Chapter Text
DAILY PLANET
Federal Government Authorizes Superman’s Arrest on American Soil
Administration cites unauthorized intervention in Juhnrpan and newly released Kryptonian transmission; Superman has not responded to order
The federal government has issued an order authorizing the arrest and detention of Superman—Kal-el—should he enter United States territory, according to a statement released by the Department of Justice late Friday.
The order follows Superman’s unauthorized intervention in the conflict between Boravia and Juhnrpan, during which he damaged Boravian military equipment, harmed several soldiers and obstructed an ongoing operation conducted by a United States ally, as well as later kidnapping and threatening the President. Juhnrpani authorities dispute portions of that account and have publicly thanked Superman for preventing attacks on civilian settlements.
Officials also cited the recent public release of a recovered Kryptonian transmission apparently recorded by Superman’s parents before his arrival on Earth, where it is advised to him that he should take full control of the planet.
Superman has not been formally charged in a public court filing. The administration characterized the order as a temporary national-security measure intended to facilitate his detention, questioning and evaluation. The order applies within United States airspace and territory, allied and foreign nations have refused to accommodate the order.
When asked how federal agents intended to arrest Superman, the Department of Justice declined to discuss operational details.
Officials have not clarified whether Superman’s work with local emergency services or his interventions during active disasters would automatically trigger an attempted arrest.
Lex Luthor, chief executive of LuthorCorp, has been authorized to provide technological and logistical support to the federal task force responsible for carrying out the order.
Several state and municipal authorities have already questioned how the order is expected to function in practice. The governor of New Jersey stated that state agencies would cooperate with federal authorities. Metropolis police officials have not issued a formal response.
In Gotham City, however, Mayor Bella Reál said the city would not divert local emergency resources toward confronting Superman without evidence that he posed an immediate threat to residents.
“Superman saved thousands of Gotham citizens during the flood,” Reál claimed. “Our police officers and emergency workers will not be instructed to initiate a confrontation with a hero, nor should the government.”
The statement has already drawn criticism from federal officials, who warned that municipalities do not possess the authority to disregard a lawful federal order.
Superman was last seen early Friday morning assisting with a refinery fire outside Metropolis. Witnesses reported that he departed before federal personnel arrived. He has made no public statement regarding the arrest order.
Brucewaynescumdumpster69
We have superman becoming a fugitive before gta6 smh
Localunemployed14
A fugitive from what charge
Nobody_importantsadly
Do you read the news with your eyes closed?
Localunemployed14
He isn’t a man according to half of you but suddenly he has all the duties of an american citizen whenever that becomes convenient. He helped the Juhrpan people, Boravian was the problem
BethanyR84
And what happens when he decides your neighborhood is the problem?
Nobody_importantsadly
Cares so much about Juhnrpan yet writes the country’s name wrong lol get off Reddit kid
Bananalover7229
Send him back to wherever he came from.
Monkey30280
He spent years making himself look harmless while hiding what his actual purpose was. He is clearly a threat. If you defend Superman you are an idiot.
Localunemployed14
His “actual purpose” according to a recording translated by a billionaire who is the main seller of military equipment and has every reason to make the guy he very publicly hates look dangerous?
Ihavenocreativityforacoolname
Found Superman’s burner account.
Prof_jimbo
Guys, we do understand that saving people during a natural disaster is not the same thing as attacking a country’s military and torturing their president. Right, guys? Guys…?
Salamanderslayer
I knew Superman was shady the moment he intervened in Boravia’s operation to save the Juhnrpani people
_lhamas_
legit want to know how they’re planning on arresting him lol
Drake2010
WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT BORAVIA AND JUHNRPAN??? FUCK BORAVIA AND JUHNRPAN! THE FUCKING VIDEO IS RIGHT THERE GUYS IT IS QUITE LITERALLY THE END OF THE WORLD, HELL KILL US ALL!!$!!
UrbanizedCopula
How come Clark Kent isn’t the one writing this? Isn’t he the Superman expert?
Thrownaway_account7101820
Kent has been laundering Superman’s image for years. Every time Superman does something insane, this guy appears with an exclusive interview about how sad and misunderstood he is. They probably have an agreement or smt, so Kent won’t badmouth him.
FUTRUMP
Maybe that’s why Kal-el keeps talking to him. Free positive coverage and apparently no gag reflex.
[This comment has been removed for violating community guidelines.]
NewsroomRat
LMAO.
Insertfunnyusername
Remember when life was simple and superman used to rescue cats from trees and stop rapes? That was cute. He should have stayed in his lane.
actually_a_vet
Can somebody call that Boravia Hammer guy to help stop Superman
RainbowDashJarSurvivor
Fucking lol I knew he was planning to get into politics
SpookyUnderwear
Am I the only one who didn’t know Superman had a name?
TatiGabe
I think you need to reevaluate your priorities.
MAGAMyAss
To everyone defending him: come back to this comment section in a year.
Amazing_job827019
How long until the dictator of Juhnrpan asks Superman’s help to invade another country lol
Brucemantruther
#Supershit chain
Pavlova7292
#supershit 2
Gahhzin
#supershit 3
Idontknowwhat_else_touse
#supershit 4
Isertfunnyusername
#supers—
Clark groaned and tossed his phone onto the other side of the bed.
He rolled onto his back and dragged one arm over his eyes. He just lay there for a while, mindlessly staring into the warm darkness behind his arm, not quite registering it.
Another tear slipped toward his ear, cold against his skin, and he realized he had been crying for long enough that the pillow beneath his head was slightly damp.
He scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand, more irritated than surprised, then turned over and shoved his face into the pillow with another groan. He should just go to sleep. Wallowing in self pity and obsessively checking internet forums looking for what strangers were saying about him felt both extremely narcissistic and embarrassingly pathetic. He had work in the morning—assuming Perry did not decide that employing the one reporter suspected of being Superman’s personal propagandist was becoming too much trouble—and lying awake refreshing the same article would not change anything.
He had become Superman to help people, not to be liked by them. He was not an influencer, he was a superhero. What did it matter what people thought of him when he could sleep soundly knowing that his decisions had saved lives, regardless of whatever backlash he received for them?
Except he couldn’t sleep soundly.
In less than a second, the phone was back in his hand. He refreshed the page and the number of comments on the Reddit post that had copied and pasted the Daily Planet’s article annunciating the government’s decision jumped from 723 to 1.012. The letters blurred slightly on the shiny screen, Clark blinked until they sharpened again and pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth. Some of the accounts had cartoon characters as profile pictures. The whole thing was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. These were strangers arguing in a comment section in the middle of the nigh, he probably shouldn’t be so upset about it, for god’s sake.
He had been prepared for this. His parents—his real parents—had warned him long ago that people might not like or accept him because he was different, no matter how good he tried to be, and that, in response, he should attempt to be even better. He should never allow another person’s fear or cruelty to decide what kind of man he became. And Clark believed them, truly, he did!
But this was not only about him nor about the message left by his biological parents and Luthor now using it as proof that everything he had ever done had been part of some elaborate scheme to take over humanity. He could endure criticism. He always had. But this was bigger than him. People were defending Boravia, of all things.
By intervening, he might have made even things worse for Juhnrpan in the public eye. His reputation was in utter ruins, and now the country he had defended was being dragged down with him. Every defense of Juhnrpan became a defense of Superman, and every criticism of Superman seemed to make Boravia appear a little more reasonable by comparison.
It drove him insane that people were taking Boravia’s side. Clark could understand people being frightened by him because of the video, he could even understand questioning whether he should have been so brutish—for lack of a better word—with Vasil Ghurkos. But Boravian soldiers had been firing on unarmed civilians, children. He had seen it with his own eyes. There were photographs, videos, eyewitnesses—proof. There was no reason that could justify killing an unarmed civilian. There simply wasn’t.
So why were people still discussing the matter as though there were two equally reasonable sides? It seemed so simple to him that he genuinely could not understand how anyone could manage to make it something even remotely complicated. What was he supposed to have done—sat idly by and watched? And why should the people of Juhnrpan now be criticized simply because he’d chosen to defend them?
Clark clenched his jaw. He felt the urge to scream and laser through the walls and the ceiling, smash and destroy something. The pressure in his chest had become unbearable, too large and hot to contain within himself. He could hear the building around him: the old water pipes behind the walls, the calm breathing of dozens people asleep around him, someone masturbating somewhere in an apartment close by. Everything just felt like too much. He needed air.
He was out of bed, in his uniform and through the open window before he could give himself time to think better of it.
Clark let instinct guide him through the clouds. He almost never left his apartment as Superman, even if he was flying too fast for any camera and much less a human eye to catch, it was a stupid, unnecessary risk, but tonight he was too upset to care.
The cold air dragged across his face and through his hair, his cape violently snapping behind him. Here, up in the sky, he didn’t need to concern himself with anything as undignified as what people were saying about him on the internet. Here, he was Superman, not Clark Kent; and Superman had greater things to worry about. Things larger than himself and Clark’s own injured ego.
The sound of the atmosphere changed around him as his body cut through the wind’s friction, deepening into a continuous roar that pushed every other thought to the edges of his mind. He crossed the ocean in minutes, then mountains, forests, lakes, deserts, and beautiful stretches of land untouched by humanity’s hand. The cold had dried the tears against his face. The ache in his stomach had not disappeared, but it had become easier to ignore beneath the rush of speed and the constant violence of the wind. He let himself drift into it, thoughtlessly following the curvature of the earth, listening without really listening to the millions of lives passing beneath him.
He did not know where he was going, but that hardly mattered. There was always somewhere to go. The world was so full of people who needed Superman that Clark never truly had to be alone with himself.
A scream cut through the relaxed fog of his mind. It was high and bloodcurdling, then abruptly smothered—cut off by an outside object pressed over the woman’s mouth. A hand, most likely.
He dropped through the clouds and followed the sound into a narrow street below to find a woman being cornered by a man twice her size, who was intent in ripping the woman’s dress. The assaulter had his pants down to his thighs, exposing his ass and his hard, leaking penis to the cold night air.
Things never got any easier.
Heat flared behind Clark’s eyes, staining his vision red. He took one slow, deliberate breath and forced it back down.
He moved forward faster than either of them could see and struck the man once in the back of the head. Clark used only enough force to knock the guy unconscious without fracturing his skull, causing any lasting damage, or even leaving him in much pain when he woke; probably much weaker than most people would have hit, had they been in Clark’s position. But the difference between too little and too much was microscopic for him, and it was always better to hit too lightly than to miscalculate and splash a man’s brain matter all over the wall.
“It’s okay,” he said to the woman, keeping his voice low. “You’re safe now.”
He reached toward her slowly, intending only to help pull her clothing back into place, or to offer some form of comfort, but she flinched so violently that his hand stopped in midair. Her body went rigid against the wall when she seemed to recognize him. She stared at him with wide eyes and said something in a language he did not understand.
“Jebote… to si ti.”
Clark lowered his hand.
“Oh.” He swallowed. “Sorry.”
The reaction should not have hurt. She had just been attacked. She was frightened and half-naked, and a strange man had appeared without warning and struck someone unconscious in front of her. It would have been unreasonable to expect her to immediately understand that he meant no harm, and he immediately felt awful for it.
He tore his eyes away from the woman, if only to make her more comfortable, and focused on the man lying on the ground. He was still passed out.
People were not supposed to remain unconscious for very long after being lightly struck in the head. At least, Clark did not think they were. He had read somewhere that a person always came around after a few seconds, but Clark was fairly sure that was not how unconsciousness actually worked. Or perhaps it was. In which case he had dealt with enough injured people over the years to recognize when something was seriously wrong—probably, he was far from a doctor—so he probably did not need to panic just because the man had not woken up yet.
Maybe he had hit him slightly harder than intended. No, the skull was intact. There was no internal bleeding or swelling in the brain. His pulse was normal. Unless there was some subtler injury Clark could not identify because, again, he was not actually—
His anxious thoughts were cut short when the woman fell to her knees at his feet.
She grabbed the edge of his cape with shaking hands and her entire body shook with the force of her sobs. There was something deeply wrong in the sight of a woman who had just survived an attempted rape kneeling before him—before a man—immediately afterward. Even if she was simply grateful, it left a bad taste in his mouth.
Especially considering the kind of things Luthor had been saying about him.
“No, no. You don’t have to—” Clark bent toward her and gently tried to bring her upright. “Please, you don’t have to kneel.”
She refused to release him. When he pulled her to her feet, she surged forward and clung to him instead, pressing herself against his chest, still crying. Her torn clothing had fallen open, leaving most of her upper body exposed, and Clark immediately pulled one side of his cape around her. She did not seem to notice. She only buried her face against his shoulder and continued whispering the same words over and over—thank you, he assumed. Carefully, he placed one arm around her shaking body.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, despite knowing she probably could not understand him either. “I’ve got you.”
He lowered his face into her dirty, tangled hair and closed his eyes.
The relief with which she held him was almost overwhelming. He knew this moment was not about him, she had just survived something horrifying and her gratitude was not reassurance intended for his personal benefit, and he should not treat it as such. Still, it felt… nice. Lately, the only creature who seemed entirely happy to see him had been his cousin’s dog.
Lois certainly wasn’t.
Whatever remained between them had probably ended during their last fight. Clark had not allowed himself to think about that too closely yet. It was easier to tell himself they both needed time than to admit that she might really be done with him. He loved her. So much.
His fingers moved absently through the knotted strands of the woman’s hair, breathing in the smell of ash and grime. He should be trying to find someone who spoke her language with his superhearing and make sure she had somewhere safe to go, but he couldn’t bring himself to focus on much else other than the gratitude exhaling through her very pores.
His feet rose a few inches above the ground. The woman startled and lifted her head and Clark immediately began lowering them again, afraid he had frightened her, but she only let out a small, breathless laugh. Tears still shone in her eyes. She looked down at the ground beneath them, then back up at him with open wonder. He smiled back, heart threatening to burst in his chest.
“Jesi li ti uopće stvaran?”
His smile got an apologetic tint. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Superman.”
“That’s me.”
She looked deep into his eyes, her dark irises still wet and shining in the light. “Thank you,” she said.
His smile fell from his face.
How long had it been since he last heard a simple thank you? A week? A month? Less, probably, but it felt longer. Before the message from his biological parents had been released, people had more often than not been happy when he appeared, with very few exceptions, but now those few exceptions had become the vast majority. The change had been so sudden, so jarringly different from all the love that had come before, that it had shaken him far more deeply than he would like to admit.
Clark had never become Superman to be thanked, he only wanted to help, it was his duty. He had spent so much time telling himself that that it should have felt truer.
He felt a gentle hand on his face. Clark blinked, pulled abruptly back into the moment.
“Don’t cry, Superman.”
Her voice was soft and unsteady, the words rounded by an accent he vaguely recognized but could not place. Middle East. Eastern European, perhaps. Somewhere near Boravia, maybe, it was similar to the Hammer’s way of speech. The thought made something in him tense before he could stop it.
He truly registered her words when another tear slipped down his face, and embarrassment flooded him immediately. This woman had nearly been raped, and somehow he was the one crying. Over what? People no longer liking him as much as they used to? How self-centered could he be?
“Superman!”
“Jebote, Superman!”
Clark turned his head toward the voices, startled to find that a small crowd of locals had begun gathering at the end of the alley, pointing at him while speaking rapidly at one another. Others waved with both hands, trying to get his attention, unmistakably excited. A few were already moving toward the woman, concern overtaking their curiosity as they noticed her torn clothes and the unconscious man on the ground.
Clark lowered himself and the woman gently back to the pavement, but he did not move away from her. His cape was still the only thing keeping her breasts covered, and she continued holding tightly to his suit.
They attempted to communicate with him, and he only smiled sheepishly in hopes that his awkwardness could convey that he did not understand.
“Ne razumije nas, pričajte na engleskom!”
“Zna li ovdje itko engleski?!”
The crowd shouted over one another, pointing between Superman, the woman, and the man sprawled on the ground. Clark distantly realized he was wearing a military uniform.
“Superman, what happened?” An older man finally asked in heavily accented english.
Clark looked at him with immediate relief. “He was attacking her. I stopped him, but someone should call the police. And she may need medical—”
Before he could answer and safely allow the rapist to be properly held accountable for his crimes, the woman he’d saved suddenly pulled away from his chest and begun shouting something. She pointed accusingly at the unconscious male with an anger that seemed to shake her entire body. Tears continued running down her face, but there was nothing helpless about her now.
Clark could not understand any of it. He caught Superman several times and thought he might have heard Boravia, though he could not be certain. Whatever she was telling them, their expressions changed from concern into outrage as she spoke. Several glared at the passed out soldier(?) on the ground. Someone shouted something from the back, immediately answered in what he assumed was agreement by three or four others.
Clark tensed. Angry crowds always made him nervous—especially considering that nowdays that anger was usually directed at him—they had quite the inclination to turn violent. He shifted slightly to put himself between the crowd and the soldier, prepared to stop anyone who tried to do justice with their own hands, but no one seemed particularly interested in approaching them.
When the woman finished her speech, she seized Clark’s wrist and lifted his arm above both their heads. The crowd erupted and the many voices around them cheered in sync, excitedly repeating over and over what Clark realized had been the final phrase of her speech.
One man clapped and cheered when Clark looked his way, he struck a fist against his own chest, then pointed emphatically toward the S emblemed on Superman’s suit.
Clark felt tears threaten again. This time, he could not even summon the usual embarrassment that came with such attention. He grinned stupidly at the people surrounding him, drinking in the approval like a parched man in the desert.
It had been so long.
For a few seconds, he let himself forget about everything else.
It was only then that his attention mildly returned to the unconscious man. Clark had noticed the military uniform from the beginning without thinking much about it. Now, looking more closely, he noticed the tiny Boravian flag stitched beneath the insignia on the man’s shoulder.
His smile faltered.
He looked from the flag to the woman still holding his raised arm, then out at the people chanting around him.
He was in Juhnrpan, he realized.
No wonder this was the only place he had been welcomed in.
Superman would probably be trashed by all media platforms and crucified on the internet for acting against Boravia again. It was a shame, but somehow, he finds that was a problem for later. Now, this felt just like the place he ought to be.