Disclaimer: Form the shoulders of giants like Siegal, Shuster, Donner, Gough, Millar, and Singer you can see into the Trust AU.
A/N – We've completed our pre-deployment training. Now we wait for the Army to decide fly us over. I will have some time on my hands for the next couple of weeks, so I might finish this story.
--X--
Hearing his son stir, Kal-El zipped across the Fortress, black trench coat flapping behind him, and hovered over him. He smiled over the lad saying the traditional Kryptonain blessing over him quietly. Jason White woke amid the grey and white crystal of the Fortress and looked around wide eyed. His lips opened, but his tongue found no words. When he looked up, into his father's face, Jason brightened. "Father," he reached out with both arms open to hug Kal-El.
Suddenly his face clouded with concern, Jason pushed back to arm's length and found some words, "Grandma Martha and Mr. Ben, are they okay? And Grandfather, Jor-El, where did he go? And where were you when the huge bizarre man-thing that looked you in a Dracula costume but wasn't tried to take me away to the Bad Bald Man. Why didn't you save us? Isn't that what you're meant to do? You're Superman! And why are you dressed like Neo from the Matrix?" A flood of emotion tumbled out of the young lad along with his words: first concern for his Grandma's well-being, next wonder at Jor-El, then the excitement of the narrow escape from Bat-zarro, followed anger at his father for not saving them, followed at last by wonder again at his father's peculiar choice of uniform. "Hmm?"
Kal-El hovered down and came to rest on the floor with a warm and open smile, a touch of uncertainty in his eyes. "You have many questions my son." Whoa. I sound like Jor-El. "You're already developing a newsman's nose for stories."
"What's a newsman?" Jason asked with the innocent wonder of a child in a safe place
Kal-El took a step side ways, moved a hand up toward his chest, palm facing out, pointed his index finger straight up in the air and answered, "That's what your uncle Perry calls reporters, like your mom and your daddy."
"Oh. So." Jason sat up and turned sideways dangling his feet off the white futon where he'd been resting. "What about some answers?"
"Grandma Martha and Mr. Ben are fine. Grandfather Jor-El will be here shortly. And under the long coat, is my black space travel uniform," Kal replied directly.
"Wwoooowww!" Jason leaped off the futon and hung in the air for just an instant longer than a human six year old would have. He spread his arms to the sky in excitement and exclaimed, "You were in space! Dija go to tha Moon?"
"No," Kal chuckled, "I was father away than that. I got here as soon as I knew I was needed. Even I can only be in one place at a time. That's why my friends, like your Aunt Chloe and family, like Grandfather Jor-El, cover for me when I have to go away."
Making an intuitive step, Jason asked, "And Mr. Steel, is he your friend, too?" He glimpsed momentary puzzlement in his father's eyes and added, "He's ten feet tall in his armored suit that looks like steel of course, and he wears a deep blue cape and he has an "S" on his chest, too; but it's not in a triangle thingy like yours."
Kal squatted down to his son's eye level and looked into his eyes. "I haven't actually met Mr. Steel yet," He took his son's hand. They walked toward the central chamber, "but I'm sure he must be a very nice gentleman, if he wears an 'S' on his chest."
--X--
Clang!!! Steel's Kinetic Hammer slammed into Green Lantern's force field an inch away from his shoulder and bounced back. Steel's amplified voice boomed, "Where were you the Day the Towers Fell?"
The Bizarro clone had burned itself out in upstate New York, in the 10th Mountain Division's training area. The wounded had been evacuated to hospitals and dead taken to the morgue. The Army had thanked the Bat, the Martian, the Space Cop and Steel and taken over the remainder of the cleanup. In the aftermath of battle, tempers flared.
The sound of a grunt came from deep within the armored steel exo-suit. Pistons under the arms extended and a turret at the waist swiveled as Steel wound up and took another mighty swing, aiming for the Emerald Squire's left knee. "Is Space Sector 2814 too big for you to pay attention to your home planet?" Steel shouted. GL stood his ground and moved his left hand in a downward arc toward his waist. The force field extended out from his forearm to parry the blow away.
Steel maneuvered his Hammer around for one final swing, this one streaking around from the opposite side toward the rookie hero's head. "Do you have any idea how--" Calmly, the Space Cop reached up, again with his left hand, moving the rest of his body very little, and grabbed the Hammer. GL's force field shimmered green around the Hammer. The Emerald Squire held the Hammer still, silently allowing the senior hero to finish his question. "—how hard it is to try and stop a fully loaded and fueled 757 jumbo jet from crashing into a building, with only a pair of magnetic levitation flight boots and this mechanical exo-suit?"
Green Lantern opened his hand so Steel could take back his Hammer. The Hammer's shaft telescoped out and Steel planted it on the ground. The red-caped hero sagged for just a moment, the fight apparently draining out of him, through the Hammer, into the ground. Then he straightened back up and pointed his face plate down at the Space Cop. He seemed to be glowering. "Well?"
"No, I don't know what it's like to try and single-handedly avert a tragedy." Green Lantern answered. "I've always worked as a part of a team." He waited until he thought he had Steel's attention (but how could you tell, with that face plate?). "And I was right here on 11 September 2001, in the U.S.A. I wasn't a member of the Green Lantern Interstellar Corps then. That morning I was on my laptop logged into the Edwards Air Force Base training mainframe, finalizing training plans for an Air Force Reserve weekend drill."
"You're in the military?" A deep voice resonated surprise from within the armored suit.
"What can I say? My other car is an F-15E Strike Eagle." GL powered down the force field to a faint shimmer just around himself. "In my other life, I'm an Air Force Reserve fighter pilot."
"He does not deserve this." The deep quite voice of the Martian Manhunter instantly commanded attention.
A gravelly voice drifted out of the shadows nearby where Batman had been watching. "It's really directed at the other guy with an 'S' on his chest." He perched in tree, looking more like a gargoyle from a Gotham skyscraper, than something at home in the woods.
The Martian continued, "Now that we have dealt with this 'Bizarro' clone of him, we should have the courage to take it up with him, personally."
Now the gravelly voice came from the ground, near a boulder behind Steel. "He should be back from his offworld mission with that asteroid by now. Where is he, Lantern?"
--X--
"Where are they?" Richard White asked rhetorically as he and Lois Lane surveyed the damage to the Kent farmhouse from outside the yellow crime scene tape. The lights in the farmhouse were on but nobody was home, unless you counted the Sheriff, three Deputies and a Crime Scene Analysis unit from the Kansas State Police.