Hughie and Mother's Milk ran over to the wall Butcher was braced against, and made to help him up, but Butcher shook them both off, and pushed himself away from the wall as a sonic boom sounded in the distance.

"I don't want to hear a single fucking word out of you!" Butcher said, pointing his finger in Hughie's face.

"I wasn't going to!" Hughie said, putting his hands up.

Butcher stormed away from the epicenter of the explosion as Superman levitated into the sky, with the terrorist grasped in one hand.

Marvin shot Hughie a sidelong glance.

"I don't care what you say you were gonna do, none of us get to say shit about this." MM said as the two of them took off after Butcher.

Superman ascended above the highest buildings in the area to get a good look at the situation. Too many of the older buildings still had lead in them for him to reliably use his X-Ray vision to track all of the exploding men, and he didn't want to waste any more time. He knew from the second the man hit the van that his cover was going to be blown... He couldn't think about that right now, though. Too many lives were on the line.

The sonic booms in the distance were concerning. They weren't as powerful as the ones the Kryptonians from his universe made when they flew at top speed... And there was only one person he'd seen who could fly at those kinds of speed anyways.

Within seconds of that thought, Homelander snapped into position next to Superman. He was clad in a brand-new suit, one without the padding. It was a reinforced skin-tight ballistic suit in the same style of the one he'd worn before, with the same colors, pauldrons, and cape, and a much larger eagle-shaped belt... With compartments Superman's X-Ray vision couldn't penetrate.

Superman put the new suit out of his mind, and scanned Homelander for any sign of animosity. Surprisingly, the egotistical faux-hero appeared to be more concerned with the destruction of the city than with Superman.

"What are we looking at?" Homelander asked, scanning the city himself.

"Flame-powered terrorists." Superman replied, breaking his gaze from Homelander, and going back to picking out hot-spots where the terrorists were. "They burn hot, hotter than you'd expect."

"Good thing my new suit's fire-proof." Homelander quipped, glancing at the unconscious terrorist in Superman's hands. "What's with that guy?"

"What?" Superman asked.

"Why is he still alive?" Homelander asked. "He's weighing you down."

"Can't interrogate a dead man." Superman replied, coldly. "I want to know why they're here and if there are more of them."

Homelander shook his head and shrugged, widening his eyes a little. "Fair enough." He replied, apprehensively. "Let's round these guys up, then."

"Agreed..." Superman said, turning his head to face Homelander. "But you follow my lead on this."

Homelander looked at Superman with a raised eyebrow... Then nodded. "No problem."

Superman was taken aback by his response... But nodded in agreement.

"Alright. Let's get this done quick." Superman said. "We knock these guys out, only kill them if there's no other choice. Then we round them up and put them somewhere they can't burn their way out and find out what their deal is."

"I know a place like that." Homelander replied. "I'll take the left, you take the right?"

Superman nodded, and the two of them rocketed off into the city.

Homelander jetted through the city streets, toward the nearest glowing man as he tossed a fireball at a passing car. Homelander took the fireball straight on his chest, sending waves of hot air through his blonde hair. He closed the distance between him and the terrorist in a quarter of a second, and punched the man squarely in the nose, sending him careening into the pavement.

Homelander turned to the frightened people in the car, and flashed them his million-dollar smile.

"Don't worry!" He said. "We have this under control!"

Homelander grabbed the unconscious, possibly dying from a brain-hemorrhage terrorist (Not that John really cared either way,) and flew off to the next hot-spot.

Superman heard a crackling sound coming from the lobby of a nearby building, a tall one. The exterior was already scorched. In a flash, Superman wrapped a bike-rack around the first burning man and hoped he wouldn't come to before he could come back and get him.

The interior of the building was covered in flames. There were two men in the lobby, each of whom spouted jets of plasma from their hands, setting fire to anything that wasn't already burning. Superman took a deep breath... And blew as hard as he dared.

A wave of ice-cold air washed across the open spaces of the building, snuffing out every flame in the building, and chilling the entire lobby. The terrorists snapped around to look at Superman with eyes ablaze with rage.

Before they could say a single word, Superman closed the distance between him and them and knocked them unconscious with a single strike to the neck apiece.

Superman turned to the nearest civilians, then scanned the rest of the lobby. There didn't appear to be any more burning men in the lobby... But there were too many burned corpses and injured civilians. The burning men struck suddenly... If he'd been back home, there would have been a dozen heroes on the scene in a second...

If I wasn't so focused on getting home, I might have been here faster... Clark thought to himself.

He shoved those thoughts from his mind as he used his X-Ray vision to scan the rest of the building.

"There are more of them-" One of the civilians began, but Superman nodded, and cut him off.

"Downstairs, right." Superman replied as he zipped off to the basement, leaving a gust of wind in his wake.

Homelander ripped the doors off of a burning car, and pulled a man, a woman and two children from the blazing sedan. He rushed them across the street, then rushed back and clapped his hands together, sending out a shockwave that put out the flames.

He levitates above the car and landed on the other side as another burning man tossed a fireball into the panicked traffic-jam. His laser-vision burned so hot it dispersed the ball of plasma, and sliced the man's arm off at the shoulder, cauterizing the wound instantly.

A smug smile crossed Homelander's face, and he sliced off the man's other arm, then chopped him on the side of the neck, allowing him to crumple to the pavement in a burned heap. Then, he saw a wave of heat radiation coming out of the basement parking garage of a nearby skyscraper, and he had to hide a smirk.

Please, let them try to take out a building... Hell, maybe I'll even let them succeed a little. The bigger the damage, the better it gets... The better it looks when I save the day.

Homelander took off for the basement parking garage in a blur of red, white, and blue.

One of the terrorists had been posted as a guard outside of the steel gate at the street-level entrance, but he barely had time to tell that someone was approaching before Homelander was in his face, and slapped him across the face, sending him head over heels into the black top, shattering his nose and teeth and knocking him out cold. Homelander tore the gate away and flew into the parking garage.