The newly promoted Police Captain George Stacy stood a short distance from the negotiator with his team, letting the man do his job while staying ready for things to go sideways.
Even an experienced cop like George had a headache over this one.
The criminal and the hostage were right on the edge of the roof.
One wrong move and the kid would go over, and a fall from that height was a death sentence.
On top of that, the guy refused to let them put down a safety mat.
He swore he’d stab the boy the second they tried.
Looking at how wound up the man was, George wasn’t about to roll those dice.
The negotiator’s voice was already going hoarse from shouting when someone in the crowd of onlookers suddenly pointed at the sky and yelled, “What the hell is that?!”
Every head snapped up.
A comet-like streak was cutting across the horizon, heading straight for them.
“Is that a bird?”
“Or a plane?”
“No… that’s Superman!”
The whole street erupted.
Cheers exploded through the crowd while camera flashes went off like crazy.
The criminal had been on his feet too long.
His legs gave out the second he saw that figure.
He and the white boy both toppled right off the roof.
Nobody panicked.
The second Superman showed up, everyone knew the situation was already over.
Wayne had been taking his sweet time, keeping his speed well under light-speed just for the stroll.
He hadn’t expected the guy to be such a weak-kneed loser that he couldn’t even keep his footing.
Not that it mattered.
At the speed they were falling he could’ve flown five hundred laps around the Sun to warm up and still made it back in time.
He sped up a fraction.
Photons got left in the dust and time itself seemed to freeze.
Wayne appeared between the falling pair, grabbed each of them by the collar, then eased off the throttle and drifted down nice and slow.
He tossed the criminal onto the pavement like a sack of trash.
Officers who’d been waiting jumped on him and slapped the cuffs on.
One of the cops fumbled out a pen and a little notebook, face flushed.
“Um, Superman, do you like… I mean, I’ve been a huge fan since I was a kid, could you… maybe…”
Kid?
Wayne almost laughed.
He was only eighteen.
There was a classmate named Peter Parker who would eventually run around in a mask, and people might not clock his age, but Wayne was Superman, not Daredevil.
Still, he scribbled an autograph just to get the guy to leave him alone.
Apparently that wasn’t enough.
The white kid he’d just saved was still standing there staring.
“Thank you!
M-Superman!”
A vein twitched on Wayne’s forehead.
“Don’t call me M-Superman!
I already told everyone I’m Superman!
Superman!
Get it through your head!
It’s just Superman!”
George Stacy watched the whole argument with a small smile.
“So who’s stronger, you or Clark?”
Wayne didn’t even pause.
“Size M is bigger than size S.
Pretty obvious, right?”
He jabbed a thumb at the golden letter on his chest.
“What do you think this M stands for?
It’s MAN.
I’m a more MAN Superman than Clark ever was!”
With that he vanished.
In the frozen moment of near-stopped time he checked the kid’s recent history, found a whole stack of failing test papers the boy had been hiding, and dropped both the papers and the kid’s father right in front of him.
The boy’s face went pure white.
Wayne watched the father drag his son away with a face like thunder, then waved goodbye with the biggest, friendliest grin he could manage.
“That kid’s gonna have nightmares for a week.
Goes out shopping and ends up with a public execution plus a beating from Dad.”
George Stacy walked over and held out his hand.
“Thank you for the help, Mr.
Scott.”
Wayne and George Stacy already knew each other.
Wayne had been classmates with Gwen Stacy since elementary school and had even been over to their place a few times.
Pretty much everyone on the planet knew who Wayne was.
He operated exactly like the city Superman from the movies and never bothered hiding his face.
He could have used the Bio-force field to scramble people’s perception if he felt like it, but there was zero point.
Hide his identity?
My ass.
His whole family were superheroes.
Even if something happened on the far side of the Milky Way, one shout and he’d be there in a blink to turn the threat into paste.
His vision covered several galaxies.
Almost nobody could touch his people while he was around.
And if someone actually could… then secret identities wouldn’t help against that kind of monster anyway.
So far Wayne hadn’t found a single downside to living in the open.
The only real upside was that he could write “saving the world” as the reason every time he skipped class.
“Uncle Stacy, I’m still not used to you calling me Mr.
Scott.
If you really want to thank me, just buy me dinner sometime.”
Wayne shook the older man’s hand.
“Susan’s been trying out new recipes lately… and while charcoal won’t kill me, I’d rather not have to eat it.”
“Alright, kid, quit complaining.”
George clapped him on the shoulder.
Since Wayne didn’t want the formal routine, George dropped it.
Right now it wasn’t a captain talking to a superhero.
It was just the man who’d watched this brat grow up.
“You’re gonna be late.
You’ve still got class today, or did you forget?”
“You know I’ve never been late.”
Wayne pulled out a small camera device.
“I’ve just gotta drop this off with Reed and I’ll still have more free time than I know what to do with.”
“As long as you know what you’re doing.”
George reached into the patrol car, grabbed a sandwich, and held it up.
“You eat breakfast yet?”
“Nope.”
Wayne drifted upward.
“But Gwen said she’d bring me some.”
He flipped around and rocketed into the sky, vanishing over the horizon with a sonic boom that cracked the clouds.
“That brat!”
George watched him go and just shook his head, laughing.
…
Baxter Building.
One of the most recognizable skyscrapers in New York and the official headquarters of the Fantastic Four.
Right now the team was gathered in the lounge on one of the upper floors.
Reed Richards, Mr.
Fantastic, looked like any ordinary middle-aged guy.
He was pacing back and forth like a man waiting for his wife to give birth.
Unfortunately, in this universe he was still very much a bachelor.
Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman, sat on the couch with her silky blonde hair and that killer figure on full display.
Her face, however, was pure thunder.
Off to the side, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, looked a little too much like a certain smooth-talking captain.
He was too scared of his big sister to open his mouth, so he just muttered to himself,
“Ugh..
bro, get your ass back here already.
I can’t take much more of this.”
Ben Grimm, the Thing, stood at the bar mixing himself a cup of coffee, quietly watching the whole circus while he sipped.