A.N. I think I've figured it out. The word limit is supposed to be 20k and 100k characters. But if the word count exceeds 15k and the characters exceed 90k, then you can't publish the chapter.
Webnovel! Fix your shit!
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Chapter 8.5
-Clark Kent (Superman)-
The rendezvous had been Bardock's idea, although Clark had begun to suspect that the Saiyan's understanding of a casual meeting differed considerably from that of most people. He had suggested the rooftop of a skyscraper in central Metropolis, specifying neither the building nor the time beyond an afternoon when the weather was clear, and then arrived several minutes early to find Bardock already sitting on the edge of the roof with his legs hanging over the side.
The height would have made an ordinary person reluctant even to approach him, but Bardock appeared entirely comfortable, one hand resting behind him against the concrete while the other held a paper container from which he was eating something that smelled strongly of grilled meat. His tail curled loosely around his waist, and the red staff tucked into his sash lay across his thighs, its polished surface catching the sunlight whenever he moved. The Saiyan looked as though he had come to enjoy the view rather than discuss anything of consequence, though Clark had spent enough time around him by now to understand that apparent idleness did not necessarily mean a lack of thought.
"You know," Bardock remarked as Clark descended towards the roof, "I'm beginning to think that staying on the other side of the pond for a while might not be such a terrible idea. I've spent most of the past month exploring for other places to stay besides my quaint village house, and although there's something to be said for not being tied down, it becomes inconvenient when you want to return somewhere and discover you have nowhere to put your boots except the floor of a borrowed room."
He lifted the container, extracted another piece of food with his fingers, and continued speaking around a thoroughly unbothered chew. "I've been looking at apartments. Nothing particularly extravagant, but somewhere with enough room to keep my things, a decent kitchen, and walls thick enough that I won't hear every argument the neighbours have about their marriages. I'm not asking for a palace. I've had quite enough experience with people who think living in a palace means they've accomplished something."
"Thought you already have a house? Two actually."
"Like I said, I like to move around. And I'm never taking out my capsule house ever again anywhere where Batman can get to it."
Clark landed several feet away, his cape settling against his back as he straightened and regarded the Saiyan with an expression of mild amusement. "I suppose that means you've found somewhere you like then?" he asked.
Bardock's answer was already becoming apparent from the way he was looking out across the city rather than appearing especially enthusiastic about the prospect. The Saiyan shrugged, finished the mouthful he was chewing, and wiped his fingers against a folded napkin before putting it back into the container.
"I've found several places that might do, but I haven't decided whether I want to commit to one yet. There's a difference between choosing somewhere to sleep for a few nights and deciding that you're going to keep returning to it, even when the reason you came in the first place has disappeared."
His gaze shifted towards Clark, and a faintly mischievous smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. "Besides, I should probably establish whether Batman intends to turn my front door into a surveillance station. I can already imagine the little devices he'd install in the smoke detector, the electrical sockets, the plumbing, and perhaps the furniture if he could find a way to make a chair look sufficiently suspicious. I came home to the village one day to find that many bugs all over my house."
Clark gave a small, involuntary laugh before he could stop himself, because the image was so perfectly plausible that denying it would have been dishonest. "Bruce would probably tell you that he was doing it for your own good," he said, "and then explain that the microphones were necessary to detect dimensional disturbances, the cameras were necessary to establish whether anyone had entered the apartment without your knowledge, and the sensors in your refrigerator were necessary to determine whether your eating habits were consistent with your usual behaviour. He would have an explanation for every single device, and if you questioned him closely enough, he would probably insist that he had shown admirable restraint by not putting anything inside the walls themselves."
Bardock turned his head slowly, staring at him with an expression that suggested Clark had just confirmed a suspicion the Saiyan had been nurturing for some time. "You make it sound as though you've already had this conversation with him."
Clark's smile widened. "I've had conversations with Bruce that were remarkably similar. He learned my identity after slipping a tracker on my suit and then following me to my apartment."
"I thought as much." Bardock placed the empty container beside him and leaned back on his hands, stretching his legs over the edge of the roof as though the subject had been settled. "I also offered to help with Gotham while I was considering where to stay, since I was already going to be on this side of the ocean and it seemed sensible to ask whether he wanted an extra pair of hands. He turned me down before I'd finished explaining what I meant, which I suppose is an answer of sorts. I offered to help him clear out a few criminal organisations, not take over his city or put my name on the side of a building. You would think a man who spends so much time fighting crime would appreciate someone offering to take a few of the more troublesome jobs off his plate." He paused, then added with a dry look, "Perhaps he was worried I'd demolish one of his favourite rooftops. I understand that Gotham has a shortage of decent architecture, although from what I've seen, it may have a shortage of decent planning as well."
"Bruce is protective of Gotham in a way that can be difficult to explain to someone who hasn't worked with him for very long," Clark replied, choosing his words carefully because he knew how easily a description of Batman's habits could become an excuse for them. "He sees the city as something he has a responsibility to defend, but he also understands it through years of experience that no one else shares in quite the same way. He knows its criminal networks, its institutions, its neighbourhoods, and the people who operate in the spaces between all those things. When someone else arrives and offers to solve a problem, he immediately starts wondering what they might overlook, what they might damage without realising it, and what happens when they leave. That doesn't make him right to refuse help automatically, but it does explain why he can be difficult about accepting it. Gotham has become part of his identity, and he takes the possibility of losing control over what happens there rather more personally than he ought to."
Bardock considered that for a moment, his expression losing some of its humour as he looked down at the streets far below. "I understand attachment to a place. I understand responsibility, too, even if I've never been particularly interested in owning a piece of land or deciding that one city belongs to me more than another. But if you've spent years defending something, surely you should be able to recognise when another person is trying to help you defend it rather than take it away."
He glanced back at Clark, and there was a little more seriousness in his eyes than the conversation's easy tone might have suggested. "I'm not asking him to hand over his keys to his Batcave (which wasn't that hard to find) or tell me where he keeps his secret files. If he wants to work with me, we can agree on what I should and shouldn't touch, and if he doesn't, then he can carry on doing things his way. I'm perfectly capable of leaving a man to his own decisions. What I find irritating is being treated as though the mere possibility of my involvement makes everything worse before I've even done anything."
"Bruce isn't the only one who thinks that way," Clark admitted. "A lot of heroes become territorial about the places they protect, even if they don't always express it as openly as he does. They develop routines, relationships, and ways of approaching problems that work for them, and an unfamiliar person with extraordinary abilities can disrupt all of that without intending to. I've seen it happen between people who genuinely respect one another. Sometimes it's a question of trust, sometimes it's a question of experience, and sometimes it's simply that people become accustomed to being the one who arrives when something goes wrong. Accepting help means admitting that you cannot do everything alone, and that can be difficult even for people who know better."
He folded his arms loosely across his chest and looked towards the skyline, where the glass fronts of the taller buildings reflected the afternoon light. "I don't mind other heroes coming to Metropolis. The city is busy enough that I could spend every hour of the day dealing with something, and the threats it attracts can be considerably more dangerous than the people Bruce usually has to contend with. Having someone lend a hand can mean the difference between stopping a problem quickly and spending half the day putting the city back together."
"Which brings us neatly back to my original complaint," Bardock said, turning his head towards him with a look of exaggerated patience. "Most people don't seem especially grateful when I offer to lend a hand. Your League still treats me as though I'm liable to explode if somebody so much as asks me to move a chair, and the Watchtower's security system prepares to greet me with enough force to level a small town whenever I teleport aboard. I appreciate the consistency, at least. There's something reassuring about knowing that Batman can be counted upon to suspect me of something even when I'm arriving to tell him that I've found a box of cookies in the cool looking supercar I find self-driving around Gotham that I'm reasonably certain belongs to him."
Clark opened his mouth, considered the image of Bruce's expression upon discovering Bardock eating from a labelled emergency food supply, and decided that defending the League's hospitality would be more difficult than he had anticipated.
"We're still getting used to you," he said at last, which earned him a look that suggested Bardock considered that explanation both predictable and insufficient. "You blew up a planet in front of us," Clark added before the Saiyan could develop the complaint further, deciding that a little honesty was preferable to pretending the League's caution had appeared from nowhere. "I understand why you did it, and I'm not suggesting that you were trying to hurt anyone on Earth, but you can hardly expect everyone to put that out of their minds simply because you've been helping people since then. You demonstrated that the difference between a minor exercise and the destruction of a world can be a matter of how much power you choose to use, and most of us have never had to consider that kind of decision from the perspective of someone who could make it so easily. We know you're capable of showing restraint, but we're still trying to understand what that restraint means when you're angry, distracted, or dealing with something you believe needs to be destroyed."
Bardock studied him for a few seconds, then gave a single, untroubled nod. "Fair enough. I did make a rather poor choice of demonstration if my intention was to reassure people that I could be trusted with delicate work. In my defence, I was running on the high of a good fight."
The concession came so readily that Clark was briefly unsure how to respond, but Bardock had already moved on to another subject, apparently satisfied that the point had been acknowledged.
"Speaking of people who are still making up their minds about me, is Kara still sore about our last encounter?" he asked, and the question was delivered with such casual curiosity that Clark had to make a conscious effort not to look immediately towards the nearest building, as though the Kryptonian woman might be hiding behind its rooftop machinery. "I've crossed paths with her a few times since then, and she gives me a remarkably wide berth. I've seen people who were less determined to avoid someone after they'd been chased through an entire battlefield, and I'm beginning to wonder whether she thinks I'm going to challenge her to a rematch every time I happen to be standing within twenty feet of her."
Bardock tilted his head, considering the matter with the same interest he might have shown when examining an unfamiliar fighting stance. "I thought we settled things reasonably well. We fought, she lost, I didn't kill her, and she learned that I'm not particularly interested in injuring people who have already made their point. Unless she's still angry that I blame her for breaking my roof, I'm not sure what she expects me to do about it."
Clark knew perfectly well that there were several things he could tell him, none of which would improve the situation if he wanted Kara to maintain what little dignity she had managed to recover. He could mention that she had begun reading reports of the mysterious hero whom the people of Asia had nicknamed Wukong, following online discussions of sightings and occasionally correcting details that she considered inaccurate. He could mention that her interest had expanded beyond news articles to videos, interviews, and the occasional music performance featuring young men with long hair, broad shoulders, leather jackets, and the sort of deliberately rebellious stage presence that suggested they had never willingly followed a rule in their lives.
Clark had been unfortunate enough to see several of those searches appear on a shared screen when Kara had been using the Watchtower's systems, and he had possessed enough sense not to ask why she had suddenly developed a strong interest in punk rock bands whose members bore a rather conspicuous resemblance to a certain Saiyan. He had also seen her close the browser with the speed of someone who had just discovered that the laws of privacy were considerably less reliable than she had hoped.
Instead, Clark adopted the expression of a man who knew nothing at all, a skill that had become surprisingly useful since Kara's arrival on Earth. "She's probably still annoyed about the fight," he said, which was technically true and therefore not quite a lie, although he could not entirely prevent the corners of his mouth from threatening to rise. "Kara is proud, and she doesn't enjoy being reminded that there are people who can defeat her without having to work particularly hard for it. Especially since she's still quite new to her powers. Give her time. She'll decide what she thinks of you when she's ready, and it would probably be best not to make a habit of asking her about it in the meantime."
Bardock looked at him suspiciously, his eyes narrowing just enough to suggest that he had noticed the slight hesitation before Clark answered. "That sounded remarkably like a man who knows something he doesn't want to tell me."
Clark gave a careful shrug. "It sounded like a man who knows Kara."
For the moment, that was as much as he intended to say, because the last thing either of them needed was for Bardock to discover that the woman who had once tried to punch him through a mountain might now be trying to decide whether his hair looked better in motion or in a still photograph.
Whatever Bardock might have said in response was interrupted by a disturbance on the street below, where a burst of sharp metallic noise rose above the usual traffic and the distant murmur of pedestrians. Clark turned instinctively towards it, his hearing narrowing the scattered sounds into something more useful: a car alarm, the brittle crash of a shop window, shouted warnings, and the rapid report of weapons that were far too heavy to be ordinary handguns. Several people were running from the entrance of a commercial building, while a group of armed men in dark clothing advanced across the pavement behind them.
The attackers were carrying weapons with broad barrels and reinforced housings, the sort of equipment that would have been excessive for an ordinary robbery but not entirely unfamiliar in a city where Lex Luthor's companies had a habit of producing machinery that found its way into the hands of people with questionable intentions. Clark's expression hardened as he recognised the cut of the equipment and the insignia that one of the men had attempted to conceal beneath his jacket, and he stepped towards the edge of the roof before the first frightened pedestrian could stumble into the line of fire.
"Looks as though someone has decided that our afternoon could use a little excitement." Bardock remarked, following Clark's gaze and rising from the ledge with a fluid movement that left the abandoned food container behind him. His voice had not changed very much, but the casual amusement had given way to a sharper interest as he assessed the disturbance below.
Clark was already moving, his cape snapping behind him as he dropped from the roof and accelerated towards the street, where a man had raised his weapon towards a woman attempting to drag a child behind a parked car. The weapon's barrel flashed, and Clark crossed the distance in an instant, placing himself between the shot and its intended targets while the projectile flattened harmlessly against his chest. He caught the weapon by its housing, twisted it away from the gunman's hands, and sent the man tumbling sideways into a stack of discarded cardboard boxes with no more force than was necessary to remove him from the immediate danger.
"Everyone get back from the building," he called, his voice carrying across the street without becoming a shout. "Find cover and keep moving away from the entrance. I'll handle this."
The other men responded with the kind of panic that usually accompanied the realisation that their carefully arranged plans had failed to account for Superman appearing in the middle of them. Two raised their weapons, one tried to retreat through the building's broken entrance, and another abandoned any pretence of discipline and charged Clark with a heavy metal baton. Clark moved between them without striking harder than necessary, deflecting a shot into the empty sky, catching the baton before it could reach his shoulder, and sweeping the attacker's legs out from under him.
The man hit the pavement with a grunt, his weapon clattering away across the road, while Clark reached for the nearest rifle and crushed its firing mechanism between two fingers. He was already considering how many civilians remained inside the building when a fifth attacker stumbled out through the entrance, clutching his side where Clark had struck him with a glancing blow. The man staggered, caught himself against the side of a car, and then did something that made Clark pause despite the urgency of the situation: he seized the front of his own jacket and tore it away with a sudden, mechanical strength that no ordinary human should have possessed.
The fabric fell in two pieces, revealing a synthetic body beneath it, all dark metal plating, exposed cables, and articulated joints that moved with a precision far removed from human anatomy. The face was still recognisably human in outline, but its expression sat awkwardly upon features that were no longer flesh, and a faint red light pulsed from the seams around its neck. More troubling still was the green glow shining through a reinforced opening in its chest, where a compact crystalline core had been embedded behind layers of protective plating.
Clark recognised the colour before he understood what he was looking at, and the instant the synthetic man turned towards him, the first pulse of weakness passed through his body like a sudden fever. The strength he normally carried without thought seemed to withdraw from his muscles, leaving his limbs heavy and his breathing more laboured than it had been a moment before. His eyes fixed on the green crystal, and the name came to him with a sickening clarity as the robot's mouth twisted into a grin.
"Metallo." Clark said, more to himself than anyone else, and then had to brace a hand against the nearest car when the second pulse of radiation washed over him.
The artificial man's grin widened as he watched the recognition dawn, and his right forearm split apart into a collection of moving segments that rearranged themselves with a grinding metallic shriek. The hand disappeared into the mechanism, replaced by a broad, blunt mallet that swung towards Clark's head before he could fully recover his balance. Clark raised his arms in time to take the blow, but the impact drove him sideways through the air and into the side of a parked vehicle, crushing its frame beneath his back and shattering every window along the passenger compartment.
He rolled off the wreckage before Metallo could follow with another strike, forcing himself upright despite the weakness spreading through his limbs, while the android's left arm unfolded into a rotating barrel that spat a burst of explosive rounds across the street. The projectiles tore through two abandoned cars and ripped chunks from the pavement, sending smoke and debris rolling between the buildings as pedestrians screamed and fled behind whatever cover they could find.
Clark pushed himself away from the wrecked vehicle, attempting to circle beyond the reach of the Kryptonite core, but Metallo moved with enough speed to keep him in front of it. The android's mallet retracted into its forearm and became a serrated blade, which swept across Clark's chest and forced him to twist aside rather than risk taking the edge directly. He caught the mechanical wrist with both hands, trying to redirect the next blow, only for the robot to drive a knee into his stomach and send him stumbling backwards across the street.
The impact would ordinarily have done little more than inconvenience him, but with the Kryptonite draining his strength, it left him struggling for breath and made the familiar weight of his own body feel like something he had never quite learned to carry. He could hear the panic in the surrounding streets, the distant approach of emergency sirens, and the repeated crack of metal striking the ground as Metallo's limbs changed shape to suit the next attack. Clark tried to focus on the people still near the building, but the android advanced again, and the green light in its chest seemed to follow him with a cruel, deliberate certainty.
Bardock descended into the street several seconds later, landing on the roof of an overturned car with such lightness that the damaged suspension barely moved beneath his boots. He looked from the shattered vehicles to the scattered attackers, then to Metallo as the android drove another blow into Clark's guard and knocked the Kryptonian to one knee. Bardock's expression was not quite disapproving, but there was a genuine note of confusion in the way he watched the fight unfold, as though he had arrived to find a skilled martial artist losing a match to an opponent who had forgotten that the rules allowed him to move his feet.
"I'm sorry." he called, his voice carrying clearly above the noise. "But why is that clanking piece of rubbish giving you so much trouble? From where I'm standing, he looks like the sort of riffraff you ought to be able to put down without breaking a sweat."
Clark looked up at him with an expression that might have been a glare if he had possessed enough strength to sustain it, and Metallo took advantage of the distraction to catch him across the shoulder with the flat of his transformed forearm, sending him skidding over the pavement.
"Kryptonite," Clark managed, forcing the word out as he rolled clear of a descending metal fist. He could see Bardock's gaze shift immediately towards the green crystal, and the Saiyan's head tilted with the unmistakable interest of someone who had just encountered a new piece of information that he intended to examine at length. "The core in his chest emits radiation that weakens me. The closer I am to it, the worse it gets, and he knows exactly how to use that against me."
Clark tried to rise, only for Metallo's arm to reshape itself once more, the metal segments locking into a heavy hammerhead that came down with enough force to crack the pavement beside his face. He twisted away from the centre of the strike, but the edge caught him and drove him flat onto his back, leaving him staring up at the sky through a haze of pain and green-tinged light. Above him, Bardock made a sound that was unmistakably a laugh, not loud enough to be mistaken for mockery by someone who knew him, but far too amused to be appropriate under the circumstances.
"Your weakness is a green rock?" Bardock asked, apparently fascinated by the sheer absurdity of it, and Clark would have found the question funny under almost any other conditions. "I'm sorry, I know this is probably a terrible time to bring it up, but that is genuinely one of the strangest weaknesses I've ever heard of. I've met people who were vulnerable to magic, people who couldn't survive outside a particular atmosphere, and a few who could be inconvenienced by an extremely specific form of energy, but I don't think I've ever met anyone whose body takes one look at a green stone and decides it would rather not participate in living."
He took a few steps towards them, studying the core with the calm attention of a craftsman examining a badly made weapon, while Clark tried to push himself upright again and Metallo turned his attention towards the new arrival. "Does it have to be green? What happens if someone paints it blue? Is it the mineral itself, the radiation, or some delightful combination of both? I have to say, I'm beginning to question your rationale behind why you've been so uninterested in my offer to train you, because there are clearly circumstances in which being able to fight properly becomes rather more useful than being able to lift a mountain."
"Bardock." Clark said through gritted teeth, trying to keep his attention on Metallo's changing limbs rather than the increasingly absurd conversation taking place above him. "This probably isn't the best time to discuss my training."
The Saiyan looked down at him, one eyebrow lifting in a way that suggested Clark had just made a point Bardock found worth considering, though not necessarily worth accepting.
"That's fair," he replied, and then turned his attention back to Metallo with a small, inviting gesture of one hand. "All right, clanker. Why don't you come and have a round with me instead? I promise I'll try not to bore you by asking too many questions about the interesting green light in your chest until after you've had a chance to swing at me."
Metallo's head snapped towards him, and the mechanical jaw tightened as though the insult had reached something deeper than whatever passed for the android's ordinary anger. His shoulder assemblies shifted, his right arm folding back into a compact striking mechanism, and then he surged forward with a burst of speed that shattered the pavement beneath his feet.
The android's first punch was directed at Bardock's head, its fist extending on a telescoping joint that carried the metal knuckles far beyond the reach of an ordinary arm. Bardock did not move out of the way. Instead, he lifted one hand and caught the extended fingers between his own, stopping the strike with such abruptness that the force of Metallo's charge travelled through the robot's body and made its shoulder joints groan under the strain. For a moment, the two stood almost motionless in the centre of the ruined street, the android leaning forward with its full mechanical strength committed to a blow that had failed to move its target even an inch.
Bardock examined the hand he had caught, turning it slightly as if checking the quality of its construction, before closing his fingers around the metal digits. The sound that followed was not the sharp report of an explosion but a succession of ugly, grinding snaps as the synthetic fingers crumpled inward, their articulated segments crushed together until the hand could no longer maintain its shape.
Metallo reacted with a furious roar and attempted to wrench himself free, but Bardock had already stepped into the movement, using the robot's own forward momentum against it. He pivoted his arm in a short, almost lazy arc, and the android's entire body rose from the pavement, its legs leaving the ground as Bardock swung it over his head. The movement was so compact that it scarcely looked like an application of strength at all; Bardock's feet remained planted in the same place, his torso barely shifting, while Metallo's considerably heavy mass travelled through a complete arc and struck the sidewalk with a tremendous crash.
The pavement fractured beneath the impact, sending a web of cracks through the concrete and throwing dust and broken fragments into the air, while the android's limbs jerked violently against the ground. Bardock released its damaged hand, straightened, and looked down at the machine with a faintly disappointed expression, as though he had expected a little more resistance from someone who had been so eager to start the fight.
"There," he said, brushing his palm against the side of his trousers. "That was considerably more straightforward."
Metallo tried to rise, its mechanical legs grinding against the fractured pavement as the damaged arm retracted and began to reconstruct itself. Bardock allowed it to move just long enough to confirm that it was still capable of fighting, then lifted one boot and brought it down onto the centre of the android's chest. The impact drove the synthetic body flat against the ground, crushing the armour surrounding the Kryptonite core and forcing the green crystal inward beneath the pressure of Bardock's heel. A sharp burst of light flared between the plates, followed by a shower of sparks and a rising mechanical whine that climbed in pitch until the sound abruptly cut out.
Metallo's limbs spasmed once, twice, and then fell still, the glow in its chest flickering into darkness as the core was destroyed. Bardock kept his foot planted for another moment, watching the machine's internal lights go out one after another, before stepping away with the same lack of ceremony that he might have shown after breaking a training dummy. The street fell briefly quiet around them, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and the distant wail of approaching emergency vehicles.
Bardock's eyes narrowed as he looked down at the ruined machine, and a familiar green light began to gather around his right hand. Clark recognised the posture immediately, even through the haze of weakness that still clouded his vision, and he forced himself to speak before the Saiyan could turn a disabled android into a pile of molten scrap.
"Stop. Don't destroy it."
Bardock glanced over his shoulder, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to irritation at being interrupted in the middle of what he clearly considered an entirely sensible course of action.
"Why not? It's already done trying to kill you, and I'd rather not give it the opportunity to start again. I can make certain there's nothing left to switch back on, which seems preferable to leaving it here for somebody to collect and repair." He looked down at the crushed chest plate, where the Kryptonite core had been reduced to fragments, then back at Clark with a frank expression that suggested he did not consider this a particularly difficult decision. "Unless you're worried about the cost of the metal. In which case, I suppose we could take it apart and sell the pieces, although I doubt there's much value in something that looks as though it's been used to test the strength of a road."
"There's a human brain inside the machine," Clark explained, his voice strained but urgent enough to reach Bardock before he could resume gathering energy. "His name is John Corben. Luthor had him turned into Metallo, and whatever he's become, there's still a person in there. I don't know how much of him is conscious while the system is operating, or how much control he has over what the machine does, but I'm not willing to treat him as though he's nothing more than a weapon. If there's a chance of recovering him, we have to take it."
Bardock's expression changed, not into sympathy exactly, but into the reluctant recognition of someone who had just discovered that a seemingly straightforward problem contained a complication he had not been told about. He rolled his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and let the green glow around his hand fade.
"Of course there is. Why would anything involving a machine that tries to kill people ever be as simple as taking it apart?" He nudged a fragment of the destroyed chest plate with the toe of his boot, then gave Clark a sideways look. "Very well. If you insist on saving the man inside the murder suit, I'll leave you to it. I'd still recommend removing the rest of his weapons before you invite him to have another go at your head."
Clark tried to smile at the advice, but the effort was interrupted by a wave of dizziness that forced him to brace one hand against the side of the wrecked car. The Kryptonite had not disappeared simply because the core was damaged; fragments remained embedded in the broken chest assembly, and whatever radiation they continued to emit was enough to keep his strength suppressed. Bardock noticed the movement immediately, and the irritation in his expression gave way to a more practical concern as he stepped over the broken pavement and extended a hand towards him.
"Come on," he said, sounding almost impatient with the idea that Clark might refuse help when he plainly needed it. "You're not doing anybody any favours by staying down here pretending you're perfectly fine. Take my hand before you decide to prove something stupid."
Clark accepted the offered grip, and Bardock pulled him upright with a controlled movement that was firm enough to help but careful enough not to wrench his shoulder. Even weakened, Clark could feel the difference between being dragged to his feet and being assisted by someone who had made a deliberate choice not to use more force than necessary, and the distinction did not escape him.
The moment Clark was standing, he became aware of the cameras. Several pedestrians had gathered at the far side of the street, some filming from behind parked cars and others standing near the pavement with their phones held high. A pair of reporters had arrived before the emergency vehicles, their cameramen already moving into position as they tried to capture the scene of Superman leaning against a damaged car while a tall, black-haired stranger stood beside him. Bardock followed Clark's gaze and let out a long, weary sigh, his tail making an irritated flick behind him.
"Wonderful. I was hoping to go through an entire afternoon without becoming somebody's favourite moving picture, but I suppose that was optimistic." He glanced at the ruined android and then at the surrounding street, taking in the broken cars, shattered windows, damaged pavement, and abandoned weapons with a look of detached assessment. "At least they'll have something interesting to show their viewers. 'Local Hero Beaten Half to Death by Green Rock, Saved by Man Who Can't Be Bothered to Stay for Questions.' I can already imagine the commentary."
Clark was about to tell him that the title would probably be less dramatic than that when a high-pitched mechanical whine rose from somewhere above the buildings. Bardock looked up first, his eyes following a small drone that swept down between the skyscrapers with the speed and confidence of a machine operating under precise instructions. Its exterior was dark and angular, with no obvious insignia, and the underside opened to reveal a set of articulated clamps designed to grip the damaged android's torso. The drone hovered over Metallo for only a moment before its clamps closed around the wrecked frame and lifted it from the cracked pavement.
Bardock's expression sharpened at once, and he turned his body towards the machine, lifting his index finger as a concentrated point of green energy began forming at the tip.
"Oh, no you don't," he said, his tone losing every trace of humour. "That thing is leaving with the evidence, and I'm not particularly interested in finding out that whoever sent it intends to rebuild the same nuisance and send him after you again. I can bring it down without touching the street, and if the drone is carrying anything important, I can catch the pieces before they hit the ground."
"Bardock, wait," Clark said quickly, reaching out as though the gesture might have any effect on someone who could cross the distance between worlds without travelling through the space between them. "Don't shoot it down. I can see the device on the underside; it's armed, and there are other drones in the area. If you destroy that one, you could trigger the explosives before we know where the others are or what they're connected to. There are people all around us, and we've already had enough damage for one afternoon."
Bardock kept his eyes on the departing drone, his fingers still poised around the gathered energy, and for several seconds Clark thought he might decide that the risk was worth taking despite the warning. The Saiyan's expression had gone very still, the kind of stillness that preceded a rapid decision rather than indecision, and his gaze shifted between the machine, the rooftops, and the surrounding buildings as he assessed the possible consequences. At last, the light around his hand faded, and he lowered it with an audible click of his tongue.
"Fine," Bardock said, sounding distinctly dissatisfied. "I'll refrain from turning your city's mysterious flying rubbish into a very expensive firework display. But if that machine comes back with another man in a metal suit, I reserve the right to complain that I was given an opportunity to prevent the problem and chose not to use it because you asked me to be patient."
He watched the drone disappear between the buildings, its burden secured beneath it, then turned back to Clark with a look of exaggerated resignation. "It'll be your mess to clean up, then. I hope you appreciate that I'm making a considerable effort to respect your judgement, because I can think of several ways to deal with that situation which would be much quicker and would leave considerably fewer unanswered questions. They would also leave considerably fewer drones, of course, which seems to be the part you're worried about."
Clark managed a tired laugh despite himself. "I appreciate the restraint. I'm not sure the city would appreciate the alternatives."
The first reporter reached them before Clark could say anything else, a woman in a dark coat who had evidently decided that the risk of approaching Superman was outweighed by the possibility of securing the first interview. Her cameraman followed close behind, his equipment already pointed towards Clark's face, while two more journalists hurried around a damaged car in an attempt to reach the pair from the other side.
"Superman! Can you tell us what happened here? Was this another attack connected to Lex Luthor? Who was the man who intervened, and is he the same individual who has been appearing in reports from Asia under the name Wukong?"
The questions came so rapidly that they seemed to collide with one another, and Clark could see several more people lifting their phones as they recognised the name. Bardock's eyes closed for a moment, his face taking on the expression of a man who had just been informed that an otherwise pleasant meal had been ruined by someone's decision to invite a dozen strangers to his table.
"Oh, absolutely not," Bardock muttered, taking a step away from Clark as the reporters began to close the remaining distance. "I've already dealt with the clanker, and I've made a sincere effort not to turn the drone into scrap, so I'm declaring myself finished for the afternoon. You can explain whatever needs explaining, and I'll see you aboard the Watchtower when you've recovered enough strength to get there without having to ask someone to carry you."
Clark turned towards him, half in disbelief and half in amusement at the speed with which the Saiyan had decided to abandon him to the approaching crowd. "You can't just leave me here to answer all of these questions," he said, although he knew perfectly well that Bardock could do exactly that, and was about to demonstrate it.
The Saiyan gave him a pleasant, almost apologetic smile that did not reach his eyes. "Of course I can. You're Superman. They came to ask you questions, and I'm sure you'll give them very thoughtful answers. I'm not even going to charge you for the privilege."
Before Clark could formulate a reply, Bardock raised two fingers to his forehead. The air around him seemed to fold inward for an instant, the movement so quick that the nearest reporters barely had time to register the change before the Saiyan vanished from the street. There was no flash, no explosion, and no lingering distortion beyond the brief stir of air that followed his departure; one moment he stood beside Clark, his tail flicking behind him as he prepared to leave, and the next there was nothing but empty pavement where he had been.
The nearest camera continued recording the space for several seconds, its operator apparently unwilling to accept that the man had simply ceased to be there, while the reporter's expression shifted from professional excitement to the frustration of someone whose most interesting interview subject had disappeared before she could ask a single question. Clark looked at the empty space, then towards the sky where the drone had vanished, and finally back at the gathering journalists.
"I take it that means he isn't available for comment," the reporter said, recovering quickly enough to direct her microphone towards Clark.
Clark sighed, straightened as much as his weakened body would allow, and tried to summon the reassuring smile that had carried him through countless interviews, emergency briefings, and public appearances.
"I'm afraid he has a habit of leaving when he thinks a conversation has gone on long enough," he replied, and the line drew a few uncertain laughs from the people nearest him.
It was a perfectly true statement, but it did little to answer the questions now being shouted at him from three directions at once. He raised one hand to ask for a moment of quiet, aware that his strength was slowly returning now that the worst of the Kryptonite's influence had receded, and began explaining that the situation remained under investigation, that emergency services were on their way, and that everyone should remain clear of the damaged machinery until the area had been secured. He did not mention that a drone had carried away the body of a man who might still be alive, nor did he speculate about who had sent it, because he had learned long ago that premature explanations could become obstacles to discovering the truth.
As the reporters pressed closer, Clark's thoughts returned briefly to Bardock's offer to train him, and to the Saiyan's insistence that the ability to question one's habits mattered as much as the power to overcome an opponent. He had declined that offer because he did not want to treat his own abilities as a problem that required a stronger man to solve, and because he believed there was value in understanding the difference between what he could do and what he ought to do.
Yet the encounter with Metallo had exposed a weakness he could not dismiss merely because he disliked admitting it: when his powers failed, he had relied on the same habits that normally made him effective, and those habits had not been enough. Bardock had defeated the android with almost insulting simplicity, but he had done so through timing, leverage, and a precise understanding of how to use an opponent's movement against him, not by unleashing the sort of overwhelming energy that had levelled a planet. The distinction was stark, and Clark found himself wondering whether he had been too quick to assume that accepting instruction would necessarily mean surrendering his own judgement.
He looked once more towards the gap between the buildings where the drone had disappeared, then turned his attention back to the people gathered around him. There would be questions from the League, questions from the police, and almost certainly questions from Batman about why an armed machine had been able to remove a potentially living person from a public crime scene. There would be investigations into Luthor's involvement, efforts to locate the other drones, and an uncomfortable conversation about the fact that Metallo's Kryptonite core had been placed where it could be used against him.
Clark would have to deal with all of it, and he would have to do so without allowing the frustration of the afternoon to turn into an excuse for careless decisions. Bardock had made his position clear: he would respect Clark's judgement when asked, but he would not pretend that a poor decision became sensible merely because it had been made with good intentions. Clark could respect that, even if he suspected that dealing with the Saiyan's blunt honesty would become a recurring challenge.
For now, however, he had a crowd to reassure and a city to protect, and he could not afford to spend the afternoon wondering whether the man who had just left him behind might have been right about more than one thing. He drew a steady breath, allowed his shoulders to settle, and addressed the reporters with the calm, measured confidence they expected from him, explaining what could be said without compromising the investigation or placing anyone else in danger.
Somewhere above the city, Bardock was already making his way towards the Watchtower, probably expecting the rest of the League to be considerably more interested in the fight than in the questions that had followed it. Clark suspected that Batman would be waiting for him with a long list of concerns, that Wonder Woman would want to know whether the attack had been deliberate, and that Kara would have several opinions about the fact that Bardock had appeared in Metropolis and left again without giving her any warning. The thought almost made him smile, although he wisely kept the expression small enough that the nearest camera would not mistake it for amusement at the situation.
When the reporters finally began to give the emergency crews room to work, Clark looked down at the fractured pavement where Metallo had fallen and considered the damage left behind. The street could be repaired, the vehicles replaced, and the building inspected for structural damage, but the android's disappearance had turned a straightforward rescue into something more troubling, and the Kryptonite core had reminded him that even familiar threats could become dangerous when someone understood how to exploit them.
Bardock had intervened because he had been nearby, had acted quickly enough to prevent the fight from escalating, and had stopped when Clark warned him that destroying the drone might put civilians at risk. That mattered more than the Saiyan's mockery, more than the ease with which he had broken Metallo's body, and more than the fact that he had abandoned Clark to a swarm of reporters with a grin that suggested he considered the whole affair an excellent joke. It was a small demonstration of trust, perhaps, but Clark was beginning to understand that trust with Bardock would rarely arrive in the form he expected.
He rose from the damaged car and turned towards the Watchtower, where the next part of the afternoon would undoubtedly involve explaining what had happened and why he had allowed an unknown drone to escape with the remains of a dangerous android. He would tell them the truth, including the parts that reflected poorly on him, and he would listen when Batman raised the questions he had already begun to anticipate. He would also ask for every available record of Metallo's construction, because if John Corben was still alive inside that machine, then the responsibility to recover him had not ended simply because the immediate threat had been removed.
As Clark lifted himself into the air, the city spread beneath him in a familiar patchwork of streets, towers, parks, and moving traffic, its ordinary life continuing despite the violence that had briefly interrupted it. He had protected Metropolis through a thousand such disturbances, but each one reminded him that strength alone was never enough to guarantee a good outcome.
Sometimes the most important part of being a hero was knowing when to strike, when to stop, and when to accept that another person might see a danger you had overlooked.
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A.N. Kind of got philosophical there. Sorry, I wrote this chapter as a cooldown from an essay on science and lab ethics I had to write for my professor at university. Some day you kids will know how it feels.
P.S. Please go check out my Nekros story. I'm investing a lot in it. It's slow paced but I'm really concentrating on the world building and balancing the overpowered-ness so it doesn't get bland.