Thanks to everyone who left a review so far, and thanks to the Lady Isis for betaing this chapter.
After waking up next to her father's hospital bed, being told by the doctor that he needed to stay in hospital for a few days, and assuring her dad that he didn't imagine anything, Shelly Erdel takes a taxi back to her father's home/lab. When the taxi drives away and she starts walking to the door, a large black man in a red shirt walks up behind her eating from a open bag of Oreos.
"These may be the most tasty things in creation," he tells her following her up the stairs to the door.
With the door open she turns to the man and asks, "Excuse me, am I supposed to know you or is that just the worst pick up line ever?"
The man looks around for a second before turning back into his tall martian form. Shelly nearing shrieks in surprise at this when the tall green man says, "It's alright, its me."
"Yeah, I remember you. Come inside before someone sees you," she orders, gesturing for him to come inside.
J'onn quietly follows her inside as she closes the door behind him. "How is your father?" he asks.
"The doctors say he's going to be okay as long as he stays in the hospital for a few days and takes it easy once he gets out," Shelly answers. "Thank you for asking."
He nods. "Well, I am partially responsible for his condition," he says.
"Well, you also probably saved his life," she tells him. "Look I wish I could just flip a few switches and send you back home, but I'm an art major and I got no clue how to make that thing work."
"That's fine. Like I said I'm the last of my kind, so I have nothing left to return to. In a way...accidentally bringing me here was probably the best thing you could have done for me," he tells her.
"So you don't want to go home?" Shelly asks, confused.
"Like I said, I don't really have a home to go back to, and Earth looks like a beautiful and fascinating place, with interesting people and," he stops and looks down at one of the cookies intently, like it is the grandest and most beautiful thing in the world, "such amazing things."
"Where did you get those?" Shelly asks.
"An elderly woman gave them to me as an award for getting her cat out of a tree. Would you like one?" J'onn asks. Shelly shrugs, takes one out of the bag and bites into it. The two then spend a few minutes eating the cookies before the Martian asks, "You said you were an artist?"
"Um...yeah," she answers. "If you really want to see my stuff follow me, my dad has some of my work hanging up," she says leading him to another room. One wall of the other room is covered in pencil sketches and paintings. "My stuff is very Japanese manga inspired," she says as J'onn looks at the pieces intently.
"Very beautiful," the Martian says.
"Thank you," Shelly answers, a smile on her face.
"What are these creatures?" he asks.
She laughs a bit at that then explains, "They're people- er, humans, they're just cartoonish and stylized."
"Oh, I see," J'onn says. Then before her eyes he shape shifts into people from her paintings, one by one in succession.
"That's amazing," Shelly tells him.
"Thank you," J'onn says returning to his natural form.
Shelly gets a weird look on her face and looks the martian up and down before asking, "Are you...naked?"
"What? No," he answers pointing to the red straps across his chest and the blue shorts he's wearing, "I'm wearing clothing."
"Yeah I can see that, but your changing your body into different forms, does that mean that the clothes I'm seeing are just part of you in that form now?" she asks.
"Oh no, my wife..." he pauses for a second as a sorrowful memory passes over his face before he continues. "My wife created this organic fabric. It can change shape and color to telepathic commands. She based the technology on my own physiology."
"What do you mean on your physiology? Can't- Couldn't the other martians shape change?" she asks.
"No," J'onn answers. "While my people were telepathic, otherwise they were not that different from you. I however was born with some...unique abilities."
"Such as?" Shelly asks.
"As you know I can shape change and fly, I can also change my density and am much stronger and more durable then most martians or humans," he explains.
"So you're a super martian?" she asks.
He pauses for a second at that. "I've never heard myself described like that, but I suppose that fits," he answers.
"Cool," Shelly says. "Well, your wife designed clothes, what did you do?"
"I used my abilities to help my people in anyway I could," he explains. "I caught criminals, fought monsters, I even helped repel an alien invasion once."
"So you are like a martian superhero?" Shell asks.
"Superhero?" J'onn asks.
"Yeah, that's what we call people like that, here," she says pulling out her phone and starts scrolling through images. She stops when she gets to a man flying through the sky wearing a blue costume with a red cape and a red S on his chest. "Like this guy, he's called Superman and he's from Metropolis. He can fly, he's bulletproof, really strong, and he can shoot lasers out of his eyes. According to the news he's an alien too."
"Really? He looks rather human to me," J'onn says.
"Yeah I don't really get that," she answers scrolling through the images again until she comes to a black man in a green mask and green costume, holding a glowing green lantern with a green metal ring on his finger. "This guy is Green Lantern, he can make all sorts of stuff with his ring. There is also supposed to be a guy in Gotham called Batman, but no one's gotten a picture of him yet."
"Interesting. This world might actually have a place for me," J'onn says. Then he returns to the form of a black man in a red shirt and pair of blue jeans. "Thank you for the hospitality, Shelly, and give your father my best. I think I'm going to do a bit more exploring."
As J'onn is walking towards the door Shelly gets his attention. "J'onn?" Once he turns to her she asks, "Your wife, your people...what happened to them?"
"They were killed in a sort of...terrorist attack," he stops as the pain of the memory is almost too much for him. "I'm sorry, its been centuries, yet somehow the pain is still fresh. I promise though one day I will tell you the full story."
"Does that mean I'll see you again?" she asks.
"Of course," he answers, walking out.
…
A few hours later J'onn is walking down the street when he sees a woman putting missing child posters up on the back of a bus stop. He feels the sorrow from the woman but also the hope that what was taken from her might be returned, that her little boy might still be out there waiting for her.
He stops behind her and asks, "What's his name?"
The woman turns to him with hope in her eyes. "Joseph, Joseph Certa! Have you seen him?" she asks, handing him one of the posters.
"No, I'm sorry," J'onn tells her. The woman deflates a bit at that and looks very tired. "What happened to him?"
"We don't know. The police showed us a store security video, it showed a big man grabbing him off the street and throwing him in a car before driving away. He was on his way home from the bus stop," she answers.
J'onn looks into her mind, looks into her memories with her son, sees how happy and smart he is at least through her eyes, and it brings back some memories of a young girl who was taken from this world long before her time. He then looks through her memory of the security video, memorizing every detail she remembers from the scene especially of the big man who grabbed the boy. "I will find you son, Mrs. Certa," he tells her before walking off.
"Wait...who are you?" she asks his retreating form.
"I am J'onn J'onzz," he answers.
"John Jones? Are you some kind of detective?" she asks.
He stops for a moment, looks back at her and answers, "Yes I am," before continuing on his way, now on a mission.
…
J'onn spends the rest of the day taking the poster around, showing it to everyone he can and asking them if they have any information on the boy or the people who took them. When he talks to the people he also scans their minds, searching for any clue they might have. As the sun starts to set he finally catches a break. He talks to a scantily dressed woman standing on a corner, and when he asks her she says that she doesn't know anything about it, but in her mind she is forcing herself not to look at the dangerous man across the street.
J'onn looks where she refuses to and sees a group of guys standing around an expensive car. While none of the men look like the one who grabbed Joseph, one of men's head has the same profile of the getaway driver.
J'onn calmly walks across the street, gets his attention by saying, "Excuse me, have you seen this missing boy," and shows him the poster.
The getaway driver's friends decide that they have better places to be and the man in question looks at the poster, recognizes who it is and answers, "Sorry buddy, never seen the kid before. If you can excuse me I got places to be and people to see." And with that he steps into his car.
J'onn lowers his body density to near nothing and slips into the car before returning to solid form and coming to rest sitting on the vehicle's back seat. "You're lying to me, Mr. Buckland," J'onn says.
Buckland whips around in shock, pulling a pistol and pointing it at the man who mysteriously appeared in his car. "How the hell did you get in here, and how the hell do you know my name?" he yells.
"It is really in your best interest to simply tell me why the boy was taken and most importantly where he is," J'onzz calmly tells him.
"Yeah? Well it would have been in your best interest not to have fucked with me!" Buckland shouts before firing three shots into his chest, the people on the street fleeing at the sound of the gunfire. To the criminal's surprise the black man in his back seat seems unaffected, and a few seconds later even the bullet holes in his shirt close up before his eyes.
As Buckland looks on completely shocked, J'onn grabs his arm, twists it around painfully, and removes the gun from his hand. "Where is Joseph Certa?" J'onn asks again.
"Go to hell," Buckland shouts in pain, but in his mind he thinks, What the hell has Miller gotten me into?
"Miller hired you, where is he?" J'onn asks, keeping the pressure on the man's wrist.
"I told you where you can go, freak!" the getaway driver shouts in answer.
As Buckland is feeling unhelpful, the Martian hero has no choice but to look through his mind. He quickly gets past the feeling of pain and the criminal's surface thoughts and starts probing through his memories looking for Miller. He finds that Miller is in fact Michael Miller, a strong man for the local criminal community. Miller had hired Buckland as a driver for a series of abductions, all children, and that Joseph was among them. Miller hadn't told Buckland the reason for the kidnappings but the driver does know where the children were taken. The knowledge now taken J'onn tells man in his grip, "Thank you," before knocking him unconscious with a light backhand.
J'onn steps out of the Buckland's car just in time for a police car to pull up. A lady officer steps out with her weapon drawn and pointing at J'onn saying, "Hands in the air, now!"
The Martian does as she commands asking, "Is there a problem, officer?"
"What are you doing here?" she asks.
"I was asking Mr. Buckland if he had any information about a missing child I'm looking for," J'onn answers, handing her the poster still in his hand.
While keeping her weapon on J'onn she takes the poster, looks at it, then hands it back to him. "We got a call that shots were fired here," she says.
"Do I look like I've been shot?" J'onn asks her.
"No," she says.
"Does he?"
Keeping her weapon and her eyes on the man in front of her, she reaches over and checks the pulse of man unconscious at the wheel. Finding him to be alive she asks, "What happened to Bucky here?"
"He seems to have fallen unconscious," J'onn answers. "Perhaps he was tired."
"Really?" she asks sarcastically. "What's your name?"
"J'onn J'onzz," the disguised Martian answers. He reads the officer's mind and finds that she is about to ask him for identification. He suppresses that thought and asks, "What is yours?"
"Officer Callahan," she answers. "Why are you looking for the kid, Mr. Jones?"
"I'm a detective," J'onn answers.
Callahan holsters her weapon, looks him up and down, and says, "Really? Because you don't dress like a PI."
"How are detectives supposed to dress?" J'onn asks.
"Lets just say a suite wouldn't heart," she answers.
"I'll keep that in mind," he tells her. "If you excuse me Officer, I have a child to find."
"Stay out of trouble Mr. Jones," she says to his back as J'onn walks away.
TBC. Reviews are welcome.