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Up above the rooftops of Metropolis, a portal opened and unceremoniously spit out a teen in a Superman costume, before shutting again. Clark tumbled in the air a bit before righting himself. He wasn't certain what was going on. The last thing he'd remembered, aside from a blurry mess, was that he'd been somewhere above Los Angeles, rescuing a plane. He turned around, trying to get his bearings, and suddenly stopped.

He might not enjoy the Superman comics, but years of having them foisted upon him meant he could recognize many things in them by sight alone. The famous globe of the Daily Planet was one of them.

"What." Clark said flatly. He looked around, some more, enhanced vision picking out the Lexcorp Towers and Centennial Park.

"This can't be happening. I can't be in Metropolis. How am I in Metropolis?"

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He wouldn't have much time to think about this though as a shower of sparks erupted from one of the electric signboards outside the Daily Planet. What had been some of today's headlines flickered into the words "Livewire's comeback tour."

And sure enough the blazing blue woman with skin crackling from pure energy appeared in a flash on the signboard causing a commotion in the street below.

"Goooood afternoon Metropolis! Boy it's great to be back in The Big Apricot! Did you miss me? Tell me you missed me!" She mocked holding a hand to her ear and then looked shocked to hear some boos.

"Well well well! Looks like my ratings have gone down in my absence. Was it the Fun Pigs over on Radio 890? Because those those two greasy knobs are about as fake as radio scum get and trust me I know!"

That still did not earn her the reaction she was hoping for and some people actually began to walk away setting a fire in her eyes.

"Oi! Don't touch that dial citizens, because the real show is about to begin!" She struck a pose with her hands in the air sending bolts of lightning in either direction blasting more electric signboards on opposite buildings causing them to rain down sparks and make people scream. Each of these billboards changed to images of her. Meanwhile livewire herself transformed into pure energy and dove back into the sign.

The building itself seemed to flicker as lights in the windows came on and off. Employees flooded out the doors and a fire alarm went off inside. Someone had called the police as well it seemed and the sounds of sirens in the distance warned of their impending arrival.

Lifewire was well out of their reach for now as she reappeared on the roof of the building. She had taken control of the security cameras and was projecting their images onto the electric billboards so everyone could watch as she used her powers to blast away at the machinery that controlled the rotating globe on top of the building.

"Ya know they really oughta replace this thing." She joked and her voice boomed out through every radio and television speaker in the immediate area. "With how many times it's been thrown off this roof it's a real public hazard. Like me!"

She laughed and watched gleefully as the metal blazed white hot and began to melt and groan causing the globe to shift in position.

He could hear the radios in the police cars. Superman, the real one, was dealing with an ongoing emergency on the other side of the planet. The Defenders, whoever they were, were on their way, but they wouldn't get here in time to stop the globe from falling.

Clark wasn't sure how to fight a supervillain, especially one he didn't recognize, but repairing falling structures was something he could do. Pushing the globe back into position, he sped around it as a red-blue blur, cooling down the metal with his freezing breath and spot-welding with heat-vision as needed, before coming to a stop right behind Livewire.

"Let's not do anything else crazy, please."

She pouted as he this new whoever he was came out of no where to stop the globe's tumble. Blinding white electricity crackled and pulsed from her fingers.

"Oh you wanna talk crazy? Let's talk about some nameless rando coming out of no where and interrupting my show? You realize that globe was NOT meant for you right? So you've got about ten seconds to introduce yourself before I drop you and get back to hunting for my A list superhero."

Shooting towards him like a rocket she counted down. "One, Two, Ten!"

Clark instinctively braced himself for impact, and Livewire-

PAIN.

-passed through him, lighting him up like a Christmas display. Blacking out, Clark tumbled to the ground. Thankfully, unlike Kryptonite, the jolt only bypassed his powers instead of shutting them down, so he left a pseudo-Kryptonian-shaped dent in the ground rather than a smear, and the sudden impact jostled him back to consciousness/

Livewire cackled delightedly, apparently satisfied with knocking him out of the sky and was back to terrorizing the public. She skated along the power lines making her way towards a building with a large radio tower ontop. The sign lit up with the call letters for the station and when Livewire flew up to the base of the tower she blasted the letters free sending them spinning towards the ground.

"I didn't like you guys when you were my competitors, and I REALLY hate you now that I'm an solo superstar." She declared. "So let's see you pull your Morning Zoo schlock without a tower! I bet you don't even stream online yet!"

Shaking off any lingering wooziness, Clark flew back into action. The shadow of pain from his electrocution kept him from going faster than a speeding bullet, but he was still just fast enough to catch all four letters and set them gently on the ground.

"Look, electrocute me all you want. But as long as I'm still standing, I'm going to stop you." He called up the building, superpowered lungs helped his voice carry up to Livewire. This was probably not a good idea, but, he reflected, if he only protected people when he, personally, wouldn't be endangered by the act, he'd be a poor example of a Superman.

Quirking an eyebrow Livewire looked down at him unimpressed. She wasn't sure if he could see her expression but if he had the same powers as Supes then probably?

Holding a hand behind her she began to unbolt the massive metal screws that kept the radio tower anchored to the building using her electricity like a magnet. Meanwhile she shouted back.

"Boy you really don't know how to take a hint do ya? I'm not lookin' for some cheap knock off! I want the real deal! Mister all American cheeseball. I want the red, yellow and blue boy scout."

To try and discourage him from pestering her she brought her hand around making it into a gun shape and as her thumb flicked down lightning charged metal bolts each the size of a golf ball rocketed down at him like they'd been fired from a railgun.

Clark, out of reflex, brought up his hand to protect his face, and the bolts bounced off him. They'd certainly leave a mark, but other than his arm moving up he didn't even react.

'Okay. I need to get her away from the radio tower. She obviously has an ego. Let's use that.'

"You sure you want him?" He called back up. "You can't even fight a knock-off head-on. What makes you think you can handle him?"

She visibly stiffened and growled at him "Oh Puh-lease! I've gone toe to toe with the big man and had him dead to rights. I've saved the entire stinking world from Darkseid! You think I can't handle you? I've just got better things on my plate!"

But ooo it stung so much that he would even dare to say something like that. Turning her attention back to the tower long crackling whips of lightning raced out from her fingers and connected with the metal, wrenching it from it's foundations the tower screeched and whined and the electricity from the wires connected to it surged back into her feeding her with power.

Clark's superhearing finally picked up on her name and alias coming from a police radio, now that he was looking for it. He figured calling her out by name might irritate her even more. "Then why don't you put that tower back where it belongs and come down here and face me, Leslie?"

"Wazzat?" She stuck a pinky in her ear wiggling it around. "I don't think I heard you correctly. You're talking to the one, the only, LIVEWIRE!"

When she declared her name an explosion of energy sent the radio tower tumbling, spinning through the air towards the ground below.

"It's about brand recognition! It's about making a statement that lasts!" She added indignantly as she took flight racing along the rooftops and exploding the lightbulbs on various billboards causing glass to rain down in glittering twinkling threats.

"It's about having an over-inflated ego," he muttered.

Clark flew up, catching the tower as he did so, and started following the trail of broken glass, using the mass of metal he carried as a makeshift barrier. As soon as everyone was safe and out of the way, he placed the load down, and cast his eyes to the rooftops, trying to figure out where Livewire had disappeared to.

Edited 2015-04-21 19:24 (UTC)

This guy was spoiling all her fun! And she was feeling more and more charged the longer this dragged out. As Livewire drifted past buildings electricity was being drawn to her out of lightbulbs, power lines, computers and phones setting too close to windows.

With a growl she dove towards the ground in a flash, a bolt of lightning blazing from her lower body in blinding white light. Just before she hit the ground she pulled out of the dive causing people to scream and scramble for cover. Crackles of electricity danced around cars as she blew past them soaking up even more energy.

"You're a real kill joy you know that? And the only guy allowed to shock-block me is big blue himself!"

She threw her fists forward intending on bringing all that excess energy right through his chest just as she had before.

Knowing what was coming helped Clark maintain consciousness. It didn't stop him from being blown off his feet, and it certainly didn't do anything about the fact that, after a blast like that, he couldn't even get back to his feet.

He needed to think quckly. If she hit him with that much power another time, he probably wouldn't get up again for a while, if ever. Electric supervillains were usually weakened by water, right?

A split second x-ray of the ground showed him what he needed. Heat vision lanced out of the ground, melting a hole in the asphalt, and bursting a water main right beneath Livewire.

"What the-"

Livewire had just spun around in the air to gloat at Clark when she saw where he was firing. As fast as she was she wasn't fast enough and the water struck her from below causing a massive discharge of energy that shattered windows and shorted out any electrical devices that she hadn't already drained of their juices. It would be hours before anything on this block had electricity.

Her scream echoed through the street as she was blasted out of the air by the pillar of water. By the time she hit the ground and the blinding flash of energy had subsided Livewire was gone and Leslie was laying in a rapidly growing puddle of water, hair puffed out in all directions looking on the verge of passing out.

"Oh my head, oh my everything!" She groaned finding herself too sore to move right away.

While the Science Police weren't entirely equipped to handle a fully charged Livewire, they were fully capable of preventing her from recharging once she'd been stopped. Slapping specialized cuffs on her and shoving her into a squad car was the easy part. Figuring out what to do with the kid dressed liked Superman was a little more difficult.

For now, they'd settled on helping him up, and letting him sit down.

"You wanna tell me why you you were running around in Superman's suit?" asked one of the officers.

"It's kind of a long story..." Clark answered.

"It's one I'd very much like to hear," came a stern voice from above and there he was, the Man of Steel, floating above them, cape fluttering slightly in the breeze.

He'd been away on a rather crucial mission with the Defenders on the other side of the globe and had only just heard from Defenders dispatch that Metropolis was in trouble. While he'd expected that another superhero might be able to respond first since there was an APB out to all the Defenders, he hadn't expected...this.

"If you aren't in trouble with the police and feeling fit enough to come with me, we need to talk."

He didn't sound angry...yet. More like he very much wanted to figure out how to feel about someone he didn't know wearing the 'S.' And a lot of that depended on why he was wearing it.

Clark's eyes widened. due, He'd Known Superman was here, but knowing was different from actually seeing him with his own two eyes.

"That would...probably be a good idea."

He followed after the older man, up to the top of the Daily Planet. Running his hands through his hair nervously, Clark tried to figure out where to start.

"I guess the best place would be to start from the beginning." He said, staring off into the city. "I'm from a reality where you're a fictional character. My parents, who thought they were being funny, named me after you. And, about a year ago, I woke up in the middle of the night hovering in mid-air, which was the weirdest thing to happen to me up until I some how ended up here."

He glanced back over at Superman. "I would love an explanation for that if you have it, by the way, because I don't."

Superman's eyes widened slightly in alarm at that explanation and he eyed the boy carefully. He didn't look like Superman Prime, though, who was a the spitting image of his younger self. This young man looked more like someone who simply bore a passing resemblance.

Clark briefly scanned him with X-ray vision. His internal makeup certainly wasn't entirely human, something to be expected if he had superpowers, but it didn't look quite 100% Kryptonian either.

That made it clear he wasn't a version of Prime but who knew what was possible due to the Crisis warping nearby dimensions? Who knew if he might be just as unstable? He could've still been a version of Prime and that meant there was a risk he could be just as unstable.

"I'm afraid I don't have one for why you have these powers," Clark said, "but I do have one for why you might be here in our world. About a year and a half back there was a cosmic crisis that threatened our world and another. The heroes of both worlds banded together to fight it and while we kept both worlds from being destroyed we couldn't stop them from being merged into one. Over time, the heroes started to fall back from the dimensional pocket they'd been trapped in after the Crisis - and we're still waiting on some of them to return."

Which mean the dimensions were still warped and unstable.

"I'm no scientist, but it's possible, due to all that dimensional upheaval, that your universe was affected so that you fell through to ours."

Edited 2015-04-24 04:07 (UTC)

Clark was a smart kid, so the realization of what that probably meant hit him pretty quickly.

"I'm guessing that means I won't be going home any time soon."

The shock of that forced him to sit.

"I mean, I'm not exactly an expert on this whole dimensional travel thing, but it seems like it'd be too easy to just go, "Oh hey, you got accidentally stuck in our dimension. Let's just pop you back into yours."

He ran his hands through his hair again, this time out of anxiety rather than nervousness, and Superman would likely hear his pulse quickening.

"I- what am I going to do? Where am I going to stay. God knows what my parents are thinking right now."

Superman put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Don't lose hope, son. Some of our scientists, like Dr. Pym, are already looking for our lost allies out there in the Multiverse. I'm sure they can try to find your home universe, too. In the meantime, the Defenders have more than enough resources to help you and we wouldn't leave you to fend for yourself in a strange world."

Especially with the state of the world right now.

Superman took his hand off the teen's shoulder and sat down next to him, clearly wanting to be on his level and reassure him.

"We'll want to do a security screening, since you're new to this world, but as long as your story checks out, you'd be welcome in Defenders Tower. We do have a teen team that the Defenders train and mentor."

As strange as the situation was, and as much as they'd want to be cautious and make sure this wasn't some sort of strange trap or villains trying to infiltrate the Tower with an inside agent - or a boy who was a time bomb like Prime - they weren't about to leave a minor out in the cold.

Edited 2015-06-02 02:22 (UTC)

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