Superman stood, his body torn, his arms stretched out on each side and tied to a large titanium platform with synthetic kryptonite wire. Standing below, an angry mob cursed him, shouting profanities and throwing anything they could find at him.

Lois Lane stood watching him, tears falling down her cheeks as she struggled to come to terms with what was happening. Superman's eyes met hers, pleading for some sign of recognition.

"Lois..." Superman whispered, trying to fight the pain he was feeling so he could speak. "Please...I..."

"I hate you." Lois replied, sobbing as she turned her back on him and walked away, disappearing into the crowd as the Mayor of Metropolis stepped on to the platform.

"Kal-El of Krypton, also known as Superman, also known as Clark Kent...by order of the President of the United States of America, you are hereby sentenced to death by kryptonite injection. If you have any last words or if you wish to beg for mercy, now is the time," said the Mayor before standing aside, allowing Superman to speak.

Clearing his throat, coughing up blood in the process, Superman opened his mouth to speak. "I...I only wanted to help..."

"Murderer!" a voice from the crowd shouted, quickly followed by the rest of the crowd. The Mayor nodded his head, signalling to the executioner, who stepped towards the Man of Steel, carrying a large syringe.

"Let the sentence be carried out...and may God have mercy on your soul..."

Jedsithor Presents

SUPERMAN

Fall From Grace

Part 1

Metropolis - 24 hours earlier

Superman flew over the city of Metropolis, tracking a van that had been involved in a bank robbery. Metropolis was in chaos, with the mysterious Intergang committing crimes and inciting violent riots across the city. The Man of Steel was busier than ever, and Clark Kent had been forced to take a leave of absence from the Daily Planet so he could tackle these criminals.

As the van turned towards the freeway, Clark dove down from the sky, flying at speed as he twisted his body to land hard on the ground, extending his hands to catch the van and lift into the air.

"Good morning gentlemen," Clark commented with a grin as the police arrived to take the criminals away.

Across the city, Lois Lane sat in her car, her foot pressed down on the accelerator as she sped through traffic, trying to escape a group of Intergang thugs who had been chasing her, all the way through Metropolis from Suicide Slums to the Hyper Sector.

A bullet came through the back of her car, forcing Lois to duck, taking her eye off the road. Suddenly, the car was moving through the air, flipping as it crashed back down and slid, upside down into the pole of a street lamp, having clipped an oncoming truck.

Superman arrived to see Lois' car upside down, with three Intergang thugs approaching. Landing quickly, Superman blew a strong gust of wind to knock the thugs to the ground before running to the car.

"Lois? Can you hear me?" Superman called out as he pulled the door from his hinges and threw it behind him, his ears barely registering the sound of a crash as he concentrated on pulling Lois from the car, using his heat vision to deflate the air bag.

"Wh--what happened?" Lois asked as she stood up, her head throbbing. Superman was about to answer, but he stopped, noticing that Lois was looking over his shoulder, her eyes widened in horror.

Turning around, Superman saw what she did. A school bus lay on it's side, broken glass from the windows all over the road, smoke and fire rising as it lay against the alley-wall of one of the tall buildings that made up the city's skyline.

As Superman moved to act, the bus exploded in an intense fire ball, forcing onlookers to retreat to a safe distance, the heat threatening to overwhelm them. Using his x-ray vision to scan through the smoke and metal, Superman saw the bodies of a dozen children as well as the bus driver, all of them dead.

"You did this!" One of the onlookers shouted, pointing to Superman, followed by another.

"He's right, I saw you..."

"What are you talking about?" Superman asked, confused and saddened by the deaths of the children.

"You pulled the door off that car and threw it towards the bus. The driver swerved to avoid it and crashed."

Looking around, Superman saw the door, of Lois' car on the road side. He remembered throwing the door of the way, he had heard something...but he had been so intent on saving Lois that he had ignored it.

"I...I didn't mean to..." words failed him as a crowd began to gather and word of what had happened began to spread.

"How could you do this?" a crying voice from the crowd asked, "they were children...and you..."

"You killed them..." another voice cut in, "murderer..."

Clark turned back around to face Lois. Her eyes seemed empty somehow, like she was lost inside herself. She couldn't feel anything, her whole body was numb. Her lips moved but no words came out of her mouth. Lois couldn't look at Clark, she was fixated on the burning wreckage of the bus.

"Lois..." Superman said her name, but he wasn't sure what to say next. He was still trying to come to terms with what had happened. How could he have been so careless? How could he have allowed something so terrible to happen? He didn't have any answers.

"Go...just go." Lois replied. There was no emotion in her voice, no love, no hate...nothing. It was almost an automated response from a programmed machine.

Superman glanced at the crowd of people surrounding him. They were angry, and that anger was focussed squarely at him. He didn't know what to do. A tear rolled down his cheek as he looked over at the bus. Realising that if he stayed, the hostility could boil over into violence, Superman slowly began to rise into the air, heading away from the scene, his mind racing as he tried to figure out exactly what he should do.

The White House:

Lex Luthor, President of the United States, sat in the Oval Office, watching news reports of the incident in Metropolis. This was exactly what he had been waiting for, Public opinion was turning against Superman, the saviour of Metropolis had become a killer.

"Oh how a hero falls..." Lex muttered to himself, trying to hide a smile behind his face.

"Mr. President, how are we going to respond to this?" the Secretary of Defence asked, worried what could happen if Superman went rogue.

"Those people want blood...they want his blood. So we give it to them. I want Superman found and brought in...alive if possible...dead...well either way works for me."

Lex sat back in his chair, pondering the situation. He always knew that Superman would slip up sooner than later. The public would never condemn him for failing to stop a disaster. They knew that he couldn't be everywhere at once...but to cause one, to act in a way that resulted in people's death, especially children...Lex knew that the people, who loved Superman so much, would turn against him faster than a speeding bullet and never forgive him. The legacy of Superman would end with his death.