTAGE..... the spiders hiss, leaping and clawing at me as I duck and dodge them. From my knapsack I pull a small egg-shaped plastic appliance and put the various herbs in it-- normally I'd use a proper mortar and pestle, but in a pinch, one of these compact food-processors will do. YOUR ALLY IS GONE, AND YOU ARE BUT A LOWLY WITCH AGAINSSST A HORDE OF LENG.....

"About that," I say, pressing down on the egg-shaped blender to start the motor. It whirs and shakes in my hands as I mix the potion together. "When Trigon sent you into the mortal plane to spring this trap....he didn't tell you who you were trapping, did he?"

IT MATTERSSSS NOT, FOR WE--

"Look in my eyes."

The spiders stop their assault, and a single, basketball-sized spider with half of its legs transformed into a vague approximation of a human hand and a single compound eye lowers down from the dung-dripping ceiling. It looks me in the eye for a moment, and at once the spiders speak in unison.

.....OH SSSHHHHHI--

"Tell Dad I said hi," I say, throwing the blender full of potion into the heart of the swarm. The concoction explodes, filling the room with noxious green smoke and the ear-piercing screams of thousands of hell-spawn arachnids.

I quickly tuck my face down and cover my nose and mouth with my flannel shirt as the oily smoke rolls over me. The potion won't banish me like it does to the spiders, but it's still incredibly unpleasant-- like cutting onions that are filled with tear gas.

After a minute or so, the smoke clears, and the Leng spiders are gone. I reach into my case for a piece of chalk, a candle, and a quartz crystal, and I draw a pentagram seal in the center of the room, carrying out a short ritual to close off the portal between this world and my father's infernal realm.

I inspect the rest of the house to be sure that it's completely clear, and I eventually find the girl's parents, hung upside down by spider-webs in the basement. I pull them down, explain that their daughter is in good hands, and then go over Roth and Anders' very reasonable payment plans for the job.

I don't know why Trigon is sending minor peons like Leng spiders into my city, without even telling them they're going up against me. Maybe he's probing my defenses for some avenue of attack. Maybe he's trying to keep me distracted while he carries out something worse. Or maybe he's just taking pot-shots at me to keep from getting bored.

As I step out into the fresh air of Jump City, half-covered in demonic spider-webs and splatters of sewage, there's one thing I know for certain.

"I could really use a shower."

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

The alarm clock is set for 6am, but it's not for me. Like most mornings, I'm up well before dawn.

Three eggs, in warm water for five minutes before cracking.

In the meantime, the roof of a low-rent tenament building in Buenos Aires is about to collapse. I suit up and make my way down south, holding up the support beams with plenty of time before they buckle and make sure everyone is out safely.

A tense showdown between police officers and a depressed file clerk with a rifle is about to turn tragic in Charleroi, Belgium. It's a practice called 'blue suicide,' where a person deliberately forces police to kill them. As the man lifts the rifle to open fire, I touch down in between him and the officers, blocking both parties' line of fire, and I introduce the man to a local psychologist who's agreed to work with him.

I spend the next three minutes or so high above the equatorial Atlantic, carefully adjusting temperatures with sweeping rays of Heat Vision and correcting with gusts of chilled Arctic breath, to prevent the current weather patterns from forming into what would have otherwise become a hurricane over the next week or so. As it is, there will still be scattered thunderstorms throughout the Gulf region, but it's certainly a better outcome than the catastrophic damage that would have resulted instead.

The eggs have warmed enough. I head back to the apartment, crack the eggs into a bowl, add a pinch of salt, and stir, before applying a teaspoon of butter to the skillet and setting to medium-high heat.

While the skillet warms up, I fly up north to the Fortress for a bit of work in the lab. Kelex assists me in reading through the human genome and unlocking a potential 'super-charge' for the immune system that would render homo sapiens impervious to bacterial or viral infections. I write up a quick thesis on the subject, and anonymously send my research off to Reed Richards, STAR Labs, and a few other trustworthy institutions for review.

I notice Krypto is getting restless cooped up inside, so I take him for a quick stroll to Venus and back, to let him stretch his legs and do his business so I don't have to clean up a mess in the Fortress itself. Re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, Krypto and I spent the next minute or so digging out some irrigation trenches for a land-locked village in Mauritania to make sure the people there have access to clean running water, before he returns to the Fortress for a nap, and I get back to the kitchen and put the eggs on the skillet before the butter boils away.

This is where the risk is at its greatest: for the next fifteen seconds, I need to carefully tilt and move the pan to make sure the stirred eggs don't stick, which means any crises requiring my attention will ruin the meal. Obviously, helping people in danger comes first, but I won't lie and say I don't look forward to a job well done.

The eggs begin to turn into a solid mass, as the liquid yolk cooks in the pan. Things are starting to come together.....

"Superman, help!"

"On my way," I sigh.

....and it's back to work. I flick the skillet, flipping the mass of eggs into the air before heading back out the window.

There's a man in a powered suit in Glenmorgan Square, his armor glistening with heavy weapons. It looks like something from one of Tony Stark's competitors, probably traded through a labyrinth of dummy companies and criminal fronts before winding up in the hands of this lunatic, calling himself 'Firepower.' This has all the markings of a 'call-out,' which is annoyingly common among career criminals who've recently acquired metahuman abilities or high-tech weaponry: as soon as they get something that they think makes them more powerful than they were before, the first thing they want to do is pick a fight to show that there's a new 'big dog' in town.

I analyze Firepower's suit, looking into its interior to understand its weapon systems and structural weaknesses, before speeding in faster than the on-board targeting system can track and disabling the suit's power source, leaving the would-be troublemaker a sitting duck for Metropolis Special Crimes Unit to arrest at their leisure....

....then I get back to the kitchen just in time to catch the omelette as it lands on the skillet.

"Gotcha!" I say out loud with a bit of a laugh. Most mornings, that interruption means I have to settle for scrambled eggs instead.

After that, it's five more seconds to cook on the other side (during which I do some preventative work on the East Anatolian Fault in Turkey), then I sprinkle in a quarter cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese, fold the omelette over and slide onto a plate, garnish with some finely chopped chives, and breakfast is served as she steps out of the bedroom in one of my oversized T-shirts.

"Morning, Smallville," Lois says as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes, picking up her tablet off of the kitchen counter to check the morning news. "I see you kept the world from exploding while I was asleep."

"Thankfully, nothing Earth-threatening so far today," I say, only half joking-- things have an unfortunate habit of going from calm to apocalyptic unreasonably quickly in this day and age. "Thankfully it's been a pretty easy morning."

Lois rolls her eyes as she scrolls through the various Superman-related headlines on her tablet in between bites of her omelette.

"'Easy' for you is still 'impossible' for everyone else," she says. "And you wonder why all your enemies think you're being smug."

"I tried snarling at them like Bruce once or twice back in the early days, to show them how seriously I was taking things," I shrug. "All I got out of it was a sore throat."

Lois laughs, and finishes her breakfast.

"Well, at any rate, it's nice that the world was quiet enough that we got to actually have breakfast together for once," she says. "I'm gonna jump in the shower, and then I'm going to get started on following leads on who sold that Firepower loser his battle-suit. Are you thinking it's Lexcorp again?"

"Not this time," I shake my head. "Luthor's not above selling weapons and tech to goons, but it's usually to keep me distracted from something bigger. This one didn't seem to have much of a point in it. Although off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly where that one came from."

"Well, good thing you're dating a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist, then," she says with a grin. "I'll see what I can dig up; after all, someone's got to be doing some work around here."

I return her grin, and get up from the table.

"I'm going to swing back up to the Fortress for a little bit, finish up some lab work," I say, clearing my throat. "I'll see you at the office, okay?"

"Just don't accidentally create a black hole or let out some horror from a parallel universe until I've had my coffee," she says as she gives me a quick kiss. "Love you, Smallville."

"Love you too," I say, leaving her to get dressed for the day as I head out the window and back up into the sky.

After a short flight to the North Pole, I enter the glittering sunstone main hall of the Fortress, the carved statues of my biological mother and father holding up a holographic image of Krypton between them in a towering arch over the primary AI console.

"Welcome back, Kal-El," Kelex greets me, its digitized voice resounding through every part of the hall. "I am currently not reading any events on the planet requiring your specific attention. The current global situation is relatively calm."

"Good to hear," I say. "Have there been any responses from the scientific community regarding this morning's research on human immunity acceleration?"

"Full reviews and replications of the experiment are forthcoming, but the general consensus thus far is positive," the AI answers. "There may be political controversy involving the implementation of it, due to its reliance on synthesizing a mutant X-gene in baseline humans, but given my projections, we can expect most countries to adopt it within five years."

"Excellent," I say, pleased with what we've accomplished so far. "What about the experiments involving the Interstellar Refuge? Have you made any progress in freeing Kandor or the rest of Brainiac's Bottle Cities?"

"Not yet-- I must confess the Coluan miniaturization technology is still far superior to any countermeasure I have been able to devise. However, initial models involving a dimensional auger similar to your father's Phantom Zone Projector seem promising. I will begin virtual trial runs within the week."

"That's...disappointing, but at least we may be headed in the right direction with that. Any luck in finding a reversal for the Bizarro Plague?"

"Currently, evidence suggests that the Bizarro Plague is irreversible. However, I am in the process of developing a way to inoculate humans to prevent future infection, in the event that the Bizarro World creature emerges from the Underverse again."

"And my Bizarro duplicate?"

"Still conscious, but inactive. He has been standing motionless at the South Pole for one year, nine months, twenty-two days, six hours, and eighteen minutes. There is currently no reason to assume any change in his condition."

"It all sounds promising," I say, though a touch of skepticism creeps into my words. "We're coming close to making some real lasting change in the world, being able to say that we left Earth and its people far better than we found it. Even Luthor and his cronies have been on the quiet side lately......"

There's a pause in the air that hangs for just a while too long. There's a cold, tightness in my chest as I try to work up the next words, a feeling I almost never experience, so rare that it takes me a moment to even register what it is.....

....I'm afraid to ask the next sentence.

"Kelex.........what's the countdown?"

"Eight months. Sixteen days. Thirteen hours. Forty-five minutes. And counting...."

It's a bitter pill to swallow. Not long ago, the Fifth Dimensional imp Mxyzptlk transported me into the future, where I re-connected with my old friends in the Legion. I started searching through Brainiac-5's temporal archives, trying to find a way back to my time, and through the numberless threads of potential timelines converging and branching and twisting and contradicting each other between the present and the far-future, I accidentally saw something I shouldn't have.

A fixed point in every potential timeline, one that shapes every possible future. One that's far too close for me to truly grasp, but one that I don't think I can avoid.

I haven't told Lois yet. I don't know how to break it to Ma, or Lana and Kara. I haven't told Bruce or Diana or anyone else in the League. But I can't put it off for much longer-- sooner or later, we're going to need to have plans in place for what happens when time runs out.

Eight months. Sixteen days. Thirteen hours. Forty-five minutes and counting.

Counting down until Doomsday.

Counting down until the moment that I die.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

Posts are coming, but I sadly don't have an ETA-- this was literally the worst possible time for the game to go live for me, since I'm currently working 60+ hour weeks. Superman and Raven will be up when I can make 'em happen, as well as my third CS.

Maximum Comics – Insurrection \ CLOSED

Holy frak, Byrd's actually back in it!