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Still Defiant! SI [Marvel/DC] 64: Smoke Screen
🕑 Added 2025-04-20 10:27:37 +0000 UTC64: Smoke Screen
"Can you believe it?! There are so many incredible things happening in the world and Perry sends us to cover a stupid story about the reconstruction of some ugly museum!"
At Lois’s outburst, Jimmy Olsen raised a finger, ready to defend the so-called 'ugly museum', but when he saw the irritation on her face, he thought better of it and decided to change his words.
"We can’t help it, Lois. Remember, we’re ‘punished’? We’re lucky we didn’t get fired… or worse," he said, trying to be reasonable, but as always, his partner seemed not to listen.
"Bah! We’re not kids, Jimmy. So what if we took a few risks? It ended up being an amazing story! They should be giving me a damn award, not pulling me out of my city and making me interview old people!" she complained once again, gripping the disposable coffee cup tightly in her hand.
"If he was going to send us to New York, he could’ve at least sent us to the Baxter Foundation’s science fair," she muttered under her breath, letting out a low sigh.
"It doesn’t matter. With the way the world is, we’re bound to find a great story soon. I bet something’s gonna blow up any minute now, and when it does, we have to be the first on the scene. Perry won’t be able to keep giving us the worst assignments or ignoring our efforts if we bring him something amazing!"
If he was honest, Jimmy wasn’t so sure he wanted to be in the middle of another big 'story' anytime soon—the last time, he’d nearly peed his pants.
But he knew he wouldn’t say no when the moment came. Despite his inner fears, there was a reason he hadn’t quit being Lois’s partner, as crazy as she was.
Maybe it was a bit masochistic on his part, but deep down, he also wanted to witness the great events that would shape history—maybe even be a part of them… preferably without dying in the process.
"Well, I’ve heard there are some pretty interesting vigilantes in the city—one they call the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and some newer guy still without a name in Queens. Since we’ll be around for a few days, maybe we could try digging deeper into them," he commented, making her raise an eyebrow.
"I mean… if we want a great story, wouldn’t it be better to go out and find it ourselves?" Jimmy added when he saw her perplexed expression. "No offense, but I don’t think your plan to wait for something to blow up is gonna do us much good..."
Lois narrowed her eyes at him. For a second he thought she was going to get mad, but then her frown relaxed and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
"I like your initiative. Tell me more about these guys."
These days, a vigilante couldn’t be ignored—not when they might mean the discovery of another Defiant in the making.
It was well known that Many would-be heroes had been popping up everywhere lately—most of them just ordinary people looking for trouble, but a small few were beginning to prove they were more than mere troublemakers.
If they were lucky, and this pair of vigilantes turned out to be more than just guys with too much free time and a ski mask, then they’d have a big story on their hands.
One that would surely make Perry start taking them more seriously.
Seeing that she was on board with his idea, Jimmy began thinking about the rumors some of his contacts in the city had told him, ready to share them with her. But before he could get a single word out, something stopped him—an earsplitting crash, hitting his eardrums like thunder, followed by a powerful shockwave that rippled through the air.
“BOOM!!!”
“What the hell?!” Jimmy shouted, gripping the table between him and Lois to keep from falling. Car alarms started blaring around them, mingling with panicked and shocked screams from the people nearby.
Heart pounding in his chest, he turned toward the direction of the blast, his pupils shrinking as he saw that not far from them, the top of the famous Baxter Building was now shrouded in a thick cloud of black smoke.
“HA! I told you!” Lois yelled excitedly, slamming both hands on the table, a wide, almost maniacal grin spreading across her face. Then she grabbed his arm and began dragging him along with her.
“Come on! We’ve got no time to lose!”
Jimmy could only let himself be pulled, mouth hanging open and face frozen in stunned disbelief. Just… what kind of rotten luck did he have?
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Daniel growled as he felt a drop of blood slide down from his nose. Eyes narrowed, he stared into the thick cloud of black smoke in front of him. Then, with a forceful exhale, he split it in two, blasting it away and revealing the full extent of the destruction caused by the explosion.
Half of the lab was gone. The top of the Baxter Building was now in ruins, a massive hole torn through its side, with debris of all shapes and sizes falling toward the ground.
Frowning, Daniel carefully scanned the surroundings, his ears ringing as he tried to focus—listening for the heartbeat of Harvey.
Lying on the ground behind him, Susan and Johnny, who were only just beginning to react to the sudden turn of events, stared numbly at the spot where their father had vanished—reduced to less than ashes before their very eyes.
“D-Dad…?!” Johnny stammered, the color draining from his face, disbelief shining in his eyes.
Susan, for her part, had to cover her mouth with her hands to stifle the scream rising in her throat, her heart sinking at the same time that tears began to spill down her cheeks.
Neither of them was capable of accepting what had just happened.
Not far from them, Ben lowered the arms he had crossed in front of himself, staring in astonishment at the half-destroyed laboratory. He couldn’t understand how things had escalated to this point.
On the ground behind him, without his noticing, Victor’s eyes had opened some time ago, his dark green pupils fixed with unreadable thoughts on the last place Harvey had stood before the explosion.
For a few seconds, silence was the only thing that reigned in the place.
‘Did he die too?’ Daniel wondered, unable to find any trace of Harvey. Reluctantly, he had to stop focusing his hearing, though his caution remained fully alert.
Whatever the case, things seemed to have come to an end—but it wasn’t the ending Daniel would have wanted.
Hiding the grimace on his face, he wiped the trail of blood from his nose, glancing sideways at the two people behind him. Luckily, he had reacted in time to keep them from getting hurt—at least physically.
He thought about something to say, but no words seemed right. Still, he knew they couldn’t just stay there doing nothing. Ignoring the dull cramps running through his body, he turned toward the Storm siblings, lips tightening at the sight of their expressions.
“I...” Any feeble attempt at comfort caught in his throat before he could voice it.
“NO!!” Johnny’s anguished scream shattered the silence—and with it, a wave of flames erupted uncontrollably from his body.
With his perception speeding up, Daniel hurried, closing the distance between them in an instant. He managed to get there in time to place himself between the flames that were about to reach Susan, and without hesitation, he raised his hand, striking precisely at Johnny’s neck.
At his precise strike, the boy's eyes rolled back, and the blazing flames lost much of their intensity, his body collapsing to the ground the next second.
“Johnny!” Seeing her brother fall unconscious, Susan seemed to have regained some of her composure, quickly rushing to his side and cradling him in her arms.
“He should wake up in a few minutes,” Daniel assured her, noticing the worry in her eyes.
His voice caught her attention, making her lift her head and look at him with a pale face and trembling lips—she almost seemed on the verge of breaking down, and he didn’t blame her at all.
Letting out a sigh, Daniel dropped down beside them, staring at the large hole where the wind was beginning to seep through, carrying with it the distant wail of approaching police sirens.
“…I’m sorry,” he said after a few seconds with genuine regret, making her shiver slightly.
Gently laying Johnny down, Susan hugged herself tightly, her pained gaze fixed on the last spot where her father had stood before dying. She remembered how he had slipped from her grasp—how she hadn’t been able to stop him.
Her reddened eyes squeezed shut, letting tears fall for a few more moments before she swallowed hard and shook her head.
“No… don’t apologize,” she whispered, her voice cracked. “This isn’t your fault.”
Daniel hesitated, unsure if that was really true, but right now there was no point in thinking about how he could’ve done things better—or what he’d done wrong. After a second of vacillation, he finally placed a hand on her shoulder.
That simple gesture seemed to be enough to make her finally break down. With a choked sob, she turned toward him and threw her arms around him, clinging to him desperately as her sobs grew louder and more raw.
Daniel could only hold her in silence, letting her pour out her grief while his gaze locked onto a building in the distance, a dangerous glint beginning to spark in the depths of his blue pupils.
He was going to have to pay a certain sorceress a visit soon.
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“Hey, watch out!” Jimmy warned, stopping Lois as several small chunks of debris fell right in front of them.
“Come on, Jimmy, it’s just a bit of gravel,” Lois scoffed, brushing off the danger as she kept moving forward.
“We need to move fast and find out everything we can before the cops show up. I bet they’re going to try and cover this up.” A failed experiment? A security breach in one of the labs? Or maybe some scientist’s careless mistake?
Whatever the real reason was, Lois knew they had to uncover it and report it before the authorities could try to bury the truth.
Soon, the two of them reached the front entrance of the Baxter Building, but to their surprise, they didn’t find any staff evacuating. In fact, the doors were shut and there was no sign of activity inside the building.
The reason, of course, was that most of the Foundation’s members had gone to the science fair, either to assist or simply attend as spectators.
The few employees who had remained on-site had been sent home shortly after Dr. Storm’s return with Daniel, as a precautionary measure to avoid disruptions—or to keep them out of danger in case of an accident.
A decision that had turned out to be quite wise, given everything that had happened.
“Doesn’t look like we’re getting in,” Jimmy remarked as he watched Lois unsuccessfully try to force the doors open.
“How strange... there should at least be a security guard around here. Why is there no one?” Lois ignored Jimmy’s words, scanning the area with sharp eyes as if looking for an alternative way in.
“I think I can fit through that window,” she said with a grin, spotting a broken window low enough that, with a bit of help, she could reach it.
“I don’t know if breaking into a building that just exploded is the best idea, Lois.” As always, Jimmy’s words seemed to bounce right off her, and she was already dragging him toward the window so he could give her a boost.
“Maybe you should listen to your friend.”
“Bwha!?” Lois let out an unintelligible squawk, nearly tripping over herself.
Jimmy froze at the unexpected intrusion. Turning slowly, his eyes widened in shock at the figure looming behind them.
“Defiant!?”
The hero didn’t say a word, simply hovering a few inches above the ground, looking at them with a blank expression.
Lois cleared her throat, trying to act as though she hadn’t just been startled. She stepped forward and spoke with more confidence than she actually felt.
“You came to investigate the incident?” she asked, a mix of curiosity and suspicion in her tone as she noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual suit. Instead, he was nearly naked—just a pair of tattered, scorched pants hanging low on his hips.
Without a word, she gave Jimmy a discreet elbow to the ribs, and the redhead reacted on instinct, pressing the shutter on his camera and snapping a photo.
Neither of them seemed to remember that the flash was still on.
With a dismissive snort, Daniel ignored their actions and lowered himself fully to the ground.
“You should leave,” he advised, his eyes scanning the building’s structural damage—cracks had spread all the way down to its base.
"Hey! Do you have any idea how far we ran to get here?" Lois protested with a scowl.
“At least tell us something. Was it an attack? Was it the Ten Rings? I heard they hit the top of Stark Tower a few days ago too.” As she spoke, she pulled a recorder from her jacket and pressed the power button without hesitation.
Daniel was quietly amused by her boldness but didn’t bother calling it out. The truth was, when he noticed their arrival, he could’ve ignored them—avoided this whole conversation—but he hadn’t. And that was for a reason.
“If you want to know what happened, then I’ll tell you. A former employee of the Baxter Foundation lost his mind,” he began, making Lois step in closer—almost completely ignoring his personal space, holding the recorder just inches from his mouth as if trying to capture every word straight from the source.
Meanwhile, Jimmy had fully entered his professional photographer mode, circling them in silence, camera raised, scanning for the best angles he could get.
“He apparently held a lot of resentment toward his former colleagues, and caused a major incident at the science fair—killing several people. Most of them were renowned scientists from the Baxter Foundation,” he continued, voice low and serious.
“The one responsible is known as Dr. Harvey Rupert Elder. He was a former Foundation scientist, fired months ago. Somehow, the man turned into a monster and gained superhuman abilities. After his attack at the science fair, he kidnapped the Storm family and a few others, bringing them here for reasons still unknown. When I found out what was happening, I stepped in immediately to stop him. Unfortunately… I was too late.”
Licking his dry lips, he kept speaking as if every word were undeniable truth.
“Right now, the president of the Baxter Foundation, Dr. Franklin Storm, is dead and his children are severely injured. The attacker… in a final suicidal act, he immolated himself - destroying the building's upper floors.” He finished, Pointed up at the gaping hole atop the tower, from where small debris still falling.
At his lengthy, rapid-fire explanation, Lois and Jimmy could only stare in stunned silence.
Of course, most of what he’d just said was a skewed version of events—half-truths laced with well-placed lies.
The facts were simple: Someone had to take the blame.
Daniel had already decided the incident had to be softened, its impact minimized, especially for the sake of the Baxter Foundation. Harvey’s transformation into a monster had given him the perfect scapegoat—one the public could point to and hate.
He didn’t like it. He hated having to do this kind of thing. But what other choice did he have? Blame Johnny? Reed? Let the media pressure fall on Susan’s shoulders right after she had lost her father and might also lose the Foundation?
No, Daniel couldn’t do that.
Since Harvey was likely dead, and it had largely been his provocation of Johnny that ultimately triggered the entire situation, Daniel thought that letting him take the blame was the least he could do to make up for some of the damage caused.
He doubted Susan or Johnny would contradict him. Ben wouldn’t say anything either—not if it meant admitting that Reed’s machine malfunction had caused so many deaths. He didn’t think the boy would be capable of tarnishing his friend’s name like that.
The only uncertain variable was Victor but… Daniel would figure out how to handle that when the time came.
“That’s all I can tell you. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to repeat it to the officers,” he said, pointing toward the patrol cars beginning to park around the building.
Lois wanted to ask a few more questions, but he ignored her and walked away, leaving her frowning.
His words had sounded credible enough—Lois hadn't detected any hesitation in his tone or lies in his eyes—but somehow, she felt there was more to all of this. Her journalistic instincts were telling her so.
“This time we landed a big scoop,” she said after a moment, stopping the recording.
She could already imagine Perry’s face when he heard it.
“And some killer photos!!” added Jimmy, looking at the shots he had taken.
Curious, Lois stepped to his side, eyes locking onto the camera's LCD screen before letting out a low whistle.
“Damn... you really knew where to focus,” she praised, chuckling under her breath at the sight of Defiant’s bare chest, but then her smirk twisted into a frown as she shot the cameraman a strange look.
Jimmy didn't notice, too absorbed in checking the images...
Shaking her head, Lois decided not to dwell on her partner’s possible... hidden preferences. Instead, she tucked her recorder away and started running, dragging Jimmy along once more.
“Come on, we need to send this in as soon as possible.”
Before they could fully walk away, Lois stopped and turned back to glance at Defiant for a moment. Maybe she was overthinking things—there was no reason for the hero to lie. He'd never done so before and assuming he would now just didn’t sit right.
Above all, if people couldn't trust their greatest hero... who could they trust?
‘Don’t disappoint me.’ Was her final thought before she looked away and took off running once more.
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Far from New York, hundreds of miles away from the city, in an unknown location within the vast Appalachian Mountains...
A hunched figure trudged through the thick underbrush, moving with difficulty. His steps were unsteady, each one accompanied by low, guttural growls. Blood trailed from his side, dripping from a stump where an arm had once been.
The man once known as Doctor Harvey leaned against one of the tall trees while catching his breath. His orange eyes, almost unfocused, staring at the canopy of leaves above him with unknown thoughts.
“Still not enough…” he muttered through clenched teeth with a distorted, hoarse voice, hatred soaking each of his words like stinging poison.
With a growl, he forced himself onward until his path brought him to the entrance—nearly hidden—of a deep, yawning cave.
Without looking back, the man—now a monster— kept moving forward, vanishing into the darkness of the underground.
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"I must say, you've certainly put quite a bit of effort into handling this incident," Fury’s voice came, followed by the sound of his footsteps.
Daniel, now fully dressed in his hero suit, saw him approaching from the corner of his eye before shrugging and continuing to look through the large hole in Doctor Storm's lab, his cape gently fluttering thanks to the wind coming in through the opening.
"Manipulating the media narrative, eliminating evidence—if I didn't know better, I'd say you're trying to hide something," Fury mocked before adopting a much more serious expression.
"Well? I'm listening—give me your explanation."
"There was an accident..." Daniel began after a long silence.
"Most of what I told the media is true, you should've already heard several of the interviews they did with me."
"And now I want to hear the real part," Fury said, arriving at his side and gazing with his one eye at the sunset hiding on the city’s horizon.
"The real part is that… maybe the team will get new members." Those words made Fury freeze for a moment before he frowned and looked at him in confusion.
"I don't have time for riddles, be clear."
Daniel laughed, deciding to stop beating around the bush, and began to explain what he believed needed to be said.
A relationship must be reciprocal—since Fury had used his resources to help him this time, it was only fair to inform him of some things as well.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he could hide what had happened forever—at least not from him. It was better to be clear from the beginning than to create unnecessary friction between them.
"In short, the spatial rift opened by Reed’s machine caused their DNA to alter, their molecules changed. They now have extraordinary abilities—powers, if you want to keep it simple," he finished after a quick rundown of the events, of course omitting some things, like his participation as a civilian at the science fair or the interference of the Sorcerer Supreme.
Daniel wasn’t in the mood to explain the existence of the mystical world right now.
To say Fury was perplexed would be an understatement, but as Director of SHIELD, he managed to process everything quickly. At this point, the man had already accepted that things would only keep getting stranger. The accidental opening of a spatial rift to another dimension that released energy capable of granting people powers was still within the range of what he could accept.
"I guess I won't be meeting them anytime soon, right?" he finally asked, making Daniel shrug again.
"Two of them just lost their father, and the other one lost his friend. They need time to process things, to adapt. I’ll take them somewhere private to calm them down, and when they’re ready—and only if they want to—you’ll be able to talk to them."
It was obvious Fury wasn’t pleased, but Daniel wasn’t going to change his mind.
"What about the fourth one, Harvey’s student—do you think it’s a good idea for him to be near the other three?"
At the mention of Victor, Daniel suddenly froze. Fury raised an eyebrow as he saw him look away, a slight flush of embarrassment coloring his cheeks.
"About that... Victor might’ve escaped while I was talking to the police," he admitted in a low voice, not very proud.
"What?!"
"I didn’t think he’d leave," he tried to explain. "He’d been unconscious the whole time—when he woke up, I couldn’t really pay him much attention since I was dealing with other things." In his defense, he thought it was more important to make sure Susan and Johnny were okay.
The boy had been patient, pretending to be disoriented when Daniel took him out along with the other three from the destroyed lab. The place he’d taken them to was, in reality, just a few floors below, in another lab that was empty and in better condition, where he left them while he dealt with the aftermath of the explosion.
Honestly, he believed Victor would stay obediently on his stretcher, but at some point, the boy decided to slip away and, without anyone noticing, disappeared.
When Daniel returned to check how things were going, Victor had already been gone for quite some time.
He tried to find him, but his senses weren’t sharp enough to track someone in a city with millions of people. Unlike what comics claimed, heartbeats didn’t have “unique” sounds that made identifying someone over long distances any easier.
At least not for him. Carol had once confessed that, to her, his heartbeat sounded unique and special, but Daniel wasn’t sure if that was true or just some illusion in the girl’s head. Maybe it was another hidden Kryptonian power he simply didn’t possess
But putting that aside, the truth was that he couldn’t locate a specific person once they got too far. Having them nearby? That was much easier. Even though heartbeats don’t have individual sound signatures, they do beat differently depending on many factors, which makes it possible to distinguish them to some extent.
However, once the distance is big enough, trying to find someone that way becomes as useless as looking for a needle in a haystack.
"You...!" Fury choked back the dozen unprintable words clawing at his throat.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, the Director of SHIELD could only shake his head several times before letting out a long sigh.
"I’ll have a search operation started," he said, turning on his heels and beginning to walk toward the lab’s exit.
"If you find him, remember to let me know. He could be dangerous. Letting your agents face him alone will only get them killed." Upon hearing that, Fury paused for an instant before continuing forward.
"If anyone dies, it’ll be your fault. Remember that."
Any bit of good humor Daniel might have managed to hold onto during this time evaporated with those simple words.
"Tch!" Clicking his tongue, he clenched his fists and let his expression show, for the first time, just how damn pissed off he was.
"You think I don’t know that, you damn son of a—" he muttered through clenched teeth before abruptly stopping and trying to regain his composure.
"I need a shower..." he decided, thinking that maybe immersing himself in the icy waters of the Arctic could help reduce the pain in his body.
'But before that, I need to finish the things I still have left to do.'
Absentmindedly, he wondered if Carol would be willing to knock him out for a few hours so he could get some sleep.
Thinking about her made him wonder how she’d been doing during these past few days he’d been away.
‘Eh, I guess I miss her a little.’ It was odd to admit, but her company—though stressful at times—was mostly pleasant.
‘The year’s almost over. Her prom is coming up soon. I wonder if she’ll ask me to take her.’ Knowing her, she probably would.
‘Maybe I’ll have to meet her parents.’ Now that thought was less appealing.
Letting his mind wander into all kinds of strange ideas, Daniel managed to push the pain aside enough to finish the day without further setbacks.
For now, Susan and Johnny had stayed at their home in New York, while Ben had to be taken to a more private place—a house Daniel had borrowed from Tony for a few days so the giant could stay there while he looked for a way to solve his problem.
Things were far from over for them, but at least tonight, they could rest.
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His consciousness felt heavy, turbulent, and numb.
Reed couldn’t remember the last time his thoughts had been so slow, erratic.
A grunt of effort escaped his throat as he tried to stand, but the pain in his body—like hundreds of needles stabbing his muscles—made it impossible, leaving him writhing on the ground.
‘Ground?’
With bloodshot eyes snapping open, Reed examined the place he was in—a barren, desert-like land, where cold winds and orange stone greeted him.
Above him rose a sky without clouds, without color—a dark sky, free of light pollution, exposing the glow of the vast universe in all its splendor.
Reed stood stunned for nearly a minute, faced with the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed.
But he couldn’t admire the landscape for too long, as a gust of freezing wind striking his face snapped him out of his awe.
Swallowing to ease the discomfort of his dry throat, he tried to sit up once more, his body barely able to obey his thoughts.
“W-where am I?” he asked himself in a broken voice, his last memories only a confusing mess of distorted fragments and unclear images.
Leaning against a large rock that had been beside him, Reed began to check himself for injuries. None were apparent, despite the pain he felt in every inch of his skin.
“What happened to me?” This time, a few flashes came in response—brief images he could barely comprehend.
Shaking his head, he decided not to think about it for now. First, he needed to find a better place to recover—preferably one where the wind didn’t threaten to freeze him to the bone.
“Alright, first step: find shelter.” He didn’t yet know what the second step would be, but given the thirst that was starting to set in, he figured it would be to find a water source.
And maybe some food too.
Unnoticed by Reed, not far from him, hidden among the sands of the desert terrain, dozens of pairs of dark, pupil-less eyes watched him move with intense focus.
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Note:
New chapter! It's been a long wait, hasn’t it?
Ending an “arc” is always difficult, especially when it concludes in anguish. I’m really not great at writing sad characters, so I tried to keep it short but meaningful, adding a few more “lighthearted” parts in between to keep it from feeling too heavy.
As you already know, just because this arc is ending doesn’t mean we won’t see the characters from it again — in fact, they’ll be quite important in the future.
Still, I know there are quite a few other plot threads that were left on hold. Don’t worry, we’ll be returning to some of them soon. It might seem like I’m juggling too much at once — and honestly, sometimes it feels that way to me too — but given the variety of characters that exist in Daniel’s new world, I just can’t help it. All I can promise is to give each of them the screen time they deserve.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts and critiques. Most of all — what are you looking forward to seeing next?
I’ll be reading!
And if you spot any errors, please point them out so I can fix them.
With that said, I’ll sign off! I hope I can release many more chapters soon ;D
Comments
Ysmir
Same. Those are going to be a hype hype scenes for sure. Two different species that came from the strongest heroes of earth is going to kill thousands or millions and bring paranoia and hate for them. The drama
Noob
Tyftc
Jaylon Cain
I’m just waiting for the invasion of krypton and viltrum people coming to earth. Especially people like conquest with a quote of” I am so lonely” to defiant. 😂😂😭
