Lois was standing in the kitchen at the farm. The first cup of coffee of the morning on the kitchen Island next to the Daily Planet paper that Clark brought from Metropolis. She had no real reason to be in Metropolis right now and chose to stay with him at the farm. Clark brought her some things from her apartment, and she was about to upload her story to the news blog recommended to her by one of her more mysterious sources. She pulled Lex's credit card out of her wallet and weighed it in her hand. She had stolen it from him yesterday morning while he fired her, and she didn't know if he had cancelled it yet, but she wasn't going to risk it. She walked over to the sink and threw the card into the trash.
She looked out the window and took a few purifying breaths and then went back to the cup of coffee. She drank from the mug and pressed 'send' on the laptop. The website's minimalist animation was activated and all that was left to do was wait. Lois was daydreaming, fantasizing about Pulitzer Prizes, and flying with Clark when her computer made a startled sound. Lois looked at it in surprise and clicked on the flashing tag in the browser.
"...I'm repeating, Connie. This is Barbara Harris speaking from the observation point on Mount Davidson. A few moments ago, a strong earthquake ended, according to initial estimates, at a level of 8.2 on the Richter scale. The authorities ordered everyone who can do so to go to the higher places in the city because there is a fear of serious tsunami waves..." The camera looked down on the city spread out below with clouds of dust and destroyed buildings scattered throughout it. The camera suddenly focused on the reporter who touched her ears and paled noticeably, "Information I am receiving at this moment." She took control of herself with a noticeable effort, "The nuclear power plant on the outskirts of the city that supplies electricity to more than a quarter of the city began to sound an alarm." The reporter swallowed hard, "The mayor asks all citizens to keep calm and get to the high places in an orderly manner. The emergency at the station is under control and the engineers are currently working on cooling the reactor..."
"Clark!" she screamed.
He appeared in seconds at the farm.
"What happened?"
"There was an earthquake in San Francisco. Huge!" He looked at her confused.
"I felt something but..."
"You feel earthquakes? Never mind. We'll change clothes and fly there now."
"Us? Lois..."
"This is the biggest story of the year, and I won't stay on the sidelines! You said we were together yesterday."
"Ok."
"I'll be super careful, promise." She ran quickly up the stairs to his room.
Clark packed her computer and quickly changed into his suit. She came downstairs after a few minutes and looked at the suit-clad Clark with a smile.
"I guess it's now or never. You packed my bag!" She kissed him. "You are great."
"I also put in the first aid kit which I hope won't be needed." He looked at her seriously.
"Me too. Now, let's go to work!"
He cradled her in his arms and flew to San Francisco.
"Ms. Sullivan!" the receptionist at the Isis Foundation called into the intercom. "Do you watch WGSN?" Chloe quickly changed the channel on one of the screens she was watching.
"... Connie, I just don't know how to explain it. Max? Are you filming this?"
"You bet, baby!" The photographer's voice is heard.
"What? What is this? This man is flying?" said the anchor.
"You see right, Connie, this man flies and from reports we're getting that's probably not the only thing he's capable of!"
The camera focused on a red and blue blur that kept saving people and flying from place to place. The camera had trouble following him.
"Oh god!" whispered the photographer. He pointed the camera towards the beach.
"The tsunami wave authorities feared has arrived. It has reportedly completely flooded the Golden Gate Bridge, sweeping cars with it." Barbara Harris said. The camera must have had a zoom or telescoping lens because the photographer was able to focus on the flying man as he saved cars from the flooded bridge and was able to prevent the bridge from collapsing.
Impulse arrived in San Francisco even before the reports of the Flying Man arrived and before the tsunami wave. He tried to save a group of children on a school bus that was about to fall from a crumbling stone bridge. The yellow, heavy bus threatened to take all twenty children with it and Impulse just couldn't get them out fast enough when suddenly they all fell to the floor. The children looked around in horror, the bus started to rise.
"Sorry for the jolt, kids." said a warm male voice from outside the bus.
The kids rushed to the windows and Bart watched in shock as the bus floated through the air and then gently landed in a nearby parking lot. A man in a blue suit opened the emergency door of the bus. He smiled at the stunned children, a casual breeze unfurling his red cloak. He waved goodbye and flew up.
"Hey, wait a minute!" called Impulse.
"A bit busy at the moment, sorry." He disappeared.
Bart shook his head and hurried away himself. The mysterious man will be waiting, there is a whole city in distress around.
Cyborg held onto a heavy beam with piles of stones from an entire collapsed building on it, while rescue teams rushed inside. He would have to hold on until the firemen could find another beam to take his place, that wasn't going to be a problem. Only he didn't take into account the aftershocks and one came just now causing several more tons of rocks to fall on the beam. Against his will his legs and hands began to tremble under the enormous weight. He must last! have to! If this beam collapses hundreds of people will be trapped inside. His legs were beginning to buckle under the strain, he wouldn't last much longer. He groaned.
Then in front of his stunned eyes appeared a man in a skin-tight blue suit protecting his chest with a red-letter S. He gripped two heavy steel beams as if they were toothpicks and advanced towards him.
"Cyborg, if you could hold on for a few more moments..."
"What? What are you doing? Who are you?"
The man inserted one beam on each side of Cyborg and aligned them under the vertical beam, creating an opening and then before Cyborg's amazed eyes the beams wielded themselves against each other.
"It should last until all the people are evacuated." He smiled and walked away, intending to leap and fly.
"Wait! Who are you? How did you know..." But he was already gone, "...who am I?"
Aquaman and his sea mammals, dolphins, and whales, chased the tsunami waves until they reached San Francisco and began rescuing adrift people, capsized boats and ships.
"Oh hell!" Aquaman exclaimed as he noticed the large oil tanker in the harbor.
Oil had already started to leak from the tanker, and it tipped on its side at a ninety degree angle. God knows how much oil spilled from her deep into the harbor. Arthur knew there was no way he could do anything about the oil. He saw people and marine animals trapped inside it and there was not a single thing he could do. The dolphins and the whales with him will never agree to enter there but the damage that will be caused to the environment, to the livelihood of the people, to the lives of the people. He looked helplessly at the spreading oil slick.
Something suddenly started happening. In front of his disbelieving eyes, the huge tanker, one of the largest in the world, began to straighten out! Then something else strange happened, a miracle! The oil began to recede as if something had drawn it back. Arthur threw caution to the wind and swam at full speed towards the tanker, to the other side to see what caused it, who was responsible for the miracle. And what he saw was a huge vortex, a tornado of oil, a black pipe that poured all the oil back into the tank. It took time, about fifteen minutes, but apart from small, almost imperceptible spots, all the oil was returned to the tank.
Arthur looked in shock at the floating man who was covered in oil from head to toe.
"You..." The man smiled, his white teeth standing out through all the oil.
"I need to clean up before it leaves a stain. Excuse me." He flew south quickly.
The tourists at the tar pits in Los Angeles watched in shock as the man removed a huge amount of oil and then took off north.
Green Arrow shot an arrow that created a large web and then called the frightened family in the fifth floor of the destroyed building.
"It's okay! Jump!"
The mother and father, as scared as they were, grabbed their three children, closed their eyes, and jumped. The large net stopped their fall and Green Arrow helped them off it. But before they could breathe a sigh of relief, another aftershock shook San Francisco, and the entire top floor of the building was about to fall on them. Green Arrow laid the family on the pavement and tried to cover them with his body but apart from a few small stones nothing fell. Oliver opened his eyes and looked up with the family. He stared open-mouthed at the man who lifted the entire collapsing floor and carefully returned it to the building.
"The building is stable enough, but you should get to shelter quickly." The man said in a friendly manner.
"Wait a moment!" Oliver screamed, "Get back here, idiot!" The man raised an eyebrow. "If you would stop a moment..."
"I'm a little too busy to play right now, Green Arrow. Maybe when the crisis is over?" He disappeared.
"How the hell do you know who I am?" Oliver screamed to the sky.
"Hey, Green Bean!" Black Canary called from the nearby building, "Are you done playing? Because there is work to be done."
Lois had just arrived in San Francisco and was already in trouble. The National Guard refused to let her near the power plant and now she was stuck on the roof of a tall building. She climbed the building in order to look out from it with the binoculars that she... barrowed from a soldier in the National Guard around the nuclear power plant. Since the initial news report of an alarm heard at the station the authorities have maintained radio silence regarding the power plant. So, Lois got on a roof high enough to overlook the station only that just like Cyborg she didn't build on the aftershocks. The building that seemed relatively stable when she climbed it began to shake and Lois's eyes widened in horror as she realized that the building was about to collapse and there was nothing she could do about it. She ran to the edge of the building and tried to calculate her chances of surviving a jump to the roof of the nearby building but the fact that all the buildings in the area were also shaking didn't give her much hope. Then the roof rail she was leaning on snapped and she fell more than fifty stories.