(TSSFH) CHAPTER SIXTY: SUPERMAN

Superman’s job never ended. He could take a break, yes—he wasn’t a machine despite his enhanced endurance, and Ma Kent had always reminded him that even heroes needed to rest once in a while—but sooner or later, the world would always call.

And this world called more often than most.

Brockton Bay had become his base of operation, his Metropolis-in-miniature. Every collapsed building he braced, every frightened civilian he carried to safety, reminded him why he wore the cape. But he couldn’t keep his gaze fixed only here. Crises weren’t bound to a single city.

Beyond Brockton Bay’s borders, the world was teetering on the edge of collapse. Governments strained under corruption and fear, capes waged wars over ideology, territory, or pride, and somewhere in the background, Cauldron moved its pieces, convinced that nothing mattered in their preparation for Scion. Sooner rather than later, he would need to sit down with them again. Plans had to be made, whether he agreed with their methods or not.

But even Cauldron’s hidden hand couldn’t reach everything. Above all else, two presences loomed larger than the capes or governments: Scion and the Simurgh. Threats beyond even the imagination of most of Earth Bet. They weren’t city-scale disasters. They were extinction made manifest.

And yet, for all that, the world had other monsters too. Ones that didn’t make global headlines beyond their regions, but left just as much ruin in their wake.

Africa showed him that most clearly. Unlike the vibrant, complicated, and often hopeful continent he knew from home, Earth Bet’s Africa was a patchwork of the nice and the desolate. In some places, there was brightness: families laughing in crowded markets, children chasing each other through sunlit courtyards, and entire communities pulling together with nothing but grit and will. But too often, that light had been extinguished. Promises meant nothing, borders collapsed overnight, and whole populations were uprooted or consumed by violence. Warlords rose and fell, and refugees fled only to return and flee again.

But of all of them, none were worse than the Ash Beast.

The PRT dossiers had painted the picture clearly: a major S-class threat by any definition. An unending explosion given form, a human figure standing at the heart of rolling flame and smoke. Within said flame, he changed shape, sometimes sprouting wings or claws. 

The only saving grace was his pace, slow enough to track, and predictable in its movements for evacuations to stay just ahead of it.

Still, towns were emptied in hours, fields of food abandoned to flames, and families carried everything they owned on their backs while soldiers shepherded them down dirt roads, their faces taut with fear but not panic. They have lived with the threat long enough to know it could be endured.

And when Superman finally met it face-to-face, he understood why.

The fire hit him first, a wall of living heat that bent trees to cinders in seconds. Smoke clung to his cape, curled in his hair, and tried to choke his lungs, but he did not choke. The flames licked at his skin but never left a mark. He stood tall, and the inferno broke against him like surf on a cliff.

Ash Beast didn't make a sound, but its body flared with new shapes, a serpent’s neck one instant, the silhouette of wings the next. Each unintentional strike came with force enough to blow apart buildings, but none of it hurt.

And in return, Superman’s blows landed with all the strength of a man who could split mountains. He struck, and the fire parted. He drove the shape of the man into the earth, but when the flames dispersed, they re-formed. They always re-formed. His heat vision could only momentarily stall the blaze, and though his breath scattered the ash, it always rolled back in.

Ash Beast could not be hurt. Superman could not win, at least not without completely erasing the cape. 

Minutes stretched into an hour, and still Ash Beast walked, and still the flames remained.

When Superman finally drew back, hovering above the smoke, he looked down at the roiling mass and felt something heavy in his chest.

It was the same helplessness he’d felt when facing Noelle. She was trapped, her body and (periodically) mind consumed by something she could not control. But at least she was contained. At least there was hope.

But this? The Ash Beast was beyond containment. There was no box strong enough to hold it, and no prison that would not melt and burn away. It walked the land akin to an Endbringer, a tide of unstoppable, unkillable fire that nothing could smother.

And worse than all of that, it had once been a person.

He didn’t know their name, or even their face, but somewhere, long ago, before the power consumed everything, there had been someone human. Now there was only the explosion and an endless cycle of destruction. Superman could only watch, intervene where necessary, evacuate, and delay. But not save.

That was the truth that gnawed at him.

He could not save Ash Beast.

And he hated that.

He hovered there until the flames rolled westward, toward an abandoned plain where nothing lived anymore. Only then did he turn and fly back toward civilization, his cape streaming behind him in a line of red among the smoke-darkened sky.

It seemed he would have to speak to Cauldron sooner than he’d planned. 

He didn’t like their methods, he didn’t like their secrecy, or their compromises, but they were the only group here with the reach and knowledge to help him make his idea real. Because if it worked, then people like Noelle and Ash Beast—people who had been twisted by their power— could be saved. 

Superman clenched his jaw as sunlight broke through the clouds, lighting the horizon in bands of gold.

He had work to do.