The three of them converged on Anti-Matter Man more than twenty thousand feet straight up. Up here, the air was frigid and thin. It reminded J’Onn of Mars.
Anti-Matter Man stood more than three hundred feet tall, walking calmly toward them as though there was solid ground beneath his feet, not a vast welter of empty space. His expression did not change in the slightest—he was impassive, implacable, resolute. The air around him crackled with constant mini-explosions and eruptions on the atomic level, filling the space nearby with the reek of ozone and burning carbon.
Soon, they would test whether or not Kryptonian and Martian invulnerability could resist the explosive result of matter meeting anti-matter.
“I’ll try first,” Superman said. “I’ve tussled with him before.”
“Remember what happened?” Kara asked, a little more tartly than she’d intended.
If he was offended, Superman didn’t show it. “Still looking out for me? I promise I’ll be careful. Watch what I do and what he does, then use that information for your attack run.”
Before Kara could speak, he sped away, fists extended before him, plunging toward Anti-Matter Man. With a skipped heartbeat, she realized the import of what he’d just said: He intended his assault as a dry run for her and J’Onn.
He planned to sacrifice himself so that they could see how Anti-Matter Man fought and defended himself and look for a weakness.
“No!” she cried, and would have followed him in an instant had J’Onn not restrained her with a bear hug from behind.
“Kara! This is the end of the world, and your cousin is willing to die to prevent that. Honor his decision!”
“No!” she shouted again, struggling against J’Onn. “The world needs him!”
“The world needs to survive,” he reminded her. “Watch and learn.”
He was right. In that moment, Kara hated him for it, but J’Onn was right. She relaxed into him, stopped fighting. Together, they observed as Superman arced in the air toward Anti-Matter Man. Bolts of black lightning spat-crackled around the Man of Steel—he dodged them effortlessly, zigging and zagging through the red sky.
J’Onn’s bear hug became an embrace. She wrapped her arms around his lower arms, and they held each other like that, watching.
Superman pulled to a hovering stop thirty yards away from Anti-Matter Man. He drifted there for a moment and then blasted out with his heat vision.
“Good move,” Kara muttered. “Not touching him direct—”
She was cut off at the sight of Anti-Matter Man moving with incredible speed for something so large. At the same time, he grew even more. Superman had been safely out of the creature’s reach, but now Anti-Matter Man extended his arm and brutally backhanded Superman, swatting him with a sizzle-thwack that J’Onn and Kara could have heard at their distance even without super-senses. As Kara watched, horrified, Superman tumbled through the air, gathering speed as he went, careening over the horizon. A glance with her telescopic vision told her that he’d already shot over the Pacific and was on a collision course with the Himalayan mountain range.
And something inside Kara Zor-El broke in that moment.
She’d been sent to Earth with one mission, one task: To protect her baby cousin, Kal-El. A glitch in the plan had seen her in suspended animation in the Phantom Zone for years, and by the time she’d arrived on Earth, baby Kal-El was already a grown man, renowned the world over as a hero.
But still—she was supposed to protect him, and now she’d just watched as that beast from the antiverse slapped him like a gnat. Her cousin. Superman.
“No. Freaking. Way,” she growled.
J’Onn had already slackened his grip on her. It was easy enough to slip out of his grasp. She poured on the speed, flying straight toward Anti-Matter Man.
“Kara!” J’Onn yelled, and flew after her.
“No one hurts my family while I’m around! And you especially don’t get to hurt Superman!” She didn’t know if she was talking to J’Onn or to Anti-Matter Man. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to stand by as Superman rose from his deathbed, only to be smacked down again. Nope.
Anti-Matter Man sensed her coming. Maybe it was the perturbation of the winds caused by her flight. Maybe it was just his ability. She didn’t know. He turned toward her, focusing those enormous eyes in her direction. His expression did not change at all. It was impassive and emotionless. Remorseless.
If you’re just a thing, I will break you, she thought. And if you’re alive . . . I’ll kill you.