Johnny Storm sat in the cell eating the fried eggs. These weren’t 3 am drunk dinner fried eggs
nor were they Sue’s fried eggs… and that made the seriousness of the situation
hit him like a ton of bricks. The door
slide open and in walked THE BAT!
Johnny just about fell out of his seat.
*
The splash of cold water brought the Kryptonian crashing
to the ground. Karen rubbed her eyes
trying to clear the sleep away looking around at what happened.
“Un… Clark?” Karen saw her cousin come into focus.
He was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans holding a jacket in
his crossed arms.
“I think we need a chat,” Clark said sternly.
“I didn’t actually sleep with them, I am just letting the
rumor run…” Karen started.
Clark raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” Karen got up off the spare bed and went to the
closet to get changed, “I forgot what happened for a second…”
There was the sound of Karen thumping her head against
the back of the closet.
“We should remember our past, but keep our wits about us
as we explore this Terra Incognita call the future,” Clark mused, “As the
philosophers said.”
Karen stuck her head out from behind the closet’s door.
“Kryptonian? Greek? Roman?” she guessed.
“No, they were a band I listened to growing up,” Clark
smiled, “Somewhere between Rush and REO speedwagon. They wrote a song about me after I saved
their tour bus.”
Clark frowned as he watched an expensive blouse get
tossed out the closet by his cousin.
“Look about your shopping trip…” Clark said.
“What? I invited
you,” Karen stuck her head back out, “You had to do a report on that political
garbage.”
“I know,” Clark said, “I wanted to talk to you about some
of the shops you were dragging Kara into… She isn’t old enough to be in them.”
“Come on Clark,” Karen said as tossed a pair of leather
pants out of her way, “We are all almost a hundred years old… Well I guess according
to her learners permit… Ro is sucks not being grounded.”
There was a long awkward pause as Karen groaned. She stepped out of the closet holding her
white Powergirl outfit, dressed in black leggings and a white sweater.
“I actually miss Star Technologies…” Karen said, “We all
know how much good we can do running around from one disaster to the next in
our Ka-nul-Texs outfits, and while you were happy to slog away at the Daily
planet for a penny a letter working for Truth, Justice and the American way… But
that wasn’t me, it was never me. I don’t
know how I convinced you the first time, maybe it was the petty bit about driving
the Bat nuts with his own stitch.”
“Excuse me?” Clark asked.
Karen hung her suit in front of the window, and then sat
on the bed and put on snow boots.
“My human life was as Karen Star, the technically brilliant,
beautiful, ditz dipshit head of Star Technologies,” Karen groaned as she tried
to get the boot on without shoving her foot throw it, “I took some of the things
in the archives and brought them to market for our new home. Relax.
Most of what we made were toys and consumer goods, better refrigerators,
more efficient water heaters and so on.
I think your real pleasure in the arrangement was watching the Bat wanting
to tear his cowl apart seeing me do a better job of the rich but stupid act
than he does in public.”
“Why would you think I would approve of that?” Clark
tried to sound stern.
Karen just looked at her cousin.
“Ok,” Clark smiled, “that must have been so wonderful to
watch…”
“Well,” Karen went about putting on the second snow boot,
“Star Technology grounded me, it gave me something to do in between having to
be a hero, I had reason to join the masses, going into the office, a means to
have an apartment, being able to get some food without scrounging cash or
having the embarrassment of a dead Fob.”
“A what?” Clark asked.
“We phased out credit cards a while back with a more
secure system,” Karen smiled, “The bat and I were having a bet to see who could
make Lex pull out his three trillion-dollar hair transplant job so I managed to
get the entire financial sector adopt these secure little deals, you remember those
key fop pets from a few decades ago?
Yeah they were like that. Lex
torn every hair out when Master Card stopped issued plastic cards. Anyways… Clark, it gave me something to do.”
*
Diana walked into the room monitoring the Bruce’s interrogation
of John Storm.
“How is it going?” Diana asked.
“So far he has confessed to every time he wet his bed,
cheated on a test, ate a lunch his sister made for his brother-in-law…” Wally
West smiled as he was writing it all down.
“What has Bruce done to the pour man?” Diana asked.
“So far all Bruce has done is sit down with the two
crossword puzzles on the clip board his butler gave him this morning,” Barry
Allen smiled, “I know he went home slept and showered, but I think that is
still the same cape and cowl from last night.
Storm is freaking out. Every time
he notices a new splotch of blood he confesses to something else.”
“Some more garbage,” Wally smirked, “Isn’t that what you
mean Berry?”
“Can you handle this for a minute alone Kid Flash?” Diana
asked, “I need you to look at something Allen.”
“Sure,” Berry got up.
Diana and Berry walked out of the monitoring room and as
they did Megan, aka Miss Martian waved and went into the room with Wally.
*
“Here we go,” Karen smiled, “I told you it was in here,
just how this crystal was encoded shuffled the location of the files, Ka-nu-tex,
all the how to’s right there.”
“That looks like something that Bruce could have made up…”
Clark said as he looked over the files.
“If you know about Zod and his goons,” Karen got up and
floated up, “How come you haven’t looked this stuff up before?”
“We never thought about it,” Clark admitted, “Being
naturally bullet proof we never gave it much thought.”
“I was thinking,” Karen hugged herself, “Last time I didn’t
go past personal body armor and blast dampers, that was a mistake… Maybe we
should have a system to defend against Galactis.”
“What makes you think Bruce would trust you with such a
weapon?” Clark asked.
“He wouldn’t but he would trust a system where you,
Diana, and at least three other random League members all have to sign off on its
use and he gets to keep those extra people a secret from you.”
“Show me what you were thinking of and I will bring it to
the league’s attention,” Clark said, “But I am pretty sure I already know how
they will reject it.”
“Well while we are at it how would you like to be a
normal human husband with Lois one night and have a son?” Karen floated down.
“How?”
“Go back about three folders and look at the files of
Doctor Yun and her theory about Silver Kryptonite…”
*
“Oh,” Barry said as he re-entered the observation room.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Wally blurted.
“It looks like Meg is sitting on you lap and you two are
trying to make jokes about Mr. Storm’s situation,” Barry smiled.
“Ok,” Megan smiled, “That is exactly what it is.”
“I think Batman finished one of the cross word puzzles,”
Wally tossed out.
*
Barbara didn’t wait for the knock at the door. She had watched Dick Grayson come into the
building in a suit with flowers. The
small pot of live flowers almost went crashing to the ground as Barbara jumped onto
Dick.
“Hay now,” Dick said.
“Come on in,” Barbara pulled on Dick’s free hand.
“So glad to see you are much friendlier than the other patient,”
Dick noted, “I tried to bring him flowers and he tried to kill me.”
“I would have figured Jason would be retrained,” Barbara
said taking the pot.
“Oh yeah,” Dick said, “I was referring to Damian the
serial killer in training.”
*
Cyborg was trying his hardest to keep a stern and
straight face as he walked into THE elevator, the elevator that went straight
to the Fantastic Four’s penthouse suite!
As the elevator opened, he was confronted by a rather pissed off Sue
Storm and a H.E.R.B.I.E. robot unit.
“Cyborg, right?” Sue accused.
*
Fury didn’t trust anyone; he didn’t trust
himself much less anyone else. He had
spies watching Coulson and everyone else on his team. He put down the receiver on the hand set. That confirmed that Hill wasn’t leaking
anything either. He wished he didn’t
have to spy on his own people, but he never really had all that much trust to
begin with and the reenactment of “Night of the Long Knives” last night had
killed what he had to begin with.