Action Comics #18: "Doomsdays, Part One of Three"

Clark Kent gurgled as his pain worsened and his wounds burned. He’d never experienced pain like this. Kryptonite? Of course that was painful, but he had never really understood the pain of humanity. Or the pain of being a human as bullets tear through your chest. That was a downer, especially for someone who once was referred to by the media as the ‘Man of Steel’. He seized in the back of the ambulance, and gripped the side of the bed, as a wave of pain wracked his body. He had once believed himself to be human. Sure, he didn’t feel pain when the Sun was shining bright, but as a child he had stubbed his toe, he had bruised his ankle and cut his knee. He had nearly drowned in Crater Lake, and he remembered clearly how Lana had to save him. But as he later discovered, this was his first exposure to the ‘meteor rocks’ that he eventually discovered were fragments of his dead planet. Kryptonite. He felt another wave of agony coming. He didn’t welcome it.

“Don’t worry chum,” a voice whispered, “we’re getting you help.”

He turned his head, and smiled as he saw the grin of a familiar face, clad in black and grey. “B-Bruce?”

“Don’t worry, Kal!” Another voice, feminine, strong, beautiful. “We brought something to help!” Diana. “This won’t hurt one bit!” She held the Purple Ray and flicked a switch, and with a swirl of light he was complete! He rose up out of the bed, his wounds healing themselves, bullets popping out of his body as his biochemical aura returned! He stood, looked at Lois who sat weeping and smiled, then took her by the hand, lifted up and--

He coughed blood and grit his teeth. Lois held his hand as he lay in the bed, the ambulance rushing through traffic. “C-Clark? Help is nearly… Help is…” She sobbed, and clutched his dirty, grimy hand tightly. “Don’t leave me.”

“Sorry… Lois…” He drifted away from the pain, and welcomed the darkness. “So… sorry…”

“This is insane!” howled Hunter, fiddling with the inner mechanics of his craft, “how can my archives me incomplete? This is… Wait…”

“Rip Hunter, eh?” muttered Alfred. “Is that your real name, sir?”

Rip turned from the controls of his time ship, wires exposed and clippers in hand. “Rip Hunter? Sometimes I think it is, but no. It’s not. I had to change my name throughout history to prevent--”

“Villains from travelling to the past and removing you from the board?”

“Exactly,” nodded Hunter, splicing two wires together, and watching numbers run down his screen like rain. “Exactly.”

“Can I help you in any way?” inquired Alfred Pennyworth, resisting the urge to grab the hose and spraying down the dirt encrusted sphere before him.

“Umm… You could grab that hose and give my old baby a wash down…” he smiled and winked. “If you want, that is.”

“How is that…” Pennyworth paused. “How did you do that?”

“Time travel, my friend, time travel.” He vanished from sight for a moment, delving inside the inner working of his ship, and grabbed a long, insect-like device from inside a compartment of the circuitry. “What the hell is this?”

“It doesn’t look pleasant, I can tell you that, sir.”

“It doesn’t belong here. Looks… Oh come on, it looks evil. It looks like an evil time disruption device. But this technology…”

“What are you thinking, sir?”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” grunted Hunter, sealing the sphere and powering up the time engine. “A minute.”

Metropolis Mercy General:

Lois sat outside the surgery as they operated. She had been waiting for what had seemed hours, and she was still crying. Steve Lombard sat beside her, a kind hand on her shoulder. Ron was emailing to Perry, writing the story as it unfolded on his laptop, sending in drafts to the Editor-In-Chief and receiving corrections almost instantaneously from him. Perry was waiting anxiously at his desk, the other members of the bullpen crowding round his door as he stared at the phone.

“Chief?” The reporters cringed as Jimmy Olsen arrived by his door, ready for another shouting match to begin.

“Olsen,” started White, something blazing in his eye. The other began to back out, but then they realised what it was, hiding behind the eyes of Perry White. It wasn’t rage, or anger, but fear, fear at the loss of a friend’s life, a friend who Perry almost considered a son of sorts. “What you got for me?”

“It’s big,” came the reply from Jimmy, as he took out a memory stick. “Just like we imagined.” He paused. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Kent…”

“CK? What’s happened?!”

“He’s been shot.”

The colour drained from Jimmy’s face, “C- CK?”

They were outnumbered. Outgunned. A man in a green beret at the front of the group of soldiers raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “The call has been made.”

“GO!” shouted Harper, diving at the soldiers, shield raised. A horde of men in black armour scattered as he barrelled into them, his golden shield glistening in the spotlight. He grit his teeth, his enhanced strength straining against the immense mass behind the shield, and then he pushed a group into the van, spinning around as he did that and kicking another attacker in the face, before picking up an electric truncheon from one of the men’s hands. They weren’t heavily armed, not believing the golden Guardian would put up any kind of fight, but they were wrong. So very wrong. He jammed the weapon into the ribs of one of the men. It didn’t even faze him. So he slammed it in his face and dove back, his shield tight in his hand.

“So brute force is the only answer?”

No reply.

“Well, I wouldn’t have it any other WAY!” He dove into a massive group of the men, not aware of his friend’s plights.

Caesar was weaving spells, faster than ever. He turned electricity into dust., but suddenly the armoured men stopped attacking him. Why? He smiled. He had scared them, blatantly. Then he heard the muttering. What was that? Hebrew? He span around and saw a group of urbane looking magicians with books open. So the government was employing mystics now? Amateurs. He smiled. What were they doing? He could turn the pages into water, the bindings into snakes. He began to whisper himself, moving his hands in a swift arcane movement, but suddenly the world rumbled, and something formed from the concrete below their feet. What the hell was going on?

“Emet.” The lead sorcerer took a strange looking wand and pointed it at the shapeless mass, and the word burned brightly onto it, until the shape became a living mass, inanimate becoming alive, a living Golem!

“Oh, you have got to--” Caesar didn’t get to finish his sentence before he was swatted across the harbour, toward the pier. “--Uhhff--”

“Destroy.” Whispered the sorcerers.

Meanwhile:

Something was in the air. It slowed him down, but what? He didn’t know. It hurt to think. He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn’t carry, “J-Jim,” he managed, but no one heard. He looked to the lifeless Caesar, “C-Caesar,” he muttered, but he was getting breathless. What was this? He turned to Steel, who was getting pummelled by energy fire, and he could see the metal of his armour beginning to melt… They were heroes! They were losing! How is this… How was… He was down with one shot. His biological solar energy reserves sapped in an instant, the result instant pain. His skin was burning and his uniform was scorched. He winced as he saw a man approach him. Caesar was battling strange golems, Steel massive robots, and the Guardian was lost in a horde of the armoured agents. “We have a New God in custody. We studied. We waited. We built. And now we have it. A defence,” he raised the energy weapon at Lightray, his skin pale and his hair limp. “A weapon.”

“Y-You will never win.”

“That’s what Gravyen said. Before we dissected him.”

“Gravyen?!” Bastard son of Darkseid? Lost during the Apokolips War on Earth, could they, the humans, could they have ended his threat? Is that a good thing? Or is it… Thoughts exploded in his mind like bursts of light. But something was still slowing his movements! Something was binding him down!

“Do you know what Radion is, Sollis?”

Radion. Of course Lightray knew. It was legendary, the only element... His eyes widened as he saw the glow of theenergy weapon. “By… Highfather!”

“Yes, Gravyen told us the legends too. Radion, the only element that can kill a New God, and we’ve just released particles of it into the immediate area… Your wings have been clipped!”

“AND YOU TALK TOO MUCH!” A loud voice shouted, as the taunting official was swatted into the side of a building, and crumpled into unconsciousness. Lightray turned to see a battered and bruised Caesar behind the Golem, and behind them, the sorcerers that summoned it lying unconscious in a heap. “Silly little man!” Caesar smiled, “you think I don’t know how to twist the strings that control a Golem?” He rubbed blood from the side of his nose. “Though it did take some extreme measures to make me remember…” He shrugged. “Let’s help the others!”

The Hall of Justice:

Meeting Room:

Batman punched the palm of his hand, and looked around to the other Justice Leaguers present, and then stood up with a start. “I don’t like this, we should be doing something more than sitting around!”

Wonder Woman placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder, and nodded slowly. The Flash was the first one to speak. “McNider and Caulder are the best metahuman physicians known to man, Bruce. We’ve got to trust them.”

“I do trust them, but we’ve finally found Superman and now this? Shot. Through the chest.” Batman turned to the Martian Manhunter. “Is the shooter still in custody?”

J’onn nodded. “The MCU is keeping up posted.”

“I don’t like this, friends.” Diana fiddled with her lasso as she spoke. “Someone has gone to great lengths to hide Kal’s whereabouts from us, and now we have found him… It stinks of a trap.”

The Atom shrugged. “We’ve been looking for a Superman, Diana. A Kryptonian. You’ve seen his DNA, it’s a mess. None of our instruments could have detected what was going on inside his body.”

“True…” She paused. “Maybe he was hiding himself?” Wonder Woman looked around. “Maybe he was ashamed to confront us with the fact that he no longer had his powers.”

“Excuse me?” Batman looked at the Queen of Themyscira and scowled. “What do you mean?”

“Kal is the best of us, and maybe… The proudest.” Green Lantern smirked slightly, but didn’t interrupt. “He lost his powers, and now--”

"Kal is not..." started Hal, "Superman wouldn't do that. So don't--"

“Justice League.” A hollow voice filled the room.

The Atom turned “What is that?”

“Transmission.” Green Lantern hurried over to the Monitor wall, but the Flash beat him to it. “From…”

Barry turned to Hal, attempting to verify his findings. “Is that right?”

Green Lantern’s ring sparked and fizzled, and then died down. “Yes.”

Batman tensed, and walked toward the other heroes. “What is it?”

“A transmission from the Fortress of Solitude.”

“Justice League of Earth.” The words were spat out, disgusted. But the voice… Like a monster.

“Who is that?”

The screens all turned black on the monitor wall. Then they began to flicker alive with a mass… A grey and horrendous mass, that slowly came into view. Green LAntern was the first to speak. “What is that ugly monstrosity?”

Wonder Woman grimaced. “Kru-El.”

Batman nodded. “Doomsday.”

“I hear my dear brother is incapacitated.” Growled the voice.

The Flash nudged Green Lantern. “When did he get so eloquent?”

The Atom grimaced and began to type on the computer. “More importantly, how did he know about Superman?”

The Martian Manhunter began to follow The Atom’s lead, and began checking the computer systems.

Batman pressed a button on his belt and pulled a scanner from a pouch. His eyes turned to slits. “We’ve been hacked by a superior technology. Kryptonian. When did Kru-El get so damn intelligent?”

“I adapted, little human.” Kru-El. Bastard brother of Kal-El. Disowned son of Jor-El. Hound of General Zod. Captured by Lex Luthor. Traded to Darkseid. Mutated into this. “And now I have something to ask of you.”

“You of all people are in no position to ask anything of us?” Wonder Woman growled, her fists clenched.

“How much do you value your Earth? Or my brother?”

Batman grimaced. “What do you mean?”

“My brother is a husk. His body destroyed by radiation.”

The Atom turned to Green Lantern. “(Radiation? What kind of… Red sun radiation!)” The hero hurried out of the room to McNider and Caulder.

“If you want the cure to my brother’s ailment…” Doomsday smiled, massive chunks of bone around his mouth, grey skin stretching to form an inhuman grin. “You need me. My blood. My blood is stronger than any known substance on your Earth. Able to cure any ailment Kryptonian in nature. You must come here. And take it from me.”

Green Lantern pointed his ringed finger at the view screens. “What is this?”

“I’m challenging you, little Justice League of Earth… To a battle. To the death.”

Wonder Woman’s eyes widened. “Hera…”

Guardian flattened himself as much as he could against the abandoned patrol car. Bullets from the MPD and the SCU smashed into the wrecked vehicle and cut up the pavement around it.

A little man dressed all in black stood in the middle of the street directing the officer’s torrent of bullets toward the pinned hero. “C’mon out Guardian! Your buddies want to play! Don’t you want to play with them?” shrieked Crowley above the din of the gunfire.

Ping, K-Pow, Vree, P-Tang, The whizzing bullets almost sounded musical, in fact, Harper, could hear a pattern. Some officers were reloading and some were firing at a different rate. Harper listened for the opening. There! He sprang out from behind the now almost skeletal patrol car, and ran for a nearby alley.

Crowley was mind controlling over a dozen men and women, his focus was broad and his aim not to good. Guardian weaved and somersaulted, picking the pattern of the shots, taking the ones that couldn’t be avoided on his shield. Tang! Speow! The lead careened off the metal.

Harper dove for the alley, the bullets tearing up the bricks behind him.

“NO”, Crowley screamed. The officers, the SCU, all fell abruptly silent and dropped where they were standing. The telepathic villain reached out his mind into the nearby buildings and homes. There, petrified and shaking behind his front door, watching the scene unfold outside his ramshackle apartment, was Mark Altizer. Mark suddenly felt his mind go numb and he no longer had control over his malleable plastic-like body. “Perfect.” Crowley grinned.

“This is your last warning! Release the Guardian!” The crystal device she was encased in absorbed Maggie’s voice and amplified it to the outside.

Crowley released his hold on Mark and his elastic body snapped back to it's human shape and he passed out, the poor metahuman’s brain overloaded from Crowley occupying it.

Guardian slumped to the ground, coughing as he tried to pull air back into his lungs. Each breath caused his cracked rib to radiate his chest with pain.

Crawley stepped out from his hiding place and into the street.

The giant crystalline robot peered down at Guardian and spoke with Maggie’s voice. “Harper, are you all right? Harper?”

Guardian looked up and blinked his eyes to clear the pain. “Captain?”

“It’s me, Jim.” Maggie used the robot sensors to scan his vitals. She saw the extent of his injuries, his cracked rib. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. You’re hurt.”

“Where did that come from?” Guardian asked between ragged breaths.

“A little gift from Mr. Irons and a mutual Kryptonian friend of ours," even in the chaos, he could tell she was smiling, "I’m taking it out for a little test drive.”

“Ugnh, Maggie you’ve got to get that out of here, if Mind Buster gets inside you while . . .”

“Too late blue boy!” Crowley jumped up onto the roof from the fire escape. He reached out his mind and touched Maggie's.

The villain screamed and hugged his arms around his head, teetering back toward the edge of the roof, and the Guardian looked on in wonderment.

John Henry Irons was no newcomer to the hero game and had tried to anticipate every battle situation. This included what he called a 'redundant bio-feedback' circuit. If the robot were to encounter thought waves other than the operators, they would be rerouted to a separate circuit and then back out along the incoming transmission. The robot shivered slightly while matching Crowley’s frequency. The result? Crowley was in agony.

"NO!" The Guardian leapt for the villain as he disappeared over the edge of the building. Harper grabbed Crowley's ankle and swiveled himself around underneath him. "Dammit!"

Crowley stood facing the robot as people began to flow to him from nearby apartment buildings and alleyways. Some had powers, some did not. The officers again became pawns of Crowley and began to fire their weapons. Shots bounced off the crystalline hull of the robot. Some back into the crowd. Maggie began to back away. Bolts of energy shot out from dozens of hands, striking the robot in the chest and causing it to falter backwards.

Some people began to fly upwards toward the robot. Inside, Maggie watched on the monitor screens. The robot's systems were already dealing with some of the damage caused by the energy blasts. Maggie did not want to open fire on these people; they were after all being controlled, she knew that. Little green reticules popped up on the monitors over the people that were flying towards her.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard in front of her.

Weapons system retargeting. Maggie heard in her head. The little green reticules blinked out and one larger one reappeared over Crowley.

Maggie’s finger hesitated over the fire button. People were beginning to swarm around Crowley. “Damn” she swore. Still, she knew that if she didn’t take the shot more innocent people would die.

The robot shuddered. The people outside were hitting it.

“MIND-EATER”! Maggie heard a shout. Harper stood behind Crowley and his crescent shaped barricade of people.

Crowley turned. “NO, it can’t be! Why won’t you die! I don’t know why I can’t get into your mind Guardian but I won’t have to because my slaves are going to tear it from your skull”!

Guardian was battered and cut, streaks of blood trickled down his body. Crowley’s mind controlled army began to march toward him.

Jim Harper reached behind him, stuck into the strap that usually held his shield was Belle Jackson’s Microwave rod.

Jim pointed the rod toward Crowley and said. “This is for Belle.”

The rod fired and Crowley felt nothing, for about a second.

The waves passed through his body vibrating at 2.5 billion times per second. His blood began to boil. His brain shut down, and Crowley collapsed to the street. His puppet army fell as well. Freed of his mind control, their brains shut down, to rest.

The walls of Styker’s Island held some of the most notorious Metahuman prisoners the world had ever seen. And now Lucian Crowley could count himself among those infamous individuals.

“Still no response?” The young doctor, asked.

The attending nurse completed Lucian’s sponge bath. “No sir, no response. How long has it been?”

The young doctor absent-mindedly studied the medical chart. “Almost two weeks now, but I think we’ll start to see some improvement soon.”

The nurse smoothed Lucian’s pillow. “You’re new here aren’t you? I’m Margaret Nelson.” The young Doctor smiled at the pretty nurse.

“Oh yes, I am new here. I hope I can do some of my best work within these walls. I’m pleased to meet you Margaret. My name is Dee, Dr. John Dee.”