Clark found him in the open.
Homelander had chosen the location well. The plaza outside Vought Tower was a concrete basin surrounded by glass and steel, a bowl designed to hold crowds. And it was holding one now. Thousands pressed against the barricades. News drones hovered above like dragonflies. Every major network was live. The Vought PR team had been pushing the location for hours. "Homelander accepts Superman's challenge. Come see true heroism."
There had been no challenge. Clark had never said those words. But it didn't matter. The narrative was already written.
He descended through low cloud. His cape was a red slash against the grey sky. The crowd saw him and a sound rose — not a cheer. Something harder. A jeer wrapped in fear.
Homelander stood at the center of the plaza. He wore his full costume. The cape. The boots. The starched collar. His arms were crossed over his chest. He was smiling.
Clark touched down forty feet away. His boots clicked on the concrete. The crowd hushed.
"Superman." Homelander spread his arms wide. The smile grew. "You came. I was starting to think you only fight through press conferences."
"I'm not here to fight."
"No? Then why are you here?"
"To talk."
"Talk. Right." Homelander turned to the crowd. "He wants to talk, folks. That's what they do up in their space tower. They talk. Meanwhile, we're down here. In the streets. Doing the work."
A wave of cheers. Someone threw a Vought-branded cap into the air.
Clark stepped forward. His hands were open. His voice was calm. "You're protecting a murderer. A-Train killed a woman and your company covered it up. You have the power to do good, but you're choosing something else. I'm asking you to choose differently. Come forward. Cooperate with the investigation. Prove that you're the hero these people believe you are."
Homelander's smile flickered. Just for a moment. Something underneath showed through — a flash of bare teeth. Then the smile was back.
"Interesting. You come here, to my city, surrounded by my people, and you tell me I need to prove I'm a hero." He turned to the crowd again. "What do you think, guys? Do I need to prove anything?"
The roar was deafening. HOMELANDER. HOMELANDER. The name became a chant, rhythmic and swelling.
Clark didn't move. He kept his eyes on Homelander. "This isn't about popularity. It's about justice."
"Justice." Homelander said the word like it tasted foreign. "You keep using that word. But you're not elected. You're not accountable. You answer to a shadow you won't even name. That's not justice. That's a clique of freaks deciding who lives and who dies."
"And A-Train?"
"A-Train made a mistake. A tragic mistake. He's sorry. Our legal system exists for exactly this reason. Not so an alien can fly down and pronounce sentence."
The crowd agreed. Voices rose in support. Clark could hear individual shouts now. "Go back to space." "Leave him alone." A woman near the front held up a sign: SUPERMAN IS THE REAL THREAT.
He had lost them. He had lost them before he landed.
"Homelander. Please." Clark took another step forward. "I don't want to fight you. I want you to do the right thing."
"Please." Homelander's tone shifted. Hardened. "You want me to do the right thing? Here's what I think."
He closed the distance in a heartbeat. Later, analysts would clock the speed at Mach 2. Later, physicists would note that no human object could accelerate that fast from a standing start without shattering the concrete beneath it. Homelander shattered it. The ground cracked in a radial burst as he launched.
Clark saw him coming. His reflexes were faster than light. His body tensed to absorb the impact, to deflect, to neutralize without hurting. He was still thinking that way. He was still trying not to break anything.
Homelander's fist hit him under the jaw.
The sound was not a punch. It was a thunderclap. A sonic boom compressed into a single point of impact. Every window facing the plaza shattered simultaneously. Car alarms erupted for twelve blocks. The news drones were knocked sideways, cameras spinning wildly.
Clark left his feet. His body traveled two hundred feet backward, through the Vought tower's reinforced glass facade, through the lobby's marble wall, through the secondary support pillar behind it. He came to rest embedded in the central elevator shaft, surrounded by twisted steel and falling glass.
The building groaned. Debris rained down. Sprinklers erupted.
Clark opened his eyes. His jaw ached. Not broken. But the hit had landed. Homelander had thrown everything into it. Hadn't held back. Hadn't cared about the glass, the crowd, the damage. Had wanted it to hurt.
And it had.
---
The plaza was chaos. Smoke and dust roiled out from the shattered tower face. The crowd was screaming. Not all in fear. Some were cheering. The chant had changed. HOMELANDER. HOMELANDER. Louder now. Wilder.
Homelander stood at the edge of the crater his launch had left in the concrete. His cape was white with dust. His fist was still clenched. He turned to face the crowd and raised both arms.
"You see?" His voice boomed. "You see what happens when they push us? When they try to take away what we've built?"
The cameras caught it all. The broken tower. The smoke. Homelander's silhouette against the wreckage, arms spread like a conquering general.
"He came here to threaten me. To threaten you. To tell us that we're not good enough for his League. Well, I say we don't need his League. We don't need his approval. We don't need an alien to tell us what justice is."
A young woman broke through the barricade. She ran toward him across the debris-strewn ground. A security guard tried to intercept her, but Homelander held up a hand. Let her come. She threw herself at his chest, sobbing, and he wrapped an arm around her.
"It's okay," he said, loud enough for the cameras. "It's okay. I'm not going anywhere."
The image was iconic. The hero, dust-covered, holding a weeping civilian in the ruins of his own tower. The villain — Superman — buried somewhere in the wreckage behind him.
The feeds went global within seconds. HOMELANDER DEFEATS SUPERMAN. LEAGUE AGGRESSION BACKFIRES. THE PEOPLE'S HERO RISES.
---
Inside the ruined shaft, Clark pulled himself free of the steel. The metal groaned. The sprinklers soaked his cape.
He could hear everything. The crowd cheering Homelander's name. The news anchors already recrafting the narrative. The rapid pulse of a child crying somewhere in the tower above him. The sirens approaching.
He didn't move. He stood in the rubble and listened to the world decide that he was the villain.
His phone was still intact. He pulled it from his belt. The screen was cracked. One unread message.
Bruce. I told you not to use the public system.
Clark typed a response. His fingers felt heavy.
I know.
He slid the phone back into his belt. The sirens were closer now. The child was still crying. He could reach her in less than a second. Pull her from whatever broken room she was trapped in. But if he emerged from the tower now, the cameras would see it as an attack. Another confrontation. Homelander would spin it. The crowd would panic. Someone else might get hurt.
He could save the child quietly. From inside. No one would ever know.
He moved. The steel bent around him. The tower groaned. Somewhere above, the crying stopped.
Outside, the crowd kept chanting. Homelander kept smiling. The cameras kept rolling. And the world kept turning — away from the League, away from the truth, toward a hero who had just leveled a building to make a point and was being cheered for it.