JLA Watchtower (Archive)

Superman arrives in the vicinity and sees utter chaos below. He scans quickly to try and find Nightwing, or Cyborg, someone he can find out what's going on from.

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First to greet him is a blur of white, gold and red, blonde hair tousled by the speed of motion, eyes behind the goggles narrowed. The Fastest Woman Alive comes up short in front of Superman, hovering a few feet above the ground, wary.

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Superman manages a smile. "Jesse, what's going on here? Why on earth are the Titans attacking a S.T.A.R. Labs facility?"

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Superman is one of her heroes, one of the people whom she wants to impress and whose approval she craves.

Usually.

Today, however, she snarls, "I don't care what your reasons are; what you're doing is WRONG!" and comes tearing at him with superspeed and a flare of superstrength behind her. Both fists are out ahead of her as she flies directly toward him, aiming for his face. A sonic boom cracks the wall behind her.

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In shock, Superman moves a fraction of a second too late, and the flying punch spins him around multiple rotations, taking him a second to right himself.

What in the name of Rao...

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She doesn't give him the mercy of time to right himself. In her world, in her fighting, seconds are eternities, and the Man of Steel has to be put down now, fast. After the impact of her fists to his face, a kick follows, aimed at his side, and then an elbow at the throat and a knee toward his abdomen. She can't relent.

He has to be put down now.

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The blows have pain behind them, to be sure, but she's not cracking ribs yet. Yet.

Slowly, a level of bile crosses the mind and throat of the Man of Steel. People are dying. His SON could DIE, and the Titans...especially this three-timing wannabe...is wasting...his...time.

Lives are at stake.

Once the knee connects, Superman rolls over onto top of Jesse, then snaps a headbutt right towards her face, while shoving downwards at top speed. Jesse's way fast, but she's not Wally.

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No, she's not Wally, but neither does Wally have her strength. A hand flares up between his head and her face, and while the effort helps deflect some of the damage from his heatbutt, much of her hand cracks...and his forehead still impacts the bridge of her nose enough to inspire blood from her nostrils and stars in her eyes. Grunting, she tries to roll away while two of her fingers jab at his solar plexus, seeking a chance to rob him of air to give her a second's respite from the fight.

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The shot is true, but given his level of invunerability, not 100 percent effective. Still, it gives him coughing fits...

When he does take breath, however, it comes out icy cold, directed in an arc around Jesse.

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She didn't expect it to be fifty percent effective, but she'll take what she can get. The cone of cold is nasty, and the instant it hits she begins a superspeed spin to try to deflect it back. If that works, she fully intends to do something she never in a million years expected to do: throw the contents of a can of cola - left in the breakroom in which they're now fighthing - in Superman's eyes.

At the speed of sound.

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The speedspin doesn't deflect it back, but it doesn't hit Jesse either.

The upshot is that the breath's still going when the cola hits. Shards of frozen sugar water hit Superman's face, and while most of his face is invulnerable, the shard that strikes directly in his eye causes Superman to flinch, and when he comes up, he's bleeding from his right eye.

However, that's not all that's about to come from his eyes. They begin to glow deep red.

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Jesse spins to a stop and stares at Superman's eyes and their glow. Bad news, that, no matter how much strength she has. She propels herself toward the metal of a nearby counter, seeking its reflecting shelter while a hand desperately throws a chair at the Man of Steel.

She's running out of options.

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Exactly what he thought she'd do. The chair flies, and Superman backfists it out of the way as the heat vision unleashes...exactly one blast.

He then flies to the other side of the counter and meets her, dead on, and decides to use his recent training. He feints the kick then spins around with a hard backfist aimed for the jaw.

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Like Luthor, Jesse wasn't expecting the expert attack on a non-powered scale. She is a highly skilled martial artist in her own right thanks to training at Nightwing's hand, but this...no, this was unexpected. She has enough time to avoid the single blast from his heat vision, something probably intended as a decoy, but the fist was nothing she could have believed of the Man of Steel. Why use a standard karate punch when he has all of his powers at his beck and call?

Two things happen: the Kryptonian's hand drives into her face, and the Fastest Woman Alive crumples to the floor.

Fight is done.

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The fight between Jesse Quick and Superman had moved far too fast for Damage to actually keep an eye on what was going on, red, yellow, and blue blurs darting around the laboratory, blazing a trail of destruction throughout the S.T.A.R. facility. Of course, he'd also been a bit distracted by the fact that the security forces were shooting at him.

However, he'd seen and heard Jesse hit the ground, then watched as she didn't get up. As if he really needed anything else to be angry about, now Superman has put one of his teammates on the floor. Grabbing one of the guards by the throat, Damage tosses the unfortunate man into a group of his compatriots.

Think we can't handle this, like we're just incompetent kids. They're not going to stop me from figuring out who did this to Lian!

Damage turns toward Superman, stretching out his arms, palms outward, the bluish-white power aura burning brightly, having crept up to his shoulders. Without any further warning, a wide blast of explosive energy tearing from his hands, aimed directly at the Man of Steel.

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The blast hits Superman, and sends him flying...

His first thought is how shoddy the teamwork is, given he waited until Jesse was down.

The next thought is that there's no way in hell he's going to be taken down by DAMAGE

He turns around and flies straight at him...then stops three feet short of impact and fires heat vision directly at his chest.

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That wasn't the most powerful blast he's ever fired off, not even close. As such, it didn't bleed off a whole lot of Damage's power - which is good because Superman looks angry. The blast of heat vision slams into the Titan's chest, sending him sailing across the room, slamming into a console near the far wall.

Picking himself up off the floor, Grant spits at the floor, running his forearm over his lips. "We can handle this, Superman! I don't know why you're interfering, but we don't need your help!" he calls out.

The power aura shimmers around his arms as he rushes forward, aiming a hard right cross at Superman's shoulder, following up with an uppercut to the Kryptonian's chin.

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Damn, this kid can hit.

"We're interfering because you're doing what you do best - blow things up for no good reason in a way that gets people hurt!!!!"

A tiny fragment of sense in the back of his mind tells him that he's going to regret saying that at some point.

But not today.

Superman returns the shot in kind, moving low for a punch to the solarplexus, followed by a crude legsweep to get Damage onto his stomach before rolling over into an elbow right to the back of the neck.

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That hurt. Landing punches on Donna a few weeks ago had been bad enough, but he hadn't had a power spike at the time. Even with his energy reserves climbing higher and higher, his fists connecting with the caped Kryptonian's shoulder and chin hurts.

And now the Most Powerful Man on Earth has gone and done something he really shouldn't have - he wounded Damage's pride. "Go to hell--!" he yells out, cocking back his fist, leaving him wide open for Superman's punch. It hits hard, colliding right with his solar plexus, causing the Titan to double over.

The sweep catches him off guard, and he falls, but Damage continues the roll up over his shoulder, coming up on one knee as Superman's elbow slams into the floor. Coughing and wheezing, trying to pull air back into his lungs, tears stinging at his eyes, the meta turns back toward Superman and...jumps.

Leaping into the air, he tucks his legs, meaning to drive his knees into the man's back, his countenance clouded with rage.

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Sorry kid, you're not that fast.

Superman spins, and catches him in midair, then flies up about 100-200 feet at superspeed, until whipping and twisting around in an attempt to cause vertigo in someone that's never done superspeed very much.

After about five seconds of this, Superman flies straight down, driving Damage into the earth outside of the complex.

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"Hey, what the--?!" is all Damage manages to get out as Superman catches him and hauls him up above the earth's surface, twisting and darting back and forth, greatly disorienting him, his vision spinning, the world swirling beneath him.

His fingers grasp tightly at the other man's shoulders, his eyes screwing tightly shut, and all he can do is hang on and hope he can regain his senses. There is the briefest of pauses as Superman's arc ends and he turns the pair toward the ground, and Damage knows he's in trouble.

Before he can even think about twisting around to lessen the blow, the ground rushes up to meet him and his shoulders and upper back collide with the earth, the impact leaving a rather sizable crater, and all the Titan can manage is a barely audible, "Hnnnf!!"

Shaking his head - and man does that hurt - Damage struggles underneath the Kryptonian for a moment. Superman will see his power aura begin to glower brighter brighter, just before a torrent of explosive energy, more powerful that what he'd unleashed moments before, tears from his palms, tightly focused beams fired from both palms at pointblank range.

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The explosion rocks the area, causing tremors for at least a half mile for a few seconds, as Superman is sent flying into the afternoon air.

Children are dying while these people are trying to prove they belong at the adult table. No more. I have had enough.

Superman flies, at top speed, back to Damage. Grant manages to hear the sonic boom right before he sees Superman's fist, at top speed, inches from his face.

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