E8: Superman #4

[Spider-Man Beyond]

E8: Superman #4
Don't Ever Call me Superman! Part 4 of 4

Written by Russell Burlingame (Borntorun)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

Off the Coast of California.

I black out. Only for a moment, but by the time I'm aware of a change, I'm on my hands and knees, blood running down from the crown of my head and into my eyes.

If I hated that damned cannon before, I hate these little grabby-hands even more.

I take a quick survey of the room: Alpha Centurion is still chugging along. There are like fifteen little hands grabbing all over his lower body, but the upper half of him is swinging maniacally, that light-sword-thing of his sending bits of shrapnel all over the place. He fights like a crazy person—with the kind of wild abandon of someone who knows he's out of his class and has to fight like crazy to make it through the day. I remember when I was a kid, I saw this guy picking on a girl—she fought like that. That girl beat the crap out of him...

...no. No, I don't remember that, because I was never a kid.

What the Hell was that all about?

Anyway, the point is the Centurion's keeping himself busy. It's a largely fruitless gesture, though, as the Cyborg is able to reach out with his body, so that he can trade blows with the Alpha Centurion while still subconsciously repairing all the damage being done to his engine-construct.

You know, those guys are really creepy to watch.

Supergirl is on the ground, too. She's a smoking pile of person right now, but breathing, and at least Henshaw appears to have lost interest in her.

Think, think. Kryptonian technology? Okay. He's using the heat from the lava to power it. How can I use that?

I stand up and, struggling against a dozen groping metal hands, throw myself at the wall. Not AT the engine—but the area right next to it. If I make this look good, he may stay distracted by Marcus.

“NO!” I scream. “I'm not Superman! This isn't my thing! I've just been born, I can't die! No! NOOOOO!!!!”

Centurion is visibly irritated at first, but then cracks a grin and keeps fighting. Either he understands what I'm doing, or just really thinks it's funny to see people suffer. I'd give it about even odds. The whole time I'm throwing my tantrum, I'm clawing and bashing away at the wall, as if I've lost my ability to fly and just really don't want to be here. Finally, a big chunk of the wall—and of the silty rock behind it—tumbles down into the chamber. I can see the massive waves overhead that are being caused by this machine, and don't want to think what it means for the people in the city above or around the world. Dammit, this better work.

I reach out with my telekinesis and bend the falling chunks of wall into a sort of makeshift waterslide, pointing at the engine. In the half-second it takes Henshaw to figure out what I'm doing, I have to be done with it already—or this was all a mistake. As soon as the slide is in place, I'm rushing in: I pound my entire body as hard as I can into the side of the engine.

The pain is immediate and almost impossible to describe. The lava is in my nose, in my ears... I feel like I'm going to pass out.

No, because if I pass out here, I'll die. This instant. And I'll have done no one any good.

I push trough it, and crash through to the other side of the engine, where I fall to the ground in my own smoking heap not entirely unlike the one Supergirl had made earlier. There's a dusty taste in my mouth—I think it's chunks of sand and molten rock—and it's merged with the coppery taste of my own blood, too. I heave up a mouthful of the disgusting, murky mess and wipe some more blood and lava off my face before I dare open my eyes again. My clothes are entirely gone now, and I've got burn marks and gashes all over me. The lava is pouring down the side of the hole I've just made, but more important...

...the engnie is making the most horrible noise I've ever heard.

Before the Cyborg can respond to what's happening, the water has rushed into the first hole I made, speed-cooling the lava and building up a deposit of rock inside the engine. I'm no engineer, I can't explain how it worked, but the bottom line is that in about two seconds I managed to make the big, scary engine into a big piece of metal with rocks in it.

Henshaw is howling. Literally, howling. Supergirl's still down, and I'm useless. Alpha Centurion is starting to tire and it's starting to feel mighty dangerous in here. I fight every urge to stay down and struggle to my feet, but once I'm there my legs are wobbly and I start to fall. Centurion joins me. With that helmet on, I hadn't noticed the blood smeared all over it until just now. He collapses, his energy blade retracting into his gauntlet as though it knows.

Henshaw picks me up by the neck, and I'm hanging there off his metal hand, naked and in pain. I try to reach out with my telekinesis, but all I manage to do is pull a few metal tendons in his cybernetic hand apart. Without Centurion or Supergirl to distract him, he keeps it together easily.

“Bastard kid,” Henshaw is ranting. “I can't believe you broke it—you were supposed to help! Superman helps people! This is exactly why I need to be Superman. You others—you Kryptonians, you aliens—you always fall short. You'll see. I'll be Superman now. I'll go back, I'll save my family and then we can be the Superman Family. And I'll make the world a better place to live.”

“Hey there, Tin Man!” I hear from the ground. Centurion is still bloody and beaten, but he's smiling. Supergirl is back in action now, shaking her head and standing unsteadily up, bracing herself against the destroyed engine shell for support.

“Centurion...” the Cyborg looks at Marcus on the ground, “have you got something to say to Superman?”

“Yeah, I got somethin'. Go Wolverines.”

“Wolverines?” Henshaw asks him—but I see what he's talking about. I don't know what the Hell it has to do with Wolverines, but I see it.

And I cover my head.

There's a deafening crash and the walls collapse as the biggest damn robot I've ever seen comes marching straight through it and plucks Henshaw's head off. The robot doesn't seem to have a head, but it's got arms and legs, feet and hands. It's enormous, and purple with a big green bird-looking seal on the front. It's vaguely familiar to me for some reason. Some kind of light emanates from the top of the robot, shining itself over Henshaw's head, and immediately I feel the body lose its grip on me. The Cyborg collapses, and I do too. A second later, a door opens in the front of the purple robot and a man steps down a set of stairs and onto the ground in front of it. While Centurion is helping me up, I recognize the big, black man descending from the robot as my man in the armor. Steel.

“Wolverines?” I ask him.

“I taught him some sports jargon. I went to Michigan. Played on the football team.”

OK. So it wasn't me. That really was a strange, random reference to everyone but them. “Well, that's fine then. I almost thought it was a strange thing for Alpha Centurion to say to the guy who had me by the throat.”

“Ahh,” Marcus says, walking over to Steel and clapping him on the back. “The old Statue of Liberty play!”

“Actually,” Steel grins, “I prefer to call this one Operation Black Steel.”

“Operation Black Steel?” Centurion chortled.

“Yeah, saw it in a cartoon once, thought it sounded cool.”

I had to interrupt. “You know, guys, I hate to be a negative Nancy here, but...what's to stop noggin-man over there from taking control of everything again and making us all dead?” I point at Henshaw's head, suspended above us in what seems to be a greenish tractor beam from the robot—there's something about it that I can't place, but you can just tell that he's still in there.

“Ahh, he's fine,” Steel says. “Kryptonian stasis of some kind. It's a low-level connection to a pocket dimension. From what I can see in Superman's documents, it's called the Phantom Zone. Might not be a bad place for our friend here—but if I increase the power on this beam, he'll vanish into it and I don't think we could get him out. I don't know that we even necessarily want that.”

“You lost me at Kryptonian stasis dimension. I guess if you say he's stuck, then I'll take your word for it. It just doesn't seem like the smartest idea in the world putting the guy who can control metal, in very close proximity to your giant machine-o'-death.”

“If John Henry here says he's fine, he's fine,” Alpha Centurion says. “Trust me, this is a man who doesn't take chances.”

It's cold and I'm starting to feel very stupid being naked while there's a gorgeous woman on one side of me and two jocks snapping metaphorical towels at each other's junk on the other. It seems like it's in terrible taste, but I lean down and steal the tights and boots off the Cyborg's body.

“Ya know, Kid, I'd give you an ‘ew’ for that, but I really think I'd rather see you with underwear on the outside than hanging out there for the whole world and this pretty blonde here to see,” Centurion says.

“Yeah, you and me both,” I tell him. “So what's next?”

“The funny thing is, we spent all that time last month teaching you about Clark—about the things that made him the man he was—and there's one thing you've never seen that you probably should have,” Steel says. “The place that was his connection to Krypton. I have to take Robo-Supes and the battle bot back there anyway, so why don't we stop by--”

***

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Fortress of Solitude, Antarctica

It takes longer to get to the Fortress than I expected—it's pretty well-hidden! No giant key that only Superman can lift outside the door or anything. Just a patch of ice that we literally have to break through in order to get to the place. I can't imagine finding it without the navigational computers onboard the Centurion's ship. Designed for space travel, there isn't much on Earth it can't find.

A strange little gold robot is skittering across the floor when we arrive in a huge, metal room the size of an aircraft hangar. There are computers everywhere, monitor banks against one wall and three more of the Kryptonian war suits that Steel had borrowed for the fight with Henshaw. At the center are three statues—a man and a woman in what I inexplicably recognize as traditional Kryptonian garb, and Superman. Not the robot, but the real Superman. The one I'm supposed to have been made from pieces of. I stand there, looking up at his stone face for a while. The Kryptonians appear serene but emotionless. Superman? He's... human. He's smiling. There's something special about that statue, and it seems like a shame that I know only a handful of people will ever see it.

While I'm looking up to Superman, the Centurion is nowhere to be seen. Supergirl is slumped in a chair, drinking bottled water, and Steel is talking to the little gold robot. After a minute or so of that, he gestures to the Kryptonian battle robot that's got Henshaw's head caught up in its tractor beam. Some silent (to me) gestures later, he's walking over to see me.

“You made it through your first knock-down, drag-out superhero fight, Kid,” Steel says with a smile. He's like Superman—like the statue. He always smiles when you don't expect it and there's something profoundly inspirational about his general demeanor.

The lights dim significantly all throughout the Fortress. John Henry stands calm, but the rest of us react with tension and panic, just out of habit. A small explosion of green light happens somewhere on the other side of a wall from us.

“What the Hell?” I say, but before I can finish the thought, the little gold robot appears around the corner, daintily placing Henhaw's cyborg skull at my feet.

“Hank Henshaw is no more,” the robot proclaims with all due drama.

“There wasn't another way?” Steel asks, his smile fading to concern and sadness.

“I assure you,” the little robot tells us, “he wouldn't have stopped until you were all dead.”

There's a moment of silence while that sinks in for all of us, and it's Supergirl who breaks it.

“You shouldn't wear his shield,” she says to me. “He perverted Superman's symbol. He disgraced everything that the ‘S’ on my chest, and John's, stands for. You shouldn't wear that shield.”

“Well, I don't know that I plan on wearing any shield,” I tell her, “But I didn't want to be naked. And given the climate around here, I'm kind of glad I opted for this choice!”

Her eyes seem to glow a bit—is she going to heat vision me for being a smartass?--no, it's something else. It's only a second in now, but my clothes are... changing.

So I look down and see that the shield on my chest is the more “traditional” one—all red and yellow, without the black or the distorted coloring that Henshaw used. In my case, though, it's attached to the cape over my shoulders so that instead of tucking the cape into my neck, it should slip on and off over my head. That should mitigate the possibility that a villain who's seen too many cartoons will swing me around by it. There's black in my costume, though. The outside “edges” of my body, including the arms and a good portion of the legs, are blue. The rest, though, coming out from the center of my chest, is black. It feels strange, having this costume on. It feels... well, maybe I'll think about that later. Right now I'm mostly thinking of how hard it is to hide your, er, excitement at a girl as good-looking as Supergirl is when you're wearing nothing but tights. I pick up the Cyborg's skull and use my tactile telekinesis to blow it apart into as many pieces as I could. Tiny pieces fall to the ground, shards of metal. The lens from his robot eye falls to the ground as one piece and then shatters too.

He'll be back. That's how these crazy bastards work. He'll be back, and next time he may blow up a whole city before I can stop him.

Heh. So I plan on stopping him. Good to know. I turn around.

“So I don't suppose there's anything to eat here in the Fortress, is there, John?”

“Not really, no,” Steel answers, the smile coming back. “But there's always Planet Krypton.”

“Planet Krypton?” I scoff.

“It's a restaurant. Superhero theme. A friend of mine—well, I hesitate to call him a friend, but a guy I know—he owns it. Claims he's a big-time superhero from the future, but Doomsday tore through him. He lost his powers. Decided to get into a safer line of work, and started up a restaurant. I contributed my first hammer to add to the 'ambiance’.”

“The place sounds dreadful,” I tell him. “Can the superhero washout cook?”

Fini