New SHAZAM in Flashpoint World - Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Kryptonite, Magic, and a Desperate Plan
The cold, imperious voice of General Zod ceased, leaving behind a silence far more terrifying than the broadcast itself. The stark, three-pronged Kryptonian symbol on the screens seemed to burn into Jack’s retinas. Around him, the initial shock of the Metropolis citizens was rapidly curdling into panic. A woman near the park entrance screamed, a high, thin sound that was quickly swallowed by a rising chorus of shouts, car horns blaring erratically, and the distant, approaching wail of emergency sirens. The ordinary Friday afternoon had fractured, replaced by a primal, city-wide fear.
Jack remained frozen on the stone bench, the chaos washing over him like a distant tide. His mind was a maelstrom, replaying not just Zod’s chilling ultimatum, but scenes from the movie he’d been watching what felt like a lifetime ago. He saw the desolate landscapes of that Flashpoint world, the brutal, hopeless battles, the heroes falling, the timeline unraveling towards an inevitable, fiery end. This wasn’t just a crisis; it was the Flashpoint crisis, a reality so broken, so inherently doomed, that its very existence was a cosmic error.
This world is doomed, the thought echoed in his mind with the finality of a death sentence. According to the movie, nothing they did could stop Zod, not really. It all ended in fire and ruin before Barry tried to reset it again.
The Wizard’s desperate, hurried actions in the Rock of Eternity now cast a chilling new light. The old man hadn’t just been looking for a Champion to pass on his powers before fading away. He’d been making a last, desperate throw of the dice in a game that was already lost, thrusting the burden of a dying world’s magic onto the first vaguely suitable (or perhaps merely available) soul he could find. He knew, Jack realized with a sickening lurch. That old fossil knew this was coming. He knew this world was on the brink.
A wave of anger, hot and sharp, momentarily pierced through his fear. Anger at the Wizard for his lack of explanation, for his cowardice in the face of this. But the anger was quickly doused by the cold, overwhelming flood of despair. What could one old wizard, even the guardian of Earth’s magic, do against a fleet of Kryptonian warships and a maniacal general? And what, for that matter, could he do?
He pushed himself up from the bench, his powerful new limbs feeling heavy, unresponsive. He needed to think, to get away from the escalating pandemonium. He moved through the scattering crowd, an island of forced calm in a sea of rising hysteria, his Shazam-enhanced senses taking in the fear-contorted faces, the panicked cries, the beginnings of a city starting to unravel. He found a slightly more secluded spot in a narrow alleyway between two towering office buildings, the sounds of the street somewhat muffled. He leaned against a cool brick wall, the rough texture a small, grounding sensation in a world that had just tilted off its axis.
Okay. Deep breaths. Internal assessment. He was facing an invading force of Kryptonians, super-powered beings who could level cities. What did he have to counter that?
“Two ways to beat a Kryptonian,” he muttered to himself, the words a familiar refrain from decades of comic book lore. “Kryptonite… and magic.”
Kryptonite. The irradiated fragments of their homeworld, their ultimate Achilles’ heel. In most DC timelines, its existence became known because of Superman. Lex Luthor, Batman, various government agencies – they’d all studied it, weaponized it. But in this world, a world seemingly without a Superman, who would even know what Kryptonite was? Where would it be? For all he knew, the meteorites that brought it to Earth in other realities might have landed in the ocean here, or never arrived at all. He couldn’t just Google ‘Flashpoint Kryptonite locations.’ The green rock was, for all practical purposes, a mythical solution. Useless.
That left magic. His magic. The power of Shazam. He felt it thrumming within him, a vast, untapped reservoir. Kryptonians, for all their might under a yellow sun, were vulnerable to magic. It was one of their few established weaknesses. This was his only real card to play.
But a terrifying thought immediately followed: I barely know how to use this stuff! He could change his clothes, apparently intuit a fake ID into existence, and open a portal out of the Rock of Eternity. He’d transformed into this powerhouse, yes, but that was an automatic process triggered by a word. He had no finesse, no training, no actual combat experience beyond a few clumsy video game combos. Could he throw a magical punch? Probably. Could he shield himself from heat vision? Maybe. Could he engage in a strategic battle against seasoned Kryptonian warriors, led by a tactical genius like Zod, without accidentally blowing up half the city himself? Highly unlikely. He was a toddler wielding a nuke. The Wisdom of Solomon might give him access to vast knowledge, but knowledge wasn’t a substitute for experience, for muscle memory, for the instincts honed in actual battle.
The sheer, overwhelming odds pressed down on him. It was him, a novice godling, against an army of beings who could crack planets. The scenario was so ludicrously one-sided it would be funny if it weren’t so terrifyingly real.
His mind raced, sifting through the plot of the movie, searching for any loophole, any advantage, any forgotten detail that might offer a sliver of hope. And then it hit him: Kara Zor-El.
Zod wanted her. That made her valuable. That made her a target. But it also made her… a potential ally. In the film, she had been imprisoned, weakened, but once exposed to sunlight, she was a force of nature. A Kryptonian to fight Kryptonians. She was, potentially, their heavy hitter, their only real match for Zod’s raw power.
A desperate plan began to form, fragile and fraught with peril. He couldn’t just wait for Zod to arrive and lay waste to the planet. He couldn’t surrender Kara, even if he knew where she was – that would mean her death and likely wouldn’t appease Zod for long. Zods, as a rule, weren’t known for their peaceful post-conquest retirements. No, their only chance, however slim, was to fight. And to fight, they needed Kara.
So, step one: Free Kara Zor-El.
He remembered a crucial detail from the movie: Kara was being held in a secret facility in Siberia. But Siberia was immense, a vast, frozen wasteland. He couldn’t just fly around aimlessly hoping to stumble upon a hidden alien prison. He needed a precise location. He needed intelligence, resources, someone who knew how to find secrets.
His thoughts, inevitably, turned to the only other potential piece on this fractured chessboard: Bruce Wayne.
The Batman of this world was a ghost, a legend from the 1980s. The Bruce Wayne of today was a 53-year-old recluse. But beneath the age, the reclusion, the potential brokenness, wasn’t there still a core of the detective, the strategist, the man who could find anyone, anything? Wayne Enterprises was still a global powerhouse, with resources that could dwarf those of many small nations. If anyone on this planet could locate a black site prison holding a super-powered alien, it was Bruce Wayne. Even this version of him.
It was a long shot, a monumental long shot. This Bruce Wayne had no reason to help him, no reason to care about a world he seemed to have withdrawn from decades ago. He might be too old, too broken, too bitter. Jack had no idea how to even approach him, let alone convince him. And what would he even say? “Hi, Mr. Wayne, I’m a comic book fan from another dimension, now I’m a demigod, and I need your help to prevent an alien invasion that will destroy this doomed timeline unless we enact the plot of a movie I just watched”? It sounded insane even to his own ears.
Yet, as he sifted through the impossibilities, the Bruce Wayne option, however flawed, remained the only viable path forward. There was no one else. No other heroes to call upon. No government agency he could trust or that would even believe him.
“Bruce Wayne,” Jack breathed, the name a strange mix of fanboy reverence and desperate hope. “He’s the detective, even in this timeline. He might know where the Russians are keeping a super-powered alien.” He had to try. It was the only thread he had to cling to in this unraveling reality.
The plan was forming, a three-step Hail Mary:
Find Bruce Wayne.
Convince Bruce Wayne to help him locate Kara Zor-El.
Free Kara Zor-El.
Then… somehow… save the world. (He’d worry about that last part if he even survived the first three.)
Each step was fraught with near-certain failure. But as the sounds of Metropolis descending into chaos grew louder, as the chilling words of General Zod echoed in his memory, Jack knew he didn’t have the luxury of despair. He had the powers. He had the terrible, meta-knowledge of what was coming. And he had a plan. A terrible, desperate, probably doomed plan, but a plan nonetheless.
He pushed himself off the wall, his new Shazam body thrumming with a nervous energy that was entirely his own. First Gotham. Then Wayne Manor. Then, hopefully, a very reluctant, very old Batman.