[Emissary] Chapter 20 - Project Cadmus (Patreon)

AN: If you're interested in joining my Discord server, you can do it at /x7xdd53WqE

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Previous chapter 

“Dao!”

For a second, it was as if the whole world was cut in half. Trees, rocks, animals, the earth wall erected by Faust, and the magician himself too—a slanted horizontal blade of magic had sliced them all in two. 

Felix Faust’s eyes were wide in shock and horror as he watched his own upper body slide off his lower body from the waist before falling to the ground with a wet thud. He died before he even knew it. 

⁂

“I better remove all traces of battle,” he muttered when he looked at all the destruction around him. 

He vanished the corpses of the five demons and Felix Faust’s bisected body too, and then he grabbed a tree branch close to him and turned it into a portkey before throwing it on Tala, who was unconscious, teleporting her away. Then, he cast a large area of effect [Arc of Time], restoring the place to how it used to be before his battle against the two sorcerers. 

With that done, Harry Apparated back into his bunker-home, two kilometres below the ground. 

“You’re back,” Kara said when she saw him reappearing in the study. “Is that woman one of the people who came after me?”

“Her name is Tala. I recognise her from the files that the Justice League keeps on villains,” Harry said. “She came together with another sorcerer, one named Felix Faust.”

“Did he escape?” 

“No, I killed him,” Harry said. 

A poignant silence followed. Kara rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably. 

“...Was it necessary to kill him?” she asked. 

He glanced at her with an unreadable look in his eyes. 

“He followed you here to kill you, Kara. Besides, Felix Faust was a sorcerer. Don’t tell me you think some regular prison would have been able to hold him.”

At that moment, Tala let out a moan in her sleep. The Stunning Spell that he had cast at her should have kept her unconscious for hours, but she was already showing signs of stirring awake. 

“I still don’t think it’s right,” Power Girl said while she watched Harry conjuring ropes from his wand to tie the woman up and gag her too so that she would not be able to speak if she were to wake up. 

“If there is one thing I learned in my long life, it’s that showing kindness to enemies is no different than being cruel to yourself,” Harry said calmly. “You don’t even need to listen to me. Just take a look at what happened to you and all your fellow heroes over the years. You keep arresting metahuman criminals and throwing them in prison, but, one way or another, they either break out or buy their way out of jail with money and good lawyers. And then you will start it all again, from the beginning: them attacking you in revenge, and you beating them up and throwing them in prison again. It's like a never-ending cycle until one of you dies.”

Harry let out a sigh. 

“Look, we’ll talk it over a bit later, okay? Finding out why these two were trying to kill you is more important now.”

Taking her silence as a sign of agreement, he turned his attention back to Tala and aimed his wand at her face:

“Legillimens!”

⁂

The act of invading Tala’s thoughts and ‘reading her mind' did not take more than two minutes, but Power Girl noticed that Harry’s facial expression seemed a bit stiff when he ended the spell. 

‘Come to think of it, have I ever seen him look worried before?’ 

In her eyes, he always seemed to be relaxed, easygoing, and confident, as if he were always in control of the situation. For him to show that sort of expression, something terrible must have happened. 

“This is bad,” was the first thing Harry said after he pulled back from Tala’s mind. 

“What’s wrong? What did you see?”

“Tala, Felix Faust, and many others were sent by the government to kill you.”

“What?!”

It sounded so outlandish that, for a moment there, Kara had a hard time believing she heard right. 

“If her memories are to be believed, they’ve already captured the two Green Lanterns, John and Hal. Superman is being targeted as we speak too.”

Hearing his words, Kara quickly took out her smartphone in order to call Superman. She may have had a big argument with him recently, but she cared about him. 

However, her phone was malfunctioning. Space-Expansion Charms, Protection Charms, Warding Spells, Transfiguration Spells, Runic Arrays, Warming and Cooling Charms, and so on and so forth—there was so much magic in Harry’s underground home that her smartphone was flashing and buzzing when she turned it on; she couldn’t use it for anything. 

“Don’t worry, I know their plans. They’re planning on luring Superman to the Daily Planet and pretending to be a suicide jumper to catch him off guard before shooting him. I'll go to him right now.”

“Take me with you!” Power Girl said. 

“But your powers aren’t working. You’re just a regular girl now. Even a punk with a handgun could kill you now, let alone the government’s hired killers!”

“I can’t stay here! I’ll die of worry. I need to know that he is alright!”

Unknowingly, Kara’s blue eyes started turning red with her growing frustration, and the whole room shuddered as she stomped her foot on the floor. 

Power Girl was startled too by the sudden return of her Kryptonian powers. The more time passed, the more she was starting to accept that the Star Labs’ medic’s diagnosis was true: the fact that her loss of power all stemmed from a mental level. 

“Any more complaints?” she asked. 

Getting over his surprise at seeing Kara unexpectedly regain her Kryptonian powers like that, Harry replied:

"None whatsoever."

He pointed his wand at her businesswoman suit and heels and Transfigured them into her Power Girl outfit. "Let’s go.”

As soon as Kara took his hand, the two of them Disapparated.

⁂

Anticipating the fact that there would be a large crowd gathered around Daily Planet, Harry Apparated himself and Power Girl several dozen metres in the air to prevent any splinching accidents. 

“Superman!” Kara shouted and dove down before Harry could say anything. 

Due to her Microscopic Vision, she could see perfectly what was going on down below, despite the distance. 

‘Homenum Revelio.’

Once he cast that spell, his sight almost went white from how many people’s silhouettes started glowing in his eyes. However, other than the crowd below, the reporters and the pilots in their helicopters, and the people inside the buildings, he couldn’t detect anyone suspicious; nobody was lurking around, hiding, or on Daily Planet’s rooftop. 

‘That cyborg, Metallo was his name? He must’ve run away after shooting Superman.’

Checking one more time that his four protective charms were still active on his person (Mana Shield, Protego Aegis, Protego Totalum, and the Runic Iron Skin) Harry donned his usual skull mask and flew down to the crowd below. 

A large crowd was gathered around a cordoned area where Superman lay down, unconscious, with a group of doctors and firefighters around him. 

A rather attractive woman with long black hair was holding an oxygen mask to Superman’s mouth while a firefighter was on one knee, trying his best to cut open his skin with a grinding machine. 

“I can’t pierce his skin!” the firefighter shouted to make himself heard over the infernal noise of the tool in his hand. 

Sparks were flying everywhere as the grinding machine’s disc was being eroded from the friction with Superman’s skin, but that was all there was to it. Even though the Man of Steel was being weakened by the Kryptonite bullet in his chest, they still couldn’t cut his skin open to remove the bullet. 

“Emissary?!”

“He came here too! Maybe he can do something about it?”

“He’s an amazing sorcerer! I’m sure he’ll save Superman!”

The spectating people were rather surprised but also enthusiastic to see Emissary appear in their midst. Only a few weeks passed since the ‘Miracle’ that he had performed in New York, restoring the entire city to a pristine condition, as if it had never been obliterated by a meteorite. The mass media and regular people all wanted to find out more about Emissary, but they had not seen or heard anything about him ever since. Today was the first time he was showing himself to the public again. 

“He got shot with a Kryptonite bullet,” Power Girl explained him the situation. “The bullet didn’t hit his heart, but it’s very close to it. The problem is that his punctured skin healed back, and now they can’t cut him open to remove the bullet.”

“I see,” Harry muttered as he cast a nonverbal Diagnosis Charm to get an accurate idea of the wounds that Superman had suffered. 

Taking his noncommittal words as a soft refusal to involve himself in the situation, Power Girl pleaded:

“I know he doesn’t like you. I know you two aren’t the best of friends, but… please don’t hold it against him. You can be the bigger man. Please, Harry. You could-”

She was so worried about Superman that she forgot that they were in the middle of a huge crowd and that she wasn’t supposed to call him by his real name. 

But Harry took her hand in his and squeezed it lightly, stopping her plea.

“What are you saying? Of course I will help him!”

He was over 500 years old. To him, Superman’s antagonistic behaviour was little different from a child’s tantrum. He also understood what he must have looked like in Superman’s eyes: some random magician popped out of nowhere and killed Batman, who was his best friend. 

So Harry had never really held any ill will towards Superman. It was all one-sided. Furthermore, he wasn’t petty enough to let someone die just because they didn’t see eye-to-eye. 

He made a small circle with the tip of his wand in the palm of his right hand, conjuring a pair of delicate but strong locking forceps, a surgical tool meant for grabbing and holding things. 

“I can cut open his skin, but my Diagnosis Spell shows that his bullet is extremely close to his heart. I’m afraid-”

“I’ll do it,” Kara said, taking the forceps from his hand. 

“...Are you sure? It’s a Kryptonite bullet,” Harry said worriedly. 

She leaned in close to whisper in his ear so that only he could hear her.

“It’s a secret, but, for some reason, Kryptonite doesn’t affect me like it does Superman. Nobody except for Superman knows this.” (1)

Harry took a look at the people around them and then at the woman who was holding the mask to Superman’s mouth. Then he stood up and made a flashy show out of conjuring what looked like a bright red, special suit that people who worked in environments with acid and radiation hazards wore.

“It’s a special suit. It will protect you from the Kryptonite radiation,” Harry said loud enough for Lois Lane and the firefighters and doctors around Superman to hear his words. 

Power Girl caught on to what he was doing and played along. 

“Thank you,” she said, quickly putting on the special suit with its helmet, gloves, and boots.

As Emissary and Power Girl crouched next to Superman, the doctors and firefighters took a few steps back, giving them space. 

“Don’t worry, Lois, he’s in good hands. We’ll save him,” Power Girl put a hand on Lois Lane’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly in encouragement. 

“I’m going to cast a Cutting Charm. Ready?” Harry asked. 

“Ready.”

At her word of confirmation, he cast another mental Diagnosis Charm to double-check the kryptonite bullet’s position inside Superman’s chest before pressing the tip of the Elder Wand to his chest and slicing his skin open, making an 8-centimetre-long cut in his flesh. 

Knowing that the wound was not going to last long before Superman’s healing factor kicked in, Power Girl didn’t waste a second. Using her Microscopic Vision the entire time, she inserted the tip of the forceps in his chest and locked it around the bullet. 

Superman let out pained moans as Kara’s forceps came inside his chest, making her anxiety rise off the charts. 

Although her Kryptonian powers were back, she was so nervous that beads of sweat started gathering on her forehead as she slowly pulled out the bullet.

“I got it,” Kara said, her voice betraying her immense relief as she showed Harry and Lois the brightly glowing green bullet in her forceps. 

A moment later, Harry cast a Vanishing Spell on both the forceps and the Kryptonite bullet, erasing them from existence. 

Ten very long seconds passed, and everyone seemed to hold their breath as they waited to see what was going to happen next. 

After ten seconds, the cut in Superman’s chest healed like a miracle, and he opened his eyes before sitting up. 

The crowd erupted in cheers when Superman regained consciousness and Lois threw her arms around him, hugging him for all he was worth. 

“What happened?”

“You were shot with a Kryptonite bullet,” Power Girl explained. 

Her words made it all come back to him in an instant. He looked at the firefighters and medics around and the various tools that they were still holding in their hands, and then at the skull-masked Emissary. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they couldn’t cut open his skin to remove the bullet and that Harry must have used his magic to do so. 

“Did you…save my life?” he asked in realisation, the tone of his voice letting Harry know just how surprised he was. 

“Together with Power Girl, yes,” Harry said, directing Superman’s attention to Power Girl, who was still wearing the anti-radiation special suit. 

“I have no quarrel with you, Superman,” Harry said simply. “I wouldn’t let someone die just because of our differences. Nevertheless, we’ll have time to talk later. This is an emergency. You aren’t the only one who was attacked.”

“Who else? What’s happening?”

“Listen, don’t ask many questions. We don’t have time. The entire Justice League is under attack, not just you and your teammates, here in the US, but the Justice League of Europe too. A top-secret branch of the American Government named “Project Cadmus” had put together a team of metahumans and hired killers to take you all out. Plans that were meticulously designed to aim at your weaknesses. Hal Jordan and John Stewart were captured already. Hawkgirl is under attack. I am afraid Captain Atom was already killed. Flash is in danger now too.”

Superman stood up from the ground with a serious look on his face. 

“Alright, what’s the plan?” he asked. 

“I’m going to teleport you to Hawkgirl. She is in dire need of help. They don’t plan on taking her alive,” Harry said. “Do you trust me?”

“You’ve just saved my life and it’s the second time already. I trust you,” Superman said and nodded.

“Can you get in touch with Flash? Someone bolted an exploding bracelet to his wrist. He can’t phase out of it or stop running, or the bomb will detonate.”

“Jesus…” Superman exclaimed in a soft voice. “As long as his coms are still online, I can reach him.”

He brought a finger to his ear and asked:

“Flash? Flash, do you hear me?”

“Superman? You won’t believe it-”

“I know; I heard about it. You got a bomb bolted through your wrist.”

“How did you know?”

“We’ll explain later. First, how bad is it? Where are you?”

“Pretty bad. I can’t phase out of this, or it blows up. And if I decelerate, it explodes too. I’ve been running for a while now… I’m starting to get tired.”

“Don’t give up, Flash! We’ll come to get you! Just tell us where you are!”

“It’s no use. I’m running so fast that my position will have changed long before you even get here. I know you’re fast, Superman, but I think even you’ll have trouble catching up to how fast I’m running now… I’m sorry… but don’t worry, I’ll make sure I’ll be in a remote place when the bomb explodes.”

“Listen, keep running! Emissary is here! He can teleport where you are. Just hold on for one minute.”

“Power Girl and I will help Flash,” Harry said. “I can teleport to him, but he’s so fast that I won’t be able to help him with anything. It will be Power Girl’s job to carry me and fly fast enough to keep up with Flash so I can cast the spell to vanish the bomb.”

“Are you sure? He said even I would have trouble catching up to him,” Superman asked. “And Power Girl’s powers are-”

“I’m at full power now. Don’t worry, Superman. We’ll do it,” said Kara. “Trust us.”

“...Okay.”

Harry grabbed the oxygen mask from the ground and then cut a piece of the hose from the oxygen tank too before turning them both into Portkeys. 

“The mask will take you to Hawkgirl. You can activate this portkey by saying the name of your home planet. You will appear in front of the factory where Hawkgirl was lured and ambushed. The piece of hose will take you to Hungary, where Animal Man was ambushed by Gorilla Grodd, Star Sapphire, and Copperhead. When you are ready, say Supergirl’s real name, and the Portkey will activate to teleport you there. And if it all goes well for you, Red Rocket is supposed to be in Russia, in Saint Petersburg. Cadmus’ agents are going to use the electromagnetic weapon Nika to fire an EMP pulse to destroy his power suit and kill him too.”

“I understand,” Superman said as he took the two portkeys from Harry’s hands. “And thank you. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

Pressing on his earpiece, Superman called Flash again. 

“Flash? You still there?”

“Yes, still alive and kicking,” Flash said in a humorous voice, as if he wasn’t only a few minutes away from dying. 

“Decide on a landmark you’re going to pass by in 30 seconds. A place where Emissary has visited before. Emissary and Power Girl will be there, waiting for you. The plan is for Power Girl to fly as fast as you are running while Emissary casts the spell to make the bomb disappear.”

“I told you, I don’t think it will work. I’m running too fast now. Even you-”

“Flash, it’s the only plan we have,” Superman cut him off. 

“... I understand... How about that entrance to that cave where he first showed us what his Portkeys can do?”

As Superman relayed Flash’s words to Harry, he nodded. 

“It’s good,” Harry confirmed.

“Emissary said it’s fine. He and Power Girl will be there in 30 seconds from now,” Superman told Flash before glancing at Power Girl and Harry and saying: “Good luck.”

And with that, he spoke the name of his home planet, “Krypton”, activating the mask portkey. 

Once Superman was teleported away, making the spectating crowd gasp in shock, Harry took Power Girl’s hand and teleported away too, leaving a gobsmacked Lois Lane and a stupefied group of doctors and firefighters behind. They heard everything that had transpired. 

⁂

The instant they arrived at the entrance of the cave, Harry cast a Bubble-Head Charm on his head and then an Impervius Charm on his entire body and one on Power Girl too.

“Hug me from behind,” Harry said.

Power Girl didn’t ask useless questions, knowing that time was of the essence. 

Had they been in different circumstances, Kara would have teased Harry for how he lowered himself until his head was at the level of her breasts, but that was not the time for it. Once Kara hugged his neck and buried the back of his head into her chest, wide and thick leather belts came out of Harry’s wand and strapped their bodies together tightly in a way that made it impossible for his body to slip off. 

“Fifteen seconds left,” Harry spoke quickly. “Don’t focus on holding me, the straps will do that. Fly as fast as you can!”

“Yes.”

With only five seconds left, a look of intense focus appeared on Power Girl’s face as she flew together with Harry two metres above the ground, getting in position. 

5..

4..

3..

2..

1.

If not for his superhuman constitution as Death’s Emissary, and if not for the fact that his head was cushioned by Kara’s breasts, merely the consequences of Kara’s abrupt burst of speed would have crushed Harry’s ribs and internal organs or at least snapped his neck. 

The Bubble-Head Charm ensured that he would not die of suffocation, and the Impervius Charm ensured that the wind pressure from flying faster than the speed of sound would not destroy the Bubble-Head Charm. 

Alas, Power Girl was flying so fast that even with 7 spells that he had cast on himself, Harry felt as if he were only a few seconds away from passing out. All the surroundings appeared like a blur, and a feeling of vertigo made his head spin. He was struggling not to throw up. They were already flying faster than commercial airplanes, leaving sonic booms in their wake. 

Despite his condition, Harry had the presence of mind to cast Featherweight Charms on both himself and Power Girl, which resulted in their speed increasing even further. 

“I can’t believe you guys actually managed to catch up to my speed!” Flash’s words reached Harry’s ears, startling him. 

For a split second, he thought that Flash must have used some sort of telepathic ability or even magic. After all, logically, it made no sense that he could talk to them when their speed was multiple times faster than the sound. But he banished those distracting thoughts and sent his intent into Power Girl's mind with a Legilimency spell. 

‘Fly as close to Flash as you can.’

He also sent his intent into Flash’s mind with a spell:

‘Run as close as possible to Power Girl.’

The two did as told, and now Flash and Power Girl were flying/running shoulder to shoulder across the Atlantic Ocean, stirring enormous waves in their wake. 

‘Keep your right hand still.’ 

Harry spoke into Flash’s mind, and the speedster became tense. It was then or never. 

The moment Flash stopped moving his right hand, Harry touched the bolted bracelet bomb with the Elder Wand.

“Evanesco.”

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It was just a regular evening, just a regular shift, doing patrol duty in Los Angeles. Beating up thugs, foiling robberies, saving people, and flying around with her electric mace to intimidate any would-be evildoers. It was just the usual Hero stuff for Hawkgirl. 

Or that’s how it was supposed to be. 

As she was flying above the industrial district of Los Angeles, the unmistakable sounds of gunshots came from a factory below. It couldn’t pass as a misfired shot or a negligent discharge; it was a full-blown shootout. 

Frowning behind her bird mask, Hawkgirl grabbed the handle of her mace and flew straight down, breaking through the roof of the factory with no regard for the property damage she was causing. After all, human lives were at stake. Every second mattered. 

Crashing through the roof, Hawkgirl let out a battle cry as she entered the factory. But she couldn’t see a thing, it was pitch dark inside. Furthermore, all sounds of gunshots had stopped. There were no people inside either; or if they were, she just couldn’t see them. 

All of a sudden, a sound like that of an engine revving up was heard, and a powerful attracting force almost yanked the mace out of her hand. However, one of the first things that all the members of the Thanagarian military learn is to never let go of their weapons. Because of that, she was yanked together with her weapon, slamming hard against a metallic platform. 

The darkness in the factory unexpectedly disappeared, getting sucked into the cane of an old man wearing a tuxedo, and Hawkgirl was momentarily blinded by the extremely bright lights that suddenly overwhelmed her sense of sight. 

“You won’t be able to pull out your mace, Hawkgirl,” the old man spoke. “That is a state-of-the-art superconducting electromagnetic device. Even someone like Superman wouldn’t be able to take it out now, much less someone like you.”

“Shade!” she exclaimed. Although she still couldn’t see well, she recognised the villain’s voice. 

“I suggest you surrender peacefully. You are surrounded from all sides.”

As her vision slowly came back, Hawkgirl saw nearly 10 red dots on her chest, stomach, and many more on her wings. 

“Hawkgirl falling in the City of Angels. Rather poetic, don’t you-” Shade began to say, but Hawkgirl let out a cry of anger, and before he and the rest of the special forces operatives at his side could react, she let go of her mace and flew at him. 

She decked the old villain in the jaw so hard that he went flying like a broken kite, and he didn’t get up from the spot where he collapsed. 

However, Shade’s teammates weren’t scrubs, and Hawkgirl wasn’t bulletproof. She flapped her wings, attempting to fly away, diving at one of the agents but a hail of bullets rained upon her from behind, skewering her wings, and leaving more than six bleeding holes behind. 

But even as she cried out in pain and smashed against the ground, Hawkgirl didn’t give up. Getting up from the ground, her jumping strength was much higher than they had expected, and her punch smashed through an agent’s rifle, snapping it in two, and landed on his chest, caving it in.

The agent couldn't even die with dignity because Hawkgirl proceeded to grab him by the arm as if it were the handle of her mace before slamming his corpse into everyone around her. Beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker. Cornered and on the verge of dying, Hawkgirl stopped holding back and forgot about ethics and norms as a hero and as a member of the Justice League.

She stopped being Hawkgirl. She reverted to Shayera Hol, a lieutenant of the Thanagarian Navy. 

Although she was using the corpse of an agent as a meat shield and another corpse as a human-shaped mace to club her enemies to death, Shayera wasn’t left unscathed. Numerous bullet wounds riddled her wings, her arms, and her legs, but her superhuman constitution and a massive adrenaline rush allowed her to still stand and fight. 

She was too angry to die, too fierce, and too determined to give up. But it wasn’t only her wildness that allowed her to prevail. Thanks to her military training and her knowledge of her own body’s limits, Shayera used the meat shield to prioritise protecting her vital areas. 

On paper, in Batman’s plans and in Cadmus’ plans, Hawkgirl was supposed to be an easy target. In theory, once they took her Nth metal mace out of the equation, she should have been incapacitated, unable to fight. 

Yet there she was after her mace was taken away, punching a hole through the chest of the last living special operative that Cadmus had sent to kill her before kicking his corpse away. 

Over thirty Cadmus operatives were lying on the floor lifeless, with many of them missing entire limbs or with their skulls smashed into a paste. They all suffered violent deaths. 

And that was the scene that Superman stumbled upon when he burst through the factory’s doors: three dozen mutilated corpses lying in a pool of blood on the floor and Hawkgirl, whose body was riddled with bullet holes and whose large, feathery wings were red and soaked with blood. 

Superman felt bile rising to his throat. It took a significant amount of effort not to vomit at the sight of the massacre in front of him. 

“...Hawkgirl?” he asked, slowly getting closer to her. 

However, she didn’t reply. Shayera was unconscious. She had passed out on her feet. 

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AN: check out the meme I attached to this chapter lol.

(1) This is canon. The only kryptonite that affects Power Girl is the kryptonite that comes from the Krypton of the alternate dimension she came from. The kryptonite of this world does not affect her. 

Hope you enjoyed the chapter. Until next time!