seriousfic

Title: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,274
Characters/Pairings: Superman, Supergirl, Lois Lane, Richard White, Lex Luthor, General Zod,
Previous Part: 30
Next Part: 32
Summary: The scariest thing about General Zod is that he’s not the worst thing out there.

Barbara had never recalled being quite so terrified in her mother’s presence. She sat primly, back straight as a ruler, watching Sarah Gordon sip a martini. She herself had a cup of tea, which she didn’t dare drink.

Dick had not arrived.

“You know, Dick’s the only person in the world who can do a quadruple somersault.

“Is that so?” Sarah said, trying and succeeding in sounding pleased.

”Yes, he’s very athletic!”

Sarah drank her martini.

All of a sudden Gordon burst out of the bedroom, strapping his bulletproof vest on, cell phone clenched against his ear. “Yeah, Harv, as soon as you can… I know he was your friend, but I need you and my family to be safe. I have a feeling things are about to get really bad in Gotham.” He shuffled the phone into his pocket and grabbed for his jacket.

“Jim, what’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

“Nothing. Probably just nothing. Stay indoors. Dent’s going to come by soon, let him in and no one else.” Gordon headed for the door. “And sorry I missed out on meeting your boyfriend.”

“He’ll still be around tomorrow,” Barbara consoled.

Gordon offered her a weak smile and closed the door behind himself.

***

Kara was speechless. Her father was back, exactly as she remembered her before the Science Council had banished him. The same tears now came to her eyes. But he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at Kal-El, and Kal-El was saying…

“General, listen to me. We’re the last of the Kryptonians. I’ve seen our world. I’ve seen all that’s left of it. We are all that remains. We can see to it that Krypton’s remembered as the great civilization it was. We can live in peace with the humans, they must accept us!”

Yes, Kara nodded, they could be a family.

“You are your father’s son,” Zod said dismissively. “All your heroics and all your compassion… and Earth is worse off than when you came here. Jor-El was wrong. This race can never be great. They will be forever at each others’ throats, only the weapons ever changing.”

“You’re wrong.” Kal looked at her. “Kara, don’t listen to him! Mankind is changing!”

“I…”

“Not anymore. Can’t you hear the stars going out? Or can you not recognize the fear dripping down your spine? Doomsday is coming.”

Kal-El jerked forward. “How do I stop it?”

”Die.”

***

Lois’s nails dug into Richard’s arm as he let the speedometer needle drift down to sixty. With each blow the radio reported, Lois had subconsciously pressed his foot down on the gas. Now the GPS had them almost on top of Luthor’s off-the-books mountain facility.

Lois had spent the last year trying to ferret out what Luthor was hiding there. Now that she knew, she wished she’d never heard of it.

The front gate was around the next bend. “Stop the car,” she told Richard, and the mini-van squealed to a halt. Last time she’d been doing this it was Jimmy and a Hummer. She’d never have thought there’d be a day she hated being thrust into those sort of circumstances. Yet here she was, back in action and hating every minute of it.

She got out of the minivan. Slammed the door. “You know what to do.”

The mountain facility’s primary protection was secrecy. There was only one rent-a-cop guarding the front gate. Richard drove up to him and presented the guard with a forged security card. It didn’t check out, obviously. While the guard and Richard debated, Lois looped around, picked the lock on the guard shack, and jammed a pistol into the guard’s back.

“Break time.”

***

Kara listened in horror as the words of her father, as distorted as his metallic flesh, spilled out of a sneering mouth. “You never did honor your heritage, Kal-El. Turning your family crest into that brightly-colored theme park logo. Your father would be ashamed of you. Did you ever learn that Kryptonian technology can do more than incorporate water into it? It can assimilate primitive technology as well.” He laid his hands on a parked car. “Thusly.”

Crystals shot out of his palms and into the car, causing it to metastasize into a pair of larger arms – artillery pieces. Zod blasted Superman through a department store window.

“Corben’s thinking was so limited. I gave him the technology of a god and he used it to throw punches.” Zod smashed his fist into a pick-up truck, which reformed into a gargantuan Vulcan cannon. The front of the department store was shredded as Zod opened fire.

“Father, no!” Kara pulled at Zod’s arm. “He’s not your enemy!”

“My darling girl…” He shoved her aside. “He has infected you with his weakness. I’ll wring it out of you like water from cloth – but later.”

Superman crashed into Zod feetfirst, grabbing the machine-gun arm. He held Zod down with his feet and ripped it off. “There’s not going to be a later.” He swung it into Zod’s face…

Where it stuck and was sucked back into his metal body. “You’re not fighting a man, Kal-El. You’re fighting metal.” His arms extended, wrapped around Superman repeatedly. They began to grind closed like a trash compactor. “Hard. Unyielding. Like the million years or Kryptonian pedigree, a chain that has never been broken!”

Kara’s heatvision lasered through the restrains. “Krypton is dead, father! We can’t—“

“You try my patience, little one.” He backhanded her through three buildings with his Kryptonite claws. “Stay down.”

Zod turned to Superman. The hero gasped for breath. Zod stepped on his throat. “For all your strengths, you forget that I was the greatest warrior on Krypton!”

“And you forget that it’s 7:16 AM.”

“Oh? And what happens then?”

“Sunrise.”

Zod turned eastward to see the sun rising, illuminating shimmering glass, asphalt streets… and Kal-El’s swelling family crest. “Great Rao.”

“And as for being the greatest warrior on Krypton.” He reached up. Took hold of Zod’s leg. Broke it off. “We’re not on Krypton.”

Zod tried to throw a punch, but Superman blurred to the side, grabbed his wrist, elbowed him so hard Zod separated from his outstretched arm.

”I’ll take you apart piece by rusty piece, general.”

Zod spread his diminished mass into two arms and two legs, giving his metal form an emaciated look as he stood in the middle of the street. “I must confess to an oversight of mine last time. These humans do have some potential. I find one of their proverbs particularly suited to the occasion.”

His body exploded into a thousand metal snakes. Superman fried as many as he could, but all too many slithered into abandoned cars and motorcycles. One sidewinded into an electronics store and emerged a skull as big as a tank. It topped the writhing pile of barrel-thick slugs, which became the tendons and bones of a sixty-foot-tall of skinless chrome destruction.

“I am become death, destroyer of worlds!”

***

Luthor reacted to having a gun shoved in his face with surprising élan. “Ms. Lane, you are aware trespassing is a felony? As is assault?”

“So’s murder.” She pressed the muzzle against his bald scalp. “You wouldn’t let Metallo run free without a leash. Where’s your failsafe?”

Lex rolled his eyes over to Richard. “Mr. White, your fiancé is throwing her career and her freedom away based on a paranoid delusion. Are you going to stand there and do nothing?”

Richard’s arms were firmly folded. “No. I’ll help if she asks me.”

“Rich, break his arm.”

“With pleasure.”

Lex backed up against the wall. “Lay one finger on me and I’ll sue you for every cent you’re worth!”

Richard put a single finger on the lapel of Luthor’s shirt. And smiled.

“Well, I can see there’s no point reasoning with you. In there,” he nodded to a door. “And kiss Jason’s college education goodbye.”

“Yeah, about Jason…” Lois shot him in the leg. “He says hi.”

“You shot me!”

“Couldn’t have you running away. Richard, watch him.” Gun held firmly in hand, Lois toed the door open.

“Miss Lane, Miss Lane, Miss Lane,” Zod admonished, three electrodes glaring brilliantly in triangular formation on his balding head. “You’ve arrived just in time for the story of the year. The Death of Superman.”

***

Superman burst through Zod’s chest, leaving a heatvision-catarized hole big enough for a car to drive through. In a half-second he was turned around and attacking again, ramming himself through the monster’s shoulder. But with each step, Zod pulverized a vehicle and added it to his body. For every ton Superman carved out, Zod grew exponentially.

“Your pet is here, Kal-El. Is there a message you’d like to pass on to Miss Lane before I send you to join Jor-El?”

Superman flew up. Jammed his fist through Zod’s lower mandible and pulled his jaw away like a hunk of warm bread. Zod’s teeth grew into a dagger-edged deathshead grin. Pure Kryptonite radiation charged up with ever erg Zod could store, burst from the colossus’s wrecking-ball eyes. Superman was smote across the street in a crater so deep sewer water coursed into it.

Zod wasn’t satisfied. He brought a bus-sized foot down on Superman. Began to grind him under his heel.

“As unabashedly sentimental as it is, I think I really will enjoy watching you die.”

***

“I can feel his heartbeat slowing! He cannot breathe! He cannot!” Zod cried in ecstasy.

Lois racked the slide. “Let him go!”

“Or you’ll shoot me, little human? Please. Were I you, I’d be more thoughtful in your action toward Zod. You have a son. He’ll be growing up in my new world.”

Lois pulled the trigger. A bullet caved in Zod’s forehead and exploded the back of his head. The shattered interface gave off a mournful spark, then Zod tumbled out of his chair. He fell on his side, breath held as if for a high note, then it slowly leaked out. His eyes closed. He began to twitch.

Lois lowered the pistol. “You’re never getting near my son.”

***

A cheer went up as Superman stood, lifting the foot off him, but it changed into confusion as the giant robot crumbled. It was falling apart even as Superman pushed it over, and when it landed it shattered into a sea of half-digested auto parts. The only thing recognizable among the scrap metal was the original Metallo, the light going out of its eyes.

Superman walked up to it. Kara flew down to join him.

“Kal-El? Where am I? It’s dark here. And very cold…”

Kara took his hand. “I’m here, father!”

“Kara? I can’t see you. Where…?”

“I’m holding your hand.” Kara looked down, but it was already turning to dust.

“Kara… he’s gone.” Kal put his hands on her shoulders. “Say goodbye.”

“Kal-El! You are the superior survivor. The last son of Krypton. Take care of my daughter. But beware. You are not alone… Krypton’s destroyer is coming to finish the job. Let’s see how much your morals are worth now that it’s your world that’s doomed.”

“Don’t leave.” Kara cradled Zod’s head, the last remnant of his deserting body. “Daddy…”

“Kara, I did it all for you.”

***

“I was so close, wasn’t I?” Lex was near tears, but it was probably just the leg. “Next time. I swear to you, there will be a next time.”

Superman ignored him for the moment. Tracing Zod’s signal back to its source had been easy once he found the right spectrum. He’d left Kara to her tears and gone to Lois, only to find a smoking gun next to a corpse. She was in Richard’s arms. That was only fitting.

As quickly as possible he extracted the bullet and bandaged Lex’s wound. The criminal looked more mortal than ever, pale and shivering from blood loss.

“Why can’t you just die like the rest of your filthy race?”

“I have work to do,” Superman answered obviously. “You’re under arrest.”

“That’s alright. When doomsday comes, any seat is in the front row. Zod and I made a deal with the devil, and the devil always collects.”

Superman heard a series of cracks, growing louder and louder, until Kara broke through onto his level. Her hands were still stained with dissolved Metallo.

“Someone in this room is a murderer. I have words for that person.”

Superman stepped between her and Lois. “Kara, it’s over.”

“Nothing is over!” She forced herself to swallow her anger. “A crime has been committed. The guilty must be punished. You taught me that.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“He was my father! Your fellow Kryptonian! Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care. But there are bigger things—”

“Like your precious humans!” Kara screamed and punched the wall, rattling the entire complex. “Is there any atrocity of their devising you won’t condone? You save them time and time again so they can go on killing each other! When are you going to stop being their apologist and start being their savior?”

He took her by the shoulders. “It’s not my place to save them. They have to save themselves.”

Kara rested a hand on his chest before pushing him away. “They can’t.”

She erupted through the ceiling. Superman took off, stopping a few feet above the ground.

“Lois, will you be alright?”

She held onto Richard a little tighter. “I always am.”

He shot after Kara. Stopped a mile up as if he’d hit an invisible wall. In expanding his hearing to find Kara, he’d found a news report. The only thing strong enough to pull him back to Earth.

Bruce Wayne was dead.