Part Two

Lori Lemaris

Chapter One

Metropolis – 2020

"Can you then us all whether or not this is a real person, an alien, or just some made up stories?"

Robyn looked up at Iris and smiled.

"I can categorically tell your audience that this is a real person. And let me be absolutely clear," Robyn stated. "The man that rescued me, the man that came out of nowhere to not only get to me, but reassure me that I was going to be okay, and then performed superhuman feats to save me, that man is a real person."

"Wow," Iris said. "Talk about jumping the shark!" she replied kiddingly. "When you say 'man', are you referring to a metahuman or a regular man?" But before the lieutenant could answer, Iris said, "No! Strike that question. That's my mind running at 100 miles an hour at what you're saying. We don't want to give away the whole show in five minutes." Robyn smiled and nodded. "And just for the audience's sake, I haven't interviewed Robyn nor has anyone from my staff submitted me questions that they asked her. Full attribution, she was vetted for truthfulness, not content. This is our first face-to-face meeting and conversation so please excuse me in advance for being excited myself. Next to my husband Bryan asking me to marry him on a live broadcast, this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me as a broadcast host." She looked at Bryan and grinned. "And if Bryan wasn't in the control room right now and giving me a ride home after work tonight, I would have said this is the most exciting thing that's ever happened."

Bryan broke in on the broadcast. "I'm driving home either way, but what would I be missing out on if I said this was the most exciting moment in my broadcasting career?"

"Let's say more than just dinner and leave it at that, Honey," Iris quipped. Robyn chuckled and Bryan was laughing. "So, let's get back to business. Let's start at the beginning and you can tell your amazing story to the audience. I'll try not to interrupt. Please go ahead."

"So it started just after seven on Thursday night, October 15th. We were a little short on personnel because of some stomach bug that had decimated the station house that week. A few of the other 3rd district officers and I came in to help backup the overnight shift. There had been a few call outs by the time the big fire was called in.

"The fire, as we know, was in one of the tenement buildings in the Suicide Slums district and most of those places are fire traps waiting to happen anyway. This was a twelve-story apartment building, and the fire was classified as a structure fire with entrapment, meaning there were people trapped inside. Three trucks rolled on that call. I was in the second truck.

Iris interrupted. "How many people on a truck, Robyn?"

"That depends the type of truck. Two to eight firefighters are on a truck but mostly, crews are four or less nowadays. The one I was on had four, including the driver. Our district captain was on the first truck and when he arrived, he became the incident commander, directing all the resources in accordance with the ICS incident management model. So on the ground there were 10 firefighters I believe, including me. There were also two ambulances with paramedics on the scene."

"Thanks," she said. "So you arrived at the scene and there were three trucks and with your crew, ten firefighters. Please continue, Robyn."

"So we arrived and the ninth floor and tenth floors looked like they were engulfed in flames. The eleventh and twelfth floors were engulfed in smoke. Five of us suited up to search for survivors on the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth floors. Two went to twelve and would work down. The speed with which the place was burning was incredible. I went to the eleventh floor. I worried that the stairs going from the ninth floor to the tenth floor would burn out before we could get back down from the floors above. But our guys on the hoses were doing an incredible job and the stairs were pretty solid going up.

"The smoke was thick as Hell…I can say that right?" Iris nodded. "Thick as Hell on the twelfth floor, not quite as bad on the eleventh floor, and even less on the tenth floor. Luckily, there was only one elderly person on the twelfth floor and one of the team members was helping him down and sharing a breather with him."

"That has to be harrowing," Iris offered, and Robyn affirmed that it is pitch black and it can be ghastly looking for survivors or those who have been overcome by smoke under those conditions.

"So, the second member of the twelfth-floor team came down and assisted me. There were six people holed up in their apartments. One was a rather large woman who needed help getting down the stairs and the teammate from the twelfth-floor team took her down below the ninth floor and handed her off to a couple of guys from the rescue team on the eighth floor before coming back up. The firefighter with the old guy came up to the eleventh. That gave us three firefighters on the eleventh floor now to get the six people cleared out.

"I had taken three of the six down pretty quickly, they were young and I could get them down easily. The second guy from the twelfth-floor team took one person, the other member of that team took one person down. That left one older woman who was afraid to go down the stairs. She just knew the stairs would give way just as soon as she started down and was afraid that she would plummet into an inferno.

"The fireman who got the older gentleman down to safety came and helped me with the woman. Together, we got her to go but had to kind of carry her down. Once she was below the flames, she was adamant that there was someone else in her apartment, a teenage boy. I raced up to get him because I couldn't imagine I had overlooked him. I went through her entire apartment, combing all the rooms and little closets thinking he was frightened or incapacitated and curled up somewhere.

"Did you find him?"

"Sadly, yes. It was remains that the woman wanted. He had been killed a couple years ago and cremated and his ashes were in an urn in her room. I got them but before I could get back down, the stairs collapsed."

"What happens then? Could the ladders reach you that high up?"

"No, the truck ladders generally only reach about 9 floors at best."

"So," Iris said carefully, "you were kind of…"

"Screwed?" Robyn suggested. "Yep, I was screwed. Guys were bringing up ladders from below, but they were having trouble because tenth floor and stairs down to the ninth floor were getting pretty unstable by that point."

"So, what happened?"

"A miracle. The reason I'm here tonight talking to you."

"I take it that is when you encountered the Avenging Angel of Mercy?" The lieutenant nodded. "Please go on."

She chuckled. "Yes, and there's a funny thing about that I'll tell you later. But yes, I sat down at the threshold of the apartment with the urn in my lap hoping our guys could get a ladder to me from below, but I pretty much knew that wasn't likely. I was trying to think of some way of dropping down hoping the impact wouldn't shatter my legs. From behind me, I hear a voice say, 'Can I help?' and at first, I thought it might be the teenager and I overlooked him or my mind playing tricks on me. I turned around and he was there."

"My God," Iris exclaimed. "You said 'he'. So, this was an actual human?"

Robyn smiled again. "That I can't say for certain, but I can tell you, he isn't some supernatural phantom or apparition. He may be a metahuman, but he's definitely a man. He isn't surrounded by some ethereal aura or anything like that. He's not semi-transparent. He doesn't talk funny like cartoon aliens or have an overly formal voice like someone who studied our language from a textbook. He sounded like any other guy on the street except to hear him it was almost like you instantly felt safe. He smiles and you feel hopeful, even in the most hopeless situations. When you look in his eyes, you see a kind of calmness that makes your fears just fall away because you know you're going to be all right."

"Wow, this is crazy," Iris interjected. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. So, did you see him long enough that you could describe him for our audience. You know, what does he look like?"

"He's actually a very good-looking man, not in a Manhattan Fifth Avenue male model way but in a wholesome looking way. He looks like a regular guy. He's tall; I'd say he's about six-two or six-three and he's well-built. He looked like a guy who spends three or four hours a day at the gym but not grossly muscular like body builders. He's Caucasian, black hair that seemed neatly trimmed, no facial hair, and I couldn't tell the color of his eyes in the smoke and fire, but they looked blue. He was wearing a form-fitting suit of some type and I couldn't feel the material because of my gloves but it looked like something I'd never seen before. It had a sort of design in it. And the thing about the outfit was, on his chest there was this prominent stylized 'S' on a shield of some sort."

"So you're saying you actually touched this man?"

"Touched him? Oh yes. He picked me up. And I mean, like, picked me up as if I weighed nothing. Now I try to keep fit but I still weigh around 135. He picked me up like I was a pillowcase full of feathers, just effortlessly. He carried me while I carried the urn. He walked to one of the nearby apartments, kicked the door open and put me down. He said, 'Stand back a bit' and as I did, he looked at a spot on the floor and it burst into flames. I thought, 'My God, we're both going to get incinerated in here!' because I thought it was the fire coming from below but as soon as it started and a large hole was burnt through the floor and ceiling below, he blew the fire out. It was incredible. It was like a Halon fire extinguisher. Then, he picked me up and we dropped down but not fast. We sort of floated or drifted down to the floor below. It was like he had a parachute deployed or something. He did that two more times and I was below the ninth floor. He set me down and said, 'I think you'll be safe now.'

"Holy smokes," Iris exclaimed. "And you're not exaggerating or weren't the victim of some smoke-induced hallucination?"

"No. I know it's hard to believe but this man is real, and I was on a breathing apparatus the whole time so I wasn't influenced by the smoke or fumes the fire caused."

"Floated down! That…is just hard to believe." Iris shook her head in amazement. "I'm not accusing you of making it up, but I know the listeners out there are probably thinking the same thing right now. And for those who find this story hard to believe, we have a polygrapher in the studio tonight who will confirm Robyn's story.

"So, how does this story end?" she asked.

"I asked him if I could hug him, and he smiled and said 'Yes'. By that time, I had removed my breather because we were below the fire level. I hugged him and I think I even kissed his cheek, but I can't remember. I thanked him for saving me and he said, 'No, thank you for risking your life for others.' He said, 'I have a special affinity for first responders'. I asked him if he was going to walk out of the building with me or something like that and he said he had a different way out to avoid attention. I asked him why and he said that it was people like me and the other firefighters who deserved the attention, not him."

"And what happened next?"

"I asked him if he was the 'Avenging Angel of Mercy' that everyone was talking about, and it was kind of funny the way he responded to that. When I asked him that, he made a face like you do when you've bitten into something really bitter or gross tasting. He nodded his head 'Yes' and said, 'That's really a mouthful, isn't it?' He told me he hates that name because he doesn't avenge anything, and he said he was no angel. I told him that I disagreed with the last part and so would my kids." She paused because her voice got wobbly. When she recovered, she began again. "He said that her fellow firefighters were waiting for her in the hallway and she should let them know that she's okay. I went to the door and turned around to say good-bye and he was already gone."

"This is incredible, Robyn." Iris looked at her notes and just pushed them aside. "So, in your opinion, is he human, metahuman, alien, something divine, or something else?"

"As I said, he's a man and I imagine he's a metahuman because of the things he did, burning the holes in the floors, picking me up like I was nothing, blowing out the fires, and floating down. He seems like a man but what he does is just amazing. Oh, in all of my explanation, I didn't mention that this man was not wearing any breathing apparatus. The smoke was not as thick on the eleventh floor as it was on the twelfth but there was still plenty of smoke. He didn't seem to ge affected by it. So, it's clear he isn't an average man but he's not like anything else I could describe him as being."

"What about alien? Could he be an alien?"

Robyn squinted. "I don't know about that. If he is, he's spent a long time here. I didn't detect any dialect or oddity in his speech or use of the language. His mannerisms were all normal human mannerisms, like when he made a face when I mentioned the name everyone's given him. That's a human mannerism. He didn't have any strange special devices or anything like that. He wore a cape with that outfit and it looked really cool. It looked crimson. I don't think he was, but if he was an alien, we need about a billion more of them on this planet to straighten it out."

Iris was captivated with the story. "Whoa! Okay," she said. "This ends the first segment of our broadcast here at Seriously Weird Stuff on WJOB. When we return from our break, we've got an independent polygrapher who will run a series of questions by Robyn who agreed to take this polygraph exam to verify the validity of her story.

"After that, we'll open up the phone lines and take your calls. Robyn has agreed to be here to the end so be patient and we'll try to find out more about this man like," she looked at Bryan and grinned, "I don't know, like if he's attached or married, and if not, if he might be open to fooling around with a married woman? We'll explore all that and more, right after the break. So, stay tuned."

Metropolis – 2015

Thanks to the athletic director and the coach of the Met U Wildcats, Clark and Pete were assigned as roommates at Met U. The semester had not yet started but the football team was at school practicing and conditioning. Having Pete as a roommate was an arrangement that Clark desperately needed and made Jonathan and Martha feel at ease knowing Pete was with him.

Clark was not pining for Lana as much as he missed the emotions, the feelings, and the excitement of anticipation he experienced having a relationship with a girl. The end of the entire three-year on again, off again nature of their relationship had drained Clark of hope for having a normal relationship with a girl. It left him believing that, once again, because he was different, he would never be the same as a human in anyone's eyes. He felt empty, and even though he thought that he was concealing it, Pete could tell. He who knew Clark better than anyone besides his mom and dad, saw his best friend a shell of the person that he had known just six months earlier. For a guy who was as positive as Clark had been, seeing his mood and outlook so bleak was a change he could not easily hide from those who knew him best.

When they first arrived on campus, Pete urged Clark to join him at fraternity parties being hosted to welcome members of the various varsity teams at Met U but Clark opted out. The football field was where Clark seemed most like himself and when he sensed his friend was slipping into a quiet mood, Pete would drag Clark out to throw a football around, go to the gym to work out, or over to the meeting rooms at the field where they would go over Met U team playbook and review last season's films of the teams that were on their schedule in the upcoming season.

Pete wanted Clark to tell him about what happened with Lana. All Pete knew was that Lana and his best friend had gone their separate ways and he was somewhat shocked by it. He believed that Clark would explain what happened once he got past the point where he could talk about it without reliving it and he was right. That time came just before the new semester began.

"Pete, when she told me that, all I could do was think about some strange guy she barely knew on top of her, defiling her and I just couldn't see her in the same way again."

"Damn Clark. That just sucks and I can see why you cut her loose." He paused to gauge Clark's reaction. "I never considered Lana to be someone who would do that," he offered, "not to someone she said she loved."

"I felt like she ripped my heart out, Pete. It still hurts, you know? I have been trying to understand why she did that. After nearly two years of being a couple out in the open, she ends up doing that with some other guy and it just left me feeling…foolish for being so in love with her." He paused. "My mom said it happens when you put people on pedestals, and I guess she was right."

Pete groused. "It's still a betrayal. She can fall off her pedestal but it doesn't have to be because of doing something like that." He shook his head with disbelief. "I'm like you, I won't be able to see Lana in that light even again. I always thought of her as some porcelain doll, just nice as can be and nearly perfect in every way, but doing that to you puts her in the same category as every other cheating chick." He frowned. "I just figured your relationship had run its course. You know, like you hit it and then gradually lost interest."

Clark shook his head. "I guess a part of me wishes that it had been like that. I viewed her almost like my savior in a way, you know? It's like she pulled me out of that pit of rumors, lies, and innuendo the people in Smallville had put me in and I feel like I owe her my eternal gratitude for doing that. And it's…"

"Owed, not owe!" Pete interrupted. "You paid that bill, Clark. You paid with your heart, you paid with your trust, you paid with your loyalty, and she cashed that friggin' check! You don't owe her anything now, you got that?" He put his hands on Clark's shoulders and stared at him. "She had the chance to be with the most amazing guy that Smallville will ever know and she threw it away for what? To scratch some itch like a stray cat in heat?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry, but you're wrong! She did that without even thinking about what it would do to you. You owe her nothing except the respect you show every other person and nothing more, man. It's her loss and I know Lana well enough to know that she knows what she lost. If she doesn't now, she will know it when she starts a new relationship with some other dude." He paused and Clark said nothing. "I am guessing that she was really upset when she realized what she had done and what she had lost." His anger subsided because Lana had been a friend of his as well. "I guess deep down, she's a good person and maybe it was a moment of weakness. I don't know because it seems out of character." He paused again and became introspective. "I guess you never really know what you think you know about people. I would never have guessed you and Lana ended that way. It didn't seem like something like that ended your relationship because you two seemed very close all the way through graduation."

"Pete, she made me feel horrible and she felt horrible about it. She begged me to forgive her, but I just couldn't look at the same way anymore. I did forgive her but I couldn't forgive what she had done."

"No shit, man!" Pete interjected.

"But I didn't want to see her embarrassed or anything like that. So we agreed to continue the image of a couple and then just go our separate ways after graduation." Clark paused. "I'm sort of relieved that she's not here at Met U, you know?"

"Yeah," Pete agreed. "That would have been tough." He thought about it for a second and Clark did not say anything else. " But now it's her that is paying the price and it's a price she'll have to pay for the rest of her life, I imagine. Something like that doesn't just go away when you find someone new. She'll have to live with knowing she cheated on you forever. But you did the right thing, man. You dealt with it like a true man and rather than trash her reputation, you protected it and that's really remarkable. I'm sure Lana knows it too and it will eat at her in every relationship she has from now on.

"Abby and I broke up but not because of that. Our relationship was going nowhere and she was not planning to go to college so we just fell apart. Now, we're just two lone wolves, man. So, are you ready to get back on that horse?"

"Not really. I think I'm going to sit this quarter out and give it some time to age."

When it came to friends, Pete Ross would always be Clark's oldest and most-trusted friend. Which, in fact, was the reason that Clark decided to share his secret with Pete. He did it during the period of darkness in which Clark had found himself. He needed to talk to someone his own age who could relate to the day-to-day challenges he faced. So, after telling him about what happened with his relationship with Lana, Pete had suggested that they take the weekend before classes began to go camping at a lake near the campus. Clark decided it would be the perfect opportunity to finally share his secret with Pete. They would be remote, by themselves, and he could tell him without worrying about others hearing or seeing him do something that would convince Pete of the story he was going to hear.

Pete drove his graduation present to the lake that Friday. They stopped at a Walmart to pick up a tarp, some rope, a few camp pots, and some food. Within an hour, the two had found a suitable camping site near the lake and pitched a simple tent made from the 16-foot by 8-foot reinforced nylon tarp and had bedrolls using blankets and sheets they had in their room. After getting situated and enough stones to create a fire ring to contain the campfire, they dug out hot dogs and canned baked beans and heated them for dinner.

Sitting around afterwards, they chatted, and Clark wondered how best to bring up his secret. Pete left an opening in a conversation about sharing problems with best friends and that they could be trusted to help when the other was feeling down or having problems.

"Trust is a tricky thing," Clark said. "Just when you think you are sure you know someone, you find something out about them that you wish you they had told you before."

Sensing where he was going, Pete replied, "I'm not Lana, man, I'm your best friend." He could see Clark's body language change. "I'm not going to dredge that up again, I'm just saying that I'm not her. She had her reasons for not saying something earlier. And you made some assumptions as well and judged her based on those assumptions." He paused. "Best friends don't judge each other like that."

Clark sensed his opening. "So, say you found something out about me that I never told you before, you wouldn't be hurt or feel like I didn't trust you enough to tell you?"

"If you held back," he began, "I would just assume it's because you were ashamed of it or afraid that it would affect our friendship, not because you didn't trust me. After all these years, man, I trust you with my life. I hope you feel the same."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Pete." Clark said. "Because there is something I want to tell you that I haven't told anyone else. No one else in the world except my parents know."

Pete leaned forward intently. "Are you going to finally tell me you have special powers that you've never told me about?"

"What?" Clark asked, flummoxed. "Why…why'd you say that?"

Pete laughed out loud. "Hey man, I've known you're different for about ten years. At first, I just kind of suspected you were a little different. But the more I thought about it and the more we hung out and did things, the more I realized it." He chuckled a little more. "You never get hurt, not even a scratch or bruise. You never get sick, ever! There are times when you are in one place and then you suddenly appear somewhere else and I'm probably the only one who noticed that it was physically impossible for you to be there. You work out in the gym and you never break a sweat or even seem to be struggling with weight. I believe you could throw a football all the way to Smallville from here if you wanted to. I've seen you move or lift things when you either weren't thinking or didn't know I was watching. It's okay. I know you've been hiding these things from me since we were little kids."

Clark spent the next two hours telling Pete all about his fears and his parents' fears of his abilities being exposed. In turn, Pete talked about the times he remembered Clark doing something quite extraordinary physically. They exchanged stories and for Clark, it was like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders to be able to tell another person his story only to realize that person had known it all along and kept that to himself. By the end of the evening, Clark had never felt better or so unburdened. Even during the best of times with Lana, he had never felt so free and relaxed.

"You've got to be kidding me," Pete exclaimed. "So, you're telling me that you, Clark Kent, are not human but from another planet. Is that what you're saying?"

He nodded. "That's exactly what I'm telling you."

"Bullshit! What planet?"

"I don't know."

"Aaaah! Then how do you know you were sent here from another galaxy?"

"My dad has the spacecraft I was sent here in. It's hidden in the barn."

Pete cocked his head. "Unbelievable! I've been in every inch of that barn, there's no spaceship in there."

"It's hidden in a storage cellar beneath the floor." He paused. "Until my fifteenth birthday, I never knew it was there. My dad dug a storage pit with a backhoe, framed its opening, put the spacecraft in there, build a reinforced top to go over it, and covered it with a couple inches of dirt and then moved some old equipment that he didn't use anymore over top. I don't think he ever expected to resurrect it, but he showed it to me on my fifteenth birthday."

"You show it to me someday?" Pete asked and Clark nodded. "God almighty! My best friend is the real deal. I thought Luke Skywalker was about the coolest damn thing there was and you make him look like a punk!"

"Watch this!" Clark demonstrated his arctic breath and followed it up with his heat vision and Pete could hardly believe what he was seeing.

"That will come in handy next time we go camping or whenever beer needs to be iced down!"

"These powers just keep developing and they keep getting stronger as I get older," Clark admitted. "The heat vision is the last ability I developed. I got that last summer." He did not mention his x-ray vision or his super hearing. Those were intrusive abilities, and he knew those could be unsettling. He kept those things hidden.

They spent most of the night talking about Clark's abilities and powers and how Pete had known certain things about him were different than normal human beings. As a best friend, he decided never to confront his with it, knowing that if Clark wanted others to know, he would tell them. When the next day arrived, Clark felt reborn and was looking forward to moving on and what college life held for him. "Any more fraternity parties for us?" Clark asked Pete.

"They're pretty much done now," he replied. "It's just the regular rush to find pledges for the fraternities." Clark looked disappointed. "We can head over to a couple anyway," Pete offered. "A couple of them urged me to give them a second look after I had seen all the others."

Clark nodded. "I'm in," he said to his best friend's approval.

They never joined a fraternity but met some of the other teammates that had joined and they promised to keep the fraternity in mind. Clark had told Pete that alcohol did not affect him unless it was an extraordinary quantity, and it would be unlikely that he could physically consume that much. Plus, the two of them being underaged made them dismiss the idea, at least until the season was over.

Pete and Clark both were recruited for the varsity team and they were sitting on the third and second string lineups, respectively. As a backup quarterback, Clark never played another position, but Pete was often used on special teams. Because of that, Pete would likely see more action than Clark once the games began.

Midway through the second game, Clark had to go in for a couple series when the starting quarterback's hand hit an opposing player's helmet and it jammed his thumb. Like in high school, Clark showed a great command of the playbook and made some exceptional throws that kept two drives alive and those drives led to a field goal and a touchdown before the starting quarterback returned to the game. The two series were enough to get the student body's attention and Clark's name known.

In classes, Clark had taken some of the basic core courses and a business elective. It was a popular course and it was in a lecture hall. Among the many freshman students was an extremely pretty but quiet girl with long brown hair and an athletic build. She was among other girls in the freshman class that Clark had noticed, but he was not anxious to start a relationship right away. Every once in a while, he would catch her staring at him, but she would glance away when he did. He was not interested in introducing himself and getting to know her better. Half way through the first semester, he learned that the girl was a swimming phenom on the girls' varsity swim team at Met U.

He asked Pete if he had ever met the girl or knew anything about her. He nodded. "I haven't met her personally but I hear she's kind of a bitch," his friend said. "She's good-looking but from what I hear, she is not at all sociable and the word is that she's a man-hater."

"All men?"

Pete looked around and grinned. "All human men. You might luck out with her," he said facetiously.

"That's the word, huh?" Clark was no stranger to rumors and innuendo. "I remember things being said about me that weren't true. I wonder what she's like." Clark said he was simply interested to know more about her and what made her tick. Someone as gifted an athlete as she was seldom sought a low profile. "Feel like going to a swim meet? They have a swim meet on Thursday night. Let's check it out," Clark suggested. "We can eat after practice and hit the swim meet."

Pete scowled. "This isn't a rebound thing from Lana, right?"

He thought about it. Was it, he asked himself. Lana betrayed our relationship. She betrayed my feelings and me. That familiar feeling in the pit of his stomach reminded him of the pain he felt when Lana told him the truth about her fidelity. No. I don't need to feel that way again.

"Not at all," Clark said confidently. "I don't even know her, never met her. I haven't even spoken to her. She's in my Business class and I hear she's phenomenal. I'd like to see for myself. That's all."

"In any other situation, I would probably go but I've got an exam in French class tomorrow that I have to study for." Clark looked disappointed and nodded. "But you go ahead and go, so long as it's not because you're looking for a stand-in after the Lana debacle."