The sunshine was bright as it met the city of Metropolis, and Superman had only had to respond to a few everyday emergencies. There were a few near miss traffic accidents that he had averted, a window washer had fallen off of his scaffolding, and a dog had almost been hit by a truck. It was a very light day for the man of steel, and he was grateful for it. Of course he never complained about the amount of work he had to do, but it was nice to see that peaceful days like this could still happen.
Now he was on his way back to the Dailey Planet, flying through the air at a decent pace without rushing, so he could enjoy seeing the city in peace. Though this was ruined for him when he noticed the single large cloud, in a sky with very few small wispy clouds.
“Well that's not suspicious at all.” he said sarcastically as he smirked. He focused his X-Ray vision onto the cloud, and inside was a rather comical looking aircraft. It was a combination of a helicopter, airplane, hot air balloon with a tail rotor to steer it, a nose propeller for forward motion, and a small blimp on its left and right sides. Superman nearly laughed out loud at the sight.
He studied the aircraft a bit more, and saw how it created water vapor to hide in an artificial cloud. Actually kind of ingenious once you think about it. he thought to himself.
As he flew closer, three turrets (one on top of each balloon and one on the bottom of the aircraft) opened, and aimed gun barrels at him. Superman’s smirk was replaced by a frown as his easy day suddenly vanished. The hero placed his hands in the trajectory of the lower turret, which was the only one that could currently hit him, so he could stop the shot from doing any collateral damage.
A bolt of electricity shot out of the gun, and shocked Superman’s nervous system. The energy coursed through Superman's body as easily as it would anyone else's, his invulnerability only protecting him from the physical damage while he still felt pain from the attack.
After a quick tumble through the air, Superman righted himself, and came back at the attacking aircraft.
After a short battle (if it can be called that) the aircraft had crashed into the Metropolis public park, with Superman's help it just barely messed up the grass. He blew out the fires that had started when he shot the balloons with his heat vision, and tore open the cockpit to get the pilots out before it could possibly explode. Granted there was no fuel source to blow up, but he felt better knowing that nobody was in harm's way.
“Alright, talk.” Superman held the two men up by their shirts. “What was that thing, why were you flying it through the city, and why did you attack me?”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” one the men held up his hands. “We're just doing what the boss told us!”
“And your boss would be-” Superman stopped when he saw the employee badges on their belts.
The bald man sat behind his desk as he looked over some documents. Having started his own business years ago the scientist had evolved into a financial thinker. His research was now carried out by his employees, unless it was something very important, or something he didn't want anyone to know about. Most of his time now was spent making money, and doing his best to get under a certain alien's skin.
He looked up from his papers after hearing a knock on his window, dozens of floors up from the ground.
“Ah, Superman!” the man smiled and opened the window. “What brings you by this fine day?”
“Your aircraft, the one that shoots lightning.” Superman hovered in place with his arms crossed.
“Yes, quite shocking was it.”
“You put people's lives in danger, Luthor!” he reached out to grab the man. “I'm taking you to the police.”
“You'll do no such thing.” Lex Luthor held up a contract. “Permission granted by the mayor to test a new urban stealth aircraft inside the city. Of course it had weapons, in case of a metahuman, or alien attack, but the weapons in question were low grade electric pulse generators with relatively short range. Why...something would have to frighten the pilots quite a bit for them to use them, such as an indestructible flying alien that can shoot death beams from his eyes.”
They watched each other for a few seconds, Superman scowling and Lex Luthor smirking. The man of steel knew that he had been played, made to look like he had unnecessarily frightened two men who had just been doing their jobs, and he knew that if he pressed the issue the billionaire would just use the following media hype to his advantage.
“Anything else I can help you with?” Luthor asked with an annoying smirk.
Superman didn't say anything, and flew away. It was infuriating! Luthor could get away with anything as long as he had his lawyers. He was a chess master, and while Superman was far from stupid he needed only to make one wrong move and Luthor would win. It was always like that; Lex Luthor would do something that was either just illegal, or directly meant to be an attack on Superman, and Superman would stop his plans only for Luthor to have some legal way out of any trouble. And each time the people caught in between them took the fallout.
Sometimes it's like I can't actually succeed. Like I don't have a way to win. No matter what I do, there is always more that I can't. Superman flew aimlessly through the clouds as he thought to himself. I know there are other heroes, but I'm Superman, I'm supposed to be able to save everyone...but I can't.
Almost as if it could sense he was in a bad mood, the universe dropped something else onto his shoulders. Back in the park where he had left the two men, people were screaming. With an exasperated sigh Superman plummeted down towards the chaos.
“Ok, this is different.”
All around the park people, including the two men from earlier and several cops, were being chased and attacked by large thorny black vines. At first Superman thought that Poison Ivy had come to Metropolis, then as he watched one vine give a police officer a wedgie, he thought of the Joker, but the plants did not seem intent on hurting anyone so that ruled out both of them.
“...Alright. Time for some gardening.”
Superman ran in front of a vine as it reached for a woman, and grabbed it between two thorns. The vine tried to pull away...which was useless. Superman snapped his arm up and down very quickly making the vine flow from his hand to its root like a big wave, and right as the wave reached its end he pulled hard to snap it straight again, and the vine snapped apart from the force of its movement. The vine fell limp in his hand.
“Well, that at least is-yowch!” Superman jerked his hand out of the grip of a vine, and saw the blood slowly trickling from the pin sized holes in his skin. He sped away from more vines and examined his hand. “No kryptonite poisoning, has to be magical.”
“Help!” He was there in a blink to stop the vines from snatching a man up by his ankles.
“Get it off my face!” Hearing that Superman looked to the person who shouted, and saw one of the cops trying to fend off a vine that was attempting to latch onto his face with fly trap type mouth. He grabbed the vine by its mouth, lifted it up, and burned it off with his heat vision. The cop looked up to Superman. “Behind you!”
Superman turned, and got sprayed in the face by a fly trap. “Ah...ugh...magical poison...urg...perfect.” he froze that vine with his cold breath and smashed it.
Three vines sprung up and wrapped around Superman's legs and left arm. The vines were not any stronger than before, but their thorns seemed to intentionally dig into his skin. He ripped off the vine on his arm and burned away the ones on his legs. Before anymore could grab him he flew up above the trees.
“Jeez loueez, that stings.” Superman winced from the pain as he hovered over the area with a dark cloud over his head, literally. The black cloud was studded with gray spikes, and it seemed to almost quiver as it stayed in perfect position over his head.
Superman floated forward a little, and it was in his peripheral vision that he saw the cloud following him. “......” The cloud zapped him in the butt with a lightning bolt.
Down on the ground the two cops were watching Superman get chased around by the apparently living cloud.
“Should we help him?” asked the male cop that had been attacked by the facehugger vine.
“What are we supposed to do? Shoot a cloud?” his partner asked as she watched Superman try to fly through the cloud...he got stuck.
“Good point.” they continued to watch the show.
Superman took a deep breath just before the cloud could envelope his head, and he froze it from the inside out. The cloud lost its buoyancy with the air and crashed next to the police car where the cops had hidden behind.
Superman broke free from the rest the ice and spoke to the cops. “I'm going to put a stop to this, you help the people who are trapped.”
“Hey! You're the one who's supposed to save people, all I'm supposed to do is arrest them, and I don't see anyone to arrest.”
The female cop had the good sense to smack her partner over the head. “He's just kidding, bad sense of humor.”
Superman just squinted at them before he flew away. With his super hearing though, he heard the rest of what she had to say to her partner. “You idiot! That crazy alien could have melted you with its laser eyeballs. You saw what it did to Metropolis last year when it fought those other ones.”
They are better off without me. As soon as I went public, Luthor began playing against me, criminals started to use more dangerous weapons that put civilians in harm's way, and then I brought a war to their city. I-I'll leave. If it will mean that they're safer, I'll leave. These were Superman's thoughts as he descended into the central point of the vines’ growth.
And there it was. A bundle of the black thorny vines, coiled around something as if protecting it. Probably a seed pod or something, Superman thought.
“Probably sent by another supervillain who wants to take a shot at me, and doesn't care about who or what gets between us.” He sighed to himself, and turned his heat vision onto the coiled vines. Instead of a concentrated beam, like usual, he unfocused his vision so that the heat was spread evenly, and ignited the vines all at once.
As the vines burned away, he saw a small organic form revealed, and a cry of surprise met his ears. In less than a blink, Superman had stopped his heat vision and snatched the little creature from its nest.
“Oh, lord no, please be ok…” he looked over the small thing in his arms, and was only mildly surprised to find that it was a little white unicorn with wings, and a mane and tail that were almost like rainbows.
“I am unharmed, little sleepy though.” she (gender was apparent from her voice according to his super hearing) rubbed her eyes with a hoof. Superman was rather surprised indeed by her ability to speak flawless English-
“What cha doin, pops?” she asked as she smiled up at him.
-when she wanted to. And he was slightly put off by being called ‘pops'.
“One moment.” he asked her for patience. A look to the vines that she had come from, and he saw that they had been completely burned away, and all the other vines were now dead, so he blew his cold breath over the ash to put out any still burning embers.
“Now,” he set her down, and sat beside her. “since you can talk, let's introduce ourselves. I'm, Superman.”
“I am Princess Celestia, and it is a pleasure to meet you.” she said very politely, and did a little bow.
“Princess of what exactly?” If she was royalty, Superman would need to return her to her people as soon as possible.
Celestia scrunched up her face as she tried to think. “I-I don't remember.”
Superman's eyebrow arched up. “Ok, can I take you somewhere safe? Away from the public, would that be ok?”
The little white filly looked around, and saw several people watching them, and taking pictures of her. “Yes, please.” she said from under her wings as she tried to hide herself.
Superman chuckled at the display of shyness, and picked her up. “Alright, here we go… Up, up, and away!”
Superman sailed through the air with a little white pony in his arms. Celestia uncovered her eyes, and they widened at how high up that already were. Clouds whipped by close enough to reach out and touch with her hoof, so she did.
Superman pulled himself to a sudden stop after he realized that he was no longer holding Celestia. He looked frantically for her. Could she fly? Were her wings strong enough? Why couldn't he hear her screaming as she fell? ...Why does that cloud have four legs, and why is it doing a dog paddle?
Superman blinked, and slowly floated over to the cloud. He waved his hands through the vapor where he thought her face would be, and found two light magenta eyes looking at him.
“Help…” Celestia said pitifully.