Issue #5

How Many Bullets Does It Take To Kill Superman?

By Jess Nevins

The same number as with anybody else, of course.

It just has to be the right bullet.

It was an ordinary day at LexCorp in Metropolis, although that term is even more mutable with regards to Metropolis and LexCorp than most words. "Ordinary," in Metropolis, might mean that a gang war involving Ice and hopped-up Jamaican drug posses and Mexican Esés had broken out, or that Superman had fought the Composite Legionnaire in the skies over the town, or that something with tentacles and four glaring yellow eyes had emerged from the Atlantic and slouched towards Metropolis, waiting to be born, until stopped by the Justice League. "Ordinary," for LexCorp, might mean that the corporation was attempting a hostile takeover of CordCo, or had sent a team of agents to the Roreira Plateau and to Dinosaur Island in an effort to retrieve velociraptor eggs, or had synthesized a super-element (working name of "Lexorium") capable of powering the city for the next century.

In this case, however, "ordinary" meant...ordinary. Mundane. Dull, even. The sun was shining down out of a clear blue sky, the spring weather was warm and dry, and the postmodern buildings of downtown Metropolis were gleaming in the morning sun. Inside the central LexCorp building, none of the workers or visitors had given any trouble to the guards or had been carrying anything that tripped the metal detectors. The morning rush of first shift workers had gone without a hitch, and the security men were (most unusually) enjoying their coffee and cigarette break at 9:05 am--almost absurdly early by the their normal standards.

Then the five came in.

LexCorp hired only the best security men--not "best" in the Judeo-Christian sense of being morally and ethically pure, but rather in the Greek sense of areté, excellence divorced from righteousness. LexCorp didn't care what you'd done before you applied for a job with them; they only cared about the size of your muscles, the speed of your reflexes, how quickly you could clear your gun from its holster, and how many shots you could put in the bullseye of a moving target while you were blindfolded. If Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, or the Joker and Deadshot, had applied for a job, they'd only have been asked to get haircuts and lose their outfits for sober black suits, and the job would have been theirs.

The LexCorp security force in Metropolis was made up of veterans of the Serbian, Iraqi, and Turkish militaries and secret police, among others. They ranged in body type from lean and rangy to small and wiry and rattler-quick to tall and thick with defensive linemen muscles. But they were all nerveless (for what they were sometimes called on to do or to fight, they didn't need nerves of steel, they needed bodies absent of nerves--and emotions, and scruples--altogether), liquid under fire (things cool or frozen tend to react sluggishly, if at all, and their jobs required them to move and react exceedingly quickly), with the morals of a starving wolverine and the dead eyes of a psychopath.

They were exactly what the company wanted in security guards, in other words, and so when the five walked through the revolving glass doors of the LexCorp lobby the eight security guards instantly saw them for what they were--fellow criminals and hard, bad men and women--and moved into action.

Guns were yanked free of holsters and pockets, so quickly that cloth ripped, shooting positions were assumed (despite the vagaries of language, in this case the cliche--of "assuming the position"--is wrong; when one assumes a shooter's stance, one doesn't make an ass of oneself, but only of the target), alarms were sounded, and "FREEZE!" and "DON'T MOVE!" and similar ejaculations were shouted.

The five exchanged amused glances. They all wore business suits and long black overcoats, and except for the big one's size (he was at least seven feet tall and perhaps twice as broad, and didn't seem to have more than an ounce of fat on him) and a certain blurriness about the man in the lead (the eye kept telling the brain that the man was handsome in a movie star way, but the brain kept responding that "You don't know what you're talking about--he's grotesque and not even human!" To which the eye eventually said, "I don't need to take this abuse--I know what I'm seeing" and the brain responded, "Leave the thinking to me, pal." With eye and brain bickering, it was hard for the guards to concentrate--a condition the guards would soon regret), the five looked normal. As they raised their arms in an "I surrender" gesture, the short one said to one of the woman, an Indian, "That's five you owe me."

She smirked and said, "Take it from one of these poor bastards' wallets." Hands raised over her head, she fluttered her fingers in an intricate procession of geometric shapes as she silently mouthed a sentence in a language no one on Earth outside of those in the Temple of the Dark Earth Mother, in the most desperate section of Delhi, would recognise. The guards, being trapped in certain old-fashioned ways of thinking (i.e., sexism), had looked at the Indian woman, seen her beauty, and dismissed her as a real threat, and were instead concentrating on the three men; the big one worried them the most, although the small bearded man looked dangerous as well.

They soon regretted it, as horrendous boils and welts and blood blisters appeared on their hands and quickly spread across their bodies, crawling up their arms and then over their faces and down their bodies. As their skin cracked and bled, the guards dropped their guns and fell to the ground, in too much pain even to cry out; all of them had high thresholds for pain, none of them had been trained to withstand so much agony all at once, and the speed of the magical attack had caught them all by surprise.

The five lowered their hands and walked over the writhing, jerking bodies. The short one, a dwarf, lit a cigarette as he pressed the button for the top floor on the elevator panel; he said, "Told you they wouldn't go for it."

The handsome man, whose features were subtly shifting to give his face a more vulpine appearance, said, in the amused and only slightly discomfited voice of a scientist whose lab rats have just expired from a lower dose of poison than he'd anticipated, "How odd. They should not have bene able to resist my mental commands. Their little monkey brains seem to be capable of more than they should be."

The muscular man said, "Duhhhh....whuh?"

As the other woman, a tall, buxom redhead with a hard, cold face, patted him on the arm and said, "Never you mind, Baran," the Indian looked at the dwarf and said, "I, too, am curious, Mikron."

The dwarf puffed on his cigarette and drummed his fingers on the wall next to the elevator doors as he leaned on it. "Ah, I knew plenty of guys like them in Belle Reve and Blackgate. It don't matter what you tell them or what telepathy you use. They got a lifetime of training and experience tellin' ‘em to be wary of folks like us. They're gonna react a certain way regardless of what their brains tell ‘em to do; it's all reflexes and their whatyacallit, limbic system."

The handsome man stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm. You might be right, at that."

The elevator dinged, the doors slid open and the five entered, admiring its real marble inlays (nothing was too good for LexCorp; even the bathrooms for the common workers were spacious, airy, and covered with buffed-smooth stone and perpetually-gleaming brass, while the executive bathrooms were large enough to house a family of 16 fat people. But then, this was LexCorp, whose yearly earnings outstripped Microsoft's, and this was Metropolis, where having a window office was akin to sitting at the right hand of God) and its size (large enough that even the presence of Baran didn't make the others feel crowded). The redhaired woman pushed the button at the top of the panel, which had a simple "L" on it, rather than a floor number, and as the doors quietly closed and the elevator began its almost imperceptible journey to the top of the LexCorp skyscraper the five checked their weapons and freed their arms up and otherwise made themselves ready for combat.

Fifteen seconds later, halfway up the 110-story building, the elevator shuddered to a stop. The dwarf, holding his cigarette in his right hand, slipped his left into the largest pocket of his overcoat and said, "Told you they wouldn't let us get to the top."

The handsome man grimaced and said, "Selinda?"

The redhead pointed her glowing right hand at the roof of the elevator; a hole promptly appeared in it, the edges of the hole very sharp. As the dwarf took what looked like a pocket calculator from his pocket and attached it, via an array of wires, to the elevator console, Baran, the muscular man, looked up through the hole. "Nothing there, Selinda."

Mikron's fingers flew across the keyboard of the calculator as he muttered, "C'mon...almost...damn you, behave...almost there...c'mon, you sonuva..." Finally he said, with the satisfaction of an animal trainer who has broken a particularly stubborn mule, "Got it." The elevator resumed its journey upward. Sounds of consternation, including shouts and what sounded like guns being cocked, could be heard floating up the elevator shaft from below. The handsome man said, "They will try to shoot the elevator, but they know they can't reach us in time."

As the elevator glided to a stop and the doors slid open, loud bangs could be heard, simultaneous with the thuds of bullets ricocheting off the bottom of the elevator car. But nothing was or could ever be too expensive for LexCorp, including the construction of the elevator cars, which were built to withstand earthquakes (Delaware being close--uncomfortably so, for Lex Luthor, who hated any variables that he could not personally control--to a major fault line), and so mere bullets had the effect of only scratching the veneer of the elevators.

The five left the elevator, the handsome man smirking, with his hands deep into his overcoat's pockets, the others with serious looks on their faces and their hands ready for action. The office they stood in was huge, with deep, luxurious carpeting, teak and mahogany furniture, a desk the size of a church door, and vaulting ceilings that gave the room the feel of a cathedral that had been converted into a luxury apartment. Behind the desk was a single chair, turned so that its tall back was facing the five.

There was a moment's silence, broken when Selinda said, "No last words, Luthor?" The handsome man began to say, "Wait--there's something--" as Selinda gestured with one glowing hand, and the chair dissolved into a cloud of acrid-smelling yellow-green gas.

The handsome man shook his hand and began inspecting the office as Mikron retried his calculator from the elevator, slipped it into his pocket, and took out a palm-sized computer, extended its two antennae. He began punching buttons as the Indian woman said, "He's not here!"

Selinda swore as Baran looked dully around the office. Mikron said, "They've rung the police. You know what that means. I'd say we've got a minute, tops."

The handsome man said, "I will take care of Him. Mikron, access the desk computer. Tell us where Luthor has gone."

Baran strolled to the windows, crossed his arms, and looked at the pretty birds riding the thermals as Selinda and the Indian woman took up positions facing the elevator shaft and the windows. Mikron ran two leads from the rear of his computer into the back of the large computer on resting on the desk and began. After fifteen seconds of keyboard-punching, he said, "I've got his calendar here; says he's in a meeting in Bludhaven. Won't be back ‘til late this afternoon."

Selinda cursed fluently as the handsome man assumed a pensive attitude. Finally, he said, "To Bludhaven, then. I should be able to locate him, so long as I know the general location."

Mikron began detaching his computer from Luthor's as the Indian woman looked at the handsome man. "Simon, can you really...?"

Simon smirked. "Yes, Arati, I can. Really."

A machine attached to Mikron's belt began beeping, and he whirled around to look at the others. "We're being scanned with X-rays!"

Simon's eyebrows came together just as the windows exploded inward. As the five flinched, a strong wind filled the room, focused on the handsome man, who, though obviously confused, did not budge. The wind slackened after a few seconds; the five began to relax, and so were caught off-guard by the sonic booms that seem to emanate from inside the room.

When they stopped, Mikron looked up and went for his weapons. Superman, holding the unconscious body of the handsome man--now much transformed--in one hand, said, "Don't do it, Gizmo. You know you can't outdraw me. Make it easy on yourself and don't bother."

Arati and Selinda and Baran moved as one to the attack. A foul-smelling black cloud formed around Superman's face as yellow beams leapt from Arati's hands towards Superman and as Baran charged at the Kryptonian. Mikron began fumbling in his overcoat.

In under a second Superman had blown the poisonous gas out to sea--it tasted similar to hyper-gallium, he thought, and spent a leisurely half-second wondering how Shimmer would have acquired knowledge of that, as he'd only encountered it once before, while fighting Brainiac--and dodged Jinx's spell. He spent another second waiting for Mammoth to reach him, all the while watching Gizmo, who was clearly looking for something. Superman was tempted to do a full scan of the dwarf, but refrained; as someone with superspeed, Superman moved and lived at a an extremely rapid pace, and boredom was one of his biggest problems. When his opponents posed him no real threat, as the four conscious members of the Fearsome Five did not, he preferred to wait to see what new trick they would come up with to challenge him with.

Baran had almost reached Superman, his outstretched hands going for the Kryptonian's throat, when Superman moved. One punch, at superspeed, sent Baran flying across the room, through the elevator and into the wall of the elevator shaft. Gizmo's hands came out of his pockets with what looked like two blow-dryers, and he pointed them at Superman and began firing.

Superman, amused, waited three seconds--enough time for the dwarf to realize that the miniature bullets he was firing at Superman were only crumpling up or bouncing off of him--and said, "Gizmo, you know you're only endangering your teammates, don't you?"

Jinx spat a curse in Bengali and began a new spell, only to have a strong burst of wind from Superman's mouth blow her off her feet and disrupt the casting. Shimmer dissolved the floor under Superman's feet, and erected a steel cage around him, only to have him wrench the cage apart and hover over the hole in the floor.

Gizmo kept up his fire as Superman, smiling slightly--Gizmo seemed more intelligent than to just waste his ammunition like this--said, "Why bother, Shimmer? I'm afraid Psimon was the only real threat to me of the five of you, and I took care of him first thing."

Jinx tried to stand, but intermittent gusts of Superman's breath kept her pinned to the ground, and everything Shimmer tried, Superman seemed to smilingly ignore; even when she gestured at what Gizmo was holding and briefly flexed her powers, Superman's attention was not caught. Gizmo slid a new and out-sized cartridge into the base of one of his blow-dryer guns; Superman noticed, but dismissed it as just some new toy Gizmo wanted to try out before he went back to prison.

Shimmer said, "How did you...I thought Psimon could--"

Superman smiled and shook his head. "He can take control of minds--if they're moving at normal speeds. I move quite a bit faster than that, and he wasn't able to pin me down."

The special bullet moved up the clip quickly as Gizmo continued to fire, and just as Superman said, "Now why don't you all spare yourselves--" the bullet entered the chamber and was fired.

Superman didn't pay any attention to the bullet, which was encased in lead, just like the rest. He said, "--a lot of hassle--"

The outer casing of the bullet crumpled as it hit his body. The inner casing, made of solid Kryptonite, continued onward, entering under Superman's floating rib and then, guided by some quirk of fate, plowed through Superman's intestinal tract and finally came to rest against the rear of his rib cage.

Kal-El, shocked beyond measure, was in too much pain to cry out as he dropped to the floor, his arms suddenly clutched around his stomach as if to hold it in; the pain was beyond anything he'd ever imagined, and he was literally paralysed. He stared with wide, gaping eyes as his blood began to pool under him.

Gizmo stopped firing and looked at the prone body of the Kryptonian. "Huh. Wasn't sure if that'd work."

Jinx picked herself up from the ground and spat on Superman as Shimmer helped Mammoth free himself. Jinx looked at Superman and then at Gizmo and said, "Shall I finish him now?"

Gizmo pulled out his palm computer and quickly consulted it. "Nah. Metropolis P.D. be here any second. Get us out of here, Arati."

She gestured theatrically and spoke a long, sibilant sentence, and the Fearsome Five disappeared, Shimmer holding on to the unconscious body of Psimon, and when the police arrived, "reinforced" by strongly-armed members of LexCorp Security, all they found was a wrecked office and the dying body of Superman.

Next issue: The Most Dangerous Game

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