Chapter Text
Toyman has been adjusting to things, now that he is in the company of Lex Luthor.
He is kept in a small white room with four blank walls, an even floor, and a flat ceiling. He is not let out except under very special circumstances. He has been here for an indeterminate amount of time, which feels like aeons but must be far shorter; he is underground, and so there are no windows to show the passage of night and day. He has no visitors.
Lex Luthor had taken him- or the marionette, rather- to this special place, inside his fortified castle. It’s the LexCorp main building, or so Toyman seems to vaguely recall from knowledge earned during his life.
The spirit doesn’t understand their arrangement at first- this small room, this lack of inactivity- but gradually, over time, he realizes what he has become: a toy. Luthor’s toy. And Luthor is the kind of person who puts their toy on the shelf, never looking at it, never playing with it, never touching it, unless he wants to show someone else how great his toy is, to purposefully make them jealous.
It is a lonely life, sitting on the toy-shelf. Like a toy, Toyman doesn’t need to be fed, watered, or exercised— nor does he need to sleep, or produce waste for someone to clean up. This means no one has to check on him. To talk to him. To give him even the barest trace of human comfort.
Toyman could leave. His spirit is not, technically speaking, anchored to the marionette. But he can’t bear the thought of leaving the piece of the Body he has, the precious bit of flesh he keeps contained inside the wooden doll.
On that subject…
Some time ago- Toyman doesn’t know exactly how long- Luthor had come to visit him. He had taken Toyman with him down a series of hallways. Luthor had brought him to a small room, containing a glass box. He had said this box was a preservation chamber: temperature and moisture controlled, hermetically sealed, devoid of oxygen— built for the purpose of keeping the contents perfectly preserved. Toyman had been confused, at that point, what this had to do with him— Luthor had chuckled at his naive inquiry, and picked up the doll so Toyman could see what was inside.
It was the Body. The rest of it, not just the small piece Toyman held within his wooden avatar. The smooth, expressionless face, with the delicately closed eyelids; the calloused hands folded over his chest (the number of fingers missing was right); the shock of bristling black hair. It was so clean and bloodless and well-dressed, compared to when Toyman last saw it, that he hardly believed that it was Jack Nimball— but he knew it was true in the depths of his soul. Luthor had exhumed the Body from where Nimball’s family had no-doubt placed him in the earth for his final resting place, just for more leverage over the toymaker’s spirit.
Luthor had made clear the terms of arrangement from then on: if Toyman disobeyed him, the Body would be destroyed. If he attempted to flee, the Body would be destroyed. If Toyman attacked Luthor, the Body would be destroyed.
So when he is returned, he sits there- in that horrible white room- feeling his own consciousness slip between his fingers as the time goes by. He sheds tears of ectoplasm. He screams and screams and screams until he’s tired of screaming, for he has no throat to grow hoarse, but no one comes no matter how loud he makes his cries. He sings nursery rhymes to himself. He makes up fantastical little stories about fake characters, and chips at the walls to draw murals of them. He dredges up memories of children he had helped in the toy-shop; he even remembers his own life, his own childhood, just for anything, anything at all, to do.
Luthor comes to him again, and it must be at least a week or two since the last time Toyman saw him. Toyman is so desperate for company that he doesn’t need to be threatened, doesn’t need bribes or promises— he talks to the vampiric snake willingly, all too willingly.
Luthor is direct about why he has come: he needs Nimball’s help for something. He promises time spent outside the white room in exchange, the chance to stretch his legs and do something stimulating, physically and mentally. Toyman is in no position to bargain, but he begs, begs Luthor for better conditions. He reminds Luthor that he promised he could see the toyshop. He tells the billionaire that he is going absolutely mad with no human contact, with no noise, with no anything. He is not a simple wooden doll, able to sit quietly in a dark room for days or months or years upon end. If this keeps up, Toyman is going to go absolutely feral, and then he will be no use to Luthor at all.
Luthor haggles with him. He says he will see about getting Toyman a permanent playmate, and different- more interesting- accommodations, perhaps a television or radio and toys— but it’s if, and only if, he manages to do what Luthor asks of him. Though he is rigid and inflexible on this point, the vampire seems to understand, at least a little, that this treatment is driving Toyman absolutely mad. Nevertheless, he acts like granting the barest comfort is a great kindness. Toyman wants to kill him so, so very badly— and he thinks he could do it, too.
But the Body. The Body, the Body, the Body… That is something Toyman cannot risk.
DAY ONE
Luthor takes him from the white room to a different one. This one is larger. There is a table, with a chair built for Toyman’s proportions, so he’s just a little ways above the tabletop surface. There are cages, filled with wood chips. Toyman dimly remembers his own childhood— he lost his sense of smell when he lost his life, but the image conjures to mind the reeking of wet animals and soiled bedding. Childhood pets. He feels fond already.
“You animate the inanimate,” Luthor says, giving the doll’s wooden back a hearty nudge in the direction of the cages. “You bring toys to life, in a sense. Can you try it on what used to be a living body?”
DAY TWO
Toyman giggles in delight as the hamsters run past him, squealing little reek reek s of enjoyment. One of them is only bones, and the other is entirely drained of blood. They are alive, though, alive at Toyman’s whim. The bony one scratches its ears, even though it lacks them, and squeaks at the other despite its lack of vocal chords.
Toyman kneels, opening his arms, and both creatures rush into his embrace. He has no more sense of touch, or one that is not quite like life— but he can imagine the warmth, imagine the slick feel of fur and the brittle hardness of bone.
DAY THREE
He is taken from the room. They are testing how long the hamsters will “live” for without his direct control and influence. It takes an hour before the bones fall apart, and two until the furred hamster remembers it’s dead and keels over. They repeat this exercise, and Toyman is promised a chance to visit the toy shop if he can keep them “alive” longer. By the end of the day the hamsters are autonomous for a full five hours.
DAY FIVE
Toyman liked the trip to the toy shop. It was as he remembered it— the big creaking stairs, the rows and rows of shelves, all the products on display. He was able to play hide-and-seek with one of the patrons- a little girl- while her father was arguing about prices with a staff member that Toyman doesn’t remember working there. She had told her father that a dollie had played a game with her, and he had dismissed her, said that’s nice dear, and they had gone. Toyman had been warned about revealing his presence by his handler- the proxy that Luthor had sent to watch over him- and had begrudgingly gone back to a more subtle touch— an alluring toy falling in front of a parent with a young child, the checkout machine mysteriously applying discounts, the lights glowing just a warmer and more rosy. He even visits the workshop, the little back room where he spent his time making his own toys— it was where Jack Nimball had died.
When he is told to leave, he nearly snaps, but he remembers himself, remembers his place now that Luthor has ownership of the Body. Toyman is willingly taken back to LexCorp for a short rest before the next sunup.
Today, it is back to business. Toyman is working on resurrecting people , making the leap from hamsters to humans.
Unfortunately, people are harder than animals. He cannot get them to behave convincingly, to be much more than one-dimensional stereotypes. He also cannot tell what they were like before they were dead, so he puppeteers their bodies while giving them new voices, new names, new personalities. He cannot keep them working for very long if he is not in direct control.
DAY SIX
Luthor finally tells him what this is about.
He takes Toyman to a new room, one he has never been in before. There are massive vats fitted with tubes and pipes, and all manner of buttons and switches and readouts that the spirit cannot readily comprehend. There are creatures inside, half-formed horrors that are grotesquely inhuman. Most of them have various bulging or withered body-parts: a tiny, vestigial head on a massive torso with weak little limbs; a head with a stunted torso and little club feet, without arms; one giant leg with a little tumorous lump on the end that had teeth and hair growing on it.
“These are clones of Superman,” Luthor tells him. Toyman almost does not believe him; these things are nowhere close to what Superman looks like. Superman is chiseled, handsome, well-proportioned, noble-looking. These things are ghostly white and… and simply wrong.
Luthor seems to implicitly understand his doubt, so the billionaire carries on talking as he paces through the forest of fluid-filled chambers. “I have spent millions of dollars perfecting the technology, and attempting to grow a viable embryo from a sample of Superman’s cells. But, so far, every single one has not been viable; either failure to even begin cell division, or developing with the deformities you see before you: missing limbs, not growing a brain, swollen extremities… My scientists tell me it is not the fault of technology, but a failure of Kryptonian DNA. Our knowledge of it is fragmentary. They think it will be years- decades, without a good sample- before we unravel the mysteries of Kryptonian genetics. I am patient, as an eternal creature of the night, but not that patient.”
He sets Toyman down on a countertop, so the toy might observe the jarred remains of failed alien experiments. The marionette’s crude hands click together, in a facsimile of nervous hand-wringing. Luthor is expecting a response, but Toyman doesn’t know what to say. He tries a safe option.
“I don’t understand. What am I here for?”
Luthor smiles down at him. He has pronounced fangs.
“This cloning project is unsalvageable in the current day. We will not get an exact duplicate of Superman for twenty, perhaps thirty years, and in the meantime, I’ve wasted millions on nothing. Unless, that is, we find some way to use these failed clones for something else.”
Toyman tilts his head. It goes beyond the limitations of a normal neck.
“What are you saying? What is it?”
The smile widens. Luthor inhales, and says, in his rich, plummy voice:
“You’ve heard of Frankenstein, haven’t you?”
DAY SEVEN
The next day is when Toyman gets to see the piecemeal body, on a lab table in yet another room he has never been inside. This area is fitted with a great deal of medical equipment; complicated-looking machines with tubes and dials and innumerable switches. He thinks this one might be an artificial breathing device, and this one might be a dialysis machine, and this one… Well, he’s not sure what that one is for.
Toyman floats the doll up to the surgical table and gets a good look at what he will be animating.
The hybrid clone’s body-parts have been carefully measured and fitted to meet as one another closely as possible in terms of proportions. This creature is a hodge-podge of seven of the twenty clones that had developed beyond a zygote; surgical scars, fresh, run up-and-down the length of many parts of its body, where one clone’s body parts meet another’s. It has careful stitching all over its scalp— the head and brain belong to different clones, with the most attractive face paired with the most well-developed brain.
Its skin is unnaturally, starkly pale- almost chalk-white- but it has some Superman-like features; a strong chin, large broad shoulders, a V-shaped torso, large fists. It is a little more brutish, though, in the heaviness of its brows, and the Neanderthalic wideness of its jaw. Its genitalia has been removed— Luthor had given a dismal comment on the matter to the effect of “we don’t need them breeding, do we?”.
Toyman animates it.
He imagines it like Superman— proud, noble, heroic. The first thing it does is ask Toyman if he wants to be rescued from this place. (It has what he imagines Superman’s voice is like: pleasant, reassuring, steady, not excessively deep but undeniably masculine). He almost begs it to take him away, but manages to contain himself and tell it “no”. In turn, it tells Toyman that Luthor needs to be arrested for his crimes, and that it will deal with him personally. Toyman severs it from life, little wooden hands clasped over his nutcracker mouth, horrified that Luthor might take offense at the creature’s insolence and harm the Body.
Shakily, he tells Luthor he will need another day.
DAY 8
It is the twenty-ninth of October. Jack Nimball had died close to four months ago now.
Luthor had reviewed the camera footage from the day prior. He tells Toyman, taking great pains to be gentle, that it isn’t meant to be Superman. It’s meant to be a blind, submissive drone that obeys only Luthor’s commands. It’s Superman’s strength and powers that are desired, not his noble heart or sense of justice or sculpted physique.
Toyman reanimates it with that in mind. The clone does not talk much from then on.
Today they test the Superman clone’s powers, to see if he is a physical match for Superman, in both strength and weakness. The clone collapses in agony when exposed to Kryptonite for longer than a few moments. The clone is capable of flight, X-ray vision, heat vision, and incredible feats of strength and dexterity. No one is able to really determine if that is a result of the clone’s physiology, or Toyman’s own ability to bend and warp reality as he saw fit, but the methodology doesn’t matter: Luthor is keenly interested in results.
DAY 9
A storm rolls through Metropolis, starting that afternoon. The wood of Toyman’s marionette doll feels funny as a result; stiff, maybe, bloated with the additional moisture in the air. He thinks it is a bad omen. It’s the night before Halloween, too— that ought to count for something.
He begs Luthor to let him take the day off, telling him stubbornly that something doesn’t feel right, but the vampire is not deterred. He puts Toyman right back to work as soon as the ghost can be convinced to start again (gentle threats being made to the Body in the process). Luthor wants the clone capable of acting at least somewhat independently; though Toyman has never been in ‘direct control’ of any of the animated dead, they are not very functional if they’ve been separated from him for too long. If the clone is to do battle with Superman- where Toyman will most likely not be able to follow- they have to nip out that limitation.
They work on the clone following Luthor’s orders, too. Toyman remains small and silent in the corner as the faux-Kryptonian obeys every single demand unflinchingly. The ghost does not say anything when Luthor savagely attacks it; kicks it, berates it, punches it, claws it— spitting vile words of abuse that he has saved for the real Superman.
Toyman wishes he could go home. Instead, he is directed out of the testing area, and later told that the clone had stayed animated for a whole hour once he was removed from the room— whimpering from the pain of its injuries as they slowly healed under a yellow sun lamp.
DAY 10
It’s the morning of Halloween. Toyman only rises when Luthor threatens the Body again.
They leave the LexCorp building. The woman that Luthor had been with the day that Toyman was captured at the toy store is responsible for driving them; Luthor and Toyman sit in the backseat. The clone, not animated at present, is in the trunk.
“Where are we going?” Though he is engaging in polite conversation, Toyman privately wishes he had a seat belt to fit his tiny frame. He is worried about the condition of the part of the Body inside his abdomen, should there be a traffic accident.
“We’re on route to a facility where the clone can really demonstrate its skills, and test its viability in far proximities from you. The facility itself is in the Catskill,” Luthor answers.
He turns his head to look down at Toyman, his imperious expression never wavering. “So far, I have been pleased with what I’ve seen from you and the clone. I expect there’s no great surprise in telling you you’ll be rewarded for your efforts so far. When we return from our trip north, you’ll have a new room prepared at LexCorp— more things to keep you entertained when you aren’t working. However, I expect you to keep participating in the research for the privilege of these amenities.”
“Yes, Mister Luthor,” Toyman replies, dull and dutiful.
It begins to rain- the storm clouds had been threatening all morning, ever since yesterday- and the sound of it is too aggressive to be calm and lulling. It sounds almost like a hail of bullets slamming into the limousine, like nature itself is trying to dissuade them from completing their journey. Luthor’s assistant has to drive slowly to avoid slipping on the wet roads, and take curves even more gently than is typical.
They arrive late that day, evidently settling in for a night visit. It’s black as a crow’s wing at midnight due to the storm and the late time of arrival, and there’s more than once that Toyman is worried they’re going to be hurtling over the edge of a mountain precipice.
Eventually, though, they go up a long, winding road, and end their trip at a facility nestled in a small valley in-between mountain peaks. There’s a simple concrete building and tall chain link fences encircling the perimeter, which Toyman suspects are electrified. They have to go through a guard checkpoint to get in. Whatever else is in here, Luthor really doesn’t want others to see it.
Luthor gets a pair of men to bring the clone’s body inside, their flashlights illuminating the pouring droplets of rain. Luthor’s assistant holds out an umbrella for the vampire, to prevent him from getting too wet, though affords herself and Toyman no such luxury. It’s dark as anything as they walk to the building, with the only lights in the shadowy compound coming from the facility and at various points around the fence; Toyman thinks there is the outline of trees in the darkness, but he can’t tell.
Toyman usually prefers walking places, even in his diminutive state, but the dirt road leading to the concrete building has been turned into a soup of mud so severe that he’s almost wading through it, knee-deep, like a swamp. He floats himself besides Luthor instead.
“We had a doctor that wanted to do an autopsy while you’ve animated the body,” Luthor says, speaking loudly to be heard above the rain pattering against the umbrella. “Louise Belladicta. It shouldn’t take long.”
They all step inside, removing damp jackets or mud-caked shoes; Luthor receives a new pair of clean Oxfords within ten seconds of entering the building, which must have been some pre-discussed contingency. The lobby they step into is bright, clean, and devoid of moisture; Toyman’s wood has gotten wet from the rain, and he’s feeling unbearably swollen and waterlogged, so it’s a small relief to be somewhere a little less wet . The sudden bright lights after Stygian darkness is a little disorienting, though; even when he was alive, Jack Nimball was never good at switching between light and dark without discomfort.
“This way,” Luthor tells him, jarring him from his thoughts. The doll paws at his eyes to try to refocus, even though it doesn’t do anything. “Come along.”
Luthor, the female assistant, Toyman, and the two men carrying the corpse go right into a bright hallway. It has a tile floor and simple walls, with no decorations, and a strip of fluorescent lights on the ceiling like the stripes on a roadway.
They move into a different room. The room is large, very clearly medical, with all kinds of equipment and machinery and a sturdy-looking steel autopsy table. Above the table is a red sun lamp, glaring down at the tabletop, bathing it in scarlet light. There’s a woman in the room already, preparing some equipment. She’s older, stern-looking, in a lab coat and glasses with a little ID tag clipped to her front pocket that says “Louise Belladicta”. She’s already in surgical scrubs, with thick gloves pulled to her mid-forearm and a tight cloth mask pressed over her mouth and nose.
“Oh, Mister Luthor, you’ve arrived. Very good.” She wordlessly indicates to the two men that they should place the body on the tabletop; they are silent throughout this process, with expressions just as unthinking and unfeeling as the clone. They restrain its neck, wrists, and ankles in solid steel bands. “I would just like to see, Mister Luthor, if I can’t get the body working independently once your…” Her eyes linger on Toyman for a second, then sweep away. “... Associate animates it.”
While the clone is still dead- one head turned to the side, eyes peacefully closed- she slices open its abdomen with a Y-shaped incision, and uses sturdy metal clamps to keep the sides pinned open. Seeing inside the clone makes Toyman feel sick and anxious, and he quietly backs away from the operating table until he’s needed. Just hearing the sound of her… doing whatever it is she’s doing that’s making those gross, wet, squelching sounds , has him placing his hands over where his ears ought to be to try to block it out.
“These organs are remarkably well-preserved, given that this body has not been in any kind of stasis for the past week…” Doctor Belladicta narrates. Luthor nods along with her.
“After being animated, it seemed to resist cellular decay; that was what my other specialists told me. That is not a surprise, however— Toyman is his own evidence of his capability to stop cell death.”
“Stop it,” Toyman wheedles, in a whine, still keeping his hands over the sides of his head. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Luthor is referring to the piece of the Body Toyman has inside the wooden doll. The ghost is constantly expending energy to keep the old tissue healthy and fresh, so it doesn’t rot beyond the way it was when Toyman found it; it’s days old instead of the months it ought to be.
Luthor gives the marionette a wan smile. “My mistake, of course.”
The doctor finishes her work inside the clone, bringing her bloody latex gloves out of his abdominal cavity. She wipes her fingertips off on a nearby towel, just so the slickness doesn’t impede her work.
“Now, Toyman, please bring him to life.”
Toyman floats up to a good position, and eyes the body in its current state. All of its ribs are visible. Its organs, soft and loose and squishy and a rainbow of different colors, are available for all to see.
“It’s going to be in pain,” Toyman says, reluctant.
“That’s irrelevant,” Dr. Belladicta tells him. “If you would, please.”
Toyman glances over at Luthor, but if anything, he finds even less sympathy there. Toyman reluctantly channels himself, using the body of the clone as a conduit for his will; he assigns the right personality. Luthor’s perfect Kryptonian soldier.
For a moment- just a moment- Toyman is distracted, though. He thinks of how it had kindly asked him if he wanted to escape, the first time Toyman brought it to life. The spirit’s concentration wavers for a second, but he banishes the thought from his mind and puts it to what Luthor wants.
The clone awakens. Its organs begin to move, pumping blood, digesting, breathing— Toyman places a hand over his mouth, thoroughly disturbed, and looks away. He is even more disturbed when a second later it starts screaming. It thrashes ferociously in its bonds, but the red sunlight keeps it weak enough to not be able to escape and not be able to heal. Its banshee screeches of pain are awful, animal.
“Shut it up, Toyman,” Luthor orders, above the din.
“I c-can’t, that’s not how it—”
“Shut it up!”
Toyman whimpers, crude wooden palms pressed to his temples; he wills it to be quiet, to stop, to shut up. It doesn’t. Toyman has a suspicion, deep down in the knot of his stomach- where the piece of the Body dwells- that the reason it’s in so much pain is his fault, because he thinks it ought to be hurting.
He can’t stop it from screeching in agony, so he uses his last resort: Toyman severs the connection of life, panting even though he doesn’t have lungs, and drops to his wooden knees. There is a deafening, chilling silence— though a distant roll of thunder sounds a moment later, slow and ominous.
“That gave us excellent data, though it wasn’t what I was hoping for,” Dr. Belladicta says, quiet and mild. “It is alive, in a manner of speaking. Its heart and brain and lungs were all, from a cursory look, functional. If we could just sustain it, we may not even need Toyman beyond the initial animation.”
Luthor is glaring holes through Toyman, and the puppet flinches at the sight. Gradually, though, Luthor’s irritated gaze softens as it lands on Dr. Belladicta.
“One more time, then— see if you can get any reading on its vital signs. And Toyman, see if you can make it not feel pain this time.”
Toyman rises to his feet once more, raising his shaking, blocky hands as he calls life back into it…
There’s a sound, a distant roar, and all at once, the lights wink out; the entire room is drenched in darkness. Almost at the same time, a peal of thunder booms overhead, with a ferocious, terrifyingly close-sounding crash. Silence reigns for a moment.
“What the devil?” Luthor mutters, the first to react. One of the guards’ radios chirps; the little red power light on it moves as he brings it up to his ear.
“Power failure,” he says, after a brief listen. “Lightning struck the power lines and fried ‘em clean.”
“What about the backup generator?” Luthor says, tight and controlled.
“Out for maintenance… There was a memo, sir, that was why Officer Adawe wanted you to schedule your visit for next week.”
Luthor growls, and the sound is deep and rattling, like a big cat or rumbling motorcycle.
The lights flicker back on; bewildered glances are exchanged, until the culprit is revealed to be Toyman. The little glowing whites of his eyes are narrowed to slits in concentration.
“Ahhh, I knew there was a reason I kept you around, Toyman. Let’s hope this is only a small hiccup.” Luthor’s gaze sweeps towards the operating table to check on the status of the clone, and the blood drains out of his face. Dr. Belladicta catches on a moment later.
“Where is it?” She whispers.
The table is empty, devoid of any sign of the clone except for a few smudges of blood on the steel surface and broken restraints. Toyman gives a small little sound of uncertainty, and Luthor snaps at him.
“Keep those damned lights on. Do not panic.”
“Didn’t you enter with a partner?” Luthor’s blonde assistant hisses to the guard. “Where is he?”
The lone guard glances around wildly, but his companion is gone. As if on instinct, the guard reaches for his firearm, fingers closing around the grip.
Luthor, just as quick, places his hand on top of the guard’s. “That’s not going to do anything to a Kryptonian. Even if you do hit him, which I doubt, it will ricochet off him and injure one of us.” When the guard reluctantly lets go, the billionaire glances down at Toyman. His tone is accusatory.
“Why haven’t you cut the clone loose?”
“I did,” Toyman shrills, soft and reedy. He reaches into the yawning abyss for things that he has control of; there is no weight of the clone on his consciousness— there is nothing but forcing the filaments in the rooms’ bulbs to stay hot and bright. “I’m not controlling anything but the lights. I didn’t animate the body. I didn’t.”
Luthor leans back, seeming to be thinking.
“Just like Frankenstein,” he mutters to himself, the only thought process he seems willing to articulate aloud. “The lightning…”
There is a sound, from behind one of the machines. Their eyes are drawn— nothing is there. When they look back…
A body has been returned to the operating table. It is not the clone’s body, rather, it’s the missing guard. A Y has been carved into his chest, rough and gouging, splitting bone and muscle and organs in its wake. His expression is contorted in agony.
Everyone witnesses the body in total silence, until the billionaire speaks.
“Graves. Toyman. We’re leaving.”
“You? What about me?” Dr. Belladicta shrieks, rounding on him.
“If you want to avoid the fate of this man, all guards are issued a sidearm,” Luthor replies, eyes narrowed. “I’m sure Mueller, here, would be willing to spare a bullet— but we’re leaving.”
“You asshole,” the guard, Mueller, snarls. “No, no… That’s not what’s going to happen here, Lex— and you too, bitch. You brought the fucking thing to life, you and Louise and the weird fucking doll— so you two are going to stay put and let it rip the two of you to shreds, and I’m going to walk free, because I had no part in this.”
“You think I’m going to stay here?” Luthor scoffs.
“If you move, I’ll shoot you,” Mueller snarls, voice trembling with mania. He draws his pistol and aims squarely for Luthor’s knee, even despite the tremor in his hands. “I don’t need to kill you. You’re not going anywhere on a shattered fucking knee.”
“Try it,” Luthor invites. He takes a step forward. “Try it, Mueller.”
“Stay back!”
Luthor takes another step. The guard shoots him, the gun barking loudly in the enclosed space, and fragments of bone and blood explode outward; Toyman jerks a sturdy-looking medical machine towards himself, sheltering behind it just in case the bone shards might pierce his wooden hide and harm the Body.
Luthor lunges, even on his shredded knee, and his teeth sink into the guard’s neck. There’s a horrific scream, two more gunshots, and the guard sinks to the floor, pale as a ghost and rapidly on his way to complete desanguination. Luthor’s knee is none the worse for wear, except his torn pant leg, and he licks a small rivulet of blood away from the corner of his lip. He addresses Graves and Toyman:
“Now, let’s be off, shall w—”
Dr. Belladicta doesn’t even have the time to scream before a hand is driven through her stomach, giving an ugly-sounding crunch and a nasty squelch . Behind her looms the clone, standing partially in her shadow, its pale face contorted in an ugly grimace. It draws its hand out of her chest, and she collapses to the floor, blood oozing into the cracks. The clone appeared to have healed from the autopsy already; there is only a faint scar where the incisions used to be.
“Why?” It asks, gaze focused squarely on Luthor. Luthor, naturally, dons his vampiric form before speaking; his new musculature tears through his suit, wings included, and his fangs and pressed-in nose hinder a bit of his speech.
“Why what? Why did I make you? Why experiment at all?”
The clone nods, eyes narrowed. The whites are almost yellow, jaundiced. Toyman silently wills it to lapse back into unconsciousness, to fall back into the slumber of death, but it isn’t his to play with anymore— it is animated all on its own. The spirit redoubles his efforts on keeping the lights functional, but the clone rips the red sun lamp from the ceiling in a shower of sparks, and crushes it to a pile of crumpled steel with his bare hands. The clone throws it into the corner.
“I wanted a weapon against Superman. And it seems that you’re quite efficient. What do you say you work for me?” Luthor asks, warm and pleasant. Toyman can feel the vampiric glamor tugging at his will, urging him to agree.
“No,” the clone says, tight and controlled. “You are bad. Evil. Lex Luthor belong in jail. Or maybe…”
Its eyes fall to the body on the operating table, wordless but still threatening.
“There’s no need for that,” Luthor says, calmly; he holds up his hands, in a manner that is supposed to be placating. “Whatever you want, I can provide it to you.”
The clone’s eyes slide off of the billionaire and onto Toyman.
“Walk away,” the clone says. “Me know you. You a victim. A victim of his. And Superman save victims.”
“Toyman,” Luthor’s voice is sharp, biting. Toyman knows what he means without it being explicit: If you leave me to die here, the Body back at home is going to be destroyed before you can return to it.
“You aren’t Superman,” Toyman tells the clone, nervously. “Y-you’re Luthor’s… Weapon.”
The clone blinks.
“Was,” he says. “That is not what me want. Me not your weapon no more. Me am not Superman, that is right— me am wrong, made wrong. Me am bizarre. Me am Bizarro! ”
He rushes at Luthor, with a speed that scalds the air; Toyman, for a terrifying second, thinks of the Body’s complete and total destruction. Its fate all hinges on Luthor being alive.
Everything becomes very clear when Toyman realizes that, for the purposes of right now, Luthor is essentially the Body— and Toyman has no reservations about cutting loose in its defense.
The little ghost screams an awful banshee’s scream, and the room itself comes alive. The metal gurney’s wheels are repurposed as legs, drawing the clone into a crushing embrace against its steel belly. The floor tiles rip from the ground and sling through the air, slamming into the clone with bullet-like velocity; the snaking hoses and pipes curl around the clone, drag him down, restrain him— Toyman tries to crush him, squeeze him, destroy him. The lights flicker and shudder with his wavering concentration; sometimes they go out altogether.
The clone tries to tear its way loose from the mob of medical machines, bellowing in pain like an injured bull.
“You victim! Stop hurting me! Bizarro am trying to help you!”
“STAY AWAY FROM LUTHOR!” Toyman shrieks, and the walls themselves shudder in response to his rage. The machinery in the room pummels the clone, denting from the force of their collision with his tough Kryptonian flesh, but re-forming as they rear back to strike. An oxygen tank has dented and twisted to become a snake; various machines have been crunched into bladed caltrop-like balls; and, of course, the gurney remains in its legged, monstrous form.
Bizarro breaks free from his restraints with a yell, fragments of metal exploding outward in every-which direction; his eyes begin to glow red, and twin beams of red light slice through all the nearby objects, rending them cleanly in two. It takes Toyman a second to try to bring them back together, to defend himself and Luthor— by the time he has his creatures reformed and his wits about him, Bizarro already has Luthor by the throat.
“Gonna kill you,” Bizarro threatens, to a stony-faced Luthor. He’s visibly squeezing the billionaire’s neck— veins are popping out on Luthor’s head. “Gonna kill Luthor for making Bizarro hurt!”
Luthor scoffs, though his words are gurgled from the pressure on his larynx. “Really? You’re going to kill me?”
“Bizarro can squash you, crush you, mash you—” Bizarro threatens. While he’s talking, Luthor strikes with his vampire form’s craggy talons, gouging deepling into Bizarro’s stomach— it is a nasty disemboweling, sending skin, fat, and blood flying. The clone howls in pain, letting go to stagger backwards, cupping his stomach to keep his entrails in place.
“You idiot Kryptonians are all the same,” Luthor sneers, his wings flaring, framing him as larger than he truly is. “Use a little magic and you crumble away. The difference is Superman isn’t stupid enough to get close.”
Bizarro looks down at himself- nearly eviscerated- then back up at Luthor, shock faintly written into his expression. He tenses, crouching a little, then jettisons towards the ceiling, breaking through the roof. A flood of rain begins pouring in, mixing with the debris and plaster to create a new sodden floor.
Once he’s out of sight, Luthor collapses to his knees, clutching his throat, gasping for breath— Graves follows him, and he digs his teeth into her neck and drinks his fill. Toyman quivers as he waits, watching the holes in the floor begin to fill up with water and the blood of Luthor’s three employees. Luthor pulls away from Graves a short time later, breathing hard, still slightly massaging his neck— but he’s very much alive. Seeing him unharmed is its own kind of relief to the marionette.
The Body is safe. The Body is safe.
“Let’s get out of here,” Luthor rasps, rising to his feet; he helps Graves up, too. “Before that moron realizes that was the last of my Kryptonite nail lacquer.”