He barely recognized the city after all these years.

Superman still knew how to get there, of course; he'd flown to Manhattan from every angle and latitude, and from it every direction of the compass. For years, even after he'd quit his career in heroics, it had been his compass north; the point at which his calibration was taken. As much as Superman belonged to America, New York City was the place he'd always considered his home.

But he hadn't laid his eyes upon it since the late 50s, when he and Lois had moved out to a house in Virginia in order to help with her breathing problems. The doctor had said the country air and warmer weather would help her, but he didn't have any idea of the damage. Clark had known; he'd watched the cancers grow in her lungs for years before they got married and he was able to convince her of the damage that the cigarettes were doing. After all, nobody had every heard of cancer in the 40s; if Clark Kent, average newspaperman, when he told her that her own body was turning against her as a result of her bad habit back then, he'd have been laughed out of the building.

He'd seen pictures, of course. Watched movies with the city in it, seen it on TV. He'd even considered coming back one a couple occasions, when it seemed like he might be most needed: the blackout, the riots, September Eleventh. Each time it had happened, he had shaken with rage in his seat as he watched on TV until he couldn't take any more, at which point he would turn it off, go over to some secluded place and cry. When Lois had still been with him, she'd been the one who understood, who comforted the man of steel with a heart of glass; but since she had passed away, there'd been no one left to comfort him. So he'd just withdrawn further and further into himself, and into the emptiest parts of the country.

But now, as he soared over the horizon and saw the city arising to the west, it took his breath away. It seemed so much taller, so much bigger than it had before. Of course, the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and Statue of Libertv were all were they had always been, but now they were surrounded by more – everything. It seemed like a forest, a living mass of trees that stretched higher and higher into the heavens. Be gone for a week, and you don't notice any change; come back after fifty years, and everything's so much taller than you remember it.

He was glad he'd taken the time to fly around the world before coming back here. He'd needed the time to think everything over. Though he'd known the gist of what he was going to do when he'd taken off from Nebraska, he'd spent the several hours slowly circling the world planning out what he was going to do when he got there. Clark Kent was long dead, supposedly claimed in a plane accident during a Caribbean getaway three years after his wife's death, but the old disguise would still work under a new name if he needed it. But he wasn't sure that he would; after all, the persona of meek, mild-mannered Clark had always been the one he'd assumed to live a normal life and get close to others; nowadays, someone like that would seem more out of place than – well, an alien. Maybe he could just spend all his time being Superman now.

He'd also need a place to stay. He didn't need to eat – the sun, the source of his amazing powers, effectively kept him fed; however, he could still eat when he wanted to, and he had always enjoyed a good apple pie or chocolate bar – but finding a place to stay might be a problem, what with no source of income. He supposed he could always sleep in the park, atop a building, or even off in the hills up north if he wanted a little peace and quiet, but even his invulnerable back had grown used to the feel of a comfortable bed.

No point in worrying about it, he told himself. Just like Ma and Pa always said, things'll work themselves out in the end if you just be yourself and do what's right.

The sun had long since set here; 3:30 in the morning, according to a clocktower his telescopic eyes discerned in Connecticut as he closed in on the city. He didn't feel tired, unsurprisingly; his muscles had, quite honestly, never been tired in his life, and the only time he'd ever felt mentally run-down was after three days of non-stop consciousness and activity. But usually, in the later hours of the morning, a sort of dullness crept into his mind, sticking around until the sun rose and burned it off. Not today. Today he felt only exhilaration.

Superman slowed down to half the speed of sound as he swept underneath the Verazzano-Narrows Bridge, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks grumbling across in the early morning. New York had always been the city that never slept to him, and the 21st century hadn't changed that in the slightest. Even at this hour, street sweepers cleaned the roads, garbagemen removed waste from street corners, delivery men dropped off the new day's supplies to merchants across the city. Subways still chattered across their tracks, buses still groaned their way down the avenues. He could hear all of it, if he opened up his ears.

So he did, and he remembered. And the Man of Steel closed his eyes and smiled.

He swooped triumphantly past the Statue of Liberty, soaring around her once to give her a once-over. He'd always loved flying out to see her when he'd been in the city; the first time he'd given an interview to a certain Ms. Lane, he'd brought her out to the torch to talk. Of course, that had been when anyone could still climb up to the flame; nowadays, people couldn't even get into the statue itself.

He flew northwards, passing over the Battery before moving up over Wall Street and the newer skyscrapers there. Off to his left stood the half-constructed Freedom Tower; only a few months into its building, and it was already as tall as the neighboring buildings. Superman weaved back and forth across the island as he went north, trying to peer into every neighborhood and listen in to see what had changed. So much was different; the Village, once a hellhole, had been gentrified to the point of almost becoming a caricature of itself. Chinatown was pretty much unchanged. Chelsea was gayer than ever. Hell's Kitchen, too, was being sweetened up; according to a signfront he discerned from half a mile up, the whole neighborhood was being renamed "Clinton." Superman shook his head. Nobody had any respect for traditions anymore.

Ahead of him lay the Empire State Building, once and again the tallest building in the city. He looped around it once, twice, three times; the beautiful lights on the outside had been shut down over three hours earlier, but it was still quite a sight. He alighted atop the radio beacon on the very peak of the skyscraper, as he had done so many times when he was younger, and stared out at the city before him. His city, once again. She deserved nothing better than a Superman. It was his to protect, his to serve – his to bring hope to. He intended to do nothing less.

A high-pitched shriek cut through the night air; his ears, having been attuned to the sound years earlier, quickly gave him a vector on the sound. North, and west; Central Park, not too far from the Museum of Natural History. He was off like a shot, his slipstream rocking the antenna behind him. Closing in on the sound at twenty miles a minute, he heard more as he closed in; the sounds of a scuffle, of a woman fighting back, of a man cursing, all Doppler-squeezed into frequencies high enough that human ears couldn't even hear it. Superman gazed towards the location of the sound, and pierced the heavy trees with his X-ray vision; he heard the sound of the woman falling backwards, and saw:

A young woman, no more than twenty-five, lying on her back having been thrown to the ground.

A man, late forties, scruffy looking, staring at her in desperation.

A backpack, its strap torn, lying in-between them.

But what he noticed most of all was the silver handgun in the man's hand, aimed at the woman. Superman didn't recognize the make, but he knew what it was. The click of the hammer locking back rang in his ears as the woman cowered in fear; the man's finger tightened –

-and Superman moved.

He landed between the two of them just as the bullet reached where he was standing; the full-metal jacketed round bounced off him like a spitball, flying off into the woods. The gunman found himself staring directly into the bright red "S" on his chest. Two sets of jaws dropped, neither of them Kryptonian.

The gunman, thinking maybe he'd missed somehow, fired again; from ten feet, he didn't think he could miss. But the man in blue-and-red didn't go down; he just stood with his hands on his hips as the would-be mugger fired round after round at him to no effect. He looked, of all things, bored with it all; the gunman could have sworn he saw the caped man suppress a yawn as he emptied his magazine at the bright symbol on the outfit's chest. The gun clicked dry, but the man, shocked, didn't even notice; he kept pulling the trigger, dry-firing the pistol again and again as if maybe that would do some good.

Superman reached out and grabbed the gun from the man's hands, and crumpled it in one fist before passing it back to the stammering criminal. He was just about to reach out and tap the man out for the police – when the gunman's eyes rolled up in their head of their own accord, and he slumped to the ground.

Superman loved that part of the job.

He turned around and offered a helpful hand to the young woman behind him; her only response was to stare at him in shocked suspicion. She made no move to get up, but merely scanned the stranger up and down, from his wind-tousled silver hair to his red leather boots.

"Are you all right, miss?"

The voice was deep, but strong and resonant, almost like a bassoon. She could only stammer out a weak response. "Ye-yeah, I'm…fine."

Slowly, she reached out and grasped her hand, and he pulled her up; it felt like she was slowly being pulled up by an industrial crane. "How…how did you…who are you?"

He just smiled. "Folks called me Superman, a long time ago."

She just stared at this man before, a man who had appeared from nowhere and saved her from certain death only to claim to be a man long since lost. "But…Superman's dead…" she stammered.

The stranger shook his head, and uttered two simple words. "I'm back."

He reached over and picked up her bag, brushing the dirt off it before handing it back to her. "Here you go, ma'am. You should try to stay out of the park at night; it's not safe for a young lady like yourself."

She barely heard him. "Uh…yeah, sure."

"You take care now."

Then, to the woman's astonishment, the stranger leapt up into the sky and hovered long enough to give her a wink before rocketing back off into the sky above.

Patrick O'Leary stumbled out of the bar at around four o'clock in the morning, enough booze in him to kill a horse. He'd been drinking for about eight hours at that point, after receiving a notice from his boss that his services as a salesman at the 80th street Best Buy would no longer be needed. The management was insisting that he cut back on employees, his boss had insisted, and Pat happened to be at the bottom of the list. Against his better judgement, Pat had proceeded to wander from into the nearest bar and wipe out both three and a half years of sobriety and a good portion of his checking account. He knew that his wife would be furious when she found out, but then and there, he really didn't care.

As he stumbled out of the bar into the street, he slumped against a lightpole for a few minutes, trying to get his bearings. The subway stop was seven blocks away, too far to walk in his condition. Better to call a cab, yes; have the driver take him home rather than risk spending hours wandering around. The street was relatively deserted, though; so, in order to be sure that he didn't miss any cabs that went by, he reasoned, he should be out in the middle of the street. He began drunkenly walking into the avenue – foolishly, without looking in either direction.

He looked up at the sound of screeching brakes to see a Chevy bearing down on him far too fast – even in his state of mind, he knew it would hit him – but he was frozen in place, a deer in the headlights – the car was almost on top of him –

-when the world turned upside-down around him as he felt himself scooped up and torn away from the pavement as if blown away by a gust of wind. The car fell below him as he rose upwards into the air, the wind blowing on his face and whooshing past his ears. He had to be dead, that was the only option that seemed logical. The car had hit him, he'd died, and his soul was heading up to heaven. And the man holding him up must be an angel.

But since when did angels wear red capes?

Superman could barely bring himself to face the man who he'd scooped out of the path of the speeding car. It wasn't so much the way he looked as the smell of him; his breath was painful for a normal human, let alone a man who can smell things better than a dog can. He turned his head away just a little, holding the man at arm's length. "Are you all right, sir?"

The drunk could only stare at him. He hadn't blinked in about a minute, and Superman was beginning to wonder if the man had gone into shock; it hadn't ever happened to him from scooping someone up so fast, but it had always been a fear of his. Luckily, the man's eyes fluttered back into recognition when Superman jostled him a little; the Man of Steel breathed a sigh of relief to himself. "Are you okay?" he repeated.

The man didn't answer the question, but rather slurred out an altogether unrelated statement. "You…yu're Sooperman! But…yu're just make-believe! My daddy, he said he saw yew once, long time ago, but I alwaze figured he wuz...jus' pullin' my leg!"

I seem to be getting a lot of that, a sarcastic voice in the back of Clark's head said.

Superman just smiled as he lowered himself and the man to the ground. "I was gone, sir, but I've come back. And I intend on sticking around this time. You should get home, sir; your wife is probably waiting for you."

"How'd you know I wuz married? Oh, wait – " Pat snapped his fingers – "You probably used yer x-ray eyes on my wallet, right? Yeah, that's a good picture of Suzie in there. You wanna see it again, Sooperman?"

Superman's eyes flicked back over to the man's wedding ring again before looking Patrick in the eyes. "That's all right, sir. I've got other places to be."

And he leapt up into the sky, heading eastwards. He stopped over the river for a few seconds, and listened in on the sounds of the city, until he heard what he was looking for: sirens, coming from…Brooklyn.

The apartment building's upper four floors were already engulfed when the first fire truck screeched to a stop outside the building. Lieutentant John Aganetti let out a word that the nuns who'd taught him at St. Mary's parochial would have berated his knuckles for saying as he saw the flames licking at the top of the building; a fire like this could easily burn hot enough to bring the roof down on the building, causing it to collapse. Aganetti had had friends who'd gone into the World Trade Center and never come out; he had no intention of sacrificing any of his men in the same fashion. So long as they could get everyone out, he'd do his best to fight it from the trucks, but no way was he sending any FDNY officers into that towering inferno.

Besides, he told himself as he glanced around the crowd outside the building, it looks like most of the people managed to get out. Dozens of people, most of them half-dressed or pajama-clad, were staring at their home as it burned in the early morning night. Most of them had that faraway look Aganetti had seen all too many times; the distant eyes, the half-opened mouth as everything they owned went up in smoke. The look of someone who couldn't believe what they were seeing.

He was just turning to one of his men to tell them to get the pump started when a shrill cry broke through the air, causing everyone to whirl in surprise. Aganetti tilted his head up instinctively towards the sound, only to have his heart fall in his chest. There, head sticking out the top floor window, was the face of a frightened boy, gesturing frantically and screaming at the top of the lungs from the only unengulfed room of the top floor. The boy's mother, suddenly realizing where her son was, screamed his name and leapt towards the building, only to be held back by her husband and a pair of firefighters.

Aganetti let out another choice expletive as he whirled on his second-in-command. "Get me an airpack! Now!"

Dutifully, the other man yanked an air tank off the truck and passed it over to his commander, who began strapping it on with expert skill. "Now, if I'm in there for more than twenty minutes, you send somebody in after me, okay?" Aganetti grinned nervously he buckled the chest straps over his Nomex jacket. "Ella's birthday is next week, and I want to be sure that her daddy's there to see it."

Suddenly, a voice came from behind them. "In that case, perhaps I should go in there."

Neither man recognized the voice – the deep baritone wasn't that of anybody on their team. They whirled in unison on the speaker – only to find themselves staring at his boots, six feet off the ground.

For the first time since that tragic September day years before, Aganetti found himself wearing that same expression of disbelief that he saw so often.

Superman gazed down at them from his hovering pose, cape billowing around him as the heat of the fire caused the air around them to move. No smile stretched across his lips; his mouth was set tight as he glanced back up at the building, eyes staring through it. "The building's too weak from the fire already; if you send anyone in, there's no way they'll make it to the top before it goes down." He glanced back at the two men. "It'll just take a couple – "

But he was cut off as a crash roared from the top floor, the side of the building beginning to cave in on itself. The little boy disappeared back into the building with a shout as he backpedaled from the window. For a moment, his shock over seeing the flying man was forgotten; Aganetti just pointed towards the window, about to shout an order to the flying man (though, he noted ironically, he really didn't have any right to), but he was already gone, smashing through a lower floor window faster than the eye could see.

Once inside, Superman took half a second to gaze up through the building with his X-ray vision to make sure he was in the right spot. No support beams in the way, nothing that would make the building go any faster if it got smashed around. Might ruin a few folks' floors, but nothing much that can be helped about that. He'd learned long ago that trying to enter a burning building through the wall on the floor where it was already on fire only exacerbated the collapse, and at the time, there weren't any windows on that floor that were more accessible. This was the best way.

He leapt upwards, flying through one floor after the next, arms extended in front of him to clear the way as he plowed through flooring, wood and metal. Seven, eight, nine stories went by in a fraction of a second until he smashed up through the final three floors, already ablaze, and into the room where the young boy was cowering on the floor, staying low and clear of the smoke. Smart kid, he thought. They never used to teach kids to do that.

Superman crouched down next to the boy, underneath the smoke, and gave him his warmest smile. "It's gonna be okay, son," he said kindly, and scooped up the boy in his arms. He made no note of protest; there's probably a good chance he thinks he's dreaming, Clark thought to himself as he wrapped his cape around the boy tucked under his left arm. Kids usually tend to let their imaginations run more wild than adults in these sorts of situations, and I'm enough to make anyone think they're hallucinatging.

Getting out of the building would be a little different than getting in. he didn't want to take the boy back through the hole in the floor; it wasn't big enough, anyway, for the two of them. And if he was going to have to expand it to get out…well, there were faster ways of doing that.

Superman hit the exterior wall of the building with his right shoulder at fifty miles an hour, more than enough to send the weakened bricks and mortar flying. He quickly moved well out of range of the heat before untucking the cape from around the child. "You're going to be fine," Superman said, again sending the boy a smile. This time, though, the kid did something unexpected. He smiled back. "Thanks," he squeaked out, his voice going into the higher pitches out of excitement at the flying man holding him. He'd been saved by Superman, the greatest hero ever!

Superman lowered himself to the ground in front of the boy's parents, handing the child off to his mother, who scooped him up and held him tight enough that Clark half-wondered if the child was going to burst. Her husband grasped Superman's hand and shook it firmly, still astonished at what he just had seen. "Thank you so much, pal. Without you…how can we ever repay you?"

Superman gladly returned the handshake. "No need to repay me, sir; just part of the job."

The other man seemed to catch onto the words, for it seemed that he only noticed the costume just then. He glanced up and down; the cape, the boots, the tights, they ere all there, just like in the drawings and on the action figures he'd had as a little kid. But it was too good to be true. "Are you...really…him?"

Superman nodded, and chuckled. "I'm getting a lot of that tonight."

The brief moment of humanity broke the tension, and the other man laughed, too. Behind the crowds and the barricades, Superman could hear the sounds of vans pulling up and reporters shouting to each other, their news crews ready to take image of the miraculous rescue they had only heard about. His legs tensed instinctively, ready to flee the scene before anyone could get a good picture of him as he always had. But then, thinking about it, he stopped. What was the point in running? He had no secret to protect anymore. Nobody close enough to strike at, nor anyone who would want to strike at them; his friends and enemies were, for the most part, a lifetime away. Why not let them get a clear look at him?

In fact, I'll do them one better.

He turned back to the fire and leapt into the air, soaring upwards and smashing back through the building on the middle of the burning floors. His foot hit the floor, and smashed a hole through it; the force caused a chain reaction, taking out a good-sized chunk of burned flooring and sending it crashing down. His fist did the same with the floor above him. He wrapped his cape around himself, and began spinning around in place. Faster and faster he twirled, thousands of revolutions per minute until he had created a cyclone around himself, sucking the oxygen and the heat in towards him and spinning it around fast enough that the flames couldn't get their grip on anything. Then, without slowing down, Superman smashed skywards, rocketing up into the air at a hundred feet a second and pulling the fire behind him in a corkscrew of burning embers and orange light. From the ground, the building looked like a volcano that had just erupted. The news crews, families and firefighters all cheered at the top of their lungs.

The fire out, Superman dove past the scene one last time, slow enough that everyone could take a good look at him thirty feet off the ground as he waved to the people below. A hundred cameras followed him from below, clicking away pictures and video frames that within minutes were all over the TV and the Internet. Superman was back in a big way. And just like the first time he came around, the world wopuld never quite be the same.