by Libbylawrence
As the time-displaced magical construct called Super-Girl found herself in 1986, she immediately sought her ideal mate: Superman. She flew over the city, marveling at the odd cars and what appeared to her 1950s sensibilities to be wildly futuristic clothes.
“Ah! There is the Daily Star where he works as Clark Kent,” she said with a smile.
She swooped inside the office and walked up to a reporter. “Hello, I am Super-Girl,” she said. “I seek Clark Kent.”
The reporter grinned as he saw the blonde beauty before him. Standing up, he said, “Well, legs, he no longer works here. Can I help you, sweetheart?”
Super-Girl laughed and said, “I hardly think so!”
Jimmy Olsen, sitting in his office with the door open, heard the girl’s laugh and took a peek into the newsroom. He gulped as he recognized her, and he quickly ran out of his office. “Nice job!” he said loudly and nervously to the reporter. “Clark hired this… this model before he retired. She was to help Superman in a, uh, charity ad. She’s a real human fly!” He quickly ushered the blonde into his office and slammed the door.
“I remember you!” said Jimmy. “Heck, I created you, but that was years ago! What are you doing here now?” He lowered his voice, whispering, “You can’t walk around dressed like that asking for Clark. Remember, Clark doesn’t want folks to know he’s Superman.”
“Why ever not? He should be proud!” she said happily. “He is to be my mate, you know.”
Jimmy was worried, and he started to pace in his office. He knew this girl came from the very magic item that had been taken from his home. Was her appearance linked to Clark’s abduction? Pacing back and forth, he began, “For the last time, Superman is not–”
But the blowing curtains showed she had already departed by the time he turned around.
***
Seconds later, Super-Girl landed at the Kent home outside of Smallville, dressed in a red dress and heels. Her hair was swept up in a bun. She had used her x-ray vision to read Clark’s employment files at the Daily Star to learn his current address and had decided to take Jimmy’s advice by dressing in plainclothes. She knocked on the door, and Lois Lane Kent answered.
“Hello! I am Mrs. Kent, Clark’s mate,” she said in a cheery tone. “Where is he?”
Lois choked in dismay. “Who? What? Come inside!” she gasped. “Listen, Clark is married to me. You need to go either back to that limbo land or help us track him down.” She asked eagerly, “Are you mentally linked to the device that conjured you?”
“I am Debbie Kent, Clark’s wife!” she started.
“No! You are a magical dream girl created by a glorified stick!” said Lois.
Super-Girl remained quiet for a moment as tears began to form, and Lois began to feel bad. “I can find it,” Super-Girl said tearfully. “But I really am meant for him.”
***
After some fast talking by a frustrated Lois, she managed to make the magical construct called Super-Girl accept the idea that, by going to the JSA and then following her own connection to the talisman held by Colonel Future, she could save Superman, her ideal mate.
Super-Girl now carried Wildcat as Green Lantern flew beside them. “This must be the place,” she declared as she landed in front of a tall penthouse.
“Can you do a vision-scan to see how many foes we’ll be facing?” asked Green Lantern.
Super-Girl nodded. “Yes sir! I see around twelve thugs and the Colonel Future your computer file showed to me.”
Wildcat nudged Green Lantern. “‘Sir’! Didja hear that? This babe treats us with respect, unlike Power Girl. She even smiled and said thank you when I opened a door for her.”
Green Lantern smiled. “I’d not get too used to a dainty and feminine Kryptonian female in the group, if I were you. I mean how often have you even seen Kara in a skirt?” Wildcat nodded.
Super-Girl and Green Lantern smashed into the villain’s headquarters with her might and his green-energy battering ram, complete with ram’s head.
Colonel Future sputtered in alarm. “Get them! Use wood on that Green Lantern fellow!”
Green Lantern frowned. This weakness is getting entirely too well known to the underworld, he mused, slamming a shield between his friends and the energy rifles leveled at them by Future’s army.
Super-Girl allowed the rays to bounce off her chest and then blew six thugs into each other with a puff of super-breath.
Wildcat swung into the goons with a wild abandon. “You punks wouldn’t last three rounds in the real ring!” he said with a laugh.
Colonel Future ran for the talisman, though he knew it was devoid of power. Green Lantern caged the portly conquerer, while Super-Girl smiled prettily and handled the talisman.
“This is the one!” she said, tossing back her hair. “I think we can just get him to cancel the wish about Superman.”
Wildcat gripped Future’s tunic. “Undo what you did to Supes, or I’ll work some magic on your face! And at no time will my fingers leave your chin!”
“Common thug! Vulgarian!” Future said with a frown. “I undo wish one. Restore Superman,” he said desperately.
“Nothing happened!” said a pouting Super-Girl.
“Nor will it. I’ll see to that,” said an armored figure.
“Son!” cried Colonel Future.
“Call me the Futurian,” he said. The Futurian looked like a twenty-something version of the Colonel. He wore green and purple armor. “Leave my father alone, you crass street punk!” he hissed at Wildcat.
“Talks like his old man, too,” said WIldcat.
Electric pulses shot out of the armored man’s hands, and Wildcat nimbly shoved the old man in front of him.
“Stop, son — you’ll electrocute me!” ordered the Colonel.
Futurian frowned and concentrated. “I draw the very air into any matter I choose. Like this!” he yelled as he ran a suddenly formed wooden spear at Green Lantern, who gasped as Super-Girl turned the deadly weapon into ash mere inches from his chest.
“Thanks, Super-Girl!” said Green Lantern, creating a platform beneath Futurian and toppling him backward.
Futurian righted himself with boot jets and sent a red ray at Super-Girl. It knocked the blonde flat, and she moaned in pain. “Solar rays weaken Kryptonians, as my father taught me,” said the smug villain.
“That’s the way, son — melt that Kryptonian cover girl!” called his father.
“Get back!” cried Green Lantern as he charged into battle.
As she held her stomach in pain, Super-Girl moaned softly, “Oh, my love! Where are you?”
Wildcat bent over the shapely blonde. “What’d that creep do to you, honey? Red sun rays don’t make Supes sick like that.”
“I think his armor is magical in nature, and that affects me more than most things,” said Super-Girl. She sat up slowly and saw Green Lantern dueling with Futurian in midair. Neither gave in, and both had grim looks on their faces. Super-Girl saw the hero fall beneath a literal mass of logs that appeared over his head at Futurian’s command. He fell hard, and Super-Girl weakly flung herself at the Futurian. He blasted her, and she gritted her teeth and charged forward against the ray.
Girlie’s got guts, mused Wildcat as he ran to clear the logs off the injured Green Lantern.
Super-Girl grew red and feverish as she braved the magic ray. She clutched Futurian desperately, ripping his armor free of his chest with an anguished heave. Then the girl fainted to the floor.
Wildcat charged in and connected with a series of rapid and near-lethal punches. But Futurian’s shield chest and face bore the brunt of the ex-champ’s fury. He dropped to the floor, and his father jumped to shield him.
“I just wished Superman away!” said Colonel Future. “I can’t tell where the magic sent him. I cancelled the wish like you ordered. Now leave my boy alone!”
Green Lantern sat up bruised, but otherwise intact. “He’s telling the truth,” he said. “Superman is still missing. I can only assume the wish brought about some other, non-related means of eliminating him. Even with the magic ended, he remains missing.”
Super-Girl frowned as she started to fade away. “I am being drawn back in time to where I belong,” she said. “If you find my Superman, tell him I loved him truly!”
“She’s gone!” cried Wildcat.
“So are the Futures!” said a grim Green Lantern. “Teleportation, I believe.”
Wildcat tossed the useless talisman down in disgust.
***
Meanwhile, Power Girl had arrived in Smallville only minutes after she first left. Her years as Karen Danvers and her time as Lightning Girl had not delayed her search at all due to the vagaries of time travel. She returned to the Kent home after continuing her search for Superman in the present. “No luck, Lois,” said Kara Zor-L. “I can’t find him.”
Lois nodded sadly as she put down the phone. “Green Lantern called to say that he claimed the talisman, and Colonel Future was behind it, as we thought, but nothing they did brought Clark back. In fact, Green Lantern added that the talisman’s magic was somehow powered from the 1890s and that was what poor Hocus wrongly homed in on. Wherever Clark is, he’s not lost in time.”
Kara hugged her and tossed the slippers and outfit she’d used as Lightning Girl onto the sofa.
“What’s that?” asked Lois.
“I’ll tell you another time,” said Kara. “Just a reminder of an adventure.”
She studied the loving and now-maternal Lois and mentally marvelled at how she had changed from the mean-tongued shrew who tormented a hapless Clark in those early years before becoming first his friend and then finally his lover.”
“We’ll find him yet,” said Lois in a brave manner. “Green Lantern says the JSA will search everywhere for Clark. He added that perhaps they can even call in the Spectre, if needed.”
“Let me do another scan of exactly where you last saw him at the table,” suggested Kara. As the beautiful blonde did so, she said, “I detect something new — a lingering and almost-faded energy signature. The magic made the energy hit Clark when maybe it was never intended to, but it was the energy that took him, not the magic! I was thrown off by Future’s theft and that crackpot Hocus!”
“Can you trace it?” asked an eager Lois.
“Sure! … Or at least I hope so. I’ve got to try,” she vowed. “He’d do it for me.”
“It doesn’t go anywhere,” she said, puzzled. “It just vanishes right here!”
“You mean he is here, but not here… like he might be on Earth-One?” asked Lois.
“Yes! And that would be a huge problem, since before his disappearance Starman told us no one can cross over right now,” said Kara. “In fact, that leads me to doubt that he could be there, either, come to think of it.” She smashed the table to splinters in her frustration.
“Easy, honey,” said Lois. “That won’t help Clark.”
“I know, but I feel so helpless, and I don’t like it at all!” said Kara.
“Well, I know you won’t hold your feelings in,” said Lois. “You’re not a shrinking violet!”
“Wait…” said Kara, an idea forming. “Earth-One’s Atom — he shrinks. Maybe that energy is a shrinking ray like the belt the Atom uses. It’s some kind of white dwarf something or other.” Thinking quickly, she shouted, “I need Al Pratt!” And she flew off.
A startled Al Pratt found himself carried into the farmhouse minutes later. “Kara, you know, I was only back home for about thirty minutes when you showed up at the house. Mary’s going to be steamed!” he explained.
“Look, you know more about Ray Palmer — and he knows more about shrinking — than anybody else I know!” she shouted, fearful that time was of the essence. “Could he use some physics do-hickey to tell if the energy is reducing in nature?”
Al smiled as he thought about it. “Yeah. I can! And I admit using my brains and being wanted for them for a change makes me feel ten feet tall! Ray — being the other Atom — told me all his secrets once. He and I never bonded like Jay and Barry, but we are friends, at least. He is far advanced in his field, and I am just a college prof with special insights due to my lifestyle, but he shared his stuff with me.”
He began to set up the equipment he needed, while Power Girl fetched material at super-speed under his direction.
“Oh, yeah!” cried Al, whooping with delight. “You called it correctly. The pattern almost matches Ray’s work. Nearly, but not quite. Superman is right here! Just in some microscopic world — some subatomia between the molecules of our location!”
“Can you replicate Ray’s equipment?” asked Kara. “Shrink me down, too?”
“Kara, I don’t think–!” started Lois.
“Yeah, but it is really new to me,” said Al, “and I’d hate to risk–”
“Do it now!” shouted Power Girl.