My original plan for this chapter was to get it out within two months. I was actually well on the way to that when I had one of those pesky little "why the hell am I here writing fan fiction?" "insights." So I lost my motivation to continue the fic while already having most of the second chapter done, leaving me stuck between wanting to have it finished but not actually feeling up to finishing it. Two years later, enough was enough and it ends in a decent enough place now, though the formatting might be a bit inconsistent. Even if I won't be continuing, I'd like to think what I got down is still entertaining so I'll leave the rest for the end.

Chapter Two: Yet Another Eden Prime . . . Kinda

or: Wait, What?

"Do you know who I am, Ms. Dantius?" a soft and deceptively casual voice asked, carefully layered over with a high-class faux-British accent.

"Of course I do," the asari at the other end of the line smirked, "You're a brat with too many toys."

"Incorrect," the young man replied, gazing at the woman through glacial grey eyes, "I am a brat who also happens to be the heir of a corporate empire two and a half centuries old, I am a brat with access to technology I'm not even sure you could imagine, and I am a brat who does not like his people being abducted," he spat the word, "You, Ms. Dantius, are the person who has done just that. Now, I was able to find you on my own, without the aid of the Shadow Broker, and if you don't return my people to me as soon as you are physically capable of doing so, I may be forced to go looking for people far, far more dangerous than you could ever hope to be."

"What, you gonna sic one of your 'Superheroes' on me, brat?"Dahlia Dantius challenged, thoroughly unimpressed.

"I think you should be glad that those men and women are gone," the young heir to wealth informed her coldly, "Two Face, The Joker, The Riddler, Scarecrow, Ra's al Ghul-"

"A bunch of idiots with bad names," the Asari cut him off, "What of it?"

"All of these people were completely insane," he explained, still in a tone of cold-iron wrath, "and all of them, incredibly dangerous. Every last one was taken down by a single, unaugmented human being; yet the one who still lives is far more powerful than even the Batman could ever have hoped to be." he raised his voice as she began to interrupt again, "You have one galactic standard week to return my people, Ms. Dantius. I think that's more than fair."

He cut the connection, leaned back in his luxury chair, sighed deeply, then let loose with a measured, careful invocation of the foulest invectives found in his native language. As if it weren't hard enough to rebuild his company's reputation, now slavers thought they could abduct his personnel! Not only was it a blatant, personal challenge to his status as a businessman and as a moral human being but now, his PR department was going to have one hell of a time just convincing the public of what had actually happened, not to mention the fact that he'd just threatened to sic bloody Superman on the woman! Some days, he really regretted just which corporate empire he'd inherited. The man sighed again. He really needed a drink.

"Henri!" he called instead. Technically, it stood for Human-Emulating Neo-Robotic Intelligence, a highly illegal but incredibly useful AI that had been formed off of data collected on Kryptonian programming techniques. Mostly, though, it held that acronym because its owner liked the name "Henry."

"Yes, master Matthew?" Said AI butler replied in a voice indistinguishable from a human's, projecting not from the building's computer system but his own high-end, violet-hued omni-tool; HENRI was physically located in the heart of his company's Earth Headquarters, able to communicate with him via routing through an extremely expensive QEC installed inside his personal yacht, the Reformation. It payed to be cautious when you did most of your work from the Citadel, after all.

Matthew got up from his desk and began a series of rapid-fire orders as he stalked through the halls of the station, "Inform the Public Relations and Security departments of the full situation. Tell the former to do their best and the latter to observe the slavers' base of operations but hold back unless absolutely necessary. Now that I've had my moment of idiocy in announcing my presence, knowledge, and full intentions, I'm afraid going in would cause more harm than good. On that note, begin an archive/extranet search for major disasters, mysterious saviors, and reports of abnormal individuals."

"Searching for Superman?" the AI asked.

"I don't expect it to work, but call it a Plan B," Matt sighed, "Plan A is on Earth, so if my ship's not ready, get it that way before I reach the docks."

What is Plan A, if I may ask?" the synthetic but well-hidden voice asked, curious. Henri's voice also sounded british, being patterned off of the archetypical high-class butler. Well, to be perfectly honest, it and the entire rest of HENRI's basic personality was patterned solely after that of one Alfred Pennyworth, though it could be said that the man had been the perfect example of a butler - excepting, of course, those that traditionally served a certain line of Irish "businessmen."

"Plan A is that I check the old vaults for anything that can be used to get his attention," the young heir explained despite the long exposition that had come before him, "If neither plan works, option C is that we hit the Fortress of Solitude with a giant, semi-metaphorical hammer and hope he comes running. I'd say hope he doesn't brutalize me, as well, but that's step two of every plan, I'm afraid." The young man grimaced.

"All sound ideas," Henri complemented, "Well, except for the 'brutalizing,' of course. Would that be all, sir?"

"The usual stuff, obviously, but otherwise, it should be," the bald young man said back, distracted, "Oh, and as always, thank you for your help." HENRI may not be much like the Geth, but family history also showed that it was a good idea to be nice to the AI with full run of your systems, just in case.

"Of course, sir," Henri replied, a smile in his voice. Matthew Luthor, in the meanwhile, supposed that drink would have to wait. Alas, the burden of leadership.

Somewhere, Out in The Cold Depths of Space:

"Kal, I'm detecting a problem," an aged, wise voice broke the silence of the void, its words vibrating through the synthetic, kryptonian-based fibers of his Solar Suit.

"What is it, Jor-El?" Superman subvocalized, trusting his high-tech clothing to translate the vibrations of his throat into words and addressing the AI by name as both of them had stopped seeing it as his father long before.

"Reports indicate that the human colony of Eden Prime has been attacked by an unknown and massive invasion force," Jor-El informed him - ever since word of the First Contact War had reached their ears, they'd extensively modified both the Solar Suit and, more covertly, the Fortress of Solitude itself to let them monitor galactic communications even as they roamed space.

"How massive?" Kal-El asked even as he altered course to head for the nearest Mass Relay; he found using them extremely uncomfortable, a fact that was disturbing all on its own, but it was faster than his own (rather mysterious) form of FTL and any damage he took was more of a lingering ache than anything else - easy enough to fix under a decent star.

"Reports are patchy, but I've intercepted an image of the flagship," the AI explained, activating a screen that stretched between two holographic emitters secured to Kal-El's temples and bringing up the still image in question. It was blurred and poor quality, almost certainly pulled from the helmet-cam of a fallen soldier. Clark's heart wrenched at the implication even as his stomach fell out at the sheer size of the squid-shaped vessel on the screen.

"That is . . . big," Clark breathed, metaphorically of course.

"Comparisons with the known measurements of that tower next to it put the size at between two and three kilometers in length," Jor-El elaborated, "Easily the largest thing we've seen land on a planet since Zod's world-shaper and far beyond the capabilities of all known, modern societies."

"Well, then; you've got one thing right, Jor-El," Clark said lightly, "This is definitely a job for Superman."

Shepard's Here, Too, By The Way

"Nihlus? You're coming with us?" Jenkins asked. Well, that made sense. If he was really there to evaluate her for Superheroine status(or council wetworks division, depending on your perspective), then it would be the logical thing to do.

"I work faster on my own," The Turian replied, checking his shotgun before he jumped out the back of the cargo bay. Or, he wasn't going with them, which in her mind made a whole lot less sense.

"Nihlus will scout ahead and provide recon support!" Captain Anderson explained, having to shout due to being the only one without a helmet. Well, that was something at least.

"Understood, Captain," she replied, nodding as her bright green eyes drew an unusual amount of attention.

"Approaching drop point two," their pilot, Jeff Moreau, reported, utterly failing to live up to his call sign.

"The mission's yours now, Shepard! Good luck!" Anderson yelled a parting platitude.

"Yeah, try not to die down there, Hero of Elysium," Joker tacked on, "I'm not sure if your parents or your fans would think to blame the poor, innocent ship's pilot first." Ahh, now that's more like it.

"Good to know you care, Joker," she bantered with an easy grin, then sobered, "Alenko, Jenkins, move it up!" Then it was their turn to jump out of a moving frigate, which they did.

"Gear check!" she ordered the moment they touched down, "Weapons and armor, people! Let's not fuck this up!"

"Acknowledged/Roger that," Kaidan It's-not-Carth-Onasi-damnit Alenko and Richard L. Why-the-hell-do-I-have-to-babysit-this-kid Jenkins said back at the same time, the former quickly and efficiently checking over his standard-issue light armor and pistol while the latter half-heartedly glanced at his omni-tool. Following her own advice, Shepard looked over her own equipment; as always, she couldn't help but smile a little beneath her helmet at the sight of top-of-the-line LutherCorp Amazon heavy armor, a female-optimized mirror to the more popular Sparta variant. The extremely expensive piece of equipment had been a gift from a mysterious benefactor that, after being extensively tested for sabotage and painted in the iconic red-on-black, had served her well for quite some time. It was good to be an N7, she reflected for a moment as she briefly looked over all four of her own weapons, exactly none of which were Hahne-Kedar, lowest bidder, complete shit standard equipment.

"Nothing broken?" Shepard confirmed, "Good. Move out!" Joker had found a decent LZ for them; a small if still somewhat open field out on the outskirts of the settlement and at the end of what seemed to be a shallow canyon. As the convenient objective marker, giant squid-bug dreadnought, and oddly restrictive scenery suggested, they followed the canyon. Soon enough, the trio came upon their first interesting sight, a bunch of weird, betentacled, organic balloons.

"What the hell are those?" not-Carth asked in an awed tone. It kind of made him sound like a dumbass, Shepard thought, but considering she had drawn, pointed, and nearly fired her own assault rifle at the sight, she couldn't really blame him. Those things looked entirely too bulbous, fleshy, and liable to explode in a flood of organic, space-zombie flavored death. She violently shook her head at the bizarre and slightly terrifying thought. Space zombies? Really?

"Gas Bags," Jenkins identified in the vague background, "Don't worry. They're harmless."

"Can I shoot them anyway?" Shepard asked - she wasn't normally so trigger-happy but goddamnit, those things were still freaking her out!

"Umm, if you want to, commander?" the young man slowly replied, completely thrown by the question.

"Right, sorry," she apologized, shaking her head out again, "Let's just get moving. They're . . . making me nervous."

"Roger that/Sure thing," the two confirmed in unison once again. Kinda weird how the Alliance didn't seem to drill a standardized response into its troops. At any rate, they kept going, soon finding a pair of dead bodies that had been horribly ravaged by heat and flames.

"What happened to these people?" Kaidan not-going-to-reference-KoTOR-again Alenko asked.

"No way to know for sure," Shepard replied somewhat coldly, the sight having firmly grounded her in reality once again . . . . mostly, "But there's nothing we can do, so if you're done, Sir Exposition, we've got people to save and a mission to complete. Jenkins! Take point!" She wasn't really sure why she'd done that instead of putting her own massively-armed and heavily-armored self in front. It had just felt right.

"Roger that, ma'am!" obeyed the young man regardless. The reality of the situation had also begun to sink in for him, since the red-orange sky and massive clouds of black smoke didn't seem to be enough. They slowly crested a rocky hill, alert now for any danger.

"Area clea-" Jenkins began to say, cut off by a hail of odd, brightly glowing blue shots that tore straight through his shields and armor before reducing his internal organs to charred paste. Shepard watched this happen, suffused with a feeling of detachment and held back as though it were a static event that had happened many times before, feeling no sense of loss when he fell and even knowing, somehow instinctively, of the three oblong, purple-blue drones that had swung from around an outcropping ahead to fire that deadly hail . . . except Jenkins neither died nor even got hit at all.

Instead, a blur descended from the sky, resolving into a large, majestic figure of a man clad in navy blue with a billowing, crimson cloak. The figure float-stood in front of Jenkins, arms defiantly at its side, glowing blue projectiles breaking harmlessly over the S-shield upon the man's chest.

"Sorry I'm late," the Last Son of Krypton quipped, glancing their way with a smile.

"Not a problem," Shepard replied, disbelieving grin beneath her helmet. Working on instinct, she ran up to join him, swinging around to find exactly what she'd known intrinsically to be there; three sleek, purple-blue drones, underslung pulse rifles still firing in their direction. Her own rifle snapped up, destroying one drone even as twin beams of exacting red heat effortlessly downed the others.

"Now if you'll excuse me, ma'am," Superman began, turning fully to her, "Duty calls." and with a parting salute, he was off again.

"Shepard! What the hell just happened?" Nihlus demanded over the comms before anyone had a chance actually react.

"Well, Nihlus," she responded, still a bit giddy over it all, "You know those superheroes my people talk about?"

"Yes," the Turian said back cautiously, picking up on the inappropriate tone of voice, "What about them?"

"Corporal Jenkins here," she explained, patting the shellshocked young man's shoulder, "Just got saved by The Superman himself."

"What?" Nihlus breathed; whatever he had been expecting, it wasn't that, "Are you sure?"

"He's a pretty hard guy to mistake," Shepard said back dryly, "Got it on helmet-cam, too."

"Right, well, this changes nothing," the Spectre decided, throwing off his confusion, "Unless he stuck around to talk . . ."

"Negative," Shepard confirmed.

"Then we continue with the mission," Nihlus continued in a decisive tone, "Objectives unchanged."

"Roger that," she acknowledged, "Alenko, Jenkins, pick your jaws up off the ground and move out! There'll be time to act like starstruck fanboys after we're done here."

"Got it/acknowledged," Christ, were they doing this on purpose? At any rate, the trio kept moving through the rocky area, finding little except some abandoned supplies; being Systems Alliance marines rather than common mercenaries, they left these alone.

Meanwhile, Superman was having a few unexpected problems with his third public debut. It hadn't really surprised him much when using the Mass Relay network affected him; no doubt such megalithic structures weren't really designed to ferry something of his small size and disproportionately high density. That even being near modern technology played havoc with his senses and shattered the iron control over his strength he'd so carefully honed, however, was an entirely separate matter.

The soldiers he'd saved probably hadn't noticed anything, but it had hurt to be so near to them; not the poisoned, caustic agony of Kryptonite nor the stabbing, pervasive chill that characterized most other abilities that had ever managed to affect him. No, this was different, a turbulent nausea that sent waves of heat and cold through his limbs, interfered with his equilibrium, and sent his every sense into constant flux. A human might have compared it to nausea, food poisoning, or a particularly bad night drinking, but Superman had no such reference to draw upon. The symptoms hadn't been severe thus far, but even such light exposure was enough to throw him off his game, not to mention the fact that he could feel that damnable dreadnought's power even from where he stood, hidden and attempting to get his bearings. It didn't take long; he had never been one to let personal discomfort get in the way of his duty.

Superman sped around the colony, saving civilians and the occasional remaining colonial defender perhaps not so quickly as he would've preferred, but well and valiantly all the same. These robots he faced went down easily enough, at any rate; they were weaker, individually, than anything Luthor had cared to send his way, but surprisingly well-organized and a few of their tricks, such as simply being made of the same technology that was affecting him, made the synthetics a bit less trivial of a foe than he had initially believed.

He'd also encountered the . . .space zombies. The thought brought a dark twist to his visage. It wasn't as though he hadn't seen the like before, however rarely that had been. It was more that since the end of the Second Age of Heroes, the very idea of such a twisted mockery of life had become something he despised on a far more personal level than before.

First, Kal-El forced himself to look closely, analyzing the abominations with the utmost extent of his(currently inconsistent) abilities. There was nothing to find. No heartbeat, no brain activity, nor anything else whatsoever to indicate that they were anything more than heinously desecrated corpses. So assured, he wiped these husks from the face of reality with the white heat of ten thousand stars. It was a powerful but draining ability, a logical escalation of his "heat vision" that sterilized every remnant of these horrors until all that remained was undifferentiated vapor; if anything remained of the souls that had once occupied such tortured shells, he could only hope that they found release in the purifying heat. Taxing though it was, he did the same to the spires that created them, glassing the earth even as he left at least one 'bot intact to watch his unsaid pledge to annihilate every God-forsaken spire he came across. So absorbed with destroying these devices and dealing with his own chaotic equilibrium, Kal-El almost failed to notice a certain encounter between two Turian Spectres.

"Don't worry," a deeper, calmer, yet to his distant but experienced ears, more sinister voice assured even as Kal-El heard the tiny, muted sounds of a handgun unfolding, "I've got it all under control." A shot rang out, but he was already moving, hurtling towards the pair at speeds that nearly tore the atmosphere asunder from friction alone. It was enough, but there was one slight problem; in order to get between Nihlus Kryik and the tiny projectile meant to kill him, Superman had to pass Saren Arterius. More importantly, he needed to pass said Turian's cybernetic left arm and the neon green, four-faceted crystal embedded in the back of that limb's hand, which threw him off just enough to ensure that instead of stopping short and taking the sand-grain slug on his invincible back, Superman rammed into Nihlus with the muted force of a high-speed crash, slamming the Turian to the ground and severely damaging much of his body. Stunned and horrified at the results of his actions, Kal-El rose and turned to face the other person present.

"You!" Saren snarled after an astonishingly brief moment of shock, thrusting his synthetic arm forward as the viridian crystal placed there blazed with a sickly blue-green light. Immediately, Superman collapsed to his knees, the combination of the green gem and whatever facet of this new technology was hurting him being far too much.

"Kryptonite," he managed to get out in a mix between a snarl and a gasp, coming to the obvious conclusion.

"You like it, Clark?" Saren asked with the Turian equivalent of a smirk, "The radiation of this little stone would slowly kill any human," he snarled, "Fortunately, my kind is more . . . resilient."

"Do you have a point?" Kal-El ground out; head down and barely even able to remain off his stomach; after long enough, all villainous monologues really started to sound the same. It also served to hide the incredible shock he felt at the fact that Saren somehow knew his old name.

"Oh, absolutely," the Turian replied lightly even as his former protege bled out mere feet away, "I don't know how so much Kryptonite managed to end up on Earth, but it took me a very long time to find this marvelous little rock. Luckily," his tone darkened, "I have much more where it came from. In fact, now that you've just killed Nihlus for me, why don't you have some!" Saren roared, viciously stabbing a crystalline dagger into the Kryptonian's side, causing him to cry out and finally collapse completely. Smirking at his own genius, Saren moved the last, helpless remnant of a dead race and the dying man he had once called friend so that it would look like they had killed each other before going off to continue his business, absently murdering one last dockworker as he went.

"Jor-El," Clark gasped once the Turian had left hearing range, "Overcharge the suit's emitters."

"Of course," the AI acquiesced and in moments, the synthetic material was glowing with innumerable pinpricks of white solar light blasting from the tiny, overstressed devices. Ideally, this would supercharge his abilities enough to overcome the paralysis of direct Kryptonite exposure, but it had never been tried before due to the inherent risk of both suit damage and the Kryptonite itself that would've been required. Kal-El rallied his willpower, feeling his strength trickling slowly back, but it was a sluggish, agonizing process, one he wasn't sure would complete before the suit's batteries drained or its emitters simply failed from the strain. Four pain-filled minutes later, he finally staggered to his feet and pulled out the dagger, throwing it aside just as the first trio of soldiers he'd rescued, along with a female militiaman he'd saved soon after, sprinted up to him; without prompt, Jor-El restored the suit to its basic setting as they approached.

"Afternoon, ma'am," Clark greeted respectfully, smiling even as sweat coated his red face, his wound bled, and his limbs very visibly wobbled, "Never did get your name."

"Commander Janette Dora Lynne Shepard," she replied slowly, noticing Nihlus' crushed body, "Uhh, what the hell happened here?" She thought she'd known what had happened, had seen it playing out in her mind, exactly like Jenkin's death had been, but once again, what she'd seen didn't look to match up with what had actually happened.

"There was another Turian, Saren," Clark explained, wiping his brow, "I think he's another Spectre," or rather, Jor-El knew as much and was feeding him the information as he went, "he tried to shoot . . . Nihlus? right in the back of the head. I stopped him." He hoped they wouldn't question how he knew so much, but couldn't really spare the energy to figure out what information he should or shouldn't have access to. Besides, though humble, he wasn't blind to the sheer awe his presence invoked; somehow, it just wouldn't seem all that strange for Superman to know these things.

"So then, why's he crushed?" Shepard asked, her puzzlement over other things leaking into her voice; again, Superman's intervention seemed to have been the only thing preventing her odd vision from being 100% accurate.

"Saren had Kryptonite in a false hand and, uh," Clark smiled sheepishly at her, "well, I tripped when I went past it."

"Nice," Shepard deadpanned, "I bet he stabbed ya, too."

"Yeah," Clark replied, smile turning rueful as his face reddened for an entirely different reason than fatigue; this was not how he'd wanted to reintroduce himself to society. The awkward situation was broken, however, by a weak cough coming from the 'body' a few feet away. All five of them rushed to Nihlus' side, the Kryptonian cursing himself for his lack of focus; mysterious sickness or no, he would not let this man die if he could do a single damned thing to prevent it. He focused on his vision, assessing the Turian's condition as best he could with the aid of a rapid, subvocalized conversation with Jor-El.

"Not nearly as bad as I thought," Superman reported shortly after, all levity gone, "He'll live, as long as we give him enough medi-gel and get him to proper facilities as soon as we can."

"How much is enough?" Shepard asked, more than ready to sacrifice her own supply.

"Much as you can spare, I'm afraid, but I haven't cleared out the area ahead yet," Kal-El informed her, then focused on his sense of hearing, drowning out all else and listening for the whine of servos and the thrum of synthetic hearts. Meanwhile, Shepard sent out her team to secure the immediate area with a few hand signals.

"Still plenty of opposition up ahead," Superman reported in something of a trance, "Saren is with them and they've reached some sort of beacon," his eyes widened in his trance even as Shepard's own eyes snapped into the same distant gaze.

"Fuck!/Bombs!" Shepard and Clark swore at the same time.

"Can't explain how, but I know!" Shepard yelled, pulling her set of medi-gel canisters off of her belt and tossing them at the man, "My team and I will get the bombs, you focus on Nihlus!" Kal-El started to argue for a moment, then stopped short and instead gave her a piercing gaze.

"Are you sure?" He asked after a tense second even as he applied the healing substance to the Turian's wounds.

"You go after Saren, he shoves his Kryptonite fist through your skull and kills you for real," She explained quickly and rationally, "He won't be expecting the rest of us. Look, we've got a stealth ship in orbit, the Normandy, Alliance comm. code B29-A36. Arrange for pickup and get Nihlus into the medbay."

"Alright," Kal-El agreed, "I can do that. I'll join you as soon as I can, but in the meanwhile, Shepard, I'm trusting you with this."

"Won't let you down, sir," she acknowledged, saluting him briefly; in Jane Shepard's own, professional opinion, anyone who didn't treat The Superman as the highest ranking man in the room was doing something wrong.

"Didn't think you would," Clark assured her, quite truthfully, "You don't seem like that kind of girl, somehow."

"Appreciate it. Oh, and one last thing," Shepard said, smirking over her shoulder as she walked away, "Fair warning: our pilot's kind of an asshole."

"I'll keep that in mind," Kal-El replied, smiling grimly as he carefully gathered Nihlus into his arms, ignoring the increase in nausea it caused, "Good luck."

"Luck's for bitches," she dismissed, "I'm a professional." Kal-El nodded good-naturedly, watching her shouting orders to her team as he rose slowly, carefully into the air.

"Alright, Jor-El, patch me through," he ordered as soon as they were above the cloud layer; he needed the energy, "When you're done, try to help out Shepard any way you can."

"Channel ready," the AI replied a moment later, "On the Shepard front, the bombs have no wireless capability themselves, as I suspected, but I've been able to hack a few of the enemy platforms to our side. These Geth are putting up a fight, however, and I'm unsure as to how long my control will last."

"It'll have to be enough," Clark acknowledged, then carefully moved his hand up to turn on the sut's external comm system.

"This is Man of Steel calling SSV Normandy," Clark . . . called, reverting to the radio code of his early days both out of habit and as part of his usual persona, "Repeat, Man of Steel calling SSV Normandy. Do you copy?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya," A youthful-sounding voice broadcast through his earpiece, along with the sounds of shuffling limbs, "Just got four questions first: Who the hell is this, what the hell do you want, why the hell are you talking like that, and how the fuck did you get this channel?"

"Respectively: Kal-El of Krypton, need medical pickup for a Nihlus Kryik, I'm old, and Commander Shepard gave it to me, over," Clark replied in a flat tone, already predicting the response, "Don't believe me? Check your sensors. I am floating, unassisted, above the cloud layer. Over."

"Bull," the voice on the other end snorted, before a long pause punctuated by muted noises; the young man seemed to have forgotten to turn off his mic in his haste to call Kal-El on his 'bluff,' "Uhh, well, shit," All of a sudden, the man seemed an awful lot more alert, "Captain!" he called, probably over his shoulder.

"What is it, Joker?" Kal-El heard a deep male voice ask in the faint background.

"Uhh, you'll have to come see this for yourself, Captain," 'Joker' dismissed, "Won't believe me otherwise." Clark heard the deep voice of the captain sigh, then footsteps growing closer; he wondered for a moment why the Systems Alliance used microphones so much more sensitive than the human ear, then realized just how helpful it could be if they ever needed to analyze the recordings.

"Well, hot damn," he heard the Captain say a moment after the footsteps stopped.

"This is Captain Anderson of the SSV Normandy calling Unknown Individual," the now-named Anderson spoke quite gravely into the mic proper, "Identify yourself."

"This is Kal-El of Krypton," he formally introduced himself once again, "Also known as The Superman of Earth. I am holding in custody one Nihlus Kryik in critical condition. Requesting medical pickup."

"Acknowledged, Kal-El," Anderson confirmed, either Joker or himself manipulating some controls, "We'll meet you three miles due south-southwest of your position. Sending exact coordinates now. Can your equipment link up with his suit to give us a better idea of what's wrong?"

"I'll do what I can. From what I can see, though, severe blunt trauma to the left torso and arm," Clark listed as Jor-El attempted to make the uplink, already flying to the rendezvous point, "Internal bleeding, several broken bones, dislocated shoulder, myriad smaller injuries related to high-impact crash."

"Acknowledged. We have now received linkup and are prepping the medbay accordingly," Anderson informed him, "Do you know what hit him?"

"Me. It was an accident," Superman reported just a bit too curtly, still quite embarrassed over it all, "I'll send the Alliance a full report, as well as my formal apologies to be passed on, as soon as the situation permits. For now, I'd like to get back to saving this colony as soon as I can."

"Fair enough," Anderson conceded. The rest was wind and silence until he met the ship a moment later. Then, things got even more complicated. As it happened, the vessel was surrounded by some sort of field that rapidly escalated his newfound sickness to truly hazardous levels.

Clark's solar suit, advanced as it was, had only rudimentary sensors of its own; he relied primarily on its robust communication suite and connection to the Fortress' supercomputer for most of his information. As such, it was some discreet hacking on Jor-El's part rather than anything on-site that finally began to determine what was causing his condition; the eezo-based Tantalus Drive Core employed in the Normandy design was known for being relatively enormous, employing large-scale usage of the so-called "mass effect" in order to move said vessel without showing up on thermal sensors. The connection was simple; Kryptonian physiologies seemed to negatively react to Element Zero and the dark energy it manipulated.

"Something wrong?" Anderson asked as the floating man deliberated over the issue just outside of the Normandy's field.

"I seem to be allergic to your ship, captain," Kal-El reported, a trace of irony in his voice.

"That's . . . really not good," the gravel-voiced man said back eventually, "Anything we can do to help?"

"Just open your cargo bay doors and get ready," Clark ordered, "I'm afraid this won't be my best landing."

"We can do that," Anderson promised, then got off the line.

Finally, a proper transition again.

All things told, Shepard was having a great day so far. Sure, there was the invasion, the Geth, the goddamned space zombies, and some bizarre visions that may or may not have meant she was going insane, but most of that was actually not far off of standard fare in the life of a Systems Alliance marine; and on the other hand, Jenkins hadn't died, Nihlus would probably still live, and she'd personally witnessed the return of Earth's greatest superhero, a man who was actively helping with the mission. So, yeah; things could be worse, especially with the fact that a solid third of the geth had started firing at the others.

"What the hell?" Ashley wondered aloud at that particular sight, peeking over the railing that served as her cover.

"No idea," Shepard admitted as she took a look through her own sniper's scope, "but let's not take it for granted!" Putting word to deed, she sighted one of the larger platforms and blasted its conveniently-glowing head off. With the help of these mysterious converts(which then destroyed each other), her team made excellent time to the end of the tram and the spaceport itself. Then, things got complicated; each bomb was approximately the size of an average, household refrigerator. A quick scan from her omni-tool indicated that any single one of these monstrosities packed enough ordinance to shatter the old 'Hiroshima Standard' and reduce anything within several miles of its location to molten glass. There were four of them.

"They don't leave things half-done," Shepard muttered to herself, then barked out, "Kaidan! You're up!"

"Yes, ma'am!" the resident tech specialist acknowledged, then stepped up to the bomb. Watching him work, Shepard got the vaguest impression that she should be doing this herself, but that was ridiculous; though all N7 operatives were trained for bomb-disposal, any good squad leader knew to play to their team's strengths and hacking live ordinance was not hers.

"One down," Kaiden reported just a few moments later.

"Right. Timers will be synced. Kaiden, get us a countdown off that one then let's all haul ass to the next one!" Shepard ordered, shaking off the odd feeling. He got the countdown. It was bad; mere minutes before everything went to hell. The situation, Shepard realized, had officially moved from grim to fucking desperate.

"Move out!"She roared after the millisecond it took her to understand this, sweeping her arm forward in an instinctive motion as the ever-present buzz of adrenaline roared with new life. This time, however, she took point, sprinting forwards and letting her expensive shields soak up the fire of what Geth remained in the spaceport, shotgun spitting damnation at her foes even as the sounds of war and death washed over her; an idiot's plan to get any officer demoted, if not killed outright, in any other situation. Given the cost of failure, however, Shepard didn't see much choice.

The insane gamble paid off; even if the Geth were able to predict organic impulsiveness(which was certainly possible), there was, as one of her instructors in the academy had been so very fond of saying, a whole world of difference between expecting something to happen and actually being able to see it coming. The geth routed, dropping like flies beneath Kaiden's totally-not-The-Force and everyone else's raw firepower. The next few minutes went by in a haze of raw red adrenaline and fleeting, crystalline focus.

An instant eternity later, the bombs were disarmed, Shepard's team was at the beacon, and Shepard herself was resisting the urge to steal from nearby containers while definitely not ignoring perfectly good loot. She had pride, damn it, and anyway her existing arsenal was already the best stuff out there short of Spectre-Cert gear. There was no way that vendor trash would be worth the effort and dear, God. Was she actually adapting to this thing? Unaware of his commander's minor existential crisis Kaiden tossed one last Geth who'd been playing with the Beacon over a convenient railing then promptly decided to ignore each and every one of the guidelines for handling unknown alien tech to go up and poke the green-glowing Prothean Beacon.

Idiot, Shepard had time to think before cold detachment settled over her. Her vision shifted and she watched as the Beacon, looking somehow different than before, dragged her subordinate towards it. She saw . . . herself? a figure, vague and shifting, male sometimes then female and clad in any variety of armors but always human and familiar. Shepard watched this person - no, this representation of a person - who felt like herself shove Kaiden(or was it Ashley?) to the side and get bodily lifted into the air. Sights and sounds flashed across her mind; creepy, disjointed, ominous, but most of all muted, pathetic and yet somehow important, extremely important. The vision ended. Kaiden had only just begun to move towards the Beacon.

Fuck it, she thought, Sobriety be damned; this is not the dumbest thing I have ever done.

"Alenko, back!" Shepard snapped, then made the second dumbest decision of her entire life; she tensed her legs and leaped towards the Prothean Beacon with all of her strength.

Sights, sounds, pain. Emotion, meaning, machine distortion and a thousand other things that she had no words for. The previous "visions," crude clips like sterile scenes from a movie, were nothing. The feeling of a foreign awareness beating down upon her, ripping and tearing and burning its way, cold circuits practically shredding her mind with the alien perceptions of reality they carried; it was indescribable, impossible to imagine but she would not give in to it.

Impact, one side then the other, and the searing pain cut off in a jagged, white-hot break. Unfocused eyes watched from the ground. A fuzzy silhouette of blue and red, majestic even through the haze of pain and foreign memory.

Now you come! Shepard thought, fighting through the pain for just that littlest bit of coherence. The ringing in her ears intensified; another wave of pain as the Beacon overtaxed itself and exploded, Oh, of fucking course. Her mind gave up on reality and Shepard knew no more.

The inevitable larger A/N:

Sorry for making you guys wait so long but here it is: the last I will ever do for this fic. Feels kinda sad, especially since the thing got so much more popular than I was expecting, but I've just lost motivation to work on a fic as huge in scope as this was turning into in my head and probably had to have been in the first place. As the description says(will say in a moment from my perspective), this is officially up for . . . ehh, call it open adoption. Anyone who wants to continue this can go right ahead but I do have a few conditions.

First quotes: For fuck's sake, please credit me if you're quoting any of my words directly and please use your own as much as possible. If it's not going to specifically restrict you, I'd prefer just pointing people to this fic and calling yours a sequel. PM me if you absolutely need to quote giant sections of this original fic. It would be easy to make the original document completely public but I'm paranoid enough not to do that. Second, name yours something different because Third, no matter how many people end up continuing this little idea, it will be free for all. There will be no "official edition endorsed by me" or anything of the sort. It's a tiny crossover category anyway so think up your own frickin' name.

Anyway, as promised, here's what I could remember and what I already had typed out of my old plans, for the use of anybody wanting to continue this and the curiosity of everyone else.

Brainiac, The Reapers, and The Fall of Krypton: Krypton was a part of the previous cycle. Its people originally existed alongside the Protheans as allies. The Reapers, however, saw them as an enormous problem: with Kryptonians being basically allergic to eezo, their technology evolved in an unpredictable way. Combined with their potentially extreme physical abilities, the species' potential threat was massive. Because of this, the Reapers were forced to use a more clever solution than the norm.

They manipulated Kryptonian society from within, influencing it into being reclusive, xenophobic, and isolationist. They then influenced the creation of Brainiac, corrupting the AI to their side and using it to create the best possible approximation of a fully synthetic Reaper even as they annihilated its former masters. The reason that the Jor-El AI hasn't told Clark this is the same reason it took 50:000 years to get to Earth: the pod he was sent out in got clipped by a Reaper or piece of debris before jumping to FTL, damaging both the memory banks and (Kryptonian, non-eezo-based) FTL drive. This is also why there's so much Kryptonite on Earth; the damaged drive not only took 50,000 years to get there (with only moments passing within), it also took a rather large chunk of what used to be Krypton along for the ride.

Finally, I might have made use of Brainiac and the creepy skull-genome thing from Man of Steel to give The Reapers even more reason to hunt down Clark. Oh, and the real Jor-El managed to figure out quite a bit about The Reapers before he died. 'Cause, you know, he's just awesome like that or something.

The Batman's Legacy: The Illusive Man is a descendent of Bruce Wayne. He knows about most of the Batgear but can't access it because Batman was far more paranoid than to let any single descendent have free reign of his contingency plans. On the Cerberus end of that, TIM runs Wayne Enterprises as a recluse and has still created Cord-Hislop in order to have a far more malleable corporate cover. The man himself is working diligently on getting past the security on as much Batgear as he can, especially the Kryptonite storage, but his efforts are hampered by the extreme prescience of Bruce Wayne and the fact that he'd prefer to keep his true identity secret from the rest of Cerberus.

Clark, however, has access to Bruce's Primary Vault and will eventually give Matthew Luthor access to it, thereby empowering him to select the new generation of the Bat Clan. As measures to be used only as an act of final resort, said vault was both built over the last known Lazarus Pit and contains Bruce Wayne's remains in cryonic stasis. I'm not sure who the hell I would've wanted for the new guys, though. I might also have nixed the remains thing; last resort or no, it would make sense if Bruce wanted his own death to be permanent. May also or instead have had a Bruce-based AI at the location. Biggest issue with that is it would make Matt a bit AI-overdosed with HENRI also there, not to mention that he's quite intelligent on his own.

Specific Chapter Plan: revisit White and Gallus at some point for some exposition on how the more extreme and magical parts of the DC/Superhero 'verse apply here, in particular how Earth has WAY more stuff going on supernaturally than anywhere else. This is because it's some sort of supernatural nexus; while there is more magic-related stuff going on outside of Earth, it's far more subdued elsewhere and nowhere near as likely to have a major impact
On The Green Lanterns: Originally, I had no plans to include them at all, thinking that in any universe with both The Reapers and The Green Lantern Corp, they would not be able to coexist peacefully, inevitably resulting in a truly enormous war. As time went by, it occurred to me that there is a possible way to reconcile this. Had the story continued, this vast interstellar war would've been a part of the backstory: many cycles ago, the GLC and the Reapers encountered each other. With the Reapers' Harvest being incompatible with Green Lantern ideals, war inevitably broke out and quickly escalated. In the end, with entire solar systems being destroyed and the very fabric of reality at risk, the two sides were forced into an uneasy truce: the Reapers would limit themselves to the Milky Way galaxy and in return, they would be left alone to continue their Cycle. Neither side is happy with this, of course, and the Lanterns are still watching, waiting for an opportunity to seize a decisive advantage over the Reapers and end the Cycle once and for all.
Note: Green Lantern Corp can be substituted with most any organization that works on a similar scale.

Shepard and What The Fuck is Going on?: That one actually came out as I wrote it but the general idea as it turned out was that she would end up being almost possessed by some quasi-gestalt entity made of the Mass Effect playerbase and the Commander Shepard Metasoul, itself a gestalt entity of every version of Commander Shepard ever to exist. Mainly, though, the effect would've given her something almost but not quite the same as what tvtropes calls Medium Awareness and the DC Comics wiki calls Cosmic Awareness - essentially, breaking the Fourth Wall writ large - as a way to both differentiate my version of the character and make the bits of story where I'd have to follow canon more interesting.

Possible Human Alterhistory: Another idea that cropped up over the long period between actually working on the fic and giving up on it, one I may or may not have used, is that the current cycle would not have been humanity's first. Following along with the idea of Earth being some sort of supernatural/multidimensional hotspot, Humanity managed to get more than advanced enough to catch the Reapers' attention fifty thousand years ago. Advanced enough, in fact, that the Reapers had such a hard time taking them out that they simply could not afford to do as thorough of a job ensuring humanity's demise as they otherwise might have. This would have both allowed me to more easily justify alter-versions of any number of other characters, especially Science Fiction ones, and let me escalate the hell out of the story's conflicts. After all, a species being a part of two separate cycles would be something extremely rare, if not unique. Certainly enough to catch the attention of the Green Lanterns and any other cosmic-level organization with a hidden hate-on for The Reapers.

Note that the "Kryptonians are from the Last Cycle" idea works either way: Jor-El sent his son either to a powerful, once-allied species for sanctuary or to an undeveloped one which, though hopefully below The Reapers' radar, also happen to look astonishingly similar to Kryptonians.

The Beacon and other Immediate Plot: Due to Superman's intervention, Shepard would've made it just in time to stop The Geth from deliberately sabotaging the Beacon. Following another Cut-scene Awareness moment, she'd have deliberately activated it only to be "saved" by Clark, who then would've been hit by a full dose of Beacon-Vision properly calibrated to Kryptonian biology. His ability to understand it would've been an early hint as to Krypton's exact fate. Chapter two was meant to end with Shepard waking up in the medbay, after which I would've skipped the tedious(if potentially interesting) exposition and found somewhere more interesting to continue from.

The Plan after that was pretty general. I was going to split up the events of Mass Effect a bit between Clark and Shepard, with one major deviation from the game in that she would not get all of the clues towards Saren immediately, providing in-story justification for the side quests as basically busy work in between leads to the main planets. Among all of this, I would've worked on plot threads like Superman's own investigations, the interplay between him and Matthew Luthor as Clark slowly grew to trust the kid, and probably other stuff like The Illusive Man's reaction to things and more DC-inspired stuff. I never really came up with a real plan for the end of Mass Effect or anything after, not wanting to get into that before I got a bit further into the story.

Superman's Abilities and Temperament: Mostly but not completely the same as usual. First off, the gold heat vision in this chapter is not a separate ability; just him overpowering it with a bit of style on my part for description. Second of all, "super mind." This exists in the fic but only as a Required Secondary Power; as I see it, since Kryptonians didn't evolve to handle the level of sheer power Kal-El has managed to escalate to, the vast majority of his enhanced intellect goes towards processing sensory input, controlling his strength, regulating cell division, etc. Past all of that, he's quite sharp by human standards but is still pretty ordinary all-around. Even with the boost, he can't handle his own abilities perfectly even in fic-present: I showed him having to focus to use "X-Ray Vision" and such. That was not purely stylistic but also because he has to shut out most of his own abilities most of the time in order to not be overwhelmed or burnt out. This interpretation is supported by Man of Steel, though he was just a kid at the time so it's not a perfect justification. The fact that he hasn't actually been out hero-ing for a long time also plays a part in things, by the way, and just because he can't consciously handle these senses doesn't mean they're actually turned off.

On the subject of Element Zero, the plan was to have that be something quite akin to food poisoning, with the main symptoms being nausea, general discomfort, and a loss of coordination. This would go from mostly just annoying(human scale, shown) to potentially debilitating with danger to others(as with The Normandy) to potentially fatal(The Citadel and other large, eezo-based stations). Unlike with Kryptonite, however, this very much would have gotten better over time, both from building up immunity through long, miserable exposure(ala Earth's atmosphere in Man of Steel) and, as with the powers, simply from getting back into the swing of things.

In temperament, he is/was meant to be solemn, sad, and old, but basically the same character with a few quirks. First off, the way he sees himself. In Superman's mind, he was Clark but is Kal-El, his life as a human having definitively ended by the time of his last meeting with Lois. Second, he's seen a lot of friends die by story-present and, as demonstrated with the Husks, has extra-strength respect for the dead and an exceptionally dim view of necromancy and anything resembling it. The last thing of note, though not actually unique to this interpretation, is a strong dose of self-awareness and a good understanding of psychology. As I demonstrated here a bit, he's basically acting his way through old roles. That's not because he doesn't believe in them but simply because it's been awhile and he can't necessarily get back into them just like that.

Misc. Notes: Nihlus may or may not have survived but was definitely out of the fight and unconscious for an inconveniently huge period of time. Matt, though mostly existing just to troll my dear readers, would've served as a useful foil to The Illusive Man as well as the stuff I mentioned in the Batman section.

Possible Entities: Will need someone to exposit on some things, mainly the basic tenets of magic/energies and the underpinnings of reality. These are what I've narrowed it to;

The Spectre:

Specifics:

+ Association: Tied closely to a vague form of the Christian Mythos; this could be used to have multiple, species-specific versions of the entity.

- Vengeance: The character definitely ain't a scholar, being particularly focused on pursuits that lie completely outside of what I require.

Solution? Being a pawn of a higher power, I could theoretically have the entity be directed to act out of character if necessary, though it would weaken my storytelling.

The Phantom Stranger:

Specifics:

+ Exposition: The character is extremely well suited for the role and actually seems to be used for this exact purpose within the comics.

- Own character: There may be some very real characterization that I don't know about and, as such, would fuck up.