And All Of Us Are Dying

Part 5

He was serene enough when he emerged from the Observation Deck six hours later. His feet carried him swiftly without complaint. His head was high. Rejoining his friends in the Conference Room, he asked only two questions. "How bad is it?" he queried.

Cosmic Boy looked grim. "Bad enough," he informed the Kryptonian. "The Khunds are screaming bloody murder. Threatening war against the U.P. They've been looking for an excuse for a long time now. This is as good a one as any. Better than most."

Superboy laced his fingers together behind his back and paced. He tried unsuccessfully to bite his invulnerable fingernails, scowling in frustration. After a moment he lowered his hand, curling his fingers into his palms. His face was still as a deep mountain lake when he faced them again. "Where is he?"

The holoprojectors sprang to life once more.

"We think he may be here, but we're not sure," said Cosmic Boy. "These vids were captured by UPGovCICIntell spy satellite about six months ago. Asteroid XL76K, Praxtellis system."

It was just a huge chunk of rock, about the size of Ceres in the Sol system, if Clark was any judge. And yet it was very obviously occupied. But equally plainly, not by anything even remotely human. Scanners detected no atmosphere, natural or man made. No heat or power source. No evidence of natural water or vegetation. In short, it was dead. There was nothing of any interest there save for a large sprawling structure carved from the natural nickel iron rock of the asteroid itself. With a sickening lurch, Clark recognized the towering spires and sprawling porticos of the architecture.

Daxamite. Late Gandian Hegemony Period.

Lar always loved stories about those times, Superboy remembered. The many fanciful tales of Gand, The War Maker...the krylots to be slain...the beautiful warrior princesses waiting to be wooed and won...the castles...

And now he'd built himself one, it appeared.

Violet spoke for the first time, now. Shy, retiring Vi. Her voice dripped bitterness like salt and brine from a pickling jar. "Praxis is almost dead center of Khundian allied space. So, no UP diplomatic help allowed, thank you very much. Actually, the Khunds don't want help. They'd welcome this war. Eagerly. Chameleon Boy went alone on an Espionage Squad mission to try and contact Mon. In disguise, of course. He never came back."

Clark's throat threatened to close around the breath that couldn't quite escape him. He couldn't even swallow.

~Oh, God...Cham...Cham...~

"We...we don't know that Lar-" Imra was quick to point out. "I mean, it might have been the Khunds..."

It was painfully plain that all of them really wanted desperately to believe that.

"How's RJ?" Superboy managed.

Rokk studied his feet in apparent fascination. It was left to Imra to answer. Composing herself, she replied, "RJ is...retreating. We still get our monthly stipend and all the funding we need...but he doesn't talk to us very much anymore."

The young man with the vast array of superpowers at his beck and call peered around, struck by a sudden thought. "Where are Jo and Tinya?" he pressed. "I haven't seen either of them. Maybe they can help-"

"No," the Teen of Steel was interrupted by Chuck Taine. "Jo and Tinya...left..."

"Left? W...why?"

Rokk seemed to find his voice again for the first time in many moments. "Jo resigned in protest, and Tinya went with him. After Cham disappeared, we tried to send Jo to Lar with a message. He...refused. We don't know where they are." The Braalian Leader shrugged. "For all we know, they could be on Asteroid XL76K with Mon."

"If that's where Mon is," grimaced Vi. "We don't even know that for certain. This whole mess is totally sprocked up. Totally."

Superboy had to agree with that. 'Is this the way the rest of my life is going to go?' he wondered. 'Is this what it means to be grown up?'

"I don't know if I can do this," he whispered, burying his face in his hands.

Saturn Girl slowly pried his fingers away from the chill of his pale flesh, and he let her. She held his hand in hers and sought his eyes. "It's just a message, Clark. That's all. Just a message. A plea to stop this madness and surrender himself. Surrender himself to us."

The Last Kryptonian set his teeth. "And if he doesn't?" he demanded to know.

No one bothered to answer him. He turned away. "That's what I thought," he said.

He retreated once more to the Observation Deck, and this time it was almost a full day before it became obvious that he had no intention of answering them any time soon. So they sent Lu to force the issue. She never uttered a single word. Not one. She simply stood there, a concrete reminder of all he held dear; all his duties and responsibilities. Duo Damsel never wavered, and she never pressed. She didn't have to. Kal-El, The Last Son of Krypton's conscience did that for her.

As she always knew it would.


He didn't bother to say good-bye and, mercifully, there was no one to see him off. He stared at the futuristic skyline of Metropolis with his telescopic vision for many long minutes before he leapt and shot himself into the void at close to the speed of light.

'Oh, Jesus wept, Lar,' he mourned. 'What have you done? What in the name of God have you done?'

In the blink of an eyelash, it seemed, he found himself approaching Khundian space. He poured on the speed, making himself invisible, moving too fast to be traced even by Thirtieth Century technology. He didn't slow appreciably until he reached his goal. The Praxtellis system, and Asteroid XL76K. He scanned near space with his telescopic vision. Finding nothing, he was satisfied that he had reached his target undetected. At least, by the Khunds...

Undetected by the friend waiting for him on the asteroid's bleak surface was another matter entirely though, wasn't it? He didn't let himself think about that too long or too hard. He couldn't. The future Man of Steel, now merely the Boy of Steel (or trapped in some nebulous place between the two, actually) nerved himself and began his descent.

He searched fruitlessly for almost an hour before he found someone.

Cowering in a corner of one of the many rooms here, the space-suited Khundish boy couldn't have been more than ten cycles old, if that. He scrambled away in fear until he had no place left to go, tucking his head into his arms, his eyes tightly closed, resigned to his fate.

"Have...have you come to kill me?" he stammered. With that, he looked up, baring his teeth. "Then, get it over with, blast you! Just do it! Don't...don't torture me like this..."

If he hadn't been a Khund, member of a warrior race, he'd have been in tears. Crouching by his side, the young Kryptonian lifted the other's chin with care and spoke softly, using superventriloquism to directly stimulate the boy's auditory nerves in the airlessness of this grim place.

"No, I haven't come to kill you. It's all right, now. Everything's going to be all right." From the look in the child's dark eyes, he didn't believe Superboy. He held his silence, clutching it as a human child might clutch a favorite toy.

The Legionnaire laid a calming hand on his shoulder. "Who are you?" he gently asked.

"Vema," the boy responded. "Vema Agar. He took me. Pulled me from the wreckage after he killed my parents. Brought me here. He should have let me die, Sheol take him! He should have let me die!"

Hoping against hope, Superboy forced himself to ask, "Who brought you here, Vema? Who?"

Vema spat an angry answer, and something within the Teen of Steel died. Some small part of his innocence.

"HIM! The demon. We call him Hator-Mapik - The Demon of Vengeance. I thought - I never thought Hator was real. Just a spirit to frighten disobedient children is all I thought he was. But he's real! Real! And he's killing everybody. Everybody!"

The boy's labored breathing quieted; he gazed into the stranger's clear blue eyes. "Have...have you come to rescue me?" he wanted to know in a small voice, little daring to hope. "To take me home?"

Superboy kept his voice kind. "Yes, Vema," he promised, "I'll take you home."

The boy's hands shook until he hid them in the pits of his long arms. His eyes radiated gratitude. "Th...thank you," he managed between teeth clenched tight to keep them from chattering.

"Vema," Superboy injected a note of urgency into his voice, "do you know where he is? Do you know where Mon...Hator Mapik is?"

The Khundish youth shook his head. "I think he's gone. He doesn't usually stay around for long. He brings me food and water, oxygen for the suit, but he never stays long." Superboy tried very hard not to think about what that might mean. More dead people. Khunds, true enough; but people for all of that. He closed his eyes in pain.

Only to snap them open moments later at Vema's tentative, "Maybe...maybe he's in The Garden. At least, that's what I call it. He spends a lot of time there when he's here."

"The Garden? Can you show me where that is, Vema?"

The boy rocketed to his coltish legs and gestured for the Legionnaire to follow. The path they took was circuitous, to say the least. Even with his super senses, Kal-El might have gotten lost. This place was huge. He had no idea how long the two of them, the young hero and the even younger Khund, wandered down featureless corridor after like corridor. It seemed to stretch endlessly forward into forever.

Eventually they emerged into wide open space crowned with twinkling stars overhead like a diadem. Glancing about, Superboy gasped and froze in his tracks, stunned. 'Dear God, Lar...Dear God...'

The Garden was filled with statues. Over a thousand of them. One thousand, three hundred, seventeen of them to be exact, by Superboy's quick superspeed count.

A thousand copies of the same face and form stared back at him, carved from every conceivable substance imaginable. Marble...diamond...ruby...emerald...the clearest crystal quartz...jade...scarlet Martian sandstone...blazing Tharrian firestone...superconductive Plutonian ice IX...molten Gallopian liqui-rock, held in suspension with a magnetic field...and...and...

Good Lord! Could that actually be-

His microscopic vision quickly confirmed it.

Jewel Kryptonite, from the long vanished world of his birth.

From a thousand different vantage points, Tasmia Mallor, Shadow Lass, gazed out upon the Universe, her soft smile and comforting hands a benediction.

Superboy swallowed the bile rising swiftly in the back of his throat.

"She always liked the coolness of shadows," spoke a voice at his back, directly into his ear. Super-ventriloquism again. "I think she'd have liked this place." Behind him, the Khundish boy, Vema, fled on silent, terror stricken feet, and Clark watched him go.

Superboy whirled. "Lar!" he cried, wanting desperately to smile with relief.

And then he got his first clear sight of Lar Gand.

The patch over his right eye was soft, pliable leather; quite small and unassuming, actually, but in Superboy's mind, it leapt out at him like a rampaging krylot and grabbed him by the throat and heart.

"Lar!" he blurted. "What...what happened?"

Instinctively, the older youth's hand rose to touch the dark leather covering his eye. But he stopped himself in mid-reach, his questing hand falling still to his side.

"What happened, Kal?" he smiled. "I happened. What does your Holy Book, that Bible of yours, say? 'If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out'? After I watched Tasmia die, I didn't want to see anything anymore...I meant to take the other one, too, but I changed my mind at the last moment. I decided, I might need at least one eye for what I had in mind..."

Nausea shook him like a relentless terrier, snapping the neck of a smaller, helpless creature in its crushing jaws. Spinning away, Superboy retched spewing bile upon the hard stony surface of Asteroid XL75K. Before he could rise from his knees, a hand laid itself upon his shoulder.

"Don't be sad, Kal," said Lar Gand, Mon-El, wiping the younger boy's lips with the royal blue of his flowing cape. "I don't miss it. It isn't important."

"Hator-Mapik," Kal whispered as if to himself, and shuddered. The former Mon-El reached and pulled the younger boy to his feet with a surprisingly gentle hand.

"That's what they call me these days," he agreed. Tenderly, he brushed aside the bouncing curl on the youthful Kryptonian's forehead, but it stubbornly sprang back into place. "The Demon of Vengeance. It's what I am, now. All that I have left, little brother."

Superboy's stomach lurched and, for a moment, he feared that he might be ill again. He swallowed hard, and his lower lip trembled.

The once hero and Legionnaire smiled, but it never reached nor warmed his glacial blue eyes. Nothing seemed to do that, anymore. "Did you know that the Khunds think I'm immortal?" Mon-El murmured. "They say that Hator-Mapik can't die. I've been trying to do that; die, I mean. But I think they're right. I can't. The Khunds have a new legend, now. Hator can only be killed, they claim, when the losiranokian that live on the slopes of Mount Vhasti find their way to his palace."

Lar shook his rueful head, gesturing around him. "Well, I've built the Palace, but so far, no losiranokian. Not surprising, I guess. Losiranokian are one of the most environmentally delicate insect species in the known Galaxy. And one of the most beautiful. Rather like your Terran butterflies. The Khunds have no use for them. Ironic, isn't it? Such brief, fragile beauty placed at the disposal of brutes unable to appreciate it in the least. If it weren't so very tragic...so very, very Khundish...I might laugh. Losiranokian are almost extinct, did you know that? Yes, they are. And they only live on the slopes of that one mountain. Mount Vhasti. Nowhere else. They die if you move them."

Superboy threw out his arms, embracing Mon-El, who stood stiff and unyielding in the circle of his arms. "Mon, please," he pleaded, his voice a shadow, cracking under the strain, "please...this can't go on. You've got to stop. Come...come home with me. We'll think of something, I promise. I swear to God, we will."

With exacting care, as if he were loathe to harm the younger boy, Lar Gand unentwined the comforting arms from around his corded neck. "I can't stop. It's too late for that, Kal. You must know that." His sapphire gaze drifted to a small grave hewn from the asteroid's nickel-iron rock. "Much too late," he said softly.

Superboy's eyes followed the same path, spying the unremarkable cairn clearly marked with the protean, amorphous symbol for Durla. He paled.

"I didn't mean to do it, Kal. I didn't. You have to believe me. Moons of Daxam, no! I'd never have...I wouldn't-"

His hands shot to his temples, massaging them as if to drive forth a persistent pain or hurt. "He wouldn't leave me alone!" the voice hissed. He glanced at Superboy, crying out for understanding, desperate for it. That seemed very important to him. "Why wouldn't he just leave me alone? WHY? Just go away, and leave me in peace? Why did he make me -- Gods, Kal...make me...make me..." He couldn't say it. His voice choked off, deserting him. Like a majestic toppling oak, felled by time and grief, he crashed to his knees.

Superboy ran his fingers lightly through the night dark hair. "Lar...Lar..." he sighed. "It wasn't in Reep's nature to give up on you so easily like that." He closed his eyes. "Reep's...or mine..."

The Daxamite towered to his feet. After a moment, he lay a calm hand on the younger youth's smooth cheek. It did not tremble in the slightest, the Legionnaire noted. "And so now they've sent you," Mon-El whispered. He smiled. "Must have been Imra's idea, wasn't it? Imra knows. Saturn Girl knows everything." He lowered his hand. "The one person left in the whole of the Universe that I'd rather die than hurt." He took a deep breath, preparing himself.

"Then, there's really only one thing left to do, isn't there?" he said.

In a flash of superspeed, Superboy found himself flying across The Garden's tranquil openness. And he discovered that it really was true.

In space, no one can hear you scream.

With a groan, Superboy pulled himself to tottering feet. "Go home, Kal," said Lar Gand, Mon-El, in a steady, monotonous tone. "Go home."

"I can't do that, Lar," he returned, sadly. "Any more than Cham could. Any more than you can quit. You know that." He reached out a hand, as if that simple gesture could span the chasm now separating them. The muscles of his face writhed in torment. "Don't do this, Lar!" he found himself begging, and didn't care. "Please, God, don't do this...just don't do this..."

The Daxamite's smile was predatory, this time. Like a swooping hawk or a circling shark. "What's the matter, little brother?" he taunted, almost turning the endearment into an epithet. "Afraid you'll lose?"

'No, I'm more afraid that I might win...' the punishing thought coursed through him, unbidden, unsummoned.

"Stop it, Lar! Stop it!" The shout might have shattered mountains, if there'd been an atmosphere to carry it.

The other's smile broadened itself. "Come and make me," he challenged.

And, just that simply, the true horror began.

Superboy set his jaw with determination. He planted his booted feet deep within the rock of the barren asteroid, frowning his unhappiness. This wasn't supposed to happen. 'We were only going to talk. Why, Mon, why? WHY? What in Rao's name are you doing?'

Like a knife through his not quite invulnerable heart, the hero from the Twentieth Century suspected he knew why.

Superboy's body went cold, and he shivered as he never had with the absolute zero of space. And then he forced himself to relax. After all, it couldn't come about unless he cooperated, now could it? He clutched that thought to him like a warm blanket on a chill winter night, protection against the cold. All he need do was not follow Mon-El's plan, the script the Daxamite had in mind to play itself out to an inevitable end. He was safe.

Everything was going to be fine. He'd make it that way. He was Superboy, wasn't he?

He could do anything.

The nascent Superman actually smiled. Later, the thought of that smile would burn him like acid, indelibly etching his super memory forever. No matter how hard he struggled, he was never going to lose sight of that smile.

"It won't work, Lar," he told the older youth. "You can't make me angry enough to fight you." The smile gracing his full lips seemed to flicker and change shape subtly. The irony in it shone like a star gone supernova. "I have a lot of experience with...restraint..."

Reaching down, the inspiration for the Legion of Super-Heroes pressed a small hidden button on his belt buckle, and braced himself. Just as Brainiac Five had promised, a ruby aura erupted into life around his body, and he caught himself in Tasmia Mallor's outstretched hand as his superpowers deserted him.

Nor was he the only one.

From the look on the Daxamite Legionnaire's face, it was plain that he, too, was caught in the glow of the red solar radiation shining from Superboy's no longer invulnerable body. Invisible transuits glowed into sudden life around them to protect them from the vacuum of space. Dormant telepathic ear plugs sang in their ears.

"You can feel it, too, can't you, Lar?" the Youth of Steel said. "We're just us now. Just Clark Kent and Lar Gand; not Mon-El and Superboy. We're powerless, the both of us. Be reasonable, for God's sake! Let's end this travesty."

Lar Gand flashed his teeth. "Yes, let's!" he smiled. "I don't need superpowers to beat you, Clark." He stepped forward. "I was always strong, little brother. Even before I left Daxam. Just a brawny kid too big for his age, with his head always stuck in a stellar warp drive or a genetics text...that's me."

Superboy made a mistake, then. Later, he would acknowledge it. He was so intent on listening to Lar's words that he let the heavy -worlder get close enough to strike out at him with one long leg. The blow caught him just under the chin, and sent him flying once again. Unprepared, he landed with an "oomph!" of explosive, escaping breath as pain shot through his back, paralyzing him for an instant.

The youth he had christened Mon-El in the mistaken belief that they were brothers was on him before he could stir.

"That's the trouble with always having had these wonderful powers of ours, Kal," Mon-El emphasized his point with his punishing fists. "You never really learned how to fight, did you? You just do it, and Sheol take the hindmost. Since you've never really faced your physical equal, it wasn't necessary." The Kryptonian's broken nose began to bleed profusely, a warm tide of bright scarlet flowing down his face onto the collar of his blue uniform, marring the perfection there.

"It is now, Kal. It's necessary now. I hope you're a quick study." He stunned the younger youth with a blow to the temple. "Either way, Kal, it's going to be a painful lesson. I wish I could say this will hurt me more than it does you..."

The no loner super boy heaved with all his might, throwing the heavier boy off him. Wiping his bloody lips, he scrambled to his feet. His right eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled its viscous way down from his lacerated cheek. He was not foolish enough to shake his head to clear it. He just had time to see that his knuckles were skinned and stinging ('How?' he wondered absently. 'When did I strike back?' He couldn't remember.) before he was tackled to the ground. Borne down by Lar's superior weight, Superboy twisted his body and landed on top. Only to have Lar reach out with an iron grip and grab his throat.

"Come on, Kal!" the Daxamite champion spat. "You can do better than this! Fight me, damn you! Fight me!" Superboy kneed him in the groin and watched the shock of it spread from out of his sapphire blue eyes.

"Yes!" Mon-El gasped through the pain, rolling off the other. "That's more like it! Now, we're getting somewhere!"

Coughing and choking, Superboy lurched to his knees. He ached. He stuffed his fist into his mouth to keep from screaming. He clawed at his bruised throat. Gasping for air, he sank back to his knees once more. Tears streamed out of his eyes from the violent coughs escaping him. His lungs burned as if he'd inhaled the photosphere of a star.

"K-Kal?" The voice was near panic, laced with incipient hysteria. "Kal, are you all right?" Urgency echoed there like a tolling bell. Strong arms enfolded him, pounding lightly on his back. The pain of it startled him. Lashing backwards with his head, Superboy connected with a sharp chin. But the older youth grimly held on. 'I wonder if he lets go when it thunders, like a snapping turtle?' Superboy thought in irrational wonder.

Over and over, they rolled, pummeling and striking at one another. Superboy coughed up bright red blood, and his breathing became painful after Mon-El struck him a stout blow in the solar plexus. He could barely feel his battered hands, now. Blood streamed into his eye from a cut on his brow, and he wiped it away with his sleeve.

Summoning all his remaining strength into one powerful blow, the Kryptonian youth sent his Daxamite brother sailing across the Garden to crash forcefully into the delicate base of an iridium statue of Tasmia Mallor. The super teen watched in horror as the heavy memorial teetered and finally tumbled from the cracked podium on which it rested. He tried to move at superspeed. He did. But he was too late; far too late. The youthful hero stumbled and fell in his haste to reach Mon-El.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Superboy reached the prone body of Mon-El. He took the head of the young man he called a brother into his lap. Lost in pleasant dreams, the eyelids rose to half mast, like a setting sun, revealing the blue depths beneath. The smile was small, almost as if afraid to show itself.

"Kal..." the ex-Legionnaire breathed the name like a blessing. "I've been having the worst dream. Tasmia will be angry with me. I woke her up again. My nightmares always wake her..."

"It's all right, Lar," Superboy wept. "The...the nightmare'll be over soon, I promise. Tasmia understands. She loves you. She's waiting for you. Go back to sleep now, o...okay?"

"...tired..." the once-hero sighed. "...really tired..."

His eyes fluttered, then closed. It wasn't until the dying Mon-El felt the lightest of touches on his hand that they slowly opened again. "Kal, look!" he murmured. The jewel-like insect with the iridescent wings crept into the palm of his outstretched hand, flexing its delicate wings, prettily. "What is it?"

"Losiranokian," Superboy answered, his throat working hard and unsuccessfully to swallow. His full lips quivered.

The losiranokian took flight, coming to rest in another outstretched palm, this one of hard, cold marble instead of warm, yielding flesh. Tasmia Mallor seemed to smile in welcome.

From the arched portico above, overlooking The Garden's serenity, burst a living swarm of flickering, kaleidoscopic color; a rainbow-hued whirlwind that descended upon the two men below. Fluttering, dancing about in their thousands, fragile wings sparkling in the glistening starlight, the losiranokian swirled around the two, the living and the dying. Superboy raised his hand to briefly caress the cheek where, moments before, one of the prismatic insects had briefly rested.

"...beautiful..." said the fading voice of Lar Gand, slipping quietly into unconsciousness.

It took that strong body several long hours to finish dying. Through it all, Superboy sat in silence with lowered head, holding his brother's hand. Not once did he let go of that hand as the life and warmth of it slowly melted away. He did not let himself think. He did not let himself feel. That was for later. For now, he only knew that he couldn't let go of that hand. He had to hold on to Lar Gand's hand.

It was the returning Vema Agar who made the final pronouncement. "He isn't breathing," the Khundish boy said.

"He doesn't need to breath unless he wants to," Superboy pointed out, unwilling to surrender that easily.

'nononononono...I'm not ready...not ready...'

"Listen," said Vema. "Do you hear a heartbeat?"

He did not listen, for it was not necessary. The hand within his was cold and stiff. Tenderly, he lay it upon the dead man's breast, pale and stark against the royal blue cloth of the uniform. He kissed the chill lips.

"This is what you wanted, isn't it, Lar?" he wept. "Are you happy now? At peace?"

He could only hope so.

He had quite a galactic tour ahead of him before he was done.

First, as promised, he delivered Vema Agar to his home on Jelix VI. He had no family left, but the authorities were glad enough to see him and hear his joyous news. He rushed at them, shouting, "He's dead! The Demon is dead! Hator-Mapik's dead!" From his uncurled hand, a losiranokian took jeweled, graceful flight, disappearing into the cold, thin air of the wintry planet.

"Vema Agar!" cried the planetary Governor. "We thought you dead," he challenged, swatting at the iridescent escaping insect in rising wrath. Seeing Superboy, the older Khund grew cautious. "And who is this?" he asked, not quite reaching for the weapon at his side.

Vema grew calmer. "He's our Savior. He's the one who slew Hator-Mapik! Killed him with his hands! You should have seen it, Trath Nomar! It was a glorious fight! Glorious! He hit him and hit him and hit him until he-"

Wincing as if in pain, Superboy covered his ears and heard no more, until the Khundish boy gently removed his hands.

"I'm sorry," said Vema Agar, and he seemed very sincere. "That was...unworthy of me." He fumbled for words. "I...I should not have - that is - it was your victory. It isn't my place to claim the honor. I beg...I beg your forgiveness."

"Is that what this is?" whispered Superboy. "Victory? An honor?"

The Governor, who's name was apparently Trath Nomar, nodded. "Is it not?" he insisted. He tried to search Superboy's shielded eyes, but found them impassible. "Is he really dea - ah - gone? Are we free?"

Superboy managed to nod.

Trath Nomar saluted him in the manner of Khunds, clenched fist raised high. "Then we owe you a great debt, Superboy of Earth. Yes, I recognize you, now. How may we repay you?"

Superboy set his teeth, a once more invulnerable barrier against the gorge rising from his belly. "Peace," he demanded. "Make peace with the United Planets, Governor. I've given you back your lives. Make them count for something."

Nomar's wistful sigh sundered the air. "It would have been a glorious war..."

Before he could display his disgust, Superboy disappeared precipitously.

This next would be...difficult...but he would not leave Lar's body to the mercy of the Khunds. He would not.

He buried his brother Lar Gand on Daxam, in the Meditation Garden of the ancient, crumbling Shrine of Gand, the War Maker, the holiest place on that world. Digging deep into the core of the planet, he brought magma to the surface and ignited it with his heat vision, an Eternal Flame cradled in a deep bowl hewn of polished inertron fetched from the core of a white dwarf star. For a head stone he used the statue of Tasmia Mallor wrought of harmless but lovely Jewel Kryptonite. He released a good many losiranokian into the lush verdant quiet of the peaceful place. A nest of them took residence in Tasmia Mallor's mane of long hair, a glittering crown. What the monks of the Shrine thought of this he never asked. But, later, prone to checking on the quiet tranquility with his telescopic vision, he saw flowers and other offerings lain there.

He did not linger by the fresh grave.

It was time. He had one last duty to perform.

When he once again trod the halls of the Legion's new orbiting HQ, he was spared the many questions he expected, much to his surprise. One look in his eyes, and they seemed to know. He was only forced to say it once. "Lar...won't be a problem anymore."

After that, there seemed little left to say.

Trust Violet, the new and aggressive, fire tested, no longer shy and shrinking Vi, to find something to say in spite of that. "What I don't understand," she asserted, "are those whatyoumacallthem - those losiranokian? Where did they come from? And how did they get to Asteroid XL75K? I thought you said they couldn't live anywhere but that one mountain on Khundia Prime?"

"They can't," returned Brainiac Five in a voice of finality, hoping, for Superboy's sake, the subject would die.

It didn't.

"Humans are such perverse creatures," the Coluan observed privately when he heard Superboy's next words.

"They were genetically engineered," the young Kryptonian said. "Specifically designed to survive on Asteroid XL75K or almost anywhere. I checked with my microscopic vision."

Vi was overcome with bewilderment. "But...who would do that?"

Rokk Krinn, Cosmic Boy, stroked his bearded chin in momentary consideration, and then shrugged. "Maybe the Khunds?" he proposed quickly.

Querl Dox looked up in irritation. Well, he had tried. No one could say that he hadn't. Might just as well say it and then be done with it, no? The smartest boy in the Universe, his twelfth level computer mind slowing itself to mere human speeds, shook his blonde head. "To boost morale by making the legend come true? To make Hator-Mapik appear defeatable?"

The Braalian Legionnaire nodded. "Something like that. Why not?"

"Hmmm," the Coluan genius hmmmed, then shook his head again in negation, coming to a final decision. "If we were dealing with any people other than the Khunds, yes, that would be a masterful psychological ploy. But Khunds do not think in such manner, my friend. A Khund warrior never needs to have their morale 'boosted'. That's a weakness Khunds don't acknowledge. And Khunds are warriors, not scientists. Their science is limited to weapons tech and related fields. They know little of biology; even their own. And they care less. Remember also, they loathe the losiranokian as pests. No, such a course of action would scarcely occur to them, I fear."

"Then who-?" began Vi.

Brainiac waited for the inevitable answer to present itself.

It did not surprise him in the least that it was Superboy who provided it.

Not in the least.

The Teen of Steel untied all the knots he'd twisted in the scarlet glory of his cape at superspeed, and took a deep breath before he rejoined.

"Lar."

The green skinned Coluan youth remained calm, but Superboy saw agreement flash in Brainiac's not so cold jade green eyes.

Superboy's smile was compounded of sadness and pain. "With all his physical gifts," he pointed out when he spied the surprise on all their smooth young faces, "it's easy to forget that Lar was a biologist and a geneticist. One of the finest on Daxam. Which means in the Galaxy. It would have been child's play for him to engineer those changes in such a simple lifeform as the losiranokian."

"But why would he do such a-" blurted Vi.

No one felt the need to answer. Superboy turned away, drawing the warmth of his cape closer to his body.

'I've been trying to do that; die, I mean ... ' whispered the voice of Lar Gand and Superboy paled.

"I think," hastened Brainiac, "that for the moment, it's more important for us to decide where we go from here." General agreement awkwardly ensued. Much vigorous head nodding and the like followed on close heels. Throats were cleared. Feet shuffled themselves, searching desperately for a path leading out of this conversation.

Superboy stood. "Well," he informed them, "I know where I'm going from here. I'm going home."

And he was gone, almost before they could blink. Superspeed had its uses. It was only later that Lu discovered the Legion Flight Ring lying abandoned on the great plasti-steel table. Duo Damsel refused to let herself cry. He'd never needed it anyway, right?

None of them were really very surprised when Superboy never again visited the Thirtieth Century. It had to happen sooner or later, they told themselves.

Superman was a busy guy.

The End

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