A/N – this chapter has new material interspersed with an updated version a chapter removed from Darkseid Cometh

Chapter Two: Feelings and Priorities

Kal-El had chosen to intervene in this particular traffic accident on the Delaware River Bridge because he'd seen a gasoline tanker truck following too closely behind the car that was about to have a blow out. He'd lifted the car off the deck and flown it from the bridge to the nearest service station. The commuters in the car had shouted at him for delaying them and making them miss a meeting, until the auto mechanic had told them they were about twenty yards from losing their right front tire to a really bad blow out.

From there Kal had flown to the Amazon Consulate. He'd hovered next to Chloe's jet, with his long black coat flapping in the jetwash, as she prepared for a vertical landing. Her face looked troubled as she saw him and the jet wavered for a moment. Kal just hung there a few yards away from the now visible aircraft while she righted it.

The Amazon flashed her Kryptonian friend a smile for showing confidence in her ability to handle the jet herself.

Kal smiled back and gave his oldest friend a two fingered salute. He watched as she deftly lowered the airplane through a retractable roof into a hanger. The steel roof closed over her and Kal continued to watch as Chloe signed the aircraft back over to an aircraft mechanic. When he saw that she'd completed the paper work, the Son of Krypton looked out to the horizon and took his phone out of an inner pocket of his trench coat. He called Chloe's phone. It rang a couple of times and went to voice mail. He heard her say, "Meet me on the Terrace in a few minutes. And bring coffee."

-0-

"Kent! Sullivan! My office! Now!" Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief Perry White's voice boomed out of his office into the bullpen. It was early Tuesday morning. At the Daily Planet, this was normally one of Perry's nephew Richard's days to open up and get the paper going. But Richard was still in Smallville bringing in the Batzarro story. Or at least that's what Perry White thought his nephew was doing there. So Perry was getting things going this morning.

"Ah, Chief?" At his desk, Jimmy Olsen keyed up the intercom on his phone. He wasn't sporting a bow tie today. "Chief?"

"What is it Olsen?" The Editor-in-Chief's voice still boomed out of his office door.

Olsen wondered why the Chief didn't pick up his phone or just talk into the speaker. He keyed up his intercom for the Chief's extension. "Mr. White, neither one of them has reported back in from Kansas yet. As far as we know, they're still out there checking on Mr. Kent's mother after the Batzarro incident the other day."

"Tell me again why we've got two reporters an editor and a technician out there covering one story?" The Chief's voice boomed in stereo out of both his office door and Olsen's intercom.

Since when am I the Planet's conscience or the business expense accounts supervisor, Olsen wondered to himself. "Sir, Mr. Kent can't cover a story with his own mother at the center of it, and Ms. Sullivan has been friends with the Kents for years, ever since she and Mr. Kent went to junior high school together. So, neither one of them has even a pretense at objectivity."

"Oh, and my nephew and his fiancee do?" White growled gruffly but his eyes were similing.

"Well, Ms. Lane does." Olsen replied sheepishly. "She doesn't care about anything but bringing in the story. Except for ..."

"Yeah, exactly." The photographer heard a click in his phone. So, the Chief did actually know how to use the intercom. "And for that matter, who's going to cover the Coroner's findings on the 'Superman' autopsy?" Jimmy could hear the quote marks in the Chief's voice.

"The Coroner's Office isn't done yet. They've called in Dr. Klein form Star Labs for a consult." The photographer had done some of his own follow up. While Jimmy Olsen might not ever have the way with written word that he did with a telephoto lens, he did have a nose for a story.

"Alright. Go down there with Thorpe." The Chief barked. "Get a quote. Get something. Even a, 'No Comment,' would be good for us right now."

"Chief, I can go right after I get copies of the photos I took in Luthor's basement during the East Coast Blackout investigation over to the District Attorney's office. The crystal experiments in Luthor's basement could implicate him in both the Blackout and the Crystal Island incident. I meet with them at nine o'clock."

"Alright." The Editor-in-Chief raised his voice again, "Thorpe! Pull Kent's background and field notes from his East Coast Blackout investigation off the server archives and go see the DA with Olsen. If Kent misses that appointment, you can provide testimony from the Planet's archives as representative of the Planet. And when you see the Coroners later, remember to find out if they will go on the record that Klein is there. He may as well be Superman's personal physician."

"Aye, aye, Chief." the reporter and photographer replied in stereo.

"Well get going already! What are you standing around for?"

Thorpe had already pocketed his note pad and his Palm Pilot and Olsen was gather up his camera gear. The team met at the coat rack where they both grabbed their coats and hats.

-0-0-

Chloe Sullivan, or Cassiopeia as her Amazon sisters called her, shivered in the cold morning air. The sun had peeked over the eastern horizon but the temperature still seemed to be dropping and the blustery wind didn't help any either. The traditional Amazon regalia was designed for Mediterranean climes, so the newest Amazon had grabbed long warm coat out of her closet at the Consulate. The coat was from her days in Kansas and might look gauche now but it kept her warm.

Kal lowered himself gently to the Consulate's Terrace and handed a steaming mug of sugar free almond mocha with fat free extra whip to the Amazon. He kept a mug east Indian spiced chai for himself. They stood at table that had tall chairs.

The Amazon nodded her thanks and took a cautious sip. At the moment, the mug was more useful to warm her hands than anything else. Her stomach growled.

Kal spoke, "We could go inside, to the galley, and I could make you an omelet, I'm sure they have eggs in there."

"No actually we can't. This is sovereign Themyscarian soil. Men aren't allowed under pain of death other than on official business. Except the Terrace. Apparently Steel would meet Diana and Batman here from time to time. There's a similar terrace at the Gotham consulate where Donna Troy meets Robin.

"So, exceptions are made for men who can fly?" Kal reflected, smiling.

"Would you stop being so nice?" the Amazon's eyes narrowed. "You're making it impossible to be mad at you." She wanted to be mad, wanted to get the feelings out of her system.

"Why are you mad?" Kal asked openly.

"Because you weren't fraking there when I was fighting that Bizarro on Route 9 in Kansas near your mom's farm!" Cassiopeia spoke slowly and darkly.

"Chloe, I was off world slowing an asteroid," the Son of Krypton explained calmly.

"An asteroid that's going to hit earth in what – twenty years?" the Amazon scoffed.

Kal looked up for a moment, working some calculations in his head, "Maybe twenty months, now."

"Yeah, go ahead and defend yourself, you weasel." She tossed her coffee in his face.

His cheek blistered for an instant before the stored sunlight in Kal's cells healed it. Chloe couldn't see it but Kal could feel it. It didn't exactly tickle.

"I could have been killed," she spoke softly with menace in her tone, "dead for real this time! That thing, that Batzarro, rammed a metal sign post through my chest! And where were you? "

"You know that even I can't be in two places at onece that far apart -"

"This is not the part where you answer!" The blonde warrior tapped the palm of her hand on the table. "Can you just let me feel my fear and anger for five minutes?" An element of pleading entered Chloe's tone as she stood. She looked into Kal-El's eyes and saw no understanding there, only mild confusion. Tears began to well up in her eyes and the Amazon turned away from the Son of Krypton. She pointed emphatically up and away from the Consulate, out toward the New Troy Island Sound and stalked off in silence. Kal gathered up the crockery mugs his mother had made and flew back to his apartment.

-0-0-0-

In his glass walled office, Perry White glanced up through the outside windows at the rays of the rising sun. He clicked his desk phone with one finger while he held the receiver in the other hand. Two taps speed dialed Richard's cell phone. It was only an hour earlier in Kansas, but on a farm people rise early. Especially, when the farmhouse has been damaged and needs repair. Perry White might not let on to the world what he had figured out, but he was nobody's fool. Least of all Clark Kent's. Or Superman's.

White supposed he'd suspected for years, but on the day a few weeks ago when he'd seen Superman's face close up in the high definition monitor in his office, something had clicked in the Editor's mind. It had been Kent's second day back on the job. Lois had been covering the maiden voyage of NASA's next generation Space Shuttle, code named Genesis from inside the Boeing 777 that was helping it launch.

Disaster had struck in the form a black out that started in Metropolis and ran all the way down the East Coast to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, even affecting the Genesis, and it's F-22 chase planes. The mounting brackets that clamped the space vehicle onto the jumbo jet had failed to release. The abort sequence had also failed and when the Genesis's main engines had ignited, it had dragged the 777 up into the stratosphere with it.

Superman, absent for the previous six and a half years, had chosen that moment to re-appear, to save an air craft with Lois Lane in it. Granted this was a larger aircraft than the helicopter he'd saved her in the first time almost a decade earlier, and this save was quite a bit more complicated than merely catching a falling girl and a falling helicopter. But the wordsmith in Perry White appreciated the symmetry.

After setting the U. S. Air Force jumbo jet down in the middle of a South Florida baseball stadium, Superman had stood there in the middle of the baseball diamond near the pitcher's mound and accepted the crowd's ovation. He'd allowed the television cameras that had been covering just another Major League baseball game, to zoom in on him and broadcast a close up of his face around the world. And then he'd lifted up into the sky and flown away.

Looking into the Man of Steel's eyes through the television monitor... in that moment something had come together in Perry White's mind. He realized that Superman had the same eyes as someone he'd shaken hand's with just that morning: Clark Kent. And then a hundred-odd details had come together for Perry. Clark would disappear for hours or days at a time and then turn up with a Superman exclusive. Superman had disappeared soon after Kent had gone on sabbatical and then reappeared within hours of Kent being back on the job. Kent always stood up for Superman. Above all, the reporter seemed uncannily sure of what the Man of Steel thought or felt about a variety of issues most especially, Truth, Justice and Lex Luthor.

The man had these incredible powers: faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, he could fly! But how did he choose to make his living? With brains and heart, with words written on a page and ideas communicated through them. He made his living everyday showing his humanity even when other reporters grew jaded and cynical, or became political ideologues trying to use the news to promote the political agendas to which they subscribed.

Clark Kent had been coach-able in his time as a cub reporter. Over the years, he'd won an modest array of awards for the clarity, consistency and passion of his writing. He had chosen to compete with humans in arena in which his superpowers wouldn't help him. And he hid behind a pair of glasses.

Lois had drawn a hat and glasses with a coat and tie over a photo of the Man of Steel a few days before the Kryptonian had disappeared on his voyage back to his homeworld. She'd shown it to himself and Jimmy and half the staff and no one had scene it. But now it all made sense. The man hid in plain sight and competed with humans not in sports, or science (at which his Kryptonian birth culture excelled) but in the only fair playing arena he had: words and ideas. This earned White's respect.

Surely if anything were Page One above the fold news, it was this: Superman has a secret identity. Most Editors would make selling papers the highest priority. But the more Perry thought it over the higher helping Clark keep his secret moved on White's scale of priorities.

These recent incidents in Metropolis with the burned police officers, the dead young mother as well as the ones in Smallville and at the Army base in upstate New York did have had the marks of Superman's powers. But White felt confident in his own assessment of Kent's character. In cape and boots or suit and tie, the guy wouldn't hurt a flea, or a felon much less police officers, innocent by-standers and soldiers.

All of this passed through the Editor-in-Chief's mind in the time it took the phone call to connect and Richard to answer and say, "Hello? Hello! Uncle Perry are you there?"

-0-0-0-0-

The Son of Krypton consulted both the Kal and Clark appointment books. Kent had a nine o'clock deposition at the Criminal Courts Building with an Assistant District Attorney regarding his investigation into the East Coast power outage a few weeks before and Lex Luthor's role in it. From his closet he picked up his fedora and one of his brown suits and hung them both in the pocket of his trench coat along with his laptop and his brief case. He'd need to be at the DA's office soon.

With so much of the evidence of Luthor's involvement in the crystal continent scheme sunken at the bottom of the Atlantic along with the yacht, only the what the Daily Planet had uncovered at the manor house could tie Lex to the power outage. Of course the power outage had ground commerce to a halt, disrupted the Pentagon and scuttled the maiden voyage of the Space Agency's Genesis Orbiter. Those could all be serious felonies.

-0-0-0-0-0-

"Yes, Richard. I'm here," the Editor-in-Chief shifted the phone to his shoulder and adjusted his blinds. "Are Kent and Sullivan still there? No, no it's okay you don't have to get them. Is Kent's mother okay? Was she hurt?

The reply came across the long distance line, "Uncle Perry what are you talking about? Of course Mrs. Kent is fine and so is Jason. We're all a-okay out here."

Richard sounded like he was hiding something. Perry had been almost a surrogate father to his nephew from the time the lad's family had moved back Stateside from Okinawa. He could tell when Richard was covering something up. "Well, take your time out there. The Planet will still turn without you."

"Yeah, about that, Uncle Perry, we'll have to talk tomorrow when Lois and Jason and I get back." Richard hadn't liked breaking it to Jason that he was going back into the Air Force. He'd expected a fight from Lois but she'd been supportive.

"What is it, Richard? You're too young for prostate problems. You can't have gotten an offer from the competition because we have none."

"Don't worry Uncle Perry. I'll tell you tomorrow when we're back." Richard laid back down with Lois and tried to go back to sleep. Kent and Sullivan had left the Smallville Motor Court a couple of hours before to return to Metropolis on a tip about the Batzarro/ Bizarro story from an informant in Gotham of all places. But Richard wasn't going to let on to his uncle that Clark had told him he was Superman.

-0-0-

The deposition wrapped around lunch, and Clark said goodbye to Ron Thorpe and Jimmy Olsen. Thorpe and Olsen caught the train to the Coroner's Office while Clark headed back to the Planet. He needed some time to think and the train usually gave it to him. His conversation with Chloe at dawn on the Terrace at the Amazon consulate had him befuddled and he needed some time to work thru it. At speed, he mentally reviewed his father's teachings.

Jor-El had always been long on universal moral philosophy and Kryptonian hard sciences like singularity physics and tensor calculus, but rather short on the touchy-feel-y stuff like social psychology and relationship dynamics. Finding nothing useful, Clark switched mental tracks to his mom and dad.

How many times had his mom been worried about the harvest, the flocks, the herds and the debts? Clark couldn't count. How many times had his dad justified himself when his mom had expressed her concerns? None, at least none since Clark had started paying attention when he was a school age child. How had Jonathan and Martha always handled these kinds of discussions...?

Jonathan had listened calmly knowing that Martha's concerns were about her feelings not his performance. . He'd confirmed that he was okay with her feelings and that he loved her. Period. He never stood for any swinging fists. He'd just walk away and ignore her if she did that. Mom had learned to own her feelings and talk about what she felt, rather than accusing Dad of anything. Dad had been supportive and loving. He'd reassured her of his commitment to her, to Clark, their family.

Could that be what was going on here with Chloe? She was no stranger to his heroics. She'd been his sidekick, make that partner in crime-fighting and meteor freak wrangling before Batman had a Robin or Wonder Woman had a Wonder-girl. She knew the risks. She'd even been near death a couple of times herself, before Rayner had given her the Lantern Corps reserve charge. Was she feeling hurt by Clark's absence because she loved him and needed him to love her? He mentally reviewed his relationship with Chloe from before he left to Krypton backwards.

First Clark thought of her marriage to Olsen's cousin in her early days at the Planet. Poor kid had been killed less than a year later. Then he thought of hundreds of times before Olsen's cousin and since when Chloe had looked at him with wonder and affection and love and sadness in her eyes. And he'd never seen her as anything more than his oldest and most reliable friend, usually because he'd been mooning over Lana or Lois.

Maybe Jor-El had been right at the Fortress when they'd given Jason his naming ceremony: Maybe mortal Chloe who loved Clark Kent before he'd even been fast or strong or able to leap tall buildings... maybe tender Chloe who'd accepted his alien heritage as just another wonderful quality that made CK who he was... maybe Amazon Chloe who still loved Clark and wanted to fight injustice along side Kal-El of Krypton whether he wore Superman's red cape or Neo's black coat... Maybe Chloe Cassiopeia Sullivan- or what was it Gil had called her this morning? Duh, Trinity! -maybe she could truly be his SCRRREEEECCCHHH! The subway train stopped and broke his train of thought, "Stop 26, Daily Planet Building and LuthorCorp Plaza."