A/N: I do not own the Avengers or Superman. Believe me, this would happen if I did.

NOTE: I will be deleting my Star Wars fics Boots To The Ground and Boots To The Ground: Paradise Lost. They could use some fine tuning. They will be back.

Man of The Hour

This was it.

Captain Steven Rogers, U.S. Army, was headed into the battle of a lifetime. He'd learnt that the Tesseract wasn't as gone as he'd hoped it was. As a matter of fact, Asgard had come down to reclaim it.

Problem was, the man they sent- Loki- was trying to bring in an army of some really ugly aliens to conquer the Earth.

Well, shoot, Steve thought, and here I thought the Norse Gods were legends. Shows what I know.

Steve was back in his World War II costume (he hadn't quite felt at home in the Coulson-inspired outfit), his shield strapped securely on his back. Beside him, the Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, was sliding two loaded pistols into her holsters. Next to her, SHIELD Agent Clint Barton (codename Hawkeye, and still slightly recovering from Loki's mind control) was loading up on a lot of arrows, some of which Steve was certain weren't for just puncturing eyeballs.

Tony had just left to go back to New York ahead of the anticipated invasion. Thor (and his hammer, which Steve really wished he could wield someday) were MIA, and so was the Hulk, also known as Dr. Bruce Banner when he wasn't angry.

Man, Steve mused, I wish we had a few more super men like me running around. I think we're going to need them.

A few thousand miles away, a young drifter sat in a bar, musing over the peculiar turn his life had taken.

To any other person, the drifter would be just that- a drifter. However, anyone who sat down in front of him would notice the sharp blue eyes that spoke of a deeper intellect. He had just come from the Arctic, having discovered the truth of his origins.

The drifter's name was Kal-El, son of Jor-El, of the dead planet Krypton. That wasn't even the best bit- apparently Kryptonians flourished under the radiation of a yellow sun. They gained special abilities, such as enhanced strength, speed, endurance, heat vision, and freeze breath.

And a cool suit. Kal wore it under his torn-up street clothes. There was no other way to hide the light blue.

Kal sat in a dive in Montana when he felt it- the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as raw energy was discharged. That was another ability Kal had- he was sensitive to large fluctuations of energy.

Kal dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, enough to cover his food and tip. He grabbed his lunch and was out of there faster than the eye could see. His clothes were gone in a second, leaving the armor in full view.

The time for secrecy was over.

Here we go, Steve thought.

He stood in a circle with six other heroes, ready to fight the onslaught of aliens. As Iron Man and Thor took to the skies (Iron Man taking Hawkeye up as he went), and Hulk smashed things on the ground, Steve was left with Natasha on the ground with hundreds of ugly aliens.

Let's dance, uglies. Welcome to Earth.

The fight seemed to be going well enough; the aliens couldn't break the Avengers' defenses, and the military was actually pretty effective against them.

"You know," Tony quipped over the comms, "In movies it's an understood cliché that the military sucks when it comes to stopping alien invasions."

"This isn't a movie, Stark," Natasha snapped back, much to Steve's delight. At that moment, however, a projectile from an alien weapon hit Natasha in her ribcage, and the superspy went down.

"Natasha!" Steve called. He raced over to look over her injuries, which looked, well, not good.

Natasha coughed. "The tower- Steve, I need up there."

"Hang on, ma'am," Steve answered. "We'll figure out a ride here in a moment." Steve looked up then, to see the advancing horde of aliens.

A horde that was immediately crippled by twin pillars of fire. Steve could only watch in awe as a man in a blue suit dropped from the sky.

The man in blue was tall, Steve noted; about as tall as Steve himself. His blue suit showed off his physique, and gave the figure a somewhat regal quality. He seemed to be peering intently at Natasha.

"Your left rib cage is cracked," the figure said. "It's painful, but you should be fine. I can find a medic-"

"No," the ex-Russian answered. "I need to get up to the tower; that portal is being held open by a machine. I can shut it off."

"Okay, then. I'll give you a lift, but it might hurt."

"I've been hurt worse." Natasha answered flatly.

The figure picked Natasha up, holding her on his left side so that his hand could cover her injured side, and took off, landing gently on Stark Tower's roof, where Thor and Loki were wrestling on the veranda.

The figure took off again, flying through the sky at speeds that put Tony's suit to shame, punching and kicking and plowing through and occasionally blasting away with the heat from his eyes.

I'll be darned, Steve thought, a super man.

Tony was speechless. "JARVIS, you seeing this?"

I see it, sir. The A.I. replied. I'm still working on believing.

As Tony watched, the new guy plowed head-on into a space-whale thing, which immediately fell from the skies.

Tony turned his attention away from that, to the portal. Too many of 'em. We need a big gun.

"JARVIS, patch me into the SHIELD communications network."

Already done. Synchronizing with Mark VII suit's internal audio system.

And that was when Tony heard about the nuke.

Steve confirmed it a moment later.

"JARVIS, ETA on the package?"

ETA on package is roughly two minutes, fifteen seconds.

"Alright. JARVIS, put everything we've got into the thrusters."

Already done, sir.

And Tony blasted off. He intercepted the missile with one minute left, then manually redirected the missile's course via armpit thrusters. He disappeared through the portal.

Kal watched as the metal man flew through with the missile. He immediately knew where he was going, and what he was doing.

Smart man.

Kal lasered several hovercraft, then turned his lethal gaze onto the ground below, taking pressure off a platoon of soldiers protecting a line of evacuating buses. Then, he hurried to the portal, where he was just in time to catch the metal man as he fell.

Gently, Kal brought the man to the ground, where he listened for breathing.

Nothing. Thor ripped the faceplate off, and mere moments later, Hulk's roar brought the man in the suit to consciousness, having faked it the entire time.

Kal breathed a sigh of relief, then looked over to where an ornate-looking hammer lay on the ground. Kal picked it up, and turned to the blond man in the cape.

"Excuse me. I think you dropped this."

Thor turned. "Thank you, friend. I-" His voice died in his throat as he saw his hammer in the hands of another man.

"What sort of man are you, that you are worthy of wielding this hammer?"

Kal raised an eyebrow. "Sooo… not just anyone can lift this hammer? Oh."

Thor could only nod numbly as he grasped the proffered weapon.

"Hey, I hate to break up the party," Tony interrupted, "but Nat's not phoned in."

"Oh no," Steve breathed.

"Hang on, Captain," Kal said. Let me give you a lift."

"What should we call you?" Bruce asked, the Other Guy now safely tucked away.

"Call me Kal," the figure- Kal- answered, before taking off and landing again a minute later. A couple of EMTs ran over, one inspecting Tony, the other Natasha.

"What happened here today?" Kal asked, turning to Steve.

"Well…" Steve began. "It started with a man named Loki…" Steve trailed off then, his eyes widening. "Speaking of Loki, where is he?"

Bruce spoke up. "I think that the… Other Guy… might have smashed him into Tony's floor."

"We need up there, now."

Loki awoke in the floor of that worthless mortal Stark's floor.

He was still groggy from the beating that the green creature had given him, but he could have sworn there were six… Avengers fighting his Chitauri legions.

Standing in front of him were those six, Stark in his armor, the assassin next to him with the scepter, the Hawk pointing an arrow at him, his brother and the green hulk flanking him, the captain to Thor's left- but there was a seventh man, in light blue armor (with a strange S-shield on his chest), his eyes glowing red, bobbing up and down behind the hawk.

Loki raised his hands in surrender. "If it's all the same to you… I think I'll take that drink now."