Wally West did not see this coming. And that’s more of a big deal than you think. Because Wally West is one of the fastest people alive. And because he can think faster than most people, he’s also one of the smartest people alive.
He was supposed to be on vacation with his family. After returning to the land of the living three years ago, Barry had taken back his mantle. Wally was happy to let him. He loved being the Flash, but the stress was getting to him. Now that he wasn’t the only Flash anymore, he could spend more time with Linda and the kids.
But where was he now? Running at superluminal speeds and throwing a punch at a Superman. Which is not how he saw this weekend going at all.
Throwing a punch at a Superman is harder than you think. His skin was protected by a kinetic barrier, picometres in width but stronger than steel. But that kinetic barrier field flickered, every now and then. It flickered especially when a Superman flew as fast as he could, which was almost as fast as any good speedster.
And this Superman, he was as good as they came. Maybe better.
“We could just talk, Wally,” Superman said, glancing back at his pursuer. “You are probably getting pretty tired right now.”
“Sure. We can talk,” Wally replied. “But you need to stand down first. J’onn and the others probably have a lot of questions for you.”
“I don’t have the time on my hands to talk with the whole League, Wally. I won’t be here for long. I need to use all the time that I have.”
“Well, that’s a pity. I am sorry, man.”
“Sorry for what?”
“This.”
Wally increased his speed a thousand fold, rapidly gaining on Superman. Before the Kryptonian could react, Wally drove his fist against the man’s cheek as hard as he possibly could. At such speeds, his fist had enough mass to punch a hole into the strongest steel.
His punch landed, and for a moment, it was as though the Speed Force exploded with kinetic energy. A shower of blood burst from Superman’s mouth, splashing past Wally’s head, landing on his shoulder plates.
Superman’s protective field flared to life immediately, jolting violently against Wally’s fist. Newton’s third law had sprung into action, but Wally, thankfully, was quicker than that. He could see the shockwaves reverberate through his wrist, moving towards his arm. With a deep breath, Wally rocketed straight into the Speed Force, phasing through Superman entirely. That hurt Wally a lot more than he had expected it to, but the moment he enveloped himself in the Speed Force, his injuries healed, disappearing in the space of three seconds.
But three seconds were eternities for a Flash as well, and by the time he returned, both Superman and Barry were gone. The only one still left was Jesse Quick, who had hung back to see if Wally was okay.
“You can’t pull that stunt all the time, Wally,” she chided. “People get lost in the Speed Force all the time.”
“I am fine, Jesse. Any updates on our guest?”
“He shoved Barry pretty hard. He was sailing past the English Channel, last time I saw him. Barry’s back on his trail though.”
Wally nodded, before starting to run again. Jesse joined his side after two seconds.
He wondered what this Superman had gotten up to since he last saw the man a minute ago. Barry would know, probably. After all, Barry was the current fastest man alive. He had outrun the Black Racer himself.
Wally only hoped that Barry could outrun this Superman.
~*~
Elijah Snow inhaled slowly, holding his breath in for as long as he could. Eventually, he started feeling slightly light headed as the smoke tickled the roof of his mouth. He exhaled, watching the smoke disappear past the oxygen wall into the vacuum of space.
Snow was standing on the deck of the Carrier, home to Stormwatch. As far as sentient alien spaceships went, it was pretty alright. The pilot, who called herself the Engineer, had once interfaced Snow with the vessel’s mind. What Elijah had found there could perhaps be best described as the mind of the world’s biggest puppy. If Elijah found something similar to a snoot on the Carrier, he would make it a point to pet it.
Snow looked down at the Earth, which hovered directly below the glass floor. It looked hauntingly beautiful from up here. It also made Snow feel harrowingly old, and out of place.
“Still trying to kill yourself, old man?” Jenny Quarx said, fiddling with the e-cigarette stick in her hands.
“If I keep trying, maybe I will succeed one day. Who knows.”
“You are 118 years old already. So maybe dying is not really an option anymore.”
“At any rate, I have all of eternity to figure out. And you shouldn’t be smoking that. You aren’t Sparks. Stop trying to be her.”
Jenny harrumphed, leaning against the railing. “Sparks is so last century, old man. I mean, she couldn’t do this, could she?”
Quarks threw her right hand out, snapping her fingers. A hologram sprouted from her finger tips, instantly taking the shape of a shirtless man wearing abnormally high waisted black pants before dissolving into nothingness.
“Is that the sort of guys you are into nowadays, Jenny?”
“Uggh. No. It’s a meme. I forget you didn’t even watch the first Star Wars.”
Snow smirked, his ageless visage barely wrinkling. “Never had the patience for that stuff. Too much melodrama.”
Jenny groaned, before turning back towards the Carrier’s interiors. “Come inside, Snow. It’s cold out here.”
“Just the way I like it.”
“Suit yourself. Just remember, visiting hours are nearly over.”
Snow nodded, grimacing. The rapport between Planetary and Stormwatch had been tenuous from the start. That’s to be a given, especially considering that Planetary was charged with keeping strange things hidden and safe, while Stormwatch was tasked with building a better and stronger world altogether.
Before Jenny could leave, however, the Engineer arrived, her molecules separating from the Carrier’s deck to assume her default, liquid metal shape. She was also accompanied by Jack Hawskmoor, who jumped out of an organic portal, teleporting from his native New York in the span of a minute.
“How bad is it, Angie?” Jenny asked, arms crossed.
“Category Nine. Extraversal excursion. Not sure if he’s from this multiverse.”
“It’s a Superman, Angie,” Hawksmoor added, scratching his stubble pensively. “There probably ain’t guys like him in other multiverses.”
“You never know, Jack,” Quarx said. She looked at Snow, all trace of conviviality drained from her gaze. “You coming too?”
“Might as well. Because I literally have nothing to do.”
“Right then. Door.”
A bright yellow portal appeared, and Quarx walked through it, the others joining her as they travelled down to Earth through the hyperdimensional Bleed.
They resurfaced in a damp, dark hall, lit by flickering chandeliers swinging to and fro. Snow saw that other members of the main Stormwatch team were there as well. Apollo, Midnighter and Swift were standing near the Doctor, who was floating three fit above the ground, hands spread in a lotus position.
“Why the hell are we here, Angie?” Midnighter asked, glaring, his eyes bulging around his mask. “I thought we were supposed to fight a Superman today. I was rather looking forward to it.”
“Dearie, I mean this in the best way, but you are writing a cheque that your body can’t cash,” Apollo stated gently, firm hand over Midnighter’s shoulder.
“Please. Five minutes is all I need.” Midnighter nursed his fist dangerously. Apollo simply smiled in response, shaking his head.
“Jerome found a trail of quantum narrative particles leaking from this place,” Swift explained. “He’s trying to find the source, so we can find out what happened.”
“You say quantum narrative particles as though I am supposed to understand them,” Jack said irritably. “In English, please.”
“I can help there,” Snow said. “Everything you know…and everyone you know, have stories to tell and follow. The universe works the way it does because there is something that makes the possibility of something happening high and the possibility of something else happening low. The stuff that makes that happen, that’s what quantum narrative particles are.
I would love to discuss the specifics, but you would need to ask Drummer Boy about it. He is the one who understands everything.”
“I would love to say that’s the weirdest thing I heard this week, but it isn’t, not by a country mile,” Jenny said. She looked up at the Doctor, who was suppressing a smile. “You done there, Jerome?”
“Actually, yeah. I was kinda waiting for you guys to ask.
I would love to tell you what happened here, but it’s best that I show you.”
The Doctor walked north, a green flame dancing on his left hand, illuminating the way forward. As Snow followed him, he wondered if this was exactly a good idea, getting involved in Stormwatch business. Truth be told, he was too old to care.
And there was strangeness afoot, so that was more than enough incentive to keep him around.
“There. Do you see that?” the Doctor said, pointing. Snow squinted, seeing nothing but air.
“You need to be a little more specific, Jerome,” the Engineer said, lips pursed and slanted.
“Ohh. Right. I forget that you guys don’t see colors in 5D. Here, this should help.”
The Doctor summoned a handful of extradimensional spices in his hands, and then threw it in front of him. They colored the air around them in brilliant ways, subtly revealing the ways the world was connected to the Bleed, which was itself connected to the fifth dimension.
Before Snow could understand what was happening, though, something huge sneezed with enough force to throw almost everyone off their feet. Only the Doctor, Swift and Apollo were left standing.
As the spices settled, Snow saw a huge, translucent eye staring at him and the others, turning away as the body attached to it moved further away from the group. If Snow didn’t know any better, he would say that this was a whale. Or a ghost of a whale, at least.
“Guys, meet Leviathan. He’s one of the handful of narrative engines that keep our reality well oiled and running. As you can see, he is a shy guy.”
“He doesn’t look too well,” Jenny said, getting to her feet. Her hands glowed, taking on quantum characteristics as she flew, gently kneading the area around Leviathan’s eye. “Is he sick?”
“Yes. He has…what can be best described as diarrhea,” the Doctor explained, rubbing his neck. “You see this residue around his mouth? He vomited too. Expect things like politics and global affairs to be wonky for the rest of the day.”
“Please don’t tell me that Superman punched him really, really hard,” Jenny said, frowning hard.
“I am sorry, Jenny. But Superman punched him really, really hard.”
“How in hell did he do that?” Snow asked, his interest piqued.
The Doctor shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
~*~
Wally West’s legs were hurting. He had been running nonstop for thirty minutes. For a Flash, that may as well be thirty years.
“Where did he go to next?” Wally asked Barry, who was still leading.
“I don’t know. We have scoured most places on Earth already. We should have had him back in DC.”
“Who in hell knew he could refract light? Our Superman can’t do that,” Jesse Quick said, panting as she kept up with the other two. She was looking our for Bart Allen, aka Impulse, who had broken off earlier to mobilize Young Justice.
“This Superman is a lot older, Jesse,” Barry said, eyes narrow and slotted. “You haven’t seen Clark like I have. He could barely outrace bullets when he first started out. Now he can outrun event horizons. God knows what this one can do now.
J’onn, it’s been half an hour already. We need to regroup.”
~*~
Half a world away, J’onn J’onzz complied, activating the teleporter to summon the rest of the active Leaguers to the watchtower. Wally sighed in relief when he got there, finally slowing down as he skidded to a halt.
Superman- their own Superman- was already there, quietly surveying the Earth past the windows. Wally wondered what was going through the man’s head. He had fought Bizarro countless times before, and even Superboy Prime. But Superboy Prime was young and foolish. This future self was focused and intelligent. As intelligent as Clark was, if not even more.
“Alright everyone. Here’s what’s going on so far,” Bruce said, pacing around the table. “Leo Quintum discovered a distress signal in the Bleed, two hundred years into the future. There, he found a warning in a wrecked spaceship, about an inescapable disaster that was sweeping across existence. There were some spacetime coordinates mentioned in the message, which pointed Quintum right here.”
“Quintum’s time remembers today’s day as being monumentally important,” Diana said, hands pressed against the table. “Little records of the twenty first century have survived, but what’s left suggests that we have a big fight on our hands.
Now I personally don’t know if this intruder is what we are supposed to be fighting. But if it is, then a battle he will have. Cyborg, we need to have all global defensive systems in high alert. And Bruce, we need to secure supplies of all the Kryptonite we can acquire as soon as possible.”
“We are only going to subdue this individual, not poison him, Diana. As for my Kryptonite stock, it’s not going to be of much help. I carbondated his blood. Good job on that by the way, Wally.”
“Yeah, glad almost breaking my hand yielded good results,” Wally stated, rubbing his sore knuckles.
“This Superman’s physiology has evolved past the cellular weakness to Kryptonite,” Bruce continued. “And he’s almost two hundred years old. He’s functionally immortal. We need to rely on strategy to win this one.”
Clark finally turned away from the window, approaching the round table with calm resolve. “He is looking for something, Bruce. He isn’t hear to hurt us.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He could have hurt us plenty if he wanted to. The only thing he has really done so far is try to talk to Lex and hurt this Leviathan creature, from what Stormwatch told us. He has to answer for that, but that doesn’t mean he is the enemy we are looking for.”
“It’s better to err on the side of caution, Clark. We have to do what’s best for Earth.”
“I know, Bruce. But you have to understand. He is alone. He is tired. I have been following his movements for the last hour. He thinks he is hiding his trail, but he isn’t. There’s a curvature in spacetime, every time he hits speeds beyond light speed. So far, he has come to and gone from Earth around a hundred times.
In that time, he has tried to reach Doctor Fate’s helmet twice. Then he tried to drill his way to the Earth’s core. He was probably looking for the White Lantern being sleeping inside the planet. It’s almost like he’s trying to reach something through these things.
He is running, yes, but only because we chased him. We need to slow down enough so that he can trust us.”
Bruce stayed silent, expressionless. He turned towards the nearest door, turning his head towards Diana. “You take over the meeting. Clark and I will have a talk.”
Bruce headed towards the next room, motioning Clark to follow him. “Look, Clark. Let’s put our friendship aside for a moment. I respect you as a human being. But you have to understand something. You aren’t infallible. Not even you.”
“I never said I was infallible.”
“You didn’t. That doesn’t stop you from acting like you are. You are right, Clark. He is alone. And that’s what frightens me. He doesn’t have anyone. No Ma or Pa. No Lois, no Conner, no Kara. He doesn’t even have me.
Did you ever wonder, Clark, what you will do when it’s time for Clark Kent to die? What happens when you finally get tired of pretending you are like the rest of us?”
“The rest of us? You just called me a human being, Bruce.”
“Yeah. Because you are still Clark. One day it will be time for you to move on. And like it or not, that version of you has already done that. He’s barely Superman anymore.”
“If he wasn’t Superman, Bruce, he wouldn’t have worn the shield. That means something to me. That probably means something to him, too.”
“Maybe. But maybe he’s forgotten. You really trust yourself enough to put everything else at risk?”
“I trust myself enough to know that I won’t put everything at risk. I know how I work, and how I think. He’s problem solving. He would have stopped to explain, maybe, but we barely gave him the chance.”
“Fine. This conversation is almost irrelevant at this point. Let’s catch him first, then we will give him a chance,” Bruce said, offering his hand.
Clark took it. “Fine by me.”
By the time Clark and Bruce returned to the conference room, most of the other Leaguers had left. Only Wally, Diana and J’onn were there, discussing the final details of their battle plans and worst case scenarios.
“You two talked it out?” Diana asked, half-smiling.
Bruce nodded. “He is heading for Oa, isn’t he?”
“Perceptive as always, Bruce,” J’onn said, smiling wryly.
“How did you figure it out?” Wally asked. “And don’t just say that you are Batman.”
“Clark just said that the other guy was last seen near the White Lantern in the Earth’s core. If I were him, Oa would be the next place on my wish list.”
“Hal has already contacted Kyle and John,” Diana explained. “They are forming a planet wall pretty soon.”
“Good luck to them,” Bruce said, heading towards the main teleporter. “I will be returning back to the cave. I am not going to be much use in space. You can always reach out if you need me.”
Diana nodded. Bruce returned a nod, before disappearing from the room in the next instant.
“Well, now that Mr. Killjoy is out of here, what’s the actual plan, Clark?” Wally asked. Clark could see the lines of genuine concern forming across his cheeks. “We can’t beat him, right?”
“I don’t know, Wally. But we will try, if we have to.”
“Yeah. But he’s you. And you know us better than anyone else. I mean, remember the time Ra’as Al Ghul almost got the drop on us? This is like that, but about a million times worse.”
Clark sighed. He realized, finally, what Luthor saw when he looked at him. That fear, that worry, based on the idea that at the end of the day, Superman was too human. And that one day, Superman will turn on everyone else if he had a bad day, or even a bad life.
Bruce saw that in Clark everyday, but he trusted Clark against his better judgement. And Clark knew that, for better or worse, his teammates trusted him too. For now.
“We will figure something out, Wally,” Clark said, putting his arm around Wally’s shoulders. “We always do. You should join Barry, see what’s he doing to prepare.”
Wally nodded, smiling. “What a day though, right? Let’s hope this ends before Linda starts missing me. We were kinda in the middle of a second honeymoon actually.”
“Ohh, that’s nice. Where did you go?”
“New Genesis, actually. Orion is babysitting the twins. It’s going about as well as you would expect.”
“Right. You know what, I will talk to Lois about it, see if she would be up for a trip there. It’s been a while since she saw Linda and the kids too, so that will be nice.”
“Look at you, Clark,” Wally said, smiling broadly. “You are finally talking about vacations. When was the last one you took, actually?”
“Fiji, I think. Lois didn’t like it there though. Cityrat and all that.”
“Right,” Wally said, limbering as he prepared to run again. “See you there at Oa, man.”
Wally was gone in a streak of red lightning, and J’onn followed him shortly after. Diana, however, was eyeing Clark in the way that few others could.
They were together, a few years ago. In those few months, Diana had learned to see through Clark’s facades.
“You are going to take the scenic route there, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, dimpling. “Need to take preparations of my own. You will be okay?”
“Yeah. I will be. I used to be the Goddess of War, remember?”
“Oh yeah. That was not a good look for you though.”
“Speak for yourself, Clark. The helm was very, very cool. Give me a minute.”
Diana walked into the armory, grabbing her shield and sword. She was still smiling when she came back to the conference room. “You think you can make it to the Planet before noon?”
“Maybe, let’s see. I am supposed to leave for Colombia today, so don’t have much stuff on my hand.”
“That’s good,” Diana said. She looked at him earnestly. “He’s not you, Clark. Don’t project your worries into his head. This is just another job. Just another Wednesday.”
Clark nodded. “Yeah. Just another Wednesday.”
“See you at Oa, you big oaf.”
Diana walked into the teleporter, waving at Clark as she vanished from the room.
Diana was right. This was a Wednesday. But it was the longest Wednesday in Clark’s life.
He only hoped that it won’t get any longer.
This is a Shared Universe, multi-chapter story that will be updated periodically. You can also follow this story on other platforms, such as Wattpad.