After getting things sorted, Lois made her way to Slabside Penitentiary where she was supposed to have her first talk with Cletus Kasady. The Carnage Killer. The man who murders slaughters, and on occasion eat his victims!
As she made her way through the Super Maximum prison, a guard led her through the many cells with a guard aside her. She was led to a laser gate that was literally a gate made of lasers. When the guard walked up to it, the lasers allowed him past without even touching him.
Lois had to freeze for a second and look at the gate in fear and the guard took notice. "Walk through. The laser parts for authorized people."
Lois decided to just go with his suggestion and walked through the lasers. The lasers indeed parted in her form to let her pass, causing Lois to sigh in relief. He leads her down the halls and towards the cell of the Carnage Killer. He asked to speak to her personally, which immediately got everyone's attention.
Cletus hasn't spoken to anyone in twenty years since he was first institutionalized. Then one day he says he would only talk to Lois Lane of the Daily Bugle, and everyone jumped at the opportunity to close some unsolved cases.
"You ask me, they're dumb to let this psychopath call the shots." The guard informed Lois. "Second asked for you to interview him, I'd have shut him down there and then."
"Well, you know the FBI." Lois shrugged as she took her notepad and pen out of her bag. "They're taking advantage of the only time he agreed to speak to anyone. They just hope that agreeing to his terms will help them identify some additional bodies and even where a few body's locations left undiscovered."
"FBI doesn't work up and personal with him." The guard scoffed as they reached the door. "The FBI will have to identify you if you don't follow the procedures."
"Relax, this isn't my first time dealing with a psychopath," Lois stated, thinking back to her brief history of dating Lex Luthor.
The guard then unlocked the door with two other guards and allowed her to walk inside. "Got a visitor for you, Red!"
Lois walked into the room and saw a giant cylinder glass container in the middle of the room with a yellow box drawn around it. That was meant to be the barrier she wasn't meant to cross, or alarms would blare.
Lois became immediately disturbed by the killer when she noticed that there was a message drawn out of blood:
WeLCOmE LOiS
The Carnage Killer then looked over to Lois with a smile. "Hello, Ms. Lane."
"Hello, Mr. Kasady?" Lois decided to go with it as an opening.
"Do you mind if we forgo the whole creepy serial killer thing?" Cletus asked of her.
"Sure." Lois decided to go with what he said to get him talking. "It's fine with me."
"I mean, I can turn it on if you want." Cletus offered her. "I can talk about the... Dadaist patterns of arterial spray."
"I believe you," Lois replied as she started to pace back and forth.
"Tough to see you in the light, Lois," Cletus said, keeping his eyes on her as she kept walking. "You mind stepping a bit closer?"
"Sure." Lois decided as she took a step closer. "See me any better?"
"Yes." Cletus confirmed.
"So... what did you want to talk about?" Lois asks him.
"I want you to get my story out there," Cletus tells her, getting to the point quickly. "But first...get a message out there. To all my fans. Then...if you come back...I'll give you my life's story."
Lois was surprised to hear this and walked up to the yellow line. "I'm listening."
Peter was currently crouching down over the nearest building to the prison. He was dressed in his suit and was worried about what could happen if his mother was killed by this freak.
You'd think he'd believe in the security of this place, but it's exactly the opposite. Everyone is constantly escaping this prison, so they plan to transfer Cletus to Arkham Asylum in Gotham.
Because that's a better place to send him.
How many times had the Joker escaped in the past two months alone?
Then his alert went off and he saw that he needed to get to school. He quickly leaped off the ledge and started to swing around to make it. While he was swinging, he webbed the security cameras in the area watching his movements and recording everything. He didn't need someone putting together where he was going or where he was coming from or even worse end up getting his location.
Getting used to this web swinging and how his shooters would function have been a long time coming, but getting the formula was one thing. But using them to swing around the city was another thing altogether. Trying to work out most of the best ways to get around and the fastest routes to get from place to place.
Up in the air, far above the atmosphere, there sat a communications tower for most of the heroes of the Earth, and a few from the stars. The Watchtower was floating, keeping everyone on the planet as safe as they could. But the recent question on the mind of everyone was the same as everyone on Earth.
Where is Superman?
Bruce Wayne, the Batman, was sitting at the computers at the main center of the computer systems, trying to figure out what could have happened to him. From what little footage could be seen by the cameras that caught the exploding shuttle, there wasn't much to really see. When Bruce looked over the footage, he watched as Superman flew upward to the shuttle, but he only reached it before it ended up exploding due to entering the atmosphere and the damage it sustained. How it sustained damage was unclear, but there wasn't even any sign of the crew when others tried to make contact.
"Anything?" John Stewart, the Green Lantern, asks as he flew and landed aside Batman.
"Nothing." Bruce was sorry to say as he watched the footage over and over. "I keep going over this, trying to see what I could have missed. But there's nothing to miss. The ship is there, Superman comes in to slow the descent, then it explodes."
"And afterward?" John asks.
"No Superman," Bruce said as he stood up with a sigh. "There's nothing useful. I saw the same on the Batcomputer and just figured I would try it out to make sure I didn't miss anything."
"What do we think happened? That he was teleported?" John wonders as he was anxious to learn what happened to the hero. Bruce just started to walk away, making his way for the exit. "It was Lex's shuttle."
"No. I checked it out." Bruce's first thought was the same as his. "He only gained a few samples of something he's keeping under lock and key. They were already contained before the shuttle exploded and were retrieved after they landed."
John nodded and should have known that Bruce already considered it. "What about that new guy running around Metropolus now? Think he might know something about it?"
Now for once in his life, Bruce was utterly confused. "New guy?"
"What, haven't you been watching the news?" John was a little surprised that he hasn't heard. He then turned the computers to show the recent news going on in Metropolis. "Here. Take a look."
Bruce watched as someone was taking footage of the fire from just the other night. He watched as a dark figure swung into the burning building while entering through the fifth floor.
"..this masked new vigilante of some sort is seen making his way inside. Everyone is asking, who is this man? They described him to be about average height, with the strength to go with the likes of Wonder Woman and Superman from the looks of it. He was said to be dressed in red and blue clothing, didn't seem to say much, and was able to get everyone out using some sort of spider-like webbing exiting from his wrists. He was done seconds before the fire department was able to put out the flames and the masked hero only left this at the scene."
Then there was a small note attached to a small spider web that read: Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man
"And with this note in mind, everyone asks...who is Spider-Man?"
"I can't say I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. Just made a first debut a while back." John shrugged it off and turned the screens back to normal. "Nothing major, but he has been helping with keeping the crime down in Metropolis since Superman disappeared."
Bruce was surprised he let something as major as that move past him like that. "I wouldn't think much of it. It would seem to me that he is just trying to help. I'll keep an eye on him if anything comes up." Then he started to walk back again, making his way for the transport back to Earth. "For now, I say we leave him be until we have more information."
At LexCorp, the man in charge was making his way down toward where he was keeping his newest specimens. When he reached the labs, he looked and saw that one of the specimens didn't survive the experiments they were being put through. It was a small creature that was basically a pile of ooze. But it was sentient. That's what drove Lex to have it sent back to Earth for further study. Except there were supposed to be three of them, with one of them escaping and causing the crash to happen. It cost a few lives, but what he learned about these creatures was fascinating, to say the least.
When he walked through toward the next container, he saw that there was another cell with another one of these creatures, only this one was still alive. It was an all-black creature that was still trying to escape its containment a month after first arriving.
"Squabble all you want, you're not escaping," Lex commented, knowing that the creature was sentient to at least understand him. Then one of his scientists approached him with the recent results. "Anything useful?"
"I'm sorry, sir. It seems that whatever powers these creatures possess, they...they can't be replicated." The doctor was sorry to admit to him. "They are strong, everyone who we have exposed it to, they only gained powers for a good minute or two... before they spit out what's left of the corpse. If there's anything left at all. It's almost like a...parasite of sorts."
The creature then flung at the window of its cell and the two men jumped back in worry. They watched as it tried to escape but then started to calm down again before going back to running around its cell.
"I don't think it likes to be called a parasite," Lex commented with a little laugh. "I think a Symbiote is more appropriate for these guys."
Then he looked down to a larger room where he saw two men in armored suits trying to sustain the same person who escaped just a month ago. The same person who accidentally caused Peter to be bitten by that spider that gave him his powers. She is tall with bright orange skin, large green eyes with light-green scleras, and black eyebrows. She has straight, shiny, waist-length, fiery-red hair with short bangs.
She was speaking something that none of them seemed capable of understanding as she was fighting back as much as she could. Lex decided it would be best to keep her away from the Earth's sun as he figured her biology could be similar to that of Superman, and he wasn't going to have another one of them flying around.
"A' ye ne bila ka taa!" The girl cried as she tried to fight back and escape their clutches. But it wasn't so easy since Luthor was right, and she was weakened due to the lack of sun. She couldn't fight back the same way she was able to back when she first tried to escape their capture. "Aw ye ne to yen dɔrɔn!"
Lex watched as she was then finally sedated when one of the men was able to sedate her with a syringe to knock her out. The girl was then placed against a heavily restraining table to keep her from escaping a second time.
"Seems that our guest here hasn't lost her spark, after a month of seclusion," Lex commented on their work.
"We are still trying to figure out what she is and where she came from." The doctor confirmed. "It's becoming a bit difficult to keep her contained."
"Find a way to keep her contained." Lex warns him as he then walked off. "I don't want to kill her if she can be of some use to us."
The alien was sedated and breathing heavily but slowly began to calm down after the sedation was taking effect over her entire body. As the men left and locked her cell, they closed the windows to allow the room to be filled with darkness, the only light being the light glow the girl was illuminating. But even with all of these precautions, a figure stepped out of the darkness and approached the girl.
His appearance resembles the yin-yang symbol. The right half of his body is white with a black dot for the right eye, while the other half is black with a star for the left eye. He wears a red choker around his neck and has the yin-yang symbol on his chest.
"The balance must be kept precise." The man said as he eyed and looked across the room, seeing through the wall, into the cell with the Symbiote. "And I know just the individual who can put the balance between the two."
Peter was sitting in class.
Well, technically he was laying down with his head against his desk. Due to his late-night rescuing of people in need, he wasn't exactly able to get the best sleep. Now he understood why Superman had super speed. He could snooze all he wants and then jump into action when his super hearing was able to pinpoint where the danger was.
Sadly, he wasn't bitten by a genetically altered...he has no idea what kind of creature would grant him any of those kinds of abilities.
"Mr. Lane?" His teacher tried to wake him up. His sleepiness seemed to be getting some attention from the students as they laughed at him all so quietly. "Mr. Lane!"
Peter jumped awake and tried to make it seem like he was always awake. "Yeah, sorry. I'm here."
"Well, if you seem to have been paying attention, would you be so kind as to answer the question on the board?" His teacher asks and gestured to the question.
Peter was so glad that he was considered a genius, seeing he needed to quickly answer. "Uh... Mass cancels out, so it's just gravity times sine."
The teacher sighed and saw that it was correct but also knew he was asleep. "While that is correct, will you refrain from falling asleep in class?"
"I will try my best, Dr. Banner." Peter chuckled and tried to stay awake this time.
The man from the LexCorp cells watched as Peter Lane attended school like any other kid. None of them but him knowing who he really is and what he is destined to become.
"He will bring the balance that this universe needs." The man nodded as he kept himself hidden from the world. "He is the light. But he needs the darkness that is being locked up to reach his full potential to save the Man of Steel."