He stood in the ruin of the throne room of a dictator whose family had ruled this world for close to 1,150,000 years. Scattered around the ornate, complexly beautiful golden room lay men and women in detailed armors, their bodies broken and beaten, smashed beyond all possible recognition. Some were missing limbs, others heads and others the whole lower torsos. He stood in the midst of it all, reflecting that these people who were so human-like in their artistic natures and desires yet so simple in their technological innovation. He thought that maybe, just maybe, this was a type of government that he hadn’t seen brought down before…it was only momentarily interesting. He was certain he would see it again eventually.
He knelt down beside the King, Zorn or some-such ridiculous name, and pushed the decapitated man aside. Beneath him was a metallic case lined with jewels and the seal of the Empire. He pressed the simple latch on the side and the case popped open with a small hiss of vacuumed air. Inside were a dozen small, delicately wrapped cigar-shaped sticks that were what obviously passed for as cigarettes on this world. Buzz pulled one from its slip of cloth and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. But before he lit it he held the case out to his right and behind him a little, saying, “Anyone want one?”
When no one moved, Buzz snapped the case closed and slid it into the right inner pocket of his rumpled suit jacket, pulling a lighter from the front left pocket of his jacket and lighting the cigar. The familiar taste of tobacco flooded his mouth and sinuses, along with a dozen other similarly strong substances that he could not identify right away but it was a wonderful experience nonetheless, much more pleasurable to him than the conversation he was about to have with the two beings behind him.
Sighing, Buzz turned slowly, a smile curling up the smooth cheeks of his face. “Well, Roland, Spectre, to what do I owe this visit?”
In front of Buzz stood two unlikely allies: the Spectre and the Ageless Stranger, one the Hand of God and the other a self-proclaimed Seeker of Justice. Neither looked too pleased to see Buzz, but that was a guess since Buzz had never seen either of them appear to be happy at any previous time he had met them.
“Justice demands that you stop, Buzz,” Roland said, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets as he walked blithely past the shattered forms on the floor, unconcerned with their deaths. “We have come to persuade you of that fact.”
“’ave you now?” Buzz said, plopping down in the throne, watching as the Spectre cast mooning glances at the dead, much more likely to really care about them as individual, living beings than the Stranger ever would. “Well, the answer is no, so piss off. You may have put the fear of God into me once, Stranger, but that was a long time ago. I no longer fear you; nor do I fear you or your Master, Spectre. I’m already in hell, what’s he going to do to me?”
“We did not come here to fight, Buzz,” the Spectre said, her voice ringing with the deathly echo she had picked up centuries ago to impress the yokels. “We came to tell you it’s over again, and beg you to not start anew.”
“Oh groitz,” Buzz said, spitting the remaining nub of his cigar at Roland. “You killed them all again? You’re a bloody bastard.”
Roland smiled, his blue eyes coming alive as he experienced the few moments of pure emotion from Buzz, one of the very few victories he’d had over the past few centuries in curbing Buzz’s Supergirl-inspired death wave across the cosmos. “On a world much like this one I caught up with your girls again, like I have every year for the last 400, and slaughtered them one and all. You are once more alone, Marcus, just the way you chose to be when you decided to let…”
Roland of Gilead did not finish that sentence as that was when Buzz had heard enough and willed the hellfire to swallow the mouthy immortal, incinerating him where he stood, killing him instantly. Across the room, the Spectre sighed. “You two are becoming increasingly annoying as the centuries pass.”
“Immortal or not, I know he feels pain,” Buzz said, lighting another of the alien cigarettes. “If I have to kill him a million times he still will never experience a tenth of the pain I have experienced in my centuries.”
“And whose fault is that, Buzz?” the Spectre asked, walking amongst the corpses, safe from a fate similar to the Stranger’s. “In Rome you were weak and your wife was taken from you, raped by a deranged Emperor and she returned your betrayal equally, slaughtering you out of a rage that knew no bounds. Then you betrayed your Master by revolting against his brethren the Carnivore out of your love of a mortal woman, super as she was. For your actions Beelzebub would have had you killed had it not been for the Love of God and that of Linda Danvers. Reborn with an untainted soul, you had received a second chance for a happy life; one not ruined by your own pettiness.”
“But the Lord’s reprieve and the love of a woman were not strong enough for your black heart, and jealously crept in and grew stronger than the love and the consciousness you had developed thanks to Supergirl. You then came to a moment when you had two choices: denounce what your weak heart and embrace the love offered you by Linda, or accept Beelzebub’s offer of your power of death and hate. Why, I wonder, did you choose so, Buzz?”
“Piss. Off.” Buzz said, attempting to disappear from the throne room, but found he was blocked. “Let me go, bitch. I have no interest in your psychoanalyzing.”
“You chose power over love, but you didn’t consider the source of that power, did you? You knew intimately well that Beelzebub was the Lord of Lies and had tricked you before with the soul of your own wife. When he came to you, offering to forgive old debts and a return to your status, did you consider his price for granting you the forgiveness you sought? Did you know the sacrifice called for, Buzz?”
“No…” Buzz lied, but he turned from the Spectre, the tears filling up his eyes.
He gasped in surprised, however, when completed his turn away from the Spectre to find himself face-to-face with a reborn Stranger, whose blue eyes blazed with a hellish fire as he leaned into Buzz’s face. “Lies, Buzz, Lord of Lies? What a surprise. You knew good and damned well that someone would have to die to restore your powers and I believe a portion of you knew it would have to be Linda. You’re a monster, Buzz, and no matter what you have done since, you can never undo what you did.”
“Not that you didn’t try,” the Spectre said, coming up behind Buzz. “In retaliation, you took Beelzebub by surprise, forging a pact with Neron to destroy the Lord of Lies and assume his place. But it was a hollow victory that all the servants and souls and power in the multiverse could not long take the place of her love. And as the years have gone by the emptiness has grown, until it began consuming you like a black hole sucking the matter from a dying sun.”
“So you decided the only way to apologize was to return Supergirl to the universe, but like everything else you have ever touched it rotted, becoming not a wave of wonder but a pestilence that has slaughtered thousands of planets in the cosmos. You’ve turned her proud heritage of good into a vessel of blackest death,” Roland said, his voice hoarse.
“And with every innocent who dies beneath her symbol, Linda Danvers kneels in Heaven and prays for your forgiveness, Buzz, because her love for you has never faded, even in death and the atrocities you continually commit.” The Spectre closed in, pressing Buzz between them, hoping to amplify the effects of her words this time. “She prays to the Lord to forgive you, Buzz. She wants to be with you. All you would have to do is ask, to give up this mad quest, and you would be welcomed into not only her arms but also the arms of the Lord. You could spend eternity atoning for your sins in the home of the Lord. What do you say, Buzz?”
Buzz shook between them, his body, mind and soul overcome with remorse, hatred and pain, pure and focused and he screamed, tears pouring down his cheeks. His breathing was accelerated and his black heart beat with such speed and strength that the Stranger and the Spectre could feel it just by touching him. “I..I—I..NO!” Buzz screamed, throwing his hands up, blasting the two away from him and through the walls of the throne room. Standing and ranting incoherently, Buzz lashed out at the room around him, leveling pillars and grinding corpses to dust beneath his suddenly deformed, demonic feet. He screamed and stomped until the palace shook to its foundation and collapsed, and only then did silence return to the planet.
It was a few moments later that Roland of Gilead awoke, lying beneath a huge bolder that had only moments ago landed atop him, crushing the life from his body. He placed his fingers onto the stone and flipped it off of himself, sitting up to find a green-gloved hand reaching for him, hauling him to his feet. Roland looked at the Spectre and sighed, clapping a hand down onto the one-time super heroine’s shoulder. “That was our closest attempt yet, friend. In a few hundred more years he may be ready to accept the offer.”
“Perhaps,” the Spectre said, feeling tired for all of her power. “I can feel it starting again. I’m not sure he can ever forgive himself, Roland. We may never succeed.”
“Perhaps,” Roland said, dusting off his jacket and preparing to leave. “But unlike Buzz I believe in Love, Spectre. One of these centuries Linda Danvers will save him. Until she does, I shall be here.”
“As will I, Stranger. Until the next 100 years.” Smiling, the two men disappeared.
The End...
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