Light of the 40th Century

Rebirth

Deep in the primordial void where neither light nor darkness painted creation. Where concepts originated and from whence they ceased. In the void both above and below the infinitum of the Absolutionism where unclaimed souls go to die, a golden soul pulsed with light. Thrum by thrum it resisted the great erasure but the soul was fragmented. Wave by wave in the place in which time did not exist the soul was weakened. Few can resist the great void but this soul had done so for ages untold. However, even it could not last forever, and thus the cracks in its foundation. But it was not the only soul in this primeval void. A small blue soul which started to evaporate in mere moments after being subjected to the void flew as fast as it could and collided with that golden soul. And, like glue the blue wisp filled the cracks blending with the greater soul from two into one. And just like that ages without limit number nor name passed until another entered the fray. One with a soul so alike to that original golden soul it was frightening. Rather than an innocuous wisp or a shapeless orb, this one was composed enough to take the shape of a man. The truest paragon, a man with a bright red S emblazoned on his chest. The very first hero and last son of Krypton, a harbinger of a new era, Kal-El. In that timeless place at the end of infinity, the greatest hero's soul stood tattered over the golden soul before him. That constant smile that had carried him through battle after battle and war after war was no longer true. It was a smile of habit and not happiness, the last stand of a long-dead paragon. And yet as he looked upon this blended soul tears stung his eyes. He reached out and embraced the wispy soul softly and through cracked lips he spoke

"I wanted to be your hero... but I should've known better. To stay a hero or become a monster. Faced with two options somehow this father of yours did both. Ignia was her name, she had a will to burn the world extinguished far too fast. Just like your own, before you could even enter this world. To break me as they always tried, and I'm sad to say they both succeeded and failed. They are gone now but so are you. I won nothing and so once again I fought. Legions of demons died in my fists, angels crushed under my heel, endless, humbled before my might. All for you. I will give you a chance to write your own story, a chance to ignite your will just like your mother.. Just like me."

"You know we never named you, your mother's name meant great flame and both you and I are El's. As presumptuous as it may be, before I send you off I want to name you. Go forth and live well, son of mine. Burn the world, Rao."

...
On a distant planet in Ultima segmentum light gathered in a dark cave that blended soul constructing a form around itself based on the lineage passed down by Kal-El. The body of a Kryptonian at the age of five. Knowledge was supplanted in the boy's soul to help him survive in whatever world he may end up in. Kal had no choice in where he'd go. However, what Kal did not know was that the soul of his unborn child was mixed with another. A small soul whose persistence kept that golden soul from being erased. This affected that body as well. In the dank must of the cave, the unblemished body had completed its genesis. With a body rather large for a five-year-old with light brown skin and silvery white hair that reached down to his feet the boy lay naked and asleep. His facial features could only be described as regal or heroic, a trait inherited from his father, however, there was wildness there as well an inexplicable trace of savagery between his brows, the shape of his eyes like that of a beast. As he yawned he exposed oddly sharp teeth and opening his eyes he exposed his orange-gold eyes. Two burning orbs reminiscent of infernal stars that would never be extinguished. And so the child of the last son of Krypton and the beastly Ignia awoke to the world.

...

'I awoke to complete darkness which as I'm sure you'd know is creepy as a particular clown in a sewer who lures little boys with raincoats on. Last I remember I was on my way to pick up some Oreos and then that truck crashed into that minivan. And then the minivan exploded for whatever fucking when some debris hit the streetlight next to me which fell on my head? Danm! If you wanted to get me truck-kun you could've just done that straight up. What kinda contrived manure did you have to go through to try and be different? Also, why am I so small, I remember being larger than this. At least I think I was? I can't remember too much about that time.'

"Well, Hopefully, I'm not in a womb because if I am Ma, gotta get some serious shit checked out in here."

Moving forward to the titanic slab of granite which seemingly blocked off the cave from the outside world the small Kryptonian leveraged his comparatively small body with his legs to the ground and his back on the lower part of the boulder.

"Heave - ho, Heave - ho" Rocking back and forth the young kryptonian shook the granite, its loosening accompanied by a horrid grinding that echoed throughout the dank cave. Luckily for him even with no sunlight, Kryptonians had quintuple the muscle density compared to their weaker sister race, so he could designate himself as a buff baby. The boulder grinded against the granite before falling and rolling down the hill revealing the sight of the outside world. The cave flooded with a warm red light that seemed to fill every corner of his body. A dark black sea seemed to stretch out far past the rolling hills filled with faint red and purple flora. Giant tree-like structures seemed to touch the lowest layer of the sky, the branches growing as if they were wicker baskets, plastered with a strange blue-black biomass similar to creep from those old Starcraft games. Plants drifted along the abnormally thick purple sky like algae in the ocean and creatures resembling an unholy mix between a centipede, dragonfly, and lemur swarmed around the large green floating plants. And in the distant dark ocean, a titanic fin displaced thousands of gallons of water before receding back into the sea. All in all 'well it's not as bad as ancient Krypton at least, but a yellow or blue sun would have been better. Fate is a rather cruel mistress. Actually, why do I know about two planets instead of just one.' Assuming he was a reincarnate he should have memories of either Earth or Krypton but he knew much of both worlds. Why? Regardless, for the moment survival is my first priority. I can have an existential crisis when I'm not on an alien planet with demon whales and black seas.' He moved forward out of the cave into the world. 'So my first order of business should be finding food. Kryptonians can go a max of a year and a half without food but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant. Not to mention I am currently a strangely mobile child. Those stats are for adults, I may not last that long. Who was it that said there weren't any advantages to having your species evolve on a hellscape of a world?

'But the question is what should I do? Regardless of why I am here or otherwise I have to survive. But then again what if everything on the planet is poisonous? There's so much I don't know. But if I'm gonna live I have to eat. I won't go out starving plus dying is gay.'

Scaling down the mountain with the crevices in the rock the boy used his small size to his advantage jumping from ledge to ledge. And using the intermittent branches and trees that grew out of the mountain in order to base himself. All the while the bottom got closer and closer. Landing on another tree branch he got ready to use that as a base to jump to another ledge. Unfortunately, that branch buckled under the weight of the 6-year-old. Then again he was 5 times heavier than your average kid. Obesity was in fact a disease.

His back collided with the hard granite sending his small body into a spiral, he tried to gain his bearings but gravity pushed him faster and faster down the mountain slope. However, he wasn't totally helpless, balling his body up into the turtle position he was able to shrink his center of gravity. And kicking out with a single leg he was able to launch himself avoiding the stalagmites near the bottom of the mountain. But in the process crashing into a tree near the bottom. Attempting to grab onto the bark the Kryptonian skinned his hands making the craggy bark slick with blood. But he achieved what he had set out to do and slowed his descent. But he was strongly pushing his fingers piercing the bark and he slowly ascended the tree. Upon making it to three branches which created something like a pseudo bed Rao laid down and darkness eclipsed his vision.

The world seemed to be composed of a multitude of colored dots as my eyelids parted from one another. My mind was slow but my body was not. My hands had already recovered a great deal, likely due to the sunlight, either that or my natural healing factor. Kryptonian physiology it seemed regardless of a yellow sun or not was a good deal better than that of humankind, wish I had this back on earth instead of paying a Bitcoin to get a stubbed toe looked at. Regardless no matter how good his body was it wouldn't matter if he turned into alien feed. Now while he technically wasn't sure about the existence of land predators on the planet, considering the atmosphere is full of enough oxygen to give birth to such titanic plants and from the decent amounts of sunlight and flora it would be a fool's errand to not believe that the planet had predators of that sort. Not to mention he'd been reincarnated on a planet that specifically doesn't give him superpowers. Suffice it to say he's about as lucky as a Disney villain, in other words not lucky at all. Funnily enough, thinking back didn't they all die horrible deaths?

His eyes glazed over for a second before he began knocking furiously on the wood below him.

You know cause you can never actually be safe. But that was enough thinking for the night he'd rest up for the challenges the next day would bring to his door-tree? The darkness once again flooded his vision, however this time it was welcome.

----

The red sun shined directly into his eyes, however, it did not impair his vision in any way and in fact, it felt comfortable. Sometimes he had to remind himself he was basically a walking plant. The branches warmed the small of his back and the rather smooth rubbery barks tactile sensation reminded him of turf. What turf was for exactly he couldn't remember but he liked the feeling. It would have been a perfect morning, if not for the thing staring down at him which looked like the child of a spider and Cthulhu born out of wedlock. Rather than three abdominal parts it had 5 and instead of hair it was filled with uncomfortably fleshy feelers which seemed to almost mimic human hands. Its head was a multitude of tubes arising from an empty gap lined in teeth. There were hundreds of them dripping with something each crowned by an eye. Eyes that opened to absorb shit, like who the fuck made this thing. Is god even real!

The alien creature triggered in him feelings of disgust he didn't even know he had like nigh nascent trypophobia, aside from the fear he felt an inexplicable urge to destroy the thing before his eyes. Partly because it was ugly and mostly because the stuff it was dripping was acid! It Was going to melt him after it finished the prey in its grasp. Luckily it seemed to lack the web-making talents that spiders back home had. It was likely the powerful and semi-long feelers were going to make up for it though.

Making no sudden noise he inched his way to the far right of the branch, slowly shimmying with his back and legs, only stopping when the unholy thing would stop to take a break from its mutilated corpse. Unfortunately, he failed to account for the fact that this was in fact a tree and that trees had loose branches. A branch decided that this would be the perfect moment to breach its structural integrity and fall down to the ground. The alien creature then abruptly snapped its head in his direction, despite its lack of ears. He paused and stared at the thing and it stared at him back. Red stained its mandibles as its tubes danced through the air. And so he moved.

He abruptly swung his feet over the edge of the branch he was standing on, catching himself with a singular arm. Just in time as the centipede lite creature moved with world-blurring speed striking where his head once was. Shimmying along the branch with his hands till he was behind it he swung himself back up. Shattering a branch with a well-placed punch he grabbed onto the resulting stick and pierced forward towards the back of its head.

He missed.

The creature seemed to be strangely aware of its surroundings, It swung a scythe-like claw at him and unfortunately, his resulting dodge didn't free him from the resulting damage. A cut opened up on the boy's toned torso. But the blood clotted quickly and the pain barely registered. But that was the first blade not the last. Multiple kept swinging at the boy, but he could see them moving. And he attempted to dodge but oftentimes his body couldn't keep up with his mind. Numerous cuts opened up on his body until he looked like a puppet with bad red stitching to keep it from falling apart. But all the while Rao analyzed the creature, It seemed to have a thick carapace, of the sort that a random branch wouldn't do much to it. But no carbon-based creature could be completely armored, well unless you were a Martian or Kryptonian or Czarnian, but that was beside the point. Its body could move which meant there were gaps in the armor in the first place. Right, the scythe appendages are actually legs. Which meant to move them so fast there must be a gap there, an armpit analog. But in order to stab it there with the branch he would have to stop the leg from swinging and unfortunately there was nothing in the surrounding that could stop the leg. The tree trunk was feet away from the two fighters. So he'd sacrifice himself to live.

'This body of mine will heal accordingly, I'm a child of the stars after all.'

Rao could see the next scythe closely; he focused on it, and rather than move his blood-soaked body out of the way, he remained there, letting himself be stabbed in the abdomen. He knew nothing about his physiology aside from his ability to absorb energy, mostly stellar radiation however he knew that despite their similar externals the internals were very different. But regardless he led the leg to pierce his body around the area where a human's kidney would be out of caution. The pain was sharp and instantaneous. The alien's eyes narrowed with what Rao interpreted as a cruel delight after its first true connecting hit drew out a pained scream from him. But despite the pain in his body, his mind remained acute. He remembered in the past that he did not think like this but for some reason, it was different now. Driving this fight was anger and not fear. Bloodlust and not merely survival, it was the instincts of a predator. Kryptonians evolved on a deathworld and they battled their way to the very top of the food chain. Then after that, they fought for thousands of years becoming an empire that conquered galaxies. Humanity was similar. Both were races that birthed conquerors. Rao was merely true to his lineage.

With a rapid twist, he used his left leg to pin the other scythe appendage of the creature to the branch and he sandwiched the appendage in his body even deeper under his right arm as he pierced the sharp branch into what was essentially its armpit. The unholy lifeform let out an ear-shattering shriek as the tubes lined with acid reached for Rao's face marring his flesh. But the boys' eyes were hazed with unending ferocity and violence. He opened his mouth exposing his fangs and bit and tore at the tubes while he shoved deeper into its insectoid body. On the fringes of his consciousness, he felt the flesh and viscera and organs of the creature give way before his weapon. He could hear its cries of pain and the strange sploshing sounds that came from its injured form. But he didn't care. He just wanted this fucking thing dead. Rao angled the stick in its body piercing towards the thing most resembling its skull where the tubes emerged from. He pierced something and it burst with an audible pop, a strange sensation he could feel through his weapon and the tubes went limp. But he did not stop pushing. The stick moved forward piercing out its face causing gray matter and purple blood to spray all over Rao. marking his acid marred visage in blood and gore. But even then the Kryptonian did not stop. In his rage, he stabbed it over and over and over. Till purple flesh and blood dyed the tree branch purple. Till the acrimonious sent of bile and other liquids filled the vicinity. Till the corpse was nothing but a pile of flesh and cracked carapace filled with holes. Pieces of tentacle and intestine had attached themselves to him during his rampage. At that moment Rao looked every bit the reification of the rage of Krypton. The anger of the last glimmering light of a dead world!!