DVD Commentary for astolat’s "Moving On" Part 1
Here are my DVD comments on Moving On, by astolat -- please note, this is a comedy, and jokes don't flow well with constant interruptions, so if you haven't read it yet, I suggest you read the story in its entirety first, then come back here for the comments!
Large chunks of this story were written in a tent in Botswana, under the harsh and unforgiving eye of cesperanza, who brutally made me rewrite that one scene eight times and just generally beat the whole thing into shape. It shamelessly raids the Justice League cartoon and some of the more cracktastic bits of DC canon for inspiration and just keeps going from there.
All Hail, Mistress cesperanza! Good job with the whip!
Also? DC canon truly is the most crack-tastic thing on this earth.
This story is a Smallville/Justice League/DC comics universe amalgam, also a Future AU. You'd be surprised how many stories in this genre there are out there. People pick and choose the parts of the DCU they like and bring them together - why not, it's what the pros do! Wally and John are recognizable as Justice League cartoon characters, but Clark and Lex are refugees from SV. Fans are particularly fond of the JL version of Wally, as he is most wonderfully voiced by Michael Rosenbaum. I've seen a surprising number of women on my flist start reading comic books via the Smallville-to-Justice League-to-DCU chain. The JL episode that brought over the most fangirls into the paper-based universe was "A Better World".
If you need to know who Maxima is, Wikipedia is your pal! (Also, if you read to the end of the entry there is a picture of her trading card, which features Superman in chains and collar and shredded costume kneeling at her feet. You know, if you like that sort of thing.)
I knew of Maxima only from a "Superman: the animated series" episode that featured her as the Bad Guy of the week. She was loud-mouthe and annoying, like an alien Veruca Salt, if Veruca were an adult with superpowers. Unlike the more subtle "Batman: the animated series," Superman's villains often tend towards the one-dimensional: Maxima was flat-out childish; laughable, but for her powers and her willingness to resort to violence to fulfill her whims.
This story could otherwise be summarized as, Lex conquers the galaxy, in STYLE, and I am glad to report I have successfully harassed mutecornett into making an accompanying Lex Paper Doll , to serve as a visual reference! *g*
Priceless. You must go check out the outfits... but only after you finish reading the story, as there are spoilers!
Moving On by astolat
It was Wally's turn on shift in the Justice League satellite that night, which usually meant he played half a dozen video games, called GL a few times (okay, ten or eleven) until John finally yelled and hung up on him, played another five or six games, called a couple of girls whose numbers had drifted into his pockets that outfit has *pockets*?, watched some soap operas, and ended up running in circles around the watchtower to keep from shooting himself in the head out of boredom. Once he'd actually shot himself, and then zoomed away faster than the bullet could follow. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to check what was behind him, and Batman's expression on seeing the shattered monitor had put an end to that particular form of entertainment.
We start slow, focusing on secondary characters who will act on and comment on the main characters' actions in our little comedy-drama. This bit's in Wally's POV. It's funny how, for such a frenetic character, he's wonderfully laid-back.
However, for once it was a quiet night coming after a noisy day - Maxima had blown into the solar system for yet another shot at talking Superman into becoming her Emperor, and when that brilliant plan hadn't worked - big surprise to exactly no one but her - she'd thrown a fit that had nearly taken down a couple of skyscrapers and left a smoking crater in the middle of a field in Kansas. Superman had managed to calm her down after a few hours, but not before her starship had gotten damaged too badly to leave the system. It was now parked in the docking bay with her servants swarming over it to do repairs, and Superman and GL were hanging out to keep an eye on her.
Like I said, Maxima needs to be tossed down a garbage chute by some squirrels, 'cos she's a spoiled brat.
Which meant Wally had someone to talk to, as long as he kept the conversation topics going. "I know a lot of their names are stupid, and yeah, okay, Rainbow Raider and Mirror Master are kind of lame-"
John grunted noncommittally.
"-but Abra Kadabra's got to be the hokiest name ever, and he's seriously rough, I never have any clue what that guy is going to come up with. On the other hand," Wally zipped up the stairs, following as John flew to the second level of the catwalks, "Trickster sounds cool, but he's just a nut. But maybe the worst is Zoom. Although, Grodd's a pain too. Well, and Captain Cold is tough, but he's not as evil, y'know? I mean, sometimes I'm worried I'm going to get killed, but not like he's going to go murder a bunch of little old ladies if I don't get there in time."
My husband, ComicbookMan, and I have actually had conversations wherein we refer to Central City's villains as the "Batman Lite Bad Guys," because so many of them seem like less-serious analogs to Batman evildoers, but Flash's adversaries are canonically referred to as "The Rogues." If Batman and Flash ever decide to swap cities for a day, The Rogues will wind up hiding under their beds, shivering in terror and weeping piteously for the Flash's return. They are far less compelling than Batman's villains, but entertaining in their own cracktastic way.
Superman came out of the hallway onto the landing a little cautiously, looking around. I don't blame him, because Maxima will suddenly come at you from nowhere, like Kato in those old Pink Panther movies. Wally privately shook his head. Not that he was out to see the big guy settling down in a star system far, far away or anything, but it was a sad day for all mankind when a babe as hot as Maxima went away from Earth without at least getting laid. He'd tried offering a little friendly advice-"Look, just sleep with her, and make it kind of fast. Trust me, she'll never call you again" Voice of experience, Flash? - but Superman had just glared at him and stalked off. It wasn't even like Superman was dating anyone, but he apparently had "issues" or something. Wally, Clark is not a slut: he's obviously saving himself for his Own True Lurve! Which is to say, someone whose initials are "LL": who that might be depending on the DC universe.
Maxima was hovering over her spaceship, arms folded, still sulking. It was too bad she couldn't see past the big fish to all the others swimming around in the ocean, Wally thought regretfully. Damn, those were some fine... He jerked his eyes away and hurriedly tried to think of something else, before she picked up on it. "So, uh, what about you, GL? Who's the worst of the worst? Sinestro?" Sinestro being a Green Lantern who turned to Eeee-vil. Jeez, you'd think they'd think twice about offering a ring of ultimate power to someone named "Sinestro", with a freakin' widow's peak 'o Evil and a Snidely Whiplash moustache!
John shrugged. "Whichever one I'm up against at the time, that's the bad guy." John will not play this time-passer as a game, he's taking it way too seriously.
Wally rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. One of them's got to have been the toughest to beat." "C'mon, unbend a little and play with me, dude!
"It's a bad idea to think about them that way," John said. "Either you'll end up underestimating someone you think is a second-stringer or you'll psych yourself out for a tough fight. They're all the same."
No fun, as usual. "Hey, Supes, come on, what do you say? Anybody top of your list?"
"Green Lantern's right," Superman began virtuously, but Maxima gave a short, mocking laugh, and darted down to join them.
"A human?" she said. "An ordinary man, one of these fragile weaklings?"
Superman looked annoyed, and Wally couldn't blame him. "Hey, sharing the mind reading isn't buddies," Wally said. I've never heard the expression "isn't buddies" before, but plan on using it constantly from here on in. I can hear Wally using it on the wee Central City orphans he canonically visits regularly. Then he looked at Superman. "So who is it?"
He looked annoyed some more, and then sighed. "Luthor." Luthors! Can't live with 'em, can't toss 'em out an airlock!
"Huh, really?" Wally blinked. "I mean, worse than Darkseid? The immortal guy with the giant evil hell planet and the endless army?"
"Luthor's worse because he's better," Superman said, which didn't make much sense, and not to Maxima either, apparently, because she frowned and flew off again, vanishing around the far side of her ship. We, and the characters, will have to wait for the other shoe to drop to understand that statement.
After a few seconds, Wally said, "So, how about them Yankees?"
Aaaaand we now join our regularly scheduled program, already in progress… Lex POV.
Lex heard the impact from his office: the windows of the penthouse shattering on the other side of the building. "I'll have to call you back, Jensen," he said, and hung up on his call.
He poured Scotch for himself, a glass of fresh orange juice for Clark, and leaned back against the desk to wait, trying not to look too hard at his feelings. LexCorp had smashed past Wal-Mart and become the biggest corporation in the world five months ago when the new regenerative drugs cleared FDA approval and the stealth fighter contract came through the same week, setting off a stock-buying frenzy that had made his assistant's assistant a millionaire and the executives all billionaires. Walmart! Not as evil as LexCorp, but eviler than Microsoft! He'd smiled and drunk champagne with the board, shook his father's hand and looked at the baffled spite in his eyes, and gone to bed with the amazingly uninhibited activist from Greenpeace who'd crashed the party to throw oil into the punch. Afterwards he'd lain on his back staring at the ceiling and felt nothing: no excitement, no thrill. Probably disappointed that the activist from Greenpeace didn't try to kill him after sex--and please note, whether the activist was male or female wasn't mentioned, which amused me no end. Also, color me astonished that Lionel isn't pushing up the daisies.
He'd given away two and a half billion dollars in the last week alone, and the month was going to end up in the black anyway. One of his think tank people had come up with the idea of building an artificial archipelago in the South Pacific and declaring it a new nation under LexCorp governance, inviting people to become citizens, just to have something to do with the money. They'd bought a couple of islands to get started and already had a waiting list. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored....
He owned five governors, twelve senators, thirty congressmen, and some ridiculous number of local politicians, not to mention most of the greatest city in the world. He had no children and five divorces and one alien enemy, and only the last one of those stirred any emotion in him at all anymore.
He didn't even know what had provoked Clark this time; there wasn't much going on. Nowadays he didn't break the law so much as he told his people what he wanted and they had the laws subtly changed to allow him to do it. Might this be a reference to the current administration? He hadn't had anyone killed in years; people didn't stand up to him anymore. He'd been debating whether to run for president or throw it all away and turn costumed supervillain; or possibly both in that order. That's a tip of the hat to what happened in DCU canon. For all he knew, Clark was high on red kryptonite and coming here to kill him, and all Lex could feel was a glittering, sparkling thirst for something anything! to happen.
The doors peeled themselves back and away, the haze of smoke and debris in the hallway cleared and a woman stepped into the office: six feet tall, red hair rioting over her shoulders, with the inhuman beauty of a supermodel after image manipulation except for the thin clinging film of grey dust on her skin and a trickle of blood down her arm.
"You're not who I was expecting," Lex said, contemplating her. He felt alert, alive. He thought he could taste Clark in this, two steps removed or less; and if not, at least a challenge, something worth caring about. If he'd shown fear, he'd be dead right about now.
"I am Maxima of Almerac," she said, "and your defenses are pathetic. They could never have kept out Kal-El."
Lex smiled. He knew who she was. "They're not meant to," he said. "Can I offer you a drink?" Better talk fast, Lex; this one has a short attention span. I suggest you compliment her a lot while you talk.
We switch to Clark's long-suffering POV
Clark had just started to relax after it had been about an hour since he'd seen Maxima, when he realized it had been an hour since he'd seen Maxima. This is what we call repetition for comedic purposes or comedic repetition. ::adjusts glasses in a scholarly fashion:: The servants - slaves - only cringed when he demanded to know where she'd gone.
"The League tracking computer has a record of a projectile leaving from the docking bay," John said, flying back into the room. "It was headed straight for Metropolis."
"Oh, for - what does she want now?" Clark said. It had been bad enough fending off Chloe's crush back in high school, not to mention the crash-and-burn of his relationships with Lana and Lois; at least none of them had taken apart a freaking city when they'd been mad at him. I love that he's comparing the behavior of this hell-juggernaut of destruction from another world with the girls of Smallville's high-school crushes.
"She wishes only to do you a service," one of the slaves squeaked. "A favor, to destroy your enemy-" "Maybe if I kill his worst enemy, he'll finally *like* me!"
Clark didn't stop to grab an air mask, so his lungs were aching with the need for oxygen by the time he burned back into the atmosphere over Metropolis, midnight lights sparkling. She had an hour's lead on him, but maybe she'd have had trouble finding Lex; maybe the LexCorp defenses had slowed her down-
There was a gaping hole in the front of the LexCorp towers. He couldn't see through the leaded windows and walls, so he just dived through the opening she'd left, blowing away the smoldering cloud. Dozens of LexCorp armored drones littered the floor, smashed into pieces; bloodstains on the floor showed where she'd left bodies, though the casualties had been cleared, so someone had been in charge afterwards- The doors to the elevator shaft were smashed open and hanging askew. He flew up to the top floor and through the gaping hole on the other side, and into the study.
He stopped.
Maxima was reclining on a large velvety divan in the middle of the room, holding a glass of champagne and looking simultaneously irritated and perplexed. Lex was leaning against the desk, as composed as if the big metal doors hadn't been peeled open like a sardine can and there wasn't blood-streaked dust tracked in all over the oriental carpets. "What kept you?" Lex said. Only James Bond or Bugs Bunny could get away with this level of cool.
Clark glared at him. If he'd been dead, there would have been a great rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in sorrow, but he's okay, so Clark's annoyed.
"I do not understand you," Maxima burst out, standing up. She waved a hand at Lex furiously. "How can he be your worst enemy? - there is nothing to him! I could kill him by walking across the room!"
Lex raised an eyebrow at Clark. "Your worst enemy? I'm touched." And you know, I suspect Lex really is pleased he's special in some way to Clark. If he wasn't, the rest of this story wouldn't have happened.
"Maxima, I guarantee if you put a hand on him, you'd be sorry," Clark said, ignoring Lex. "There's a defense system built into the ceiling."
"Those are just the cameras, actually," Lex said blandly. "The matter destabilizer is satellite-based." Always prepared for any eventuality. And they call *Clark* the boyscout!
She stared at him. "You never thought about that," she said accusingly.
Lex shrugged. "I've dealt with telepaths before. It's not that hard to maintain a few superficial lines of thought to cover any contingency planning. Besides," he smiled back at her, that sly flirting twist to the corner of his mouth, "I was enjoying the conversation."
"All right, Maxima," Clark said, breaking in. "Your ship is fixed, so let's go." Via con dios and don't let the door hit you in the ass, bitch!
"That's kind of rude, 'Kal'," Lex said, obviously following his usual playbook, which as far as Clark could tell seemed to be to get to him as much as possible. If he can't provoke love, he'll provoke hate; as long as it's attention of some sort. "Someone might think you were feeling a little threatened. You know," he went on to Maxima, with a confidential air, "some men can't handle a woman who's an equal."
Clark stared at Lex, speechlessly, while Maxima's eyes widened. "Is that why you have refused me?" she demanded, whirling on him. "You - you spineless, pathetic - worm!" Actually, this is one of the few reasons Maxima can understand for Clark's rejection--one that doesn't reflect badly on herself. She literally cannot fathom why Superman didn't fall in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her.
"No!" Clark said. "That's not-" Then he stopped, torn; if letting Maxima believe it would get her off his back, it was almost worth not punching Lex into next week for it. A lot of people would resent someone else thinking they were that pathetic, but Clark's used to people thinking he's a loser, as that's his usual Clark-Kent-dweeb-reporter front.
"I should have known!" Maxima stormed. "What other reason could there be for a Kryptonian to enjoy living on this wretched little backwater lump of a planet? Foreshadowing! I cannot believe I offered my hand to a spiritless, cowardly weakling-"
Clark backed away as she advanced on him, wincing at the volume and the haze of fury she was broadcasting; her hair was almost crackling with it.
Lex snapped open his cigar case and took one out. "Don't be too hard on him," he said, lighting up. "It's kind of inevitable - you take someone strong and put him in with people weaker than he is, it stunts the development of his fighting instincts." Hmmm, that's actually got a germ of plausibility to it!
Maxima reined in and slowly turned to look at Lex, eyes narrowed. "You are an ordinary man," she said. "Yet Kal-El names you his most dangerous enemy."
Lex shrugged, blowing off a cloud of smoke. "I spent most of my childhood weaker than the people around me. It has the opposite effect." Makes no sense, but nicely reasoned! I bet she buys it!
"So why are you still on this insignificant dirtheap?" she said.
Lex tilted his head, thoughtfully. "I guess I just haven't had a better offer yet."
Lex's POV
"Look," Clark said, in what he probably imagined was a reasonable tone, Lex used to think "OMIGOD, he's being a prick". Now he thinks, "he's being a prick but he thinks he's being a mensch". It's as if, via deeper understanding, Clark has achieved a whole new level of annoying for Lex. "you can't be serious. Almerac's hundreds of light years away." In other words, "Staaaay!"
"No, not wool; it's a tropical climate," Lex said, waving away the tailor's assistant holding out a bolt of fabric. "The distance only matters if I'm coming back, Clark." There were twenty people bustling through the penthouse, packing, occasionally stumbling over some of the debris from Maxima's entrance. Have any of those twenty people noticed that The Boss is calling Superman, "Clark"? He hadn't bothered to have it cleaned up much. Whoever the board picked to replace him could decide what to do with the place. Lex is leaving a mess in his wake for others to deal with, much like the fallout from his disastrous relationship with Clark is a mess that the Justic League will have to deal with in the next chapter.
He picked up books from his end table to consider. The Art of War, yes; Foreshadowing! Strunck & White, no it's "Strunk & White", and he's right, there's no use for the Elements of Style in English if you're going to be speaking and writing in Almeracian. One of Maxima's servants had brought him a machine that could shove a new language into your mind giant gulps at a time; each session felt like having major dental work without novocaine, and he'd had a steady ache at the back of his skull for the last two days, but he could already manage basic conversations in Almeracian and the galactic trade language. They'd given it to him set on a lower-middle-class accent, so someone on her ship was obviously not thrilled with the upcoming arrangement Is it just me, or is that totally passive-aggressive on someone's part?, but it had been easy enough to hack into the system and tweak it to give him something closer to Maxima's crisp vowels. Kudos to Lex for discerning that difference in the accent-setting and knowing what an upper-class accent of an alien language sounds like.
Clark hadn't said anything. Lex glanced up; Clark's mouth was set in a hard, tight line. "Just how long do you think it's going to be before you and Maxima have a fight?" Clark said. "She's not exactly the most stable person in the universe. Then you're going to be stuck on an alien planet halfway across the galaxy without a way back home."
"I'm touched by your concern," Lex said, "but I'll manage. Yes, that's fine, let's do it in dark grey and black." He took off his jacket and started taking out his cufflinks as the tailors set up the measuring platform.
"Either Maxima's going to kill you or you're going to kill her," Clark said.
"So far it's running ex-wives zero, me five, so at least I've got a winning record," Lex said. *Snerk!* Remember that statistic; Clark will. "This isn't a romance," he added, tossing his shirt onto the bed and moving on to his belt. "We have mutually compatible goals. She needs an emperor to impress her council of ministers and I need some new people to impress. You've gotten to be too tough an audience."
He stepped out of his pants and onto the platform. The tailors murmured to themselves as they laid the measuring tape out across his body. A few years back, he'd tried a 3-D scanning system with laser cutters, but it hadn't quite worked. The clothes fit perfectly, and were as soulless as off-the-rack. The laser system was making LexCorp a few hundred million a year in licensing from high-end design salons, though. I love this throw-away detail. One of the reasons Lex is bored is that even his failures are smashing successes that bring him large amounts of cash and accolades. He barely has to try anymore.
Clark was still standing there, staring at the floor, his shoulders low, looking as much like a kicked puppy as a six-foot-four hero in spandex possibly could. It's funny, but when Lex called him "Clark" earlier, I assumed he was wearing civvies. It's a more comedic image to have Clark in spandex looking glum, but I think Lex should have been calling him "Superman" in snide tones throughout this scene rather than by his given name. Lex looked at him and thought, unwillingly, I'm never going to see him again. It hollowed out a space somewhere under his breastbone, and then filled it up with fresh anger, because he was fucking going out of his mind, and there wasn't a damn thing he had here to regret leaving behind. If he doesn't go with the anger, he'll start crying and/or not leave, so by all means, Lex, rage on! Or should I say, repress on!
"I'm sorry to be taking away your favorite chew toy," he said, biting it out, "but I'd need a better reason than that to stay. Have any for me?"
Clark flinched and just stared at him. Clark just can't say it of his own volition, much as he might want to--especially when he's wearing the suit.
"I didn't think so." Lex turned for the tailors and spread his arms out for the next set of measurements. "Take care of yourself. But then I don't think you'll have too much trouble once I'm gone." Lex is lashing out because he's genuinely *hurt*! I distinctly heard a "neener-neener" in there!
Clark's POV, at his most hang-dog.
It was bizarre to see Lex out of a suit. He looked good in the Almeracian outfit, though, all lean lines in the black bodysuit and handling the sweep of the dark grey cloak draped over his shoulders as if he'd been wearing it all his life. He had silvery arm bracers, probably stuffed with circuitry, and a helmet to match under one arm. He made a good foil for Maxima's gold and bright colors, a slight rewrite of that, and you have Lex as a good foil for *Clark's* bright colors both of them standing at the foot of the ramp of her ship.
The chests were being loaded onto it. John Stewart had scanned them all before they'd been beamed onto the satellite, but Clark watched them anyway, almost wishing one of them would explode, so this could all turn out to be some elaborate booby trap scheme.
"Not that it isn't wrong on about five billion levels that she's swapping you for Luthor, but isn't this a good thing?" Wally had said. "I mean, she gets off your case and takes him with her - two for the price of one." Everyone else's opinion had been pretty much in line with John's "Good riddance."
Batman came to the railing and stood next to him watching silently. Clark stood it for a few minutes and then snapped out, "Glad to be seeing the last of him?"
"Almerac has an expansionist warrior culture and a substantial fleet," Batman said. And that is the second statement where we, and the characters, have to wait for the other shoe to drop to get it.
Clark waited for him to take that somewhere, but apparently that was all Bruce had to say. He turned and disappeared back into the hallway.
The last of the chests had gone aboard, and Maxima held out her hand, imperiously. The railing under Clark's hands crumpled with a metallic scraping noise, but Lex didn't look up. He took Maxima's hand and they went up the ramp together. He never looked back. And our pore wee Clark's pore wee heart crumples in his massive chest.
The Almeracian ship glided out of dock smoothly. Clark didn't leave, though the vacuum tugged urgently at his cape and he had to hold his breath. The hyperdrive fired even before the docking bay doors had closed again, and the ship elongated and snapped away into the starfield like a rubber band. He stood there alone, his head bent, while the doors slid closed again and the air slowly hissed back in.
He was never going to see Lex again. But that would mean the story ended right here!
Now we switch to John Stewart's POV. I love how irritated with the world in general this guy is: he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's truly Flash's opposite with regard to temperament.
"Look, what are people supposed to say? 'Hey, big guy, how about not saving those kids from the burning building next time?'" Wally was saying. "But I'm telling you, a lot of them are getting ticked off."
Unbelievable. John finished another set of push-ups and got up to wipe his face. "That's their problem," he said. "If their ego is too big to take help, they shouldn't be doing this job."
"Nobody minds Superman showing up when there's a crisis," Wally said. "But if he saves all the cats out of trees-"
"What happens, Booster Gold doesn't get enough face time on the evening news?" John snorted.
"People lose their edge," Batman said unexpectedly, melting out of the shadows. John fucking hated that. It was always a struggle not to let on that he hadn't known the guy was there. Like a cat, he's all, "I meant to do that!" "It's damaging to morale."
"Somebody has a problem with Superman invading their turf, they can talk to him about it," John said flatly. "I've got better things to worry about."
"Fine, then how about worrying that half the freaking League is going to quit," Flash said. "Black Canary was so mad she nearly walked last week. Superman blew in while she was shutting down a bank robbery, and he smashed up a couple of walls taking out the guys she'd already set up to walk into a net. This isn't about Booster or whoever, it's about him." Flash is smarter than people give him credit for, and he is good at understanding human (or in this case, Kryptonian) motivation. This is Clark's version of acting out and Flash is putting the blame squarely where it belongs--this is the mess Lex left behind for others to deal with..
John felt his jaw tightening. He threw his towel into the laundry bin. "You want to talk about Superman behind his back, you can do it without me. This conversation's over."
He stalked out and down the hall, then stopped abruptly as he was passing the observation deck: Clark was standing at the window, looking out at the empty starfield. John cursed silently a few times and walked out to join him. Clark didn't say anything.
"Don't let it get to you," John said. He automatically assumes, correctly, that Clark was eavesdropping via his superhearing; and he's an old softie 'cos he tries to make Clark feel better.
"They're not wrong," Clark said. He sounded tired. "Maybe I should leave the League." "My life is so empty without my main man, er, I mean my main super-villain!"
"Fuck that," John said, flatly. "You started this. You practically are the League."
"I shouldn't be," Clark said quietly. "Bruce is right; if I'm demoralizing the rest of the team-"
"Incoming alert," interrupted the satellite computer. John had barely enough time to turn and throw up a shield before the whole observation dome shattered and the air screamed out, bolted-down furniture wobbling soundlessly in the new vacuum. The outer shield closed down almost immediately, but not before Clark had been punched through the back wall into the hallway by whatever the hell it was.
John ran out and found Clark holding Maxima off by the wrists. "You, you filthy, lying-" she panted, getting an arm free and catching him on the jaw with a right cross. Like I said earlier, she is wont to drop on you out of nowhere and with no warning, like Kato dropping on Inspector Clouseau's head.
"Ow!" Clark said, and slugged her hard enough to stagger her back a few paces.
John shot a couple of restraining bands around her. "Okay, you're done," he said, while she struggled furiously against the restraints, too angry to focus her power enough to break them. "Now where the hell did that come from?"
"Hey, what was that?" Flash zipped up and stopped. "Oh, uh, hey, Superman," he said awkwardly. Feeling guilty about talking smack about Supes behind his back, no doubt. "That was Maxima?"
Batman, following him, didn't look in the least bit guilty at seeing Clark. "I told you people that the observation deck was a vulnerability." Not that Bruce would ever sink to saying, "I told you so."
"I will rip your entrails out and smother you with them!" Maxima spat at Clark. "You planned this! You conspired for my humiliation-" It is unacceptable to her that she might have actually made a mistake in judgment on her own, she has to blame someone else.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Clark said.
"As if you do not know!" She finally managed to strain free of the bonds and flung herself at Clark again, beating at him too wildly to really land a blow. He got a hold on her again. "I have been deposed!"
John snorted. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person," but Clark's grip on her arms abruptly tightened enough to make her gasp, and he slammed her up against the wall.
"If you've been deposed, where is Lex?" he demanded. Is it too obvious for me to observe here that, for Clark, Lex's continued well-being is always the most important thing in any given disaster?
"Who do you think has usurped my throne!" she screamed into his face.
And that, my friends, was the sound of the other shoe dropping.
Clark stared at her blankly, his hands loosening again. She wrenched free and stood panting. "I demand you stop that black-hearted treacherous snake you foisted upon me! If you do not remove him from my throne, I will lay waste to your world! I will slaughter millions-"
She stopped there, because Clark was laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall, and she jumped on him again furiously, spitting more inarticulate insults and threats, until John had to wrap her in a stasis field and shove her half-smothered into one of the holding cells to stop her.
She kept pounding on the door from the inside. Clark had kept laughing weakly the whole time; when John shot him a dubious look, he managed, "Lex six, ex-wives zero-" and went off again. It was over a year ago, but he still remembers every heart-wrenching word of what Lex said just before he left.
"Now what do we do?" John said, eyeing the door. "That's not going to hold her all that long."
"Uh, you guys realize, if Luthor's really kicked her out, she's got nothing to do but hang out here and make trouble," Wally said. He winced as the wall vibrated with the force of her next slam.
"That's beside the point," Batman said. "Almerac has an expansionist warrior culture and a substantial fleet. Which Luthor now controls." Okay, that was the sound of the other shoe dropping. It was actually quite nice of Bruce not to finish his thought a year ago when he first figured it all out; Clark would have just worried impotently all that time.
"Wait," Clark said. "Are you seriously suggesting we help her? We're not even remotely responsible for this. I did everything short of launching her out of the system in a catapult-" "This is so not my fault!"
"And of course that makes it all right to leave the population of Almerac and every surrounding populated system to the interstellar war Luthor's undoubtedly going to start ten minutes from now," Batman said.
Clark's POV
Clark still was thrown by the whole being-on-another-planet thing, no matter how many years he'd had by now to get used to the idea he was an alien himself. Clark as rube. This is not meant as a random comment, it's very important, because one of the themes of this story is Clark's growth as a person (through the healing power of SEX, but that's why this is Delicious Crack-fic.) Almerac wasn't particularly weird-looking-annoyingly beautiful, in fact, with a sunset-purple sky and two showy moons and architecture that would have put the Byzantines to shame.
He'd come with John, coasting along in a hyperspace tube generated by his ring. They hadn't figured out exactly what they were going to do, and Clark had the uncomfortable feeling that he shouldn't like the idea of hauling Lex back to Earth in a sack quite as much as he did. He fancies himself in the aggressive, manly role in this little harlequin romance.
"It's one thing if this was just a palace coup and everyone would be just as happy having her back," John had said. "But if the general population really want Luthor in charge, grabbing him is going to be a bad scene. The Lantern Corps have learned that the hard way."
The guards on the palace looked at them curiously, and made some quiet murmurs into their communicators; then they were being ushered through the halls of the palace and out into the gardens. Lex was stretched out on a couch in the shade, reading some kind of electronic tablet; there were a couple of servants just hovering, even a bowl of fruit at his elbow and an enormous picnic basket on the grass next to him: the perfect picture of a Roman emperor. He was even wearing something like a toga.
He put the tablet aside as they came up. "Clark, good to see you," he said, as if it hadn't been more than a year, as if Clark was just dropping by the mansion after school or landing on the balcony on patrol. Because Lex is as cool as James Bond and Bugs Bunny combined.
"Maxima tried to beat me to death," Clark said, folding his arms. What? No "Hi, Lex; how ya doin'?"
"Better you than me," Lex said. "Any chance you were forced to accidentally kill her?" ...thus saving me a butt-load of alimony?
"Sorry, no," Clark snapped. "I can't believe you! What, being co-ruler of an entire star system wasn't good enough?"
"I didn't divorce her just because I wanted the throne, Clark," Lex said. "I had issues with her parenting style."
"Her what?" Clark said.
The picnic basket whimpered. Clark stared down at it, and the heap of blankets stirred.
"Her name is Lena," Lex informed him, sounding unbearably smug.
The drowsing baby poked out an arm and waved her tiny fist in the air. There was a distinct possibility her tiny middle finger was raised; she's a Luthor, after all.
Back to John's POV--the first tip-off is that Lex is now being called Luthor, the second is the general tone of pissed-offedness.
Luthor and Maxima had apparently fought over her plans to raise the baby using traditional royal Almeracian methods: regular beatings, leaving the baby out in blizzards, throwing her to wild animals. The baby sat on Luthor's lap the whole time while he was telling the sob story, looking at them with big blue eyes and fuzzy red hair and yawning once in a while, probably calculated just to look more cute and helpless, John thought bitterly. "Damn you, wee Luthor and your adorable yet evil ways!" A baby is an excellent fashion accessory to wear to a sob story.
Moving in for the kill, Luthor handed Clark the baby, which put him completely out of commission: he just held her, looking dazed, while she batted at his S. I think Clark's ovaries just exploded.
John folded his arms and said, "So you're just going to settle in, raise your alien princess, be a friendly neighborhood benevolent despot?" Please say "yes"!
Luthor grinned at him, looking genuinely amused. "Stewart," he said, "I'm going to conquer the galaxy and give it to her on a string."
After that friendly chat, Luthor took them on a tour of the city, full of construction and bustling marketplaces, and crowds who cheered wildly as the royal convoy went past, throwing red flowers up to their feet, calling out Luthor's name and Lena's. I don't remember the Almeracian people sharing Maxima's superpowers; they're just ordinary human-type people.
"Maxima liked to confiscate property and print her way out of any money shortages, so they're new to the whole idea of a reliably functioning economy," Luthor said, just to rub it in some more. "They seem to approve, though, don't you think?"
For a grand finale, he brought them to the massive dockyard full of gleaming new warships, big as skyscrapers. One was launching; John watched grimly as it lifted off, engines glowing blue-white: like the Empire State Building taking flight, except the Empire State Building didn't have cannon the size of eighteen-wheelers mounted on its sides. This is a rather spectacular word-picture being painted here.
When they came back to the palace, the servants took them to a private suite and spent ten minutes offering them food and drink and what John seriously hoped weren't meant to be sexual favors before he managed to chase them out. I wouldn't put it past Lex to have sicced the sleazier of the servants on GL and Clark on purpose. He shut the doors behind them and turned back into the room. Clark had slumped down at the central table and was resting his head on his hands. This is the first time in the story Clark rests his head on his hands, feeling frustrated and powerless... Lex does that to him.
"Well, that went great," John said.
"We can't take him back," Clark said without lifting his head.
"No kidding," John said. "Any ideas on how else to stop him?"
"No," Clark said.
"Right," John said. "In that case, seeing how we just flew two thousand light years to strike out, I'm going to sleep."
He woke up a couple of hours later in the dark, instinct rousing him. I'm assuming his Gaydar went *ping*. The main room was empty, and the other bed hadn't been slept in: the curtains were blowing in the window from the open balcony doors. John frowned and padded out onto the balcony. Nobody could have taken Clark without enough of a fight to wake him, so John wasn't worried, exactly, he just had a hell of a bad gut feeling-and then he spotted Clark, hovering in mid-air, just above the big jutting terrace six or seven windows down, near the center of the palace building.
Luthor stepped out onto the terrace and looked up. Clark landed, apparently so the two of them could stare at each other without saying anything. Finally Luthor said, "Are you coming in?"
Clark stood for another moment, and then he said, so quietly John could barely hear it, "Yes."
They went inside. A minute later, the lights went out.
John stared. What the fuck. He's just had the rug pulled out from under him, I don't begrudge him a few curse words.
I love being a fly on the wall for this conversation.
"What?" Wally said, for the third time.
"Goddamn it, you heard me!" John snapped. "For the fastest man alive, you're fucking slow on the uptake."
"Superman's gay?" Wally said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," John said.
"Superman's gay and he's sleeping with Luthor ? Are you-"
"If you ask me again whether I'm sure, I am going to punch you in the face," John said.
"Hey," Wally said, "Maybe it's, you know, one of those things like, Luthor threatened to conquer the universe unless Superman slept with him?" It's actually rather sweet that Wally goes to this place rather than believe Clark would be all slutty and sleep with the enemy.
"He threatened to conquer the universe anyway!" John said. I almost wish Maxima hadn't come in at this moment; I'd love to see where this conversation would have gone without the interruption. These two are better than Abbott and Costello.
The door to the conference chamber slid open and Maxima burst in. "That faithless thought-hider fornicated with Kal-El?"
John stared and then turned to look at Wally. "You let her out?"
"Well," Wally said defensively, "you guys were gone, Diana was fighting a pack of demons in South America, and then Mongul broke out of Cadmus-"
"And that wasn't enough of a challenge, so you decided to make things worse?" John said.
"She helped!" Wally said. "Actually, she kind of took him apart. We had to pull her off the guy."
Maxima tossed her head. "That posturing weakling was no match for the might of a warrior of Almerac. Why have you not brought me back Luthor's head?"
"Speaking of your ex," John said, "you might have mentioned the baby."
"There's a baby?" Wally said.
"The suckling is not yet a year old; it has not even been named," Maxima said dismissively. "And with that coddling nursemaid of a coward raising it, it will never be worthy of naming! All my effort in bearing it will go to waste." Who wants to see a flashback of Maxima, pregnant and with swollen ankles, bitching out Lex? I do, I do!
"Lovely," John said. "Well, your people don't seem to feel the same way about Luthor and the kid as you do."
"What does that matter?" Maxima said. "You and Kal-El together could have defeated the guards! Only your cowardice-" She has a simplistic way of looking at things: "Who cares what the people want?" and "Want, take, have." For all her physical power, she is actually the sort of person someone clever, like Lex, would have fun running rings around. The fact that she could kill him with her pinkie if she figured him out would just make it more fun. It's actually astonishing she hasn't been deposed before now by someone else.
John's ring abruptly throbbed: someone was broadcasting a message over the Lantern network. He held out his arm and projected the transmission, letting it drown Maxima out; it was Ajikan, the Green Lantern for the Lorian sector. He looked tired, tentacles drooping.
He said, "Almerac has invaded the Idarian Confederacy-"
"What?" Maxima shrieked. "The Idarian armies outnumber ours by half again! That lunatic will destroy my empire-"
"Three-quarters of the Idarian fleet was destroyed in a trap at the Balta mining colony in the first sortie at the third hour of the current galactic standard day," Ajikan continued.
Maxima stopped in mid-sentence. You'd think she'd have seen that one coming, she of all people knows how sneaky Lex can be.
"Almeracian casualties were nil. The Idarian council has entered into negotiations for surrender." Ajikan paused. "This represents a significant shift in the balance of power in my sector," he said wearily. "I anticipate significant movement of population, as the Almeracians typically enslave their conquests, and many Idarians will presumably attempt to flee to nearby star systems. I request assignment of two additional Lanterns to assist in monitoring the situation and protection of refugees. Ajikan out."
The transmission faded out. Maxima was standing there gawking.
"Great," John said.
A half-dozen Lanterns showed up the next day to discuss the situation; the Idarians had surrendered on terms that morning, and Luthor had immediately taken possession of their two dozen shipyards and started building more warships. Where he was planning to find people to man them, no one really knew; he already had fresh lieutenants in command on some of the newer Almeracian ships. But his neighbors weren't exactly waiting to find out: ten different nations were arming, and the Vorlon Empire, a handful of independent systems away from Almerac's new border, had begun to sluggishly move troops around.
"We are an exchange of fire away from a conflagration which could envelop the entire quadrant," Vox Ghanai said; he was the senior Lantern for the area. "Billions will die, and more than that be enslaved, either by the Almeracians or the Vorlon. Under the circumstances, extraordinary measures are warranted."
Ajikan nodded. "If Maxima will agree to render back the Idarian territories in exchange for being restored to her throne, I believe we can stabilize the situation."
They looked at her, but she didn't say anything; she still looked dazed, like she had since the news had first come through.
Vox Ghanai shrugged a little, minutely, and turned back to John. "Our observers say that Luthor's at the Idarian homeworlds right now."
John nodded. "We go in, grab him quick and clean-"
"We're not leaving the baby," Clark said, glaring at Maxima across the table. Already Clark's a better mom than Maxima is.
"Fine," John said, after she still didn't react. "We'll have to make it simultaneous."
Vox Ghanai nodded. "Difficult but not impossible. Superman, you have the most experience with Luthor - I believe you would be the ideal choice to lead the operation to seize him." This must be some new Green-Lanterny definition of the word "ideal" with which we were all previously unacquainted.
John looked at Clark, who had dropped his eyes to the table. The mixed emotions, they burn! "I'll go with him, and make him do this," John said grimly. He looked at Diana. "Can you go get the baby?"
Diana blinked at him. John figures, what the heck, she's the closest thing they have to a girl, that means she's "ideal", at least by the new GL definition of that word. "I'm certain I could take her," she said, "but I've never really handled a child, and it will be a long journey back. Don't they need special food? And to have their clothing changed somehow?" Well, apparently on Almerak they beat them regularly, leave them out in blizzards, and throw them to wild animals; you should do just fine, Diana.
"I'll get the baby," Clark said. "You can tell L-Luthor that I've got her. He'll probably go with you, just so he won't be separated from her." For some odd reason, my thoughts flashed back to season 5 of Angel, when Angel sent Spike out to save a baby from a pack of demons. Spike and Clark are both caring-nurturers!
"Very well," Vox Ghanai said. "John Stewart and Diana and I will seize Luthor, then; Ajikan, you will inform the Idarian council once Luthor has been taken, and-"
"What are you planning to do with him?" Batman said, abruptly. Stop confusing us with your damned questions, Bruce!
Everyone stopped and looked at him. Because, God help them, this very important question had not occurred to them before.
"He just led the Almeracians to a major military victory," Batman said. "If you abduct him, they'll come looking. So will most of the systems threatened, to prevent his return. If you bring him back to Earth, they'll take the planet apart between them. So what are you planning to do with him?"
"He's right. We need to find a St. Helena," John said. "Someplace small and defensible, where one Lantern can keep an eye on him-"
"There are nearly ten thousand human-habitable asteroids in the Hlaian nebula," Vox Ghanai said. "It would be ideal; a Lantern could patrol the area, to avoid revealing the specific location-" Which definition of "ideal" was that again?
"What?" Clark said. "Now you're talking about imprisoning him and the baby for life on some rock?"
"If Luthor ever had a fair trial for the crimes he's committed, he'd be serving twenty life terms," John snapped.
"Then you can give him a fair trial," Clark said. "That's not the same thing as the ten of us sitting in a room deciding that we're going to use our powers to violate a nation's sovereignty and kidnap a man and child and abandon them on a deserted asteroid."
"Oh, and sovereignty is what you're worried about?" John said, folding his arms. Clark flushed. "I'm prepared to stop Luthor," he said tightly. "I'm not prepared to treat him like a wild animal-"
"Stop it," Batman said. "This argument is pointless. You can't lock him up when he's wanted by a significant portion of the entire galaxy. Someone will get through. Putting him in jail under the current circumstances is equivalent to staking him out in a field and hoping the ones who want him dead will reach him first."
"So what's your suggestion?" John said.
"Kill him yourselves," Batman said. I cannot help but think he suggests it knowing full well there's no way in hell they're going to do it.
"What?" Clark said.
"We are not murderers," Vox Ghanai said. Oh, c'mon, Vox; it would be the "ideal" solution!
Batman said, "Then stop looking for an easy way out. Yeah, see? He was trying to make a point, not actually get them to kill Lex. You're not less guilty because you choose an indirect method with a high risk of failure. You're simply less effective. If you're not willing to assassinate him, you have only one option. Defeat him."
"We want to stop a war, not fight one!" John said.
"Too bad," Batman said. Much as I love Bruce's devil's advocate routine, I don't see him coming up with any solutions to the problem; he may be right, but all he's doing is finding fault with their plans without coming up with a legitimate plan of his own. I honestly wonder what steps he would take in this situation if it were entirely up to him.
Part 2 of 3
Large chunks of this story were written in a tent in Botswana, under the harsh and unforgiving eye of cesperanza, who brutally made me rewrite that one scene eight times and just generally beat the whole thing into shape. It shamelessly raids the Justice League cartoon and some of the more cracktastic bits of DC canon for inspiration and just keeps going from there.
All Hail, Mistress cesperanza! Good job with the whip!
Also? DC canon truly is the most crack-tastic thing on this earth.
This story is a Smallville/Justice League/DC comics universe amalgam, also a Future AU. You'd be surprised how many stories in this genre there are out there. People pick and choose the parts of the DCU they like and bring them together - why not, it's what the pros do! Wally and John are recognizable as Justice League cartoon characters, but Clark and Lex are refugees from SV. Fans are particularly fond of the JL version of Wally, as he is most wonderfully voiced by Michael Rosenbaum. I've seen a surprising number of women on my flist start reading comic books via the Smallville-to-Justice League-to-DCU chain. The JL episode that brought over the most fangirls into the paper-based universe was "A Better World".
If you need to know who Maxima is, Wikipedia is your pal! (Also, if you read to the end of the entry there is a picture of her trading card, which features Superman in chains and collar and shredded costume kneeling at her feet. You know, if you like that sort of thing.)
I knew of Maxima only from a "Superman: the animated series" episode that featured her as the Bad Guy of the week. She was loud-mouthe and annoying, like an alien Veruca Salt, if Veruca were an adult with superpowers. Unlike the more subtle "Batman: the animated series," Superman's villains often tend towards the one-dimensional: Maxima was flat-out childish; laughable, but for her powers and her willingness to resort to violence to fulfill her whims.
This story could otherwise be summarized as, Lex conquers the galaxy, in STYLE, and I am glad to report I have successfully harassed mutecornett into making an accompanying Lex Paper Doll , to serve as a visual reference! *g*
Priceless. You must go check out the outfits... but only after you finish reading the story, as there are spoilers!
Moving On by astolat
It was Wally's turn on shift in the Justice League satellite that night, which usually meant he played half a dozen video games, called GL a few times (okay, ten or eleven) until John finally yelled and hung up on him, played another five or six games, called a couple of girls whose numbers had drifted into his pockets that outfit has *pockets*?, watched some soap operas, and ended up running in circles around the watchtower to keep from shooting himself in the head out of boredom. Once he'd actually shot himself, and then zoomed away faster than the bullet could follow. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to check what was behind him, and Batman's expression on seeing the shattered monitor had put an end to that particular form of entertainment.
We start slow, focusing on secondary characters who will act on and comment on the main characters' actions in our little comedy-drama. This bit's in Wally's POV. It's funny how, for such a frenetic character, he's wonderfully laid-back.
However, for once it was a quiet night coming after a noisy day - Maxima had blown into the solar system for yet another shot at talking Superman into becoming her Emperor, and when that brilliant plan hadn't worked - big surprise to exactly no one but her - she'd thrown a fit that had nearly taken down a couple of skyscrapers and left a smoking crater in the middle of a field in Kansas. Superman had managed to calm her down after a few hours, but not before her starship had gotten damaged too badly to leave the system. It was now parked in the docking bay with her servants swarming over it to do repairs, and Superman and GL were hanging out to keep an eye on her.
Like I said, Maxima needs to be tossed down a garbage chute by some squirrels, 'cos she's a spoiled brat.
Which meant Wally had someone to talk to, as long as he kept the conversation topics going. "I know a lot of their names are stupid, and yeah, okay, Rainbow Raider and Mirror Master are kind of lame-"
John grunted noncommittally.
"-but Abra Kadabra's got to be the hokiest name ever, and he's seriously rough, I never have any clue what that guy is going to come up with. On the other hand," Wally zipped up the stairs, following as John flew to the second level of the catwalks, "Trickster sounds cool, but he's just a nut. But maybe the worst is Zoom. Although, Grodd's a pain too. Well, and Captain Cold is tough, but he's not as evil, y'know? I mean, sometimes I'm worried I'm going to get killed, but not like he's going to go murder a bunch of little old ladies if I don't get there in time."
My husband, ComicbookMan, and I have actually had conversations wherein we refer to Central City's villains as the "Batman Lite Bad Guys," because so many of them seem like less-serious analogs to Batman evildoers, but Flash's adversaries are canonically referred to as "The Rogues." If Batman and Flash ever decide to swap cities for a day, The Rogues will wind up hiding under their beds, shivering in terror and weeping piteously for the Flash's return. They are far less compelling than Batman's villains, but entertaining in their own cracktastic way.
Superman came out of the hallway onto the landing a little cautiously, looking around. I don't blame him, because Maxima will suddenly come at you from nowhere, like Kato in those old Pink Panther movies. Wally privately shook his head. Not that he was out to see the big guy settling down in a star system far, far away or anything, but it was a sad day for all mankind when a babe as hot as Maxima went away from Earth without at least getting laid. He'd tried offering a little friendly advice-"Look, just sleep with her, and make it kind of fast. Trust me, she'll never call you again" Voice of experience, Flash? - but Superman had just glared at him and stalked off. It wasn't even like Superman was dating anyone, but he apparently had "issues" or something. Wally, Clark is not a slut: he's obviously saving himself for his Own True Lurve! Which is to say, someone whose initials are "LL": who that might be depending on the DC universe.
Maxima was hovering over her spaceship, arms folded, still sulking. It was too bad she couldn't see past the big fish to all the others swimming around in the ocean, Wally thought regretfully. Damn, those were some fine... He jerked his eyes away and hurriedly tried to think of something else, before she picked up on it. "So, uh, what about you, GL? Who's the worst of the worst? Sinestro?" Sinestro being a Green Lantern who turned to Eeee-vil. Jeez, you'd think they'd think twice about offering a ring of ultimate power to someone named "Sinestro", with a freakin' widow's peak 'o Evil and a Snidely Whiplash moustache!
John shrugged. "Whichever one I'm up against at the time, that's the bad guy." John will not play this time-passer as a game, he's taking it way too seriously.
Wally rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. One of them's got to have been the toughest to beat." "C'mon, unbend a little and play with me, dude!
"It's a bad idea to think about them that way," John said. "Either you'll end up underestimating someone you think is a second-stringer or you'll psych yourself out for a tough fight. They're all the same."
No fun, as usual. "Hey, Supes, come on, what do you say? Anybody top of your list?"
"Green Lantern's right," Superman began virtuously, but Maxima gave a short, mocking laugh, and darted down to join them.
"A human?" she said. "An ordinary man, one of these fragile weaklings?"
Superman looked annoyed, and Wally couldn't blame him. "Hey, sharing the mind reading isn't buddies," Wally said. I've never heard the expression "isn't buddies" before, but plan on using it constantly from here on in. I can hear Wally using it on the wee Central City orphans he canonically visits regularly. Then he looked at Superman. "So who is it?"
He looked annoyed some more, and then sighed. "Luthor." Luthors! Can't live with 'em, can't toss 'em out an airlock!
"Huh, really?" Wally blinked. "I mean, worse than Darkseid? The immortal guy with the giant evil hell planet and the endless army?"
"Luthor's worse because he's better," Superman said, which didn't make much sense, and not to Maxima either, apparently, because she frowned and flew off again, vanishing around the far side of her ship. We, and the characters, will have to wait for the other shoe to drop to understand that statement.
After a few seconds, Wally said, "So, how about them Yankees?"
Aaaaand we now join our regularly scheduled program, already in progress… Lex POV.
Lex heard the impact from his office: the windows of the penthouse shattering on the other side of the building. "I'll have to call you back, Jensen," he said, and hung up on his call.
He poured Scotch for himself, a glass of fresh orange juice for Clark, and leaned back against the desk to wait, trying not to look too hard at his feelings. LexCorp had smashed past Wal-Mart and become the biggest corporation in the world five months ago when the new regenerative drugs cleared FDA approval and the stealth fighter contract came through the same week, setting off a stock-buying frenzy that had made his assistant's assistant a millionaire and the executives all billionaires. Walmart! Not as evil as LexCorp, but eviler than Microsoft! He'd smiled and drunk champagne with the board, shook his father's hand and looked at the baffled spite in his eyes, and gone to bed with the amazingly uninhibited activist from Greenpeace who'd crashed the party to throw oil into the punch. Afterwards he'd lain on his back staring at the ceiling and felt nothing: no excitement, no thrill. Probably disappointed that the activist from Greenpeace didn't try to kill him after sex--and please note, whether the activist was male or female wasn't mentioned, which amused me no end. Also, color me astonished that Lionel isn't pushing up the daisies.
He'd given away two and a half billion dollars in the last week alone, and the month was going to end up in the black anyway. One of his think tank people had come up with the idea of building an artificial archipelago in the South Pacific and declaring it a new nation under LexCorp governance, inviting people to become citizens, just to have something to do with the money. They'd bought a couple of islands to get started and already had a waiting list. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored....
He owned five governors, twelve senators, thirty congressmen, and some ridiculous number of local politicians, not to mention most of the greatest city in the world. He had no children and five divorces and one alien enemy, and only the last one of those stirred any emotion in him at all anymore.
He didn't even know what had provoked Clark this time; there wasn't much going on. Nowadays he didn't break the law so much as he told his people what he wanted and they had the laws subtly changed to allow him to do it. Might this be a reference to the current administration? He hadn't had anyone killed in years; people didn't stand up to him anymore. He'd been debating whether to run for president or throw it all away and turn costumed supervillain; or possibly both in that order. That's a tip of the hat to what happened in DCU canon. For all he knew, Clark was high on red kryptonite and coming here to kill him, and all Lex could feel was a glittering, sparkling thirst for something anything! to happen.
The doors peeled themselves back and away, the haze of smoke and debris in the hallway cleared and a woman stepped into the office: six feet tall, red hair rioting over her shoulders, with the inhuman beauty of a supermodel after image manipulation except for the thin clinging film of grey dust on her skin and a trickle of blood down her arm.
"You're not who I was expecting," Lex said, contemplating her. He felt alert, alive. He thought he could taste Clark in this, two steps removed or less; and if not, at least a challenge, something worth caring about. If he'd shown fear, he'd be dead right about now.
"I am Maxima of Almerac," she said, "and your defenses are pathetic. They could never have kept out Kal-El."
Lex smiled. He knew who she was. "They're not meant to," he said. "Can I offer you a drink?" Better talk fast, Lex; this one has a short attention span. I suggest you compliment her a lot while you talk.
We switch to Clark's long-suffering POV
Clark had just started to relax after it had been about an hour since he'd seen Maxima, when he realized it had been an hour since he'd seen Maxima. This is what we call repetition for comedic purposes or comedic repetition. ::adjusts glasses in a scholarly fashion:: The servants - slaves - only cringed when he demanded to know where she'd gone.
"The League tracking computer has a record of a projectile leaving from the docking bay," John said, flying back into the room. "It was headed straight for Metropolis."
"Oh, for - what does she want now?" Clark said. It had been bad enough fending off Chloe's crush back in high school, not to mention the crash-and-burn of his relationships with Lana and Lois; at least none of them had taken apart a freaking city when they'd been mad at him. I love that he's comparing the behavior of this hell-juggernaut of destruction from another world with the girls of Smallville's high-school crushes.
"She wishes only to do you a service," one of the slaves squeaked. "A favor, to destroy your enemy-" "Maybe if I kill his worst enemy, he'll finally *like* me!"
Clark didn't stop to grab an air mask, so his lungs were aching with the need for oxygen by the time he burned back into the atmosphere over Metropolis, midnight lights sparkling. She had an hour's lead on him, but maybe she'd have had trouble finding Lex; maybe the LexCorp defenses had slowed her down-
There was a gaping hole in the front of the LexCorp towers. He couldn't see through the leaded windows and walls, so he just dived through the opening she'd left, blowing away the smoldering cloud. Dozens of LexCorp armored drones littered the floor, smashed into pieces; bloodstains on the floor showed where she'd left bodies, though the casualties had been cleared, so someone had been in charge afterwards- The doors to the elevator shaft were smashed open and hanging askew. He flew up to the top floor and through the gaping hole on the other side, and into the study.
He stopped.
Maxima was reclining on a large velvety divan in the middle of the room, holding a glass of champagne and looking simultaneously irritated and perplexed. Lex was leaning against the desk, as composed as if the big metal doors hadn't been peeled open like a sardine can and there wasn't blood-streaked dust tracked in all over the oriental carpets. "What kept you?" Lex said. Only James Bond or Bugs Bunny could get away with this level of cool.
Clark glared at him. If he'd been dead, there would have been a great rending of garments and gnashing of teeth in sorrow, but he's okay, so Clark's annoyed.
"I do not understand you," Maxima burst out, standing up. She waved a hand at Lex furiously. "How can he be your worst enemy? - there is nothing to him! I could kill him by walking across the room!"
Lex raised an eyebrow at Clark. "Your worst enemy? I'm touched." And you know, I suspect Lex really is pleased he's special in some way to Clark. If he wasn't, the rest of this story wouldn't have happened.
"Maxima, I guarantee if you put a hand on him, you'd be sorry," Clark said, ignoring Lex. "There's a defense system built into the ceiling."
"Those are just the cameras, actually," Lex said blandly. "The matter destabilizer is satellite-based." Always prepared for any eventuality. And they call *Clark* the boyscout!
She stared at him. "You never thought about that," she said accusingly.
Lex shrugged. "I've dealt with telepaths before. It's not that hard to maintain a few superficial lines of thought to cover any contingency planning. Besides," he smiled back at her, that sly flirting twist to the corner of his mouth, "I was enjoying the conversation."
"All right, Maxima," Clark said, breaking in. "Your ship is fixed, so let's go." Via con dios and don't let the door hit you in the ass, bitch!
"That's kind of rude, 'Kal'," Lex said, obviously following his usual playbook, which as far as Clark could tell seemed to be to get to him as much as possible. If he can't provoke love, he'll provoke hate; as long as it's attention of some sort. "Someone might think you were feeling a little threatened. You know," he went on to Maxima, with a confidential air, "some men can't handle a woman who's an equal."
Clark stared at Lex, speechlessly, while Maxima's eyes widened. "Is that why you have refused me?" she demanded, whirling on him. "You - you spineless, pathetic - worm!" Actually, this is one of the few reasons Maxima can understand for Clark's rejection--one that doesn't reflect badly on herself. She literally cannot fathom why Superman didn't fall in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her.
"No!" Clark said. "That's not-" Then he stopped, torn; if letting Maxima believe it would get her off his back, it was almost worth not punching Lex into next week for it. A lot of people would resent someone else thinking they were that pathetic, but Clark's used to people thinking he's a loser, as that's his usual Clark-Kent-dweeb-reporter front.
"I should have known!" Maxima stormed. "What other reason could there be for a Kryptonian to enjoy living on this wretched little backwater lump of a planet? Foreshadowing! I cannot believe I offered my hand to a spiritless, cowardly weakling-"
Clark backed away as she advanced on him, wincing at the volume and the haze of fury she was broadcasting; her hair was almost crackling with it.
Lex snapped open his cigar case and took one out. "Don't be too hard on him," he said, lighting up. "It's kind of inevitable - you take someone strong and put him in with people weaker than he is, it stunts the development of his fighting instincts." Hmmm, that's actually got a germ of plausibility to it!
Maxima reined in and slowly turned to look at Lex, eyes narrowed. "You are an ordinary man," she said. "Yet Kal-El names you his most dangerous enemy."
Lex shrugged, blowing off a cloud of smoke. "I spent most of my childhood weaker than the people around me. It has the opposite effect." Makes no sense, but nicely reasoned! I bet she buys it!
"So why are you still on this insignificant dirtheap?" she said.
Lex tilted his head, thoughtfully. "I guess I just haven't had a better offer yet."
Lex's POV
"Look," Clark said, in what he probably imagined was a reasonable tone, Lex used to think "OMIGOD, he's being a prick". Now he thinks, "he's being a prick but he thinks he's being a mensch". It's as if, via deeper understanding, Clark has achieved a whole new level of annoying for Lex. "you can't be serious. Almerac's hundreds of light years away." In other words, "Staaaay!"
"No, not wool; it's a tropical climate," Lex said, waving away the tailor's assistant holding out a bolt of fabric. "The distance only matters if I'm coming back, Clark." There were twenty people bustling through the penthouse, packing, occasionally stumbling over some of the debris from Maxima's entrance. Have any of those twenty people noticed that The Boss is calling Superman, "Clark"? He hadn't bothered to have it cleaned up much. Whoever the board picked to replace him could decide what to do with the place. Lex is leaving a mess in his wake for others to deal with, much like the fallout from his disastrous relationship with Clark is a mess that the Justic League will have to deal with in the next chapter.
He picked up books from his end table to consider. The Art of War, yes; Foreshadowing! Strunck & White, no it's "Strunk & White", and he's right, there's no use for the Elements of Style in English if you're going to be speaking and writing in Almeracian. One of Maxima's servants had brought him a machine that could shove a new language into your mind giant gulps at a time; each session felt like having major dental work without novocaine, and he'd had a steady ache at the back of his skull for the last two days, but he could already manage basic conversations in Almeracian and the galactic trade language. They'd given it to him set on a lower-middle-class accent, so someone on her ship was obviously not thrilled with the upcoming arrangement Is it just me, or is that totally passive-aggressive on someone's part?, but it had been easy enough to hack into the system and tweak it to give him something closer to Maxima's crisp vowels. Kudos to Lex for discerning that difference in the accent-setting and knowing what an upper-class accent of an alien language sounds like.
Clark hadn't said anything. Lex glanced up; Clark's mouth was set in a hard, tight line. "Just how long do you think it's going to be before you and Maxima have a fight?" Clark said. "She's not exactly the most stable person in the universe. Then you're going to be stuck on an alien planet halfway across the galaxy without a way back home."
"I'm touched by your concern," Lex said, "but I'll manage. Yes, that's fine, let's do it in dark grey and black." He took off his jacket and started taking out his cufflinks as the tailors set up the measuring platform.
"Either Maxima's going to kill you or you're going to kill her," Clark said.
"So far it's running ex-wives zero, me five, so at least I've got a winning record," Lex said. *Snerk!* Remember that statistic; Clark will. "This isn't a romance," he added, tossing his shirt onto the bed and moving on to his belt. "We have mutually compatible goals. She needs an emperor to impress her council of ministers and I need some new people to impress. You've gotten to be too tough an audience."
He stepped out of his pants and onto the platform. The tailors murmured to themselves as they laid the measuring tape out across his body. A few years back, he'd tried a 3-D scanning system with laser cutters, but it hadn't quite worked. The clothes fit perfectly, and were as soulless as off-the-rack. The laser system was making LexCorp a few hundred million a year in licensing from high-end design salons, though. I love this throw-away detail. One of the reasons Lex is bored is that even his failures are smashing successes that bring him large amounts of cash and accolades. He barely has to try anymore.
Clark was still standing there, staring at the floor, his shoulders low, looking as much like a kicked puppy as a six-foot-four hero in spandex possibly could. It's funny, but when Lex called him "Clark" earlier, I assumed he was wearing civvies. It's a more comedic image to have Clark in spandex looking glum, but I think Lex should have been calling him "Superman" in snide tones throughout this scene rather than by his given name. Lex looked at him and thought, unwillingly, I'm never going to see him again. It hollowed out a space somewhere under his breastbone, and then filled it up with fresh anger, because he was fucking going out of his mind, and there wasn't a damn thing he had here to regret leaving behind. If he doesn't go with the anger, he'll start crying and/or not leave, so by all means, Lex, rage on! Or should I say, repress on!
"I'm sorry to be taking away your favorite chew toy," he said, biting it out, "but I'd need a better reason than that to stay. Have any for me?"
Clark flinched and just stared at him. Clark just can't say it of his own volition, much as he might want to--especially when he's wearing the suit.
"I didn't think so." Lex turned for the tailors and spread his arms out for the next set of measurements. "Take care of yourself. But then I don't think you'll have too much trouble once I'm gone." Lex is lashing out because he's genuinely *hurt*! I distinctly heard a "neener-neener" in there!
Clark's POV, at his most hang-dog.
It was bizarre to see Lex out of a suit. He looked good in the Almeracian outfit, though, all lean lines in the black bodysuit and handling the sweep of the dark grey cloak draped over his shoulders as if he'd been wearing it all his life. He had silvery arm bracers, probably stuffed with circuitry, and a helmet to match under one arm. He made a good foil for Maxima's gold and bright colors, a slight rewrite of that, and you have Lex as a good foil for *Clark's* bright colors both of them standing at the foot of the ramp of her ship.
The chests were being loaded onto it. John Stewart had scanned them all before they'd been beamed onto the satellite, but Clark watched them anyway, almost wishing one of them would explode, so this could all turn out to be some elaborate booby trap scheme.
"Not that it isn't wrong on about five billion levels that she's swapping you for Luthor, but isn't this a good thing?" Wally had said. "I mean, she gets off your case and takes him with her - two for the price of one." Everyone else's opinion had been pretty much in line with John's "Good riddance."
Batman came to the railing and stood next to him watching silently. Clark stood it for a few minutes and then snapped out, "Glad to be seeing the last of him?"
"Almerac has an expansionist warrior culture and a substantial fleet," Batman said. And that is the second statement where we, and the characters, have to wait for the other shoe to drop to get it.
Clark waited for him to take that somewhere, but apparently that was all Bruce had to say. He turned and disappeared back into the hallway.
The last of the chests had gone aboard, and Maxima held out her hand, imperiously. The railing under Clark's hands crumpled with a metallic scraping noise, but Lex didn't look up. He took Maxima's hand and they went up the ramp together. He never looked back. And our pore wee Clark's pore wee heart crumples in his massive chest.
The Almeracian ship glided out of dock smoothly. Clark didn't leave, though the vacuum tugged urgently at his cape and he had to hold his breath. The hyperdrive fired even before the docking bay doors had closed again, and the ship elongated and snapped away into the starfield like a rubber band. He stood there alone, his head bent, while the doors slid closed again and the air slowly hissed back in.
He was never going to see Lex again. But that would mean the story ended right here!
Now we switch to John Stewart's POV. I love how irritated with the world in general this guy is: he doesn't suffer fools gladly. He's truly Flash's opposite with regard to temperament.
"Look, what are people supposed to say? 'Hey, big guy, how about not saving those kids from the burning building next time?'" Wally was saying. "But I'm telling you, a lot of them are getting ticked off."
Unbelievable. John finished another set of push-ups and got up to wipe his face. "That's their problem," he said. "If their ego is too big to take help, they shouldn't be doing this job."
"Nobody minds Superman showing up when there's a crisis," Wally said. "But if he saves all the cats out of trees-"
"What happens, Booster Gold doesn't get enough face time on the evening news?" John snorted.
"People lose their edge," Batman said unexpectedly, melting out of the shadows. John fucking hated that. It was always a struggle not to let on that he hadn't known the guy was there. Like a cat, he's all, "I meant to do that!" "It's damaging to morale."
"Somebody has a problem with Superman invading their turf, they can talk to him about it," John said flatly. "I've got better things to worry about."
"Fine, then how about worrying that half the freaking League is going to quit," Flash said. "Black Canary was so mad she nearly walked last week. Superman blew in while she was shutting down a bank robbery, and he smashed up a couple of walls taking out the guys she'd already set up to walk into a net. This isn't about Booster or whoever, it's about him." Flash is smarter than people give him credit for, and he is good at understanding human (or in this case, Kryptonian) motivation. This is Clark's version of acting out and Flash is putting the blame squarely where it belongs--this is the mess Lex left behind for others to deal with..
John felt his jaw tightening. He threw his towel into the laundry bin. "You want to talk about Superman behind his back, you can do it without me. This conversation's over."
He stalked out and down the hall, then stopped abruptly as he was passing the observation deck: Clark was standing at the window, looking out at the empty starfield. John cursed silently a few times and walked out to join him. Clark didn't say anything.
"Don't let it get to you," John said. He automatically assumes, correctly, that Clark was eavesdropping via his superhearing; and he's an old softie 'cos he tries to make Clark feel better.
"They're not wrong," Clark said. He sounded tired. "Maybe I should leave the League." "My life is so empty without my main man, er, I mean my main super-villain!"
"Fuck that," John said, flatly. "You started this. You practically are the League."
"I shouldn't be," Clark said quietly. "Bruce is right; if I'm demoralizing the rest of the team-"
"Incoming alert," interrupted the satellite computer. John had barely enough time to turn and throw up a shield before the whole observation dome shattered and the air screamed out, bolted-down furniture wobbling soundlessly in the new vacuum. The outer shield closed down almost immediately, but not before Clark had been punched through the back wall into the hallway by whatever the hell it was.
John ran out and found Clark holding Maxima off by the wrists. "You, you filthy, lying-" she panted, getting an arm free and catching him on the jaw with a right cross. Like I said earlier, she is wont to drop on you out of nowhere and with no warning, like Kato dropping on Inspector Clouseau's head.
"Ow!" Clark said, and slugged her hard enough to stagger her back a few paces.
John shot a couple of restraining bands around her. "Okay, you're done," he said, while she struggled furiously against the restraints, too angry to focus her power enough to break them. "Now where the hell did that come from?"
"Hey, what was that?" Flash zipped up and stopped. "Oh, uh, hey, Superman," he said awkwardly. Feeling guilty about talking smack about Supes behind his back, no doubt. "That was Maxima?"
Batman, following him, didn't look in the least bit guilty at seeing Clark. "I told you people that the observation deck was a vulnerability." Not that Bruce would ever sink to saying, "I told you so."
"I will rip your entrails out and smother you with them!" Maxima spat at Clark. "You planned this! You conspired for my humiliation-" It is unacceptable to her that she might have actually made a mistake in judgment on her own, she has to blame someone else.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Clark said.
"As if you do not know!" She finally managed to strain free of the bonds and flung herself at Clark again, beating at him too wildly to really land a blow. He got a hold on her again. "I have been deposed!"
John snorted. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person," but Clark's grip on her arms abruptly tightened enough to make her gasp, and he slammed her up against the wall.
"If you've been deposed, where is Lex?" he demanded. Is it too obvious for me to observe here that, for Clark, Lex's continued well-being is always the most important thing in any given disaster?
"Who do you think has usurped my throne!" she screamed into his face.
And that, my friends, was the sound of the other shoe dropping.
Clark stared at her blankly, his hands loosening again. She wrenched free and stood panting. "I demand you stop that black-hearted treacherous snake you foisted upon me! If you do not remove him from my throne, I will lay waste to your world! I will slaughter millions-"
She stopped there, because Clark was laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall, and she jumped on him again furiously, spitting more inarticulate insults and threats, until John had to wrap her in a stasis field and shove her half-smothered into one of the holding cells to stop her.
She kept pounding on the door from the inside. Clark had kept laughing weakly the whole time; when John shot him a dubious look, he managed, "Lex six, ex-wives zero-" and went off again. It was over a year ago, but he still remembers every heart-wrenching word of what Lex said just before he left.
"Now what do we do?" John said, eyeing the door. "That's not going to hold her all that long."
"Uh, you guys realize, if Luthor's really kicked her out, she's got nothing to do but hang out here and make trouble," Wally said. He winced as the wall vibrated with the force of her next slam.
"That's beside the point," Batman said. "Almerac has an expansionist warrior culture and a substantial fleet. Which Luthor now controls." Okay, that was the sound of the other shoe dropping. It was actually quite nice of Bruce not to finish his thought a year ago when he first figured it all out; Clark would have just worried impotently all that time.
"Wait," Clark said. "Are you seriously suggesting we help her? We're not even remotely responsible for this. I did everything short of launching her out of the system in a catapult-" "This is so not my fault!"
"And of course that makes it all right to leave the population of Almerac and every surrounding populated system to the interstellar war Luthor's undoubtedly going to start ten minutes from now," Batman said.
Clark's POV
Clark still was thrown by the whole being-on-another-planet thing, no matter how many years he'd had by now to get used to the idea he was an alien himself. Clark as rube. This is not meant as a random comment, it's very important, because one of the themes of this story is Clark's growth as a person (through the healing power of SEX, but that's why this is Delicious Crack-fic.) Almerac wasn't particularly weird-looking-annoyingly beautiful, in fact, with a sunset-purple sky and two showy moons and architecture that would have put the Byzantines to shame.
He'd come with John, coasting along in a hyperspace tube generated by his ring. They hadn't figured out exactly what they were going to do, and Clark had the uncomfortable feeling that he shouldn't like the idea of hauling Lex back to Earth in a sack quite as much as he did. He fancies himself in the aggressive, manly role in this little harlequin romance.
"It's one thing if this was just a palace coup and everyone would be just as happy having her back," John had said. "But if the general population really want Luthor in charge, grabbing him is going to be a bad scene. The Lantern Corps have learned that the hard way."
The guards on the palace looked at them curiously, and made some quiet murmurs into their communicators; then they were being ushered through the halls of the palace and out into the gardens. Lex was stretched out on a couch in the shade, reading some kind of electronic tablet; there were a couple of servants just hovering, even a bowl of fruit at his elbow and an enormous picnic basket on the grass next to him: the perfect picture of a Roman emperor. He was even wearing something like a toga.
He put the tablet aside as they came up. "Clark, good to see you," he said, as if it hadn't been more than a year, as if Clark was just dropping by the mansion after school or landing on the balcony on patrol. Because Lex is as cool as James Bond and Bugs Bunny combined.
"Maxima tried to beat me to death," Clark said, folding his arms. What? No "Hi, Lex; how ya doin'?"
"Better you than me," Lex said. "Any chance you were forced to accidentally kill her?" ...thus saving me a butt-load of alimony?
"Sorry, no," Clark snapped. "I can't believe you! What, being co-ruler of an entire star system wasn't good enough?"
"I didn't divorce her just because I wanted the throne, Clark," Lex said. "I had issues with her parenting style."
"Her what?" Clark said.
The picnic basket whimpered. Clark stared down at it, and the heap of blankets stirred.
"Her name is Lena," Lex informed him, sounding unbearably smug.
The drowsing baby poked out an arm and waved her tiny fist in the air. There was a distinct possibility her tiny middle finger was raised; she's a Luthor, after all.
Back to John's POV--the first tip-off is that Lex is now being called Luthor, the second is the general tone of pissed-offedness.
Luthor and Maxima had apparently fought over her plans to raise the baby using traditional royal Almeracian methods: regular beatings, leaving the baby out in blizzards, throwing her to wild animals. The baby sat on Luthor's lap the whole time while he was telling the sob story, looking at them with big blue eyes and fuzzy red hair and yawning once in a while, probably calculated just to look more cute and helpless, John thought bitterly. "Damn you, wee Luthor and your adorable yet evil ways!" A baby is an excellent fashion accessory to wear to a sob story.
Moving in for the kill, Luthor handed Clark the baby, which put him completely out of commission: he just held her, looking dazed, while she batted at his S. I think Clark's ovaries just exploded.
John folded his arms and said, "So you're just going to settle in, raise your alien princess, be a friendly neighborhood benevolent despot?" Please say "yes"!
Luthor grinned at him, looking genuinely amused. "Stewart," he said, "I'm going to conquer the galaxy and give it to her on a string."
After that friendly chat, Luthor took them on a tour of the city, full of construction and bustling marketplaces, and crowds who cheered wildly as the royal convoy went past, throwing red flowers up to their feet, calling out Luthor's name and Lena's. I don't remember the Almeracian people sharing Maxima's superpowers; they're just ordinary human-type people.
"Maxima liked to confiscate property and print her way out of any money shortages, so they're new to the whole idea of a reliably functioning economy," Luthor said, just to rub it in some more. "They seem to approve, though, don't you think?"
For a grand finale, he brought them to the massive dockyard full of gleaming new warships, big as skyscrapers. One was launching; John watched grimly as it lifted off, engines glowing blue-white: like the Empire State Building taking flight, except the Empire State Building didn't have cannon the size of eighteen-wheelers mounted on its sides. This is a rather spectacular word-picture being painted here.
When they came back to the palace, the servants took them to a private suite and spent ten minutes offering them food and drink and what John seriously hoped weren't meant to be sexual favors before he managed to chase them out. I wouldn't put it past Lex to have sicced the sleazier of the servants on GL and Clark on purpose. He shut the doors behind them and turned back into the room. Clark had slumped down at the central table and was resting his head on his hands. This is the first time in the story Clark rests his head on his hands, feeling frustrated and powerless... Lex does that to him.
"Well, that went great," John said.
"We can't take him back," Clark said without lifting his head.
"No kidding," John said. "Any ideas on how else to stop him?"
"No," Clark said.
"Right," John said. "In that case, seeing how we just flew two thousand light years to strike out, I'm going to sleep."
He woke up a couple of hours later in the dark, instinct rousing him. I'm assuming his Gaydar went *ping*. The main room was empty, and the other bed hadn't been slept in: the curtains were blowing in the window from the open balcony doors. John frowned and padded out onto the balcony. Nobody could have taken Clark without enough of a fight to wake him, so John wasn't worried, exactly, he just had a hell of a bad gut feeling-and then he spotted Clark, hovering in mid-air, just above the big jutting terrace six or seven windows down, near the center of the palace building.
Luthor stepped out onto the terrace and looked up. Clark landed, apparently so the two of them could stare at each other without saying anything. Finally Luthor said, "Are you coming in?"
Clark stood for another moment, and then he said, so quietly John could barely hear it, "Yes."
They went inside. A minute later, the lights went out.
John stared. What the fuck. He's just had the rug pulled out from under him, I don't begrudge him a few curse words.
I love being a fly on the wall for this conversation.
"What?" Wally said, for the third time.
"Goddamn it, you heard me!" John snapped. "For the fastest man alive, you're fucking slow on the uptake."
"Superman's gay?" Wally said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
"Oh, for Christ's sake," John said.
"Superman's gay and he's sleeping with Luthor ? Are you-"
"If you ask me again whether I'm sure, I am going to punch you in the face," John said.
"Hey," Wally said, "Maybe it's, you know, one of those things like, Luthor threatened to conquer the universe unless Superman slept with him?" It's actually rather sweet that Wally goes to this place rather than believe Clark would be all slutty and sleep with the enemy.
"He threatened to conquer the universe anyway!" John said. I almost wish Maxima hadn't come in at this moment; I'd love to see where this conversation would have gone without the interruption. These two are better than Abbott and Costello.
The door to the conference chamber slid open and Maxima burst in. "That faithless thought-hider fornicated with Kal-El?"
John stared and then turned to look at Wally. "You let her out?"
"Well," Wally said defensively, "you guys were gone, Diana was fighting a pack of demons in South America, and then Mongul broke out of Cadmus-"
"And that wasn't enough of a challenge, so you decided to make things worse?" John said.
"She helped!" Wally said. "Actually, she kind of took him apart. We had to pull her off the guy."
Maxima tossed her head. "That posturing weakling was no match for the might of a warrior of Almerac. Why have you not brought me back Luthor's head?"
"Speaking of your ex," John said, "you might have mentioned the baby."
"There's a baby?" Wally said.
"The suckling is not yet a year old; it has not even been named," Maxima said dismissively. "And with that coddling nursemaid of a coward raising it, it will never be worthy of naming! All my effort in bearing it will go to waste." Who wants to see a flashback of Maxima, pregnant and with swollen ankles, bitching out Lex? I do, I do!
"Lovely," John said. "Well, your people don't seem to feel the same way about Luthor and the kid as you do."
"What does that matter?" Maxima said. "You and Kal-El together could have defeated the guards! Only your cowardice-" She has a simplistic way of looking at things: "Who cares what the people want?" and "Want, take, have." For all her physical power, she is actually the sort of person someone clever, like Lex, would have fun running rings around. The fact that she could kill him with her pinkie if she figured him out would just make it more fun. It's actually astonishing she hasn't been deposed before now by someone else.
John's ring abruptly throbbed: someone was broadcasting a message over the Lantern network. He held out his arm and projected the transmission, letting it drown Maxima out; it was Ajikan, the Green Lantern for the Lorian sector. He looked tired, tentacles drooping.
He said, "Almerac has invaded the Idarian Confederacy-"
"What?" Maxima shrieked. "The Idarian armies outnumber ours by half again! That lunatic will destroy my empire-"
"Three-quarters of the Idarian fleet was destroyed in a trap at the Balta mining colony in the first sortie at the third hour of the current galactic standard day," Ajikan continued.
Maxima stopped in mid-sentence. You'd think she'd have seen that one coming, she of all people knows how sneaky Lex can be.
"Almeracian casualties were nil. The Idarian council has entered into negotiations for surrender." Ajikan paused. "This represents a significant shift in the balance of power in my sector," he said wearily. "I anticipate significant movement of population, as the Almeracians typically enslave their conquests, and many Idarians will presumably attempt to flee to nearby star systems. I request assignment of two additional Lanterns to assist in monitoring the situation and protection of refugees. Ajikan out."
The transmission faded out. Maxima was standing there gawking.
"Great," John said.
A half-dozen Lanterns showed up the next day to discuss the situation; the Idarians had surrendered on terms that morning, and Luthor had immediately taken possession of their two dozen shipyards and started building more warships. Where he was planning to find people to man them, no one really knew; he already had fresh lieutenants in command on some of the newer Almeracian ships. But his neighbors weren't exactly waiting to find out: ten different nations were arming, and the Vorlon Empire, a handful of independent systems away from Almerac's new border, had begun to sluggishly move troops around.
"We are an exchange of fire away from a conflagration which could envelop the entire quadrant," Vox Ghanai said; he was the senior Lantern for the area. "Billions will die, and more than that be enslaved, either by the Almeracians or the Vorlon. Under the circumstances, extraordinary measures are warranted."
Ajikan nodded. "If Maxima will agree to render back the Idarian territories in exchange for being restored to her throne, I believe we can stabilize the situation."
They looked at her, but she didn't say anything; she still looked dazed, like she had since the news had first come through.
Vox Ghanai shrugged a little, minutely, and turned back to John. "Our observers say that Luthor's at the Idarian homeworlds right now."
John nodded. "We go in, grab him quick and clean-"
"We're not leaving the baby," Clark said, glaring at Maxima across the table. Already Clark's a better mom than Maxima is.
"Fine," John said, after she still didn't react. "We'll have to make it simultaneous."
Vox Ghanai nodded. "Difficult but not impossible. Superman, you have the most experience with Luthor - I believe you would be the ideal choice to lead the operation to seize him." This must be some new Green-Lanterny definition of the word "ideal" with which we were all previously unacquainted.
John looked at Clark, who had dropped his eyes to the table. The mixed emotions, they burn! "I'll go with him, and make him do this," John said grimly. He looked at Diana. "Can you go get the baby?"
Diana blinked at him. John figures, what the heck, she's the closest thing they have to a girl, that means she's "ideal", at least by the new GL definition of that word. "I'm certain I could take her," she said, "but I've never really handled a child, and it will be a long journey back. Don't they need special food? And to have their clothing changed somehow?" Well, apparently on Almerak they beat them regularly, leave them out in blizzards, and throw them to wild animals; you should do just fine, Diana.
"I'll get the baby," Clark said. "You can tell L-Luthor that I've got her. He'll probably go with you, just so he won't be separated from her." For some odd reason, my thoughts flashed back to season 5 of Angel, when Angel sent Spike out to save a baby from a pack of demons. Spike and Clark are both caring-nurturers!
"Very well," Vox Ghanai said. "John Stewart and Diana and I will seize Luthor, then; Ajikan, you will inform the Idarian council once Luthor has been taken, and-"
"What are you planning to do with him?" Batman said, abruptly. Stop confusing us with your damned questions, Bruce!
Everyone stopped and looked at him. Because, God help them, this very important question had not occurred to them before.
"He just led the Almeracians to a major military victory," Batman said. "If you abduct him, they'll come looking. So will most of the systems threatened, to prevent his return. If you bring him back to Earth, they'll take the planet apart between them. So what are you planning to do with him?"
"He's right. We need to find a St. Helena," John said. "Someplace small and defensible, where one Lantern can keep an eye on him-"
"There are nearly ten thousand human-habitable asteroids in the Hlaian nebula," Vox Ghanai said. "It would be ideal; a Lantern could patrol the area, to avoid revealing the specific location-" Which definition of "ideal" was that again?
"What?" Clark said. "Now you're talking about imprisoning him and the baby for life on some rock?"
"If Luthor ever had a fair trial for the crimes he's committed, he'd be serving twenty life terms," John snapped.
"Then you can give him a fair trial," Clark said. "That's not the same thing as the ten of us sitting in a room deciding that we're going to use our powers to violate a nation's sovereignty and kidnap a man and child and abandon them on a deserted asteroid."
"Oh, and sovereignty is what you're worried about?" John said, folding his arms. Clark flushed. "I'm prepared to stop Luthor," he said tightly. "I'm not prepared to treat him like a wild animal-"
"Stop it," Batman said. "This argument is pointless. You can't lock him up when he's wanted by a significant portion of the entire galaxy. Someone will get through. Putting him in jail under the current circumstances is equivalent to staking him out in a field and hoping the ones who want him dead will reach him first."
"So what's your suggestion?" John said.
"Kill him yourselves," Batman said. I cannot help but think he suggests it knowing full well there's no way in hell they're going to do it.
"What?" Clark said.
"We are not murderers," Vox Ghanai said. Oh, c'mon, Vox; it would be the "ideal" solution!
Batman said, "Then stop looking for an easy way out. Yeah, see? He was trying to make a point, not actually get them to kill Lex. You're not less guilty because you choose an indirect method with a high risk of failure. You're simply less effective. If you're not willing to assassinate him, you have only one option. Defeat him."
"We want to stop a war, not fight one!" John said.
"Too bad," Batman said. Much as I love Bruce's devil's advocate routine, I don't see him coming up with any solutions to the problem; he may be right, but all he's doing is finding fault with their plans without coming up with a legitimate plan of his own. I honestly wonder what steps he would take in this situation if it were entirely up to him.
Part 2 of 3