Chapter One: Prologue
A couple holding each other.
Each grabbing the other for support.
The heat buffeting them. It's scorching. It'll leave a mark.
They don't notice it. They don't even care. All they care about is being there.
They will not see their boy again.
The silvery-blue spaceship shoots through the opening in the ceiling, sending a lonely, innocent infant away from its parents.
"He will be safe. He will be safe." Repeated Jor-El, the greatest scientist on his planet, and in his moment of hope and triumph as his boy's great cradle was flying through the air the pang of realisation hit him: the boy is safe, but alone.
His wife, Lara, stood silently. She was bred to be a warrior. To fight. She was taught to stay calm, never giving away emotion. Yet even she allowed a single tear to fall from her eye. She didn't move to wipe it away. How could she, starring at an empty space?
Her boy is no longer there.
By this time their young son, Kal, is gone. Alive, but gone.
The building rumbled as the planet collapsed. The ground underneath their feet gave way. They fell, still holding one another. Still staring at the last place their son had occupied in the heavens. Not a cry was uttered. Not a word spoken. The cacophony of the buildings surrounding them as the city fell to rubble would have drowned anything. The fires which had engulfed the planet with molten lava from the core were spreading.
Had the infant known, he may have turned around to see the last moments of his planet. But he did not know of all those things. He only knew he had no warmth, and his mother and father were all gone. He did not know where or why. He just felt emptiness. Loneliness.
Sadness.
He didn't even feel the shaking of his craft from the explosion. He was gone, and behind him a planet was no more, it was just ashes and rubble. Large stones floating, disjointed. Showing nothing but barrenness.
Far away, some time later, a couple is standing in a field. Car nearby and the house in the distance. The night sky is always so pretty in Kansas. So many stars. The sonic booms from military jets during training flights were disturbing the otherwise complete silence. But somehow they lent a mystical element to the night: anything could be coming. Maybe, even, that sought-for child that would not happen. That birth which cannot be. The adoption that may happen yet.
Another boom, and a glint in the sky. But it's different. It is approaching. No one notices it. The radar viewers call it a glitch and move on. It is unseen by all, except for that couple, Jonathan and Martha, in the field staring at the sky.
The ship crashed into their field in a storm of soil and dust. The heat burned the crops around it and the winds that gushed around snuffed out the flaming crops. The noise was one large blast which resembled a sonic boom with a hint of breaking bricks. But much, much louder. The couple, crouched down and praying to stay alive, that they will both be fine.
Somehow, miraculously, they were.
The dust and soil slowly settled, and the couple stood up. Both covered in dust. As it settled, Martha dragged Jonathan to the crash site.
They expected a meteor.
But instead, they received an answer to a prayer.
They received a son.
Kal-El. The last son of Krypton.
One of them.
In between the origin and the destination, there was a cloud. A cloud within the fabric of space. What was it made of? Jor-El never found out. It moved around, and was of a very rare kind. Its gifts were a mystery to all but it..
The ship passed through such a cloud of unknown energy and potentials. The ship rocked. Shrunk. Enlarged. And then continued on its path to Earth. To Kansas.
But another ship. The same ship. A replica, or the original, one cannot know. If one were to look at it, there would be no difference between them, not one. That other ship veered away, and landed someplace else. A different planet.