Power Girl wasn't in the habit of letting men protect her, but she let it slide as this was the first time she had felt physical pain or weakness in eight months, since she came to this universe. Tony's chivalry was touching, really- or maybe it was just him getting shit done. Who knew. At any rate, the pain was draining quickly and she fixed her attention back on the young girl.
May Ori- strange to have a face (a distressingly small face, the kind of dimple-cheeked angel face you'd see smiling up at you from a high school yearbook photo) to place to the name they had been chasing for months- flicked her tired eyes between Tony and Kara. "ฉันรู้จักคุณจากโทรทัศน์," she said. "ก็แปลกไปเป็นอันธพาล."
Power Girl stepped around Tony gently and spoke, grateful for Tony translating behind her. "You don't have to be the bad guy, May," she began gently. "We can help you. You don't have to kill."
Sirens cut her off, closer than any others that night. Kara listened hard, her Kryptonian ears picking up sounds from miles away, and confirming her fears. "They're coming," she said frantically in English.
Tony didn't translate, but everybody present understood- especially May, who looked terrified and lunged at the man she had been trying to kill, her hands glowing purple.
Shit. Sirens, and -- shit. There was no room for foreign crime policy in this situation. They needed to move fast.
His gut reaction was to attack the girl first, but he knew that protecting the innocents -- or, in this case, an outmatched man who'd earned May's attention for whatever reason -- was priority number one. The suit served as a protective armor against most anything there was a name for, but the guy was only human, and he likely wouldn't survive the radiation poisoning he would unavoidably contract if May came any closer.
Jarvis did the manual work of plotting a trajectory within a millisecond and getting Tony there within a few more; he knocked the man onto his ass a few meters away with a solid shove to the sternum and faced May, who was still moving fast towards them.
He leveled his hand, palm out, towards her, mirroring her stance from a few moments before. The repulsor on the gauntlet palm glowed a bright and sharp a second before it fired into the soft flesh of her abdomen and threw her backwards.
"ฉันไม่ต้องการเจ็บคุณ," he said. The emotionless mask of the Iron Man armor turned to regard Power Girl for a brief moment as he switched the config to English. "You all right, Elle?"
"Yeah," Kara said firmly. "I'm not used to things, well, hurting- but I'm okay. Thanks." She turned to May, not wanting the situation to get out of hand. Sirens shrilled in the distance, and the teenager was starting to stir in the corner. Before any of them but Kara could truly get their bearings, May was on her feet and wiping blood from her already filthy and gaunt face.
Kara sped over to her and grabbed her by the wrists just as she raised her hands again at the older, seedy-looking man. "Why are you doing this?" Power Girl asked, her voice rising from adrenaline. Behind her, Tony continued to translate for them.
"ฉันต้อง! ไม่มีทางอื่น!" May cried, her young face contorted in panic and horror. She reared back and kicked Kara full in the shins, the radiation just enough to catch Kara off guard and send her reeling back from the blow.
In a heartbeat, Power Girl was on top of her, pulling her arms back effortlessly even as May's palms turned red-hot and tried to burn impressions into Kara's arms. May struggled and kicked, somehow managing to wrench free- Kara's fault for trying to go gentle on the girl- and scream, tears pouring down her cheeks, "พระเจ้ายกโทษให้ฉัน."
Even as she ran at the man, palms burning purple-red, and pressed her hands into his face, a gunshot rang through the alley.
It took them a frozen moment to realize what had happened. It was the blood blossoming scarlet against May's side what alerted Tony to what must have transpired -- the victim's gun had been out and shaking in his sweaty hand and cocked and ready before either of them had time to notice, to stop it -- and it had released a bullet pushing, squirming its way past May's ribs as her skin reddened, bubbled, crumbled around it.
In the seconds it took for reality to crash back down and register, the pistol dropped like a rock to the ground and clattered into the relative silence. There was a pause, like a deep breath, before the man realized that half of his face was missing and began screaming and clutching at the hemisphere of his brain that wasn't there anymore.
Tony watched, his stomach caught in his throat, as the man scrabbled with trembling, jerking fingers into the socket of his face that coated his nails with blood and little gray flecks that dropped from the crevasse like flaking paper. Radiation poisoning lamed in the skin he had left, bursting his other eye, and he was dead from the pain before he hit the ground.
Tony wasn't sure when he went into shock. He didn't move, couldn't really move, not even when Jarvis himself starting speaking to him urgently, telling him to move, he must recover his faculties and assist, please, Sir. Move.
The man -- what had his name been? God, she didn't even know -- was still collapsing, still screaming in Kara's head though his lips had fallen silent, still scrabbling and wailing like a rabid animal in deepest agony. His brain was ash and there was blood mixing with other fluids on the ground. Power Girl's impossibly blue eyes took in the scene before her as a litany of words fluttered through her mind, keeping her anchored to the scene.
Highly-focused induced radiation. Nuclear burns. Shock. Aqueous humor. May began to fall back, and in an instant Kara had caught the slim girl in her arms- even to her strong sensibilities, May barely weighed anything. Christ, she should be at a junior prom right now, or kissing boys, or buying her first goddamn training bra. She had to be 14 or 15, and her skin was bubbling and singeing, deep burns spreading like wildfire from the bleeding gunshot wound. The low, pathetic keening groans of agony she was making were worse than any screams.
A new word, then, came into Kara's mind. Ability immunity. May was losing hers- she was vulnerable to her own radiation now, and her skin was turning a sickly purple from ultraviolet sickness spiderwebbing across her broken body. It was killing her.
May's body began expelling gamma waves in an intense wave of purple, spreading through the air around them. No. No, they were in a city- Kara couldn't let that happen. So many people. So many burst eyes and burnt skulls, no. Kara caught May's gaze, and the little girl's almond eyes were in agony as she weakly grasped at Kara's sleeve and nearly sobbed in pain.
"ได้โปรด," she moaned. Please. One of the few words in Thai Kara knew. She noticed that the radiation was focusing on the point of contact where May was clutching Kara's arm, pouring into the Kryptonian's body instead of into their surroundings. Power Girl scooped the girl into her arms and held her hand tightly, her free hand stroking the burning, melting skin of May's face.
Any pain Kara felt was pushed to the back of her mind, because gamma radiation didn't matter, not now. Not when this little girl was sobbing in pain and bleeding out over Kara's arms, being poisoned by her own unwanted power. They stayed there in that alley, May's sobs echoing into the silence, until she lacked the strength to cry. The radiation was pouring from her more intensely now (god Kara's hand was burning from it), and Kara leaned over to stroke her face, brush a hair out of her eyes.
"พวกเขาสัญญาจะทำให้ฉันปกติ," May said weakly. The girl was dying, and Kara leaned in, muttering No no no no no please please don't go stay with me please stay I can save you I have to save you. May tightened her grip on Kara's fingers, looking pleadingly into her blue eyes.
"ฉัน... ฉันพลาดแม่ของฉัน," she sighed, burns sweeping slowly over her face to melt her cheek. The radiation didn't even have the grace to kill her then, allow her a dying moment of dignity, no- she gave a few shuddering gasps, blood bubbling in her throat, before sputtering her last breath and dying in Kara's arms.
But Kara could barely focus on the horror of May's final moment, because in her death rattle her body convulsed with a burst of radiation equivalent to a nuclear bomb, all pouring into Kara's body. She was blasted back from May's corpse and landed on her back before scrambling to her hands and knees, her entire body reeling in agony. Radiation poisoning. It had to be. Sickly purple was sweeping over her, threading through to her bones and highlighting every cell in pain.
She waited out the long moment, a cold minute in the alley that seemed to last forever, as Tony stood a few feet from her watching cautiously. Kara caught her breath, managing to focus through the pain and nausea long enough to eye May's mangled body.
It took a lot for him to watch. The images printed themselves onto his pupils but he found it difficult to comprehend them. He tried to grasp at his slipping rationality by its steady, comfortable threads, he got a hold of himself with simple words. He began explaining the situation to himself: This is May, dying. Dead. This is Elle picking up the slack, saving people. Jarvis is telling me to pay attention; I should, shouldn't I?
Somehow he managed to pull it together. It was clinical, his reaction, he could tell that much, but the sharp smell of horror lingered with the scattered pieces of rosy, burnt flesh around them. Things moved slowly. Elle asked him a question. He should answer. What was it?
No -- he couldn't say it. Not now. Maybe later. Later. "Later," he said roughly, the word heavy and fat in his mouth like his jaw had only just figured out how to move again.
He knelt. Elle looked like death warmed up, skin flaxen. He couldn't imagine what it felt to be her at the moment -- he avoided her eyes, the body of May. "There's nothing we can -- Elle, we need to leave."
Power Girl, or maybe she was Kara, or maybe Karen- this weak creature whose hands were clenching in pain on the ground- struggled to her feet and swayed slightly. Burns were visible on her chest and running down her legs, none of them too severe but still out-of-place on her invulnerable skin.
She met Tony's eyes unsteadily and took a step towards him. "Elle," she started. "That's not my name." Her knees abruptly gave out under her.
He lurched forward and caught her before her knees managed to crack against the ground, wondering vaguely how it felt to be held by arms of cold metal. He stared blankly at her. He wanted to flip up the visor and speak with her face-to-face -- this was impartial, he felt shielded, but there was still too much radiation in the air.
"You can explain later," he said. There was later, again. He was pushing it to the side, like always. "Can you fly?"
She put a hand on Tony's metal chest and wondered slightly when her skin sizzled. Kara's eyes were disoriented, unfocused, and she looked up at the impassive gold face in front of her. She could see through the mask to his strained face underneath, but the x-ray vision flickered in and out like a bad satellite signal.
"No," she answered. "I can't, I'm sorry." Before she could stop herself, Kara bowed her head and grimaced in pain a stab of heat that spiked through her head.
"Yeah," he said, and tried to make it sound like it was a good thing. He held her steady with a hand as Jarvis went ahead and dutifully scanned her, picking up heavy traces of radiation that appeared as little blue blips at the corners of his eyes. It didn't take a quasi-MRI to notice how badly she was burnt, second to third-degrees over her thighs and shins, red and shiny and irritated. He fought the urge to run metallic fingers across them, curious at the pain he knew she was so unused to.
She was in bad shape, for a meta. "Hey," he cupped her cheek gently, thinking sluggishly though his options as the sirens blared louder, closer, maybe even around the corner. "We need to hurry. I can get us out of here. Think you can hold on to me up in the air? You strong enough to do that?"
"Yeah," she slurred. "Maybe." Kara knew, in some distant corner of her mind, that her voice sounded weak and unconvincing, but she had to at least try to be strong. Right? So she inched around his back, clinging to him piggy-back even as her grip weakened.
Dimly, she felt Tony reaching behind him to untie the rope and clasp holding her cape to her left shoulder and use the whole setup to bind her to his back. Kara tried to help, passing the cape and rope along behind her, and soon she was tied to him so that she couldn't fall off if she tried.
Were they flying, or was she passing out? She couldn't even tell.
It took maybe an hour, maybe more, flying as fast as he dared with an injured woman on his back with fluctuating powers of durability. She affected many flying factors by just being there, but Tony forced himself to be considerate of her current state rather than rushing to fix her back to her normal self. The urge to go breakneck back to someplace with other people like her to help was overwhelming -- he was just a guy, just a human, and it was so damn odd to be responsible for someone who could kick his ass any other time of day.
The wind was probably something horrible and it was cold as ice during the night, flying fast. He cranked up the internal thermostat and opened a few flaps in the hopes that she was warmed by the heating metal; it seemed all he could do, for now.
By Kara's estimation, they flew for just this side of forever. Sometimes she was awake, sometimes not, and sometimes she even talked to Tony a little. She still had her JLA wristband that she used to talk to him over the roar of the wind, and though she spent half the flight slightly delirious from fever, she did have enough lucidity to tell Tony near the end of the flight to let her sleep it off.
Sleep sounded perfect right now. And there was no medicine in this universe that could cure her faster than her body would go. At the worst, it would probably take her seven, maybe eight hours to heal. The mental calculations took most of the trip to think of between her half-dreams and half-nightmares, endless loops of ray guns and portals, stars swallowing planets and exploding eyeballs.
The last thing she remembered was seeing the sunrise reflect off of a house over a cliff, then she was gone.
May Ori- strange to have a face (a distressingly small face, the kind of dimple-cheeked angel face you'd see smiling up at you from a high school yearbook photo) to place to the name they had been chasing for months- flicked her tired eyes between Tony and Kara. "ฉันรู้จักคุณจากโทรทัศน์," she said. "ก็แปลกไปเป็นอันธพาล."
Power Girl stepped around Tony gently and spoke, grateful for Tony translating behind her. "You don't have to be the bad guy, May," she began gently. "We can help you. You don't have to kill."
Sirens cut her off, closer than any others that night. Kara listened hard, her Kryptonian ears picking up sounds from miles away, and confirming her fears. "They're coming," she said frantically in English.
Tony didn't translate, but everybody present understood- especially May, who looked terrified and lunged at the man she had been trying to kill, her hands glowing purple.
"No!" she shrieked, just as Tony shouted "หยุด!"
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His gut reaction was to attack the girl first, but he knew that protecting the innocents -- or, in this case, an outmatched man who'd earned May's attention for whatever reason -- was priority number one. The suit served as a protective armor against most anything there was a name for, but the guy was only human, and he likely wouldn't survive the radiation poisoning he would unavoidably contract if May came any closer.
Jarvis did the manual work of plotting a trajectory within a millisecond and getting Tony there within a few more; he knocked the man onto his ass a few meters away with a solid shove to the sternum and faced May, who was still moving fast towards them.
He leveled his hand, palm out, towards her, mirroring her stance from a few moments before. The repulsor on the gauntlet palm glowed a bright and sharp a second before it fired into the soft flesh of her abdomen and threw her backwards.
"ฉันไม่ต้องการเจ็บคุณ," he said. The emotionless mask of the Iron Man armor turned to regard Power Girl for a brief moment as he switched the config to English. "You all right, Elle?"
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Kara sped over to her and grabbed her by the wrists just as she raised her hands again at the older, seedy-looking man. "Why are you doing this?" Power Girl asked, her voice rising from adrenaline. Behind her, Tony continued to translate for them.
"ฉันต้อง! ไม่มีทางอื่น!" May cried, her young face contorted in panic and horror. She reared back and kicked Kara full in the shins, the radiation just enough to catch Kara off guard and send her reeling back from the blow.
In a heartbeat, Power Girl was on top of her, pulling her arms back effortlessly even as May's palms turned red-hot and tried to burn impressions into Kara's arms. May struggled and kicked, somehow managing to wrench free- Kara's fault for trying to go gentle on the girl- and scream, tears pouring down her cheeks, "พระเจ้ายกโทษให้ฉัน."
Even as she ran at the man, palms burning purple-red, and pressed her hands into his face, a gunshot rang through the alley.
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In the seconds it took for reality to crash back down and register, the pistol dropped like a rock to the ground and clattered into the relative silence. There was a pause, like a deep breath, before the man realized that half of his face was missing and began screaming and clutching at the hemisphere of his brain that wasn't there anymore.
Tony watched, his stomach caught in his throat, as the man scrabbled with trembling, jerking fingers into the socket of his face that coated his nails with blood and little gray flecks that dropped from the crevasse like flaking paper. Radiation poisoning lamed in the skin he had left, bursting his other eye, and he was dead from the pain before he hit the ground.
Tony wasn't sure when he went into shock. He didn't move, couldn't really move, not even when Jarvis himself starting speaking to him urgently, telling him to move, he must recover his faculties and assist, please, Sir. Move.
But he couldn't.
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Highly-focused induced radiation. Nuclear burns. Shock. Aqueous humor. May began to fall back, and in an instant Kara had caught the slim girl in her arms- even to her strong sensibilities, May barely weighed anything. Christ, she should be at a junior prom right now, or kissing boys, or buying her first goddamn training bra. She had to be 14 or 15, and her skin was bubbling and singeing, deep burns spreading like wildfire from the bleeding gunshot wound. The low, pathetic keening groans of agony she was making were worse than any screams.
A new word, then, came into Kara's mind. Ability immunity. May was losing hers- she was vulnerable to her own radiation now, and her skin was turning a sickly purple from ultraviolet sickness spiderwebbing across her broken body. It was killing her.
May's body began expelling gamma waves in an intense wave of purple, spreading through the air around them. No. No, they were in a city- Kara couldn't let that happen. So many people. So many burst eyes and burnt skulls, no. Kara caught May's gaze, and the little girl's almond eyes were in agony as she weakly grasped at Kara's sleeve and nearly sobbed in pain.
"ได้โปรด," she moaned. Please. One of the few words in Thai Kara knew. She noticed that the radiation was focusing on the point of contact where May was clutching Kara's arm, pouring into the Kryptonian's body instead of into their surroundings. Power Girl scooped the girl into her arms and held her hand tightly, her free hand stroking the burning, melting skin of May's face.
Any pain Kara felt was pushed to the back of her mind, because gamma radiation didn't matter, not now. Not when this little girl was sobbing in pain and bleeding out over Kara's arms, being poisoned by her own unwanted power. They stayed there in that alley, May's sobs echoing into the silence, until she lacked the strength to cry. The radiation was pouring from her more intensely now (god Kara's hand was burning from it), and Kara leaned over to stroke her face, brush a hair out of her eyes.
"พวกเขาสัญญาจะทำให้ฉันปกติ," May said weakly. The girl was dying, and Kara leaned in, muttering No no no no no please please don't go stay with me please stay I can save you I have to save you. May tightened her grip on Kara's fingers, looking pleadingly into her blue eyes.
"ฉัน... ฉันพลาดแม่ของฉัน," she sighed, burns sweeping slowly over her face to melt her cheek. The radiation didn't even have the grace to kill her then, allow her a dying moment of dignity, no- she gave a few shuddering gasps, blood bubbling in her throat, before sputtering her last breath and dying in Kara's arms.
But Kara could barely focus on the horror of May's final moment, because in her death rattle her body convulsed with a burst of radiation equivalent to a nuclear bomb, all pouring into Kara's body. She was blasted back from May's corpse and landed on her back before scrambling to her hands and knees, her entire body reeling in agony. Radiation poisoning. It had to be. Sickly purple was sweeping over her, threading through to her bones and highlighting every cell in pain.
She waited out the long moment, a cold minute in the alley that seemed to last forever, as Tony stood a few feet from her watching cautiously. Kara caught her breath, managing to focus through the pain and nausea long enough to eye May's mangled body.
"Tony," she said quietly. "What did she say?"
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Somehow he managed to pull it together. It was clinical, his reaction, he could tell that much, but the sharp smell of horror lingered with the scattered pieces of rosy, burnt flesh around them. Things moved slowly. Elle asked him a question. He should answer. What was it?
No -- he couldn't say it. Not now. Maybe later. Later. "Later," he said roughly, the word heavy and fat in his mouth like his jaw had only just figured out how to move again.
He knelt. Elle looked like death warmed up, skin flaxen. He couldn't imagine what it felt to be her at the moment -- he avoided her eyes, the body of May. "There's nothing we can -- Elle, we need to leave."
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She met Tony's eyes unsteadily and took a step towards him. "Elle," she started. "That's not my name." Her knees abruptly gave out under her.
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"You can explain later," he said. There was later, again. He was pushing it to the side, like always. "Can you fly?"
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"No," she answered. "I can't, I'm sorry." Before she could stop herself, Kara bowed her head and grimaced in pain a stab of heat that spiked through her head.
"Tony," she asked uncertainly, "Did I save them?"
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She was in bad shape, for a meta. "Hey," he cupped her cheek gently, thinking sluggishly though his options as the sirens blared louder, closer, maybe even around the corner. "We need to hurry. I can get us out of here. Think you can hold on to me up in the air? You strong enough to do that?"
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Dimly, she felt Tony reaching behind him to untie the rope and clasp holding her cape to her left shoulder and use the whole setup to bind her to his back. Kara tried to help, passing the cape and rope along behind her, and soon she was tied to him so that she couldn't fall off if she tried.
Were they flying, or was she passing out? She couldn't even tell.
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The wind was probably something horrible and it was cold as ice during the night, flying fast. He cranked up the internal thermostat and opened a few flaps in the hopes that she was warmed by the heating metal; it seemed all he could do, for now.
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Sleep sounded perfect right now. And there was no medicine in this universe that could cure her faster than her body would go. At the worst, it would probably take her seven, maybe eight hours to heal. The mental calculations took most of the trip to think of between her half-dreams and half-nightmares, endless loops of ray guns and portals, stars swallowing planets and exploding eyeballs.
The last thing she remembered was seeing the sunrise reflect off of a house over a cliff, then she was gone.
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