Chapter 13- All of Infinity in the Palm of my Hands (MCU/Clark Kent SI)

I woke up with a strong feeling of something being wrong. I could feel it in my bones. Looking up, above me, and noting that my room was still consumed in darkness did little to drive away that feeling. AIKO was usually much better at predicting my waking times and would often light the room up minutes or even seconds before I woke up. “AIKO?” I called out as I began to get up. One benefit of Kryptonian physiology was that I could go from asleep to awake in the span of a second. It was truly instant. I didn’t even need to stretch. My body didn’t have weaknesses like getting stiff from laying in one position for hours on end. 

Standing up, it was even more obvious that something had gone wrong. AIKO replied instantly. Never a delay in her replies. I scanned the tower I called home with a worried scowl on my face. What was wrong was obvious. The darkness wasn’t only in my room. None of the lights anywhere in the building were functioning. None of the electronics at all, I confirmed as I switched wavelengths. An Electromagnetic pulse had fried everything, I figured after looking through the electromagnetic wavelength and seeing things basically going haywire. Fuck. At least, AIKO would be safe. Her mainframe was shielded from things like this. The EMP had been very powerful, though. Not stopping at my tower, it had shut down the entire city. New Kylos was in darkness. 

Carina, I thought to myself. Watching her make her escape from the tower. She’d set off the device as close to the centre as possible, I concluded, noticing how the most distorted areas were just a few feet away from her. The machine was a medium-sized box. Nothing I would have allowed her to bring in. So, just how did she get it, and how did she activate it with no one being the wiser?

I guess there was only one person who would know the answer to that question. I began to fly towards her before a voice interrupted my thoughts and actions. “Kal El, my friend. I apologise that this will end this way, but the Kree have been so convincing. Stand down, surrender yourself and what remains of the Kylosian species to the Kree empire and I promise that you will die in as painless a manner as possible” Tivan, I recognised. His voice rang out across the planet, but the source was obvious. I stared straight up and was met with a sight that made my stomach drop to my feet. A Kree Armada. An entire fucking armada. 

“Please bring Carina with you as you surrender. I’m sure she’s done her part admirably” His voice was smug. How could it not be? He probably thought he had me beaten. I was a fool. A fucking idiot. I should have seen it coming a mile away. The Collector was a ruthless businessman. I expected that he would deal with me as he did with the established powers of the galaxy and keep to the terms of our deal. Of course, he didn’t. I’d put the cart before the horse. I wasn’t an established power, so why the fuck should he treat me like one? 

It probably played out something like this; I gave him the body and the weapon and then left, he then called up the Kree empire and said he had a lead on the person who killed Ronan. He was officially a rogue element, but I doubted that he still wasn’t useful to the Kree in one way or another. Even if he wasn’t, making an example of me would have been in their best interests. He probably even hatched a deal with them that let him keep the body, weapon, and ship. He was that kind of bastard. And the moment the Kree finished with me, he’d have seven planets ready for sale, freshly terraformed. The only thing I was having difficulty with was answering the question of why he’d waited this long. Tomorrow would have marked a year since we made formalised our agreement, and Carina would have set off for Knowhere with the cleaned up Dark Aster. 

I stared at the armada, racking my brain for what to do next. They were right on top of New Kylos. After Tivan’s last sentence, about two score fighter ships had shot out of the fleet of motherships and were making their way down. I estimated that their arrival would take anywhere from 45 seconds to 1 minute. First things first, I flew right through the door of my room, tearing through the tower as none of the automatic doors were functioning. 

It took me fifteen seconds to fly through the tower and land right in front of Carina. “The Collector made me do…” She couldn’t complete the sentence as I cleaved her head from her body with a knife hand to the neck. I could understand that she was a slave. I knew the Collector didn’t treat her nicely. I knew she’d been forced to do it, but still. I’d trusted her. Brought her into my home. Allowed her make friends with my friends. Ovette saw her as a sister, Komori, as an aunt. All she’d needed to do was ask me for help. I’d have helped her. Her cowardice had put my people in danger, and the jury was still out on whether I was a good king or not, but all I knew was that what she did was inexcusable. More lives were at stake than my own. 

The detour had cost me 20 seconds in all, and I flew right for the mainframe this time. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fix things in time to stop the fighter jets from attacking, but it was a question of the needs of the many over the needs of the few. I wouldn’t be able to stop all of them. It was for the best if I allowed the jets to begin their attack in favour of working to restore the planet’s defences. With those online, even the motherships in space were not going to present much of a threat. I was at the centre in twenty-two seconds, and I rushed to begin. First things first was rebooting AIKO’s mainframe. It was safe from being fried, but the sudden loss of everything it had been connected to would cause a problem or two. The second was using the subordinate control centre to run a diagnostic check of everything. 

It was like I suspected, everything was offline. The EMP was powerful. I’d taken the box from Carina’s body, so I’d study it later, but all I knew for now was that it was powerful enough to shut everything down. Not powerful enough to cause actual physical damage to the electronics, however. That meant a hard reboot could be enough to clear the bulk of the damage. I just had to work with AIKO once she came back to restore everything. The ships had crossed the atmosphere and were now in the city’s skyline. Waiting for AIKO to reboot, I watched their flight path as the first two let loose with their armament. It slammed into one of the apartment buildings, destroying its base and making it begin to topple. That was my mistake. Watching. Because where my eyes went, the rest of my senses followed. I heard the screams. The screams of hundreds of my people as they fell to their deaths. I could have ignored it. Zod was trained to do much worse in the search for victory. I would have ignored it, continued in my path that I was sure was wiser, if one of the children did not scream ‘Superman’ loudly to the skies. Calling me for help. I had no idea where he’d learned the name from. AIKO’s bedtime stories, maybe. But it didn’t matter. He called for my help. I could not ignore him. The walls of the tower I called home gave way as an unstoppable object tore through them. 

Fuck the needs of the many. I’m fucking Superman. I’d save everyone with my hands because I willed it to be so. And anyone who dared stand in my way would feel the wrath of God. I flew, making the speed of sound my bitch, as I crossed her several times in my journey. On earth, I wouldn’t have been fast enough to make the journey. The building would have landed long before then. Here though, thanks to strong construction, the building fell slowly as it struggled to right itself. Slowly enough that a black blur in sweatpants and a tank top was fast enough to make it to catch the building in its fall. Flying past the ships had destabilised them for a bit, and I hoped that that would be enough to prevent them from continuing the attack while I was occupied. 

“Captain, are you seeing this?” I heard one of the pilots say into what I suspected was a communicator of some sort. 

“Yes. Yes, I can. It’s Mar-Vell all over again. Let’s lighten his load, boys” one of them, the Captain, I deduced, said into his own communicator, and they unloaded their armament on the building all over again. 

Fuck. Fuck no. I thought to myself as the building crumbled all around me. These fucking assholes. 

I let go of the boulder in my hands. They’d destroyed the building’s structure entirely and made the entire thing collapse in pieces. Looking at the ground, I could see dozens of Kylosians dead. Even more were injured, groaning on the ground and struggling to stand. Their species’ durability came in clutch this time, but still all I could see was red. Those could have been Ovette. Or Komori. Or Drax. They were my people, under my protection, and I’d failed them. What the fuck had I been thinking. 

“He’s just staring at us” One said into their communicator. 

“Kraf” another shouted as I unleashed my heat vision on the ships arrayed before me after taking a few seconds to charge it up. I completely obliterated the first two, and I tore through a good portion of them before they separated and began attempting evasive manoeuvres. 

Nineteen ships had survived from the initial assault. Close to half their number. One of them had the audacity to fly right at me, firing his weapons all the while. I waited until he was about to crash into me before I stretched out my hand and flew forwards. The ship crumpled around me as the very stoppable force met the immovable object that was Kryptonian skin. I grabbed the Kree idiot by his neck and pulled him right out of the jet. Like a good portion of his species, he was humanoid with blue skin. I made sure the rest of the pilots could see him in my grip. A few of them even began flying back towards me to attempt to rescue him. 

It was too little, and much too late. I clenched my other hand before punching right through his chest with a squelch that was music to my ears. Green kree blood dripped from my fist as I smiled for the world to see. A cold, brutal thing. They were all dead. They just didn’t know it yet. 

Seventeen ships left. The three that had broken off their escape to attempt to rescue their compatriots were to be my first targets. Two of them turned around the moment I killed their friend, but one didn’t. He looked to be frozen in his cockpit, staring at the body as it lay limp in my grip. I could see the very second when he realised what was about to happen, but he was still too slow. I reared my hand backwards and threw the body right at his ship with a good amount of strength. Of course, the body was pasted against the durable metal, but it was just a distraction. In the time it had taken the body to get there, I’d flown underneath it. As green blood splattered everywhere as the corpse turned into sludge, I flew through the ship from beneath, breaking it in half and killing the soldier within. 

I noticed some Kylosians begin to come out of their buildings as the fight wore on. I’d have to find out how, considering I was sure that elevators were the only way out of them. Not bothering to include stairs in the buildings had to be one of the biggest idiot moves I’d ever made, but in my defence this was literally a situation that was nearly impossible to have foreseen and even more unlikely. I’d prepare for redundancies, next time. Sixteen ships remained, and even as they flew back upwards, they must have felt the Grim Reaper at their tails. 

One of them was faster than the others, though. He was almost at the edge of the atmosphere, about to make it into orbit. He was the first one I went after. I broke the Sound barrier with ease, and ramped up far beyond that. 

The Kree fighter jet was fast, but not fast enough. It took me twenty seconds of pursuit to catch up to him, and once I drew level, I stretched a hand out and punched into the ship’s frame and stopped. His speed did the rest of the job as the ship was torn in half. I only paid the soldier within enough attention to cleave his head from his shoulders with a knife hand. That was quickly proving to be one of the most efficient ways of disposing enemies. If Zod had this kind of strength, no one would have equalled him in all Krypton, I thought to myself as I considered the vast amounts of combat skill and data that had been pumped into my head. A startling amount of it even applied to superpowered combat. Made me wonder what stopped the Kryptonians from just relocating to a planet with a yellow sun. They were well aware of what the exposure could do to them. I left the thoughts for later as I felt several blasts of superheated plasma tear into my clothes. My tank top turned into little more than a rag after only a second of fire. I flew backwards before sharply changing directions and flying at the ship that fired at me with my hands outstretched. The remaining blasts hit my skin and broke upon them. 

The ship and the Kree pilot within fell to the ground in pieces a few seconds later. I immediately turned my attention to the four that used that distraction to escape the atmosphere. Foolish. I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them, all I saw was red. This blast was not as powerful as the first one, but it was still more than enough to cut through all four ships and end their ascent. They never flew again. Only ten ships remained, and they must have got the hint that nothing would be leaving the atmosphere on my watch. 

One of them, a spectacular idiot if I’d ever seen one, chose to spend hi last few seconds of life firing at the Kylosians that had made their way to the streets. He unloaded his armament for all of two seconds before I flew through his ship and ended his life. Nine left, I told myself while doing my hardest not to look at the damage. 

Damn it, AIKO. Come back online, I said to my mind. She just had to find a way to reboot everything and bring the defences online. Two other pilots seemed to have seen the other guy’s actions and decided that was the way to go. When they turned to the Kylosians on the floor, I breathed in and breathed out a veritable windstorm that tossed both their ships off their intended flight path and sent them flying to the ground. They were surely dead. With only seven fighter pilots remaining, I saw the lights beginning to flicker before the entire city lit up. Yes! I almost screamed. 

“Don’t celebrate just yet, Kal El.” AIKO’s voice said in my ears. 

“What?” I asked, replying into the earpiece.

“Whatever Carina did, it was more effective than it should have been. The orbital defences are still a while from coming on. But I have an idea” She said to me. I wanted to ask, but that proved unnecessary as much of the surrounding sky turned purple. A familiar gleaming purple. It was the Fog. I watched with a curious awe as a swarm of nanobots broke off from the main cloud and flew right at one of the ships. He tried to fly away from them, but he was too slow, and I watched as the nanobots devoured not just the ship, but the Kree soldier inside. It was like one second they were there, and then they got covered by the cloud. When the cloud moved on seconds later, nothing remained. 

“What?” I asked, with what I was sure was a stupid look on my face. 

“I took the liberty of removing the safeguard preventing the fog from consuming organic matter. I hope that does not offend, Kal El” AIKO said, and I just nodded numbly, still surprised. In the time the first cloud had taken to consume the ship, the other ships quickly found themselves boxed in and overrun. 

“Use the fog. Figure out some defences in case the motherships turn their attention to the surface.” I ordered AIKO as I flew upwards, heading to confront the three large motherships still in orbit. Hopefully, those were the last of their fighters, but it was doubtful. 

As I left the atmosphere, I saw one of the ships beginning to charge up a massive attack. With new Kylos right behind me, there was no way for me to dodge. I grit my teeth and stretched my hands, preparing to stop the attack in its path. ‘I should definitely have put on my suit before flying up here’ were the last thoughts I had before the beam hit. 

A/N; Feedback will be much appreciated.