The air of the city was far, far, cleaner. The ground was far cleaner. This was probably the cleanest place I have ever been in. And that is saying something because I can literally just burn dirt off things when I clean my apartment. The giant golden globe sitting on top of the large building before us glistened in the light of the sun. I think it was the childhood wonder seeping into my mind, but the sight alone was enough to get mesmerized.
But it wasn't enough for me to forget the rather dangerous madman that was just behind me. Killian tried to struggle, he tried to melt me with his fire, to heat up his body till it was too hot for me to touch. But nothing he could do did anything to me. Especially since he kept himself under the temperature that would cause his clothes problems for short periods.
So this ended up with me shoving his face into the ground, to keep him from shooting flames at passersby or other innocent people, while using a mere armbar. Surprisingly the man that ran a think tank didn't know how to get out of the rather basic hold. What a surprise
"Where are we?" Louise asked, her eyes just briefly darting towards Killian before being enraptured at what could only be described as a glistening cityscape around us.
It was a mutual attraction as there was a crowd of people gathering around us. Staring at the sudden appearance of a room and three people, one of which being pyrokinetic of some sort and the other holding him down. Louise ended up being a minor point of attention, but a point the same. It probably helped that she was wearing the security guard uniform, people probably were thinking this was some experiment gone wrong. So the guard made sense to be there.
Not too much the two guys without shirts.
"Stay back!" I warned the crowd rather than answer Louise's question right away. There were a lot of factors to consider in how to convey my ideas of where we were. But even those needed to come second to ensure people stayed back given the danger Killian represented. "This man is a dangerous madman. Popped himself with some sort of super serum. His entire body is unstable and could blow up in an explosion… about… a half block at least?"
That caught the crowd's attention, though no one seemed super concerned by the revelation. Some did turn away, muttering about how this reminded them of a few years back with Atomic Skull's arrest by Superman.
Which told me at least this was a world with a Superman who'd not just revealed himself but had been active for a few years now. Which was good. It meant a better chance at a world where the Justice League was active. Which meant a good chance they'd already dealt with a bunch of dimensional or alternate universe wackiness.
"You can't contain me!" Killian screeched. His body finally getting hot enough for me to feel uncomfortable. "I'm the Mandarin, I'm a genius!"
"Okay, genius; Maybe you should cool off before we get a mini-Pompei."
Even though he was a genius and claimed his version of the Extremis had been stabilized. I was aware of the eccentric mental state he was displaying while also the project's overall rate of self-combustion so far. So I didn't trust how stable his body was.
"Lugh, I'm still pretty freaked out here!" I glanced over to Louise in a half-head turn so I could keep Killian in sight. Louise was getting pretty hot herself and not in the attractive metaphor manner, but in the soon might explode one.
"Calm down, we're in a safe plac-" With just a second's distraction, Killian had dislocated his arm, allowing him to break from my hold. Of course, I responded faster than he could do much else. First I reset his arm… and then I threw him into the air. "-e. I can guarantee that everything is going to be fine. This is a minor setback, we're going to be able to fix you in a few short hours."
My actions took Louise so off guard, that she stopped focusing on the situation at hand. It was probably hard to worry about exploding in a strange city when you've seen your friend throw a man in orbit with one hand.
Not that I threw him that hard.
"Did you just kill him?" She asked, her head tilted up and her eyes squinting at the speck in the distance. "Not that he doesn't deserve it, just that was really casual."
"No, I think he's fine," I could see Killian as clearly as if he was standing next to me. He was screaming, but whatever the man was saying got consumed by the winds ramming into his face. "I'll just catch him in a few seconds. Hopefully, it will get him to stop struggling… or at least to shut up. That man talks and he talks but he never really says much."
Before I could make a move to do so, the man was grabbed by a red and blue blur in the sky. I couldn't help the grin that spread over my lips. This was it.
"Incoming," I warned Louise, hoping to keep her calm in this situation. " Keep calm,we got a visitor, don't be jumpy, he's friendly."
"That was more stilted than you've been in a while," Louise remarked dryly, though unable to mask the deep breaths she took. I cursed that I hadn't paid more attention to Hansen's little debriefing of the effects and results of the Extremis Project. I couldn't recall if Louise's heart rate mattered to her chances, but I was better off distracting her regardless.
As if Louise focuses on me being weird she won't have time to worry about exploding suddenly.
"Well, I'm just a stilted guy. Watch as I soon descend into sentence fragments."
Suddenly Killian was on the ground, the way I had thrown him into the air had caused him to spin. So even his rescuer putting the man down gently on his feet meant he tipped over the second Killian even looked at me. Usually, I would make fun of the man, try my hand at a quip or look over to Louise with a light smile to draw out hers.
But I was captivated by the very clear familiar face, the nose, the ears, the smile, and even the little twirl in the man's fringe. The blue of his outfit was darker and deeper than the clearest blue sky. His cape had that little yellow version of his symbol on the back while the one on the front of his torso had swapped the yellow typically seen behind the S with black. Not to be confused with the Kingdom Come Version of the Symbol, this one retained the curves of Nineties' Superman.
"If you can stop from throwing people into the sky, it's something that I take issue with."
His voice caused me to blink rapidly as I suddenly connected dots that had been hidden behind mental walls. Someway, somehow, my mind hadn't allowed itself to make the most obvious connection. His appearance, even the cadence of his voice. This wasn't just any Superman but rather The Superman. This was a variation of Christoper Reeves.
Just so excited.
"He's a super-soldier with the power to explode when his body temperature heats up too much," I explained, trying to hide my glee at meeting this legend. I almost wanted to bounce. "His name is Aldrich Killian, leader of a think tank turned terrorist lacky responsible for the mass bombings across America."
That was a condensed version of events and Superman even raised a brow at the explanation.
"This is the first time I heard anything about mass bombings?" He questioned me with a tone that spoke of multiple aspects of the man at once. The main thing was raw authority, Thor, a prince of an entire species, didn't radiate this level of authority. I couldn't help to answer this as anything less than truthful with the man.
Though this may all be a result of fanboy-ism wreaking havoc with my self-control.
"That's because it wasn't this America," I informed him. "See that room over there, it was used to transport us from our universe to this one. As a way to remove me from the playing board," I held up a hand to stop him from interrupting the rest of the explanation. "I would love to explain more but we're on a bit of a timer here. Louise needs medical attention because of what was done to this nutso-" I pointed to Killian, who was still failing to stand on two feet as we talked, "Was done to her, except worse so she might explode. We need to keep her cool first and foremost, then I will get you that explanation."
Superman blinked as it seemed that I took him off guard with the rapid way I tried to explain the situation. Then there was a low crackle from a very small earpiece he was wearing. The voice was a smooth voice, almost alien you could say. There was some sort of scramble effect to the voice, something that stopped me from understanding him.
There were a few exchanges that I paid little attention to, given how I couldn't understand what one of them was saying. So instead of wasting my time, I Instead kept my attention to Louise, whose temporary calm had crashed down hard. Louise wasn't her usual gathered self, the events of the past few hours had hit her hard. not that she was on her knees crying, more that I could see how shaken up my friend was.
Though I made sure to keep my guard up as one never knew what was going to happen in a comic book universe.
Slowly, I inched closer to her, giving Louise a hand to squeeze. She took it without a word. But there was a bit more pressure than I expected from her. It was easily explained that it was from the Extremis boost but still was slightly odd to experience.
When you get used to someone being unable to exert that much force, then doing so becomes a surprise even when you know to expect it. And to be honest, she wasn't as strong as Killian but there wasn't as much room as you might expect. Probably helped that Louise had a half foot on the man.
"Hey," I whispered, not that it stopped Supes from hearing us. It did make the conversation feel more private, it gave the vibe that we were all alone. Even though we were starting to become surrounded by onlookers, cops even created a barrier to keep people safe from any sudden action.
It was a fancy energy barrier so that was neat.
"Yeah," Louise responded, the crunch in her brow indicating a coming headache. I wondered if she was getting dehydrated due to her body's rising temperature? Was it possible that her body was sweating more in an attempt to relieve this unexpected condition? For cooling? It wasn't likely, as sweating alone wouldn't be enough to deal with the raising heat, nor did any of Hansen's subjects display such effects. Food for thought at least.
"Did that guy… eh… Brad? Break up with your friend Becca recently?"
Louise gave me an annoyed expression. Both at the topic and probably the timing. But better slightly annoyed with me than full of so much tension and anxiety that she literally explodes. Though, if that helped keep her heartbeat down or merely kept her from spiraling downward I couldn't say.
"How did you know that?" She questioned, "Were you spying on my friends."
"No, I was just making stuff up to distract you," I told her, not wanting to have her get the wrong idea about me. I frankly didn't care about Louise's other friends enough to waste time spying on them. Oh, living in a comic book universe means that any of them could go super-villain, but the chance of that didn't overwrite their right to privacy… nor how fecking creepy spying on them would be. "They broke up though? What happened, thought they were pretty close when I saw them last?"
"Brad decided he wanted to fish for fresh," The manner she said this produced a chill going down my spine.
"Oh, geeze, that is… did he say that out loud?"
"Yeah, he did. Becca spent a whole week in crumbles over the eejit."
Well, that was somewhat depressing and somewhat predictable. A lot of people weren't interested in long-term relationships at such a young age, I was much the same myself in terms of romantic interest. But there was that and there was the asshole this man outed himself as. Golden Rule of interaction in general, don't be an asshole.
If that interaction gets around enough, he wouldn't be able to find many fish, as disgusting as the framing was.
Before I could ask any other random thing to pop into my head. The conversation shifted back to the subject at hand.
"Well," Superman chuckled. "There's some truth in what you've said. A friend of mine is saying our systems picked up a Bleed Signal a few moments ago. So your being from another universe appears to be true. But given the trouble you could cause, I want to ask you to accompany me to our HeadQuarters. Just so we can keep an eye on you all while we attempt to fact-check other elements of your story."
So that either involves Wonder Woman's Lasso or J'onn reading our minds. Lucky for me, I don't really have any secrets that need major guarding. At least nothing that I was aware of. It wasn't like Nick Fury sent me loads of the World's Military secrets or anything of the sort. All I had was that I was from another universe, which I had no reason to be anything but upfront about.
Author's Note; Took much longer than I would've liked. Not going to get into why but it is what it is. I have the next chapter done already and an interlude after that. I will try to speed things up to my better moments in the coming days but that will only happen when life allows.
I am struggling a little bit with trying to limit my tendency of over and underplaying my hand when it comes to delivering important plot threads for you to follow. So I am editing bits out and moving things around. There are just some things that I feel get awkward to talk around for long periods of time. I have also kept to Pat's pov for a few chapters now. Is that what people prefer completely? Or was it merely a vocal minority that were against multiple povs?
I will try to get a chapter a week out for the next while.