Half Pint
Hound55
Cyberlad
Retired
mickilennial
Ezekiel
Master Bruce
PrinceAlexus
Pilatus
Chronic
Everything is black and cold, body and mind numb.
Slowly, though, I start to feel patches of sensation again. Half-remembered bursts of pain. An angry, agonizing buzzing all around. A desperate dive into the water to drown the lightning in my head. A descent into darkness, consciousness slipping away.
I feel an icy wave slap across my face, and I realize I'm not dead.
I'm floating on my back in the Hob's River, drifting out towards the ocean. Memory's still hazy, but I remember bits and pieces. Livewire attacked the city, trying to pick a fight with me. She tried to fry my brain from inside, and I countered by shorting her out in the river. She must have....dissipated after that. Given that her physical body is made of non-solid electrical plasma, I doubt she's actually dead, but it's going to be a while before her consciousness has gathered enough charge for her to be a real threat again. Something I'll have to deal with in time.
For now, I'll settle for just getting back to shore.
Normally I'd just pop up and fly my way back, but warping my gravitational field enough to fly requires a level of mental concentration I just can't seem to work up at the moment. I keep getting flashes of scrambled memories, flares of remembered pain, my attention drifting every time I try to focus on lifting myself out of the water. More than anything, though, there's a dull, heavy anger that sits like a thousand-ton weight on my mind, poisoning my thoughts. The more I try to concentrate, the more I feel my teeth clench, my hands ball into fists so hard they start to tremble. When I let it go, it persists, all of my thoughts cast in a thick red haze.
Unable to fly, I start to swim towards the shore instead. It's not as fast, but I can displace a hell of a lot of water with each stroke of my arms, so even as far out from land as I am, I'm able to cover the distance in maybe a minute. It feels like an eternity, though, and by the time I reach land, washing up near the Queensland Boardwalk, my arms and legs are screaming, my muscles cramping and my pulse pounding. I sit in the sand for a while, breathing in ragged gasps, trying to shake off the low rumble of an anger I can't place.
...bzzzzz--....zzzzzz.....ZZZZZZZZZZ--
My eyes snap open, a heat that can cut through steel building up as the same damned buzzing I'd felt in my head returns. Livewire.....is she still--?
No.
A small flying object, a little smaller than a dinner plate, whizzes above my head, and I realize the buzzing isn't in my head at all. It's a remote-control drone, and going by the Daily Planet sticker on its underside, it belongs to--
"Superman! Holy crap, you're okay!"
Jimmy Olsen. Running up the beach, my roommate and co-worker follows after his trusty camera drone, nearly tripping over himself as he hits the sand.
"Jimmy, right?" I greet him, trying not to let slip that I've been splitting rent with the guy for about seven months now. "How'd you find me?"
"This guy right here," he points to his drone as it circles around him. "I was able to pick you up on camera when you started swimming-- you kicked up enough of a wake that it was pretty hard to miss. Are you....are you all right?"
He glances down at my hands, and I realize they're clenched into fists again. It takes some concentration to let them loosen.
"I'll be all right," I say, avoiding eye contact. "I guess Livewire really did a number on me."
"You're not kidding, Big Guy," Jimmy laughs uneasily. "When you went down into the river, people were starting to think you'd died. Not me, though. I know it's gonna take more than a living joy-buzzer to keep you down, heh."
"Thanks," I nod. "How's the city? Is everyone okay?"
Jimmy winces.
"It's pretty rough in Hob's Bay," he says. "They're saying at least twenty dead, another hundred or so injured. But it's not just Metropolis, Superman. Something major's going down. Perry's saying there have been other attacks happening all at once! There's an attack in New York, in Central City, in Gotham--"
"Gotham," I interrupt, and I start seeing red again.
Gotham. I was just in Gotham, what was it......I was looking for someone......
.....there was another emergency......
.....I left Lois in the city.......
.....the Batman, that was it.....I was hunting the Batman......
I start to feel my fingernails digging into my palms. All of my thoughts start to blur.
Lois.
Gotham.
Danger.
Batman.
"Ummm, Superman?" Jimmy says, his voice starting to fade. "I'm starting to think you should take it easy. I mean, I've heard electricity does all kinds of bad things to the mind. You don't look like yourself...."
Rather than squash out my focus, that dull and heavy anger is now a conductor, channeling all the focus I need.
I rip through the air, only vaguely aware that I sent poor Jimmy and his drone tumbling into the sand in my wake.
"Gotham," I hear myself snarl through gritted teeth. "Lois. Batman. I'm coming for you."
