Dan vs. Superman

By Sivad Ttarp

Chapter one: The Challenge

"Good morning ladies and gents," Helicopter Hal's voice droned out of the old AM radio, filling the battered red hatchback with a sort of dull static/chipper voice combination. "Hot times are upon us, and in the height of summer there's nothing hotter than a rush hour traffic jam. A couple accidents, a dash of roadwork, and an overturned semi filled with bananas and nobody's going to be getting anywhere quickly today. Better wish your AC works."

"Yeah," Dan grunted, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. "I wish my AC worked too." He jabbed the radio off with his thumb so hard that the button popped and rolled under his tattered seat.

"Great," Dan rolled the driver's side window all the way down. He stuck head out and, glared down the street.

His car sat motionless, its engine rumbling, one in a row of stationary automobiles stretching into the distance in either direction. Equivalent rows stretched, three out, on either side. Traffic in each lane had come to a standstill.

"I don't know about you degenerates," Dan said loudly, "But I put gas in this car to make it go, not just so I can sit here and listen to white noise on every station!"

No one responded, or even acknowledged his complaint. Dan plopped back down in his seat and yawned in boredom, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. His black t-shirt stuck to his back. He took a deep breath. It tasted like exhaust. Not as bad as mace, but still no fine cigar.

Dan reached into his pocket and produced a worn little notebook and a stub of a pencil he flipped it open, and scanned his own chicken-scratch handwriting. This page of "The List" read thusly.

Phonebooks.

Baby shoes.

Worcestershire sauce.

Idiots.

Voicemail.

Dachshunds

Heartburn

Heartburn medicine

Judy Garland

Dan quickly scrawled the word 'Cars' at the bottom on the page. He paused

Momentarily, scratched stroking his stubbled chin, biting the tip of his tongue in concentration. Deep in thought.

Dan scratched out the word 'Cars', completely ignoring the pencil stub's very functional eraser, and instead wrote "Other People's Cars". He punctuated generously, and stuffed both pencil and paper deep into the pocket of his jeans.

Dan sighed and reached down to turn on the radio. He grunted in recognition when his finger found no button to push. He'd have to find that sometime, glue it back on. He probably had time, considering that even a snail's pace would quickly outdistance this particular flow of traffic. Dan always kept a tube of super glue in the glove box, for times just like these.

He was about to go for it, when the industrial warehouse about a mile down the highway and to the left exploded in a geyser of flame and debris. A hefty chunk of flaming concrete nailed the minivan next to Dan right in the hood, and the gas tank ignited in another blast of fire. Dan rolled his window up quickly, but the heat still singed his eyebrows and turned his arms and face bright red.

Panicked screams rang out across the motorway. Tires squealed and fenders crunched into each other as drivers tried and failed to extricate themselves from the traffic. Abandoning their vehicles, men, women, and families dragging their children, raced past on foot.
"What?" Dan scoffed. "Never seen any fireworks before, I…oh."

The explosion had been just the beginning. From the shell of the warehouse, a massive metal beast was emerging. Its main body was the size of a small building, and shaped suspiciously like a human skull, made of jagged black metal with two glowing red eyes. It moved like a spider on a series of spindly metal legs, and trailed long metal feelers that twisted and gyrated like animate whips.

The robot clambered out of the wreckage and into the street, skewering and crunching abandoned cars beneath its legs. The feelers whipped around, severing one car in half, and tossing a minivan high into the air, before it slammed down on an oil tanker. Another huge explosion.

As those flames too subsided, a beam of red energy issued from between the creature's eyes, drawing a line of melted slag along the businesses along the street side. At least one two story building collapsed in on itself.

Maybe I should get moving, Dan thought. He opened his car door and stepped out. The tarmac shook under his feet.

He felt the breeze as something zipped past from behind, right over his head. His messy hair was ruffled. The green blur circled the robot, and paused before it, hanging in the air. A man, clad in a formfitting green and black costume. Emerald green energy surrounded him, keeping him afloat. Dan was no expert on superheroes, from his experience they came off as pompous and overrated. But even he recognized Green Lantern.

Ducking behind the car door, Dan watched. This could be good. Citizens still ran screaming past them, some of them were on fire, but Dan did his best to ignore them. Giant monsters were nothing he hadn't dealt with before. If he thought about it, he could still remember the taste of vegetables. Never again.

A massive fist of green energy slugged the robot, sending it stumbling on its many metal legs. Green tendrils, pincers and clamps, all appearing from Green Lantern's ring, wrapped and folded around the robot, entwining it, holding it fast.

Until the laser beam blasted at the emerald knight, nearly knocking him out of the sky. A green shield appeared in front of Green Lantern, replacing the assorted instruments of bondage, as he switched to defense. As the energy beam bore down the green shield constantly eroded and replaced itself, as Green Lantern was pressed slowly back under the assault.

A slot in the robots forehead opened, revealing the tip of a rocket. The missile was ejected right at Green Lantern, trailing smoke and flame. It impacted, and a huge explosion of orange and yellow flame filled the air between the combatants. His shield destroyed, Green Lantern went tumbling in a slow, green-laced arc, disappearing into the wreckage of a nearby sandwich shop.

The giant skull robot went back to smashing cars. It impaled a pickup truck with a sharp leg and flung it into the air, Dan cheered as one its whips sliced the truck in half. This was exactly what he'd wanted to do to other people's cars. "Dang, I wish I was driving that thing," Dan whispered reverently.

"Citizen, you've got to get out of here, get somewhere safe." Dan jumped at hearing the rich, authoritarian voice from behind him, bonking his head on the car door. Another superhero was behind him, a guy Dan didn't recognize. This man looked strong, and wore an orange shirt of scale-like armor and green pants, but all this was secondary to his flowing blonde hair that would put any hair product commercial from any brand for any audience thoroughly to shame.

"What do they call you," Dan looked him over, seeing the golden harpoon he sported for a left hand, "Captain Hook?"

"I am Aquaman, master of the deep," the man announced, gravely.

"Deep what? Deep back in the makeup section? Because, man-"

"This is irrelevant," Aquaman shouted, "That robot is coming this way. You've got to get under cover."

"I'll do what I like," said Dan, "You're not my boss. I can handle myself. That's what I hate about you superheroes; just because you can fit into those tights makes you think you're all the master race. Well, I got rights, and-"

The wave of salty water burst from the manhole ahead of him and enveloped Dan in its chilly embrace, propelling him down the highway. He hit a mini-cooper on the hood, and rolled off.

"You can walk from there," Aquaman called down the street.

"Very heroic," Dan shouted, squeezing water out of his shirt as he ducked out of view behind the trunk of an abandoned car. "Why didn't you do that to the robot, instead of some innocent bystander?"

"Oh," Aquaman smiled, "I'd just be getting in the way," as a red and blue blur ruffled his luscious hair.

Long red cape, red and blue uniform, square jaw, underwear on the outside, Dan recognized the most famous of all superheroes in an instant. So did the robot.

The robot hurled a semi-truck at Superman, but the Man of Steel caught it in midair, and lowered it gently in a nearby parking lot. A pair of missiles impacted where he stood, and he disappeared in a ball of flame.

The robot was just turning away from the fresh crater, when Superman bounded out into the air, unharmed. The robot activated its heat ray, but Superman flew right under the beast. Twin beams blasted from the flying man's eyes, severing one of the robots legs. It slammed to the tarmac, flattening a motorcycle.

The tip of another missile emerged in the robot's forehead, ready to fire. Superman took a deep breath and blew. Ice coalesced, freezing the missile in its weapons bank. It exploded a second later, tearing a hole through the robots face. Oil spurted, and loose wiring sparked and sizzled within the shredded metal surface.

A trailing tendril whipped through the air to wrap around Superman, swinging him down to slam into the road. The cement cracked under the impact. It brought him down again, but before it could bash him a third time, Superman tore his way from its grip, snapping the tip of the metal tentacle into bits. A second tendril whipped toward him, but Superman caught it, and yanked. The robot head beast was pulled off its feet to slam down into the ground.

Superman sped through the air toward the damage in the robot's forehead, firing his red eye-beams at the beast, pockmarking its armor all the more. But when he arrived, a massive surge of electricity flashed across the metal surface, sending him sailing back.

Determined, Superman reached behind him, and seized a battered red car; he hurled it through the air at the robot, and then launched himself behind it. The body of the car took the brunt of the electrical field, and Superman blasted right through its metal frame with his eye beams, disappearing into the hull metal monster.

He was out of view for a few seconds. One glowing robotic eye exploded outward in a shower of sparks. Then the other. Superman burst through the metal armor, tearing out of the back of the robots head. He accelerated into the atmosphere as what was left of the robot exploded. A large shard of metal armor took out a convertible only a few yards away from Dan.

The wreckage flamed contentedly, like an open fire in a Christmas hearth. There was no sign of Superman.

Sirens wailed in the distance as emergency vehicles arrived. Fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars: each conveniently missing the heat of the action.

Dan gulped. He'd seen what happened. But he had to make sure.

Down the street, Aquaman was tearing open the canopy of a squashed car with his golden hook to release the young couple trapped inside.

Dan crept past him, toward the flaming husk of the war machine. He ducked behind a line of cars. Aquaman didn't notice him, and when he got far enough away, Dan broke into a sprint.

In the distance, he vaguely noticed Green Lantern stumble out of one of the destroyed buildings, holding a hand to his head, as if he had a hangover.

The heat from the robot's corpse was almost unbearable, but it was not the only corpse Dan had eyes for. The car was destroyed. Bits and pieces all over the ground, a red door here, a stain of melted rubber there. Dan's car was no more.

His companion, his vehicle, his friend. Dan fell to his knees, overwhelmed with emotion and shock. It had all happened so fast, but now the reality set in. the reality of a future without transportation. The reality of the destruction of his private property without so much as a batted eye, all in for a cause he wouldn't endorse. Heck, Dan had wanted to adopt the robot thing, not destroy it. He felt the rage gather within him. His hands started shaking. Someone was going to feel his wrath.

Dan threw back his head and yelled. "SUUUUUUUUPPPPEEEEERRRRRMMMAAAAANN!"