DISCLAIMER: I do not own Superman, or any other Superman character that appears in this fan fiction, and I make no money off of this.
Ultimate Superman Crossover
by Rhonnel Ferry
Face down on the dirt, the Man of Steel's eyelids flutter open. He coughs once, creating a small dust cloud, as he forces himself to his feet. Looking around, he easily realizes that he is in Smallville. Although, he also realizes that it is not his Smallville. Oh, there are the familiar trees, fields, and small barns. But one senses if he is home. There is a feeling of comfort and safety. He is feeling neither of those things now. If anything, he senses that he is in very grave danger.
The Man of Steel turns when he senses movement behind him, and is surprised to find three other Supermen there!
They all vaguely resemble each other physically. Two of them, (one about his age, and the other, much older) were even wearing Kryptonian suits similar to his own. Although curiously, they seem to be wearing red underwear on the outside of their pants. Their suits also appear to just be homemade. The younger one is only now struggling to stand. The older one, his arms crossed, looks to have been the first to rise, and is only waiting for the rest of them to recover.
And then there is the last one. A young man who isn't even wearing a Kryptonian costume, and instead dons a long black coat over a black shirt with a silver S symbol on the chest.
"Is everybody alright?" the oldest one asks. "Ears ringing? Nausea? Disorientation? All common symptoms of inter-dimensional travel."
"Who are you?" the Man of Steel asks him.
"I'm you. Well, in a way, we all are. We're all Superman."
#
"OK, first thing's first," the oldest one announces, as he makes coffee for everyone in the Kent farmhouse kitchen, while the others find stools or chairs to sit in. "I would like to forgo the usual superhero beatdown, where we try to find out which one of us has the biggest dick, before we all decide to team up and fight the big bad in the end. Any objections?"
Initially, no one responds.
Then the Man of Steel grumbles, "I woulda' won."
"You would not," the man in black counters. "You couldn't even beat a guy in a Halloween bat costume."
"Says the kid with a kryptonite rock on his chest every other episode."
"OK!" the oldest interrupts. "What did I just say about the dick measuring contest?!"
The other two lower their heads quietly.
"Good!" the eldest remarks just a little bit angrily. "Secondly! We can't go around calling each other Superman. It's confusing as hell. So from now on, you will all call me Dean. You will be Tom, you will be Brandon, and you will be Henry!"
"Actually, I never even used the Superman name," Tom admits. "They call me The Blur."
"No one is calling you The Blur! You look like a Tom! Your name is Tom!"
"I think I saw this scene in Reservoir Dogs," Brandon whispers to Henry.
"You mentioned inter-dimensional travel," Henry reminds Dean. "Now, I know this isn't my dimension. So is it yours?"
"No," Dean confesses sadly. "This dimension belonged to another Superman. And he was the best of us. A true symbol of hope. He made the people believe that they could be better, that they could make their world better."
"Was the best of us?" Henry repeats. "You mean...he's dead? How?"
"No one knows. It's a mystery. Suffice it to say that in his last days, even as he weakened, he still tried to help as many people as he could."
"How do you know about all this stuff?"
"I've been doing this a long time, son. Alternate realities aren't new to me."
"Did you bring us here?"
"No. I got pulled out of my dimension just like the rest of you."
Suddenly, they're collective super hearing picks up an ear-splitting electronic noise! It is so deafening that Dean drops the coffee pot, and it shatters onto the floor tiles.
The noise is accompanied by a voice that says, "This is Lex Luthor. Only one thing alive with less than four legs can hear this frequency, Superman, and that's you."
#
"I suppose you're wondering why I transported you to my dimension," Lex continues. "Well, follow this signal to my humble apartment in Metropolis, and I will explain everything. If curiosity is not a strong enough motivation for you, I could also transport a speeding asteroid the size of Texas right on top of the city, if you'd like. Don't keep me waiting."
The voice vanishes, and the noise softens.
"Well, that was rude," Tom groans as he picks himself off the floor, leaning on the stool he had fallen off for support.
"It's Luthor. What did you expect?" Henry reminds him. "He's a twitchy, psychotic brat. He's probably rude in all our dimensions."
"Hey! He was my best friend in my dimension!"
"Luthor was your best friend?! What dimension are you from exactly? Bizarro World?"
"It's obviously a trap," Brandon cautions everyone. "This might be how the Superman of this dimension died."
"Yeah, but he's also threatening to destroy the city with a giant asteroid," Dean adds.
"So what do we do?"
"What we always do. We're Superman. We save the day."
"I thought that was Mighty Mouse."
#
"Wait a minute," Dean says to Brandon, as they fly towards Metropolis. "You and Lois were able to conceive a child?"
"That's correct," Brandon affirms.
"And you're letting another guy raise him?!"
"Uhm...yeah..."
"Lois and I have tried to have kids for years, but it was genetically impossible for us! How could you just throw away that opportunity, you deadbeat bastard?!"
"Hey-!"
"Guys!" Henry interrupts. "We're here."
The three of them descend at the city limits so that Tom, on foot, could catch up.
"Why were you running?" Henry asks him when he finally arrives. "Can't you fly?"
"I have a thing with heights," Tom confesses.
"No tights, no flight?"
"Well, I have the tights, but It's just too embarrassing to wear my undies on the outside."
"It's not underwear!" Dean and Brandon shout in unison.
Just then, a massive portal materializes right above the city. And for a sickening second, all the heroes hold their breath, expecting a giant asteroid to fly through it. But instead, a fifty foot tall mechanical monster appears. The pavement easily shatters under its feet, and the shock wave flips over several cars. Hundreds of pedestrians scream in fear! And in their panic, they trample each other as they run for cover!
"That is not an asteroid," Henry observes.
"No," Dean agrees. "Luthor probably got it from a more scientifically advanced dimension."
"Well, what're we waiting for then? Let's go kill that thing."
"Uhm...I'm gonna pass," Brandon says, taking a step back.
"What?! Why?! That thing is destroying Metropolis!"
"I'm a pacifist Superman. I don't like that whole fighting thing. I didn't even throw a single punch when Kumar from White Castle was beating me up on Luthor's kryptonite island."
"You let Kumar from White Castle beat you up?! Don't you have any pride?"
"Apparently not."
"OK, this is how we do it!" Dean commands. "Henry, you like killing things. You take care of the giant robot. Tom and Brandon, you're on crowd control."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I'm following that signal, and then I'm gonna put a stop to this dimension's Lex Luthor once and for all."
#
The mechanical monster swings an enormous robotic arm at a skyscraper, sending several large debris dangerously down on the crowd!
But Brandon manages to swoop down and save everyone by effortlessly catching the wreckage of the rooftop. And then... And then... And then nothing. He just stands there carrying all that heavy junk over his head, like he's waiting for someone to snap a picture.
Henry flies fists first into the monster's metal chest!
The colossus collapses on a three story library, crushing it completely.
"Dude!" Tom yells at Henry. "Easy with the collateral damage!"
With the threat neutralized, the frightened citizens tentatively reveal themselves. In mere seconds, they flood the streets. And in a show of appreciation, they enthusiastically cheer the superheroes.
"What are they doing?" Henry asks Brandon.
"They're applauding us, of course. What, people don't applaud you where you're from?"
"No. Actually they kinda' hate me."
"People hate Superman in your dimension?! Are you sure YOU'RE not from Bizarro World?!"
#
Dean crashes right through the large window of a third floor apartment, the source of Lex Luthor's signal.
"Luthor!" he calls out.
"I'm right here," Lex answers softly, slowly revealing himself from behind the shadows of the unlit room.
What Dean sees shocks him. He expected to find an over the top super villain, a charismatic psychopath dressed in a loud suit. Instead he is met by an old man, who seems to have neither showered nor changed out of his bathrobe in weeks.
"What?" Luthor asks, sensing Superman's surprise. "You were expecting a self-made man in a suit? Your Luthor was a businessman, right?"
Dean doesn't answer.
The old man hobbles over to a minibar, and, with trembling hands, pours himself a drink. He takes a sip, then gestures an offer to Dean, which the superhero refuses with a shake of his head.
"It's over, Luthor," Dean tells him, almost gently, then takes a step forward. "I'm taking you in."
"No you're not."
In an instant, the old man produces a small black jewelry ring box from his pocket. And when he opens it, the room is bathed in a sickeningly eerie green glow.
Dean gasps, staggers back, and then stumbles onto the dusty wooden floor.
Lex sighs in disappointment, "Lex Luthor calls you out, and you don't expect him to have kryptonite on him? Apparently, Superman is predictable no matter what dimension he comes from."
"You...you killed this dimension's Superman!"
"No. No, I don't know what killed him. The greatest criminal mind, and I have no idea what killed my arch-nemesis. Maybe it was some earth-born virus that his alien body had no immunity to. Maybe it was the stress of the work. I'm not sure. But you're right. It should have been me."
Lex then motions to what appears to be a large, strange looking 1900 box camera.
Then he continues, "That's why I brought you here with my portable, inter-dimensional transporter. I spent four decades researching the alternate universes after his death. It hasn't been perfected. I only wanted to bring one of you here. But the machine made a miscalculation. It couldn't tell the difference between you, so it brought all four of you here. And in a location not of my choosing either. Did much better with the giant robot, though. No matter."
The old man drags a chair over to the suffering superhero, and furiously tells him, "I missed my chance to kill my Superman. So you'll have to do. And I'm not going to drop you in a swimming pool, and then leave you alone with my woman, so she can betray me and save you! No. I'm going to sit right on this chair, drink my bourbon, and watch the stupid green rock kill you!"
With wide eyes, Dean could no longer see a frail old man bending over him. He is seeing the man for what he truly is. A cruel, maniacal madman!
All of a sudden, a pair of small fireballs from Tom's eyes knocks the ring box from Luthor's withered hand! The lead lid closes on the alien rock as it hits the floor.
Lex tries to chase after it, but from behind, Henry wraps a powerful, muscular arm around the old man's neck!
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" the other three Supermen scream in panic at the same time!
But they are too late, and Lex's limp body falls heavily.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Dean furiously shouts at Henry. "Why do you keep murdering people?!"
"He's alive," Henry assures the older Superman. "I knocked him out with a sleeper hold."
Dean checks, and notices that Lex is indeed still breathing.
"Oh,...good," Dean says. "Well, with your track record, could you really blame me?"
#
After the cops had taken Luthor away, the four Supermen regroup on the hilltop in Smallville where they all first met.
"What are you gonna do with that?" Brandon asks Dean of the portable, inter-dimensional transporter in the older man's hands.
"Well, I'm going to send us all back. And then I'm going to keep it. Just in case, we all decide to make a sequel."
Tom laughs, "Sure, I guess I don't mind doing this again."
"Are you kidding me?" Henry tells him. "Part o' me doesn't want to go back home."
"What about this dimension?" Brandon asks. "It still doesn't have a Superman."
"I could look in on it every once in a while," Dean offers. "Shouldn't be too hard. They don't have a lot of super villains in this dimension. Not a lot of super villains in my dimension either. Mostly a bunch of mad scientists."
"I could probably lend you a hand. I have a strange feeling nothing eventful is going to happen in my dimension anymore."
Epilogue
And so, Dean sends all the other Supermen back to their respective dimensions. But before going back, himself, he makes one last pass over Metropolis to show its citizens that there will always be a Superman watching over them.
And then he decides to smile, and fly towards the sunrise, to honor the fallen Superman, who was known for doing that kind of thing.
END