Okay, so, unlike with the Redux of The Bat Vol. 1, This fic's redux is more of a rewrite. The plot will be largely the same, with a similar level of detail to the redux being seen on The Bat but will differ in a few points. But enough about that. R&R, please, no flames, B.
...
Krypton, 1985
Jor-El walked around the large, crystalline lab. He'd recently returned from a trial going on, overseen by Krypton's ruling council. It wasn't one he was comfortable with being one of the character witnesses on, given his position as a childhood friend of the accused.
However, Kryptonian law called for such witnesses to be present, and as the majority of the man's acquaintances had served with him in the military, it was Jor'El's place, as the sole remaining person who'd known the man, Dru-Zod, now known simply as General Zod, outside of members of his military unit, Jor-El was the only witness who could be called.
He moved over to his computer terminal, moving crystals about until a holographic projection of Krypton appeared, a graph of the different radiations present appearing beside it. Notably, the output of radiation from Krypton's sun was massively disproportionate to it's norm. Jor-El couldn't believe his eyes.
When he'd been told he was to present testimony on Zod's character, and that his friend was being tried for tampering with the solar control matrix used to provide continual power to Krypton's cities, such as Argo and Kandor, Jor-El had hardly believed it. Of course, the lack of time in between had left him little time to do anything but go and visit the hospital where his wife, Lara, was currently resting, preparing for the birth of their son.
Now, it looked as if the accusations could be true. Someone had manipulated the solar control matrix. This after Zod had called for a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the council; at first, Jor-El had assumed this trial was some kind of political reprisal from a perturbed rival. Now it looked like the only reprisal had come from Zod.
"See anything interesting, Jor-El?" Came a voice from behind him, Jor-El turning to see Zod stood there, the light reflecting of his dark hair and beard, wearing his fitted black bodysuit, his family's crest on the chest, black robes falling over it, Jor-El instinctively shutting down the hologram and moving away from Zod "What's the matter, Jor? You seem frightened of something."
"Zod... You shouldn't be here, the trial is ongoing..." Jor-El said with a hard gulp "I'm asking you, as your friend, for your own sake, please leave."
"I intend to, Jor-El, don't worry." Zod said, approaching Jor-El and clapping a hand on his shoulder "I just wanted to thank you, for what you said in the tribunal. You were very complimentary."
"We've been friends for years." Jor-El said with a forced smile "I was hardly going to agree that you're a psychotic madman with homicidal tendencies like they claimed. You may have a temper, but you've never been insane to my knowledge."
"Exactly." Zod said with a smile "I just thought I'd come and thank you myself. It appears that, thanks to your testimony, I'm to be acquitted."
"That's good news." Jor-El lied "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and see Lara. The baby's due soon."
Jor-El began to walk out. As he was about to reach the door, he felt a sharp blow to the back of his legs, taking him to the floor. He looked up, to see Zod stood over him, a long, silver staff in his hands.
"You know, I'd hoped you would've joined me when I'd tried to take control of the council." Zod said simply "Your death is regrettable. However, I recognised those readouts. They're the same ones my advisor came up with. Before I lobotomised him. Couldn't have him telling people what I was planning. Still, a man of his strength? He'll make an excellent grunt. Wherever we finally decide to settle."
"Zod... You... Why?" Jor-El said, unsure what to ask first "Why are you doing this? Why destroy Krypton?"
"Don't you see?" Zod said, standing up and tossing the staff aside "Krypton as we know it died long ago! These bureaucrats running the council now, they have put in place a decadent lifestyle for the ruling classes, but the people that fall into those classes are decreasing in number daily. They removed me and my people from that lifestyle to provide more for themselves, whilst taking from my men, from my wife and child! Don't you see, Jor-El? This isn't about me; it's about them!"
"And what of my wife, of Lara?" Jor-El asked as he stood, subtly picking up a crystal shard from the floor and putting it behind his back "Or of my son; you would kill Kal-El to save your men?"
"I would kill all of Krypton's sons to save my men!" Zod spat, beginning to advance on Jor-El, picking him up by the throat "Starting with you. Good bye, old friend."
Before Zod could do or say more, Jor-El swiped across with the shard, slashing down over Zod's right eye, causing Zod to drop Jor-El and clutch at his face in pain. Jor-El ran out of the lab. He just had to make it, just a few more feet.
As he reached the foyer, Zod caught up to him, tackling him to the ground and flipping him onto his back, both of Zod's hands at Jor-El's throat. He felt himself slowly slipping into unconsciousness, the last thing he saw being Zod being wrestled off of him by the security of the facility.
...
Jor-El stood in the stands of the tribunal. It was the day of sentencing, and Jor-El had been dreading it; there was a lack of actual victims for Zod to be sentenced by, as was customary under Kryptonian law. As Zod had tried to murder him in front of witnesses three weeks before this hearing, Jor-El had been informed that it fell to him to sentence Zod and his people.
He looked over the three. Zod's injury had been tended to eventually, but had left a ghastly scar over his eye; apparently, he'd been lucky to retain vision in it. Stood beside him, at around a foot taller, his head shaved with signs of tampering with his brain, was Non; once a great scientist, and one of Jor-El's partners in the development of an advanced AI, before the project had been abandoned, now reduced to nothing more than an ape. Finally, to Zod's right, was a red haired woman, Faora. Zod's wife.
Their son had been taken from them, put into protective care. Having seen his own son born less than a day before that event, having witnessed it, Jor-El could understand Faora's cries of anguish. However, as enthralled to Zod as Faora was, their son was not; the boy had been terrified of his father, of the monstrosity he had become. Jor-El only regretted that they hadn't been able to stay Zod's hand from the beatings the boy had received upon his decision to become a scientist rather than a soldier like his parents.
"Come, Jor-El." Zod's words snapped Jor-El out of his thoughts, reminding him what it was time for "Tell us you intend to kill us."
"No, Zod." Jor-El said "You are the killer. I will not sentence you to our fate. I hereby sentence you to the Phantom Zone, there to live for all eternity."
"And what of our son?" Faora spat "What of our boy?"
"Lor-Zod has committed no crime." Jor-El said "Therefore, he cannot be sentenced for any."
"You sentence the boy to death but not his parents." Zod said, glaring at Jor-El "I will see you burn for this, Jor-El. You and your Kal-El!"
Jor-El turned and walked out, not watching as the Phantom Zone projector was brought in. He didn't need to see his former friend being sent to a timeless desert with no end to it's lands in sight. He wasn't sending Zod there to end his existence.
He was sending him there to spare him it. He had only one final task before he began working on his project.
He approached the court bailiff, pulling him aside. He paused for a moment before speaking.
"I have request." Jor-El said "Send the boy to the Zone. Allow him the chance to be with his family. Allow him a chance to live past what his father has done."
"I can't do that." The bailiff said, pausing "I'll try. That's the best I can do."
"Thank you." Jor-El said, putting a hand on the man's shoulder with a smile.
He hoped that, even if he couldn't earn his friends' forgiveness, he could spare the child the cataclysm that was coming.
...
Jor-El walked into his lab, finding Lara sat in a seat beside a spherical crib, watching over the baby inside. He walked over, looking at the boy, a single, dark curl visible on his head.
"Are you really going to do it?" Lara asked "Are you really going to send him away? To live with primitives?"
"They aren't so different to how the people of Krypton were a handful of centuries ago." Jor-El said, pausing "However, no matter how good, or bad, as the case is with some of them, they may be, it is not the people that caused me to choose that world."
Jor-El manipulated controls, causing the image of a green and blue world to appear in holographic form above the crib.
"It orbits a yellow star. His cells will drink it's radiation, become a living solar battery." Jor-El said "He will be near indestructible, with strength beyond what he can imagine, and speed to match. He will fly in the skies as easily as he runs through the fields."
"And if they try to exploit that?" Lara asked "They'll be terrified of him, they'll try to make him some kind of weapon! They're barbarians!"
"Having seen what some of those close to us are capable of recently, I question if we are so much better." Jor-El said finally as a ring shaped ship with a pointed front section was raised out of the floor "It's time, Lara. He has to go now if he's to be safe from the solar expansion Zod has set into motion."
"He'll be alone." Lara said, concern in her voice "How can you let that be?"
"He'll never be alone." Jor-El said, removing a crystal from his robe and setting it down in an open compartment of the ship as machinery lifted the crib, moving it into a waiting hole in the centre "I've downloaded the entire sum of Krypton's knowledge into that crystal, to be activated when it is. The AI interface is my most advanced work. It will keep him safe."
"How can you know that?" Lara asked "How can you know it won't be perverted like BRAINIAC was by the military?"
It was true. Jor-El and Non's creation, the BRAIN InterActive Construct, or BRAINIAC, had been taken by the military and perverted into a devastating weapon. It had ceased use under Zod's regime, and been sent out into space, to drift amongst the stars.
This time, however, he had foreseen such a possibility and made counter measures; the AI would self delete if used for military purposes, and would respond only to Kal-El unless otherwise instructed. On top of it all, Jor-El knew the AI would keep his son safe as it was based on his own neural patterns. Everything he knew, every experience, was in the AI. It would love Kal-El as if he were it's own son.
"Because I would." Jor-El finally spoke "It's programmed to act as I would, to teach him as I would."
"And if he were to want his mother's opinion?" Lara said, apparently catching Jor-El's meaning "What then?"
"The database contains your own neurological patterns." Jor-El finally spoke "He could fashion a second AI using the first as a base pattern. I prepared for every eventuality."
The top of the capsule was lowered over the crib, the ship beginning to rotate into position for launch. He keyed in the final preparation controls, before pressing one to be allowed to speak into the craft.
"Kal-El... I'm sorry we won't be there to see you take your first steps, to make sure you are protected from any harm, however unlikely it may be." He said "Know that we will always love you, my son. Good bye. And good luck."
He swallowed hard as he inserted the final crystal into the console, the ship firing it's thrusters and launching out of the open ceiling of the lab and into the red sky above. He had done all he could for his son.
What happened next would be out of his hands.
...
Hope you like this opening guys, it was important to me that the final days of Krypton be present to some degree in this fic. We won't be seeing kid Clark here, instead getting straight to teen Clark. How the Kents found him will come up, but his life, and what he does with it, won't begin until then. Plus, it gives a more entertaining and less cliché perspective than super baby haha. R&R, please, no flames. B.