Mistah Kay

So Kon-El had a soul. So what? Just because Raven had shown him the little glowworm didn’t mean he wasn’t suddenly a clone, half of his DNA belonging to one of the most evil men in existence. Even Superman’s good couldn’t counterbalance that; hadn’t the two of them been fighting to a standstill since forever? Why should it be any different in Kon’s half-human heart?

It didn’t change what he’d done, either. The rest of the team talked about how it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t his choice, but that made it worse. Real people made decisions. He’d just been like some puppet carved in Luthor’s likeness. He’d shaved his head—the hair was still growing back—and attacked his friends. Attacked Cassie.

Every villain he’d ever fought, they’d all had a choice. They could choose, whenever they wanted, not to do evil. Kon didn’t have that choice. It was in his genes. He couldn’t be trusted, especially not with Superman’s parents. So he left the Kent farm, left civilization entirely. For Gotham City.

He didn’t know why he went there. It seemed the place to be when you were a soulless monster, or at least had a history of being one. Did he want to be found by Tim, on Tim’s home turf? Or did he want to avoid Cassie—going somewhere a million miles away, the polar opposite, of everything that gorgeous golden girlfriend was?

Either way, in Gotham he could lay low, not think, not worry about hurting people. There wasn’t many innocent people in Gotham to hurt. So he’d fit right in.

He went to one of the scummier neighborhoods, as it wasn’t like any homeless psycho of roving street gang could pose a threat to half-a-Superman (half something else), and picked a condemned building at random. He went in through a shattered window four stories off the ground. The lower ones were boarded up, and Kon had to laugh at the irony.

Even now, he wasn’t willing to just kick a door down or smash a lock apart. Hell, he could probably pick a lock with his tactile telekinesis, but that would be breaking and entering. Look at the big hero. Won’t bend the law, he’ll just smash his girl in the face. Kon groaned to himself, wandering the dank interior of the building.

It was then, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, that he noticed the place wasn’t the wasteland he’d been expecting. It wasn’t nice by any means, but it was reasonably clean, no graffiti on the walls, and strung-up Christmas lights led the way through the black hallways. Kon aimlessly followed them in pointless exploration.

What was this place? Probably a supervillain hideout, sure, but for the first time in recent memory, Kon was out of the haze of recrimination from attacking his fellow Titans. He looked around, playing detective, trying to guess from vibes and energy just who was squatting here. Penny Plunderer? The Riddler? Maybe random Gothamites were starting to lair now and he was about to run into an influencer. Next episode, on The Charmed Life of Conner Kent…

He now noticed footprints on the dusty floor, small, slender, feminine in contrast to the stompers he wore. There were only a few sets, all the same size, and he wanted to say the tread was that of Keds. Not that he knew enough about women’s footwear to be creepy or anything.

Most of the tracks had a faint covering of fresh dust—if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms—but one trail sunk through to the bare hardwood. He followed it, his mind racing at its newfound focus.

This was probably an old hideout. It wouldn’t have been so settled if whoever was living here had just prepped it. But they hadn’t been here in a while either. It was like a safe house, he supposed. They’d come in, turned on the lights, and had a nice warm place to lie low. It was a good idea, Kon admitted. Why didn’t he have a place to go to be alone and brood? Somewhere he wouldn’t be bothered, wouldn’t stumble across any weirdo Gotham supervillains either, like Alaska or some cave deep in the Earth…

Or an island populated only by women, Kon thought. Now this was starting to feel like a cliché.

He picked up the pace in following the fresh set of tracks, coming to an open door with light pouring out. He slid around the corner and found Harley Quinn in the bathroom, sitting on a tub filled with soil. She had a bouquet of flowers and was picking the petals from each one, piece by piece.

More importantly, she was wearing a sort of roller derby outfit, short-shorts and a half-top, both in bifurcated red and black. She had on a large Blondie T-shirt over the lingerie-like ‘costume’. On her small body, it reached down to mid-thigh. Her skin was milky white and her hair a pale blonde, except where she’d dyed two pigtails blue and pink. Her eyes were bright blue. Toned legs, flat stomach, and pert breasts pushing out her baggy shirt made Kon (a connoisseur) think of a gymnast who had quit the diet plan and finally had a growth spurt to get a proper ass and boobs, without ever losing the taut muscle that let her flip across a room or do a hell of a pole-dance.

Seeing her, it was fair to say Kon’s ennui was largely banished.

“Aw, great!” Harley snarled upon seeing him. “Not only do I got an uninvited guest, but he’s a Superman fan! What kinda freak is a Super-fan in Gotham City? Frigging wiseass!”

She picked up a gun from her side. Kon considered that he could easily superspeed over and take it from her, or melt the gun with heatvision, or reach through the floor with TTK and Luke Skywalker it out of her hand. He probably should—you never knew when someone had a magic bullet, a Kryptonite bullet, or your powers were about to go on the fritz. But at the moment, he needed something to be smug about.

“What’s the matter?” Kon asked. “Pissed off that not only are you not good to take on a real superhero, but your pasty boyfriend isn’t man enough either?”

“That does it!” Harley squeezed one eye shut, aiming squarely at the S on Kon’s T-shirt. “Say your prayers, contrarian.”

“Triple word score,” Kon opined, though at least two words were lost as Harley emptied her clip into him.

Naturally, the bullets bounced off his chest, not even scuffing his T-shirt through his skintight forcefield—there was more than one reason he bought his shirts so tight. The ricochets bounced through the room, smashing porcelain and sending the ceiling plaster leaking downward. One stray bullet hit the mirror, shattering it into enough pieces to fill up the sink below. Kon winced at that.

“Seven years bad luck,” he said. Bad form to follow up a quip with a quip, but he didn’t think the last one counted when Harley obviously hadn’t heard him.

Harley lowered her smoking pistol. “Holy crap! You’re really him! T-t-the Superkid!”

“Superboy,” Kon corrected her, before realizing that wasn’t much better.

Harley hurriedly dropped the gun. “Hey now, Kid Supes, hey… I was just kidding around… that was self-defense, really, you broke into my place, I was squatting here fair and square! If I’d’a known it was you… alright, fine. You win, Kid Supes. Take me back to Arkham.”

“Is that what heroes do?” Kon asked, feeling his misery rushing back in.

He’d beaten Harley Quinn in a fight. Whoopdie-do. It wasn’t like she was a menace to society. The last crime he’d heard of her pulling was taking over a radio station to read bad love poetry to the Joker, and she’d used a squirt gun to do it.

Kon sat on the closed toilet, hearing the seat grind out of place. One more indignity. The seat was rotting off the base.

Harley looked confused, though she wore it well—sort of the Marilyn Monroe of the Secret Society of Supervillains. “You mean you’re not gonna bring me in? Even though I’m a dangerous lunatic and such?”

“Who am I to judge?” Kon mused. “I’m no hero. I’ve done worse things than you ever have. I’ve betrayed my friends in ways you can’t even imagine.”

“Oh,” Harley said. “You got MeToo’d, huh?”

“What? No!” Kon grunted, sitting up so sharply that the toilet seat shifted again. “Lex Luthor put a… program in my head. All he had to do was switch it on and I hurt just about everyone I love. At least you hurt people because you choose to. I can’t even control myself…”

“Wow.” Harley jumped up, dusting off the seat of her pants and brushing off her shirt. “That doesn’t sound like it’s your fault, though. If you weren’t able to control yourself, that means you were insane. You don’t get thrown into Blackgate for that. You just go to Arkham… oh.” Harley pinched her lips together, then laughed weakly. “Well, it really ain’t such a bad place. You meet lots of interesting people!”

“Like you?”

Harley thrust her chest out proudly. “Yeah. I’m a regular fixture. Where else you gonna meet a quality gurl like moi?”

“Wandering into a deserted building at random,” Kon answered truthfully.

“Huhzah? Oh, yeah, I suppose it’s so…”

Harley paced around Kon, eying him up, pulling on her too-big shirt to straighten it out. On her, it looked like a football jersey on a cheerleader. And with her shorts unable to be seen without X-ray vision, she might’ve been naked except for the shadow of her top where her chest ghosted against the swaying fabric.

“Hey, Superboyo, don’t you got that tactile telekinesis?”

“Yes… I do…” Kon said, shocked that Harley Quinn, of all people, knew the technical term for his power. Maybe all his speeching about it had finally paid off.

“Don’t act so surprised. I got a PhD, y’know!”

Kon did know. According to Tim, who ought to know, Harley hadn’t graduated by studying her ass off. Actually, it was the fact that she hadn’t studied her ass off that had gotten Harley her degree. But Kon was too much of a gentleman to let that slip.

“Yeah, I heard you’re real good with that shit,” Harley continued. “I got some tattoos I’m not so proud of and I know those are just tiny particles of ink stuck to my skin. Think you can get ‘em out if you’re tactile enough with me?”

As shocked as he’d been by Harley Quinn dropping the TTK-bomb, he was even more stunned by her supervillain ass asking him for a favor. “And why would I want to do that?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re a real bad Superboy now, aintcha? But us bad girls have our own rumor mill, and if I’ve been hearing things right, you never needed much reason to touch a girl before, unless she’s old or fat or one of those ‘ladies’ what need the quotation marks around ‘em…”

“I’m being lectured on standards by the Joker’s gal pal,” Kon muttered. “So this is what rock bottom feels like.”

Harley popped her leg up, planting her foot on the toilet seat between Kon’s thighs. “Nah, me and Mistah J, we ain’t so copacetic no more! In fact, he’s a real jerk! I’m all kinds of through with him, so you can see why I don’t wanna go around with ink saying I’m ‘Joker’s little girl’ or ‘Property of the Clown Prince’ or anything like that. I need to make those tats wave bye-bye, only that takes money. And even when I was sane, my best idea for making money was going through medical school. So how about you just do it? I’ll owe you one—a big one. An’ I like big ones…”

She smiled at him, letting Kon see how sharp her teeth were.

“Why not? What’s a little TTK between friends? And you don’t have to worry about owing me one. You can just buy me a cock—err—some Coke.”

“That does sound like it would hit the spot,” Harley simpered, knowing she was getting to him.

Superman’s kid would’ve never made that kind of slip if she wasn’t.