Chapter 34: THE IMP ARRIVES
[National City Airspace — Late November 2016, 7:23 PM]
The city lights spread beneath us like scattered diamonds. Kara flew a lazy spiral beside me, both of us taking the long way home after debriefing. The mission had been clean, our coordination seamless, and the comfortable silence between us carried the satisfaction of a job well done.
Then reality shimmered.
The air in front of us rippled like water disturbed by a stone. Colors bent. Sound warped. And where there had been nothing but empty sky, a man appeared—floating without effort, dressed in an immaculate purple suit that belonged in a different century.
"Kara Zor-El!" His voice carried impossibly across the wind, theatrical and resonant. "I've watched you for eons! Across dimensions and timelines! And I've come to make you my bride!"
My stomach dropped.
I knew this creature. Knew him from the show, from episodes I'd watched in another life, in a world that no longer existed for me. Mr. Mxyzptlk—fifth-dimensional imp, reality warper, obsessive pursuer of Kara Danvers.
And I knew how to beat him.
"Who—" Kara began.
"Mr. Mxyzptlk, at your service!" He swept into an elaborate bow, somehow managing to execute it while floating upside down. "Fifth-dimensional being, lord of imagination, and your future husband!"
"I'm not marrying you."
"Not yet!" He snapped his fingers with a grin. "But you will. Once you see what I can offer compared to..." His gaze shifted to me, and his expression curdled into theatrical disgust. "That."
The snap echoed through dimensions.
One moment I was flying beside Kara. The next, I was encased in something hot, itchy, and profoundly humiliating. Yellow fabric. Foam padding. A beak that kept trying to flop into my field of vision.
A chicken suit.
"The Daxamite boy-toy isn't worthy of you, darling," Mxyzptlk crooned as I found myself—somehow, impossibly—dangling from a flagpole three hundred feet above National City's central plaza. "He can barely fly, let alone match my magnificence!"
Below me, crowds gathered. Phones emerged. Camera flashes sparked like tiny stars.
"Release him!" Kara's voice carried fury I'd rarely heard from her. "Now!"
"Oh, but why?" Mxyzptlk appeared beside her, lounging on empty air like it was a chaise. "He's perfectly safe. A little embarrassed, perhaps, but isn't that appropriate for someone so clearly beneath you?"
I dangled. The chicken suit itched in places I didn't know could itch. Somewhere below, I heard someone say "Is that Supergirl's boyfriend?" followed by raucous laughter.
"What do you want?" Kara demanded.
"Want? I want you, of course!" Mxyzptlk spread his arms dramatically. "I want to shower you with gifts, protect you from harm, make your every wish reality! I want to give you the universe!"
"I don't want the universe. I want you to leave."
"Ah, but here's the thing." His expression shifted—still theatrical, but with something harder beneath. "I can't force you to love me. Fifth-dimensional rules, very strict. But I can prove that I'm the better choice. Through demonstrations. Through grand gestures. Through making your current... companion... look appropriately inadequate."
He snapped his fingers again. The flagpole bent, sending me swinging over the plaza in a dizzying arc. The crowd below gasped.
"I'll keep appearing," Mxyzptlk continued. "Keep demonstrating my superiority. Keep interfering until you see reason. And eventually, you'll choose me." He smiled, all teeth. "It's inevitable, darling. I have all of eternity to wait."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I'll make his life very interesting." Another snap. The flagpole bent further. "Nothing permanent, of course—fifth-dimensional ethics, very clear about that. But I can be remarkably creative with embarrassment."
Kara's hands clenched into fists. Heat vision flickered in her eyes—but she held back, clearly aware that attacking a fifth-dimensional being without a plan would likely make things worse.
"Fine," she said through gritted teeth. "Do what you want. It won't change anything."
"We'll see!" Mxyzptlk blew her a kiss. "Ta-ta for now, my beloved! I'll be back with something truly spectacular!"
He vanished in a burst of purple light.
The flagpole stayed bent.
I stayed stuck.
---
It took forty-five minutes for the fire department to reach me. The ladder truck couldn't extend high enough, so they had to call in a specialized rescue unit. The entire time, I hung in my chicken suit while National City's citizens documented every moment on their phones.
Kara hovered nearby, apologizing repeatedly, unable to simply grab me and fly down because the flagpole was somehow anchored by residual fifth-dimensional energy that resisted her strength.
"I'm so sorry," she said for the tenth time. "I don't understand what that was or why—"
"Fifth-dimensional imp," I managed through the chicken beak. "Reality warper. I've... heard of them."
"Heard of them?"
I couldn't explain how. Couldn't mention the show, the episodes, the meta-knowledge burning in my brain. So I deflected.
"Daxam had archives. Legends about beings from higher dimensions. I never thought they were real."
The rescue team finally reached me. They cut me free from the flagpole's grip, lowered me to the platform, and helped me out of the chicken suit with professional efficiency that suggested they'd seen weirder things in National City.
"Thank you," I told them.
"No problem." The rescue captain paused. "For what it's worth, you handled that with dignity."
I still had chicken feathers in my hair. There was no dignity to be had.
---
Back at the DEO, I stood under the harsh fluorescent lights, picking feathers from my clothing while Winn ran analysis on the residual energy signatures.
"Fifth-dimensional," he confirmed. "The readings are off the charts. This guy exists on a plane of reality we can barely conceptualize."
"Can we stop him?" Kara asked.
"Stop a being who can rewrite the laws of physics with a finger snap?" Winn shook his head. "Not through conventional means. We'd need to find a weakness, some rule that binds him."
I knew the weakness. The name, spoken backward. Kltpzyxm. It would banish him back to his dimension, at least temporarily.
But I couldn't just say it. Couldn't explain how a refugee from Daxam would know the specific vulnerability of a fifth-dimensional entity. The transmigrator secret was already straining against its containment; adding "I watched a TV show about your life" would shatter it entirely.
I needed to guide them to the answer without revealing the source.
"Fifth-dimensional beings," I said slowly, as if thinking aloud. "In the legends, there were always rules. Constraints. Things they couldn't do, or ways they could be bound."
"Rules like what?" Winn asked.
"I don't remember specifics." The lie came easily—too easily, maybe. "But they involved words. Language. The power of names."
Winn's eyes lit up. "Names. That's actually..." He started typing rapidly. "There's mythology about this. Beings who are bound by the speaking of their true names. If I cross-reference fifth-dimensional folklore with linguistic binding traditions..."
He was on the trail. Good.
Kara caught my eye across the room. Her expression was thoughtful, assessing. She'd noticed how smoothly I'd guided the conversation, how conveniently my "vague memory" had pointed them in the right direction.
She didn't say anything. But her earlier words echoed in my mind: Whatever you're still not telling me—I can wait.
I hoped she meant it.
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