Growing Pains

“You guys sure you don’t want a lift or something?” I asked for the third time. “I mean, it’s like twenty miles back to the city and I’m not sure your car is going to make it.” I’d dragged the fallen car back up the cliff since the fake Superman didn’t bother, but it had still gone off a cliff into the ocean.

It didn’t look great at the moment.

Lois didn’t seem thrilled to get back into it either. “I’m not normally a stickler for these kinds of things but this outfit is over four hundred dollars, I’m not ruining it with car fish smell. No offense, Smallville. I’ll wait for the taxi we called.”

Clark Kent chuckled and rubbed at the back of his head. “None taken. I’m probably just going to walk back myself. Still a little shaken from the fall.”

“And I’m responsible for these two. Can’t just leave them in the lurch.” Perry – Lois’s boss – said. “But you sure Kent? I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go ahead. Maybe sit down and get an interview with our friend here? Like the girl said, we’re miles from anything.”

“You know us country boys, Mr. White. Ten miles to school and all that…” Clark said as he started walking. “I’ll be fine once I walk it off.”

I sighed and looked at the truck driver. “Don’t suppose you want a lift?”

“Nah, ‘preciate the offer but I gotta stick around to give my take to da cops. Wheel shouldn'ta blown like dat, which means somebody screwed up at the depot.” The driver said. “I take off now I could lose my job.”

Oh well, I tried.

Besides, me asking was mostly an excuse to corner the real Superman for questions. And since he had left I didn’t have a reason to stay either.

I waved goodbye and took off after the two Supermans – Supermen? – towards Metropolis.

It didn’t take me too long to find them. It was hard to track a specific Ki signature in a city even if the two I were looking for were identical, but following them from the cliff let me know generally where they would be.

From there it was simple to just fly around until I spotted them. Though they didn’t exactly look like they were getting along.

As I got closer one of them pointed at the other’s hands which made that Superman look down and flinch at whatever it was before he started getting angry. He yelled something I couldn’t make out and then punched the real Superman in the face.

Which…fair, I was here to do the same thing.

Maybe I could fight him first? I could at least ask.

“Hey you! If you’re looking for a fight why don’t – whoa, what happened to your face?” I started to challenge the fake but was shocked when he turned to face me.

Fake Superman had started off looking exactly like the real one, but now I could literally see parts of his face shifting as bones and muscles rearranged themselves for some reason. It ended up giving his eyes a sunken look and his jaw was starting to look weird too. And it looked like it wasn’t stopping. The fact his skin was turning chalk white all over didn’t help either.

“Uh…”

“Get…away, from me!”

A punch caught me by surprise and sent me halfway through a building. Whatever was going on with the fake, it didn’t mess with his strength much. Ow.

I pushed some of the rubble off of me and looked around. I had crashed into the middle of some kind of office space and now had a handful of people peeking over cubicle walls at me. I gave them a wave and flew back out the hole I made. They lived in Metropolis, they were probably used to people getting knocked through walls now and then.

I quickly made my way back to where I saw the two Supermen, but I could only find one Ki signature. Turns out it was the real one, who was also looking around for the fake. “Hey, where did the other guy go?”

Huh, it was odd to see Superman scowl. “He got away.”

Really now? Already? That was fast. “So any idea who that guy was? Or where he was going? Cause I need to pay him back for the cheapshot he took.”

Superman crossed his arms. “I’ve got no idea, on any of it. Took off in a hurry though.”

“Some kind of shapeshifter?” I guessed, it would possibly explain the Ki thing. Though I felt like I was forgetting something. “Cause he wasn’t looking much like you by the end of it. Anyway, you want to help me track him down and see what his deal is?”

The sound of sirens started up in the distance, cutting off Superman before he could say anything. He looked towards the source and then back to me. “Looks like I’m going to be busy for a bit. Don’t go looking on your own. I don’t know what his deal was, but he wasn’t some pushover. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I’ll be careful.” I shrugged, trying to seem uninterested in looking for his lookalike.

Superman didn’t buy it.

“I’m serious, Califa. Stay away from him until we know more. In fact, if you don’t go looking I’ll promise you a full day of sparing on a deserted island.”

I perked up. A full day fighting against someone I could go all out against, just for not looking for one guy? I could do that.

Then a thought connected and I had to hold back an evil smile.

“You promise?! Then it’s a deal!” I shouted and forced him into a handshake. “So, while you’re busy I’m gonna go hang out with Lois. Later!”

“Wait, wh–”

I didn’t hear the rest, I was too busy speeding back towards the edges of the city.

-o-

Lois was glaring at me from behind the top of her monitor.

I said nothing and gave her my best wide-eyed, innocent looking smile.

A pen clicked twice in the background.

Lois glared harder.

I kept smiling and raised my hands up so she could see. Neither one had a pen in them.

Two more clicks.

Lois started looking like she was trying to suddenly develop heat vision. I wished her luck. I could kinda mimic heat vision by focusing Ki out of my eyes if I wanted to, but it wasn’t really worth it considering the other techniques I could do.

For a normal human, especially one that got in trouble as much as Lois, it would be a lot more useful.

Two more clicks.

She did her best to ignore me, but I could see the vein twitching on her forehead. It was only a matter of time before –

Two more clicks.

“Will you stop that!?” Lois roared, slamming her hands on her desk and standing up to glare at me straight on.

My smile widened by a few teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about–” Two more clicks “–I don’t even have a pen!”

“I can see your tail moving monkey girl. You aren’t fooling anyone!”

Crap, she was good. I quickly tossed the pen across the room with a flick of my tail.

“Nope, no pen here! Definitely wasn’t just pressing it into my back to annoy you!”

Lois raised her hands up and looked like she was doing her best to hold herself back from strangling me. At least she did before she took a deep breath to calm down and leaned forward on her desk. “Okay, fine, I’ll pretend I buy that. Why are you here bothering me? Shouldn’t you be off giving the Justice League a collective headache instead of hanging around an empty office building?”

I didn’t want to tell her I was totally using her as bait for the fake Superman, because that would definitely get her to call the real Superman and he would probably decide that going where the fake was most likely to show up and just waiting was the same as going looking for him.

He was evil like that.

So instead I just said, “Superman blew me off earlier, so I’m following you around so he can’t run away pretending to be busy and will have to fight me.”

Lois raised an eyebrow. “So you’re just going to follow me around for god knows how long?”

“Nah, you’ll probably end up getting kidnapped again soon enough. Or he’ll drop by tonight for your date.”

“I do not get in trouble that often!”

I snorted. “Didn’t you almost get knocked off a cliff today?”

“...That!...You! Ugh, nevermind.” Lois sputtered and shoved away from her desk. “But you’re right, he was supposed to stop by the roof around eight. I’m going to give him an earful if he thinks he can just dump you on me because he’s busy!”

Huh, so she didn’t know Clark Kent was Superman’s disguise yet? I guess she only suspected and the fake showing up made her doubt it.

Of course I wasn’t going to tell her, just hold it over her head later when she definitely knew. “Yeah, you tell him!”

My outburst just got me another dirty look that I decided to ignore as I followed Lois on her way towards the roof.

It wasn’t a long walk, but it did give me some time to think about what scenarios meeting the fake Superman could end up as.

Problem was, he had so many clones and copycats it was kinda hard to guess right away. I mean there was the cyborg guy, the animated toy guy, the like thirty different ‘evil’ versions from alternate dimensions, and I think there was a power stealer that could shapeshift at one point? Hmm, I felt like I was missing an obvious one…

Metallo? No, that was the robot with the blonde skinsuit.

Well whatever. The point is there were a lot of different ways for someone to fake being Superman and they had a lot of different reasons to do so. That kinda made planning for a specific guy hard. The only guaranteed thing to do was to go find a chunk of kryptonite somewhere but that was both cheating and not something I could really do in five minutes.

So I was just going to go with the flow and figure out a plan later.

Lois made it to the top of the roof access stairs and I followed her out, but there honestly wasn’t much up here, literally.

Besides the column that held up the Daily Planet orb, there was nothing on the sloped roof. Not even a rail to stop people from just slipping off the edge.

That wouldn’t be a big deal if you could fly or were tough enough to survive the fall like a Saiyan could. But most humans couldn’t do either of those, so how the heck did the builders get approval for that?

The sound of people talking broke me out of my thoughts as I heard Lois call out to the fake that just arrived and…was looking a lot worse than earlier today.

Ignoring the now completely white skin and messed up hair, most of his face now looked jagged and misshapen. That extended to the rest of his body too as he stood hunched over with his legs at odd angles. For some reason even his outfit looked different, the blue fading to a kind of purple and the shield emblem looking deformed and bizarre…oh.

I was an idiot.

“Right, Bizzaro. Forgot about him.” I muttered under my breath. A mistake because even if Lois missed it, the degenerating clone of Superman didn’t.

“Me not Bizzaro!...Am Superman! Me…hero.” Bizzaro growled. “Me need Lois help.”