[Emissary] Chapter 21 - Monster (Patreon)

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Chapter 21 - Monster

Lying with his eyes closed on his back on a sandy beach, Harry was panting as he tried to recover from the insane speed at which Power Girl had flown with him in order to catch up to the Flash. 

“Are you okay?” Kara crouched next to him and asked. 

“I don’t want to do that again.”

“Tell me about it,” Flash also said as he bent over and rested with his hands on his knees. 

Harry sat up with a groan and rubbed his face. His head was pounding, and he felt like throwing up. Humans were just not meant to travel at that sort of speed. 

“I’m afraid we can’t rest. Flash, do you know Elongated Man and his wife?” Harry asked.

“Of course I do, they’re my best friends. What’s wrong, what happened?” Flash said quickly. 

“You aren’t the only one who was attacked today. All the members of the Justice League were targeted by the agents of a secret government organization. Elongated Man is in danger too. They’ve sent Killer Frost after him.”

Despite how tired he was after running around the Globe several times continuously, Flash disappeared with a burst of speed, running as fast as he could in his current condition back to Central City. 

“Are we going to Cadmus now?” Power Girl asked after Flash left. 

“Could you go to Russia for Red Rocket instead? Superman may not get there in time. He has to save both Hawkgirl and Animal Man.”

“And let you go alone into the enemy’s headquarters? No chance!” Kara said, crossing her arms to her chest. 

“...Then let’s go together to save Red Rocket first. We’ll go to Cadmus after that,” Harry compromised. 

“What about the Green Lanterns? They’re just regular humans without their rings.”

“If they took them alive, that means they want something from them. My guess is that John and Hall will be kept alive until they reveal the method to control the power rings. But they’re Green Lanterns. Willpower is their thing, isn’t it? It won’t be easy to break them,” Harry reasoned before raising his hand for her to take it. 

“You’ve been to Russia before?” she asked. 

“In this world, only once, to Moscow. You’ll have to fly us to Saint Petersburg.”

⁂

A few minutes and another crazy flight later, Power Girl and Harry Potter arrived in the sky above Saint Petersburg. 

According to the information he got from Tala’s mind, Red Rocket was going to be lured and ambushed during a fake robbery at Bank Saint Petersburg.

“We’re too late,” Kara said sorrowfully when they arrived in front of the bank. 

The bank was cordoned off by the police, and there was some damage done to the entrance of the building, but it was minor. 

‘It seems like he barely put up a fight when they ambushed him… The electromagnetic pulse they had fired must have disabled his robotic armour. Without his suit, he was powerless,’ Harry thought. 

He gave Power Girl a few moments to mourn her former teammate in silence. 

“Let’s go. He’s gone. Hal and John are still alive, and they need us,” she said after a while, and Harry nodded at her before summoning a piece of debris from the damaged door and turning it into a Portkey.

⁂

“They’ve been hiding in plain sight,” Harry muttered as he looked at the steel factory ahead of him. 

They were currently in the biggest city in New Mexico, USA, Albuquerque. 

“I can’t see a thing... They actually insulated the entire facility with lead,” Power Girl said while using her X-ray vision, trying to see underground. “How do you want to do this?” she asked, turning her attention back to him. 

“They have hostages. We can’t just storm into the facility,” Harry said. 

“But Invisibility spells won’t cut it if they have infrared sensors,” she warned him.

“Don’t worry, I have a way. I’ll let you in on a secret,” Harry said, and a silvery cloak suddenly appeared on his shoulders. “This is one of Death’s artifacts, their Invisibility Cloak. In the legends of my homeworld, it was said that the owner of the cloak could even hide from Death.”

At her look, he added:

“The part about being able to hide from Death is a myth. But the cloak will erase our presence completely.”

⁂

'Confundus.'

After casting the Confundus Charm on the gatekeeper to make him open the blast doors for them, the two of them walked into the Cadmus facility unhindered. 

“Their sensors really can’t detect us,” Power Girl said in a whisper, surprised to see how smoothly they managed to infiltrate the base. 

“You don’t have to whisper. Nobody can hear you even if you were to shout,” he reminded her.

The two of them were flying with Death’s Invisibility Cloak above their heads (it had magically enlarged to cover them both without needing them to crouch and stay huddled together).

“But that’s some heavy security they got here,” he muttered. 

There were dozens of agents armed with laser blasters on every level of the facility, and the deeper they went, the more their numbers increased. 

“We’re almost there,” she said as she used her X-ray vision to scan the facility, searching for the two Green Lanterns. 

Cadmus had not coated the inner walls and floors of the facility with lead too, only the outer walls. Therefore, after infiltrating their base, nothing stopped Power Girl from seeing through the walls. 

“How can they fire me?! After all the sweat, blood, and effort I put into this, they’re throwing me away?!” a sudden scream came from behind one of the doors they passed by. 

As Power Girl stopped to hear more, Harry stopped moving too. 

"Your Doomsday weapon is a failure. It can't be controlled," the man said in a high-pitched voice, making a mockery of his superior. "All I asked was for a little extra time to fine tune the specimen!"

Sounds of objects being thrown against the walls were heard as the man started breaking things in his anger. 

“They think I’ll just let them send me back to jail again? HUH?!” he screamed. “I’ll show them! They’ve messed with the wrong guy!”

Harry turned to look at Kara inquisitively. "Who is that nutcase?"

“It’s Doctor Milo. He’s a mad scientist from Gotham. Batman busted him and handed him over to the authorities. He was supposed to spend at least 20 years in jail,” Power Girl told him what she was seeing. 

Harry frowned as he recalled Dr Milo’s file from the Justice League’s database on villains. “The guy that was doing human experiments, trying to fuse human and animal DNA together?”

“Yep. It looks like Cadmus somehow got him out of prison in exchange for hiring his services… oh no, he just freed a monster from a pod.” she said. Her X-ray vision allowed her to see what was happening beyond the door. 

A loud roar shook the walls and floors of the facility, and then a death cry was heard as Doctor Milo was killed by his own creation.

The door and the wall were unexpectedly blown up and the debris blasted both Harry and Power Girl away, making the cloak slip off them and reveal their presence. 

Luckily, Harry’s four protective spells were still active, and Power Girl had also protected Harry with her body at the last moment, shielding him from damage. 

The monster let out another ear-deafening roar before jumping at Harry and Kara. 

A crack of Apparition was heard as Harry teleported with Kara to the other end of the corridor. A split second later, the humanoid beast's feet obliterated the place it landed on, collapsing the entire floor and making Harry and Power Girl fall to the level below. 

“Kara, go after the Green Lanterns. I’ll keep the monster busy!”

“Are you sure?” she asked quickly. “That thing looks like bad news.”

Alarms started blaring through the entire facility after the beast destroyed the floor, and the blast doors at the ends of each corridor opened as a dozen soldiers rushed in, pointing their laser blasters at the creature and at the two intruders too. 

“Freeze!”

“Don’t move!” they shouted. 

But the beast’s answer was to let out a roar and lunge at them. 

A hail of laser beams was fired upon the monster, but all of them were deflected off its skin, not leaving a scratch behind. A moment later, the creature's fists smashed and ripped the soldiers to shreds. 

During the few seconds that the soldiers managed to keep the creature busy, Harry cut a piece of Power Girl’s red cloak and cast a Portkey Charm on it. 

“You have your X-ray vision; you know exactly where they’re being held. I turned this into a portkey. Say your cat’s name when you want to activate it.”

At that very moment, the beast lunged at them and smashed its massive, bone-spike-covered punch at them. 

A Shielding Charm appeared like a sphere around Harry and Power Girl but to his shock, the transparent shield trembled heavily for a second before exploding, blowing them both away. 

“Go, Kara!” Harry shouted. 

Power Girl glanced at him one last time before starting an extremely fast spinning motion, drilling into the floor, and disappearing. Now that the alarm was triggered, she was just going to smash her way through all the walls and floors, flying in a straight line towards the cell holding Hal Jordan and John Stewart. 

Not a second after Kara disappeared, Harry was forced to cast another Shielding Charm to protect himself from the beast’s crazed assault. The shielding spell didn’t hold under the monster's savage strength this time around either, and Harry teleported himself to the other end of the corridor to escape.

‘What the hell is that thing?!’

He was in disbelief. 

His Shielding Charm was strong enough to stop bullets effortlessly, yet that monster was smashing his spell with every punch it threw. 

‘This is dangerous.’

An expression of seriousness appeared on his face.

The monster threw itself at Harry again, roaring as it tried to rip his body apart. However, its punches hit nothing but smoke as Harry turned himself into a wraith and flew through the monster’s body. 

Rematerializing himself behind the monster’s body, he aimed his wand at it and shouted:

“Avada Kedavra!”

He had no intention of playing around with a beast as dangerous as that in such a confined space while they were trying to save Hal and John’s lives. He needed to eliminate the beast immediately. 

The bright beam of green light hit the humanoid monster right between its shoulder blades, and Harry let out a sigh of relief. 

*bang *

His ears started ringing, and his sight went white.

‘What the hell just happened?’ he thought as he pushed with his hands against the floor, trying to stand up. 

He glanced at his surroundings with a bleary look in his eyes. He wasn’t in the corridor any longer but in a room filled with futuristic medical pods holding all sorts of monstrosities and strange creatures floating in a green liquid.

He understood then that the creature had punched him through several walls. He was in Doctor Milo’s laboratory now.

Harry had just gotten up to his feet when the wall was shattered violently and the gigantic creature stepped through at a walking pace, heading towards him. 

‘How is it still alive…?!’

Just what was going on? He had fired a Killing Curse at the creature. His spell had hit it square in the back. It should have been dead! 

‘Did I botch the spell?’

But he shook his head at that notion. He was over 500 years old. Among the wizards of his homeworld, none were equal to him. He was the pinnacle. And he was Death’s Emissary. It was impossible for him to fail in casting the Killing Curse. 

As the beast jumped towards him again, Harry fired another Killing Curse, this time pouring all his hatred and killing intent into it, just to make sure.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Seeing as the creature was in mid-air, it couldn’t dodge even if it wanted; the spell hit it straight in the chest. But just like the previous time, nothing happened. Harry barely managed to Disapparate before the monster smashed its two fists down like hammers, destroying the floor. 

All the pods in the laboratory were shattered, and creatures in them were killed too by the shockwave coming from its fists smashing the floor. 

But the monster was relentless. It wasn’t satisfied with just causing destruction. It wanted to kill the human that had evaded it so many times already. It wanted to kill every living thing around it. 

“Dao!”

A voice was heard, and then an invisible blade slashed through the walls and piles of debris, heading straight to the monster’s head. 

Its superhuman instincts, however, warned it of mortal peril, and it raised both its arms up to protect its neck and head from the incoming attack. The monster roared in rage as both of its forearms were chopped through, and a thin, horizontal cut appeared on its neck too. 

‘That didn’t kill it either?!’

The Dao Curse was the strongest Cutting Curse he knew. He had even beheaded a Dragon with it in his third life! Harry had not held back when casting it but the spell had only chopped the monster’s arms; it had lost power before it could chop off its neck too.

The next few minutes seemed to stretch to eternity as Harry was forced to Disapparate more than 40 times while the rabid beast pursued him. They broke through various rooms, laboratories, and floors in their fight, wrecking the entire facility.

So far, Harry had managed to stay out of the creature's grasp by teleporting himself away and bombarding it with deadly spells from mid-range. Fire spells, Lightning Spells, Exploding Charms, Bone Breaking Cruses, Acidic Curses... there was nothing he didn't try on the beast. He had even tried to immobilize it with Sunning Spells and Body Binding Charms (which didn't work) and tie it up with conjured chains thicker than his own arms, but the creature snapped out of them as if they were made of straw.

Every now and then, groups of Cadmus operatives got in their way, trying to kill both of them, but Harry didn’t even have to lift a finger to deal with them. 

‘Seems like it has an overwhelming desire to kill everything in front of it.’

At first, he had found it weird that the monster was chasing him so persistently. He thought that the monster was obsessed with him. However, as other people got closer to the creature, it became clear to Harry that the monster wasn’t obsessed with him in particular. It always lunged at the closest living being to him. 

‘Come on, Kara, how much more time do you need?’ Harry thought, a feeling of urgency coming over him the longer he spent battling the beast. 

The creature had already regenerated its severed forearms, growing what looked like a bony club in one arm and a bony sword in the other.

‘Not just that. Every time I cast a spell, my magic has less and less effect on it.’

If the first Dao Cutting Curse had chopped off the creature’s arms, after only one minute, the same spell was only dealing flesh wounds to it. If the first Blasting Curse that he had cast on it had blown the beast back like a cannonball, now it didn’t even flinch from that spell anymore. 

Furthermore, the Killing Curse and the Cruciatus Curse didn't work on it, which led Harry to believe that the creature didn't have a soul and that it could not feel pain either. Lastly, the Imperius Curse merely slowed it for a few seconds before its overwhelming bloodthirst threw off the spell. 

Harry had never seen anything like that in any of his previous lives. 

'Is this creature the Doomsday weapon that that nutjob was talking about?'

Waving his wand at four large pieces of concrete lying nearby, he Transfigured them into four lions and ordered them to attack the monster before flying away through a hole in the wall. 

The pack of lions didn’t stall the creature for even 5 seconds. It smashed through the wall after Harry like a juggernaut.

Harry was so distracted by what he saw in the new room that he almost forgot about the creature that was trying to kill him. 

It was a large room filled with various medical apparatus and other devices that Harry had no clue about, but the thing that stood out the most in his eyes was the medical pod standing in the very middle. 

Inside the pod filled with a green liquid was a young girl, no older than 12 or 13. Her eyes were closed, and a transparent breathing mask covered her mouth and nose, but Harry was stunned at the sight of her. 

“This can’t be!”

He was shaken out of his stupor when the monster’s roar reached his ears. 

“Depulso Maxima!”

Speaking the incantation out loud and pouring as much power into the spell as he could, Harry sent the creature flying back violently, making huge holes into over six walls before its momentum finally stopped. 

Having bought himself a bit of time, Harry ran to the pod and drew a circle with his wand around it:

“Protego Diabolica!”

As chance made it, at that moment, he also felt the Portkey that he had given to Power Girl activate. That meant that she and the two Green Lanterns had teleported away to safety. 

Normally, Harry should have Disapparated now too. There was no more reason for him to continue risking his life fighting this bioengineered creature; after all, as far as he was concerned, Project Cadmus’ agents deserved their fate. 

But he didn’t Disapparate. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t leave the little girl sleeping in the medical pod behind. 

He took one last look at the girl before the monster returned. Her eyes were closed, but her short blonde hair, her soft jawline, the shape of her cheekbones, the forehead, and the partially visible chin, lips, and nose behind the transparent breathing mask made it impossible for him not to recognize the uncanny similarity. 

‘If Kara were 12 or 13 years old, that’s exactly what she would look like.’

He knew that there was also the possibility that the girl had no relation to Kara whatsoever. 

‘She could just be a random girl kidnapped off the street and used for their human experiments.’

But he couldn’t shake off the feeling that Power Girl and the little girl were connected in some way. The similarities were too uncanny. 

As the beast burst back into the room with a roar, Harry noticed that it was breathing heavily, as if it were exhausted. Had it been any other living being, his spells would have killed it over 30 times by now. Yet there it was standing, with not even a scratch on its grey skin and with nothing to show for the massive amount of trauma it had suffered other than its heavy breathing. 

The beast let out another scream and jumped with such strength that the ground under its feet shattered, launching itself forward faster than the speed of sound. 

The circle of blue fire surrounding Harry and the medicinal pod flared to life and exploded in intensity as the creature slammed its sword-like bony arm into it. 

Momentarily, the monster’s charge was stopped. 

However, the shockwave it had generated by breaking the sound barrier shattered the glass walls of the medicinal pod, forcing Harry to split his attention from the monster in order to catch the little girl so that she would not get injured. 

As the monster roared, Harry turned his head just in time to see it force its way through the wall of blue fire. Its skin was melting and its raw flesh was charred, but it was pushing through the fire as it could feel no pain. 

Protego Diabolica had incinerated Batman and killed two metahumans from the Crime Syndicate instantly, yet this monster not only was still alive but it was even starting to heal from its wounds faster than the fire could burn it.

Before he could attempt to Disapparate along with the little girl, the monster swung its club-like arm at him. 

He could have instantly turned his body into a wraith and saved himself. However, in doing so, he would have left the unconscious girl unprotected. 

Was it his ‘saving people thing’ acting up again? Or was it because the little girl looked like a miniature version of Power Girl? The exact reason was not clear to him either, but Harry refused to let the girl die. 

The monster’s club strike blew Harry and the little girl away like ragdolls, smashing them violently into the wall. 

Protego Aegis, Protego Totalum, Mana Barrier, and Runic Iron Skin—all those protective spells shattered at that instant, and the bones in Harry's left arm were crushed like brittle glass at the impact. 

The pain was so bad that it could almost rival the Cruciatus Cruse. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel his magic either. He was barely hanging onto consciousness. 

Yet even in that deplorable state, he looked at the little girl in his arms to make sure that she was safe.

To his surprise, the girl didn’t have a bruise on her. Furthermore, she was awake now, her baby-blue eyes peering into his curiously. 

He noticed her eyes shift away from his and glance at something over his shoulder. He knew what it was. The monster had probably closed in and was about to finish them off. 

‘Is this the end?’

‘...I wish I could’ve at least saved this girl.’

It felt like he was going to die in vain. 

‘Did you foresee this too, Death? Did you know I was going to die like a fool again while trying to save someone?’

Harry’s thoughts abruptly halted when the girl’s eyes started glowing with crimson light, and then two heat beams burst out over his shoulders. 

The girl’s heat beams nailed the monster straight in the forehead. They pierced through its tough skin and through its thick skull too, before turning its brain into goo. 

The bioengineered creature froze with his sword-like arm above its head, and the light disappeared from its eyes. For a second, it was petrified. Then it fell to the side lifelessly. It was dead. 

‘Ah, I was right!’ Harry thought. ‘She really was a Kryptonian.’

Relief washed over him at hearing the creature collapse on the ground with a heavy thud, not making another sound. 

The girl was safe. They were both safe. 

“Good girl,” Harry praised her and smiled weakly. 

He only got to see the little girl tilt her head at his words and return his smile before his sight went dark. He fell unconscious. 

⁂

When he woke up, the sound of life support machines was beeping steadily in his ears. 

‘I didn’t die,’ was the first thing he thought when he realized that he didn’t wake up in limbo, in front of Death, but that he was in a hospital room. 

Glancing around, he recognized the place he was in. 

‘It’s the Watchtower… so the League found me. But why did they bring me here?’

He had been out, unconscious. There was no telling what sort of effects his magic power could have while he was out cold. 

It was then that he finally noticed the little girl sitting on a stool next to his bed and looking at him unblinkingly with her big blue eyes. 

Unlike when he found her, the girl wasn't naked anymore, she was wearing a pretty blue summer dress and a pair of white sandals.

“Hey,” Harry said, smiling at her. 

The girl returned his smile and said too: "Hey."

“What’s your name?” Harry asked. 

The girl scrunched up her eyebrows before saying: “What's your name?” 

“My name is Harry.”

The girl took a few seconds to think before also saying: “My name is Harry.”

At that moment, it dawned on him: she was imitating his words. 

‘Is she just being mischievous?’

But he dismissed that thought. 

‘No, she’s speaking slowly, and she sounds like she hasn’t talked before.’

Unintentionally, as he locked eyes with her, his mind reached into her surface thoughts. A torrent of powerful emotions came from her mind. 

Curiosity, confusion, excitement, admiration, affection, and some anxiety. 

‘...Why am I not hearing any words?’

It was the first time in his long life that Harry had stumbled into a mind with no thoughts. 

'It's like I'm inside the mind of a newborn.'

He had never used his Legilimency on a baby but he reckoned that only a toddler's mind could be like that.

‘Could it be… that she doesn’t know how to talk?’

It sounded crazy, but upon taking a moment to think about it, things were starting to make sense. 

‘She looks like a miniature version of Kara. She’s most likely a Kryptonian too. I found her in a pod, at Cadmus, who were doing human experiments, and worse… '

'...Could it be that she’s a clone?’

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN: For those of you who are not that familiar with DC, Doomsday is a creature best known for killing Superman. 

Doomsday's origins vary a lot depending on the comic or animated movie/series but his characteristics are usually the same everywhere: he is a juggernaut, a monster that cannot be killed twice in the same manner.

But not just that. As long as something doesn’t kill him outright in one hit, Doomsday evolves mid-fight too, growing resistant to it. Doomsday is the embodiment of ‘Whatever doesn’t kill him makes him stronger” and “Whatever kills him makes him even stronger”. He is the ultimate killing machine.