He was awake before the impact.

In most cases, the computers would do an emergency wake-cycle on the cryopods in the event of an emergency. It wasn't quite clear what went wrong, but somehow, the ship entered the planet's orbit at an uncomfortably high speed, and had aimed for a lovely little patch of hard, hard ground in the middle of a medium-sized continent. But the computer hadn't counted on the grogginess and general mailaise of the occupant it had awakened.

The pod door opened and Jor-El's first instinct was to grasp the shield on his chest, expecting to find a huge hole there.

But it was just the vestiges of panic, a common effect from awakening from cryosleep. Though he' d nearly missed the launch, and sent his wife and child to the stars, alone, if it weren't for the fact that he had somehow, impossibly, not died in the fight with Zod and managed to run to the platform where their large, interstellar ship was waiting. He wasn't unhurt, but the cryostasis had healed his wounds from the last fight with the mad General.

But small victories would be savored later—the warning klaxons screamed that impact was imminent. The controls were so far away—he shook his head, trying to clear the tendrils of disorientation still grasped tightly around his mind.

"Five seconds to impact!" the voice of the computer was frantic, as if it would somehow make him hurry.

With all the strength he could muster, he kicked open the door as far as it would go and scrambled to the controls. He had just enough time to sit in the chair and slam his hand down on the intertal dampeners when-

SLAMMMM!

And it all went black. Again.

"Honey! Honey, look, there's someone else here!"

"Be careful!"

The sharp, acrid smell of a fire burning nearby. And a strange, sort of looming sense that something was not quite right with the world.

The crash. Lara. The baby.

Jor-El gasped and jolted up, and immediately wished he didn't, because his head was pounding. He was lying in a pile of dirt, somewhere, surrounded by tall, grass-like plants. It was night, but the sky was alight with smoke and flame.

"I got him!" a voice said. Jor-El stiffened. Universal translators impanted in all Kryptonians at infancy let him instantly understand the words. But they still felt alien. He'd had some information of these people, but there was nothing one could do to actually prepare for seeing one.

"Hey, are you all right?"

Even though research told that they would have a similar appearance, if not identical, to Kryptonian, it was still a bit of a shock. They were a bit shorter in stature, smaller, but nothing strange about them. They could easily pass in any city, back home.

Home. Home would have been destroyed by now.

Lara. The baby.

Jor-El scrambled up, and the alien ran over and helped him up. The strange feeling was starting to become overwhelming. It was almost suffocating…until he realized that he, in fact, was having a hard time breathing.

No wonder his brain felt so fuzzy—if he'd been operating efficiently, he would have deduced that in any case, it meant that he was no longer breathing Kryptonian atmosphere.

"Martha! Come here!"

Running footsteps. Everything was getting blurry. It was so hard to breathe…and it burned his lungs, like acid.

"Oh, honey, are you sure he's from…you know...out there? He looks like your cousin Rob—"

"He's having an asthma attack or something, I don't know, and looks like he hit his head really bad—"

"We should take him to the hospital."

"What if he is…you know…one of them?"

A hand patted his back.

"I don't care—he's gonna die without our help!"

Jor-El shook his head, and managed to gasp. "No…it…it must pass."

"See, he spoke English! I mean, he might be Canadian or something, but…"

He waved his hand again. "Lara…my wife?" he said, strained. "The baby?"

The couple looked at each other. Jor-El felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"Lara! The baby!" he grabbed the man's collar, but his strength was fading away. Blackness gathered at the edge of his vision.

"I'm sorry…" were the words he heard before fading completely away into unconsciousness.

It was a bright and sunny morning, when the strange man came down the stairs. He was dressed in Jonathan's old clothes, and didn't look a lick out of place. You wouldn't even think he was from out of state, Martha thought.

"We made breakfast. Not sure if you…might like the taste of bacon and eggs, but I'm sure we can find something to your liking around here," she said, trying to make the awkard moment pass with some small talk.

Jonathan came in from the outside, and threw his cap on the coat rack, not realizing their visitor had entered the kitchen. "The drought's getting worse. We lost half an acre again this morning. I don't know what we're gonna do if this keeps up—"

"Honey," Martha gave him a glare, and jerked her head toward the front of the kitchen, where the…man was looking around. Not in an disoriented manner, but in a way that a curious person would, as if he was learning about every detail and storing it away for later.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude on your meal," he said, in his funny accent.

"Don't be silly, we love having visitors. Don't we, Jonathan? Of course, most of ours only come as far away as Fort Worth, but…" she laughed at her own joke, but she was the only one. She coughed. "You were touch and go for awhile back there, fella. Are you feeling all right, now?"

"Yes. Thank you." he said in that ever-so-polite voice. Well, at least aliens raised themselves right.

"Your air…it's different from ours, isn't it?" Jonathan finally spoke, and sat down at the table.

"Yes," was all he said, and stood there, a little lost. The sadness in his eyes was too poignant to ignore.

Jonathan and Martha looked at each other. Finally, Jonathan spoke. "The ship…someone took it, while you were out, the past couple days. We guess maybe the government or somebody. We didn't tell them about you…said we were out watching a movie when the crash happened. I thought…I didn't think it was right for them to know about you."

He shook his head. "It was my idea…to come here. Our planet was going to explode. I was supposed to send my son, my infant son only…" his voice came out strange, as if he was masking a sob. "But at the last moment I retrofitted our fastest ship to carry us all, so he wouldn't be alone…and now both Lara and he are…"

Immediately Martha went over to him and rubbed his back. "Don't you dare blame yourself. Don't you dare do it."

He stood up straighter, his face impassive, as he seemed to have fought all the emotion back inside him. "I do thank you…for all you've done. You had no reason to trust me, and you did. I'm forever grateful."

"What are you gonna do now? Obviously you can breathe our air now," Jonathan said, lifting his cup of coffee at the surprised man's face. "I mean, that's what was wrong, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he said. "Now…now…I'm afraid all that I was going to do is for naught, now that they are lost…I was going to help…I mean, I am a scientist, I was going to offer assistance but…perhaps it's best if I lay a bit low for awhile. Would you assist me?"

"Of course we will, won't we? Jonathan?" Martha gave him a glare that meant her question was already answered.

"Of course, we will." Jonathan stood up, and offered his hand. "I'm Jonathan. This is Martha. We're the Kents."

"My name is Jor-El. My wife's name was Lara. My son's name was…Kal."

Thirty Years Later…

California had been a geographically beautiful place to live, but once he was satisfied that the technology was headed in the right direction, sometime in the eighties Jor-El moved permanently to Metropolis to dabble in some various R and D departments, including one interview Wayne Enterprises that seemed to be very interested in weaponry. He refused to assist in any way when it came to weapons, even though he knew the simple 'hints' he provided several individuals about computer technology would end up being used all over the world for things he would want no part in, at least he felt that he made up for it by doing a few good deeds here and there.

After all, the power of flight wasn't only just for personal enjoyment, it was a very good way to catch muggers and carjackers, and give them quite a scare, besides. The world was starting to see the emergence of so-called superheroes, but Jor-El was decidedly not one of them. Still, he did see the merits of having a 'uniform' of sorts, and decided on his old Kryptonian outer jacket and the House of El emblem on the bodysuit inside, just in case. He was so fast most of the time that no one ever saw anything but a gray blur.

He was not expecting, one fine Saturday afternoon, while providing a purse back to a frightened old lady, a big great blue blur flew out of nowhere, slammed into him and knocked him onto the roof of an apartment building.

It was much too familiar of a move to be done by anyone but a Kryptonian.

"Who are you?" he demanded the strange figure, who was clad in blue, with a red cape. However, his chest emblem looked like a strange mockery of a Kryptonian shield.

Something about Luthor?

"My name is Superman," the stranger said, with a sort of haughty gaze. "I'm here to take you down."

This story is based on the fact that in MOS (Spoilers!) Jor-El had some awesome moments in that really awesome suit in the middle of the movie, even though he was a computer program. I wondered what would happen if he had somehow entered the superhero world himself...