(TSSFH) CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: SUPERMAN

Although Clark Kent and Superman were two sides of the same coin, people often misunderstood which side was which. To the world, Superman was the truth and Clark Kent the disguise. But Clark had never seen it that way. As he’d once told Lois, Superman was what he could do. Clark was who he was.

And in this situation, Superman was the one who was needed the most.

He didn’t like it. By tomorrow morning, the story would be on every screen and paper: Superman had stormed an illegal dog-fighting ring in Brockton Bay, scattering Empire Eighty-Eight loyalists and tearing down one of their hidden revenue streams. A clean victory, or so it would appear to the public. In reality, it gave Max Anders another opportunity to polish his campaign message, to hold Superman up as an ‘ideal Aryan’ standing against evil while painting the PRT as weak and ineffective.

Anders would happily sacrifice his followers to achieve his goals. 

And then there was Carol Dallon. Clark had spent the last few hours gathering leads into something resembling a case—proof he could put in her hands—but once they met, she would ask the questions any good lawyer would. Questions about where the information had come from, how a supposed dishwasher with no known experience and history in Brockton Bay had uncovered it, and why he cared enough to do so. Questions that could end with her suspecting that Clark Kent was more than he seemed.

But if that was the price to pay? If his cover cracked here and now, if people saw through the jacket and glasses and realized that Clark Kent was Superman?

Then so be it.

Because this wasn’t just about Max Anders anymore. It was about Rachel Lindt, the girl who had walked into the warehouse with her dogs and her fury, too far down a path that Clark knew only ended in tragedy. If there was even a chance of pulling her back from it, even a chance of saving her from the same system that had already failed her, then the risk was worth it.

More so here, in a world where Clark Kent was just a nobody.

And so, as Hellhound’s beasts tore through the crowd—men stumbling over each other, women clawing toward the stairs, and pit dogs cowering against their cages—Clark rose to his full height. 

The slump of his shoulders fell away, the intentional smallness he’d worn all evening discarded like an old coat. He no longer looked like a man blending in at the edge of a crowd. Even in his casual wear, he looked like someone who belonged above it all.

He had become Superman. 

When he finally moved, it wasn't with the thunderclap of speed that cracked the air, nor with the spectacle of him streaking overhead. This time, it was quiet and controlled, a gust of displaced air that snapped the weapons from people’s hands before fingers could pull triggers, steel crumpling like paper as they clattered harmlessly across the floor. 

Cries rose from the crowd, panic spilling over anger, but their voices were drowned beneath the guttural roar of Rachel’s monstrous hounds.

A woman stumbled back from a swipe of massive claws, only to find herself yanked out of harm’s way in a blur. Another man tried to bolt for the door but found himself pinned against the wall, his wrists bound tight with a strip of twisted rebar before he’d even processed what had happened.

Then came the pit dogs. Superman didn’t strike them; he couldn’t. They weren’t monsters, only victims used as entertainment by wicked people. Instead, he herded them gently, using bursts of controlled breath and walls of chain-link torn from storage racks to pen them in. One lunged, teeth flashing, and found itself caught gently, its claws scraping harmlessly at skin that wouldn’t break.

“Easy,” Superman murmured, his voice pitched low enough to cut beneath the noise. The dogs froze, confused, buying him the moment to weld the makeshift enclosure shut with a thin seam of heat vision.

The fight drained from the room. The crowd scrambled for exits, panic collapsing into naked fear. Some would escape tonight, but many wouldn’t. Between the weapons left behind and the information tucked safely in his jacket, there was enough evidence to interest Carol in this case. 

Finally, his gaze turned to Rachel.

“Rachel.” 

Her head snapped toward him, the mask hiding her eyes but not the rage in her posture. For a moment, her hand twitched, almost as if she fought against the instinct to sic her dogs on him. 

Superman didn’t move.

“The dogs are safe,” he said evenly. “That’s enough for tonight.”

She didn’t answer. But after a long pause, she whistled sharply. The beasts froze, their snarls dying into uneasy silence, their glowing eyes locked on Superman. They didn’t move, waiting for her command.

None came so he inclined his head in acknowledgment, and then, in a blur, he was gone. One second he was among the crowd; the next, he was through the side door and into the night sky, leaving only the ripple of stirred air and the sounds of broken men and barking dogs.