Chương 20: Weirdo Logic

Wind tore past his ears as Kaelvorn hung in midair, the natural dividing line between Metropolis and Gotham stretched out below him. A wide river caught the light in a rippling shimmer, drawing a clean boundary between two cities built in completely different registers. His original plan had been Gotham. The gray-robed figure from Batman's files was the only lead he had left. But his head kept circling back, uninvited, to Tom's weathered, sea-worn face. And that bowl of warm, good seafood soup.

Those seven days healing in the cottage had been the calmest stretch he'd had since landing on Earth. No brutal training. No suspicion hanging over his identity. And nothing that touched the weight of his own past. Tom's warmth was like sunlight off the water. Never harsh. Always enough.

"Just talk for a bit. Relax. Then leave." Kaelvorn muttered it to himself, trying to make the case sound reasonable. Diana's distance sat on him like a mountain, and he badly needed somewhere he could get some distance from that pressure, even briefly. He turned to head for the coast outside Metropolis, and the air around him suddenly went thick and resistant. No sound of displaced air. No energy signature.

A shape in red and blue simply appeared, hovering a few meters off to his side, like it had always been there. Kaelvorn's pupils snapped tight, every muscle in his body locking up at once. It was the outfit he'd seen on television more times than he could count. A blue bodysuit cut close over a lean, powerful frame, a red cape stirring gently in the wind, the S on the chest catching the sun bright enough to sting.

Unlike the black-suited man he'd met that night in space, this one's face read younger, something not quite worn out of it yet, an easy smile on his mouth as he stood there, hands on his hips, sizing Kaelvorn up.

"Hey. Kael, right?" Young Superman spoke first, his voice bright and clean, warm the way afternoon sun is warm.

"Caught your file in the League database a few days back. You're from Viltrum?" He drifted a little closer, something genuinely wistful in his eyes.

"Kind of funny, actually. Our backgrounds aren't that different. Both of us strangers from somewhere else." Kaelvorn's expression went cold instantly, his whole presence sharpening into something edged. Similar? He didn't see a single thing he had in common with this guy Earth had decided to worship as its guardian. Diana's warmth and decency were still fresh in his memory, and the second she'd learned what he'd actually done, that warmth had turned into a wall keeping him out.

He wasn't interested in going through that cycle again. Accepted, then rejected. Better to draw the line himself before it got that far.

"You and I aren't the same thing." Kaelvorn dropped the line flat and cold, turned away from Superman, and moved to fly straight past him.

"Whoa, wait!" Superman shifted just slightly and blocked his path, tapping his own ear and offering an apologetic grin. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"I know this is going to sound a little invasive, but my hearing's just built different. I can pick up sound from way farther out than anyone should be able to. Used to drive me crazy, honestly, took me years to learn how to filter most of it out." He paused, his tone turning genuinely sincere.

"When Diana hit those bracelets of hers a bit ago, it came through way too loud on my end, and my attention just got dragged toward Salem before I could stop it... So yeah. I heard your whole conversation. Sorry." Kaelvorn's whole body went rigid, his eyes flashing cold, something close to physical killing intent rolling off him.

"Sorry, I don't really do guilt as a concept. I know what you can do, and I know I can't beat you right now..."

"Oh, I'm not here to fight you."

"No hostility here. Genuinely sorry for overhearing something that personal." Superman threw both hands up fast, showing he meant no harm, something bittersweet and a little helpless creeping into his grin.

"Funny timing, actually. Just had a fight with my girlfriend. Got kicked out of the apartment. Kind of at a loss for where to go right now." Kaelvorn's confusion deepened, the edge slowly draining out of his posture. He genuinely couldn't work out why a total stranger was handing him this information. Superman sighed, seemingly oblivious to whatever bizarre expression was on Kaelvorn's face.

"Think about it. You're an alien deserter carrying around a heavy past, I'm an alien visitor who can't even hold onto a girlfriend. Backgrounds match, moods match. Why not go somewhere and talk it out?" Kaelvorn's brain fully stalled out. He'd braced for Superman to interrogate him. To turn hostile like Doctor Fate had. Maybe even to try restraining him on the spot. Not once had he considered this.

This guy was seriously putting his massacre of hundreds of millions of lives in the same category as getting into a fight with his girlfriend and getting locked out? While Kaelvorn's thoughts were still spinning in place, Superman closed the distance, reached out with one broad hand, and gently rested it on his shoulder. A familiar warmth bled through from the contact, close to identical to what he'd felt that night in space held by the black-suited Superman.

But everything about the energy behind it felt completely different. This younger Superman's warmth carried something a little clumsy and completely genuine underneath it, with none of that same weight pressing down.

"Don't just hover there. I know a good spot." Superman didn't wait for a response before pulling him up and forward, moving fast enough that Kaelvorn didn't have time to react, just carried along for the ride. The city below shrank fast, blurring into a smear of shapes, and then a stretch of deep blue ocean opened up ahead of them. They crossed a stretch of rough water and touched down on the cliffside of a small, uninhabited island.

Waves broke against the rocks over and over, throwing up white spray with a low, steady roar. The salt air carried a fine mist against their faces, cool and sharp. Superman let go of his shoulder, walked over to the cliff's edge, and sat down, legs swinging loose over the drop, looking out at the horizon. Kaelvorn stayed quiet for a moment, looking at the back of this "blue boy scout" in front of him.

Then he walked over too, sat down a short distance away, stared at the churning water below his own feet, and finally couldn't hold the question back.

"Why would you put what I did in the same category as an argument with your girlfriend?" To him, there was no comparison possible between the two things at all. One was blood-soaked sin. The other was a minor relationship spat. The first was heavy enough to break anyone who'd grown up somewhere peaceful. The second was a footnote in an ordinary life. Superman turned his head, the smile on his face settling into something more serious, and answered with a question of his own.

"Tell me something. Did you come to Earth planning to bring more killing with you?" Kaelvorn blinked, shook his head on reflex.

"There you go." Superman spread his hands, looking back out at the horizon, his tone calm.

"You ran from a civilization that treats killing and conquest as the whole point of existing. Doesn't that mean you rejected everything they stand for, at the most fundamental level there is?"

"Yeah, you took part in some brutal stuff back there. But you chose to run instead. Which means you cut off every future massacre Viltrum would've ordered you to carry out otherwise."

"That's enough, as far as I'm concerned, to put you in a completely different category from every other Viltrumite conqueror out there." The waves kept breaking against the rocks, wind cutting past them both, and Kaelvorn sat there on the edge of the cliff looking at this young Superman, his whole head a genuine tangle right now. This was the first time anyone had ever framed his past from this specific angle. No accusation. No hostility. Just a plain, direct kind of understanding.

"You..." Kaelvorn's mouth moved, a little numb.

"You must have gotten called a weirdo a lot by your classmates growing up, huh." Superman paused, then nodded, something wistful in it.

"Yeah. Powers kicked in sometime around puberty for me, and between one thing and another, I kept causing messes for a while there." Kaelvorn rubbed at his own face, still half frozen from shock.

"Might not have had much to do with the powers, honestly." Superman went quiet for two full seconds, then burst out laughing, more irritated than amused.

"You definitely got beaten half to death on Viltrum for that mouth of yours too, didn't you."..... +40 advanced chapters on Patreon [email protected] /YATOOO