Chapter I: The Robbery

Somewhere halfway through Missouri, the passenger train bulleted through the track towards the border of the state to Kansas. It had been going for at least two hours now without stopping, and it was highly possible to stop in the next state because that was the train's destination.

Among the multiple passenger cars of the train, only one served as the car for two award-winning news writers. Both worked on the same team for the same paper. They were thought of as the Dynamic Duo of news writing. Some had even called them the Batman and Robin of news. However, these two writers were very different from each other as one was a normally agitated woman who should never be disappointed by anyone, while the other was more or less anything but Batman.

"When I get my hands on chief…" Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane mumbled as she fiddled with the luncheon meat set before her on the table as lunch. Across her sat Clark Kent, the mild-mannered reporter always considered second to the Pulitzer prize-winning lady. He had a worried look on his face as he tapped on his meat with his fork. Again and again, he looked back at Lois's fingers as she kept running her hands through the meat.

"Uh, Lois," Clark said in his gentle but worried voice, "I don't think it's a good idea to be playing with your food. It's bad manners. And I'm sure the chief gave us this assignment for a good reason."

Lois let go of her luncheon meat and sighed in disappointment. She almost sounded like a little girl disappointed with a broken doll. "I'm sorry, Clark," she answered. "It's not that I'm disappointed with the chief. And I'm not playing with my food. It's just that-" She took a moment to grab her plastic table knife and suddenly stab her lunch. Clark jolted back in his seat, his eyes suddenly wide. The knife had snapped upon making its rough contact with the meat. "-this darn luncheon meat is impossible to cut through!" She pointed with her left pointer at the meat in a manner that made her seem almost Italian because her hands were moving along with her finger.

Clark raised his hand to the attendant in their passenger car, which immediately caught her attention. The attendant gracefully strode towards their seating area and asked in a kind and pleasant voice, "Yes? How may I help you?"

"You could start by telling us why the meat is impossible to cut through…" Lois said rudely. Clark shifted his disappointed but angry eyes towards her, and that stare alone made Lois sigh again and cross her arms.

Clark turned his eyes back to the attendant. "Could we have another knife please? My co-worker seems to have broken hers."

The attendant smiled reassuringly. "I'll be back with one in awhile, sir." And in an instant, she walked away from their seating area with that same graceful stride.

As soon as she left them, Clark leaned in to Lois, who was staring out the window at that time. "Lois, I don't like the way you're acting now," Clark's voice seemed angry now, although that same nervousness that was present on the day he met Lois was still present. "Be glad with what's in front of you, even if it is-" Now Clark paused as he laid his fingers on Lois's luncheon meat, carefully tearing it apart into bite-size pieces. "-not as hard to eat as you think it is."

Lois looked back at her luncheon meat and sliding out of the seating area, she told Clark, "I'm going to check on Jimmy in the other car."

Lois walked to the end of the passenger car in a walk that was very much the opposite of the train attendant's. Her back was slouched and her footsteps were loud enough to trace her position in the dark. She walked through the door of their car and dragged her feet into the next.

Clark sighed.

Jimmy Olsen was not at all glad that he chose to be the one sitting alone in the car next to Ms. Lane's. He was not at all glad that despite what he had learned from his experiences with Mr. Kent's, the nozzle of an M4 carbine was pointed towards him and at every other member of the car.

Since his car was the last passenger car among those in the train and the next was the cargo car, he assumed that there was always something valuable that was to be hidden in that car, and that the last passenger car would always be the first to be threatened with death in case of a robbery.

There were about eight of these masked felons and all of them were carrying the same rife, an M4 carbine. From time to time, they would point their guns at one of the passengers with the threat of peril from a few hushed shouts.

In the middle of the car, two of the men were working on boring a hole in the middle of the car's floor. Jimmy assumed that this was part of their escape plan, but then again, it could've been for another reason.

Mr. Kent always said assume nothing.

"Don't you think of pulling off any wise cracks, eh kid?" one of the masked robbers near Jimmy asked. "I'm sure you don't want us to be pulling some lead all over your face and spilling it all over your nice suit."

The robber was right. Jimmy didn't want his suit to get messed up, more or less have his brains spilled all over it. His mother had made him the suit, and he had sworn only to wear it on special occasions, this ride to Kansas being one, since he was going to visit Mr. Kent's hometown of Smallville.

"Superman will get here," Jimmy told the robber. He sounded almost like a seven-year old kid, who was caught in the same situation with a burning belief in the world's greatest hero.

The robber laughed mockingly at Jimmy and made him squirm with both anger and disappointment. "Superman won't make it. He's probably off saving some cat from a tree." Again, the robber laughed with a loud mocking voice until another robber had shushed him with the words, "Hey! Pipe it down there! You don't want Superman to hear you."

The robber who threatened Jimmy looked back at the young intern, who was now smiling with a suave sense of glee and victory. "Superman will be here," Jimmy repeated.

All of the sudden, the door connecting the other passenger car to this one opened and in stepped a woman dressed in a middle-class metropolitan dress with dark brown angel hair and eyes of captivating beauty. Her face was caught in entire irritation though.

"Ms. Lane…" Jimmy trailed off at the woman's entrance, and suddenly, the door behind Lois was shut close by one of the robbers, who then grabbed Lois from behind and covered her mouth as she attempted to scream loud enough for someone in the next car to hear. However, her scream was muffled by the robber's gray yarn-sewn glove.

The robber who told the other robber to quiet down, who Jimmy believed was their leader, aimed his rifle at Lois. "Hey! Shut up! Shut up now!"

Lois didn't stop screaming despite the fact that all of her cries were muffled behind the robber's glove. This promoted the leader to step closer to her and press his rifle towards her chest.

"Now you shut up, or I will deliver a bullet into your little heart of yours," the leader threatened sinisterly.

At that offer, Lois stopped shouting, but began to let her eyes fill with tears. Her face was no longer that of irritated beauty. It was now a face filled with great fear. She began crying as soon as the robber who had taken hold of her began moving her towards Jimmy's seating area.

The robber pushed her into the seat and she stumbled in with tears still flowing down her eyes.

Jimmy leaned forward to check if Ms. Lane was alright, but when he looked, he was surprised to see that Lois was no longer crying. It was as if nothing had happened. Instead of that fearful face, Lois now carried a straight face that obviously told Jimmy one thing: "Trouble as usual."

"And that goes for all of you!" the leader cried to the other passengers.

"If I hear any of you make so much as a sigh, I will ensure that you do not leave this car alive!" a small voice entered Clark's ear from the car despite the roaring sound of the train engine far ahead and the continuous movement of the wheels on the railroad track.

Clark looked at the door of the next car, where Lois just passed through and focused on it deeply. He looked at it harder and harder and harder until he could suddenly see through the door of the passenger car and then through the door of the next.

Alas, here was the scene unfolded before him now. Eight masked men, all carrying carbine rifles. They had hostages and obviously some loot taken from the cargo car. No one could hear the shouts of the robbers from the other car except Clark probably because like his vision, Clark had a sensitive hearing ability.

Standing from his seat, Clark approached the car attendant, who upon sighting him said, "Sir, your knife will be with you in a minute."

"Never mind the knife, miss," Clark answered politely. "I need to use your bathroom. Would you mind showing me where it is?"

Shaking her head, the attendant answered in a similar polite tone, "Not at all, sir." She motioned her hand towards her left side where a door sat with the word "Male" painted on it in white bold letters.

"Thank you, miss," Clark said as he opened the lavatory door and locked it shut.

The lavatory was very much cramped, but it gave him enough space to rip open his suit to reveal a large red and yellow "S" encased in a diamond over a blue backdrop.

"Hey boss, we got more loot from the hold!" a ninth robber said as he entered the car with a bag slung over his shoulder. "We must have about more than half a million by now!"

"Hey, pipe down," the leader said. "We'll count it when we get off."

The two men who were attempting to bore a hole in the floor of the passenger car were halfway done as they had already cut the outline of a circle in the floor using a laser. They were about to punch the circle down to make a hole.

"So what are you stealing anyway?" Lois suddenly spoke up in the midst of the silent terror and cries among the other passengers. She certainly had the guts to stand up against the threat of a robber.

"Lady, I already warned you," the robber told Lois. "Keep quiet."

"Yeah, I know, I know. But I want to know what you're stealing," Lois again defied the robbers.

"That's it," the robber locked his M4 and aimed it at Lois. He placed his finger on the trigger and was about to pull it until a crash came down through the roof of the passenger car. The robber immediately pulled the trigger at the sound of the crash and fired away at Lois.

It was ironic though for a man such as this to be closing his eyes upon firing an M4 carbine. But despite his closed eyes, the leader could hear the sound of his bullets shooting out of the barrel. The thing that struck him though was that after firing the bullets, a clanging sound followed after, like the bullets were just diving into steel.

His teeth clenched, the robber slowly opened his eyes and looked at his fellow robbers, all their mouths agape. The robber must have given a bloody sight to behold to everyone. Perhaps he was that good with a rifle.

But the passengers' jaws also dropped. They weren't crying in fear or anything. Every single soul in the passenger's car was dead silent.

The leader looked at his supposed target and dropped both his jaw and rifle at the sight beheld to him: there was a large hole in the roof and it seemed that all his shots had bounced off the chest of a large muscular man with jet black hair and suave looks to match his strength. He wore unusual attire—a red cape and blue tights of some sort to be accompanied by a giant "S" encased in a diamond over his chest clothed by a blue leotard.

"Superman…" Jimmy, Lois, and the leader of the robbers all recognized at once.