Optional Starter for
Man of Steel: Hunted[/b]]It was shaping up to be a rough weekend for the Man of Steel. It had started simply enough, with his last class of the afternoon ending as his students turned in their tests. Gathering up his belongings,
Clark Kent shuffled off in the most mild-mannered of fashions. He was only working part time as a history teacher, but he also had to keep up appearances as a freelance writer while maintaining his grades in pursuit of a masters degree in journalism. Being so busy as Clark Kent was good; it helped him keep his mind off how badly he wanted to be wearing the cape. He'd been active in the public eye again for almost a year. The trouble was many people still looked at the shield on his chest and, despite his best efforts since then, thought of that day. The day everything changed. The day
HE came to Metropolis and changed everything.
LOCATION OF SUBJECT: UNKNOWN.
SUBJECT LAST SEEN --- SENDING COORDINATES NOW.
Clark had spent the majority of Friday night doing his own homework while listening to a mostly quiet police scanner. There were few incidents throughout the night, and nothing local emergency services couldn't handle on their own.
Four years ago, he'd come out as a meta human: He caught a helicopter with a particularly fetching reporter inside of it and announced to the world Superman was here to help. For almost two years, Superman had leaped around the city stopping crime and other more nefarious meta humans. There had been little challenge in most of those encounters. Then a
real fight came; his first
real fight in his entire life. He'd disappeared for six months and some change after
that day, and when he came back the public was a different creature altogether. Meta humans had always been treated with fear and skepticism, but after his fight had leveled almost a third of the city in a single afternoon things had changed rather drastically. Clark had never lost control like that before, never fought anything like that before, and Superman was seen in an entirely new light. The people's new attitude toward him kept him inside and out of the cape unless he felt like it was really needed. He still went on patrols, but less frequently and without letting himself be seen. People knew he was out there, criminals knew he was around, and that was making enough folk nervous as it was.
LOCATION OF SUBJECT: UNKNOWN.
SEARCHING...
SEARCHING...
So, on nights like tonight, he managed to keep up with the life of a mild-mannered twenty-four-year-old. He finished all the homework he had due in the following week and even managed to get a few hours of sleep. Waking up Saturday morning was nothing special, either, as he woke and submitted what homework he could online. The next few hours were spent making and enjoying breakfast, cleaning up his small studio apartment and preparing a duffel bag for travel up North. Things were so quiet, and he had no desire to parade around in a cape this weekend, that he intended to spend the next day and a half or so up at the Fortress. It was possibly the one good thing that came out of what happened a year and a half ago. His aptly named Fortress of Solitude was actually a restructured, redesigned spaceship that crashed (with some help from him) in the Arctic. With its barren location and advanced technology, it was virtually undetectable without being right atop it. Even then, Clark suspected, most people would miss it. In the duffel bag he threw a change of clothes, the tests he still needed to grade, and a few treats for Krypto.
LOCATION OF SUBJECT: UNKNOWN.
PERIMETER SEARCH: UNSUCCESSFUL
RELINQUISHING PRIMARY DIRECTIVE TO OPERATIVE...
Just as he was about to zip up the duffel bag, something strange came over the police scanner. A fire. A big,
big fire. It had apparently started out of nowhere and had already engulfed an entire building and was going to spread rapidly. Clark shed the jeans and buttoned-up shirt he was wearing and sprang out of his window and into
action. It took moments for him to zip across the city, and was soon seen hovering above the fire. The building where the fire had started was done for; he could put out the flames, but they had engulfed every last inch of the structure and there was no saving it---plus, after a quick x-ray vision scan, he found it was empty. The buildings around it were still salvageable and had people inside, but those flames were quickly extinguished by some swift and powerful movements around them. Putting out the big fire took a long inhalation followed by a powerful gust of wind, blown from the lips of Superman. It took longer than he expected and he almost ran out of breath, but the flames withered and died below him. He hovered down, the fires put out, and scanned the area to make sure nobody was seriously injured. Fortunately, everyone was fine.
SUBJECT CONFIRMED.
Everyone except him.
IMMEDIATE SUBJECT ACQUISITION REQUIRED
IMMEDIATE SUBJECT ACQUISITION REQUIRED
"Hey, chump!" The deep, gruff, animalistic voice that was too
visceral to be human was all Superman had for a warning before the clanking metal chain wrapped around his neck from behind. The sickle attached to the end dug into his flesh and he would have yelped in pain if the chain hadn't been yanked so tight he couldn't breathe. A moment later, he was slammed into the concrete below. The impact shook the street and left a crater ten feet in diameter with a Man of Steel shaped imprint in the center. Standing at the edge of the crater, puffing a cigar and grinning ear to ear, was a muscly, pale-skinned, red-eyed monster of a man. "Ain't you a colorful muthafucka! Name's
Lobo, an' I'm here fer the price on yer head. That, an' ta prove I'm the biggest, baddest, meanest sonnovabitch around." He took another puff of the cigar before tightening the chain on Superman's neck again. The sickle dug deeper into his collarbone and he finally managed to yell about it. His attacker yanked on the chain and the Man of Steel was pulled up and out of the crater only to be swung like a pendulum up, overhead, and back down into the ground on Lobo's other side. The self-proclaimed bounty hunter was laughing as he puffed away and continued to swing Superman about like a sack of meat that needed tenderizing.
Once he was sure his prey was down for the count, Lobo approached the freshest of several small craters in Metropolis' port district. Superman was laying in one, the chain loosely fallen around him and groaning as though struggling to maintain consciousness. "BAH! I thought you were some kinda tough guy! Ya didn't turn ta mush after a beatin' like that, so there's some credit... But I was told there'd be a fight worth havin' 'round here..." Lobo was so focused on gloating, and lighting a fresh cigar, he didn't notice the Man of Steel's fists clench.
Without making a sound, Superman turned his gaze onto the tip of Lobo's cigar. Just as the hunter inhaled, he doused the already lit tip with a more than generous burst of heat vision. The result was a cigar almost instantly going up in flames and filling its smokers (albeit very durable) lungs with over half a cigar's worth of smoke instead of just one good puff. Not to mention the whole thing was set ablaze and the small burst of flame plumed upward at Lobo's eyes. It wouldn't have hurt him, nor would the overload of smoke, but that wasn't the point. The fire startled him which, coupled with
way too much crap in his lungs, threw him off balance for just a moment. That moment was all Superman had needed.
In a flash he was off the ground, launching himself upward to deliver an uppercut directly to Lobo's stomach. The blow shattered any glass within twenty yard that had somehow survived his earlier seismic impacts. It also forced a large plume of cigar smoke out of Lobo's mouth, making the hunter cough both spittle and blood as he stumbled backward, reeling from the blow. "I don't know who you are," Superman began saying as he hovered off the ground, staying low as he pulled the sickle out of his collarbone and tossed it aside. "Or about a price on my head, or what you think you need to prove, but you came to the wrong place to do it." With that, Superman dashed forward through the air at blinding speed, landing another blow. This time it was Lobo's face, and the next one got him in the ribs. Then the head. Ribs again. Mid shot, mid shot, head shot, body shot, mid mid head body... He delivered a series of blows so fast he wasn't even sure how many times he'd hit Lobo. He would have kept going if the hunter hadn't thrown his own hand up and caught one of Superman's fists in it. The impact rippled through the air around them, a loud popping sound echoing through the emptying street. Superman's eyes were wide as he looked at his fist encompassed by Lobo's closed hand.
"Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about! Lobo, the Main Man, versus Superman, the Man of Steel!!" Lobo laughed and cheered, a visceral "WOOHOO" so loud it made Superman's ears ring, then used his free hand to punch his foe square in the jaw. Superman had known his enemy was strong, but
that was unexpected. He hadn't been hit like
that in long time. Not since...
He was sent flying backward, slamming into and going through a building before he managed to plant a foot in the street on the other side. He grinded to a halt and snapped his attention immediately back through the hole his body had created, looking straight at Lobo. He was suddenly reminded, in full force, of the chaos that rained down from the sky because of his fight that day. The damage they had done... The chaos he had been unable to stop. Unable to do anything but perpetuate.
"Not again..." He swore to himself, both back then and now. "
Never again..." And he charged back through the way he had come. Lobo had already picked up his chain and hurled the sickle toward Superman as the latter flew toward him in a blur. The sickle caught Superman's thigh, digging in and cutting through his suit and flesh alike. A quick tug brought Superman off course, slinging him away for a moment. The hero twisted his leg so that his foot was on the chain, then planted that foot down onto the ground and twisted his body while grabbing the chain. Deftly, and swiftly, he pulled the chain and its wielder with it until Lobo was off the ground and hurtling toward him. The hunter leaped into the pull, flying at Superman faster than the Man of Steel had anticipated. Everything he thought to try, Lobo seemed to anticipate. There was an obvious gap in their experience, and it was not working in Superman's favor. Lobo closed their gap and delivered another crushing blow to the Man of Steel, punch after punch rocking the world around them. Superman could still hear the screams of citizens who were
convinced that everything was about to be destroyed again, that
Superman and whatever he was fighting were about to level the city. "
NEVER AGAIN!!" He shouted, wrapping both arms around Lobo and bending both knees before rocketing them up, up, and away.
The hunter threw punches, knees, elbows, stabbed him with the sickle, but Superman did not let go. He flew higher and higher until the air grew so thin there was no point in trying to breathe. Then, he pushed himself off of Lobo. With barely half a foot between them, they floated there for a moment while Superman aimed his shot perfectly. It
had to be perfect. Just as Lobo started to fall and regain his composure, Superman loosed a punch he
never would have loosed in the city. The air cracked with the intensity of the blow, and Superman swore he felt Lobo's jaw crack. The hunter flew down, down, and down. Miles, it seemed, flashed by in an instant before he crashed into the ground some twenty miles away from absolutely anything. The aim
had been perfect; a barren field where plans were made but nothing ever built and far enough from the highway that the odds of anyone near by were dismal. Lobo grunted as he pushed himself out of the crater, practically having to peel himself out of the rock. The hunter heard a loud POP above and behind him, and his red eyes widened with shock. "Uh-oh--" he mumbled aloud before turning just in time to see Superman zooming down with all his speed and the planet's gravity bringing him toward his foe. Superman's own eyes were red, blazing with his contained heat vision, as he crashed down onto his opponent with a fearsome battle cry.
Lobo had been in many a fight before, killed entire planets before, and had some of the best reflexes in the galaxy. Just before impact, Lobo produced a small weapon from a side holster. It looked like a sawed off shotgun, but when he pulled the trigger a blast of energy unlike anything Superman had ever seen before burst forth and slammed into him like a galactic freight train. It was slamming himself into a wall of pure light and fire, and he found himself unable to stop his descent or divert his path in time to avoid the blast. It wasn't enough to stop him, but the impact slowed the Man of Steel and veered him off course so that he landed in the dirt and not on Lobo. The hunter grinned and twirled the weapon on his finger before slipping it back into the holster without even bothering to reload the smoking gun.
"Betcha thought you had me, eh Boyscout?" He chuckled, bringing his chain and sickle to bear with one hand while digging in his vest pocket for cigars with the other. "When I was told ta lure ya with that fire, I thought to mahself: 'Ain't no way such a
badass mother fucker could be so
fuckin' gullible. Yet here we fuckin' are. You put up a good fight, Man of Steel, but no man is a match for the
MAIN MAN."
Superman struggled to catch his breath, but as he rolled himself onto his back he saw a plume of smoke come off his smoldering chest. He would recover, but he needed time. And, as Lobo clomped ever closer, he knew time was something he was running very short on.
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