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Lightning flashed through his body. It would have killed anyone else, anyone human..but Kyle Rayner was a long way from human these days.

Energy crackled around him as he opened his eyes. A golden lasso was wrapped around him as he lay on the dry, cracked earth. Standing above him were two women whom he recognized, but knew that he never truly knew them, not these particular incarnations.

A statuesque blonde in black with a silver S-shield looked like Supergirl..and she was, at least in this reality. Here, she was far from the heroic if stubborn Supergirl Kyle knew from his own reality. Across from her stood a dark haired woman equally as beautiful were it not for the scowl of contempt across her face. Kyle had loved Donna Troy in his own world..but here; she was nothing like the Donna he knew. Here, the two women were not Supergirl and Donna Troy.they were Supergirl and Donna DesTroy.

"I thought you said you killed him," said Supergirl.

"I did," said DesTroy. "I tore his head off his shoulders and watched his eyes lose their light."

"Then, who the hell is this?" asked Supergirl. "I think your definition of tearing a head off is a bit different from mine."

Kyle felt his body ache from the electrical jolt DesTroy's lasso of wrath had given him. Still, his new power, courtesy of genetic manipulation by the Keepers of the Cluster, gave him amazing durability and recuperative powers. It wouldn't be long before he was ready for anything the two women could dish out.

"I said I killed him," said DesTroy. "Kyle Rayner is dead. This must be a trick.a subterfuge from the Guardians. They swore they would leave Earth alone.obviously they lied."

"Never trust a blue dwarf, I've always said." Supergirl smiled at her attempt at humour. "By the way, he's awake."

DesTroy looked down at Kyle with contempt. "You should have stayed dead," she said as she lifted her foot up and brought it down at Kyle's head.

 

DC Infinity Proudly Presents

#2

"Power Play - Part Two"

By Mike Hintze

 

DesTroy's foot came crashing down, but found itself stopped by an emerald bubble that instantly encased Kyle's body. At the same instant, Supergirl and DesTroy were surrounded by green energy that immobilized them.

"Man," said Kyle, "You're quite the bitch, aren't you?"

Neither woman could move. Fury was etched on DesTroy's face. Supergirl was surprisingly calm.

"You're not human," said Supergirl. "I've scanned your molecular structure. What are you? A Durlan?"

"Oh, I'm still human where it counts," said Kyle. "More human than either of you. Now let's hear something productive out of your mouths. What happened to Earth? Looks like freaking nuclear Armageddon."

Supergirl's face looked perplexed for a second, then resumed its passiveness. "You don't know? Hm. I guess if you really are Kyle Rayner, you were killed before all of this happened. If you're not Rayner, then you should know exactly what happened. The entire universe knows what happened."

"I'm.not from around here," said Kyle. "Give me the Cliff's Notes version."

"Release me!" yelled DesTroy as she struggled against her bonds. They didn't give an inch.

"Hush, you," said Kyle as he wagged his finger reprovingly. He turned back to Supergirl. "Let's hear it, Blondie."

"Our leader took out the most powerful over a matter of weeks," said Supergirl. "Superman was exposed to Gold Kryptonite. Batman was infected with a techno-organic cancer. Wonder Woman was assassinated by an OMAC. I could go on..but you get the gist of it."

"Yeah," said Kyle. "And apparently perpetually PMSing Donna here tore my head off. How did this lead to nuclear war?"

"Our leader, when he made himself known," said Supergirl, "Decided to take the first strike against humanity. There was nothing anyone could do. Those of us loyal to him saw to it his plans went as he desired. He wanted humanity wiped from the face of the Earth."

Kyle's face blanched. "You guys killed everyone? That would explain why my ring didn't find any life signs.my God." He looked into Supergirl's eyes with anger. "You killed six billion people."

"We would have killed more," said Supergirl, "Far more. The plan was to move on to other worlds.Rann, Thanagar..Oa. But then the Guardians stepped in."

"Damn straight they would have," said Kyle. "That doesn't tell me why you all aren't in Sciencells on Oa, though."

"Our leader was considered too hard to contain," said Supergirl. "The Guardians surrounded the planet in an impenetrable barrier. We can't leave. But.if you can get in, then there must be a way to get out."

Kyle felt a wave of feedback moving through his ring into his body. Supergirl was smiling now.and flexing her arms. The emerald constructs that imprisoned the women were cracking.

"Enough time for talk," said Supergirl. "It's time to get you to our leader.and time to leave this prison."

The constructs shattered as Supergirl extended her arms. Kyle was thrown into the air by the feedback. Before he could get his bearings, Supergirl gripped his throat.

At that instant Kyle sensed something else. The emerald constructs he had used to make a base camp were gone. Something had destroyed them.

Before everything went black from Supergirl's punch, Kyle's last thought was for his partner, Axel Asher, aka Access.

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Elsewhere

The sky opened, a tear in the fabric of spacetime, an abcess in reality. The air shimmered and warped at its existence. The universe wanted the rupture repaired, healed..but before the universe could seal the hole, something came through.

A glowing fireball flashed through the sky, illuminating the desolate radiation scarred planet below. A trail like a comet followed the fireball until it landed with a resounding explosion. The earth heaved for miles from the impact, creating a crater a mile deep at its centre.

Inside the crater, the glow of the fireball faded. What was left, what had landed on this desolate world in a perverse birth through the membranes of reality..was a man. He was naked and extremely muscled, veins running down his biceps and legs. His chest was still..then began to rise and fall from slow breathing. Slowly, his eyes opened..

"Help..me." said the man. His eyes closed, and he returned to the bliss of unfeeling unconsciousness.

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He opened his eyes.or rather, eye, since he only had one organic one left. His systems booted back online. He coughed up black gunk and struggled to regain his breath. Whatever Mia had hit him with had been far more than a nuclear warhead.it had been laced with Kryptonite. He shook his head at the audacity Mia Dearden had shown. The former Speedy was dead now, along with Clark Kent. Not even vapor still existed that could be traced back to their beings. They had almost killed Kon-El-Connor Kent-Superboy.no, he was none of those names anymore. He was the Cyborg-Superboy. He served one master on this hell-forsaken planet, and that master was not Clark Kent. Superman was dead.

His robotic systems had saved his life, surprisingly enough. The metallic shielding had protected him enough from the Kryptonite that despite the pain he felt, he was sure he would recover soon. Still.he was cocky and arrogant. He would be sure to keep his guard up in the future.

My son , said a voice from within the Cyborg-Superboy's mind. Come to me.I have need of you. There are intruders in my kingdom. DesTroy and Supergirl-Prime have taken one of them. Come to the Fortress at once.

"Father," said Cyborg-Superboy, "Let me at these intruders. I will show them horrors they could never have conceived of."

No , said the voice. Come to the Fortress at once . The connection faded as abruptly as it came.

Cyborg-Superboy wiped off carbon dust from his tattered cloak. His father wanted him at the Fortress.but there was no way Supergirl-Prime would be the one to present an intruder.an interception was definitely in order.

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His name was Power Ring 3599.1. His former name, before he had become possessed by the parasite that resided in his ring, was long forgotten. He had been an officer (slave?) of the Power Ring Cluster longer than he could remember. The ring gave its host unnaturally long life, but so finicky was the energy parasite within the ring that some hosts were suddenly abandoned when a better one came along that suited the parasite's interests. 3599.1 had long served the Keepers of the Cluster and had avoided the failings of other ring-parasite bearers by continuously proving how strong and determined he was. Many Power Ring bearers longed to be done with their ring-parasite. 3599.1 could not imagine life without it.

He had arrived in this Prime Reality hours before Rayner and the Access. The Keepers had dispatched him and many other agents to scout out Prime Realities and set the dominoes in motion that would result in a Multiversal Collapse. This Prime Reality was not as vital as others that lay in the vast expanse of the Multiverse, but it would be an important step in the Keeper's plans nonetheless. He, like all the other Power Rings and agents of the Keepers assigned to attack the Prime Realities, had been briefed on the threat posed by the hated Guardians of the Universe and their Torchbearer, the human known as Kyle Rayner. Rayner was more than any other Green Lantern before him, as he had once been one with the power of the Ion. It was that exposure to the Ion Power that had made him the ideal candidate for the Keepers to attempt to harness the power of the Guardians. They had attempted to alter Rayner's DNA to genetically tap into the power of the Guardians, the universal powersource that was personified as willpower. The human race was widely believed to hold the key to the evolution of the multiverse, to actually be the future heirs of the Guardians themselves. Rayner's exposure to the Ion Power had moved that evolution onward at a great rate, greater than even the Keepers had suspected. They had done very little genetic tampering when Rayner's innate energies erupted from him and gave him, essentially, the power of a Guardian in the body of a human being. The Keepers had been unable to recapture Rayner before their plans around Qward and the Anti-Monitor were disrupted. Still, the Keepers had been able to send many of their number and their agents across the Multiverse to destroy Prime Realities. They had lost the amazing compass that had been the Access, imprisoned with them for years, but they had learned enough from their analysis and torture of the Access to find many Prime Realities to kick off their campaign of destruction. The fact that 3599.1 had come across Rayner and the Access together seemed fitting, somehow. He would destroy this Prime Reality, and Rayner along with it.

The Access had been surprisingly easy to kill. Sleeping in an emerald energy hut while Rayner searched for answers to the nature of this barren Earth, Access was unaware of 3599.1's arrival until it was too late. He had vaporized the Access in seconds, and in doing so had rendered Rayner virtually ineffective in his hunt for the Keepers and Power Ring Cluster. He would most likely be trapped in this reality, and if not, he had way of tracking the Prime Realities in the vast Multiverse. It would literally be a billion times worse than finding a needle in a haystack. It would be like finding a needle in a billion, billion haystacks, and billions on top of that. Rayner could die here anyway, however. The young Guardian could not hope to have harnessed his full powers yet.not enough to stand up to a Power Ring Centurion.

3599.1 took to the skies and headed towards his next destination. Rayner would be his next target, and the Multiverse would shake in its death-throes at his destruction.

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He floated in nothingness.all was black. Was he dead? He must be.and this must be the afterlife. In all his travels between worlds, he had never come across such emptiness. He felt nothing, yet was at peace. His chest rose and fell, yet he felt no breath in and out of his body.

Axel Asher opened his eyes. There was a dim light now, a muted glow that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. He felt the black emptiness.and at the same time, felt the light growing not only without, but within. He felt a presence.he was not alone.

He did not feel threatened b y this presence, however. In fact, he felt comforted by it. Maybe he was dead? Maybe he was still heading into the afterlife?

The dim glow then erupted around him, blinding his eyes. His vision returned slowly, and he was speechless at what he now saw.

A wall.that was the best he could describe it as. A gleaming wall of gold. Yet, the wall was not made of any bricks he had ever seen. The wall was made up of.people. Humanoids, tentacled aliens, they went on as far as the eye could see. It was a massive wall made up of sentient beings, beings that cried out silently in anguish, as if they understood their fates instants before becoming part of the Wall.

"Where in the hell am I?" asked Axel to himself.

A flaming hand formed from nothingness before him. The hand was gigantic, yet Axel was so far away that it seemed a normal enough size for him to almost reach out and grasp it.

The hand began to write in tall, flaming letters.

ALL THAT EXISTS IS AT RISK.

Axel stared. Flaming hand or not, it knew English!

Axel didn't know how he knew this, but he felt that talking to this hand was.what it wanted?

"How is everything at risk? Is it the Keepers?"

THE KEEPERS.AND ONE OTHER.

"Who? Who is it? How do we stop them all?"

THE KEEPERS WILL MEET THEIR FATES.BUT KYLE RAYNER MUST DIE.

"Kyle? But he and I are trying to save the universe! Hell, the Multiverse!"

KYLE RAYNER MUST DIE.

The light flashed again, and Axel landed on something hard. He looked around, and saw he was back in the campsite Kyle had constructed. Only, the campsite was nowhere to be seen. The ground around him was scorched as if by blasterfire.and then, Axel remembered it all.

A Power Ring had tried to kill him.he had tried instinctively to jump between universes.and ran into that crazy flaming hand.

KYLE RAYNER MUST DIE.

Man , thought Axel, If Kyle has to die.we're all royally screwed .

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Next Week: Kyle Rayner vs Power Ring 3599.1!