Fic: Men of Steel: "Hello, Metropolis! My Name Is ____" (WIP, 1/?)
Title: Men of Steel: "Hello, Metropolis! My Name Is ____”
Author: josephina_x
Fandom: Smallville + DCnU fusion (sort-of)
Pairing: Clex as canon as it was in Smallville (I’ll ‘warn’ if it goes farther than this)
Rating: G
Spoilers: I consider the totality of Smallville and the DCU fair game, and then some -- like a few of the DCnU covers, solicits, and rumors. Also: Clark Kent is Superman! (Ohnoes! I didn’t spoil that for you, did I? Heh.)
Word count: >1,800 (so far)
Summary: Lex Luthor, corporate mogul extraordinaire, has a proposition for an individual who is rather extraordinary himself. (…Get your minds out of the gutter - it isn’t that kind of proposition. Business before pleasure, folks.)
Warnings: WIP. Un-beta'd. No basis in any DC (canon!)“reality” whatsoever, god help us all.
Author's Note: Rant that explains the genesis of my madness is here. Keep in mind the post date (mid-to-late July 2011) when reading this, please. I have no idea what the DCnU is gonna be like in September; I’m just playing around with what little they’ve talked about at the time of writing. This piece is majority (early-season) Smallville-ian in terms of the characterizations, while the character histories are a mashup of Smallville and DCU (pre-Flashpoint). The storyline(s) are going to be mostly riffs off of DCU stories - hopefully not much of a surprise, since Smallville was all pre-Superman. You have been warned. More notes at the bottom of the fic.
Feedback: Please oh please yes!
Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.
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Clark Kent wasn’t really used to thinking of himself as Kal-El yet. But, while he had originally not been sold on the idea of a special costume for his runabouts and low fly-bys as “Kal-El” when he felt like buzzing the skyscrapers of Metropolis, he certainly was now.
He flew a little higher, out of the shade of the skyscraper he was floating nearby, to soak up a little more of the last dying rays of the sunset, and realized with no small amount of elation that this was a new height record for him.
He also needed to figure out what those green crystalline rocks were and where they came from. He was pretty sure that that had been the root of his weakness, which had resulted in his capture by the army forces, and he counted himself lucky that they hadn’t figured that out. Yet. If they had, he doubted he ever would have seen the light of day, though, so he needed to figure out why they affected him like that, and figure it out fast. He had to do whatever he could do to cancel out the weakening effect the stuff had on him, or at least mitigate it enough that he didn’t end up completely incapacitated like last time, because the next time that happened he’d probably be very very dead shortly thereafter. Since they affected him at a distance, the rocks probably gave off some wavelength or another of electromagnetic radiation, so he could try layering with some plastic and lead ‘cloth’ under-wear for starters. He could maybe make a bodysuit out of something that was also bullet-resistant later -- as it was, he was going through t-shirts and jeans at a pretty alarming pace, given his paycheck, and those homemade iron-on ‘S’ family crests were pretty expensive, too.
It was one thing to run around laughing off gunfire from robbers and cops alike when he was invulnerable. He didn’t want to try tackling crime without that distinct advantage. He wasn’t in this to martyr himself, or suicide.
He hadn’t really planned on ever ‘coming out’ as having special abilities, it had been a quite recent spur-of-the-moment thing. He’d just graduated college with his bachelor’s degree in journalism and had been visiting home before the big move to Metropolis and his really really lucky entry-level position at the Daily Planet. If that freak storm hadn’t spat up that line of unbelievably destructive tornados that day, he never would’ve tried his repeated ventures into creative meteorology through speed-running and tried to de-spin them down to the ground. Normally he had only had one tornado per storm, or maybe two, to try and handle. He knew he was pretty invulnerable, and the drops to the ground didn’t hurt him when he invariably got sucked up into one if he wasn’t careful. But this one had spawned seven of the spouts, and they had kept chaotically touching down and bouncing up and reforming again. He’d try to run one down and another would suck him in. He’d done a lot of hard falls to the ground that day.
Until he didn’t.
Realizing he could float, and then that he control it - actually fly - was a revelation of epic proportions. Getting to screw around in tornado weather while learning how to control it had been… he didn’t have words for it, and he was a writer-by-trade now.
He hadn’t been perfect - hell, he’d barely been adequate - but he had been able to stop the majority of the worst damage that would have happened that day if he hadn’t been there, trying his amateurish best. Nobody had died. Nobody had even been hurt, by unbelievable luck. But there had still been a vast track of destruction left in the aftermath.
Of course, if it hadn’t been for the hellishly destructive weather, he probably wouldn’t have found the spaceship hidden under the barn floor, either. Finding out he was an alien from another planet had been a shock almost as big as the first one of the day -- hell, he was still high on the flying thing, pun totally intended! -- and he had the feeling that his ma and pop never would have told him if they hadn’t had to. How they’d managed to adopt him, or why they’d take the risk doing so, he’d probably never know, or understand. He probably would’ve been angrier at the lies if he didn’t know how much they loved him or hadn’t stuck around long enough for the hurt and worry in their eyes to register properly. And it had been all for him.
At his parent’s warning and yelling and prodding, he’d been pretty careful about suppressing his powers all his life, playing the downtrodden single white male four-eyed farmboy geek, even in college. But now, hearing that he wasn’t even human, but something more, different, maybe better? How could he continue to just stand by and try to be ordinary all the time? He had to be here for a reason, didn’t he? Aliens were among us! er, them! This was huge! Earth wasn’t alone in the universe! People should know! And the best way to do that was to show, not tell, so why shouldn’t he do just that?
But maybe that was just a whole lot of hot air and justification on his part - after flying for the first time, he was hooked. He couldn’t give that up if he tried; he was barely able to sit still at work as it was. Busting up crimes was a great constructive use for his powers, and buzzing off the corrupt city cops was just icing on the cake. It was seriously pathetic - they’d spent so much time chasing after him the last few weeks he’d been ‘out,’ wasting bullets firing on him in the middle of downtown despite knowing that it would have no effect, all that effort and force that could’ve been put to better use stopping criminals and solving actual crimes. The revelation that the corrupt officials in charge would actually go that far to try to suppress someone bucking the fat-cat Intergang status quo setup between the organized crime racket and the police force’s patrol schedule had been juicy fodder that Clark Kent, Intrepid Reporter was putting to very good use. He’d even garnered some notice from a few of the regular staff reporters upstairs already. Life was good.
Just so long as he didn’t have to worry about his invulnerability cutting out on him again, anyway.
He floated a little higher, suppressing a laugh. He was only a few floors below the roof of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the whole city. New height record, indeed.
He should probably start dropping down soon, though, if he didn’t want to be taking a controlled fall to the pavement. The sunset was waning, and he didn’t want to drain his body’s reserves of sunlight if he didn’t have to. Flying was harder work than it looked, he’d found out early. Practicing it was the best way he’d found to stretch and strengthen his powers, though.
Unexpectedly, something moved in Clark’s peripheral vision and caught his eye, which was… weird, given how high up he was. He turned, slightly startled, and stared, trying to figure out what it was.
He stared at the building, then blinked and actually looked through the large, almost floor-to-ceiling glass window instead, like a normal human being.
The person inside at their desk, who had swiveled around to face him, stared back. He raised a hand.
Clark waved back a greeting automatically, then stopped suddenly and felt a little silly. Even more oddly, the man smiled back at him, then made a ‘come hither’ motion, and got up from his rather plush-looking dark swivel chair.
Clark frowned slightly, not sure what to do. When the man opened up one of the large windows and stepped back, he floated in and touched down, curiosity getting the better of him. This was a far sight different than anyone else had treated ‘Kal-El’ so far. He reserved judgment on whether it was “better” for the moment.
The suave dark-suited man leaned back against the side of his desk, slid his hands in his pants pockets, and looked Clark over openly with just as much curiosity. Clark wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but it was obvious that the gears were turning behind his eyes. He tilted his head and asked Clark, “Were you wanting to talk with me?”
“Uh, sure?” Clark replied.
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence as they each waited for the other to say something else.
After awhile, the man added, “Why were you outside my window?”
“Oh, I was just… catching some sun. Practicing floating.” And this conversation was really getting pretty surreal already. Clark had no real guidelines to follow here: the only people he’d ever talked about anything with openly were his parents, especially anything abilities-related. These were uncharted waters.
“This late?” Clark blinked, and the man added, “I thought you were usually more active earlier in the day.”
Clark thought about it for a moment, and winced slightly. Settling into patterns, especially accidentally, was a really bad idea, given how the information could be used by the military, who obviously wanted his head. “Well, I was a little busy earlier, and, well, floating. It’s kind of -fun...” He bit his lip slightly and trailed off, wondering if maybe that was rude to say to someone who couldn’t float. Miss Manners so did not cover a lot of the alien-human social niceties.
“So, you were not floating up here specifically to talk to me.”
“What? No, I-oh.” Clark resisted the urge to facepalm. The businessman hadn’t been asking if Clark didn’t mind having a conversation, he’d been asking if Clark had... right. Awkward. “Did you want to talk to me about something? I mean, you did invite me in and all…” Unless he was busy, although Clark wasn’t sure that good manners covered being polite to floating men over completing one's business paperwork.
The man’s eyebrows went up. “Honestly? I was just curious about you. And you were hovering around right outside my window. I was hoping to talk with you at some point, though.” He smiled and slid his hands out of his pockets and onto the edge of the desk on either side of him, palms-down. “I needed a break anyway, and now’s as good a time as any.” He leaned back slightly in a long static stretch, and it reminded Clark of nothing but a relaxed, content housecat as he shifted minutely and tensed-then-relaxed muscles from his neck and shoulder through his arms and back, down into his legs and even his feet. Clark could almost feel the tension in his own shoulders melt away a little as he watched him.
“Why would you want to talk with me?” Clark asked incredulously. “And what about?”
~*~*~*~*~*~
AN2: So, what do you guys think so far? Love it? Hate it? Indifferent-inbetween? Meh?
AN3: Ok, looks like LJ is (sort of) working again. I've put all of part 1 together and deleted the other posts. (Shouldn't be a problem with no comments there.) I've also retimestamped. Here goes nothin'!