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Author: CaptainTightPants12

Rating: K

Disclaimer: If I owned Superman, his story lines, or any related characters, you'd be seeing this story in the pages of the this month's issue of Superman and not for free on FanFiction. Ditto any DC Comics characters or storylines.

Summary: After Barry Allen changes history to save the world, Clark Kent faces an uncertain destiny in a new world.

Chapter: #239, Earth-Whatever-The-Hell

Author's Note: Here we go again! Another Sunday, another Flashpoint! Last chapter, we saw Superman vs. Power Girl! This chapter, we see a whole lot more of that as their respective arguments get made! I wonder who is going to come out on top! Find out now!

. . . .previously on Flashpoint. . . .

"If Brainiac gets ahold of the Fortress, he'll wipe all of us out and he'll be unstoppable," she snapped.

"If we do something to him now and the Destroyer of Worlds comes, what makes you think we can stop it? This might be the only way to save the world!"

Karen stepped forward and snarled, "A real Superman wouldn't cower down and would find a way to stop it."

"In case you missed it, your Superman didn't even survive the Crime Syndicate-"

Before he could finish his statement, Karen delivered a right hook that sent him flying backwards through walls of the Fortress. "Karen!" Lois shouted.

She held up her hand, "He's got more than that coming, Lo. I suggest you find somewhere without a roof that might cave in."

Karen shot off like a bullet down the Superman-shaped hole in the wall, and Lois shook her head and pulled out her phone. "Of course AT&T doesn't have service at the North Pole," she grumbled under her breath. She quickly grabbed her Justice League com. "Borgy Boy, you there?"

"Lois? Is that you?" a female voice asked.

She furrowed her brow, "Ummm, maybe? Who is this?"

"It's Barbara Gordon," the voice answered. "Victor has uh... He's taking a little bit of a break after... well... you know..."

Lois closed her eyes for a moment. That poor boy had to be going through as much as Clark was, only he watched his cyborg body help carry out the task of murdering their friends because he had been overtaken by GRID. She let out a sigh, "Hiya, Babs. Is Diana around? I need help at the Fortress of Solitude."

There was a loud crashing in the distance, "Is everything ok?" Barbara asked.

"Not exactly," Lois grimaced. "Maybe see if Mera is around too?"

. . . .and now. . . .

Ice flew around like shrapnel across a battleground as Clark flew backwards through the walls of the Fortress. He landed with such a thunderous crash that surely somewhere, some scientist must have thought that they were detecting an earthquake originating from the North Pole. He looked up to see Karen flying down towards him and he moved within a microsecond of her knee coming down where his head had been. Clark rolled out of the way and looked up at her with glowing red eyes, unleashing enough heat-vision to send Karen flying backwards through one of the walls of the Fortress.

Clark got to his feet and stepped through the hole in the wall, "Who do you think you are?"

"I think I'm the only one not blinded by grief making decisions around here!" she shouted back.

He narrowed his eyes, "You can't tell me that if there was a way to protect the world from something awful, you wouldn't entertain that? I know that where you are from, Brainiac was a villain, but things are different here. And they can be different here. Isn't that why you came? To change things?"

Karen shook her head, "There are some things that just don't change. The sun sets in the west, Lois Lane and Clark Kent, Lex Luthor is an asshole, Batman has a crappy sense of humor, and Brainiac steals cities. He's lying to you, Clark. He's not going to help you, he wants the power of the Fortress!"

"I never said I was going to give it to him!" Clark shouted.

"No, you're just going to do that classic Clark Kent thing!" she growled. "You're going to give him a chance, you're going to give him rope, and he's going to hang you with it! Look at what happened with Lex Luthor, you gave him an inch, and look what has happened! He's way too involved with our lives! You are going to consider helping him, you're going to underestimate him, and then he's going to take the power he needs to destroy our world!"

Clark started to breathe heavily, "I wouldn't do that."

"I've done my homework since I got here. Lex, General Lane, Darkseid, Trigon, Checkmate, Waller, Metallo... You either give them enough room to kick your ass or you sacrifice yourself to stop them. Brainiac is a different animal, Clark. He's not a brute like Darkseid or Trigon or Metallo, and he's not as small scale as Lex or Checkmate or Waller. He's a game changer. He's a manipulator. He's both powerful and smart, more so than you are," she said bluntly.

He let out a small scoff, "Think that highly of me, eh?"

She shook her head, "No, I just know what Brainiac is capable of. I watched him destroy my home, Clark. I watched him come for Metropolis time and time again. Of all of the foes that Superman meets, Brainiac is every bit of the worst of them. And the fact that you can't seem to figure this out, that when I stand here and tell you these things and you still don't listen, it makes me think you're not prepared for what he brings to the table."

"Something is coming that we might not be able to stop," Clark shook his head. "I can't turn away. I am not saying that I trust him, but I can't ignore the fact that we are weaker than ever. If I turn away from an opportunity to save this world because you tell me Brainiac was a bad guy where you're from, when the evidence on this world says perhaps he can help, I might be sealing the fate of every last person on this planet. Your Lex Luthor never helped your Superman do anything, but the one on this world brought me back from the dead to stop Darkseid. Things aren't always as simple as they seem. I have to see this through."

Clark turned away, but Karen caught his arm, "Then you're not leaving me any choice, Clark. I have to stop you. I can't let him destroy another world."

"If what Brainiac says is true, my father turned away his help because he thought he could overcome whatever came next. It led to the destruction of Krypton, and if your world is proof of what is constant, the core was going to explode anyways so it doesn't matter that Zod made the Red Sun supernova. Now you are telling me to turn his help away because you think we can band together against whatever comes next. Don't you get that? We seal our fate."

She nodded, "I do. I know what I'm saying. I know what it's like to look at an impossible decision and have to make a choice. But I'm willing to bet on us and the Justice League coming through over him. You've just lost your confidence. You're not thinking this through."

"I would have hoped that your Superman would have taught you to have faith in people. To have hope in the good in people," he retorted.

"He did," she began to snarl. "He just wasn't dumb enough to ignore what was right in front of his face."

Clark clenched his jaw, preparing himself for what he knew was going to come next. "No, he knew he was going to die at the hands of the Crime Syndicate, but he wasn't the one that was too stupid to see that they were being sent away to to be saved, not to get reinforcements."

She crashed into him swinging wildly as they blew through the walls of the Fortress again. "Don't! You! Dare!"

They blew through room after room after room, and if the Fortress had been anything like the one that she had grown up in, they would have unleashed all kinds of animals and criminals at this point. Instead, it was just more ice to break because as she was furiously aware, this Superman was not the same as the one that had raised her. In her eyes, he was younger and more reckless, where the one that she had looked up to and had been trained by was more disciplined and knew a threat when he saw it. He wouldn't have risked the safety of the world for anything.

"You think your Superman wouldn't have considered this under the same circumstances?!" he grunted as he traded swings with her. "You're kidding yourself!"

Karen elbowed him hard in the gut, "He didn't back down from a fight!"

"I'm not backing down, I'm doing what Bruce would have done! I'm trying to be logical! You're just emotional because you lost Kandor! But newsflash, Karen! I have seen it! They're all there, and they're completely safe! Guess what isn't?! Krypton!" he shouted back.

"You don't know that Jor-El wouldn't have found a way to save your Krypton! Brainiac's actions led to the destruction of Krypton, but you're so scared that you can't win a fight that you're willing to take the easy way out, handing our fate to an intergalactic monster!" she growled.

Clark hit the wall with a thud, "If we didn't give people a chance, the Justice League wouldn't exist in the first place. Your Superman died fighting along side people that he could have mistrusted, that someone from another universe could have said that he saw Batman be a villain, like we have seen first hand, and you wouldn't even have your best friend! Your Superman was smart enough to have hope!"

"Don't talk about him like you knew him!" she snapped.

"He died because there wasn't any other way to stop them, we don't have to fall into the same trap!"

Karen sprung forward while shouting, "I said to stop talking about him!"

He did the same, but before they could collide, they were taken down to the ground. Karen growled as she looked up, "Let go of me, Di!"

"Not until you calm down," she sighed before looking at Mera, holding Clark in place. "Do you have him?"

She looked unamused, "I trained Arthur. I can handle the farm boy."

He glared, "I'm not going to hurt her, she's my cousin."

Karen struggled under Diana's grip, "Yeah, well, I could still go for kicking your ass, Cuz."

Diana shook her head, "Who wants to explain what is happening here?"

It was at this point that Lois jogged in, "I don't hear as much destruction and raised voices, that's gotta be a good sign right?"

"You called the tiara wearing principal?" Karen growled.

Diana furrowed her brow, "Was that an insult?"

"You two are aliens from another world that can knock down buildings," Lois rolled her eyes. "I struggled to open a pickle jar last week. What did you think I was going to do? Come back here with my fisticuffs and put you two emotional wrecks over my knee? Of course I called the principal!"

Again, Diana shook her head and looked at Mera, "Is it? It sounds like it is."

"I hated the headmistress in Xebel as a student, but perhaps it means something better on the surface world?" Mera offered.

Karen rolled her eyes, "Do you want to tell her, or should I?"

He let out a sigh, "It's complicated."

. . . .a complicated conversation later. . . .

"Tell him that can't trust Brainiac," Karen waved her hand and dropped it onto the table in Watchtower. "I watched him murder my people. He came to Earth countless times and tried to reign down destruction upon Earth. His plan was to take our peak civilization, and destroy the rest. For him, he only wanted it for himself. Once he had it, no one else could have it. If we let him in the door, he will destroy Earth."

Mera nodded, "I agree with Karen. This creature cannot be trusted. Our enemies rarely change their stripes."

"Thank you!" Karen grinned. "Di?"

She blinked for a few moments and looked to Clark before looking back to Karen, "I have never been one to turn away from a fight. In fact, in order to win many fights, I have had to make deals and seek allegiance from those that I neither trusted nor approved of as an ally. Often times, I knew that they would betray me at the first chance they had, but there was no other way to do what needed to be done. I have been all the way to the bowels of the underworld and made deals with Hades himself, but it was something that had to be done in order to complete my mission. So, I am afraid that I agree with Clark."

Karen shook her head, "What happened to ladies sticking together?"

"If there is a way to potentially use this Brainiac creature's technology to save the Earth, it is worth exploring," Diana offered. "Though I do not believe you should allow this being to have access to the Fortress either. He is too dangerous to be allowed inside."

Lois waved her heads, "See? Middle ground. Freakin' Kents."

He let out a sigh, "Mera, didn't you come from a place that considered the Atlanteans evil? That they had trapped Xebel in another dimension? In fact, weren't you raised and trained to murder Arthur for these crimes? Things are not always as they seem." Mera looked to the floor and nodded, so he turned to his cousin and sighed, "Karen, you told me Silver Banshee was one of the great villains on your world, but here? She's just a woman with a curse on her back. She helped me fight the Black Banshee. It's not all black and white, and I don't intend to give Brainiac the run of the place, but I can't start this off closed minded. And I can't tip our hand before we know where he stands. I don't know how much time we have."

"Time?" Mera asked.

"Time before the Destroyer of Worlds arrives. Time before something else tries to end the world. Time before we need something like this," Clark offered. "It could be any time now. We don't know when these things will happen, so we have to treat it as if it could happen at any time."

Karen clenched her jaw, "I will make you a deal, since apparently we're in the business of compromise now."

"I'm all ears," he blinked.

She let out a sigh, "I'm going to go get some answers out of that bitch from Earth-Whatever-The-Hell. Please don't do anything that I'm going to have to beat you up for in the meantime? You're one of the few people on the planet that it hurts when you hit back."

Clark couldn't help but let out a chuckle, "I've already got bruises to remind me of just that."

"You know, this would be a really cute family moment if we weren't talking about the end of the world," Lois muttered.

"And ya ruined it, Lo," Karen rolled her eyes.

. . . .to be continued. . . .

Author's Note: Well, what did you think?! The band is back together! Kind of... I'm super excited for the next chapter, the return of some other characters that I've been itching to write! But I wanted to have an actual all out fight between Power Girl and Superman though. It's important to show both sides of this argument because I want this to be an arc of debate. Should we trust Brainiac? Might he be a good guy? We know Brainiac 5 is, he's one of the Legion of Superheroes, what if this Brainiac is that one? We never know! What if Brainiac could bottle the entire planet in the event that the Destroyer of Worlds comes? Also, that's not actually that character's name, I just don't want to spoil what that character is yet, haha. It's such a mouthful, but I've got big plans for that one still to come! Anyways, shoot me some reviews and let me know what you thought! Can't wait to see you on Sunday!