- - - Chapter Thirty-One

Saturday afternoon, almost one o'clock, the meteors had finally stopped. The streets of Metropolis were littered with the poisonous rocks, and the rain was still coming down, the kryptonite continuing to grow. There was barely anybody else on the roads, at least not in their cars, Lois observed as she sped down the near-abandoned streets. People walked slowly from place to place, taking in the damage and staring at the fallen blocks of green. Jason moaned every time they got close to them, and the babies inside her had gone alarmingly still.

Jason was unconscious when she pulled into her driveway. Kryptonite exposure and exhaustion combined and the stomach flu on top of that. She'd gotten a call from Martha Kent saying that she was at their house, the older woman had panicked when she'd arrived at her son's house and found it completely empty.

Lois made it around to Jason's side of the car and opened the door as Martha hurtled out of the house. A few of her neighbors were in their driveways, looking for answers. "What happened?!" Martha asked, taking the boy from his pregnant mother and leading the way into the house. Lois had to stop a moment to look at the elder Mrs. Kent; she was a lot stronger than she looked. But then, she had raised Superman and she was still keeping the farm going in Smallville. An amazing woman.

"He hasn't slept in twenty-four hours, he has the stomach flu, and the streets on the way back here were coated in kryptonite," she said, putting a worried hand on her stomach, an action not missed by Martha, whose eyes darkened with worry.

"Well, let's not have you catching colds too," she said, pulling the door open and getting inside before she could get as soaked as the other two. "You go and change your clothes while I take care of him."

Lois was relieved not to have to deal with this on her own, and she'd rather have no one other than Martha here with her just now.

Lois quickly threw on a pair of sweats, pausing a moment to rub her belly and worry about the twins before rushing back out to the living room. Martha was there with a groggy Jason, smiling calmly as he came back to consciousness.

"How're you feeling, munchkin?"

"Icky," he said, sitting in a lawn chair on the patio, his face tipped up to the sun and his eyes wide open, absorbing it all. Lois almost reminded him that staring at the sun would hurt his eyes before she remembered just who his father happened to be. Chuckling to herself, she sat down in the chair next to him as Martha disappeared into the house.

"Is it the kryptonite or the flu right now?"

"The flu, I can't feel the kryptonite anymore."

"That's good," he gave her a look that said he disagreed, but she just smiled and he went back to watching the sunny sky. The yard was wet from last night's rain; it was still raining in downtown Metropolis not five miles away. Even Lois could hear the thunder.

"Dad's still by the kryptonite," he paused but didn't look over at her again. "And there's not as much sun there. He's not going to feel good when he gets back."

"He'll get better, he always does," she gave a reassuring smile she wasn't quite sure she felt. Jason bought it, though.

- - -

Damn that chunk! Clark cursed again. The large chunk that he'd pushed into orbit had fallen to Earth three times in the course of the active meteor shower, and now it was falling a fourth time. At least this time it was the only thing falling form the sky.

The weather was taking a positive turn, and Batman and J'onzz were doing some good work on the ground, but that single humongous piece of poisonous rock kept falling from the sky. The first time he'd lifted it into orbit he hadn't gone as far as he could've, knowing other meteors would've come down and started it back on collision course with Metropolis again. The second time he had managed to get it a little higher up before the car hood he was still using between his hands and the kryptonite had been punctured through just where his hands needed to be. Blistering and feeling like he might throw up, he'd let it settle into orbit and gone back down to the downtown area to do what he could. The third time it had started to come back down on the opposite side of the world; Ollie had alerted him via the Watchtower. It was lucky he had when he did or Japan would've been half the island it was.

This time it was coming down a few miles east of Metropolis. There were no more chunks falling from the sky, just this huge one cutting through the rain clouds and growing bigger as each drop fell on it. Clark could feel it more than see it in the rain and the thick fog rolling off the ocean nearby. J'onzz was shouting something about alternative methods and just easing it to the ground, but Clark knew it would only continue to grown and take over the land; if he set it down, there was no way he would pick it up again.

So here he was again, flying towards something that would probably be the death of him in all eventuality. He cursed Luthor again, his guilt waning slightly at the sight of the grayish-green monstrosity.

There was nothing between him and the meteor this time. He'd found a new spot to grip it, this one having more than three meters of nice, safe, lava rock between him and the deadly green stuff. If this weren't the fourth time he was lifting this same rock, and if he hadn't been in a kryptonite riddled city all morning, this would be easy.

Hands spread wide, his shoulders pressing against the rock, he caught it. Its downward momentum lost him a few long yards. It took only seconds, but it felt like an eternity before he had stilled the momentum and was lifting farther into the sky. Once above the clouds it got easier, the sun reaching him even in the shady underbelly of the rock. He focused on the warmth and energy radiating from the yellow sun and pressed on.

One final push and it flew away from him into space, going towards the larger remnants of New Krypton. As one final attempt to make his life harder, a crack appeared on the meteor he'd just pushed away, and a quarter of it flew towards him. He wasn't sure if gravity should be pulling it towards him like that so far from the Earth, but he was a bit more concerned about the fact that it was and not why. He glared, blasting it with heat vision, and the thing exploded. Unfortunately for him, shards of kryptonite flew out from it, a few burying themselves in him. He gasped and choked on the lack of atmosphere.

He threw himself towards the Earth, sucking lungfuls of air as soon as he could. He found that he couldn't slow his descent, that he could barely maneuver in the skies. He passed down below the clouds and rain drove into him. He had dried off significantly above the clouds but that did him little good now. He couldn't even see the sun.

How did that work? He asked himself. Why did it come towards me? It should've flown out in every direction. It shouldn't have been falling towards me in the first place! But the world doesn't always make sense.

He managed to swoop a little as he approached the ground, gaining some altitude so that he wouldn't crash through the pavement or a person when he finally did crash. His vision was dancing wildly, shapes and colors drifting together. His heat vision was gone, x-ray vision gone. He could hear everything remarkably well even though he didn't feel like he could move a muscle. Why is it that hearing is something that never fades? Is it meant to plague me so that I know who is hurting when I can't rush to help?

He was happily unconscious by the time he hit the ground, but he still heard the impact.