Superman Movieverse Forum

Title: Family Reunion
Author: Mr. Beeto
Rating: PG-13
Beta: htbthomas and Shado Librarian
Summary: AU Twist on Donner/Singer Movieverse: Tie the three films together into a cohesive whole, and provide a more credible and interesting reason for Superman to have returned to Krypton.

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Author’s Notes:
Thanks again to the beta team of htbthomas and Shado Librarian, a.k.a. dandello.

Chapter 38 – Launching the Apocalypse

Thursday, October 5, 2006 2:45PM EDT
Luthor sat at the table on the yacht’s stern deck and admired the narrow green cylinder in his hands while pondering the events that would soon unfold.  His ruminations were interrupted by a mournful sigh from Kitty who sat across from him, uncharacteristically silent and with a distraught expression on her face as she clutched the cursed Pomeranian tightly to her chest.  Luthor glared at her momentary before he impatiently checked his watch.  He picked up the walkie-talkie that was sitting on the table in front of him and pressed the transmit button.  “I’m still waiting, gentlemen,” he said irritably.

“Just a couple more minutes,” Stanford’s voice replied quickly from the walkie-talkie.

“What’s the holdup?” Luthor demanded.  “I gave you very simple instructions.”

“Almost there, boss,” Stanford said appeasingly.  A moment later he added, “There.  Everything’s shut down.”

“Then shut off your radios and get up here.  On the double,” Luthor commanded.  After turning off the walkie-talkie and setting it back down on the table, he rose from his seat and walked over to the ship’s stern railing, looking out at the horizon with eager anticipation.  Another aggrieved sigh caused him to look back at his miserable companion.  He frowned and warned her, “Don’t forget which team you’re on.”

“Lex, why do so many people have to die?” Kitty whined.

“Natural selection – it’s the way of nature,” Luthor said simply.  “Now get over here.  You’ll want a front row seat for this.”

Kitty reluctantly joined him at the railing, still tightly clutching her dog.  Just as she reached the rail, Grant, Reilly and Stanford showed up on the deck behind them.  Grant was pulling out a video camera from a bag and turning it on as they approached.

“Make sure you get everything on tape,” Luthor told him authoritatively.

“Sure thing, boss,” Grant said compliantly.  “And we’re rolling.”

Luthor removed the seed crystal from his inside jacket pocket and inserted it through the hollow center of the kryptonite cylinder, afterwards handing over the combined crystals to Stanford.  The younger man inserted the combination into the exposed interior of the R-73 missile.  With Reilly’s assistance, he then reassembled the missile, screwing the retaining bolts through the sides with a power drill.  Once the assembly was complete, Stanford unlatched a small metal case beside it and opened the lid to reveal the control panel.  He flipped a toggle switch and several buttons labeled with Cyrillic characters lit up.

“Wait,” Luthor commanded.  “I need to make a very important phone call first.”  Luthor walked back over to the deck table behind them and retrieved a portable satellite phone, punching in the number as he rejoined the others at the railing.  The number rang once and immediately disconnected with a loud click.  Luthor turned off the phone and smiled evilly as he turned to Stanford and issued the command, “Fire.”

Stanford pressed a lit green button which launched the rocket into the sky at a forty-five degree inclination angle while the rocket’s backwash unexpectedly ignited the deck furniture behind them.  Stanford ignored the disturbed furniture and removed a handheld magnetometer from his pocket, pointing its probe towards the missile as it raced towards the apex of its parabolic path.  Luthor simultaneously followed the projectile’s progress through a pair of high-powered binoculars.  It took a few minutes for the missile to reach its apex and turn earthward, eventually striking the surface of the ocean eighteen miles away, at the extreme limits of visual range.

“Camera off now!” Luthor commanded.  “Hurry, before the EMP fries it.”

Grant had barely shut down the camera when a green flash spread across the horizon from the missile’s impact point and the clouds above quickly gathered together, darkening the sky.  Kitty heard a loud rumble of thunder in the distance, and her eyes widened in fear as she nervously commented, “This isn’t like the train set, Lex.”

“No, it’s not,” Luthor replied indifferently.

“Um, boss?” Stanford interrupted.  “It just fried the meter.  The display jumped to all nines and then it went dead.”

Luthor looked over at him and condescendingly said, “Now that would be our EMP, wouldn’t it?”  He looked back out at the darkening sky and added, “Grant, I want you and Reilly to start the engines back up.  You can resume filming after you’ve restored power.”



Lois looked nervously over at Brutus and Jason, who were playing a duet at the grand piano.  She’d truly been fearful when the killer followed her son as he walked over to the piano and stunned when he began playing the song with him.  She hadn’t expected a brutal killer of his reputation to demonstrate any musical talent, not even something as simple as Heart and Soul.  It turned out to be a lucky break, distracting their minder from the sound of the fax machine.  After confirming the coordinates with Kara, Lois had hastily written out an S.O.S. on some loose paper she found on Luthor’s desk, loaded it into the fax machine and dialed the Planet’s fax number.  The page fed through the scanner, and Lois quickly retrieved it, folding it up and stuffing it in the back pocket of her jeans.

When the telltale beeps sounded from the machine a moment later, she looked nervously over at Brutus, praying he wouldn’t notice the noise.  The killer abruptly stopped playing, peering suspiciously around the open lid of the piano in response to the faint and thankfully unrecognized sounds from the machine.  Lois avoided his gaze pulling Kara closer to her as she surrepticously checked the fax status display:  “Dialing”…  “Connecting”…  “Sending Page 1”…

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Lois urged the machine in a quiet whisper.  However, before the fax could complete, the power suddenly went out and the room went dark, illuminated only by the sunlight filtering through the far doorway and the fire burning in the hearth behind her.  Jason and Brutus immediately stopped playing the piano.

“Mommy?” Jason called out anxiously.

“It’s okay, honey.  We just lost power,” Lois told him confidently.  “You should still be able to play the piano, though.  You don’t need power for that.”

After a beat, Jason resumed his part of the duet and a moment later, Brutus joined in.  Lois breathed a sigh of relief, and turned to Kara, asking in a whisper, “Do you know what happened to the power?”

Kara whispered back, “Mister Luthor told them to shut everything off.”

Lois nodded absently and she recalled that Luthor’s crystal experiment in the Vanderworth’s basement had unleashed the recent EMP.  He’s about to plant the seed crystal and set off another EMP, Lois thought.  I guess he doesn’t want to take a chance on damaging his precious yacht.  Lois suddenly noticed the light from the fireplace reflecting off of the crystals on Luthor’s desk.  She had immediately recognized the missing crystals from the Fortress the moment they entered the ballroom.  Luthor had carefully laid them out on a black felt cloth at the edge of the desk, displayed like precious jewelry.  However, Lois knew that they were far more valuable.  More importantly, by her count, all of the missing crystals were now sitting in front of her, with the exception of the seed crystal Luthor had taken with him.

Lois turned to Kara and in a low voice, she solemnly told the child, “Kara, in a little while, I’m going to ask you to do something really, really important.  Maybe the most important thing you’ll ever do.  And you’re simply going to have to do it without any argument or hesitation.  Do you think you can do that for me?”

Kara nodded nervously, her eyes wide as saucers, and she quietly asked, “What do I have to do?”



It seemed to take a small eternity before Superman finally felt that he was getting the upper hand against the inferno at the Hancock building.  It was another HTA blaze and he had arrived to find white hot flames engulfing six floors near the midpoint of the forty story tower, leaving two hundred ninety-one lifeless bodies in its wake.  It had been quickly racing up the tower, threatening the panicked survivors who were trampling each other in their struggle to get up the stairs.  He had barely arrived in time to crash through the stairwell firewall and lay down an insulating layer of freezing superbreath to protect the people above from the extreme heat.

The Man of Steel reflected that the Vanderworth blaze had been a far simpler situation.  Not only was it a smaller fire volume, there were no civilians inside endangered by the fire and only one injured victim, who he had been able to quickly deliver to Met General’s emergency room.  In contrast, the Hancock tower presented multiple and seemingly mutually exclusive objectives:  Extinguishing a fire hot enough to melt the structural steel and preventing the building’s collapse; protecting the survivors above and below the inferno from the extreme heat; and evacuating the injured to the care of emergency services.

If the steel failed and the building collapsed, he would be powerless to prevent the loss of thousands of lives, and thus Superman’s priority had been on containing the blaze and using his freezing superbreath to counteract the effects of the three thousand degree Fahrenheit temperature on the steel.  That left no time to help those injured in the blaze or trapped on the upper floors.  They would have to wait, and he agonized over the tormented cries he heard from those literally being burnt alive who he was powerless to help.  Unfortunately, an HTA fire could not be blown out like a candle or rushed through its life cycle and it demanded his constant attention to be restrained from consuming the entire structure.  If he was to save the thousand trapped above or lingering in the building below, he had no choice but to leave a small number of suffering victims to their fate.

When the high temperature accelerant was finally consumed, the temperature of the blaze quickly dropped, lacking the necessary fuel to push back against the freezing gale from Superman’s lungs.  With the flames finally subdued, he turned his attention to the burn victims, many of whom had perished while he was fighting the inferno.  He sought out the survivors and began evacuating them to the area hospitals.

Only when all the injured survivors were evacuated did he turn his attention to those remaining, all of whom had sought refuge either on the roof or by hanging out the windows of the upper floors.  There were far too many for him for him to carry down, but he could clear the way for them.  He cleared the smoke and heat from the stairwells, and then searched through the ranks of the firefighters at the scene, gently landing in front of two of Metropolis’ Bravest a moment later.

“Captain O’Neill, Marshall Carter,” Superman greeted as he landed.

“I hope this means everything’s finally under control,” Carter commented hopefully.

“The fire’s out and I’ve evacuated the surviving burn victims,” Superman informed him.  “However, there are still nearly three thousand people trapped on the upper floors – the elevators are out and the fire melted the steel frame holding up the stairs at the eighteenth floor.  You’ll need ladders to bridge the gap.”

Captain O’Neill waved down a subordinate, and gave him instructions to carry ladders up the stairwells.  He afterwards returned his attention to Superman and asking hopefully, “Any chance you could give us a hand with the evacuation?”

“Given enough time, certainly, but considering how my afternoon’s gone so far, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have before another emergency comes up,” Superman replied grimly.

“It probably won’t be much,” a familiar female voice responded.

Superman looked over to discover Captain Maggie Sawyer approaching them, wearing her police badge on a chain around her neck.

“Isn’t this a bit out of your territory?” Carter asked irritably.

“This is the third fatal firebomb this afternoon, and that qualifies as a major terrorist attack against the city, and terrorist attacks are my territory,” Maggie replied adamantly.

“I don’t understand why those Islamic terrorists hate us so much,” O’Neill commented.  “What did we ever do to them?”

“This wasn’t Islamic terrorists,” Maggie declared.  “They would have detonated all their bombs at once to maximize the chaos.  This is different.  It looks like it’s intentionally designed to keep our friend in tights here occupied.  Islamic terrorists also aren’t likely to have been interested in the Vanderworth house – the property listed as Lex Luthor’s primary residence, which the court just this morning ordered him to open up for inspection.   We also have a direct link tying Luthor to this building and I’d bet my paycheck that he’s behind all of this afternoon’s firebombs, including the one in the Roosevelt Tunnel.”

“You’ve tied Luthor to this fire?” Carter asked.

“His lawyer’s office was on the eighteenth floor, and I’m fairly certain that the point of origin for this blaze was on that floor,” Superman informed them.  “I’d be surprised if anyone from that floor survived, judging by what I saw up there…  It’s also another HTA firebomb, just like the Vanderworth estate, and just like the Baxter plant was meant to be.”

“Anyone here still think it’s a coincidence that Luthor’s lawyer’s office got nuked just a few hours after that madman got handed his lunch in court this morning?” Maggie asked sarcastically.

“It doesn’t seem likely,” Carter commented.

“No, it doesn’t,” Maggie agreed.  She turned to Superman and informed him, “Oh, by the way…  Lois Lane is missing.”

Superman struggled to keep his voice level as he stated, “My understanding was that she was hiding out at a safe house for the time being.”

“I just got a call from her editor,” Maggie explained.  “Apparently, there was supposed to be a court-ordered inspection of the Vanderworth house at two and she was invited along.  Now the place has gone up in smoke, and she’s not answering her phone.”

“I hear that she turns it off on occasion, if she doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Superman pointed out.  “In any case, I got to the Vanderworth estate about eight after two, just after the firebomb went off.  I saw Harold Vanderworth Junior there, along with his bodyguards and one of his lawyers.  However, Miss Lane was not with them.”

“She could have been… inside,” Maggie suggested hesitantly.  “It wouldn’t be the first time she snuck past security for an exclusive.”

Superman shook his head and said, “I checked the house as soon as I arrived and I didn’t see anyone inside.  As hot as the fire was, I still got there soon enough that I’d have seen something.”  As he spoke, he opened up his hearing, searching out three familiar and very special heartbeats.

“Well, she’s still been reported missing and Luthor had targeted her partner,” Maggie reminded him.  “I’m certain that Lane is on his shit list, too.”

“I’ll try to find her,” Superman promised sincerely.  His hearing locked on to the heartbeats from Lois and the children, noting that they came from an unexpected bearing and distance.  He then added seriously, “I have some ideas on where she might have gotten off to.”

“Well, I’d like a word with her once you find her,” Maggie declared irritably.  “This afternoon’s security plan did not include swinging by Luthor’s place with her kid in tow.”

Superman’s head suddenly snapped to the side, his eyes momentarily widening in surprise before he squeezed them shut in frustration.  He opened his eyes and declared, “It’s happened again.  Suicide Slum, I think.”  He then rocketed into sky, zooming northwest across the city, disappearing over the rooftops and leaving a sonic boom in his wake.



Jimmy regretted his decision to share a cab with Gil on the way down to the Roosevelt Tunnel fire.  Though getting down there had been uneventful, the return trip had been agonizingly slow, with the alternate routes around the Roosevelt tunnel filled with commuters trying to avoid that bottleneck, and traffic again bottling up around Glenmorgan Square.  He would certainly have made better time on his scooter, which he could have maneuvered around and between the stopped cars.  A trip that should have only taken ten minutes had instead taken him a half hour.

He practically sprinted off the elevator when the doors finally opened up to the bullpen and once at his desk, he rushed to upload the pictures from his camera and send them to the color printer next to his desk.  Once the last of them came off the photo printer, he ran down the aisle towards Perry office.  However, his path was suddenly blocked when Ralph stepped away from the floor’s high performance Xerox printer/copier, engrossed in the contents of his printouts.  Jimmy wasn’t able to stop in time and slammed into the older man, knocking him off his feet and causing both of them to drop their printouts and scatter the pages in the aisle.

“Watch where you’re going, Olsen!” Ralph shouted angrily.  He knelt down, trying to locate his materials from the mixed litter on the floor while the young photographer also scrambled to collect his printouts.

Jack Wilde approached the two, telling Ralph, “Lay off the guy!  You weren’t looking where you were going either.”

Jimmy suddenly stopped, his face going pale and his eyes shooting wide as he recognized a large and familiar script on one of the pages.  It was a fax rather than a regular printout, which was hardly surprising considering that the Xerox printer/copier doubled as their fax machine.  However, the contents on the page were another matter, even with the bottom quarter of the page blank and obscuring the last printed line.  The fax had apparently been interrupted, but not before the most crucial part of the message had come through:



   “Oh, my God,” Jimmy quietly mumbled.

“Hey!  Give that back,” Ralph commanded.  He grabbed the page from Jimmy, his brow wrinkling in confusion as he read it.  “What the – how’d this get mixed up with my stuff?”

“I think that came from Lois,” Jimmy said breathlessly.

“More likely, it came from some kids playing a joke,” Ralph argued skeptically.

“No, it’s Lois’ handwriting,” Jimmy said insistently.  “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

Jack pulled the page from Ralph’s fingers and read it, his wide-eyed expression betraying his concern.  He immediately turned and sprinted down the aisle to Perry’s office and Jimmy rushed after him, his photo printouts suddenly unimportant.  Some of their colleagues jumped out of their way in a panic as the two men came barreling down the aisle.  After a brief discussion with the bodyguard outside Perry’s office a moment later, the two men burst into their editor’s office, interrupting the conference with the three assistant editors.

“This better be important,” Perry warned them.

“It is,” Jack assured him, handing the page over to Perry.  “This fax just came in – Jimmy thinks that’s Lois’ handwriting.”

“I’d recognize it anywhere,” Jimmy declared.  “I’m not sure what those numbers mean, though.”

“They’re global coordinates,” Richard explained.  He had rushed around Perry’s desk as soon as Lois’ name was mentioned and read the message over his uncle’s shoulder.  “I think that’s a little ways off the coast.  I can take the seaplane there–”  Richard fell silent when the floor suddenly lost power, silencing all of the televisions, telephones, printers, and desktop computers, which was then followed by a chorus of complaints from the bullpen.

Sam Foswell checked his cell phone and somberly stated, “My phone’s fried.  It looks like we’ve got another EMP.  That probably means that you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, Richard.”

“I’ve still got to try,” Richard replied adamantly.

“Hold on a moment – I have an idea,” Perry muttered.  He walked through his office door, beckoning for his nephew to follow him.  Perry then turned to the bodyguard stationed outside his office and when the man looked over at him, Perry asked, “Say, Mike… do you think you guys are up to a rescue mission?”

“Rescue mission?” the man asked skeptically.

Perry showed him the fax and said, “It looks like Lois Lane has got herself in something of a pickle, and Richard here’s determined to take his plane out and fly in to the rescue.  I think some backup would be helpful.”

“That sounds like a good way for someone to get himself killed,” Mike replied seriously.  “One, it’s an unfamiliar environment.  You don’t know how many hostiles you’ve got or how they’re equipped, and you don’t know where on the ship the woman is.  You probably don’t even know the layout of the ship.  This isn’t a job for amateurs – it’s a job for the Coast Guard.  They can get a helicopter out there and send in a well-trained and armored team to extract Lane.

“Second, considering that we just got hit with another EMP, we’re probably going to have gridlock on the streets and a regional communications breakdown.  Resources that you might otherwise have been able to bring to bear will simply not be unavailable.  You can’t even be sure that the equipment you do have wasn’t somehow damaged by the EMP.  I’d strongly advise that you accept the recommendation on that fax and call the Coast Guard.”

“Some bodyguard you turned out to be,” Richard complained critically.

“Our job is to keep our clients safe, which means restricting movement to known environments that we can control and protect, and avoiding unnecessary risks like your proposed rescue mission,” Mike replied curtly.  “I can’t commit my team to a probable suicide mission and rush blindly into a lion’s den.  That’s an unacceptable risk.”

“For you maybe, but I have to go,” Richard countered.  “That’s my fiancée out there, and there’s a good chance our son is there with her…  He’s not at the safe house.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but it doesn’t change my recommendation,” Mike told him sympathetically.  “The risk is simply too great for you to pursue this yourself and even if we were inclined to support it – which we’re not – we wouldn’t be able to guarantee your safety.  The best I can do for you is to contact our superiors in Gotham and have them try to expedite matters with the Coast Guard.”

“That’s not good enough,” Richard insisted.  “I’ll going after her.”

“That’d be suicide, considering the enemy’s known background,” Mike replied.  “We were assigned here for a reason, remember?  And no offense, but you’re a desk jockey with a plane.  You don’t have the training or experience to pull this off.”

“Richard, please be reasonable about this,” Perry pleaded.

“Uncle Perry, I can’t just sit around here and do nothing,” Richard insisted.

“You may have no choice.  Mike’s right about the gridlock - you’d be lucky to make it across town by nightfall,” Sam pointed out.

“It didn’t take us that long to get to the house last time,” Richard argued.

“You mean, after Superman had already spent a couple hours clearing the dead cars off the roads,” Perry asked pointedly.  “From what we’ve seen so far this afternoon, it could be a while before he bothers with something as trivial as traffic when he’s had all those other things to deal with.”

  “My scooter can get around the traffic,” Jimmy declared confidently as he dug into his pocket for his keys.  “You can borrow it.”

Jack snorted and said, “A scooter?  You’ve got to be kidding…  No offense Jimmy, but I’ll get him there a lot faster on my Harley.”

“You two aren’t helping,” Perry declared irritably, glaring at Jack and Jimmy.

“Actually, I think they’re very helpful,” Richard stated seriously.  He turned to Jack and added, “You’re on, Jack.  Let’s go.”

“Richard, hold on a minute,” Perry insisted.  “You were listening to what Mike just said, weren’t you?  Luthor’s thugs are armed and dangerous and they don’t mind killing people.”

“Uncle Perry, I can’t just sit here and hope that the Coast Guard will get there in time,” Richard said adamantly.  “I have to go after her.  And I’m not asking for permission.” At Perry’s pointed look, he quickly added, “I’ll grab the Beretta from the closet safe and I’ll try to radio the Coast Guard as soon as I’m in the air.”

“Let’s think about this for a minute,” Perry demanded.  “Mike said his people can help with the Coast Guard.  Copy down that information from the fax so he can pass it on.”

“Okay.  Anything else?”

“I’ve got a box full of satellite phones in my office that Bruce Wayne sent down for emergencies after the last EMP,” Perry added.  “You’re taking one of them with you.”

“Are you sure none of those phones got fried?” Sam asked.

“There in a special metal box that’s supposed to shield them from an EMP – I think Wayne called it a Faraday Cage,” Perry explained.  He turned back to Richard and added, “When you find the boat, you’ll call it in – all the numbers you need should already be programmed in the contact list.  Mike’s people will expedite things with the Coast Guard, and you’ll wait for them.”

“Uncle Perry,” Richard began.

“Damn it, Richard, I don’t want to be planning another funeral,” Perry snapped angrily.  “Our family’s lost too many of your generation already.  You’ll wait.  And you will not pull some macho bullshit stunt out there and get yourself killed.  I want you coming back alive and kicking.  Understood?”

“Understood,” Richard replied quietly.

Perry sighed deeply and said, “Okay, let’s get you that satellite phone.  While I’m digging it out, copy down that information for Mike.”  Perry walked back into his office and turned his attention to a metal box under the window, unlatching the container and quickly searching through it.  He retrieved a small box and tossed it over to Richard.

“Remember, let the Coast Guard do the heavy lifting here,” Perry said authoritatively.  “Don’t get impatient and go rushing in where angels fear to tread.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Richard promised.  He then turned and left with Jack, quickly running down the aisle towards the elevator lobby.