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“He should’ve been put in a sciencell for this shit. Who mindwipes the whole world? Literally, who does that? He’s lucky Clark doesn’t kill, because that is a killable offense. I’ve met prisoners of wars who were treated more humanely by their captors,” Kon finished with a huff.
Kenan didn’t disagree. “At least the trigger responses have finally been neutralized,” Robinpod translated for Kenan as he and Kon flew towards their destination. Kenan didn’t add how a lot of that was thanks to him, since the trigger had actually killed him for a little while before he was forcibly revived by Master I-Ching. Thanks to his rebirth, John Henry Irons and Lana Lang had been able to study Kenan’s brain to figure out how the trigger could be neutralized.
“How many people do you think didn’t survive?” Kon asked softly as they neared their target, a small town in the Pacific northwest with less than seven hundred people living in a valley bordered by countless mountains on one side and the Columbia River on the other. The most remarkable thing about the mountain town was the view.
Oh, and they hated the Super Family.
“They probably wish we didn’t exist to begin with,” Kon muttered when Kenan didn’t answer him. He floated closer to Kenan, maneuvering around Robinpod as it buzzed between them. “They were probably happy when Superman left for Warworld.
Once again, Kenan chose not to answer. When they finally reached the patch of forest they’d been instructed to stop in on Kara’s orders, they quickly changed into their disguises.
“Probably wished he’d died there too, the bastards,” Kon sneered with a glint in his eyes.
Kenan chose not to fuel Kon El’s ire and instead focused on the mission at hand. After all, what did Kon El understand about true hatred? He was sure the latter had been through terrible things in his life, but had he ever felt the kind of hatred poor people had for those they deemed above them? Kenan doubted it. He doubted anyone in the Super Family understood, but Kenan bit his tongue. It wasn’t the space nor the time to challenge a member of a superhero team he chose to be a part of, even though his heart ached to go home.
Right now, there were more important things at stake. Kong Kenan and Kon El were tasked with investigating the remains of a cult that had been born in poor little mountain town they were approaching. It was the same cult that had just killed over a hundred of its own members, costing the people of the mountain town a quarter of its residents to a mass suicide.
The tiny mountain was on the other side of the country, hundreds of miles away from Metropolis, Delaware. It had, had its own Superman cult operating in its village since Superman first revealed himself as Clark Kent. Until recently, they’d been decidedly quiet.
That was until Lex Luthor’s trigger responses were neutralized worldwide with the help of Kenan’s brain scans, seventeen powerful magicians, three demons on contract from Hell, a minor god, and Lana Lang and John Henry Irons’ neutralization schematics. Now, if Clark Kent wanted to tell someone that he was Superman, they wouldn’t have a brain hemorrhage in real time. They wouldn’t go down like Perry White had two years ago. They wouldn’t die and then revive like Kenan had with the help of Master I-Ching. It’d taken a lot of manpower and a lot of brains, but they had gotten the job done.
It was on Clark Kent’s request, after all. He wanted the ability to share as he pleased, because he knew it wasn’t the same world he’d lived in before. With Warworld, with the sins committed by his birth father, being a son of two worlds wasn’t something Clark wanted to be ashamed of.
And both Kong Kenan and Kon El understood that intimately.
But, like all things, even neutralizing Luthor’s nefarious actions had come with consequences. Like the Superman cult in Washington state that had committed its ultimate show of fervor a few weeks ago once the neutralization process was completed, and how a week after the neutralization process, the entire cult had committed a mass suicide without the other townsmen knowing.
They did it without any superhero interfering because the town was out in the middle of the Washingtonian wilderness where few ventured out into unless they were avidly hiking. It’d only registered to the Super Family that a tragedy of this magnitude had even occurred when pieces of flesh arrived at Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s penthouse in Metropolis as a gesture of their faith in their lord god, Superman.
And because things like this never ended well, it wasn’t Lois or Clark who’d opened the box, but Otho Ra and Osul Ra because their parents were at work and they’d smelled the rotting blood even through the icebox.
Kenan grimaced. Maybe some of the Super Family understood. The Super Children Kenan had grown fond of, and liked to secretly thing of as his little niece and nephew, had been born into a slave state. Mongul had run a cult-like regime, so maybe at least the Super Children understood what the others hadn’t. After all, they’d told the rest of the family that they’d said a prayer for the people who’d sacrificed themselves, even if they had no idea who they were.
And now Kenan and Kon were heading to the place where it all happened.
Kon wasn’t raised in a cult, and although neither Dubbilex nor Red Tornado had been real dads, they’d at least been nice enough.
When Kon had gotten the call in Smallville that they needed him in Metropolis immediately, he thought that there had been an attack that called for reinforcements, but when he’d gotten to the penthouse, the twins and Jon were sitting quietly at the dining table while Lois and Clark were talking in their bedroom. Of course, everyone could hear them clearly, but it was the thought that counted.
Only then had Kon realized that there was blood in the room that wasn’t exactly fresh, and when he saw the ice box full of dead hearts on the coffee table where the twins had opened it, Kon knew that they were in trouble.
And yet, the room had remained quieter than a mouse until Kara arrived with Kenan, and Lois and Clark finally came out of their bedroom. She announced that this was now an active case, and that with the blessing of the Washington state department, the Super Family was now a silent partner in the investigation due to the circumstances.
Kon hadn’t realized it was a cult until he’d had a chance to go through the ice box himself, and found that each heart had finger nails and hair embedded in them, as if they’d been torn from chests with bare hands.
“We are here,” Kenan said softly, pulling Kon out of his head.
They’d walked the handful of miles to the mountain cave system where the cult was tracked down to because Kara didn’t want them to expose themselves as members of Metropolis’ Super Family. The bodies were still being removed, since the town didn’t have enough hands to clean it up quickly enough, and since the cult was made up of northwestern loggers, fishermen, and pot farmers, local police hadn’t really thought it as pressing as all the action happening in Seattle.
The logging industry was dying in these parts, and with how polluted the river had gotten, so was the fishing industry. Growing weed still had its financial merits, but there were cheaper options coming through other channels. In a way, the changing world had left this tiny mountain town and its people behind. Had it not been for the Superman connection, Kon sincerely doubted the state department would have even gotten involved.
“Remember, we’re not state investigators, we’re just the forensics grunts who came to town to bag and tag any remaining evidence,” Kon told Kenan as he handed Kenan a pair of the special glasses Lana had given him so that they could shift their facial features and render any photographed pictures of themselves useless. “Townspeople can’t know it’s us. If they do, we’re in deep shit.”
Kenan gave him a curt nod before putting on the glasses and censoring his real face and Robinpod’s true form. And off they went, two schmucks from the Seattle crime lab, here to assist the overworked local PD.
Kenan, with Robinpod’s help, did most of the talking to the local police while Kon took in the yellow-taped cave entrance. It wasn’t far from the road that cut through the forest near the mountain. From where Kon was standing, it was a half an hour away on foot from the outskirts of the mountain town – for the humans. Kids with enough of a party spirit would have come to the cave regularly. What loggers were left would have walked past the cave to get to the healthy trees deeper in the forest. Wasn’t much to pull from a cave system that had been, in the town’s youth, a place to drink and have relations with the neighbor’s spouse.
“Ready?” Kenan asked him once he and Kon had pulled on their plastic gloves.
“There were kids, weren’t there?” Kon asked instead.
Kenan frowned. He took the lead, turning on the flashlights attached to their helmets. “Reports find children,” he said without Robinpod’s help. “Hearts in box also from children.”
“They knew,” Kon said softly. “They knew their kids were coming here to drink and fuck. Maybe they didn’t know they were worshiping a superhero, but they knew there kids were up to no good.”
“They could not have stopped them,” Kenan replied softly.
If Kon had been normal and raised normally, he would have agreed.
“But they had to have known Superman was something more to them,” Kon insisted, just like he’d been to Kon, except Kon had, had Superman’s superpowers and then some. These kids had, had nothing of the sort. All they’d had was their ardor for the Man of Steel.
“Even if they did, it wouldn’t have mattered,” translated Robinpod over Kenan’s soft voice. “It is a dying town. You would be surprised how many things can happen a place where there is little hope and even less mercy.”
Kon couldn’t argue with that.
The cave wasn’t deep, maybe half a mile deep, and just wide enough to allow three to four people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Other caves of the sort made great hangout spots. Kon had frequented a few himself, both after he’d broken into the world as Superboy, and after he’d been rescued from Gem World and sent to live with Ma and Pa Kent. These places were for normal teens to make out in and drink plenty of beer. Ghost stories were meant to shared with flashlights. First loves were meant to be declared over ice coolers and chips.
Kon wouldn’t pretend he actually knew what normal kids did, but as a twenty-three year high school dropout who’d spent most of his life in a test tube, died, been resurrected, and then punted around the multiverse, Kon could say that the allure of a spot far away from supervision, a place to simply relax and kick back, that allure was universal.
“They held teachings,” Robinpod said over Kenan’s soft voice after they were done taking photos of the cave and bagging leftover samples. “A mound of dirt for a pulpit, marijuana as a ritual drug, and bloodletting as an offering.”
“They were borrowing from books and TV shows,” Kon surmised. “They knew poisoning themselves would’ve been too painful, so they opted to throw themselves off the mountain instead.”
“What they did not realize is that it takes a lot of force to kill the human body.”
“Which is why some of them took days to die.”
Which was the other thing Kon had been thinking about constantly since learning of the ice box. The cult had committed suicide after they’d sent the box to Lois and Clark and had gotten a notification that it’d been delivered. The deliveryman had been a cult member too. They’d killed themselves in waves. The first wave’s hearts had been from some of the youngest in the cult, along with three adults who’d been in the cult the longest. The remainder of the cult had sent their hearts to Lois and Clark, and once the deliveryman had confirmed the delivery and jumped off one of Metropolis’s many bridges and into the Atlantic, the rest of the cult had jumped off the mountain where their cave was. By the time Kara had arrived with news, the last cultist had drawn their last breath.
Kenan found what he was looking for and motioned for Kon to come look. “There.”
“Why didn’t they just send it with the body parts?”
“Because it was meant to be discovered. Superman was supposed to find it-”
“-but Superman won’t,” Kon interrupted Robinpod’s translation, “because we’re here.”
Kenan nodded before he pulled out the book from the trap box built into the cave wall.
Days later, after John Henry Irons and Lana Lang had deemed the book ‘safe’ to read, and confirmed all bodies had been safely removed from the cave, Kon floated listlessly not too far from the Lane-Kent household.
“Busy?” Kara asked as she floated to his side.
Kon didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at the bright city lights that seemed to make the entire place sparkle. “Do you think he knew?” Kon asked after some time.
“Lex or Clark?”
“Lex,” Kon clarified with a cringe. “He sacrificed a man to make the mindwipe work, but it wasn’t really a wipe. It was all boxed away in people’s head, and some people were too…” Kon struggled to put his idea into words. “I wouldn’t say obsessed, but something close to that. When John Henry and Lana worked on the schematics, we were told neutralization didn’t mean people would magically start to put two and two together. It should have been a gradual process. How did they just know it was Clark after two and half year’s of an active bomb in their head?”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘devotion,’” Kara noted. “And you’re right. For the average citizen, it won’t be a quick recall. It’ll be like remembering a fond memory, but only if Superman was a fond memory to begin with.
Kon snorted. “They seemed to be fond of him well enough.” He clenched his hands into fists and exhaled harshly. “If it’s devotion that made them do it, why not do it sooner? Why do it just after we neutralized the triggers? The book didn’t say anything about hating Superman for not revealing his identity. They were just-”
And Kon stopped taking because tears had sprung in his eyes.
Kara was quiet for some time before she spoke again. “I think the neutralization only did what would have been done eventually,” Kara began carefully. “He didn’t erase any emotions. He only locked away their memory of Superman’s true name. That fervor never went away. If anything, it was probably heightened. It was also probably why they had so many people in the cult by the end. The drugs, the sermons, the religious fervor. It might’ve just been a serious fanclub at first, but after Luthor put the entire world under a gun, it probably amplified whatever emotions they were already experiencing.”
She showed him mercy by not reminding him of the book he and Kong Kenan had found the cave, the book that had a letter for Superman from each of the cultists that had killed themselves in his name.
“Lex did this,” Kon gritted through his teeth, wiping the remaining tears from his face. “Now he’s sick and on life support, but he did this. He put those kids on that path. It was a poor town, Kara. They weren’t making enough money to live, and every year they’ve been losing people. The cult was 73% people under 22. There was a thirteen year-old who was found at the bottom of the pile. She was one of the first to jump. How are we supposed to explain that?”
Kara stared out into the distance, pensive. “We can’t. And we can’t ask them either, not unless we ask Zatanna to hold a séance. But what would that do except feed the rumors? Clark’s not ‘out’ to the world anymore. We only neutralized the trigger responses. Whether or not people remember is up to the individual.”
“They had to have remembered,” Kon insisted. “They didn’t address that box to Lois and Clark. They addressed it to Superman and Lois Lane. If it’d been left outside the building, people would have seen it. If the twins hadn’t opened the door-” Kon stopped abruptly and hung his head low. “They opened that box, Kara.”
“They did what they thought they had to do,” Kara said listlessly. “As children have always done.”
“Is it our fault?” He asked weakly. “For not fixing this earlier?”
“No.”
“But-”
“You didn’t fuel the fire, Kon El,” she interrupted sharply. “It’s not your responsibility alone to carry that burden. Clark made a choice that day. When he told me, I was happy for him, because it meant a lot for us as a family. It still means a lot. But how people take it is up to them. Humanity has a right to react the way that it wants to. People thought my cousin was a god before this cult suicide, Kon. Clark could never stop those things. You can’t either. There will always be people operating on the extremes, just like there are people who can take it one day at a time without thinking too much on it. Those people, those kids, they died because they wanted to. They didn’t have to, but they wanted to. All we can do is carry their memories with us and hope that it doesn’t happen again, but we can’t stop them from thinking the way that they do. Do you understand? Long after we’re dead, the idea that Kal is a god won’t magically disappear. Gods do die. They have died. And a dead god is much holier than a living one.”
She put an arm around Kon’s shoulder and squeezed gently. He hovered closer and put his head on her shoulder. “I know this,” Kara continued, much softer. “I have to fight myself from defying Krypton everyday, even though I’ve lost my home, my people, and my culture. It’s a fight between remembrance and understanding. I can’t glorify the dead, because if I do, I run the risk of stripping them of their complexities. My people weren’t saints or saviors, but they were people. Many of them good. Some of them terrible. But good or evil doesn’t define who should and shouldn’t live. My uncle thought himself a good man, and still managed to be the reason why most of our species was eliminated. My planet thought isolating the Phaelosians was a good thing, and now look at us. They’re half the reason why we even have enough Kryptonians to help repopulate New Kandor.”
“Those people in that town didn’t see Clark Kent as a person,” Robinpod interrupted as it and Kenan came into view. “They saw him as something above them, and so they gave up their lives to prove how holy he was to them. They did not care that all this will do is haunt him, so do not think you are alone in this grief, Kon El.”
“We’re here for you,” Kara added softly, ruffling Kon’s hair. “We have to be, because this only means our mission to help and protect isn’t just relegated to rescuing people from fires and holding bridges from falling down. It means being on the level of the people we save, and helping them understand that we’re not better than them. That even if I’m Kryptonian first, I’m still a person. And you are too. So is Kenan. Kal always knew there would be consequences for being a hero.”
And despite the consequences, Kon was still Superboy at heart, and would always be superhero because that’s what he fought to get back. It was why he’d dropped out of school entirely after being rescued from Gem World, and why he worked regularly as a hero when he could have gone to college and really graduated out of this life.
Because Kon was a hero first.
But people were people. They could become heroes, or they could remain as people. Not that there was anything wrong with being a normal person, but that didn’t mean people couldn’t be sick too. Kon understood that better now.
But he also understood that there would be shame associated with not being a superhero, and even more with not being a superhero like Superman. Because for some people, being super just wasn’t enough even when being a normal person was the hardest thing to be.
“The press conference went well,” Kara said softly as she pushed a plate of fruit towards Kenan. Kenan thanked her before taking a bite of the melon slices.
“If you want to talk, I’m here,” she said after some time.
“Did you ever feel that way?” He asked, Robinpod translating for him. “About your cousin? Did you ever see him as anything more than just your blood relation and a hero?”
Kara looked at him, stunned, and Kenan knew the answer. He supposed he always did, especially when they’d first given him the jacket and declared him a part of their family officially.
“Maybe, once upon a time,” Kara admitted with a frown. “I was a child when I arrived, not much older than Jon. It seems like so long ago, but I knew I was obsessed. Probably not the best thing for a seventeen year old to do when meeting her baby cousin, but what did I know? Sometimes, we can’t help but fixate. That doesn’t mean it’s Clark’s fault for being who he is. It just meant that I had to grow up. And I did.”
Kenan thought about it while he finished the rest of the melon. Kara remained quiet for the rest of exchange.
When it was time to go, Kenan pretended that he couldn’t see her tears.
“You know there’s over six hundred documented Superman cults, right?” John Henry Irons told Clark Kent as they took their coffee on the roof of Steelworks Tower.
“I want you to start tracking them yourself.”
“I can maybe hack into Waller’s servers. She’ll have more information, and probably more cults we never even heard of.”
Clark nodded. “Do what you have to do. I just want to make sure we have a personal hand in keeping tabs moving forward.” Then Clark clenched the mug in his hands a little too harshly, causing a small crack to appear on the porcelain. “And John – I want to know if she knew.”
“You think Waller would have let a cult commit mass suicide without any intervention to mess with you?”
“Or teach me a lesson.” Clark gave his friend a bitter grin. “She wants metas dead. She doesn’t care that the public’s grouped together actual metahumans with aliens and other species native to Earth. If she can prove superheroes are killing the public just by existing-”
“-then she can convince them to hang them too,” John Henry finished for him.
They remained silent for the rest of the time, finishing their coffee, each in his own mind.