[Fragment recovered]
[Ability unlocked: Underworld Manifestation]
[Description: An independent dimension under your control where the concept of death does not exist. You are its ruler. You can imprison anything within it or reshape it to your will.]
Daniel looked at the system panel and muttered, "Didn't expect Zod to be carrying fragments."
He hadn't had much chance to check the system since arriving three days ago. Three days and the mess had started immediately and hadn't stopped.
He looked at Zod's body.
Honestly the only reason that had gone smoothly was because Kryptonians for all their physical power had one consistent weakness. Magic. Death energy counted. Without that he would have been in considerably more trouble.
He looked up at the ship still pulling apart above Metropolis.
Time to end this.
He raised his arm.
The sky above Metropolis darkened. Something older, the darkness rolling in from every direction at once, swallowing the light until the city below was lit only by fires and the glow of the ship's failing systems.
Then the chains came.
Dozens of them, black and absolute, shooting down from the darkness and wrapping around the ship's hull, each one pulling taut, the ship groaning under the tension as it began to drag upward toward the dark.
The ship fired thrusters. Full burn.
The chains didn't care.
More came. Wrapping tighter, pulling harder, the ship's hull beginning to buckle where the chains gripped it.
Then from the darkness smaller chains descended, spreading across the city, finding every Kryptonian still standing and wrapping around them, pulling them off their feet, dragging them upward toward the opening above regardless of how hard they fought it.
Faora grabbed a building with both hands and held on, the chain around her pulling with enough force to crack the entire facade off the structure.
The chain pulled harder.
The facade came with her.
In the news helicopter the reporter had stopped talking entirely. She was just watching, mouth open, the camera running because her hands were still holding it but her brain had stopped filing coherent thoughts thirty seconds ago.
"What," she said finally. Just that. Nothing after it.
Daniel clenched his fist and the sky snapped back to normal, the darkness pulling back, the chains dissolving, daylight returning to Metropolis like nothing had happened.
He dropped to the ground and stayed there on one knee for a moment.
"Fuck," he said. "That was heavy work."
He meant it. He had limits and he had just found most of them. His death energy was dried up completely, the Underworld Manifestation having burned through everything he had left.
Right now a normal Kryptonian could probably knock him over.
Clark landed beside him.
"What are you?," Clark said, looking at him with the expression of someone trying to categorize something that didn't fit any existing category.
Daniel looked up at him.
"That's all you have to say," Daniel said. "No thank you. No appreciation. Nothing along the lines of thanks for stopping your psychopath people from terraforming the planet and killing every human being on it." He paused.
"A thank you would be nice Clark."
Clark looked at him for a moment.
"Thank you," Clark said.
"Was that so hard?" Daniel said, and sat down fully on the ground.
He looked at the state of Metropolis around them. Buildings down. Streets cracked open. Fires still burning in three directions.
"Your people really did a number on this city," Daniel said.
Clark looked at the damage and said nothing.
***
The broadcast had done its work.
Every government on Earth had watched the same footage.
A man in a blue suit and red cape moving through Metropolis faster than anything they had built. A man in a trench coat surrounded by darkness, chains pulling a warship out of the sky with his bare hands.
Military hardware that could level cities rendered useless against two people standing in a street.
The conversations happening in secure rooms across every major government were all the same conversation.
Different languages, different faces, same fear. These beings existed among them, had been among them, and the gap between what humanity could do and what they could do had just been broadcast live to every screen on the planet.
Most governments reached for their weapons first because that was what governments did when they were afraid.
The weapons felt considerably less reassuring than they had yesterday.
---
In a particular building in Metropolis, clean lines and sharp angles, the LexCorp logo visible against the skyline, a bald man stood in front of a floor to ceiling window watching the news footage on a screen behind him reflected in the glass.
The man in the cape catching a building facade with one hand.
The man in the red coat standing in a ring of dust where a street used to be.
Lex Luthor watched it without moving, his expression unreadable, a glass of something expensive held loosely in one hand.
His city.
His city had just been saved by something that wasn't human.
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
"Interesting," he said quietly, to no one.
*****
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