A Man's Got to Know His Limitations
Chapter Two: There's a Saying in Kansas
By LastScorpion

There's an old saying in Kansas: "There's so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us." People say that the late Kansas Governor Edward Hoch wrote that in his newspaper, the Marion Record. My dad used to repeat it sometimes. It was more honored in the breach than the observance. I suppose if he'd found it easy advice to follow, he wouldn't have had to repeat it so much.

I have things I tell myself all the time, too. *You can't save everybody.* *All you can do is your best.* *It's not the end of the world.* Even now, I have to say them over and over, and they do about as much good as my dad's reminding himself to not judge people and gossip.

Before, it was worse.

Cities are loud; it's their nature. Millions of people crammed into a few square miles are going to make a certain amount of noise. Some of them are bound to be in trouble at any given time. There's always going to be someone crying, or screaming, or dying. It's hard to hear that and not try to help. It's really hard to do triage on their cries, to only help the ones that need help most and that are most likely to actually benefit from your actions. It's super hard (ha!) to do triage in your head all the time and hold down a steady job and save the world from big threats like scary alien invaders.

When I put it that way, I'm almost glad I finally failed.

The last one -- I hope it was the last, not just the latest -- was a year or so ago. I think it was a year. Sometimes time gets away from me a little. It was big, bigger than me, smaller than a city bus. It was of extraterrestrial origin, I'm almost sure. I think it knew stuff about me. It didn't tell me anything; it never said a word. I think it knew about me because of the way it fought, and because it had little chunks of kryptonite decoratively arranged on its costume. They were just the raw mineral, though prettily carved; if they'd been that refined stuff the Luthors came up with I would have failed even sooner and even worse than I did.

I used to keep CNN on all the time. It's a heck of a thing for a print reporter to admit, but I thought I could just add the world to the aural mix that way, and it would help me take care of the planet. It was the tail end of a long December night and I had just dragged myself home after helping to deal with a four-alarm fire in the worst part of Metropolis. I'd saved three people from the top floors of the building; the firemen had saved thirty-seven more from lower down; eight people had died. It was a bad night, and it wasn't over. I went in my apartment window and heard the TV saying that there were reports of a big flying monster rampaging through Tokyo. Hundreds of people were being reported dead, and thousands injured. I zipped right back out the window and headed for Japan. In retrospect I probably should have headed east and picked up some daylight on the way, but I didn't know what was going to happen, and I headed west.

When I first saw it, I was actually relieved. Stupid, huh? You hear "monster," "rampaging," and "Tokyo" -- you just naturally think Godzilla, don't you? This was a lot smaller. No buildings were actually down, although there were several fires. It seemed to be concentrating on killing and maiming people. It could shoot fire from this weird little nozzle thing on its forehead. As soon as I saw it, I got straight to work. I slammed into it, but it was strong and quick, and it had those dang rocks on it. A man has to do his best. I tried to use my head, and hit it with things: broken pieces of building mostly, and wrecked cars. That sort of worked, or it seemed to. The thing would fight me for just a little while and then fly away quick, always to the west. If I wasn't right on top of it, flying as fast as it did, then it would land somewhere there were people and kill them while it waited for me to catch up. When I tried to get ahead of it, it would stop or go north or south for a while, find some place where there were people, and kill them until I caught up with it. There was nothing I could do but tag right along with it.

The obvious thing was to get rid of that armor/clothes thing it was wearing that had the kryptonite embedded in it. The fire-shooting didn't bother me much personally; I'm not real flammable. I tried to burn its outfit off, but it was apparently fireproof. I tried to cut it off with the lasers, but it didn't work -- maybe the color was too close to the color of my eye-lasers. I even tried freezing it, but no joy. You can see why I thought this guy must know something about me. I kept trying to think, and I kept fighting, and the monster kept fighting and fleeing and killing people.

The thing was unbelievably fast. It didn't take more than a couple of hours to know that it was keeping to a definite timetable. I'd met it in Japan a little after sunset, and everywhere we went it was the early part of the night. The creature was making sure that as long as I stuck right with it, I wasn't going to get any sunlight. Whenever I didn't stick right with it, detouring to try to put out a fire or come up with a plan or a trap, it just settled down to killing people, right and left. I tried to steer it north, to less-inhabited areas, but it didn't work very well.

Europe is full of people, and there were historic structures for the thing to destroy there, too, so it dawdled a little. Kryptonite sucks. I really hate it. I kept fighting, and it kept fighting, and I wished that people would just have the sense to stay the heck away from a big fight like that, but they kept coming close enough to be killed. There was nothing I could do about it. Finally the monster took off over the Atlantic Ocean at a tremendous speed, and I had to try to catch him.

I had to leave behind the screaming, crying, dying people of Europe and Asia to try to catch the thing.

The first trip over the Atlantic Ocean was the last time I thought I might win that fight. There were no victims available for him but me. I got him in a headlock at one point and plunged us both into the sea. It turned out that I could hold my breath longer, but he could hold his longer than I could stay that close to the kryptonite. I spent the rest of our time over the ocean trying my best to rip his clothes -- sissy way to fight, huh? I did some damage, and I slowed him down enough that I could almost smell the sunrise, but I didn't stop him, and then we were at New York.

I don't want to think about New York. He killed a lot of people; I saved a few; it distracted me, and he gained enough distance on the sun that I started to know there was no way I was going to win. He settled for just setting towns on fire in passing until we got to L.A., and even there he didn't linger as much as he had in Spain. I think I'd spooked him a little in the Atlantic. Across the other ocean like a shot again, and I knew I had to stop him. I'd picked up a big piece of I-beam in New York, and I used it like a bat. It must have worked pretty well, because he charged me and grappled long enough for me to get really sick and drop it, although I know I did him (and his dang jammies!) some noticeable damage before he broke away and fled. The kryptonite and the lack of sun were telling on me, but he was slowing down, too.

He skipped Hawaii, for which I am grateful. We came ashore in New Guinea. He slaughtered only a few people and then ran. We flew across Indonesia and Thailand. He was keeping well ahead of me, which meant that the kryptonite wasn't poisoning me the whole time, but it also meant that he was gaining on the sun again. In India he stopped to engage in carnage for a while, and I caught him up and we fought.

Thinking about it now, the worst thing of all was when people were hurt or killed while we were fighting, because we were fighting. He'd deliberately throw me into these ramshackle buildings, and they'd go down and people would scream and hurt and die. I couldn't stop to help, because he'd be killing somebody else in the time it took me to get back to him. I'd try to hold him down, but the rocks weakened me. I'd work on the little rip I'd gotten started in his clothes, but then the rocks would make me sick, and he'd throw me into a building. I'd rush back into combat as quickly as I could manage, and we'd repeat. As soon as he'd decide we'd been in one place too long, he'd take off to the west, and I'd follow as fast as I could. We crossed India like that, and the Middle East, and Africa. The Atlantic Ocean was next again, and it was my last chance -- not to win, too many people had died already for that, but just to stop him.

I finally ripped his stupid jacket off during that pass, but unfortunately he dived for it and got it back. He wadded it up in his fist and used it for a weapon for the rest of the fight. Considering that Pete Ross once knocked me unconscious with one poor-quality chunk of green meteor rock in his bare fist, ripping the dang outfit didn't really profit me much. However, it did slow down and hinder his killing-the-bystanders abilities, so call it an upside. Another small mercy became apparent when we hauled up in Florida. The National Guard was out in force, and that kept the onlookers down to a minimum. Jeeze, I was tired, and hungry, and cold. He didn't seem a whole lot better. It seemed like we'd been fighting forever.

I steered the fight as best as I could. I wanted the Great Plains rather than anything further south -- the fewer people around, the better. He sort of let me drive as long as we kept heading west. Thrashed and rolled and bit all through the cold frozen Midwest, through mud and snow, and inevitably we ended up in Kansas. I sure wish I could have stopped it before we hit Metropolis.

He was convinced he had me beat, and I pretty much agreed. He had the kryptonite to hit me with, and I had nothing. He had buildings full of people I cared about to slam me into, and I had nothing. He had the will to murder as many people as it took, and I had nothing. He had me on the ropes, and I knew I was going to die.

I knew I had to take him with me.

He was a little slowed down from before. I'd done him some damage, so I knew he wasn't completely invulnerable. He'd made me decide he was a monster, not a person, so it was like killing Godzilla and not executing a criminal; that made it a little easier, too. I grabbed a burning car and threw it, then charged when he dodged. I got my arms around his neck and set to work to pull his doggone head off. He beat me with his kryptonite-studded coat. I felt him break my ribs, and I felt the kryptonite killing me. I didn't let go. His blows became weaker. I squeezed and pulled with all my remaining strength.

We were on the steps in front of the Metropolis Public Library when his head came off, and his body went up in intense blue flames. Even the cloth that I hadn't been able to burn before was consumed, and nothing was left of my opponent except for the hot kryptonite rocks that fell onto my back and burned through the remains of my suit, settling into my flesh. The library caught fire, too. I remember thinking, "I should probably put that out."

I fell face-down on the dirty pavement. People were rushing around and yelling. The National Guard was probably trying to keep order, or put the fire out, or something. There were people screaming and crying all over Metropolis. I could hear people further back along our trail of destruction, too. I could remember people screaming and crying and dying all around me, all over, for the last -- two days? Was that all it was? It seemed like years. The kryptonite on me hurt, but I couldn't seem to even roll over to try to get rid of it. I was so tired, and so cold. I remember trying to say, "Help me."

I heard Lois coming. I'd know the sound of her footsteps anywhere. "Lois will help," I thought.

She was screaming. She was crying.

I don't remember anything else for a long time.