Life After the Fall Chapter 30, a superman fanfic

- - - Chapter Thirty

Clark wrapped Jason in his cape and dropped from the sky. In his arms, Jason gave a little yelp when his stomach jumped from its usual place to his throat, but he would be a fan of rollercoasters when he was older.

"Do you have to catch it again, Dad?" He asked, still looking up through the clouds at the falling rock.

"Yes," Clark said, unable to keep the nervousness out of his voice. The very slight quiver made Jason nervous, and his little face clouded with worry.

"What's the matter?" Lois asked, throwing the sliding door open and running out onto the patio when she saw them back and the looks on their faces.

"New Krypton is falling," Clark said simply, his face dark as he handed Jason over.

"What?"

"I have to catch it," he looked up into the sky where his son's eyes were still trained. "Lois, this could turn out a lot like last time," her face paled and he put a tender hand on her cheek. "Don't worry about me; the coma is a natural part of the healing process. There's nothing to worry about unless it lasts more than a week or so."

"A week or so! Clark…" she bit her lip, holding Jason to her.

"It'll be okay, Lois- J'onzz will pick them up soon and he'll send somebody to help."

"Why didn't they come last time?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "It'll be okay," he kissed her, getting an annoyed look from Jason who was tucked under his mother's chin and still looking up. He gave Jason a kiss on the forehead before taking off.

"He'll be okay," Lois muttered to her son as well as to herself. She stood out on the patio, clutching Jason to her, both of them looking up into the darkness. She couldn't see a thing, but Jason could see everything.

- - -

BANG!

Richard looked at his door, willing the person on the other side to think he was asleep and go away.

BANG!

He sat there, still waiting, the TV muted.

BANG!

So much for that, he thought, getting up and opening the door so far as the chain would allow. It took him a moment to place the face on the other side of the door; he hadn't seen anybody from the Daily Planet since the day he had left over a year ago.

"Georgianna?" He asked, thanking his predisposition to hang onto names and faces but completely unable to find her last name or what she would be doing in California banging on his apartment door at eleven o'clock at night.

"Mr. White, I'm sorry to come over unannounced like this, I know we don't know each other very well," At all, Richard kept to himself, trying to come up with any scrap of information he could on the woman standing in a pea coat and knit hat on his doorstep. She worked in Public Relations at the Planet and she annoyed Lois a lot. That's all he had.

"Georgianna… what're you doing here?" He asked after zoning out on whatever she'd been saying. She stopped talking for a moment, staring at him like she was gathering her thoughts before reaching into her overlarge purse and pulling out a manilla file folder.

"I have some information about a certain someone that you might want to see."

"A certain someone?" He asked, not willing to take the chain off just yet. Instead of answering, Georgianna opened the file and pulled out a single glossy 8 X 10 print and held it up for him to see. His eyes went wide and he slammed the door shut, taking the chain off and throwing the door open again so the plump woman on the other side could come in.

- - -

Lois couldn't see anything above her, so she settled on watching her son's face. Jason was watching the sky with more than a little worry. He could see his father approaching the meteors as they fell into the atmosphere. The chunks were still growing, they kept their size as they fell came through the atmosphere; burning off a good deal of their mass as they came through the atmosphere, but they were still present, still made mostly of kryptonite, and still coming. Superman was waiting in the stratosphere, using heat vision to burn off the smaller meteors before they got too far.

Lois gasped when a huge falling mass came into view. Clark was soon behind it, grabbing what he could of the regular rock and straining against gravity's pull. She couldn't see his face, just a dark silhouette of a man in a flapping cape pulling on something ten times his size and winning. Superman managed to throw that meteor back up, slamming into another larger piece of New Krypton. Smaller chunks rained down on him, and he darted away to avoid the kryptonite that would send him falling from the skies.

The neighbors were awake now, as was most of the rest of Metropolis. Fireballs falling from the sky tended to do that. Lois could see a few of the neighbors over the fence when she followed one of the meteors wit her eyes and ended up looking over at the driveway. They were looking at her like she would have the answers about why this was happening, but she was just as clueless as them, and even more worried.

"Its pieces of New Krypton," Jason told her, seeing his mother's face.

"What?"

"It blew up in space, or something, and now its falling back down on us," he said, looking back up at the sky. "It's going to get worse, too."

And it did. It took three hours, bringing them well past midnight, but the falling meteors got bigger and more riddled with kryptonite. Batman and the Martian Manhunter had appeared on the scene shortly after Lois had brought Jason with her to the Daily Planet building, where Perry was still working on the next day's edition. Batman was focusing on the damage being done to the city by the meteors that made it past his two flying companions. Clark couldn't get very close to the meteors, there was a very thin layer of harmless rock between him and the kryptonite and it wasn't enough. He'd reverted to blasts of heat vision from afar, blowing the meteors into smaller chunks that J'onzz could control more easily or would cause less damage when they crashed into buildings.

In the bullpen, Jason was watching everything through the walls and on the television screens. Nervous newscasters had more questions than answers, and only seemed to make the growing panic worse. When Lois and Jason had arrived, the Planet had been all but empty, but as the night got wilder more reporters trickled in, hoping for more information and a measure of safety; Superman trusted the Planet, so he'd protect them there, right? Lois felt a bit guilty for leaving the house, knowing Clark would think they were safe there, but she didn't really care at the moment. Clark was right outside her office window staring at a falling meteorite until it glowed slightly and broke apart.

She sat in the chair staring at him, hovering there. Hovering wasn't a new thing. He did it to reach things on the top shelves when he didn't feel like reaching; sometimes he did it when he fell into a really deep sleep without meaning to, or when they kissed. It was different to see him hovering outside the window concentrating on incinerating the one substance that could kill him than when he floated a bit to get the peanut butter for her. Jason was watching too, sitting on her desk next to her computer that she wasn't planning on turning on tonight.

- - -

The kryptonite falling from the sky was doing nothing for Clark at all. Its presence was giving him a headache as he continued to use heat vision, and he had several small knicks where debris had hit him; his invulnerability was all but shot from exposure.

He knew he was hovering outside the Daily Planet bullpen, and he knew Lois and Jason were watching him, but he couldn't take the time to look at them because it would be seconds he wasn't using heat vision to solve the problem and keep them safe. He could feel Perry's eyes on him from the next office over, too; then there were all the reporters that had shown up in the bullpen who were looking through the glass walls of the offices to see him at work.

The sound of a familiar voice calling out to him caught his attention. The strange thing was that the person, a woman, was calling out for Clark, not Superman, and it was coming from somewhere nearby and high in the sky. Clark tuned into the voice; it was his mother, and she was on a plane.

He was off in a second, leaving J'onzz and Lois behind to watch with curiosity until he was out of sight and the falling meteors flooded their vision again. In front of him, a troubled plain trying to get out of Metropolis airspace came into view. One wing was missing and the tail was damaged, it was spiraling down towards the airport as though the metal that made up the flying machine knew where it was supposed to land and was trying to return there.

Clark dove from the height he had accomplished while searching for the plain and grabbed hold of what was left of the tail. The metal groaned as it slowed, and he heard several relieved breaths from inside the plain as the passengers realized Superman was intervening. Clark peered through the plane and found his mother in first class, sitting with the yellow mask strapped to her face, her hands gripping the arm rests like they were her life line. He knew she didn't like flying, even with him when nothing could go wrong.

What are you doing on this plane, Mom? He asked himself, but didn't dwell on it. No matter what the reason, she was on the plane and the plane was trying its best to crash.

Time slowed as they neared the pavement of the nearest runway. Clark couldn't go any faster or he would damage plane and passengers though he desperately wanted to get back to the chunks of kryptonite falling onto the city. Well, not desperately, but he felt guilty for being away from the fray.

Like he had upon his return, he pulled the door off its hinges and let the yellow evacuation slide drop to the ground as he stepped inside. "Is everyone alright?" He asked, eyes only for his mother. There were murmurs of 'yes,' and 'thank you, Superman,' but Clark didn't leave until he saw his mother nod weakly. With a burst of superspeed, he set a note on her lap with the new house number and instructions where to find the spare key before he leapt back into the sky. Nobody had seen him move into the plane, but those around Martha had felt the rush of wind. Martha slipped the paper into her pocket before anybody noticed.

J'onzz was flying above, holding one of the medium-ish sized meteors above his head and slowly brining it down to the ground when Clark returned to the downtown area, where the meteor were falling most thickly. Batman would remove it later, as he would be doing with those that fell into the ocean, and those would be the ones that would be growing exponentially as soon as they touched the surface. The red glowing of J'onzz's eyes cast a strange glow on the green rock above him. Looking past the Martian, Clark saw the biggest meteor of the lot hurtling straight toward the globe atop the Planet; it was probably half the continent he had lifted into the sky all those months ago. J'onzz saw it too and looked straight at him, eyes flashing a more intense red for a moment. His descent quickened but Clark was already headed toward the meteor, looking for anything to put between himself and the kryptonite.

The hood of a car lying a few feet away from the actual car caught his eye. It wasn't very thick, but it was something and it was big enough so that he could spread his hands out for better support. He dove down to the street and grabbed the hood before soaring back up towards the meteor. There was at least four feet of rock between his hands and the raw kryptonite, and the hood helped, but he could certainly feel it. This meteor would be too big for J'onzz to handle and it would do an extreme amount of damage should it collide with anything on the ground.

The thing was heavy, but not nearly as heavy as the whole mass of New Krypton. Still, he painted quite a picture on the horizon as he took the meteor on his shoulders. The sun was rising, meteors were falling in streaks of flaming light, and the shadows were burning below. Kryptonite was everywhere, draining Clark as it had before, but this time there was no wound on his back with shards still inside. This time the mass wasn't so big, and he wasn't alone in trying to lift it. And this time he didn't have to worry about what Luthor would be doing while he was distracted lifting the mass away from the Earth. He did, however, have to worry about the smaller meteors that continued to fall around him, crashing into buildings and streets. Lois and Jason were in the city, they could be hurt by a stray rock; so were Perry and Jimmy, and now his mother was on the outskirts of town. He'd almost rather only have to worry about Luthor.

And if it all couldn't get worse, it started to rain. And it wasn't just raining, it was pouring. Sheets of rain came down and coated everything, slicking surfaces and soaking the people on the streets. The only good thing about it was that the fires spluttered and some of them went straight out. Clark, shielded beneath the fragment of New Krypton, continued pushing upwards still dry.

"Mommy, I still don't feel good," Jason said, looking back at his mom after his father had disappeared from normal human view.

"Is it the kryptonite, honey?" She asked softly, turning around to face him and doing her best to ignore the goings-on outside her window. Jason shook his head.

"I can feel the kryptonite too, but… I have a tummy ache, I think I might," he bit his lip and looked like he was going to throw up. Two minutes later he was doing just that in Lois's garbage can while she rubbed soothing circles on his back.

"Oh, honey," she whispered, eyes filled with pity. Of all the nights for his instable invulnerability to leave him susceptible to such a simple and uncomfortable human ailment as the stomach flu, it had to be the night that he hadn't slept and had to deal with large quantities of kryptonite, the kind that affected him no less, falling from the sky.

It was slow going lifting the meteor into the sky. The kryptonite was growing even faster now that it was raining, and a sharp shard had already punctured the hood of the car, passing dangerously close to Clark's left hand. He could feel his skin blistering at its closeness, but he couldn't shift his grip without loosing the careful balance of the large object above him. Instead, he pushed for more speed and was surprised when he got some.