"What are you doing!"
It wasn't a question. Clark asked it with the tone and expression of a person demanding an answer, but the words carried the weight of a conclusion already drawn. He stared at Homelander, his brow furrowed, his patience exhausted by what he had just witnessed.
Homelander smiled at him.
Behind Homelander, Queen Maeve watched the three men arc upward. She was already running the numbers. It was not out of sympathy. Three armed robbers who had just terrorized a public street did not evoke much pity from her. But what Homelander had just done was tactically moronic. They had surrendered. Their guns were on the pavement, their hands on their heads. They offered full cooperation with cameras recording. And he had thrown them into the sky.
Vought's legal team is going to have a very productive afternoon, she thought. He's going to hear about this. She glanced at the crowd, at the phones already raised. We're going to hear about this.
She was still processing the operational implications when the air cracked.
Clark had already moved. She registered the sound of a body breaking the sound barrier and looked up in time to see a red cape cutting a line toward the apex of one man's trajectory. He caught the first man, adjusted mid-flight with the unconscious precision of someone for whom physics was a minor concern, retrieved the second, and came back down with the third tucked under his arm. The entire sequence completed in the time it took her to process it.
She found herself watching the arc of his flight with an attention she hadn't intended to give.
Homelander was watching, too. His expression had not changed, but something behind his eyes shifted—a rapid internal calculation, the quiet revision of an assessment.
His flight speed, Homelander registered. Not slower than mine.
The thought filed itself away for later review.
Clark landed. He set all three men down with the careful precision of someone returning objects to their original condition. He looked at Homelander.
"Why kill them," he said. "They'd already surrendered." He paused. "This isn't heroism."
Three sentences. No performance, no volume. Just the flat moral clarity of a man stating what was in front of him.
Homelander's anger flared, immediate and total. It started in his chest and radiated outward. I'm not a hero? The internal monologue roared like static. The strongest. The most successful. The most recognized in history. And an unknown nobody who appeared out of nowhere twenty minutes ago is standing on my street in my city telling me—
He smiled.
Years of Vought's conditioning had produced a direct relationship between internal suppression and external performance. The angrier he became, the better the smile got. It was automatic, calibrated, airtight.
"I hear you," Homelander said warmly. He turned slightly so his voice carried to the crowd. He aimed the explanation at Clark, but he delivered it for the forty phones currently pointing at them. "You haven't been doing this as long as I have, so it's understandable that you'd see it that way. But these men were armed. Active threat, ongoing situation. Decisive action protects citizens. That's the job."
"They had their hands on their heads," Clark said.
"Let's not get stuck on this. You clearly care more about the criminals than the people they were threatening. That's a perspective, but the citizens are my priority." Homelander's voice did not change register. He lifted slightly off the ground, a slow, deliberate ascent designed to read well from street level. "You did good work today. The truck's intact, the money's safe. That matters." His gaze swept over Clark, an appraising look meant to devalue what it saw. "If you're interested in The Seven's selection process, I'll put in a word. Plenty of people here would support it." He tilted his head slightly. "But if you came here thinking you could build your brand off the back of mine—that's not how this works. You want to be a hero? Do it honestly. Take the long road."
He held the smile for one more beat—the photo-finish beat, the beat the cameras needed—then rose smoothly into the sky and vanished.
Queen Maeve watched him go. Contempt flashed across her face, brief but real, before she smoothed her features. She looked back at Clark.
His abilities are essentially identical to Homelander's.
The thought carried a weight she was not ready to confront. She filed it alongside Homelander's offhand comment about The Seven's selection process, turned it over once, and let the sound of the crowd bring her back.
Clark, meanwhile, had walked across the street to the two teenagers.
"Next time you cross the street," he said, "look both ways. And watch your language."
Both boys stared at him. The taller one raised his hand.
"Could we—can we get a picture? Superman?"
Clark looked at him. The boy's expression held the pure, uncomplicated hope of someone who had just watched a man stop an armored truck with his hands and catch three people out of the air. It was a reasonable request.
Clark sighed. He smiled. He did not like the reporter circuit. He did not like interviews. He preferred to be Clark—just Clark, with a job and an apartment and a commute—and to move through the world quietly. But he could not refuse a direct, sincere request.
He took the photo.
He was about to turn and find Jude when his vision adjusted involuntarily, reaching through the crowd. He picked out Jude on the far pavement. Jude had one hand raised, his phone facing outward.
Clark focused. He read the screen.
Don't worry about me. Just take off. I'll find your size and pick up clothes. Come find me when you're done.
Jude provided no meeting point. No coordinates. He simply assumed that a man who could see through buildings from orbit would have no trouble locating someone on a single city block.
The operational advantages of working with someone who actually has powers, Clark reflected. If this were Bruce, Jude would need to transmit coordinates. Or there'd be a listening device somewhere.
He waved once in Jude's direction—a gesture that read to the crowd as a general farewell—and looked up.
A hand caught his arm.
It lacked force, but Clark stopped. It was not the kind of grip he could pull away from without causing a scene, and he did not want a scene.
"Queen Maeve." She extended her other hand, properly this time. Her expression had softened, abandoning the controlled neutrality she wore around Homelander. "What you did today was excellent."
"Thank you," Clark said. "I should really—"
She leaned in slightly. Her voice dropped.
"What," she said, "do you think you're doing?"
Clark looked at her. "...Leaving?"
"Just leaving. After a photo with two teenagers."
"Was there something else I should do?"
Maeve stared at him, her expression blank as she encountered a gap in her understanding of the world.
"The media," she said. "The cameras. The NYPD officers who'd like a statement. The citizens who've been waiting for twenty minutes to get within ten feet of you. You're just going to fly away."
Clark considered this. "In Metropolis, I usually—"
"You do this in Metropolis? Just help someone and then leave?"