Chapter 75 – Distraction Pt. 5

August 27, 2010 - Gotham City, NJ

Gotham Sewers

06:11:05

“Well?”

Superboy took a steadying breath and carefully schooled his expression, forcing a tight smile out and nodding. He followed after the creature that wore his Aqualass’ form as they set off down another tunnel and tried to wrestle down his panic.

Shit fuck shit. Its him. Clayface. He must have jumped Aqualass. That’s what took her so long to show up. Damn it! I knew splitting up was a bad idea. 

It took most of his self control not to freak out or just attack Clayface from behind. Anger warred with fear for his friend as he drifted along behind the disguised villain. He grit his teeth and forced his balled fists to unclench, reaching for the calm flow state that he had worked with Wonder Woman to practice. He didn’t need to access his super speed right now, but he did need to be focused and collected, and it was his best tool for that.

Then he started to plan.

Okay, Clayface is pretending to be Aqualass. He thinks he has me fooled, because why wouldn’t he? He hasn’t shown off his impersonation ability yet, just turned into stuff. What is he planning?

Scenarios flickered through his head as he evaluated and dismissed each one.

The villain was most likely planning to do the same to him as he had done to Aqualass. Wait until Superboy lowered his guard and then sneak attack. Clayface was probably wary of his strength, since he had been the one to splat the villain before. It hadn’t done him any permanent harm, clearly, but it was something. The shapeshifter was at least worried enough about a fight with Superboy that he didn’t want to risk a face to face confrontation.

Which meant Superboy had some time. Not much, but some. Unlike his teammate, he had the senses to detect Clayface even while transformed. This was an opportunity to gather more intel on his opponent’s capabilities. He flicked through his super vision, examining the villain much more closely in infrared, trying to puzzle out why he wasn’t as cold as the clay in the ground. Peering closely, he saw the heat moved in waves across the surface of the doppelganger’s body, quite unlike the heat blobs of normal living creatures. Most living creatures were hottest in their core, where their heart and organs kept their internal temperature up and pumped that hot blood around the body, cooling toward their extremities. Clayface was uniformly one orange blob, all the same temperature. But unlike the actual Aqualass, the heat didn’t radiate out from the core; the villain’s whole body bled heat into the environment and cooled across its surface area.

When it did, the surface rippled subtly, like a wave, and then the heat turned back up. 

He’s rubbing layers of his clay together to create friction for the false warmth. That’s… brilliant. This is Clayface’s debut, though. I presume he’s still pretty new to his powers, but he’s already got tricks like this. I doubt he’s expecting anyone to look at him in the infrared, he’s probably just doing it to ape human warmth, so its not instantly obvious he’s clay when you touch him. Still, his mimicry is already pretty advanced.

The orange blob in front of Superboy kept marching along, but Clayface didn’t attempt any small talk. That suited Superboy just fine; he didn’t trust himself to act naturally against a shapeshifting, Assassin-trained supervillain. He kept observing his target, and flipped to microscopic vision, hurrying to catch up so he could use it at its optimal distance. Superboy would have been better pleased to finally use this mode of his Super Vision, if the circumstances were less tense. He was already starting to sweat, anxiety about the danger he was in only a trifle compared to his worry about his friend.

Under the close examination of microscopic vision, he could finally make out visual details that betrayed Clayface’s true nature. The faint ripple across the surface of his exterior that provided the warmth was visible now, a swell like an oceanic wave that went across his entire surface, not differentiating between what was supposed to be clothing or skin. The motion was literally microscopic, but he could still see it. When he peered closer and focused down to the cellular level, he could see that Clayface was entirely made up of tan blocks of clay, and the exterior ones were shaped to mimic human skin cells. The attention to detail was amazing, and he wondered how Clayface managed it.

Ms. Martian said his mind was totally different, diffused through all of his clay. Maybe that’s part of how he manages the shapeshifting; each cell thinks for itself. That’s crazy. 

Clayface did breath, a steady respiration that Superboy shuddered to realize mimicked Aqualass’ actual breathing patterns. Superboy’s Super Senses were an incredible tool, though it had taken him a few days to fully adjust to them when he had awoken on Terra. Super Hearing could become overwhelming if he didn’t tune things out, and Super Vision was a confusing mess if he didn’t force himself to use each part of it as a discrete ‘mode’. Cadmus had already programmed his mind and body to process the sensory overload subconsciously through telepathic programming, but controlling it consciously had taken good old fashioned practice. Now he had a perfect subject to test them on.

The lack of heartbeat was the major giveaway that had ruined Clayface’s game. The villain didn’t have blood, or he hadn’t bothered replicating a human body enough to need to make his own clay version. So the telltale murmur of Aqualass heartbeat was missing; Superboy was suddenly glad that he had taken the time to memorize his friends’ heartbeats. It let him always know when they were around, and he had vague notions of using it in a situation like this, but it turned out to not really matter this time. Clayface just didn’t have a heartbeat, instead of Superboy detecting a discrepancy as a fatal flaw, like he had imagined doing. But it was enough to know who the real Aqualass was.

None of that helped the real Aqualass, though, and Superboy fought down his anger again. His hands itched to lash out and splatter Clayface across the tunnel again, but he realized how ineffective that would be. They had already tried that once, and Clayface had just turned the situation around on them. There had to be something he could do here.

Do I pump him for information? I’d have to ask questions that wouldn’t raise suspicion… no, that’s stupid. I’m not going to out-act the ‘man with a million faces’. It would be amateur improv versus an Academy Award winning thespian.

Frustration bubbled up and he bared his teeth, before forcing it down, worried that Clayface had eyes in the back of his head. Briefly he worried the villain could see all around him, but considering his fake human skin looked like human skin cells, Superboy theorized that he probably had to mimic an eye’s physical structure to see. The fact that Clayface could apparently model and concentrate on all of that at once was mind boggling.

While also kicking our asses or fighting Batwoman and Robin to a standstill. Fuck me, once more I’m realizing that this guy is a heavyweight and I’m amazed Batman can handle him. It would be a hell of a lot easier if Batwoman just had a Freeze Gun, but nooo. Stupid metahuman Mr. Freeze…

The thought that they lacked the weaponry to deal with Clayface made him regret his own limited power set. Superwoman could have dealt with this in a second with her Freeze Breath, but he lacked most of her secondary powers. He had mastered Super Breath, but he doubted he was going to blow the half ton of living clay apart with that power today. 

I need something else, but what?

He wracked his brains, trying to think of something that would work on Clayface that he could actually do. Heat Vision and Freeze Breath could do a lot to the villain, but punching was all he had to work with. And that had already proved its ineffectiveness. Clayface could absorb blows like nothing he’d fought so far; punches that could shatter a tank’s armor just made moist craters in his body that quickly filled back in. A strong enough hit could splatter him, but that didn’t actually diminish Clayface, just spread him around. 

Theoretically I could hit him like that meteor smash again and keep splattering him every time he reformed. But that’s a terrible plan. What else do I have to work with?

He concentrated, reviewing everything he knew about Clayface.

Superboy suddenly halted in the tunnel, arrested by the obvious answer he had already overlooked.

Everything I know about Clayface.

A new plan started to form in his head, and it was partly formulated by the time the villain noticed his stop and turned Aqualass’ face back to him questioningly. Superboy took another calming breath and met the storm grey eyes of the stolen mask.

“I think that’s far enough.” He stated, squaring up and keeping his hands from balling up into fists again. Superboy tried to project an air of calm and control.

“What are you talking about? We need to keep looking-” The false face said in his friend’s voice, but he just shook his head and kept his stone face.

“Cut the crap, Hagen.” He barked, and Clayface grew utterly still. He didn’t move or even breathe, just stared at Superboy with an inhuman intensity. Then the villain broke into a broad grin that showed off all of Aqualass’ teeth, except they weren’t her teeth anymore. They were the broken, asymmetrical yellowed stumps of Clayface’s own visage, and her mouth split open wider than the real McCoy could have managed. The sight gave Superboy goosebumps, but he refused to show fear.

“What gave me away? It wasn’t the accent, was it? She has a very peculiar one, but I thought I did a fair impression.” Clayface asked, facing Superboy down across the tunnel, only ten paces separating them. His voice had completely changed, a melodious and masculine voice coming out of the ghastly mouth that split apart Aqualass’ familiar face.

“A magician never gives away his secrets.” Superboy answered cryptically, standing still as Clayface shifted back and forth across the narrow tunnel, not coming closer but pacing like a caged tiger. The villain kept his friend’s shape though, and the dissonance of his shape and the threat he represented ratched up the tension for Superboy.

“Well, that’s not fair!” Clayface sneered, Aqualass’ face twisting grotesquely as the villain emoted with far too much fluidity. “If you’re going to be a critic you have to at least provide a real critique!” He snarled, his voice becoming more like the echoing bestial roar that he had used in the whirlpool chamber. His eyes began to shift back and forth between Aqualass’ storm grey ones and the flat yellow ones of Clayface’s ‘true’ form. Even more disturbingly, they changed one at a time and randomly.

Oh shit. He’s Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Superboy swallowed as the erratic shapeshifter continued his confined pacing while occasionally shifting one of his hands into a form like Aqualass’ waterbearer blades or maces, but made of the thick tan clay of his actual matter. It seemed like a nervous tick, and Superboy elected to try diplomacy.

“A better question would be, ‘how do I know who you really are?’” Superboy posited, and Clayface froze in his pacing. The villain’s eyes finally turned entirely yellow as his brow became unnaturally craggy while he scowled at Superboy.

“That’s right, how would you know? Did Al Ghul tell you I was coming? That they sent me here? Is this another test for the master?! After all I’ve done, all I’ve suffered?!” Clayface spat, head shifting side to side as he snarled and shouted. But he didn’t turn his head and emote; his whole head rippled to and reformed face a new direction with a new enraged expression. 

“I’ve never talked to them. I just know things. Its one of my superpowers.” Superboy answered, more than a little smugly.

I’ve been waiting weeks to use that line!

“Oh, a smart guy, eh? We can see how smart you are and what you know when I drown you in my clay! Shove it all the way up your sinuses and into your lungs, force all the air out of you. Won’t matter how super you are when you’re suffocating, eh!?” Clayface raged, his yellow eyes blazing with rage as he took a step closer, but Superboy didn’t retreat. The villain didn’t advance further, though, and he had a calculating look as he did so.

He’s playing it up, trying to rattle me. But he does sound crazy. I have to try to reach him. Get him to tell me what he did to Aqualass.

“I know what happened to you, Hagen. Your accident. I’m sorry that happened to you.” Superboy offered, trying to be the voice of reason here.

Clayface recoiled so hard his entire body shifted and undulated before returning to a mostly Aqualass’ shaped form. Again his expressions shifted rapid fire in the same shapeshifting collage; fear, anger, disgust, rage. It was a horrifying sight.

“Oh, you know, do you? You know what the fucking cops said, the goddamn tabloids said! They blamed me. ME! I was the fucking victim!” Clayface screamed, the sound echoing through the tunnel, far louder than human lungs could have produced. It had the deep bass of his more monstrous voice again, and Superboy realized that was a bad sign. 

Gotta keep him calm and talking, and not in monster-mode. He seems way more out of it in that form. Playing a ‘role’ seems to make him more stable.

“I know what you said happened, and I believe you. You were being stalked, and you were trying to get away. It wasn’t your fault.” Superboy said as calmly as he could, summoning as much empathy as he could for the hair-trigger supervillain. It helped that it was true; he did believe Hagen’s story about the accident. Hollywood fame could be as much of a trap as it was a pedestal.

“You… you do?” Clayface said, suddenly deflating, literally. He had been swelling in size as he worked himself up, but now he returned to something like Aqualass’ normal dimensions.

“I do. I’m sorry that happened to you, it shouldn't have. It shouldn’t happen to anybody, and I’m sorry nobody believed you. That was wrong of them; you were the victim and they put you on trial for it.” He offered, and Clayface’s visage twisted with emotion as he looked away.

“I was just trying to get away. Those bitches… they’d been stalking me for months. Harassing me. Following me, calling me, leaving ‘gifts’ at my door and tagging messages up for me to find! A whole website of fanatics online trying to get me to be what they wanted. Do you know, they wanted me to be in the new Dread Castle remake? That’s what it was about. That’s why they were making my life a living hell! So I would be in a remake of a remake of a schlocky horror movie that they liked ten years ago!” Clayface ranted, stalking back and forth again and waving his arms like he was on stage performing a soliloquy. 

“The industry was bad enough! Nobody wanted to let me make art! They wanted me to be a pretty face and a box office draw. The producers, directors, casting people; they at least had a reason to try to make me put on a mask! Its a business! I put asses in seats! But the fans!? The fucking FANS!? They thought they fucking owned me! That they could dictate my life so I could keep playing the same fucking roles for the rest of my life!” Clayface appeared to be hyperventilating, but Superboy realized it was performative. The man of clay didn’t actually need to breathe, he only did it so he could talk.

This is all a performance, too. I think putting on a performance is the only way he’s a person, and not the monster.

That was a sobering realization, and Superboy’s compassion for Matt Hagen became deep and genuine. His experience with stardom had scarred him, literally, and his origin had seemingly unmade him, mentally and physically. It was a terrifying thing to behold.

“Did the League of Assassins do this to you?” Superboy asked, concerns about keeping the villain talking falling away and genuine curiosity now filling him.

Clayface froze at the question, eyes darting around while his jaws clamped shut and he hissed between his broken teeth. He shook his head violently, his expressions exaggerating ever more grotesquely as he did so. Superboy thought he looked like he was struggling with something, fighting to try to spit something out but not being able to. Then he realized that was exactly what it was.

“You can’t say, can you?” He asked, and Clayface looked hunted as his head shifted back and forth fluidly. It was as good as a confirmation to Superboy. He tried to go down a different route to see if he could get answers out of the villain.

“How did you find out about the Lazarus Pit?” He asked, going straight for the heart of the matter. 

Clayface looked shocked, his yawning mouth hanging slack in surprise at Superboy’s question.

“How do you… you ‘know things.’ Of course you know about that. What else do you know, I wonder?” He said, eyes narrowing, but he answered anyway. “A guru in Hollywood told me about it. He claimed he’d studied under the ‘Hidden Masters’ in Nanda Parbat, in the Himalayas, and he had read about a mystical pool that ‘could heal any wound, cure any disease.’” Clayface laughed bitterly.

“I was so stupid. Desperate. I’d paid my last red cent to that conman, after spending everything else on useless doctors and plastic surgeons. Then I went looking for the… thing. He actually called it by that name, so maybe the old con knew something after all. But asking after that thing didn’t turn up anything, but it did make someone turn up to find me.” Clayface continued, bitterly. There was actual fear in his face when he stumbled over trying to name the Lazarus Pit, and Superboy realized there were limits to whatever conditioning was keeping Clayface from talking more freely. The villain clammed up after that, and it was clear he couldn’t say more.

“The League of Assassins.” Superboy provided, already knowing the answer, and Clayface met his gaze but pointedly didn’t offer any acknowledgement. 

Guess I have to fill in the rest of the blanks myself. Let’s see if my guess about the rest of the plot was right.

“They found you, probably threatened to kill you if you kept poking around. But they must have seen you had something to offer them. I assume it was your skills?” He asked, and this time Clayface gave a very slow nod, seemingly surprised that he could.

“So you offered to train their Assassins. Teach them how to act like anyone. Disguise themselves. Play any role.” Superboy continued, his tone growing colder and his anger growing. Clayface’s situation had roused his sympathy, but the man had turned to a fanatical death cult of murderers and offered to help make them even better at their line of work. 

He must have been desperate, or maybe he was doing it to keep them from cutting his own throat. I don’t know, so I can’t judge. Not yet, anyway. And he doesn’t look like he can say.

Clayface remained mute, staring intently with growing feverishness in his blank yellow eyes as Superboy continued his monologue.

“You wanted access to the Lazarus Pit. You must have realized early on that was never going to happen.” Clayface was deathly still at that statement, and Superboy knew he was on the money. “Ras al Ghul is an old monster, and would never let anyone else use it. Even if you became an actual League member, that wasn’t going to get you access. So you looked for another route.”

Superboy stroked his chin as he considered the weight of evidence. Suddenly, he felt like Robin when she was playing Great Detective, and finally saw the appeal. Having an audience of one hanging onto his every word definitely made it better, even if that was balanced on the knife edge of danger considering who his audience was.

“I looked you up when I realized who we were dealing with. Your history, articles about you, filmography. No long term relationships to speak of. Always attached to this or that starlet but nothing that ever goes anywhere. Lots of rumors about your love life online.” He winced as Clayface snarled, and he put up his hands placatingly. 

“I’m not judging, man. It must be very hard for a closeted gay man in Hollywood. Especially this Hollywood. Women want you to be available, to be straight so they can imagine you might be interested in them. I read comment sections online for about five seconds before I realized how gross they are about you. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that too. Its awful.” He said softly, and Clayface actually recoiled again and pushed himself so hard up against a wall, he splatted against it lightly. The villain looked terrified to be seen in that moment, suddenly vulnerable despite the barely restrained violence of the situation. He looked hunted and ready to fight or flee in a moment.

“The Justice Guild has surveillance looking for the notables in the League all the time. They spotted Ali al Ghul in Marrakesh in February. With you.” Superboy said gently, and Clayface seemed to rally himself. Instantly all of his trembling emotional expressions disappeared, replaced with a visage of cold contempt as he peeled himself off the wall.

“Ali! I thought- ! I thought I meant something to him. He was heartbroken when we met, blathering on and on about his ‘beloved’ who had left him. I saw him, and I thought… I thought the League was like Hollywood. It was all about who you know. Who better than the boss’ son? But as I got closer, he saw me for the real me. My face… he didn’t care about my face. It was another mask to put on at first, but it became so much more. We became so much more.” A little real melancholy bled through the mask at the mention of their relationship, before the anger snapped back to cover it.

“I put his heart back together again, showed him what it meant to love again. He was so happy! I could have made him happy. He didn’t care about my face BUT I STILL DID!” Clayface screamed, his mouth yawning impossibly wide and the sound echoing down the tunnel. “I wasn’t trying to steal the thing from the old monster! I just wanted to dip a toe in, fix what those bitches did to me. That was all! Ali had finally gotten permission to be with me, the old monster had finally relented. Never approved of me, like I was just an extra hanging around in the background. Not a ‘true Assassin’ at all.” Clayface sneered at the mention of the Master of the League of Assassins, Ras al Ghul. It was clear that Ras and the Lazarus Pit were taboo for him to mention, but Ali was not.

Clayface slumped like failed pottery, dejected as he finished his rant.

“When Ali told me that he finally had ‘permission’ to be with me, I realized that he was utterly beholden to the old monster. He couldn’t even consent to be with me unless he got ‘permission.’ I was… upset. I decided at that moment that I should at least get what I wanted out of this, if our love was only possible if it was ‘permitted.’ So I asked Ali to let me use the thing, just once, just enough to fix me. Then we could both be happy, together.” As Clayface spoke, he sank deeper into an oblivion of despair and regret. Superboy could hear the contrast between his words about loving Ali and where it had all ended.

“I should have known when he agreed so easily. That very night, he led me down secret passages beneath… beneath the place, down to the thing.” Clayface’s bitterness grew as he continued his tale. His jaw, or the equivalent, worked soundlessly for a moment as he tried to form the words he was bound not to say, his frustration evident. Superboy elected to take the burden away.

“It was a trap. Ali thought you were using him for access to the Pit, so he ‘let’ you use it. He didn’t tell you about its side effects, did he?” Superboy asked, and the haunted look on the twisted face of Aqualass made his heart ache for the shapeshifting villain. Clayface didn’t need to answer for him to know the truth of the statement. “I know that its bad, but I’ve never heard of anything like ‘this.’” He said, waving a hand to indicate Clayface’s general situation. The villain didn’t answer, out of either reticence or whatever kept him from mentioning certain topics.

“Someone must have sabotaged it to turn you into… this.” Superboy finished, his regret clear in his tone. “The League sent you to Gotham for Batwoman. Of course they did. Did they make you do all this?” He asked, but Clayface was still unable to answer, and the shapeshifter began rocking back and forth, muttering and shaking his head.

His mouth became a thin line as his anger grew again, this time for Clayface instead of at him. 

He’s another victim. He doesn’t want to be this, to be doing this. The League used him as a weapon. He’s made mistakes, ran with the wrong crowd, but nobody deserves this.

Superboy took a deep breath and pushed the useless anger down and extended a hand towards the cowering villain.

“Matt, I want to help you, okay? We don’t need to fight anymore. This isn’t your fault. If you stop now, the Guild can help you. Help with your condition, and whatever else the League did to you. We can fix this, I promise. But you have to tell me what you did with Aqualass. I need to know she’s safe. Can you tell me?” He said, speaking as calmly and authoritatively as he could. 

I feel like a fraud, talking down an unstable supervillain. But this is what Superman would do, and what Batwoman probably wants to do. Hagen is unstable but if we can resolve this without any more fighting, we can skip right to the part where Wayne Industries starts trying to cure him instead of Batwoman having to fight him all over the city.

“I… I choked her out and stuck her to the tunnel wall. She’s alive.” Clayface whispered, pointing back the way they came. Superboy heaved a sigh of relief, releasing a tension he had been holding the whole time. He had hoped and prayed that she was fine and that extending some trust would bear fruit, and now it seemed it had.

“Okay. That’s okay, she’ll understand. Let’s go get her and make sure she’s safe, first.” He stated as a fact, instead of as a request. That part he did recall from the team’s training on emergency response; don’t ask emotional people to do things, tell them authoritatively what they were supposed to do.

He stood back and let Clayface shuffle past him, still wearing Aqualass’ form as they walked back the way they came. Superboy watched the villain closely, worried he might lash out at any minute, but all the fight seemed to have gone out of him. After a bit of walking, they turned down the tunnel that ‘Aqualass’ had come out of, and halfway down was the real Atlantean, half buried in clay against the tunnel wall, her head and hands sticking out. Her head was down, unconscious, and he rushed over to her. As he grew closer, the clay pulled away and she fell into his arms. Checking her pulse, he found it steady and heard her breath and her heart beat.

Now he truly sighed in relief, and picked her up, before turning to Clayface.

“Thank you.” He said honestly, holding Aqualass close. “Now, we just need to find the others and we can get out of here.” Superboy said, walking past Clayface with his burden and back toward the chamber with the rushing channel of water. 

He stopped short when he saw the rest of the team already waiting there, turning to look at him as one.

“Guys!” He shouted with relief and took a step forward before stopping mid-stride.

All four of the others regarded him with flat expressions and his hackles stood on end. He sucked in a breath as he felt the danger he was suddenly in.

The only heartbeat he heard in the room was the steady thrum of Aqualass’. 

Slowly he turned back to the Clayface behind him, keeping his expression neutral.

“Matt…” He began, but the shapeshifter looked confused and bordering on panic. He was taking stumbling steps back away from the chamber, staring in disbelief.

“I don’t… I don’t understand! They’re not listening to me. They’re not listening to me anymore!” He blubbered, panic twisting his features.

Superboy turned back to the chamber to look at his supposed ‘teammates’, who all stared back at him in unison.

But now they were all smiling. 

With impossibly wide mouths that were full of broken, yellowed teeth.

Ah…. fuck.