Daniel nodded, keeping his face entirely neutral. "Right. The invasion. Long day."
The fake Superman beamed, dropping a heavy hand onto his shoulder. "We saved a lot of lives, my friend. That's what matters."
Daniel stared at the hand, then back up at the grinning face.
Who the fuck is this guy?
Clark didn't call him "my friend." Clark called him Daniel. Just another piece of a script this impostor was poorly reciting.
"So, Superman," Daniel said, pulling away from the hand. "Do you know my name?"
The man smiled warmly. "Of course. It's Reaper."
"Not the cape name. My actual name. You know it, right?"
The smile faltered for a fraction of a second. "Of course I do. It's... Jake. No, James. Drake? Duke? Isaac..."
Daniel just watched him desperately guess names.
"Yeah, stop trying," he interrupted. "Just admit you're a fake and undo whatever the hell this is."
The impostor blinked, tilting his head in perfect, manufactured confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm—"
"Right. This is why it's better to just beat the shit out of you and ask later."
Before he could finish the sentence, Daniel drove a hand into his chest, grabbed the rigid fabric of the S, and hurled him straight up.
The force of the throw shattered the concrete beneath their feet and sent the impostor rocketing into the clouds like a bullet.
Daniel didn't give him a second to recover. He bent his knees and launched himself into the sky after him, the air cracking violently as a massive black scythe materialized in his grip.
The fake Superman stopped his ascent a few thousand feet above the city, shaking off the disorientation.
The boy-scout expression was gone, replaced by a furious scowl. His eyes flared crimson, and two thick beams of heat vision ripped straight at Daniel.
Daniel didn't dodge. He just gripped his scythe.
"For a guy playing Superman, you missed a pretty big detail in the script," he said, voice cutting through the wind.
He swung the weapon in a wide arc. A crescent of crackling death energy shot from the blade, colliding head-on with the heat vision and splitting the beams down the middle.
The impostor's eyes widened as the blast tore through toward him.
"You don't seem to know he's weak to magic," Daniel finished.
He swung again, then a third time, sending rapid slashes of energy tearing across the sky.
The fake Superman crossed his arms, expecting Kryptonian invulnerability to tank the hits. It didn't. The dark arcs sliced straight through the aura, tearing into his suit and throwing him back.
He grunted in pain, clutching his chest. No blood where the energy had cut — just a strange, glitching black mist leaking into the air before it evaporated.
"What is that?" he demanded, voice distorting, losing its smooth pitch.
"The thing that's going to carve the truth out of you," Daniel said.
He kicked off the empty air, breaking the sound barrier as he closed the distance in a blur, spinning the scythe and raising it for a heavy downward strike at the impostor's head.
The blade slammed into his head. The impact triggered a shockwave which blew a crater into the clouds.
Before the impostor could retaliate, the back of Daniel's left hand flared — the mark of the Nexus clock lighting up his skin. The air around the fake Superman thickened instantly, his super-speed grinding to a crawl.
"You really don't know anything about me," Daniel said, watching him struggle in slow motion.
He reached into his inventory and pulled out a jagged, glowing chunk of Kryptonite. Green light washed over the impostor's face, his eyes widening in sluggish panic.
Daniel willed his magic forward. Thick tendrils of dark energy lashed out, wrapping around the impostor's arms and torso, pulling the Kryptonite flush against his chest and binding it there.
The fake choked, the radiation sapping whatever strength he had left, breathing ragged as the bindings held him in place.
The sun was setting behind them, bleeding red and bruised purple across the sky.
Daniel gripped the dark tendrils, pulling the gasping impostor close. "I'm going to have fun breaking you and digging out the truth."
***
At the same time in Central City, Evelyn, Elizabeth, and Sylvia sat in the backseat of the car heading home, Ronnie behind the wheel.
"Have to say, that museum exhibition was really good," Elizabeth said, looking out the window.
"Yeah," Evelyn agreed. "I mean, even though we don't have to work, sitting around the house doing nothing gets boring. It's better that we're actually doing something."
Sylvia leaned forward a little. "So, can that Book of the Dead really bring people back to life?"
"Yes. It caused a massive mess," Evelyn said, frowning slightly at the memory.
Before anyone could say more, a police siren cut through the street. A squad car accelerated past them, swerving sharply to stop directly in front of their vehicle.
"Well, that's new," Ronnie muttered, hitting the brakes and putting the car in park.
An officer stepped out and walked over to his window. "License and registration."
Ronnie pulled the documents from the glove compartment and handed them over. The cop looked at the paperwork, then sneered down at him.
"You don't look like the kind of guy who can afford a ride like this," he said aggressively. "Did you steal it?"
Ronnie kept his tone even. "Look, I might not look the part, but this car belongs to my boss. And trust me, my boss is a very petty man. Since there's nothing wrong with the license or the registration, why don't we just let this go?"
The cop didn't listen. He yanked the car door open, grabbed Ronnie by the front of his shirt, and dragged him out of the driver's seat, slamming him hard against the hood of the car.
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 30 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace