Chapter 256: The Curtain Of The Stage Slowly Rises!
Clark Kent.
This young Superman tightly hugged his long-lost mother Martha, feeling her warm body temperature and slight trembling, and his suspended heart finally settled halfway.
“Mom, are you okay? Did he hurt you?” He asked urgently in a low voice, but his gaze was fixed dead on the large hole that had been smashed open.
As well as the basement’s hidden situation revealed below the hole.
The three-headed six-armed monster was still giggling foolishly.
While another even more ferocious monster had its eyes tightly closed.
“I’m fine, Clark. It’s just… that boy… who is he exactly?” Martha shook her head, her face pale but her expression relatively calm. She patted her son’s arm to comfort him, then looked toward the broken hole as well, her tone carrying incredulous confusion and a trace of lingering fear.
“Other superheroes?”
This was already the best explanation Martha could come up with.
“Boy?” Superman was stunned for a moment; he couldn’t connect that image with the word “boy” no matter what. It was clearly an unknown existence emanating an aura of ancient chaos and immense power.
His mouth moved.
Superman ultimately didn’t correct her.
He just instinctively glanced again at the ferocious broken hole with gravel still falling from its edges, and the faint energy fluctuations coming from below belonging to that three-headed six-armed monster. “I don’t know what that is either… but Earth has never seen such a superhuman before today.”
Superman’s vision at this time could already see the global situation.
So.
His voice was resolute. Of course, though Ian’s appearance had left Superman feeling confused, what he cared about most right now wasn’t actually Ian, who had saved Martha.
It was the thing opposite the “three-headed six-armed” monster man, emanating an aura of extreme unease and disgust. His super vision pierced through the pervasive dust, clearly seeing the scene in the basement—that existence who had saved his mother was standing in front of an even more massive, even more ferocious monster.
The monster seemed pieced together haphazardly from jagged bone spikes, twisted muscles, and dark cuticles, its entire body radiating primal ferocity and destructive desire.
Just looking at that monster.
Made Superman’s Kryptonian cells instinctively sound the alarm.
“Luthor!” Superman abruptly turned his head, looking toward Lex Luthor, who had slumped to the edge of the broken hole due to the sudden event, nearly fallen in, and was still roaring downward.
Superman’s voice was like ice.
“What is that thing?!”
He knew Luthor definitely had the answer, because this place was Luthor’s territory, and anything dug up from inside could be considered 100% one of Luthor’s secret experiments.
“Heh.”
Luthor recovered from his initial shock.
He propped himself up with his hand on the ground to steady his body, turned back to look at Superman, and instead of fear on his face, a mad and twisted smile bloomed.
“Want to guess? I’ll give you three, no, five chances, how about that?” Rainwater mixed with sweat slid down from his head, which wasn’t completely bald yet.
“You can’t threaten me anymore.”
Superman’s eyes glowed red again.
“Oh oh, the wrathful little baby has finally found his mommy, congratulations, but you can kill me, but you can’t kill the masterpiece I’ve already created.”
“You ask what it is?” Luthor’s voice trembled slightly with excitement. “It’s the gift I give you, Kal-El! A ‘greeting’ from your old home Krypton!”
With that, he abruptly raised his wrist, where there was a small controller. His thumb unhesitatingly pressed the only red button on it!
“Roar——!!!”
From deep underground, that ferocious monster seemed injected with final vitality, letting out a deafening roar filled with pure destructive desire! The sound waves mixed with violent energy blasts upheaved the basement’s debris again, and even Superman above could feel that heart-palpitating power.
“Feel it good!” Luthor spread his arms as if displaying a perfect artwork, his face filled with sickly mania. “Feel how feeble your so-called body of a deity is before this true creation of ‘evolution’, Superman! Hahahahaha!”
This arrogant declaration and the monster’s roar completely enraged Superman, who was already burning with wrath over Luthor’s kidnapping of his mother. A blue-red blurred figure flashed by, and Superman appeared in front of Luthor like teleportation. One large hand carried irresistible force and fiercely gripped Luthor’s entire crown of the head!
“Urgh!”
Luthor’s laughter cut off abruptly; intense pain and suffocation hit him, and he felt his skull would shatter in the next second! The shadow of death instantly enveloped him.
Superman was indeed full of killing intent.
He didn’t have Batman’s firm no-kill principle.
Only.
“Clark! Don’t!”
From behind Superman came Martha’s anxious and clear call. It was as if some will in the ether always arranged a role to awaken Superman’s inner self just before he lost control.
His mother’s voice was like a basin of cold water.
Extinguishing the killing intent in Superman’s eyes that was about to materialize.
“Huff huff huff~”
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the impulse to crush that evil head, but the strength in his hand didn’t relax; he just lifted Luthor off the ground like picking up a chick.
“Hahahaha!” Despite the immense pain, Luthor squeezed out a mocking sneer through his gritted teeth, his eyes full of disdain that said “you don’t dare.”
“No matter what you plan to do, Luthor, no matter what monster you’ve created,” Superman’s voice was cold as iron, carrying unquestionable determination, “I will stop your evil plan. And you, the rest of your life will be spent in the darkest prison, repenting for everything you’ve done!”
With that, he wasted no more words, gripped Luthor’s crown, and shot into the sky like a rocket, instantly vanishing into the rainy night’s cloud layer.
Clearly, Superman flew straight toward the secret facility for detaining superhuman dangerous criminals. A few minutes later, Superman returned to the rooftop and carefully picked up his mother, who was still waiting there.
“Mom, let’s leave this place.” His voice softened.
Martha looked worriedly at her son’s tense profile: “Clark, you…”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Superman interrupted her, giving her a reassuring look. “I won’t do anything that would disappoint you or make me regret it. Luthor will face the judgment of the law. But right now, I need to ensure your safety first, then come back to deal with that… ‘gift’.”
With that.
He glanced inside the building’s broken hole.
The monster was roaring.
And the freak in front of the monster had an extremely strong competitive spirit, also roaring back with three heads, even opening its mouths wider than the roaring monster.
The scene looked utterly bizarre and absurd.
“…”
Superman found it hard to describe his mood tonight, but he figured since the three-headed six-armed freak wasn’t backing down at all, it should at least be able to hold off that monster for a while.
“Wait for me!”
He shouted to Ian, then hugged Martha and soared into the sky, safely delivering her to his girlfriend Lois Lane’s apartment.
This was one of the safest places Superman could think of right now. After a brief explanation, Martha tightly gripped Superman’s hand, her eyes full of trust and support.
“I’m very worried, Clark. You must not push yourself too hard.”
Lois wasn’t there, perhaps working overtime.
So now it was a warm moment just for mother and son.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” After settling his mother, Superman didn’t linger at all and turned into a streak of light again, rushing back to the rooftop of that abandoned building.
He leaped directly through the broken hole, landing in the wrecked underground space. The sight before him made Superman’s heart tighten—that three-headed six-armed existence was wrestling with the mountain-sized terror monster! The monster’s bone claws tore through the air, smashing toward the three-headed freak with destructive force.
And the freak used his bizarre multi-arms and speed.
Dodging and blocking like a phantom, occasionally counterattacking with fists wrapped in gray-white lightning, smashing into the monster with dull thuds.
The fight was intense.
The collision of flesh against flesh actually sparked chains of sparks!
Of course.
And the monster’s shattered bones.
The entire underground space was trembling.
“What is Doomsday!” Superman remembered that this three-headed six-armed guy seemed to mutter this name when he charged down, so he shouted to Ian to inquire and try to understand the opponent.
“Hehehe, Doomsday is… chicken flavor, crispy, with protein content five billion times that of beef!” One of Ian’s heads turned back amid the busyness to shout.
“Of course, right now it’s just like a hormone-pumped farm chicken; I’m helping it exercise to turn it into free-range chicken.” Ian’s tone actually carried a bit of… excitement?
“?????”
Superman was truly baffled.
He understood every word from the other, but together they made utter chaos, and paired with this apocalyptic battle scene, even his super brain couldn’t comprehend the logic.
This freak’s thought patterns were indeed as inexplicable and jumpy as his appearance.
“What are you talking about?”
Superman sighed helplessly. The current Clark wasn’t yet the future old father who had weathered storms and could even “cross channels” to communicate with Ian.
He just felt extremely speechless and bewildered. Of course, his combat intuition and the other’s act of saving his mother clearly told him this three-headed six-armed “boy” was mostly friend, not foe.
Precisely because of that.
Even though his mind couldn’t make sense of it, Superman didn’t hesitate any longer. His eyes flashed red, heat vision charging, while his body shot out like a cannonball.
He brought a sonic boom.
Boldly joining the fray.
One punch blasting toward the monster called “Doomsday”!
…
Central City.
Star Labs’ makeshift detention center.
A golden lightning bolt flashed by, accompanied by a gust of wind. The “Magneto Bro” who had just been strutting in a bank at the other end of the city, able to control metal, had his ridiculous homemade uniform covered in magnet pieces stripped off and replaced with an orange prison jumpsuit. He was locked in a special non-metal cell with a dumbfounded look.
“Done!”
Barry Allen.
This young Speedster easily clapped his hands, a hint of pleasure on his face. For some reason today, he felt his speed was unprecedentedly fast, the Speed Force surging through his body without limit. He even had the illusion that he could try challenging how long it would take to run around the world once.
“What a wonderful feeling.”
Through his headphones.
He excitedly shared his joy with his teammates in the Star Labs control center and the Dr. Wells he deeply respected as a mentor: “Cisco, Caitlin, Doctor! Did you see that? My speed just now! I feel like I could run around Earth eight times without gasping!”
“Oh, my condition today is just fantastic!” The reason for specifically noting he’s the young Speedster is that the future Speedster encountering this would only be shocked.
Only the young don’t know there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
“Barry, this is unbelievable, you actually…” His teammates were also providing emotional support, but the teasing or congratulations from the headphones didn’t last long.
Suddenly.
A piercing high-frequency “zzz” static disrupted the communication!
“Hello? Hello? Cisco? Is that you tinkering with some new device again interfering with comms?” Barry frowned and tapped his ear.
Just as he was puzzled, a sudden change occurred!
The space in front of him began distorting and rotating without warning!
A vortex made of golden lightning and blurry images appeared out of nowhere in the detention center’s corridor! That familiar yet unsettling energy fluctuation—it was a Speed Force field!
“It’s happening again?!” Barry instantly went on high alert, instinctively crouching into a combat stance, golden electric arcs crackling around him. He’d been screwed over too many times by Speedsters from the future; Reverse-Flash’s shadow hadn’t faded, and any abnormal Speed Force phenomenon put him on edge.
“What could it be?”
The Speedster stared dead at the vortex, fearing another arch-nemesis in a yellow battle suit would emerge. However, the figure gradually materializing in the vortex left him directly stunned.
Beyond expectations?
Far beyond expectations!
It was a direction the Speedster couldn’t even guess at!
There, in the Speed Force vortex, the figure… was wearing the exact same red battle suit as him! And had the same face, just looking quite a bit older!
Another Barry Allen!
“Future me!”
This was the only thought flashing in the Speedster’s mind at that moment. That “he” looked more fatigued, his face carrying anxiety or even… fear? The other seemed trapped in an extremely unstable passage, his body flickering in and out of clarity, straining across vast distance to shout something at him.
The voice was intermittent, mixed with massive noise, like a radio with bad reception.
“Ian will die in the past… Bat… man… Arkham… find… Joker… stop… everything… only you… can make it in time…”
This was the classic line the Speedster often heard others say to him.
Now.
Hearing the same words from another version of himself gave the young Barry a strange feeling. He scratched his head, frowned, and prepared to speak up for details.
“What are you saying? The signal seems bad!”
Unfortunately, the other couldn’t hear his voice.
Then, before Barry could react, the Speed Force field flickered violently a few times as if depleted of energy, then collapsed and contracted, ultimately vanishing into the air.
As if it had never appeared.
Leaving Barry Allen standing alone, his face full of shock, confusion, and bewilderment.
“Who is Ian? ‘Die in the past’ means he doesn’t originally belong to the past? Is this person’s life and death that important to the future?”
A string of thoughts rose in the Speedster’s mind.
He couldn’t figure it out no matter how he thought.
