Superman's Metropolis - Chapter Three

Chapter Three.

1935.

*The Kents were good to me. I remember my mother descending into a deep depression after my dad died. I can still hear her crying herself to sleep at night.*

__Clark Kent lies in bed, watching shadows dance on the ceiling. The sound of Martha's weeping echoes in his ears.

*There was an emptiness without dad around. My mom always called him her super-man, but now the hero had fallen and her hope seemed lost.*

__Clark gets up, and watches the sunrise through his window.

*She used to tell me about how he saved her from something dark. She never told me what that was. The sunrise always made me feel better. The idea of the light overcoming the darkness resonated with me, and reminded me of my dad.*

__Clark basks in the sunlight.

~Twenty-five years had passed. We still had very little data on the green rock that made me sick in the first place. My colleague affectionately dubbed it 'Lexalthite.' I hated that term.~

__"But sir, we stopped digging fifteen years ago," an older man with glasses and a receding hairline speaks with a shaky voice.
__The lab is older now. Alexander has dark circles under his eyes, but he doesn't seem to have aged much at all.
__"I don't care if it's been fifty years. You work for me, and I said assemble a team to go back to the dig sites to look again." Alexander says solemnly.
__"Sir, five of our men died last time."
__"Everyone knew the risk before they went."

~He was right. I wish there was a way to take it back, but time moves forward. All of our choices have the power to make or destroy the world around us - even if no one ever notices when it all falls apart.~

*I took my mother on a trip around the world in '36. It was a promotional thing to see every continent. It was the last time we'd spend together.*

__The cruise ship nears Antarctica. The splendor of the ice reflecting the sun light glimmers on the faces of a hundred passengers. Clark and Martha watch with wonder in their eyes.

__Suddenly, and without warning, something shoots across the sky. It's a green light, and the passengers of the cruise ship watch amazed until a huge wave consumes the boat and all the unwary mortals aboard.

__Minutes pass before Clark emerges from the icy waters with his mother in his arms. He struggles to revive her.
__"Clark," She whispers with the last remaining strength she can muster. "life is more than a series of events. The things we do here build or break eternity. Be good, son." Martha hands Clark a small crystal, and with those last words, Martha Kent was reunited with Jonathan in Heaven. Clark looks up at a blue light ahead of him shooting from the ice.

*I spent the next three years in solitude there on the ice. About a year in, I realized what my mother had given me. I tossed the crystal into the water, and came face to face with my past. It was then that I realized who I was.*

1938.

~I saw him for the first time that day. That baby I'd saved from the crash site had become a man. I only recognized him by the symbol he wore on his chest. His blue and red uniform, his neatly combed black hair. He was everything I couldn't be, but more importantly, I realized who he was. The papers called him Superman, but I knew he was an invader, sent with poison to wipe humanity from the cosmos.~

*Blue for the world I came to protect. Red for the world I left behind. Yellow for the life giving sun that gave me power.*

__Superman appears in the sky. People look in awe. His flowing cape blows in the wind, and the world meets it's first "super" hero.

*The Kents were always good to me.*

__Superman rescues people from a car crash, and saves a woman from drowning. Alexander watches through his penthouse window.

~I knew it was my destiny to stop him.~

*I miss them.*

To be continued in Chapter Three.