- and in the amount of time it took for Chuck to blink, the bar was plunged into darkness.

"What the hell?" he asked, surprised. "Have there been power outages like this recently?"

"This is Los Angeles, dude," Morgan replied. "There have been power outages like you wouldn't believe since you've been gone."

Chuck turned and looked outside. "Does that include every car on Figueroa coming to a dead stop?" he asked.

Morgan turned and looked as well. "Okay, now that's weird."

But just as suddenly as the power had gone out, it came back on. The television flickered back on, returning to the cabin of the USAF 777 in flight over the Pacific Coast.

"Sorry about that, folks," Ryan Seacrest said onscreen. "It looks like we lost our feed for a moment there. There was some sort of in-flight emergency up here, I guess we lost power for a moment, but the pilots are saying everything's alright."

The camera panned around the cabin, capturing the shocked expressions on the faces of the reporters and VIPs around Seacrest – and there she was.

Sarah Walker.

Chuck hadn't seen her in years, not since he'd left Los Angeles behind to go home, to try to find answers. But there were no answers – just chunks of rock, blown to smithereens.

Ryan Seacrest was still speaking onscreen. "According to the pilot, we are still go for launch on the first operational test of NASA's new launch vehicle," he said. "As a reminder, this new vehicle is carried to 45,000 feet by either a 777 or an Airbus 330, and it launches from there. This is designed to cut costs per mission by millions of dollars."

That's when the screen started shaking. "Uh, I think we're experiencing a little turbulence," Seacrest said, his face starting to drain of color. Then, the aircraft started shaking violently, Seacrest's eyes went wide –

And the screen cut to the FOX logo, with a "Please stand by" caption.

"Holy shit," Morgan breathed. "Did you see that, Chuck?"

He turned to the stool that Chuck had been sitting on. "Chuck?"

But Chuck was outside, having locked himself in a phone booth. A moment later, the door of the booth burst open –

And a streak of blue and red flashed into the sky, rocketing itself toward the doomed aircraft.

"What was that?!" a lady in the bar asked, seeing the streak.

Morgan raced outside, watching the red and blue streak scream across downtown Los Angeles and high into the sky.

"It's a bird!" one man yelled.

"No, it's a plane!" another yelled back.

But Morgan knew the truth. "No, it's not!" he shouted. "It's Superman! Superman's back!"

And Superman was back indeed. Known to his friends and family as the mild-mannered Nerd Herder Chuck Bartowski, he had reverted to his public image as Superman for the first time in years.

There was a very good reason for that. Forty-five thousand feet above him, a plane was in trouble. And Sarah Walker was on that plane.

It took him less than a minute to reach the plane. It was in worse trouble than he had thought. The launch vehicle had failed to separate from the 777 properly, its main engines had fired, and the 777's modified stabilizer was beginning to collapse.

Chuck got underneath the launch vehicle, bracing his feet against the body of the 777. He pushed with all his strength, and very slowly, the couplings separated, allowing the launch vehicle to break free.

Continuing to push upward, he boosted the launch vehicle until it had reached the stratosphere. At that point, its own power was enough to launch it into orbit.

But all was not well. Chuck turned around to dive back toward the 777, and as he did so, he watched in horror as the 777's damaged tail structure finally disintegrated, sending the aircraft into an uncontrollable spin.

Pressing his arms flat against his body, he dove rapidly toward the doomed aircraft. With a heavy thud, he landed on its right wing. Grasping the leading edge of the wing, he pulled, attempting to muscle the plane out of its spin.

Unfortunately, between the speed at which the plane was spinning and the force of his strength pulling backward on the wing, the wing failed and snapped off, hurtling off into space, taking Chuck with it.

With the loss of the wing, what was left of the 777 began to roll in addition to its spin. Casting the broken wing aside, Chuck dove back toward the aircraft. Planting himself under the left wing root, he pushed upward, trying to stop the roll before going back to controlling the spin.

The roll slowed, but as it did so, the left wing too snapped off, leaving the fuselage of the 777 as basically an aluminum tube filled with human beings, hurtling toward the earth. "For God's sake," Chuck breathed, irritated. "This is getting ridiculous."

Gathering his strength, he breathed deeply and flew back toward the 777's fuselage. Matching its rate of roll, he lined up with the wing spar that ran under the plane – one of its strongest points. Bracing himself there, he pushed his body in the direction opposite the roll.

Slowly but surely, the fuselage stopped rolling, but it was still diving toward the earth at several hundred miles an hour. Chuck pushed upward, and pushed upward some more, but the aircraft was hurtling toward the ground at far too high a speed. As he pushed, he could feel the bottom of the fuselage begin to crumple against his back.

This was not good. Los Angeles was getting bigger and bigger in Chuck's eyes, and if he didn't stop this 777, it was going to be an utter disaster. He couldn't allow that. Not now, not after all that had happened while he had been away.

Using his hands to drag himself down the fuselage, he pulled himself to the nose of the aircraft. Getting in front of the fuselage, he put his hands on the nose, and began trying to fly upward.

The aircraft slowed more, but it was still heading toward Los Angeles like a cruise missile. Chuck looked over his shoulder – and realized that the airplane's ballistic trajectory had it headed directly toward Chavez Ravine. Dodger Stadium lay at the end of the airplane's path.

If the airplane hit Dodger Stadium, there was going to be a gigantic body count. Chavez Ravine would be devastated, and who would be blamed?

Superman.

Well, Chuck wasn't about to allow that. He pushed even harder against the nose of the airplane. The aluminum nose cone began to crumple slightly, but the aircraft continued to slow.

Chuck looked over his shoulder again. The Dodgers and the Giants were on the field, but they were beginning to scatter. People were starting to panic and try to flee the stadium. This had to stop, right now.

He gave the airplane one last almighty shove. The nose cone crumpled completely, but its momentum dropped to practically nothing. He grabbed the fuselage on either side of the cockpit, and very gently, let the 777 settle to the ground. The nose rested right above the pitcher's mound, with the body stretching almost completely across the outfield.

The people in the stands looked on in shock. Then one began to clap, then two, then ten, then a thousand, and before Chuck realized it, Superman was receiving a standing ovation.

Slightly embarrassed, Chuck waved and nodded to the crowd, before flying around to the side hatch of the aircraft. Grabbing it by the sides, he popped it off, and stepped inside the cabin.

Every passenger was strapped into their seat, catatonic. There were a few gasps of surprise when they realized who it was.

Ryan Seacrest looked up at him in amazement. "Holy crap," he whispered. "You're really back!"

Chuck smiled and nodded. He looked up at the people onboard the aircraft. "I hope this experience hasn't put any of you off of flying," he began, trying not to smile. "Statistically speaking, it's still by far the safest way to travel."

There were nervous giggles throughout the aircraft, but one didn't laugh. The one who was still staring at him in shock.

Chuck turned and made eye contact with her. Sarah Walker. Her eyes were wide, her mouth hanging open. Chuck wanted to say something, but suddenly, his mouth had gone completely dry and his mind blank.

So, he just nodded, said, "Ma'am," and leapt out the door. He streaked upwards, rocketing out into space, where everything faded to black –

To be continued…