SLASH FIC: World Boom 2/? [Powerpuff Girls/Superman/JL]

[feygan]

Title: World Boom
Author: Feygan
Fandom: Powerpuff Girls/Superman
Rated: PG-13
Pairing: Boomer/Clark
Disclaimer: I do not own the Powerpuff Girls or Superman.
LiveJournal: http://feygan.livejournal.com
Home: http://www.darkgesture.com/fanfiction.htm
Author's Note: This is the sequel to "Metropolis Boom."  I was sitting at my computer today, then thought, "What the hell," and decided to post this in tandem with Met Boom.  Like Lord of the Rings and The Matrix, everything's being written at one time.
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Summary: Superman goes missing and Boomer gets... upset. 

CHAPTER TWO
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 Fruitless searches of the city with no flash of a red and blue suit anywhere.  Superman was nowhere to be found.  It was as though he had dropped off the face of the Earth.

 Boomer glared down at the city of Metropolis from hundreds of feet in the air, raking it with such powerful beams of X-ray vision that it was a wonder the buildings didn't collapse under the weight of his gaze.

 The Justice League was supposed to be searching the rest of the world for their errant member, but he didn't know if he trusted them enough to do it right.

 They might play at seriousness, but sometimes they could completely let the childishness and melodrama get away from them.  The rest of the world might exist in blissful ignorance, but he had seen the inner workings of the Justice League and not been impressed.

 He knew they had to have some skill to save the world on such a regular basis, but sometimes he was sure it was only luck that the day was saved at all.

 They were just stupidly lucky to stumble across as many clues to the various world-ending plots as they regularly did.  And there was no way he was trusting luck to save Kal.

 Straining with his superhearing for even the slightest whisper of Kal calling his name, Boomer kept up his sweep of the city and beyond.

* * *

 "Any clue where Superman is?"

 Kara glanced at Booster Gold and rolled her eyes.  "We haven't found him yet, fashion plate."

 "Hey," Booster picked at the front of his 'suit.  "I resemble that remark."

 A faint smile quirked Kara's lips, but she didn't have it in her to really laugh.  Not yet.

 It was always so disturbing when Superman was hurt or disappeared unexpectedly.  He seemed so confident and strong all the time that he fooled people into thinking he couldn't, wouldn't ever be hurt.  Like he was untouchable.

 But she remembered the Bad Times.  The days when all the newspapers screamed about Superman's death and all she knew was that she was never going to see Cousin Clark again.  The world had gotten so dark and grimly real, Camelot overrun by the reality that not everyone could be saved and the Dream was dead.

 Superman had come back and the world had righted itself on its own axis, but she never felt so safe and secure as she had those days back before she knew Superman could die.

 It had made her happy when Clark had found Boomer and the kind of love most people only dreamed of.  They were so happy and Clark had found the freedom to give up the lie of dual personalities and just be himself.

 She had started to worry about him.  His two personas were so entirely different that it really had to tear him apart to switch between them.

 Ckark Kent, ridiculously meek and mild, all bad suits and geek glasses.  He was an award winning journalist, but still people regularly felt sorry for him and the fact that he was so socially awkward and pathetic.

 Superman, an alien in the truest sense of the word.  Largely invulnerable and determined to save the world from itself.  He really wasn't part of the human society he lived amongst.  He always held himself aloft, consciously separating himself from the casual plights of humanity and not even noticing when he was practically worshiped, though some portion of him accepted the adulation as his due.

 Geeky Clark versus godlike Superman.  How could anyone, no matter how strong, differentiate between the two personalities without losing their mind?

 And honestly, Kara had really begun to wonder what Jonathan and Martha had done to him.  Sure, it had been a hard road raising a superstrong, superfast child.  She could understand that even as a toddler, there was no way they could overcome his childish willfulness through physical means.  So what exactly had they had to do to keep him from accidentally killing his little friends with a casual touch?  Because there was no way a young child, no matter how careful, could control himself all the time.  Normal toddlers regularly hurt the family cat on accident, and they didn't have the strength to lift trucks over their head.

 Though she had never said anything, Kara had worried.  There was just such a vast gap between the ludicrously human Clark and Superman, the most powerful being on the planet.

 But everything was good now.  There was really no longer a "Clark" or a "Superman."  There was only Kal-El, at once more human with his feelings, yet more alien with his casual acceptance of his superpowers.

 She was so happy for him.  He was more comfortable in his own skin and he had found the love of Boomer.

 Sure, on casual glance they seemed too different to ever even attempt a relationship.  Except that they were perfect together, each offering something to the other to make them better and more real.  And they were so happy together that she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to ruin that perfection.  It was simply meant to be.

 Kara didn't know what Boomer would do without Kal-El to rein him in, but she had a feeling it wasn't going to be nice or pretty.

 And she was afraid, dreading the grim reality that no matter how incredibly strong he was, Kal was not immortal.

* * *

 Though there were no announcements in the newspapers, people couldn't help noticing the sudden activity of the entire Justice League being out in force.

 Crime rates dropped as the smarter criminals slunk back into the shadows.  And those dumb enough to think they could keep doing business right under the JL's nose... well, prison was nice this time of year.

 The metahuman the criminals were truly afraid of was Kal-El's husband Boomer.  They hadn't known much about him before the stranger hyper-activity of the Justice League, but they were learning more than they wanted about him now.

 Any criminals he came across were met with the terrifying vision of a too-perfect face, blazing blue eyes, and hard hands that didn't quite amputate limbs, but didn't hesitate to crush bone either.

 There was no mercy in Boomer.

 What the world had seen of him before was a handsome man standing at the side of their hero.  Both of them towering over the merely average humanity.  Kal-El was their shining savior, while Boomer was his mysterious consort.  They made a truly lovely picture.

 But now Boomer was roaming the city streets alone, searching for something or someone and no one was being allowed to get in his way.

* * *

 The man known simply as Anders in government circles sat before his assembled team.

 "Something is happening amongst the Justice League.  Do we have any intell on what's going on?"

 White shook his head and shuffled the papers in front of him.  "They haven't apprised us of any situation, but something is definitely going on.  Word is that they're tossing the city, looking for someone."

 "Who?" Anders asked.

 "Some say Zatanna Zatara, others say Blue Beetle.  Personally, I think they're looking for Superman."

 Anders leaned forward intently.  "And why do you say that?"

 White shrugged, secretly enjoying the attention.  "There are no reports of Superman sightings.  And it seems that Boomer Rowdy has been putting the fear of God in the criminal element."

 Anders leaned back, steepling his fingers.  "Hm."

 Boomer Rowdy had always been a mysterious element in an otherwise clearcut set of calculations.  He made Superman act in unpredictable ways and had meta powers of unverified strength.

 Rowdy was a threat just by existing, and he made Superman into a threat by proxy and that made the government very nervous.

 There had been protests and riots over Superman--the peoples' hero--being gay, but a lot of the outrage had been blanketed by the fact he was an alien and could very well be the female of his species.  Then there had been the trouble when Superman revealed his alter-identity of being the intrepid reporter Clark Kent.  It had tied up a lot of loose ends, but had truly upset a lot of people.  Though there was a lot of amusement about how he had hid amongst a crack investigative team of news reporters with his sole disguise being a pair of thick framed "nerd" glasses.  The funniest joke was the one about Drew Carey actually being the Batman.

 Anders had laughed so hard when he found out Superman's real identity.  So hard that his teeth still ached from being clenched that tight and he still simmered with a disbelieving kind of rage.

 Clark Kent was superman, though now he wanted to be known as Kal-El.  He was a gay alien from the planet Krypton and he was here to save the human race.  It should have been some kind of childish joke, except people were taking it so seriously.

 Some of the Christian church organizations had taken Superman's revelations of his sexuality as a reason to crusade against him.  They were either going to turn him onto good ol' boy family values, or they were going to brand him the Devil and crucify him in public.

 Superman had become the personal hero for gay youth the world over.  Homosexual rights movements were using him as their mascot, holding up the fact that if such a well-known superhero--who regularly saved lives--could be openly gay, then obviously no one should have to hide in the shadows anymore.  And posters of a shy looking yet shirtless Kal-El in faded blue jeans standing next to a smirking Boomer Rowdy had become very popular.

 Other than the rash of people admitting their homosexuality, the riots, the religious upheavals, and the short-lived mass hysteria, people had pretty much taken Superman's admission in stride.  There had been plenty of shock, then the world had shrugged and it had faded into the background like any other sensational story.  Sure, it had helped spawn the Church of El, but that had been in the background for awhile, especially since there were now three members of the Super family--Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy.  And besides, the Church of Justice needed some competition even if Superman was a founding member of the Justice League they worshiped.

 Still, once the initial excitement had died down, life had pretty much gone back to what the world laughingly called normal.  And now the Justice League was scouring the world over in search of someone that might be Superman and Anders had that felling in his gut that spoke of dark days ahead.  Though he could only hope it wasn't a Darkseid, Mother-May-I kind of trouble, 'cause that was never fun times to be had by anyone.  And if Superman really had disappeared...

 "Find out what's going on," Anders instructed.  "I want to know what's happening yesterday."

* * *

 Darkness edged his pain-filled vision.  There was dull throb in his brain and more than anything he wanted to lie down, except that he would probably never wake back up.  He would just curl up in a kryptonite induced coma and just slip away.  And more than anything he knew he couldn't let that happen... Boomer was waiting for him to come home.

 He was filled with such a dull misery that he could barely remember his own name.  All he knew was that he was hurt, exhausted, and what he wanted more than anything was to wrap his arms around Boomer and know that everything was going to be all right.

 He burned with a fiery rage against his captor.  If he was loose, he wasn't quite sure what he would do, but it would involve splattering blood and pulverized bone.  And he didn't even have it in him to feel bad about the violence he wanted to commit on another being.

 Rage curled through his veins, mixing with the pain and desire to escape.

 In this moment in time, there was very little of the innocent farm-boy turned superhero in evidence.  There was only a man pushed to the edge.

TBC...