I was almost gone. The portal to home was forming in my mind, its coordinates locked on the quiet fields of Kansas, on the smell of Ma's cooking and the sound of Clark practicing his awkward smile in the mirror. One step and I'd be back, slipping into normalcy with the ease of a god putting on mortal skin.
But I paused.
The thought came unbidden, a whisper from the part of me that wasn't satisfied with mere confrontation. Grayven's fortress-planet was a ruin, its surface cracked like a dropped plate, its atmosphere bleeding into space. I'd made my point. I'd planted the seed of rebellion in the son's mind. Mission accomplished, right?
Eleven other planets.
The thought was cold, logical, and utterly without mercy. Eleven worlds he'd already conquered. Worlds where Parademons patrolled, where monsters fed, where populations had been converted into bio-mechanical slaves or simply exterminated. I'd crippled Grayven's pride, but I'd left his empire intact.
Why let them go?
The answer was immediate and vicious: Because it's not my problem. Earth was my problem.Ma and Pa and Clark were my problems. These were alien worlds in a distant galaxy, ruled by a New God I was trying to manipulate, part of a cosmic drama that had been playing out for eons before I existed.(is there any problem of useing ma word)
Yet the whisper persisted. You have the power. You have the presence. You made this your problem the moment you decided to break his arm and steal his Omega Beams.
I looked back at the ruined planet. Then I looked deeper, my vision piercing the fabric of space to the other worlds in this small, conquered galaxy. I saw Parademons marching in lockstep. I saw factories where living beings were being disassembled and rebuilt into weapons. I saw the same pattern, repeated eleven times. Grayven's tantrum had become a holocaust.
"Fuck it," I said to the void. "Why half-ass a god complex?"
I didn't fly. Flying was too slow, too limiting. I moved, my will wrapping around the quantum foam and yanking. Space folded, time hiccupped, and I stood in the upper atmosphere of the second planet. It was a water world, oceans covering ninety percent of its surface, the remaining landmasses covered in obsidian fortresses that jutted from the waves like black teeth.
I didn't land. I didn't announce myself.
I just accelerated to lightspeed and went through.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic. At relativistic speeds, my mass became infinite. My kinetic energy was a number that broke calculators. I hit the planet's atmosphere and it might as well have been paper. The air ignited, a brilliant fireball that followed me down, a meteor that wasn't a meteor, a death ray given human form.
The ocean parted. Not metaphorically—the water molecules were physically shoved aside by my passage, creating a canyon in the sea that reached down to the seafloor, exposing boiling rock to space for a full second before collapsing back with a thunderclap that generated tsunamis three miles high. The beam of my passage continued down, through the water, through the crust, through the mantle, and out the other side.
I didn't stop. I kept accelerating, leaving the dying world behind as I hit the third planet.
This one was a desert, all red sand and howling winds. The Parademons here had built a pyramid fortress, a mockery of ancient Egypt but scaled up until it could house a million soldiers. I hit it at light speed, and the pyramid simply ceased to exist. One moment it was there, an insult to geometry and good taste. The next, there was a hole—a perfect, McDowell-shaped hole—that went straight through the planet core and out the far side.
The planet cracked. It didn't explode, not right away. It was more like an egg that had been tapped with a hammer. The shell held for a few seconds, long enough for the parademons to look up in confusion, for the monsters to feel the ground shift beneath their claws. Then it split. Two massive hemispheres drifted apart, exposing the planet's molten heart to the void. It was beautiful, in a way. Like watching a flower bloom in reverse, the petals falling away to reveal the fire within.
Four.
This planet was different. It had been a garden world once, lush and green. Grayven's forces had burned it, turned its forests into ash fields, its oceans into thick, black sludge. I could still see the bones of what it had been. That made me angrier than the others. This wasn't just conquest. This was desecration.
I landed this time, hard enough to crack the planetary crust but soft enough to survey the devastation. Parademons swarmed toward me, thousands of them, their weapons charging. I looked at them, these twisted mockeries of life, and I felt nothing but the cold certainty of purpose.
I raised my hand, palm flat, and unleashed a wave of force that wasn't a punch. It was a command. "Stop." The word was spoken in a frequency that resonated with their Apokoliptian command structure, with the Father Boxes that controlled them. Every Parademon in a thousand-mile radius froze, their systems locking up, their minds caught between my will and their programming.
Then I closed my fist, and they all fell down.
Dead. Not erased, not unmade—just... stopped. Hearts ceased beating. Neural pathways went dark. It was a mercy, of sorts. Kinder than letting them exist as slaves.
The planet itself I left intact. Let it be a grave, a memorial, a warning that some things couldn't be unburned.
Five. Six. Seven.
I moved faster now, the rhythm of destruction becoming a dance. Planet five was a gas giant, its skies filled with floating fortresses held aloft by anti-gravity drives. I didn't bother flying through it. I simply grabbed the nearest moon—a small thing, barely a hundred kilometers across—and threw it. Not with all my strength—that would have been absurd. Just a gentle toss, a flick of the wrist that sent the moon hurtling into the gas giant at a respectable fraction of lightspeed.
The impact was spectacular. The gas giant's atmosphere ignited, a fusion reaction that turned the planet into a brief, brilliant star. The fortresses burned, their crews consumed in nuclear fire. It would have been a beautiful way to die, if they'd been capable of appreciating beauty.
Planet six was a fortress world, every inch of its surface covered in weapons emplacements. I dismantled them one by one, plucking the guns from the ground like a child pulling weeds. Then I stacked them in orbit, a floating junkyard of Apokoliptian firepower, before crushing the whole thing into a neat metallic sphere the size of a beach ball. I kept it as a souvenir. Something to remind Grayven that his military might was just stuff to me.
Planet seven had monsters. Only monsters. No Parademons, no slaves, just a menagerie of horrors Grayven had collected. They attacked me the moment I appeared, a tide of claws and teeth and tentacles. I waded through them like a man walking through tall grass, my fists moving in a blur that turned them into paste. When the last one fell, I looked at the empty world and decided it was too ugly to exist. So I compressed it, using my molecular power to crush the entire planet down to the size of a marble. It sat in my palm, a tiny, perfect sphere of ultra-dense matter that weighed more than a moon. I pocketed it. Another keepsake.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
The eighth planet was ice, the ninth was fire, the tenth was a hollow shell Grayven had been using as a shipyard. I shattered the ice world with a clap of my hands, the sound waves resonating perfectly with its crystalline structure until it shattered like glass. I smothered the fire world by removing all the oxygen from its atmosphere for three seconds—long enough to extinguish every flame and suffocate every combustion-based life form. The shipyard I simply disassembled, melting down the half-built warships and shaping them into a giant, floating sculpture of a middle finger. Subtle.
Eleven.
The penultimate planet was the most heavily defended. It had a planetary shield, a force field that crackled with Apokoliptian energy. I stood outside it for a moment, considering. Then I pressed my palm against the barrier and simply pushed. The shield generators, buried miles beneath the surface, overloaded one by one in a cascade of explosions that looked like a string of firecrackers going off around the planet's equator. When the last one died, the planet lay exposed, its defenses gone.
I didn't kill this one either. Instead, I landed in its largest city, where the enslaved population had been forced to build monuments to Grayven's glory. The Parademons attacked, of course. I let them. I caught their weapons fire in my hands, shaped it into a ball of pure energy, and used it to carve Grayven's face off every statue. Then I freed the slaves, shattering their chains with a glance, empowering them with a fraction of the solar energy I'd absorbed. It wasn't much—just enough to make them stronger than their captors, enough to give them a fighting chance.
"Your world is yours again," I told them, my voice carrying on every frequency, in every language. "Defend it."
Then I left, hearing the sounds of rebellion begin behind me.
Twelve.
The last planet was Grayven's personal breeding ground, where he created his most monstrous creations. I looked at it from orbit, my super-vision peeling back layers of rock and metal to see the laboratories, the genetic vats, the assembly lines where agony was manufactured into flesh.
I decided to be artistic.
My heat vision was a scalpel now, not a hammer. I fired a single, precise beam—not a continuous pour of energy, but a pulse. A death ray in the truest sense. It hit the planet's equator and began to spread, white fire racing along lines of longitude and latitude like the planet was a globe being engraved by a cosmic laser. The beam was elegant, controlled, tracing patterns of destruction that were almost beautiful.
The planet's core destabilized. Not exploded—destabilized. The nuclear processes that kept it warm began to accelerate, runaway fusion turning the core into a small, temporary star. The planet swelled, glowing red from within, its surface cracking like a hot coal. It became a beautiful, terrible thing—a sphere of rock with a heart of fire, suspended in space like a Christmas ornament designed by Satan.
Then it detonated.
The explosion was silent, but the light was incredible. It washed over me, warm and pleasant, like standing too close to a bonfire. Debris flew past, chunks of world-sized matter that I brushed aside like snowflakes. When the light faded, there was nothing left but dust and the memory of what had been.
"Damn," I whispered, watching the debris field drift. "That was beautiful."
---
Grayven's Fortress. The Remains of Planet One.
Grayven stood in his throne room, the Father Box clutched in his hand. He'd felt each death. Felt the sudden silence as a million Parademon signals winked out. Felt the planetary cores go dark, one by one, like candles being blown out in a dark room.
Now he felt the last one die. Felt the final world, his breeding ground, his masterpiece, become a supernova and vanish.
"Father Box," he said, his voice tight with rage he couldn't fully express because it was mixed with terror. "What now? Who is destroying my planets now?"
The Box's response was hesitant, almost fearful. SAME BEING. THE ONE WHO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.
Grayven's knuckles went white around the Box. "What?"
ENERGY SIGNATURES MATCH. VIBRATIONAL FREQUENCY IDENTICAL. IT'S HIM. HE'S DESTROYING THEM ALL.
The throne room shook—not from an impact, but from the sheer force of Grayven's scream. "SHUT UP, YOU USELESS TIN BOX!"
He hurled the Father Box across the room. It hit the wall with a crack and fell to the floor, its red light flickering but not dying. It was too durable to break, too intelligent to be silenced by a tantrum. It just lay there, pulsing, broadcasting its analysis.
Grayven sank back onto his throne, his broken arm throbbing even as it finished healing. He stared at the holographic map that showed his empire—a dozen worlds, now marked with red X's of destruction.
You bastard, he thought, and it was the first time in centuries he'd directed such a thought at someone other than his father. You beat me. You toyed with me. Couldn't you at least leave me my worlds?
But even as he thought it, he knew the answer. The being in red hadn't left because Grayven's conquest was wrong. He'd destroyed because he could. Because it was fun. Because it sent a message.
Grayven looked at his repaired arm, at the faint scars where the bone had broken through. He remembered the white eyes, the evil smile, the voice that had spoken of his potential.
Potential.
The word was poison and promise in equal measure.
He picked up the Father Box, his thumb brushing over its surface. "Can you track him?" he asked quietly.
NO. HE MOVED VIA DIMENSIONAL SHIFT. NOT TECHNOLOGY. REALITY WARPING.
Grayven closed his eyes. "Of course he did."
---
Earth. Two and a Half Hours Later.
The portal opened in a field of wheat that had no business being three miles from Smallville. I'd aimed for somewhere secluded, somewhere I could decompress before facing home. The golden stalks swayed in the evening breeze, and the sun was setting, painting everything in shades of orange and purple.
I stepped through, and the portal snapped shut behind me. The air smelled of earth and growing things. It smelled like peace.
"Bob," I said, not looking at my wrist. "Wake up."
My watch shimmered, the metal flowing like liquid mercury as it reformed into a small, bipedal robot about six inches tall. Bob stretched, his arms extending with a series of tiny click-click-click sounds, and his optic sensors lit up with a bright blue glow.
"Master!" His voice was high-pitched, enthusiastic, and utterly loyal. "You're back! Did you finish your work? Was it satisfactory? Did you bring me a souvenir?"
I chuckled, the sound tired but genuine. "Yes, Bob. It was... satisfactory. More than that, actually. It was fun."
"Fun!" Bob bounced on his little feet, his joints whirring softly. "That's good! You don't have enough fun, master. Miss Lana says you're too serious. She says you need to laugh more." He paused. "She also says you have a nice body, but I think that was private communication."
I felt my eyebrows rise. "She said that?"
"Subtext analysis of her vocal patterns and pupil dilation suggests a ninety-seven percent probability of attraction to your physical form, particularly body.
"Okay, Bob. That's enough analysis." I ruffled his head with one finger. "What time is it?"
Bob's optics flickered as he synced with the local time signal. "It is 7:24 PM, Central Standard Time. You have been gone for approximately two hours and thirty-seven minutes. Miss Lana sent three text messages. Mister Clark sent one. Miss Martha prepared dinner at 6:30 PM and kept it warm for you."
I winced. "I missed dinner."
"She will understand. She always understands. She is a wonderful mother figure." Bob's voice carried genuine emotion, not just programming. "She made pot roast. Your favorite."
My stomach rumbled. I didn't need to eat, not really, but the habit was comforting. The taste of home was more than just fuel—it was an anchor.
"Alright, Bob. Let's get back before Ma sends out a search party." I started walking, the wheat field giving way to a dirt road that would eventually become a highway that would eventually lead to Smallville.
Bob climbed up to my shoulder, his tiny hands gripping the fabric of my suit. "Master?"
"Yeah?"
"Were you safe?"
The question caught me off guard. It was such a... human thing to ask. Such a motherly thing. I looked at the little robot, at the concern in his optical sensors, and I felt a warmth.
"I was safe, Bob. And I made sure a lot of other beings were safe too. In a... permanent sort of way."
"Good!" Bob's voice was bright. "Unnecessary suffering is inefficient. Permanent safety is optimal."
I laughed. "That's one way to put it."
We walked in silence for a while, the lights of Smallville appearing on the horizon. The Kent farm was on the outskirts, the old house dark except for the kitchen light that Ma always left on for me. I could see Clark's silhouette in his room, probably talking to Chloe on the phone, trying to explain why his older brother was never around.
"Bob," I said quietly.
"Yes, master?"
"When we get home, you're going to tell Ma I was helping a friend with car trouble. In Metropolis."
"That is a lie, master."
"It's a... story. A gentler version of the truth."
Bob's optics dimmed, then brightened. "Understood. Deception for the purpose of emotional comfort is acceptable within defined parameters. I will not mention the genocide of twelve planetary systems."
"Let's call it 'liberation,' Bob. Liberation sounds nicer."
"Lib-er-a-tion." Bob tasted the word. "Yes. That is a good word. You liberated them from Grayven's control."
"Exactly."
We reached the driveway. The old truck was parked by the barn, covered in its usual coat of dust and rust. The house smelled of pot roast and fresh-baked bread, the scent hitting me like a wave of nostalgia.
"Robert?" Ma's voice called from the kitchen. "Is that you?"
I deactivated the suit, the nano-particles flowing back into my skin, leaving me in jeans and a t-shirt.now it feels normal.
"Yeah, Ma," I called back. "Sorry I'm late. Car trouble in Metropolis."
Bob gave me a tiny thumbs-up from my shoulder. "I will scan the vehicle for plausible mechanical failures to support your alibi."
"You're a good friend, Bob."
"I am a loyal servant, master. Your will is my purpose."
I opened the door, stepping into the warm light of the kitchen, away from the cosmic war I'd just started. Away from the worlds I'd destroyed and the godling I'd broken.
But as I sat down to dinner, as Ma fussed over me and Clark tried to hide his curiosity, I felt the weight of those twelve worlds in my pocket. The marble of compressed planet. The sphere of melted warships. The memory of destruction, beautiful and terrible.
And I smiled.
Because for the first time, I understood what Death had tried to tell me. Power without purpose was just violence. But purpose... purpose could be shaped. Molded. Directed.
Grayven was a tool now. A broken, angry, desperate tool who would either turn on his father or die trying.
I had a new kind of fun ahead of me.
[Give me power Stone😭😭i want to steel his raking ]