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The raven-haired bachelor placed his keys and eyeglasses on the coffee table, then tossed his jacket over the drab couch.
Kai, a svelte, angular-faced black cat jumped down from the windowsill upon his owner's arrival into the apartment. He scurried over to brush against the strong pair of legs, a customary greeting. The large-framed, handsome man bent down to give Kai his requisite petting.
In the kitchen, Clark went through the motions of cooking dinner. Fine Cuisine: Vegetarian Delight. More like "Vegetarian Sewage" as far as Clark was concerned. Somewhere in the ooze of sauce floated a few stray string beans. Other vegetables were hard to recognize, though not impossible to the point of bothering to toss the whole thing out. Truth be told, Clark had little appetite. He knew he didn't really need to eat, but choosing not to would be giving into his being far beyond human. This would be a distorted reflection of how he felt these days: human. His generally, unflappable, even temper now had moments-- pangs really-- of strange feelings: irritability, a transient sense of being stifled, waves of sadness ebbing away, only to later wash over him again. Kai was his only main companion these days.
Lois had made it a point to be in his face more at work, often ruffling his hair before walking away. She'd started calling him more often, and not simply to discuss scoops and story angles. He'd stopped answering his phone a lot lately. Lois always gave Clark a hard time for this at work the next day. He put up with it, knowing full well that she knew what he was going through.
"Break-ups suck, no matter what. I should know, believe me. You'll get through this, Smallville. I know you were in love, but, trust me-- trust yourself-- you did the right thing. Lex Luthor turned out to be a big loser, even though he didn't start out that way with you. Hey, how could you have known about the shady business dealings and big crime boss connections he and his father Lionel started making until *us* two uncovered them over the past several months?..." She'd carried on like that. Lois was right, of course, but her talking had become mostly annoying chatter to him. And Clark used to get annoyed so *very* rarely-- used to, that is.
Shaking his head clear from such brooding, he let out a forced sigh, blowing a glass off the kitchen counter and onto the hardwood floor, where it shattered.
Kai ran over to investigate.
"It's just a glass, Kai, nothing interesting, and too dangerous to be poking your nose in, kitty." Clark rubbed the top of Kai's head before proceeding to clean up the shards of glass.
Kai's head turned abruptly, ears standing upright. Crouching down, Kai stalked out of the kitchen and into the living room. Clark thought he heard something, a moving about from behind the far wall at the other end of his apartment. The cat sniffed along the edges of the carpet, placing his right paw up against the wall. He seemed to be listening. The noise had stopped. Clark didn't bother to use his X-ray vision or power hearing. He'd long decided not to do so within his apartment, feeling like an intruder to his neighbors should he use these powers.
Kai, however, appeared to have no scruples-- not that a cat needed any like his owner did. The feline turned and looked Clark straight in the eyes. He froze and stared back. Two green irises held fine, long slits for pupils; each dilated by a subtle degree. Suddenly, Clark's mind was overtaken with the intense, staring face of his wondrous cat. A sense of urgency rose up inside the Kryptonian from seemingly out of nowhere. Kai's ears twisted back to the sides, as if trying to listen closely to the wall while the cat's head remained stock still. Then, Clark heard it too, a distant ticking. The sound grew louder, Clark's power hearing now honing in on it. 'So much for restraint with my powers,' he mused. He bolted over and fell onto his hands and knees beside his little animal friend.
It came from out of the small heating grate, though this was not the actual source; the wall alongside it was. Tick. Tick. Tick. Clark looked intently at an area against the eggshell white surface that rose up from the floor. His X-ray vision revealed a black box with a red light and single-handed clock along its top. Wires snaked out from the object, having been attached to piping within the wall, making their way beneath the square of grating right before Clark's hands and Kai's paws.
"Thank you, Kai," Clark simply stated as he jumped up and stripped off his outer clothing within milliseconds. Then a blur of red, blue, and yellow whisked off the grating cover, pulled out the black object, and zipped through the instantly-opened, sliding glass door to the balcony-- all in a single flash.
Kal-El shot into the night sky. He appeared undetectable to the naked eye, save for the faintest glimmer of three primary colors streaming up and out of the earth's atmosphere. The Kryptonian raced towards the sun, passing the stark orb of Mercury before finally slowing down. He hurled the bomb towards the mighty ball of fire, where it exploded into billows of flame, a tiny spark within massive waves and ripples of heat.
Turning away, he flew back to his adopted home planet, landing in an alley across the way from the old apartment complex in which he lived as Clark Kent. Scanning his surroundings, he saw a young man and woman heavily making out in a black car on the curb in front of the brownstone. A scruffy transient struggled to stand up against the rusty dumpster just over from Kal-El's left. The bearded man failed miserably, falling back against the ground.
The Kryptonian walked over to him. Gently shaking the drunk homeless man awake, Kal-El said, "James. James! Listen, it's time you have a life for yourself. I'll take you to the nearest shelter. This just isn't right. I'm tired of postponing helping you out."
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Soon, James was comfortably tucked into a shelter bed with repeated promises by the night shift manager to have the man assigned a social worker the next day. He would be placed in a thirty day detox and, from there, the worker would get him onto public benefits and into a room of his own within a supervised sober house.
"You're a real savior, Superman. It's an honor and privilege to meet you," the manager stated as the reluctant-feeling superhero stepped out the door. Fortunately, there was no other fanfare beyond those few sentences. All was quiet in the shelter and its outside immediate premises.
Satisfied-- for now at least-- Kal-El flew up and away, to land back in the alleyway he'd just visited. No sign of life, save for a few sewer rats, a man walking briskly down the street, head bent down, and the amorous couple still in a car. 'Hopefully, they're in love,' the mighty man-alien
mused. The street was clear, and finding that another thorough scan around him yielded no onlookers, the lone Kryptonian took a great leap and landed on the roof of his apartment.
Kai sat on the concrete balcony floor, greeting his owner/companion with a soft "Meow" and a yearning look up into Kal-El's eyes.
The Kryptonian knew who had to be behind this murder attempt, which, if successful, would have killed many lives except for its intended target. He'd need to launch a personal investigation, but it could wait until tomorrow.
After years of witnessing, and battling against, the worst behaviors of humanity, the extreme degree and way that human bitterness had been expressed tonight still sobered him like the impending threat of exposure to green kryptonite.
"It's all okay now, Kai, thanks to you."
FIN
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