I pulled the door off its hinges with a light tug, a bit surprised at how easily it'd come off, and checked the pulse of the man inside. It was faint, and I sensed he had shrapnel in his gut. His wife was unconscious beside him, and their dog was in the backseat. It had died on impact. Delicately, I pulled both out, healing them just enough that paramedics wouldn't sense anything awry.
The car they'd collided with had only one passenger. He seemed fine to my senses, if a bit concussed. His airbag had worked overtime. I carefully unpretzel it, pulling the trapped man free and healing him, too.
I carried him to the curb and then returned for the family. The wife grabbed my hand just as I lay her down, dizzy and possibly out of her mind.
"Colin," she whispered. "Where is Collin?"
I blinked. "Collin?"
"My dog…"
Who names a dog, Collin?
"Is he okay?"
I looked at the SUV, frozen and beaten to all hell, and shook my head negatively. She started to cry.
"I can get his body for you...so that you can lay him to rest," I offered. Slowly, sadly, she nodded and let go.
I was just about to get the dead dog out of the car when I spotted something fast entering my sphere of perception. Kicking off the ground, I shot back with Body control and an airstep, barely missing the charge of a flying man. He crushed the cars, asphalt, sand, and bedrock underneath like it was glass, kicking up a dust spout.
I righted myself mid-air and touched the ground lightly. Screams filled my ears as people fled, and the dust and smoke silhouetted my attacker, but I could see—or rather, perceive—him clearly. He had a mask reminiscent of Deathstroke's, but overdesigned, with slits cut at eye level to allow for better sight.
But behind the mask, I made out the contours of his face. His jaw was blocky, his nose strong, and his eyes were a piercing blue like mine used to be before the change.
If all that wasn't a dead giveaway that he was a clone of me, his overall physiognomy was. It was shrouded by a skin-tight black muscle suit that soaked in solar energy. There were remarkable differences in observable muscle insertions, sizes, and overall skeletal structure, but it was a match for mine, and oddly, Superboy's.
Those assholes finally succeeded.
Jesus, I wondered just how much of me it inherited. The eye slit flashed red, and I clapped my hands, swapping places with him. Tugging on Earth Manipulation, I pulled on the rising dust and smoke, expanding it, harvesting more from the soil around me, and pumped it into the air around for hundreds of feet.
Twin beams of death carved through the spot where I used to be nearly as second later. I clapped again, exchanging myself for a patch of energy-infused dust, and drove my palm into the jaw of my attacker with a mix of Powerstrike and Expanse, launching them into the air. I didn't wait around for him to recover, accelerating abruptly. I flung bony daggers in different directions, skipped over cars, vaulted over building tops, and accelerated until I was just below the speed of sound.
The clone caught up to me predictably and became fast too. Faster than I could react to. The punch nearly tore through the expanse and sent me crashing into the side of a building, denting it.
The clone cocked its head in confusion. And understandably so. He'd been packing enough force to rip through a skyscraper like it was paper.
"Who sent you?"
I asked, genuinely curious. All I got was an incomprehensible snarl as he charged me.
Ripping off my mask, a chill escaped my mouth.
Maximum Technique: Frost Calm.
A tsunami of frozen air exploded from my lungs, sweeping over the streets and draining the warmth out of the air and freezing it dead, solid. The clone charging me wasn't spared. He was frozen in place, mouth open, fist cocked back, eyes shining.
There was a shiver, and then a crack. My stomach dropped.
Escaping already? Not on my watch.
I touched the ground and ripped it apart, exposing the sewer system underneath and untouched earth beyond it. A swipe of my hand shattered the chunk the clone was trapped in, and I slammed my palms together, burying him.
I used Boogie Woogie and appeared several blocks away, sliding down a brick wall. My hands blurred as I flung bone dagger after dagger, spreading them over the horizon. I picked a random direction, and I vanished, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, until I was seconds away from Maze's place in Beverly Hills. Then, I flung a grenade at a parked car two streets over before I made my final sprint onto her property, breathing lightly at the end.
From behind the walls of Enochian runes, I watched as the clone dove down into the street moments after the grenade went off.
He rose back up with a leap, hovering in the air, eyes slowly scanning the streets. His mask was gone now, and I could see his face. His golden hair flapped in the wind, his piercing blue eyes drank in light, and his face… It looked like mine, but it was not.
It was an unsettling sight.
A small part of me ached to fight it and kill it, here and now, when it was still a somewhat manageable threat, but I realized very quickly that it was very unlikely it was alone.
The clone could've come from Luthor or Artisan, and neither tended to operate alone. And even if the clone were alone...it would take a ridiculous amount of force and power to put it down once and for all. And it would probably cost Los Angeles millions in property damage and lives.
And that was if I succeeded at all. If it were anything like me, I had only one shot at this. Once he adapted to my attacks and techniques, I was finished. And don't get me started on the speed. I was at the scene barely a minute before he showed up.
No, it was smarter to wait, bide my time, and prepare, though I suspected that it wouldn't matter.
If Artisan had more than one of those things on her roster, then we were fucked, even with the League on our side.
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