Metropolis.
The City of Tomorrow.
I was surprised that, even with such a grand title and all its technological advancement, there were still areas of the city where the future looked just as grim.
The Southside—or, more commonly to its residents, Suicide Slum—was one such place.
When I first heard the term, I didn't understand why it was called that. Sure, the area was full of old industrial blocks, crumbling offices, abandoned warehouses, and cheap apartments, but it didn't seem that bleak at first glance.
Apparently, the name came from the high rates of crime—suicides, murders, and gangs running rampant through the streets.
The people living here couldn't afford the prices of the main city and were left to endure in this place. The police ignored the area too, whether because of corruption or because it sat in a low-tax district.
Gunfire here was just background noise at night. But lately, even though shots were still common, the streets had never been safer. The crime rate had dropped to an all-time low.
The reason for that was obvious.
…Me.
As this place had become my training ground.
---
BANG—BANG—BANG!
"AHhh—no, spare meee!" a man yelled as he backed away, firing wildly in the flickering light of an old apartment building.
The bullets pinged off my Kryptonian suit. I didn't feel them, but I didn't want him to keep firing—he could hurt someone, or even himself.
I moved in and crushed his gun.
CRACK!
"AHHHH! You fucking—fuckerrr—you broke my hand!" he screamed, tears running down his face in agony.
"Sorry about that," I said, genuinely apologetic. "I still have some problems controlling my strength."
And it was true.
It was surprisingly easy for me to dial my strength down to normal-kid levels. It was just as easy to unleash almost my full power.
What I struggled with was the in-between.
Crushing a gun required far more force than crushing a hand, and those minute differences were hard to pull off when I wasn't fully focused.
Anyway, I didn't enjoy making someone suffer—although this shitbag probably deserved it.
So I zipped behind him, and my blue eyes snapped into focus.
In that instant, my X-ray vision pierced through his skin. Muscle, bone, vessels—his entire anatomy laid bare before me. I zeroed in on the dense cluster of structures in his neck. In microseconds, I identified the carotid artery, jugular vein, and the small pressure-sensitive node called the carotid sinus—a bulb at the artery's fork whose primary job was regulating blood pressure.
Carefully regulating my strength, I touched his neck with two fingers and vibrated them for a split second.
The man who had been screaming in pain went slack. His knees folded, and he hit the pavement with a dull thud.
"Good," Lara's voice murmured beside my ear as the lower half of my face was covered in a red mask. "You didn't make any mistakes this time."
"Doing it quickly and safely is still pretty hard," I muttered with a wry smile, glancing at the bodies scattered across the ground—men groaning, twitching, clutching at their limbs.
All of them had gone through the same treatment. I just hadn't been as successful with most of them.
What I had done to this guy—and what I had been trying to do to the others—was artificially overstimulate the carotid sinus, triggering a sudden drop in blood pressure and heart rate that forced the brain to shut down for a few seconds.
Ideally, they would wake up after a few hours once their bodies stabilized, with no visible lasting damage.
Obviously, this wasn't something a normal human could pull off.
It was difficult even for me. The level of precision it required was insane.
But I didn't want to go around cracking necks or fracturing skulls just to take people down—like I had back in Gotham. I wanted something fast. Reliable.
After digging deep into human biology, this was the safest method I had managed to come up with.
I had been thinking about naming the technique the Art of Finger Fainting… or the Fingers of Death.
Lara hated both.
So, clearly, I still had work to do.
"Only a few scumbags left," I muttered, eyeing the top floor of the old building.
Instead of taking the stairs, I flew straight through the ceiling, chunks of concrete exploding outward as I punched through.
BOOM!
I burst up from below in front of a reinforced door where two men with rifles stood frozen in shock.
Before they could even blink, their weapons were scrap and both of them were sprawled on the floor.
I crushed through the door and stepped into the final room.
"WHAT THE FUCK!" a tall, muscular man with an ugly face shouted in panic.
Compared to the rest of the building, this place looked absurdly lavish—a private study with leather sofas, ornate desks, and even an aquarium built into one wall.
The ugly man was halfway through opening a safe hidden behind one of the large paintings.
"Oh," I said lightly, tilting my head, "were you planning on running after grabbing all your 'goods'?"
I chuckled.
"I didn't realize one of Intergang's new leaders—Bruno Mannheim—was so greedy."
Bruno Mannheim.
One of the more ruthless figures in Intergang.
His crew controlled most of the drugs, gambling, prostitution, and human trafficking in Metropolis. And Bruno himself had a personal hobby: beating people's faces in until they were as ugly as his.
Intergang was an international crime organization with roots across the world. Bruno's late father had been one of its founding members, which was how Bruno had managed to secure Metropolis—one of the biggest cities—as his base.
Some of that information I had learned from the dozens of hideouts I had raided over the past few months.
Some came from my own canon knowledge.
And most of it came from Lara, who had already hacked into half a dozen government databases that kept files on him.
Anyway, Bruno was still technically just getting started—but even so, he could grow into a serious nuisance later, just like he did in the comics.
Which was exactly why I was dealing with him this soon.
However, I still hadn't expected him to stay behind to grab his money. I had assumed that he would quickly try to run to the helicopter parked on the roof.
Of course, he would have then realized pretty quickly that I had already disabled the pilot.
Meaning he had nowhere left to run.
"So you know who I am?" he barked. "Then how dare you attack my gang!"
He stalked over to his desk and yanked a shotgun from underneath it. "Now you'll pay for it!"
Before he could fire, I was already in front of him. I took the weapon from his hands and snapped it in half like it was a wooden twig.
"F-fuck!" He stumbled backward. "W-why is a powerful metahuman like you attacking my gang?" he stammered. "Is it money? Did some other crew put a contract on us? If so, I'll pay double—no, triple—for you to switch sides. Trust me, whatever you want, I-I can get it for you."
As he spoke, I noticed his finger subtly press a button on the wall behind him.
WROOOM—WROOM!
Two model planes mounted on opposite sides of the room roared to life and launched toward me.
"HA! Die, you stupid shit!" Bruno shouted, diving behind a chair.
He didn't realize I had been letting him move freely—because I had been waiting for him to trigger his toys.
The miniature aircraft were packed with dense machinery and high-grade explosives.
A flick of my cape sent red fabric unraveling into shimmering dust that washed over both planes, choking their mechanisms midair.
They dropped harmlessly onto the table.
"Huh?" Bruno peeked out, stunned by the lack of an explosion. The planes sat there, inert. "W-why didn't they blow up?" he asked, panic creeping into his voice.
"Those toys could've leveled this entire room," I said with a grin. "You should be grateful I disabled them. In a way… I just saved your life."
Obviously, I hadn't disabled them—Lara had. But he didn't need to know that.
Bruno looked genuinely rattled now, sweat forming along his ugly face.
"W-why don't we make a deal?" he stammered. "I-I heard you don't kill people, so why not just let me go? There's around 1.5 million in cash in that safe—and a lot of gold bars too. I-it's all yours. Take it… j-just let me leave, okay? Deal?"
I smiled and took his offered hand.
CRUNCH.
"AHHH!" he screamed as his bones ground under my grip.
To cut his scream off, I seized his neck and lifted him off the floor.
"W-why—AHH!—why are you doing this? Why t-target me… my gang?" he gasped, his face flushing deeper red as my fingers tightened.
"It's nothing personal," I said calmly. "You and your gang were just… part of my training."
His struggles weakened as oxygen stopped reaching his brain.
Then he went limp.
I released him, letting his body hit the floor.
He was still alive, just unconscious.
In fact I really hated him.
Everything I had seen over the past few months—the prostitutes, the addicts, the corpses in alleys, the lives being ruined and erased—so much of it traced back to him.
Directly or indirectly.
A man who trampled others like that deserved to die painfully.
"Should I really not kill him?" I muttered, staring down at him as heat prickled behind my eyes.
"No," Lara replied calmly. "We've already discussed this. You committing murder now would only hinder you and create additional complications."
My mother's voice was like cold water dumped over my anger.
I didn't want to think about pros and cons right now.
Unfortunately, my brain did that automatically.
My reason won over my emotions.
"…Yeah. You're right," I said, forcing myself to breathe slower. "Were you able to pinpoint the location through the toy planes?"
"Yes. It isn't far from here. Wrap this up quickly, then you can pay him a visit," Lara replied lightly.
"Sure," I muttered, already moving to clean up.
First, I yanked open the safe door.
Inside were duffel bags stuffed with bundled cash, gold bars, and jewelry—along with bearer bond certificates. There were also ledgers listing the names of several Metropolis politicians, plus another folder crammed with incriminating photographs.
Drugs too.
Lots of them.
I took everything valuable and shifted it onto a nearby empty rooftop.
Consider it my commission for the night.
I burned the narcotics and destroyed the weapons. Then I freed the fish from the aquarium, carrying them out to the sea before returning.
After that, I hogtied the ugly man and dropped him on a rooftop across from the main police station, stacking all the incriminating evidence beside him.
They wouldn't be able to ignore that.
Especially once an anonymous tip hits the Daily Planet.
I didn't bother delivering the other gang members to the precinct. There was no point—they would be released soon enough.
Instead, I dumped them in nearby alleys.
Then, following Lara's directions, I burned specific structural points in the building with my heat vision.
The whole place went up in flames.
I had done the same thing to other bases over the past few months, and Lara could always calculate how to keep the fires contained.
Which was a big relief.
"Do you think these gang members will get the message and turn over a new leaf?" I murmured, watching the blaze eat into the night sky.
"You have destroyed nearly all the major drug and weapons operations in Southside," Lara said soothingly. "More importantly, their leader will remain incarcerated for a long time. Most of these thugs will scatter out of fear and attempt to return to normal lives. Some will regroup and form smaller gangs—but that is not your responsibility. You can just leave them for the police and other vigilantes, there is no need for you to do everything on your own."
I exhaled slowly.
"I just don't want them hurting anyone," I admitted. "If they do… it'll weigh on my conscience that sparing them led to more victims."
"Kal-El," she said gently, wisdom threading through her tone, "killing everyone would not solve anything."
"I know," I replied quietly.
Then I straightened.
"Alright. Point me toward Toyman."
With Lara's guidance, I slipped away into the night—the burning building throwing harsh light across the bleak sprawl of Suicide Slum.
***
[CKLance has redeemed an Extra Chapter this week]