If you look closely, you can see where I said "fuck it close enough". Even this chapter seems abrupt to me, but I was so close to finally being done that I was on the edge of not caring. It's not bad, but it's not my best. I know it's not my best. Let's just roll with it.
Chapter 24 still ain't done, but holy crap look how close this story is to being fully posted
Chapter Forty: Fire in the Hole
Lois's challenging words still all but rung in the air. "So what'll it be?"
The SCU might as well have been a world away from the rest of Metropolis for how quiet it was inside. For as old as the building was, it was remarkably sound-proof. Therefore, they couldn't hear very well the screeching sirens and the general panic and chaos that was overtaking the city block by block.
At the desk behind Lois, she heard Maggie Sawyer whisper something to her third in command, Sergeant Escudero, in a tone too low to be understood. There were mental whispers over the psychic link that Detective Jones had established between them, mostly consisting of a lot of -C'mon punks! Try it!- sort of thoughts.
Then there was a squeak of rubber shoe soles pushing off the floor. They were all ducked down too far to really see over the divider wall and the empty reception desk, but they did hear one of the hired goons running, followed by the slam of one of the outside doors opening. For a moment, the chaos outside became audible and then door swung shut, bringing silence back to the inside of the building.
"Hey you two!" Maggie called out, rising up a little from the cover of the desk. "I think your buddy has the right idea. Just leave the case behind. Slide it out to where we can see it and then leave."
"Run!" Turpin added.
There was no movement from the other side of the reception desk. Maybe they were still weighing their options.
-Hey uh... Are we still on the talking heads frequency down here?- came Officer Mill's voice tenatively.
-Uh...- Maggie glanced over at Turpin and he nodded. -Yeah, go for Sawyer.-
-So bad news.- Officer Mills sounded hesitant. -Our bomb just lit up. Like... I think it's been remotely activated.-
Lois felt her heart or her stomach leap into her throat at that and she sent a slightly wild glance to a few desks over where Colletta was crouched alongside Sergeant Kesel. Colletta returned the look and shrugged as if to say 'Sorry, what can you do?', but no words passed between them.
-Shit. Shit, how much time are we getting? - Maggie demanded, fighting the urge to run down into the boiler room to rip the bomb off the wall.
-It's fluctuating.- Harper responded this time. -Literally, the timer keeps jumping over a five minute period, but I'd say we have a minimum of ten minutes.-
-Hang tight, I think I might be able to do something about that with this piece of equipment.- Lyle declared, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
-Is there even time for that?- Lois asked.
-Optimistically, no.- Harper replied.
-Bundle of sunshine, you.- Colletta muttered mentally.
"Hey boys! The bomb's gone live!" Maggie shouted at the goons across the way. "You still want to finish the job? You still want to be the pair of idiots who killed the world?"
They might have given in right then, Lois would think in retrospect. They were three young dumb stupid kids who had probably been paid a lot of money to plant the virus but had no earthly idea the kind of damage they would be responsible for. Sometimes, just giving the young, dumb, and stupid a chance to re-consider their current path was more than enough to make them set the weapons down.
They might have given in if they had gotten the chance.
The kid who had run out earlier suddenly came back through the door, screaming blue murder and half of his face a mess of blood. He had this awful hysterical look in his eyes, like he had just peeked at a glimpse of hell. Something barged through the doors right after him, too large to fit through the frame but that didn't stop it. It forced its way in and the structure creaked in distress. Great big slavering jaws snapped and bit at the air where the bomb squad kid had been standing just seconds earlier. The beast lunged forward, dragging its huge body through the straining doorway and the wall cracked around it.
It looked like a dog, but only in the sense that it was shaped like one. Four legs, a tail, a lupine head, and other dog-like attributes. Frankly, that was where the similarities ended.
After all, most dogs weren't ten feet tall and about as long and didn't look like what this one looked like.
The skin didn't look so much like skin as it resembled a cracked lava bed and it even glowed a hideous red-orange in the cracks, as though it was on fire from the inside. Heat distortions blurred the air around it. The shoulders were so hunched, the forequarters so distended that the back half of the dog-creature looked roached. The chest looked horrifically stretched as well, as though the skin was just barely clinging to the external bony ribs. The waist tapered down to a point that would have had any well-educated veterinarian screeching starvation, before the body expanded again into bulging hindquarters. The tail was just a nub, docked like a Doberman's.
The paws didn't look nearly large enough to support such a massive body, but the claws were over a foot long and needle-sharp. Huge ram-like horns curved over the top of the skull, framing a pair of scalloped pig-like ears. The eyes were bloodshot and rabid-looking with slit pupils and long strings of drool spattered off the snapping jaws. The teeth were like spiral drill bits and they had to be a good ten to twelve inches long, each. And every single one of them closed around the kid who had tried to make a better choice with his life.
Lois had seen a few gruesome things in her time. You couldn't run with a gang captained by Sofia Gigante without bearing witness to at least one statement-making execution.
In their time, the SCU had seen some awful things as well. They were cops. The bad ones happened now and again. The police kept therapists on staff payroll for a reason.
But whether it was the arterial blood spray or the sound of the bones breaking or the lost expression on the kid's face like he couldn't comprehend what was going on or just the ungodly, unearthly beast what done it, it didn't matter. Somehow, this was just worst than all the other past experiences.
The hellhound opened its jaws only to bite down again and surely the kid was dead by the time the teeth speared through his body again (something in his eyes appeared to be fade). The hellhound threw the corpse into the air and caught it as it fell. The poor kid's body tumbled down its throat. It chewed a few times, watching the SCU with some manner of challenging glare, and then swallowed. A long tongue licked its chops clean and it looked around as if searching eagerly for its next bite.
"GET OUT OF THERE!" Maggie screamed at the remaining young dumb kids.
-Duck, Miss Lane!- Detective Jones ordered mentally, and Lois did, just as Maggie threw herself over the top of the desk and opened fire.
The new SIG Sauer P250 had a muzzle velocity of up to thirteen hundred feet per second and that was enough to punch a decent hole in flesh. The hellhound flinched when the bullets impacted, so it clearly felt them, but even at a distance, Lois saw the bullets ping right off its lava-like skin.
Maggie exhausted the clip, leaving a ringing silence in the wake of the last bang. But the hellhound just shook itself from nose to tail as though the bullets had been as irritating as a mosquito bite.
Its bloodshot eyes roved around the main concourse, pausing for a second to focus on each one of them. Lois had a terrible feeling it was sizing them up from most threatening to least. Then it growled, a bowel-watering brown note that reverberated more through the floor than the air.
The two remaining kids sprang up screaming, half-vaulting, half-falling over the divider wall as the hellhound lunged after them, bloodied jaws opened wide in hopes of catching one of them.
The leader escaped the first swipe of teeth by falling directly over the wall as soon as his upper body tilted far enough with the black case against his chest, but his comrade wasn't nearly as lucky. His own legs were still sticking out and he was too slow to pull himself over the wall. The hellhound's front pairs of incisors sank into the kid's calf muscle.
In that second, Lois learned of a new personal definition for 'blood-curdling'.
"Open fire!" Maggie ordered, dropping the emptied clip from her gun. "Head! Front legs! Shoulders! Fire fire fire!"
The SCU took up the order with gusto. Lois clamped her hands harder over her ears, not sure how the police avoided going deaf during a shoot-out like this. The noise of nine guns going off all at once was simply incredible.
Not that nine guns did a single thing. The hellhound growled low in its throat and flinched at each bullet, but not a one pierced its skin. It threw the poor kid aside with a toss of its misshapen head (he hit the corner of the wall neck-first and there was such a sickening crack that it was a good bet his neck was broken) and thrust its jaws over the dividing wall down at the bomb squad leader flat on his back.
"Get outta there you dumb-shit!" Gordon bellowed over the erratic burst of gunfire.
But whether the kid heard him or not was just not the problem. It was those big, blood-stained jaws and the spiral drill-bit teeth that bore down on him. The leader let out a sobbing cry, too paralyzed with fear to move.
Without thinking about her own safety on the matter, Lois grabbed a heavy-looking desk name plaque and sprinted out from behind the safety of the desk. She charged across the floor as fast as she could with being so low to it.
"Lois!" Colletta growled.
"Hold your fire!" Maggie ordered, pulling her gun up. The bullets stopped in that same moment.
"Miss Lane!" Gordon shouted reflexively, and then charged after her. He saw where she was heading and he was not about to let her go over there without someone covering her ass.
"What are we all dumbasses today?" Turpin wondered in a mutter, from somewhere close to Maggie's elbow.
It wasn't a long distance and Lois covered it in a matter of seconds. She heaved the name-plaque and it bounced off the hellhound's snout without leaving a mark, but it jerked its head up. That was all the opening Lois needed and she slid in like a baseball player making a steal for home-plate, right in beside the dumbass kid.
"C'mon! Get up get up!" Lois ordered, digging her hands under his shoulders. He was shaking terribly. This close she could see his eyes and that there was barely any coherency in them; just a primal animal fear.
She felt the growl in her ribcage as opposed to hearing it and suddenly those gigantic teeth were inches from her head. Lois had never experienced the phrase "blood running cold" before, but she did now. It was like ice washing over her and the blood drained from her face in a rush, contrasting harshly with the immense heat radiating off the hellhound. It felt like it would burn her skin at this close distance.
Don't look up. Lois told herself, staring at the quivering nose that was mere inches in front of her and the drill-bit teeth just a little few more inches down. Most animals like dogs regard eye contact as threatening, so don't look up.
"Hey!"
Gordon's voice rang out, instantly followed by his SIG barking once. Lois jerked back and the bullet struck its target, right on the hellhound's nose. For once, it struck truly and there was squirt of hot blood from the sensitive tissue. The hellhound let out a wounded noise and flinched away from what probably amounted to a bee-sting, but a painful one all the same.
"Miss Lane, this is dangerous!" Gordon informed her once he had sprinted up to help her pull the kid out of biting range.
"Tell me something I don't know!" the reporter snarled back.
She heaved the poor bastard to his feet, more or less and dragged him back while Gordon kept his gun trained on the beast. It was pawing at the blood on its nose and shaking its head alternately.
Then it screamed.
Lois was pretty sure that the scream was supposed to have been a bark, but there was just no way this evil beast birthed from Satan's asshole could do anything like a conventional dog.
So it screamed like ten thousand wailing damned souls, spittle flying from its jaws. The hellhound reared its head back and its chest expanded like something was trying to push out of the cracked-lava skin and--
Spewed a horizontal tornado of flames.
"It breathes fire?!" Lois screamed. "That's not fair!"
"Get down!"
Turpin was on top of them, shoving them down out of the path of the traveling inferno.
We're too close. Lois thought, already smelling the sulfur stink of burnt hair. At least first degree burns.
The intensity heat seared over them and if it hadn't been for the fact that she was still wearing her winter coat, Lois might have felt the temperatures a little more keenly than she did.
The blaze only lasted three or four seconds, at most, but it could have been forever before it stopped. Instantly, Lois sprang to her feet without pausing to see if the coast was clear; the only thing she had on her mind was getting out of range of the fucking fire-breathing hellhound!
She was vaguely aware of Detective Turpin on one side and Detective Gordon on the other, with the dazed leader of the bomb squad (still clutching the black case full of alien super-virus) squished between them. Lois was slightly more aware of the horrified expressions on everyone else's faces ahead of them. They were frozen in that sort of post-mortem shock you only saw in corpses, except this lot was still alive.
In the second or two it took to get from their spot on the floor to the first row of desks, it occurred to Lois that no one had any idea what the hell they were supposed to do with a fire-breathing hellhound that must have just popped out of fucking thin air, for only the Devil himself knew where it had come from. They were police. They were used to operating on something that resembled a procedure. There were emergency drills that they ran at least bi-monthly. Especially the SCU, since they were supposed to be
the one to handle the weird shit.
But they had no idea what to do.
After all, this sort of weird shit had just never happened in Metropolis.
The hellhound screamed again, rearing its head back.
"Fire in the hole!"
And Officer Harper reappeared with the M32 grenade launcher he had grabbed from the armory downstairs. He was flanked by Officer Mills and Detective Marzan, both similarly outfitted. They wasted no time aiming and shot an incendiary grenade each as the hellhound's chest started to inflate again. Lois didn't waste the time looking over her shoulder to see what would happen next; she had seen explosions of that nature to paint a pretty accurate picture.
They dove behind the nearest desk and everybody else ducked.
The police-grade incendiary grenades were a little weaker than the military-grade, but there was still that outward blast of heat and an ear-drum rattling BOOM! that shook the floor. The hellhound screeched like nails on a chalkboard, thrashing in apparent pain. Fire crawled up the old wood-work, licking at the banners that hung strung over the reception desk.
They weren't winning this one any time soon.
"Evacuate the building, double-time!" Lieutenant Sawyer roared, performing a quick head-count to make sure everyone was there. Captain Jase had long since departed, which left nine people beside herself, then Officer Harper, Miss Lane, and the dumbshit kid. She made them all go past her first and fell in step beside Harper, who had kept a remarkably cool head through all of this.
"The bomb?" she inquired.
Harper shook his head. "It's fluctuating too much. Could go at any time."
Can't risk it. Maggie nodded to herself, shoving Harper ahead of her as they hurried to the stairs.
Most of the others had gotten out the back door, which used to lead to the evidence warehouse before the damn thing had gotten half-blown up a few weeks ago. The city had simply pulled the rest of it down rather than waiting for the inevitable collapse. Some of the wall posts still remained where they had been anchored too firmly in the foundation to come down, but all that was really left was a three hundred foot square area of scorched concrete.
The SCU made their way unscathed down the empty street. Empty of pedestrians, at least. There were hastily abandoned cars and apparently people like to smash windows in for the hell of it. Otherwise, midtown Metropolis seemed to have all but cleared out in the last forty-five minutes; people fleeing for the outskirts of the city as fast as they could.
It was eerie to run down the streets when they were so quiet.
Two blocks away and around a corner, hopefully well out of the blast zone, they came to a halt, still warily watching the surrounding side-streets and even the sky. Lois knew they were looking for any sign of Superman to come flying to the assist, but at this point, she didn't have a whole lot of faith that her dad would actually do the right thing.
He had, after all, engineered a plan to make Metropolis burn.
"Here, set him down here." Sergeant Escudero instructed of Lois and Gordon, whom were still carrying the leader of the would-be bomb squad.
They set him down beside the steps to a building. The kid was limp between them, panting laboriously and his eyes roving and seemed to have no control over his legs anymore. He whimpered a little as he was lowered to the cold pavement, his arms locked tight around the case of virus.
Sergeant Escudero peeled off the knit balaclava, revealing that he was nothing more than a dumbshit teenager who had probably been given a pile of cash and a list of instructions. Maybe no more than seventeen or eighteen years old and milky-white across the everywhere.
"Pinche idiota." Sergeant Escudero muttered, shaking her head as she picked up his wrist to take his pulse. He wasn't very responsive, but he also wasn't showing the physical symptoms of shock, yet.
For now, he was just freaked out of his head.
"Lieutenant Sawyer, lobby for someone with more extensive medical training next!" she suggested, not for the first time.
"I know. Is everyone all right?" Lieutenant Sawyer asked, moving from officer to officer to check on them. They all had basic first aid training, but only Officer Mills had the training to do things like stitch wounds together and only because he was also a member of SWAT. What they really needed was a former first responder from the emergency services unit.
"Oh! Detective!" Lyle yelped, pointing at Turpin with one hand while the other still clutched the pilfered laptop.
"What?" Turpin blinked in confusion and then looked down to where the forensic specialist was pointing. Right at his shoulder where the suit had burnt clean through and the skin there was now a shiny red patch with blisters just starting to form. "Oh... Ooh, I'm gonna be feeling that when the adrenaline wears off."
"Dan--" Lieutenant Sawyer started worriedly.
She was interrupted by a KR-BOOM sound followed by a sound not unlike whistling fireworks. Without turning around, she could tell that there was a tower of smoke rising up from the ground two blocks away, judging from the way everyone's eyes traveled upwards.
"That was HQ, wasn't it." she commented.
"Yes." Detective Jones nodded.
"Everything was backed up on the main server, right? The one not located anywhere near the bomb site?"
"Except for everything from today, most likely."
"That's fine. I don't think it was that much we lost."
She said it to console herself, because they had actually lost a fair bit. The entire building and all the phsyical evidence. Most of it was either cold case or closed case, so losing it didn't cause too much of a problem. But they'd had a few active cases going on and losing all of the physical evidence was not going to help.
And the building.
They would get a new one; the SCU was a separate division no matter how many of their cases overlapped with other divisions. The new building would be something shiny and state of the art. But Maggie would miss the ambiance of the old court-house.
"Is anyone else hurt beside Turpin?" Lieutenant Sawyer asked, visually checking on her second in command. Turpin was still staring at his injured shoulder as though he was daring the burn to start hurting. The rest of them looked a tad dazed, but every murmur was generally a positive one.
"How's our person of interest?" the lieutenant asked, coming to check on the dumbshit teenager. Colletta followed her over and went to stand beside Lois, nudging the reporter companionably.
"He'll probably need to have a long talk with his parents and a lawyer and definitely a therapist, but he'll live otherwise." Gordon replied, kinking his neck this way and that as he spoke.
"Dumbass." Lieutenant Sawyer muttered, kneeling. "Lupe, help me get this out."
'This' was the black case. Between her and Sergeant Escudero, they freed it from the kid's vice-clamp grip and set it gingerly on the ground. There was a gentle slosh of liquid inside, but nothing prominent enough to suggest that any of the vials had cracked.
"I saw about two dozen vials when it was all still in the cabinet." Lois reported.
"Hopefully, they didn't make any stops before us." Colletta said softly.
"Let's find out." Lieutenant Sawyer undid the clasps and lifted the lid while her heart pounded in her throat. The tension was for nothing when she saw about two dozen vials of semi-cloudy liquid tucked into thick foam padding, all present and accounted for. Wherever the dumbshit kids had been going, the SCU had been their first stop.
Gordon whistled lowly. "One major disaster averted. Just the rest of the bombs to worry about." he said.
Then ten thousand damned souls screamed from just two blocks away.
Sergeant Escudero said something not fit for repeating.
Lois gritted her teeth. "Of course it's still alive. It couldn't be that easy to kill it."
Lieutenant Sawyer snapped the case shut and unthinkingly shoved it into Lois's arms before she turned around to address the rest of the SCU.
"Marzan, Mills, Harper! You've got the grenade launchers! Roast that bitch as soon as you see it! The rest of you find cover! Aim for the nose, the paws, the ears! Any time Fluffy opens his mouth, you put a bullet right down his throat!"
"If we were close enough to the rivers, I'd say drive it into the water." Gordon added, taking his SIG out of the holster.
Lieutenant Sawyer glanced over her shoulder at him and grinned. "Now that you mention it, we're not that far from the river."
Although logistically speaking, it would be difficult to drive the hellhound clear up the street to the edge of the Siegel River without it figuring out their plan, if it was smart enough to reason. They were still a half-mile from the river-front and that was enough distance for something to go wrong. And they would certainly need heavier artillery than what they had.
But they didn't have the time to worry about the logistics of anything. The hellhound was sprinting up the streets towards them, trailing streamers of fire. Lyle dove into the alleyway behind Lois, mumbling something about remote signals and ignition degradation, while she herself ducked down behind the stairs. Lieutenant Sawyer made a gesture that sent the rest of her team moving for cover behind the the overturned cars. Harper, Marzan, and Mills took up position in the middle of the road, the grenade launchers aimed at the swiftly approaching monster.
"Light it up!" Harper shouted.
*shunkPOMP!*
The grenades flew straight and true, but the hellhound detoured to one side, allowing the projectiles to shoot right past it. The hellhound snarled like a chainsaw and leapt, but not at the trio in the street. It leapt right over them and landed heavily, cracking the pavement. Those awful blood-red eyes zeroed in on Lois's ineffectual hiding spot and barely breaking stride, the hellhound changed direction on a dime and barreled right at the reporter.
Shit, is this three times in one day? Lois wondered while her legs worked on automatic. I am really setting the record today.
She forgot there was a building almost directly behind her until she backed right into the wall and the hellhound charged at her, drill-bit teeth bared savagely and taloned paws stretching out to rend her flesh-
*Crunch!*
Lois didn't remember closing her eyes, but she opened them in time to see that the hellhound had dug its incisors into the black case she had been holding. She let go of it abruptly and wiped clean, dry hands up the brick wall behind her.
Then the beast slid-- slid back several feet and it made a surprised noise from the back of its throat. Its claws gouged furrows into the concrete just inches from, but it made no headway. Immediately, Lois side-stepped out of the almost-corner and saw what had stopped the hellhound in its tracks (more or less) and couldn't help a bright smile.
"Superman!"
Superman had the hellhound by its hind-paws, specifically by the toes because they were the only part of the beast that was small enough to get his hands around adequately. He didn't look quite so great, Lois thought. He looked like he hadn't yet fully recovered from a bout of the flu and he certainly seemed to be straining to keep the monster from slipping out of his grip-
But just what the hell did it matter? He was here and that meant General Lane had miraculously found the balls to do the right thing. Superman was here, meaning their chances of dying had just lessened.
Superman threw his back into it, but it was a struggle to pull the hellhound off the ground. Even though the vague fatigue was fading from his limbs the longer he spent under the sun, he didn't feel back up to full strength yet.
Oh, but there was Lois. Alive and radiant and clearly delighted to see him, look at that smile.
He was just in the nick of time--
In his moment of inattention, his hand must have loosened a little. The devil dog jerked a foot free and donkey-kicked Superman in the chest, knocking him into the neighboring building. Then it leaned its head back and swallowed the black case full of alien super-virus.
"Superman!"
Lois sprinted a wide berth around the hellhound to get to their rescuer (it didn't chase her). Superman was already extracting himself from a pile of concrete when she got there. Up close, he was definitely pale and obviously sweating.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine." Superman grunted, getting upright.
"You sure?" Lois asked, since it sounded like a lie.
"I have to be." Superman replied. He inclined his head at the monster dog. "I think it got what it wanted."
Lois blinked. "The alien super-virus? What did it want with that?"
"Look at it." Superman said.
Lois did.
The hellhound had seated itself, head bowed and unmoving. But the cracks of its lava-bed skin had started to glow more brightly and fiercely red, like a warning sign on a rainy road. Staring at it, Lois had the terrible feeling she was standing in front of an armed nuclear warhead.
"I can see its stomach-- X-ray vision." Superman smiled briefly and tapped one of the orbital bones around his eyes. "It looks like an internal combustion engine in there. Everything's starting to mix. There's gas mixing with some kind of liquid. And the heat too. It internal body temperature is already past the boiling point. If it can ignite a spark--"
"It can breathe fire." Lois interrupted, and Superman blinked. "You're saying that thing itself is a bomb? No, of course it is, that's just how this day's been going!" she added, throwing up her hands in exasperated done.
"Someone is trying to make sure the job gets finished no matter what." Superman said, appalled at the lengths this third party was willing to go to (where the fuck had this monster even come from anyways?). "But if I can fly that thing high enough out of orbit, the virus won't have an atmosphere to disperse into."
"You sure about that?"
"Not really."
"So you're taking a gamble."
"Yep."
"You're probably going to die." Lois dryly. It was the only tone she could say it in because she sincerely doubted that even Superman could breathe in space.
He didn't look fussed about it, however. He just smiled that toothpaste-ad smile again and set a hand very gently on her shoulder. Despite the reassuring pressure he applied, there was something like uncertainy in his expression.
"It's what heroes do, Miss Lane." he said with a shrug, as if adding 'what can you do?'
Then he stepped away, grabbed handfuls of the hellhound's glowing skin, and rocketed into the air, scattering the debris around them. Lois threw an arm over her face to protect herself from the dirt and grit his departure kicked up. That wailing thousand-damned-souls scream dopplered away and Lois saw the trail of fire that the beast spewed out behind it but Superman hit Mach 1 at two miles up, punching a hole through the thick cloud cover, and then swiftly picking up speed from there. Both he and the hellhound rapidly shrank into a pinprick against the parting clouds and vanished.
"Yes! Fuck you!" Lyle screamed triumphantly from the alleyway and killing any tension still left in the moment. "Your kung-fu is not strong! Just you try setting off the rest of the bombs now motherfucker!"
"Lyle!" Lieutenant Sawyer snapped like a reprimanding parent.
"I just jammed the frequency, ma'am! They won't be able to remotely set off any more of the bombs! I'm gonna try and back-trace the signal and see where it came from!"
"Can you even do that from there?"
"My kung-fu is strong."
Lois watched the sky patiently as the clouds dispersed from Superman's passage, not turning away even as Colletta sidled up beside her with strangely cautious movements. It took a few minutes, but out above the atmosphere was nothing more than a flash of light, slightly bigger than sunlight gleaming off the underside of an airplane.
She smiled. "Well done." she said quietly.
And she wasn't the only one to see it.
It was strange that everyone in Metropolis looked up and knew what it was. Knew that it was their predicted doom exploding somewhere else. The people stuck on the bridges, trying to leave town, saw it. They cheered, throwing their hands up and dancing about. Plastered to the windows of the Daily Planet, Perry White led a great roar of triumph, hugging the nearest person who stood still long enough. There were tears and laughter and relief and triumph.
In city hall, word trickled down from the Special Crimes Unit that the crisis had been averted and word came in from other corners that the Army Guard branch had collared none other than Sofia Gigante as the individual responsible for master-minding this attack (Lyle's attempt to back-trace the signal would lead him on a merry chase through satellites and servers before landing somewhere in remote areas of Greenland)
Mayor Kovac heaved out a great sigh of relief and slumped back in her chair while her council clashed in life-affirming hugs, with more than one kiss on the cheek or the lips. The captain would not have to go down with this ship.
The City of Tomorrow would see another tomorrow.
Back out on the street, Lois watched the sky intently for any signs of Superman's return. He had done it. There was some cleaning up to do, but the city was still standing. He had saved the day and now it was time for him to get his butt back on the ground so Lois could do this thing properly and kiss him on the behalf of all the grateful citizens.
That was how this worked. That was how the hero-story ended. There had to be at least one adoring kiss before the credits rolled.
So what was keeping him?
But as five minutes turned into ten turned into twenty, the more it occurred to Lois that this was not going to be one of those feel-good endings. Maybe this was the sort of story where the hero didn't make it out alive.
Maybe there wasn't supposed to be a new age of superheroes.
-0-
yesterday i binge-watched the new episodes of voltron legendary defender omigod its so good