AN; Hello you beautiful creatures. I wasn't intending on releasing a new chapter for this story so soon, maybe at all but the amount of support you guys gave on the first chapter was absolutely insane. 251 views. 32 Followers. 23 Favorites and three reviews. Its only been eighteen hours since I posted the story! Seriously guys I appreciate you.
Pegasi Jake: I'm glad you enjoyed the first chapter, hopefully this one lives up. I'll definitely give Spacebattles some thought but for now I'll stick to posting on FF. Stick with what you know early on you know?
Dalan777: Ye ask and ye shall receive. I agree with you, I was reading through the Worm archive in the bath the other day and I was pretty bummed out at the lack of Superman stories. I saw maybe three decent ones? Thus this story was born.
Hunter of Entities: I agree and I'll consider spacebattles, thanks for the review friend. :)
Without further adieu I hope you all enjoy this chapter.
It was, John reflected, not entirely fair how attractive Kal-El was. He realized this as he stared into his reflection off of the glistening water in the sunrise of Brockton Bay. The only thing that he could reasonably say that he had kept from his original body were his crystal blue eyes.
A good thing in his somewhat narcissistic opinion, they had always been his favorite feature. A frown twisted the exceptionally masculine jawline of the new Kryptonian, for what else could he be now except alien?
ROB'd was the conclusion John had reached after spending a few hours thinking it over in a truly massive graveyard of boats; he'd wandered his way in here after around an hour's walk along the bay.
"This really is bullshit. Aren't I supposed to get a choice in this, or maybe be put somewhere that I actually know anything about?" An annoyed look crossed his features then, and could he just say wow. This face did the dark and brooding look extremely well.
An explosive sigh left his mouth as he ran a hand through his now midnight black hair. The man whose face he'd unwittingly stolen was making him feel a bit insecure, not even twelve hours before he'd been a relatively normal man in the Army, muscled, a bit gruff but overall decent.
Now? A quick flex of his skintight bodysuit revealed muscles that put Schwarzeneger in his prime to shame. John clenched his fist in no small amount of anger, the face in the water mimicked his emotions exactly. The mimicry only made him more upset and he whirled away from the shore and stalked over to one of the boats with his cape fluttering behind him all the while.
"Let's put a test to this body, see why it was so important to steal me from mine." He ground out and came to a stop at the base of a beached fishing vessel, perhaps twenty five feet long and ten feet tall. Far beyond what a normal man could even dream of lifting.
With a grunt of concentration he forced his hands under the boat. Once proper lifting posture was obtained he stood up in one solid motion, this achieved two things. One the boat was lifted off the shore with moderate ease, unfortunately he was also now Superman and didn't have a handle on that kind of strength yet.
The fishing boat rocketed upwards nearly forty feet and due to where he grabbed it the vessel flew forward until it landed on a moored tanker with a truly deafening crash. John gaped in astonishment even as he slammed his hands over his delicate ears.
This in turn tipped over the larger vessel causing it to scrape against another next to it the entire way down. All told this lasted almost half a minute before everything settled enough for the man to remove his makeshift ear protectors.
"Holy shit man, I'm lucky those thugs didn't explode into a bloody mist when I hit them." He concluded with a chagrined grimace, John brought his muscular arms up and flexed his hands slowly as he watched them. "I need to be more careful, a lot more careful. Going around exploding people and breaking houses is not how I want to live my life."
He could not express in words how much he didn't want to kill people with barely any effort again, the first time was more than traumatizing enough even for a man trained to kill with ease. It took less effort to annihilate those gangbangers than it did to jack off some nights.
John closed his eyes and pushed the dark thoughts away, he did not need a morality crisis on top of his current existential one, caution and care would be observed as he went forward. Assuming of course that this wasn't an elaborate fever or coma dream.
"Improvise. Adapt and overcome." The blue eyed man chanted to himself quietly. "First priority is clothes money and a place to stay. The whole cape thing makes blending in almost impossible."
Food was quickly added to the list as his stomach began growling ferociously. Which of course meant money. A problem quickly arose, how does a caped man who is responsible for two vigilante killings get money and clothes?
This problem actually resolved itself rather quickly once he figured out how flying worked. Some form of muscle memory obviously existed from the body's previous owner because all he had to do was step off the ground with a bit of pressure and he was suddenly using a muscle he hadn't known existed.
After doing a few gleeful laps of the boat graveyard he began somewhat carefully examining the city street by street of the slowly awakening city. He'd decided early on to keep it somewhat close to the docks, he'd stopped the thugs there and by rule of association John was hoping on this being close to these 'Merchants' territory.
His patience and planning (Definitely not laziness) was rewarded with the sight of an armed man selling what was clear even from above as Meth on a little street corner in what can only be described as the ghetto from hell.
Run down buildings, stray dogs running by and the random child screaming in the distance set the scene as he sat down in the alley just behind the drugged out dealer.
John wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stench that violated his sensitive nose, the most horrendous mixture of nail polish remover and unwashed sweaty man assaulted the man in blue violently.
"Good god man, take a bath." The dealer swung around and pointed his neglected glock in John's face with shock apparent in his bloodshot eyes. Even knowing of Superman's invulnerability he couldn't help but tense as the weapon discharged and sent a round directly at his forehead.
The average 9mm bullet travels at around eight hundred and twenty miles an hour, or twelve hundred feet per second. For comparison the average airliner cruises at five hundred and fifty miles an hour.
The thug probably didn't know any of this but that didn't change the horror in his eyes as John held the intact bullet in front of his head from where he'd caught it, a delighted grin spread across the caped man's face as his new friend's mouth made an O.
John gently reached out with his other hand and took the pistol from the dealer, he considered it to be an absolute success that he managed it without mangling the guy's hand. With a squeeze he squished the metal into a distorted mess that would never fire again. He had to cough to avoid laughing as the thug's eyes bugged out even further.
"I need your money, your clothes and your drugs." He demanded with a bright smile, the smile died quickly as the smell of urine filled his delicate nose. "Did you seriously just piss yourself?"
That wasn't all the drugged out Merchant did, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and John had to quickly catch him so that his head didn't impact the hard cement. With an exasperated look he lowered the man against the wall in a sitting position, the slimy feeling he got when he touched the drug dealer was beyond disgusting.
A quick search yielded ten pouches of Meth and a baggie full of money. He counted it out to one hundred and twenty three dollars. Not a half bad consolation prize for having to touch the unwashed druggie he mused.
A further inspection saw him holding the drug dealer's flip phone, John chuckled a little when he saw it. It had a sticker of a cat on the back. Luckily it wasn't password protected. With a cheerful hum he dialed 911.
"Police operator 218, what is the nature of your emergency?" A peppy woman's voice answered the phone after a few rings.
"Good morning operator, I am calling to report an unconscious drug dealer with a lot of meth on his person." John answered with a smile.
"Uh, roger." The operator hesitated for a moment as the click clack of a keyboard filled his ears. "Where are you at right now sir?"
The caped man blinked before mentally smacking himself, that was obviously needed information in hindsight. A glance down the street yielded a sign fortunately. "I'm in an alley between Jefferson St and Parker Way."
"Okay sir I've dispatched a patrol car and EMS to your location, it shouldn't be too long." The woman asserted. "Are you or the other person injured or in danger?"
John hummed in thought for a second as he glanced around the almost empty street and alley. So that's no danger. A quick listen yielded a perfectly healthy if higher than normal heart rate on the thug. "No, we're both fine. He fainted when he saw me."
"Very good sir, may I ask your name and your relation to the patient?" She requested
"Of course. My name is Superman and I came to stop him from dealing drugs. Apparently I'm pretty scary." He chuckled with great mirth.
The click clacking of keys froze for a long moment before beginning again with a frenzy. "I think I understand the nature of the situation now sir, would you be willing to stay on scene with the patient and give a statement when the officer arrives?"
John agreed in short order and settled in to wait. From his previous experience with big city cops he wouldn't be shocked if it took half an hour for them to arrive, especially in such a rundown part of town.
This city was kind of a hellhole from what he'd seen so far, scoping out from above just made it stand out starkly. The crazy part was that he'd only observed a six block area and it looked like those pictures he'd seen of Yemen during the worst parts of the civil war, still livable but barely viable. Almost like the whole city was on life support.
As the minutes passed by John grew bored, playing on the drug dealer's phone revealed a startling amount of cat pictures and pictures of his below average penis. Suffice to say there wasn't any entertainment to be found within.
He wandered over to a newspaper stand and inserted the required dollar, with a hum he brought it back over to his unfortunate and still very smelly companion where he took a seat on a dumpster to read.
BROCKTON BAY HERALD,
FEBRUARY 28th 2011
SIMURGH ATTACKS CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA
CITY QUARANTINED, EIDOLON AND LEGEND
SAVED THE DAY!
On the afternoon of February 24th the Endbringer sirens began to blare in the capital city of Canberra Australia, a once beautiful tourist destination with a population of half a million located in the far south east of the nation.
Panic set in at once as the Simurgh made her way down from the heavens like a wrathful goddess of death to smite all who stood in front of her onslaught. Were it not for the intervention of the Triumvirate's Eidolon and Legend the entire city may well have ceased to exist.
Legend's fearsome blasts of light smote down the would-be Killer of Canberra as Eidolon made short work of her tinkertech device. Were it not for the valiant efforts of them and many others who worked to save this small part of the world then Canberra likely would have become the next Lausanne.
The hard fought battle while righteous was unfortunately unable to beat back the winged Endbringer before containment protocols needed to be established, much like the city of London this was unavoidable but this author suggests that instead of despairing at another domed city that we be grateful to our heroes for ensuring a worse fate did not befall our friends in Australia.
For more information on the Battle of Canberra please see page 14. For an interview with Legend see page 2. For a study of the effects of the Endbringers on Australia's economy see page 19. For an overview of cape casualties see page 5.
John set down the newspaper as a police car pulled up outside the alleyway with an ambulance right behind, thankfully for his ears they didn't have the sirens running. It made sense considering the urgency or lack thereof in his call.
Still though. A twenty five minute response time was kind of ridiculous he complained to himself as he checked his new kitty phone. With a small hup noise he slid off the dumpster in a dramatic fashion that he blamed entirely on his enormous cape.
Two officers stepped out of the patrol car and made their way cautiously over to where he was standing with a polite smile on his lips. The first officer was a tall blonde woman in her late thirties with kind gray eyes. Her name tag read J. Lewis.
"Are you our wayward Superman?" She returned his smile and shook his hand with a firm grip. "Damn, strong grip. What are you made of?"
John couldn't help the grin that replaced his smile. "Steel Ma'am. I'm your man, what can I do for you?"
"Well Man of Steel, my partner Officer Walker needs a statement." She gestured to the young man beside her. "And I think I need a picture with you, because that is one of the best costumes I've ever seen for a newbie cape."
Said caped man laughed as the paramedics approached the downed drug dealer and began looking him over. "Well neither of those should be a problem at all, whenever you're ready Mr. Walker."
The process of giving his statement was dull and monotonous as expected. Mostly it just consisted of repeating events as they occurred such as the why's how's and where's. The best way to think of it is that you are painting a picture with your words for the officer to help them reconstruct what happened.
John always had a good memory but it had nothing on a Kryptonian, he was able to remember it down to the second and the smell associated with the memory. He was more than a little envious of the fact that he didn't have this perk when he was in school. Tests would have been a breeze.
After repeating his story of events for the fifth time they took mercy on him as the paramedics loaded up with the now cuffed but still unconscious drug dealers into the ambulance.
"Alright Superman, that's everything the department needs from you, now how about that picture?" Officer Lewis grinned at him.
With an amused look he agreed and the blonde woman handed her phone off to her partner who accepted it with a long suffering look. She marched back over to John and wrapped an arm around him in a side hug and gave the camera a peace sign and megawatt smile.
John laughed and reciprocated the hug and gave the begrudging camera man a thumbs up.
"Fantastic, thank you Superman, my kid will love this!" She gushed as she reclaimed her phone. "Though I do have a question if you don't mind?"
The blue clad man gave a hum of interest. "I don't mind at all, what've you got?"
"Well it's just, are you trying for a whole New Wave message with the whole no mask thing?" Officer Lewis gestured to his bare face. "If so then I definitely respect it, it takes guts to be out here fighting crime with accountability."
"Ah." John blinked in confusion, what the hell was a New Wave? "It's not really about sending a message considering I only started today. I just think wearing a mask speaks of being afraid of the world seeing the truth and how can you really be a hero when you're hiding who you really are behind a lie?"
An admiring smile appeared on her features. "I think I get what you mean. How can you stand for Truth and Justice when you refuse to look a man in the eye right?"
John nodded firmly. "Something like that."
"Well thanks again for the picture and helping get a Merchant off the street. There's enough Meth here to put him away for years." The blonde officer shared a respectful nod with him as she and her partner walked back to their vehicle. "If you find any more criminals, give us a call!"
John chuckled and stepped off the ground to ascend into the air. Once he was a few hundred feet up the smile dropped from his face as one question resonated in his mind.
What the hell was an Endbringer?
-Edited it and reuploaded this chapter because I'm retarded. February 30th doesn't exist LMAO