“LANE! OLSEN!”

The bellowing voice of Perry White rattled the window on his office door that read EDITOR IN CHIEF. A young woman with long, dark hair in her mid-twenties ran towards the door, followed by a slightly younger man with red hair. Once they walked in, they saw the middle-aged White angrily pointing at a television screen in his office.

“Brakes on the monorail have gone out, engineers are tryin’ to find a way to stop it before it goes off the rail, every network in the city is covering it, so I wanna know why in the name of Caesar are you two idiots not down there?!”

“Sorry Chief, I forgot to turn on my signal watch that notifies me of impending danger,” said the redhead.

Perry glared angrily at the young photographer. “You wanna run that by me again, Olsen?”

“I sai—”

Before he could utter another word, his coworker clamped her hand over his mouth and started pushing him towards the door. “We’re on it, Chief. Report back soon with some news.”

“You’d better, Lane,” said Perry. As the two left his office, Perry shouted out one final thing to them: “AND DON’T CALL ME CHIEF!”

“You trying to get fired, Jimmy?” she asked as she dragged him towards the elevators.

“Hey, cut me a break, Lois. You get the old man riled up all the time,” said Jimmy.

“Yeah, but not when he’s already on a warpath.” Lois pressed the elevator call button. “Pick your battles, Olsen. Think after working at the Planet for a year, you would’ve learned that by now.”

They got into the elevator and as the doors closed and it began to descend, Jimmy looked at his co-worker. “So…another crisis, huh?”

“Looks like it,” said Lois.

“You think…you think it will happen again?”

Lois gave Jimmy an annoyed glance. “‘It’?”

“Yeah…y’know…it. In the past two months, there have been dozens of reports of some sort of strange blur whenever there’s a crisis. Car accidents, muggings, it’s all over the place.”

The elevator doors opened and Lois stormed out of the elevator, running to catch a taxi. “Olsen, how many times do I have to tell you that Twitter is not a legitimate news source?”

“Oh c’mon Lois, why don’t you explain what it is, then?”

“Urban legend, just like that story about the giant bat in Gotham.”

By the time Lois and Jimmy arrived at the station, there was already a crowd of reporters, both print and television. Police were successful in keeping them back, but they could still get a relatively good view of the monorail track. Jimmy took out his digital camera, focusing in on the speeding train.

Questions were being shouted at the city spokesmen, but they were too frequent for any to be answered. Meanwhile, everyone watched as the train continued speeding. With the speed it had gained, it was likely to derail by this point, unless the engineers found a way to stop it first.

“Look! Up in the sky!” shouted one of the onlookers. All eyes and cameras moved towards the clouds, where a blue and red streak came from the air, descending down to the track.

The streak came alongside the train, slowly gaining ahead of it, before coming to a stop on the track. The train screeched as it met resistance from this new force, somehow powerful enough to overpower the train. Smoke rose up from the track before the train finally came to a stop.

A hush fell over the crowd. Everyone just watched in silence, waiting for the smoke to clear. What they saw was unbelievable to their eyes. A man with short, black hair and dressed in a blue shirt and red jacket stood with his hands resting on the train. He looked down at the throng of reporters and flashes went off one after another. People began shouting questions at him.

But just as soon as he arrived, he was gone again, flying away with the same blue and red streak that accompanied his arrival.

Jimmy looked at Lois with an arrogant smirk. “Urban legend, huh?”

“One more word and that telescopic lens goes in a very unpleasant orifice, Olsen.”

TAKING FLIGHT

Part I

By Dino Pollard

Smallville, Kansas

“There was nothing I could do,” said Clark as his mother, Martha, set a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. “In all the years I’ve been using my powers to help people, I’ve always managed to get away before anyone could get a good look at me. But now…”

“I was afraid this would happen,” said Martha, sitting across from her adopted son. She laid her hand on his and squeezed it gently. “When you said you wanted to move to Metropolis, I was worried that there’d be a lot more attention, that sooner or later someone would get a glimpse of you.”

“Fortunately it’s not that bad.”

A young, redheaded woman entered the kitchen with a laptop computer in her hands. She set the computer on the table and turned it so Clark and Martha could see. “This is the best video I was able to find of the situation.”

She hit play and as the video went through, the quality wasn’t good enough to get a clear shot of Clark’s face. He was gone before the camera could focus in on him with any degree of clarity.

“That’s something,” said Clark. “But now they know I’m out there, Lana. I’m not an urban legend anymore. They’re going to be looking for me. How can I do this and be Clark Kent at the same time?”

“That’s easy, Clark,” said Martha as she sipped her own coffee. “You need to be two people.”

Metropolis

Known as LexTower, the highest skyscraper in Metropolis also served as the headquarters of the multinational corporation, LexCorp. Its founder and CEO sat in his spacious office on the top floor. On the wall was a large, flat-screen monitor that had various split-screens on it, each one showing a different news broadcast. Holographic computer monitors surrounded his large desk, also showing various clips that had been posted on the Internet about the strange incident yesterday involving the mysterious man with the train.

Although it seemed like far too much data for one person to absorb, Lex Luthor took it all in. And as he did, he began to consider the possibilities of this strange being.

He pushed a button on his phone’s intercom system. “Mercy, get me Professor Hamilton at STAR Labs.”

Smallville

Clark opened the doors to the old barn. The Kents got out of the farming business when Clark went on to college, but still kept the old barn standing. It was something Lana always thought was strange, but she just wrote it off as Jonathan Kent’s nostalgia.

Clark approached the cellar, which appeared to have the latch fused shut. He gripped it and tore it free, opening the doors. As Clark descended into the darkness, Lana just stood and watched. She had seen Clark use his powers numerous times since he revealed them to her on the night they graduated high school, but her awe never diminished.

Clark hovered out of the cellar, holding some sort of object covered by an old drop cloth above his head. It wasn’t that large, however, only about the size of a couch. Lana looked at it quizzically. “What is it?”

“I haven’t told you the full story behind why I have these powers.” Clark hung his head slightly. “I guess I was always afraid how you would view me if you saw this.”

Lana placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Clark, you know I’d never—”

He cut her off as he patted her hand with a smile. “I know that now. And that’s why I can finally show you this.”

Clark gripped the cloth and pulled it off, dust flying everywhere. Lana coughed slightly and once the dust settled, she saw what it was the Kents had been hiding for over twenty years.

The object was a metal cylinder of some sort. Clark reached down and tugged on the top section of it. It popped open, like the canopy of a plane and inside, Lana saw a strange material, blankets perhaps, colored red, yellow and blue.

“This is how I came to Smallville. Do you remember reading about that meteor shower that happened when we were babies?”

Lana nodded.

“My parents were thrown off the road trying to avoid it. They were almost hit by one. But it wasn’t a meteor, it was…this. And inside, they found me.”

“Where is it from?” asked Lana.

Clark sighed. “I have no idea. Dad thought it was some sort of experiment, maybe by the Russians, maybe by our own government. But because no one ever came to investigate, by the time he died, he’d been convinced it was something else.”

“And you have no clues?”

“Only two things.” Clark reached inside the craft and pulled out a long, thin crystal. Lana gently took it into her hands and examined it in the light.

“It’s beautiful, but I don’t get how that’s a clue?”

“I don’t either, but when I touch it…it’s hard to explain,” said Clark. “I just know that it means something. That it has a purpose. What that is, I have no idea.”

“And what’s the other clue?”

Clark rubbed his hand on the nose of the cylinder, wiping off the dust. There was a pentagram carved into it, with an odd symbol in the center. A symbol that looked vaguely like an S.

“Whoever sent me here, I think this symbol is some way of identifying them. But I’ve tried researching it and I can’t find any information about it. But just like with the crystal, I feel like it…I don’t know…that it defines me somehow.”

“You don’t need a mask,” said Martha as she fed the fabric through the sewing machine.

“What do you mean?” asked Clark. The fabric was from the blankets in the rocket, normally as invulnerable as Clark himself. But Clark was able to unthread the fabric as well as use his strength and heat vision to fashion a makeshift needle from the ship’s hull.

“A mask shows you’ve got something to hide. Makes people suspicious about you. Makes them think you do have a secret identity,” said Martha. “No mask.”

“Yeah, but if I’m walking around Metropolis, won’t people recognize me?” asked Clark.

“How many times have you seen someone that looks like a famous person? Do you right away assume it’s the famous person, or just someone who looks like them? Same thing, dear.”

“That’s a pretty big risk, Mom,” said Clark. “I need a little more than that.”

“Remember how in high school, your father always told you to keep your head down? Don’t attract too much attention? That’s what you gotta do now. We just gotta plan it out a little more.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“There’s gotta be a way…” Martha stopped the sewing machine. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes, thinking of a solution. She looked down at her glasses again and smiled, struck instantly with a solution. Standing from the machine, she patted her son’s chest. “Hold that thought, I’ll be right back.”

Clark looked at the progress the suit had made so far. It was almost finished, but there was definitely something missing from it. He took the notepad where the basic look of the suit had been sketched out and a pencil.

Martha came back into the room. “Look at me, dear.” Clark looked up from the notepad and Martha stood on her toes to slide something onto his face. She also put her hands through his hair, pushing it back as tightly as she could. She settled back down and looked at the work.

Clark reached to his face and pulled off the glasses, looking at them. “These were Dad’s. Why did you…?”

“Put them back on,” said Martha. “I’m trying to get a visual.”

Clark put the glasses back on and Martha shook her head. “No, not working. You need to slouch a little more.”

“You always told me to stand up straight!”

“Oh hush, now I’m telling you to slouch!” Martha circled around him, studying her son carefully. “You need to speak in a little bit of a higher tone. And we’ll have to get you some clothes that are just a little bit too big.”

“What’s this all about?” asked Clark.

Martha smiled. “It’s your disguise, honey. If you dress differently, slouch a little, don’t make a big impression, people will barely notice you. No one will think mild mannered Clark Kent is a superhero.”

“And the glasses?”

“Helps add to the image. And also, those lenses dulls the color of your eyes. Makes you less noticeable.”

He removed the glasses, studying them carefully. “I guess it could work…”

Martha noticed the pad in Clark’s hand. “What were you doing?”

“Oh, I had an idea for the suit,” said Clark, showing her the pad. “I think we need something here. That symbol from the craft.”

Martha smiled as she looked at it. “I thought we might be missing something.”

Metropolis

“Metropolis Airport, this is AC Flight 38, we’ve got an emergency! We’ve got engine failure and need a clear runway ASAP! We may have to attempt a crash landing!” shouted the pilot.

“There’s no way we can get a safe landing from this altitude!” shouted the co-pilot.

“I’m trying to steer us towards the river, if we can get a water landing, we might be okay.”

The commercial aircraft plummeted from the sky and all over the city of Metropolis, people watched the developing story with fear. Emergency crews were dispatched, but no one expected a pleasant outcome. One man moved away from the crowd, down into an alley. He broke into a run down the deserted runway, pulling open his dress shirt and undoing his tie as he did so, revealing a stylized design imprinted on a blue, skintight suit beneath. Seconds later, a red and blue blur streaked from between the buildings, flying at supersonic speed towards AC Flight 38.

Clark flew past the windows, and passengers looked out in surprise at the streak. None of them could see him as he came up behind the plane, wrapping his hands around the tail fin and trying to pull back on it. Instead, the fin broke off and Clark silently cursed himself for being stupid enough to try that.

He flew back towards the plane, this time moving under its belly. The landing gear had been extended already and he moved closer to it, carefully gripping it in his powerful hands and using it to slowly tilt the craft up.

Inside the cockpit, the flight crew looked at the instruments in surprise. “…did the engine go back on?” asked the co-pilot.

“No…but somehow we’ve stabilized…” said the pilot. He released the steering column yet the plane still remained level. “What the hell is going on?”

Clark carried the plane more or less on his back, easing it down to Metropolis Airport. A runway was clear and as he approached, he hovered above the runway, slowly touching down and lowering the plane to its resting spot.

He hovered above the plane, with onlookers watching in amazement. The emergency exits opened and inflatable slides shot out. But everyone’s eyes were on the flying man dressed in a blue, red and yellow bodysuit, complete with a flowing red cape.

Jimmy Olsen kept snapping shots with his camera as Lois Lane stood beside him, her mouth hanging open in surprise. “I don’t believe it, just what is he?”

“Ich lehre euch den Ubermenschen,” said Lois.

“What?” asked Jimmy.

“It’s German, a quote from Nietzsche.” Her voice had a slight quiver to it that Jimmy would never expect from the normally-fearless reporter. “It means, ‘I will teach you the Superman.’”

To be continued…