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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Nodding all around. "He does look rather -- disheveled, but any wounds he may have had appear to have healed the instant he was exposed to sunlight," Doc adds. "So he's probably going to be dirty, but physically all right."

"Typical for him, right?" Marty says with a little smirk.

Victor glances back in the direction Clark zipped off to. "I do hope things go well with Zod. And that--" And that the knife doesn't have to be used. He understands if it does turn out like that, but. . .well, can you blame the guy for having sympathy for Lex?

"We started buying Clark's clothes in bulk years ago," Martha says, smiling through teary eyes. "He destroys them so quickly, it puts him growing out of his clothes as a child to shame."

"Good thing he usually only wears the two colors, too," Marty replies. "Must make it easier."

Alice sees Victor's unease and puts an arm around him. "It'll all be well," she reassures him, and anyone else who might be listening. "Things will work out how they're supposed to."

"If there is a way to defeat Zod without killing Lex, Clark will do it," Chloe agrees. "He and Lex haven't been close for a while, but he's stubborn like that."

"He's never let anyone die when he could save them, not even to keep his secret," Martha agrees. "He won't take the easy way out if there's a path that is just."

"Precisely," Doc agrees. "There's always another way. And he mentioned he had a plan right before he took off, so. . . ." He shrugs. "I think we can all agree that we can trust him, right?"

"I should certainly hope so," Chloe says, with a laugh. For such a bad day, this seems to be ending on a much better note than she'd expected. The world has still gone to shit, and recovery will likely take months, perhaps years, but Clark is back. And that usually means the world is in good hands.

"Since he's back, we should probably hold off on going to find the black ship," she suggests. "We know where it is now, and we can tell him when he's done with Zod. It probably has some super-secret Kryptonian off switch that only he can press or something."

Recovery is always a long process, but they've got their hero back, and everyone seems to be safe and in good hands so far. It seems today will end on a positive note.

"Yeah, and he can get there faster and with less problems than we could," Marty agrees. "You guys want to check to see if more of the net and the TV stations are up now?" Some news of the outside world would be good -- see if the rioting and suchlike has calmed down any.

"Sounds like a good idea," Chloe says, moving to the living room to switch on the TV. A few stations are up and running again, and no one is discussing anything except the mysterious technology blackout. They're already dubbing the event Dark Thursday.

"I should call my contacts in Washington," Martha says, and excuses herself from the room to do government damage control things.

The gang follows Chloe and watches the newscasters. "I wonder what they'll blame for the blackout," Victor comments. "They certainly can't know it's alien in origin."

"Probably some sort of hacker," Doc says, though he looks a bit worried. "Hope this doesn't cause any international incidents, though, because the symbols were unreadable." Because that's the last thing this world needs.

"Probably not," Chloe points out. "The virus was global, not just national. It'd be hard to point blame at any one person or country when everyone got slammed with it. It'll be a bit hard to explain how battery-powered things and vehicles and such stopped working though."

"I'm sure they'll come up with something," Alice says. "People are endlessly imaginative." She pauses. "Except when it comes to naming things. Dark Thursday? Really?"

"It's perfectly descriptive," Doc points out, looking amused. "And aren't half of your friends in Wonderland named things like Hatter and White Queen?"

"I was seven -- what's their excuse?"

"It's the darkest Thursday I've ever seen," Chloe comments, gaze glued to the endless footage of burning cities and riots in the streets, and the welcome addition of red and blue lights of cop cars. "It's simple, easy to remember, and descriptive enough that everyone knows what you mean. I'll probably be helping to investigate the story once the Planet is up and running again. I don't expect there'll be a new edition tomorrow, probably."

"Precisely -- just what you want in media coverage of an event like this," Doc agrees. "How long do you think it'll take for the paper to get back on its feet?"

She makes a face. "Depends on how much of the building was looted, and whether people were killed in the riots. But we're a resilient bunch, so probably a day or two, if all goes well."

The group shares a bit of a pained look at the phrase "whether people were killed." "Yeah, let's hope that the damage was kept to a minimum," Marty says, although he doesn't sound very confident of that. "Kinda depressing, how quick people go crazy."

"You'd be surprised," Alice mutters darkly, wincing as another fire appears on the screen. Now it's Victor's turn to put an arm around her.

"Metropolis isn't like other cities. There are good people, but Clark... he told me once that the city has this dark undercurrent, full of poverty and desperation, and the cops are fighting a losing battle. He lived in the underworld of the city for three months once, and he's never really talked about it, but what he saw there changed him somehow. He got to know people, the kind of folks who were out rioting today."

"Yikes -- sounds a little like Gotham," Marty says. "He mentioned that in the Nexus when we first met, but -- I dunno, I guess I have trouble picturing Metropolis like that." He shrugs.

"I don't think any town's quite free of that," Victor admits. "Even Burtonsville had its share of crime and poverty, and it was just a little village that happened to host a very successful cannery. Honestly, I'm not sure why Mother never insisted on Father moving somewhere more 'fashionable.'" He looks back on the footage. "Then again, perhaps she knew of things like this and wanted to avoid them."

"Oh, Gotham's much worse," Chloe says immediately. "They don't pretend to be as nice."

"I'm sure everywhere has crime, but I kinda doubt a village could have multiple crime syndicates killing each other off all the time."

"Don't think Gotham pretends to be nice at all," Marty replies.

Victor's eyes go wide. "Ah -- no, I d-don't believe t-that was the case," he says, clearly shocked.

"I'm sure the police can take care of this -- at least the worst bits," Alice says, trying to get an optimistic mood back around here. "Even after the worst disasters, people can rebuild."

"Oh yeah, definitely. Things won't be the same, but now we can start trying to get things back to normal. Clark's going to blame himself, like he always does, but we can beat some sense into his head when he does."

Alice almost jokes, "And we even have an appropriate instrument with which to do it," but she's still feeling a little embarrassed about greeting Clark with her Vorpal Blade in hand, so she refrains.

"I don't think April will let him do that," Doc says. "And neither will the rest of us." You hear that, Clark? No self-blaming.

"He's lucky to have friends like us," she says with a grin. "He doesn't always listen to me, but if we get enough people saying it maybe he'll believe it for once."

"Maybe we should paint it on a big billboard," Marty jokes. "Or make him wear it on a hat or something. Just so we're sure he gets the message."

She smiles, but sighs when her attention is drawn back to the news broadcast. "God, what a year."

"It -- it can only get better from here?" Victor says tentatively. Because, really, technological virus taking out the world's technology, Clark getting put in the Phantom Zone (even if it was only for a while), Martha and Lois's plane crashing, and the Fortress going offline -- that's gotta be about as low as one can go, right?

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