TOC Part 11 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JOURNAL ENTRY #12
MID FEBRUARY, 1995
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If the last entry was routine business (even if it did later turn out to have involved Rollie Vale, Kryptonite, and the return of Lex Luthor from the dead), the events of this one were anything but.
It started out simply enough. Top Copy's Diana Stride came into town, looking to do a story on Superman. She put a radioactive tracer on him, which he easily eluded. Clearly, she was a "Lois and Clark" problem, so we stepped back and just kept an eye on things. Then we found out that she was a retired Intergang assassin, and that they were reactivating her. She was supposed to take out a snitch who was due to testify about Intergang, ruining some of their major operations. That made the situation a little more complicated. We wondered if we should get word to Lois and Clark.
That situation was resolved, though, when she struck at her target while Lois and Clark were in the area. Clark rescued the target and Lois found Diana's lucky necklace. The witness was sent to the hospital, but he was expected to recover. So, it looked like Lois and Clark would be able to handle things on their own, as usual.
Then Cadmus stepped in. They hired her to kill Superman, a job she was glad to take after he'd foiled her first strike. Cadmus's involvement made her our problem. Except that she was also a "Lois and Clark" problem, which meant that we weren't supposed to interfere.
Diana got Kryptonite through Intergang, but then Cadmus contacted her, saying they could do a better job with it. We didn't know what to do, or even what she was planning. The whole thing was a mess.
Of course, that's when Wells suddenly showed up to make things even more tricky. It seemed Diana was going to expose Clark's secret identity, which would throw off history entirely.
Cadmus used their experience in formulating liquid Kryptonite to put the small sample Diana had obtained into a more deadly form. She'd already had Intergang grind it into a paste, but Cadmus found ways to enhance its effects. When applied to Superman's skin, it would penetrate into his bloodstream, circulating through his body and poisoning him. Cadmus also gave her plans and frequencies for a better tracker, which she passed on to Intergang. The new tracker would use the enhanced Kryptonite itself as the radioactive tag.
She used it before we could find a way to stop her. But Lois came up with a way to burn it out of his system. For some odd reason, she thought Kryptonite poisoning could be treated like cancer, with radiation. That was, of course, completely off-base, but Clark was too sick to realize it. So, he walked into the reactor chamber of the local nuclear power plant. Which seemed incredibly stupid, even to me.
We were all stunned when it worked, but we later figured it out. The intense radiation of the reactor had torn through his body. His powers, in part fed by the radiation itself (some of which was similar to solar radiation), had healed him. The Kryptonite, however, had been ripped apart, broken down into more harmless substances. Then, when he'd walked back out of the reactor, his aura had somehow absorbed the excess radiation, allowing him to safely move around without irradiating everyone around him.
That, however, still left the problem of the exposed identity.
Wells ended up taking care of that himself, although he "bent" some rules doing it. "I, er... Went back in time," he explained.
"You did?" I asked. "But nothing seems different."
"Ah, yes," Wells replied, unconcerned. "It wouldn't. Yet. Rather than preventing the story from ever airing, I made it possible for Clark to cast it into doubt."
"How'd you swing that?"
"Well, you see, I secretly replaced Martha Kent's regular art teacher with... *ahem*"
"Folger's Crystals?" Inez piped up brightly.
"Er... no." Wells fidgeted some more, clearly having trouble making the admission. "With... a man from the future."
"Uh-huh," I said, not quite sure what to make of it.
"Yes. He's... sort of a policeman, if you will."
I frowned, confused. "And what is a policeman from the future supposed to do, posing as Martha Kent's art teacher?"
Wells beamed, clearly proud of himself. "He's going to introduce her to a new form of sculpture — advanced holography. She will then be able to use that holographic equipment to create a realistic image of Superman which can appear next to Clark."
"I see. So you got someone from the future to bring advanced equipment back in time and teach Martha Kent how to use it."
"That's right," he replied happily.
"And that's not interfering with history?"
He hesitated for a moment, but then rallied. "Uhm... Of course not. It's setting things back on the right track."
"And you had no trouble convincing this policeman to go along with it?"
"Of course not. I've worked with the Peacekeepers from the very beginnings of their organization!"
"I thought you first encountered them after you decided to take Tempus home as a souvenir," Dudley commented, joining the conversation.
"In my personal timeline, yes. But in their history, I've been there from the start."
"The wonders of time travel," Phillip said, shaking his head.
"Exactly!" Wells replied, grinning.
We all took a moment to digest it.
"Incidentally," Wells said, breaking the silence, "I don't know if I should be asking this, but curiosity has gotten the better of me. Do any of you happen to know anyone who goes by the name 'Hawk Master'?"
We looked around, confused, before agreeing that none of us had ever heard of anyone who used a name anything like that. Wells was reluctant to tell us more, but eventually admitted that he'd been browsing the Peacekeeper's archives, looking for information about us. According to history, a mysterious new recruit by the name of "Hawk Master" would one day help us complete our most critical mission. No one, it seemed, knew anything more than that.
We assured Wells that we couldn't satisfy his curiosity. Embarrassed at having revealed as much as he had, he left soon after. We shook our heads and got back to work.
Except... between Lois, Superman, and Wells, the entire mess had cleaned itself up without our having to do anything. Diana Stride had been captured, the witness was safe, Clark had recovered from the Kryptonite, and Wells had provided him with the means to protect his identity. It had been a confusing and worrying time, but everything had worked out, more or less. I almost wished that all our cases could go like that. Almost.
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