This series is somewhat inspired by Superman Returns, somewhat inspired by current events. I still don't own anything that belongs to DC Comics or Bad Had Harry Productions. Trish will appear courtesy of Speakfire, before the end of this whole thing. ---------

The situation seemed to be leading up to something, but Richard White wasn't sure to what, and Clark wasn't giving any hints. At least he wasn't giving any hints that Richard knew how to read.

As the two rode up the elevator to the roof, Clark thought to himself that this was the first time he had ever actually ridden the elevator all the way up. Usually, he got in the elevator alone and climbed through the service hatch to change from a three-piece suit into his caped uniform. But today he had left a blazer at his desk, and he wore no fedora hat, no vest, no tie. He felt liberated.

Clark glanced over at Richard. The reporter resisted the impulse to use Kryptonian senses and listen to the editor's heart rate, or examine his forearms with microvision, looking for perspiration. Choosing, instead, to limit himself to the senses of an earthman, he felt strangely liberated. He saw that Richard's tie was loosened, and that the other man looked slightly rumpled and casual. After all he had rolled up his sleeves digging into work for hours: assigning new stories and following up with reporters on their continuing work. He struck a casual pose leaning back against the hand rail, sipping his coffee. Richard's breathing was slow and calm, but his eyes held tension as though he felt slightly out of his depth.

Instead of the man who might be a romantic rival, Clark saw someone whom he was choosing to take into his confidence. Instead of a superior at the newspaper, he saw a man whom he was choosing to make his friend. "Did you see the Meteors play the Yankees?"

"No. Last night, Jason and I watched the Giants play the Dragons."

"Huh? The Giants played the Tigers last night. What are you talking about?"

"No, Clark, the Tigers played the Bay Stars."

Clark sipped his coffee and racked his brain. Nothing came. He relaxed closed his eyes and let his mind drift. Giants, Dragons, Tigers, Bay Stars… "You're talking about Japanese professional baseball, aren't you?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"I…" Clark thought faster, glancing up and away, then replied "read an article about Japanese baseball in the in-flight magazine on Continental Airlines a few months ago.

"So," he turned back to face Richard, "why do you follow Japanese baseball?"

"My dad was stationed in Japan when I started watching baseball with him. I was about Jason's age, and it was his last regular assignment, before he helped to form Task Force One-Sixty and switched to covert ops. I've tried to follow it ever since. Where ever I lived, Germany, England, Air Force Bases all over the world, I always found a way to follow the Japanese teams. That was one of the few constants in my life growing up.

"What about you Clark, what sports teams do you follow?"

"The Kansas City Chiefs, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Bulls."

"Who were your heroes growing up, Kent?"

"Neil Armstrong, Albert Einstein, the Hebrew Prophet Elijah."

"You mean the one who called down fire from heaven on the sacrifices?"

"Yeah. That one."

"Are you testing me, Kent?"

"No, no. I went to Sunday School as a young kid. I looked up to those Scripture heroes."

Ding.

"This looks like our floor."

"So, it does."

Reporter and editor stepped out of the elevator and walked up the last couple of steps from the elevator house onto the roof. Richard turned toward Clark, "So, what gives? A lead box, a lump of coal, and a baseball..."

"We'll get to them, Richard. But not in that order."

"It's a little windy up here for throwing baseball. What's going on here?"

"I played football in high school: Quarterback and wider receiver. I knew you liked baseball, so I thought maybe we could swap some sports stories, talk about our fathers, our family businesses, you know, get to know each other."

"Okay, maybe I'll buy that, but what are you selling, Clark? What have fence posts, organic eggs and corn got to do with the military or newspapering?"

This wasn't going as Clark had planned. Maybe he should just invent some excuse to go back down and finish writing that article on the blackout.

"I'm just giving you a hard time, Kent. You and my wi--, my fianc-- …you and Lois shared enough bylines while I was working as a war correspondent and running the European Bureau of the Planet. Well, I know there's some history there. And then there the fact that she won't talk about you and my uncle only grunts when I ask. The only one around here who'll talk about you is Jimmy, that is, when he's not talking about Chloe." Richard paused and looked wistfully up at the clouds. He was beginning to let down his guard.

"So, what about you, Kent?"

"I introduced them."

"Who?"

"Chloe and Jimmy. I came up here with her for the first week of summer internships before our senior year at Smallville High."

"You don't say… you and Chloe Sullivan the original intrepid girl reporter…and sports?"

"Yeah, as I said, I played high school football. We won the state championship my senior year. I threw the winning touchdown on a Hail Mary pass that would have made Roger Staubach proud."

"I never won any batting titles, but I was quite the shortstop. I helped get more than my share of double and triple plays. And the friends I had back then."

"Me, too. Pete Ross, Lana, Chloe, even Lex."

"You knew Lex Luthor in high school?"

"Yeah, we were friends before everything changed. Before he changed…"

"What about you and Lois?"

"We were friends, colleagues, we covered stories together and then there was that mess with General Zod."

"Yeah, right before astronomers sited Krypton and Superman disappeared."

"I always wondered if Superman's disappearance had more to do with General Zod than it did with anything astronomers saw through the Hubble Space Telescope."

"Didn't my wi-, my, my … Lois get that scoop? It was just Krypton?"

"That's what the article said, but I still wonder. So, what about that lost patrol? This isn't any off-kilter, Manchurian Candidate style event, is it?"

"No. I was hitching are ride, before my R&R, riding jump seat in an Army Blackhawk doing convoy duty. The convoy got ambushed, my helicopter got shot down. We were pinned down by hostile fire. I took an M-60 machine gun from an Army troop with shrapnel in his leg and held off the enemy while the wounded troop called in a two ship CAS sortie from my fighter squadron. I killed two men that day one at sixty yards the other at 150. I told myself they were just terrorists, sub-humans. But…taking a life changes a man. Soon after that day, I decided to finish my combat tour and leave the Air Force which was my father's family business, for the other family business: Uncle Perry's."

"So that it's it, your uncle just hired you?"

"I got my commission through ROTC, while studying journalism at the University of Missouri. I finished top of my class in both fields. That's how I got selected for a flight billet. That's how got hired at the Planet. "

"Do tell…"

"Uncle Perry sent me right back over there as an embedded reporter with the ground combat forces. I got to know the young GIs and Marines. That assignment, covering those troops, helped me to understand myself, to come to grips with the lives I took that day on my lost patrol."

Clark rolled up his sleeves. "So, hand me that coal there, Richard."

"Okay…" Clearly he has nothing up his sleeves, Richard said to himself.

Clark took the coal lump in both hands and compressed it. An ear splitting crack emerged from his hands. He opened them and showed Richard a diamond.

"Great Scott, Clark. How?"

"No excuses, Richard. I'm Superman."

"So, why all of this?"

"First because of General Zod - -"

"No I mean the glasses, the suits and ties, the fedora hat?"

"I need a life, Richard. Doesn't everyone? But that's not what I came up here to talk to you about. You killed men in war, maybe you can understand what I did, what I had to do."

"Okay, then, General Zod, Clark tell me about General Zod. Why am I calling you Clark?"

"Because that's my name. My Mom and Dad named me that in Smallville, when they adopted me after the first Smallville meteor shower."

"Yeah, but I'm talking to you as Superman, now. And saying Superman, just doesn't roll off the tongue, you know?"

"You can call me Kal. My Kryptonian name is Kal-El. It was given to my by father Jor-El and my mother Lara. I need to tell you about General Zod."

"Sure, continue, I'm listening."

"I killed him. Killed them. Killed General Zod and his acolytes. Not Judge, nor jury, but Executioner, I tricked Luthor into luring him and Ursa and Narn up to the Fortress of Solitude. I used a red solar ray device to weaken them. And I killed them."

"Okay…as I recall they tried to conquer the world. They tore up our lunar mission, they killed hundreds of people, but why did you have to kill them if you took their powers away?"

"I'll get to that. You think what they did here was bad? You should have seen their body count on Krypton. My father Jor-El and the Council of Elders gave them a capital sentence that would have led to execution if Kryptonian Law had provided for it. Instead General Zod and his acolytes were imprisoned in a nearly unreachable parallel existence which my father called the Phantom Zone."

"But they escaped."

"Yes."

"And they had to die because even if you put them back there, they could escape again and because they could have gotten their powers back… but how could you know they would get their powers back?"

"I knew it was possible because I got mine back."

"Wait a minute. What are you not telling me here?"

"Put it together, Richard."

"You lost your powers in the Fortress of Solitude, got them back and then used the device to defeat General Zod?"

"Something like that, you're getting warm."

"You didn't lose your powers. It couldn't have been an accident. I can't picture Superman bumbling around the Fortress of Solitude. Clark Kent, I can see bumbling around like that…"

"Gosh-jeepers, Mr. White, I seem to have lost my powers." Clark was poking fun at himself. It felt good. It felt cathartic. It felt liberating. But there was more truth to get at here. "You're right on track, Richard. I didn't loose my powers."

"You gave them up for some reason…for some person. For a woman?"

"No for Bruce Wayne."

"Really, I always figured both you and he were straight."

Clark burst out laughing and Richard followed.

"Was it Lana?

"Not Lana. She had been with Lex by then."

"Was it Chloe?"

"No. Richard, the truth is right in front you, just like I was."

"It was Lois."

"Yes."

"And Jason is ..."

"Yes.

"Oh my God! I can't print that."

"You can print the part about General Zod, if you want."