[Third Person Pov]
Superman floated motionless above the wasteland, the air around him still warped from the final exchange of power. What had once been a battlefield was now nothing but empty space—an endless gray expanse of pulverized stone, scorched earth, and drifting ash. Craters the size of city blocks overlapped one another like the footprints of angry gods. The horizon itself seemed broken.
His red sunstone cape settled slowly over the burns that still marked his chest and face. The flesh beneath was already knitting itself back together, the charred skin peeling away in thin, curling flakes as new tissue formed in its place. He paid the process no attention. His eyes remained fixed on the ruin below.
With a soft hiss, his boots touched the ground. He began walking.
The husk that had been Boros lay crumpled near the center of the largest crater, barely recognizable. He clung to the last frayed strand of life the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.
Superman stopped a few paces away and looked down.
Boros' voice came out thin and ragged, forced through a throat that no longer wanted to work. "Tell me something, Superman… Do you consider me a worthy opponent?"
Clark answered without hesitation.
"I do. That was perhaps the most entertaining battle I have ever been in."
There was no mockery in the words. Only honesty. Boros had earned that much, at least, for the strength he had shown.
A broken, rasping laugh scraped out of the alien's ruined chest. "Hahaha… Entertaining… not even challenging… While I was fighting with everything on the line, you were having *fun*."
Boro's voice and tone softened. A thin, almost reluctant smile touched his mouth.
"I suppose I have no leg to stand on. It was fun for me too."
He was quiet for a moment. Then, softly asked: "You were still holding back… weren't you?"
The silence that followed was heavier than any blow either of them had thrown. Clark did not answer right away. His silence spoke for him.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and measured, as if he were confessing something he rarely allowed himself to say aloud.
"I don't always mean to. I have to. Ever since I was young. Maybe you know what it's like… how fragile everything and everyone is. How careful you have to be."
He looked out across the shattered plain, eyes distant.
"It's like living in a world of cardboard. Or a house made entirely out of a deck of cards. A single misplaced touch. The wrong twitch. The wrong muscle spasm at the wrong time. Even a sneeze is all it would take for everything to come crumbling down."
His gaze dropped to his own hands. He flexed his fingers slowly, watching the tendons move beneath skin that had already finished healing.
"Not to mention my abilities are constantly growing. Each day makes me stronger than the person I was yesterday. And with every increase in power comes another limitation I have to learn to live with. Another line I have to draw around myself."
His voice grew quieter, more introspective.
"The stronger I become, the more careful I have to be. It's not just about controlling myself anymore. It's about controlling what happens around me. Because the difference between me holding back and me not holding back isn't measured in bruises or broken bones. It's measured in lives. In buildings. In cities. In the people standing beside me who might not even realize how close they are to getting hurt."
He lifted his eyes again, meeting what remained of the man who gave everything for his dream.
"So I learned to hold back. At first it was something I had to consciously think about. Every movement. Every punch. Every step. Every breath—I had to measure them. Eventually I stopped thinking about it."
A faint, almost melancholic smile crossed his face.
"Now it's second nature. Holding back isn't something I do anymore. It's part of who I am."
He paused, the words settling into the empty space between them like falling ash.
"And maybe that's the part people don't understand. They see Superman and think about how much I can lift, how fast I can fly, how powerful I am. But the truth is… the stronger I become, the more restraint I need. My power may be limitless, but my control has to be even greater."
Clark's eyes drifted once more across the vast emptiness surrounding them—the cratered void that had once been solid ground.
"Because if I ever forget that… if I ever stop being careful for even a moment… then all that power I'm supposed to use to protect people becomes the very thing they need protection from."
His gaze settled back on Boros.
"So yes. I was holding back."
A small, quiet smile formed on his lips.
"I always am."
Boros' breathing had grown thinner still, each inhalation a labor. Yet he forced the next question out, the words barely more than a whisper.
"Do you ever… get lonely… being this powerful?"
Clark let out a brief exhale that was almost a laugh—soft, surprised, and a little exasperated.
"Funny. I thought I would have… but surprisingly, I don't. I have my family. My grandmother. My sister. My dog. My fiancée. Even an annoying senior who refuses to leave me alone no matter how many times I try to push her away. It's hard to feel alone when you're always surrounded by people who love you."
A final, faint smile ghosted across what remained of Boros' face. "Heh… I'm… envious…"
The words faded into silence. The last strand of life slipped free, and the husk of the alien that dreamed to be the Conqueror of the Universe finally went still.
…
The gravity crystal that had been holding the colossal vessel of the Dark Matter Thieves aloft finally gave out with a sharp, crystalline crack that echoed across the city. The gigantic ship shuddered once, then began its slow, inevitable descent.
Screams erupted from the streets below as people looked up and realized what was happening. The shadow of the vessel stretched wider and wider across the buildings, swallowing entire blocks in darkness.
The Superman robots deployed throughout the area reacted instantly. Dozens of them streaked upward in perfect formation, thrusters roaring as they slammed their metal shoulders against the underside of the hull. Blue-white exhaust flared in synchronized pulses, fighting the ship's massive weight meter by meter, slowing the fall but not stopping it. The strain was visible in the way their frames trembled and the way the air around them shimmered with heat.
…
Back in the crater, Clark still stood over the charred husk of Boros, the wind tugging faintly at his cape.
"What's wrong?" Sol asked, his voice calm and clinical inside Clark's head. "You don't seem as enthusiastic about your victory as I would have expected. Even against Ultraman you seemed pleased. I'm not detecting the same satisfaction now."
Clark's eyes remained on the lifeless form at his feet. "Hmm. I don't know, honestly… He just didn't feel like a bad guy to me. I don't think he deserved to die."
"Perhaps it would make you feel better to know he was an intergalactic space pirate," Sol offered, clearly attempting to help. "Pillaging countless planets. Spreading terror. Causing mass havoc across multiple star systems."
Clark gave a small, humorless breath that might have been a laugh. "Maybe. But I've met plenty of bad people before. He wasn't evil… it was just within his nature. You can't get mad at a tiger for being born a carnivore." He looked away from the body, gaze drifting across the ruined landscape. "And I'm not as upset about this as you might think. This was how he chose to go out. This was his decision. He was a man of sound body and mind. To be upset would be a dishonor."
There was a brief pause as Sol processed the words. "Ah. I see. I believe the emotion you are feeling right now is… pity."
Clark stopped and considered it. "Is it?" He tilted his head slightly, as if testing the word against the quiet weight in his chest. "I suppose you're right. I do feel like he was quite pitiful… although I don't think he would have appreciated hearing that very much. Heh."
"I don't mean to interrupt your lamentation," Sol said, tone shifting to something more urgent, "but I believe the Superman robots are struggling to hold up the alien ship in the middle of the city."
Clark's expression cleared. He nodded once, stepping away from Boros' corpse. He looked over his shoulder a final time, then tilted his head toward the open sky and grinned.
"Up, up… and away."
The words were barely out of his mouth before he shot upward like a red-and-white missile. The empty space that had lingered around the crater vanished in an instant. The roar of the world returned—wind, distant sirens, the low groan of stressed metal.
He passed over Yami, who stood alone on the edge of a rooftop, watching. Their eyes met for the briefest fraction of a second. Clark kept flying.
He headed straight for the ship. curving around the planet itself, climbing higher and higher until the atmosphere thinned and the sun's light struck him full force. The moment the solar radiation touched his skin, warmth flooded through him. The residual aches from the battle melted away. Strength surged back into every muscle, every cell. He smiled, then pushed harder, accelerating until the sky became a white blur.
When he returned, he came in low and fast.
The people below saw the streak of color and erupted into cheers and whistles. Superman rose beneath the massive alien vessel alongside the straining robots, planting his hands against the hull and pushing. The ship's descent halted, then slowly began to reverse as the combined force of man and machines drove it upward, away from the city.
Clark's eyes were closed. A broad, almost radiant smile stretched across his face, so wide and unguarded that even Sol found it out of character.
"I didn't take you for someone who enjoys the admiration of the common populace…" the AI remarked, sounding genuinely puzzled.
"Huh? Oh. That's not the reason I'm smiling." Clark's grin didn't fade in the slightest. "I really couldn't care less about that."
"Then what…?"
Clark's voice dropped into something almost reverent, thick with excitement.
"This ship… I'm going to strip it bare and loot the fuck out of it. Imagine all the things I could build from the material. I love being rewarded for my actions. My dream of filling up my empty hangar is finally going to come true."
His eyes grew suspiciously shiny just from thinking about it.
Sol was silent for a long moment.
Then, quietly:
"…Sigh."
********************************************
+20 advance Chapters on: patreon.com/Shadow_D_Monarch3