The wheels of straw rested on their earthen bed, soaking in sunshine, adding their fragrance to the day that developed as an old photographic film may. Under the sky that is made all the more pretty for the scattered clouds, the white puffs that radiate white light, every colour is made more prominent. The farm itself grew up out of the pale green hills as if it had always been part of the scenery. The house was a beautiful brick, the colours being the hues of the land; rustic brown striations on grey rock. Upon the rolling fields grew potatoes, turnips and all the root vegetables people loved to roast in the autumn.

The old hay barn had stables at the front with those old half-doors to allow the horses to see the view of the yard. Once the old iron bolts were opened there was a ladder rising to a loft, the place where they stored the hay. Clark could be seen walking out of this small structure, carrying a hay bundle on either shoulder.

"Clark!" Harper called out, but the man didn't stop his journey to the animal pens nearby. He already knew that they were there, but apparently he had no interest in speaking. Perhaps because he was also aware of the reason behind their visit.

Harper's teeth gritted together so hard that it was almost audible from inside her suit. She stormed after him in a huff, and Victor trailed slowly behind; focusing his attention on the windmill in the distance. The ground near it sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and the pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, washed out in winding gullies by last week's rain.

"I know you don't want to listen, but you're going to anyway!" Harper insisted just as the burly man threw one of the stacks of hay over a fence to feed the sheep kept within it. He then continued on his path, not even granting them a sideways glance. This only made Harper angrier. "I can't believe that you're the same Superman that basically died trying to protect the world from Doomsday... You're a shadow of what you were before..."

Still, there was no reaction from the man that they were following; as if he had told himself these things hundreds of times already. Instead, he pegged the last hay barrel through the air and it landed perfectly a few yards away in the pig pen. With his back still turned, he started back towards the house as if their very presence was nothing to him but a quiet breeze.

"This is your chance to make things right." Harper kept trying, hoping to evoke some kind of reaction from the man. "Your daughter is a danger to practically every living thing on this planet. It's your responsibility to make sure that she uses her powers for the greater good...instead you've let her run amok."

Clark's shoulder's tensed. At long last, he was showing some small fragment of emotion. "I was ordered to never get involved in these affairs again, so I won't."

"Is the thought of breaking the law seriously more important than saving people? More important than saving your daughter?"

The man of steel sighed much too calmly and finally turned to face the two people that had trespassed on his land. "I know you're trying to help, but there's nothing I can do. The people don't want my help. Neither does my daughter."

"I know you well enough to suspect that the idea of breaking the law isn't all that's holding you back..." Harper finally deducted. "You just don't want to fight your daughter."

There was a transparency that blinded his blue eyes like fog. It was hard to see something so vivid be lost behind the wall of smoke. "She lost her mother, and I failed her as a father...any and all of Jessica's actions are a direct reflection of me, not her. I'm the one that deserves to be punished."

At this stage Harper was growing rather sick of the excuses. The very little sympathy that she possessed had run dry, and now she was only left with impatience. "We get it, you love your daughter, but even you have to see that this is going too far. Don't fool yourself into believing that she's innocent in this. Jessica's old enough to make her own decisions, and she's chosen to ignore everything that her father once stood for. It's only gonna get worse from here, and you can't stay on the sidelines forever."

As if to directly oppose Harper's words, Clark turned his back on them once more and vanished into the seclusion of his own farmhouse. This one small act felt like a sucker punch to the stomach. It not only shocked Harper, who was expecting to be met with a much better man than who she found, but it also stole the breath from her body.

Victor knew how she was feeling. He had experienced the exact same thing at least a dozen times over the passed few years. It was a painful void of hopelessness that felt irreversible. "I was really hoping that they wouldn't disappoint you, Harp...like they did everyone else. I'm sorry."

The mech slumped its shoulders, a clear sign that the woman inside was struggling to focus on moving it naturally. Victor wanted to say something...anything to stop the painful ebb of depression that was likely consuming her, but a message broke through his comms before any opportunity arose.

"There's another fight happening in Gotham. Raizo's handled most of the evacuation, but we need to get back and search for any remaining strugglers."

A boom tube was opened seconds after Victor's announcement, and clenching her hands at her sides, Harper steered her suit through the portal - desperate to get far away from that farm. Harper didn't want to believe that the Justice League had fallen into such a state of disrepair, but now she regretted ever trying to reach out to any of them.

Upon exiting the boom tube Harper and Victor were thrown into the streets of Gotham, and straight into the middle of a battle. Something was flung towards them and they barely had time to dive out of the way before it landed. Dionysus crashed into a Honda CR-V, eradicating it's hood and leaving a dent so large that the whole front of the car dropped downward. The bulking Greek growled as he detangled himself from the metal, and in a matter of seconds, he was charging back into the fray; without a scratch on him.

"Our priority is to check the buildings for any civilians." Victor stated, already beginning to scan the vicinity for non-meta life signs. "Raizo is usually pretty thorough, but it's better to be safe and double check anyway. We can't leave it all to him."

"I'll take the east side of town. You go west." Harper insisted, and with such courage in her tone that Victor didn't suspect she intended to do much more than save a few people that hadn't listened to the evacuation warning.

Victor nodded. "Stay off the streets, and keep an eye out. They appear out of nowhere sometimes."

"Got it." She responded and watched Victor dash towards a tall apartment complex.

Once he had disappeared into the towering structure, Harper turned her sights to the ensuing fight. Half of them exhibited familiar powers but the only ones she really recognised were Jess, Dionysus, and Nightstar; all of whom were fighting on opposite sides of the battle. In the distance a shape shifting green woman was clawing at the arms of a man dressed like a magician, and a winged girl with a mace was swinging it at someone that looked remarkably like Blue Beetle. The city paid the price for such an intense fight. The roads were torn from the ground, littered with debris, but still mild compared to the walkways that had almost been split in half.

With nothing but a thought, Harper encouraged the metal plating in her suits arm to peel back, and beneath arose an atomic thermal cannon. She aimed it skyward, where Nightstar was throwing star bolts at a super with a face riddled with metal piercings, then fired. The sound warned them of the incoming attack before it could reach them, and they both parted from their fued to dodge the projectile.

Now having gained the attention of at least five of these reckless kids, she switched her microphone to its maximum volume. "You're all under arrest. Turn yourselves in now or I'll be compelled to use force."

Surprisingly enough, most of these rebels heard her over the sounds of their own destruction. They glanced down to the middle of the street, only to see a large mech standing alone in the midst of a crumbling city. They weren't threatened at all by her presence...but some of them were certainly amused.

"You're gonna capture all of us by yourself?" One of them scoffed. He was tall and lanky, and Harper thought she'd seen him stretch in a similar way to Plastic Man. "I'd like to see you try."

Harper's eye twitched in annoyance. "Someone has to."

She triggered every single defence system that her suit possessed. A dozen large guns revealed themselves along her back, arms, and torso. Another four smaller ones unravelled themselves from beneath the armour and pointed towards the group of supers. Still, none of them even flinched. In fact, she could hear distinct laughter coming from a few of them.

"Just remember that you started this." Said a woman with sharp, green teeth and wild hair of the same shade. With an amused grin, she charged towards the Atlas mech; along with at least twenty more supers. None of which included Jessica or Dionysus who were watching from the skies with obvious conflict hazing through their gaze.

Harper shot at least twenty rounds, all from different weapons. Some of them created large bursts of fire upon impact, others attached to its target and shocked them into unconsciousness, but despite Harper's best efforts she couldn't stop the group of metahumans from reaching her. Now, her Atlas model could certainly have handled two of them, maybe even four depending on their power set, but fifteen of these young supers remained unscathed by her guns and quickly started ripping them off the armour entirely.

It all happened so quickly, and Harper hadn't expected anything else from such a large group of powerful individuals. She knew before even starting this that she had no chance of winning. She just wanted to try, outcome be damned. She tried to activate any remaining defence systems, but they had little effect on the people attacking her. In the end, she was left with no option but to swing a few punches their way and hope to knock one out. She managed to knock two out before they had started to tear apart her suit.

The sight from afar must have been horrific. They were tearing at the Atlas like a pack wild animals clawing at the carcass of a deer. They tore past the first layer like it was nothing but hardened skin, then through the skeleton until they revealed the helpless woman within.

"Not so tough now, are ya?" The metal-faced meta hissed. He ravaged what was left of the Atlas, then grabbed Harper by the collar. As she was lifted out of the sanctity of her suit she hurled punches at him; all of which seemed to hurt her more than him. "Insects shouldn't pick fights with gods."

He tossed her away as if she were nothing but a piece of garbage, and she crashed into the distance so hard that she felt every bone within her body jolt. Her head had been slammed against the concrete with enough force to split a small section of her head open, but she couldn't even feel it through the ebbing consciousness. The same group dashed towards her again, and with a headache beginning to ravage her mind, Harper tried to pull herself away but they quickly caught up with her. It was difficult to get any small distance away without her wheelchair...

As they reached her another hit was whacked against her jaw. Blood pooled in her mouth like salt water, then dripped from her lips and painted them bright red. The next few seconds passed in a slow, torturous whirl. Harper was too dazed to completely comprehend who was attacking her, or where they were, all she knew was that there were multiple people all using their abilities simultaneously; her right arm felt cold enough to snap off but the left side of her torso was burning rapidly. Her mind was filling with horrifying images that carved into her brain at a torturously slow pace and there was a loud screeching sound that Harper thought might deafen her if it continued.

She inhaled a trembling breath, sweat accumulating on her skin like icicles. Death was looming, and it didn't feel as peaceful as she had imagined, with her stomach turning in on itself and eating away at her insides, tearing away at the tissue there, leaving her but a rendered mass of dying cells.

Harper tried to move, tried to reach for something in the distance, though she didn't know what, the screaming started again and her body pulsated with the sound, froth gathering forth near her lips in pungent yellow. The world faded. Everything faded. Then, before she could blink out of existence everything stopped. Someone had pushed the superhumans away from her. A tall woman with glistening blonde hair that, with the light of the moon and Harper's dwindling vision, looked like a halo. A broken one, but a halo nonetheless.

"Stop!" Finally the familiar voice of Jessica Kent pierced Harper's senses. "She's down! She's not a threat anymore...why are you still attacking?"

"She started it!" One of them shouted. "She brought this upon herself!"

"And you've defeated her! You've proven your point, there's no reason to keep going..."

"She got in our way. That's reason enough."

Harper's head rang, and that sound echoed in her ears. Still, through the static she could hear Supergirl say "But you'll kill her! We're not killers!"

"Speak for yourself."

Dionysus appeared at Jessica's side, as did another ten of the metahumans that hadn't initially attacked Harper. The Greek man growled "This has gone far enough. It was fun while it lasted, but murder's where I draw the line."

"What a bunch of losers."

The battle started anew, but this time with an actual purpose fuelling it. Harper would have been relieved to see that so many supers had finally realised the lengths of their own immaturity, but her head was pounding and her vision was darkening and she was becoming so incredibly drowsy.

Victor appeared in the horizon; metal limbs sparkling like they were embedded with thousands of tiny stars. His one remaining human eye widened at the sight of her, and the brown iris looked like warmth itself despite the fear it was exhibiting. It was with this lingering threat of unconsciousness that Harper really started to admire Victor. Perhaps because she thought it might be the last time she'd ever see him. He looked horrified, but her mind filtered all that painful emotion away and left her with nothing but a perfect image of him. Even as he ran to her, and held her, and rushed her to S.T.A.R Labs whispering sorrowful words above her, she could still only see the sunshine in his iris and the stars that cradled her in their moonlit sky.