The smell of burnt toast and profound, soul-crushing failure hung heavy in the morning air. It was a specific kind of stench, one Kai Kenta knew intimately. It wasn't just the smell of scorched carbohydrates; it was the ghost of a thousand failed breakfasts, a monument to his inexplicable inability to operate a simple kitchen appliance designed for a single, solitary purpose.
The toaster, a gleaming chrome bastard he'd bought on sale, sat on the counter looking smug. It had one job. One fucking job. And yet, for the third time this week, it had chosen violence.
"Seriously?" he muttered, the words a low growl of defeat. He used a butter knife to pry the blackened, smoking briquette from the toaster's metallic jaws. It looked less like sourdough and more like a fossilized turd from some prehistoric creature. "You win this round, you son of a bitch". He scraped the carbonized remains into the bin with the grim finality of a burial at sea.
A low chuckle, smooth and rich like the expensive coffee she was drinking, drifted from the doorway. "Another valiant effort in the Great War Against Gluten, ace reporter".
Kai turned, the mock-scowl on his face melting as he looked at his wife, Elena. She leaned against the doorframe of their cozy, ridiculously overpriced Metropolis apartment, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. Her dark hair was a chaotic masterpiece of waves and curls that defied gravity and reason, a testament to the fact she'd probably been up since four AM in a fit of artistic inspiration. Her hands, usually smudged with charcoal or flecks of oil paint, were wrapped around a steaming mug that read, 'I'm silently correcting your composition.'.
"It's not me, it's the machine," Kai insisted, gesturing at the chrome menace with his knife. "It has a personal vendetta. It waits until I'm distracted, then it cranks its own dial to 'hellfire.' I'm telling you, it's sentient".
At twenty-five, Kai was a study in contrasts. His frame was lean, almost wiry, but it hid a deceptive, coiled power. It was the result of two decades dedicated to a brutal cocktail of martial arts that he practiced not for combat, but for control. It kept him grounded, anchored in a body that always felt like a barely contained engine. His features, a handsome blend of his parents' lineages that women in checkout lines had once called 'exotic,' were currently scrunched in a look of theatrical defeat.
"Or," Elena said, taking a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee, her eyes dancing with amusement over the rim of her mug, "you keep forgetting to turn the dial back down after I use it for my everything bagel".
Kai opened his mouth to mount a defense, to argue the finer points of sentient, evil toasters, but a new sound cut through the domestic battlefield. It started with the gleeful, high-pitched shriek of a tiny tyrant who had just discovered a new and exciting way to cause chaos. This was immediately followed by the frantic, scrabbling barks of their corgi, Cosmo, who served as the tyrant's four-legged, perpetually confused accomplice.
"Sounds like Operation: Re-decorate the Living Room is a go," Elena noted dryly.
Kai's expression softened instantly. The scowl vanished, replaced by a warmth that reached his eyes. "I'll handle the tiny dictator and his furry enforcer," he said, walking over and planting a quick, coffee-flavored kiss on Elena's cheek. "You go save the world from bad art".
"Just try not to burn the house down before your interview with the mayor," she called after him, her voice laced with a laughter that was the soundtrack to his life. "He's a stickler for punctuality!".
The living room was a whirlwind of joyous, slobbery chaos. Leo, their one-year-old son, was a miniature, super-powered version of Kai, right down to the unruly black hair, but he had Elena's bright, intelligent eyes—eyes that were currently wide with mischievous delight. He had managed to pull every single cushion off their well-worn sofa and was now attempting to teach Cosmo how to "fetch" a particularly large throw pillow, a task the corgi was failing with gusto.
"Alright, you two agents of chaos," Kai said, scooping his son into the air with an ease that belied the boy's surprising density. Leo giggled, grabbing a fistful of his father's shirt. "Let's give your mother some peace and quiet so she can paint her moody masterpieces".
He settled onto the floor, the cushions be damned, and let Leo crawl all over him while Cosmo licked his face into submission. This was his life, and for all its beautiful, frustrating, un-toasted chaos, he wouldn't trade it for anything in the universe. His job as a reporter for CNN's political desk kept him on his toes, chasing down leads and navigating the shark-infested waters of Metropolis politics. But this—this was his anchor. He was, in his own mind, just a completely normal guy, living a perfectly normal life, in a world that was anything but.
From their apartment window on the 47th floor, the Metropolis skyline was a testament to that fact. Gleaming, silver towers scraped a sky that was perpetually busy with the silent, electric hum of private shuttles and public transport skiffs. It was a city of tomorrow that had been here for twenty years, a place of impossible technology and equally impossible rent prices. And every so often, a casual streak of red and blue would slash across the sky, a passing, everyday reminder that gods walked among them.
The Justice League was a fact of life, as real and as mundane as taxes, traffic jams, and superhero insurance premiums. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman... they were less celebrities and more public utilities, their epic, city-shattering battles the cause of daily news reports and traffic diversions. Kai often reported on the aftermath of their brawls, his voice a calm and steady presence delivering news of multi-billion-dollar property damage and the current status of the city's reconstruction bonds. He'd even interviewed Aquaman once, a surreal and profoundly awkward experience that involved a lot of talk about marine conservation and a lengthy, passionate tangent on the proper way to season kelp.
He was, in every sense of the word, a man who observed the extraordinary from a safe, professional distance.
He was blissfully, completely unaware that the blood of a long-dead planet, a world far older and stranger than Krypton, flowed through his veins. He had no idea that his family's "well-documented immigration history" was a carefully constructed lie spanning three millennia, a legacy of a handful of refugees who had sought sanctuary on Earth long before Krypton's final, fiery demise.
He had no idea that his occasional, heart-pounding "adrenaline rushes"—those strange moments where the world seemed to slow to a crawl and he could see every detail with impossible clarity—were actually flickers of a power that rivaled the Man of Steel's. He didn't know that his body was a biological anomaly, a genetic quirk that made him completely immune to the one substance that could bring a standard Kryptonian to their knees.
For now, he was just Kai Kenta, a husband, a father, a reporter.
A man who, despite holding black belts in five different martial arts, was regularly and soundly defeated by a toaster.
And in a world of gods and monsters, that was perfectly, wonderfully fine by him.