Last Son of Krypton

Strange Visitors, Part 2

Disclaimer: all character are property of their respective owners.

Spoilers: general spoilers for Superman and the MCU.

Author Note: as with Batman, my version of the Superman mythos draw from several sources.

A.N. 2: revised by JediKnight.


Triskelion. Delivery entry. Midnight, Eastern time.

Three vans entered through the door, each one a different model, color and different markings. A group of men were waiting for men clad in tactical gear, with identifications of SHIELD Internal Security division, except two, an older man in his later 60s and a middle aged man in his mid-40s, who were wearing business suits.

The vans opened, disgorging men clad in green tactical gear, not too dissimilar from the one that SHIELD security was wearing. One of the men, a clean-shaved man in his 30s, with a slim, though clearly well-built, physique, approached them. Nobody noticed one of the men, his only distinguishing feature a red bandanna around his neck, moving minutely to one side to have a good view of the trio.

"Director Faraday, it's good to meet you at last. James talks very well of you." the man said, offering his hand to the older man.

"You must be Mister... Deacon, isn't it?" Faraday said, shaking his hand, "Formerly of..."

"Yes, them." Deacon said, and the added, "Frankly, I was relieved when you people disbanded the whole operation. My boss had started to go completely bonkers. Most of the people in my section had disappeared in 'mysterious' circumstances." He then turned back to look at his troops, that had finished to get out from the vans, "But enough of the past. I assume that everything is in order right now."

"Yes, I have issued a full lock-down and we'll start questioning people from the top down." Faraday said.

Kent Farm. Next morning

'Here we go again.' Nick thought as, for the third time, the SHIELD automated call center put him on hold, and disconnected the call. 'I'll try again later.'

Since Faraday had authorized the upgrade of the Triskelion Communication Network, there were, ironically, a lot of problems with communications. It usually got resolved in a few hours, but it was bothersome, especially for those, who, like him, only wanted to check that there wasn't any emergency.

He did his morning exercises, but decided to forgo running. Jonathan and Martha had offered to drive him to Topeka, instead of having to wait for the next bus, and they were going early. He packed his things and went out. Before getting out of the farm, though, John went to talk with him while Jonathan and Martha readied the pick-up.

"About what we talked yesterday, what do you plan to do?" John said.

"Check where is Stark's piece, and put my father's in a place where it won't be stolen or lost." Fury said, thinking already of a couple places, "I hope that your piece is in a safe place."

"Yeah, it is. " He said, offering his hand "It was good to talk with you. I hope that you'll visit again, sometime."

"So do I, it's a quiet place. And my work is sometimes a bit too much." Fury answered, shaking the old man's hand. "Goodbye."

He walked to the pick up and sat in the seat by the right door, while Martha, an attractive thirty-something redhead, rode in the center seat, beside Jonathan.

Earth's orbit

Jor-El's prototype ship arrived on Earth's orbit, using its stealth systems to hide itself from Earth's detection equipment. It briefly reoriented itself to line up with the landing point chosen by Jor-El, the cornfields of Kansas, not too far from a little town called Smallville.

Unfortunately the gravitic engines from both Jor-El's ship and its relentless pursuer had kept dragging behind them pieces of Krypton debris. And the only people on Earth who could have discovered them on time were blind and deaf due to an internal crisis. By the point other agencies will have detected them was too late, the Smallville Meteor Storm was already underway.

A dirt road near Smallville

"Actually, I work for an agency that deals with international cooperation in law enforcement." Fury said, using one of the usual cover stories, that had the advantage of being somewhat true. And then added with a smile seeing Martha's expression, "Believe me, it sound a lot more interesting than what it really is."

"How so? I imagine you travel a lot." Martha asked, curious.

"Less than you may think, and even then, I spend most of the time in small offices talking about..." Fury started to say when he noticed something up, in the sky "What the...?"

Jonathan and Martha looked up and saw what had prompted Fury's exclamation, several fireballs were crossing the sky toward Smallville. Then, suddenly, they sensed more than they heard or saw an explosion to their right, as one of the fireballs impacted on a nearby field, and the shockwave threw them into the field, rolling over a couple times before settling on a ditch, leaning on its left side.

Fury was the first to regain consciousness and looked around. Both Martha and Jonathan seemed to be unharmed, other than a few cuts and bruises, and by their moaning they seemed to be about to awaken. He looked around and saw the damage, fires on the fields where the fireballs had impacted, leaving small craters and the smoke that was rising from Smallville.

"Fuck." He said to himself when he saw the consequences of... well, whatever was what had happened, although he had his suspicions..

To his side, Martha opened her eyes, looking stunned at first, but she recovered her wits soon enough.

"What the...?" Martha said, before turning to her right, and seeing that Jonathan was also coming out from unconsciousness. "Jonathan?"

"I'm here, honey." Jonathan answered, before groaning, and gingerly touching his side "God, I think that I have a broken rib. What the hell have just happened?"

"I think..." Nick started to say, stopping himself for a moment before pursing his lips and continuing to speak, "I think that it was a meteor storm." Nick said, as he tried to open the right door.

"A meteor storm? In Smallville?" asked Martha "How is that...?"

"I would like to... hnnng." Nick said, finally managing to open the door with a strong push. "...know it myself." He paused for a moment "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believed it possible."

Nick got out carefully, and then stepped down to the ground, taking care to not upset the balance of the pick-up much. He helped Martha and Jonathan to get out from the vehicle, and then the three of them pushed to set it over its four wheels. As they were going to see if the pick-up started, Martha turned her head toward the left, where one of the meteorites had fallen, leaving a streak of burned grass and a small crater.

"Did you hear that?" Martha said.

"What?" Jonathan said, straining to hear whatever it was.

"It sounded like the wail of a child." Martha said, looking in the direction of the crater.

"I'm not hea..." Jonathan started to say and then stopped himself, as the he could hear it now. "I'm now hearing it."

"So do I." Nick said, looking at the same crater Martha had been looking at, "It seems to come from that crater."

Without saying a word, Martha ran toward it, soon followed by Jonathan and Fury. In the center of the crater there was something half-buried, with a small hatch open, from which the wails came. Martha jumped inside the crater and looked inside the hatch.

"There is a child here!" she said and proceed to try to get the child out.

"Martha, I wouldn't do that; too late." Nick said as Martha retrieved a bundle of clothes from... whatever it was that. 'Probably some kind of spaceship.'

Martha opened the bundle to reveal a perfectly normal baby boy with a tuft of black hair and blue eyes.

"Isn't he gorgeous, Jonathan?" Martha said looking at the child, who had stopped wailing and was looking at them with a look of intense curiosity.

Nick winced for a moment, thinking of the talk yesterday night. One of the things that he had learned was that the fact that they couldn't have children had been an ongoing cause of grief for the couple. And now, they had a child literally falling from the sky before them. A child of unknown origin that had come in a spaceship. If the kid wasn't some kind of alien, he was going to eat his hat. But... he had only to look at the faces of the Kents to realize that it would be easier to convince them to sell their land than to separate them from the child by now.

"Jonathan, why don't you bring the pick-up here to put this on the bed." Nick said.

"Good idea, and we have some tarps that will cover it." Jonathan said and ran back to the pick-up.

Not too far from there

Buried in the ground the drone ship assessed the damage. Just as it was maneuvering to shoot the ship it had been tasked to destroy, one of the debris fragments had impacted it, causing it to being unable to change its course and fall with the rest of Krypton's planetary debris.

The evaluation was short and showed the ship couldn't take off again, and all long range weaponry seemed to be disabled. So it decided to shed part of it mass, including where a fragment of the debris was still embedded, in order to initiate its reconfiguration into the drone's ground mode. Afterwards it would unearth itself and continue the mission.

Back to the Kents

"I wouldn't start to picking names for the baby just yet. How do we know that his family it's not looking for him?" 'Or that it isn't some kind of infiltrator for an invasion.' Nick said after they had put the ship on the pick-up.

"Look at where he came, I don't think that he is from... around here." Martha said.

"And if your next words are something related to alien invasion, be serious." Jonathan said, "Why would they send a defenseless baby?."

Nick didn't answer, because he didn't have a good answer, only the paranoia that he had acquired on many missions. A paranoia that had almost destroyed his relationship with Val, and put a heavy strain in his relationship with his brother. He decided to let the matter lie by now.

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud rumble to the east, where another of the meteorites had fallen. He looked there and saw the earth starting to move.

"Get in the car! NOW!" he cried. He didn't know what the hell that was, but he had seen enough crap to know that it was nothing good, and putting miles between them and whatever was unearthing itself was a pretty good measure.

He already had his cellphone out as he got into the pick-up and by the time that Jonathan had managed to start it, he was already calling SHIELD. But he found that whatever problems were plaguing the S.H.I.E.L.D. comms this morning, they were still there. He then looked at the rear-view mirror and saw what had been hidden there, a crystalline... thing on six short, squat legs that was already starting to pick speed behind them.

'Fuck it.' He thought and keyed another number.

"Who are you calling?" Martha asked.

"Somebody who I know." Fury said. The phone rang, once, twice, thrice...

"Carter residence, who I am speaking to?" a old female voice said.

"Director Carter. I'm Nick Fury, from SHIELD." Fury said.

"Ah, yes, I remember you. A promising young agent." Carter said, and then continued after a pause, "Why are you calling, it must be quite early in the States right now?."

"There has been a meteor storm on Smallville, Kansas, and something came out from one of the impact craters. It looks like a six-legged walking tank, made of some kind of crystal. I have tried to contact S.H.I.E.L.D., but the communications have been off since this morning, and you were the only person with some kind of pull that I wouldn't have to go through three secretaries before I could talk to them directly."

"Smallville, Kansas, you said?" Carter asked, and in the background he could hear her rummaging in her handbag, "Now, repeat what it happened slowly while I take notes, my memory is not what it was."

Fury explained what had happened, omitting the pod and the kid now safely nestled on Martha's arm, but giving a more thorough description of the hexapodal crystalline thing that was chasing them, as well as talking about the communication problems that had plagued SHIELD for the last weeks.

"That's odd, and very uncharacteristic of Faraday." Carter said, "He was a bit of a broken record on the importance of communications in the modern world." Carter sighed and then added, "I'll make some calls, to see what the hell is happening with S.H.I.E.L.D. and what can be scrapped to help you."

"Thank you. Any help will be well received." Fury said, "I'm going to try to drive it far from town."

"That's very dangerous!" Carter said through the phone.

"Less than let it go into the center of a town of 10,000 people. We'll talk later, Director." He said as he cut the call.

"Are you mad?" Jonathan said.

"No, I'm not. Think about it, what are the odds that the kid and that thing are not related in some way?." Fury said, and then signaled toward the thing "And it's coming for us, anyway. So, pedal to the metal, we're going to need all the speed this old thing can achieve."

TO BE CONTINUED...