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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,523
Characters/Pairings: Clark Kent, John Corben, Lois Lane
Previous Part: Chapter 19
Next Part: Chapter 21
Summary: This looks like a job for Superman.
Corben jerked back with each shot that tore into his Kevlar vest, a boxer taking body blows from an invisible opponent.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Detective Maggie Sawyer of the Special Crimes Unit said from the doorway, her service pistol oozing smoke. “Damn, got it backwards again.”
Mr. Blue returned fire with his back-up gun. Maggie took cover behind the doorway, which fractured but held against the low-caliber onslaught. Corben, his chest feeling like a baseball bat had been taken to it, ran for it. Crouched low to the ground, practically crawling at points, he scooped up the Kryptonite while Mr. Blue and Sawyer traded fire overhead. Finally, he made it to the stairwell and disappeared up the stairs.
Superman raised his head and let loose the new surge of power he felt in the Kryptonite’s absence. A laser-thin beam of thermal energy leaked from his eyes and chiseled the trigger of Mr. Blue’s gun.
The criminal’s finger clicked on nothing as Maggie popped out from cover again, staggering him with a burst into his stomach. Mr. Blue vomited, his Kevlar probably keeping his injuries at a few cracked ribs. Maggie had him handcuffed before he could recover or even stop coughing.
She looked up from her straddle of Mr. Blue. “Hey, boy scout, how you holding up?”
Superman tried to raise, but couldn’t manage it. “Yeah, I’m just really comfortable here. Go after that man, he’s John Corben, Lexcorp’s head of security…”
“No need for an APB just yet. There’re cops all over this place, he’s going no—“
The whine of helicopter rotors cut her off. Superman redoubled his efforts to get to his feet. It was like his heels were greased. The twitches of his antigravity organ slapped him back down to earth.
He felt a vampiric pain at his throat and realized it was Maggie taking his pulse. The look on her face was all she needed to say.
“I need sunlight, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Inspector now.” She slipped his arm around the back of her neck. “On three, we’re standing up, capiche?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three!”
Kal-El put all his effort into pushing upward. Somehow, he got his feet under his body and found himself leaning unsteadily on Sawyer.
“Now, one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
Teetering, he made his way into the hallway and to the floor-to-ceiling window at the end. At one point, he stumbled and Maggie steadied him with a hand on his chest.
“You know, a lot of women would kill for this opportunity.”
“I’m not one of them. You’re not my type.”
“Alien?”
“Male.”
Superman sagged against the glass, now supported entirely by Maggie’s strength. The sun had half-fallen below the horizon and ripened into a deep orange, a bloody wound in the purple bruise of an evening sky. Drawing energy from that was like trying to get blood from a stone. Still, he pressed his hand up against the glass to soak in all the red rays he could.
A second buzz joined the noise of Corben’s helicopter starting up. A police helicopter. Its searchlight played over the two crimefighters as it flew over them.
“See? We’ve got things well in hand.”
Clark’s fingers steepled on the glass. “Why the world doesn’t need Superman,” he mumbled.
Above, the chopper pilot bellowed through a loudspeaker. “Civilian helicopter, power down and throw down your weapons.”
Superman’s hearing was still too deafened to hear the trigger being pulled or the electrical impulse traveling down the joystick. But it was just sharp enough to hear the missile take off and be subsumed in the roar of an explosion. Superman watched, stricken, as the police helicopter fell past the window in flames.
As soon as its fiery light had left him, he dove through the glass. Maggie cried his name as she reached for him, too late, his flapping cape disappearing over the edge.
Superman fell. The helicopter falling below him was burst open like an overheated tin can and wreathed in flames. But a life inside screamed to him.
Marshalling his power despite the bile rising in the back of his throat, Superman slid forward. He speared right through the metal carcass, grabbing the pilot as he went, and saw the ground coiled below him like a fist. It hurt like hell, but Superman pulled up, every iota of his power seeming to tear him apart as he used it. But he felt the wind on his face shift and the ground turn into the horizon turned into the sky. He touched down feet-first, dropping the pilot, going head over heels as he lost his footing. He’d landed on STAR Labs’ lawn, the grass so soft and so full of singing life. Superman closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to listen to their song…
The malevolent drill of Corben’s helicopter cut across his hearing. He opened his eyes. The cops had come to him, the paramedics surrounding the pilot. Superman let himself be helped to his feet and saw the helicopter disappearing into the distance.
He soaked in the embers of the dying sun. He was lifted off his feet, faltered back down to the ground, then shot up eight feet. Dan Turpin was below him, hopping up and down, trying to get to him.
“Don’t be a suicide case, Blue! Go home, this isn’t your job!”
Superman’s telescopic vision picked out the helicopter making its getaway.
“Looks like it is.”
***
Corben tapped his code into the keypad on the floor. After a moment, a latch popped. He slid the section of floor open to reveal the casing of the laser cannon. Flung open the casing to show a hollow with several rods to hold an item in place. He retracted the rods to make room for the Kryptonite.
“Something on radar!” the pilot yelled.
“Some people just don’t know when to quit.” Corben began calibrating the laser. “Blow him out of the sky.”
***
Superman followed low to the ground, barely above the evening commute, flying at a speed that would have been lazy if he were at full power. Down here, the fumes of the diesel engines chafed his senses. The helicopter was trying to lose itself in Metropolis’s skyline, flying among the skyscrapers to baffle radars and blend in to the civilian traffic. He tailed it over the Lakeview Mall, then took a deep breath as he felt his strength returning.
He thought of Jor-El, sending off his only son to Earth to uphold Krypton’s legacy, so that billions of years of evolution, progress, and philosophy could live on.
He thought of Jonathan Kent, who’d shown him how to be the man who could pay tribute to Krypton.
He put on a burst of speed, accelerating into a supersonic blur and reappearing in front of the helicopter. It was a wasp-like craft, bristling with the harsh points of weaponry. An ugly, nasty weapon of an aircraft. Its wingtip thrusters swiveled forward to bring it to a stop. Superman crossed his arms confidently as he felt the high-tech targeting systems acquire him.
The nose-mounted 30-mm chain gun spun into life, thundering out rounds in less than a seconds. They seemed to slow to a crawl as Superman concentrated, but still swam in and out of focus… it rang bells in his head to try to think at this speed.
His hands blurred out to catch the bullets streaming towards him. Sparks flew off his hands, got under his fingernails. The heat was like taking something out of the stove with oven mitts on, but it was still more than he should feel. Flattened slugs fell away from his body in a waterfall of lead, landing on the plaza below him like the sand from an hourglass.
Narrowing his eyes, Superman focused his weakened heatvision on the chain gun. A few bullets slipped through, stinging at his chest like ant bites. But soon enough the chaingun had overheated, the barrels starting to run together as slag.
Superman’s hands were bleeding. Flecks of lead were splintered under his fingernails and the whorls of his fingerprints were flooding with blood. He looked up at the helicopter with eyes still burning red and flew forward to put an end to the chaos.
A seven-barreled cannon under the wing puffed and a mortar wound burst against his chest. The effect was like hitting a home run into a normal man’s stomach. Superman jerked backward, tried to regain control, ended up gliding upside-down into an office high-rise. His fall crushed a rubber plant.
The janitor watched him stagger to his feet.
“I should be running, shouldn’t I?”
Superman tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak. So he just nodded. The janitor ran.
The hiss of rocket fuel igniting heralded it. The missile leapt forward from the chopper, right into a weak dose of heatvision that blew it apart. The shockwave broke every window for seven floors and knocked Superman on his back. He sprung right back up, though the rib the mortar had struck creaked like a plank under too much weight. He didn’t even try to fly, he just ran forward and flung himself at the target.
A green laser crystallized in a giant needle hanging under the helicopter like a stinger. Even before it struck him, Superman felt like his bones had been set on fire. Then it splashed across his body and every molecule screamed in agony. Even its ending was pain, like the jolt of an electric chair. He fell.
He felt nothing. Not the wind rushing by his face, not the helicopter grinding above him. But he knew he would feel this.
With the last of his strength, Superman plunged his fist through the glass window he was falling past.
The glass chipped, splintered, shattered against his hand as he held on. It wasn’t just breaking the skin anymore. It was tearing right through it. At last his hand hit the bottom of the window frame. The pain didn’t stop. Superman looked, saw jagged glass shards embedded in his hand.
He tried to get his other hand up to grab the ledge, but there was more shattered glass on the floor. He steeled himself and put his hand firmly down. Secure, he hung there. Saw his reflection in the window he was hanging in front of. The laser had burnt a hole clear through his suit, exposing a blistered expanse of his chest. The world-famous S-shield was scorched and defaced.
Now he felt the wind coming back to him, across his face and hitting his wounds like whiplashes. It wasn’t just the high altitude. It was the helicopter coming in closer, its rotors as loud as a thousand chainsaws. He had time to see the rotors buzzing closer before he squeezed his eyes shut.
Pain erupted in his side, the stench of his own burning flesh filling his nostrils as sparks jumped from the point of contact. His cape was hacked through, his blood sprayed out in a single cleaving ejaculation. The helicopter pulled back. Superman opened his eyes. The cut was deep, with blood pouring down over his belt to run down his leg.
Blood, stuck to the helicopter rotors, was being flung outward with each rotation. It speckled Clark’s body, bringing him back to himself. He asked a little more. The sun couldn’t save him now, but the Earth was still here. Home, mother, protector and sanctuary. Give me something now, just enough to bring this man who has harmed his own kind to justice. Just that much.
He didn’t know if anyone or anything was listening. He didn’t know if anyone cared. But he felt new strength welling up in him.
The helicopter floated closer, its rotors hungry for his blood.
He kicked off the building and flung himself toward it. He was still above the rotors, but the tiniest spark of power made him blur forward in mid-air, in-between the slow and cumbersome rotors, to slam into the helicopter’s nose. It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t awe-inspiring, but he was hanging onto the cockpit, his set face reflected in the windshield.
He raised one fists, studded with glass fragments, and brought it down on the windshield. Glass flew from his hand and spider-webbed at the end of his knuckles. Corben shoved his gun over the pilot’s shoulder and right at Superman. The pilot had time to start the syllable of his objection, then the gun roared.
The windshield exploded like firecrackers going off, chips bouncing around the cockpit. Bullets whizzed by Superman’s head, singeing his hair. He punched through the weakened glass and his fist cut off the pilot’s scream. The helicopter veered hard to the side. Superman rolled off the nose. He grabbed for a handhold on the cockpit, and this time his impenetrable fingers crunched through the glass. Corben rapped his knuckles with the butt of his pistol. Superman dropped, grabbed onto the landing skid.
Corben shouted to be heard over the wind whistling through the cabin. “Go low! Scrape him off!”
The helicopter dipped, descent flattening Superman toward the fuselage. He tried to lock his ankle around the skid, but the chopper leveled off and knocked his legs back down. Now the helicopter was just above traffic.
“The power lines, aim for the power lines!”
Superman looked back over his shoulder to see stiletto-wire power lines strung up across the next intersection. If he hit them, he’d have a short life as a conduit before he died from electrocution. Superman swung his legs , trying to build up enough of an arc to get a foothold. With a migraine-level application of flight, he was able to get his legs wrapped around the strut. His cape brushed the power lines as they passed underneath. It burst into flame.
“Climb! Maybe the fall will kill him!” Corben ordered as he threw the helicopter’s side-door open.
Before he could toss off a villainous monologue or whatever he planned, Superman grabbed his bootstraps and pulled. Corben landed on his back, started kicking at Superman’s hand. Superman pulled him halfway out of the helicopter. He grabbed onto the Kryptonite’s case as Kal-El dragged himself up on top of Corben. Pain coursed through the merc’s brain as Corben realized Superman had started punching him.
“Dump us!” Corben shouted between right hooks.
The helicopter obligingly tilted sideways. Superman felt a very un-super lurch in his gut as he and Corben went airborne, toppling out the helicopter. Then Superman felt like a bug against a windshield. They’d landed on a skyscraper roof, still rolling, every revolution seeming to jar one of Superman’s bones an inch out of where it should be. Finally he came to a rest, and took his first deep breath in an eternity.
Corben’s boot scythed into his midsection, detonating an explosion of agony. Superman rolled again, this time onto his face to breathe in concrete. Then his cape was drawn up, choking him like a leash. Corben was dragging him toward the edge while spouting Luthor’s bigoted rhetoric like a true demagogue. Superman tuned it out to dig his fingers into the rooftop.
***
Lois could already see Superman’s plight on her iPhone’s streaming video, so there was no point in going to the scene. Jimmy was already saying so as they sat in traffic. The real story was back at STAR Labs, where the whole thing had started. But seeing Superman hit by that laser had aroused in her a protective instinct she hadn’t felt since Jason was an infant. She’d even agreed to let Jimmy drive her prized Lexus while she rode shotgun, glued to the scattered footage of Superman’s fight.
When he hit the rooftop, she kicked off her heels, got out of the car, and ran.
***
Corben dropped Superman onto the parapet like it was an execution block, Then, panting, he saw down on the parapet beside Superman. The helicopter hovered malignantly nearby, like the wasp about to sting you.
“Nothing personal. Okay, a lot personal.” Corben punched Superman behind the ear to demonstrate. “But this is what has to happen to the bait in a trap.”
“What?”
Corben pulled a phone from his jacket pocket and pressed speed-dial. Then he jammed the mobile so hard into Superman’s ear that the dial tone deafened him.
“Hello, Superman. Guess who this is.”
“Luthor..”
“Right in one.” Lex’s tone was the chipper, friendly one he’d cultivated since getting out of prison, the harmless philanthropist voice. Hearing that avuncular voice threatening him was like Batman interrogating a suspect as ‘Brucie’… as insane as it was frightening. “Just calling to tell you goodbye. Wish I could see you go in person, but HD-TV will have to do. Any last words you’d like me to pass on to your pet reporter, Louis or whatever?”
Superman clamped down on his lower jaw. “You can kill me, but those who believe as I do will never stop fighting the likes of you.”
“A bit long-winded,” Lex chided. “I would’ve gone with something pithy, but moving. If it’s any consolation, Kryptonian, your death won’t be in vain. With you dead, there’ll be nothing to stop my plan from coming to fruition. And with the knowledge I gain from that, I’ll be able to lead the world into a golden age of peace and prosperity.”
Superman chuckled wearily. “World domination? Is that the only thing that will satisfy your sick ambition?”
There was a long pause. Then the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “It’s worth a shot. But hey,” Lex’s voice wheeled vicious. “You’re one to talk about discontent. Loved and adored the whole world over and you still skip out to Krypton for half a decade. Still, your little vacation gave me the freedom to put all this in motion, so I can’t complain. It’s that strong sentimental streak in you, Superman. It makes you weak.”
“It separates me from monsters like you.”
“Like I said: weak. Put Corben on the line.”
Fatalistically amused, Superman looked up at Corben. “He wants to talk to you.”
Corben lifted the phone to his ear, listened – “uh-huh” – and hung up. “He wants you to suffer. Some days, I love my job.” He held down the transmit button on his radio. “Strafing run.”
The K-laser sliced open the night to reveal emerald hellfire. It struck the other end of the roof and scalpeled across to Superman. Kal-El’s guts churned faster the closer it got. He looked over the edge of the parapet. At this height, in his condition… but it beat the alternative.
Down, down, and away, he thought before throwing himself over the side.
***
The whole way through, Lois didn’t know what her plan was. Get to the building, climb forty stories, then save Superman from an armed gunman? It was only Plan A because Plan B was watch Superman die. So no, she didn’t know what her plan was. What she did know what was losing him would feel like. It would be like dying herself.
She was just running down the sidewalk outside the building when a gestalt-noise of fright pulsed through the crowd, the human herd holding its breath. Lois looked up to see Superman toppling down.
Maybe it was a desperate plan to catch him. Maybe she was just paralyzed. But Lois stood fast, and no matter how fast the Earth spun, she couldn’t be moved.
***
Superman started out his fall in a tailspin. A flagpole had knocked him into it. Then he saw Lois. Spun more. Earth. Sky. Lois. He straightened out, using his cape to guide his fall. It was Lois!
He had to do more. He reached out for more power, form the sun, from mother Earth, and even from Lois. She was the only one that gave freely, and through her came the blessings of his adopted home. But something was wrong on a metaphysical level. The energy felt tainted… or like something he had no right too. Had he been gone for so long that the Earth had rejected him? Or was it something to do with Lois?
Despite her unfamiliarity with the contact, Lois intuitively knew what he needed and gave all she had, but for a kernel of doubt coiled deep inside her. The taint. The reason she couldn’t give herself to him, despite Clark never needing someone so desperately in his life. He looked for its source and found it on a ring around Lois’s third finger. The taint had a name. It was Richard.
He stopped, in physical space just feet above her, sharing the same breath; metaphysically, miles away. Rejection and scorn filled him with a tenebrific energy as potent as the sun’s rays. She was looking up at him, and he couldn’t bear eye contact. Not when he knew what was behind those green eyes.
He didn’t fly toward the roof. He pushed himself away from Lois, tearing through the sound barrier with a messy boom. In his rage he smashed through the parapet to hover above the roof. Corben was climbing back into the helicopter. Superman gave him a heatvision hotfoot to speed him along his way.
The mercenary threw himself into the cabin and kicked off his smoking boots. “What’re you waiting for!? Shoot him!”
Before a finger could even touch a trigger, Superman had zipped to the left of the helicopter and blown some turbulence its way. The helicopter swung to target him and Superman flew by its tail rotor, his wake buffeting it.
“Fire into the buildings! See if that sits right with him,” Corben ordered.
The chaingun thundered. Superman flew abreast of the gunfire, unleashing his heatvision with the scope of a solar flare. The bullets melted before they could even chip the paint.
The laser cannon whirred as it aimed, fired. Superman circled the stream of lead, dodging the Kryptonite-focused light but still frying the bullets. Then the helicopter fired a missile. Superman circled further, but the missile homed in. Before he could compensate, it had detonated. The explosion dropkicked Superman through the building, his world becoming one of rapidly shattering walls, windows, and cubicles. He burst out the other end with strips flayed from the arm of his uniform.
The helicopter turned the corner of the building a moment later, laser blazing. Superman dropped like a stone to get under the beam and the laser dropped with him like a guillotine blade. He pulled up at the last second, the laser slagging his boot leather, and plowed through the backdoor. Out of the poison of the laser’s radiation, he put on a burst of speed and flew out the lobby into the street.
The melted bullets had rained into a pool of molten lead stretching for the gutters. Superman cooled it with a single breath, solidifying it into an oblong plate. He scraped it off the asphalt in the same instant the chopper rounded the building. There was humming like a hundred angry beehives as the laser struck. But this time Superman was ready. He held the lead up like a shield and the laser crashed against it, melting into the metal like a snowflake on a hot skillet.
Kal-El coiled his legs and leapt, charging for the sound of the rotors. He butted the chopper, caving its nose in, then lifted his arm over the radius of the shield. The rotor blades broke against his skin. They also drew a slender line of blood that Clark tried to block out.
The helicopter stopped firing. Stopped flying, too. It wibbled back and forth, right to left, trying to stay level on shredded wings. For a few moments. Superman hovered over to the cabin, ripping the side-door open and stabilizing the chopper with a firm hand.
Inside the chopper, Corben stared at him, queasy, bloodied from a gash on his head, his eyes drawn. Superman stared back.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said. “If you could just get past your fear, your hatred, you’d see… you people need to stop being afraid all the time.”
“You people,” Corben sneered. He threw open the lead casing of the laser, letting the Kryptonite out to play.
Superman doubled over in mid-air, stricken, letting go of the helicopter. It instantly pinwheeled forward, toward a skyscraper under construction.
Superman tumbled, slowly, end over end backwards, his flight ability instinctively propelling him away from the poison. Even the minute exposure was like a gutpunch. He righted himself, his guts still clenched up like there was a fist squeezing them, and against every iota of self-preservation in his body flew after the venomous helicopter.
It crashed through a crane arm, severing a line holding up a load of I-beams. Superman flew down too quick to land safely, instead splitting the road where he landed. On his way down he caught an I-beam, then used it to balance the others on like so many Lincoln Logs. To an observer, it might’ve looked like he was playing Jenga in reverse. With all of the beams caught, he froze them together and tossed them back into the construction yard.
The next obstacle in the helicopter’s path was a skyscraper, one fully populated. Superman flew up and used his superbreath to blow the helicopter off-course. Always keeping his distance, he flew under it to keep it in the air, subtly maneuvering it right and left until it had reached Hobb’s River. He flew up again, closer than he had dared before, close enough to feel the Kryptonite sapping his strength again.
“Close it!” he shouted. “I can still save you.”
Corben’s only answer was to lift his sidearm and empty the clip into Superman’s chest. The physical pain was nothing compared to the inner angst Clark felt at such… nihilism. He pulled back, chest throbbing, as the helicopter slanted down to hit the water.
The rotors hit first, jagged edges catching the surface, wrenching the helicopter up and around and seemingly in every direction. Superman heard Corben’s scream, an involuntary expression of complete terror that was ripped from his lungs. Then the helicopter, already shorn of its skin by the initial jolt, hit the water full-on. The splash was almost comically small; just thick white waves kicked up by the impact.
Minutes passed while Superman stood there, watching the helicopter vanish ghost-like beneath the waves, a telltale flash of green preventing him from coming any closer. He looked inhuman, to the cameras that turned his way, like a harbinger of death looming over his next villain. Then Corben bobbed to the surface, to be corralled by the River Patrol boats that buzzed about, shining their spotlights on him. Dragged out of the roiling waters, he looked up balefully.
Superman, implacable, flew away. He didn’t need his nightly vigil over Lois Lane to complete the iron maiden of his emotions. He was an alien, unloved in some quarters, despised in many, but trusted in none. They would always be wary of him because, as Lex said, as Bruce said…
It was the smart thing to do.
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,523
Characters/Pairings: Clark Kent, John Corben, Lois Lane
Previous Part: Chapter 19
Next Part: Chapter 21
Summary: This looks like a job for Superman.
Corben jerked back with each shot that tore into his Kevlar vest, a boxer taking body blows from an invisible opponent.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Detective Maggie Sawyer of the Special Crimes Unit said from the doorway, her service pistol oozing smoke. “Damn, got it backwards again.”
Mr. Blue returned fire with his back-up gun. Maggie took cover behind the doorway, which fractured but held against the low-caliber onslaught. Corben, his chest feeling like a baseball bat had been taken to it, ran for it. Crouched low to the ground, practically crawling at points, he scooped up the Kryptonite while Mr. Blue and Sawyer traded fire overhead. Finally, he made it to the stairwell and disappeared up the stairs.
Superman raised his head and let loose the new surge of power he felt in the Kryptonite’s absence. A laser-thin beam of thermal energy leaked from his eyes and chiseled the trigger of Mr. Blue’s gun.
The criminal’s finger clicked on nothing as Maggie popped out from cover again, staggering him with a burst into his stomach. Mr. Blue vomited, his Kevlar probably keeping his injuries at a few cracked ribs. Maggie had him handcuffed before he could recover or even stop coughing.
She looked up from her straddle of Mr. Blue. “Hey, boy scout, how you holding up?”
Superman tried to raise, but couldn’t manage it. “Yeah, I’m just really comfortable here. Go after that man, he’s John Corben, Lexcorp’s head of security…”
“No need for an APB just yet. There’re cops all over this place, he’s going no—“
The whine of helicopter rotors cut her off. Superman redoubled his efforts to get to his feet. It was like his heels were greased. The twitches of his antigravity organ slapped him back down to earth.
He felt a vampiric pain at his throat and realized it was Maggie taking his pulse. The look on her face was all she needed to say.
“I need sunlight, Lieutenant.”
“It’s Inspector now.” She slipped his arm around the back of her neck. “On three, we’re standing up, capiche?”
“Yeah.”
“One, two, three!”
Kal-El put all his effort into pushing upward. Somehow, he got his feet under his body and found himself leaning unsteadily on Sawyer.
“Now, one foot in front of the other.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
Teetering, he made his way into the hallway and to the floor-to-ceiling window at the end. At one point, he stumbled and Maggie steadied him with a hand on his chest.
“You know, a lot of women would kill for this opportunity.”
“I’m not one of them. You’re not my type.”
“Alien?”
“Male.”
Superman sagged against the glass, now supported entirely by Maggie’s strength. The sun had half-fallen below the horizon and ripened into a deep orange, a bloody wound in the purple bruise of an evening sky. Drawing energy from that was like trying to get blood from a stone. Still, he pressed his hand up against the glass to soak in all the red rays he could.
A second buzz joined the noise of Corben’s helicopter starting up. A police helicopter. Its searchlight played over the two crimefighters as it flew over them.
“See? We’ve got things well in hand.”
Clark’s fingers steepled on the glass. “Why the world doesn’t need Superman,” he mumbled.
Above, the chopper pilot bellowed through a loudspeaker. “Civilian helicopter, power down and throw down your weapons.”
Superman’s hearing was still too deafened to hear the trigger being pulled or the electrical impulse traveling down the joystick. But it was just sharp enough to hear the missile take off and be subsumed in the roar of an explosion. Superman watched, stricken, as the police helicopter fell past the window in flames.
As soon as its fiery light had left him, he dove through the glass. Maggie cried his name as she reached for him, too late, his flapping cape disappearing over the edge.
Superman fell. The helicopter falling below him was burst open like an overheated tin can and wreathed in flames. But a life inside screamed to him.
Marshalling his power despite the bile rising in the back of his throat, Superman slid forward. He speared right through the metal carcass, grabbing the pilot as he went, and saw the ground coiled below him like a fist. It hurt like hell, but Superman pulled up, every iota of his power seeming to tear him apart as he used it. But he felt the wind on his face shift and the ground turn into the horizon turned into the sky. He touched down feet-first, dropping the pilot, going head over heels as he lost his footing. He’d landed on STAR Labs’ lawn, the grass so soft and so full of singing life. Superman closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to listen to their song…
The malevolent drill of Corben’s helicopter cut across his hearing. He opened his eyes. The cops had come to him, the paramedics surrounding the pilot. Superman let himself be helped to his feet and saw the helicopter disappearing into the distance.
He soaked in the embers of the dying sun. He was lifted off his feet, faltered back down to the ground, then shot up eight feet. Dan Turpin was below him, hopping up and down, trying to get to him.
“Don’t be a suicide case, Blue! Go home, this isn’t your job!”
Superman’s telescopic vision picked out the helicopter making its getaway.
“Looks like it is.”
***
Corben tapped his code into the keypad on the floor. After a moment, a latch popped. He slid the section of floor open to reveal the casing of the laser cannon. Flung open the casing to show a hollow with several rods to hold an item in place. He retracted the rods to make room for the Kryptonite.
“Something on radar!” the pilot yelled.
“Some people just don’t know when to quit.” Corben began calibrating the laser. “Blow him out of the sky.”
***
Superman followed low to the ground, barely above the evening commute, flying at a speed that would have been lazy if he were at full power. Down here, the fumes of the diesel engines chafed his senses. The helicopter was trying to lose itself in Metropolis’s skyline, flying among the skyscrapers to baffle radars and blend in to the civilian traffic. He tailed it over the Lakeview Mall, then took a deep breath as he felt his strength returning.
He thought of Jor-El, sending off his only son to Earth to uphold Krypton’s legacy, so that billions of years of evolution, progress, and philosophy could live on.
He thought of Jonathan Kent, who’d shown him how to be the man who could pay tribute to Krypton.
He put on a burst of speed, accelerating into a supersonic blur and reappearing in front of the helicopter. It was a wasp-like craft, bristling with the harsh points of weaponry. An ugly, nasty weapon of an aircraft. Its wingtip thrusters swiveled forward to bring it to a stop. Superman crossed his arms confidently as he felt the high-tech targeting systems acquire him.
The nose-mounted 30-mm chain gun spun into life, thundering out rounds in less than a seconds. They seemed to slow to a crawl as Superman concentrated, but still swam in and out of focus… it rang bells in his head to try to think at this speed.
His hands blurred out to catch the bullets streaming towards him. Sparks flew off his hands, got under his fingernails. The heat was like taking something out of the stove with oven mitts on, but it was still more than he should feel. Flattened slugs fell away from his body in a waterfall of lead, landing on the plaza below him like the sand from an hourglass.
Narrowing his eyes, Superman focused his weakened heatvision on the chain gun. A few bullets slipped through, stinging at his chest like ant bites. But soon enough the chaingun had overheated, the barrels starting to run together as slag.
Superman’s hands were bleeding. Flecks of lead were splintered under his fingernails and the whorls of his fingerprints were flooding with blood. He looked up at the helicopter with eyes still burning red and flew forward to put an end to the chaos.
A seven-barreled cannon under the wing puffed and a mortar wound burst against his chest. The effect was like hitting a home run into a normal man’s stomach. Superman jerked backward, tried to regain control, ended up gliding upside-down into an office high-rise. His fall crushed a rubber plant.
The janitor watched him stagger to his feet.
“I should be running, shouldn’t I?”
Superman tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak. So he just nodded. The janitor ran.
The hiss of rocket fuel igniting heralded it. The missile leapt forward from the chopper, right into a weak dose of heatvision that blew it apart. The shockwave broke every window for seven floors and knocked Superman on his back. He sprung right back up, though the rib the mortar had struck creaked like a plank under too much weight. He didn’t even try to fly, he just ran forward and flung himself at the target.
A green laser crystallized in a giant needle hanging under the helicopter like a stinger. Even before it struck him, Superman felt like his bones had been set on fire. Then it splashed across his body and every molecule screamed in agony. Even its ending was pain, like the jolt of an electric chair. He fell.
He felt nothing. Not the wind rushing by his face, not the helicopter grinding above him. But he knew he would feel this.
With the last of his strength, Superman plunged his fist through the glass window he was falling past.
The glass chipped, splintered, shattered against his hand as he held on. It wasn’t just breaking the skin anymore. It was tearing right through it. At last his hand hit the bottom of the window frame. The pain didn’t stop. Superman looked, saw jagged glass shards embedded in his hand.
He tried to get his other hand up to grab the ledge, but there was more shattered glass on the floor. He steeled himself and put his hand firmly down. Secure, he hung there. Saw his reflection in the window he was hanging in front of. The laser had burnt a hole clear through his suit, exposing a blistered expanse of his chest. The world-famous S-shield was scorched and defaced.
Now he felt the wind coming back to him, across his face and hitting his wounds like whiplashes. It wasn’t just the high altitude. It was the helicopter coming in closer, its rotors as loud as a thousand chainsaws. He had time to see the rotors buzzing closer before he squeezed his eyes shut.
Pain erupted in his side, the stench of his own burning flesh filling his nostrils as sparks jumped from the point of contact. His cape was hacked through, his blood sprayed out in a single cleaving ejaculation. The helicopter pulled back. Superman opened his eyes. The cut was deep, with blood pouring down over his belt to run down his leg.
Blood, stuck to the helicopter rotors, was being flung outward with each rotation. It speckled Clark’s body, bringing him back to himself. He asked a little more. The sun couldn’t save him now, but the Earth was still here. Home, mother, protector and sanctuary. Give me something now, just enough to bring this man who has harmed his own kind to justice. Just that much.
He didn’t know if anyone or anything was listening. He didn’t know if anyone cared. But he felt new strength welling up in him.
The helicopter floated closer, its rotors hungry for his blood.
He kicked off the building and flung himself toward it. He was still above the rotors, but the tiniest spark of power made him blur forward in mid-air, in-between the slow and cumbersome rotors, to slam into the helicopter’s nose. It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t awe-inspiring, but he was hanging onto the cockpit, his set face reflected in the windshield.
He raised one fists, studded with glass fragments, and brought it down on the windshield. Glass flew from his hand and spider-webbed at the end of his knuckles. Corben shoved his gun over the pilot’s shoulder and right at Superman. The pilot had time to start the syllable of his objection, then the gun roared.
The windshield exploded like firecrackers going off, chips bouncing around the cockpit. Bullets whizzed by Superman’s head, singeing his hair. He punched through the weakened glass and his fist cut off the pilot’s scream. The helicopter veered hard to the side. Superman rolled off the nose. He grabbed for a handhold on the cockpit, and this time his impenetrable fingers crunched through the glass. Corben rapped his knuckles with the butt of his pistol. Superman dropped, grabbed onto the landing skid.
Corben shouted to be heard over the wind whistling through the cabin. “Go low! Scrape him off!”
The helicopter dipped, descent flattening Superman toward the fuselage. He tried to lock his ankle around the skid, but the chopper leveled off and knocked his legs back down. Now the helicopter was just above traffic.
“The power lines, aim for the power lines!”
Superman looked back over his shoulder to see stiletto-wire power lines strung up across the next intersection. If he hit them, he’d have a short life as a conduit before he died from electrocution. Superman swung his legs , trying to build up enough of an arc to get a foothold. With a migraine-level application of flight, he was able to get his legs wrapped around the strut. His cape brushed the power lines as they passed underneath. It burst into flame.
“Climb! Maybe the fall will kill him!” Corben ordered as he threw the helicopter’s side-door open.
Before he could toss off a villainous monologue or whatever he planned, Superman grabbed his bootstraps and pulled. Corben landed on his back, started kicking at Superman’s hand. Superman pulled him halfway out of the helicopter. He grabbed onto the Kryptonite’s case as Kal-El dragged himself up on top of Corben. Pain coursed through the merc’s brain as Corben realized Superman had started punching him.
“Dump us!” Corben shouted between right hooks.
The helicopter obligingly tilted sideways. Superman felt a very un-super lurch in his gut as he and Corben went airborne, toppling out the helicopter. Then Superman felt like a bug against a windshield. They’d landed on a skyscraper roof, still rolling, every revolution seeming to jar one of Superman’s bones an inch out of where it should be. Finally he came to a rest, and took his first deep breath in an eternity.
Corben’s boot scythed into his midsection, detonating an explosion of agony. Superman rolled again, this time onto his face to breathe in concrete. Then his cape was drawn up, choking him like a leash. Corben was dragging him toward the edge while spouting Luthor’s bigoted rhetoric like a true demagogue. Superman tuned it out to dig his fingers into the rooftop.
***
Lois could already see Superman’s plight on her iPhone’s streaming video, so there was no point in going to the scene. Jimmy was already saying so as they sat in traffic. The real story was back at STAR Labs, where the whole thing had started. But seeing Superman hit by that laser had aroused in her a protective instinct she hadn’t felt since Jason was an infant. She’d even agreed to let Jimmy drive her prized Lexus while she rode shotgun, glued to the scattered footage of Superman’s fight.
When he hit the rooftop, she kicked off her heels, got out of the car, and ran.
***
Corben dropped Superman onto the parapet like it was an execution block, Then, panting, he saw down on the parapet beside Superman. The helicopter hovered malignantly nearby, like the wasp about to sting you.
“Nothing personal. Okay, a lot personal.” Corben punched Superman behind the ear to demonstrate. “But this is what has to happen to the bait in a trap.”
“What?”
Corben pulled a phone from his jacket pocket and pressed speed-dial. Then he jammed the mobile so hard into Superman’s ear that the dial tone deafened him.
“Hello, Superman. Guess who this is.”
“Luthor..”
“Right in one.” Lex’s tone was the chipper, friendly one he’d cultivated since getting out of prison, the harmless philanthropist voice. Hearing that avuncular voice threatening him was like Batman interrogating a suspect as ‘Brucie’… as insane as it was frightening. “Just calling to tell you goodbye. Wish I could see you go in person, but HD-TV will have to do. Any last words you’d like me to pass on to your pet reporter, Louis or whatever?”
Superman clamped down on his lower jaw. “You can kill me, but those who believe as I do will never stop fighting the likes of you.”
“A bit long-winded,” Lex chided. “I would’ve gone with something pithy, but moving. If it’s any consolation, Kryptonian, your death won’t be in vain. With you dead, there’ll be nothing to stop my plan from coming to fruition. And with the knowledge I gain from that, I’ll be able to lead the world into a golden age of peace and prosperity.”
Superman chuckled wearily. “World domination? Is that the only thing that will satisfy your sick ambition?”
There was a long pause. Then the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “It’s worth a shot. But hey,” Lex’s voice wheeled vicious. “You’re one to talk about discontent. Loved and adored the whole world over and you still skip out to Krypton for half a decade. Still, your little vacation gave me the freedom to put all this in motion, so I can’t complain. It’s that strong sentimental streak in you, Superman. It makes you weak.”
“It separates me from monsters like you.”
“Like I said: weak. Put Corben on the line.”
Fatalistically amused, Superman looked up at Corben. “He wants to talk to you.”
Corben lifted the phone to his ear, listened – “uh-huh” – and hung up. “He wants you to suffer. Some days, I love my job.” He held down the transmit button on his radio. “Strafing run.”
The K-laser sliced open the night to reveal emerald hellfire. It struck the other end of the roof and scalpeled across to Superman. Kal-El’s guts churned faster the closer it got. He looked over the edge of the parapet. At this height, in his condition… but it beat the alternative.
Down, down, and away, he thought before throwing himself over the side.
***
The whole way through, Lois didn’t know what her plan was. Get to the building, climb forty stories, then save Superman from an armed gunman? It was only Plan A because Plan B was watch Superman die. So no, she didn’t know what her plan was. What she did know what was losing him would feel like. It would be like dying herself.
She was just running down the sidewalk outside the building when a gestalt-noise of fright pulsed through the crowd, the human herd holding its breath. Lois looked up to see Superman toppling down.
Maybe it was a desperate plan to catch him. Maybe she was just paralyzed. But Lois stood fast, and no matter how fast the Earth spun, she couldn’t be moved.
***
Superman started out his fall in a tailspin. A flagpole had knocked him into it. Then he saw Lois. Spun more. Earth. Sky. Lois. He straightened out, using his cape to guide his fall. It was Lois!
He had to do more. He reached out for more power, form the sun, from mother Earth, and even from Lois. She was the only one that gave freely, and through her came the blessings of his adopted home. But something was wrong on a metaphysical level. The energy felt tainted… or like something he had no right too. Had he been gone for so long that the Earth had rejected him? Or was it something to do with Lois?
Despite her unfamiliarity with the contact, Lois intuitively knew what he needed and gave all she had, but for a kernel of doubt coiled deep inside her. The taint. The reason she couldn’t give herself to him, despite Clark never needing someone so desperately in his life. He looked for its source and found it on a ring around Lois’s third finger. The taint had a name. It was Richard.
He stopped, in physical space just feet above her, sharing the same breath; metaphysically, miles away. Rejection and scorn filled him with a tenebrific energy as potent as the sun’s rays. She was looking up at him, and he couldn’t bear eye contact. Not when he knew what was behind those green eyes.
He didn’t fly toward the roof. He pushed himself away from Lois, tearing through the sound barrier with a messy boom. In his rage he smashed through the parapet to hover above the roof. Corben was climbing back into the helicopter. Superman gave him a heatvision hotfoot to speed him along his way.
The mercenary threw himself into the cabin and kicked off his smoking boots. “What’re you waiting for!? Shoot him!”
Before a finger could even touch a trigger, Superman had zipped to the left of the helicopter and blown some turbulence its way. The helicopter swung to target him and Superman flew by its tail rotor, his wake buffeting it.
“Fire into the buildings! See if that sits right with him,” Corben ordered.
The chaingun thundered. Superman flew abreast of the gunfire, unleashing his heatvision with the scope of a solar flare. The bullets melted before they could even chip the paint.
The laser cannon whirred as it aimed, fired. Superman circled the stream of lead, dodging the Kryptonite-focused light but still frying the bullets. Then the helicopter fired a missile. Superman circled further, but the missile homed in. Before he could compensate, it had detonated. The explosion dropkicked Superman through the building, his world becoming one of rapidly shattering walls, windows, and cubicles. He burst out the other end with strips flayed from the arm of his uniform.
The helicopter turned the corner of the building a moment later, laser blazing. Superman dropped like a stone to get under the beam and the laser dropped with him like a guillotine blade. He pulled up at the last second, the laser slagging his boot leather, and plowed through the backdoor. Out of the poison of the laser’s radiation, he put on a burst of speed and flew out the lobby into the street.
The melted bullets had rained into a pool of molten lead stretching for the gutters. Superman cooled it with a single breath, solidifying it into an oblong plate. He scraped it off the asphalt in the same instant the chopper rounded the building. There was humming like a hundred angry beehives as the laser struck. But this time Superman was ready. He held the lead up like a shield and the laser crashed against it, melting into the metal like a snowflake on a hot skillet.
Kal-El coiled his legs and leapt, charging for the sound of the rotors. He butted the chopper, caving its nose in, then lifted his arm over the radius of the shield. The rotor blades broke against his skin. They also drew a slender line of blood that Clark tried to block out.
The helicopter stopped firing. Stopped flying, too. It wibbled back and forth, right to left, trying to stay level on shredded wings. For a few moments. Superman hovered over to the cabin, ripping the side-door open and stabilizing the chopper with a firm hand.
Inside the chopper, Corben stared at him, queasy, bloodied from a gash on his head, his eyes drawn. Superman stared back.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said. “If you could just get past your fear, your hatred, you’d see… you people need to stop being afraid all the time.”
“You people,” Corben sneered. He threw open the lead casing of the laser, letting the Kryptonite out to play.
Superman doubled over in mid-air, stricken, letting go of the helicopter. It instantly pinwheeled forward, toward a skyscraper under construction.
Superman tumbled, slowly, end over end backwards, his flight ability instinctively propelling him away from the poison. Even the minute exposure was like a gutpunch. He righted himself, his guts still clenched up like there was a fist squeezing them, and against every iota of self-preservation in his body flew after the venomous helicopter.
It crashed through a crane arm, severing a line holding up a load of I-beams. Superman flew down too quick to land safely, instead splitting the road where he landed. On his way down he caught an I-beam, then used it to balance the others on like so many Lincoln Logs. To an observer, it might’ve looked like he was playing Jenga in reverse. With all of the beams caught, he froze them together and tossed them back into the construction yard.
The next obstacle in the helicopter’s path was a skyscraper, one fully populated. Superman flew up and used his superbreath to blow the helicopter off-course. Always keeping his distance, he flew under it to keep it in the air, subtly maneuvering it right and left until it had reached Hobb’s River. He flew up again, closer than he had dared before, close enough to feel the Kryptonite sapping his strength again.
“Close it!” he shouted. “I can still save you.”
Corben’s only answer was to lift his sidearm and empty the clip into Superman’s chest. The physical pain was nothing compared to the inner angst Clark felt at such… nihilism. He pulled back, chest throbbing, as the helicopter slanted down to hit the water.
The rotors hit first, jagged edges catching the surface, wrenching the helicopter up and around and seemingly in every direction. Superman heard Corben’s scream, an involuntary expression of complete terror that was ripped from his lungs. Then the helicopter, already shorn of its skin by the initial jolt, hit the water full-on. The splash was almost comically small; just thick white waves kicked up by the impact.
Minutes passed while Superman stood there, watching the helicopter vanish ghost-like beneath the waves, a telltale flash of green preventing him from coming any closer. He looked inhuman, to the cameras that turned his way, like a harbinger of death looming over his next villain. Then Corben bobbed to the surface, to be corralled by the River Patrol boats that buzzed about, shining their spotlights on him. Dragged out of the roiling waters, he looked up balefully.
Superman, implacable, flew away. He didn’t need his nightly vigil over Lois Lane to complete the iron maiden of his emotions. He was an alien, unloved in some quarters, despised in many, but trusted in none. They would always be wary of him because, as Lex said, as Bruce said…
It was the smart thing to do.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 05:59 pm (UTC)i cheered for maggie. especially that little exchange.
antigravity organ? i am curious.
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Date: 2008-12-09 08:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 01:55 am (UTC)Minor correction; "paint". Also; asdf YES.
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Date: 2008-12-10 05:06 am (UTC)Also, I'm assuming that from the dream in chapter 13 Lois figures out that Clark is superman. interesting how you used the word taint that's a good way of putting it, and so now that they've both acknowledged that through their own ways and he's seemingly "flying away" from it all, how is she going to react? will she go after clark? stay with richard? ahahah this is all SO GOOD. action! drama! awesome characterization! PERFECT ^_^
no subject
Date: 2008-12-11 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-13 06:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-13 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-17 10:05 pm (UTC)However, when he took energy from the earth I was like.. WAUGH DKR Supes!!!1!!111!!!
And of course, his leeching of energy from sources other than solar brings up some interesting questions. Does Superman operate through some method other than photosynthesis? Is he able to leech from all living being? Does he on a regular basis? Waugh! *geeks out*