Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story.
Author's note: This story was written near the end of Smallville season seven. It is a crossover story between Smallville and Cloverfield.
He was back in his journalism class. The professor had just handed out the test papers, and had given them an hour to finish.
Lana was there. She kept telling him that if she didn't leave him, he would never accept that it was his destiny to pass the course.
And then she started ringing like his cell phone.
On the fourth ring he awoke enough to realize that it was, in fact, his cell phone that was ringing and not his ex-girlfriend, whom he had not seen in over a year. He fumbled around for it, and managed to find it before it stopped ringing.
"Hello?" he mumbled as he eyeballed the time; four thirty.
"Clark! Turn on your TV! Something terrible is happening in New York!" Chloe didn't frighten easily, but Clark could hear fear growing in her voice. "What's wrong, Chloe?" Flipping on the television, he had his answer.
The news channel was broadcasting live coverage of the Manhattan skyline. Or rather, what was left of the Manhattan skyline. In the middle of the devastation was something straight out of a nightmare, a behemoth as tall as a small skyscraper. It had a tail that wiped small buildings out of its way as it swung back and fourth and a mouth that looked like it could gulp down a city bus.
"It attacked sometime last night." Chloe said. "According to the news wire, Manhattan is being evacuated. The military has been hitting it all night, but nothing seems to hurt it. They say it's even dropping little ones, like hatchlings. They're considering using a tactical nuclear warhead to keep it from leaving the island!"
Clark was still too stunned to respond. "My father was in New York on business."
Chloe added. "I've been trying to reach him, but all the circuits are tied up! Please Clark, I don't know if you can stop this thing, but I know you can save my father!"
Clark had decided he would do both. "Just tell me where he's staying."
Minutes later, Clark had changed and was cruising northeast at mach 20, being careful to stay above 80,000 feet to keep his sonic boom from rattling houses. Journalism hadn't been the only thing he was studying. Although he rejected his biological father's idea that he should rule Earth for its own good, he recognized that completing his training would enable him to protect the planet that he now called home. He even found something that would help him use his powers in public.
He had found it in the fortress. It was a ceremonial uniform, emblazoned with the standard of the house of El. It was blue with a red cape, and more importantly, it had a hood with a mask that covered his entire face. The fabric was something that proved to be resistant to flames, chemicals, and gunfire, so he wouldn't have to worry about running around in tattered clothes. In fact, it had recently endured a house fire without even getting singed. The only problem was that while the mask's visor was see-through one way, it would resist his heat vision, and would even melt if he turned up the heat vision to maximum.
Even without super vision the smoke from Manhattan was visible from as far away as Reading, Pennsylvania. Over New York itself, the smoke was obscuring large parts of the city, but this was no problem for Clark. His X-ray vision helped him scope out those areas where smoke had blotted out the city. And of course the leviathan itself was hard to miss.
It was an ugly thing, a gangly-legged monstrosity whose ugliness wasn't fully conveyed by the television. Clark could see some kind of flaps or thick tentacles down the creature's flanks between its forelegs and hind legs. He could also see something spider-like drop from one of the flaps. "The hatchlings that Chloe mentioned" thought Clark.
Gabriel Sullivan's hotel was in Brooklyn. From where he hovered, Clark could see that it and most of Brooklyn was relatively untouched. Using a map he had printed before he left, he homed in on the address Chloe gave him and scanned the building. There was no sign of Mr. Sullivan. Clark started scanning the nearby cars, causing more than a few pedestrians to gawk in disbelief. Sure enough, Gabriel was on foot, his rental car stuck in the absolute gridlock that was still going strong hours after the attack. He had covered a grand total of five miles in the last two hours.
"Gabriel Sullivan? Chloe sent me to rescue you."
Mr. Sullivan could only stare at the strange visitor who had landed ("Yes, landed!" his eyes told him, though his brain still hadn't believed it) in front of him in the most outlandish costume he had ever seen. Finally he managed to get words out of his mouth. "C-Chloe sent you?"
"Yes sir. But we have to leave now." And with that Clark grabbed him and shot skyward.
Mr. Sullivan panicked momentarily, but Clark had a firm grip on him, and within seconds they were across the river, standing near an aid station in New Jersey. "Call your daughter when you get the chance." Clark said. Then he took off in search of a certain critter that was in desperate need of a beating.
As Clark passed over Brooklyn on his return flight, he noticed some commotion near a subway entrance. Looking closer, he saw three spider things chasing some pedestrians. Swooping in like an eagle going for the kill, he managed to crush all three beasties like flies before the people even knew what happened. Then he zoomed down the tunnel, using his infrared vision to hunt down any more crawlers that had escape on their minds. He had his mask up in the tunnel so he could use his heat vision, with his hands obscuring most of his face in case the subway cameras were still working.
The end result? There were a great many crispy critters left in the tunnel.
His mask back on, Clark shot up out of the subway on the Manhattan side. He considered scouring the other tunnels and bridges so that no more hatchlings would get off the island, until he realized two things. First, there were still civilians on the island, since he could clearly see some of them running down the street. Second, the leviathan itself was in hot pursuit of said pedestrians.
Flipping up his mask momentarily, Clark let out a short burst of heat vision that hit the monster broadside. The blast surprised the creature more than it stunned it, but as it spun around to see who had the audacity to attack it, the people it was chasing down had time to get away.
And a good thing too, for just as they ran for cover, a barrage of rockets hit the creature, doing more damage to the street than to the monster.
As the monster shrugged off the attack, Clark lifted off and aimed a punch at its jaw. Its head snapped around, and it staggered a bit, but it didn't fall. Clark looped around and hit it again, but again it only staggered. Making his third pass, Clark doubled his speed and rammed the monster broadside. This knocked the creature into a building, but it immediately started to rise.
"Tough critter." Clark thought to himself as he rammed it again, not hurting it much but at least keeping it off balance. "I wonder where it came from, and how many others are loose?"
After hitting the monster again, Clark realized something was wrong. "Why aren't the jets attacking?" he thought to himself. Scanning the sky, he saw the planes circling the area. Then he realized the problem. Seeing a man zipping around the sky in a strange costume had confused the pilots, and they were probably awaiting orders as to whether to treat the strange visitor as a friendly, a hostile, or ignore him and continue the attack.
This was the monster's chance. With Clark distracted it had risen to its feet and charged him, stomping him into the sidewalk. It bent down and tried to bite Clark's head off, but only succeeded in ripping off and swallowing his hood and mask.
With a mighty effort, Clark pushed upward and threw the leviathan off balance, rolling free in the process. He had no time to worry about his face being exposed in public. This monster was turning out to be a real handful, and would take all his concentration. He blasted it in the stomach with his heat vision, which seemed to stun it, if only a little.
The air force jets had apparently gotten over their hesitation or had gotten new orders, for one of them chose that moment to drop a bomb on the creature. As it rose, Clark hit it, dropping it again.
This went on for about twenty minutes. Clark would hit the monster, or blast it with heat vision, and one or two jets would attack while it was down. Then Clark would hit it again, and more jets would strafe it. This kept the monster down, but it kept trying to get back up.
So Clark considered his options. He could keep doing this all morning, and the air force could keep sending in planes that were refueled and rearmed, but this was getting them nowhere fast. He could try to evacuate as many people as he could so the air force could nuke the creature, but he doubted he could save everybody.
There was one other option. He could lift the monster. He couldn't throw it into the ocean. Chloe had said it came up out of the ocean. It would simply swim back to land.
But he could drop it in some remote area where it could be nuked with fewer casualties. He might even be able to throw it into orbit, if necessary.
So Clark flew under the creature and shot upward, hitting it square in the stomach with a mighty blow. The surprised behemoth doubled over as Clark rocketed it clear of Manhattan and streaked westward. He had a spot in New Mexico all picked out where he could drop the monster in the open desert. Within minutes he was over the target area. After scanning the ground for civilians, he dropped the squirming monster from twenty miles up.
The creature seemed to take forever to hit the ground. When it did, it shook the desert for miles. But Clark had chosen the area well. The nearest town was eleven miles away, and would only suffer some rattled windows.
He flew over the spot where the creature hit. Among the settling dust he saw the monster stir. But he also saw something else.
The monster was bleeding. It was injured.
Clark watched the creature stumble to its feet. It was bleeding from its mouth and its side, but it still managed to stand, defiantly roaring at him. It still had some fight in it.
Clark was beginning to tire. Fighting and lifting the monster had drained him slightly. But he still had plenty of strength left. So he flew underneath and rocketed the beast skyward again. He shot up thirty miles and dropped it.
Again the desert shook. But this time, when the monster hit, it stayed down. Its breath was labored, and its bellows were growing weaker by the second. Clark watched as the creature's eyes glassed over and became sightless, and he almost felt sorry for killing it. Almost. When he was sure it was dead, he took off towards New York to see how else he could help.
It wasn't long before the air force, which had tracked Clark's flight and the monster's death plunge on radar, had vectored fighters to see just what was going on in the New Mexico desert. There would be a flurry of activity for weeks as scientists studied the beast's carcass, trying to figure out what it was, where it had come from, and how best to kill the next specimen.
The army, meanwhile, was busy hunting down the remaining hatchlings. Sweeper teams patrolled the burros of New York twenty-four hours a day, scouring the alleys, tunnels, and even the water around the city. This would continue months after the last one was killed.
But that was not the end of the story. Within minutes of the clash of these titans, some videos began to circulate in news reports and websites. These videos didn't just show the creature, but a man fighting it. A flying man. A man who did what the U. S. military could not. The images of his unmasked face were too far away and too grainy to discern much detail, but his blue and red costume and its coat of arms had been seen up close, and were splashed across screens all over the world.
And suddenly the man who had only been a rumor whispered by those in the mid-west who had been saved by miracles was no longer a rumor, and people all over the planet began speculating as to whom this "super" man was.
The End.