Fun time's over

Spinning in his chair with laughter, the Toy Man was beside himself with glee. Clapping his wooden hands together and cackling with manic laughter at the opportunity he was seeing through his toy jet’s cameras, the wooden marionette tapped at the controls, getting ready for another salvo.

“And here we come to the DOUBLE BONUS ROUND in our high-flying simulator ladies and gentlemen! Two targets for the price of one. Oooh! I wonder if I’ll be paid double for getting rid of the kryptonite glutton AND the man of steel!”

*

The explosions were strong enough to send Superman and Lois off their feet and land several meters away from where they were standing. With Clark crashing headfirst into a car and folding it like a book while Lois tumbled into a van and kept going until she finally stopped in the caved in hood and engine compartment of a parked sedan. Looking up from her prone spot and up at the five fighter jets that flew over, the woman sneered when she thought she heard the five vessels flying overhead play an arcade version of Danger Zone. Along with the shrill, nasally voice of their operator giggling at his own bad humour.

“HIGHWAY TO… THE DANGER ZONE!!!!!”

Circling the now panicked crowd and the two targets from their first salvo, the wing of toy jets made another pass. Pulling himself free from where he landed, Superman looked up and spotted the toys make a dive to fire again. A barrage of missiles let loose from their wings, aiming directly for Lois who lumbered out of her landing sight and just looked up in time to see the red tipped explosives heading her way before they exploded meters overhead when her husband collided into the missile cluster.

“Cla… SUPERMAN!”

Getting back to her clawed feet, Lois watched on as the Man of Steel crashed into the parking lot like a fiery comet into a parked van, causing it to explode and rain metal all around the crash site. All the while the wing of toy jets flew past with the Toy Man’s voice continuing to broadcast his jeers.

“Ooops! Party foul, no high score for him, time for the BONUS round!”

Gunfire rattled out of the jets in their third flyby, belting off Lois’s hide as she raised her arm to guard her eyes, the bullets bouncing off her harmlessly with sparks of metal falling to her feet. Seeing where Clark had crashed, Lois ran towards the fiery wreckage to check on him. Relief filling her heart when she found him crawling out of the fire unharmed. Shaking his head to clear it and looking up at the Toy Man’s weapons as they flew up to make another attack run, Superman frowned and looked up to his wife who crouched down to help him back up to his feet.

“Clark… He’s after ME Clark, him, Livewire and Metallo, Luthor paid them to find me.”

“We have to keep him away from the paramedics and the people they’re trying to help.” Stepping off the ground to float high enough to see his wife eye to eye, the Man of Steel gave his wife a nod before turning his attention back at the toy jets. “I’ll hold them off, YOU lead them out to safety.”

“Clark, wait!” She could sense something was wrong, something off about the jets that made her salivate.

Flying up to collide with one of the fighter jets, Superman grabbed hold of its wing to divert it into the others. But the moment he did, he cried out in pain, his skin burning just as he slipped off and crashed again into the ground and fired upon by missiles.

“CLARK!”

Ignoring the fly by of the toy jets, Lois scrambled to where her husband crashed, prying off debris and concrete out of her way to find the man burned and coughing up blood before passing out in her muscular arms.

“Ooops! Guess that’s not a pearl green paint job Pooperman, more like KRYPTONITE green.”

Ignoring the obnoxious laughter from behind her back, Lois cradled her husband in her arms as she tried to coax him to keep awake, seeing him recover but still out of it from the mineral’s exposure. “Toy… Man…”

“Shhh, its okay Clark, just stay with me, just stay…”

More explosions peeled across her back as a cluster of missiles exploded and enveloped white-hot heat across her entire body and around the crater they were both sitting in.

*

“Ha ha ha hee hee hee!” Spinning in his chair, the Toy Man was beside himself when his computer screen flashed in crude 8-bit lettering stating he won an all-time score.

“Ding, Ding, Ding, looks like Toy Man’s getting a new collectible after this paycheck… Oooh! I wonder if that mint condition Action Guy play set is still for sale?”

With his attention off the five camera feeds, the wooden marionette cried out and pulled the earphones off his wooden head when he head a bellowing roar that would have been better found off an angry lion… OR a tyrannosaurus. Quickly turning around to look back at the camera feeds, the first and last thing he saw was a massive scaly woman flying out of the plume of smoke and grabbing hold of the lead jet.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to do that!”

*

“That’s cheating!”

Lois didn’t hear a word of his complaints, so filled with rage all she had was tunnel vision focussing on the things that attacked her husband. Raking her claws across the hull of the man-sized jet, fuel sprayed out and ignited, causing the green tinted vessel to explode in mid flight and crash off into the distance. Landing on her feet, Lois looked up with bared fangs, her eyes wild with rage as she followed the four jets turning to make another air strike.

“You… Hurt… CLARK!”

A sickly green glow began to form in her mouth as her blackened eyes regained their pin prick green glow. Breathing in a deep breath, the monstrous woman roared out a column of green radiation that send the snow around her to blast and flash melt around her while the beam cut through a second and third fighter jet, exploding them on impact.

“You… HURT… CLARK!!!”

“My TOYS!” The Toy Man screamed over the intercom, any semblance of fun from the whole event sucked out as the man fumed at his controls like a disappointed child. “You broke my TOYS!”

Steering them back out to Metropolis, Lois watched the escaping toy jets try to escape and leapt into the air, swatted the closest one across the tail and snapping the jet in half, causing it to explode and rain down metal into the snowy field below before she landed with a blast of rubble and snow. Leaping again after forming a crater in her landing, she jumped up and grabbed hold of the last remaining jet, her weight too much for the thing to keep flight and they both came crashing down to the ground with her landing on her feet staring into the camera where the cockpit would be. The engines blasting at full thrust and even that wasn’t enough to break free of her grip.

All the Toy Man could see was blind rage on the woman’s face, her eyes and teeth glowing green and the image going static from the radiation pouring off her. “YOU BIG BITCH! YOU BROKE ALL MY TOYS!”

“Hurt… Clark!... HURT!... CLARK!!!”

“What the hell are you babbling abou…” With the groan of metal being bent and crushed, the jet exploded in Lois’s face, sending metal and debris everywhere. Completely unharmed by the blast, Lois breathed deep and hard, her anger still stoked but slowly ebbing down now that the thing that sent her into a fury was reduced to fiery metal in her hands. Looking down at the metal in her claws and the green glitter in the paint job, she brought out her tongue and licked at its surface, her eyes fluttering at the flavour as she could taste the kryptonite there.

They wanted to kill her husband; they nearly DID kill him just now. Never again. Darting her head back and forth, she sniffed at the air, her tongue licking her fanged lips when she spotted the scent of another cache of kryptonite in the air. Crouching, she jumped into the sky, sending herself miles up into the clouds where she disappeared.

*

Coughing and wheezing, Superman rolled onto his hands and knees as he quickly regained his strength, his injuries rapidly healing as the winter’s sunlight renewed his body. Getting up to his feet, Clark looked around to find the five toy jets destroyed… And his wife nowhere to be seen. Pulling out the kryptonite Geiger counter out of his belt pocket, he sighed in relief that it wasn’t destroyed in all the commotion.

“Well… Here we go again…”