slayers_desire | the calvary arrives in Smallville

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the calvary arrives in Smallville

It was time to mount a rescue effort in Kansas. After losing Clark to the Phantom Zone, April had helped Lionel get back to the safety of his mansion, and then had disappeared to the Nexus. Where she was able to find a couple of people who wanted to help keep the peace.

PINpointing back to the farmyard with her allies, April waited for everyone to get settled. Then she took a breath, and gave them a briefing. "So basically right now we have mass public panic, no technology is working, and there are several friends of Clark's that are missing."

"We have two enemies that we need to be concerned about," April pulls out two artist renditions. "The first is Brainaic, a Kryptonite supercomputer who has been posing as Professor Milton Fine. He has all the Kryptonian powers of flight, strength, speed and healing... but isn't affected by Kryptonite. Meteor rock. He can also shapechange. Chloe, you will go with Alice, Victor Van Dort, Doc and Marty to find Brainaic. Also do what you can for those innocents who need to be saved from this chaos. You will also need to find Martha Kent and Lois Lane, as they are both missing."

"The second is General Zod, who has taken possession of Lex Luthor. Once again Zod has all the Kryptonian powers, and I am not sure if meteor rock will affect him. I haven't had a chance to test it."

"Victor Allen and I will try to find Zod, as we have more experience with dealing with crazy Kryptonians. We will also look for a way to bring Clark out of the Phantom Zone."

"I am going to give each of you a piece of Kryptonite, just in case. And hopefully we can figure out a way to get through this situation." April took a breath. Hoping that their little plan would work for the better good.

((this will be a split thread. Alice and Her gang will go off with Chloe to deal with Brainaic. Victor Allen and April will deal with the Clark issue))

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Victor starts a little, and bunches up a little closer to Alice. "Well, ah, at least--" Then he notices a look of shock on Marty's face. "Something wrong?"

Marty glances around at his companions. "I'm really hoping it's just a difference in realities," he whispers to his friends. "But, uh, that voice -- sounds a lot like Zod's from the second movie. I mean, it's been ages since I saw it--" He grimaces. "But it could be just like how me and Doc are different from those other uses. . . ." Oh great, another reason to be on edge.

"How curious it would be if Clark's father and worst enemy had the same voice," Alice says. She looks around herself. "Can you give us a direction?" Because searching the Fortress seems to be quite the project.

Chloe's never met Jor-El before, so she can't say whether or not that's the case. Or if Zod somehow got to the Fortress and reprogrammed it, or... something.

There's no answer from the AI, and the already dim lights darken slightly. "I think there's something wrong with the Fortress," Chloe says, frowning in concern. "Like it's on emergency power or something." It's what the red lighting reminds her of; those battery powered emergency lights in office buildings.

"Oh dear," Victor says, shivering a little. "I do hope that doesn't fail." It's creepy enough with the dim red light -- he can't imagine being in this place in the dark. Alice gives his hand a reassuring squeeze.

Doc cautiously releases Alice's hand and touches a crystal. He has absolutely no idea if his ability to temporarily fix things magically would have any effect on alien technology. He certainly doesn't want to break the Fortress completely. "Should we start searching?"

"Doc, this place looks huge! And I really don't want to split up." Marty looks up and around. "Hello? Mrs. Kent?" he tries.

Still no answer. The Fortress is cold, but not quite dangerous yet, with the crystal structure blocking the Arctic air. Though Kryptonians can spend as much time as they please here without needing a heated environment, the main center of the Fortress is protected slightly, enough to make human visitors or invaders uncomfortable without putting them in danger. At least, not unless they prove to be hostile, at which point the Fortress defenses kick in.

"Maybe he didn't mean near as in inside the structure," Chloe suggests, looking worried.

"Not inside -- aren't we in the Arctic?" Marty says. "How the hell do we go outside to--"

The air around the group warms considerably. Doc gives everyone a slightly smug smile. "Riiiight, my best friend can control the weather," Marty says, resisting the urge to facepalm.

"It's certainly more comfortable like this," Alice says, quietly relieved. She's got the shortest sleeves of anyone there, after all, and this place is even colder than the ice caverns beneath Wonderland Woods. "Let's see if we can find an exit. And keep a lookout for anything unusual." She takes Doc's hand again, to ensure no crazy separations happen.

"That helps a lot!" Chloe says, flashing him a bit of a smile. "All right, let's go as a group, at least to start. I think it should be plenty visible from outside, with how big this place is."

The exit is actually relatively easy to find, too. Back through the spires, following the ground as it steps downward in large chunks, out into the Arctic air. There are mountains in the distance, and flat snowplains stretching far outwards towards the horizon. Looking back, the Fortress is a massive structure that gleams in the sun (http://images.wikia.com/smallville/images/a/a9/Fortress_of_Solitude.jpg), towering hundreds of feet overhead.

Doc grins back. "Happy to help, trust me."

They pick their way down and out, then take a moment to gaze out at the horizon. "This is actually rather pretty," Alice comments, looking both at the snowplains at at the Fortress.

"Yeah, these guys definitely don't do things by halves," Marty agrees, gazing up at the Fortress. He suddenly smirks. "Wonder if your tongue would stick to one of those if you tried licking it."

Doc's giving you a bit of a look for that, Marty. "Let's not try that. Anyone see any sign of the LuthorCorp jet?" He squints and scans the horizon.

The plane is mostly white, so it blends in with the landscape on first glance. But look hard enough, and there it is, half-buried in the snow about a mile away, broken into three pieces.

"Oh crap," Chloe says, finally spotting it.

"Shit," Marty says, as the others see it too. "Come on!"

The gang sets off for the plane at a jog, though everyone makes sure to keep fairly close to Doc. (Otherwise they're going to get a blast of Arctic air in the face.) "Please be okay, please be okay," Marty mutters as they head over. He can't imagine finding out Clark's mom has died, so soon after his dad. Alice is similarly pale with the prospect of this happening.

The crashed jet isn't on fire, at least, so that's an encouraging sign. Not a very encouraging sign, especially since the holes in the sides are absolutely massive, and snow has been blowing in.

"Mrs. Kent?" Chloe asks, all but leaping through the closest break they come to, only holding back because she doesn't want to trip on debris and hurt herself.

"Over here!" a woman's voice answers from behind part of the bulkhead that's fallen down. It's Clark's mom. Her face is bruised and scratched, and she's been bleeding from somewhere in her hairline, and she's been exposed to the weather for long enough that she's borderline hypothermic. But she's not concerned for herself. "Lois is hurt badly."

The general feeling is Oh, thank God she's alive. Doc extends the reach of the warm air "bubble" to get to Mrs. Kent, in the hopes that it'll help somehow. Damn it, it's times like this he wished he was a medical doctor. "Hang on, help's on the way!"

The gang will let Chloe take the lead in reaching Mrs. Kent, because -- well, look at them. But everyone is deeply concerned. (Hopefully Martha won't think she's hallucinating when she sees Doc Brown, Marty McFly, Alice from Wonderland, and a young man who looks something like a stop-motion puppet with Chloe.) "What happened?" Victor can't help asking.

"I don't know. We lost track of time, and by the time we realized we should've landed hours before, we were already over snow. Then the cabin lost pressure and I blacked out." She kneels over Lois, whose head is also seriously bruised and bleeding, and she's unconscious. "I can't find the pilot. There's no body in the cockpit and there aren't any footprints around the jet. I was about to try heading to the Fortress."

The others follow suit -- Marty hisses a little through his teeth as he looks at Lois. "Yeah, that's where we just were -- it's not working right," he says. "It's all red in there. . . . Uh, hi, I'm Marty, and this is Doc, Alice, and Victor. We, ah, know your son." He really has no idea what Martha knows about the Nexus, but it's probably better if she knows at least who's here.

Alice examines Lois's head. "We really should get both of you out of here. Staying in the plane can't be helping matters."

"Yeah, but how do we know it's safe to move her?" Marty says. "What if something happened to her neck?"

Frustrated Doc is frustrated. "And of course, with this technological virus on the loose, god knows if there's any help to be gotten at a hospital. . . ."

"Technological virus?" Martha repeats with a frown.

"It's a long story, and we should have time to tell it once we get Lois some help," Chloe says, reaching down to check on her cousin. "I don't think we have any other choice but to move her. There won't be any help way out here, and PINpointing might be dangerous. Maybe the Fortress can help, somehow."

"The short version is that pretty much all electronics, and possibly other mechanical items, have stopped working," Doc quickly sums up. "We can explain more later."

"Do you really think it can?" Victor says, fiddling with his tie again. "You were the one who suggested it was on emergency power."

"But it's the closest place indoors," Alice points out. "And it's certainly better than staying out here." She starts looking around, to see if there's anything useful in the plane they can take along, or maybe use to help transport Lois and Martha.

"Yeah, but if I was a superadvanced alien database and stuff, I'd make sure medical facilities were on the backup circuits," Chloe points out. "It won't hurt if we try."

A lot of the plane is trashed, but it's possibly to rig some sort of travois out of curtains and bits of wreckage that they can use to drag Lois to the Fortress. And such a way of transporting her will be safer if she does have a back injury.

"And as Alice has said, it's much better than staying out here," Doc agrees. "Anything useful there, Alice?"

"I think we can make a bit of a sled thing for Lois if we try," Alice says, picking up some curtains. "Mrs. Kent, do you think you can walk, or. . . ?"

"I could carry you, if necessary," Doc offers.

"Yeah, and Victor and I can take care of getting Lois out of here, once we've got the sled thing built," Marty adds, Victor nodding along. "Here, what do we need to do?"

"Well, I think if we find a way to lash this to that in a triangle shape. . . ."

"I'm fine, thank you," Martha says, and though she moves like she's quite stiff, nothing seems broken.

It takes several minutes to get the 'sled thing' constructed, and several more to transfer Lois onto it, though it helps to have multiple sets of hands to stabilize her. And then comes the long walk back to the Fortress, following their own footsteps back, into the shelter of the Kryptonian structure.

The Fortress is silent when they enter, but after a few moments, the reddish light intensifies, almost imperceptibly. "Martha Kent."

It also helps that Alice has a sharp knife for cutting up bits of curtain to help tie things with. She offers a few unused strips as makeshift bandages for Martha and Lois. Marty and Victor pull the makeshift travois back (Victor being careful to make sure he's holding his end at the same height as Marty, given that he's 6'3" and Marty's 5'4"), while Doc stays near Martha, ready to offer a steadying hand if she needs it. He's also making sure to send plenty of warm air her and Lois's way, given their conditions.

There's a little start on everyone's part when the voice speaks. "I think it's for you," Marty says to Martha, with a very weak smile.

Martha steps forward, looking upward, not sure where to direct her voice. "Jor-El. Why did you bring us here?"

"You were taken as pawns by the Brain Interactive Construct, the being you know as Milton Fine. I gave Kal-El a dagger for him to kill the vessel of Zod. Instead, he choose to use it against Fine."

"Where is Clark?" Martha demands, realizing that her son should be here, should be doing something, that this isn't right.

"The dagger is part of this Fortress," Jor-El continues, as if he hasn't heard her. "Plunging it into Fine destroyed all copies of him, but also damaged this structure and released Zod."

The group listens as Jor-El starts explaining. "That might explain what happened with the plane," Doc says quietly, remembering Martha's comment about the pilot being missing. "If the pilot was a copy of Brainiac, when Clark tried to destroy the original Fine. . . ."

"That still leaves the question of where Brainiac is now," Alice says, one hand going to rest on the handle of her Vorpal Blade. "And what we can do to stop him."

"The black ship is all that remains of Fine, and Zod will use it to destroy Earth if he is not stopped."

"Where is my son?" Martha repeats, drawing herself up to her full height and using her senator voice. "What happened to him?"

"Banished forever by Zod," Jor-El says, and underneath the stern Kryptonian tone, he almost seems to be gentle about it. "His destiny is now his own. If this world is to be saved, you must find the dagger and kill the vessel, Lex Luthor."

Doc feels a bit more hope is needed in these proceedings. "April and another friend are working on a way to get Clark back," he says to Martha. "Nobody's going to let him be banished forever."

Victor looks particularly uneasy about this whole "killing the vessel" business, since he himself was recently possessed. From what he's heard, though, there's little chance of getting Zod to change like the King of Hearts did. One hand briefly slides up to his throat, as he remembers his own thoughts shortly after April got him free of the King. Kill myself to save everyone else. . . . "There's no other way?" he whispers, though he's not expecting Jor-El to answer him. All the AI's attention seems to be on Martha.

"I can't do that," Martha says, mirroring Victor's comment. "There has to be some other way."

"There are no more portals in existence on this side of the gate," Jor-El says. "It is the only option available to you. If you do not, this planet is lost."

Yeah, this doesn't sit well with anyone. Alice keeps looking over at Victor -- she too can't help thinking about that whole mess with the King. She's not opposed to killing someone to save others (look at the Queen of Hearts), but having to destroy someone else to get to them. . . . She shakes her head. She doesn't think she could do it either.

"So what else can go wrong today?" Marty says, words laced with sarcasm.

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