Zatanna #3

Shortly after her mother’s death, the young Zatanna Zatara had tried conjuring up a copy of her mother, but, no matter how close the copy seemed, it was never quite the same. Some things were irreplaceable, or so she had thought at the time, but now as she walked into the kitchen, and smelt those familiar breakfast spells, and saw her mother standing there, she wasn’t quite so sure.

“I heard you had quite a night,” said Sindella, struggling to suppress a smile. “All those sorcerers are still trying to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo City Hall back together.”

“Well, Tamara turned up,” said Zatanna, amused that she now found herself feeling like a naughty child, as she explained the events of last night to her mother. “You don’t know what she’s like, moth-... Sindella. She held me prisoner for a year, and I think she’s behind this weird movie spell that’s plaguing me, and now she turns up on this world of yours and expects us to be friends.”

“So, you tried to kill her?” reproached Sindella.

“She deserved it,” said Zee, deadly serious, as she sat down to the breakfast in front of her. “If those other mages hadn’t stopped us, I would have done. Still, I’ve had time to think about it. I don’t want to kill her now...”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I want to kill her later,” continued Zee, staring at her knife. “First, though, she might be able to help me find my father... our father. After that, she’s expendable.”

Sindella looked at the girl before her, full of hatred for her half-sister, and struggled to find the right words. Zee, lost in her own thoughts, finished the last of the breakfast.

“She’s here,” said Sindella. “She’s with the others outside, waiting for you.”

Zee looked at her mother from another world, and realized, that if she looked at her much longer, she would never be able to leave. “I better get going. I need to rescue my father from those Kryptonians... then I’ll be back.”

“I’m sure you will,” replied Sindella, following the girl who, in another lifetime, would have been her daughter, out to meet the others.

As Zee got outside, she knew that the movie spell had once again taken effect, as she saw before her seven horses, and, sitting on some of them, her motley band of companions - Kid Eternity, a boy who could summon heroes with his magic word; John Constantine, this world’s version of her ex-boyfriend, with flames covering half his body; Joe, the son of this world’s late hero Superman; and there, at the front, Tamara sat, her cowboy hat pushed back, and a grin on her face.

“So, sister, we better get movin’ if we’re to get to Metropolis in time.”

Zee didn’t answer, resolutely ignoring Tamara, but instead just said her goodbyes to Sindella, as the Elmer Bernstein music started to play in the background, and then she started to saddle up, as Basil leapt to another vacant horse.

“Remember,” shouted Sindella, “once you’re outside of Smallville, you’re no longer protected from the Kryptonians, so don’t do any magic or they’ll find you.”

Tamara looked over at her boyfriend, John Constantine, in dismay. “No more magic,” she said in disgust. “I guess this is my last chance then.” And with that she waved her fingers, and the horses magically turned into Harleys, and the sounds of Bernstein were suddenly replaced with Steppenwolf.

Zatanna frowned, as an alarmed Basil leapt back across to her, but that was soon forgotten as she heard her mother’s shout over the roar of her engines, and a smile came to Zee’s face and a tear to her eye.

“Good luck, daughter.”

Elsewhere, high above Metropolis, Ennio Morricone music began to play as a magician walked into a sparsely-decorated room.

Two men sat at a table, but on seeing the man walking in, they leaped to their feet and stared at him, ready in case of his magic. They knew that here, due to a protective spell, harmful magic couldn’t affect them, but that was only thanks to the gaunt figure standing before them.

The magician stood there, his eyes staring between one pair of Kryptonian eyes and then another. Their eyes were glowing red, but he waited, and waited, and finally their eyes returned to their normal color.

“What is it, old man?” Zod finally asked the magician, his lips not quite in sync with his dubbed voice.

There was another silence, one that stretched on for seconds and then minutes as they all continued staring at each other, none of them blinking.

Suddenly Jax-Ur’s newly-acquired Mexican accent broke the silence. “Zod doesn’t like to ask twice,” he growled, and then, accompanied by a spit, he added the derisory word, “Magician”.

As the silence returned, and harsh yellow sunlight started to pour into the room, a single trickle of sweat appeared on the magician’s forehead, and then began to trickle down his face, and finally he said the word he had to say, “Magic.”

Jax-Ur burst out laughing. Magic? It had to be a joke. When was the last time that magic had been a problem? And then he saw the look on the magician’s face and the laughter stopped.

“Magic?” asked Zod, ignoring his fellow Kryptonian, Jax-Ur, and taking a step forward toward the magician. “Where? Who? Show me.”

And then the magician said his spell - both of the Kryptonians listening to his every syllable in case he tried to betray them - and suddenly an image appeared before them of a group of young people with motorbikes who’d just appeared in Central City, but, like the magician, the Kryptonians’ attention was solely focused on one face.

“So much like his grandfather,” said Zod, as his mind recalled events from long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Meanwhile, in Central City, Tamara was in the middle of screaming profanities at Zatanna, who’d just inadvertently alerted the Kryptonians to their presence.

Zee, wishing to avoid killing her half-sister for the time being, just bit her tongue, trying to ignore Tamara, and instead stared around at her surroundings, trying to figure a way out of their predicament.

As her eyes looked at the faces of her other companions, most of them as scared as she was, she noticed that they were watching the skies that were suddenly becoming filled with specks of gray.

Tamara suddenly stopped her tirade against Zee, and also looked up to see the black-clad figures congregating there. “Great, they’re coming for us.”

Zee looked at the fear in the faces of John Constantine and Joe, a sharp contrast to the carefree, slightly bemused look on the face of Kid Eternity, and the smile on the face of Tamara, who, although outnumbered, was determined not to go down without a fight. Zee then looked over to the statue to their left - a monument to the Flash, a hero who’d died on this world back in 1961 - and was reminded that on this world heroes did die and they never came back.

“Welcome to Central City,” she mumbled to herself, as the Kryptonians came closer and closer to them, smashing through Tamara’s defenses, and then, thinking about the Flash, a thought came to Zatanna’s mind. “Maybe we can outrun them,” she said, looking at Joe.

“But they’re Kryptonians as well,” he pointed out matter-of-factly, his eyes still looking at the Kryptonians, coming towards them faster and faster, their eyes starting to blaze, and Joe wondered how many seconds they had left.

“Well, we’ll obviously need a head start,” she said, although she could barely be heard through the sound of Kryptonian screams as Tamara used her magic to lash out at as many of their attackers as she could, exploiting their weakness. “tropsnarT su ot oleloT,” screamed Zatanna, noticing the Kryptonian fists flying straight towards her face.

Suddenly, those fists were no more as Zee and her companions found that their surroundings had changed.

“Holy Toledo,” said John Constantine, mopping his fiery brow. “Glad to be out of there.”

“Just when I was starting to have fun,” said Tamara, a glint in her eye. “We could have taken them together, Sis. You know we could.”

Zatanna frowned, because she knew her half-sister was right. If Zee could eradicate her world of Bizarros, then ridding this world of Kryptonians would just be a matter of some carefully chosen words... but Zatanna wasn’t ready to say those words.

Suddenly Zatanna’s thoughts were interrupted by Kid Eternity. “Hate to point out the obvious, but won’t they just find us again now that your magic spell’s brought us here.”

“Well, Joe better get us out of here fast then,” said Zee. “First, a quick concealment spell to prevent any satellite tracking of him,” she added, followed by the necessary magic words. “Now, Joe just has to carry us.”

“Carry us all!?” exclaimed Tamara. “What, are you going to shrink us all and put us in that top hat of yours? What movie’s that from.”

“No, maybe I’ll store our motorbikes in there, but I had different plans for our voyage,” replied Zatanna. “Something a bit more fantastic.”

And so it was that a minute later, as the Kryptonians received orders that the magic users had been detected in Toledo, Joseph Kent was already leaving Toledo, heading East as fast as his Kryptonian legs would carry him, along with his companions, who had been injected into his bloodstream.

Finally, tired and fatigued, but now a safe distance from Toledo, Joe, now sweating, stopped in Erie, by a lake. Mainly, it has to be said, because it looked like a groovy spot for a kooky party. Taking off his shirt, and stripping down to his Hawaiian trucks, he sat down, and rested his head on the ground, and then his companions emerged from his mouth wearing sixties-style beachwear.

As the spell reversed itself and the group was once again their regular size, John found a surf board sitting on the shore.

“Far out!” he exclaimed as he grabbed it. “Catch you cats later; I’m going to hang ten.”

As John swam the board out into the lake, puzzling Joe who could see no waves at all, he also was impressed that the side of John’s body that was aflame never went out.

Zee couldn’t stop her thoughts or her actions as she ran to her half-sister. “That Johnny is so cute. I really think he digs you.”

“You think? Tamara asked with a little giggle.

“Uh huh. If you want, I could ask Joey to ask Johnny if he likes you?”

Tamara looked at her a bit puzzled; she was being played by her own spell. That was so uncool. “Uhhh, no, that’s alright. Johnny is far out and all, but I think we need to focus on our journey.”

“Sure, good idea. Hey! Let’s start a bonfire!”

As Adrian Chase stood there, in a pair of green swimming trunks, surveying those around him, the District Attorney was, to say the least, confused. One minute, he’d been looking forward to getting home to meet his pregnant wife, Anabel; the next, his surroundings had changed to a lakeside scene, with all around him in swimwear, including a rabbit.

For a second, he started to doubt his sanity, but then, as the movie spell waned and they returned to their normal clothing, he felt a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” said the boy standing before him. “You won’t remember everything that happened; they never do. I’ll explain, but it’ll take some time.”

Tamara, knowing that time was something they didn’t have a lot of, decided that now wasn’t the time for tact. “On the other hand, Adrian, I could give you the condensed version, where your wife dies, you go psycho, then you die, and end up a spirit of vengeance.”

Zatanna, seeing the shock on Adrian’s face, forgot any gratefulness she might have felt towards Tamara for earlier saving her life. “Why, you heartless-”

“We’ve not got time for this, Sis. Adrian’ll get over it, trust me. In the meantime, that magic I just used to save your life means the Kryptonians will know we’re here.” As shade fell over them, she pointed up to the Phantom Zone villains above, now lining the sky. “See!”

“teG su tuo fo ereh,” yelled Zee, as even more Kryptonians appeared, and was then surprised as her surroundings failed completely to transform around her.

“They’re not going to fall for the same trick twice,” Tamara yelled at her. “Their evil wizard’s probably cast some transportation nullification spell to prevent us escaping that way again.”

“dluiB a dael ssertrof dnuora su!” yelled Zee again, wiggling her fingers frantically as the Kryptonians approached.

Suddenly, walls leapt from the ground, surrounding Zee and her companions.

“You realize they can just rip through these walls,” said Joe.

“I know,” said Zee, “but we’re magicians. They’ll think it’s a trap.”

“But it’s not a trap,” said John Constantine, peering through a window at the gathered army in their oh-so-black suits as they landed on the ground outside.

“And they’ve got super-hearing, so they now know it’s not a trap,” explained Tamara, punching John’s flaming arm.

“But, we’ve got an army,” said Joe, with a smile, as he turned towards Kid Eternity. “It’s about time my old man showed up to help; maybe some of his pals.”

Joe’s smile disappeared as, suddenly, a blast of heat vision ripped straight through the wall and straight through Kid Eternity’s throat. This was quickly followed by two more, cutting through the boy’s falling body.

Zee kneeled down next to his body. “He wasn’t supposed to die,” she said. She then placed her hand over his eyes, and closed them for what would be the last time, as an invisible Mister Keeper looked on, fearful for what he knew would happen next.

Then, Kid Eternity’s eyes opened again, and tears began to run from them.

Tamara kneeled down beside her. “He can’t die,” she explained. “They took him to Heaven once by mistake; ended up giving him powers and promising him immunity until his life was supposed to end.”

“But he’s dying,” she said, holding his quaking body.

“Yeah, but it’ll be years before they allow him to finish dying.”

“Might as well be an eternity,” chipped in Constantine. “He was our best hope, so they went straight for his vocal cords. Still, if they’d have left them intact, I guess we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves for his endless screaming.”

As Mister Keeper sat there, trying to comfort his friend through pain that should have killed him, Zee tried to make sense of what had just happened. “But I made this thing of lead, just so they wouldn’t be able to see us.”

“Super-hearing,” theorized John, giving a dirty look towards Joe. “Dirty Kryptonians must have pinpointed his heartbeat. They could have killed us all by now, but they’re just toying with us.”

Zee felt the helplessness and despair building inside her, and the power she’d stolen from her sister growing. She looked over at Adrian, and for the first time ever she believed she understood him.

“But they made a mistake,” she said, purple orbs of energy appearing around her hands. “They made me angry.”

“I can help you defeat them,” said Joe, ready to help her in her fight.

“You?” said Tamara, laughing. “No, you and John need to keep Adrian safe. If he dies, the big white guy will be back and killing Zee in more gory ways than even the Kryptonians could come up with. Me and Zee are our best hope against the Kryptonians. They’re vulnerable to magic; just a shame that there are hundreds of them out there and they move at super-speed.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” said Zee, as they walked towards the door, magic ready.

“What?”

“You didn’t see Zod out there, did ya?”

“Zod? No.”

“Good. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble,” Zee replied, with a smile, as they reached the door, and then they both rushed out of the door together, their hands raised, glowing with power, to face the mass of Kryptonians gathered outside.

That was when everything froze.

“They’ve got a pet gorilla?” asked Zee.

“No, just a pet monkey,” replied Tamara, “well at least at first. But they could only change the green kryptonite to iron. As for that red stuff, kind of unpredictable. Stuff like that you want to test on animals first.”

“That’s horrific,” exclaimed Zee.

“But he loved the stuff,” said John. “Searched it out. Couldn’t get enough of it. Better than humans even.”

Suddenly, they heard an unearthly howl in the distance.

“Maybe we better get out of here,” suggested Zatanna.

“Good idea, Sis,” said Tamara, climbing back onto her bike, and seconds later they were riding as quickly as they could through the torn-up landscape and out of New York. And so, heading South towards Gotham, they started to put some much-needed distance between themselves and the city that was now referred to as The Big Banana.

Finally, after a few hours of traveling, with their motorbikes almost run out of gas, they decided to stop and set up camp for the night.

“Are you okay, Adrian?” Zee asked the mortal formerly known as The Spectre.

“Not sure,” he replied, looking into the flickering flames of John Constantine. “Still, could be worse. Guess I should be grateful I’m not on fire.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you?” said Constantine. “I’m just grateful I’ve not got daddy issues.”

While Zee, Joe and Tamara stared daggers at John, Adrian unpacked the spare tent - the one that Kid Eternity had been using - and wondered if he’d be able to get any sleep after what had happened.

While the others continued to sit around the campfire (or at least a makeshift one called John), Zee decided that, after the day she’d had, she wanted to be alone, so set up her tent, in that tiresome manual non-magic way she’d been forced to get used to.

Lying down in the same clothes that she’d been wearing for days now, the movie spell keeping them spotlessly clean, she tried to get to sleep, but her mind kept going back to Kid Eternity’s ‘death’, not to mention the lurid tales about Beppo’s misdemeanors that Tamara had insisted on telling everybody during the journey. Then, just as she was finally beginning to nod off, a shadow fell across Zee’s tent, and then somebody... or something... started to enter. As Zee’s imagination began to run wild, she saw that it was just Joe.

“Sorry if I scared you,” he said. “Or woke you,” he added, noticing that she looked like she’d just been sleeping.

“No, that’s alright,” she said, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “After what happened to Kid today, I was just going to have nightmares anyway.”

“You too, huh?” a worried Joe said, crouching down beside her, and then he continued, “Anyway, sorry to interrupt your sleep, but I guess it was John’s mention of ‘daddy issues’. I need you to help me.”

“What with?”

“I want to know what happened to my father,” explained Joe. “I asked Tamara and she just laughed. I thought maybe you could help me.”

“Well, I’d like to help,” she said, “but I can’t use magic, and all I know about his death was a brief flashback I experienced while talking to Jimmy Olsen.”

“I can take you there,” he said, “to the Fortress of Solitude. We can look for clues.”

“How?” said Zee. “It must be miles away, and do you even know where it is.”

“I’ve been there before,” he said, as his strong arms picked her up, and then he carried her out of the tent.

While Zee looked at Joe, wondering whether he planned to run all of the way to the Fortress, Joe looked down at Tamara and John sat there, their conversation halting as they saw Joe.

“Don’t wait up, kids,” the super-son said, and then he launched into the sky.

“But I thought you said you couldn’t fly,” observed Zatanna, catching her breath as she looked into the night sky.

“ I couldn’t, but since I left Smallville I seem to have grown stronger. Maybe all of that magic was making me weak.”

“Then again, maybe it’s just that the movie spell’s back,” suggested Zee, as Joe had to suddenly zigzag in the sky to avoid a nanny with an umbrella followed by a vintage flying car.

“Who cares,” said Joe, grateful to be unshackled by gravity. “I can fly! I can fly! I can fly!”

“So, do you remember where this Fortress is?”

“That’s easy,” said Joe, pointing with his free arm. “The second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”

“Should have guessed,” mumbled Zee, as she gripped tightly to Joe, wary that the movie spell might suddenly change and leave her in a disaster movie. But her fears were unfounded as they rushed over seas and mountains and arctic tundra, Joe’s face gleeful as he soared along tracing the route father must have taken, and finally, as they passed through time zones and night changed to day, they came across a large slightly-ajar metal door in the side of a mountain.

Slowing down, Joe flew through the gap in the door, and then landed gracefully, setting Zatanna down. Zatanna looked behind her, at the vast expanse of arctic wilderness outside, and then forwards into the darkness of the Fortress of Solitude.

“Wish I could use my magic to light this place up,” she said, and then, as she stepped forward, the Fortress of Solitude suddenly lit up, as automatic lighting, unused for years, flickered on, revealing all manner of items. All Joe saw was the bloodstain on the floor and the letters carved there by his father’s hand.

“It’s not changed,” said Joe, catching his breath.

“Probably been preserved all of these years,” said Zee, her breath visible in the cold arctic air, as she looked around. “Don’t worry, Joe,” she said. “I’ll figure out what happened. I’ve seen lots of magic tricks, but always figured out how they were done. Plus, hanging around with Barbara Gordon all of this time has to have helped.”

Just as Joe was about to ask who Barbara Gordon was, his attention was suddenly distracted.

“Master? Master, is that you?” came his father’s voice from somewhere in the distance.

Suddenly Joe was gone, faster than Zee could see, so she started walking in the direction that the voice had come from, through an interplanetary zoo, and suddenly everything became dark, as she reached a section where the lights had finally stopped working. As she made her way through the darkness slowly, wondering what alien creature or plant might suddenly pounce out at her, she continued towards the sound of Joe’s voice and finally came across another area of light, where Joe was standing, talking to the disembodied head of a Superman robot.

“Who did this to you?” he asked.

“Sorry, master,” spluttered the robot, it’s head twitching spasmodically. “Memory cells damaged. Will you rebuild me?”

Joe looked at the robot with pity, and then walked back towards the entrance of the Fortress, trying to ignore the repeated pleadings of “Master? Master?” from the robot he couldn’t help.

As Zee followed after him, she looked down at the words scrawled on the floor.
Well, rather the one word RAO, written over and over again.

“Rao, the Kryptonian God,” said Joe, explaining it to Zee, just in case she didn’t know.

“So, why would he write God?” thought Zee aloud.

“It rhymes with Zod,” suggested Joe in desperation. “Then again, I guess my father would have just written Zod if that was the case.”

“And he wouldn’t have written it over and over,” Zee added. “Maybe it’s the number of RAOs that’s the key. Come on, Zee, this must be easy. Why would he leave a clue if he thought nobody could solve it?”

Joe just watched Zee, staring intently at the words written on the floor, but, no matter how much she stared at them, she never got any closer to understanding their meaning.

Joe knew the feeling. He’d first seen the words over thirty years ago, and he’d thought about them every day since, but was still no closer to any answers.

Half an hour later they were on their way from Gotham City to Metropolis, still all on motorbikes, since none of them were over trustful of Joe’s new-found power of flight.

Zatanna looked over her shoulder towards Joe riding behind her. She wanted to tell him about what she’d finally figured out in the Batcave, but her mind was more occupied with what Tamara had said, and with wondering why it was they would need to keep the revelation from Joe. Then again, maybe Zee had got the murderer wrong. She looked over at Tamara, who just smiled back at her.

“Anything wrong?” Joe asked, seeing the look on Zatanna’s face.

“Yeah, Sis,” added Tamara. “Anything you want to share?”

“No, nothing,” Zee said, turning her eyes fully back to the road.

For a second, she had thought about getting everything out into the open, but, assuming Tamara was right, she didn’t want to risk hurting Joe. Still she had to have answers, she thought, and cut her speed back, pulling her bike in next to Tamara’s.

“Why mustn’t Joe know about his father’s murderer?” she hissed in Tamara’s ear, hoping the sound of the engines would mask their conversation from Joe’s super-hearing.

Tamara just looked at Zee, and mimed zipping her lips. Much to her surprise, a real zip appeared over her lips; well not exactly a real zip, but a painted one. This was kind of surreal, she thought, as she looked over at Zee and saw her long black painted hair and animated face with its bright red pop art lips. This wasn’t exactly the movie Tamara had hoped would come along - she was really waiting for The Parent Trap - but it looked like this would be mildly diverting as they rode down the psychedelic highway on their mission to find her father.

Suddenly, as giant green apples rained down from the sky, they steered their animated bikes to avoid them. Unfortunately, Constantine got hit by one of the apples and fell into a slumber as his bike continued forwards into some giant letters that had sprung up at the side of the road spelling Zee, and then another set, and then another.

“John, what are you playing at?” asked Tamara, unzipping her mouth, and much surprised to find a Liverpudlian accent emerging.

“Just catching some Zees,” replied a droll Constantine, surprised to find that he was now wearing glasses and a band uniform.

“Hey, everyone, isn’t it about time we had a musical number?” asked Zee, as her top hat suddenly leapt up to find Basil pirouetting beneath it.

From there, it was only a second before trumpets were playing and the gang found their motorbikes gone as they marched down the kaleidoscopic road before them, playing the instruments that had suddenly appeared from nowhere. It was kind of embarrassing, but they sure covered a lot of distance, and by the time the song had finished they found themselves outside Metropolis, their band uniforms still intact.

“Well, at least these will act as some kind of disguise,” offered Joe, at which point, naturally, the clothes faded, to be replaced by their everyday, albeit spotless, clothes.

“You had to speak,” said Tamara, and then she saw the rest of Metropolis as it turned from a bright cartoon vision to a desolated apocalypse. There, across the street from them, was an old man, standing outside a dilapidated building, a broken half planet perched on top of it.

Tamara looked in surprise at the remains of the Daily Planet, and then ran across to the old man, “Is it true what I heard,” she asked, “that the Kryptonians took over this building as their main headquarters.”

“Great Caesar’s Ghost, it’s true,” said the man, a tear in his eye, and then he meandered into song, as darkness suddenly descended and only his bright red lips could be seen.

Lois Lane was sad the day the world turned mad, and the heroes all fell down
Superman no longer there in red underwear
No Green Lantern, no Batman
And things want all wrong for Flash and J’onn J’onzz
They got killed like that Amazon dame
And with no heroes alive, we couldn’t survive
And the planet just changed its name
Like a-

As Perry White launched into his chorus, Zatanna and Tamara just walked past him.

“Typical, wait for a song, then two turn up at once,” moaned Constantine, as he and Joe took their positions behind the former editor of the Daily Planet, ready to provide backup vocals for his next song.

Zee looked back at John and Joe standing there, and realized that herself and Tamara now seemed immune to the movie spell. “So, you are behind all of this,” she said to Tamara.

“Well, duh! Of course I am,” said Tamara. “Now let’s get into the Planet before a storm starts and we’re stuck out in the rain.”

As Perry launched into yet another song, declaring, “Damnit, Planet, I love you,” Tamara and Zee entered into the building, only to have a lift descend before them.

Zee and Tamara exchanged looks, both having an inkling of what was coming, as the lift opened and a curly-haired man in a basque and stockings came out and started singing to them about his dressing preferences and where he came from.

“Can’t we stop this spell now?” asked Zee. “I’ve had enough of this schlocky horror.”

“You’re no fun,” said Tamara, as the guy flung his wig towards her.

“Lex Luthor,” gasped Zee.

“Who’d you expect?” asked Tamara. “The President? No, Lex is just some guy who once owned Metropolis. The Kryptonians taking over the place just sent him over the edge.”

“So, what’s he doing here?” asked Zee.

Tamara shrugged. “No idea. Looks like the Kryptonians have left this headquarters and found a new one.”

“You really want to know what I’m doing here?” asked Lex, his tortured eyes looking at the new arrivals.

As they emerged out of the building Zee still couldn’t get Luthor out of her mind, or the atrocities that the Kryptonians had perpetrated that had turned him from a genius into a madman.

With Tamara rushing to keep up with her, she marched on over to Perry White, who’d now thankfully fallen silent.

“Where are the Kryptonians?” she demanded.

“Look to the skies,” he said, and flung the yellowing rolled-up newspaper he had in his hand up into the air.

“wohS su erehw yeht era!” demanded Tamara and suddenly the spiraling rolled-up newspaper transformed into a giant dark spherical satellite, perched amongst the stars.

Zatanna looked at the mystical picture of the satellite, high up in the sky, and let out a sigh as she realized that her journey to find her father was only just beginning.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”