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nitewrighter · 7 months

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Scoops! (Part 5)

With this chapter, the fic's now over 30k words! Exciting stuff!!

God sends his toughest battles (doing research to find out all the ways Lois Lane has been killed off in the comics and other media for literally one sentence in a fic) to his strongest soldiers (Me).

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4

Read it on AO3 here!

----

The Leader Lois was tired. She could not remember a time when she hadn't been tired. She had seen herself die in countless ways, in hundreds of times, across thousands of universes in the League Archives. Lois Lane had been beaten, suffocated, blown up, crushed under rubble, poisoned, drowned in a nuclear-bomb-triggered boiling tsunami, vaporized, petrified into an ashen husk from the inside out, and probably a whole host of other nasty endings the Leader Lois didn’t have the energy to remember at this moment. And every time, Leader Lois had seen the gap she left behind. She had seen whole universes fold into that gap more times than she could count on two hands. She knew Lois Prime had seen the same thing, and that was one of the reasons she founded the League. The Leader Lois remembered the early days of her own recruitment into the League, how special it felt to be a linchpin of reality, not realizing back then how heavy a burden it was and would continue to be.

So what, do I not get any say in what happens to my universe until I get a Pulitzer?!

The Leader Lois wasn't sure if she envied or pitied the Lois of Earth 12-M—all that fire and passion, so typical of a Lois, but so much of it tied up in devotion to an alien being whose very existence had spelled doom for so many worlds, that had spelled her doom just as often. The Leader Lois couldn't let her mind linger too long on her, not with the Spider Lady still loose.

Leader Lois stood in the League command hub, hands clasped behind her back. League headquarters was running with only a skeleton crew with so many agents dispatched to different universes to search for the Spider Lady, and other agents dispatched as backup to more unstable universes to maintain security during the search. Fewer members meant reduced headquarter functionality—so it was colder, and the air was just thin enough to give your head a slight buzz. There were three other Loises in the command hub with her.

“False alarm on the report from Earth Eight,” said Luiza Lanovna.

“Sweep completed, no sign of the Spider Lady in Earth 51,” said Eloise Laine.

“Earth 13 team is requesting backup,” said the shapeshifting cybercellular protoplasm currently identifying as Lois Lane.

“Redirect the Earth 51 team to Earth 13,” said the Leader Lois, “Can I get a systems check?”

“Atmospheric buoys are performing optimally. Cell block, armory, and archives are secure,” said Luiza. Something blipped on another holographic screen, “Agents Olsen and Lane are returning from Earth 12-M.”

“As expected,” said Leader Lois, “See that they’re directed to central intelligence—”

“There’s been a manual override in the gauntlet hub,” said the Protoplasm Lois, “They’re—uh oh—”

The Leader Lois’s brow furrowed as a pale blue portal opened up behind her and Lewis and Jalana hurriedly stumbled out.

"Olsen," she said calmly, "Lane. Protocol states that you were both supposed to report to central intelligence for debriefi--"

"We don't have time!" said Jalana.

"There's been an incident in Earth 12-M. We have reason to believe the Spider Lady is still there," said Lewis.

"We need to dispatch several containment teams to 12-M," said Jalana, "Before--"

"Leader Lois, one of the atmospheric buoys just picked up a disturbance!" said the Protoplasm Lois.

“What?” said the Leader Lois.

“Proximity sensors indicate a high-velocity approach to headquarters,” said Eloise, opening up another holographic screen.

“Hail it,” said the Leader Lois, “Tell it to slow its approach and identify itself or else it will be fired on.”

“It’s not responding to any of our hails, ma’am!” said Luiza.

“Get me a feed!” The Leader Lois ordered, and a large hologram screen was projected so that it was visible to the whole command hub.There was an oily, charred-looking portal, and a figure flying away from it. Gold, with an utterly implacable emptiness to its orange eyes. The Leader Lois paled. “Android!” she barked, both her hands balling in fists at her sides, “I need a recall to headquarters on all available teams! All hands on deck, start manning defensive systems!” Her head swung around to Lewis and Jalana. “What exactly happened in Earth 12-M?”

—-

Clark thought entering the interdimensional burn hole would be less disorienting this time, seeing as he hadn’t fallen into it after a blow to the head, but, no, it was just as disorienting to be back in that dark, afterimages-on-your-eyelids space.

“Woooah…” Jimmy looked around the darkness, “This isn’t like the League’s portals.”

“The Spider Lady said you called it—well, her Jimmy called it ‘Backstage,’” said Clark, trying not to pay too much attention to the shifting, dark, blurred images bleeding around them, “She said the League just punches holes between universes, but this is more of a… path between.”

“How long do we keep walking?” said Jimmy, looking around, turning the flash on his camera and pointing it into the darkness, pressing the button and lighting up… nothing.

“I don’t know,” said Clark.

“Why is it wet?” said Jimmy, lifting one of his sneakers out of the shining, sloshing liquid, “Or… not wet?”

“I don’t know,” Clark said again, making the decision to just float himself above the liquid, “Want me to carry you?”

“Nah, like, flying is one thing, but if it’s just floating I kind of feel like a purse—Wait, did you say ‘her Jimmy?’” Jimmy glanced back up at Clark as they kept moving forward.

“Well, y’know, as shorthand for ‘Her universe’s Jimmy—’” Clark started.

“I know that, but she told you about the Jimmy from her universe?”

“Um… yeah,” said Clark, “I got the whole… evil backstory flashback monologue thing.”

“Ooh, am I evil, too?” Jimmy’s eyes were wide and he had the beginnings of that ‘This is so going on Flamebird’ mad little smile.

“Yeah, kinda,” Clark was wondering if he could steer this conversation in a different direction, or if he should just rip off the bandaid and tell Jimmy. But instead he just kind of quietly trailed on, “You had a mad scientist thing going. And a mustache.”

“I had a mustache? I can barely get peach fuzz in this universe,” said Jimmy, feeling his upper lip before he caught himself, “Waaaait you’re using past-tense. Is Evil-Me dead?”

“Eh—” Clark flinched a little and folded his arms, slouching a bit as he kept floating forward. “Yeah. You figured that out pretty fast, huh?”

“Well, I figure there had to be some intense stuff to make the Spider Lady like that,” Jimmy was pacing ahead of him, he tended to walk faster when he was figuring something out, “Lois is a hothead, sure, but she got into journalism because she cares about people, and she hates bullies. It would take a lot to make her go all… shock-collar giant-gun femme fatale. Is her Clark dead, too? Or is he also evil? Or wait, if nothing was stopping all the evil stuff from pouring into her universe, and she had to use you, as in a Clark from another universe, to give Amazo powers—Her universe doesn’t have a Superman?”

Gosh, Jimmy really could put this stuff together fast. Or maybe it just all came together faster after actually seeing Amazo.

“Not really. Apparently my rocket ship didn’t make it. Or… well… it came to earth, but I didn’t make it,” said Clark, “So I’m um… a baby skeleton, in that universe.”

“Wow, that’s morbid,” said Jimmy. He paused again, “So it was just… Evil-me and the Spider Lady in that universe, huh?”

“She said her Jimmy was her best friend,” Clark’s voice got a bit distant, “Oh, also I think Evil-Jimmy was hooking up with that universe’s Siobhan McDougal.” Clark squinted a little.

“I was what—AUGH!” Jimmy suddenly plummeted out of existence, his scream cutting short.

“Jimmy!” Clark called out in alarm, rushing forward, only to be caught off-guard himself by the abrupt end of ‘backstage’ again. He was surrounded by the bright and swirling colors that indicated the nebula-like center of the multiverse where the League of Lois Lanes’ headquarters was situated. Just ahead, he could see the massive white structure, already smoking with several turrets firing off, and being met with blasts of red by a golden figure semi-obscured by smoke. He could hear Jimmy screaming below and dove down, seeing Jimmy flailing as he dropped through the multicolored nothingness. Clark dove past Jimmy and swept under him. The tricky part with catching anyone falling was making sure that they weren’t hurt by the sudden cessation of momentum, so a lot of the time Clark had to think of his own flight as something like a bungee chord, once again moving with the fall, but slowing it. The result was Jimmy going from “AAAAAHHHHH” to “Wuh-guh?”

“You okay?” said Clark, holding Jimmy bridal-style.

“Y-yeah,” said Jimmy, clutching his chest and catching his breath. He glanced over at the League of Lois Lanes and brought up his camera, snapping a picture.

“I don’t think Perry’s going to believe this one,” said Clark, letting Jimmy readjust himself so they could both have an arm free, then flying toward the League headquarters.

“I can take pictures for me,” said Jimmy, zooming his camera lens in on the golden android now swooping around headquarters, dipping out of turret fire and trying to look for a vulnerable point of entry. “Huh, Amazo flies like you,” said Jimmy, watching Amazo blast at turrets with heat vision.

“No he doesn’t,” Clark said defensively.

“Clark, he’s doing the fist-forward, knee-up thing. You’re literally doing that right now,” said Jimmy.

Clark glanced down and straightened out his leg self-consciously, then after a second, bent it up again. “Okay, this is going to sound weird and I honestly do not have an explanation for it, but I need the knee for steering. Not 100% of the time, obviously, but it’s more of an art than a science and—Look out!” Jimmy flinched himself smaller and Clark had to barrel roll out of the way of a flaming turret that Amazo had ripped off of headquarters and tossed away. Clark’s jaw tightened as Amazo punched through the wreckage where the turret had once been and disappeared to the interior of headquarters, well, they had a point of entry, now.

“That’s not the point I’m trying to make!” said Jimmy, as Clark was forced to take a long swooping detour to dodge additional debris, “Even with a learning AI, all a robot has is what you put into it. I learned that when I was putting Scoops together.”

“Jimmy, I saw the Spider Lady jamming all kinds of stuff into Scoops,” said Clark, banking hard to dodge more turret fire, “And it has Ivo’s parasite suit for a body now. We don’t know what it’s really capable of.”

“I know, but,” Jimmy’s shoulders bunched up and he cringed closer to Clark as they narrowly dodged a hunk of debris exploded by turret fire, “What I’m saying is, when he duplicated your powers, he must have also duplicated how you use them! How you think about them! He’s running Clark software!”

“Or maybe that’s just how my flying works?” said Clark.

Jimmy just gave him a flat, furrowed-brow look that told Clark, It’s actually really embarrassing that we still don’t understand 70% of how your powers work at this point, and Clark just kept flying after Amazo, diving through the jagged gap that Amazo had just blasted through.

Clark didn’t exactly get a decent look at the League of Lois Lane headquarters the first time he had come there, mostly due to the fact that pretty much his entire time spent there was spent fighting an impish interdimensional chaos god and getting thrown through various portals. And also kissing Lois for the first time. He liked that part. There was just as much chaos this time as last time, however. Dozens of League members were firing at Amazo as the android flew around, firing heat vision at various load-bearing structures and forcing the different clusters of Loises to flee falling rubble and reposition themselves.

“…he’s not heat-visioning directly at them,” said Jimmy, as Clark set him on the ground.

“Of course not! That would be horrible!” Clark blurted out before catching himself, “…Clark software,” he said after a beat.

“Clark software,” said Jimmy.

“Kryptonian!” He heard Lois’s voice and his head swung around.

Wait—Oh this is going to get so confusing, he thought as he found himself looking into the eyes of robot-arm mohawk Lois, pointing a gun at him.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face around here,” said mohawk Lois. All three of them flinched at the sound of a massive rumble as Amazo smashed through one of the walkways arching throughout the headquarters.

“Look, I don’t think any of us have time for this,” Clark spoke very quickly, “I don’t mean the League any harm, I’ve just been dragged around and electrocuted by an evil Lois all day—”

“Just like you were ‘dragged around’ by Mxyzptlk?” Robot-arm Lois arched an eyebrow.

“Yes!” said Clark, “I got lied to! I didn’t have any context on any of this multiverse stuff last time I was here! I was fighting him alongside you. Why do all of you have such insane trust issu—Right, sorry, Evil Me’s, and you’re all Lois.” Clark pressed his fingertips to his forehead with frustration, but they all winced again as headquarters rumbled again and Clark looked over to see another group of Loises shooting at Amazo. “Just—Whatever! Shoot at me if you want, but I’m trying to stop that robot, same as you.” Clark moved to take off, then paused, glanced over his shoulder and said, “Sorry for snapping,” and then took off after Amazo.

“I’m gonna see if there’s anything here that can help us beat him!” Jimmy shouted after Clark before running off.

“Hey, you’re not authorized to—!” Mohawk Lois shouted after him, “Oh for—’’ she turned her gun back on Amazo.

As Clark flew towards Amazo, arcing out of the way of energy blasts from different League members, it occurred to him that he was not in the habit of making plans. The closest thing in his head that amounted to a plan was ‘Don’t let any league members get killed’ and ‘Try not to bring the whole headquarters down’ He wasn’t really sure how he was going to do that, but he figured the first thing he could do was make sure Amazo’s attention was on him and not on the Loises or their headquarters, and to the best of his knowledge that required punching Amazo in the face. The Android only seemed to barely register his presence before his fist made contact. There were still elements of Ivo’s parasite suit in Amazo’s appearance, so Clark had a natural instinct not to make contact with it any longer than a few milliseconds, but where Clark could very much feel Ivo’s resentment and hunger behind the glowing purple eyes of the Parasite, for all its physical similarity, Amazo’s expression was… empty. Impersonal. Even as Clark’s fist smashed into it. The force knocked Amazo back and Superman kept surging forward, still punching.

Clark, shoulders, he remembered Lois’s repeated corrections from that morning and angled himself just in time for Amazo’s fist to go flying past his head, giving him an opening for a one-two jab to Amazo’s face and rib plating. Clark tried to remember Lois’s positioning and movements from their sparring that morning, the economy of movement and reaction, the flow from one strike to another, and found he was honestly surprised at how many hits he was getting in because of it. Jab, jab, uppercut, jab, right hook—

Amazo seized his arm and whipped him around like a flail, first sending him flying, then smashing through one of the walkways. Clark heard Lois screaming—Wait, no, she’s back in your world— but he was already instinctively diving in the direction of the scream. Of course, it wasn’t his Lois but it was still a Lois—one with an eyepatch and a mullet, and whose League sidearm was some kind of elaborate sniper rifle, tumbling through the air.. The falling rubble didn’t really give him the space to catch them bridal-style so the catch was really more of a tumbling mid-air tackle with him covering the back of their neck with his hand and then using flight to angle himself so that he took all the hits from the falling debris, all the while the butt of their rifle was jamming him awkwardly in the solarplexus. Still, it only took him a few seconds to right them both in the air and fly up to a safer walkway along the walls.

“Are you all right, Miss Lane?” he asked, setting them down.

“Mx. Lane,” they corrected, dusting themselves off.

“Oh, gosh, sorry. Are you all right, Mx. Lane?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” said eyepatch-mullet Lois, readjusting their rifle.

“Good—” said Clark before Amazo rammed into him from the side with the force of a freight train. Amazo and Superman both slammed into a wall, sending more dust and debris tumbling down from the ceiling. Amazo had both Clark’s arms pinned against the wall, forcing him to headbutt it. The hard strike from an invulnerable skull sent Amazo stumbling back and Clark grunted in pain, rubbing his own forehead, recovering from the pain just in time to see Amazo resuming a ready fighting position.

All those hits and barely a scratch on him, thought Clark, trying to catch his breath. There was a terrifying click in his brain of 'I don't have to hold back.' He did though, he knew he did. Taking an approach of ‘all heat vision all the time’ would put Amazo on the evasive, and likely cause a lot more damage to the structure around them both. There were all the league members running around to consider. Lois's voice overlapping on itself, varying in volume and pitch, shouting orders to each other which sometimes resulted in scattered showers of energy blasts at both him and Amazo. They weren't using kryptonite guns at this point, at least. He may still be a threat, but as far as they were concerned, he was the primary thing keeping Amazo from bringing the whole headquarters down on everyone's heads.

Or at least I should be, thought Clark, wincing as some rubble tumbled down behind Amazo. The android rushed him and for a brief, mad, moment, Clark saw the ghost of his own movements in the android’s stance and speed. Lois had chided him that morning about his own stance in a fight, but looking at it now, in another body, he could see his own logic behind it. He hated how inhuman his powers could make him seem, but also, intimidation itself was a very effective tactic in a fight that actually reduced how much he had to actually fight, and thus reduced the risk of seriously injuring someone with super-strength, and a lot of that time that intimidation involved sending the message of ‘guns aren’t going to work, here.’ Just making himself a big mass coming at you fast, undeterred by bullets, so that your only instinctive option was moving out of the way.

Always sheeted forward, thought Clark with a short huff, before blasting Amazo with as much heat vision as he could summon. Amazo was knocked back, then looked at him, its own eyes blazing with furious heat vision, before two hard energy blasts hit it in the side of the head. Clark’s sight went upward to the eyepatch Lois looking down the scope of their rifle. Amazo turned to look in that direction, too and Clark instinctively gave the android a hard diagonal uppercut before it could make visual contact. Clark knew his own invulnerability was finite, and thus, Amazo’s had to be, too. Though they seemed evenly matched for now, Clark knew his own body was still repairing itself from all the damage it had taken while he had that inhibitor collar on. If it came down to a battle of stamina, the android would absolutely have him beat. But he wasn’t the only one fighting Amazo. His eyes flicked back up to the eyepatch Lois, who was now yelling at other league members to get into position.

“Keep the fire up from all sides!” Clark called up to the eyepatch Lois, “Discombobulate, and overwhelm it!”

Clark brought his own forearms up just in time to block a hard punch from Amazo.

——

Jalana and Lewis were hustling through League headquarters, both equipped with their heavier sidearms, on their way to the site where many of their fellow League members were already engaged in combat with Amazo.

And the Kryptonian? thought Jalana as multiple orders and reports from other League members streamed out of her gauntlet.

“Of course it’s an Android,” Lewis huffed as they ran, “What is with Earth 12-M and making gods our problem?!”

“It’s not a god yet,” said Jalana.

“Yet,” said Lewis, “if that thing hits the cell block and gets its hands on any of the beings we have in custody—” he was cut off as headquarters rumbled around them.

“At this rate, it’ll bring the whole place down before it has a chance to do that,” said Jalana.

“Which will still mean a catastrophic mass-escape of dangerous interdimensional criminals and entit—” Lewis cut himself off as Jimmy Olsen sprinted past both of them. “Was that..?”

“Jimmy!?” Jalana pivoted on her foot to call after him and he skidded to a halt.

“No time to talk!” said Jimmy, “Where are the League archives?!”

“First of all, how did you get here?” said Lewis, “Second of all, no, there’s no way multiversal hell you’re not getting into League Archi—”

“They’re this way!” said Jalana, racing to catch up with Jimmy and grabbing his arm, “You won’t be able to get in there without League clearance!”

“Oh sure! Just… drag your sketchy doppelgänger into the inner sanctum of League intelligence!” Lewis called after them furiously. “It’s not like we have rules or consequences or anythi—” he was cut off as the entire headquarters rumbled with another impact. “For the love of—” Lewis muttered under his breath as he cocked his sidearm and turned around to continue running toward the main chamber where the Kryptonian and android were fighting.

——

The doors to the League archives whooshed open and Jalana and Jimmy rushed in. The archives themselves were simply a large holographic interface controlling a massive holographic screen. Jalana was already feverishly typing commands into the interface, making the screen project several security feeds displaying Superman and Amazo fighting at various angles.

“We should probably keep one eye on the fight in case we need to evacuate,” said Jalana, hitting several more buttons. Jimmy watched as several spheres hovered up in front of the holographic interface and started projecting holographic footage of different universes. One screen displayed featureless golden figure fighting Superman (but not his Superman), the other displayed a hulking orange-tan humanoid with green pants and pointed ears, also fighting Superman (but again, not Jimmy’s Superman), and a third displayed a similarly pointed-ear Amazo being mobbed by several powerful looking beings and easily batting them away. Jimmy’s eyes flicked down the spheres projecting the footage. He recognized them all too well.

“Those spheres… This is where Lois got that rock…” said Jimmy.

“Kryptonite? She shouldn’t have been able to access that,” said Jalana.

“I really wish she hadn’t…” Jimmy muttered before his eyes flicked back to the security feed of Clark desperately heat-visioning one of the walkways in the main hall back together before Amazo dropped on him from above like a missile. They didn’t have much time. Jimmy stepped closer to Jalana, “May I?”

Jalana scooted over and Jimmy started typing at the interface as well. “I always wanted the Flamebird channel to have its own research team,” she said, opening several files.

“God, I know,” said Jimmy, “But the problem was—”

“You never get that golden ratio of trustworthy, competent—”

“And an actual believer,” Jimmy and Jalana’s voices overlapped. They made eye contact and both smiled a little.

“So that’s why you keep helping us,” said Jimmy, resuming typing.

“Only other Flamebro in the multiverse,” said Jalana with a grin.

“Is this all you have?” Said Jimmy, motioning with his hands to spread out several holographic files.

“There’s a lot more, but I can’t show you all at once. You can open up League files just by selecting certain details in the footage. I’ve done what I can to give you as much access as I have,” said Jalana, “If you’ve got any new ideas, I’d love to hear them."

A lot of it’s going to come down to Clark, thought Jimmy, turning back to the security footage just in time to see Amazo punching Clark hard in the side of the head, sending him flying. God I hope the super-hearing still works after a blow like that.

“Clark, can you hear me?” said Jimmy.

“Jimmy? Are you hurt? Can you hear me? Where are you?” Clark was yelling on the security feeds as he righted himself in the air and flew to avoid Amazo ramming into him again.

“I’m fine. I’m in the archives, I can hear you over the League security feeds,” said Jimmy, activating several hologram monitors.

“Please tell me this thing’s gotten beaten in other universes,” said Clark as he crossed his arms in front of himself to block the worst of a blast of heat vision from Amazo. Jimmy swallowed hard—even with his invulnerability back, Clark wouldn’t last long taking hits like that.

“Uh, yeah, a couple times?” said Jimmy, feverishly searching through the archives alongside Jalana. Jimmy was well aware of the pain and the irony of having the knowledge of decades of observation of the multiverse at his fingertips, everything he could possibly want to know about all of the mysteries he spent hours ranting about on Flamebird, and only having the time to search information on the android Clark was fighting. He tried not to think about it. Tried to just focus on what he needed to know right now. “Oh! Try vibrating its brain out of its head!”

“How would I do that!?”

“You have super-speed, right? According to the archives, speedsters can vibrate to move through solid objects. So you… vibrate?”

“If it was just a suit around Ivo before, I don’t think it really has a brain?” said Jalana, flinching as the entire structure rumbled around them.

“Scoops! Scoops has to be the brain! Vibrate Scoops out of there!” said Jimmy.

“JIMMY, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO VIBRATE AND I DON’T HAVE TIME TO LEARN,” said Clark, ducking out of a swing from Amazo’s fist.

“Poor Lois,” Jimmy said very quietly to himself.

“I HEARD THAT,” said Clark, catching Amazo’s other fist, swinging the android up and over his head and slamming him into the floor. Clark suddenly blinked. “Hey, I countered!”

“Okay, look,” said Jimmy, “All I’ve got here is vibrating, making it fight another Amazo—”

“We are not doing that,” said Clark.

“And um, sending it into some kind of giant interdimensional amoeba—” he looked over his shoulder at Jalana, “Do you guys have a giant interdimensional amoeba lying around?”

“No, we don’t have limbo cells lying around!” said Jalana, looking at him like he was completely insane.

“Okay, jeez, you had Mxy’s hat so I figured I’d ask,” said Jimmy, turning back to the monitor.

“Okay, look,” said Jalana, “I know I gave you full access, but you really shouldn’t be looking through all that—“

“Prime Directive, I know,” said Jimmy, continuing to type, “Superman, the other option is… it just goes full god and loses interest in you.”

“How often does that happen?” yelled Clark, catching a large chunk of ceiling rubble before it fell on some fleeing League members.

“…It’s not really clear. I’m on this page now that’s talking about how the more powerful a thing is, the harder it is to consistently predict across dimensions.” Jimmy blinked and turned around at Jalana, “So wait, you guys have that whole file on evil Supermen, but the truth is you don’t actually know if he’s going to turn evil.”

“Eh—” Jalana’s mouth hung open helplessly.

“The possibility was always reason enough,” another voice spoke up.

Jimmy reeled around to see a tall, older, and very sober-looking version of Lois standing in the archive doorway,

“Leader Lois!” Jalana saluted, “But—you should be in the command hub.”

“I was informed the Kryptonian didn’t arrive here alone,” said the Leader Lois.

“Lewis…” Jalana hissed under her breath, glancing off.

“I know it’s not your intention to undermine me,” said the Leader Lois, shutting her eyes to maintain composure as the whole headquarters rumbled around them before flicking them open again, “And given the direness of the situation, I do understand there has to be a certain degree of flexibility in our ranks,” she stepped forward, giving an aware but indifferent glance to Clark fighting for his life with Amazo on the security feeds, “But with that flexibility in mind, I cannot, as leader of this League, simply allow you to go rogue, commanding a Kryptonian of all things.”

“We’re not commanding him, we’re helping—” Jimmy started.

“I take it the Android has duplicated the Kryptonian’s powers?” said the Leader Lois, ignoring him.

“Y-yes, ma’am,” said Jalana.

“So it’s duplicated his weaknesses as well,” said the Leader Lois, pacing forward and putting a hand on the holographic interface next to Jimmy. “All League members, you are hereby ordered to switch to kryptonite rounds.”

“Wait—you can’t—Clark, get out of there!” Jimmy shouted.

“No!” The Leader Lois said sharply, “Kryptonian, if you can hear him, I know you can hear me. If you’re on our side, I need you to blast that thing with as much ice breath as you can. We’ll keep our fire focused on the android and not you. Immobilize it so we can put it down.”

There was a pause on Clark’s end, punctuated by the brief sound of a fist landing, then a sober, “Okay.”

“Clark, no way, even a little splinter of that stuff—” Jimmy started.

“It—nnggh—sounds like our best bet,” said Clark, trying and failing to keep Amazo in a headlock on the security feeds.

“Can I just say that I’m really freaking sick of our ‘best bet’ being the option that sounds most likely to kill you?!” exclaimed Jimmy as Amazo threw Clark off by pretty much flipping him over its head. Jimmy looked at Jalana, “Back me up, here.”

But she just looked at him with a crinkled brow, “If we can get enough damage in before the Android can adapt…” Jalana’s voice was hesitant, and Jimmy felt a chill of dread on the back of his neck. “Kryptonite rounds aren’t actual kryptonite—they just use the radiation,” she added, quickly.

“Which can still kill him,” Jimmy emphasized.

“The longer you spend arguing this, the worse our odds get. The worse his odds get,” said the Leader Lois.

“I already said I can do it,” Clark said over the security feeds.

Jimmy’s lips thinned as the Leader Lois once again hit the ‘all-comms’ button on the holographic interface, “All League members, hold fire until the Kryptonian’s signal. Then give that Android hell.”

Jimmy’s heart was pounding in his ears as Amazo and Superman punched and heat-visioned and raced and grappled across the various security feeds, the rhythm of the fight made all the more startlingly clear by the unnerving lack of fire from League members.

I should be able to figure out how to stop this, thought Jimmy, The whole reason I came along was to make sure Clark gets home. Evil Lois acted like I could figure out anything—there has to be a better way than this—there has to be—

Jimmy’s shoulders flinched as Clark managed to get a kick in hard enough to send Amazo hurtling downwards, blasting the Android with heat vision to further put distance between them. There was a half-second pause, and Jimmy realized Clark was taking in a full breath before shouting “NOW!”

Clark tended to reserve ice breath for putting out fires and was often wary about using it in spaces where people were too close by. The first few days following the discovery of ice breath as one of his powers went from a general excitement at the concept of a power that Clark didn’t have to worry about the destructiveness of as much as super-strength or heat vision, to “I should actually do some research on cold and its effects just to make sure we’re safe about it—it’ll help me get better at using it!” This quickly turned into, “Jimmy, did you know that freezing literally makes human cells explode?” And, “Jimmy, if it’s not immediately treated, frostbitten tissue has to be removed to prevent infection.” And, “Jimmy, hypothermia can kill in under an hour.” And of course, “JIMMY I COULD GIVE SOMEONE THROMBOSIS.” Jimmy had to confiscate Clark’s laptop from him for several hours after that delightful series of web searches, while also insisting to him that “Clark it’s breath—I’m pretty sure you can control breath,” and eventually having to conduct experiments with pork tenderloins to be sure Clark could encase organic tissue in ice without freezing the tissue itself. Seeing Clark put everything into ice breath now, made that memory turn Jimmy’s stomach.

Here was Clark throwing out all the contents of his lungs into an environment that was filling very quickly with radiation that was deadly specifically to him. And of course he’d do it, too—even if Clark knew he wasn’t Amazo, even if Clark knew he couldn’t have known what the Spider Lady was planning on using him for, his powers were personal enough to him that he felt responsible for other entities using them. The high whoosh of ice breath was soon drowned out by the shrieking blast of League energy pistols and rifles. Amazo, previously trying to regain its flight, convulsed in an uncharacteristically organic agony as it was hit by blaze after blaze of kryptonite rounds as Clark kept forcing it down, down, down, with ice breath. Jimmy looked over his shoulder at the Leader Lois, who was cast in an eerie green light from the security feeds surrounding them all. Amazo’s convulsions shrank as frost feathered all over the android’s plated surface, sickly mint green-tinged ice crystals spreading from between its joints and plates. Jimmy watched as the silhouette of Amazo was lost in the blaze of white and green, and soon obscured completely as frost feathered over the security feeds. That roar of arctic breath petered out to soundlessness, and the shrieks and blasts of the kryptonite rounds also ground down to a few stray fires, then nothing.

The Leader Lois drew in a long breath through her nostrils before activating a comm feed on her gauntlet. “Report: Is there movement on the android?”

Lewis’s voice sounded over her gauntlet, “The Kryptonian’s ice breath has severely limited our visuals, but we’re not seeing movement from either.”

“C-Clark?” said Jimmy, his voice finally returning to his throat.

There was no response through the security feeds. All footage was completely obscured by frost and dust and smoke.

“Superman, are you okay?!” Jimmy called again. Jalana wasn’t looking at him, hunched over the holo-console, bracing her hands against it for support, eyes squeezed shut.

And still there was no answer.

“Clark!” Jimmy took off running out of the archives.

#clois #my adventures with superman #dc

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